Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: I got this desktop computer. I just looked. I've had it for, like, about a year, I think maybe a little less than that.
But you would think that I just got it yesterday because I could never find the icons on the bottom. So every time I go this every single week for the past year since I got this computer, I go and I start GarageBand. And I looked at it. I'm like, great. How do I get Mark back? And then I go and I have to, like, stare at every single icon. Like, what is the program called? Like, what is. What am I looking? Zoom. Zoom is the program. Great. Which one of the icons is that? And it's every. Every week. And then I usually have my notes open in edge, and so I have to open that up as well. And I'm like, all right, give me a second. So every week after the clap is the, like, me sitting here going, okay, okay, I've seen a computer before.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: I know I've done this.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: I know I've done this at some point now. I just got a new MacBook too. So, you know, going through the same thing on that. My current struggle is that I can't figure, like. Like, I know how to click and drag something, but apparently I don't.
So every time I try to click and drag something, there's just shit popping open and whatnot. I'm like, I'm 39. Not yet.
Not yet, please.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: This shouldn't be beyond me yet.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: I shouldn't be having this problem. Dear God.
So welcome, Ryan.
Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. Yes, please do. Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal routine. Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm going to leg it. You know how I feel about that, Mark. I think you feel great about it.
Hello.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Hi.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Hi. Thank you so much for being here, my dear.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Oh, my God, I'm so excited.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Me, too. Have we had you on Joag before?
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Not for the main feed.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: That's crazy. Yeah. That is insanity. I was like, think about. I'm like, wait a minute. Yeah. First main feed, Ryan, which is bananas.
So everyone listen. You probably already know who Ryan is, whether you are a part of the Joad community or you're out there on Book Talk, you're probably familiar with Ryan Clark. I almost said Ryan Foley. Just like, oh, old school, randomly went way back here.
Ryan Clark, the. The queen of Scream of Gibson's Bookstore. Like I said, all over the tickety talkity, doing all the bookie things, meeting all the horror authors and sharing the love of horror and whatnot with us on the Lay down podcast. Ryan, welcome. Welcome to Joag. Oh, thanks.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Thanks for having me.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Wonderful to have you here. Listen, I gave our dear Marco the month of February off. February. Month of February.
We're not going to be here for I gave Marco the month of February our fall.
What's going on?
What is happening?
The month of February off. I think maybe February is just a harder month to pronounce. I see why people say February.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that extra R is like, it's.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Troublesome when you try to use it in a full sentence. Slows you right down. I gave Marco this month off because as I mean, we have talked on Joe Egg every year that the beginning of the year is always very difficult for Mark and I was like, you know what, you're stressed out.
Why don't we take a little, a little breather and I will invite some of our best gals onto the podcast each week to tell me a story.
So this week, next week, the week after, we have some of our bestest friends on here to tell a story. Sort of a bridged Joe Ag. We're just going to have a nice little relaxed chat and talk about something. Ryan this week, our dear friend Anna of Hell Rankers next week and my friend Brianne the week after that. I don't know what stories anyone's telling to me in the tradition of the cold open, but we're just going to do that. Have a good time. Mark will be on the Kofi as always, we're going to be doing a let's play. He got a new game he's excited about. And as promised last week, we are going to do a little side a snack this month instead of doing a snack to the future, we're going to talk about the movie Companion because we both saw it last week and we were like, we cannot just it. All the fun stuff in it would be a major spoiler to like say on main. So we decided that we're going to give everyone a chance to go see Companion, which you absolutely should.
And we're going to talk about that as a snack this month. So Mark will be around. But on the Main feed we are hashtag blessed to have Ryan this week.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: So, Ryan, live from an empty bookstore.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Yes, I love it. I was saying to Ryan before this, and if you watched the. If you're watching the YouTube version of this, I probably left it in.
But this is the dream right here. Just like you live, you live the absolute dream. It's true.
So, Ryan, what do you have for me this week?
[00:06:05] Speaker B: So I considered joking about talking about my favorite Hungry boy again, Tarar.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Who did it best? Three times.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Both of you. He's. I'm obsessed with him. I love him.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I have to read that book, too.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: It's so good. We're doing. We're doing it for book club, right? The Glutton.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Oh, are we? Oh, yeah, we are doing the Glutton. That's right.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Oh, good, it's finally out in paperback.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Oh, that's. Bless you. Because as Ryan knows, I will not read a book if it's not in paperback. That's not entirely true because obviously a lot of library books are in hardcover, but the COVID can't come off because they've, like, laminated the shit out of it or whatever. I have, like, hardcover books are too much responsibility for me generally. So the Glutton is out in paperback, and we're reading that jackmullgraves.com book club.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah. It's so good. It's so good. Okay.
But I. I went down several. Several rabbit holes trying to come up with a topic because I was like, oh, my God, I have so many interests. And, like, what? I. I had all these, like, spooky nonfiction books. I was like, I could talk about so many things, and I found some. Some fascinating things in my rabbit holes.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: This is always the thing, right? It's like, you start looking at one thing, and then it's like, well, that's an interesting side note. Let me look at that. Oh, that's an interesting side note. And, yeah, like, Lord knows, hours later.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Oh, my God, it was incredible. I have so many things bookmarked right now. Like, apparently there was a case in 2004 that. That is beat for beat. The exact telephone pole scene from Hereditary.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Do you think it's like, I don't know if you look like, based on that?
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it is beat.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Like, with the allergy attack and everything.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: It doesn't mention the allergy attack, but it is a guy driving his friend home from a party, and his friend is sticking his head out the window. The guy accidentally sideswipes a telephone pole and then drives home and goes to bed. And a neighbor comes the Body the next morning. It's literally the same.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Yeah. That has to be based on. That would be a bananas coincidence.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: But I'm like, I've never seen. And maybe I just haven't dug deep enough, but I've never seen anyone talk about that. And I find either fascinating that, like, this is a real thing that happened.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: That's crazy.
Okay, so there's one for other people to rabbit hole.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Absolutely. Go. Go on Wikipedia and look up weird deaths. It's so much fun.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: That's true. Yep. Have done it.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: And then I also considered talking about the Elisa Lamb.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Murder mystery.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: The woman. That one's. It's a lot.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: It's a lot. She was found in a water tank at a hotel. There is a book called the Last by Hannah Jameson that is a like sci fi apocalyptic story, but there is a character found in a water tank at a hotel. And I was like, oh, that's. Oh, cool. That like, inspired that, like.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that one. That story. Always the worst. I mean, not to say the worst thing. The worst thing is a woman died. But one of the grossest details of the Elisa Lam story is just the fact that, like, people were like, drinking the water in the hotel and they're like, this tastes funny. Yeah, no, that's person.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: And like, how long were they. Yeah, real bad.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Horrifying.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: The Cecil Hotel has a lot of.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: A lot going on there.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: Bad things that. A few documentaries on it and I'm just like, no.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Why? Yeah, no, there's like those L. A, like skeevy hotels. Like just hubs of misery.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah.
I was, you know, I was gonna try to, like, find something like, light and fun and like, maybe a little bit, like, goofy to talk about.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: But I am who I am. And.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: So I got a real. A real downer.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Perfect. Yes. Bring us down in advance. Bring us down this Super Bowl Sunday.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: I'm bringing you down.
