S1 Ep32: Great Balls of Fire

This message is brought to you by Cologuard. If you recorded songs off the radio for a mixtape, it might be time to scream for colon cancer. The Cologuard test is non-invasive, requires no special prep or time off, and you start screening right from your home. It's just three simple steps. Set up, sample, and ship. If you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your doctor about the Cologuard test. Available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription at Cologuard.com slash podcast. Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care is always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org. Astonishing Legends Network. The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Dead Letter office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests. When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too. Join us weekly in Blanket Fortiana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter office. Tonight's episode, Great Balls of Fire. Tonight's Dead Letter is a 2025 submission from Misael. Misael was playing a game of horse with his older sister when he was younger, and their game was interrupted by something quite bizarre. Well, this is something you don't see every day of your life. Well, actually, something most people will not see their entire lives, but it does happen. It does happen, and we hear about it. And I continue to marvel at how many things like this happen to children, by the way. There's a lot of stories come in from people, and it sticks with them. And it's definitely part of the trickster component. Well, sometimes I believe so. And as we've talked about quite a lot on the show, we, everybody in the paranormal community seems to think so. You know, children can see things us adults cannot because... That's right. They've not yet been led to believe that those things are impossible, and only the fancies of a child. But in this case, sometimes I think it may be a trickster element, and then sometimes it might go all the way up to the top, the great deceiver. But whatever this was, it did seem to be intently focused on Misael and his sister, and it definitely seemed sentient. Yes, it did. And without further ado, I think it's your turn to read tonight, sir. My sister and I were playing horse in our gravel driveway. It wasn't the best for playing basketball with rocks sticking out of the ground, but it was good enough for horse. I was 10 at the time, and she was 15 or 16. We'd started playing while the sun was up and played until it was dark out. My sister took forever to shoot. She bounced the ball, got ready to shoot, then bounced the ball again. During one of the last shots of the game, I passed her the ball as it was her turn and squatted down to pick at some large rocks where I wanted to shoot from next. As I was digging the rocks out with my fingers, I noticed a blue light on the ground a couple of feet in front of where I was. I didn't react immediately until it clicked, and I thought, where is that light coming from? I looked up to find the source, and approximately 3 to 4 feet above the basketball backboard was a floating sphere engulfed in blue fire. The fire wasn't flaring like when something is on fire, but it seemed like the flames were kept close to the sphere. The sphere seemed natural, meaning it wasn't man-made or made of metal. I know it was a long time ago, and my memory might be hazy, but I want to say it looked like it was made of stone. Picture the moon with its craters, but surrounded by blue fire. I stared in amazement and did not feel afraid. And then I looked over at my sister and said, Are you seeing? I didn't finish my sentence as I noticed the fear on her face. She held the basketball with both hands, knees bent as if she was about to jump and shoot, but she froze in place by fear. As soon as I saw her fear, I got scared and looked back at the flaming ball. As soon as I did, it shot off across our yard and flew into the light post in front of our neighbor's house. It seemed like it disintegrated or was absorbed by the light. Then little sparkles kind of fell from it. Not electrical sparks, but like the fireworks that trailed down after they pop. I stared for a couple of seconds and turned back to my sister. She was gone and the ball was bouncing on the driveway. I laugh at that part because it reminded me of cartoons when characters take off so fast and their shoes or shorts stay floating in place. Anyway, I ran after her into the house and she was already yelling at my dad, telling him about it. I laugh at that too, with her, as she just left poor 10-year-old me outside by myself after seeing the strangest thing we could ever see. I had no clue what that was. It was 1993 and if that was technology, we did not have that then. No sound. Nothing. I should say that my mom had passed away that summer in July and everyone we told automatically said it was her. That made no sense to me. Why a ball of fire? Why blue? I am of Mexican descent and Mexicans love paranormal stuff and love to believe in these things and more. Some suggested a witch and, of course, a UFO. As I stated, it looked like stone, not metallic, and it disappeared almost magically. Through the years, I tried to research, but there's not much out there about blue balls of fire. There are those electricity balls, but that wasn't it. In my culture, there are stories of balls of fire chasing people away from buried treasure, but I'm pretty sure there was nothing of that sort there. The closest thing I could find were stories from Japan where they see small blue flames that are supposed to be spirits. I then noticed that anime cartoons sometimes have blue flames next to the ghost character. While similar, it was not a beach ball-sized stone sphere engulfed in blue