Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: As I was reading and researching and putting this opener together, right.
An idea occurred to me, an idea that I think would be really, really good as fuck. Right? Okay, I'm gonna walk you through this. I'm gonna walk you through this now.
A thing about me is from a source, certain perspective. I'm kind of a sicko, right?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think it's hard to argue with.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: I enjoy, you know, I, I, I, I love to see what's on the inside of us. I love, Sure. I love to. When I'm, when I'm thinking and reading about murders. Right.
Much like you remember Hannibal. Remember the show Hannibal? The.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Yeah. I didn't watch as much of it as I like. I think I've mentioned this before. I enjoyed it. But the problem was I was in grad school and the only times that I, like, could sit down and watch something was usually I was eating a meal. And it is not a show you watch while eating.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. But I mean, take other times on this cast where we've talked about murders. In particular, I think of the.
Is it Armin Muse?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: My.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: The Armin Muse is from Star Trek, isn't he?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: I think you're thinking Armin Shimmerman. Yes, Shimmerman. Yes. The German Muse is just how you spell my. This.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: There we go. Yes, that's possibly it. And you'll recall the kind of pictures of his dwelling and the crime scenes and such. Yeah, I enjoy that a lot. I like to almost walk through them in my mind.
You know, I like to look at the spatter on the walls and the fucking tape, the crime scene tape and maybe a broken window here and, you know, some. A body there, maybe. I love to visualize it. Almost put myself in that environment in my mind and I know.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah, there's something fascinating about that. I mean, I said last week, you know, I wrote on our socials that I was looking through those very grim pictures from last week's Cold Open about the saturation diamonds while I was just, like, eating a chunk of cheese and just not even unfazed. Just like, oh, this is really interesting.
See?
[00:02:27] Speaker A: It is. And I know I'm not the only one, right? Yeah, it's a fucking, It's a thing. It's a, it's a scene. It's an industry almost. Right. Yeah, I enjoy it. So I. Oh, this.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: I'm sorry to interrupt, but this, I just want to, like, throw this out out there because I wanted to ask you this question and it relates to this and, and you don't have to answer it right now. We can come back to it, but I want to put it out.
And the question is, do you think that real snuff tapes exist? Not filmed murders, not filmed deaths, but tapes made specifically of a murder for the purpose of selling it for profit. Okay, so the murder is committed for the purpose of making a snuff tape. Not incidentally someone was recording their crimes or anything like that.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: But you're talking, you kind of talk about red rooms, aren't you?
[00:03:32] Speaker B: There are, sure, yes, right, exactly.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Online about dark web red rooms where you can pay some crypto and watch a life.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah, watch, exactly. This was a question that came up on the last podcast of the left Facebook group the other day. And the consensus, which I was surprised at how like level headed is. A lot of times people can be pretty conspiracy minded in that sort of group, but people are like, nah, probably not.
It's. It's unlikely. Why people could sort of pull that off.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Fuck it. I will go. Let's go into this now while I.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: While I am sorry everyone for derailing, but this, you know, needed to be discussed.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: I'm certain it has happened, right?
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Why?
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Well, because. Just because of the breadth of people out there, you know, and the length of time that murders have existed and the video technology has existed at one time or another, it has probably happened. But I think it is isolated. I don't think it's a thing.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. I mean I think the thing was like people were saying there's never been like a proven snuff tape. Right. Like there's no one's ever see. There have, like I said, there have been recordings of murders, obviously. Yeah. Even on purpose.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Yeah.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Obviously. Yeah. We've got like now shooters and synagogues and shit like that. Live streaming it and all that. So people murder to order.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: No, I don't believe.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah, murder to order.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: Common place.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it feels like one of those, you know, it's like that, that idea of like two can keep a secret if one is dead kind of situation. Like how can you have a production? Yeah, like that. If more than one person knows it's happening, then it's gonna get busted.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Completely. Completely.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: You know, it's over with. So you think it probably has.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: I think it has happened in kind of isolated incidents, kind of, you know, sicko arrangements between individuals. But I don't think there's ever been, you know, I will put an advert out there. No, no, no, certainly not. Certainly not. What is the thing though are animal torture videos for four hire that is a thing. That is certainly a thing. Somebody in Britain was convinced.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah, we know all kinds of. Yeah. Stuff like animal torture, like, obviously, like monkey torture, video children, like, all kinds of stuff that you can order up. So the idea of people and animals and whatever else being, like, tormented for money is certainly a thing that's out there. It's the, you know, can you order a murder tape?
[00:06:10] Speaker A: No, I don't believe.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Probably a bridge too far.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Unless you know different listeners.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. If you're. If you're aware, in the interest of.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Journalism and certainly not for purchase by me.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: What if we were the. The podcast that cracked that open some dumb asses on a Sunday night between talking about Mickey 17 watching wrestling.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: All right. Can I. Yeah.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: But anyways, go back. Yeah.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: So back to my idea. Back to my idea.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: From an artistic perspective. Right.
Wouldn't it be awesome to marry this passion of mine with emergent technology, I. E. VR?
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Hey.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Hello.
Modeling using crime scene photographs and forensic files and crime documents and police reports and whatnot. To model in a 3D space.
Accurate inch, accurate crime scene reproductions that sickos like me could put on their magic hat and walk around and just be there. Not while the crime's going on. That would be. Obviously.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Obviously. No, that goes back to the snuff tape thing.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: But no, I. I mean, I do won, like, if. Yeah, it feels like a thing that, you know, if that exists at all. I'm sure, like, police try to use at this point, you know, because they're trying all different kinds of technology things. Of course you would want to be like, can I walk around the space?
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: And, you know, see if I can, like, glean anything from this after we've already cleaned it up and, you know, I can't go back to it and stuff like that. Can we reconstruct it in some way?
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Imagine being able to walk around Dharma's apartment.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Right.
It's. Honestly, did you Google it? Are we sure this is a thing that nobody's done?
[00:08:13] Speaker A: I'm Googling it literally came up with a room.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: It really. I mean, yeah, it feels like a thing someone would have come up with at this point.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: I'm sure there's, like, some edgy fucking art student.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Some way doing something like that. Yeah. I'm like, I don't. I wouldn't know how to do such a thing. But, yeah, I mean, I don't see, like, there being anything worse or more exploitative about being able to go into a VR crime scene than being able to any of us being able to Google it with Safe Search Office, see exactly what's there, you know, anyway, just.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Something to think of. Somebody to think of, something to think.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: It's the kind of thing that, like, you know, people talk about becoming like forensic investigators and doing science and stuff like that. And a lot of times things come from stuff like that, like, oh, I saw this picture somewhere or whatever and I wanted to know more about it. And then I became X thing as a result of it. So I just think it's not just sickos, if you will.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: It's sickos. But yeah, I. Obviously, it's a bit. Obviously I'm being reductive, but it's. It's those with. Those who want to see, you know, it's those with, yeah, you know, a little itch they want to scratch, whatever.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: That might experience it, wherever that may sit.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: So all that said, right? Just like I enjoy doing. Won't you come with me to 1987?
[00:09:37] Speaker B: All right. I'm two years old.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Are you now? Where are you, Corey?
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Greenfield, Massachusetts. 18 Sanderson Street Greenfield, Massachusetts, 1987.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: I am nine.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: I am in Tritiga in South Wales.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Very nice.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: None of us, neither of us are in Ina, Illinois.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: No, no, can't say it was are.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: We know ye of the area.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Ina know. I know of Ina Garten, the delightful chef.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: No.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: And her husband Jeffrey. But I am not familiar with Ina, Illinois.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Well, Aina Illinois. It is a long Route 37.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: It is close to the state border.
It is.
Or at least it was in 1987.
A quiet neck of the woods, rural, sure, you know, tranquil, should we say?
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: But it was an area where the surrounding towns had kind of. They were, they were. There was talk of crime, violent crime.
The crew were getting unsettled. And in this town, in a trailer, in a rented trailer home, lived the Dardeen family.
Okay, the Dardeen family. The patriarch of the Dardeen family was one Keith Dardeen, a plant operator at a. At a water treatment plant, Rend Lake Water Conservatory District.
A guy with a good reputation, strong work ethic, frugal, despite his humble, modest kind of family life he was saving for his own future, for his son Peter, who is three years old.
Says a lot about him that he would sell empty pop cans to earn a little bit of extra money to set aside for his kid's future. For Peter's future.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: I remember that was like a thing, I will say, like, obviously, you know, growing up, it was like, yeah, you'd Take, take the recycling back to the store. They give you five cents a can or whatever. I don't know if they do that anymore. We all just put our recycling at the curb. But growing up, you didn't do that. There was no recycle truck. You took it back in. Um, but I know like there were people. My husband talks about this.
It's like he grew up in Bakersfield, California, before his family moved to Hawaii. And everything about Bakersfield feels like it's like Oklahoma in 1930. And so they would like collect like bottles. You'd find bottles all over the place, old glass bottles. And they're like worth a good amount of money.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: I have almost identical memories from Tritiga as I've just described. You would.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Well, there you go.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: The Pop man would come around. Yeah, the Pop man, all right, on his kind of. On his little van with the open back. And he would have crates of Pop Corona Pop Fizzy Pop in a big glass bottle. And you could return the bottle for a 10 pence. Sure, yeah, deposit the Pop Man Corrigan.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: Get Pop, he'd say.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: In later years he would sell milk, orange juice, you know, groceries.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Ooh, expanded.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: But you could return entrepreneur.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Return your pop bottle. One wonders if the Pop man evolved into the Video man. Who knows if those are the same people?
Who knows?
[00:13:21] Speaker B: No way to find out.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: But listen anyway. Listen, Keith, Keith, Keith. All he wants to do is make a crust. All he wants to do is earn a good future for Peter and his wife Ruby Elaine.
Ah, man. He had talked to his neighbors about wanting to up sticks and move away. You know, like I said, the communities have been talking about kind of violent crime. What else was going on in the states in the 80s, Corey? The satanic panic.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah, indeed.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Satanists were roaming the burbs.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: It's true. Just sacrificing everybody's babies and whatnot.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Drawing the pentagrams on the walls, blood. That was all happening, wasn't it? And Keith wanted out.
So we're, we're on November 18th. Okay. It's 1987.
And it unusually on that day, Keith had failed to show for work. Oh no, Keith, not like Keith.
Like I've said, a diligent man, a hard working man, a frugal man, a God fearing man. He and Ruby Elaine were members of the church. They would sing there, play piano there. They were community pillars. So why weren't you at work, Keith?
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Hmm?
[00:14:42] Speaker A: The alarm is raised.
He was dependable. Corey never missed a shift call after call to his trailer, went unanswered his dad gets involved. His father, Don. His father, Don Dardeen, becomes increasingly vexed, anxious.
He contacts the sheriff's office, Jefferson County Sheriff's office. And together they went to check in the trailer.
And inside.
Put on your VR helmets, friends, and walk through the scene of unimaginable horror and brutality.
Elaine and Peter brutally, brutally beaten to fucking death.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Not Peter.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Three year old Peter and his mother. Their heads, their bodies dashed with a bat. A baseball bat that was kept in the trailer. Horrific details, Corey. Horrific details. The bat that was a gift to Peter from his parents.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
The bodies had been tucked into bed after death.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Corrigan.
Oh, no, this is carefully. This is not good. Arranged seeing a John List thing happening.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Here, as though the killer had taken his time at the scene.
Ruby. Elaine had been bound with duct tape before being bludgeoned to death.
Corrigan, would you like another horrific detail?
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Had I mentioned Elaine was heavily pregnant? Oh, come on, Corrigan.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: During the assault, the trauma had forced her to go into labor.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: She had given birth during the attack.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Jesus Christ.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: And the killer beat the child to death in the same fucking fashion as he.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Peter and her mother.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: That is next level, isn't it? Fucked, this is. See, here's like. You know when you're talking about, like, being interested in the scene of something and like looking at like the bodies or whatever the case may be, I feel like the thing that like separates, you know, being interested from being the sickos is hearing that description and being like, how the fuck does someone do that?
