One, two or three watch, that was the best one we've ever done. Seriously. Hello and welcome and welcome to my mother. I was harmonizing with you, oh, OK.

The professional podcast for Professional People in the Professional World starring George Stark.

Yeah, man, when I was a kid, I thought I'd be walking around in a fuckin ladies suit with fucking shoulder pads and a briefcase being like a professional working woman. That was like a dream.

Did you have white Reebok high tops on to walk to work in with my pumps in my bag?

Hell yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I just watched Working Girl one too many times. I mean it's a great film. That is a great film. Nine to five. Again, Sigourney Weaver just hitting threes all through the 80s. You can't. Everything she did is three good.

You want to five or ten. Well hitting threes is basketball. Oh got it. Got it. Got it. That's why you did the layup movement. That's right. I was, I was throwing out for love. Got it outside outside lane. I don't actually follow basketball, I respect it. Should we start over.

But no but you should introduce me. I introduced you. Oh you did. Oh that's Karen Kilgariff. I didn't know you did.

Oh thank you. The basketball genius. Huge basketball nerd over here. I did see. And you did too. James Harden, who's from the Houston Rockets. Remember the guy? He had a beard. And we saw him at the Daily Grill in the bar.

And yeah, it was like three, two years in Burbank. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

In the weirdest place in the the least celebrity. Yeah.

It's next to the Burbank Airport, which is just like a commuter commuter central and then like the middle of the day in a fucking daily grill which is like weird and awkward.

Yeah. He had a great outfit on though. Yeah. I mean it was cool and that's when I, that was one. I like to do the thing where I'm not a fan of celebrities or stars or athletes or whatever until I see them in real life and then I begin to follow their careers, then I'm like, well, you came into my life for now.

What about yours? Now I care about you because we're friends, because we've seen each other in real life. I got that. Yeah, that's that's right.

Thank you so much. Yeah. What's going on with you?

Um, let's see. Well, the family came down to escape LA to talk about this, to escape the all the smoke in Northern California. Yeah. So that was actually nice because I had real people in my house and, you know, interaction and like eye contact and all those things that like give you a what either dopamine heads or serotonin, uh, pumps or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Dopamine. That was nice. Yeah. Eye to eye contact. There's no there's no substitution for it. Yeah.

I mean I like you do with dogs but there's, you know, they're just using you for food. They're like, wait, are you going to, are you about to feed me.

Is that we were staring at me and I always love it when my dad comes down because we fight really loud because he's hard of hearing.

So it always makes it sound like we're really mad at each other. But it's just that you're trying to get like a simple point across as loudly as you can.

You know that my dad came over, so we hung out with you and your family and your dad because your dad loves my husband. Yes. And so deeply in love. I saw my dad on Sunday and and I told him that what we did and I was like, is Karen's dad, you know, loves Vince and loves talking to it, dude. And and my dad goes, well, I like him for other reasons, like he got jealous.

It's like, well, I love Vince to work. Oh, Marty. Sorry, Marty.

Is that Jim's relationship with Vince? I'm not just using Vince for guys stuff.

I like him as a person. He's my he's my actual son in law. So, yeah, I love him much closer. Much closer. Right. Um, and then my dad pup pops up from behind a bush and tries to punch Marty in the face. What if he's like talks about sports and stuff? Because my dad can't really do that. Sorry, Dad. All right.

My dad wants to stay sexy mask, by the way. Oh, he should have won one of our state ski masks, which, by the way. My God, this is a good Segway, right? Yeah, it is it. Yeah. You've really nailed this one. He's even I didn't see it coming and I knew it was coming. But it's all true, though. I'm not making it up. So we have masks now, face masks that say stay sexy on them.

And one hundred percent of the proceeds are going to Feeding America, Doug, to help feed hungry people in America. And they came out last week. We announced it.

And you guys have already raised fifteen thousand frerking.

I thought that was a typo when I saw fifteen thousand dollars for feeding. America, dawg, yes, what amazing, beautiful thing. Thank you guys so much. Good job. Good job. Good job, everybody. You can still go to the merch store at my hip murder dotcom and get yourself one.

And while you're there, er well the other announcement we wanted to make is so everyone knows that we can't, we have those logo pins that are little enamel pins with our logo on them and we use those, you can buy them and they go, the money goes toward different charities that we choose. And this last one we put up for the black emotional and mental health collective. It's called Beahm. And for this logo pin fundraiser, you guys raised twenty thousand dollars for Beahm.

So amazing. Yep, we sent that off. Thank you so much for everybody that supported that one. I mean you guys are.

Thank you so much for using your money for such awesome stuff like this because you're really, you're really doing stuff totally.

It's very cool. And then we also have a new shirt design that is so cool. Karen, like you kind of you were the leader on this design and you love it.

Well, yes, I love it. I love the design of it. But then the message is so timely.

It is like when I tell the kids I was showing my sister, she's like, oh, that's good. Yeah, I was like, yeah.

So it's this is terrible. Keep going. Yeah. Which is a thing we say about the murder. This is terrible. Keep going. But it's also about this time we're in. This is fucking terrible but keep going and it's just a really cool design. I love it. They're up for preorder now. So if you want one, go on. My favorite murder, dotcom, go to the store and they'll ship in three weeks. Yeah, well, let's.

Have you been watching anything lately?

Well, I watch you know, the vow is my. Oh my God. Obsession, obsession. What a great day. I'm angry that I can't binge it. Every time it ends, I get mad.

It's so frustrating. But it's so incredible that one of the people that it happened to was also a filmmaker and a documentary, Motoki, because I was sitting there going, are they doing reenactments? What is this?

And he had real time all conversation crazy was having.

If you don't know, we're talking about the vow on HBO and it's about the Nexium cult, the like that turned into this sex cult. And this whole time, this documentary filmmaker, the guy who made What the Bleep Do We Know, which I totally forgot about, too. That was like the sensation was there as they are figuring out it's a cult. And so it's all documented. His wife. It's so amazing.

And it's cool because when she's first starts talking about it, it's like she you know, this is kind of taking over our life. And part of like I think we talked about this last time. But you get it because part of what this whole program is, it starts out as like if you're a business person that wants to get better results in your business or whatever. And then but then it's like but then you have to free yourself up in these ways and you see how it's it's such a slow and very like, impactful lead in where it's like.

But you're bettering yourself as a person, challenging yourself, and you're you're doing something that no one's ever done before.

This is a radical. And of course, your family is not interested in it because they're still stuck in their ego. And and then I get it to work. It's like you've spent two years and thousands of dollars in this program and they tell and you're expecting something and then they say, well, it's going to be another year. You're not just going to quit it. You're going to you've already invested so much.

You just keep going and going and suddenly and also you're not going to quit it because they tell you the reason you want to quit it is because you have these negative impulses that you need to control and you need to stop wanting to be comfortable all the time. Like the things that they start setting up are these things that are basically making there. There's no exit. There's no exit because of you exit. That is actually you're playing right into the storyline.

Here's how you're a failure.

And then the sleep deprivation part, which is part of a cult where you're like, what? What do they mean?

You're just running around and it's like, no, you need to be a busy functioning person. So you only sleep from 11:00 p.m. to five.

And like you're saying, that's like six hours. Most people are fine with that.

But I think it's shorter because there's that one night where it was like the first midnight volleyball.

Any time he has a conversation with someone, they go walking around at one thirty in the morning and she the wife that leaves first, looks it up and looks up what mind control. And it's just step after step of exactly how mind control work. Totally.

It's just like it's so fascinating the way he tries to mark when he called. I mean, these are all spoilers. I guess we should have said at the beginning. I think we're we're known for a cult.

These are all it's it's just the fact that you can hear the rationalization on the phone so you actually know how this happens. Real. Time, why it's so believable, why people can't process it, because it's like, no, it's this guy, my good friend, not friends with anybody, really isn't right. And he's this brilliant person who's been able to figure stuff out. And he's an incredible speaker. He's an incredible he's very convincing. The leader.

The cult leader. Right.

Although I have to say, if you weren't told multiple times, as they seem to be in this group, that he had the highest IQ in the world. Right. I don't know if he's the most compelling speaker I've ever seen. I don't know if there's a lot of there there a lot of circles, a lot of circle, the glaze of like.

But he's the smartest person in the world. People fuck and they love IQ shit. And then they want those people to like them and think they're smart.