flames hovering still over our basket. There was a dream I had in that time frame that popped into memory after listening to one of your shows. I didn't recall which one it was, but it was mentioned that a spirit or creature would take the form of someone you know to lure you to them. The dream was of my mom, but I was instantly terrified as soon as I saw her. She floated towards me with her hand out as if she wanted me to hold her hand. I just remembered a deep fear and panic. I couldn't get words out to notify my dad that was several feet away, but apparently couldn't see her. I woke up before she could touch me. I told my dad about that dream and he said to never take their hand as it could mean giving myself to a demonic entity. He was a pastor. I can't help but tie those two and a couple of other things together as either the spirit of my mom or an entity using her likeness to get to me or us. Maybe high emotions after her death set off all these different things. Either way, I felt like that opened a door for me to have future experiences. Not many, but enough to know there's more to life than what we see or perceive. Thanks for reading this. Love your shows. Well, it's just an innocent game of horse until blue balls of fire start showing up. Yeah. Now, we've heard other stories of people talking about orbs. And with this case, though, I feel there's also some cultural context that has some importance here. Because I believe that has a lot to do with your experience and how you perceive it, because as we've sometimes mentioned, the experience is tailored to the person receiving it. Right. If you're going to communicate with someone and you want it to be effective, you've got to use their language and cultural context. And so that's why I found this interesting, too. There's a Mexican perspective, but also our author here had looked into the Japanese perspective. What did that mean? And they mean different things, I think, depending on your culture. Some things are good luck. Some things are bad luck, depending on where you're from. And in this case, I did love the Hispanic perspective of this, because something you may not remember, Scott, but you had some work to be done, I think, on the AC unit. It was in the crawl space, you know, those California crawl spaces at about three feet tall. Yes. Yes. So the guy came over and he was super cool, very, most of those guys just get to their business. I don't want to hold them up. But he was very talkative and was like, hey, what are you doing here? And what do you guys do? I see some recording equipment. It's like, well, we have a podcast. Oh, what's it about? It's like, oh, the paranormal. And then that triggered it. He was, as he was helped describe, he's like, oh, dude, I'm Mexican. We love that stuff. So I can confirm with our author here. He's like, oh, man, I just, I love those stories. I grew up having all these experiences. You know, my family had a house and he said, we would continually see balls of light. Oh, interesting. Just past the backyard. And I said, well, you know, what did your family think of that? He said, well, same thing here. He said, you know, some family members that were older, they thought it was a bruja, brujaria, witches or some kind of supernatural spells, keeping an eye on you or watching over you or just giving you a warning like, hey, we see you. And then some thought they were spirits of past loved ones. And he said, like, you know, I'm a little younger. I thought, is this UFO related? I don't know. And then I noticed he was wearing a bracelet of small blue beads. And I said, is that tiger's eye? And he goes, yeah, my girlfriend makes me wear it. She's afraid I'm going to get some spiritual influence. So I told him about the show. I don't know if he's listening still, but he loved all that stuff. And he kind of confirms a lot of what we're talking about here. Yeah. But what he described with the orbs, he said it was very weird. I mean, it's not just like the Marfa lights way off in the distance. He said these were like bouncing orbs of light that would kind of go up and down, if I remember correctly, and not too far off. And they just knew to like, you can watch them, just don't go up to them and be respectful. So they didn't approach. But he said like, yeah, it was definitely a thing. I can swear to you that. And maybe he described them as possibly bowling ball sized. So nothing too huge, nothing metallic, just kind of glowing orbs, if I remember correctly. So it was kind of fascinating. You get some connection here. The other thing that's interesting to me about Misael's story is the fact that he was close enough or able to make out a sort of texture to it. And that it seemed like it was a stone or something natural, which is interesting too, because when you try to think of, oh, what's the mundane scientific explanation for this? You know, if we believe Misael's story, which, you know, personally I do, I think it's, you know, it's very interesting story. What could possibly account for something like this? Because, you know, you think, well, when is something going to float and be on fire to a glowing kind of heat? And the only time you ever see that is like, you know, you're around a campfire and a little piece of ash wood floats up in the heat, which is ultimately very, very small and lightweight. And the flame causes it to rise for the same reason a hot air balloon goes out and heat rises. But it's hard to imagine anything, like if you could even construct something, if you said, okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to do a fact or faked on this, that great TV show that used to be, I'm going to make a sphere out of paper and see if I can get it to float from the amount of heat it's giving off. And it's like, I don't know. It just seems like