All right. I'm bringing you back to January of 1900.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Okay. History.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: History. I did research. I have notes. You will hear them.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. This is like a news anchor. Like, paper notes.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: I have notes.
So the year is 1900. It's January, and the Florida State Reform School opens.
And for the next century, this school undergoes a name change.
Lots of leadership changes, several investigations. Like so many.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: It's a. When you start at reform school already.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: It'S sad vibes, you know you're in for.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Right. Has there ever been a reform school that just has like a really cool history? It's like there was never any Problem.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: There's never been, like, a cool reform school.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like a. Like a cool, troubled teen industry years like that. Cool conversion children. Yeah.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: For nothing.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Right?
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Despite all of those things, the reform school, later known as the Arthur G. Doer School for Boys, was a place of horrific abuses, tortures, and murders and would become the inspiration for both Colson Whitehead's the Nickel Boys.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: I was like, wait a minute. I just saw this movie as well.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: As Tananarive dues the Reformatory.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: And I just read that book.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: And that is why I am talking about it today.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Beautiful on top of it.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: It's coming up a lot. And I was like, let's get into the real history.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Please do, because I have been curious about it. I just finished the Reformatory, which is phenomenal. And if you have not read it, folks, get on it. Mark read it like, a month ago off of. He said on. He talked about this on Joag, but was in that, like, obviously in the past few years, we've gone in the. Don't buy from Amazon. Buy all your books from indie bookstores. So he went to his local bookstore and it had the, you know, the little card with the recommendations from the.
The bookstore employees, and he was like, I'm sold. I'm in. This is the beauty of going to your indie bookstore, is getting that experience and finding a new favorite like this, which is absolutely was. I immediately started reading it afterwards. I know that Laura Latour has started reading it, like, and it's catching. Everyone should read it.
I did go see Nickel Boys, which, from what I hear, the book is amazing. That movie I hated with my whole soul, um, and didn't understand what was going on at all throughout that. So it gave me no sense of what was going on at this school or anything like that. Because most of the time I was just like, why am I looking at corners?
I don't know why we have been looking at someone's shoes for the past 90 seconds.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Oh, no. It's called the Skinnamarink big dime.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Skinamarink. It's drama. Skinamarink.
So that. Listen, a lot of people apparently very much like that. My theater very much didn't, and probably half the audience walked out.
But if it's your thing, if you liked Skinamarink, yeah, you'd probably like it. But that said, having just experienced both of those things, I'm excited to actually hear. I mean, excited in, like, the, like, oh, God, this is going to be awful sort of way, but really interested to hear about this place. So tell me about it.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: I will. So I will say at the top, I will not go into great detail about the abuses because I don't want to trigger anyone because they were truly horrific. Right. So I'm going to try to gloss over them for the most part.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: As far as, like, nitty gritty detail.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yeah. We don't. Listen, we know the history of this country.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: You can make assumptions.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: So January 1, 1900, the Florida State Reform school opened in the panhandle of Florida in a town called Mariana. It was this big open space. There were no fences.
There were two campuses. It was segregated. One campus for the white kids, one campus for the black kids. And right from the start, this place was a mess.
In the first 13 years of its operation, this school was investigated no less than six times.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: Jesus. Which is like, really saying something because, like, every school, like, that was terrible at the time. So, like, if they're consistently investigating you, it's like, like what? Yikes.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: What do you do? Why? Yeah, there was one report from 1903 which stated that students were commonly being kept in leg irons.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Why do they have leg irons?
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Why, like, why do they have leg irons?
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Where do you even get that? It's not a thing. Yeah. Like, nobody asks questions. Gee, this like, they seem to be bringing a lot of leg irons over that place.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Right. And like all of these investigations and like, nothing, nothing changes.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Right. That's really the thing about it being 1900 or whatever is like, they investigated a lot and then they're like, oh, don't do that.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: And then left.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Maybe change.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: I wish you wouldn't.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: And then they don't follow up.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: In 1929, an 11 room concrete building was constructed which students called the White House.
And I have seen photos of the White House and it is terrifying looking.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: This, this is another, like, a thing from history. Like anytime something is called the White House, it's going to be the most horrific thing you've ever heard of in your life. Yeah, always is.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: It's. It's real, real sketchy looking.
The White House was where the, quote, unquote incorrigible or violent white kids were kept in cells in isolation.
The black kids had their own sort of isolation place on their campus. However, the majority of the abuses and the beatings took place in the White House, regardless of skin color.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: The school did remain fully segregated until, like the late 60s, but the white House was. That was where you went.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: That's where. That's where you integrated everybody Right there. Yeah.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: True. True cultural.
Cultural mixing when it comes to torture.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Yes. And if you've read the Reformatory, I believe Tenanarive Due calls it, like, the Fun House.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Yeah, it's something like that. I think. I think that sounds right.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: And that is this place.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. And it's horrifying.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: And it is horrifying.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: It's terrible.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: In 1968, we're jumping around a little bit.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Florida Governor Claude Kirk visited the school and found, like, overcrowding and poor conditions. And he's quoted as saying that, quote, somebody should have blown the whistle a long time ago.
Yeah. My God, what are you going to do about it?
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Six investigations in the first 13 years of its existence. Yeah, I love that. Like, I mean, I'm assuming this is a white governor here, being 1968. In what state did you. Was it Florida? It was Florida's governor. Like, the way white people will, like, have lived in a segregated Jim Crow society and then somehow be surprised by it. Yeah. Like, I can't believe no one did anything about this. Like, are. The Civil Rights act was five years ago.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: So it was, you know, like, yeah, gee, I wonder. Or four years ago, I guess, from there, like, Yeah. I wonder why nobody. Nobody mentioned it.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Gosh.
And so at this time, so it's the late 60s, the school housed 564 boys. Well, some for offenses as minor as school truancy, running away from home, and what they called incorrigibility. You'll hear that word come up a lot, which mostly included things like smoking cigarettes.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Would that be, like, would the offenses be. I don't know if you know this, but would the offenses be that small for both black and white kids?
[00:19:33] Speaker B: It seemed that way.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: The school population, the demographic was about 3 to 1, black kids to white kids.
And there were some students who had committed horrific, like, assaults and violence and things like that.
But it definitely was basically like, oh, you are causing a little bit of trouble. You maybe gave a cop some lip. We're gonna send you to this reform school.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Like in. In nickel boys. It's, you know, basically a kid getting caught in a car with someone who had stolen the car and not knowing that. And in their formatory, it's a kid, you know, kicking a white kid in the shin for hitting on his sister.
That, you know, very, very small offenses, which, you know, we talked about it a little bit in terms of, like, black folks and, you know, the reconstruction a few weeks ago as well, which is something I'd like, to go into a little more, but that kind of being a huge function of Jim Crow, which is why I asked, like, was it the same for the white kids? Because one of the ways that resegregation worked and the way that, you know, Jim Crow worked was by punishing black people for tiny little offenses like vagrancy and stuff like that. That was basically, you know, are you outside and not at work at 3pm well, you're clearly up to no good. Right. Are you in jail? So it sounds like this has. It has bits of that, and it has bit of bits of what would later become, like, the troubled teen industry, where, you know, parents send their kids off to, you know, their kids start smoking or something like that, and they're like, whoa, we better scare them straight, and they send them to these horribly abusive facilities.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And, like, from the outside, it seemed almost like a college. Like, there was, like, a football team and there were these, like, there's no fences, right?