Right. Because then that must that's such a validation. We're just like, yeah, but what if he's lying about the smartest person or when he sat down and one he's like, oh, I used to be this concert pianist as a child and a savant and all that. He sits down and starts playing like basically a super slow down version of heart and soul or is just like I used to play this on the piano when I was in your high, like, first chair level fucking piano.

And he looks like John Tesh and is fucking if he didn't have that hair, that beautiful manly mane, do you think? I don't know. It's like something about it. He gets away with a lot more. He gets away with so much. What his volleyball outfit is low.

My man, I don't ever want to see a guy outside of the house in fucking sports shorts. No nylon sport shorts. No, he he wore his knee pads around, like before the game. I mean, there's some nerd stuff happened. Absolutely.

I am so grateful that there's so much visual. There's so much like actual footage because like videos they make that are like to show people who are thinking about coming in the like Joyce running through the field.

It's so cold.

I love it. Yes. And there's so many actor types in there. There's that actor energy that reminds me of every fucking acting class I've ever taken and hated where I'm like, yeah, I wanted to learn how to act. I'm not here to like, I can't even explain it. It's kind of like a cute contest. My God, it's joined the club, the acting thing where you almost feel like you you are.

You have to join, join us, be one of us. Yeah, you can't be a cynical fucking asshole. No, you can't be like an arms crossed. I'm not I'm not sure about this thing is like surrender or whatever, which is like that's fine to a point.

But if you're not into, like, working with groups, which I'm fucking not, leave me alone.

Yeah. You're not going to you're not you're not going to like this cult Nexium.

You're not supposed to you're not going to want to join this go.

Oh, I have a correction ish correction from last week. So OK, so remember I was talking about fight flight for fucking freeze freeze or fun and I was saying how I thought a lot and I was talking a lot of shit on it because I like to talk shit on myself and I'm and I you know, I can't I can't possibly be nice to myself and gentle.

So this person named Graty Marshmallow wrote and said to me, I want to offer a gentle challenge to the description of the PTSD forn response in this episode. Well, finding can definitely include flattery and disingenuous behavior that can damage relationships. It's a lot more than that. People who find due to PTSD learn to constantly or learn to consistently put others needs ahead of their own, often to dangerous effect. Finding can look like having sex when you don't want to and going to extreme lengths to please and rejecting or cruel caregiver in order to secure safety or basic care for getting yourself and your needs entirely.

Because your brain has taught you that the only way to survive is to become what others want you to be. And there's the person who kind of created the fond response definition is Peter Walker. So I thought that was interesting.

Now, yes, other people do fawning differently, but like, it's not like you weren't. I'm not sure what the point is, actually.

The point was to give yourself a break so that you're that people who use all of these tools are using them because they worked during a time when they needed them. And a lot of us are still using those tools, even though we don't need them anymore. And we're adults. We're in different situations than we were as kids when we when we utilized those tools. And I just think a lot of it and like a lot of my therapy is not utilizing the unnecessary tools anymore.

And so, yeah, I liked that. I felt like it was correcting me in a way that was like giving myself a little more kindness, that you're not an asshole. You're not you know, I'm not being manipulative by telling you your hair looks good.

What I'm doing is old, old, old and old way to make my life and myself feel better. And that's OK. Sure.

But I think I also I don't think there's anything wrong with you looking at that behavior because, you know, as the person who received that behavior, it was was it it was the kind of thing where that's I knew that's what you were doing because we were about to have a difficult conversation. So, yeah, if that if that analysis makes you not do stuff like that anymore because you get to update yourself and know that you're now a 40 year old woman who is completely in charge of her own life, then good.

That's great. You know what I mean? Like, the analysis is going to whatever helps you do things less that make you feel bad is the point of all of it. And the thing my therapist always talks about is how those voices inside of us, the coping mechanism, voices and the critics and the the ones that are trying to keep us safe by saying, shut up, sit down. You don't know what you're talking about. They don't know.

Time has passed. They have no concept of time. So when those feelings come up, they don't go. Yeah, this is from nineteen eighty three.

They're like they like I just talked to her, my therapist, about a thing that was similar, where I was about to go do something that was making me really nervous and really stressed. And I kept like making these excuses like oh it'll be fine, it won't work out and it'll be fine. And then she was like the voice that's telling you that is trying to keep you safe and free from disappointment. And you're tired of being disappointed. Yeah.

So that's that's that's protective. But but what that voice doesn't understand is you're not going you're not leaving your house and going back to nineteen ninety five. Right. You're and they don't understand that because time is not a part of the thinking night.

And also you're an adult now who can deal with disappointment in and you understand disappointments a part of life and it's not at the fucking end of the world like maybe was when you were younger.

Yeah. But those voices aren't aware of the other pieces of you that have grown and learned and changed.

So they just kind of like it's like it's like, you know, different ages of you running up to the mike and like, taking taking the spotlight and then. You're going, oh, I guess this is how it is, and then you have to train yourself to have then the modern version of you go, thank you for that warning. I know that you're trying to be nice and protect me. I'm all good. This will be new. This will be different.

This isn't the same. We don't just keep things aren't always exactly the same pattern over and over. You're living a brand new life and all these, you know, with all these different combinations. I just think that, like, sometimes I think people like to find a hole and go, here's what you're missing. And I didn't feel like you were missing anything in that conversation, you know? Yeah, I feel like I was like you going I felt like being analytical is not the same as being mean to yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. Being being able to go, that didn't make me feel good. That's why you felt like where you wanted to tell me that. Why did I do that. And that's because you're a human being. We all do weird shit when we feel threatened and when we feel like something might be taken away. Yeah. And like we will do it until the day we die because that's how people are set up. Right. And everyone does it.

It's not just you. And you know, it's really making me think of that is listening to again, this is actually happening where everybody thinks we're the ones that have had the horrible thing happen or lived through the, like, extreme thing. That's why I think I'm so obsessed with people telling their stories, like on that podcast or on radio rental where I listen to that and go, oh, whoa, I've no idea what like, that's so funny because I like listening to it because so they have, you know, the whole thing of like big traumas and little T trauma where it's like big teeth traumas is going to war.

It's having a parent get ill. It's, you know, sexual assault.

It's these events that are horrible and traumatic. And of course they are. And the little traumas are the people who say, well, my life wasn't that bad, you know, like the little things that you can't point at and be like that's see, that's why I'm trauma. I have trauma. It's the little things. And so I think for me, having little traumas and not feeling worthy of them, listening to big traumas and seeing that a lot of their reactions and a lot of the ways they cope with them are the same fucking way that people with little traumas do.

You know, like, I don't have a big trauma, but I'm fascinated with people who fucking survive big traumas. Absolutely. Now. And I would say that in our own individual lives that your T is your size.

It's not a it's a it's not a thing to compare to others because. Yes, that's true. There is a solace that we take in all banding together and going, have you been through shit? And you feel fucked up about it. Me too. And it's not about you know, it's like whose plane crash is the biggest. It doesn't it we don't have to do that to ourselves or each other. We can hear those stories and have that empathy to go.

I've been that place where whether it was because I got so many tickets that I knew I was my dad was going to kill me, that now that this isn't that's not an example of trauma. But I'm trying to think of like when I had problems in life that I was like, I'm done, this is it. Or say it. When I flunked out of college, yeah, I fucked up like seventeen things in a row. I kept pushing it to the side and not taking care of it.

And by the time the really bad thing happened, I was completely responsible for it, blamed myself for it and did the thing of and this is the least of most people's worries. So it's not even a big deal, which I think is very damaging. When you're going through shit, your shit is your shit. You can't it's not less because other people's is more.

It's it's what it is. Yeah. You know, totally. I guess that was my point not to dismiss. Obviously that person knows what they're talking about and just wanted to give like kindness, which is lovely. But then there's also that thing of like I don't know, it's good.

I think it's good to be like to clean up your clean up the things you don't like doing to chase those things and kind of go, yeah. And if I get into that moment again, do I have to go to that place?

Right. Right. Give yourself like a little bit of space to go.

No, I don't need to. No one's going to threaten me. I'm not there's not a truck rushing towards me or.

Yeah, you're safe. I'm safe. You're safe. Yes. I think you can handle it. I think is so much of therapy is like figuring it out, figuring out how you're safe now. Yeah. I think it's fascinating that parts of your brain don't understand time. I think that is like the key to so many.