a stretch. And then to have it hovering and then to cross the street and smash into a pole and sort of disintegrate or disappear right in front of them. Right. With the sparklies trailing down. Yeah. With the sparklies, which I always think about this in an ancient movie now, but it's a movie called The Natural with Robert Redford, where at the end he hits this home run and it smashes into the lights around the stadium and they all explode. It's a beautiful scene. The cinematography is exceptional and it's very memorable. Yeah. Just all the showers of sparks coming down, illuminating the field. Yeah. That's what I thought of. Like, it's hard to find a lot about this because it is cross-cultural, you know, and it means different things, like you said, to different people. I did find this one website called The Haunted Traverse Tour Company. And the owner there, her name is Desiree or Des, and she had posted something on June 11th of 2024 talking about orbs. One of the things that she said there, and her company is in Traverse City, Michigan, which is pretty near the pinky of the mitten in Michigan. And she wrote, well, with blue orbs, the meaning is truth, peace, and creativity. The interpretation, blue orbs are thought to signify a calm and healing presence for the psyche. They are often associated with spirits that are trying to communicate in a gentle and peaceful manner to encourage growth through visions of creativity. There are other cultures, and this is from another website, blue orb meaning spiritual direction and communication website. Love to know. We have a link. I'll post it in the show notes. But it could be a ghost. Actually, a pretty controversial theory in paranormal research circles, but some people theorize that a blue orb is in itself a ghost. The color radiates from calm and benevolent spirits. When you have this type of encounter, it may be the spirit of someone you knew, such as a caring and loving parent, which is exactly what people were telling Misael. This is your mom that passed away. However, it can also be that of a pure spirit, such as a child. Now, I did want to look into, we have a copy of the, you know, in the Astonishing Library, The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits by Rosemary Ellen Guy, second edition. God rest her soul. We have a lot of people that are, we're friends with her. And I wanted to read this one entry here. It's on page 269. Orbs appear to be a form of energy of unknown origin. They are not stray light sources, insects, or dust particles. They are not sufficiently strong enough to set off any type of detection meters, nor do they have sufficient mass to set off infrared motion detectors. They seem to defy gravity and change directions, sometimes quickly. They twinkle. They react to the presence of people. They increase in number when people are present in a haunted location. They appear both indoors and outdoors. They cannot be explained by static discharge, such as that which is created by walking on carpet, for they are recorded in houses and buildings that have no carpet. Orbs are not the same as ghost lights, which are similar in shape and behavior, but which are much brighter and visible to the naked eye. And she also goes on to mention, many people mistakenly think they capture orbs on photographic film. Most mysterious balls or arcs of light that appear in photographs are refractions of light on the camera lens caused by light bouncing back from artificial lights and sources. I thought this was interesting what she's saying here. But she also mentions ghost lights, which seem more on point for this. Luminous phenomena, and this is from page 156, luminous phenomena, usually in the shape of balls or irregular patches of light reported around the world that defy natural explanation. However, most ghost lights are yellow or white, while others are red, orange, or blue. The lights may change color as they are observed. They appear randomly or regularly at particular sites varying in size and configuration and may be active for years. Ghost lights are widely reported in remote areas throughout the United States, Britain, Japan, and other countries. It says here, it's a list of characteristics here from the Ghost Research Society that she, I guess she talked to them, based in Oak Lawn, Illinois, and the American Ghost Society. They appear in remote areas. They are elusive and can only be seen from certain angles and distances. They react to noise and light by receding or disappearing. They are accompanied by humming, buzzings, outbreaks of gaseous material. They are associated with the folklore surrounding a haunting due to a terrible accident or tragedy that took place at the site. So none of that really lines up, you know? So one of the things she talks about here is what you just mentioned a minute ago, the Marfa lights, the Brown Mountain lights, things like that. It's a little bit different. So maybe that doesn't really line up, but I don't know. Yeah. I mean, what do you, what do you think? Well, I think obviously the sphere, the circle, maybe that's the most elemental universal shape. We've talked about that before. The shape of, well, most celestial bodies in the universe as above, so below. It's just the most natural shape we go to. Others with, you know, the square, the triangle perhaps are thought of as more man-made. I remember a very old Native American saying that nature creates shapes that are round. Man creates shapes that are square. And what he may be inferring was that the two shapes are, they don't mix well together. So nature tends to have rounded shapes, circles. Look at fairy rings. They're in a circle. It'd be weird to have a fairy ring that was, it was a perfect square rectangle or triangle. Yeah. But man tries to create shapes that, you know, have