Episode 614: Pyromania

This episode is brought to you by FX's Alien Earth, the official podcast.

Each week, host Adam Rogers is joined by guests, including the show's creator, cast, and crew, in this exclusive companion podcast.

They will explore the story elements, deep dive into character motivations, and offer an episode-by-episode behind-the-scenes breakdown of each terrifying chapter in this new series.

Search FX's Alien Earth wherever you listen to podcasts.

The thought of getting a degree can be straight up terrifying.

We get it.

But Southern New Hampshire University makes it easier than you'd think.

They have over 200 degrees you can earn online, no set class times, so your social life stays alive and well, and low online tuition that won't scare your bank account.

College doesn't have to be a horror story.

Visit SNHU.edu slash last podcast to get started.

That's snhu.edu slash last podcast.

There's no place to escape to.

This is the last podcast.

On the left.

That's when the cannibalism started.

What was that?

Natalie and I relax every night by watching our true crime shows, right?

You know, and the one we're watching right now is called Evil Libs Here, and it's about like bad, evil family members that you grew up with.

Yeah.

But what I love about this show.

Was it a home movie?

Oh, wait a second.

Is this live feed for my living room?

But they do a thing on the show where they always ask a question to like these devastated people.

Like this show, I kind of like it because it's really intense, but they show these devastated people and they always go like, huh?

Take a look at this picture of this other dead person.

What do you think of that?

And then they go like, they get upset and stuff.

But then eventually they always ask the question, so if you could go back would you do it all different and it's like at some point it's like yeah yeah like no one's gonna be like no i'm glad i married the serial murderer well they but the thing is they always have to say if there's kids involved they always are like well i wouldn't because otherwise i wouldn't have little darlene but the problem is that sometimes little darlene turns into angry darlene

just a net negative on the world oh it's hard sometimes little darlene didn't get all the good dna Yeah, and if Little Darlene didn't exist, maybe you'd have a nice little Timmy,

you know, and someone else.

And that Timmy's going to be a lawyer, you know, instead of a fucking lawyer.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, who knows?

Well, yeah, yeah, for a bear.

A lawyer for a bear.

Please.

In Forest Court.

Oh, my God.

Now we have a new career trajectory.

You just got to go to school.

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen.

Before we get too far into bear law, my name is Marcus Parks.

I'm here with Henry Zabrowski.

I'm actually just a part of the Otter Law

constituency.

And we just have a real live and covered in ham.

I'm just saying the picnic basket was asking for it.

Probable cause.

Probable cause Ed Larson here with the picnic basket defense.

The ham goes from the back

on the left.

How is your picnic basket defense these days?

My God, it's going well, dude.

Yeah, it's been wonderful.

I've been getting some blankets.

I've been put out.

You know what?

Fuck ants.

All right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pro-bear, anti-ant.

Anti-oh, I guess anti-is already, it's already in the word.

Yeah, you've already done it yourself, haven't you?

But I'm going to just say right here at the very top of this Pyromania episode, I think that it's super important for me to say I think picnics are bullshit.

Whoa!

Who wants to bring a bunch of cold-ass food in the middle of some feces-filled like patch of ass?

Like you're going out to, there's no place in LA that I want to have a picnic.

Also, I got to tell, this is a good warning for everyone as a dog owner, don't picnic directly under the tree because that's where the dogs pee.

They pee against the tree and under the tree.

So if you're just eating on a big pile of piss.

Yeah.

Welcome to the Pyromania episode, ladies and gentlemen.

As we just went through bear law,

picnic law.

Yeah, picnic law.

You know, where to avoid the piss at the park.

Yes.

Yes, this is our exploration on pyromania.

Yeah, fire.

Hell yeah.

I am the god of hellfire,

and I bring you fire.

I bring you to burn.

Can we play that?

No, absolutely not.

We can just say, just go yourself and go listen to the crazy world of Arthur Brown.

Oh, the best song ever.

Now, the simplest definition of pyromania, or at least the one most people probably use when they think of the subject, is the habitual setting of fires as an act of pleasure.

But after dipping into the research, we found that the reasons behind pyromania are complicated and varied, although there are some unifying factors.

According to the DSM-5, pyromania has a fair amount of markers, with the most obvious being the deliberate act of setting a fire on more than one occasion, a fascination or attraction to fire, tension or arousal before the act, and pleasure, gratification, or relief when setting the fire or witnessing witnessing the aftermath.

This is also a type of crime that has some of my, like, the funniest old-timey looks at your crime.

Like, I watched an old documentary called Portrait of an Arsonist that was like, it was actually a very expensive rental for some reason.

And I, they kind of talk about the term, they always throw around the term firebug.

Yeah.

Like the term firebug, which, like, because I guess that's like fairly common within the fire like fighter community.

Yeah.

They like bugs.

The wannabes.

Like, they call them firebugs.

They're guys that show up around the firehouse that are obsessed with the train.

They're obsessed with the ladders and the hoses and all the mechanics and stuff.

I don't know why.

Yeah.

And they then go and they essentially then start becoming like fire fans and hanging out.

But they very sillily sort of like refer to them as fire bugs.

Interesting.

But they are worse than that.

You ever set fire to an anthill?

It's wild.

You know, yeah.

You put a bunch of, you put some lighter fluid in the middle of it, and then you light it, and it goes out.