I mean, time is a human construct. It's not like our brains were suddenly like twelve a.m. to 12:00 p.m. is now a day like our brains didn't adapt. I mean, they adapted. But that's not it's still not. Brain surgeons are like, can you shut up?

They don't know. No one knows anyone about the brain. That's what I learned when I got epilepsy. They're just like, sorry, unless we do brain surgery, we don't know what's wrong with you.

It's like, thanks, thanks. Because. We're worshipping you guys we talk about, oh, I'm not a brain surgeon, you guys don't know anything. And to prove it, we're going to give Stephen brain surgery right now on the podcast. Stephen. Take off your skull.

Take off your skull. Take off your skull.

That's our new segment. Second hand therapy. If it helps you, great. If you're confused, throw it all the way. That's right. That's what we did.

Take what you want out of it and swallow the rest. Wait, so I, I guess I asked you is in that fake conversational way so that I could tell you what I've been watching. Right.

Because that was a long conversation about the van. Now you go.

Oh, but which is to say, God, if we could only watch the entire video and then talk about it for seven hours because it is real good TV, HBO, go with the times we want to binge.

But it also makes me go when I watch those things, I get worried like I think you it is a miracle I didn't join a cult. It's a miracle.

There's only a couple early years, early adult years where Georgia kind of just later made into those searching kind of like I'm lost someone tell me. And luckily it was like, oh, well, just like the band this guy likes instead of full on, like I just signed up for the whole thing of taking classes you can't afford. And then after the classes like six weeks, then you have to take ten more classes like improv.

I just like the cult of improv.

I think have I think we're lucky that we have and had a pretty high, high level of skepticism and especially in men.

So like, you know, the men who would be the ones who would fucking indoctrinate you, where should I get away from me with your fucking goatee or whatever just to go to hoop earrings and a goatee and a nose ring to or like what?

But then then if we're going to say that, then let's think that inner critic that was so mean to us but was also mean to everybody else.

Thank you. Thank you for not trusting people. You were right. It turns out you were right not to trust me or him. Good job.

Good job. 17 year old Karen who thought you knew it all?

Turns out she did.

It turns out she just did a lot of damage along the way. It's like, sure, you went and locked the front door. Thank you. But on the way you shipped every while you knocked over every veis.

She was testing herself, you know, like you test your parents love, like you still love me. Now, do you still love me now? It's like you're doing that to yourself. Like do you still have a good life now? Do you still have a good life now.

Yeah. It's like, are you going to start loving me now. How about now. Could you love me. Did you forgive me?

Finally I stumbled upon a show and it was one of those ones where it started because the show I was bingeing ended. And so then it started and I was kind of not paying attention.

Yeah. And it's called Before a nurse.

It's shot in Oslo before in late Oslo. Oslo we played.

And it is I'll just tell you this. So there's no spoilers. It's modern day Oslo and there's an event one night all these lights go on in the ocean and then people from the Stone Age, the Viking era and the I guess early eighteen hundreds appear in the ocean here. And you're talking about the new bill. And Ted, I think you misread the label.

I thought I thought the new bill instead was called Be Foreigners and adventure in look it.

So they I'm sorry.

That was the so they all show up in the ocean, in the ocean and they get rescued out and then they're like these people were. So this one guy's a cop obviously in Oslo and he shows up and it's like they rescue these people out of the ocean and they're just for a Stone Age family that's like screaming and panicking and they don't know where they are. And then it cuts to three years later where this event has happened over and over again.

And all of modern day Oslo is filled with either Stone Age people, Vikings or like turn of the century. Eighteen hundreds of people were just kind of trying to live and adapt. It's cool. Fascinating. It's really good. And then a Viking woman goes to she basically shows up and then ends up going to school and becomes a police detective. So it's the it's the detective you meet in the beginning that's there for the first person. And then three years later, his new partner is this.

This actress is great. Is it a cartoon? It sounds like it should be a no.

It's I just kept I keep watching it and it's really funny. It's really well-written. OK, there's a scene in the second episode where the Viking woman detective finds her friend, who was a. Another female Viking, and they get the friend dosis her own with mushrooms and they walk around the city like tripping out and screaming, and they come upon a church and they start they start screaming at what they call white Jesus. They go, there he is again, white Jesus.

And they start saying, like, where she'll wear the shields, women of Odin.

And we lasted longer than you are yelling it. It's and it's also for HBO Europe. So it's like an HBO series, but produced over there. It's great. It's great. I love it. That sounds awesome. In a similar like theme, the the show action or the movie the documentary Action Park, it's not at all like that. I am dying for you to watch it. It's this fucking it's this like it's a documentary about this like nineteen eighties home fucking spun New Jersey water park where people just died all not in terribly injured.

And you guys, especially the younger people and always like it was. So no one gave a shit about children in the 70s and 80s. Yeah. Please watch Action Park because it just it's exactly it's exactly what life was you went and you might get hurt or maimed because some adult did a thing poorly.

It's your own fault band. You were telling me about it the other night and my mind was blown because I've always heard people, friends of mine, who grew up in New York and New Jersey, who know about who would tell me about Action Park. But I assumed it was just a real theme park that had a couple bad rides.

The whole thing was built by a guy who was not qualified, not and now he wasn't an engineer.

The people who came up with the ideas and built them weren't engineers. The people who manned the rides were these like stoner, 15, 16 year old high school kids, you know, super super of the era. It's it's pretty.

I mean, but but I shouldn't be laughing because kids died, right? Did they die? I think so.

I didn't get to that part yet, but yes. Is it a series or a one off? It's a series. I mean, it's it's a one off. OK, I think it's on OK. It's great to watch it. Yeah, that's amazing. Like, that's you know, I always do like, you know, deaths at Disneyland or deaths at Lion Country Safari like this is this is right for that. I don't know how I never found it, but it's that's perfect.

Yeah. It's so that's. Yeah, I couldn't believe it because it kind of made me think of in Big Bear in the summer they let people. Have you ever seen those. They're like cement like it almost is like what you would have at a water park but they're. What am I trying to say. Trail's going down a slide but it's made of cement and you go down sitting on this thing, it has a break, but it kind of doesn't work that well.

And that's like a that's like a right in Big Bear that you can do during the summer when there's no snow. That's basically just like and so in the winter, just waiting to happen. It's it's like it's not a good idea. No. It's just like, hey, if you can't do tubing. Yeah. Because it's summertime, you shut down. Yeah. That's not it's not a solution.

I mean it makes sense. It's a better solution than just leaving open.

Um, thing else I think we're good to go.

Should we start it off. Yeah. Who's first this week. You. This one kind of ties in to something we were talking about last week and we can talk about or we can file this under another insane story that I had never heard of. Somehow you have this is the ayahuasca murders. No. Yes. Are you on ayahuasca right now? I just wanted to ask because I know that you're now an ayahuasca addict, so I actually don't exist.

And you're on ayahuasca.

Oh, yeah. And you are the snake. Exactly. And by the way, I don't want to do it anymore. Everyone message me all these different things. And I and I after like fucking researching this. I think I'm good. Maybe ketamine. Let's see. We'll see where it goes.

But we're still going to throw out a half baked ideas on his podcast. And I'm still going to let people psychedelic drugs. Yeah.

So I would like to think on Instagram, Katy underscore Daisy for one nine is the one who told me about this.

Insane story, and I got a lot of great info from there's a great article in Men's Journal by Matthew Bremner, there's a Guardian article by Dan Collins, CBC News article by Scott Scott Anderson, a vice article by Alison Tierney, and then the Netflix show and well, does a whole episode about Ayahuasca. And they lightly touch on this and that. I love that show.

So it's it's real. If you haven't seen the Netflix series, did we already talk about it? On what? I hadn't seen it. I haven't seen it before, so I don't know. OK, yeah, I started it because someone was like, you have to watch the one on the Essential Oils pyramid scheme. You have no idea because I left Facebook in like twenty eleven. Oh my God. So I had no idea this, these high jinks that were happening to and it's it's such a bummer.

The first season of the podcast, The Dream is all about pyramid schemes and it is mind blowing. So and then there's this like anarchist Canadian podcast called From Ember's and they interview fucking anarchist Canadians. Yeah, it's rad. So support your local anarchist everyone suerte. But just picture because Canadians are so polite and look like they're like, excuse me, I disagree. That's right. I'm an anarchist.