their own angles and geometry. And then there's such a thing as sacred geometry, I think, which blends the two. But getting back to what this was, yeah, the description of the texture of it was fascinating and really compelling because we don't often get that description. Usually when we hear about orbs, it's just funny that you're looking into orbs now because you were such a orb hater back when we started. I know, I know, I know when we started the show, I made fun of all of the orbs. And by the way, I stand by my opinion of most orbs captured by a device that has a lens. I think a lot of times it is lens flare. And by a lot, I mean 90% of the time. That said, I have seen orbs in our travels that there's no question to me that they're not lens flare or dust. I've seen them. I've seen those. I just think they're a very small percentage of what, you know, non-paranormal civilians think of as orbs. You know, they're just like, oh, it's an orb. It's an orb. It's an orb. It's like, that's a bright light outside the window coming in through the lens most of the time. I have a flip-flop opinion on that because that was years ago, back when we started the podcast. And I was still working at my old job at this building in Torrance, California, which turned out to be quite haunted. I told this story before. It's just a regular, it's an office building. It wasn't that old even, it did have a lot of activity. I learned later as I, as I was working there and had a few of my own odd experiences, but just very slight. You wouldn't say a yes guy. I was like, well, there you go. You saw a ghost. It's like, yeah, but the experiences were odd, but I still can't be a hundred percent certain. And in that light, I'm friends with the building manager and was then, and he had to take pictures of some rooms he was clearing out because you were going to move new corporate tenants in. And so he had to just show that they were empty and cleared out. And this is what they look like. On his digital photographs, there were orbs in there. And he knew I was just starting this podcast. And he was also somewhat interested in the same subjects, you know, in the paranormal and supernatural. He said, Forrest, what do you think these are? I got these bright glowing little specks that showed up on the, in the photos. And so we took a look at it. We blew them up and printed them out. And, you know, and I was trying to be very, again, back in those days, you start off, I think before you know more than you do or have more experiences, I was trying to be very neutral. And I said, well, can, you know, a lot of times these will be digital artifacts with the digital photography process and their specks of dust. And if you blow them up, they lay, look like something, but just think about it. That room was just cleared out. There's a lot of dust in there before they got cleaned. You know, it's probably nothing. And then I remember back as we had more experiences, I remember the photos, when you blew them up, it looked like there were faces in there. And I know some of that's pareidolia, but I often ask this about pareidolia. At what point maybe you look at a blurry photo of somebody and it's so blurry that you can claim it's pareidolia, but at some point there's a tipping point where it's not pareidolia. It's actually an image of somebody. Yeah, yeah. You can see a pattern in a carpet or a curtain. It's like, well, that looks like a face. But at what point does the resolution get so good that you have to, or you cannot deny anymore that that is a face, that is an image. Obviously, I take a picture of you with a digital camera. It's like, that's not pareidolia. That's just what Scott looks like. Now, if I blur that out so far, that's like, well, it looks like the shape of a head and there's a beard and it looks like Scott a little bit and he's wearing a hoodie, but it's so indistinct that you could claim it's pareidolia. Well, like I said, everybody has to choose that line where it's just like, no, it's like a lot of ghost photos. It's like, you know, that's the lamppost. That's a fan in the background. It's like, it really looks like a face to me. It's like, okay, so you see an orb in the ancient traditions. That was, I would say generally, it's safe to say that was termed as a spirit, you know, in a very general sense. And if you go back to 1800s America, as we talked about the bell witch, everything was a witch to them. Like that was the term for any kind of spirit or something poltergeisty or whatever. It was, it was a Kate Batts witch. And so what is this thing that we're seeing? Well, they had less of an idea, of course, of the ancient cultures of what technology is or what phenomena is, I think. And so what we know now is from the description, it doesn't sound like St. Elmo's fire. It doesn't sound like ball lightning. Maybe it was in some different form that we don't know anything about. But as you noted, it seemed that maybe there was some sentience to it. It took off in a particular direction. And it seemed to do that when it realized that Misael was looking at it. So maybe, maybe there was something about it that's, and maybe it was somehow connected to his mother or some other benevolent being that's outside the scope of our reality. It's so complicated and foreign to us. I think it's hard to judge what the thing is, what the phenomenon is because of the electrical charge you're giving off as a human being, your electrical field, your aura, and it just reacts, like I said, negative, repulses negative. All we have to go on, as I said, when we started here, is the feeling you get. And so his sister was like, run away, run away. And that usually keeps you safe. But a lot of times, too, these things seem childlike. And that's something that we've come across over the years with our