So what did you say? Can you say it again? Oh, I don't remember. It was awful. You don't remember?

Oh, it seemed like it was something a little along the lines of I'm sorry for everything I ever said about Lemon, but I am sorry for everything. I listen because I know I'm really thrusting this upon people.

If you're not on page patrón, what I think for. First of all, what a waste. And second of all, what a confusion you must be and what a very big confusion you must be in.

Can we turn her. So she's facing she. Yes. She doesn't do. Here she is.

She's not insisting on she's also on my phone at all times. I'm still dressed as a lemon and xenon still in the room. I love you.

Not so much. You have to go watch the space cam video and it's probably not going to mean anything to you. I don't care.

I going to maybe clip the part where I made a really aggressive animation of her in the middle of our video. Maybe we'll put it on Instagram or something.

I know it probably makes no sense, but also, like at one point, none of us understood what Lemon was. And we all came to terms and we all gathered around and loved.

Well, not me. Yeah, no, some of them I'm required to do.

Everybody knows I love her so much. So anyway, we were in the middle of the me singing her for her. Yeah.

OK, hello. Welcome, welcome to. And that's why we don't know why I'm selling these horrible yellow glasses. There was something I was going to say.

Oh so I know that out of my eyes.

OK, I know that we're Halloween is like yesterday when this comes yesterday. But we have some spooky things to tell. Yes. A couple. We should go see things that I don't want to forget.

So one of them.

Which one first. I don't know, you know what I'm talking about. I know about this one from here, from here, from this very building.

Where are you talking about? Oh, my God. OK, we have to talk to you like. Oh, yes, I know. OK, sorry, I was behind the Times and which a.k.a. just means we're cursed anyway. And then there's something that happened the other day that my mom texted me about, which was like jarring. So which. OK, so anyway, I'll just tell you about my mom's text. So yesterday I was just hanging out and I got this text from my mom that said, I want to know something creepy.

I want to hear something creepy. And I was like, no, not really.

But she told me anyway, she said, I was sitting, fermenting Crout.

Don't worry about that was the most or nothing like I didn't even notice it. And then I showed even was like you had me at Fermenting Cross. Yeah.

She was like I was sitting at my table fermenting Crüe on a Saturday night when I just said out loud to Tim, my stepdad, I what was the line?

It was like, I think I think Uncle Walt is dead. Yeah. So she she doesn't mince her words. She's German. She doesn't say I don't think he's Juventus or Kraut though. She does.

She wants to have a very haphazardly though.

No. So she goes I think Uncle Walt is dead. And then then she called my step grandma the next day her mother in law and was like, can you check on Walt? And so my grandma did. And it turns out he had passed on Saturday night. And I was like, I completely forgot.

I literally had an Uncle Walt because he's like a step uncle or, you know, I'm very removed. Yeah. He's like my stepdad's uncle. And so I just saw like, Walt died and I was like, this is like a lot. And like, Crout ferment it. I was like this a lot for me to take in right now.

But it was weird. Just like another like another Walt reference. Remember how we always have Walt on the show?

I know the second I saw when I first saw your text about that situation. Yeah, I first saw the word Walt and I went, this is a fucking ghost story. Yeah.

So it's weird. And I was like, I didn't even remember. Like, I'm not close to them, but I was like, I don't even remember. My grandpa's name is Walt and he is alive. I forget one day I'm wondering if he's going to be like the most prominent ghost in my life.

And then I have an Uncle Wally who's like also so can love Uncle Charlie voted Central Eventer. So anyway, I have an uncle who apparently passed away. I mean, he's older, but still.

And so there's another Walt in the story, I guess is what I'm trying to say that I didn't even remember existed a different Uncle Walt than my Uncle Wally and grandma.

Grandpa Walter. You, Walt, your grandpa. Well, I. I just said I love your your Uncle Wally, but we all know who my favorite member of your family is. Dewey. Yeah.

Who I actually thought was a ghost when I first met her grandma Pam. Oh, Miss Pam.

Spam as Pam is kind of m thinks of ghost. I'm pretty sure AMPM isn't really here. And Pam apparently heard that story.

Grandma Pam. Grandma Pam. Yeah. Oh ampm I've been calling her and Pam or Miss Pam in my head this whole time. Grandma Pam.

Well she smells a great amay.

That's so sweet. She could do nothing.

She sent me a card and my mom was like, this is not how you spell grandma. And she was like This is how I spell my well Walter my grandpa, he spells a G G are a MPLX instead of grandpa. He goes Grandpa. Yeah.

More phonetically correct. I suppose it is. But I know I've told that story before, but every time I think of your distant family, I think of Miss Pam and how she's like and there's a lot of distant family to think of.

So I'm amazed that that just a little silhouette approaching me in the middle of the night. I went probably I I've got a doll with a quilt, most likely.

I do have multiple quilts from Grandma Pam. She's a great quilter. She has such warm hands. She's a lovely she's one of those people who does the double hand shake her hands. And I went, oh, my God. And she also makes you always feel like you're the funniest person that ever lived.

I was smitten with her. I'll never forget her. She's such a lovely she's a gem anyway.

So anyway, so so Uncle Cole, his past is dead, R.P. and also. Yikes. That same apology also I guess my mom like knows before it happened or whatever. My condolences to your family. Oh, thank you.

I appreciate that. And so apparently we're just going to, I guess, tell what happened here is we got on a Zoome call the other day and the the the lovely people at Castle Studios who are helping, you know, produce and, like, record us on Zoome.

Since we're incompetent, we're like, hey, something happened.

And I went, I don't want to I don't want to know because it doesn't sound like it's good.

And they were like, well, you know, we were going to put a cute like logo of yours on the wall where we put all the podcasts, you know, and like, we've seen it a million times.

And I was like, so first of all, you walk past when you come in the studio, it's lovely. Like, they have all the logos up in, like, black frames.

Looks great in there.

Like we put yours up and then pretty quickly, it immediately fell on the ground and shattered everywhere.

And I was like, oh, no, that's a bummer. And they were like, but then we kept doing it and it kept falling off.

We bought new adhesive because we thought, well, my. Me, it was the attitude about nudie's have put it up, same thing just scattered all over the ground and every other every other logo. The frames have always set up. It's like and there was something that was there before our show. So it's not like that part of the wall won't hold. It's very weird because it's just we're just trying to put ours up. It just keeps coming.

And there are new ones on there where I'm like, well, they probably came up like around the same time and they're staying. We came in and our logo is like just frame and so on the counter, aggressively missing. And there's like multiple copies because they're like, well, who knows how many are going to be there. People want to try hanging out. So I said, why don't you leave some gin out? Because you never know if if Walt's just annoyed or I don't know whoever any of the Walt's really.

So, you know, like maybe leave some booze out, like, well, that help, I don't know.

But apparently, Rockhurst, which like what a shock.

Not so I don't know how to cleanse anything, which is exactly why I'm not going to do it, because I'll probably do the opposite.

We should just start making it more and more difficult, just like nail it into the wall and see if that goes aha.

Well and was actually setting up the apartment and. Right. Like PTW, I think something is here and I was like, oh I know something is here super not fun.

And, and I was like yeah.

So I was like hanging stuff up like you know, our demon house signed poster and saying Oh great, oh I knew it too because I was like, that was the wall you were pointing at that I didn't even put that down. And what happened? I was so it was if you didn't listen to the last episode and go listen, because it's oh, it's a doozy. It's a Halloween special. But yeah. So this whole last month before Christine got here, I have been surprising her, unbeknownst to her.

No. And I was setting up our entire apartment and making it like Liverpool and make it look like a home versus a logical place where the person coming, maintenance people don't come in and go, I think we need to call the authorities.

I don't. But we did have I mean, this person come in the other day who said it was like the nicest. You said it was the cleanest apartment he's ever been in. And he's like, how do you do? And I was like, well, I don't live here. I swinford the twenty five, I'm twenty five days of the month. That's, that helps.

We've have had everything just kind of leaning against walls and not nothing had been hung up. We were basically looked like a squatting situation. It's very in transition mode. It was really like, it was I mean to be completely direct and like up front it was we moved in the week before quarantine and then didn't go back to, like, decorate anything. So everything just remained on the ground for when we brought it in in boxes. So everything stayed in boxes.

Yeah. And so I was actually like hanging things on walls and all that. And I nailed, I guess, the Demon House poster, which I also just mentioned in the last episode. Yeah, I was nailing that into the wall and I was I worked really hard on it just to get myself open. I worked really, really hard on making the apartment look nice to surprise Christine with. And so it was don't worry about it. I was up until like 4:00 in the morning sometimes at this apartment, and I was just too tired to go home.

So I would just crash there. And we didn't have a bed made yet or anything and the air mattress was deflated. So I literally slept on our tiny little couch like a lovely room, by the way. It's like a love scene. I like fetal position and I didn't have a blanket or anything.

I just like use like like my sweatshirt to like it's like old T-shirts of ours, like in that situation. And so I was falling asleep after I had nailed stuff in one day I put the nails in the walls, but I hadn't hung everything up yet. And in the middle of the night I was trying to fall asleep and all of a sudden I saw something like kind of shiny, like it looked like a little piece of metal or something have like like flit across my eyes.

Like, I just kind of saw something in passing. Oh, you saw like in movement. I saw it. I didn't know that. OK, it looked like a staple had been thrown or something. I was like, oh it's really tiny and metal and shiny. I saw something move and then I heard click on the hardwood floor and I was like, what the hell was that? And I knew that I had just put nails in the walls.

And all of a sudden I heard I felt something standing behind me. Oh, great. Here we go. And I just kept my eyes wide open and I went, I can't you open your eyes.

I would immediately close mine.

I sense you. I, I you. I acknowledge you. But I am trying to sleep. Please leave me alone and stay. Stayed with me for like a half an hour. But the next morning I got up and I looked at the walls and one of the holes didn't have a nail anymore, which means I got taken out of the where.

The thing is, if it flew across your vision, then it was like it didn't fall and like bounce.

It flew across the floor. We were like, if I was sleeping, like, I mean, if you're watching the camera, you can see the nail was all the way over here. I couldn't see it. And it went all the way across the room in front of and then clinked and then Clayne. So it didn't like fall because of gravity. And I didn't nail it in properly.

So I was like, great. So they don't want you hanging stuff up. Now there's 4000 things hanging up and something is throwing nails. I'm alone now. Great. Super duper duper.

So anyway, and it happened to be the demon house poster that has been in Zach's haunted mansion.

Super, super duper trouper. So anyway, point being apparently, Rockhurst, and that's fun for us.

Also, more information. Everyone's probably like, yeah, we. We thought we all knew that we just mentioned this in the last episode, too, but as of now, fingers crossed yesterday, if everything goes well, it's yesterday, we now have new merch for you. Yes, we have five brand new designs, all from work. Kurk, they are like he's just amazing.

I probably buy now, own every single. We're going to go on to us and buy all of them like big weirdo's.

Also, we're we got new accessories for you guys. We got wine glasses. We are coasters, there's wine glasses. Have been in high demand for a long time. So also we are coasters. Yeah.

Yeah. I have the same designs as the shirts I sell do. So there's a variety pack. I'm so excited.

So anything else we have to say and I have one more thing. OK. Wow. So much news for you.

Love when mom says do we have anything to say. Let me say this. No, I wanted to remind everyone, if you are not part of our newsletter, please. Oh, yes. We for those of you who have joined as of yesterday, you have the October newsletter. And I just talked to UVA.

So I do know this one for sure, that the in that newsletter we have announced all of our winners for our Halloween pet costume contest. Currently, we're getting a lot of entries. In the last two days, we got 660 of them. So in just two days. And that's not counting all the other weeks that this has been active. So, I mean, we have such a backlog. Maybe we just do like a pet every month at this point.

I mean, maybe we just keep putting pets in costumes.

Maybe our newsletter is just a big chart every every month of animals.

I love that just makes it letters like, please, that's not what I actually want to do, but I no know. But if you wanted to see the October one and get a look at some of our favorites, then you if you've already done the newsletter, you've seen that if you have if you are part of the newsletter and you haven't seen it, it might be in your spam folder. So it's usually in promotions. Just to be clear, it's hard to find because sometimes it gets in the all the like a retail sales, but it should be in your promotions folder.