I'm lighting this fireplace on fire and now everyone cozy up while I disagree violently with you.

And they interview this author named Kevin Tucker, who wrote this book about it. And I'll get to that later. So let's get in here.

Why did you listen to the anarchist podcast? How was it? It's good from Ember's. Check it out. It's cool. It's like from I love anarchists. They're like the same with Satanists, like, just fucking or doing something different. And you're challenging the status quo. Yeah. And whether or not I believe wholeheartedly in your message, I don't fucking care. It's awesome that you're actually trying. You know, I feel like if there was ever a time where anarchists must feel really good about the decisions they made in there and they're kind of like subprocesses.

It's twenty twenty where it's like I told you, they told you they deserve a big I told you so for sure. Really do. High five. You were right about the government. You are right about the military idealism. Fuck all of it. Everything that's happening. So about an hour flight from Lima, Peru and to the northeast of the Andes Mountains is the regional capital of Pucallpa.

It's a bustle. Good. Yeah, right. I'm going I'm going to try my best to get these pronunciations right. It's a bustling city with almost a quarter million residents, and it sits on the ukulele river in the middle of the rainforest. The area is home to a number of indigenous peoples who have lived in the rainforest and thrived there for centuries and have a deep spiritual knowledge of plants and herbal remedies that the rainforest holds. And they view the rainforest as a living thing deserving of respect.

So ayahuasca is an example of this. It's a psychoactive brew made from the leaf of the Chuck koruna, and that contains the psychedelic substance, DMT. So this is obviously a very basic description of it. If you want to learn more about it, there's a lot of smart people talking about it. I am not one of them while this ingredient.

So this ingredient is highly psychedelic, this is so interesting, but it gets rapidly broken down by the enzymes in our liver and gastrointestinal tract. So even if we take it humans, nothing happens even though it is psychedelic. So it wouldn't cause any psychedelic reactions. But fuck an ancient Amazonian tribes without modern science. We're able to figure out that when it's combined with a totally different plant, they were able to figure this out. It's combined with something with Mayeux inhibitors.

In this case, the stocks of the Ayahuasca find it shuts off those enzymes and allows the DMT to enter the system. And these two plants, they form a powerful psychedelic brew that affects the central nervous system, leading to an altered state of consciousness that can include hallucinations out of body experiences and euphoria.

I mean, it doesn't surprise me that they figured this out because they're also the ones that made, you know, like Machu Picchu, where the stones are so close together you can't slide a credit card in between. So these people had I think we're getting dumber for sure. There's a very good chance those people were like, if you like an IQ, if you like a nice high key trinary IQ. Yeah, I bet you back then they were way fucking smarter than we are now.

Right.

And even today, and it's the colonial fucking the colonialization of it was that the fucking Europeans came over and we're like, you're not using this incredible rainforest for anything. So we're going to remove the whole thing and use it for rubber plants and our bullshit, not understanding the deep connection to these plants that these people had had for centuries. And actually, there's a really good book. OK, so it said that ayahuasca can help treat addiction and depression, post-traumatic stress and other mental disorders, but there's also studies that show it can.

Exacerbate pre-existing mental illness, such as bipolar, especially if it's mixed with some mester, some Western medicines, and I got a lot of messages from people that were like, if you're on our eyes, you should not take ayahuasca because it'll just fuck you up. Yeah, good to know. Yeah. The brew is used for spiritual and religious purposes by ancient Amazonian tribes. But since at least the 1960s, tourists have been coming from North America and Europe to participate in the traditional shaman led ayahuasca ceremonies.

And it takes years and years to become a shaman and so much study. It requires patience and a deep knowledge of plants and herbal remedies. It's often passed down through a family, and the role of the shaman in the ayahuasca ceremony is imperative. And Ayahuasca rituals were declared part of Peru's national heritage in 2008, which I think is interesting. And throughout the ceremony, the shaman or curandero recites these beautiful healing chants like high high pitched songs and chants that are just, you know, really they're mind blowing, they're gorgeous.

And it's said that through those chants called the those chants are called the Akaroa. And and through those, they can channel medicinal spirits. So the drug trip can last three to four hours. And participants lie on mats in the dark and they fall into like a dreamlike state. And the whole time, you know, the shaman is there with the singing, the chants, and there's like this tobacco smoke that's blown throughout the room. And they help people because they're vomiting and stuff like we talked about.

And people who have taken ayahuasca say the visions can be intense and life altering, calling up past traumas buried deep in the subconscious. So over the past decade or so, hundreds of ayahuasca retreats have popped up promising to cure all kinds of things while providing this also a mind expanding experience. And many are run by North American and European expats who come to Peru wanting to open their own little retreats. And the most profitable retreats are in Iquitos, Peru, which is the largest jungle city, and it brings in nearly six million dollars annually.

Well, it just so many people are looking for an answer and for healing and for something to actually work for them. Totally. Yeah, the human experience is tough. And you hope that there are answers out there. And, yeah, you know, maybe there are. And they charge guests as much as twenty seven hundred dollars for a week's stay. So supporters of the drug claim that the Ayahuasca boom has helped revive tribal communities and brought much-needed income to poor indigenous communities.

But many of people in these communities see these ayahuasca tourists, as they're known, as just another wave of colonialists exploiting the rainforest and the indigenous people who live there for their gain. And they argue that their use of ayahuasca is cultural appropriation and profiteering. So one such ayahuasca tourist was a 37 year old man from Vancouver Island, Canada, named Sebastian Woodroffe. So, Sebastian. OK, first of all, fuck. And he looks straight up like he could be a contestant on The Bachelor.

Like that's what he looks like. He's got the, you know, chiseled jaw, five o'clock shadow, dark eyes, just total bachelor contestant, OK? And he's a bit of an aimless free spirit. He's not interested in a conventional life and the normal rat race shit like consumerism and materialism.

Would you call him a Canadian, an anarchist? Could it be one you could possibly call them?

What if it turns out all Canadians are anarchists and we just haven't been paying attention and they're like, don't come over here, so let's be really nice. So they think that we're not as fuck.

And so it seems like it seems to me like he was a little lost in life, kind of a drifter, you know, the like. I don't want to I don't want to have a conventional job and a conventional life, but I'm also not really sure what to do with my life. I don't really have much of a purpose, it seems like. But he does lend there. Yeah, right. He does love nature.

He likes climbing mountains barefoot and getting lost in the woods and that sort of thing. He drifts between jobs. He does construction, tree planting, sea urchin diving. Sounds awesome. Yeah. And the guys on the work boat, they work with him. Call him sea bass because he was distant and always wrapped up in his own world, which I didn't know sea bass for like that sea bass are not the narcissistic, the sea.

You know how sea bass are. You know, it's me, me, me with those sea bass every time you catch him.

So he had a son in his early thirties, but the relationship with the kids mom didn't work out, but they stayed friends. And Sebastian does have a big heart, it seems, and would give you the shirt off his back. Everyone says, you know, everyone's friend, he teaches his he's still close. Listen, he teaches his son how to swim in the Valley Rivers, which, by the way, let's move to Vancouver Island. Oh, yeah, it's gorgeous up there.

And he teaches his son how to forge for mushrooms in the forest, you know, that sort of thing.

Yeah, he probably he's like a he's a nature guy. He doesn't want a conventional life because he actually is really of he's of nature. And he's like a is that type of he's like an guy.

This doesn't I don't mean this in a negative way. I just think it's a really easy way to describe someone that you will understand. One hundred percent Burning Man guy know. OK, yeah. So in twenty thirteen, Sebastian's family stages an intervention for a relative struggling with alcoholism and that experiences changes him. So he begins to think deeply about addiction and suffering and how the family unit is disrupted. And alcoholism, alcoholism and addictions are just are just a symptom of that.

And so how healing needs to happen through addiction in the family unit just to get over addiction. I'm not I'm not explaining that well, but he discovers ayahuasca when his brother in law tries some in a ceremony in British Columbia and he learns that people who take ayahuasca have surreal visions and vomit violently. But the effect can be therapeutic and help treat severe depression along with other mental health issues like addiction. And he has this awakening that this is his purpose in life, is to be a drug addiction counselor and to use, you know, medicine, natural medicine like ayahuasca.