shows. People are like, it almost seems like a kid. It's like it's sentient, but it's just playing. It could be. Or is it scoping out something? We talked about the one, I think it was in Norway or at least Scandinavia, where there was a red orb that appeared to two hunters near a hunting shack, and they tried to follow it. And I think one shot out of beam to them, and there was a lot of interaction. And I think we were going to cover it. Rob Christofferson certainly, I think, knows about it, the story. But like I said, it's hard to determine what this thing is. And so you have to be satisfied with what your feeling was. And yeah, it's a good thing you probably didn't touch it. I might have at that age. I might still, just to see what's going to happen. It depends on what I have to do the next day. But as for 10-year-old Misael and how his sister reacted, they're different people, of course, even though they're siblings. And it's like, I think he was more fascinated. The sister was more afraid. That, I think, sums up more of my childhood perception about it. I would have both fear and fascination. And you don't know what's going to win out when you're looking at it. But to my point earlier, when we started, and we were talking about the trickster element, I was going to say, the reason that young people, and especially younger children, that starts to get a little older. I think there's an age cutoff, too, that might be biological. When they talk about kids having memories of past lives. And those all start to fade, apparently, between like 8 and 10 years old. And the memories just kind of go away. I don't think that's because people said, that's impossible. I think there's a mechanism there that's biological and maybe spiritual. So yeah, that's when the brain is maturing. They tell you all the time. It's like, oh, well, your reason center is developing. And so there's a difference between like, are you just coming to grips with the fact, oh, that that doesn't make sense? Or is it some sort of evolutionary reason that you're like, all right, we're done seeing this stuff. It's time to move forward in your development. And we're going to close this window for now. I think so. Because I think the point, perhaps, and again, I'm tying this to a more elevated metaphysical reasoning is that you're meant to live this life, not dwell on a past life. That's why we don't remember them. Most people don't. For some reason, that kind of, that lapses and you get an overlap and then you get some memories of the past life. And I firmly believe there's something to that, just the facts that kids have come up with that they can't possibly know. And I don't attribute that to them being just really watching a lot of TV and the news and digging into history books and coming up with some alternate reality from past life for themselves. There's something to that. I think at some point, though, the purpose is to focus on the life you're living now in the time frame you're living now and to learn whatever you can. But getting back to your trickster element here, I would say, you know, I was, I was kind of hinting at there's the trickster element and the elemental and the, the wood sprite phase of this, and then if you progress that all the way to the end of the dial, there is the deceiver. And you just reminded me when we were talking about this, about a great line from the movie Poltergeist I've talked about just a few times before, but it's the speech from the characters Tangina played by the terrific Zelda Rubenstein. And it's one of the best scenes in the movie. And I think the writing is, the screenwriting is just spot on because it's just so, it's profound and ended up being very relevant to what we talk about a lot, which is who is the messenger and what is the message and what is their purpose? And so just to read what she says to the parents of Carol Ann here, I don't know what hovers over this house, but it was strong enough to punch a hole into this world and take your daughter away from you. It keeps Carol Ann very close to it and away from the spectral light. It lies to her. It says things only a child can understand. He's been using her to restrain the others. To her, it simply is another child. To us, it is the beast. Now, let's go get your daughter. Just love that passage. But to take away from that, the thing that struck me the line from that, or the idea, the concept was that it says things only a child can understand. Now, I've talked about this a little bit before, but what does that mean? It's like, obviously we're adults, you know, we can understand our children, right? Even when they can't form their words very carefully, we know if they're hungry, they're upset, they're throwing a tantrum, we can understand them. But is there a level that is of the consciousness of a child that is from the past, from the other side of the veil, from the elevated spiritual world that is higher than our adult consciousness now, that they're tapping into whatever the spectral beast is, that it talks and communicates on that level that we as human adults have lost the ability to understand? Because I don't think it's simplistic. It's like that goo goo ga ga type talk to a child. I take that as being some kind of understanding that is more cosmic than we can comprehend here as adults. Anyway, not to get too metaphysical, but getting back to the orb thing, I think that there is an understanding there that maybe this is why these types of things appear more to children and younger people. There's more of a connection. I think all of that tracks, and it all makes sense to me in a sort of roundabout way. Well, Misael, whatever you saw, it does feel as though it was meant for you and your sister at that place and time. Now, we don't know the reason, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't