And then when you hit it with a rake, it goes off again.

It's fucking fun.

They just pop like little popcorn guys.

Fuck ants.

Wow.

There's more ants I am.

Wow.

Really big.

Really against ants here.

But Eddie brings up a very good point accidentally because they show something like 10% of young men specifically experiment with fire setting.

There's a difference between apparently that was.

I'm going to raise my hand on that one.

Got a story coming up later on that one.

Oh, yeah, split a couple.

It's very

different than pyromania.

Very different.

And there is also a massive difference between a pyromaniac and your garden variety arsonist.

While many arsonists have antisocial personality disorders, one study found that only a quarter of arsonists qualify as pyromaniacs.

See, unlike a crooked landlord who's adept at burning down buildings for insurance payouts,

that's arson.

Pyromaniacs don't set fire for monetary gain, nor do they do it for socio-political ideology, the concealment of criminal activity, to express anger or vengeance, to improve one's living circumstances, or as a result of impaired judgment.

Interestingly, though, neither do most of them do it for sexual purposes, which I honestly thought was the main motivation before we got into all this research.

Rather, in one study that interviewed 1,100 pyromaniacs, only 5%

reported a sexual thrill when starting fires.

I mean, I would probably lie about that part.

Yeah, I'm not hard.

So, when the orphanage was burning, did you masturbate?

No!

What kind of sicko?

Who would do that?

Oh, fuck, he's thinking about it.

Oh, he can't even do it.

Rose the bathroom real quick.

Now, people who develop pyromania usually begin as fire watchers, fans, if you will.

And much like a serial killer who gets a job and authority for the power it gives them over other people, pyromaniacs will often get jobs in the firefighting field so they can be closer to fire and so they can see the consequences of their actions.

They definitely try.

Yeah.

Reportedly, about a hundred firefighters are convicted of arson every year.

But not surprisingly, the governing bodies in charge of tracking the causes of fires nationwide, they intentionally refrain from tracking firefighter arson.

Instead, these are treated as so-called isolated incidents.

Yeah, and it's kind of like in our necrophilia episode, a lot of the people involved were EMTs.

Yeah, you know, but also, I find it interesting that they don't, they obviously can't always investigate it because then they'd be looking into themselves.

It's very difficult for them.

But it's very similar to what the Postal Service did when all those guys were popping off in the 90s.

They kept saying, no, no, no, no, it's not about how we handle the mail.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

They are just mad about traffic.

It's all the goddamn paper cuts.

Those are the worst.

But I'm glad you brought that up, Marcus, because these firefighters have had it too good since 9-11.

Tell me about it.

I mean, it's been how many years now?

Almost 25?

25 years.

It's over, man.

Blanket.

Chip time is done, firefighters.

You need to do something else.

They did, though.

Yeah, they take naps and eat spaghetti.

The LAFD did extremely extremely good work here.

Just kidding.

I like to make fun of people who are obviously good.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you to all of our LAFD people here in the city who saved us just a couple of months ago.

It's just that for when they sneak in your house to try to fuck your wife.

It's different.

It turns out she's been texting them.

You always think it's a break-in because they've told you it's a break-in and they use an axe.

Yeah.

And there's all kinds of people sneaking in your house to try to fuck your wife.

It's not just firefighters.

They all do it.

They all do it.

Six out of ten.

Six out of ten of firefighters.

I'll tell you that much.

We got to get rid of her cell phone.

Honestly, why is she hanging out by the fire station?

I mean, it's so much fun.

What's so beautiful?

Dangerous.

God want to fuck a fireplace.

Bye-bye.

Oh, no.

He's only gay for men in uniform.

Typically, firefighter arsonists are white guys with one of two problems.

One, they might have a hero syndrome in which they intentionally create situations in which they can be the savior.

Firefighter arsonists, however, can also be in that small percentage of pyromaniacs who get sexual gratification from starting and/or containing fires.

But while most firefighter pyros are men, one of the most consequential in recent history was a woman that was in the firefighting game.

In 2002, a Forest Service worker and fire spotter named Terry Barton admitted to intentionally starting a fire at a campground in Colorado solely for the attention.

As a consequence, 138,000 acres of land were burned, 113 homes were destroyed, and five firefighters died during what became the largest wildfire in Colorado history.

For her part, Terry Barton was sentenced to 18 years in prison, but was released after just six.

Getting people for murder and arson is actually extremely difficult.

Really?

It's interesting because most of them beg off.

They all go like, well, it's an impulse problem.

It was an accident.

It went out of my control.

And that's what happened.

So what is it, manslaughter then?

I mean, not less than, because this is all like 18 years in prison is less than manslaughter.

It's not like a drunk driver means to kill a family.

No, I mean, sometimes it's a happy accident, but yeah,

it's mostly what you're shooting to do because you hate families.

But this is,

it's interesting that the attention like factor is the most important of all.

Yeah, that she was doing it for attention.

Yeah.

Do you think they would let her become like one of those prison firefighters?

I actually doubt that she's ever allowed to do it ever again.

I doubt she's ever allowed anywhere near a hose except to suck it.

Oh, yeah.

That's why firemen become firemen for the hose.

That's worth it.

E-D-D-I-E-T-U-N-E-S dot com.

He will suck dick for money.

But before we get into the very human pyromaniacs, Henry has requested that we cover one of history's only alleged bovine fire starters.