To help people with addictions and he decides this is his path and he wants to help break people from their addictions. So in late 2013, he launches a crowdfunding campaign, which is it says that in all the articles. But it's fucking Indiegogo. No, that one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So not exist anymore. I don't know.

Oh, he wants to raise money for his career change. And the fucking video is on YouTube. You can watch it. It's just him casually talking about, you know, this his theory on addiction and what he wants to do to change, help change things. He says he wants to go to Peru so he can study, plant medicine and learn more about the healing properties of ayahuasca. And his campaign goal is to raise ten thousand dollars, which would include sixty eight hundred dollars for the healing center.

He plans on opening. I don't know if it's there or in Canada, but he wants to open, it seems like in Canada. And then two thousand dollars for travel and six hundred dollars for a Spanish translator. But he only ends up raising two thousand dollars. But either way, in September of twenty fourteen, he's not deterred. He travels to the Peruvian jungle city of Iquitos and it's the world's largest city that is not connected by a road.

So you can't the only way to get to the city is by plane or by taking a three or four day riverboat trip, which I think is part of the experiences that you're so secluded and in the middle of this gorgeous setting. So he wants to go there to study under local shamans on Facebook. He posts that he wants to, quote, fix his mind. And while there, he meets Guillermo Arevalo, who is in Iowa, skin shaman with more than 40 years experience.

And he agrees to work with Sebastian. And over the next three years, Sebastian makes several trips to Peru and continues to take ayahuasca in ceremonies in his hometown as well. I think it's illegal in Canada and the US. Their secrets are not secret, but there is like there's private. Yeah. So his friends and family say that he starts becoming distant and erratic and in Facebook posts in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen, he says he's feeling low and lonely and some people think maybe he's you.

It's because of a recent breakup he had. But others think his issue is from his quest to become a healer. A friend close to him later tells reporters that he is essentially a good person, but he had a temper and he could be volatile and obsessive. And he claims the Ayahuasca changed his friend. Change Sebastian. He starts dieting constantly, which is a requirement for taking ayahuasca. You can't have any salt or sugar or fat. It's like part of it.

He loses a lot of weight. And when his father tells him to seek professional help, Sebastian just withdrawals further. In September, twenty seventeen, he contacts the owners of a fishing company he used to work for and asks for a loan of several thousand dollars, saying that his wallet and passport had been stolen. But it's like a weird, a weird request. And two weeks before Christmas, in twenty seventeen, he heads back to Lima, Peru, and almost immediately starts running into issues.

He reports that his passport stolen again. He's involved in a collision while driving a rental car. And he eventually finds a taxi driver who's able to take him to the colony of Victoria Garcia to meet with Yermo. Avalos grandmother, who's one of the most respected and renowned shamans in the Peruvian Amazon.

So eighty one year old Olivia Arévalo. Lumos is known as Iacone, which is grandmother. She lives in the jungle hamlet of Victoria, Grassa. So think wooden shacks, dirt roads and the the name Iacone is a term of affection and respect for this woman who knows hundreds and hundreds like five six hundred herbal remedies and is one of the last links to the dying tribal culture. She's a defender of the cultural and environmental rights of her people. She's just this incredible woman.

She's part of this Shippy boat boat people, which is an indigenous people along the Ukulele River who are Peru's second largest indigenous Amazon tribe with over thirty five thousand members. And they're renowned for their hilar led rituals that use that utilize ayahuasca. One of the villagers says that Olivia had the power to calm storms and strong winds.

And if you look at her photo, she's just this beautiful, classic grandmotherly type with this wise kind face and a smile. Her eyes are bright and beautiful. She's got the bright. Jewelery on warm, this is warm presence even through a picture, you know, and I would imagine that if you're an ayahuasca ceremony led by this woman, you would just feel at peace.

Well, yeah, she's if she's studied that much stuff, clearly, it's you know, she possesses tons of knowledge and she knows what she's talking about.

You know, always work as a healer is legendary, both within the ship IBO Combo Nation and internationally. She's attended to dozens of ayahuasca tourists who travel for more than 15 hours to cure themselves with her specifically. And so when Sebastian finally meets Olivia after having come to Peru for a couple of years to try to understand ayahuasca and the medical properties it has, he asks her if she can cure him and through him cure his family back home from whatever he believes is there, you know, deep generational trauma.

And she says she can if he has faith. And so, Becky Leonora's is, who's the mayor of Victoria Garcia, says that Sebastian Woodroffe would come by and he would insist that Olivia Arévalo would take ayahuasca with him, but she refused to. Sometimes the healers would take it as well. And so they could experience it with you. But she hadn't taken it in years. So she just was like, that's not part of what I do.

She's probably also like, yeah, I'm the one that calls the shots. Right. Right.

And so it seems like things devolved from there, it seems like in the run up until this point.

Sebastian Woodroffe, as my overdramatic English teacher in high school, would say was descending into madness. At this point, you know, and everything, every his actions are becoming more and more erratic. And it seems that he develops a kind of obsession with the Arvelo family and becomes increasingly aggressive with the locals in that community.

According to multiple accounts, he turns up in the village one night during a healing ceremony, wanting to speak to Arévalo son, Julian. He's reportedly carrying a club. He's turned away. He tries to sneak back in and hits a man guarding the ceremony, allegedly. And some villagers chase after him and they take him to the police and actually hours later says that the community took Sebastian to the police on three separate occasions. And of course, the local police have no record of this, but locals say it's because they didn't care if a white man is harassing natives.

But if had been the other way around, they would have given a shit, you know what I mean? So when Sebastian Woodrow fails to check in over Christmas and New Year's, his family and friends in British Columbia are worried. They're trying to track him down in Peru and eventually he responds to them and says, I'm alive. So he leaves Peru in early January.

Twenty eighteen with his relationship with the Arévalo family strained and a number of rumors are circulating that maybe Sebastian had given Julian Arevalo money for ayahuasca ceremonies that he never received or he'd been ripped off after giving Julian thousands of Peruvian dollars to buy land for a new retreat. But it's also like he was asking for loans from people. He didn't have money. So that seems a little far fetched. Maybe he had these perceived injustices in his head that couldn't be couldn't be righted because they weren't true.

You know, the famine of his imagination. Yeah. If you went down there on borrowed money. That's right. Yeah. It doesn't seem. Well, who knows. Yeah.

So the rumors are never confirmed. But prosecutors of the ukulele provenance say that Julian allegedly owed Sebastiaan about four thousand dollars, but we don't know if this is true or not. So Sebastian goes back to Canada, he lives in an RV, starts looking for a new job. It seems like he feels a little bit broken and disheartened. He posts on Facebook about how he feels like shit.

He says he's basically looking for a life on Facebook and on Facebook in February 2013, says, I miss my family and friends and feel like shit. I hope I'm not sick. And in March, he writes a post about heading back to Peru to do some soul searching and fix his mind. And his family and friends noticed that he gets more and more closed off with each visit to Peru. They try to talk him out of going. He fucking won't listen.

And Woodrow and his his first teacher, Guillermo Arevalo, says Sebastian reached out to him so they could meet up. But Guillermo was out of town and he says that Sebastian told him that he's bipolar and needs help. So it does seem like maybe he had some undiagnosed. Issues or maybe they are exacerbated by the ayahuasca and he's losing touch with reality. So 13 days after arriving back in Peru, the now forty one year old Sebastian writes, I'm feeling better day by day in Peru.

So thankful. And he starts behaving more and more erratically. And on March 30th, he goes to a police station in Pucallpa and tells the officer that he's looking to buy a gun, just randomly walks into the police station at the police station. I did not know.

But he tells the officer that he's going into the jungle and wants protection from animals. And the officer actually agrees to sell him his nine millimeter pistol. Oh, yeah.

Which later, they say is irregular but not illegal because he files all the paperwork and stuff even though he didn't have a gun license. His next Facebook post says not enjoying life, having a rough go. Please send me prayers.

So who OK, ready for this on the day on the day of April 19th.

Twenty eighteen, a teacher in the village school of Victoria Garcia hears three gunshots rang out and he tells the children and the school to stay put and runs out to see what happened.

And there he finds Olivia Arévalo laying on the ground outside of her hut, having been shot twice in the chest. Oh, God, yeah. It's horrific. It's horrible. She cries out. They've killed me. They've killed me. And her daughter Virginia cradles her as she dies. Horrible. It's so horrible. Someone has got to get the police and it takes a while for them to arrive from the nearby city. And when they do arrive, they leave Olivia Avalos body out in the dirt for hours as they investigate as her family and the grieving villagers stand around in shock, they find bullet cartridges a couple of yards from the body.