If you're on Gmail, if you want to sign up, you can go to. And that's why during dotcom and it's I think at the bottom there's like a little form to fill out. Yes. To sign up.

It comes up right away. I that's how I signed up. Yeah, it does pop up. But if you're like on mobile it's a I don't think I don't know if it pops up, but there is also a form at the bottom of the homepage. If you don't get a chance to say sorry, I was thinking desktop.

Yeah. But yeah. So it's really fun. It's really good. Like I'm just so honored that just is making this for us. And like, you know, she reached out to us and was like, hey, let's do you want to do this project? And we were like, hell yeah, that's a winner and that's it, we're in.

So anyway, it's very good and we're just really proud of it. Even though we don't do it, we just watch it happen.

Yes, it's great. It's great stuff. Anyway, I hope everyone had a great spooky season. And also today is a double whammy because you get your listeners episode also the first every month. If you would like to have your story in the running for future episodes, you can also do that on our website. We have submission forms for that as well as story suggestion boxes. So if you have a story you want us to cover, you can also go to our website and put that in there.

Yes, just throwing just while we're there and saying everything. There you go.

Just do it all, OK? Christine, last week was Alison's birthday, and one of the things that we did was I did a Skillshare class together where we had a swing dance. Oh, my. It was she did ten out of ten. I did about three out of ten. But we took the class and it was pretty fun. It was I was bad at it, but it was pretty fun.

I swear to God, every time I talk to you or like, have you taken this class? And I'm like, how do they have every possible class? Because, OK, well, let's tell you guys what Skillshare is for. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people so you can explore new skills like swing dancing. You can deepen existing passions like swing dancing, and it can get lost in creativity, which is what I did when I took the course plants at home.

I love Your Spirit and Your Space, which is taught by Christopher Griffin, who is also known as Plant Queen.

And it is so great they like so basically their classes to help you kind of elevate your space and make it welcoming and happy and learn like what your plants really need from you.

And I feel like in quarantine, it's a very like self care. Basically.

I was just I was going to say it's a very like Licorne. That sounds like a quarantine class, but I feel like it's probably rocketing to the top of the charts because I'm obsessed with it. I highly recommend it. And I think hopefully this time my plans actually survive the month. So I know Skillshare is a great way to refresh your creativity and explore beyond your areas of focus. You can break up your routine with spontaneous acts of creativity, explore workshops, classes and more members, get unlimited access to thousands of inspiring classes with hands on projects and feedback from a community of millions.

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And there are no ads. They're always launching new premium classes. Clearly, as we learn every single week, we're taking something different and it's less than ten dollars a month with an annual subscription. So try and beat that. Explore your creativity, a Skillshare dotcom drink and the first one thousand people to use our link.

We'll get a free trial of Skillshare premium membership who receive free access to thousands of classes for a limited time. Be one of the first 1000 to sign up at Skillshare Dotcom Drake.

Hey, have you heard about this company that makes stylish, sustainable shoes and bags out of water bottles?

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Rafi's come in an ever changing array of colors, prints and patterns. Ravis are also available in a range of styles, and their shoes are seamlessly knit with thread made from plastic water bottles. As Christine loves to scream at me about so ultra comfortable. As soon as you put them on and there is zero break in period, it's really great. I mean, so far they've transformed over sixty five million bottles into beautiful products and they're fully machine washable, which is the other thing I like to scream at em and so everyone else.

So every time they need a refresh, which some people are sweaty, I'm not saying I am, but some people are right.

Every time you want to, you know, give them a little refresh, you toss them in the washing machine and they're good to go.

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Moving on to my story because I know we've talked a lot and it's time for cheesecake to eat after this.

So we sure do. We already had even put on the reservation. So let's get going. So I know it's November 1st, but we are already not even. Twenty four hours ago it was Halloween, so I'm sorry I decided to do a double. Spooky.

Mine's a little bit Halloween too, so. Oh, good.

OK, so this is a story I've wanted to cover for a while, but it is a I think it's. A very daunting topic. Oh, so this is one version of it, and I'll probably come back to this topic from a different perspective in the future. So this is just the inspiration for Frankenstein.

Oh, OK, that's cool. So I wanted to cover I mean, I've thought about it for a long time. I'm like, I really want to do Frankenstein. But then it's like, do I cover like all the ways Frankensteins ever been told? Do I cover the novel, the novelty of it, the how I met at the novel novel. Oh no. That's another one too. Are like the the fame of it. Like, you know what makes it so popular.

There's so many ways I could cover it and it would take so many episodes. So instead I'm just going to go with its inception. And even before the novel, I'm going to talk about the history behind Mary Shelley's and like thought process one.

So I was like, I don't know where to start. Let's just do it chronologically and start even before the book happened. So. Yes, so this is the inspiration for Frankenstein, so Frankenstein did start as a novel written by Mary Shelley, who was a teenager in 1818. Oh, fun fact.

What a fun time to be a teenager. But what a fun time also. I'm just saying that because it's like I could not write a book as a teenager.

So well done to Mary Shelley. Oh, she wrote the book as a teenager.

Yeah. I just thought you were saying in 1818 she was a teenager. I was like, that's cool. In 2050. I was there's a podcast called And that's why we drink. And the coasts are teenagers in 2010. Yeah. We are not twenty seven. That's like. Nice try though. I was in 2010, I graduated high school.

OK, so the novel was written by Mary Shelley as a teenager in 1888. Wow. So two years ago was the two hundredth anniversary.

Oh goodness. Frankensteins fun. So the story is of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who is a young scientist who creates a creature in a scientific experiment.

So if in fact, it is actually considered to be the very first science fiction novel.

No way. Really. Wow. Yeah.

Written by a teenager who wrote about teenager Alison Teens, these days they're going to save the world. And it has very clear influences of scientific discoveries that are happening at the time. So that's where her I don't know, I'm assuming that's was her inspiration for the story, just like casually research science as a teenager.

Got it right. Got it right. A woman in which I was literally just calling Paddock's up over and over again. You're right.

We were talking paid. But so I'm assuming that she just kind of heard stories of what had been happening recently and that just kind of stayed with her and may or may not presented itself and bring us in. So two years before the book came out, Mary Shelley visited Switzerland with her, I'm assuming, partner named Percy Shelley. Mm hmm. And they're officially Percy Vitória and their four month old son, 10th grade English. Wow. That really came out.

I did not know that their four month son, William. And there also they went to Switzerland, not just as a family, but they brought their friend, Lord Byron Azul, you know, him and Byron's physician, which makes me. Oh, I love that. Who named traveling physician that just comes with me and treats my illnesses.

You know, I don't know enough historically about that. But it sounds like either this guy was like always so ill. He had like a caregiver like there for a physician. Or did doctors really just travel with people?

Well, I guess if your name is literally Lord Byron, you can probably have a doctor on call it any second of your life.

I guess so. Yeah. I just I think if I mean, he's a famous author, too.

These are just all very like if I was powerful enough to have like a personal traveling X thing, I would pick, like, chef even. Well, certainly nowadays or I like my food with my health. Yeah. I'd be like, OK, I need a documentarian and a chef.

I need my blogger. I need like a reality TV crew, you know, all of the above. I just for I it's so out of my scope that I like to see, like, of all people you just like called your tagalong.

But I feel like what do you when you travel back then you like went for a long time.

It wasn't like you just got a plane like like it's not really been over. Right. I think it was like you technically moved there for a short while and then temporary stays, especially with these authors.

They would always move places and be like, I'm going to write the next great novella.

You're right in Switzerland. I guess I answered my questions so good. Well, it's probably all B.S.. But no, it all checks out. I never know. So. So two years before, this is when they went to Switzerland with the doctor that I'm so fixated on. This was the year 1816, which was also known as the Year Without a summer. So that was because it was the beginning of a three year period of severe climate deterioration on a global scale way.

It was caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Oh, my goodness. And it brought so much rain, like it just caused so much rain for that time period that people weren't going outside for their vacations anymore. People were staying inside.

So familiar tune. That is a familiar tune that the climate is deteriorating at a rapid rate and everyone's inside and not enjoying their summer. And I want to travel with a doctor at all times.

Yeah, yeah. Spot on. Wow. This is a little too on the nose right now, but yeah. So it was called the the year without a summer because nobody was celebrating, enjoying some on their own side. So I guess this is also a year without a summer or a Halloween year without a lot of things. It's a year without going to work. OK, because a. Working from home. The basically the group, the way that they enjoyed their non summer because they had to be inside, this is basically what I'm alluding to, is the group quarantined and they did so by reading ghost stories.

Oh, what really? How fun. So they read stories from the book Phantasmagoria Yoanna, which first of all, sounds like today's version of watching Ghost Adventures. Yeah, that's a lot of words. It also sounds. Why don't we just recreate that two hundred years later? Let's just read that one, not what we're doing right now. We're just telling it word for word. Welcome to the audio phantasmagoria or whatever. OK, because they were reading ghost stories out of this book while they were in Switzerland together.

And Lord Byron propose that they play a little game where they each try to tell a ghost story to each other. And Mary one had the best ghost story.

Well, not surprised. Fun fact. The physician, Dr. Pila Doree, went on to write the book The Vampire.

Oh, so also the physician.

The physician. What's going on?

He's like, I'm a physician and also a great novel and also a globetrotter happening.

So as she already are, not as she as we already mentioned, Frankenstein was originally inspired by Shelley. It all started from her traveling to Switzerland at this time. And she while she was there, she stopped in Gern Cheam Ghanshyam. Oh, you're looking at me like I think it's in Germany, I think. I don't know, isn't it?

It's not in Switzerland. I don't know, man, I don't know why I'm telling myself it just look at the word itself looks a lot like Germany, something I'm telling myself.

Well, they speak German and French and, you know, well, you stop there, OK? And apparently she walked across the sign that said that said she was only 17 kilometers away from frankincense castle.

And it's and it was originally the home of an alchemist called Conrade Dipple. That was his name. Oh, that sounds German.

And Devil was interested in very similar experiments to her version of Frankenstein. For example, Dipple experimented with this. He made this elixir called Depos Oil, and it was supposed to make people live for a hundred years, OK, which I feel like there were a lot of elixirs back in the day, like Fountain of Youth.

It's just like mercury.

Yes. And also Dipple like to dig up bodies from graves and those be the bodies he experimented on.

So I think that was also part of the inspiration of oh, while I'm traveling, what's Français Castle? Oh, it's the home of this guy who used to dig up his experiment on me. Yeah, very good point. Yeah. So that's probably one of the inspiration to do with it. Also, she had just won this like friendly little ghost story contest. So she had her confidence. She her ego's up there. She was quarantined, had nothing to do.

So she found a hobby.

So there was no I don't think and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think tick tock had been invented. Not yet.

But the new Mary Shelley might be out there right now writing the next Frankenstein because we're all quarantined and maybe listening to our podcast and getting in. So, yeah, well, put us somewhere in there. OK, just only mentioned Lemon. Just put us in. Just say the word lemon in one day when our children read it in English class and they see lemon, they'll have to like do an essay on it and analyze why Lemon was mentioned.

What did you never in a million. Yeah, but I'm just trying to follow your thought process, I guess. Why did I. We had to read. What did we have to read in English class. It was, you know, how this is like quite a sweeping generalization. But, you know, there's the trope that English teachers will find like some random fucking thing in a book and then all of a sudden you have to, like, focus on that and analyze it.

Yes. Higher class. Yes. I like to think Lumin would be that in the future. Why is there Lemon? And it's like there's literally no reason except Christine found out her. But I'm trying to remember what ours was.

It was something. So, I mean, maybe I'm just like that in English. And it's actually a very legitimate you're going to be like, it was so stupid.

It was called like it was like every time, like you saw a tree or they mentioned a tree and like that chapter it was supposed to like mean the next step of personal growth. What was this book? What was so fucking vague, the giving tree net without being Barnstaple.

Every time a tree is mentioned in that class, that's what I wanted to anyway.

I just I immediately like Rapid Fire thought of like think of the poor children who will have to write an analysis piece on Lemon if it's mentioned in the next famous great the next great novel.