We've got to give it the death penalty, yo.

I want to see it dead.

I want to see it dead by fire and squad.

This, briefly, is the story of the infamous cow owned by Catherine O'Leary, the cow that supposedly started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

I heard my mama cry, the nachi pray, the nacho, go die.

So many great fire songs, right?

Yeah.

Now, the legend is that Mrs.

O'Leary's cow kicked over a kerosene lantern, which set her barn on fire, and that fire spread across Chicago.

where it destroyed over 17,000 structures and killed somewhere around 300 people.

Records are spotty.

The cow, however, may not be at fault here.

What the fuck?

While the cow very well may have been involved, Chicago was going to burn eventually, no matter what.

The weather was hot that October, the area was going through a drought, fire codes were very loosely enforced, and Chicago was a city built almost entirely out of wood.

And it's a windy motherfucker.

Yeah.

Truly, a city of wide shoulders as well.

Well, you know, the windy city, that's actually a myth.

Really?

The name windy city comes from their politicians who blew a lot of hot air in their blowhards.

I liked it better the other way.

I hate change.

Do you think that the cow got sexual gratification?

She started jerking on its others.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, cows are known to do that.

Did the cow live?

God, no.

No, no, the cow burned.

Fuck.

Now, the fire did indeed start at the O'Leary small dairy business, but it's equally likely that the fire began when embers from a chimney settled on a stack of hay.

It's also equally likely that the fire was started by a boarder at the O'Leary home, Dennis Pegleg Sullivan,

who may have accidentally lit the hay on fire with a cigarette while drinking and smoking with his friends in the barn.

Luckily for the Irish, the cow story won out, and to this day, it's still widely believed to be the cause of the fire.

No, I'll be the one of the new brave men here in 2025 to blame the Irish.

Fuck you, Irish.

Destroying the beloved fur city of Chicago and putting the blame on a cow.

You know, and not a single Irishman in the room.

No.

Or Rob?

Rob?

O'Kunowitz.

Oh, O'Kunowitz.

Oh, but I think it sounds Polish.

She's Polish.

It's a hybrid name.

Oh,

okay.

One of those Irish names.

Yeah.

Oh, Okunowitz always thought it was like, yeah, Polish now, like, oh, Kunowitz.

It is.

Huh.

Wow.

Get out of here.

Do you think think it's crazy that the last thing the Chicago heard that night was this guy going, fucking goddamn it?

Ah, shit.

Ah, ow, ow.

Ow.

He's just trying to put it out with his peg leg, like, ah, ah, damn wood leg.

It's catching.

It's catching her.

Now, the female firewatcher who started the Colorado fires, she was a rare bird in the chiromania community.

The aforementioned study of 11.

Chiromania community.

Sounds like a rough group, though.

What a meeting is it going to be like.

The aforementioned study of 1,100 pyromaniacs found that most were male and 70% were of below average intelligence.

Even Frankenstein's monster knew Firebad.

And as we know, canonically homosexual.

What about the bride of Frankenstein?

Again, she couldn't be with her.

Like, she obviously didn't choose him, but Frankenstein's monster was also, he couldn't make the choice to be with her.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And she's not even in the movie.

She's in the end of the film, she's barely in the fucking movie.

I made him watch it.

He's so mad about that.

I'm so mad about that.

I couldn't believe it.

What the fuck?

Why call it that?

But it is nice because then it just.

Everyone dresses up like her.

Like, who gives a shit?

She's not in the fucking movie.

But Natalie and I then do have an inside joke from that movie because she always goes, Henry, because that's what the lady says to Dr.

Frankenstein because his name's Henry.

Oh,

Henry.

It's very cute.

He's that great.

There are, however, some interesting through lines when it comes to pyromania.

While the study of pyromania is not as deep as we'd like it, because some in the mental health field refuse to accept it as a diagnosis, what we do see is that a lot of pyromaniacs share two things, childhood abuse and or bullying, along with neurodivergence.

Now, this through line was noticed by our head researcher, Joel, who is himself proudly autistic.

It's also probably not going to surprise you when I say that LPN, as a company, company, is chock full of neurodivergent people.

As many people

are in our employee have been diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder or ASD.

Wow, I thought we did the blood purity test.

What happened to the purity test?

Unfortunately, we're all vaccinated.

Yeah, it's been hard.

Yeah.

Well, in fact, I'm going to go ahead and take this opportunity to come out myself as neurodivergent.

Sure.

Albeit in a different way.

See, last fall, my mental disorder was re-diagnosed, and I was told, much to my surprise and bewilderment, that I do not have, nor have I ever had, bipolar disorder.

Whoa!

I spent 20 years treating the wrong condition because one psychiatrist in Lubbock, Texas fucked up way back in 2006, and all my subsequent mental health professionals just took his word for it until my new guy here in LA finally questioned the original diagnosis.

And after a lot of testing, I was correctly diagnosed as having severe ADHD, ADHD, which can sometimes mimic the symptoms of bipolar disorder.

The wild emotional dysregulation that comes with severe ADHD can cause anxiety and depression.

That would be the depressive side of manic depressive, while the hyper-focus aspect of ADHD can be confused for manic behavior.

As such, I've totally changed my treatment, transformed my life for the better in ways that I'm fucking still discovering every day, but I do want all my bipolar people out there to know that I see you, I still support you, and I still believe in you.

More importantly, though, you should still believe in yourself because you do have the ability to do anything you set your mind to.

There are people in my family who definitely have bipolar disorder, who have done great things throughout their life with treatment, people who are my own inspiration for making my mental health my responsibility.

But when it comes to pyromania, I can say from personal experience that neurodivergent disorders can cause far greater problems than just not being able to focus, As a lot of children who develop pyromania also tested positive for ADHD.

There has been quite a bit of people talk about ADHD and that word gets thrown around a lot.

I think the same thing with all of these various diagnoses.

They're thrown around on social media and nobody, we're kind of losing some of the sense of the

heaviness of some of these diagnoses.

Very much so.

The ADHD is not just paying attention.

I'm sorry.

You just don't have a fucking attention span.

There's some of you that

don't have an attention span.

That's fine.

It's been destroyed by media.

But the rest of it, ADHD can lead to full dissociative like episodes, like total, like all of the same bad stuff that bipolar does.

If you're not taking care of it correctly and you're actually diagnosed with it, you can turn into a bit of a firebug.

And that's the thing, ADHD is, it can be severe enough where it is confused with bipolar disorder.

I mean, there's a reason why it took 20 years for this diagnosis to get switched over.

Yeah, it was a beautiful statement, Marcus.

And I too would like to take this moment to come out as part human, part picky.

Well, you're just bad at heat.

It took years and many surgeries to turn my hooves into human feet.

We've since

transitioned.

I still enjoy rolling around on my own shit.

He does.

Solving puzzles meant for toddlers, but you know, I think I'm on the path to becoming full human.

Is that why you chew apples with your hands tied behind your back?

I can see it.

Speaking of which Eddie, I got to talk to you.

Our Apple budget at the network is getting out of fucking control.

We're going to need to talk with you about this.

I can't afford it myself.

This is an ad by BetterHelp.

I've tried to search for health and wellness my entire life.

First I was raised by the blade, and I found no solace in the blade.

And then many scholars scholars took me to their far-flung libraries and showed me their magical tomes.

And the magical tomes weren't enough.

And then somebody told me to try Zoloft.

And actually,

it seems to be fine.

These days, it feels like there's advice for everything.

Cold plunges, gratitude journals, black screen detoxes.

You can't detox from the screen.

It's our whole lives.

How do you know what actually works for you?

You got to stab, stab, stab in the dark.

With the internet and information overload about mental health and wellness, it can be a struggle to know what's true and what action to take these days.

I say act first, think later.

Go and get a therapist to talk to at BetterHelp.

With over 30,000 therapists worldwide, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally.

BetterHelp, you better work.

As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise.

Talk it out with BetterHelp.

All listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/slash LastPod.

That's betterhelp.com/slash last pod.

Hey, Eddie, what?

You know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans?

What doesn't belong in my epic summer plans?

Getting burned by your old wireless bills.

Oh my gosh, it burns me all the time.

I know.

It's like, halala, so hot.

Hot.

While you're planning beach trips, barbecues, and three-day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back.

Well, what should be holding me back?

Probably,

I would say you've got problems with, you know, you have acid reflux.

Yeah.

You got some problems consuming dairy.

I can barely swim.

You are afraid of loud noises?

I hate loud noises.

You're afraid of being outside.

Crack you.

But otherwise.

But otherwise,

you're good to go.

And that's why you got to make the switch to Mint Mobile.

Mmm, so fresh.

Yep.

With Mint, you can get the coverage and speed you're used to, but for way less money.

And for limited time, Mint Mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for $15 a month.

So while your friends are sweating over data coverages and surprising charges, you'll be chilling.

Literally and financially.

And this year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank.

Get this new customer offer and your three-month unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash LPOTL.

That's mintmobile.com slash LPOTL.

Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month.

Limited time, new customer offer for first three months only.

Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes unlimited plan.

Taxes and fees extra.

See Mintmobile for details.

You ever picked a vacation spot based in where you don't need a phrase book?

Yeah, it's called my home.

With Babble, the language barrier no longer has to hold you back.

Start speaking a new language with confidence, thanks to Babble's conversation-based technique that quickly teaches you to use useful words and phrases about the things you actually talk about in the real world, like guillotines.

There's over a dozen languages available to learn at your own pace, so you can achieve your goals with material tailored to your individual proficiency level, interests, and time availability.

You ever been with this guy?

He's going,

Where's your daughter?

Where's your wife?

Where's your daughter?

Where's your wife?

And you're like, Sir, please, no, please leave me alone.

I think odone esta suposa doni esta uh su niña.

And you're like, Whoa, I think I know that Spanish.

Thanks, Babel, because you learned it because of Babel.

Go check it out.

It's easy to do.

It's on your computer.

It's on your phone.

It's not like you ought to go some other place.

It's right there in front of you.

You can just go get it.

Better.

Because if you don't, I'm coming for you.

Learn another language.

Babel is gifting our listeners 55% off subscriptions at babble.com/slash left.

Get up to 55% off at babble.com/slash left.

That's spelled b-a-b-b-e-l dot com slash left.

Babble.com slash left.

Rules and restrictions may apply.

No, while ADHD certainly shows up in pyromaniacs, the neurodivergent disorder that occurs most is autism spectrum disorder, or ASD.

And that brings us to our first big story today.

Let's begin with the Australian pyromaniac Brendan Sokolak, whose part in the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 resulted in the deaths of 11 people.

And yes, the name appears, the name Brendan Sokolak appears as if it should be pronounced Sokoluk or Sokaluk, whatever.

We watch some old news reports and they all say Sokolak.

So if you have any complaints about pronunciation, direct them to the past.

I also listened to Brendan Sokolak talk and he was,

he even says it wrong.

Like he didn't know what it was.

He goes like Sharshalak.

Like he does this, like, weird thing.

He seemed to be under pressure.

Yeah.

Now, the Black Saturday bushfires were somewhat similar to what we just went through here in Los Angeles, and that it wasn't just one large fire that devastated the region.

But unlike our recent troubles, in which we had four, sometimes five fires going on all at once, the Australians on Black Saturday had to contend with 400 individual fires.

I had no idea how bad wildfires were in Australia.

My God.

That town, that whole continent's made for burning.

It is.

During these fires, over 1,700 square miles of the Australian state of Victoria burned, resulting in 173 deaths, in addition to the destruction of over 3,500 buildings and homes.

When the sheer destructive power of all 400 fires were calculated, it was said they gave off the equivalent heat of 500 atomic bombs.

Jesus fucking Christ.

You know, it's crazy, too, the way they talk about it.

It really is like they, they have a budget.

I had no idea it would be like this outside of the United States of America.

Yeah, that wildfires could be as bad elsewhere as they are here.

Cause also, I, let's just say, I'm an East Coaster, New Yorker.

I've never dealt with anything like this before.

And it wasn't until those LA fires hit that you start to, when you were watching the footage of it, I guess I never really took it to heart.

This shit just jumps.

Yeah.

Like it just explodes.

Like things just explode.

And then they go fat.

Like you would not be, you would be incredibly surprised how fast that wall of flame will overwhelm you.

Yeah.

The Australian fire right before COVID that everyone kind of forgot about because of COVID was like way worse than our fire.

Yeah, so much worse.

Yeah.

And here, how it happened was we had two seasons of like

unseasonable rain, which caused all these plants to grow.

And then we went back in a drought, which caused all those same plants to die.

And that's what caught fire.

Yeah.

Now, when survivors later recalled Black Saturday, they said that after the air turned blood red from the heat, every breath felt like sucking on a hair dryer.

And some could even feel their skin melting from the heat, even if they weren't actively being burnt.

The flames were hundreds of feet high, moving across the ground within seconds and surrounding everything.

Once the fire reached a house, the windows cracked, fabric burst into flames, the flames would slide underneath doors where they caught clothing and shoes on fire.

Those who survived did so by breathing into wet fabric, laying in shallow creeks or ponds.

In one case, a family covered themselves in lily pads and pond slime, all while kangaroos tried to survive by laying down in the water with them.

All cute.

It has got a kid.

The first ever kangaroo man wedding,

which is nice.

But it's illegal.

They got their love was considered illegal.

She was just plowing the hell out of that kangaroo.

Yeah, she was.

And they got crazy.

They got like a bigger pussy than a fucking lady.

Yeah.

Kangaroos.

Kangaroos?

Yeah, man.

The pouch is not their vagina.

Well, yeah.

It's a problem.

No, that's right.

No, I mean, I find this shit fascinating.

Australia is actually made to be set on fire on a near constant basis.

That's its ecosystem.

Due to the frequent wildfires started by lightning strikes that have been going on for millennia, the fauna of Australia has evolved specifically to not only survive fires, but depend on them.

Some plant species, for example, won't open their seed pods until the plant is set on fire.

But since some plants need fire to propagate, they've also evolved to be highly flammable.

And it's just Australia's luck that one of their most common plants, the eucalyptus tree, is also one of the most flammable in the world.

Really?

Yes.

They're called gasoline trees.

No shit.

I didn't know that.

I mean, I bet it smells good.

When it burns, right?

They create dense carpets of flammable material that create the fast-burning and fast-spreading fires that make Australian wildfire so dangerous.

The oil of the eucalyptus tree also works as an accelerant once the fire has sparked, creating literal fireballs when the flames reach the trees.

The seed pods then open and fall, where they thrive in the freshly burned soil.

But because Australia burns so easily and is, in fact, a land that is specifically made for burning, Australia has a fairly large arson problem.

And when a pyromaniac gets involved, the results can indeed be deadly.

Now, interestingly enough, this is exactly why we have such problems with fire in Los Angeles.

Because back in the day, in the late 1800s, they planted eucalyptus trees all over Los Angeles.

No shit.

So Los Angeles is actually covered in eucalyptus trees.

And like, and going, and there was like several different times when they were used to like, cause they like the way they, they, you know, the way they look and the way they smell.

And so they were planted all over Los Angeles.

And now that's kind of what's been fucking us because all the old eucalyptus trees that are everywhere and they just catch so easily.

I learned that from some gardener.

That's crazy.

I didn't know that.

Dude, every single time when we went to Hawaii and they did, you know, you just learn that everything that you like there is invasive and then they get easily destroying everything there.

And then it seems like

it's really rough to kind of just mess with the planet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just throw shit around and see what happens.

It seems to just react in wild ways that you really can't.

predict.

Yeah.

They thought it was a good idea because it's really good at absorbing wind because they're real bushy.

And so like the wind was like, you know, it would hit that and it wouldn't hit you that hard.

But, you know, obviously the wind

fire.

Yeah, that's why I travel faster when my pants are down.

You know, cows don't exist in nature.

Really?

We created cows.

What were they before?

Yeah, what were the first cows?

Aurochs.

What?

That's not real.

Yeah.

Well, they're extinct now.

Really?

Yeah, they're extinct.

We bred them like I learned this on the Blind Boy podcast.

We actually bred aurochs, all the best aurochs, the ones that were most docile, the ones that had like the best meat.

We bred them into the cows that we have today.

Cows, as we know them, don't exist in nature at all.

That's partly why they're so destructive to the environment.

Marcus, stop it.

You're driving people crazy.

People are having orgasms.

People are, they can't focus on the road.

They are literally pissing and shitting and coming so much with this information that it's just, we have to really be careful what we do here.

It's an info hazard.

It's very hard.

I'm not looking at now because now I'm looking at aurochs.

Just thinking about, I'd like to eat one.

Back to Australia.

Now, Australian Arson Squad investigators have found that fires in Australia are started mostly in areas of extreme poverty, areas between urban and rural locations, places of high unemployment, and areas with high child abuse and neglect.

Here in America, we've seen much the same thing.

Some of our worst rashes of arson, say like how the Bronx burned in 1970s New York.

They were perpetrated in some of our nation's poorest and most disadvantaged areas.

The pyromaniac in the New York City fires, by the way, that was David Berkowitz when he was still calling himself the phantom of the Bronx.

It's me,

the thickest ghost you've ever seen.

The ghost with the 38 waist.

That's what you like.

Subtle.

Sexy.

There's nothing wrong with a 38 waist.

There's nothing wrong with it.

Absolutely not.

It's a governor's waste.

A mania's pant.

But concerning the Black Saturday bushfires, the Australian Arson Squad fanned out to determine how many of those 400 fires were natural and how many were man-made.

One of the fires the arson squad focused upon was in central Gippsland, where a man named Brendan Sokolak had called the Australian equivalent of 911 to inform authorities about his local bushfire.

Now, the central Gippsland bushfire was no small event.

While it had been just one of 400 fires, it had still killed 11 people.

As such, this bushfire was of particular interest to investigators, and they certainly wanted to talk to the man who'd first called it in.

Arson is another one of those crimes that's extremely difficult to investigate.

Yes.

It's because.

And even harder to prove.

Oh, yeah, because fire destroys everything.

And there's so many reasons to burn something.

You know, like,

fine, like, and there's so many ways something you can burn down.

It's very difficult.

Now, Sokolak had no criminal record, but upon questioning, police immediately found his demeanor to be strange and suspicious.

And their suspicion only increased when they began asking around the neighborhood for more information on Brendan.

Sokhalak had been seen driving around the area slowly, watching the fires burn on Black Saturday, which didn't really surprise anyone because smoke and flames tended to follow Brendan Sokolak wherever he went.

Yeah, and it's not like he was David Lee Roth.

This is what's set up.

It wasn't rehearsed.

It was hot for a teacher.

Ooh, I don't know if he fucked his teacher.

That was more of a hot part.

Hot part, yeah.

Oh, yeah, sure, sure.

You're not fucking a teacher.

I think about fucking teachers.

I mean, if we're going Van Halen, I would say it's more like, you know, he caused an eruption.

Ah!

You really got me.

You fucking pieces.

Locals also said that Brendan was known to have problems with skulking around town.

Hey, there you skulking.

I want you walking.

All right, you stand up.

That is an Australian thing.

Yes.

And there's nothing wrong with a little light skulking.

I skulk up to 25 minutes a day

just to keep me going.

Life skulk.

Life skulking.

But Brendan was indeed the worst type of skulker, as Brendan was a bit of a pedophile.

Just a bit.

Just a pinch.

I mean, just a pinch is still a pedophile.

Yeah, yeah.

Just a pinch is the gateway to pedophilia.

Just a little pinch.

And I'd say, not all skulkers are pedophiles, but all pedophiles are skulkers.

I like that.

Yeah.

Well, Brendan was known to stand and stare at children in public and would duck and hide when people noticed him.

Brendan also collected junk and broken cars and would work for hours in his shed dismantling pieces of wreckage, where he would listen very loudly to episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine or Bob the Builder, while making, again, very loud commentary on the shows to no one in particular.

Oh, Bob, full of shit here.

I ain't gonna pass any sort of inspection.

Bob, you know, Builder.

I think you're a cartoon.

Yeah, you think you're gonna climb that tree, Thomas, you fucking idiot?

You can't do that.

You just trained.

I think you can't.

You know what, Thomas?

I'm thinking you're believing in yourself too much.

You gotta stop here.

You're attached to a trek.

All right?

You can't go anywhere.

Yeah, a helicopter.

Oh, my God, that train doesn't face.

You know, I'd give my left foot if you could convince me that train ain't smiling.

Oh, well, back to fix this old baby carriage.

Gush, goos, goose, goose.

Because let's just say he wasn't an expert mechanic.

No, he was not.

No, no, no.

He was mostly dismantling things for the scrap metal so he could sell the scrap metal.

Yes.

Now, by the time of the Black Saturday fires in 2009, Brendan Sokolak was 39 years old, single and unemployed, on disability pension after losing his job as a groundskeeper at Monash University.

Brendan, like many pyromaniacs, had a hard time keeping a job due to his poor impulse control and behavioral problems.

Brendan, however, was reportedly quite good at his job in the sense that he could keep the grounds.

These grounds are right in.

That shit's jumped the shot.

I'm sick of this fucking shit.

They always bring it some bullshit orange, whatever.

It's like an orange caboose.

What's that shit?

They found him irritating for a myriad of reasons, like Brendan's habit of hiding in the bushes so he could jump out to scare his co-workers like Spaghetti.

It's me, when I spawn out an engine, take engine.

It scares you from 100 feet away on the rock close.

The bad pranks, however, were not the only reasons why Brendan was fired.

He would also follow people and tell them to watch out because he knew where they lived.

He would pass notes to women co-workers challenging their boyfriends or spouses to duels.

And he would express joy at the pain of others, like when a coworker's loved one one died

I was wondering why you were laughing so hard at my movie

then right

hey God she's dead too right

you got free food at the funeral?

Additionally, Brendan would mow over trash instead of picking it up.

He would stuff food in his pockets at work functions.

He would hide things in hard-to-reach places to infuriate his co-workers.

He would make cat noises at people

and would mow over golf balls so they would shoot out at just the right trajectory to hit bystanders.

I'm good at this job.

This is my job.

Then fuck you.

Yeah, the little, I unlock the triangle cases because you can't get them at home.

You can only get them at work.

I really wish I didn't find them so funny.

I know.

I know.

There is something.

I mean, there's something funny about the golf balls.

There's something funny about challenging your boyfriend to a duel.

Yeah, just be like, meow.

Did you stop?

Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.

Hey, you want me to stop right now?

You fucking piece of fucking shit.

You know, too, is that it's it's just if you have to work with him.

Yeah, I could see that if he's just a funny guy.

Yeah.

No, it doesn't.

No, he would also do shit like he would, when he had to dig holes, he would like make sure that he was upwind of his coworkers so the dust would blow in their face.

You know, it's just

the most infuriating things.

Like he's trying to make people angry.

And that's all to say that Brendan was more than a bit of a prick.

But Brendan also had skills that kept him on the job.

He had a photographic memory of the campus.

He knew exactly where all the pipes and cables were buried underground, and he was quite capable with computers.

But that's all to say that Brendan Sokolak, like many pyromaniacs, most definitely had autism spectrum disorder, or ASD.

Now that's definitely not to say that all people with ASD are at risk of becoming pyromaniacs or at risk of becoming destructive in any way.

But it's a cool thing to maybe hold over your family.

You never know.

You never know, mom.

But there are definite reasons why ASD and other other neurodivergent disorders like ADHD are so prevalent amongst this section of the population.

As many of you probably already know, ASD is not a simple, straightforward disorder.

ASD manifests itself in a myriad of ways, both positive and negative, like how someone with ASD might be able to draw a perfect map of an area just by walking it, but they might not have the ability to understand tone and inflection when others speak.

The problem here is that the symptoms of ASD can be confused with people who are just run-of-the-mill pricks.

And conversely, people with ASD can also be massive dickheads who take pleasure in doing things that hurt or annoy people.

So can a lot of people, though.

Yeah, so can a lot of people.

It's not just ASD.

I think a lot of people sometimes just like being jerks.

It's pretty much all of Iceland.

Looking at you, QA.

Still the rudest.

I had so much fun.

We had so much fun in Iceland, but man, you guys roasted us for no reason.

God,

wow.

They're a very blunt people.

It's partly why I enjoy them so much.

I enjoy the bluntness of it.

Yeah, they're not there to talk to people.

You don't want to get away from everything.

You live on a rock that has ice on the top of it and lava directly underneath it.

It's the only place in the world where I can go and people aren't like, uh, Marcus, why don't you have any tact?

And it's like, no.

And I'm like, in Iceland, nobody has it and nobody cares.

And everyone's just saying whatever they want to say.

And it's great.

You are fata now.

It's like stuff like that.

It's just a fact.

You are fatter now.

I know I saw you yesterday, but you're fatter now.

Thanks.

But that's all to say that ASD is not a monolithic diagnosis in which the same principles can be applied to every person.

And really, they're just like any other group with good people, bad people, and everything in between contained therein.

Is it maybe fair to say that his acting like a prick?

Brendan Sokolak, you mean?

Brendan Sokolaki.

Was

his inability to emotionally connect with others, and that you find that the connection is you, all humans must connect to others in some way, right?

We are a social beast.

And so, on some level, when we are kind of dealing with others, I wonder if sometimes it's just any reaction then becomes a connection if you can't figure it out.

Well, actually, I can answer that question.

I mean, when it comes to pyromaniacs, it was very rare, if not non-existent in our research to find a pyromaniac with just ASD.

Instead, what we found is that amongst pyromaniacs, ASD is almost always paired with childhood abuse or extreme bullying.

Statistically, autistic people overall are far more likely to be bullied or abused.

But because of the nature of the disorder, some people with ASD don't understand why they're being bullied.

In some cases, when people with ASD don't understand why they're hated, they give people reasons to hate them.

And our subject, Brendan Sokolak, is a prime example.

That's very interesting.