And villagers tell the authorities that the killer is someone they know. A tourist from Canada they call the gringo home.

They tell authorities his name is Sebastian Woodruff and that they had taken him to the police station on three separate occasions. And at this time, they say he showed up on a motorcycle, waving a gun, looking for Olivia's son, Julian. And he had shot in the air once. But when Olivia came out instead, he shot her. But he's nowhere to be found. So soon after the shooting, there's a wanted poster made, it circulates online with Sebastian's photo, the message reads this man.

This is the man who killed our teacher, Olivia Arévalo. And two days go by with no sign of Sebastian until a local media outlet receives a disturbing video.

And the grainy footage, which I highly recommend, you don't fucking look up. Even a screen grab is upsetting.

In the grainy footage, several male villagers are beating up a white man identified as Sebastian. And he's pleading. He's beaten up, he's bloody.

And while onlookers stand by, his attackers drag him around in the dirt. And then one man takes a seat belt and uses it to tie a noose around Sebastian's neck. And they drag him through the streets as he strangled and the violent video goes viral and becomes international news.

Oh, God, how to.

No one needs that. No one needs that. That's horrible. So investigators search Woodruff's rented room in the town. And among his things, they find sleeping pills and two other prescription drugs from Canada. One of those prescriptions is an antipsychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And the other is Cloner, Klonopin, clonazepam, and another one is an anti anxiety medication. Then authorities received a tip about the whereabouts of Sebastian Woodroffe. When they go back to Victoria Garcia, they find him buried in a shallow grave several hundred yards from the village.

His body had been wrapped in a blue sheet and he's covered in bruises and his clothes are coated in dirt and dried blood. And they also find the nine millimeter pistol that he had bought and dismantled motorcycle. So back in Canada, Sebastian Woodruff's family, when they hear about this, are like that is not the person we knew. He would never kill someone. They're adamant about it. And like there's some rumors that, like maybe it was the pope, the poachers in the rainforest that killed Olivia and all these stories.

But once investigators find gunshot residue on the sleeves and hand of Sebastian's sweatshirt and forensics match the empty cartridges found near Olivia Avalos body with the gun, they and there's also eyewitness accounts that it was. It's concluded that he is indeed the killer.

And as for Sebastian's killers, police in Pucallpa are still looking for the four men in connection with the lynching. One of them was the mayor of that area at the time. And they are currently at large, reportedly hiding in the jungle. So meanwhile, in Canada, the local MP, Carlos to Bino post a tweet that calls the villagers savages and blames them on local shamans who, quote, turn ayahuasca into a business with foreigners.

That's not a good idea, that they are fucking fault that someone came to their village. What that's and especially like it's just insult to injury. Like he killed whatever the the context, he killed a holy person. He killed a leader and an innocent like a shaman and an a giver and a teacher like that's she didn't provoke this attack.

Know, she didn't invite this into her life. He he's the aggressor. He later apologizes. But the the current Mary Linera tells reporters that the whole affair is racist. And she knows that the journalist covering the case and they're all the journalists descend on the town are only there because a white man died. The killing of indigenous people, on the other hand, is ignored every day, like in December. Twenty sixteen indigenous Amazonian healer Rosa Andreotti, who was sixty seven, was murdered by someone outside the community.

That crime remains unsolved. And the killing of environmental advocate Edwin Chota in twenty fourteen as well happened. But there's no press coverage, right? A week after Sebastian's death. Canada also issued an advisory warning travelers to exercise, quote, a high degree of caution throughout Peru and to avoid nonessential travel completely due to terrorist and criminal activity. The double murder also casts a harsh spotlight on the unregulated world of ayahuasca tourism. And some condemned the tribe for taking justice into its own hands.

Some blame Sebastiaan outright and some even assert that Sebastian wasn't the murderer in the first place of Libya, which I think is far fetched. Current mayor of Victoria Grassa, Becky Llanera, says that the village never wanted the violence that Sebastian brought there. Usually a very tranquil community. But in this moment, with the death of the village grandmother and last link to traditional ways, grief took over and they carried out their own justice. Is there their side of it?

Nelly Vasquez, Olivia's granddaughter, says that the murder has made her more suspicious of outsiders, even if Sebastiaan was an anomaly before he came. She says they all lived a peaceful life and didn't bother anyone. And now she feels haunted by the gringo. And despite the media attention the killings received ayahuasca tourism has not decreased at all. And that is the murder of Olivia Arévalo, a.k.a. the Ayahuasca murders. Wow. If you want to read more, the book I was talking about earlier, Kevin Tucker's book, The Cult of Personality, Ayahuasca, Colonialism and the Death of a Healer.

It's basically talks about the how the event is linked to colonialism and exploitation of indigenous peoples.

It's a really interesting read.

It's such a tragedy. It's a tragedy in every direction. But that that idea that she had all this kind of ancient knowledge and that like that, that can only be passed down the fact that she met such a violent end, this peaceful, spiritual, you know, knowledgeable person.

And that's such a violent end from a person who was suffering from his own mental issues is his goal is like to go down there and to try to be healed and to be to say, can you please help me?

I know that you heal people, you know, and that's that was that was the whole relationship. And then that's that. The way it turns out is that's a nightmare. That's yeah.

I've never heard of that one in twenty eighteen. Yeah. It just happened. Yeah.

That's it's also very good. Think about in that way of like just accessing people's culture that way you, you going into their culture, you're going into their lives and you're expecting to be, you know, expecting to continue to be treated the way you are in your culture and not respecting, you know, not respecting another culture essentially.

And maybe also he wasn't respecting the issues he actually had that he made up the way it was going to be solved. Right. And then when that didn't happen, he just kept kind of going back to the same source, which is like if you have, you know, maybe that mental illness and whatever else was going on with him, he did get treated a different way.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Wow, that's heavy.

OK, so the story I'm going to do this week has an equal amount of pronunciation challenges because it's also international. I'm going to do the story of the beast of Geveden.

OK, so here's what happened. There's a website that I love to read called Dangerous Minds. I've been reading it for years. I don't know if you've ever gone on to it, but it's a bunch of super cool writers and it's mostly about music. But then it goes off into these kind of like fascinating cultural kind of mondo. Have you ever seen this? Have you ever seen this video? Have you seen this? Whatever. Sometimes they just have a really good one time on there.

My favorite thing, I think they had the like nineteen eighty one Christmas like employee. Thank you real for some news station in like Connecticut. So it just was the camera going around and it would be like the guy in the, the guy that was in like the in the editing down waving Merry Christmas.

Oh it's like their name underneath like stuff like that on there. It's just like yeah.

People with it's, it's a bunch of people with good taste writing about things that you would find interesting. I love it. So, so there contributor someone named Cherry Bomb is the person who wrote this article that I first found. So I sent it to Jay and I'm like, I have to do this next week. Yeah, but other sources we used are Smith Smithsonian magazine dot com.

There's a website called How about that dot site that I think goes under the URL thing. All that's interesting website, of course, the great website, Atlas Obscura dot com, and then of course, Wikipedia Ancestry.com.

And also we did a search of the MFM Gmail inbox. And this story was suggested by a listener named Genevieve Bee way back in twenty eighteen girl. Thank you. Thank you, Genevieve. OK, so this is fascinating to me and I never I've never heard of this, but between the years of fifteen, twenty and sixteen thirty, the people of France lived through what's now known as the French werewolf epidemic. So over thirty thousand people were accused of being werewolf's in that one hundred and ten year span of time.

Thirty thousand people were arrested, tortured, and then, of course, confessed to making deals with the devil for various reasons. Most of them were to protect their flock or their or their herd.

Then the devil would give them. Oftentimes it was a magical ointment. Sometimes it was a magical belt and that would turn them into werewolves and then they would murder and partially eat the unsuspecting passers by. Wow. So that was actually a big chunk of time in French history where that is kind of sounds. It's similar to like the witch trials of Europe or the witch trials in Salem. So this came and went and then one hundred and thirty years later, after it all settles down and seems to be over, Beast of Judo kicks up.

So here's what happened.

In April of seventeen sixty four, a young woman is tending to her herd of cattle in the mid Mikawa forest pronunciation disaster.