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah. They can leave, they can come and.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Go, and it's free. Like, you can go and, like, you get all your meals for free, like, it seemed. And for some of these kids who had really troubled homes, it was like, well, I'd rather go there.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: And then they got there.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: And it was awful.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: So the. The kids in. In the late 60s were ranging in age from like, 10 to 16 years old.
And the White House was officially closed in 1967.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: And officially.
Right. Officially, corporal punishment at the school was banned in August of 1968. So, you know, naturally after that, everything was hunky dory and it was totally fine and everything fixed.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Yeah, no problem.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Yeah, no, just. Just kidding.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: No need to be behind that curtain.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: The school remained open.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Shocking.
In 1982, inspection revealed that boys at the school were, quote, hogtied and kept in isolation for weeks at a time in 1982. 1982.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Jesus Christ. Like, that's insane.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: That long ago?
[00:23:08] Speaker A: No, like, it's three years before I was born. Yep. That is. That's crazy. Like, that level of corporal punishment, because I know that, like, that kind of stuff, after it was banned, like, obviously snuck by in certain places. Right. Especially when you have, like, Catholic schools and things like that. A little rap with a ruler. Christian schools, a lot of Christian schools would have, like, a paddle or something like that, you know, but 1982, to have that level of egregious corporal punishment is, like, next level.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
Especially after, you know, corporal punishment was banned in 68.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Right. Like, you're not Supposed to be doing it at all. And you're hog tying, hog tying your students.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Cool. I'm sure that's helping a lot.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: That's reforming them.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: They're going to be great, great citizens after this. No, no problems. Yeah.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: They're going to be great in society and at this time. So in 1982, the Dozier School was housing 105 boys aged 13 to 21.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: So it's like dwindled down at this point.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Yeah, whittled it down from the 560.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Because they're not just arresting every kid who like looks at a cop funny at this point.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: Right. But it's, that's still the decent amount of children.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: In the early, very young. Like have you seen a 13 year old boy?
A 13 year old boy is like just like this tiny little babies baby. Yeah. Like that's not, that's imagining. I mean and before you were saying as young as 10. But even at this point, like 13 is like when you see a 13 year old boy, they seem impossibly young.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: They are, they are babies. Yeah, they are so young.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Yes. And 13 year old girls for that matter. But obviously we're talking about a school that only houses boys.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: This is, this is in general, this.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Is a school for boys.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Now in the early 2000s, a group of survivors who call themselves the White, the White House Boys began to speak out about the abuses that they suffered and witnessed during their time at the Dozier School. Now again, I won't go into details about the specific abuses, but needless to say, they were utterly horrific and it is absolutely heartbreaking to read the firsthand accounts from these now grown men talking about what happened to them and the other boys they knew as children.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: And from what I gather, like not to go into details about anything, but like we're talking like physical, sexual, like every kind of possible abuse here. It's not, you know, Absolutely. They did not limit themselves in the ways in which they tormented these poor kids. No.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: It was every possible abuse you can.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: Imagine and ones we can't. Because we are not that.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Just because we're not sadistic.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: There is a website which I will share so you can put it in the blog for the White House boys. And they have compiled like resources and stories from the survivors and there are like, they have like a playlist of all of the videos about the school. You know, there have been documentaries and things like that. Lots of books have been published about this and that is all, you know, compiled on their, on their website. And there are photos that you can look at. And so, you know, like, I saw a photo of the White House, and, like, my heart just sank because I was like, that looks like an evil building. Like, if a building can be evil, that one is evil. Right. Like, you know, I don't believe in ghosts, but that is haunted, right?
[00:27:06] Speaker A: Yeah, Right. There is a. Yeah. There is something that just. It exudes from the years of misery and horror that has happened that's, like, palpable without ever having to step through the door.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: Yes. And it is. It is utterly heartbreaking to click through the photos that they've compiled, because there are photos of, like, the football team.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: And, like, all of the kids posing, and they're like, you know, they're just kids.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: And then there's this photo of a few of the survivors, like, recording an episode of a podcast.
And they're, you know, in their, like, 60s, 70s, and they look so sad. Like, these men are just.
You can see the trauma etched into their skin. It is utterly heartbreaking. But I do encourage people who are curious to go to that website and do a little bit of extra reading.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Yeah. I just finished the Barn, and I can't think of who the author is, but you've probably heard of nonfiction that's about Emmett Till, and it goes into, so, like, the barn where Emmett Till was killed. And then this book is so expansive, and I highly recommend it. I've never read any history book that is as big a feat as this one is. And the webs of connection between the south and Emmett Till and his family and Jazz and, like, you know, all these different things that, like, wind up in that culture to lead to this horrific murder there and whatnot.
But one of the things that is really striking about this book is that, I mean, a great thing about it is that everyone involved died miserably. In terms of the white guys that, like, did this, like, just horrific lives, they were shunned from society, even though they were innocent. I mean, not innocent. They were not guilty in their trial. So, like, they were acquitted, but it was like a bridge so far that, like, they were like, you've made Alabama look bad.
And so they were basically shunned by all of society, lived that way. You know, at least one of them died of cancer that was, like, really painful. And you're like, good. That's what I like to hear. But you also see, like, on people who are related to him, you know, his friends and cousins who were there and things like that that, like, they are Just so tortured their whole lives by this. And the men that they became are just so deeply sad. Like, just like you're describing, like, it's just like this heavy sadness that, like, never left them at any point in their life. You know, just always this air of trauma lingering over them that came from this, you know, horrific experience. Much like what happened with all of these kids.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: You don't just kind of, like, get. Especially because it's like. It's not like they got out of there and, like, went to therapy, you know, like, if you were in this school in 1968 or 1982, for that matter, you didn't get out. And it was like, oh, better get a better help account. You know, like, it was like you were on your own here. So, you know, the healing from that, you know, not. Not coming together and making this website or whatever in, like, the 2000s and coming out about it, like, that's so. So much time that they were just, like, sitting with that until they talked to each other and were like, we can maybe we can talk about this.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Maybe. Maybe.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Maybe that's okay. Yeah, we should actually discuss what happened here.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: It's so sad. I know that at one point There were about 400 members of the White House. Boys. Wow. Yep. Of course, that number, you know, fluctuates as new people come forward and obviously people pass because it was. You know, a lot of. A lot of these men were there in the 60s, you know, so they're. They're older now, and. But more than 300 of them have now publicly recounted their stories.
Their mission statement, I was reading is to basically to bring awareness to the abuses and to protect children from abuse in the future. Like, they're really like, how do we prevent this from happening to the next generations?
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Which is like. I mean, it feels like obviously something that's like, oh, this couldn't. This couldn't happen. But I feel like we are saying that a lot these days. Right. Oh, that could never happen. Did that just happen?
[00:31:56] Speaker B: Look at that. It happened.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Right? Like, I can see. I feel like the idea of. Because you hear this from conservatives all the time, the idea of, like, bringing back corporal punishment and things like that, first in the home and then, of course, in schools as well.
And so the idea of. Of restrictions being taken off of that and whatnot is not, like, an impossible thing to believe.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: No.
As for sort of their, I guess, explanation for what went on at this school, they cite things like overcrowding, which. Yeah, at one point, There were almost 600 students in this school, lack of funding and a lack of training in the staff for the abuse.