one. We know that you don't feel it was the spirit of your departed mother, and maybe it wasn't, but whatever it was, it had more than a passing interest in you or seemed to. Maybe it just wanted to learn how to play basketball. Whatever the case, your story is super fascinating to us. Thank you for sending it in. If you have a story like Misael's or of a different paranormal or mysterious type, send it to deadletterofficeatastonishinglegends.com. The Astonishing Dead Letter Office is hosted by Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess, and is executive produced by Tess Feifel. The show is edited and mixed by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound. The theme is based on the Astonishing Legends theme by Judson Crane at Founder Music, arranged by Alan Carissia, who composes all the other music in the show. Tommy Beaver Design created the logo. The announcer is John Bolton. That's me. Stories are lightly edited for length, content, and readability, but otherwise presented as they're sent to us. We're always looking for more Dead Letters, so if you have a story of your own you'd like to share, email it to deadletterofficeatastonishinglegends.com. Please include how you would like to be credited. First name only? First name last initial? Anonymous? A pseudonym? Let us know. Due to the number of emails coming in, we often cannot respond, but we do read them all. No part of this show may be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright, Astonishing Legends Productions. Exploring the unknown is what makes Astonishing Legends so much fun. But when it comes to dinner, nobody wants surprises. Marley's Spoon helps you eat well without overthinking it. Each meal is chef-designed, made with quality ingredients, and balanced so you feel good about what you're eating. With over 100 recipes to pick from every week, there's always something new to try, whether you're in the mood for a comforting classic or something a little more adventurous. Marley's Spoon adapts to your life, from breakfast to dinner, and even those in-between snack moments. The subscription is simple and flexible, so it fits your schedule, no matter how busy things get. Go to marleyspoon.com slash offer slash pod45 for 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's right, 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's marleyspoon.com slash offer slash P-O-D-4-5. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today, with the goal of being 70% more productive, so we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We're happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks. Hey, it's Jay Shetty from On Purpose. Check out the best of a moment we did, presented by eBay. I'd never owned a vintage camera before. There was something about it that felt almost unnecessary in a world where everything lives on our phones. But I wanted to change that. So I started the hunt for a point-and-shoot camera. When I finally found the perfect one on eBay, I didn't keep it to myself. I left it out on a table. Always within reach, people started picking it up without asking. Family, friends, everyone to take a photo of whatever felt important to them in that moment. There was no editing, no retakes. You took the photo and that was it. The moment became real right away. It was about choosing something. Deciding this matters. Even if it came out blurry, the vintage camera belonged to the room, to the moment, to the people in it. Over time, the photos started to pile up on the fridge, on shelves, tucked into books. Each one a reminder that meaning isn't always planned. That's what I appreciate about eBay. It's a place where you can find things that bring people together and pass along things you no longer need, so they can become part of someone else's memories. To listen to more, check out the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ebay.com to shop your favorite finds. Find what you love, sell what you don't. eBay. Things people love. All right, quick quiz for the hiring managers out there. What's worse, being understaffed or being poorly staffed? Well, that's a trick question, because both are recipes for chaos. Either way, just say to yourself, this is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. You'll get matched with candidates that meet the skills, certifications, and everything else you're looking for. Or, go a different way and get no traction. Seriously, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. It really is a no-brainer. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. With the Venmo debit card, a taco in one hand, and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking your rewards. Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment, and more. Pick a bundle with your go-tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Do more stash. Get more cash. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at Venmo.me slash stash terms. Max $100 cash back per month. Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care's always there. Download the app at your app store or HHC247.org. With the Venmo debit card, a taco in one hand, and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking your rewards. Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment, and more. Pick a bundle with your go-tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Do more stash, get more cash. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at Venmo.me slash stash terms. Max $100 cash back per month. At CVS, it matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night. And we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At CVS, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So visit us at cvs.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location.