And this is near the small town of long, long gone home in the south central region.

Onat Zhu Zhu Dog Horse. Yeah, so. So as she's out there, you know, Tennesee, the thing that I love about this story is that it happens nearby and in the forest.

And as we know, it's a dangerous place. We've talked about it a lot, but it's fascinating to me. Like, so she is she's got her cattle that are, I guess, grazing in the forest and suddenly a strange four legged creature about the size of a calf with black and red hair, long black and red hair, a long tail and a very wide mouth appears. And before the woman can figure out what's going on, it lunges forward and attacks her.

She's trying to get free that the creatures too strong. Luckily, the women's the woman's cattle comes to her aid and they charge at this beast and make it run away, which she perhaps eaten as far forest mushrooms at the time.

It's her and those cattle. I read that story and I was just like I grew up around cows.

They don't charge big threatening animals to your ass.

Yeah. Don't like me not save Karen. This was long ago.

Maybe. Maybe they used to be quite brave. OK, so she's obviously shaken, she runs back to her family. She tells them all about this happening in what she says is she was just she was attacked by something, quote, like a wolf, but not a wolf.

So then two months later, on June 30th, 1764, a 14 year old shepherd is named Jean Boulay, tends to her flock of sheep in the same region. And this mysterious beast appears again and in the same way it lunges at Jean, but that she and her sheep are no match for it. And she is the first known fatality of the strange beast of Judum.

So we'll give you a little historical context of what's going on in France at the time. OK, so France has been fighting over land in the New World for years.

And so England, if that's us going, that's I mean, it wasn't me and my people weren't here, but anyway. Or getting. Yeah, we were. We're still in Europe wandering around Europe. So England officially declares war on France over that land in 1756. This will eventually become the seven years war between England, France and Spain. It lasts from seventeen fifty six to seventeen sixty three, which is approximately seven years. That's right.

Seven years. I love talking about this shit.

I know. I'm like, oh, I've heard of that. I've, I think I've heard of that. Oh that makes sense now. No idea.

So at the end of this war, France signs the Treaty of Paris with England and Spain on February 10th. Seventeen sixty three. And they lose Canada and Louisiana to the British. Obviously they're all colonizers. It was the Native American people's land.

Yeah, we will claim land that's already. Yeah. They're having they're having wars anyway. So at this point, national morale in France is very low. So this about a year later when the news about a mysterious man eating beast in Juda travels across Europe, it gives people something new to focus on and rally around, especially as the number of attacks begin to climb. So over the course of the next few months, this beast strikes dozens of times, injuring some, killing others.

And while there are some men attacked, the majority of the victims are women and children. And there's so it's so funny. There's so many stories of children being shepherds essentially all the way all through this time. So, like, everyone had a job. Yeah, it was one of those areas. So the beast has a pattern of attacking the throat or head and decapitating the victims and partially eating many of its victims, which is not normal for wolves or dogs, wild dogs or any other wild animal known to live in that region of France.

Everybody here in French yelling in the background, he's like, I do it hit your head. So as opposed to a normal, like wolf attack, suddenly people they're finding people decapitated, local soldiers who have returned from the seven years war with, quote, wounded masculinity. From this defeat, they see this beast as an opportunity to reclaim their honor. So men, one of these local infantrymen is Captain Jean-Baptiste Duhamel. The fact that Josh Duhamel, the great American actor, has not done a biopic of clearly his relatives in France who are participating, this is a huge mistake.

So, Josh, get in touch because we we need to make this movie a project. So do teams up with a regional government delegate named on the phone and they organize it said as many as thirty thousand men to hunt down this beast. So on October 8th, seventeen sixty for another victim is mauled. Though Duemling, Lafont and their men couldn't save the victim, they are able to trail the beast to a forest at Chateau La Ball, where it's seen stalking yet another herdsman.

So do Hamel's team follows the beast into the forest where they corner it, and they managed to coax it out into the open. Then they use their muskets and open fire on the beast. It falls to the ground, but to everyone's horror, it then rises back up to its feet and runs away. So when word of this gets out, the story of the beast takes on a supernatural quality. And by December of seventeen sixty four, the frequency of attacks leads some people to believe there might actually be more than one of these creatures.

Yeah, so all the papers in the local villages latch on to these stories and these theories and they start churning out these sensational reports, circulating them all over France, making everyone equal parts fascinated, curious and afraid. One of the more popular stories is and this is my favorite. A 10 year old boy named Jack caught FE on January 12th, seventeen sixty five, Jack and seven of his friends. So five boys, it's five boys, two girls ranging from ages eight to 12.

They're out in a meadow tending to cattle. And they're also playing kind of like war with big sticks with the PEJAK.

Yeah.

So they're doing that. It's great. The tranquil, pleasant.

There's little pieces of one of those things you blow on called there in the air, the death of dandelions, things like dandelions filling the air suddenly boom. Here's this, here's this beast.

Here's this werewolf. It lunges that the kids but the kids, led by young Jack, beat it back with sticks and successfully scared away.

And nothing like a fucking gang of kids with sticks to their translator away a literal monster, King Louie the 15th is so taken by the story that he awards Jack and all of the children who were with him. Three hundred leave a piece for their bravery and he also gives Jack a free education paid for by the crowd. Jane looked it up. According to the website Historical Statistics. Doug and their currency converter. Three hundred leave in seventeen sixty four. France is worth about two thousand five hundred euros in twenty fifteen.

So that's a nice chunk of money. Definitely so on August 11th, seventeen sixty five, nineteen year old Marie-Jeanne Vallet and her sister, they're crossing the river dege on their walk home when she turns around to find the beast behind them. But Marie-Jeanne is armed with a bayonet that's attached to a wooden pole. So as the beast lunges toward them, she stabs it right in the chest. Somehow it doesn't kill it and the beast runs off wounded. From then on, MaryJane is dubbed the Amazon, or the maiden of Duvall for saving herself and her sister.

And centuries later, in nineteen ninety five, artist Felipe Kaplin, I think, or Kapela commemorates Marie-Jeanne with a statue which still stands in a churchyard in over France. France.

I said, Have you ever seen have you seen better off dead.

The movie is better off, Ted. When the mob they have the French exchange students and the bomb goes Franch Bread, Ranch Dressing and Peru and she's holding a bottle. Laperriere, Peru. OK, so these attacks keep coming and though the exact numbers aren't known, it's estimated that by early seventeen sixty five there have been between 30 and 60 deaths.

Wow. Yeah.

So do Homel and Lafont here. More and more stories of local peasants and townspeople defending themselves from the beast. Their egos are bruised, so they decide to ramp up the efforts to catch and kill this beast. So they organize military style formations and strategies. They set poison bait traps. They even dress up like peasant women to try to lure the beast to attack them. And rewards for the beasts head are set and gradually increased until they equal a full year salary for the average worker.

My God. Still, none of that leads to any results. So the repeated failures of Do Le Fall and the local men of Jiefu only add to the who can slay this dragon narrative. So in February of seven sixty five, a father and son hunting team from Normandy named the Den Avowals announced that they're going to travel to Juvonen to defeat the beat beast themselves.

They they claim that they've killed more than twelve hundred wolves between the two of them, so they convince everyone they're the men for the job. But Lafont warns them that this creature is quote, much bigger than a wolf. And Josh Dumble says, You will undoubtedly think like I do, that this is a monster, the father of which is a lion. So what its mother was remains to be seen. So this father and son team scour the area for the beast and try their hand at killing it.

But they can't do either. And by the spring of seventeen sixty five, they're super embarrassed because their big pronunciation of how they were going to get it done doesn't work. They give up, throw in the towel, they go back to normal things as the devils give up. King Louie the 15th decides it's time to send in his own personal gun bearer, a man named Francois Antoine, to hunt the beast. Now Francois, he decides to bring his nephew to help him out, since he's seventy one years old and only one in seventeen sixty five is one hundred and twelve in today's OK.

So Francois, his nephew and a few other men roam. Duval's foris until they finally find a large creature that appears to be the beast, they successfully shoot and kill it on September 20th, seventeen sixty five, and then they bring the beast corpse to the court at Faci.

An autopsy is conducted.

The inspecting doctor finds human remains inside the beast stomach. So then they they say this confirms that they have killed the beast. The body stuffed. It's put on display at Faci. Antoine receives a huge reward from the king and he celebrated not only by the villagers of Javal, but by all of France.

