Caroline Fraser (on serial killers)

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Speaker 1 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
We have a Pulitzer Prize-winning author on today,

Speaker 1 Caroline Frazier.

Speaker 1 She's got

Speaker 1 many great books: Prairie Fires, God's Perfect Child, Church, and she has a new book out now called Murderland, Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers.

Speaker 2 We love serial killers. You, you, a show on Netflix.

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Speaker 2 In New York, it's seltzer. They call it seltzer and it's different.

Speaker 1 And they're not moving off of it.

Speaker 2 No, they're not.

Speaker 1 You and I were alive when New York Seltzer water was all the rage. Do you remember that whole era of our lives where those were everywhere, those little bottles? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they came in flavors. Oh.

Speaker 1 Black cherry, maybe, was a popular one. Yeah, I remember those hit the market, and my father just couldn't get enough of them.
He loved them. He went all in on the New York Seltzer water.

Speaker 1 How fun. It's funny the arc of things that are novel.
Yeah. How exciting they are.
And they almost seem like, oh, well, these are going to be around forever. And then everyone just tires of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's my prediction with AI-generated media.
Oh, I hope so. Yeah, it's like really interesting at first.

Speaker 1 And the more you see of it, you're like, oh, yeah, I get it. They can do anything.
And really, who cares?

Speaker 2 Except those babies. They make really cute babies, and baby videos.

Speaker 1 They get me every time. Don't be voluntary

Speaker 1 videos.

Speaker 2 You're going to get some now that we are talking about it.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you grew up in Seattle in the 60s and 70s. And

Speaker 1 I want to talk first a little bit about the Christian science book, God's Perfect Child Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church. So it's rare that I get to talk to someone who grew up.

Speaker 1 Christian scientists. And that was your experience.
Yeah, they're all disappearing. I mean, demographically, they just kind of peaked during the seventies and then just fell off a cliff, really.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And now,

Speaker 1 you know, they're all dying because they don't accept medical care and they have never figured out how to draw people to the religion, really.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a it's a very chilly kind of experience to go to a Christian science church. Yeah.
Because it's just reading.

Speaker 1 You know, people just read Mary Baker Eddie's book, Science and Health, which is possibly the most boring book ever written. Do they read the Bible as well?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's kind of secondary. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 So even in just researching you, I'm embarrassed to admit, I had no clue that that had been invented by a woman, that religion.

Speaker 1 And she died in 1910, and they kind of pretended that she didn't really die. Oh, they did.

Speaker 2 They made her like a deity?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, she's buried in this spectacular cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in this monument where you kind of can't tell is somebody actually buried here. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 And they put a phone, famously, in her tomb in case she resurrected herself so that she couldn't.

Speaker 2 No, it's like, let me out.

Speaker 1 And it's connected to a live phone line? Well, it was.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't know what the status of it is now. I'd love to get the number for that.
Just drive her crazy.

Speaker 1 No, you don't want her to haunt you.

Speaker 1 What were the unique circumstances by which she was able to write a book that was then taken on and practiced by so many people?

Speaker 1 Well, a lot of it had to do with the, you know, failures of medical care at the time because

Speaker 1 there were so many things that you could get that you couldn't really treat. And a lot of doctors were quacks or didn't know what they were doing.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, if you got TB or something, I mean, it was just, there were a lot of things that were a death sentence.

Speaker 1 And so anybody who came along and said, oh, you know, if you pray about this, if you know the truth, that was their big kind of formula, then everything will be resolved and you'll be fine. So

Speaker 1 your father, this is curious to me, your father. Had a PhD from Columbia.
Yeah, in education. In education.

Speaker 1 And yet he was a devout Christian scientist and he did not believe in matter. That's right.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a foundational tenet of the religion is that the physical world doesn't exist and that it's just an illusion, a kind of fantasy that we're all having. Whoa.

Speaker 1 Kind of the matrix kind of simulation. There may be ahead of the curve on the sims.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Weird. How long into it were you going along with it? When did you start having some major disagreements? Or can you recall in your own life when you started going, is this possibly how it all works?

Speaker 1 Part of my problem always was my relationship with my father because he was so difficult. And I just kind of kept wishing he would go away.

Speaker 1 Can we get rid of this guy? Yeah. And did you sense your mother was in accord with how you were evaluating him or was she?

Speaker 1 She was not raised in the church.

Speaker 1 He was. And so he was incredibly devout and kind of doctrinaire about everything.

Speaker 1 And I don't think I, you know, as a child, sort of consciously thought, oh, this is a load of crap or something, you know, not until I was like in high school. But I associated.

Speaker 1 the belief so much with him because

Speaker 1 he was so into it and like he would sit on the couch and he had he always kept the the books next to the couch and would read sometimes. And we would kind of have to sit at his feet and listen to this

Speaker 1 stuff. And, you know, and he was always sort of enforcing the beliefs.
If I got sick, for example, threw open the car or something, that was like a big deal. What was the solution for that? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, the whole way it was framed was that these things are kind of your fault

Speaker 1 because you're not practicing. Oh, you're not.

Speaker 1 Manifestations of impurity, kind of. Yes.
And manifestation is actually a huge word oh it is in science and health that maybe i should join that came very organically to me maybe i would really

Speaker 1 you would be horrible no i would be a bad bad member i'm kind of attached to matter as a concept

Speaker 1 yeah exactly what prompted you to write the book At the time that I started, the church was going through this kind of big crisis where they had invested all this money.

Speaker 1 It was kind of their last-ditch attempt to invest a bunch of money in a TV, you know, a news organization that they were trying to launch. And by

Speaker 1 way of this, they were going to attract new members and appear, you know, on the kind of international stage. And they had very high hopes for this thing.
And yet they made a bunch of mistakes.

Speaker 1 They invested too much money. The projected TV business is kind of hard.
You need to be an expert to be profitable. Yes.

Speaker 1 And at the the same time, in the 80s, there were all these what they called the child cases, which were various cases around the country where Christian Science parents were prosecuted for the deaths or neglects of their children who had died under, you know, really pretty grotesque.

Speaker 1 and preventable circumstances.

Speaker 1 And I think prosecutors by that time had just gotten sick of this whole phenomenon and were like, we're going to make sure to kind of put the kibosh on this by prosecuting a few people.

Speaker 1 But you do explore in your book, there was a moment where they had lobbyists where they were effective at getting themselves kind of inoculated from that type of prosecution, right? How did that work?

Speaker 1 I mean, ironically, this was during the 70s at the same time.

Speaker 1 that Nixon had ascended to his position of power. And a couple of Nixon's most powerful lieutenants, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, were Christian scientists.

Speaker 1 And some of the people who worked for them were Christian scientists, like this guy, Eagle Crow, who you may remember. Eagle Crow? Eagle Crow was his name.

Speaker 1 Was he native or he just has a very native name with him? E-G-I-L.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 That is unfortunate. I was like, it's a Native American Christian scientist working for Nixon.
This has got to be the most unique person.

Speaker 1 But anyway, so there were these Christian scientists in positions of power, and they used that to basically kind of push through various federal acts, legislation, regulations that would allow,

Speaker 1 mainly on the state level, but some on the federal level, that would allow people to refuse vaccinations, for example, or any sort of health care.

Speaker 1 Under the guise of religious freedom that's right these were called religious exemptions and they still exist in most states yeah and oregon overturned theirs because one of the really terrible things about this religious exemption stuff is that all these

Speaker 1 other religious nuts you know in addition to the Christian

Speaker 1 yes and so like in Oregon there was this thing called the Church of the Firstborn who did not believe in any kind of health care for mothers having babies.

Speaker 1 And so all these women were having babies who died within a few days because they had problems giving birth or various other things that could have been addressed in a hospital setting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the infant mortality rate for these Christian scientists was some standard deviations above the national average. Yeah.
Yeah, the Christian scientists had always had kind of carve outs

Speaker 1 in a weird way. And so, like, I was born in a hospital, but it was with a doctor who I think was friendly to Christian scientists.

Speaker 1 They were kind of okay with glasses or dental care. Although I remember my father had his wisdom teeth pulled with no

Speaker 1 anesthetic.

Speaker 1 It was fungible. Yeah, that's what always has been an issue for me is humans are full of contradictions.

Speaker 1 I don't think anyone has a monopoly on contradictions, but I do find that in religions in particular, the contradictions start piling up at such a degree.

Speaker 1 The Amish, they can't have anything electrical, but they can borrow their neighbor's car. Like, that's such a curious part.
And I don't know how people make peace with the inconsistency.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of mental gymnastics that goes on to justify a lot of the things.

Speaker 1 Okay, so in 2017, you wrote Prairie Friars. I'm laying this out because they share some connective tissue, as we'll get into with Murderland.

Speaker 1 But Prairie Fires, the American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Am I saying Ingalls right? Yep.
So I didn't even know who she was, but she wrote. I do.

Speaker 1 Did you read?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you were Little Girls.

Speaker 2 I was when I was younger, much younger. And then they made it into a show, and I watched the show too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what is it called?

Speaker 1 Little House on the Prairie. Little House on the Prairie.
What drew you to write about her? Well, I'd read the books as a kid and loved them. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, I was always really into reading because I think it was a sort of way to learn about the world that was outside of the religious

Speaker 1 framework. And I'd love those books.
I mean, they're great adventure stories about a girl

Speaker 1 and her family. And they...

Speaker 1 you know, are sort of about family and domesticity and farming. And, you know, all my grandparents were farmers of one kind or another, or most of them.

Speaker 1 So I think I kind of recognized my family's kind of emigrant journey to the Midwest and struggling to survive out on the plains. You know, all that seemed like it was adjacent to my family story.

Speaker 1 So that was kind of fascinating to me. You won the Pulitzer for that.
the National Book Critics Circle Award. Numerous awards for that.
Did that come as a surprise to you? Yes, yes, it did. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would imagine, like, you as a writer is not terribly different than me as an actor, which is like, I'm doing it for a long time.

Speaker 1 There's some period where I go, oh, right, we're not really in search of an Academy Award. That's really not what we're going to be getting in our lifetime.

Speaker 1 And if it just happened out of nowhere, it might be surprising. So it must have been.
Yeah, it was. It was a...
kind of a bolt out of the blue. I mean, I had no idea.

Speaker 1 Because, I mean, for one thing, it's a biography of a children's book author, and they're respected, but maybe not the center of the literary universe in some ways.

Speaker 1 And what do you think was the proprietary angle that made it so appealing and well-received?

Speaker 1 I think a lot of it had to do with the history, you know, that I was kind of presenting her as a historical figure who had been through all these pretty major events.

Speaker 1 We would modernly call her, like, she'd be high on the A score. She had a lot of trauma if you look at her life.

Speaker 1 Endless uprooting, scary people maybe lurking around. I mean, it's a very heightened arousal childhood.
Yeah, I mean, she was somebody who survived like really bizarre and terrifying catastrophes.

Speaker 1 You know, the locust invasion of the 1870s in which like trillions of locusts fell out of the sky

Speaker 1 and destroyed their farm and their crops.

Speaker 1 One of the harshest winters of all time. Yeah, the hard winter of 1880, they practically froze and starved to death.
And then a crop failure one year. I mean, that's all you're betting on.

Speaker 1 I mean, just one after another.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and just sad. She had a child who died less than a month after he was born and their house burned down.
So she sort of went through it all. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then just survived for many years, kind of working at odd jobs. And then finally, you know, in her 60s, which is really pretty late

Speaker 1 to adopt a new career, she, with the help of her daughter, who kind of bullied her into it, started writing these memoirs, which turned into the fictional stories of the little house books.

Speaker 1 She's writing them during another crisis because it was, you know, the Dust Bowl.

Speaker 1 It just won't, the hits won't stop. Yes, yes.
And so that kind of unfolding all the history behind her life and the writing of the books, I think people

Speaker 1 really responded to the history, which is itself kind of harrowing. Yeah.
Okay, Murderland,

Speaker 1 very juicy. Our theme that we're exploring is in general, you're kind of attracted to violence or exploring violence.
Yeah, that's like a theme that runs through a lot of these.

Speaker 1 Do you have an explanation for that fascination? Let me just say iTunes. I'm very interested in violence.
Yeah, I was thinking about that Vigo Martinson movie, movie, you know, A History of Violence.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Because I think that phrase is meaningful to me.

Speaker 1 I guess it has a lot to do with being, you know, a kid in the 70s, which was an incredibly violent era. You know, crime rate was going up, up, up.

Speaker 1 kind of topped out in the 80s. The economy was stalled.
You had the oil issues, Vietnam.

Speaker 1 So it was a really violent time, and everybody was kind of tearing their hair out like you know why is this happening you know are we just terrible people you know

Speaker 1 and it became this societal question why is this happening and people had all these sort of theories about we're losing our morals or people are not going people leaving the church yeah yeah so that's always a kind of perennial favorite.

Speaker 1 And at the same time, you have all these serial killers.

Speaker 1 I think for me looking at the serial killers was just kind of one extreme yeah and you're looking specifically at the pacific northwest which both makes sense a because you're from there i could see why you'd be interested in it but the pacific northwest does have this eerie stereotype It's lumber, it's aeronautics, it's Starbucks, it's serial killers.

Speaker 2 Is it associated with? I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 From the region we have ted bundy the green mile killer gary ridgway he killed 49 people

Speaker 1 yeah oh my gosh 49 people that's a low end that's what he was convicted of yeah

Speaker 1 probably

Speaker 1 more way more oh my gosh yeah robert lee yates 13 folks The I-5 killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler. Oh my God.
This is the Mount Rushmore of serial killers. Yeah.
It really is.

Speaker 1 So what have been the common explanations? People talked about the weather and the lack of light for, you know, much of the year.

Speaker 1 And also the Joan Didian people going to the West Coast, running out of land, people who are sort of antisocial or sort of they washed out elsewhere.

Speaker 1 They washed out on the East Coast or Midwest or whatever. So they end up kind of trapped in this place.
Yeah. This is true of Alaska, too.

Speaker 1 Well, I was going to say that the reason that opinion is appealing to me is Alaska is number one per capita for serial killers.

Speaker 1 And I've been there, and that too is like everyone there is like, I had to get the fuck out of like the anger by which that drove them to Alaska is pretty common.

Speaker 1 Definitely weather then.

Speaker 1 Or just the spirit of who wants to go live in the middle of nowhere, I think, is a curious

Speaker 1 for a social priming. That's a curious desire.
Okay, so those were kind of well-worn explanations. And as you set out to write this book, what did you start discovering?

Speaker 1 We start the book weirdly with a lot of geology.

Speaker 2 You love geology.

Speaker 1 I do love geology. So I wasn't bothered by it, but I was like, well, this is an interesting place to start is maps.

Speaker 1 Those explanations that we just talked about seemed like, you know, reasonable things to talk about, but they just never felt. like enough.

Speaker 1 And I'm thinking about this, you know, the kind of aha moment of it came when i was my husband and i were kind of thinking of moving back to the northwest and so i was looking at these pieces of property there was an ad a real estate ad for a piece of property on vashon island which is just across puget sound from tacoma And I read this ad and it said remediation required for arsenic or something like that.

Speaker 1 And I was like, what? On an island with no industry. Yes.
Vashon is just a kind of farm you know

Speaker 1 yes yes strawberry farms were a big thing on Veshon when I was a kid so I thought how the heck did Veshon get arsenic on it and about you know five minutes later of googling I see the smelter in Tacoma and that that is the source of the arsenic on Vashon Island

Speaker 1 the smelter is the Asarko American Smelting and Refining Company, which was built right in the center of the city of Tacoma. And the smelter was originally a lead smelter and then a copper smelter.

Speaker 1 But for years, like decade after decade, it's just pouring tons of arsenic and lead into the air. And so I said, hmm, that's interesting.
I wonder what all that lead did to people.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And like, again, you know, you Google lead and what you find out is that lead is associated with

Speaker 1 aggressive behavior. And kids, especially, who are exposed to lead show a tendency to become impulsive, irritable, aggressive, and in some cases, violent.

Speaker 1 It's replacing the calcium that should be there in your brain during development, and you're impairing regions that would be in charge of impulse control and other things, right?

Speaker 1 So it's a structural damage in the wake of lots of lead poisoning. Right.
Quick question before we get into the nitty-gritty of it.

Speaker 1 When you go into a book like this and you're curious about an alternative explanation, you don't start with an alternative explanation. You are just kind of open to discovering an alternative.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And this in particular is not something that I can prove. One of the things that was so intriguing to me about it was: you know, Ted Bundy grows up in Tacoma.

Speaker 1 Gary Ridgway grows up just to the north of Tacoma. Charles Manson is imprisoned for five years on McNeil Island, just across from Tacoma.

Speaker 1 And so, all three of these guys are kind of in the same place at the same time.

Speaker 1 And this answers your geology question because that line between the three of them just kind of leapt out of me like, oh, this is fascinating.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert,

Speaker 1 if you dare.

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Speaker 1 Are you able to aggregate any public data from Tacoma in general? Are they over-indexing as a total population for certain things?

Speaker 1 That's one of of the really frustrating things about Tacoma is that Asarco controlled that area so completely and was so central to the economy during the time when it operated that they did not do and did not allow any

Speaker 1 wholesale testing of a lot of the stuff. There were some limited testing of kids involving arsenic, but not lead.

Speaker 1 And they certainly do know now how much lead.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's a GIS map generated by the Washington State Department of Ecology that will show you how much lead was in Ted Bundy's front yard and his backyard.

Speaker 1 And so you can see how much lead people were getting.

Speaker 1 When and if you've compared that data, say the lead in Ted Bundy's front and backyard, to the primary exposure of lead to kids and everyone in the 70s and 80s was

Speaker 1 lead gasoline being emitted from cars. What I read today was like 58% of lead was being absorbed from the exhausts of cars.

Speaker 1 So if that was the primary contributor to lead poisoning, how did that level of exhaust compare to the level that was just sitting in their yard?

Speaker 1 Like if an average person was consuming X amount of lead, how much were these people living that close consuming?

Speaker 1 Well, for a place like Tacoma, it was a double whammy because it was leaded gas, but it was also significant amounts from the smelter.

Speaker 1 Chemists and scientists can actually identify the molecular component.

Speaker 1 You know, like in El Paso, another place that I talk about, they actually did studies that show that the lead that was polluting a lot of the city directly came from the smokestack, the Asarko smokestack that was in El Paso.

Speaker 1 They have a finger. They tried it.
Yes, they do. And I don't think they did that in Tacoma.

Speaker 1 But I mean, since they have spent millions of dollars trying to clean up the lead, I think a good portion of that did come from the smelter.

Speaker 1 So interesting.

Speaker 2 Also, I'm sure it's not everyone who's exposed to lead becomes a serial killer, obviously, or becomes that impulsive, but maybe you have some predispositions that that pushes you over the edge potentially.

Speaker 1 There's a whole theory that overlaps what you're suggesting. There is a lead crime hypothesis, as people will know or not know.

Speaker 1 From this period, mid-80s till now, we've seen homicides get cut in half. We've seen an overall huge reduction in crime.
And there's innumerable theories.

Speaker 1 Pre-economics put forward the abortion explanation, right? That you had a lot less unwanted kids entering the population. That's what you're seeing the result of.

Speaker 1 A lot of folks will say, well, the interconnectivity of police forces improves. So you saw this with Ted Bundy, right? He's like moving from one place to another.

Speaker 1 It's just down the road, and no one knows the same thing's happening one county over. So that's kind of an explanation.

Speaker 1 And then there is this lead crime hypothesis that we see the outline of lead in fuel and in other places, and that we're seeing now kind of the response to that.

Speaker 1 So, like, walk me through some of the people that you have outlined in this book, and just kind of tell me how you think that fits in or doesn't fit in with any of these theories.

Speaker 1 I don't know that we're ever going to tease that apart in terms of, oh, we can assign this number to the abortion.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's no way to know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it's it's very difficult, but they have done a number of studies looking at the connection between between violent crime and psychopathy and lead exposure.

Speaker 1 So we know there's something going on there.

Speaker 1 I think the question is how much do you assign to that?

Speaker 1 And what became a sort of

Speaker 1 obsession for me during COVID was sort of looking at where each of these guys grew up and what their lead exposure might have been.

Speaker 1 And some of them, you can't answer the question, but for the people who lived in Tacoma, it's pretty easy.

Speaker 1 You know, when I was sort of doing the research, you know, I looked at the smelter in Tacoma, which was owned by Osarco.

Speaker 1 I mean, they own stuff all over the West, but one of the other big lead and copper smelters they owned was in El Paso, right on the border across from Ciudad Juarez.

Speaker 1 And when I saw that, I thought, oh, there's no serial killer that's from El Paso.

Speaker 1 Google that. What pops up? It's Richard Ramirez because he grew up there.
He's not associated with it because he killed people in Los Angeles. This is

Speaker 1 the state killer. Richard Ramirez is the Night Stalker.

Speaker 2 Oh, the Night Stalker.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay.

Speaker 1 1986, I think. Got it.
Well, what was Ted Bundy's childhood like? Well, it was quite disrupted because he's born in a foundling home. Essentially, his mother gets pregnant outside wedlock.

Speaker 1 She's sent off kind of in shame to have this baby in a place that's run by nuns. And she has the baby and leaves it for two, three months.

Speaker 1 If you go and look at what psychologists and psychiatrists have. Attachment theory.

Speaker 1 That's a real issue. She goes back to get the baby.
takes it home with her to her home in Philadelphia, which is fondly known at the time as the city of smelters.

Speaker 1 Has incredible lead pollution and so he grows up there his mother remarries he seems to have been confused about the status of this stepfather like he thought maybe it was his real father so there seems to have been a lot of confusion a lot of anger about his mom and

Speaker 1 You start seeing him acting out at a very young age and doing violent things. And that's another thing that all these guys have in common is

Speaker 1 they start having these fantasies about women, about murder, about rape, very young. And did Ted ever say why he was doing it? It's one of the really frustrating things, though, about him is that they

Speaker 1 talked to him a lot. They got him to make statements, most of them hypothetical and a kind of, if I had done this, I would have done it that way.
Right.

Speaker 1 Right. Because he wouldn't admit culpability.
Like OJ's book.

Speaker 2 Yeah. If I had done it or whatever.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Jesus.
I know.

Speaker 1 So dark. But there's so many things we just don't know.
We don't even know how many people he killed when he started killing. You got the first we know about is an eight-year-old

Speaker 1 that he took out of a house.

Speaker 1 This is a theory. We don't know for sure because she has never been found.
He would never admit to it.

Speaker 1 Although in other cases where we know for a fact that he didn't kill the person when he was asked about it, he would just say, no,

Speaker 1 no, he didn't do that. And it turns out he was right about those.
In the case of Anne-Marie Burr in Tacoma, who he may have killed when he was 14,

Speaker 1 he said stuff like,

Speaker 1 oh, I never went to that part of Tacoma, which is not true because his uncle lived around the corner. He said, I was too young to have done that.
You know, the more somebody kind of embroiders

Speaker 1 on their denial, the more it kind of sounds like they're lying.

Speaker 2 And it isn't consistent with the other way.

Speaker 1 Right. What do you think the ethics are of true crime? And why are women predominantly the creators and the audience of true crime? This is a fascinating phenomenon.

Speaker 1 I think, you know, Anne Ruhl had a lot to do with this because

Speaker 1 her relationship to true crime, I mean, she was making a living at it as a single mom writing for detective magazines. But I think she also

Speaker 1 experienced it as a way of like, the more I know about this,

Speaker 1 the safer I can be almost. And the safer my daughter will be if we know who these people are, if we understand

Speaker 1 where they came from and how they do what they do. then it becomes a kind of protective

Speaker 1 knowledge. Right.
That's now why so many women are drawn to it. But of course, the ethics are just all over the place.
The desire to sensationalize this stuff is almost overwhelming.

Speaker 1 It's undeniable that violence is a human health issue. You know, I mean,

Speaker 1 where does it come from? You know, why do so men commit violent crimes?

Speaker 1 So I think it's legitimate to

Speaker 1 engage in conversations about it, to write books about it, to examine the history of it. And I also think it's useful to kind of pull it out of the standard treatment where you kind of have a silo.

Speaker 1 You know, you've got a book about Ted Bundy and a book about the Night Stalker and a book about Jack the Ripper or something, but you're not looking at the whole there's no synthesis of that's right.

Speaker 1 And so I think historically it's useful to look at

Speaker 2 it's very Malcolm Gladwell to kind of be like, this is what was going on for all these people. Oh, wow, there is a through line.

Speaker 1 Yeah, my explanation has always been

Speaker 1 kind of intuitively just we are all afraid of the thing that we have the highest probability of dying from. Although ironically, we don't because we don't care about dying stuff.

Speaker 1 But the flashy stuff that we have no control over, we tend to fixate on.

Speaker 1 And there was this moment going around last year where women would ask men when the last time they talked about the Roman Empire was. I don't know if you saw this.

Speaker 2 How often do you think about it?

Speaker 1 Think about it, talk about it. And it really did lead me down the path of like, well, that is injured.
I recognize the reality of that. And then go further.
World War II and color.

Speaker 1 What husband isn't watching World War II in color? And the wife is like, what the fuck is the obsession with World War II? But it occurred to me that's how we die. We die in war.

Speaker 1 We have been dying in war at the level of tens of millions, and we're not even one generation out of it. My father was in Vietnam, you know, people went to Desert Storm.

Speaker 1 Like, that's how young men are going to die. So, guess what? We're pretty interested in war, and we consume it over and over again because that was the high likelihood of how we will die accidentally.

Speaker 1 And so, it just kind of makes sense that women have found their way to being murdered by men

Speaker 1 or abused or hurt and men are focusing on getting killed in a war. And there was that other sort of meme thing that happened about bears.
You know, women.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's right. Who would you rather be trapped?

Speaker 1 If you're hiking alone in the wilderness, who would you rather encounter? A bear or a man? Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was a big thing.

Speaker 1 And women pretty consistently said bear. People said bear.
Yeah. Guys, I don't know if that's the right decision.
I mean, it's like a statistically the kill rate of bears versus random man. I know.

Speaker 1 I think the message is important.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I can imagine walking through the woods and then seeing a random man. That is so terrifying.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's more or less a bear, but that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 My husband and I once did a sort of six, seven-month stint at this place above the Rogue River. It was like a writer's retreat thing that didn't, you know, have electricity or whatever.

Speaker 1 And it was really remote.

Speaker 1 And we did see bears and mountain lions which was very exciting but the scariest thing that happened when we were out there was when this guy came hiking out there and he had a rifle with him which he said was for bears right right you just never know really know yeah exactly

Speaker 1 yeah let's talk about missing white woman syndrome that just came up on a show i was watching you the show you yeah yeah about a serial killer basically yeah it's a huge thing where white women are obsessed with other white women going missing or abducted or raped or murdered or whatever.

Speaker 1 When in fact, most violent crime is being experienced by women of color. It doesn't get all the headlines.
I watched a doc.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Compton had a serial killer that was worse than most of these other ones that got headlines, but he was killing black prostitutes and no one cared.

Speaker 1 Some astronomical number of them and no one even put together that this was happening. Right.

Speaker 1 That grim sleeper killer in LA was killing women, most of whom were black, most of whom were prostitutes for decades. And nobody was really paying attention.

Speaker 1 And recently, this guy made a documentary about that and actually went to the community and talked to people. And they all just said, nobody cared.
Nobody's even been here to ask us these questions.

Speaker 1 Women who had been involved, women who had been attacked by this guy, said, you're the first person who came and talked to us about it. So it's a huge

Speaker 2 and even on the podcast and the true crime stories, it's like who you're choosing to put at the center of the story. Often it's a white woman

Speaker 2 because, yeah, that gets more clicks.

Speaker 1 What is genetic science? How is it shining a light on some of these cold cases? Oh, well, they've, of course, caught the golden stake killer who you mentioned. That was the big one.

Speaker 1 But I think there have been a couple others whereby they can go back and they can find, even if they don't know who the person is, they can, using DNA from the case, they can locate a relative of some kind and kind of move forward until they can pinpoint the exact person.

Speaker 1 But I also think that all the stuff that we now know about neurology and brain development, that should also be playing a part in how we sort of think about violent crime because we know now, I mean, the whole football brain injury thing

Speaker 1 is huge because some of these guys had significant brain injury from being beaten or being in an accident or something. And so that I think is another thing that should be looked into.

Speaker 1 Interestingly, with that, we just had a CT expert on.

Speaker 1 Weirdly, the mechanism becomes the same as lead, which is it is an area of the brain that is now obstructing communication with other parts of the brain.

Speaker 1 And the result of that is, yeah, a lot of unpredictable,

Speaker 1 often violent behavior. Did you consider in this?

Speaker 1 Because another thing that I don't hear pushed forward a lot in all these different explanations, what seems quite likely to me is the contagion effect of these things.

Speaker 1 So it's like, yeah, it had this enormous peak and serial killers seem to beget other serial killers in the same way that reporting on suicides leads to outbreaks of suicides.

Speaker 1 That psychosomatic illnesses are contagious. When people see this in press and in the media, other people do it.
How much do you think was it just a self-fueling phenomenon?

Speaker 1 I would say now it's been replaced with school shooters. We can easily identify these patterns of when they're heavily reported, all of a sudden we have another outbreak of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, although I wonder about that because the serial killers, the vast vast majority of them are motivated by the sexual compulsion they're getting off on what they're doing.

Speaker 1 Whereas the mass shooters, that seems to be a slightly different

Speaker 1 phenomenon. I mean, they're both obsessed with getting credit, which they do, and the publicity of it.
Notoriety. The mass murderers seem more motivated by that celebrity aspect.

Speaker 2 Their manifestos

Speaker 1 and obsession with guns and so forth. But I think it's a different kink.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Whereas the serial killers, the wiring got crossed in some devastating way that left them with this sexual compulsion to do the same thing over and over again and

Speaker 1 achieve gratification through that. And that seems really different.
Now, in all of this research and formulating this theory, did you have any vision forward? Do you have any

Speaker 1 prescriptions? Yeah, any prescriptions?

Speaker 1 No, and I think what I wasn't doing was writing a kind of academic argument or a thesis about this because I was more interested in a subjective approach, one that kind of captured the era and the feeling of it and the look of it and my sort of memories of it, because that felt like a kind of drama that people could maybe relate to.

Speaker 1 There have been great works of academic histories of lead and the corruption that allowed lead to become such a huge factor in this country. So, those are out there.
You know, they've been done.

Speaker 1 I think I was after something a little less programmatic and more expressive or evocative of the era. Yeah, it feels like you felt like these stories were missing context.
Right.

Speaker 1 And that you wanted to provide this context. And then even furthermore, these things which are incredibly low percentage things, these are statistically negligible, really.

Speaker 1 One in 13 million is the current estimate of serial killer, you know.

Speaker 1 But that in some ways, these larger societal problems do feed into that downriver, that this is yet one of the many downriver effects of this kind of corruption and greed and lack of accountability.

Speaker 2 When you were researching this book, did it make you more paranoid? Are you more paranoid now post-writing this?

Speaker 1 No, I don't think so because I think it was a factor of that time. I mean, I'm more paranoid probably about like keeping the door locked and the windows locked.

Speaker 1 I mean, that serial killer at the end, Israel Keys, who I kind of close with him, and he would always say, Yeah, why don't people lock their windows? Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 So I'm more aware of things like that. Yeah, but I wouldn't call it that pair of windows.
Yeah, that seems just sad.

Speaker 1 I'll tell him why. It was laziness.
No, yeah. Yeah, just laziness.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Oh, well, Caroline, such a fascinating topic and such an interesting look at it and way to evaluate it. It's such a pleasure meeting you.

Speaker 1 Murder, land, crime, and bloodlust in the time of serial killers Seattle, Washington.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, minimally, you have to be a little more optimistic because the trajectory has been pretty consistent. We are getting better at this somehow, yes.

Speaker 1 And crime is down, actually.

Speaker 2 We'll see what AI does.

Speaker 1 There's something to be learned on that little spike during COVID. That could be a telling when we fully understand what happened there.
Oh, that's exactly.

Speaker 1 We have all these corollaries, but these corollaries now make this a little more compelling. Yeah.
Well, thank you so much. I wish you tons of luck with the book.
Thanks a lot.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

Speaker 1 If you dare,

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Speaker 1 Stay tuned for the fact check.

Speaker 2 It's driving parties at.

Speaker 1 Hello. Hello.
Welcome back to the Big Apple. It's a scorcher today.

Speaker 2 It's hot out.

Speaker 1 The only thing I was looking forward to about leaving Nashville where the day I left, or the day before I left, it was like 95.

Speaker 1 They do the real feel, kind of like they would do in Michigan with the wind chill, or what it really feels like. Uh-huh.
And it was, it was 95, but it felt like 100. And it did.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I was like, oh, that won't be bad.

Speaker 1 Go up to New York, get a little fresh air. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's 95 today.

Speaker 2 Today is hot. Yeah.
Yesterday, though, was, in my opinion, tolerable.

Speaker 1 Nice. It was hot yesterday, too.

Speaker 2 It was hot.

Speaker 1 I do think real feel. Real feel.
When you're surrounded by buildings. Yeah.
It feels hotter.

Speaker 2 There's no breeze. It's true.
But when I, so when I left the hotel, when I left the airport, I had a sweatshirt on

Speaker 2 and I got to the hotel. I had to drop my bags.
My room wasn't ready. And so then I was walking.
with my sweatshirt on for a while and I was like, I'm fine in my sweatshirt.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but you know, you really,

Speaker 2 let's talk about this. Okay, so I went home to see my parents and it was, it's, it was so hot there.

Speaker 1 It's even hotter than Nashville, right? It's a little bit further south.

Speaker 2 It felt similar, but yeah, it was, it was so hot. Um, and but as we know,

Speaker 1 we looked at the humidity. We did.
It was one percent higher. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're like, it's a little bit more humid. It was a one percent.

Speaker 2 It's pretty much the same, but there's something a tiny bit different. And I was was right.

Speaker 2 But yeah, so I went, I got to my parents' house and I was like, oh, I'm going to walk to the grocery store. And my parents were like, it's too hot.

Speaker 2 And I said, it's fine. It's close.

Speaker 1 It's very close. How far did they live from the grocery store?

Speaker 2 Very close. Like, let's see.

Speaker 1 Could you put it in miles or

Speaker 2 kilometers? Less than a mile. Okay.

Speaker 2 Definitely less than a mile. To me, no-brainer.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, they're like, it's, it's too hot. And I was like, it's, I'm, it's fine.
It's going to be fine. And then it turned into this crazy, like, you can't.

Speaker 1 And I was like, they were like, worried, you're going to die.

Speaker 2 Yes. They may, they load you up with water and stuff.
No, they were like, you can't go. Like, I'll drive you.
And I was like, well, no, you don't, don't drive me.

Speaker 2 And then I was like, well, I'll just drive if you're that. worried.
And they're like, well, you can't drive because this car is here.

Speaker 2 And, and, and then my aunt was coming over and it's like, she won't be able to to get in. I was like, well, I'll take mom's car.
And they're like, you can't. She, she just bought it.

Speaker 2 You don't know how to drive that car. I was like, oh,

Speaker 2 I was there for five minutes and I was like, yeah, I got to.

Speaker 1 I'm shocked you even agreed to drive a car, which was shot down.

Speaker 2 But I know I already was being like, I don't want to do this. It's fine.
I'll just drive.

Speaker 1 You were bending over backwards. I was.

Speaker 2 Thank you for acknowledging that.

Speaker 2 And, but then ultimately, I was like, I'm walking.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then I'm a big girl. I'm a biggest girl in this house.

Speaker 2 I did. I said, I'm 37.
Yeah. And I live in LA.
I'm okay.

Speaker 1 I'm weeks away from 38.

Speaker 2 Well, just don't say that.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I left. I walked.

Speaker 1 I walked.

Speaker 2 It was very hot. Okay.

Speaker 1 At any point, did you think they were right?

Speaker 2 Okay. No, but I was starting to feel like I think I'm getting like in my head about it.

Speaker 1 A little anxiety, panic attack.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 And then I made a whole story in my head where I was like,

Speaker 2 this is what they do.

Speaker 2 Everything's so scary.

Speaker 1 They planted the fear.

Speaker 2 Yes, they planted the fear. And now I'm like feeling fearful about a thing I have zero fear about.

Speaker 2 And this is my whole life.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And look what I've overcome.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So then you felt good.
You're like, I've overcome this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I also felt like righteous.

Speaker 1 Being in the South really has forced me to think about temperatures way more than I normally would. There's so so many weird, inconsistent things about it.
One is

Speaker 1 when you walk inside of a house down there,

Speaker 1 the air conditioning is only set at like, I don't know, 78 or 77 or something in the house, which feels ice cold, but in LA,

Speaker 2 you would never have it on it.

Speaker 1 You need it at 72.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you would never have it on.

Speaker 1 Why is why does it feel completely? It feels colder in the house in Nashville because relative to outside, but then you do the myth, the temperature is not higher.

Speaker 1 Like when we get into late August, September, October in LA, it'll be 9,800.

Speaker 1 It won't feel as hot as 93.

Speaker 2 Real feel.

Speaker 1 Real feel is different.

Speaker 1 And then I still don't understand why the gap in the AC has to be so much more dramatic out west. It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 I think it's because, well, I guess I don't know, but I think like we always set in the summer to 78 and in the winter to 68.

Speaker 2 That's like what you're supposed to do eco-friendly wise, but also money-wise. Yeah.
So for my parents, it's always about money and spending. So

Speaker 2 is it, it's probably more, it probably requires more energy

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 cool

Speaker 1 more it when it's hotter outside. Yes.

Speaker 2 So that's why people are doing, oh, you're just saying it feels different.

Speaker 1 You don't feel warm in the house. Like, were you feeling warm in your parents' house at 78?

Speaker 2 no but i don't feel warm at 78 but if you walked into my house in la

Speaker 1 in september and it was 78 you would go why don't you guys have the air on maybe i'm telling you because our bedroom will be 78 and i can't go to sleep really in la in the in the summer or when it's hot we're not really hot in the summer we're hot in the fall

Speaker 1 It's very confusing.

Speaker 1 I can't believe that something like temperature and humidity could be that relative.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is weird. I mean, humidity changes the whole game.
That's true.

Speaker 1 It changes, yes.

Speaker 1 It throws the rules out.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It did remind me too, like, um, my whole childhood in Michigan, I never once was in a house with AC.

Speaker 1 Maybe my dad's, when I go to my dad's on the weekend, he would live in a condo and he would have air conditioning, but never in my house growing up. Really? No, we never had air conditioning.

Speaker 1 My grandparents, Papa, Bob, and grandma,

Speaker 1 no AC. Every window had a box fan in it.
Yeah. It was noisy as hell.

Speaker 1 That made it kind of tolerable.

Speaker 2 It was, is it hot? It gets hot there.

Speaker 1 Oh my god, yeah. Then why didn't they have it?

Speaker 1 It was too expensive. It wasn't most of the year.
Like, I think everyone's just like, yeah, you just got to get through July and August.

Speaker 2 Well, that's, that's how California is now because it got to get through September and August.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 And it, it didn't used to be like that. So most apartments and stuff, they don't have AC.

Speaker 1 You're not going to put in a box. Yeah, and you're not going to put in AC for something that you only need for 20 days a year.

Speaker 1 Like in Santa Monica, when I lived there, almost none of the apartments had AC. Yeah.
And you only needed it like

Speaker 1 nine days a year in Santa Monica.

Speaker 2 And it's changed. Like it's gotten a lot hotter in LA over the past 10 years.
So like now I think these apartments do need AC, but they don't have it.

Speaker 1 I wonder. I want to look that up.
Oh, because I do remember

Speaker 1 in Santa Monica, there there was always a few brutal weeks that Brian and I would be like in there smoking cigarettes again with a box fan in the

Speaker 1 window and one out the back trying to get a little airflow. Sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Has LA gotten hotter?

Speaker 2 But you don't like the way that's worded?

Speaker 1 Oh, no. That's fine.
I'll sign off on that search.

Speaker 1 From 1990 to now. AIO review says yes.
By how much? Approximately 2.5 degrees in the last 50 years.

Speaker 1 50 years.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I don't know if we would, and then you cut that into a third.

Speaker 2 I don't know. I just know when I lived with Anthony.

Speaker 1 You also don't live further east.

Speaker 2 I live further east.

Speaker 1 You were at Fairfax.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you think that's much

Speaker 1 cooler? It's

Speaker 1 seven miles closer to the ocean.

Speaker 2 That's true, but it wasn't.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you, Santa Monica is a full 40 degrees cooler.

Speaker 2 Yeah, even that's fine, but it that's fine. I can accept.
I understand that I'm at Santa Monica, but the grove was hot,

Speaker 2 but not as hot.

Speaker 1 That's a fun thing in LA. So our house in LA is a good 10, 15 degrees warmer than Santa Monica.
But then I drive one mile on the 101, I go over the hill into the valley, and then it's another 10

Speaker 1 degrees hotter

Speaker 1 within two miles. So fun.
Mountains.

Speaker 2 Mountains, valleys.

Speaker 1 Sea breeze.

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Speaker 1 Did you ever use sea breeze? Now tell me about it. I think that was like an astringent for the face for acne.

Speaker 2 Sea breeze. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The stuff that they were selling us in the 80s.

Speaker 1 That wasn't around when I was. It was not good for your skin.
It was just like put turpentine on your face.

Speaker 2 Seabreeze face cream, I'm going to put

Speaker 1 face cleanser. Cleanser.

Speaker 1 Sea breeze, astringent, sensitive skin is it still it's still okay then I take all that back I don't want to be sued it's a great great product when I used it it made my skin a little dry yeah well you do have to be careful obviously with

Speaker 2 just dry your face out in the 80s yeah you know I go to corrective skincare yeah

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Speaker 1 You decided she retired while you're going.

Speaker 2 I was worried. I was like, I think maybe she's like lost her touch or something.
And then I was looking at my calendar and I was like, oh, oh my God, I am about to start my period.

Speaker 2 It really snuck up on me. Okay.

Speaker 2 I didn't know. And

Speaker 2 that is standard. I'm definitely going to have, regardless of corrective skincare,

Speaker 1 a little break.

Speaker 1 You could bathe in sea breeze, but every 28 days, you're going to have to.

Speaker 2 I'm getting something.

Speaker 1 I'm getting something.

Speaker 2 But she does,

Speaker 2 for my skin anyway, she likes it to be dry.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 I use a cleanser. By the way, people who don't live in LA and are like, I want some of these things or I need help, I think you can buy some of these products on her website.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so I use a cleanser that makes my skin pretty dry.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's good for my skin. And then I use eye.

Speaker 1 Did you ever do Accutane?

Speaker 2 I think you have to do it.

Speaker 1 I've never done it.

Speaker 2 You never did it. I was scared of it.
You were scared of it.

Speaker 2 I did everything else. So I took the antibiotics.

Speaker 1 Because it can, what it can can it have? Kidney outcomes?

Speaker 2 Also, like some mental stuff.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like some

Speaker 1 stuff. Again, we're not doctors.
We don't know. We love Seabreeze.
We love acne.

Speaker 2 This is all alleged. Yeah.
This is alleged. Yeah, some like depression, some potential suicide.

Speaker 1 So there'll be a very easy correlation, not causation, because think about why you're having the acne. You're having more hormones.
You're at an age where you're starting to have more of those. Yep.

Speaker 2 It could be that. But also it's, it's really, it's like intense, I think.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like a carpet bomb. Yeah.
I have several friends that did it, but I have several friends that like had really bad acne and then they never did it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You can't like get pregnant.

Speaker 1 You can't drink on it. You're not supposed to drink on it.

Speaker 2 Probably. And then you can't get pregnant like for a while.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Which always is a little when you hear that.

Speaker 1 It's like. If you have it in your teenage years, maybe don't get pregnant as well.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but people have acne like me when they're adults would you call what you have acne at this point

Speaker 1 it doesn't have any wood yeah um

Speaker 2 the floors you could get down on the floor oh boy um yes i would i say i think i have it under control okay but

Speaker 1 yes at any moment like let's just put it this way if someone said

Speaker 1 does your friend monica have acne i go no well that's nice but i would i would never ever describe and the many things I could list about you acne would never be on that list. Well, ever.
Well

Speaker 2 that's nice, but you'd be lying.

Speaker 1 Would you Rob ever say that Monica has acne? No, I wouldn't put bad skin up.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 that's very nice. But also, what's he got? What are you guys going to say right now? Like, that would be if I would just not bring it up.

Speaker 1 Well, you got to understand, like, I, when, when I just don't bring it up.

Speaker 2 You asked Rob, you put him on the spot.

Speaker 1 That was compromising for sure. Yeah, that wasn't fair.
But I said not bad skin.

Speaker 1 I also ask

Speaker 1 a lot. Yes, I put him on the spot.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 B,

Speaker 1 that was A. Yeah.

Speaker 1 B, I only ask questions that I'm certain are going to be,

Speaker 1 that it's not going to be hard for him. I know he would never describe you as having acne.
I just know it. Well, that's.
We've talked about it a bunch of times while you weren't around acne.

Speaker 1 Okay, great.

Speaker 1 Like we'll be having lunch sometimes. I'll go, you think

Speaker 1 Monica's got acne?

Speaker 1 Monica, Monica?

Speaker 1 Yeah, Monica. Or Monica.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, why would you ask that?

Speaker 1 That's what he says when I ask him that.

Speaker 2 He says, why would you ask that?

Speaker 1 Why would you ask that? Of course she doesn't. Okay.
When we're having lunch.

Speaker 2 And then he's like, well, what do you think?

Speaker 1 No, of course not. But I heard her say she had acne.
I was like, bitch, look in the mirror. You ain't got acne.
What should we order? And then he goes, you shouldn't call her a bitch. And I go,

Speaker 1 I only say bitch affectionately. I never use it pejoratively.

Speaker 1 And then we stop talking about it because I don't know if, I don't know if she'd like that. Then we're in the weeds.
Yeah, obviously.

Speaker 2 Listen, it's not,

Speaker 2 this is, it's not crazy. Like, I do, I go to a place that is acne-centric.
Yeah. And it is why it's under control for the most part.
Yeah. I also had acne for so long.

Speaker 2 It's not like, this isn't like I was a teenager with acne. Like, I am, I have an acne

Speaker 2 skin.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

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Speaker 2 I am an acne. No one can tell me I'm not an acne.

Speaker 1 I'm Monica and I'm an acne. Oh, acne.

Speaker 2 What a horrible name for it.

Speaker 1 It's not bad. I think it's bad.
I'll tell you what's bad. I was not going to tell this story.
What? I'm reading the Mark Twain book, as I've said a million times.

Speaker 1 I happen to be in a section for the last couple weeks where almost every night I'm hearing about his carbuncles.

Speaker 2 Okay, teach me.

Speaker 1 He's got these carbuncles. He's on tour in Europe and he's got carbuncles like on his thighs and there are these big cysts, boil cis, and just the name carbuncles.
It's such a rough fucking name.

Speaker 1 Like shingles.

Speaker 2 Yeah, shingles, yes.

Speaker 1 Oh, my carbuncle hurt.

Speaker 2 You're like, but it sounds kind of whimsical, too.

Speaker 1 I do like that it has car in it and bunkles a fun thing.

Speaker 2 Bunkle's fun.

Speaker 1 But you don't want, I just, yeah. This is crazy.
So I've been kind of obsessing for a couple of weeks about carbuncles. Yeah.
Just because I keep hearing it all night long as I'm falling asleep.

Speaker 1 Carbuncle, carbuncle.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I take a bike ride five days ago. We have a whole night.
We go out to Nashville and then we go see Superman. Oh, fun.

Speaker 1 Great movie. Our boyfriend's so good in it.
Oh, God. Nicholas Holt.
It's really funny, by the way, when like Lincoln starts liking somebody a lot.

Speaker 1 And like, cause she has no interest in our job, but then

Speaker 1 she, of course, is loving Lex Luther. Yeah.
And I go, I go, like, Nicholas Holt's so good in this. And she goes, you know him? And I go, yeah, honey, I've interviewed him a a couple of times.

Speaker 1 You have?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're, we're friends. We text each other.
You are like, it's only in those moments that you text him. I text him.
It's pretty one directional. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But anyways, we see that. And then we go.
And I am feeling all night like, I almost felt like my boxers were pinching my thigh or something, right? Okay.

Speaker 1 I get home, I pulled on my pants and I have fucking like a maracino cherry hanging off my

Speaker 1 inner thigh. It's so swollen.
It's irritated. Were you worried it was a tick gone bad? No, no.
I immediately went, I have cancer. Sure.
Of course. This is like, it's now coming out of the skin.

Speaker 1 I have cancer. Of course I have cancer because this house is too nice.
I mean, literally, I was so quick to think, of course, the shoes dropping. I have cancer.

Speaker 1 I'm in a panic in the kitchen, in the bathroom by myself. And then I go, man, I think AI is really good at identifying, you know, radiology charts and stuff.
I take a photo of it. Great.
I upload it.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And I, I did,

Speaker 1 this is a little dicey. I did say, is this a boil? Okay.
So you sort of led the witnesses. I could have potentially led the witness.
Okay.

Speaker 1 But it was like, yes, this looks, this is definitely a boil. And I'm like, oh my God, I have a boil.

Speaker 2 You know what? A boil is a bad word.

Speaker 1 It's terrible.

Speaker 2 I don't want a boil. I do prefer acne to boil.

Speaker 1 I'm like, oh my God, I have a boil. How'd it get a boil?

Speaker 2 What made you even think it was a boil?

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't you just say like, i was just like my my best

Speaker 1 like my my hell merry pass was that this was a boil and it was right but in reading about this boil now it gives me this long thing

Speaker 1 it's a forenuncle oh if you get multiple they become carbuncles i was like

Speaker 1 oh my this is impossible I've been obsessing about carbuncles and now I have, I'm in route to a carbuncle.

Speaker 2 I know you don't want to believe in the sim, but like, come on.

Speaker 1 I know. If the sim was fairer to everyone, I'd believe in it, but I just can't get just because, okay, this is in like let's okay, I think we'll get sidetracked on that, but um,

Speaker 1 so and then and then I really enjoyed this interaction with AI. It says, if there's any more information, you know, and I say, like, okay, well, I took a long bike ride this morning, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 And then immediately it's like, that makes a lot of sense. People who cycle get them often because you're wearing extra tight clothes.

Speaker 1 And what a boil really is, is generally staph infection. And I'm like, oh my God, now I have a fucking staph infection.
I'm not pumped about that either. That's not good.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It tells me to do hot compresses four times a day and it'll probably clear up on its own. Okay.
But I'm not happy with that because we have to go to New York in 36 hours. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And staph infection can turn into shingles.

Speaker 1 Yes, I did get one round of the vax. Hopefully that would have protected me.
Anyways,

Speaker 1 I find

Speaker 1 a doctor that'll take me in nashville great kristen's already gone with lincoln at a vocal lesson the richardsons are leaving delta i don't want her to be home at the so i have this like mad dash race to this doctor i get there

Speaker 1 i love the nurse she's so fun

Speaker 1 And she, I think I'm going there to Lance it. They go, yeah, come in.
We'll lance it. Oh, okay.
And then we'll give you an antibiotic. And she's like,

Speaker 1 I don't think that needs to be lanced. Okay.
And I'm like, oh man, I really wanted you to lance it. And she goes, I really wanted to lance it.

Speaker 1 I was excited for you to come in and I'm going to lance it and all that stuff. She goes, but I don't, I'm not even sure it's a boil.

Speaker 1 It looks more like just a big blood blister. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 But you're leaving tomorrow.

Speaker 2 Blood blister, also not a good word.

Speaker 1 All preferred to staff, carbuncle, fernuncle, and boil.

Speaker 1 So I'm disappointed. So I'm so anti-compress, hot compress.
Chris is always begging me to do hot compresses on stuff. I'm like, what the fuck does that do?

Speaker 1 Get in bed that night. I do a hot compress for 15 minutes.

Speaker 2 Monica. Felt so nice.

Speaker 1 No, it hurts better. Oh, it burst.
It just starts opening.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 Yes. I took pictures along the way.
I have many pictures.

Speaker 1 And then it just, it completely like drained. So I was like, God damn, this hot compress thing really works.

Speaker 1 So that night, I actually went to bed feeling pretty good because it was drained, antibacterial spray, neosporn on top, huge bandage.

Speaker 1 Woke up the next morning, took it off, loved what was happening on the bandage, flat as a pancake. Great.
Now I'm down to a small band-aid.

Speaker 1 Everything's delicious. Great.

Speaker 2 Don't say delicious.

Speaker 1 It looks pretty delicious.

Speaker 2 This is not the time to say delicious.

Speaker 1 You're not in a position to decide. Okay, fine.
Let me ask you this: Are maracino cherries delicious? Because that's what the first thing is. They're not for me.
They're not for you.

Speaker 2 Only arm cherries.

Speaker 1 Okay. Cherries.
I had a cherry.

Speaker 2 Okay. So, what? So you got the small band-aid.
That's it. But then you also have a wart.
What's happening? I don't know what's happening. Is it a wart?

Speaker 1 That's a side thing. I know.

Speaker 1 I don't want to talk about my wart. I was thinking about

Speaker 1 you know me. I like talking about things that have already resolved themselves.
It's so confusing. I know.
I have a weird

Speaker 1 pattern of honesty. You just talk.
I'll be honest about anything once it's over. Like if I've shit my pants, yes.
I'll never tell you while I'm shitting my pants that I'm shitting my pants.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, I. Yeah, I'm falling apart, I guess.
I hope. So I have a...
I don't know if it's a word. I just felt something on my thumb.
I'm like, if that's a word I want to handle, it's a nice one.

Speaker 1 What if it's a. I have a band-aid on that erodes.

Speaker 2 And are you worried it's a farm uncle?

Speaker 1 Farm uncle.

Speaker 1 A carbuncle.

Speaker 2 No, that's when there's a lot.

Speaker 1 That's a lot. No, we're all, yeah, we're at farm uncle level.
Okay, speaking of like this gross stuff that's happening to me.

Speaker 2 My friend,

Speaker 2 when I was home, I was with my friends from home, and

Speaker 2 they had bed bugs this summer.

Speaker 1 And the pictures of all the

Speaker 1 ones that eat you up, right?

Speaker 2 She's covered in in bites.

Speaker 1 Sure, it wasn't scabies.

Speaker 2 It was bed bugs.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And both her and her husband.

Speaker 1 You have to burn your house down virtually.

Speaker 2 Exactly. They were in another, they were at their parents'

Speaker 2 vacation house. Oh, God.
No one else in the house got, it's just in that room.

Speaker 1 There was a big New York City bed bug thing I remember reading about a long time ago.

Speaker 2 Disgusting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's rough. We're talking about gross stuff.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So after dinner last night, I'm like, like, oh, I'll walk through Central Park on the way home. I love Central Park in the summer.

Speaker 1 And as soon as I get on the path, I'm hearing all this rustling in the bushes. And every time I look over, I see a rat in the undergrowth.
And then I just start seeing rats all over the walkway.

Speaker 1 And I'm like,

Speaker 1 I guess if you look at them like squirrels, we don't mind squirrels. I know.

Speaker 2 It is like it's racism against rats.

Speaker 2 It is. It is.
Species. Haven't I? Even mice versus rats, we think mice are so cute.

Speaker 1 Miniature mice. Exactly.
If you were a miniature rat. Honestly, I'm offended even just hearing that.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 that's so bad. Distasteful.

Speaker 2 But I feel bad for them.

Speaker 1 They're just little animals on the planet trying to make it work.

Speaker 1 But they were, I couldn't believe how many were just running around the pathways. And no one seemed worried.
But me. Do you think? I was like, are they going to bite my ankles?

Speaker 2 What? Do you think there was a dead body?

Speaker 1 I don't. I would have smelled it.

Speaker 2 Dead body's smell. Maybe your smell is gone because of all this other stuff that's you have a sickness.

Speaker 1 Possible. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Possibly.

Speaker 2 I mean, all of those rats in one spot.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't they be all over the dead body chowing down instead of running around the path?

Speaker 2 Or they're telling their friends. Yeah, they're gathering.
Yeah, they're gathering.

Speaker 2 But oh, wait, real quick, because we're talking about dead bodies. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which that's just that's really distasteful

Speaker 2 what I just did because I am going to talk about some sad stuff, which is Malcolm Jamal Warner died, which is so

Speaker 1 sad.

Speaker 2 So sad.

Speaker 1 Swimming. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you guys never take my drowning talk seriously.

Speaker 2 Just saying.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And then, and then Ozzie Osborne died. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do we know of what?

Speaker 2 I think just a hard life. Hard life.
He was, I mean, it was like, he was.

Speaker 2 So exactly. So this is what, so when I was with my friends from home, they they were like, well, Ozzy Osborne had died that day.
And they're like, well, you know, these things come in threes.

Speaker 2 And I was like, no, that's not real. And they're like, we'll see.

Speaker 1 And they were right. They were right.
They do come in threes. I don't like that.
The Hulk Hogan thing. So my friend Dean text Aaron and I

Speaker 1 a picture of Hulk ripping his shirt off. Yeah.
I didn't, I hadn't heard he died.

Speaker 2 Oh, you just thought it was a random.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which would not be unlike Dean to just randomly sent a a Hulk Hogan picture. Yeah.
And luckily, I wrote A God Among Men.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's nice.

Speaker 1 And then an hour later, I found out he's dead. And then I was like, oh, he was letting us know.
And I'm like, oh, no, that really worked.

Speaker 2 It really worked.

Speaker 1 It almost worked better. I don't even know if I would have come up with something as appropriate.
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Is there still a phone in the tomb of the woman who invented the Christian Scientist Church?

Speaker 2 She said that they put a phone in there.

Speaker 1 Oh. Oh.

Speaker 2 In case she came, in case she like

Speaker 1 woke up, rose and wanted to order a pizza because she was starving. She was starving.

Speaker 2 She was under there for so long.

Speaker 2 Okay, according to a long-standing rumor, a telephone was installed in Mary Baker Eddie's tomb at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is not true.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy.

Speaker 2 The origin of this rumor seems to center around the circumstances following Eddie's death on December 3rd, 1910.

Speaker 2 After her funeral on December 8th, Eddie's casket was kept in Mount Auburn Cemetery's receiving tomb until the gravesite could be made ready.

Speaker 2 In order to protect against vandalism, the casket was guarded around the clock. At that time, a telephone was installed for the guards to use.

Speaker 2 It was removed after the casket was transferred to the gravesite in January 1911.

Speaker 1 You also have to imagine what a phone in 1910 was. I think it was an enormous plywood box.
I know. I don't even know if they have plywood yet, but a huge.

Speaker 1 Remember, you never watched green acres did you you're too young no i don't think so do you know the theme song sing it green acres is the life for me farm living is this

Speaker 1 and then jajaja gabor would say darling i love you but give me park avenue oh you are my wife goodbye city life green acres we will do do

Speaker 1 well that was a mess but i got some pieces okay so they left the big city yeah it does he drug jaja gabor out of the big city and took her to a farm it's plus this mess i guess yeah what about it um

Speaker 1 telephone oh yeah because i was gonna say on that show they had the kind of telephone you pick up and you hold the big part to your ear and then you talk into the little mouthpiece and there was an operator and

Speaker 1 that phone was enormous and i and that was that was probably set in the 40s. I don't know.
So just imagine how big it is. That's all I'm saying.
It might have been the size of a casket.

Speaker 2 How are they even having it outside?

Speaker 1 At the cemetery? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 2 With the guards who were using it or whatever.

Speaker 1 And you used to have to crank it. I don't know if that was to supply electricity.
I don't know. You had to crank the fucking thing.
I kind of wish I had one, actually.

Speaker 2 You could probably auction for one.

Speaker 1 I'd love to have one in my car where it'd take up the whole passenger seat, and that would be my cell phone in the car.

Speaker 2 Yeah, when we, remember when, I mean, things have moved so, so fast. Cause when we watch what lies beneath, they're on a cordless phone in that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's, it just looks wild.

Speaker 1 Yes. Uh, and we've been doing the Tom Cruise Marathon.
And yes, what's even crazier is to watch early Mission Impossibles because it's like the highest tech CIA, yeah, covert shit.

Speaker 1 And you're kind of looking at all the stuff, and it's like, you know, your iPhone would do way more than every single thing in the movie.

Speaker 2 It's so weird.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Oh Lord.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Oh my heavens.

Speaker 2 Okay. How many states have religious exemptions for vaccines? 45 states and DC allow for religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements.

Speaker 2 These exemptions allow parents to decline vaccinations for their children based on religious beliefs. The remaining five states, California, a ding, ding, ding.
Connecticut, Maine,

Speaker 2 a place I really want to go.

Speaker 2 Mississippi, which I'm very surprised by. Yeah.
And West Virginia do not allow religious exemptions.

Speaker 1 You'll get surprised. You know, you will get surprised.
West Virginia and Mississippi. I'm interested in.
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 Can the Amish borrow their neighbor's car, not have electricity, but borrow their neighbor's car? Well, Amish individuals cannot own cars due to their religious beliefs.

Speaker 2 They can't and often do accept rides from neighbors or hired drivers for transportation. The key distinction is that they are allowed to be passengers in vehicles, but not drivers or owners.

Speaker 1 Not drivers.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I guess you go to your neighbor's house and go like, take me up to right aid.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but they better not be Amish. The neighbor? Yeah, and don't they all kind of live amongst one another?

Speaker 1 Well, they probably strategically make sure it's every other one, like boy girl, boy, girl.

Speaker 1 You gotta make sure you got one worldly person person to the left or right of you in case you need to go to right aid yeah this is interesting because

Speaker 2 you would think if this was the case you'd see more amish people just amongst

Speaker 2 um non-amish people so that yeah they could like reap the benefits

Speaker 1 where my grandparents had their motel in sturgis you saw that it was like And you would, it's, and you can tell because out there,

Speaker 1 none of the power lines are buried. So you're driving and you're seeing seeing power lines come off the main power lines into a house.
And then the next house, there's no power lines going into.

Speaker 1 And then so you literally could just drive down the road and see exactly who was Amish and who wasn't. But I got to say, I'm often critical of religions.
And Amish is quite extreme, of course.

Speaker 1 But I love the Amish solely because of Rum Shpringa. I think it's so rad that they go, go out, not just, you can, you should.
Yeah. Go out and spend a year in the worldly world.

Speaker 1 And we want you to decide to be here. I think that's fucking, that's all you can ask of a religion, really.

Speaker 1 What I hate is like trying to mask reality from the practitioners or hide truths, or as this term put it back on the shelf we've heard in under the banner, all these ways to like stifle knowledge and information.

Speaker 1 That's my issue mostly with religion. So, the fact that they encourage a full exploration, I think is awesome.

Speaker 2 I think it's awesome too. I'm a little more pessimistic about

Speaker 2 the actual chances of coming out of Rom

Speaker 2 Springa and having a true assessment because you've grown up, you know, it's like you've grown up being told these things about the modern world and then you're just like thrust in.

Speaker 2 The modern world is scary if you're thrust in.

Speaker 1 Let's be clear. Again, they're living among the modern world.
It's not like they're unaware of it. They're driving in their horse and buggy down the road with, you know, porsche driving.

Speaker 2 They're being told, like, that's not a good way of living. And then you're in it.

Speaker 2 I think it's hard to then be like, yeah, I love it. I think it would take long, maybe longer to fully adjust than they have for the little spring break.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just don't know of any other

Speaker 1 sect of Christianity that says, go become a Muslim for a year, go become Jewish for a year, go practice a full other religion and we're confident you'll return to ours yeah is is just rad yeah okay is alaska the number one per capita serial killer state yes

Speaker 1 um california has the highest total number of serial killings but it's not the most the most per capita just like california a high gdp exactly Yeah, I just was watching Newsome in an interview on a podcast talk about the amount of money

Speaker 1 that California gives to the federal government that it doesn't take. So we're in a like $81 billion surplus that California gives to the federal government.

Speaker 1 Whereas Texas, and I love Texas, make no mistake, is in a $71 billion deficit from the federal government. So, you know, $150 billion difference there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's something I like, I remember during the fires

Speaker 2 when Trump was like threatening to

Speaker 2 not help us and not give us aid and stuff. I was talking to my dad about it, and he was like,

Speaker 2 Good luck. All California has to do is say, Then we're not contributing to the federal government, and the whole country is riding on that money.

Speaker 1 Like, we are

Speaker 1 New York.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the country is propped up on

Speaker 1 California. I think about eight states.
Yeah, I think somewhere in there. Yeah.
Which is rad, by the way. I love it.

Speaker 1 That's why we're a union. We all benefit.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay. So what is the current estimate of serial killers?

Speaker 2 While pinpointing an exact number is impossible due to the clandestine nature of serial killing, it is estimated that there are at least 500 serial killers currently at large and unidentified in the United States.

Speaker 2 The FBI has previously stated that for every one serial killer apprehended apprehended and brought to trial, three more may emerge and begin their criminal activity.

Speaker 2 While the number of active serial killers has decreased significantly since its peak in the 70s and 80s, there is still a concerning number operating undetected.

Speaker 2 The decline is generally attributed to advancements in forensic science, policing, criminal justice, and technology, making it harder for serial killers to avoid capture.

Speaker 2 For example, the number of known active serial killers in the U.S. dropped from nearly 300 in the 1970s to fewer than 50 in the

Speaker 2 2010s. Despite this downward trend, the FBI estimates that the problem is far from eradicated.
Yeah, they kind of, yeah.

Speaker 1 Law enforcement, the risk they run is they get a little tunnel vision. Like even if they're seeing a very clear pattern of decreasing, they're like, don't you dare think about

Speaker 1 cutting our funding. Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's still raging.

Speaker 1 It's definitely come down. It's very interesting.
I don't think we really have the answer yet. I think there's, well, Eric and I were talking about on this trip.

Speaker 1 You know, there's weird outlets for people now and weird ways to pacify people that didn't exist like you could sit in your basement and just blast people all day long on video games and you could be talking to other dudes on headsets and yelling at them and being aggressive and you know all kinds of shit can happen online and you wonder is that pacifying a lot of people that otherwise would be out roaming around delinquent and bored with these weird ideas.

Speaker 1 I don't know. There's some explanation.
And it seems like it has to be correlated to technology. Whether that's also, it's way harder to get away with it.
I'm sure that's part of it.

Speaker 1 But again, I don't believe serial killers exist or don't exist because of deterrence. I think if you're that way, you're that way.

Speaker 1 It's not like, oh, I was going to be a serial killer, but then I find out you get the death penalty. So then I wasn't a serial killer.

Speaker 1 I don't think it works that way.

Speaker 2 Neither. It's definitely a brain.

Speaker 2 I think it's a

Speaker 2 brain.

Speaker 2 it's a disease.

Speaker 1 Like, I think it's like

Speaker 2 psychopathy.

Speaker 2 I mean, okay, so here's an interesting question. Do you think if

Speaker 2 they discover a gene that is

Speaker 2 a serial killer gene?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But it only appears in

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 eighth month of the pregnancy. You can only test it.
Do you think the country would be like, yeah, you can abort that child that late in the game?

Speaker 1 I think it would be split. I think a lot of people would say, no, you can't kill.
Again, everyone that's anti-death penalty would say, no, no, you can't just kill somebody.

Speaker 1 That's not the right of any of us or any government.

Speaker 1 But they would have to live in a very interesting way. There'd have to be some monitoring at all times.
Like if there was a known gene. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And again, that's so tricky of a hypothetical because so often people are

Speaker 1 genotypically one thing and then phenotypically not that thing. Like you could, you know, things happen that prevent the expression of those genes.
So you could have that gene and probably not

Speaker 1 happen. So it's very, very tricky.
I think a more compelling

Speaker 1 aspect that's that is ahead for us is there's that gene should and CRISPR is totally ironed out and

Speaker 1 dependable. Would there be legislation that on that eight month, on that eighth month, you have to use CRISPR to edit out that gene? I think people would sign up for that.

Speaker 2 It's pretty

Speaker 2 scary.

Speaker 1 Serial killers or CRISPR?

Speaker 2 Serial killers.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Then we would be putting in so much, it would require a lot of funding

Speaker 2 to like monitor those people or put them in a place or, or, you know, whatever. Yeah.
And I don't like, I don't know if people would go for it.

Speaker 1 I mean, you see the obvious, the pushback would be it's like a very slippery slope. If that's eugenics, right? So we're really slippery slope.

Speaker 2 That's why it's an interesting

Speaker 1 conversation. It's yeah.
Comment if you'd say yes on the bill.

Speaker 2 All right. Well, that's it for Caroline.

Speaker 2 I hope everyone can sleep at night, even though they're scared.

Speaker 1 They're scared.

Speaker 1 So scary.

Speaker 1 Oh, spank a church.

Speaker 1 All right. Love you.
Okay, love you. Bye.

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