[00:17:42] Speaker A: How?
[00:17:42] Speaker B: You know, like where you just. The idea of carrying that out, that whole process is beyond, like anything you can process.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: How do you fucking get there?
[00:17:57] Speaker B: How do you do this?
[00:17:59] Speaker A: How do you get there? Yeah, you see, it gets even, I guess, more interesting because you see, despite this absolutely astounding level of brutality, no forced entry, right? Hmm.
No evidence of a robbery. Fuck all the rob, really, right?
[00:18:25] Speaker B: It's a trailer.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: No real motive. No cause, like I said, quiet community, God fearing family, churchgoers.
No kind of disturbance to the house. No ransacking. They were valuable. Still in the house, untouched.
But the staging, you know, the fucking.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Yeah, like literally, this is. I'll throw in my guess now and then we'll see how it unfolds. But it's like literally, like almost the same as John List and his family. Annihilation here in New Jersey that, you know, he. He killed his family. They were very religious. He had, you know, these ideas that if he didn't murder them, that like they were going to become Satanists and, and all this kind of stuff. And then after he killed them, he went and he laid them upstairs in like sleeping bags, like tucked them in their little sleeping bags and played music over them and was like, you know, and then left. Fled. Took on a new identity, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, so that would be, you know, out the gate. Seemed like, seemed like, you know, a good guy or whatever. My, you know, family friend Weezy used to serve him coffee and a donut every day. Seemed like a regular old guy. Well, and then he listen, took everybody out.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Keith was nowhere to be found. Corrigan.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Yeah, he's not amidst Ruby.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Elaine dead. Peter dead. The newborn baby, dead. But Keith nowhere to be found. So where does your mind go?
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Yeah, you think Keith, you think family annihilation.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Think Keith. Obviously, you know, I'm not a detective, but you gotta.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: The signs seem kinda there, like, you.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Know, but let's shoot it down. Because the next fucking day, the very next day, late on the 19th of November, 1987, Keith's body was discovered in a nearby field.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: South of their home, right next to the border between Franklin and Jefferson County.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Keith had been.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: And what happened to his body?
[00:20:45] Speaker A: He had been shot three times.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: And wait for it.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Genitally mutilated.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Oh, Jesus Christ.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: That's right.
Sexual.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: This is a mutated, very weird story, isn't it?
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Yes, it.
Later his car was discovered elsewhere, parked outside the police station.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Interior of the car, soaked in blood.
Okay, so the wife, the son, the newborn child bludgeoned to death, positioned very deliberately in their trailer park home. Keith found in a field, shot to death.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: There is gonna be a solution to this, right? You're not gonna leave me hanging with this.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Corrigan will get there.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Okay. I just wanna. I want to prepare myself in advance because I'm going to be really put out if we don't find out what happens to these people.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: If you feel put out, imagine how the community felt. Imagine how the police felt. This was not domestic violence. This wasn't a fucking, you know, a burglary gone awry.
Absolute extraordinary fucking savagery.
And the investigation was as exhaustive as you could expect of the police in 1987. Primitive, you know, forensics, DNA, everybody interviewed, friends, co workers, family. Theories, so many theories.
Did Keith.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Not fair.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Did Keith maybe have somebody with a grudge against him at work?
Was it the Satanists, Right? Was, of course, the Satanists. Think of the. Think of the scene, the overkill, the staging. Keith's Sexual mutilation.
Was it cult based? But, you know, obviously these were theories, but absolutely no evidence for the ritualistic piece at all. No symptoms.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: It's just like where everybody's brain goes. You know, I think of this with. I was just watching Dateliner 2021 of those just did like an update on the Delphi murders case from a few years ago where two teenage girls had been walking and were murdered. Okay. And one of them managed to, on her cell phone catch like a glimpse of the guy and like, him saying, like a phrase in it, you know, so she kind of helped to catch her own killer. But like, it's. People don't criticize this enough. But it was like the. Because there was like some stuff carved into, like, caves around where they were and like branches erase. It was like. We think it's like satanic cult shit or whatever. And it's like you come on and it's like everything acts like this is a perfectly reasonable thing for them to assume. Well, given that these signs were there and whatnot, like, you know, it makes perfect sense that they would have thought it might. No, it doesn't. Because we're grown adults and we know that this is not real. Get it together.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Are you ready to be vexed? Because.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Is it Satanists?
[00:24:12] Speaker A: No.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: What?
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Okay, we don't have anyone for it.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Come on, Mark.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: Anyone for it? The case went cold. Went stone goddamn cold. Closest thing to a breakthrough happened in the year of our Lord 2000.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: 2000.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: 2000.
A serial killer. An American serial killer by the name of Tommy Lynn Sells.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:24:40] Speaker A: A quite prolific serial killer.
A guy whose career spanned a very broad geography. A transient, he would move from state to state. He would hitchhike, he would stay in motels.
Mo. Absolutely savage. He was a stabber. Right. Tommy lynch just.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: We'll talk about more such things when we get to our main topic. But stabbing is really. Yeah, that's a.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: That's a hell of a crime dabber.
His, you know, his. His areas of operation. We're talking Texas, Missouri, other states. He was very, very broad, overwhelmingly female. As you can imagine. His. His victims often sexually motivated, often leaving his victims in, you know, exposed and remote areas. And he was finally caught after a murder in 1999. And in 2000, he confessed to the Dardeen murders. Okay, but we question this because Tommy Lynsel confessed to a bunch of shit he didn't do.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Sure. Okay. Just kind of like, yeah, yeah, I did that. I'm all over the place. I'm a big, cool serial guy.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: And his confession doesn't pass the fucking sniff test at all. Absolutely no physical evidence at all.
The MO doesn't match with his mo. You know, he was a stabber. These were beaten to death with a bat.
He described things about the crime scene which didn't ring true.
And his confession was ultimately dismissed. Thrown out.
His story about Keith was that he'd met him at a truck stop and Keith made unwanted sexual advances towards him. So he'd shot him and, you know.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: Cut him up and then had to kill his family.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. So while, yeah, Sals was obviously a fucking horrific piece of shit.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: It just didn't quite fucking pass. Just for the.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: And there's like. There's no way that Keith could have done it. The way that he was murdered was like, cannot inflict this upon self.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: It. It. In everything I've read, in everything I've read, it has not even once been mentioned that Keith was in the frame for this.
It's so bizarre, isn't it?
[00:27:12] Speaker B: It's like, okay, it's a small town, right? And there's no forced entry or anything. I mean, I guess, small town, they just may have not, well, like, locked the door.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Plenty of places describe Ina, Illinois, as a place where you leave your door open.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: You know?
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I do that. It's a place.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Right. It was right next to the fucking. To Route 37 is right next to the fucking freeway.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Is that what you call it?
[00:27:36] Speaker A: The freeway? Did I get that right?
[00:27:38] Speaker B: Well, it depends.
Freeway is a specific kind of.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Oh, I see.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Road. But yes, let's say. I don't know. So I'm gonna say, yeah, you're totally right.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Okay.
But the fact is, friends, no one has ever, ever seen anything remotely like justice for the Dardeen murders.
So is that not just. One more reminder, listeners, of Joag rule number one.
Say it with me.
Say it with me.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: You're never safe.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: You are not safe.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: I hate this.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Mark, good.
Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Yes, please do.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said misal said, said in such a horny way before.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: Recently, Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm. I'm gonna leg it.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark?
[00:28:48] Speaker A: I think you feel great. About it.
A Dark One.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: It is a Dark One.
Yeah. Yeah. I was coming in here.
Dark stories, no ending, but. Hi, Mark.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Hello. So I. I come. I come. I come with a message of hope this week.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Do you.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: I do. Despite what that story may have led you to believe, I actually come.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: With a message of hope. I.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: All right.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: I've been kind of. If you have astral projection.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: Oh, of course. Yeah.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: I've been doing a lot of that lately. I've been getting. Right.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Oh, good. Yeah. I feel like that's probably.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: That's probably good for the uninitiated, what you do is you kind of. You meditate a lot and you kind of tap into, like, space time and you fold space time in itself internally. And you're able to project your soul, project your essence, project your spirit out of your flesh and to other places, other spaces, other times. I've been doing a lot of that lately. Right.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: It's really good to hear today.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: And I've. I've been to the future.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: I've been to the future.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Not much has changed, but they live underwater.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: I fucking hate that song so much.
I really fucking hate that song. It's not surprising, and I've got great news.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: In spite of everything, in spite of the climate and in spite of the, you know, capitalistic fucking ravaging of the world and its resources, and despite us as people being set against one another by billionaires with no fucking shred of relevance or context for the life that we live, despite the lack of social mobility and the fucking.
The invading and the colonizing and the war and the hunger and the murders.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Despite all of that, it all works out fine.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: And your great great great granddaughter is doing fine.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Astral Projected earlier on, 200 years into the future, and it was great. So don't fucking worry.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Wonderful thing.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: It's all gonna be fine.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Thanks for that.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: All right.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: It's really.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: I'm not gonna give you any good words on how we get there. I don't know. But one way or the other, somehow it's all.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: It all works out.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Gonna be fine. So how do you feel about that?
[00:31:38] Speaker B: No, I feel great.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: Good.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: I feel a lot.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: I hope you do, too. I hope. I hope that's given you something to really fucking shoot for this week, you know?
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Right, let's aim there for the Mondays.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: You know, if you're struggling to get your pep in, spring your step and fucking vinegar in your balls or whatever they fucking say, that's what.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Don't feel like. That's A saying.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: It is. It fucking is. Well, it is in 200 years time anyway.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: Oh, okay, everyone bringing back some slang for us as well.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Or hey, bootstrap paradox. Am I starting this? Who knows? But they're all saying it in 200 years. How you doing, Corey? I'm good, Marco. I got vinegar in my balls. That's what they're saying in the future. And when you get there, you'll understand.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, I look forward to it.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: And you will get. Life expectancy in the next 20 years is going to skyrocket.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: It's going through the roof.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: And we've.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: We've conquered all known illnesses, including in 200 years, including. We've finally found a cure for the rat plague.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Oh, man, the rat plague.
I went through, like, sadly too late for some of our favorites.
This I. A couple years ago, I guess, like five years ago, it was like early lockdown times. But here we had mice and it was like, you know, do you remember that?
We had all these mice and it was like, we got, you know, being the person I am, we got like the, you know, humane traps and all that kind of stuff. And we looked it up and it was like a mother mouse can have up to eight mice in a litter. Right. So we were hearing next to our bed every day, all the scritch. Scratching in the walls. So we put traps down and it was like, night one.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: We got a mouse. Like, sweet. We caught the mouse. Great. We go and we drive two miles away. We let the mouse out, come back next night, scritch.
There's still mice. Go. Next night, two mice in the trap. Cute little baby mice. We realized these are babies here.
The first night we had caught the mom, full size mouse drove this mom away. And then after that, it was like each night we were catching more babies as they were like, starving because the mom wasn't bringing them food or whatever.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: So full litter of eight mice in our walls that we managed to pull out of there and release into the wild, which was bonkers.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: That is cool.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: They were so cute. I was like, oh. I was like, I wanted to, like, pet.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: They just scurry off.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Once we put them out, they were just like, buh, bye and left. Aside from one that probably died that just kind of chilled in its place, we were like, oh, that guy's either gonna just die or something's going to eat it.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: I've only just put two and two together. We have pet mice. We have two mice upstairs. Pet mice.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: You do have pet mice in Your mouth. In your mouth in your house.
At the time, I was like, you know, oh, they're so cute. I want to pet them. But of course, much like when I went to look at if I can touch the neighborhood squirrels, I googled to see if, like, anything can happen if I do that. And one of the things that I talked about was hantavirus, and I actually pulled up the CDC thing. This was enough at the time to scare me into not touching the pet mice, the feral mice, I should say. So Hantavirus can affect and cause serious disease in people worldwide. It says people get hantavirus from contact with rodents like rats and mice, especially when exposed to their urine droppings and saliva.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Mouse piss disease. Mouse piss plague.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: Well, and particularly, it's the droppings, right? Because, like, mice, like, will get into your. Your cupboards, into your pantries and stuff like that, into your, like, cereal, into your bags of shit like that, and they'll, like, shit in it, but you don't notice it. It's like these tiny little pellets or whatever, and you'll be like, eating, eating, eating. And then you'll notice a hole in the box and be like, oh, no.
[00:35:59] Speaker A: Oh, do we think, oh, no? I mean, is. Is that what led to the. To poor Mrs. Hackman contracting?
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we'll get there. But let me tell you just a little bit more about it before we get into why we're talking about this, because some people might have no idea.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: If I could walk through the Hackman house in VR, I could see the point of ingress of rodent infestation. You know, I could solve this, right?
[00:36:25] Speaker B: So hantavirus can cause two syndromes. It says there's hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which is the most. The most common one in the US and is spread by deer mice. And then hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome is a group clinically similar. Similar, caused by hantavirus, mostly found in Europe and Asia. And what happens? Your early symptoms are like a lot of things. Fatigue, fever, muscle aches, headaches, dizziness, chills, abdominal problems like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. And then four to ten days after that initial phase, you have the late symptoms, which include coughing and shortness of breath. Patients might experience tightness in the chest as the lungs fill with fluid.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Late stage rat piss disease. Can there be a bleaker place to find yourself?
[00:37:19] Speaker B: Right, and 38% of people who develop respiratory symptoms, they die from the disease.
[00:37:26] Speaker A: Okay, can you tell me anything of treatments?
What. What do I need to do? When I first suspect I've got rapis plague, right?
[00:37:37] Speaker B: So there isn't a treatment for hantavirus specifically, but it's not like rabies, okay? It's not like rabies where it's like, if you get it, sorry, you're fucked. It's not that kind of thing. But you basically can get sort of basic care like rest, hydration, and treatments of the symptoms. And if it gets to the point where you're having breathing problems, you may end up having to be, like, intubated, where they put little tube down your throat and whatnot to help you to breathe, get your, you know, the fluid removed from your lungs with one of those big old needles, that kind of shit aspirated. That's the sort of stuff. So basically it's keeping it from. Like. Basically you're stopping all the stuff that would kill you from. You're dealing with the symptoms, right? You're dealing with the symptoms and making sure that it doesn't get to the point where your lungs fill up with fluid and you die.
So.
So crazy news this week.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: Yeah, please. And to those who. Who don't know why the fuck we're talking about this, because we did kind of just jump right into rat piss plague syndrome.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: We did. Yes.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: My analysis of the Hackman death scene was, it turns out, way off.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: Wasn't it?
[00:38:53] Speaker B: No, But I don't think that there was a way to have seen this one come.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: Exactly. And I'm taking solace in that. That's what I'm, you know, I'm salving my wounds of being so wrong with the fact that I was so wrong.
Find me someone who was right. Find me someone who fucking nailed this, who guessed right.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: I hope they put a lot of money on it if someone was right. No, this, honestly, somehow is worse than your. Your prediction of murder or suicide. Like, this is much more tragic and horrific.
We found out this week that what actually happened in the Hackman household was that his wife came down with hantavirus. Somehow, we don't know how she had been. Oh, man, it's so terrible. She had been coming home from bringing her dog to the vet, which is why the dog was in a crate when this happened.
And she died from hantavirus with the dog in the crate, which is why it most likely starved to death over the. You know, over a week between when she died and.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: Is that the link, I wonder, that she'd been to the vet, that she'd caught rat piss, plagues and drink.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: No, it was completely under. They Already said, completely unrelated, has nothing to do with what she went to the vet for or anything there. And obviously she was late stage. Right. Because this, like the CDC thing said, you know, you're talking about seven to 10 days later that you start to get this. So she had come back from that and passed out and died. Gene Hackman was in, like, late stage heart disease and dementia, Alzheimer's. And so they posit, like, he probably didn't even know she died or was.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: She kind of caring for him, maybe? And she died of his life.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: She had been his caregiver, right. And so basically left him, this sick man with Alzheimer's, to fend for himself for however many days it was between when she died and he died.
And so they think, like, either he didn't know she had died, or he might have been attempting to go get help at the time and fallen and died as a result of that, but that there was like something like six days or something between when she died and he died.
So basically just a poor old man just not having his caregiver to take care of him.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: Awful fucking dark way to go out.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Just. Yeah. Just truly like, beyond what we could have imagined for that situation.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: You know, just one question for me unanswered.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: And I think maybe. Maybe I raised it last week, but I. I haven't. Nobody has discounted it. Nobody has told me. No.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Obviously, yes, there was one dead dog in a vet's cage, but there were two perfectly healthy dogs roaming around the place.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: How were they fed, Corrie? Were they.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: I mean, fed? There's no. Nothing to say that anyone was eaten. She was mummified because she fell asleep by. Or she died by a heater.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: But otherwise, the bodies were not touched, so I would assume they knew where their food was kept and ripped the thing open or something like that would be my guess. Like, you know, dogs are pretty good at finding food. There was. I discovered today, my dog was going crazy. He kept on trying to, like, climb onto the TV stand. And I was like, why are you doing this? Like. And I could not stop him from climbing onto the TV stand. There was one single food pellet sitting at the back of the DVD player. And that distracted him for like an hour and a half.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: Again. Again. And not. Isn't it fucking maybe a little absurd that I'm trying to make this story darker than it already is?
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. By having them, did they have to.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: Look for food, you know, or was it right there?
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I don't. I cannot.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: I'm asking, did the dogs eat the body? That's what I'm asking.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: It didn't eat the body from anything. I think they would have mentioned that. There's no sparing the details in these articles.
[00:43:15] Speaker A: No.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: That's so sensational.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: That is a great point.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Our media would absolutely.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Hackman eaten by dog.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Right? Like that would be. The big old head dog ate him.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: That's what that is.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: It's so funny though, because I, I mentioned.
I don't know if I mentioned it on here, but I was listening to last podcast on the left and they have like a thing called side stories. I think I might have mentioned this actually, but I almost wrote an email and then I got distracted. Every week they give like, they're like, if you have like further comment on this or you can correct us or something. Lpotlmail.com or whatever. And so I started an email and I did not finish it because I got distracted. I was like walking my dog at the time. But one of the hosts, Eddie, was insisting that cats eat their owners more than dogs do. And I had just read a book that Eileen recommended that talked specifically about this in one of the chapters. And the fact that that's not true, actually dogs do it a lot more because, like, well, there's like various theories as to why they do it. Nobody's like, sure, because like, obviously dogs are very loyal and all that kind of stuff.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: So like, why would they eat their own the loyalty. Surely that's just us projecting.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: I mean, that's. That's one of those things that it's like, it depends. There's like research either way on that, you know, surely they don't have like human emotion per se, but we know that animals do have something akin to human emotions. Like how like elephants or monkeys and things like that mourn if one of them dies and stuff like that. You know, they hold funerals and shit like. So animals having something akin to our emotions.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: Also something we know. Do you remember the orangutan that medicined its face? Do you remember that?
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: Fuck. Fascinating study that I heard about on Radio 4 this week about mice.
Mice practicing first aid on one another.
Mice. A study where test mice had their throats intentionally blocked by just like little pellets. And in lots and lots and lots of cases, other mice would blow and remove the fucking blockage from their coal mouse's throats, man.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: Was it.
Were they trained in this or. This was an automatic response.
[00:45:48] Speaker A: Was, I believe, an automatic response. One moment that is. Isn't that crazy.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: Absolutely wild, the study shows. I mean, that's the thing is we just keep learning, like, just bananas shit about animals.
[00:46:01] Speaker A: Incredible. You know, the responses range from either kind of at the base level, gentle sniffing and grooming, to forceful actions such as biting tongues and escalating to pulling the blockage out of the unconscious mind.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: That's crazy.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: Trying to wake.
[00:46:15] Speaker B: I mean, and it's so funny. Like, I've talked many times on here before about my. My annoyance with people who claim that, like, intelligent extraterrestrials, like, exist or here, how they often say, like, oh, it would be. It would be egotistical of us to think that we're the only intelligent life in the universe or whatever. But I'm like, listen, we keep finding out animals are actually a lot. Like, why are we looking into space? Look at the ones that are, like, right here that are, like, actively doing shit like we do and we don't even realize it.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: It feels like a kind of an up and down episode for mice. This. This is a kind of.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: It is, yeah. It's kind of all over the place. We're, you know, confusing PR for mice here.
[00:47:01] Speaker A: Difficult to know where I sit now on mice.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, listen, I. I'm glad that mice have worked out for you because I tried to turn you off of them when you first got them and be like, don't do it. Because my mice, you know, one had eaten the other one's head. And I thought, I don't wish that upon your children. I also don't wish Hantavirus upon them. But it seems like it's going well for them.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: I'll tell you this. I feel as though. I mean, we've had those mice now for fucking 13, 14, 15 months. They've got to say it's been over a year. Limits of their lifespan of what a mouse can expect to live.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: Especially because a lot of times, like the ones that they sell you in stores are like, literally feeder mice. They're, like, meant to be fed to a snake. And so, like, they tend to not.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Last super long lifespan.
Okay. Usually, yeah, one to two years.
[00:47:59] Speaker B: Yep, that sounds about right.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: So I'll have to have a little fun conversation with Pete at some point this year, probably.
[00:48:04] Speaker B: FYI, they are on their way out. This is a tricky thing about having pets like that. You know, like all pets, it sucks that they die, but some of them, like, it just happens real quick.
[00:48:15] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:48:16] Speaker B: Maybe that's better.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: It's another one of those weeks where my tabs, my Browser tabs are a fucking absolute roller coaster indeed.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: Well, friends, that's why you love us. I just wanted to update you. Yeah, that's. We are the embodiment of your chaotic browser tabs.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what we are.
[00:48:36] Speaker B: That's what this podcast is.
So we wanted to update you on what happened. Obviously, we were both wrong, but who in the world was right about if you were?
[00:48:47] Speaker A: I don't believe that coming.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I hope you wrote it down.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:48:52] Speaker B: Diamond date stamped somewhere in an envelope.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: It's one of the fun things about my annual Deadpool on. On Facebook, which, by the way, I'm entertaining ideas for what I do with that next year, because it's the. It is. The only reason I'm still on Facebook is to run my annual Deadpool. It's the only thing keeping me there. So it feels like it has to move to Discord next year or something else.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's got. I think people will follow you.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: I hope so. I hope so.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: It's an important part of people's year.
[00:49:19] Speaker A: But no one has ever got a full house. Ever. In the five, maybe six years I've been doing the Deadpool, nobody has got three for three.
[00:49:27] Speaker B: Yeah, you've definitely had. Like last year, you got at least one person who had two. Right?
[00:49:30] Speaker A: Yeah, we always. We. We usually get a couple of twos, but no one has ever had a full house and as a result, had to deal with the awkward questions that would bring.
[00:49:39] Speaker B: Right, okay. Are you taking the Deadpool a little too seriously?
[00:49:44] Speaker A: Well, exactly.
[00:49:47] Speaker B: So, yeah, on top of that, let's see. So tomorrow we're gonna have a. Let's play for you. What are we playing, Marco?
[00:49:55] Speaker A: Hey, hey. Not me. Enjoying a fucking fantasy role playing game. Surely not.
[00:50:01] Speaker B: Well, well, surely. Well, well. Who's this guy?
[00:50:04] Speaker A: Yeah, like I said on Blue Sky. Baldur's. No, not Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate was a shit one. Dragon Age, the veil guard. Right.
[00:50:12] Speaker B: Okay. Mm.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: It's. Imagine if you can, that somebody. Electronic Arts took the idea of a fantasy rpg but made it actually playable and fun. Imagine that. That's what has happened here.
So we're gonna get into that. We're gonna. I get to create my own character. So I'm a big titty elf.
[00:50:36] Speaker B: Nice. Okay, great. Look forward to that.
[00:50:39] Speaker A: Big titty sexy elf. That's who I am.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: Amazing. I cannot wait.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: I didn't even hesitate with the character creator either. Elf, whack that titty slider all the way up to the right.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: And go Incredible.
So you know, check the KO Fi tomorrow night. We'll have that for you Thursday, of course. Kristen and I talking Battle Royale. So again, if you haven't watched in a minute or haven't seen it, you.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Right at the start of this podcast, we're putting year 3000 in my head. You bastard.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: I have no regrets about that.
Thursday Battle Royale. And the other thing I just wanted to say, listen, for those of you in the highest tier of KO Fi supporters, I said last week that I was sending out your.
Your presents from Italy. However, my envelopes didn't fit the presents and as I was telling Marco before the show, all the places that sell envelopes in town have closed. So I ordered some from the Internet and they will be here like Thursday or Friday and then I will send you your Italian presence. Yes, across the world.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: You can't even buy a fucking envelope in Montclair. That's a fucking sorry state of affairs.
[00:52:06] Speaker B: All these things at my fingertips and I can't get an envelope. Yeah, like what's the world coming to?
[00:52:12] Speaker A: Fucked up.
[00:52:13] Speaker B: This is Elon's America, ladies and gentlemen. Can't even get an envelope.
So yeah, all that is coming.
Anything else we need to tell them before we move on to what we watched?
[00:52:25] Speaker A: No, I don't think so. Other than we appreciate the out of you. It's true, you know we do. It's, you know, it's tough man. It's tough out there.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: It is.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: So anytime you can carve out for us and listen to us just gibbering every Sunday like we do, it matters, man. It matters to us. You're here and we just, we love having you around.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: Couldn't have said it better myself, my dear Marco. Completely agree. 100.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:52:56] Speaker B: My hair is really egoning today. Look at that.
[00:52:59] Speaker A: It is good.
[00:53:00] Speaker B: It's really doing it. It's cuz I took a shower earlier. I normally take one after the podcast, but I took one earlier and I put my like leave in conditioner in it instead of my like styling stuff. And so I get like a really nice Egon girl.
[00:53:14] Speaker A: Have you ever been blonde?
[00:53:16] Speaker B: No, I've never dyed my hair.
[00:53:19] Speaker A: Might you.
[00:53:21] Speaker B: I don't know, maybe when I start going gray, if it goes gray badly, like if I end up with like weird grays instead of like cool rogue grays, maybe I'll dye it.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: I will bring this up we mentioned because you know, we can't. We. We jump on the zoom at 9:30 and we shoot the shit and we just kind of map out what we're going to chat about. And you mentioned that you would not be averse to a little bit of filler here and there as, as the years clock up.
[00:53:47] Speaker B: Like, listen, if, if I age weirdly, you know, and I need like a little help, I'm not above it, you know. But what I did say is that like my issue is maintenance seems like more work than it's worth. Like. So I started getting my eyebrows did a few years ago and now I like have to once a month go get my eyebrows did. Or I'm like, Jesus Christ, I look absurd. Where like nobody, nobody cared before, but now, yeah, I feel like I look like I'm straight out of Critters or something if I don't get my eyebrows. And so like, that's my thing is it's like if you start getting some like Botox or whatever, you can't just like stop. No, I suppose not doing Botox, you know. And so, yeah, it's only if I'm like, if I like just get like a weird aging, I'm like, okay, maybe, maybe I'll do a little maintenance.
[00:54:36] Speaker A: Whatever your issues are with your mum, she hasn't aged badly at all.
[00:54:41] Speaker B: No, no, absolutely not. She does not look like a 72 year old woman at all. I think that's part of the problem. She still looks young and so she thinks she's young.
No, to be fair, there is no indication that I will age poorly.
But you know, if it. I was looking at Cher the other day and Cher and her mother both have an incredible plastic surgeon where they've.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: Like, Cher's mother is still with us.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: Cher's mother? Yeah, she's like 90 something good. Looks like she's like 60.
Like, it's incredible. Look at a picture of her and you're gonna look and go like, oh, that has to be from like 30 years ago or whatever. But it's not, it's from now. See, they just have incredible work done.
Does it say how old Cher's mom?
[00:55:33] Speaker A: Oh, age at death? 96.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: Oh, did she die? I thought she was still alive. She's 90.
[00:55:40] Speaker A: She died on my birthday. 2022, December 10th.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: Oh, that's. That's too bad. You killed Cher's mom with your existence. Whoops. But yeah, she looked great until 96.
So, hey, listen, if you do it right and don't like go crazy on it and don't get like plastic surgery face like say like your Madonnas and things like that, then, hey, it can work.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: Fucking Google, man. Putting those AI results at the Start of search. It's fucking disgusting. First question, what did Cher's mom pass away from? She was 96.
[00:56:18] Speaker B: Yeah, she died of being 96 is what she died of. Listen, my neighbor across the street, it's 101 or 102, somewhere in that vicinity, he, like, went to, like, not like hospice, not like end of life care for it or whatever, but like some sort of facility like that where she could get, like more round the clock care or whatever. They brought her back, like two weeks ago. She'd been in that for like a year. And then, like, I saw a sudden these, like, ambulances pull up and they unloaded Ms. Mabel and brought her back inside. I was like, God damn, she's still going.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: This one's for you, Ms. Mabel.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: This week's episode for you.
[00:56:55] Speaker A: This one's for you.
[00:56:56] Speaker B: Absolutely.
So let's talk about what we watched. We can do that over this past, shall we? We got to some things sort of together, or we both watched it and, you know, some various things on our own as well. Let me thank you first, Mark. I can't remember if I mentioned it yet. I would like to thank you right now.
I may have mentioned last week that I was distraught because I went to watch Spice World and you had removed it from the plex. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, dear God, no. This is all I want in the world. Spice World is like this close to lost media. Like, it has never been streaming. Who knows if it will ever be streaming. It is so hard to find Spice World. And so I went to watch it and you had removed it from the plex. You were like, oh, I was making space or whatever. I was like, please, please get it back.
[00:57:52] Speaker A: Right?
[00:57:52] Speaker B: I watched that.
[00:57:53] Speaker A: Two things that I just cannot grasp about the enigma. I mean, firstly is your ambivalence toward the Russian invasion of Ukraine, right? And the second is your weird fucking devotion to Spice World. I just can't wrap my head around either of those things. And they're quite different things.
[00:58:14] Speaker B: They are very different things.
[00:58:17] Speaker A: I just can't work them out, either of them.
Aside from. And on top of all of this, Spice World.
[00:58:28] Speaker B: And on top of this, Spice World. Fucking love Spice. I'm a millennial woman, of course I love Spice World. This is probably like the first meta thing I'd ever seen in my life. That it was, you know, a movie commenting on itself and the absurdity of a phenomenon and not taking it seriously. And, you know, I had never seen anything like that before.
And so, you know, it was Obviously, I was a kid, I loved the Spice Girls, so it appealed to me on that level. But then to have this movie come out where it was like, you know, a movie commenting on what was happening in it, where you're never sure what is really what's real and what's not, that they're constantly sort of breaking the fourth wall. They're breaking their sense of, like, the movie's own continuity, that at the end of it, you get, like, all of these people meeting each other and acknowledging that none of this ever happened. You know, you get that great bit at the end of, like, all the actors and directors and stuff meeting each other for the first time, you know, in this silly way. Like, it's just. It was something that, as a kid, I'd never seen before.
[00:59:37] Speaker A: I can't. I can't for the fucking life of me remember why this would be the case. But I know for a fact I saw it twice at the movies as a kid.
[00:59:46] Speaker B: So, yeah, so there's that. No, it's just so much fun. It's just a very silly movie that doesn't take itself seriously that, you know, acknowledges, like. Like, the whole plot of it is around people thinking it's stupid and the backlash to the band, and they're fully aware of, like, we're capitalizing on this moment of our fame. Let's just, like, make a movie where we ride that.
And it was very fun to watch, having not seen it in a long time, and there's, like, a lot of, like, British actors and stuff like that, like the cameos, everything. I had no idea who these people were when I was a kid. So, like, you've got Jonathan Ross is in it, and Stephen Fry and, like, all these, like, just. Well, yes. It's the first thing I ever saw Richard E. Grant or Alan Cummings in, which is funny.
They've always been endeared to me because I know them from Spice World.
[01:00:48] Speaker A: This is a tangent, but I will bring it back every now and again. Right When I think of Jo, every so often, I'll cast my mind back to that fucking episode where I had to sit here and pretend to give a fuck about Power Rangers.
[01:01:08] Speaker B: Do you remember that?
[01:01:10] Speaker A: That was tough going, man.
[01:01:14] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh, it's Mac's birthday.
[01:01:16] Speaker A: By the way, happy birthday, Mac.
Today. Today is Mac's birthday.
[01:01:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Today, March 9th is Mac's birthday.
[01:01:26] Speaker A: I asked myself some hard questions that night.
[01:01:32] Speaker B: We didn't even, like, really talk that much about Power Rangers. We were mostly, like, talking about, like, Psycho Gore, man.
[01:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah. That's true, that's true. That's. And fandom. Online fandom.
[01:01:42] Speaker B: Exactly. But yeah. So anyways, thank you for getting. For getting spice for me so that I had. I had my little non alcoholic rum and coke and sat there and watched my Spice World and life was really good last night.
[01:01:56] Speaker A: Excellent. I will talk briefly about Texas Chainsaw 2003.
[01:02:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:05] Speaker A: Which on a whim I watched last week.
It fucking holds up with the best of that franchise, you know.
[01:02:15] Speaker B: I love it. That's definitely the first one that I ever saw.
[01:02:18] Speaker A: Is it now?
[01:02:19] Speaker B: Because I was in high school, I think when I was. You said it was 03.03. Yeah. So I was a junior in high school when that one came out, so it was my very first Texas. And I loved what you said when you texted me about it. You were like, this is what people think the original one is. Those who have not seen the original.
[01:02:36] Speaker A: The remake is what people think the original is.
[01:02:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I was like afraid of seeing the original because that one is so gruesome that I was like, oh boy. Yeah. And then I saw the OG and I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, okay. This is a totally different kind of movie.
[01:02:52] Speaker A: Do you know the, the original is such a fucking deft piece of misdirection. Just as a movie with that lurid a title.
[01:03:02] Speaker B: Right. Yeah.
[01:03:02] Speaker A: You know, with that fucking sensationalist title and the press and the fact that it, you know, it's billed as a true story.
The, the, you know, the marketing who will survive, what would be left of them. It is such a fucking deft piece of bait and switch that film. When what you actually see is something almost worse than you fucking thought it could be.
[01:03:26] Speaker B: It is much more disturbing than if it were just a chainsaw slasher.
[01:03:30] Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep, yep. And you know, in.
I don't think there's a Weirder, is there? Let me just qualify this in my head. I don't think there's a weirder franchise out there than Texas. All of its timelines, all of its flavors.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's.
[01:03:49] Speaker B: Especially in a. Like. Because there's things that are like self consciously weirder, like Leprechaun or things like that, you know, where it's like, oh, let's do, you know, leprechaun in the hood or whatever. But like. Yeah, for like just a genuinely. Yep, yeah, like you know, bizarre kind of franchise. Yeah. There's a lot more going on with Texas than those ones that are doing it on purpose.
[01:04:13] Speaker A: Completely, completely, completely. And O3 is full fucking bodied, full fat, full fucking high meat content, horror, you know, A lot of protein in this film, a lot of creatine, a lot of. Yeah, Chunk city man.
[01:04:33] Speaker B: True story.
[01:04:35] Speaker A: It, it nails that fucking family dynamic.
God, I love Texas 03. It's wonderful.
[01:04:43] Speaker B: It is, yeah, it's a great one. Just that one was. But yeah, the catalyst for. At one point I had it in my head that I wanted to make a Tumblr called Jonathan Tucker Must Die. Okay. Because he dies in so many movies and often in such horrible ways. It was like I had rewatched this one at some point and was like, oh man, that would make a great Tumblr.
[01:05:06] Speaker A: It was a great choice.
[01:05:06] Speaker B: But then I was too lazy.
[01:05:07] Speaker A: Such a great choice to watch. It's all good time for us. Bad time for everyone on screen.
[01:05:12] Speaker B: Yes. Right. Yeah. Your first text to me about it was something like, it's a bad time. And I was like, oh, really? I thought I liked this one. You're like, oh, no, that's a compliment. It's a bad time for them.
Not for me.
I rewatched the Vast of Night the other day because my. Who was it? Kristen had told me that she had. Have you seen any of those, like letterboxd puts out these videos where they ask people, they're like, top four.
[01:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I really enjoy those.
[01:05:42] Speaker B: It's. Yeah, they're great. I loved the girl from Companion. She did one and it was like she'd just been watching cartoons lately. It's like just all animated stuff, but. So Quaid. What's the Quaid boy?
I don't know why his first name keeps escaping me. No, Jack.
[01:06:01] Speaker A: Jack Quaid.
[01:06:02] Speaker B: Jack, yes. Jack Quaid did one and Kristen said that the Vast of Night was one of his. And I was like, oh, man, I love that movie. But it's been a minute since I watched it. So I popped that on. If you've never seen the Vast of Night, it's sort of a Twilight Zone from framing for this movie in which you meet like this sort of fast talking radio DJ and this girl who is his friend who works on like a switchboard. And it's in the 1950s and they start receiving these weird transmissions over the switchboard. And so she calls him and is like, hey, let's figure this out. And they go into this investigation of what the heck is going on with these strange transmissions. So that sort of leads them to various people who tell them these stories about what's been going on. And it's just, oh, it's sort of.
[01:06:49] Speaker A: Like an anthology movie.
[01:06:52] Speaker B: It's not, though. It's just got a framing of like, you know, Twilight Zone. Like, they use sort of the. Like, it's introduced in sort of a Twilight Zone way with a TV telling like, oh, this is what's going on. And then it's just sort of a regular narrative, but it moves sort of at a clip with this guy's fast talking and all of that. And then they're visiting these people along the way who tell them these various stories.
It's just got great tone.
Really smartly written. You know, one of those things that I'm sure the budget was like $5, but you can't tell because what they do with it is just, you know, they're not trying to do anything huge or crazy. It's just a really nice little story. So if you've never seen the vast of night, highly recommend checking that one out.
[01:07:37] Speaker A: Sounds excellent.
[01:07:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good. It's a good time.
[01:07:41] Speaker A: Let me take a little look at the old letterboxd here. Hey, listen, just take a moment.
Letterboxd have fucking done a great job, haven't they?
Haven't they?
[01:07:52] Speaker B: Like just in general. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Mm. I mean, I love letterboxd. It's like absolutely one of my favorite social things. I check it so many times a day, see what people are.
[01:08:03] Speaker A: Cannot imagine not having letterbox. What a fucking. Yeah, you know, how quickly they arrived and how indispensable they made themselves. Great job, guys.
[01:08:13] Speaker B: Agreed.
[01:08:14] Speaker A: Followed up on my urges and watched in a violent nature again. And look, just to recap the Mark Lewis kind of rating philosophy, 4 stars is fantastic for a movie, right? 4 stars is an absolutely fantastic movie. And I have to reach to give four stars. I really have to need to give a film four stars. Four and a half. You got me in my heart and soul. I felt your movie and in a violent nature gets that extra half. It's a four and a half star film. It is precisely the type of movie that I needed if it. I think In a violent Nature can inspire horror filmmakers.
When you think there's nothing more to be said, right?
You're not looking hard enough. When you think your genre is done. When you think there's no more gas in the tank and there's nothing left to see. There's no new angle. There's no new fucking take. There's no new punchline. You're fucking wrong. You just aren't looking hard enough. And that's in a violent nature. It's really fucking looking so closely at this genre and it's just like, let the box actually, it feels so obvious when it's been done. When you watch in a violent nature, you think, why the fuck did no one see this angle before? Why did nobody else try this yet?
We've all seen Jason pop out from behind a fucking tree. You know, we've all seen. We've all seen the fucking killer.
[01:09:59] Speaker B: You're tormenting me here because I'm trying to be nice and not say anything, and I have so many quips. You just keep going on.
[01:10:05] Speaker A: I appreciate you allowing me to, you know, evangelize about this film, but it's that good. It makes you wonder why no one saw this angle before. It's fucking brilliant.
[01:10:18] Speaker B: Sure, you all can go look at my rating on that to know my thoughts, but we watched.
We watched a couple movies that we both watched. Oh, I will say, before we get to the ones that we both watched, another thing. So now. Now I'm like paranoid about, like you're clearing out your storage and whatnot on your. On your plex. So I had you get Enemy of the. Or I had you get.
Yeah, I had you get Enemy of the State, which was like a favorite of mine when I was in college. I had like the DVD of this, and this is back in the times and like, we all only had like 20 to 30 DVDs.
[01:11:02] Speaker A: I'll super quickly interrupt and just shout out my friend Rob Dean. I. He. He probably doesn't listen. It's fine. But the trailer for Enemy of the State starts with the line, someone is watching Rob Dean. And he loved it. He absolutely loved that.
[01:11:19] Speaker B: Oh, that's amazing.
Is that his name?
[01:11:22] Speaker A: Yes, it is. Robert Dean. Dr. Robert Dean.
[01:11:23] Speaker B: No, no, no, not him in the movie.
[01:11:26] Speaker A: Will Smith. Yeah.
[01:11:29] Speaker B: Is it? I'm like, why is my. Like, my brain is like, huh, Is that. That's his name.
[01:11:35] Speaker A: Will Smith, Enemy of the State. Robert Clayton Dean. Yes.
[01:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. But anyways, so one of those movies that, like, you know, was in my small DVD collection, and so I just watched it over and over and over again. So it's like I, you know, know like every line of it by heart and things like that. So I was like, oh, man, it's a good one.
I had watched the Conversation, which is basically the same movie as Enemy of the State, and there's like, people who think that Gene Hackman is playing the same character in those two movies. It's never explicitly said he has a different name, but there's plenty of reason to think he's the same guy between these two movies. So I watched that, and then I finished it, and I was like, okay, Mark, you can remove Enemy of the State.
Will you please get for me Crimson Tide now? And as we all know, I love seafaring things, and I love a submarine movie.
[01:12:35] Speaker A: Now, that isn't the Sean Connery one, is it?
[01:12:39] Speaker B: No, that's the Hunt for Red October.
[01:12:41] Speaker A: Okay. Similar. Were they released, like, in the same year?
[01:12:46] Speaker B: This one's later than you would think it is. I think, like, Hunt for Red October is, like, early 90s, and this is late 90s, but they are submarine movies with, like, red in the title.
[01:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah, you get my probably confusion.
[01:13:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I can see both of them, like, are about, like, a black guy and a white guy. Right? Because Hunt for Red October is Sean Connery and Denzel and Crimson Tide is Gene Hackman and.
Or I said the wrong. It was, who's. Who's Hunt for in October? Is that Denzel, too?
[01:13:16] Speaker A: No, Morgan Freeman.
[01:13:20] Speaker B: Morgan Freeman. There you go. And then it's been a minute. But Crimson Tide is Denzel and Hackman. So I had never seen Crimson Tide. It's been one of those ones. Been on my list forever, and, boy, was this my shit. It's like, okay, great, I love a submarine movie or whatever, but I didn't know what it was about. I've never read a synopsis or anything like that. I thought this was gonna more of, like, a straightforward war movie. But, Mark, it's about a mutiny on a submarine with, like, nuclear war at stake.
And so it's like, super, super tense and bananas and, like, oh, man, Denzel and Hackman are just, like, peak game here. And, like, it's one of those ones where, like, every side character is also, like, someone incredibly famous now or, like, became famous after, like, James Gandolfini. Or, like, there's a brief moment where, like, amongst basically the extras, you see Ryan Phillippe's face pop through. Like, it's just one of those things. Like. Yeah, like, submarine movies, military movies in general are always like that because they need so many guys. And so, like, you know, everyone pops up. And if you've ever seen Band of Brothers, it's like, that was the first time you ever saw Tom Hardy, Michael Fassbender, what's. Who's hot Priest.
[01:14:43] Speaker A: Moriarty, Andrew.
[01:14:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I keep wanting to say Andrew Lincoln. Like, that's the wrong one. But that guy Andrew, something, like, everybody pops through, so. And Crimson Tide is one of those as well. But if you like submarine movies, and things of that nature. You gotta check out Crimson Tide. It's. Although. Okay, so I was watching it. Scott. Andrew Scott. Thank you.
I was watching it and it said at the beginning, Hans Zimmer did the score for this, Right? So Tony Scott, joint. Hans Zimmer on score. And ever since watching Gladiator for the first time when I was in Rome in December and realizing that it's the same score as Pirates of the Caribbean, I've been like, what's the deal with Hans Zimmer? And I had mentioned that. And other people were like, oh, yeah. Also this scene score, same as Pirates of Caribbean. Same, you know. And I was like, this is like a thing he's been doing so like three quarters of this movie. I was like, okay, this one is not Pirates of the Caribbean. He's. This is different. And then it gets to like the like, climax of this movie and I'm like, me, It's Pirates of the Caribbean again. This guy had one song, he just used it forever.
It's the, like, duh.
Yes. That part of it comes in, like, everything that's his, like, his signature light motif or whatever that he uses and everything. And yeah, I'm. Now I'm looking for it. I'm like, jesus Christ, dude.
[01:16:16] Speaker A: Yeah, when you see stuff like that, it's.
We mentioned Trent Reznor the other week talking about the Gorge. And when you notice a particular phrase of plinky piano that he does right every fucking way. Even in his. Even in his NIN albums.
And he's been doing it for decades. Just this particular kind of discordant phrase of plinky piano.
[01:16:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I can almost hear it thinking about everything.
So I always say, like, that Danny Elfman obviously is very appreciated, but in a sense, almost underrated in how he manages to have a sound. While every single score he does is completely unique.
[01:16:55] Speaker A: Great point. The Simpsons from, you know, to Nightmare Before Christmas at Beetlejuice all sound different.
[01:16:59] Speaker B: You know the sound, but they don't. It's not the same at the same time, which is so wild.
So together we watched a little flick called Banshee Chapter the other day.
[01:17:11] Speaker A: Yes. So good to talk about. So good to see. So good to talk about.
[01:17:17] Speaker B: I'm surprised at how much you liked this one, actually.
[01:17:20] Speaker A: Why is that? Why were you surprised? A low budget, creepy fucking atmospheric.
[01:17:26] Speaker B: Well, you have, I think when it comes to low budget, you have a, like, much lower tolerance than I do usually for low budget movies that, like, seem very low budget. And this definitely has a lot of the hallmarks of being.
[01:17:41] Speaker A: I agree up to a point, but I.
Plenty of times I've talked about how, you know, necessity is the mother of invention and.
[01:17:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think you have like a good.
[01:17:51] Speaker A: Like had. It had millions of dollars to play with, I'm sure.
[01:17:55] Speaker B: Yeah. It just felt like it had some of its sort of flaws that I'm surprised that you were not as bothered by, which is like. That's not a critique. I'm just surprised. It surprised me that you liked it.
[01:18:06] Speaker A: As much as you did immediately. Like within the first 10 minutes of the film. It talks about MK Ultra and DMT entities, right?
[01:18:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:18:15] Speaker A: Which, you know I'm clean as a whistle, right?
[01:18:20] Speaker B: It's true.
[01:18:21] Speaker A: But I still think there's a trip to see the entities in my future at some point. I'm desperate to see the entities.
I am desperate to see the entities.
[01:18:30] Speaker B: If so many people, you get cancer or something, you can go see the entities.
[01:18:34] Speaker A: Oh, is that the only way?
[01:18:37] Speaker B: I think that's. At least for now, 20 minutes straight.
[01:18:40] Speaker A: In and back out.
Just go see the entities. Come back.
[01:18:46] Speaker B: Come back. Wow, that was. That was a ride.
[01:18:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And I. And I see nothing wrong with that, but.
That's right. But yes. Banshee chapter. Is that what it's called?
[01:18:59] Speaker B: Yes, Banshee Chapter. Weird title.
[01:19:01] Speaker A: Unfolds as almost like a mockumentary kind of. We have an investigative.
[01:19:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that was one of the things that was. I felt like the framing for this movie was like deeply tenuous. Confusing. Tenuous. Yeah.
Like, I don't know. I don't know if they know what kind of movie they're making, if it's like a found footage or not. Like.
[01:19:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I get that. But. Bounces around right in my wheelhouse, you know, A student gets access to an experimental strain of DMT harvested from human brains and, you know, a nationwide detective kind of horror story unfolds to find the source and the fucking source of the entities. And it's super cheap and just super effective. It's got griblies that are used super sparingly.
[01:19:56] Speaker B: The griblies are so goodlies.
[01:19:58] Speaker A: Are fantastically designed. Sound design is great. It touches on number stations. Basically about 50 different Joag threads.
[01:20:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Seriously, it's so true.
[01:20:09] Speaker A: Banger.
Just agree.
[01:20:11] Speaker B: Got like Buffalo Bill. What's it. Ted Levine. Ted Levine in it.
[01:20:17] Speaker A: I'd been.
[01:20:18] Speaker B: Were you trying to figure out who that was?
[01:20:20] Speaker A: It had been eluding me. I knew. I knew the voice.
[01:20:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that voice is unmistakable.
And he's just acting the.
[01:20:29] Speaker A: Out of this hunter s Thompson, Right.
[01:20:32] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[01:20:34] Speaker A: Stephen King.
Just excellent. The scares are sparingly used.
[01:20:41] Speaker B: Yeah. But very effective.
[01:20:42] Speaker A: Really good. It's, you know, it's a plucky young movie. This. It's. It's not. It's not. It's not new by any means. It's like 14.
[01:20:50] Speaker B: No, I think it's from like 2011 or something, you know? Oh, maybe even older than that. Yeah.
[01:20:54] Speaker A: Yeah. But I. I literally never heard of it until I saw the. My bro would put it on plex. I'd never heard of it before.
[01:21:02] Speaker B: Oh, funny. Yeah, I think, like, I'd only heard of it like, a month or so ago. Someone had mentioned it. Someone was like, oh, I watched Banshee Chapter. It was pretty good. So, you know, maybe it's having its moment so you too can enjoy.
[01:21:13] Speaker A: You should. You should. If you're after something beneath the radar that I think you'll enjoy. Banshee Chapter is the one. It's a great laugh.
[01:21:20] Speaker B: Yes. And then we also both saw.
[01:21:24] Speaker A: But I'm very suggestible, aren't I?
[01:21:27] Speaker B: You are seriously so impressionable this evening. Yeah, but we both saw Mickey 17 the other day.
[01:21:37] Speaker A: All right, all right, let's settle into this discussion then, because there's a lot here talk about a film being misrepresented. Right.
Mickey 17. I was on Sunday night.
A very healthily attended audience. Mickey 17. It was.
[01:22:01] Speaker B: Yeah, mine was like a. It was Friday, but It was like 1:30 in the afternoon. And usually those aren't like super full, but there was a good amount of people in my screening.
[01:22:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think 90% of them did not come to see the movie that they saw.
[01:22:20] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:22:21] Speaker A: I watched the trailer before I left with Owen and Laura, just showed them. I'm gonna see this. They're like, oh, that looks good. Looks fun.
Because it's. That's how it's positioned. It's positioned as multiplicity meets Right Fucking some.
It's positioned as like some knockabout ass sci fi comedy. Right.
[01:22:44] Speaker B: Mm.
[01:22:45] Speaker A: And it's fucking Boonjong Ho. Of course it isn't that. Of course it isn't that.
So I think it's gonna do.
[01:22:51] Speaker B: You gotta know the guy you're getting into here.
[01:22:53] Speaker A: Yeah, but I. I think it's gonna. I think it's gonna bamboozle a bunch of moviegoers, this one.
[01:23:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it definitely, like, when I saw it, it got a lot of laughs. Like, there's definitely a lot of very.
[01:23:08] Speaker A: Funny in the first moments in this 25 minutes.
[01:23:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, sure. I think there's like a. There's a humor throughout, like the whole thing, honestly.
[01:23:18] Speaker A: But that, that movie in the trailer, that. That ends at like 25 minutes in, right? And then the actual film begins. And every single theme in Mickey 17. And there are loads. This film fucking takes them all on.
[01:23:37] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, very much so. And it's like, I mean, you know, knowing his other films, like, if you know his. I was reading, you know, I always look at letterboxd reviews and especially like, I like to look at the low ones on ones that I like just to see what people's critiques are. And it was so funny how many people were like. But just hits you over the head with the theme stuff like that. It's like. Have you ever seen any of his movies before? Like, yes, of course it does. Like, that's what. He is not here to show you a subtle movie. He's here to show you an anti capitalist, anti colonialist. Like, yeah, he's gonna. He is going to hit you over the head with it. He's not gonna have you go home and interpret this as anything other than what it is.
[01:24:20] Speaker A: But, you know, I mean, what I say about Mickey 17, he confronts a great deal of stuff.
[01:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah, very much so.
[01:24:29] Speaker A: Where to even begin? Like just the nature of life and death and colonialism and fucking, you know, environmental ravaging and fucking white supremacy and fucking religion.
And it's all in there, all there in huge amounts.
[01:24:50] Speaker B: Yeah, but. And what I think is so effective about it is that, like, it's equal parts, I think, funny and jarring and horrific. Like, I think that those things, you know, those threads are through the entire movie, like, where there's a degree of, like, just recognize recognition in it and these elements of slapstick and stuff like that that are in it as well, that like, you know, you can't help but laugh at. Well, also some of the things that happen it are just like, so deeply horrifying and. Yeah, it's just grappling with. With. Yeah, everything is grappling with everything.
[01:25:25] Speaker A: I'm gonna say something here, right?
[01:25:27] Speaker B: Are you gonna spoil anything?
[01:25:30] Speaker A: No.
[01:25:31] Speaker B: Okay, Just checking.
[01:25:32] Speaker A: I'm at my threshold for Trump, like characters in my fiction. Thank you.
[01:25:43] Speaker B: Oh, totally. Yeah.
[01:25:45] Speaker A: Mickey 17 is the last time that I'm prepared to give a pass to a. Hey, this character is like Donald Trump, isn't he? I'm. I'm over it. Thank you. I'm currently enjoying Daredevil Born Again, which. And I enjoying with capital E. It's fucking great. It's only on episode two, but it's brilliant. But Kingpin is, you know, mayor of New York, and he's Donald Trump, essentially.
[01:26:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
[01:26:08] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm bored of it in reality.
[01:26:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. I don't want to see it. Honestly. I will say that, like, I did not clock that Mark Ruffalo was doing Trump and not just generic rich assholes who are in charge of things until the, like, very end of it, when he, like, had some throwaway line about, like, I'm gonna. This speech. It's gonna be perfect. No notes or whatever. And I was like, oh, okay. I see the direct thing here.
[01:26:34] Speaker A: He was doing a vocal thing, which was definitely alluding to Trump's kind of, you know, his delivery of speeches and his oration, I think.
[01:26:43] Speaker B: Right.
[01:26:44] Speaker A: He was. He was also Musk. And I don't know how. Far.
[01:26:47] Speaker B: Right.
[01:26:48] Speaker A: How long ago. Because it's a novel, isn't it? Mickey 7. I don't know how old the adaptation was. How. When the screenplay was written, but very prescient if so, because Ruffalo's character is definitely an amalgamation of Musk and Trump for fucking destroying space. Trump, isn't he?
And yes. What I'm saying is I'm. I'm not going to tolerate any more of that. Thanks. It's not funny anymore.
[01:27:12] Speaker B: No, I agree. That was. I was thinking. I was like, you know, I have a very short fuse for those things as well. But it manages. I think Mark Ruffalo pulls it off. Mark Ruffalo's in his unhinged era.
[01:27:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:27:24] Speaker B: And I'm enjoying watching what he does with that as well. Also, I think the teeth made him look so much like Eric Roberts that I think that was where my brain was the whole time.
[01:27:33] Speaker A: Anyway, Eric Roberts. Slander is not permitted on this.
[01:27:36] Speaker B: Hey, listen, this is.
[01:27:38] Speaker A: Don't you.
[01:27:39] Speaker B: He has big teeth.
[01:27:40] Speaker A: He does, but he has protruding teeth. I won't hear it. Right. I won't hear a word about it.
[01:27:46] Speaker B: I'm just saying that distracted me from noticing the Trump impression because all I was thinking was he looked like a Eric Roberts.
[01:27:53] Speaker A: I will never not love a performer who gets that franchise bag and then just does shit they find interesting.
[01:28:04] Speaker B: The one. Yeah. The stuff he wants. I mean. And Pattinson is, you know, Ronald Pattinson.
[01:28:09] Speaker A: Is an absolute object lesson in that. Make that fucking money and then do what the fuck you like, do what you want.
[01:28:15] Speaker B: Yeah. He hated every minute of doing the Twilight thing, but now he's gotten to do what he wants for the last 10 years.
[01:28:21] Speaker A: Fine. Absolutely fine. And he is excellent in this.
[01:28:24] Speaker B: Yeah, he's great.
[01:28:25] Speaker A: He disappears, man. Disappears into a few different roles.
[01:28:29] Speaker B: He does. Yeah, exactly.
[01:28:32] Speaker A: You know, our queen.
I forgot. No, I forgot my queen's name.
[01:28:37] Speaker B: Toni Collette.
[01:28:37] Speaker A: Toni Collette. Our queen. Toni Collette just does her thing. She makes the face. At one point, she makes the hereditary face.
But that's fine when it. You know, when you're the queen, why would you mix it up? Are right. It's great movie. It's a great, great, great movie.
[01:28:51] Speaker B: Go see Mickey 17.
[01:28:52] Speaker A: Please do. Please do and talk to us about it, because I'm not done talking about Mickey 17. I want to talk about it more.
[01:28:57] Speaker B: Yeah, get on our discord. As we said, we're both trying to wean off of the gram and the Facebook and all that kind of stuff. So go use our beautifully designed discord that Xander put together for us, because it's just sitting there low use. I've been trying to use Discord a lot more. Go do that and chat to us about what you thought about Mickey 17.
Now, Mark, with what time we have left here on Earth, I. Huh?
[01:29:25] Speaker A: On Earth. What do we say?
[01:29:26] Speaker B: On Earth? Yes, obviously, I would like to talk to you about something that now I can't even remember. I was watching something that made me think about this, and I don't remember. I mean, it was probably Dateline. Generally, it's Dateline.
[01:29:44] Speaker A: All the time you spent talking to me about Dateline. Right. I still have no idea what the fuck Dateline even is. And you talk about Dateline.
[01:29:53] Speaker B: It's gone too long and I can't even ask now.
[01:29:55] Speaker A: And I've got no idea what it is. Is it news? What is it? Is it like, crime watch?
[01:29:59] Speaker B: Dateline, It's a show that airs every Friday night where they talk about a specific case.
[01:30:07] Speaker A: Right, Right. Solved.
[01:30:09] Speaker B: Usually.
[01:30:09] Speaker A: Fine. Okay.
[01:30:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So they have, like, a rotating group of, like, six anchors. Each one takes on, like, you know, so a week's host might be Josh Mankiewicz, one week it might be Keith, another week it might be, you know, so there's different hosts, and they research and investigate and all that kind of stuff. Something. And then they give you the show interviews, people in the family, all that kind of stuff.
And I have been watching it for, you know, most of my life at this point.
And so, yeah, I was probably watching Dateline. There's a good chance of that. Or 2020, one of the two of those. Same. Same kind of thing.
But I started thinking about people who have escaped from serial killers, which is.
It's such an interesting thing to think, because I think. I don't know if you do this, but often when I'm listening to, like, last podcast on the left or watching a Dateline or something like that, where someone is, like, killed in some horrific way, I try to imagine being in their shoes, you know, like, what. What would that be like, you know, for that to be your. Your last moments and things like that, and to experience something so incredibly horrific.
[01:31:21] Speaker A: Yes, possibly.
I mean, nothing darker. Nothing darker can be imagined.
[01:31:28] Speaker B: Exactly. Just like the worst possible thing for.
[01:31:31] Speaker A: Ruby, Elaine, and poor Peter. Nothing darker. Nothing darker. No darker.
[01:31:37] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. And it's just one of those things that, like, I can't help but just sort of like. It's like trying to empathize, but none of us can, like, really grasp what that truly is.
[01:31:49] Speaker A: Like, I can't. I can't grasp it because I'm built different.
And it is impossible for me to visualize, even to conceptualize a situation where I might even have to escape from.
[01:32:10] Speaker B: Something like that because just simply wouldn't get serial killed.
[01:32:14] Speaker A: Exactly. I.
In many ways, you know how Batman is the world's greatest detective and he has a plan for everything? That's kind of. Kind of like me on a. In a way, I always have situational awareness on a level you can't even imagine.
[01:32:30] Speaker B: Mark, I have seen you walk out of a coffee shop and forget which direction you came in five minutes earlier.
You're gonna tell me, well, then your situational awareness is so heightened, you've been fooled, haven't you?
[01:32:44] Speaker A: You've fallen for my.
This character that I have honed over 46 years.
No, it's very tough for me to really get into that mindset because not me. Couldn't be me.
[01:32:57] Speaker B: Right? Well, and listen, in most cases couldn't be used simply because usually serial killers kill women. So.
[01:33:05] Speaker A: That's a great point.
[01:33:06] Speaker B: It's not always the case.
It generally. This is a thing that happens to women. And today I'm going to tell you about some women who have escaped from serial killers and are amongst those few people who can actually talk about what it's like to be on the verge of seeing the end of your life in these situations and make it out the other side.
So, first one here is a local case and a real classic case of Acaba. It's the story of a sex worker named Tiffany Taylor who managed to outsmart the man who was about to murder her.
Taylor was from right here in Jersey City, about 10 miles from here, and grew up in the projects where she'd seen some shit in articles she had discussed, like the fact that she'd seen two different boyfriends of hers killed in front of her, including one that she had to then clean his brain off the. The, like, front stoop of her house afterwards because he'd just been killed right there.
So pretty hard knock life growing up where she did.
Trying to escape that. She'd moved to Orlando for college at 18 where she double majored in music and psychology.
[01:34:22] Speaker A: She'd seen two boyfriends murdered before her.
[01:34:25] Speaker B: Murder in front of her. Yes. Yeah. Not just like, oh, hit by a car, but like, legit, like, shot to death in front of her.
So she moved to Orlando for college at 18 and double majored in music and psychology, but ended up moving back to Jersey after her sophomore year and then getting pregnant. And with no degree and a single mom back in a rough neighborhood, she eventually ended up becoming a sex worker.
Now, after a while, as I can imagine any of us would, she got sick of all these assholes treating her like an object, which, like, I was. I was watching Anora. And this was a thing that, like, I always have. Like, you know, I'm very pro sex workers. I am not super on board with men who visit sex workers because, okay, the idea that, like, you know, a woman doesn't want to touch you, but she's going to because you're paying her.
[01:35:19] Speaker A: Yes. I see.
[01:35:20] Speaker B: Is like, I just don't. Yeah, I just don't see how there's any way to get past forcing a woman to touch you with money.
[01:35:26] Speaker A: You know, duality of viewpoint that I can get on board with. Yes.
[01:35:32] Speaker B: Right. So I get where she's coming from on this. I, you know, it's a, It's a tough career to have. And her response to this was to start. Start robbing dudes.
[01:35:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:35:45] Speaker B: Instead, she would just show up, take their money and leave without actually doing the sex.
And so now that I'm not on.
[01:35:55] Speaker A: Board with, because that's, you know, theft.
[01:36:02] Speaker B: Oh, well, but if I went.
[01:36:05] Speaker A: No, if I went to Domino's and bought a pizza and then did not get the pizza and then they ran away with my money, I would not be done with that. Right.
[01:36:12] Speaker B: Here's the thing. My. The, like, listen, I get it. I get that it's theft, but also it's like an unregulated industry in which women put themselves, even as I'm talking, amount of danger every single day. Like, but again, it's like, you know, it's. It's a, It's a blurry Line, Right? Like, you're in an industry where a lot of terrible shit happens to people because it's illegal and unregulated.
And so when the moral lines get crossed, it's less black and white. I'm not Domino's.
[01:36:42] Speaker A: I'm not going to Domino's because I'm running from a different form of food.
[01:36:46] Speaker B: Right?
[01:36:47] Speaker A: Controlling me and abusing me. And I've not seen, you know, other takeaway guys dying on my doorstep.
[01:36:52] Speaker B: Murdered on your doorstep. Right, exactly. So we understand the. The blurry line here, but she. So she had started doing that, and then through mutual friends, she'd started hanging out with a guy named Khalil Wheeler Weaver. And when I say hanging out, I literally mean just that. She had no interest in him. She thought he was too young for her. Yeah, he was 20, and she was a little older than that. And they would just hang out and play video games, like him and her and her best friend. Totally chill.
But after a while, he started literally begging her for sex, which she refused. Over and over and over again.
And once again, she was like, fuck this dude who sees me as a sex doll. I'm just gonna rob his ass.
So she finally agreed to have sex with him and met up at his house, where he paid her $200. Before, she claimed to have left something in her car. And then after going to retrieve it, that should have been the end of the story. Right? Like, most guys would be like, ah, fuck that, bitch. But they would understand, like, eh, okay, that's kind of on me. Right? Like, they may not take responsibility, but they'd get that, like, fuck, this is maybe a thing that I'm risking it with. It's an illegal activity.
[01:38:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm gonna go get something from my car. Is that a thing that girls do? Because that's happened to me loads.
They never came back after going to the car.
[01:38:17] Speaker B: So weird.
Just putting some things together here.
But Wheeler Weaver was not the kind of guy to take his loss and run.
Six months later, she started getting texts from an unknown number soliciting her for sex. At this point, she was pregnant again and had been working at the Ritz Motel doing various odd jobs to support herself.
The texts kept coming even as she kept refusing, causing her to go so far as to change her number. But still, the text came.
So she was ready to pull the robbery scam again and had the unknown texter come to the Ritz Motel to meet up with her. He arrived in a ski mask, gloves, and oversized sweatshirt. But it's New Jersey it was cold. She didn't necessarily question that.
They got into her car and she drove them away until he asked her to pull over, at which point she was hit in the back of the head with something and knocked out.
She woke up handcuffed and in a chokehold, being sexually assaulted.
And he had wrapped her head in duct tape with his mask off. She realized that it was Wheeler Weaver. She tried begging him to spare her and her unborn child, but he was unmoved. He apparently already knew that she was pregnant, so she changed strategies. She told him she'd left her phone back at the motel, and the phone had all their conversations on it. He would be absolutely cooked if he killed her because he left a trail.
He immediately panicked and jumped into the front seat and then went to full incel mode, whining about, nobody likes me. Why do I have to pay for a girl to show me attention?
[01:39:54] Speaker A: Let me film my mindset.
[01:39:55] Speaker B: Real pathetic shit. Yeah. With the girl he is currently about to murder in the backseat. Like, she's gonna feel bad for him. Like, fuck off.
As he drove, Taylor managed to slip a hand out of the cuffs. But she decided against doing anything that might end up injuring or killing both of them by, like, crashing the car or something like that.
So she waited, and they walked to the room she'd been staying in. And upon getting there, she kicked the door to keep up the ruse that she was still cuffed.
When her friend answered the door, she ran inside and quickly slammed it shut. And like most hotels and motels, the deadbolt locks automatically, so there was no way for him to get in from the other side.
So that left him standing outside of the door while she called the police.
But because Wheeler Weaver was a giant dumbass, she told him, hey, I won't call the police as long as you bring my keys back.
So he did, leaving them on the stairs in full view of security cameras. Before leaving, the cops arrived, and she told them everything. She gave them his name because obviously she knew him well. Showed him his photo, showed all the messages about the meeting, showed them the handcuff still hanging from her arms. And the cops threatened to arrest her for prostitution.
[01:41:16] Speaker A: Amazing. Of course.
[01:41:17] Speaker B: Incredible, right? Yeah. Completely disregarded her story, which would, unsurprisingly, lead to another woman getting killed just a week later by the guy, another sex worker named Sarah Butler, his third victim.
After she disappeared, her sister and friend jumped into action, calling the cops and trying to help them with the investigation, including helping them to find her car, which was a few miles from her Home along with her red weave which her sister found before the cops did.
The women then went and looked at Butler's laptop and found that she had been talking to someone with the username Lil Yacht Rock who was using a fake name and picture. One of them reached out to him from her own profile and again being a huge fucking dumbass, he wrote her back and agreed to meet her at a restaurant and pay for sex.
It's at this point that the cops jumped in and two detectives met Wheeler Weaver at the restaurant in her place, where he then gave them his real name and then they let him go.
So the family kept digging and eventually their work helped the cops find her body. On Eagle Rock reservation. Where you have actually been, Mark. That's where I took you to see the view of Manhattan.
[01:42:33] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Lovely spot.
[01:42:34] Speaker B: Big ol 911 memorial. Yeah, not the only time bodies have been found there, but still a fave hiking spot of mine. There was one day I like came out from one of the trails and there was a big electronic sign that was like two bodies found here last week. Let us know if you have information. I was like, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
[01:42:54] Speaker A: A lot of murder in New Jersey.
[01:42:57] Speaker B: I mean it's America, so I don't know if like, compared to other places, I don't think it's like one of the top.
[01:43:03] Speaker A: Based on, based on this episode, it feels as though we might have got.
[01:43:08] Speaker B: A lot of murdering going on. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't know where we stand. But like I know there are places that are a lot higher than we are, so there's that.
But Taylor ended up, of course, being the central witness for the case.
And Wheeler Weaver had been texting women for sex, duct taping and attacking them in cars, and then strangling them to death. So she was a witness that could say that's what he did to me. So these other women who turned up like that, that's his mo?
[01:43:36] Speaker A: How many?
[01:43:38] Speaker B: So three total.
And then so two of them before she got kidnapped and then one before they arrested him because they didn't believe her about her story.
So he was sentenced to 160 years in prison, no thanks to the Elizabeth, New Jersey Police. If it hadn't been for Taylor and for Butler's family and friends, he would probably still be out there murdering sex workers to this day, five years later.
[01:44:03] Speaker A: Clumsily.
[01:44:05] Speaker B: Yes, clumsily. Very stupidly doing this in another case. That's frankly incredible.
[01:44:12] Speaker A: See for me, the gold, the gold standard of escapees from serial killers are the kid who ran out of Dharma's apartment. Are they not to want to keep going back to Dharma? But again, sure.
[01:44:23] Speaker B: Cops just letting him ride on back to Dahmer. Exactly. What? Like this is one of the things that like I always get from watching Dateline and things like that is that you realize that like, cops are really bad at their job. And unless someone else finds some like, clue or something like that, like, they're pretty much useless. You know, they go off the leads from us, and if they don't get those, you end up like your story that you had at the beginning of this. You know, that seems like it should be pretty easy to figure out, but if no one came forward, what are you gonna do?
So this case, an incredible case, a 15 year old named Kara Robinson, Robert Kara Robinson Chamberlain, who managed to help catch the serial killer who abducted her by being extremely clear headed while the whole thing was happening. And this is the kind of thing that you see in a movie and go like, yeah, right. No way any of this would work. Like, this is. It's beyond what you think people can do. So it was 2002, and Chamberlain was doing some yard work in front of a friend's house In West Columbia, S.C.
a man pulled up in a Trans Am with a handful of pamphlets and asked if her parents were home. She said it wasn't her house, it was her friend's house. So he asked if her parents, her friend's parents were home, and she said no. He approached and said, I'll just leave these with you then. But when he got close, he pulled out a gun, pressed it to her neck, and then forced her into a storage bin in the backseat of his car.
It was from here that her survival instinct kicked in hard. And as they drove, she started counting each turn that he made to keep track of where they were going. Yes, she paid attention to what he was listening to what he was smoking. She memorized the serial number of the storage container that he'd shoved her inside in case that could be something they could track him butt down by later.
[01:46:19] Speaker A: On just to drop the bit completely. I could do none of those things.
[01:46:24] Speaker B: None of that. Like my memory is trash counting turns remembering a number of real numbers, right?
[01:46:32] Speaker A: Will you?
[01:46:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's incredible. There's no way in any scenario I could have done any of this incredible stuff.
And she kept on. She. He took her to his apartment where he, she noticed, lived with a guinea pig, a lizard, and a host of other small animals.
And there he assaulted her for 18 hours, but she still didn't lose her head. She kept on collecting information, noting the names of his doctor and dentist, which were pinned to the fridge.
And she kept calm and gained his trust, asking him if there were things she could do for him around the house. She ended up sweeping his floor for him.
As such, he let his guard down, assuming he was totally in control, and she was just passively going to serve him and be chill with her captivity.
If there's any theme here, it's that there's a lot of men who are really fucking stupid.
[01:47:26] Speaker A: Deluded.
[01:47:27] Speaker B: Just really deluded, Right? Like, good Lord.
And when her captor, a serial killer named Richard Evanitz, went to sleep, she managed to free a hand from the handcuffs he'd locked her into and unclip a restraint on her legs.
She then quietly escaped through the front door, finding two people in a parking lot across the street who took her to the police station.
She was then able to lead them back to the apartment based on the observations she'd made on the way there. When they went in, they found a footlocker with news clippings about three missing girls. Sophia Silva and Katie and Kristin Lisk.
[01:48:04] Speaker A: Cutting his own clippings.
[01:48:06] Speaker B: Yes. Straight up. Like, all of this sounds straight out of a movie, like it's ridiculous. And all of those girls had disappeared in Virginia five years earlier.
Evidence fled to Sarasota, Florida, and after a high speed chase, he ended up shooting himself rather than being apprehended by police.
Along with having escaped a serial killer, Kara received $150,000 in reward money for having helped to solve the murder of the Lisk sisters.
That's, you know. Yeah, pretty. Pretty good. That's the end of all of us.
[01:48:39] Speaker A: Is she still with us?
[01:48:40] Speaker B: She's still around, yeah, she's still around. She's like, two years younger than I am.
[01:48:45] Speaker A: 35.
[01:48:45] Speaker B: 30 or 37. Yeah.
So in a story that shares DNA with Kara's, but is somehow even darker, we have Lisa McVeigh, who, at 17 years old in 1984, was fully planning on taking her own life until she was kidnapped by a serial killer, which made her realize she actually wanted to live.
[01:49:05] Speaker A: Talk about a.
[01:49:06] Speaker B: She'd even gone worst fucking murderer, right?
So bad at murder, you made a suicidal person an opposite murderer.
Well, McVay had even gone so far as writing her suicide note, having spent years of her life being sexually abused by her grandmother's boyfriend and seeing no other way out.
So after a double shift at the donut shop where she worked, McVay was riding her bike home at 2am when someone grabbed her off her bike from behind, saying, shut up or I'll blow your brains out.
But as all that's interesting notes, this wasn't the first time she'd experienced death threats at gunpoint, as this had happened on numerous occasions at the hands of the aforementioned grandmother's boyfriend.
Somehow this was different though. While this happening at home had made her want to die, experiencing it now made her want to live. And like Kara, her survival instincts and clear head kicked into gear. And despite being blindfolded, she found ways to observe her surroundings.
She credited watching a lot of crime shows for equipping her with surprising survival skills. She just remembered a lot of shit she'd seen on TV when she, yep, her date line was helping her out.
Through the bottom of the blindfold, she was able to see a bit of the car and see that it was a red Dodge Magnum. She noticed that they were driving north and when they reached his apartment, she counted every step it took to get inside.
What followed was a 26 hour nightmare of all the horrific things you can imagine might happen in this situation. And while blindfolded and trapped there, she actually heard on the news the story about her being missing.
Yeah, bonkers. That's gonna be sure that he was.
[01:50:52] Speaker A: That's gonna, that's gonna do one of two things, isn't it? That's, that's either gonna light a fire.
[01:50:58] Speaker B: Right, or just be like, just like fuck, yeah. Yep, that's lit a fire for her.
She was sure that he was going to murder her before she could use any of the information she'd collected.
But as such, she started just pressing her fingers to every surface she could in the apartment so that someday police could at least use it as evidence to arrest the guy later on. Just like that. Incredible presence of mind, right? Yeah. Like, okay, he's gonna kill me, but let me just get my fingerprints all over everything.
[01:51:32] Speaker A: I'm sure I've read some, some similar advice in some article or other that if you find yourself like taken, if you find yourself in a trunk or somewhere, just pull out bits of hair, right?
[01:51:44] Speaker B: Yeah, just scratch yourself by the fingernails everywhere, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, the unfortunate thing is you'll probably be dead, but at least maybe someone will be caught and they won't kill somebody else. Right?
But like Kara, she also started trying to build rapport with her kidnapper. She told him about her life and she lied to him, saying that her father was gravely ill and that she was his sole caregiver apparently this moved him. And a day later, he drove her behind a business at 4:30am and left her, telling her to wait five minutes after he left. Before taking off the blindfold, he said, tell your father he's the reason why I didn't kill you.
Crazy. She made up that story, and that's what saved her life.
[01:52:28] Speaker A: Badass.
[01:52:29] Speaker B: Badass.
But when she arrived home, rather than being met with warmth and relief, her grandmother's boyfriend beat her and accused her of cheating on him. Cheating on him on her abuser, who is her grandmother's boyfriend.
[01:52:44] Speaker A: Is it naive of me to say that? I thought that might end well, that might end better, right?
[01:52:51] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Okay. Now things'll change, right? Yeah. Nope. Immediately like this, her grandmother, the boyfriend, and the cops all decided she was lying about being kidnapped. But the cops had to open an investigation anyway. So she told them everything she remembered about what happened. And one officer asked if she'd be open to being hypnotized, which apparently spooked her abuser, who refused to consent to letting them hypnotize her.
So she just told them all about what he'd been doing to her all those years, which got him arrested.
So some poetic justice to that.
She was then given a lineup of kidnappers, and she was able to identify him from having caught small glimpses of him through those gaps in the blindfold. And because she'd felt his face and had an idea of the contours of it, because of all this, she led them straight to a man named Bobby Joe Long, who had murdered eight women before kidnapping her and would kill two more between her release and his capture.
He had also raped at least 50 women.
Once again, a guy just happily killing and assaulting tons of women with no chance of being caught until someone got away and was first disbelieved about it.
But I have saved Mark the most hardcore for last.
And that honor goes to one Allison Botaw. Attacked in December of 1994 in front of her apartment in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where I used to live. Coincidentally, not in her apartment, but in Port Elizabeth.
She had gone out with friends that night and had just parked her car when a man with a knife forced his way into her car and forced her out of the driver's seat before driving to pick up an accomplice.
The pair then drove her to a deserted area where not only did they sexually assault her, they then disembarked, boweled her, and slashed her throat till she was almost decapitated.
I don't know about you, Mark. But at that point, I just don't think I'd have the will to live. Like, this is the thing that amazes me about all these women.
[01:55:04] Speaker A: This would just fucking get my attention.
[01:55:07] Speaker B: Yeah, like this would. This is the point where I just hope to fall asleep and die peacefully.
[01:55:12] Speaker A: This rings a bell. I'm sure you've heard of this lady.
[01:55:15] Speaker B: I mean, this is an intense story, so it's probably come up somewhere in your Redditing or something.
But Bota was like, fuck, no, I'm getting out of this. Throughout the whole ordeal, which involved failed strangulation, being stabbed 30 times in the abdomen and 16 times in the throat, she remained largely conscious.
She described the latter part of the attack. The attack quote, all I could see was an arm moving above my face, left and right, left and right. His movements were making a sound, a wet sound. It was the sound of my flesh being slashed open. He was cutting my throat with the knife. Again and again and again. She saw. She could see and hear this happening to her. She said that she felt no pain at this point, but could tell it wasn't a dream. It was really happening to her.
The two finished their work and one asked the other in Afrikaans if he thought she was dead, to which the other replied, no one can survive that.
They were wrong. Much like McVay had tried to leave clues when she thought she was going to die, Bota actually wrote the names of her attackers in the sand on which she was lying because they had not been shy about saying it to each other. Like they were not thinking she was going to survive this ordeal. So she wrote their names in the sand and then wrote I love mom underneath it.
[01:56:36] Speaker A: Fucking hell.
[01:56:37] Speaker B: What a girl.
[01:56:37] Speaker A: What a girl, right?
[01:56:39] Speaker B: But then she noticed she could see headlights and realized she might have a chance if she could get to the road.
It was when she tried to do this that she realized just how fucked they'd left her. So keep in mind she's like her body's in so much shock and stuff that she. She wasn't in pain per se at this point point. So she didn't realize the extent of her injuries. When she tried to pull herself up to stand, her head just started rolling backwards because she was near decapitated. And then she felt a sliminess at her abdomen and realized it was her intestines.
To get to the road, she had to hold her head on with one hand and hold her guts in with the other.
Fucking hell.
She made it. She got to the road and she collapsed, deliberately positioning herself in Such a way that she would be likely to be seen by a passing motorist. And before long, someone did indeed see her. A vet in training who was able to tuck some of her organs back inside her body with his training before the emergency services arrived.
Doctors had their work cut out for them putting her back together. But she recovered with all of her memories intact and was able to identify her attackers, Franz detoit and Toynes Kruger, who turned out to be a serial rapist pair who became known as the Ripper Rapists.
Who knows how many more victims they would have had if it weren't for the highly improbable survival of Alison Bota?
It's a lot, right?
[01:58:24] Speaker A: Yes. Visualizing quite heavily. That was fucking horrible. That was a tale, but not almost at the same time, you know?
[01:58:35] Speaker B: What do you mean?
[01:58:36] Speaker A: Obviously a fucking horrific tale, but Jesus Christ, there is very little. I mean, we've told many, many stories along this theme, but there's nothing more powerful than the will.
[01:58:50] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, exactly. Just. That is what gets me with all of these women and like, just a strength and a will that I don't. I. I've never been in this position. I don't know what kicks in.
[01:59:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:59:04] Speaker B: When you are in that place, but I just don't see myself having the wherewithal to, like, stumble to a street holding my head on and my guts in and things like that, you know, like. This is just incredible, the things that these women were able to do in the worst situation that pretty much any of us can imagine.
[01:59:25] Speaker A: It's incredible. Incredible shit.
[01:59:27] Speaker B: I know. Human spirit, my man.
[01:59:29] Speaker A: Formidable.
[01:59:31] Speaker B: Formidable. I don't know, maybe that. Maybe that in some way counts as your good news from the beginning of this year podcast. Maybe there's something to the fact that in spite of everything, in spite of the worst things that can happen to people, somehow, nevertheless, we persist, you know?
[01:59:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:59:50] Speaker B: Somehow we go on.
[01:59:52] Speaker A: Yes.
And hell, listeners, if they can do it, you can deal with the weak.
[01:59:59] Speaker B: Hear, hear.
[02:00:00] Speaker A: You know, you can fucking handle what you've got coming up, I'm certain.
[02:00:05] Speaker B: Amen.
[02:00:06] Speaker A: You know, just as long as. While you're doing that, stay spooky.