Then two months later, in December, there's another attack. But since the king had already made this big display of saying that the beast had already been killed, he refuses to acknowledge that the that the attacks and murders have started again. That's the best part is refuse to acknowledge it. Yeah, I feel like we've heard a couple stories like that where local law enforcement thinks they've solved it and they want to have solved it. So the one the fact comes up that it's not been solved.

They refuse yet now can't do it.

So without any further assistance from the crown, the people of Jaidev will continue to be attacked for the next 18 months. And during this time, it's estimated that another 30 to 35 people die at the clutches of the mysterious wolf like creature, a witness to one of these attacks that happened in that period of time. Reports that the beast, quote, had a shape contrary to nature.

So there's something weird about this animal alien or thing that people killed. Yes, it's a ton of fun. It's nuts. OK, so the locals are now furious. They decide to take matters into their own hands. So instead of relying on these military people or the royals, they know the landscape better than anyone else. They know these forests and they have the most to lose. So they organized their own plan to kill the beast once and for all.

So on June 19th, 1767, a rich nobleman, the marquee attaché, perhaps not know, organizes a hunt with all the townspeople.

And one of these townspeople is a local farmer named John Shuzo. So Shasta was known around town for leading the hunts that the king's gun bearer and TWANT organized. Remember those guys, the guy and his nephew. All right. But after John Chestful lead accidentally led everybody into a bog, Antoine had him thrown in jail. Oh, man. Yeah, well, so now he's he got out of jail. He's back and better than ever. I don't know I don't know if this for a fact, but I'd bet you about three hundred lievre that he's super pissed and has something to prove.

So here's a quote from how about that site. It says, quote, Shuzo was armed with a double barreled shotgun. His ammunition, they say he used silver balls, silver balls, and he had them blessed in advance of the hunt.

OK. End quote. So this hunting party goes they they search the forest. They search the land. They finally come upon the beast. John just steps out, shoots is shot and quote, shuffles fire, broke the beast shoulder and ripped out its throat.

You'll be the hunter then proclaim the doom of the dread beast of Duvall, quote, beast, you shall hunt no more.

OK, overdramatic little corny will change that for Josh. Don't worry. We'll change that for the movie. When all is said and done in a three year span, there are an estimated two hundred and thirteen total attacks with forty nine injuries and one hundred and thirteen deaths of these victims. Ninety eight of them were partially eaten.

Did so. At the end of all of that, the question still remains what was the beast of Juda? Some like to believe in the more fantastical theories that it was a werewolf. It's it's kind of a historical thing in this in France. And so it's easier to believe maybe. And also because the decapitations were so common. And that's not what most animals dogs anymore do. It's easier to believe. The other thing that people believe is that it's a human serial killer somehow disguised as this monster, because they do say the they say it walked on two legs, that it had the ability to rise up and walk on its back legs, that it that it was shaped and it was wide chested.

It was flat headed. Its mouth was bigger than any animal that was a dog or a wolf. He was a who wore like a costume to disguise himself. Could you like and also they said it was the hair was long and black, and just like the the actual pelt of the animal looked really weird, it didn't look like any wolf they'd seen before.

Some dude skinned a wolf and put his body on himself.

Oh, well, also there were victims. Did I say this one? There were also victims who said that they saw buttons on the beast's belly.

Did I love I love that theory that it's some fucking psycho that's dressed up like a wolf.

I'd rather run in and terrible than a guy wearing a wolf's carcass. Yes.

No, not. You know, I think there's pluses on both sides. You know, I think I'm never leaving my house again. You know, everything's possible and I'm scared all the time. A modern scientist and historian have guessed that the creature or multiple creatures could have been a Eurasian wolf, a hyena, a variation of a lion. Some are saying maybe like soldiers that went off to war smuggled back exotic animals from foreign lands. It could have been a dog wolf hybrid some.

There are theories that it was a prehistoric animal that managed to survive into the 18th century.

And that's how in Encino Man was created. They used that and they base that up. And seeing that, that's a deep.

But this is the Encino Man prequel. We are making this movie Jaws references to nineteen eighties movies.

The most likely answer, according to historian and author James Smith, who wrote the book Monsters of the Zuda. The Making of a Beast is that they were, in fact, large wolves.

Now it's like the most boring thing, and it's the old Ockham's Razor that's no fun and goes against everything we love in podcasting, an ability that he basically said Juda had a serious wolf infestation and that's what was taking place.

But no matter what the explanation is, in this three year period, there was carnage and terror that left its mark on south central France forever.

And that is the story of the beast of javu. Also, if you want to see. So James Smith's book, Monsters of the Rudel, you should definitely read that. If this is interesting to you. There's also a 2001 movie called Brotherhood of the Wolf. It has seventy three percent on Rotten Tomatoes. And it's all it's a French movie. It's all about this story, too.

So, you know, if you want it there, you want it. It's all there, right? Trust me, that's Italian.

Oh, clopping is Italian. Bravo, bravo. French. I think Bravo is French.

Well, bravo to you. That was a day. That was great.

Thank you. I know we need more like that. There's all kinds of horrible things to talk about in this world.

So truly, you know, guys, we can go back and we still need your suggestions.

Don't stop. Won't stop. You know, not till you get enough. Exactly.

So thanks for sharing them to us because it's. Yeah. Turns out I just love that. I was just gonna say I just love that I saw that article and got all excited. And then when I asked Jay to do the search, Genevieve had been talking about it before. Yeah. So I love it.

And he's like, what's up doc, talk about this.

And at the end of her email she said, And I'm not even French. You don't have to be French to listen to my favorite murder. You don't.

But it sure does help create job. That was awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Should we do a couples do it if I can raise cool when I go first.

Sure. OK, let's see. This is from this is from Emily Fay. It says my fucking her is that my aunt is beating pancreatic cancer. My God. She was yeah. She was diagnosed mid-February with pancreatic cancer almost exactly two years to the day that my grandmother, her mother, lost her battle with the same disease. As many know, pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest cancers to treat. And B, because most of the time it's caught too late.

It started as awful news and the doctors didn't think chemo would help much. Well, on July 29th, twenty twenty, we got the news that the tumor has shrunk considerably. And on August twenty eight, she had surgery to remove all of the cancer. She's doing great and is ready to come home. Her oncologist doesn't think additional rounds of radiation will be or chemo will be needed. We're so excited to see what the rest of her life has to offer.

Fuck you, cancer. You're losing this battle. Oh, that's so. Emily, congratulations.

It's so beautiful. My aunt, Kathleen Castro, who was one of the greatest people, died of pancreatic cancer.

We lost her so quickly. It was so hard. This really is the most fucked cancer. So I'm so happy for you, Emily, because that is it was amazing. And it's going to give a lot of other people so much hope to hear that.

That's incredible. That's really cool.

The people who are going through normal things like cancer at this time, I just can't even imagine the extra. All right. So this one is from Dippie.

And Shirley on Instagram, I have finally got a spectacular fucking hurry. Over the past two years. My kids and I have been navigating, escaping from my ex, being homeless for months and legal battles, trying to get child support.

A huge financial gamble and went for my graduate degree, I just couldn't get a job that paid enough that I could provide us with a decent life and so close to the end of my program, the job I did have, I was laid off from in March thanks to covid. I graduated this month with my master's of social work and I got an amazing job within two weeks. I started in September. I've been trying to get all my life ducks in a row and my career duck is no longer floundering in the middle of the river, about to get eaten by a carp after years in an abusive relationship.

I thought my life would never be what I wanted to be. Now I have it. Thank you for being the not actual my friends who have helped me feel not alone. Thanks to the Martarano community. I'm absolutely buying a pair of fuck you, I'm divorced sweatpants with my first paycheck.

Wow, wow.

And it's paycheck with a Kukui. So they're so right in Canadiana British Mall.

Real congratulations.

Yeah that's awesome. That's a huge risk and so cool. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you for sharing those. There's still good news out there. Yeah. So if you have any please send it to us. You can do Fanjul. They know your Gmail. Twitter. We're honored that you share these winds with us.

We feel like the keeper of this really cool community and we're yeah, we're still up to be part of it. I feel like the controller of this community, we can just we could pick our titles.

OK, thanks. You guys. Stay strong, stay sexy and don't get murdered.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie?