No Stupid Questions?

I meet the world’s number one podcaster, Toe Mogan, host of the infamous and wildly popular Toe Mogan Inperience, for a friendly chat in a shaded clearing deep in the heart of Epping Forest. I am led there blindfolded by Lamie Manslave, Toe’s loyal assistant and rumoured meat-droid. When the blindfold is taken off I am greeted with the sight of a lumpy, oiled man sitting in a lawnchair and smoking a plastic gutter full of what smells like electrical components. Toe Mogan, the lumpy man, greets me with affection yet refuses to shake my hand. “Nematodes fucking everywhere,” he says, waving my hand away. I sit down in the beanbag placed at a socially-distant distance from Toe and, looking up at this behemoth of just asking questions, awed at his malformed-yet-nimble frame, I nervously begin the interview.

Oscillation Jones: Nematodes?

Toe waves his hand.

Toe: You can’t start the interview there. Back it up. Forget the nematodes. If you think about them, that’s how they get you.

I tried again.

OJ: Toe, lovely to meet you, although I feel I know you already after spending so many hours in your company, albeit digitally.

Toe: What do you mean by that? Have you created some kind of sick avatar of me you use as a body pillow?

OJ: I... No, of course not, what I meant was—

Toe: Mean what you say. Don’t beta out on me here. Own your voice. I own mine. It’s insured for billions, how do you feel about that?

OJ: It was something I wanted to ask you about.

Toe: Are you going to ask about it?

OJ: We seem to have struck upon the subject organically—

Toe: That’s how I work. Organic as fuck. I have had more conversations than anyone on the planet. I am the planet’s voice, and face, and body, and most of its useful appendages. Do you feel useful?

OJ: About the insurance—

Toe: You’re not. You’re a shill of the mass corporate media.

OJ: I’m an independent—

Toe: Don’t get so defensive. Own it. Be a man. You are a man, aren’t you?

OJ: The insurance—

Toe: There you go again, just like a broken record, you’re all the same, no imagination, no good questions. Move on. This is a conversation, that’s what we do, keep it going, like a stone skipping over water, just—(he motions with his hands slapping at the air as if he is spanking the ass cheeks of the atmosphere)—keep it snappy, keep it going, don’t dwell. There’s only so much time—that stone skipping over water line was pretty good, I’ll have to remember it. Lamie!

Toe shouts to his meat-servant, who startles from a doze and jumps to his feet.

Toe: Write that down.

Lamie pats his pockets and opens his mouth as if about to speak. He looks to Toe, but Toe already has his attention back on me.

Toe: You hear that? That’s the type of creative shit my mind just spills out constantly, it’s why I’m the best.

OJ: I think you’ve said that before, in nearly every podcast you’ve recorded.

Toe: Was that a question? It didn’t sound like a question. I’m waiting for a question but all you have is short-sighted observations. Typical liberal media.

OJ: How about I ask you about—

Toe: How about you shut the fuck up and listen. I’m done with pandering to your bullshit. I ask questions for a living. I talk for a living. This—(he motions between us, hand flapping like bunting in a tornado)—this is amateur hour. We’ve been here four and half minutes and you haven’t asked one question that has made me think, made me sit up and go, “Now that is an interesting question.” Come on, try it, give me your best question. Let’s see just how good you think you are. Hit me.

OJ: What would be an interesting question to you?

Toe: Okay. I’m impressed. That’s a fucking good question.

OJ: So?

Toe: I’m not answering that. It’s too good a question. That’s the thing about questions, the best ones don’t need answers, they speak for themselves. The best questions hold the answer to the question in the question. It’s the circle of life, just going around. The best questions are answers with a question mark at the end.

OJ: Can you give me an example?

Toe: Why isn’t gravity made of magnets? Fucking ZING! You hear that? That’s the sound of your brain thinking nuclear weapon-grade thoughts, just crackling away like a house-fire, ignition, and we are a GO! Houston, we have a question!

OJ: I don’t think I understand, can you—

Toe: No need. Do your own research. It’s all in the question. I’m asking why gravity isn’t made of magnets because that’s what gravity IS. It’s a journalistic trick, you force your opponent to answer on your terms. Basic journalism. I can’t believe I have to teach you this stuff.

OJ: Do you see all your interview subjects as opponents?

Toe: You’re not in my league. Do you think you’re in my league? I will fuck you up. I just gave you one of the four secrets of the unknown universe and you are asking me about my opponents? Your mind is a closed fucking thing... thing that opens, it has hinges...

OJ: A door?

Toe: More like an asshole.

OJ: I don’t think assholes have hinges.

Toe: I’m saying you’re an asshole, not your mind. Though, thinking about it, your mind is probably an asshole—closed, unclean and full of shit. You can tell I used to be a comedian. I’m quick.