But honestly, if you ask me, this was.
This was an excuse for terrible adults to torture children with the state's approval, right?
[00:33:00] Speaker A: 100%. Like, that's. I mean, they say the same about, like, Guantanamo Bay and stuff like that. Right? But if, like, if you put adults who aren't sociopaths in that situation, what will they do with overcrowding and underfunding and things they will make do? We see teachers do this every day. Overcrowded classrooms, underfunded classrooms, things like that. And they don't then torture children. They figure out, how do I save and, you know, scrimp to be able to make this an environment that these kids can still thrive in. So the idea that it was just like, oh, they. Oh, they got stressed out and, you know, they just weren't trained well, like that only.
Yeah, that's. Sociopaths do that. Sure. But the rest of us would not do this. You know, like, it's what. It's one thing to be like, oh, people get frustrated from the conditions and sometimes they yell at kids.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Right?
[00:33:54] Speaker A: Okay, you shouldn't yell at kids. But like, sure, that happens. But that's on a completely different planet from, you know, sexual abuse and having a house dedicated to torturing children and things like that. That doesn't just like, oops, there were too many leg irons. Having leg irons in the place, like, let the kids run then, you know, and it's also part of that sort of as much as they cry under funding or whatever. Like, it's for profit, you know, like for profit prisons and things like that, that, like, they are getting a degree of money from the state and it doesn't matter. They shove as many kids in here as they can, like bad foster parents. You.
They're getting X amount of money for each kid they put in there. The overcrowding isn't because there's too many kids. It's because they're like, arrest more children.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Send them to us.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Get more money. I mean, even this, like, idea of the White House makes me think of the story of John Henry. Have you ever heard, like, the legend of John Henry? So sort of man versus machine story. So this guy, right? Like, it's like a thing you probably hear when you're a kid. A folk tale of this guy who challenges the machine and beats it, but then dies immediately. And there's a song that kind of goes with it and whatnot. There's a book that was put out probably 20 years ago now. 15, 20 years. Somewhere in that by a guy, I think his name was Scott Reynolds Nelson, where he was researching something else and he came across a postcard that had a whole bunch of prison inmates on it in front of this White House.
And on it, I believe it had like a notation that mentioned a man named John Henry on it. And he was like, now hold on, this is interesting, you know, and like John Henry's not the most unusual name in the world or whatever. But he started looking into this and he, he noticed like he basically dove into the history of this prison and he found out that people who were sent to this prison, black men sent to this prison, were being essentially sold back into slavery. Which is what the 13th Amendment is about. Right to work on the B and O railroads.
And as such sort of, you know, they built the railroads that we use in this day and age, you know, the industrialization, all that kind of stuff were built by these prisoners. And they would die in such great numbers that they found later on a mass grave outside of this White House where they were just basically taking all these men who died on the railroads and just tossing them in there. And he thinks John Henry is one of those guys. He found records of this man named John Henry who died on there. He thinks that it was sort of started as like a cautionary tale about like, don't work too hard for your enslavers. Basically, you know, that like he, he died working on these railroads, was thrown into this pit outside the White House that we only found out again about, again like 20 years ago.
And it's just this, this kind of pattern that you see happen again with like things like these kids and with our own prison industrial complex now or what you see with the native kids in the boarding schools and stuff like that. This like total like lack of respect for, for these kids lives and for people of color's lives especially. But to, you know, acting like, oh, you know, it was. We weren't funded well enough for things like this when really those kids were only there. Those guys working on the railroad were only there to make them money. And the reason that they, the conditions were so bad is cause they didn't use the money for those kids. They didn't use the money for those prisoners. They kept that and they kept the kids in irons.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, they weren't investing back into the let's make it safer and better.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: They didn't. You know, the reform school is really, really stretching what reform means. Cause they weren't Trying to make the kids better. They didn't care about what would happen when they left the reformatory. If they left the reformatory.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: If they left.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And I. And I will get into that.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: So jumping ahead to April of 2007, the Acting Superintendent of the school and one other employee were fired following allegations of abuse of.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: Sorry, 2007.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: 2007.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: This is still running.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: In 2007. Oh, yeah, me. Okay, go on.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: Yep.
At which point the state finally officially acknowledged that abuses had taken place there. No, this was the first time that the state was like, yeah, yeah, some abuse happened.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: Even after 1969. The governor goes and is like, gee, this seems shifty.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: Yep. All of these investigations, all of the. Nothing changed. The state just sort of wrote it off. They were like, it's a reform reformatory school. Like, whatever.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: Yeah. It's not supposed to be a happy place.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: Yep. They just wrote it off. So it wasn't until 2007 that Florida was like, oh, yeah, maybe this is bad.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Jesus Christ.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: And in 2008, October of 2008, a ceremony was actually held to install a historic plaque at the White House that acknowledged that past. Now, again, the White House had been closed for, like, 40 years at this point.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: So they closed that, like, as soon as corporal. That was closed in the 60s.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Okay. But it was just there. They didn't.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: But it was just there.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: I mean, it's just, like, looming House of misery.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's still there. It's still standing.
One former student stated that he was punished in the White House 11 times, receiving a total of more than 250 lashes.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: And I read somewhere that the. The, like, belt that they use for lashes was, like, three inches wide. Like, it was.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: I. This is. It's like, one of those things where, like, you know, thankfully, my parents weren't into the whole corporal punishment thing. I was spanked once as a child when my dad got scared because I ran across the road, just panicked him. And that's literally it.
And I just think about, like, the idea of, like, I can't even imagine how much that hurts.
The thing that always gets me is the fact that, like, the element of surprise makes the thing hurt more.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:07] Speaker A: And you can't know exactly when the person is going to hit you.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: Or how many times or how many times. So the combination of the pain and the anticipation of the pain and whatnot just seems like one of the most, like, torturous things to go through.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: And there is a.
There's at Least one scene in the reformatory that takes place in essentially the White House that describes a very specific beating. And the description which I will not read here, but the description that this student described of some of the beatings that took place was pretty, Pretty spot on from the reformatory. So you can, you know, use your imagination, but it was absolutely horrific. This. This was torture.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's one of the things the reformatory really does get across really, really well is like the other element of that besides the actual beatings, which are horrible, but is also the psychological element of hearing them and waiting for yours or like, knowing this could happen to you and things like that, you know, that like.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: The level of trauma from living your entire life trying to make sure you don't make the mildest slip up to avoid that happening to you. It's like, like just imagine trying to live like that. I'm not great with authority, you know.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: No.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: So, like, the idea of having to just constantly keep in line and hold back any sense of, like, pride or humanity for yourself in order to.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:55] Speaker A: To avoid that. Like, again, in the barn, there's a part where Mamie Till is talking about, you know, I think it was maybe Till, it was either her talking about teaching Emmett or one of their relatives teaching another kid, but about like, you do not, like, you do not look at a white woman, you do not talk to a white woman. If, like, one addresses you. You like, if you need to get on your knees, you get on your knees. Like, you know, things like that. And like, just imagine having to, like, live like that. Like, I have too much pride for that. You know, humbling myself in that way is so hard to imagine, but the consequences to any form of self respect.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: So high.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: And, and there would be, you know, I was reading some of the accounts from the survivors, and I mean, there would be like, kids would start fights to get kids they didn't like, thrown into the White Room, into the White House.
And at times there were literally lines of boys waiting to go inside. So terrible. You know, I mean, it was horrific.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: Right. And that's just like teaching kids to be sociopaths too. Right. Like, you know, for kids to learn to send kids they don't like to something like that. You know, it's just evidence of a system that isn't reforming anybody.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Like, there was basically no way to escape it. If a guard decided he didn't like you.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: You're. You're going to find your way there no matter what, no matter how careful you are.
Which is just. Yeah. And I. And apparently there was, you know, one dedicated room that was specifically for sexual assault.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: Which is just, you know, just like, just imagine. Because again, everybody had to know, right? You know, like, this is. You can't have that. And like, oh, just nobody goes in there or anything like that. Like, no, everyone knows what's going on in there. And again, that's. There's no amount of, like, oh, if they're just trained better or had a little more, you know, money or whatever, they. They totally would have not allowed the sexual abuse room.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: Like, oh, if only they'd known.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: If only that. Yeah. Like, come on, everyone knew with the.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: Amount of investigations and.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Chances are it wasn't just the people there who knew. There were probably plenty of people who should have been fixing something who knew as well.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
So now we're going to get into.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: The deaths a little bit.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: According to a 2009 report following an investigation by the Florida Department of Law enforcement, there were 81 school related deaths of students between 1911 and 1973.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: 80. That's more. That's more than one a year.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: 81 deaths.
[00:46:05] Speaker B: 81 deaths in six. In like 62.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: Yeah, 72. Sorry, what did you say? 1911 to 73.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: 1911 to 1973.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: Yeah. In like 60 years.
[00:46:15] Speaker B: Yeah. She's 30. One of these boys were said to be buried on the school grounds with other. Some of the other bodies were shipped home to families or buried in unknown locations.
There is a cemetery on the campus with dirty stuff.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: You know, all of our schools, obviously.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: Right, your school cemetery. Of course.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: Yeah. It's just a thing we all had.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: That's just the thing we have. Right.
With. They had simple grave markers but no identifications, obviously.
In late 2009. So later that year, the school failed its annual inspection.
How had it passed any inspection?
[00:47:05] Speaker A: Like, up to this? Seriously? What? Like how there has to be a degree to which you can't cover up all of this. Like, you know, we all know, like, when, like the superintendent was gonna stop by the class or whatever, and the teacher's like, please don't embarrass me or whatever. Right. Like, you know, maybe we tidy up a little bit. But like, what.
What could you have done in past inspections that they wouldn't have been like, right.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: And like, we have reports from previous investigations that were like, hey, stop maybe beating the crap out of all these kids.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: Like, why is there cemetery on your school grounds? So many bodies in it.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: So it finally, it Fails its inspection.
And among the problems, the inspection found that the school had, quote, failed to deal properly with the numerous complaints by the boys held there, including allegations of continued mistreatment by the guards. Gee, you think?
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
Imagine what. Good Lord.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: 2009.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: 2009.
And these are still. The kids who are going there in 2009 are still like, kids. Like, it's like juvie, essentially.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: It's like juvie.
[00:48:25] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Basically. Yeah. This. At one point, I think I read that it was like, at one point it was the largest juvenile center in the country.
[00:48:33] Speaker A: Jeez.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: Grief.
[00:48:36] Speaker B: At this point, state. State representative Daryl Rousen said the system was struggling to move on from a long standing culture of violence and abuse.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: One way to put it.
[00:48:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Daryl. What?
[00:48:50] Speaker A: Struggling to move. Struggling to move on is like. Like, that's. You have to try to be struggling is the thing it sounds. When they say struggling to move on, it's more like they would like to still be doing the things from before and they're. They're struggling with the fact that, like, they need to. Not exactly.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: That feels more accurate, right?
[00:49:14] Speaker A: Oh, we don't know what to do to not torture kids.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: How do we not. How do we reform them without beating the shit out of them?
[00:49:21] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. How do we. How do we find guards that don't enjoy tormenting kids?
[00:49:28] Speaker B: Children.
These are babies.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: This is not. Yeah, that's not a struggle.
That. That's just you. I mean, again, it's like the thing where it's like places act like this is some sort of accident or whatever instead of going like, it's. They are intentionally finding people who dehumanize who have the ability to dehumanize kids. Just like when it comes to hiring cops, right? Like, you don't want someone who's hugely empathetic. You don't want people who are hugely smart. Smart things like that. You need people who are willing to, like, take an order and carry it out on potentially an innocent person and be like, that was my job. And like, that's what they're doing with like the guards and stuff here is finding people deliberately who don't mind punishing children in ways that are antisocial. And the rest of us would be like, yeah, no, I would. I would cry. I would break down. I couldn't do this to a kid. Right. They don't want us.
Right. They need someone who can dehumanize people.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: Soulless monsters.
Here's my. Here's my favorite thing.
The school finally closed in 2011.
[00:50:41] Speaker A: Good Lord. Not that long Ago, I was married. Yep. Not even a newlywed when this closed.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: Here's the best part. It closed because of budgetary limitations.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Sure, sure.
Yeah. It's not about the. The kids they're tormenting. It's, you know, we ran out of money to torture the kids.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: We can't afford to keep it open, so we're gonna close it now.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: Well, at least. At least it happened. And I'm sure, like, there's a degree to which that was like an excuse too. Like, of course we needed a reason to shut this down, and so there's just no money for it. But it's like the kids should have been the reason the abuse should have been. Yeah.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: The reason it. It should have closed in 1903 when they found kids. Like irons, but.
[00:51:33] Speaker A: Okay. Exactly. Yeah. Kids shouldn't have still been complaining of being tormented in 2009.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: No.
But in 2012, a forensic anthropologist named Aaron Kimmerel of the University of South Florida was granted permission by the state of Florida to do an anthropology survey of the grounds. And she and her team identified 55 burials on the grounds, most of which were outside of the on campus cemetery. And they had this really interesting way of doing it because at this point, they hadn't gotten permission to do. To, like, exhume any bodies.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Right, yeah, sure.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: So, like, they had this really interesting way of, like, testing the soil without digging deep enough to find the body to see, like. Yeah, there's a body.
[00:52:23] Speaker A: Yes, there's. Yeah, right. Like some sort of human material or whatever in there. That's fascinating.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: So they were able to, like, do some cool testing to.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: Determine these things.
They documented around 100 deaths.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: Jesus Christ.
[00:52:39] Speaker B: And she and her team are actively, to this day, working on DNA testing to try to match who these people are so that they can contact the families and be like, hey, I think you have a family member who was.
[00:52:54] Speaker A: Who was killed here, who they never knew what happened to or, you know, whatever.
[00:52:58] Speaker B: Exactly.
And so far, the results do show that three times as many black students were buried as whites, which, again, fits in with the demographic of the school. I do know that there was a fire at the school in, like, 1914.
[00:53:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Which she uses in the reformatory.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: And I think something like six people died, including two staff members. Or maybe it was six kids plus two staff members. But even if you take that out.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: Yeah. The amount dealing with. Incredible amount of deaths. Yeah.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: So much.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: That's just bodies they found there. Right. Because they did send some home and stuff like that, as you mentioned before. And they did have some marked graves around as well. So this is. This is 100 plus.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:50] Speaker A: That they did not have a record of.
[00:53:53] Speaker B: Exactly.