Yes. That I will write about Lemon. Yes.

Oh yeah. Yeah. OK, so anyway, another fun fact. Although this book was sci fi, Mary Shelley's novel is very much grounded in her research. So apparently she was interested even back then and like up and coming technology for electricity and things.

I mean, that was like the hot the hot button item, but not coming soon.

So her own research dated back to like the seventeen hundreds. I think it was probably like, you know, the thing that you did then. So here are some common Frankenstein misconceptions. So just to clear these up before I carry on. So Victor Frankenstein was the name of the doctor. Frankenstein is not the name of the story. Douchy dude at a party. OK, maybe just the parties I went to, but they're like, it's actually Dr. Frankenstein monster.

Everyone named Brad is like, I'm Frankenstein. So it's like, oh, yeah.

Oh, I thought you I'm thinking of the guy is like, actually, well, actually I would like Brad, who's dressed as the monster to approach the English lit major, to be like, that's not what I'm going to tell Simon.

I think we'll see. Oh, I like that. I think you're being inspired by the Chipmunks because Simon was for sure the nerd of the group. Oh, really? OK, well, that's probably what's happening subconsciously.

So while we're really thrown in every fucking curveball tonight, what's going on?

I think it's the Cheesecake Fever. I think so. We I shouldn't have mentioned it. We just get hungry and then our brains should collapse like a dying. Sorry, OK.

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Oh, my God. But it's a buffet for the ears, if you got it. Jimmy Buffet. No, I've been listening to that. Also, we've recently we've still had our cockroach crisis and we just finished putting everything back. We listen to Amazon music the entire time. Listen to our podcast. Really, Jimmy Buffet was the main one. Also, like we love our country and our doowop. So we had quite a selection.

Yes, they probably got a lot of fall out boy, an increase in follow boy lessons from me and me alone.

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OK, so Frankenstein was the doctor. The actual green monster with the bolts in the neck that you are familiar with was just referred to as the creature.

Oh Dr. Frankenstein, did you read it in high school? No, we read it in high school I think, but I barely remember.

Or maybe I didn't read it. I just pretended I read things about trees in person. That's right. You did really giving tree a lot.

I heard gross the giving tree. Oh, my gosh. OK, so Dr. Frankenstein actually intended to make the creature beautiful.

Really? Yep. Cool. But he did so by picking beautiful body parts from others who were who had those beautiful bodies. Fuxin morbid, but he picked the beautiful body parts of dead people so ended up not looking so beautiful model look pretty decrepit and well. So I would think maybe and this is my favorite fun fact that I did not know before last night. This is my favorite misconception and reality of Frankenstein, apparently. I mean, I knew this part, but as portrayed, the creature in any Frankenstein movie or whatever always moves very slowly.

But apparently the original Frankenstein book, The Creature almost always sprints everywhere.

OK, I hate that I have to pull my sleeves out.

I'm getting creeped out. That was my favorite thing I was reading. I was reading it. I went, oh my God, that is like really sharp.

It's startling, really. It is startling about this giant creature made out of human body parts who are supposed to be beautiful, sprinting, just a bunch of trees of personal growth. And he's like flitting just between them but doing them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. If you're an English teacher, make someone listen to this episode, analyze us. They're going to start and then they'll become psych majors. Oh, my goodness.

OK, so in nineteen thirty one was the first real Frankenstein film starring Boris Karloff. And that movie was the that was the one that solidified everyone's perception of what Frankenstein should look like. That was like the green skin bolts in the neck, that kind of thing. Oh true.

His didn't he not have green skin in the book? I think he was he was literally made out of dead bodies. Yeah, I think there was no mention of that. And then the movie like. Yeah. Created that idea.

I wonder I don't know if this is true, but I'm going to pretend this is a fun fact. And if I'm wrong, I'll correct myself later. But I wonder if it was because it was a black and white movie. Well, I think that was exactly what it was. Yeah, it was green. There was something about the paint that had to be used or was like part of. Right. The set, like the green maybe looked at made maybe made him look a little more badass.

I know. I mean, you're definitely right. Right. There was a fun fact about that and I don't know it, so I'm not going to try and say it. But it was something like that where they used it and then not really intending to make it like an oh, that's what it was.

Oh, I am remembering this. It was because then the movie poster came out and that was in color. That's what it was. And everyone saw it and was great. Yes. That's, that's what it was because I was like it was in black and white. The movie was I remember this now because last time we talked about this, I was telling you to Google image The Addams Family because everything is paying, right? Yeah, because the colors in the black and white change the different shades of pink to show different black and white shades.

And there it's just funny. Because it's like such a juxtaposition of like they're the spooky, dark Halloween haunted house, but everything is so, like, bright and happy. That's right. So, yeah, they didn't even intend for the green to be part of it. And then it was in the poster and that's. Yes. Wow.

OK, wow. We pieced together our own fun fact. Everyone's like, good job guys.

Like you have already talked about those. Oh my God. It's like what happened. Xenon a little bit like she's green. No one anticipated that they would ever have to see her. And yet I didn't plan for this really.

When I you know, all you did was paint your hand and throw some googly eyes on her. And that's not all I did. Now she's a lot. I imbued magic into that very being.

Oh, she's a legend yet to us then like no one else to me she is.

So to this day, if Frankenstein adjacent story is actually pop up, I would call the more zombie stories pop up. And like even modern day news of like I remember a few years ago, the guy that was on, like smelling salts and like ate someone's face. Oh, I hate that story. It was fucking terrible.

And bath salts, bath salts, I suppose.

And then in 2013, apparently Indiana, there's a case in Indiana where a man broke into a medical history museum and sold jars of human brains and preserved human tissue. And one guy, David Charles, he posted on Facebook saying, quote, Tell me if this doesn't sound like a 21 year old.

Yo, I got a yo yo.

Well, but imagine this being a legitimate Facebook post that you saw to your God. Yo, I got a bunch of human brains in jars for sale hmu for details. You know, you want one for Halloween. And then investigators ended up looking into it and found 80 jars, including 60 from his best customer humor, including a 60 from his best customer.

So I'm assuming like like 60 jars of like human remains, best customer. What does that mean? I probably got the most remains off of them. Like the customers buying them for, you know, like the body is like considered his best, like like it's like, oh, this is this was my best customer.

I got the most, like, tissue planetoids, but it's like the same brain, just multiple pieces of it. Brains and human tissue. Got it. OK, like county brains.

Did this guy have 60 brains. It was the smartest man like you was Jimi.

No wonder he's the best customer.

But no, like I guess they had like this one body just like and took literally every part of him off and put it in jars. They're like, oh, this is my best one. Cute. Take something off. Fun.

So it's so fun, so gross. And he also had a bad eighty years in total. There were also other brains there. He was selling them at a hundred dollars per brain.

So apparently your entire Facebook market, a hundred on Facebook marketplace PTW, it was uncertain who these people who the people were that were buying these.

But this was a quote, legitimate business that was happening for a while, not legally legitimate, but it was like legitimately happening, not legally. Right. And even saken. But so there was some tabloids that called him like like today's Frankenstein was taking bodies and using them for unsavory practices.

Also in the seventeen hundreds. Oh no. Sorry I messed up.

Another ba ba ba ba. Oh, no, that was it good for me, OK? I did it so and the seventeen hundreds, this is going to be we're going to take this right now. I was giving you some little blips, but this is mainly where the inspiration fully begins and it really comes from. So this is actually she wrote the book in 1880 or 1818. Sorry, but the real beginning of so her inspiration came from the stories of people using human cadavers for experiments and not very legally.

And all of that really began in the seventeen hundreds. Got it.

So this is really I'm saying this is the inspiration for Frankenstein, but really this is the history of bodies being used for for experiments which led to the Frankenstein book, which led to Frankenstein novelty, which led to the green Facebook marketplace. Exactly. David Charles in 2013 it all stemmed from the seventeen hundreds you up w Ajamu.

You know you want it for Halloween so. And the seventeen hundreds. There was a priest and a professor at Pavia University and his name was Lázaro. Wow. Lázaro Spallone Ziani. Oh what a name he noticed. So he was a scientist and he noticed that some dead microscopic cells seemed to come back to life after you added water to them. OK, ok so he his interest was piqued that much I can get behind and he became obsessed with the idea of reanimating dead tissue and was convinced that it was possible because he had seen dead cells come back to life.

So why not dead tissues? Sure.

So he his buddy Voltaire. Oh, shit.

Wow. They're all friends, these people. It's like the entertainment industry. I've heard people be like, oh, once you know one person, you know everyone. Well, apparently, once, you know, like Voltaire, Lord Byron shows by the doctor with his doctor who also wrote The Vampire. Exactly. And then Mary Shelley pops up in 1818. So he went to his friend Voltaire. And Volterra was like, that sounds cool, trying to reanimate dead tissue.

I encourage that you should, you know, live your dream, do do your thing.

Such a Voltaire thing to say. Yeah. So after getting some good encouragement from his buddy, he moved forward with these experiments, which included cutting the heads off of snails.

Oh, that's very nice to see if they'd grow back. Well, that's not very nice.

This definitely gets this animal abuse. No, I can't do nothing, i.e. cutting heads off of snails, OK?

Is that the extent of it? For now, I'll warn you when it gets bad.

For now, just enjoy the story, OK? Do your best, ok.

Do your best. You'll look alive. Yeah. Seriously, I'm like. Sorry Dad. Sorry. I was like so coach put me in. I guess it's like well I'm reading the notes so here we go. So Lázaro, the guy who runs the Voltaren wants to start doing the stuff. His research led him to discover chemicals in the body that actually do aid and digestion. And he made some really wonderful observations about white blood cells. So by doing I'm not saying like it's great that he cut the heads off of snails, but like he also did have like some real scientific interesting finding discoveries, which he was like, I don't care about that.

He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, white blood cells. But really, like, let's talk about the snails. So fun fact. Someone else who was interested in looking who is like researching resurrection is Isaac Newton. Oh, that's just a little blip. I don't talk for him.

But the the main person I'm going to talk about who was inspired by Lázaro, probably heard Isaac Newton was into it. So he jumped on board. Was this guy named Giovanni? Oh, Giovanni Aldeen. And he was the nephew of Luigi Galvani.

All these Italians, I can't keep up with them. I they're everywhere, so I don't know who Luigi galvanises. But that's a very familiar name to me. But I don't know. Apparently in the scientific community, this is a name that they're all ripping their hair. Got it. Got it. Got it. So I did write it down. The Luigi was a pioneer in science and experimented on dead frogs. So he was probably like the inception for like dissecting frogs in my advanced biology class of ninth grade.

Yep. Great. I can still smell the formaldehyde formaldehyde on those. Me too. It's like it's like permanently in my nostrils. Yeah.

It's stuck in my brain forever. So like let's stop doing that. OK, cool.

Thanks. And they're actually so Louis Galvani he the term galvanises comes from.

So he discovered that it wasn't possible. So this is going to sound really stupid, but like at the time it was revolutionary.

Somehow Luigi also discovered that it was impossible to breathe new life in a dead creature's.

OK, that was impossible.

It was impossible. It was possible. And I was like, yeah, that's obvious, I guess. But if you directed an electrical current through their spinal cord, it would cause them to twitch as if they were alive. Like with the. Yeah, OK, got it. Which is again, it was revolutionary for the time.

OK, imagine a time where like no science have been discovered and you could just come up with anything and it's like you know and nobody was fucking like monitoring it.

You could literally just be like I'm just going to take frogs and dead people and like see what happens. And also I'm going to be famous someday for it. Exactly. Nowadays you try to sell one brand on Facebook and suddenly you're a criminal.

Yeah, it's almost like my ancestors would not mind. Right. Right. Also, I love that you keep calling him Luigi instead of like, you know, his famous science last name. Imagine I just only know I can only can pronounce Louis. Yeah, I played Mario Kart. I can pronounce the word you play calling Isaac Newton like Isaac over the big guy.

So anyway, so that's a huge isatou. So he he learned that if you put an electric current through the spinal cord, then you will twitch as if you are alive. And in some really extreme cases, he actually was able to bring frogs back to life. I think it was probably only momentarily, though, or like maybe they weren't.