OJ: Yes, erm... Can I just go back to the gravity thing? I’m pretty sure that gravity has nothing to do with magnets. I’m not sure I follow...

Toe: It’s all magnets. How do you think you stick to the surface of the planet? With glue?

OJ: No, not at all—

Toe: Did you just ‘no’ me?

OJ: ‘No’ you?

Toe: Did you negate my reality, you ignorant piece of shit? I can’t believe— No. No. I will not let your negativity infect me.

At this point Toe Mogan begins to deeply inhale and exhale, legs crossed. He stares at the sun unblinking. I try to engage him but I am met with unmoving silence. I give up and start watching Garage Fails on my phone waiting for Toe to re-join the conversation. After three and a half episodes Toe begins talking again.

Toe: Last week I had this guy on, Edgecroft Tooms, a proper scientist, super intelligent, extravagantly well-researched guy. He knows shit, like really, really knows shit. He’s out there. Beyond. He was on the show and he explained how the magnetic field of the Earth pulls at the iron in our blood, keeping us tethered. Really mind-blowing stuff.

OJ: What are his qualifi—

Toe: SHUT THE FUCK UP! I am talking, can you not fucking hear me? Do your fucking job.

I remain silent.

Toe: As I was saying, Edgecroft is basically a genius, he had all these charts he made himself that really visualised what he had discovered. Did you know that anaemics float before they die? He had these pictures that have been banned by the CDC, the WHO, all the governments. These poor people, no one is talking about it because of Big Gravity and how they want to keep us all down. If it got out, they’d lose control. We’d be living in the clouds.

Toe stops talking and I feel like I should say something, but I wait. I don’t want to anger the world’s leading podcaster. It is not a groundless fear as many people who have courted his ire have discovered. People like Ethel Codpiece, the host of Woke Up America who, after her episode devoted to debunking the claims of Toe and his followers, found herself the target of a torrent of online abuse and death threats. I did want to ask Toe about Ethel, just as I wanted to ask him about the alleged funding he received early in his podcasting career from Conoctopticon Industries, the often controversial multi-national corporation who have gained notoriety for work in the field of bio-engineering that many find immoral. Unfortunately, I am a coward.

I sit in silence, quivering not with fear, but with the anticipation of fear.

Toe: You can speak.

OJ: Do you have anything else you want to say?

Toe: About what?

OJ: Anything.

Toe: You’re learning. That’s good. It’s alright, we are all on a journey. I just want you to know that I see you, I hear you and I want you to be the best you you can be. I love you, dog.

OJ: I did want to ask you—

Toe: Lamie! Bring up that video. You know the one. The gratitude prayer.

Lamie scurries over, head bowed, and pushes a phone into my face. On the screen there is a video of a man in what looks to be a train carriage. The man is dressed in a bin-bag loincloth, his bare skin littered with tattoos of Pokemon, his mouth wide and toothless. He is chanting out vowel-sounds and occasionally pressing a gun into the faces of commuters who whimper in fear.

Toe: Killington Bannister, we have him on next week. This guy... This guy is the closest we have on this planet to an actual trans-dimensional super-seer. The shit he knows. Just tune in, it’s going to change your entire paradigm.

OJ: Interesting. Wasn’t he arrested last year for prescribing Rachel Reeves mercury-laced toothpaste to combat the growing void in her mind?

Toe: You’d have to ask him.

OJ: You could ask him next week.

Toe: Impossible. That would be like asking God how to cook macaroni. He’d lose respect for me, like I’ve lost respect for you. I thought you were one of the real ones, asking the real questions.

OJ: What are the real questions?

Toe: You just asked one.

OJ: ‘What are the real questions?’ is a real question?

Toe: That’s two. You’re elevating your mind in real-time. I think my work here is done.

OJ: Do you?

Toe: Don’t you?

OJ: Do I?

Toe: You do.

Toe Mogan stands up and spreads his arms wide and steps towards me. I stand up to meet him.

Toe: Shhhhhhh... Stay sitting.

I remain sitting and Toe keeps his arms outstretched, steps towards me, to the side of me, away from me and carries on walking, arms wide, out of the clearing, into the shade of the forest and out of sight. As I watch him go, Lamie chasing after him, I realise I have no idea where I am. The episodes of Garage Fails I watched on my phone have drained the battery. It takes me several days to escape the forest, malnourished, dehydrated, hallucinating and covered in insect bites. I miss listening to Toe Mogan’s podcasts that follow our interview. He apparently says some nice things about me. I could listen. All the episodes of the Toe Mogan Inperience are recorded and available on Rotify for premium subscribers, but I’m not paying for that shit.