In 2017, a ceremony was held to apologize to two dozen survivors of the school and to families of the other victims. And then in 2018, there were bills being considered to provide some compensation to the victims.
Right.
[00:54:15] Speaker A: They're, you know, sorry is not good enough.
[00:54:17] Speaker B: Sorry it's not good enough.
[00:54:18] Speaker A: If it were a hundred years past, anyone being alive or something, fine. You give the family a sorry or whatever. But, like, these people are still alive.
[00:54:27] Speaker B: There are. There are survivors today, right?
[00:54:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And some from not that long ago, some from, you know, I mean, if these. If someone was a 10 year old in 1968 at that school, they're younger than my mother.
[00:54:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: You know, like, that's a. That's a person who's still got life ahead of them. That and all of that scarring behind them.
[00:54:51] Speaker B: Absolutely.
In late March of 2019, an additional 27 possible graves were discovered during a pollution cleanup.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: Oh, wow. So they weren't even looking for.
[00:55:07] Speaker B: They weren't even looking for.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: Oops. All bodies.
[00:55:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
Now, In June of 2022, Aaron Cameral, who is the leader of the anthropology team, published a book called We Carry Their Bones the Search for justice at the Dozier School for Boys.
I also found other books that were written about this. Some books written by survivors, others just written about, you know, this school. I know that there are documentaries and things like that. And again, you can find lists of these things on the White House Boys website.
They have like a whole thing where you can, like, read stories. You can find, find like there's like a YouTube playlist of clips and things. So there's some. There's a lot to unpack here.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Seriously.
[00:56:04] Speaker B: But the. The whole reason I even found out about this, as I mentioned at the top, was because of the reformatory.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: Right. Yeah.
[00:56:10] Speaker B: I'd never heard of this school.
[00:56:12] Speaker A: Me neither.
Happening to, like, read multiple things or see multiple things about this place at the same time is, like, really surprising because I've never heard of this, which is absolutely wild. Like, the scale of this is huge.
[00:56:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't know how this wasn't. And I mean, there were. There were, like, things that were publicized nationally about this in the early 2000s, and I was young enough to probably just not.
[00:56:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:41] Speaker B: Paying attention.
Yeah. I was in high school and I just, like, wasn't.
[00:56:45] Speaker A: I mean, where. Yeah, I'm like, at the point. Point at which this, like a lot of this stuff happened. Like, it was late 20s, you know, like, you would think I would have encountered some of this stuff. But.
[00:56:58] Speaker B: But.
[00:56:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So.
So what's interesting. So Taninnari VDU, she published the Reformatory in October of 2023, and the novel is dedicated to her great uncle, Robert Stevens, who died at the Dozier School for Boys in 1937. At the.
She only learned about his existence in 2013 when the Florida State Attorney General's office called her and said, you might have a family member who was buried here.
[00:57:34] Speaker A: So crazy.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And so she just think of.
[00:57:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, the. The degree of, like, all those kids.
How many families just had to kind of, like, let it go and just not, you know.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:49] Speaker A: To deal with it would just kind of pretend that person never existed. You know, like, what do you do with that?
[00:57:55] Speaker B: Kids were runaways, right?
[00:57:57] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. You knows, where. Yeah. If their family had any idea what happened, their family may not even crossed those. Yeah. Those thresholds.
[00:58:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
So all that's to say is that the Reformatory is just, like, horrifically accurate.
[00:58:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:14] Speaker B: Especially if you take out the part about the ghosts. Like, that really is the only piece that is.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: That's not straight from.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: Historically accurate.
[00:58:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:24] Speaker B: And. And, you know, again, like, the abuses described in the novel match some of the actual accounts of the survivors that I was reading. There were a lot of things that I was like, oh, I remember reading that in the book. Like, this book, you know, I read a lot of horror, as you all know. Like, I. I am fairly. I would say, like, desensitized or. Or what have you.
This book gave me an actual panic attack.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:54] Speaker B: And I didn't realize what was happening. I was listening to it on the way to work and enjoying it. It's a phenomenal book.
[00:59:01] Speaker A: So well written. I mean, so gorgeously incredible.
[00:59:04] Speaker B: She's. She's a talent. She is a powerhouse. And I got to work and I was like, I was just, you know, getting ready for my day, and I. And, like, my heart was racing, and I could not figure out what was going on. And then I realized I was like, I'm having a panic attack because of the book I'm reading.
[00:59:24] Speaker A: Right. Yeah.
[00:59:25] Speaker B: Like, it was so tense and. And.
And at that point, I don't even think I knew it was historically based.
[00:59:36] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. Because she mentions it in the afterword.
[00:59:38] Speaker B: She talks about it in the afterword?
[00:59:40] Speaker A: Yeah. It's not set up like that. Yeah.
[00:59:42] Speaker B: No. But it was just the idea that I was like, I know things like this have happened.
[00:59:47] Speaker A: Right. Yes, exactly.
[00:59:49] Speaker B: And it just, like, it sent me into a spiral, which. Which does not happen often.
[00:59:56] Speaker A: Right. Like, when reading books. Yeah. When you read stuff all the time that's full of violence and gore and bad things happening to people and stuff like that. But I think that really is what hits so hard about that. Aside with just how well written it is and everything is. I think you're spot on that. Like, I didn't necessarily know it was based on an actual place till the end of it, but it was very clear this was based on real things that happened to real children. You know, like, that part was, you know, crystal clear throughout that book. And I think that's always, you know, when it comes to reading about whether a fictional tale or a nonfiction one, when you're thinking about this kind of stuff, it's like what I was saying a few weeks ago about going on the ghost tour in New Orleans and then going on that. That ghost tour or dark history tour in Italy. Like, when you connect to the fact that, like, these are horrific things that happened to real people, it's like the humanity in you. You know, if you're not. They're obviously always people on this. They're just, like, ghosts, and they don't connect it to people at all or whatever. But when you connect with the humanity of, like, people who've been through just this incredible suffering, you know, it's like, very hard to just kind of, like, detach.
[01:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:01:17] Speaker A: From that. And again, that, like, it's not that long ago that this happened. Like, all of these kids would be younger than my mother, and, you know, she's not that old and like that.
Yeah. Just by luck and whatnot, we are northern black people and not Southern black people.
[01:01:39] Speaker B: Right.
[01:01:40] Speaker A: And I don't know, whatever history. I mean, I know part of my family, like, immigrated here from Bermuda, but I don't know about, like, parts of my family who probably were slaves, who at some point came this way by any accident of birth or whatever. We could have been Southerners and dealt with the same kinds of shit.
And it's just. Yeah. There's something about reading these kinds of things that really forces you to confront this ugliness that is so recent in our history and that, like, if a lot of people, again, in our government right now have their way, they'd love to bring back. You know, it's why it's. It's terrifying to watch them cover up, like, black history things in museums and government buildings and stuff like that, because, you know, sticking a plaque on the White House was one of the first things they did at this dozier school to, like, signal. Yeah, this was fucked up. You know, that's like one of our first things that we do is put something up to acknowledge that something horrific has happened. And the act of undoing that is permission. Right. It's a way of, like, saying we don't acknowledge that there was anything wrong with what happened here, and we need to ignore that history, which, you know, we all know is how it happens again.
[01:03:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep.
[01:03:04] Speaker A: It's a cool thing to have to be vigilant for, especially as immigrants are being sent to Guantanamo and things like that. Like, you know, we're gonna find out all kinds of horrible stories about that in a few years, realistically.
[01:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Crazy.
[01:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, all that's to say, read the reformatory.
[01:03:30] Speaker A: Yeah, Read the reformatory. Read the barn.
[01:03:33] Speaker B: Read the barn.
[01:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Read all of this.
[01:03:37] Speaker B: Read all the things. Look for the documentaries, you know.
[01:03:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Because we have to. Yeah. I think that's the thing is we do have to. We have to know about these things and how bad things can really get and how little people care.
[01:03:53] Speaker B: Right.
[01:03:53] Speaker A: You know, I think that's one of the things that really hits home about how you've described this is like, there was a century of intervention and no one gave a shit. Nobody cared enough to, like, shut it down or make great reforms to it or anything like that.
When you dehumanize a group of people, whether that's black kids or whether that is delinquents of any color, things like that, and sort of be like, they don't deserve to be treated like we expect our own children to be treated.
[01:04:26] Speaker B: Right.
[01:04:26] Speaker A: This is the kind of shit that you end up with. Yep. Our trouble, teen industry, as I keep mentioning, like, you know, a thing that still exists and still tortures children to this day. Like, you know, we. We allow this to happen.
[01:04:46] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:04:47] Speaker A: And it's something we have to be more. To pay more attention to.
[01:04:50] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:04:51] Speaker A: Thank you for sharing that. Yeah.
It is a downer, but, you know, it's. It's context that's sorely needed. And, you know, I think is. Like I said, you know, I think there's something in the moment that is causing people to revisit this stuff. And having just read those books, you know, it's on my mind also, the. The John Henry book is called Steel Driving man, if anyone wants to. It, like, came to me like that book. It's called Steel Driver man, which is a fascinating story as well, of, you know, our country being built on this kind of thing. You know, the stuff that we, you know, enjoy now, it's not just. It wasn't just cotton. It wasn't just the people building the White House, but, like, the very infrastructure of this country being built upon black bodies and. And the prison industrial complex that we are seeing now as, you know, firefighters, incarcerated firefighters, you know, fighting our wildfires in California and McDonald's using prison labor. Like, you know, like, so many things in our lives are still off the backs of people who are the. It's because reconstruction failed, and it's because the 13th Amendment exists, and we. We do this to people. So. I appreciate that context, Ryan.
[01:06:18] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, it was. I'm glad I ended up going that route.
[01:06:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
We'll be back another time to talk about some other things. But, you know.
[01:06:29] Speaker B: Oh, my God, the amount of weird rabbit holes I read about.
[01:06:35] Speaker A: Listen, this is. I got an assignment for Wisecrack this week, and the. The gal who assigns me things was like, we need you because nobody rabbit holes like you do.
It's like, I do. I do do that. It's like on this particular site, like, sometimes she's like, we need you to, like, hone in. Don't rabbit hole. You work too much if you rabbit hole. This time she was like, no. Go crazy.
Everything, there's always so. There's just so many things.
[01:07:05] Speaker B: There's so many things. And, like, that's how I start, because I remember you and Mark both talking about how, like, you'll look up one thing on Wikipedia and then just kind of like, yes, pull up the sources and just like, rabbit hole that way. And so I went. I found a Reddit thread from 2020, when those will get you lockdown. And it was like, here are my favorite rabbit holes.
Wikipedia.
Oh, my God, there were so many just, like, you know, weird deaths and, like, weird. Like human. Just. Just so much.
[01:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:07:39] Speaker B: Weird humanity. Right.
[01:07:41] Speaker A: And humanity. Exactly.
[01:07:42] Speaker B: Oh, my God. And I also, like, again, I have so many, like, non fiction horror stuff.
[01:07:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:07:50] Speaker B: That I was, like, flipping through. I was like, oh, maybe I'll talk about, like, the origin story of some of our most famous, like, urban legends and stuff like that. And I was just like five minutes of me talking. That's nothing.
[01:08:02] Speaker A: I don't know. I feel like there's something there. You know, revisit that around Halloween or something.
[01:08:07] Speaker B: I did learn about a guy who was, I think, maybe the first person to ever be, like, sentenced as a werewolf.
He's this French guy.
[01:08:24] Speaker A: I was gonna say it's French, isn't it? It's always definitely French.
[01:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah, he was definitely French. He was. He was just a cannibal.
[01:08:31] Speaker A: Like, he wasn't just regular kind, regular.
[01:08:34] Speaker B: Cannibal, but he was. He was. Yeah, the people called him a werewolf.
And then I read another story about consensual cannibalism, which I think you guys had talked about. Maybe this guy before who, like, found.
[01:08:47] Speaker A: A guy on Armin Mythes.
[01:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I read about him a little bit.
[01:08:54] Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, he's. He's one of Mark's favorites. You know, he's like, just like. He's like a nice guy. You know, he went about it in a nice way. It was consensual. You know, he just. He just wanted. He didn't want to hurt nobody.
Just wanted to eat a guy.
Let he who is without sin cast the first sin stone or something.
I don't want to eat a guy. Just for the record, one of the early episodes of this was me talking about how traumatized I was by the foot tacos.
I don't want to do that.
[01:09:32] Speaker B: I don't want to eat a guy. But, you know, I am who I am, so I had to bring it back to books, so.
[01:09:39] Speaker A: I know. I appreciate that. Thematic, you know, giving us a chance also to toss some Rex out there. Before you go. Anything. What's your. What's your one book right now that you're like, everybody read this.
[01:09:51] Speaker B: Oh, Victorian Psycho.
[01:09:53] Speaker A: Victorian Psycho. Psycho. Is it out? It just. It just released. Okay.
[01:09:57] Speaker B: It is officially out. I've already. We've already sold 16 copies. Came out last week.
[01:10:03] Speaker A: Not that you're keeping track.
[01:10:05] Speaker B: I am obsessed with this insane book. It's already slated to be a movie.
[01:10:12] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:10:13] Speaker B: Starring.
What's her name? The girl from the substance.
Oh, Morgan.
[01:10:19] Speaker A: Margaret Qualley. Margaret Qualley. Nice.
[01:10:22] Speaker B: Will be playing the.
[01:10:23] Speaker A: I hope she becomes, like, a scream queen. That'd be pretty cool. Yeah, I hope so. She's got the chops for that.
[01:10:31] Speaker B: It is. My co worker described it as Jane Eyre plus American Psycho.
[01:10:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:10:38] Speaker B: It is one of the funniest books I've ever read.
[01:10:42] Speaker A: Nice. Okay.
[01:10:44] Speaker B: Because I'm deeply dark.
[01:10:46] Speaker A: Well.
[01:10:47] Speaker B: But it's one of the greatest, like, rich people.
[01:10:53] Speaker A: Nice. We need that. We need that now.
[01:10:56] Speaker B: So much fun. She's a. She's a. A governess. She. She gets a job as a governess for these just awful rich children in this awful rich family.
And she's deranged and like, she like, introduces herself at one point to one of the kids and you Know, she. Her name is Winifred. And the boy says something like, can I call you Fred? And she goes, fred's the name of my demon.
[01:11:29] Speaker A: With these amazing. I'm in.
[01:11:32] Speaker B: And, like, she's just, like.
The best part about it is, like, because these people are so rich and living in their own world and so unaware of the help. She is literally just murdering people almost in front of them, and they're not noticing.
[01:11:48] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:11:49] Speaker B: It is hysterical. It is insane. It has. It has the meat, it has the juice.
[01:11:56] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:11:58] Speaker B: It's. It's just wild and it's super short.
[01:12:01] Speaker A: Oh, that appeals to me.
[01:12:03] Speaker B: Love a short little novella. And I have gotten almost every single staff member at Gibson's to read it, and everyone has loved it.
[01:12:12] Speaker A: Oh, beautiful.
[01:12:12] Speaker B: We all read different things.
[01:12:14] Speaker A: Nice. Yeah.
[01:12:15] Speaker B: It is just my favorite. We have a. A virtual event with the author next Tuesday on the 11th. And I'm just like. I just. I don't even know what I want to say to her. I just want to be like, thank you. Tell me about your brain.
[01:12:31] Speaker A: Right.
You should ask Australian Dan for some questions. Oh, that's a great idea.
You know, the. The expert on listening to horror.
Horror podcast interviews and whatnot.
[01:12:45] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Yeah. So that is my, like, that's my number one recommendation. And then my number two is Wake up and open your eyes by Clay McCloud Chapman.
[01:12:55] Speaker A: I have to. I keep starting it, but I'm so bad at reading my physical books because normally I play video games and listen to my books. And so, like, just last week, I, like, took it somewhere and I, like, started it, and I'm, like, immediately into it. I love Clay of Cloud Chapman. Yeah. And. But then, of course, I come home and I'm like, if I'm going to read a book, I'm going to listen to it. So I should just get, like, the. You should just get the audiobook. You know, it's like, I feel like, because you sent me the signed copy of it, right? I'm like, oh, I have it. I should. I should read this. Just, you know, it's a. You've got a cool signed copy. Just put it on the shelf and then listen to the book.
I don't know why I've made this weird rule for myself that I need to read the paper one.
[01:13:40] Speaker B: It's. It's a wild time.
[01:13:43] Speaker A: I mean, it's Clay McLeod Chapman.
[01:13:45] Speaker B: It's Clay. So it's gonna get weird.
[01:13:48] Speaker A: Gonna get weird for sure.
[01:13:50] Speaker B: But is, you know, obviously horrifyingly relevant because this is a, like, Plague of.
[01:14:00] Speaker A: Media, basically, which just in the beginning of this book, his descriptions, like, he is basically this sort of main character here from just the first chapter or whatever that couple of chapters has like lost his parents to the equivalent of Fox News, essentially. And he. It's. Oh, man. He goes into their house and it's like just the TVs are blasting everywhere and the place is in disarray and they are just like Fox News zombies, essentially. You know, it's like it feels, I think people who have relatives who have succumbed to this, like, it feels very real in that way. Like. Like this is like obviously a horror version of it, but it's not that far off from like, what it actually is. Like having family members who are suddenly in this weird, like, Qanoni zone because they watch too much Tucker.
[01:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Right.
And I will say if you can get through the entire scene in his parents house, because.
[01:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah, gets.
[01:15:07] Speaker B: Goes places.
[01:15:09] Speaker A: Yes. It goes places that you're like, yeah. Oh, no. Oh, no.
His mom gets weird. His mom gets weird. It's fin.
[01:15:18] Speaker B: Fine.
[01:15:19] Speaker A: It's fine. It's totally fine.
[01:15:22] Speaker B: It's fine. He.
[01:15:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I gotta get to.
[01:15:25] Speaker B: He and I actually had a phone call after I finished my bound manuscript of it because he was so nervous about this one coming out. Like, he was so scared about this book coming out. And of course it's getting incredible reviews.
[01:15:44] Speaker A: Yeah, everything.
[01:15:44] Speaker B: I told him it would.
[01:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:46] Speaker B: I was like, this is gonna find its audience. Like, don't worry.
But I guess it was one where like, he had his wife read it and she couldn't finish it.
[01:15:56] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[01:15:57] Speaker B: Like that him up, I think a little bit. And then like one of his author friends who he asked to blurb, it was like, I refuse to blurb this based on like the politics of it. And I think that him up too.
[01:16:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:16:13] Speaker B: And I was. Clay, it's gonna be okay.
[01:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it is gonna be okay.
[01:16:17] Speaker B: Promise.
[01:16:18] Speaker A: That audience is very much there.
[01:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah, the audience is there. Like, you know, this is the catharsis we need. And.
[01:16:25] Speaker A: Yeah. So wake up and open your eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman and Victorian Psycho by Virginia Fato.
[01:16:32] Speaker B: Virginia. She's Spanish.
[01:16:34] Speaker A: One of those. Ah, okay. Like, sorry, I have like a sneeze. It's just like sitting in my nose building.
It's like, yeah, Spain. Nice.
It's like Russell is making weird faces at you.
Really interesting. Okay, so check those out. And of course, check out the Lay down podcast, which is always just like a delightful, charming time. It's, you know, whether you guys have someone on that you're interviewing or are just talking about books in general. You know, it's. It's lots of laughter, it's lots of excitement and hyper fixation and all of the things that are just, like, for people who really love books, you know, this is the podcast for people who love, like, just the joy of reading. So if you haven't listened to Lay down and you are a reader, you gotta check it out. It's a. It's a wonderful time. And you often have great guests.
[01:17:37] Speaker B: I do, yes, we do often have great guests.
[01:17:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Really phenomenal guests who are very fun. And I always just enjoy kind of hearing insights into the writing process. But often I think one of the things I really love on the lay down is the things that you get sort of outside of their writing processes about these people and just kind of like, I think a lot of people, you know, feel like they can just chat shit with you. That is very fun. And so, like, yeah, it's cool learning about people's processes and stuff, but it's also fun just, like the random stories they end up telling or random insights, tidbits about who they are as a person.
Always really cool.
[01:18:14] Speaker B: One of my. One of my favorite interviews, I think it was.
I think it was Ali Hazelwood. We just went on a rant about the publishing industry for, like, 20 minutes.
[01:18:25] Speaker A: And it's like, that's insights you don't necessarily get. Yeah, where. Right. You know, especially not from, like, just like, you might listen to a publishing podcast that says, like, very serious insights and numbers and, you know, whatever, but it's different than just hearing someone be like, oh, don't get me started. And then going off, you know, why something is the way it is and getting someone's, like, candid thoughts on something.
[01:18:51] Speaker B: She was like, ugh, I wish I could be talking about the book that I'm actually writing right now, because that's the one that's in my brain. But of course, I have to talk about this book that I finished, like, two years ago, but now it's finally out, and I don't even remember my character's name. Like, it was so funny. I was like, I love you, you.
[01:19:07] Speaker A: Jeez, there are the sneezes. Good gravy.
[01:19:10] Speaker B: Got them.
[01:19:12] Speaker A: Found their way out. But, yeah, all that to say, listen to the Lay down. Ryan, thank you so much for. For coming in clutch and. And chatting today. Marco, of course, is grateful as well for you taking on.
Taking on his role this week, or I'm taking on his role. I don't know where. Whatever. Oh, my God. It was Jesus. Okay, everybody, I'm gonna go sneeze now, so you all remember to stay spooky.
[01:19:42] Speaker B: Stay spooky.