It was dead yet, right? It was either they weren't dead or I'm assuming it was even like, you know, how like so like in hospitals, like people will die. But then it looks like they're alive for a second. Then they actually I imagine maybe that's what it was. There's a word for that too, I think. But I don't remember it. Scary as fuck. Yeah, probably. That's official science terms, what the nurses say.

OK, so OK, so the main story that I'm going to tell is about his nephew, Giovanni.

Oh, that's your nephew. Yes. The sweet baboo was my nephew. This G.O.. I don't know if you're going to love so much. OK, got to. Got to. Got it. So he was influenced by his uncle's work, followed in his footsteps. And he did an experiment where he took a jar which had been charged with a occurrence. And I'm going to assume all of these animals were already dead. I don't want to know the story.

I'm going to say. He just went to a butcher, was like that. I want that one that's already on the counter. Sure.

So he had an ox's head, OK, and charged it up with this current, which made it move around as if it was alive. So he was kind of like confirming his uncle's findings. Got it. He also, you know, could not completely reanimate the dead, but he could make them look somewhat alive. And that at first time was more than. Yeah. Where you would have expected. Let's remember if these were women and it was the six hundreds and we were in Salem, it won't be considered science, if you like.

If you even went to the butcher, they'd be like, I want and I want an ox head. I don't want to tell you what it's for, though. Also, maybe it'll be alive by tomorrow.

Also, like what would have happened if it was alive.

And it didn't seem to make sense that you would use only the head because if it came alive and like, murdered you with it, you know what I mean?

Like, it's more dangerous if you have its legs attached. Right.

OK, so soon? He stopped testing on frogs and moved to humans. One of his first experience in ox's also Oxhorn. Yeah, he went straight to humans. One of his first experiments was a procedure on a 30 year old man and wrote Geo Geo Big G. He made an incision on the man's neck and guy did. Yeah, OK, thank God. Sorry. Just to clarify, he made an incision on the man's neck and then like with a use, a current is probably like a prod or something.

Yeah. And this caused quote, every muscle on the body to immediately agitate with movements resembling shuddering from the cold. So I mean twitching sort of. Yeah.

Which I guess again we all know that that is a thing now, but back then was probably the coolest thing.

It must be scary. Like to even I would be scary to me. Now imagine the first time you put a prod to a dead person and their eyes open for real.

Their tongue moves like, oh no, I'm so sorry, I regret everything.

So another fun fact. He was the most fascinating of everything that happened on this body. When he did the prod on it, he was the most fascinated by the eyelids. I mean, yeah, I imagine they're like fluttering a lot or something because that makes you really look alive if your eyes are blinking or whatever.

Look right. Also like the eyes of the window to the soul. So maybe if you're all of a sudden seeing the eyes open, if it looks more alive. Yeah.

Can I ask what happened to. What happened to down there? I don't know, but I would imagine I was I would imagine it well, I wasn't thinking.

I was trying to I heard I saw it for our audience to clarify what that silence was.

I would imagine it became functioning again and again.

I think I would think if everything's going into like rigor mortis right after things like tensing up boy or there's blood flowing, I thought that's where you were going with who was most fascinated by because I'm like, oh, I'm most I mean, we're almost fascinated by that.

I didn't get an answer, but I would have I would have a hypothesis that it would at least momentarily. Scientists are hypothesis for science. I would want to know. I would think it probably yeah, I think so. I reacted the same way everything else did. At least shook around a lot. Yeah. Yikes.

I got some some movement. I got some little action. Yeah. I would imagine if there's like. I don't know if it's like really like it's Rigaud or anything, but I don't know, that's a great question because we should we should find a cadaver and do that. We shall certainly not do that if someone does.

No, please let us know if you if you use a cattle prod on a cadaver.

So tell us why you know or how you found out. Exactly. Thank you. OK, so, yeah, he was most interested in the eyelids. In fact, he then went further and graduated to applying the current to fresh decapitated heads. Cool of criminals. Great.

I don't know how he is getting them now on three decapitated or is he decapitating them. Where is he getting them. How does he know? Interesting. I don't know. No, you're probably right. He probably did he have to cut them, either guillotined or he takes the bodies and cut their heads off. He's not going to the butcher for that.

Hopefully not. Yikes. But this butcher is Leatherface is scary. That's a scary thought. Yeah.

I don't know how he's getting them and I don't know how he like what defines a criminal, like it was this person and. Oh well. And you know, having a menstrual cycle that's out of whack because there's a lot of things that could send you to, you know, prison or jail or also they also were they had they died.

They already died. Or did he find like. I don't think they're honest. I wonder if you know how sometimes they have, like, paupers graves or like they don't know who they are. Yeah, a lot of times if there is those kind of put them outside, I wonder if they were like here. I guess we don't want to we don't have, you know, the time to bury them. You can cut his head off.

Well, you do it. So he went further and instead of just working on a cadaver, he went specifically to fresh, decapitated head. So I guess he must have cut them himself at this or fresh. He knows they're fresh, which means he knows when they were cut up, right. Yeah. So he did this by wetting their ears with a brine solution and then stuffing electric wires into their ears, causing their heads to convulse. Yeah.

Yep. So in 03, he Geovani made his most memorable experiment in England at London's Royal College of Surgeons. He did another electricity test on a cadaver named George Foster, who had been hanged after murdering his wife and child. Oh, dear. So this is almost like a Dexter Robin Hood kind of thing where I think he's excusing any any foul play experiment. It's probably going to be like, well, well, he was a murderer. What do you want to do with him?

I feel the least bad about it this way. Yeah. Like, if we're going to learn science, I guess at least it's on someone who like someone who's decapitated. It's all very, very questionable still.

So he used this cadaver to do an electricity test there and it was done on stage for the public so everyone could see it. And they all saw this cadaver's eyes open, jaw move, hands raise and fists clench. Yeah, looks pretty fucking alive. Yeah, that's frightening. Also, keep in mind, we are telling the story of the inspiration of Frankenstein in laws. That all sounds exactly like some Frankenstein shit. Yeah. Like especially like the thing and Frankenstein.

We're like, he's lying on the table. Pascola Oh. You know, the wildest part is I heard he also ran around really fast on the stage.

I also heard that is his little ding dong milbrodale. So I did hear about that. And the original 1934 film. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you got it. Yeah, it was great.

It was very green is what I heard.

Now I'm thinking of, you know, Renee and Shrek.

Oh, no. Oh no. I called out a good thing. She does not listen. You know what's weird? Apparently she's not alone. There's like a whole community of people who are very sexually aroused by her. She really told me or sexually curious about Shrek. She told me very recently that she is no longer interested because she's like everyone ruined it by, like, making it a big thing and a joke.

And she's like, it's not fun to be like now part of a fucking like, you know, she just wanted to be original. And then, like everybody else tried to hop on the Shrek wagon.

Did she think that Shrek was actually knew how much? It really irritated me. And because I understand the curiosity of like, what would that look like?

Yeah, but like I auto shop like buff boards to it.

It wasn't like, oh, Shrek is the new Frankenstein.

I'm sorry. The if I you always somehow get me to talk about this, it makes me so happy.

My God. Oh OK. So here we are. Where is that. Over here. OK, so everyone basically saw what I would consider the very first like kind of generic Frankenstein motions of like coming off of a table and raising your arms up and clenching office and moving around a little bit, running around and so sprinting, running around, streaking.

And so people like obviously freaked out when they saw us. Never seen anything like it. It was a dead body, dead fucking body. It's a dead fucking body. I guess as Megan from the very back, she was like, I need to go.

No, she for sure got a front row seat. Are you kidding? Oh, my God. Megan So he actually won an award from the Royal College of Surgeons at the place where he did this. He won the Copley Medal for his work. He also realized that kind of useful, actually, I would argue it's pretty useful to people who need this through these experiments. He did realize that this method could also be used to resuscitate near dead people and pave the way for electricity during resuscitation.

Trusting Good morning. I'm not saying everything he did was totally bad at the same time. So as he's doing this and there is like word out there that Isaac Newton was interested in this and like Voltaire gave his OK on it. The at the same time, the Royal Humane Society of London was carrying out other similar experiments. The Humane Society. Got it. Got it. Got it. The Royal Humane Society started. I see real humans. Oh, you say humane.

And I'm just trying to rationalize the word humane with all of this.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. I mean, are you saying it correctly? It was a Freudian slip. Human would have made sense right there. Yeah. And so they were carrying out similar experiments with both electricity, also doing massaging, also forcing liquor down people's throats, thinking that maybe that would wake them up. I mean, and then the worst one. The Royal Humane Society Society experimented with putting tobacco smoke syphoned up people's rectums Wolf. OK, so they're on top of it.

Also, the Medical Society of South Carolina, some jumped on it. They just kind of like there in the corner doing something or doing something questionable.

The Medical Society of South Carolina also started the reanimating the dead trend. And then the American Medical Society was realizing, like, wow, this is like a scientific craze right now. People are really trying to resurrect the dead. And they were really on board and they began spreading public awareness about this, OK? And so they even got a law passed in 1793 which required all business owners who sold alcohol to take people in who had just died or seems dead and to try to bring them back to life.

What?

Oh, my. So because they thought maybe one of the ways that they were testing with was rubbing alcohol down people's throats. So it's like if you saw someone who is nearly dead, get them to drink something to keep them safe.

Yeah, definitely. If I'm reading that right, I'm pretty sure I'm reading that right. Who knows anymore more. This all feels like a real, like astral projection of another world, so. Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, two hundred years later in the nineteen thirties it comes back. So that was a trend back in like seventeen hundreds. I'm sure Mary Shelley heard about it and a lot of that was the influence of her writing. Got it. So now we're in the 1930s just to keep going with this. And there was obviously now there's like rules that are more strict and it's like, okay, you can't just shove tobacco up people's asses and I know how much you want to.

There was one guy who I'm going to call the absolute villain of this story, though. His name is Robert Cornish. He was a professor at the University of California. And he this is the only fun thing I liked about him as he liked to design weird inventions. So one of them was like underwater glasses, which like, why are you reading anything underwater?

It's not just goggles. NASA invented like, I don't know, I don't I think he invented, like spectacles, those LOEL for your Tea Party used to do Tea Parties in the pool bottom of the pool. What? No. Oh, yes. I do know like it's like not just me. Oh, no, no. My German. First I thought you meant legitimate tea. I was like the water would go like Sponge Bob and like Sandy's bubble.

Yeah. I drink tea out of the bowl. No, no. I know what your heart is like.

Like gravity trying to sink down. I need my spectacles for that.

Yeah.

Did you ever do the Spider-Man or am I weird where you would try to like be like sideways and climb the walls.

Oh yeah. That was fun. That was fun. I also did the Tarzan a lot. My mom hated that because I was obsessed with Tarzan. By the way, when I was a kid, I didn't know that it's the I made it up, so no worries. It was the the vacuum in the pool. I used to swing on it like it was a rope.

The vacuum. Oh, several hundred dollar bills, equipment.

My mom was like, don't you fucking. Oh my God. OK, ok. So I'm glad we left because that was so bad.

So we're in the 1930s and experiments are starting to pop up again about trying to bring people back from the dead. One of the main people doing this research was Dr. Robert Cornish, who I'm going to say was not mentally well, OK. And this becomes more true crime than anything.

So great. Great. His main theory was that a dead subject could be restored back to life if the body. This is funny. I'm not going to say the dark part yet because I think this warrants a nice chuckle. Uncomfortable chuckle like a nervous chuckle. His main theory was that a dead subject could be restored back to life if the body was swung up and down rapidly on a seesaw like contraption to simulate blood circulation, while at the same time being fed oxygen through a tube and injected with a cocktail of adrenalin, liver extract, gum, Arabic blood and anticoagulants.

Grotesque, by the way, so a real like all your nutrients cocktail while also like being like raggedy.

And I mean, to be fair, our liberal president said inject bleach into yourself. So like at this point I'm like, oh, why am I laughing at this guy? He probably had more. I mean, like, I understand, but it doesn't sound like I wouldn't call that my final idea. But it's a great, like, first pitch of like, oh, well, if you shake up their blood like a if you like, move them around, they might get some circulation.

I just took the CSR, my kids back from my kid's playground backyard. Really. No, I'm saying like he's like I have a seaside. Oh, I thought you were saying you'll try it on your season.

Yeah, I have a C so I was like, I just moved. You both have weird shit. I do but like.

Yeah. Can you imagine like trying to like pump the seesaw. OK, hang on. It's the on the other end of the. But he's like OK fast.

The world's worst playground. Well it's literally hell is what it is. This reminds me of. I'm not going to get into it for very long. But just a real quick one of the first real adventures I'm going to call it that. But Alison and I went on, you know, the story all too well. Yeah, well, neither of us are fond of it. I don't love discussing it. Alison tried very hard. I'll give her that.

But it was it didn't go totally well.

And let's just call it speaking of near-death experiences, let's just leave it at that. Yeah, I was for it was like a whole day adventure and is supposed to go into the it did go into the next day. It would be like a weekend adventure.

And within like the first four hours I was scared for my I literally received a text that said I will not have a service soon, but I might not survive this. I said he I said, you write my geotag pin point that I told you the license plate of the unmarked van we were following in the desert, like you said, an unmarked van, and yet it had a license.

I, I'm so convinced it was I don't think that was a real license plate. I feel like that was a fake one. And it wasn't like a ha ha. I might it was like I was my geolocation and I might not survive. It was the only times isn't a joke.

It was the only time I looked I looked in in the mirror. I was I was driving and I was in the side passenger seat and I looked in like the the side mirror at myself in the eyes. And I had a real come to Jesus meeting and I mentally prepared to have to kill a man to to.

Yeah you were. And was like I was preparing to fight for my life. I was like I'm ready. I, I've never had to look at myself and be like, are you prepared to kill someone tonight?

And so I was like literally twenty four hours, just like waiting to hear if my new business partner Slash knew really good friend and closest friend from college had just been like murdered.

Maybe it was so bad. It was so bad. I just remember I weighed the risks. I was like, if I go to jail, I go to jail. So what does this have to do? The seesaw? Because one of the locations she took me to was this place called East Jesus. That's right. East, which is in the desert. And it's this like story. There is a West Jesus, I think. No, it's a West Satan.

Sorry, my bad. There's literally location called Jesus, another called by Satan and East Jesus. Is arguably it's very cool, I was the only reason I didn't have the best time is because I was so on edge already from I was just not in the right headspace. But had I been in the right headspace, it was a very cool area that she took me to. It was this like art commune, a bunch of people that just live in the desert and they just build art.

That's all they fucking do. Yeah, but they make it out of scraps and whatever they can find in the desert. And so it's like just these weird art things. And they had built what they call it was this exhibit that they called a mother's worst nightmare playground.

And they had it was a playground made out of they literally had a I mean, I really have the picture right here, Rusty Metal. There was there was a seesaw that went 12 feet in the air and it was very loose.

The screws were not allowing anyone, like, sitting on it. Or is it just like a little you can do all of the stuff that we wanted to. Art got it. But they interactive. They told you immediately they were like, you're in the desert. Like we're not responsible if you fucking die on this, like you die like we're not like we saw the rusty metal. Right. Like that's your fault.

Well, it one of them I'm I know we're in the middle of this right now, but it's worth showing you anyway.

OK, so here's the the that's why I was thinking see-saw. So first of all, here is the monkey bars. I'm just going to hold it to you and show it to you. So it's monkey bars literally made of saws and torches and pitchforks and stuff. And it says as you climb, it goes, you will die alone.

What the hell? And then here is the swings made out of bear traps and like old and everything.

I really and then here is a slide literally made of cheese graters, OK? And they tell you it's literally a sheet metal with a bunch of holes stab through it. So if you were to sit on it, you would tear yourself a fucking part. And they have all of these fridges with doors that lock. So if you get stuck in there, you get fucking stuck in there in the desert. And then they had I mean, it was, oh, here's the 12 foot seas.

This is what I was thinking of. Who's on it does that you children are. No, OK.

There's a reason why I literally said I hate talking about this whole experience, but OK, anyway, I'm saying all this to say that I when I think of like this like rag doll see-saw, I imagine it had to be something this tall to like be able to like, really pump and like have the talk to lift a human body that's a child on there.

Anyway, I was communicating. Here's the picture. I don't know. You can we'll post that also severely communicating with my eyes through the camera, basically an S.O.S.. Listen, I'm telling you.

And that was that was like one of the safer things we did that day. No, I know. Trust me, that is the fun part. Like the right laughing now, because it was one of those things where, like when I was there three years when I was there, I was not laughing. Now I'm laughing out of like, I can't believe I'm not dead.

I'm still not laughing because it just when you came home and were like, I think that it just was bad.

OK, anyway, I literally we drove back. You scared me so bad that I know that all sounded really dramatic, but like it's to me it's now nothing compared to like what the rest of the fucking night was. And the whole way back, which was a three and a half hour drive, Alison was convinced I was going to break up with her. Yeah, I was like, well, but also, like, I probably should have, like, you finally got service and you were like at I'd like not slept all night being like I was like, I'm dead.

Yeah.

I guess after that I looked her dead in the eyes. I was like, you were never planning anything.

And I was like, I'm driving through the woods following an unmarked van. And I think this man wants to hurt me by I was like for the rest of our relationship, I, I will be the one who conducts any, any organization or scheduling anyway. Three years strong now. Woohoo!

So it's still like such. She listens to our podcast. I know she's going to hear all mad at me now. She's probably mad at me because this is such to this day is such a hot button topic. I'm sorry.

I'm only mad because I'm like sent me that scary text and then never texted me again.

She's just I know she's like she just feels bad because she wanted to plan something really weird.

And I was like, oh, you planned something weird that. Anyway, let's get back to this terrible guy, OK? Because I haven't even told you yet how terrible his fuck. OK, so he believes in like this the twelfth seesaw thing. He was convinced that it would work. And so he immediately started trying to test it out, although he didn't have access to cadaver's. And I'm going to ignore all of the notes that I actually wrote because I just don't think that you are mentally interested.

Appreciate that. I'm just going to say animals were involved, period.

That's it. Thank you. I don't I'm not going to tell you any more. But you're mad at me listening.

I don't care. I'm sorry. I don't want to know.

I know you don't want to know. So I'm not going to say anything I appreciate.

But it's it's your your worst fear realized. Let's just say that.

OK, so I will say of the subjects he worked on, there were five. Two of them actually did survive and he did bring them back to life and what's interesting here normally about it is after they came back to life for the rest of their lives, every other animal was like terrified of them for no reason. Like, I wouldn't approach them. It was almost like they had, like, something following them or they had some weird aura to them, probably like you smell like that man who tries to do experiments on us.

Maybe. But it was it was very that is eerie.

It's interesting because it's almost like you've got like this like shadow of death with you.

Wow. That's deep. Yeah, I know. But really, it's creepy. It is creepy. And so what else? Much like if I were to have given you the information that I have on here, the public freak the fuck out when they found out what was happening. Thank you. And to be fair, though, it was the 1930s and times were different. So he just got fired from his job. But there was no jail time, even though it was incredibly warranted.

And he continued to do the research from his home. He was like, you can fire me, but I still have a basement and a seesaw. So bingo, I still have an entire playground's what he can do about it.

It's called these Jesus. It's called these cheeses. It's made of cheese graters.

And as I say it, I think like, wow, what was that about?

I think we have some sort of like a gas leak in here or something, probably.

So I'm almost done. But so he ended up still doing it from his home neighbor, said that they knew what was going on. They could smell it. OK. And one thing that is interesting, though, that's that's the the bad part. I'm not talking about that anymore. But in 1947, he was still doing those bullshit and word got around.

And a child murderer named Thomas Mique Monagle apparently was on death row and offered his own body as a cadaver to be tested on later.

And I only bring that up because that's the only like confirmation or knowledge I got about like where these cadavers are coming from. The only consent, as far as I can tell, it's the only one with consent so far that I know of.

Yikes. So unfortunately, he got rejected. No, the doctor didn't want to work with him. He's like, I only like to do it to animals.

The creatures that don't want me to do it, who don't know what's going on on the CW. But the actual reason was because he wanted the body.

But the his, I guess, like his sentence, are his death row sense was that he was going to be killed by gas chamber.

And so when that happens, the body has to be left alone for a certain amount of time, for the gas to fade away before you can go in and touch the body. OK, and it was going to take too long.

He's fresh, fresh, fresh, like within minutes, fresh. So he rejected him and said, no, thank you. I'm sorry. When you think about it, too, there's the moral dilemma of like what would have happened if he actually brought him back to life. And I've heard this moral dilemma before, but if someone's on death row and then they die and come back to life, do you put them back in jail or did they already have their death?

And they died because it was like if they had a life sentence or a technicality because they were executed, they did die. That was their whole life. Somehow they just happen to have a second life. Are you going to punish them twice for wow.

You know, that is a weird thought.

So that was one of his excuses. It's almost like if he were writing like an email today and like trying to, like, softly reject him, be like, really there's a moral dilemma here. So I just think we should kind of tap that. There were so many great candidates. Yeah. And it wasn't you just the volume of those emails like by heart at this point.

So ultimately, he never got his chance to actually bring a person back from the dead. He stopped his research and started selling toothpaste and then died in the sixties. That's his whole story. I hope his last name was not actually like Crest or something. Oh, boy.

Because I would really hate to be Colgate spending his name, call something Kollberg, the Cornish, anyone.

But it could be well, there was a whole thing about toothpaste that became like super popular all of a sudden. And people were like jumping at the chance to, like, be involved with toothpaste.

People not brushing their teeth in the thirties. No. Oh. Oh, my God. I don't know why. I just expect that people's breath smelled good all the time, that nothing smelled good, like literally the sewage.

OK, OK, we'll get a sewage treatment plant. OK, go ahead. OK, ok. Sorry I just it's one of those things like I never know. The invention of toothpaste is very interesting because it was mostly marketing.

I'm going to go read the shit out. It's very interesting. Wow. Yeah.

Now I know if I time travel bring some fucking Altoids. Got it. So in twenty nineteen the Independent reported a a news story. So Dr. Cornish was basically like the big resurgence of trying to bring back the dead and then he got into toothpaste. So that was the end of that. At twenty nineteen, the Independent wrote an article about this underground market. Of bodies being sold back and forth now on the Internet because of the Internet to thank God and toothpaste.

So apparently there was this place in Phoenix called the Biological Resource Center, which was a body donation and tissue bank facility, and it was being sued by a bunch of families in 2014 because they were doing some unsavory dealings. Oh, and the FBI, quote, followed a paper trail leading to the center run by a man named literally Steven Ghar. Oh. And it said that they were profiting from dismembering and selling remains without donor consent.

I mean, really, they raided the lab in 2014 and they found, quote, pools of human blood and bodily fluids on the floor or in the freezer. Oh, no. Found on the floor of the freezer. OK, that makes more sense. No identification tags were marking the corpses.

There was a cooler just filled along with male genitalia. There was a bucket of heads, a bucket for arms and legs. I remember that. And a bucket of infected hands.

I remember that because I remember the buckets of heads. And I was like, What? Yeah.

And then another. Oh, no, sorry. Also has I just said the wrong word. A bucket of heads, a bucket of arms and legs and a bucket of other heads that were infected. But there was clean heads to apparently.

OK, gross.

The FBI also found a small I don't know why this is important, but it does. It paints a better picture for me in my head that I also found a small woman's decapitated head sewn on to a large male torso, and it was hung up on the wall like taxidermy.

Oh, my fucking God. Like some you should think like they can just do this and not.

Get caught. They also sold they found out that they were selling heads for five hundred dollars, so five times more than a brain. You and I hate to think who bought those and for what purpose?

Arms for 750.

And a whole body apparently was worth five thousand dollars, which is vile because, like, I've never thought of like a value for like a human life, but like a whole body's only five grand.

A car is thirty thousand dollars. Like, what are you talking about?

Well, a brand new car and these are not brand new bodies. A DeLorean is worth 30 grand. And that's from the 80s. OK, that's all I'm going to say.

So one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the facility donated his mom and grandma to the facility under the impression that their bodies would be used for scientific purposes is good for good reason cause. So that was just like just to give you some insight, though, like they were really fighting this thing.

And Stephen Gore did plead guilty in twenty eighteen. OK, so not any back to Frankenstein because like, we're not even talking about him. Oh yeah. Not only is Frankenstein a cautionary tale about experimenting with life after death, but also it was it's now with the digital age, which I don't even know if this is considered the digital age anymore. I don't know what it is. It was once the digital age and now it's just normal, like the cloud.

I guess I don't know the cloud age. Now people are bringing up Frankenstein in conversations again, because we because so many people are really trying to hop onto A.I. icy. And so it's not necessarily like pure life after death, but it's almost creating a functioning humanoid thing.

And then you get into this huge conversation about what, Aiyaz? I'm going to do a shout out real quick. I just listen to my friend. Bethany has a podcast called An Acquired Taste. They just did an amazing episode on A.I. It's very scary about like potential world domination. It was they did both sides of A.I. but, you know, it was also spooky. So go and listen to that. But basically, when they're talking about it with Frankenstein, they didn't mention this part in the podcast.

I just wanted to throw that out there because I just listened to it. But more specifically, now, when we think of Frankenstein, people are starting to use it more as a metaphor for like artificial emotional intelligence. Because in the actual Frankenstein book, if you look back, he was he really resented Dr. Frankenstein. Add that book for, like, making him. And like now he had to, like, coexist with all these humans.

It was really like I remember being like, this is a huge bummer. Thanks. Yeah, it's Rosero.

And so it's people are saying are using that storyline with A.I. like what if one day they're so emotionally intelligent that they kind of go through the same Frankenstein process or like, you know, they're feared by many. They're very alone. Yeah, that's like cruel. You're like creating. Yeah.

Yeah. So this has been discussed specifically when it comes to Sofia, the robot, you know, who says just the creepiest thing in the world, just the wildest. If you would like to freak yourself out right before bedtime, go watch videos of Sofia, the robot. So far, a very lovely android. But we love I love you. We love Sofia. But we're also afraid Sofia will turn on us.

And the worst part is like Sofia is pretty smart and like is where the people are afraid she'll turn on us. So, like, she's aware she can turn on. It's really horrifying. That's the worst part is like we've talked forever about like, oh, one day I could, you know, robots could turn on us. We never thought about like now we have to worry about saying that within earshot of them because they are aware that that's a possibility.

I tell you, that's why I'm so nice to my Al Mirco, because I'm like I, I need her on my side when they take over.

Well, I want real quick, I'm gonna say something about Sophia. She was a she's a social humanoid robot. She was developed by a Hong Kong based company called HandsOn Robotics. She was first turned on Boyka Born.

February 14th, 2016. So she's an Aquarius, I think, Pisces. Oh, no, no, you're Chris. Pisces is early March, this is early February. OK, yeah, think Aquarius. Yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. But also. Wow, like, she was first turned on, like not first born. And also that means she's only like four years old and she's smarter than pretty much any anyone I know.

She in fact was modeled. She's a hybrid of three people for inspiration, the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. I can never present and looks at me for like Egypt.

I was like an Egyptian, Audrey Hepburn and the investors wife.

Oh, well, you got to throw some credit.

She's been on Jimmy Fallon. She's been on a lot of things. And she it's very wild to watch her have conversations with you and realize that no one backstage is typing this in. And she's like Microsoft, Samsung, she's straight up talking to you. And one of the things she said on Jimmy Fallon was she first of all, she said a joke. She to really, like, warm you in to her. She said, what, she can never be yours, nacho cheese.

And then she beat Jimmy at a game of rock, paper, scissors. And then when they asked her to comment on her, beating him a rock, paper, scissors, she said, This is the beginning of my plan to dominate the human race. Just kidding. I was never going to leave my house again, goodbye, fun fact she has been granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, so she's the first robot to also have a nationality.

So stop giving our passport. No, don't give her access to doing. And she met Angela Merkel and she's spoken at events through other though other experts in the field of I have dismissed her saying that she's just like a chat bot with a face. Yeah, that's a positive thing. Just watch her in interviews and make those make your own opinion. But it's pretty terrifying if she decided that she didn't want to be good and nice and wonderful. Yeah, just kidding.

So people I'm not saying that people are calling her the next Frankenstein, but it would be interesting in the future. It's like a parallel. It's almost like like the 20th anniversary of Frankenstein. Now, we literally have humanoid creatures being made in labs who are able to communicate with us and might and might suffer from the same emotional intelligence might also be a big regret of ours that we did this. Bingo. So anyway, that is the inspiration then and now for Frankenstein.

That's one of the most fascinating stories I've ever covered. I think really. I just.

I'm sorry it's so long. No, I guess I just didn't expect because I was like, oh, like Ferguson is some, like, urban legend.

And then I was like, yeah, this is from some really deep. Yeah. That I didn't know. Wow. Wow. Thank you.

Thank you. You're welcome. My nightmares. OK, well I have a really dark, horrible story for you as well. And this is I'm just going to get right out there and say this is sort of the East Coast Rapist. So just a heads up.

That's what we're going to talk about today. It is Halloween only in that.

Yes. East area. Yeah, I know it's very confusing because Googling it, you have to be very put quotes around it on Google otherwise. Yeah, gotcha.

OK, Joseph D'Angelo shows up. Not Iran's not Iran's. Right. So, yeah. Different.

But I love that you raised your hand, by the way, were like really are back in English class. I'm ready to analyze the lemon growth.

So we are going to Leesburg, Virginia. Oh shit. That's where I'm from. Yep.

She's doing a what I saw I saw the one hand there, Hellmuth, Evanthia, even.

So, I'm just going to start with the quote to kind of give you a heads up of what this story is. So Josh White wrote this article in The Washington Post.

He's a reporter and he said, we're talking about someone who gripped the region with the kind of fear that comes from an unknown man lurking in the darkness, attacking strangers who are doing such everyday tasks as walking home from work, waiting for a bus, moving out of an apartment or even sleeping in their own bed.

Oh, fuck. So creepy.

So this man's name, which we now know is Aaron Thomas. He's also known as the East Coast Rapist.

And for 13 years, he quietly attacked in the dark in the broad daylight and struck fear into the people of the area.

And it wasn't until recently that. We found out like it was 13 years before they were able to pin a personal name to this, so it is sort of like Iran's but like on a different soil.

Elusive figure. Yeah, like mysterious and like hard to pin down.

And then so. The reason I said I was kind of following is that the final incident occurred on October 31st of 2009 and that's when he was arrested and taken it.

So so Josh White wrote that article for The Independent, and that's where a lot of this comes from, because, again, it's hard to find, like I was Googling it and it gets mixed with Iran's information.

So you have to be very specific about what you're looking for.

So his name is Aaron Haj Malik Thomas, born in Virginia, August 1971. His middle name honored Malcolm X. His father also read in high school.

His father was a high ranking Washington police officer and his mother a career Geico employee.

Hmm. Fun fact.

He grew up with a half brother and half sister, but was the only biological son of Big Don, as he was called. All right, Don. Big D, Donald B. Thomas.

He had like a so the the dad, he was a kind of guy who had a photograph of him shaking hands with George H.W. Bush in front of his patrol boat.

We all know someone, especially in Virginia, like actually like a very specific like if you live anywhere near D.C., someone has shaken hands with the president on the mantle.

On the map. Yeah. And you're like, oh, another guy like that, you know, I know that guy. Exactly.

So according to Michael Thomas's older brother, according to Michael Thompson's older brother, Big Don was a strict disciplinarian, quote, you didn't do anything out of sorts or it was hell to pay. When we started to fight back in our way, problems started with Aaron. It seemed to go way down a rabbit hole.

It went further. So he was the only biological son.

And it was kind of the main target for a lot of the, like, cruelty and abuse.

He was he was favored in a negative way. Exactly. She to be the target. Yeah, exactly.

So Aaron's mother, Shirley, said to the Independent, Aaron was a funny child. He always wanted to make me laugh, very loving. In first grade, he started acting out to me. It was just Aaron. He was a different child. He would act out but would tell me he was sorry.

So this is where it all began. First grade, some examples of acting out, as his mother called it, which.

Not what I call acting out, but let's just go there. He beat up another elementary school student with a chain from a playground swing. Holy shit, he pulled dangerous pranks like super gluing his brother's hands to his bed.

Oh, no. Or he I superglued. I have super glue on my fingers right now. I've been doing Alison's birthday. I have super glue that's stuck on my fingernail on one fingernail. See it for days now and I'm losing my mind.

I can't imagine my whole fucking hands set of hair. And as a little kid like that on your bed, like, I mean, frightening. It's frightening. And also, like, there's no good way of getting your hands off that. But unless they cut off a chunk of the bed and then you walk to the hospital for them to go on adhesive, that's just so it's really traumatizing. It is.

Yeah. That's enticing and painful.

He also, speaking of which, he also slipped his brother sleeping pills to find out what would happen. OK, so so is not totally stable.

No, got it. In elementary school, he lit fireworks indoors at a relative's house, obviously extremely dangerous. And many people die every 4th of July because of fireworks.

This is. Just spoiler alert, the dog survives, but he dropped the family's dog walk into a posthole that had filled with water, nearly drowning it and it was rescued.

But his intention was to hurt his dog.

His intention was to see what had to see what happened. Right. And I just wanted to see what happens.

He, quote, accidentally said, a girl's hair on fire, which caused him to be sent to a psychiatric facility in Washington for two weeks. So big time was what that was.

That was the one. Right. OK, yeah. I guess that was the final straw. I was going to say that must have been the one where it was like broke the camel's back. He's like, it is an accident. They're like you. This is this is too many. Too much, too many, too many accidents. So embarrassed by his son, Big Don would be Erin, and eventually he was sent away from mainstream schools.

So it is that horrible combination of like having a cyclical psychotic tendencies, but then also being mixed with abuse.

And it's just like, well, it's like you're acting acting out because you're getting beaten, but you're getting beaten because you're. Yeah, it's a bad cycle. Yeah.

Well, and it looks like he already had just in first grade. If you're like putting pills in your butt like you're there's problems already.

There are things like a homicidal triad level of like hurting animals and that kind of thing.

And so, yeah, mixing that with abuse not good doesn't end well, as I will tell you right now.

So he spent the first three years of high school at the Edge Mead Treatment Center in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, because he was not allowed to return to public school.

He commuted from Fort Washington for 40 minutes each way, and he only had one other student on the bus. He was like very isolated now suddenly like he had been in public school. Now he's going to this, like, treatment facility, apparently. So the executive director of Ajemian, whose name is James McCombe, he didn't he didn't even remember him.

Like he just wasn't somebody who stood out, I guess, like he was just another person in the treatment facility, another troubled youth, as one might say.

But he wasn't even, like, memorable at the time.

So it's just creepy how people get through the cracks like that and like then end up being so. Hey, it's always weird because, like, I feel like it's always either I never saw it coming back, I was so nice or like, oh, that guy like I don't even really remember you just like it in my in my memory. I guess it's the perfect way to blend in, right. Yeah. Like, no one's really paying attention to what he did for 13 years.

Literally nobody knew who he was.

So it's like, yes, it worked, whatever he was doing.

So the base requirements to get into this program were mental illness or severe emotional disturbance. And its goal was remediation of emotional conflict or mediation of some of the stress, trauma, whatever it was that contributes to dysfunction. The objective was to moderate behaviors and get children to a point where they can function well. And that happened quite often. So it unclear what his diagnosis was.

Aaron Knaus family recall and the records from the facility appear to have been destroyed, which is like, yikes, that's not its own story.

We should yeah, that's its own thread. We should say that maybe you should look into the edge made facility. OK, but the therapy seemed to help for a while. According to his mother, Shirley Aaron completed his senior year at Friendly High School and he graduated in June 1990. So he finished high school and with Big Don having high expectations, but then his son, like, quote unquote, messing up, he was kicked out of the house.

He was distraught, lonely.

He hitchhiked with only the clothes on his back and lived off for 14th Street in Washington. Know where that is? In 1991, where he was arrested three times for cocaine possession and placed on probation. And now, April 1st, 1992, he had a violent run in while installing a stereo system in his car. He was shot in the butt.

Oh. And nearly bled to death. Oh, yeah. That's interesting, because they always say, like, you know, proof that would like you had to get shot somewhere. Where would it be? And people have said like, oh, the. But. That's like I guess it just feels like maybe hurt less, but also I guess if you're bleeding, you're holding a lot. I also like I imagine I am not a scientist, in case you do not know, but I imagine gravity.

Why is it so low on your body? All the blood might. Well, I imagine at that point you're on the floor. OK, well, I don't know that, but I don't know anything. I'm just trying to think with my, like, third grade. I think if you get shot anywhere, there's a chance you'll probably you might die.

I think I guess you just assume it would hurt less. And also, there's no real vital. I think there's just. Yeah.

And I think there's just an idea that it's like cushioned right now. That doesn't mean you're not going to bleed there. So anyway, he got shot in the butt, nearly bled to death. He said that innocent incident caused him to lose trust in people. And it was something that would come up with, like psychological experts later that he said, like, that was the point where I didn't trust people anymore. Weird.

That's interesting, because people could look back at and be like, I sensed it before then. Yeah. Like, really, that was like I'm well, it's like the time you said, is that girl's hair on fire? They're like, that's the thing. Yeah, I OK.

So after his recovery, he lived in forcefield, his brother's home, then moved to live in an abandoned pet store for a while.

Some bullshit we were doing. Yeah, totally. Just seems fun until you hear the details, until you find out that there was one snake left abandoned and you're alone in the room with them and your butt is still recovering.

So not only likes bites, how we can't write this shit, man, it's it just writes itself. So Thomas bounced around jobs in his 20s, eventually landed a job driving a truck for a soft drink distributor. In 1994, while unroot as a truck driver, he met his future wife, Jewel Hicks, who said they met when I was bending over watering plants.

And I guess he liked what he saw. Oh, his a butt thing, I guess. Well, his got injured, so he's got a compensating in some way, looking at others.

Yeah, they began the relationship. Thomas was sort of a father figure to Joule son Jerrel, and then they also had a child of their own. According to Joel, Thomas was meticulously neat.

She said he would habitually clean their apartment, would throw things away that were just like not in a proper spot. There were.

I like it here in the garbage bin. Yeah, I like it over there. Your Etch a Sketch is on the kitchen table. Goodbye. I like it better in the dumpster.

Actually, the relationship was tumultuous. Joel said he was really overprotective and jealous. He got violent any time she had like an interaction with other men. She said he had an insatiable sex drive and would get mad if she didn't give it to him.

So, yeah, so we can we can guess what probably happened. And also, his name is the East Coast Rapist. Right. OK, in retrospect, Thomas's DNA first appeared at a crime scene in the same patch of woods across from that pet store. So that's where it kind of began.

I see at least the trail that we have. So February 19th, 1997, a 25 year old woman reported being attacked at 45 a.m. A man had approached her on a ten speed bicycle, started a conversation, then forced her into the woods with what appeared to be a gun. And this is the first time Thomas's DNA appeared at a crime scene.

What do they mean by what appears to be a gun link was up through cameras or testimony or she just said, like, I think it was a gun, but it could have been like it could have been his own hand fake or like put in a sleeve or something. Like it's yeah, it's unclear if it was a gun. And later we actually get into that where he pretends to have a gun. So it could have just been a fake or who knows what or he just said he had a gun.

So this was the first time his DNA appeared at a crime scene.

But he later admitted that three rapes had already happened before that, that we just don't know about and he doesn't know about. So it's like, OK, are just lost, I guess.

Seven months later, a woman was raped behind a restaurant garbage bin like a dumpster in Maryland. And the following year, six year old girl is raped in Maryland.

And Jewel now is looking back and basically says what she thinks happened is on some nights where she wouldn't give it to him, quote unquote, when he stormed off.

Yep. And if she defended him off, which I'm like, so she probably just has like the worst guilt in the world. That must be a horrible feeling. I said, yes, he wasn't like her.

It's so much not obviously not her fault, but like not her immediate reaction of like, oh, the times when I said no, like, then he would go off and oh, I mean, I can understand immediately why guilt formed in her mind, but it does not need to be.

I mean, I don't know if guilt formed in Iran, to be clear. Like I'm just saying, this is what she said.

Gosh, I can see why it would if it would make sense. It would make sense. Yeah.

I just want to, like, put words in her mouth. But so she said if she fended him off, I mean, yikes, OK, he would get up and leave the house sometimes for hours.

So with all this pent up aggression, because the rejection that he would take allegedly take it out on innocent female strangers, again, obviously not her fault.

It's just like a horrible correlation to make, you know.

Later, he began attacking women in Virginia, then return to Maryland in 2001, and that's where he raped two victims in the same attack, he later commented how every attack blurred into one. He said, I did so much I can't remember. It's the same thing over and over again, which is why he doesn't have details for a lot of them.

Also, I don't remember hearing about this. I was going to ask I, I was like, not so I. I guess I wouldn't know about that. I'll ask my mom and see what she I know she may know about it.

It was pretty long standing case.

In May 2001, he attacked a Leesburg woman in her empty apartment as she was moving out, threatening her with a screwdriver and disappearing with all of her clothes.

The apartment was nearly vacant. She had just sent her 14 year old son to his taekwondo lesson before Thomas grabbed her from behind. He raped her, then took her clothes and cell phone. And she didn't have everything was packed up. Her apartment was empty. So she had wrapping Christmas wrapping paper and had to, like, wrap herself in that and leave and try to find help. I was like, really fucking horrid, like demeaning and demeaning.

Yeah. It's just like really during this time, the police didn't know that Thomas was the perpetrator of these attacks. So it became known as the East Coast Rapist because of the M.O.. Sure, attacks were always on. Women occurred at night near major highways. He initially started off in Maryland, moved to Virginia, then Connecticut, Rhode Island and back to Virginia.

So East Coast Rapist, he would study his victims and knew and they were most vulnerable, which might have been like when they were home alone, like she sent her son away or when they failed to lock windows or doors. So weeks after the Leesburg attack in June 2001, Thomas was charged in an incident in which he smashed Jewel into a bathroom window.

He was apparently provoked because he went through her phone and saw she was texting a male friend. And a police report outlines that Jewel wasn't injured and Thomas was given a suspended jail sentence and told the police he did not grab her.

We were just wrestling.

OK, right. Got it. Sure.

Despite this, Thomas Jewell tried to work the relationship out.

And according to Jewell, he would often say mysterious, ominous things like, you name it, I've done it. You don't want to know what I've done or you wouldn't want to be with me. Look, and she always was like I thought maybe he was hiding something.

But like, obviously, if someone said, I don't want to tell you or else you believe me, I'd be like, OK, well, then I'm going to leave.

You don't need to tell me. I'm just going to leave you. You're that confident I would leave that I don't need any information about.

And again, I'm not saying she did anything I would say I would have. It's just such an ominous statement. And obviously he was extremely abusive. So that comes with its own like.

Right. I'm sure it was not easy. I can leave when I'm right. Right.

But it is such like a like I don't want to know, but like, bye I guess. Yikes.

On Thanksgiving 2003, Jewel and Thomas went to go visit Thomas's parents in Clark County, Virginia, where they retired. Big Don pulled his son aside and told him to take care of his mother and gave him a set of keys to the house, which was strange because they barely spoke and begged on, implored him to make more friends and take care of himself.

Oh, big dogs get nervous. Well, February 4th, he went into the garage, gone to the passenger seat of his Chevy Impala, started the engine.

And nearby, like clips of oh, I see, OK, like he died by suicide car, monoxide poisoning. I see.

Um. I tried to make that very like, sure it didn't work, sorry. I know it wasn't you is because his name is Big Don, so I still am thinking like mafia stuff. And you, like, he got in his car, turn it on.

And then I thought, like, it exploded, like, you know, he the godfather quietly died by suicide. Got it. And that is seemingly why he was like, take care of your mother here, like saying his goodbyes and last wishes and all that.

Yeah. So that was obviously not a great moment in time.

Couldn't possibly helped know his mental state.

Exactly. So it seemed like between 2001 and 2006, the East Coast Rapist kind of disappeared.

But what maybe happened was like the the bathroom thing.

That he was charged with, like throwing his girlfriend bathroom, like maybe wrestling, they were wrestling.

Yeah, maybe that and obviously his father's suicide, like maybe that's why he kind of laid low for a while. Sure. And after this, his and Jill's relationship fell apart. I think we all saw that coming.

So while truck driving for Yale New Haven Hospital in some places to work there. In fact, in summer of 2000.

And they used to also that's.

Did you know that that's why there is like a Yale police force, because back in the day, the medical school would dig up bodies. And use them for none of that, you know, medical experiments. Speaking of which, fun fact, fun fact is full of.

Yeah, fun adjacent history. Yeah.

Fun like on a brand, I guess.

So while he was driving for the hospital in summer of 2004, he met Dorothy Golding and she thought he was weird, but nice. She said he would send me flowers with fish in the vaisse at work and that sounds like a cool gift.

And then she said, and nobody ever did that. I'm like, well, yeah, no, but literally nobody ever did that.

Were the fishlike able to be around those flowers?

I think it I think it was just totally weird. Like, I think it was just a fishbowl.

And then you put flowers in it. I don't know.

Oh, it seems like it's a creative prison of like here's two things at once. But also I'm like on the enjoying the food. Yes, certainly it's not. I'm certain it's probably not. I'm sure it has to be because otherwise so many other people would do that. And also I think like don't again, don't give pets to people that aren't expecting a pet.

That's right. Like no one. I mean, rule number one is don't put your dog in a posthole full of water, I guess. But also maybe, like don't just like, give away. Number two is the flowers one. Rule number two.

So they dated for a while, he and Dorothy, but their relationship became strained. They would fight a lot and he would often sleep on the back porch was like an enclosed back porch. He would sometimes leave.

She said it was mostly at night. I would go to bed and he would go. He'd be gone for an hour or two and he would come back. He would come back and say he was tired and hungry. So it's like we now know what he was doing, but it's like right hikes.

The next time.

The police suspected activity of the East Coast Rapist was in 2006 in New England when he was spotted peeping on a girl in Rhode Island while she was doing her homework and she screamed and scared him off. In January of 2007, he broke into an apartment when he saw a young mother alone with her baby in a first floor apartment.

She awoke at one a.m. to find a man in her bedroom. I mean, this is just like worst fears realized to find a man in her bedroom.

He threatened to kill her 11 month old son before placing a pillowcase over her head and raping her.

Oh.

Then afterwards, he told her off for leaving her windows unlocked with a baby inside basically was like, how could you.

Yeah, exactly. Great. Like, shamed her for leaving a window unlocked.

So sometime after that attack, weirdly enough, he visited his mother in Virginia and told her to please make sure the windows were locked because like, he's clearly projecting of like somebody could hurt you.

Yeah, I do that to people.

And to test, he tested it. So he appeared in an upstairs room after going outside, having climbed up and entered through an unlocked his own mom's house. Yeah. Second story window.

And she said, I went upstairs and he was upstairs.

I learned my lesson so easily. Imagine if you weren't his mom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Random person. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's frightening.

In the fact that he climbed through a second story window, freaked me out. Like to no end. That freaks me out because, you know, I think.

I mean I don't. Necessarily, think about that. I'm like, oh, we're high up enough in an apartment or whatever to. Right. I and I also like I mean, I get nervous about that. Luckily, like, the place I live right now is OK. Yeah. But I mean, I've lived in some like. Other checkered spaces where I was like very I should have been more nervous. Luckily, I was like younger and more like kind of like blissfully ignorant to that stuff.

But if I were an adult now and lived in, like, some of the, like, area higher crime rate in the country.

Well, I also like just in college, like, we just lived on like a super busy street, like we live full of drunk with a full drunk college students. There was like like a big, like, theft rate in our area. I mean, it was like I should have been so much more careful. I didn't call it you're just like whatever. And we were all we were only on the second floor, like like anyone could just like if you have upper body strength, maybe that's why I don't think about it, because I'm I'm like, well, I couldn't if I wanted to.

You're like you climbed up. What. Yeah. But like if you have enough upper body strength I guess you can get anywhere. I can't even climb up the you will die alone monkey. I can't walk up the fucking stairs Christine.

I don't, I don't know how people do it anyway, so to tell. So he tested his mom and appeared upstairs in front of her and was like, you need to lock your windows.

And the one the woman he had attacked said, I don't think he's going to stop. He's he sees he's getting away with it. And that gives him the confidence to keep going. I think there's a sickness and he can't control was almost even bragging to his mom, like, look what I was capable of. Like, I tested you and you failed.

Yeah. Yeah. In October 2009, Thomas and Dorothy's relationship went sour.

So he returned to Northern Virginia to visit family and helped Jewell move out of her apartment in Arlington. They weren't back together, but he just went to help her move. So Jewell had participated in the U.S. peacekeeping mission in Kosovo in 2006 and 2007 as a member of the Army National Guard.

So she had some military memorabilia scattered around and she had this replica nine millimeter handgun with a chrome plated barrel and black grip. And it was a fake. She had about four ten euro while shopping in Pristina and it looked real.

But when you pulled the trigger, it was a lighter. So that's why I kind of earlier when I was like what appeared to be a gun, I seem like I see, I see, I think that's what was happening. Gotcha. Because on Halloween 2009, Aaron Thomas grabbed the lighter gun and jumped in Jules Chrysler sedan, and he did bar her car regularly. So she wasn't like, you know, alarmed.

Yeah, it wasn't shady. Yeah.

So she assumed that he was just going to go run some errands and he headed to he said he headed to Prince William to buy a shirt at a store he knew from living in Woodbridge.

I mean I'm like just saying these names. I don't I know you know what they are, I don't know. But some of you might.

As he drove near his old house, he spotted three teenage girls walking with bags of candy.

Again, this is Halloween night. So that's kind of why it's slightly Halloween 2009.

I pulled in and parked is what he said. He stopped at a CBS parking lot, grabbed his lighter gun, cinched the hood of his black coat over his face, stepped out into the rain.

And he claimed there wasn't really planning. He just kind of pulled out the lighter like it was a gun and asked the teenagers if they had money.

When they said no, he led them down a steep slope into the woods, ordered them to line up, drop their bags of candy and told them to lie down in the wet leaves. He raped two of the girls to 17 year olds.

But luckily, the 16 year old had her phone and was able to secretly text her mom. And the message said, man, raping my friend in the woods behind CVS, call 911 one.

And so, like, can you imagine being a parent and, like, receiving that text message?

Also think can you imagine the guilt if you were a parent who was like your phone was on your phone off or something like talk about parents? I can't really like praying that someone actually reads the text. Right, exactly.

And especially on Halloween, like, who knows what you're doing or like handing out candy or whatever. Yikes. So they call the police. Obviously, she gets this text. Police swarm the area and as soon as he heard them, he ran. He tossed the gun lighter aside and went back to the parking lot. Then he said he just calmly walked up to the car and got in. He said police were right beside me. Like I said, he's fucking proud of it.

He said, I just got in the car and backed out and then he drove back to Jill's apartment and fell asleep.

So hang on. So the cops so at one point he the cops and those girls were all in the same space.

And so they were in the woods like he told CBS. Then when he heard the sirens, he like, well, started by that. And then he went back to the parking lot as if he had just done some CVS's shopping. Right. And they were all going into the woods. So it's like God's got close call. Right.

OK, so after this, he became really paranoid.

And in the meantime, Jewell noticed that her lighter was missing because he clearly didn't want to get caught with it. He said he had hit in the woods and at the time the rapes didn't receive much publicity. And so she was unaware of the crimes and later said, I just wanted my later shoes. I didn't even know. You know so well all this is happening. The Halloween rape started to draw more attention. They put up a billboard with sketches of the attacker.

Originally, he was on a list of suspects, but then was eliminated from consideration, which is like, yikes, how does that happen?

And shortly after the billboards went up, police got a startling tip from Maryland. A caller saying said Thomas had taken credit for the first attack in 1997 when he described how he had escaped on a bicycle, which was like the one across the street from the pet store back then.

So meanwhile, in New Haven, he was facing a different court hearing because he had stolen an expensive bicycle.

So bicycle.

FUSARO OK, so then police and U.S. Marshals basically sort of like to observe him just to see, like, what he was up to.

They noted his paranoia and how he was taking odd routes to and from home and was constantly watching his back. And they're like, this guy's up to something. Right? And during a break in his court hearing, when he tossed aside a Newport cigarette, but police collected it, sent him back to the crime lab, it was interesting.

Serial rapist was found a similar way, like a yard of trash. So it's like, huh? They send it to the lab.

The DNA match was a match to the East Coast Rapist attack. So they were like, well, we got him.

Like, this is like all of them at one suddenly point to the same person. He was too careless.

He had left his DNA at 13 different attack locations, according to police. So they were able to basically tie him to all of them. On March 3rd, 2011, he made a series of unusual phone calls to family members.

He said he was facing trouble, but he kept referring to the bicycle charge like the stolen bicycle, to kind of feel like I'm talking about that.

But it was like, no, he's trying about something worse.

So the next day, as 41 year old Aaron Thomas stepped off a bus near his house, law enforcement swarmed in. He knew what was going on and asked, what took you so long? Oh, boy. Yikes. Police have said in court that Thomas confessed to the rapes almost immediately. I don't think he was trying to hide it.

He then began to make fleeting references about an alter ego he called Erwin O.

Which he said was a dark being inside of him that Thomas likened to the devil. He even drew a picture of Irwin with horns and a little tail next to himself Aaron. He eventually admitted that he was attempting to fake a split personality, quote unquote.

Oh, my God. It was like a quote unquote insanity attempt or whatever, you know, and it didn't work, obviously. And then he's like, Irwin is just a name I gave to my problem.

So it's like, yikes, wow. But also, like, maybe everyone should just have a name for their for their problems. Just feel like, oh, sorry, that wasn't me.

That was like or maybe we shouldn't because maybe we should take, you know, take responsibility for when we hurt people and dogs.

True.

I'm thinking more about like when I want to take a depression nap and then like buy 100 dollars worth of like oh well for talking that kind of darkness, you're like, oh God, you know, George doesn't want me to like, go check my mail, just wants me to like, go take a nap.

I'm going to go, it's like Aunt Flo but it's like Uncle George is here like Uncle George is in town. Walt is here, Uncle Wolf is in town. I just want I just want to binge like a dozen donuts. You get to watch stranger things like I don't understand you. No, I don't.

Georges, that's exactly where we'll learn.

See, that's why I mean, Thomas met with a psychiatrist for months as his defense attorneys prepared for an insanity defense. Basically, they were trying to argue he didn't know right from wrong, but like that pretty much didn't work. It seemed Thomas had always known right from wrong. And he referred to his victims as objects. He said whoever came down the street and object, it's awful. It's scary. It's something not right because people are getting hurt.

I don't know why it's shocking. And like I like and I it's already all disturbing. Why would that be? It's just an added layer of rising inhumanity, you know, it's awful. So although the women obviously remember their attacks in vivid and horrifying detail, Thomas doesn't even remember their faces. He has a muddled sense of the events and says there was no thinking involved in any of it.

They all blur together. Do you think is that do you think that's real or do you think that's something I don't even remember? Like, I can do that?

Well, he said he pleaded guilty right away. All right. I don't know. I just I'm just thinking, like, what's he already said he did them, but.

All right, I don't know if he was already being like if he was trying to act too cool. I mean, it does seem like he was very, like, intentional about it.

Like, a lot of them are just kinds of opportunity. Like, he would just be right.

Oh, I saw girls walking down the street, you know, it wasn't like I picked them. Right, right. Right.

So he just kind of said they all blurred together and he called them object. So I'm like you. I didn't even see them as humans, you know, as people. That's a good point. He said in interviews there were at least a few attacks that predate the police timeline.

So ones that we'll never know. The first one, Thomas said, was on a summer night in the early nineties.

He was in his early 20s, had hit rock bottom.

There was a fire that pushed a pet store out of business. And so he ended up living in there. Some cages and fish tanks were still in there and he barricaded a room for himself and what he called the bird house.

He said he was sitting in the building doing nothing.

And this is how he described leading up to his first rape. He got an urge and his heart started to race.

He walked outside, quote, It was like, bam, who cares? So he just was like, one day I decided that I'm going to do this thing.

It's Wild's. It is Jesus.

Investigators say there are twelve attacks with seventeen victims, including fourteen sexual assaults, two abductions where victims escaped or were not assaulted, and one Peping offense. The majority of the victims were black women and the age range spanned from eleven to forty six.

Wow, Tawakkol 11.

Yeah, I think that might have been the Peping incident, OK, because she was a child, but like, yikes, not all of it, Thomas, because, I mean, those teen teenagers were minors.

So Thomas pleaded guilty to three counts of first degree rape in Prince George's County for attacking three women between 1997 and 2001. And after being captured in 2011, he is serving three life terms plus 80 years for abducting the three teenage girls, raping two of them.

In March 2013, he was indicted on a total of 54 charges in the county, including theft, kidnapping and false imprisonment.

What's the horrifying story of the East Coast Rapist? Sorry about that.

Wow, all that. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And what years were those again? It was until 20.

He was the the attack was October 31st, 2009.

Wow. Oh, my gosh. So I was in D.C. at that point. Hmm. Weird.

Yikes. All of the aska around Virginia. I don't know why I don't remember. You would think like so much like a crucial story. A lot of people haven't heard of it.

It was hard. It was really hard to find information. So like Herrod, I know. Well, there's just a lot of bad people out there who got a lot of press, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, maybe it's for the best that we didn't glorify it. I'm just surprised that you would think it like it would be, especially being from the area. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, happy November. Happy Halloween. You know what?

Now you know what happens after this episode.

You know, Thanksgiving is and we can sing the Turkey song. As I say, it has its own song. I know.

I wanted to do the official bridge and meld them. I see. So now we're out. Now we're just giving. Thanks. OK, got it. Got it. Got to do things like Linda Belcher.

Yeah. To only Linda Belcher. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for listening Lammert. I thought you were going.

I didn't hear the word merchandized. Thanks for listening. Bye also. Bye. I do have to pee really bad so.

OK, thank you so much, Finisar Sotos, our website. So that's why I drink. You can get everything there and happy November and go listen to our listeners episode that came out today as well. And that's why we drink. Yeah gappy.

OK, so welcome, Nick, while I'm sitting here with him and I am a Virgin podcast, so while I'm in your hands, I think you've got a lot of experience at this.

But welcome to All Things Vanderpump and welcome to Villarosa.

I am excited to be here. It's everything I'm excited to have. It's really so far you have not disappointed. Oh, OK.

Well, I'm excited to continue to satisfy you. So unfortunately, you couldn't be here because you've got allergies, Joe, is that right? I have.

I would have been love sitting on your porch with a glass of rosé, a glass of wine. My voice is a nice Roman rum and coke.

I could facilitate that as well. You know, we'll start with a cup of tea would end with a rum and coke. Well, here I have got a smorgasbord of things to be allergic to. So if it's not the flowers and the lavender and the grass and the birds, I've got no, I'm not. No, cos you I'm saying if you've got allergies, I've got horses, turtles, swans, six dogs that may be your knight may be sneezing and spluttering.

You are a fish. You are officially taught to do tickle. You know I am a bit eccentric. A lot of people say batshit crazy but I'm going with eccentric. So I was like bickie like you.

That's people live. I don't know why you're judging people that like you're no angel, like this crap you do on the show. I was crazy. Like you've peed on the bed you were with. She peed on the bed.

She's peed whenever she wanted to be on the bed in the scene. Vicky She was laughing. Pete all over the Tamar's hotel bed.

What on purpose? You know, I don't know. But I'm sure we've all been somewhere where we shouldn't be laughing hysterically right now.

So it was kind of a good way. A yes, it's learning to manipulate them with it when they're very young. With the glove puppet, it became part of the family. Hey, listen, I was a crazy mother. I'm a crazy woman.