Whenever I meet someone who like obviously has severe autism, I just try to find out what their thing is, whether it's like 80s rock or just rocks, you know, and you just, and you just drill them on that, and you learn a lot.

You really, yeah, you really do.

Yeah, yeah.

And then they feel great and you've learned a lot and you've had a nice day.

Yeah, exactly.

But also the key to pyromania on the whole is the attention that you get from the action.

I feel like that is still like the same thing.

I think for some, not for all.

But all the ones you talk to, you start to find out like there's quite a bit of similarities from the way they talk.

Between Brendan Sawkalaka and I was listening to Paul Keller, they actually do have very similar attitudes

about it.

Well, Brendan grew up with poor and limited speech.

He'd often skip words and sentences.

Even worse, he would regularly shit himself well into his teenage years.

His mother put him in a kid's soccer club to help him make friends.

It always helps.

Always helps, yeah.

When a kid's having a hard time making friends.

He's right into competitive sports.

Sports.

Yeah, yeah.

That's usually what kids who have a hard time making friends.

Sports is always the best thing for them.

It definitely doesn't heighten all of those issues.

You definitely don't put them right in the middle of all the kids who are most likely to bully others.

Oh, yeah, and they're all on a track of trying to do shit.

And never mind if you're just some fat idiot who's arrived to be the catcher of the team and you think it's cousin Goldberg was the fucking, like, the funny guy on the the team and that's your function and then all these kids are now starting to take the sport super seriously and now they're turning on you when you were the fucking mascot yeah yeah

yeah usually the kids on the team really hate you uh when you're the one that's making them bad yes it tends to make things worse yes it flipped like over a summer yeah it was like one summer i was the most popular kid on the team and then the next summer they were like oh you're bad at baseball.

Yeah.

No, no, no, I was bad at football in my senior year.

And like my entire, I ended up, the entire town could barely disguise their contempt for me.

Like,

just because like I was, I was like, I want to, like,

I'm a writer.

Yeah.

I'm a broadcaster.

I broke my leg last year.

I missed my junior year.

I'm behind.

Why are you putting me in at safety?

I'm so much a better running back.

Put Billy Joe in at safety or Jason.

I'm a much better running back.

Running back's political position.

Yeah.

I was a very good running back.

Well, Brendan.

Speaking of someone who's definitely not who is a pyromaniac, unlike Marcus.

Yes, unlike.

Yes.

I did great in football.

They loved me.

Well, I mean, Brendan, when he was put into soccer, it just meant that kids could kick him without repercussions.

All while they called him veggie or spastic.

And Brendan's bullying only got worse when he reached high school.

When the other kids, in their disgustingly Australian way that we learned about in our Snowtown series, all these kids decided that Brendan was a target for their bodily fluids.

One fellow teenager smeared Brendan with human feces, while others wiped snot on his clothes, coughed on him, and spat in his hair.

I read a thing about, I guess, Shaq used to do a hazing thing to rookies.

Shaquille O'Neal?

Yeah.

Where he used to shit in a bucket for like months, and then on some level, he used to

be shit.

Shaq's dupes.

That's a trough.

And I was just like thinking about that, and they all laugh and stuff.

And I was like watching this thing and I was like, first of all,

so you kept a bucket of your shit in your house just to pour on some new shit.

Probably in the locker room.

I guess, but you kept the shit just because like you're a superstar.

You're a multi-millionaire leader of the team.

Exactly.

This could have been in college.

No, it was while he was on the like the Lakers.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

That's the thing.

If you're that rich, you can have a shit room in your house.

Yeah.

I guess you can have a shit guy that can take the shit to his house and make his house the shit house.

I love Shaq.

Shaq's a great guy.

I love Shaq.

I just find it weird hanging out in your own shit all day.

Men are weird.

Boys are weird.

Shaq doesn't live in a two-bedroom apartment.

We don't know what he does.

He definitely doesn't live in a two-bedroom.

No, he's a multi-man.

He has a very large multiple smaller.

I'm just saying men are gross and a boy and then horseplay amongst boys is horrible.

Locker rooms are a very scary place.

I very much liked being with the girls.

Now, eventually.

You shouldn't be in the girls' locker room, though.

Oh, they invited me in.

My wicked well-placed oh girdle definitely convinces the girls that I am ready to give massages.

Now eventually, Brendan Sokolak's parents just gave up and pulled him out of school in the 11th grade.

The intense bullying he endured, however, left lasting scars that contributed to his pyromania.

Because from what Joel found, there is the possibility of creating a monster when extreme bullying and childhood abuse meets ASD.

Additionally, after Brendan was fired from his groundskeeping job, he may have been in the throes of a neurodivergent symptom called rejection sensory dysphoria, in which a person is emotionally or psychically affected to an excessive degree after being left out or told that they aren't allowed in a place where they feel like they belong.

And pyromaniac episodes very often happen after a giant emotional change and shift.

Very much so.

Sometimes people with RSD become people pleasers or perfectionists to avoid being excluded or treated badly for fucking up in any way whatsoever.

But others, like Brendan, go in the entirely opposite direction by acting out destructively.

See, in the months before the Black Saturday bushfire, neighbors noticed that Brendan had been setting larger and larger fires in his yard.

And when a neighbor expressed concern over a gigantic bonfire that Brendan Brendan had lit by himself on New Year's Eve, Brendan didn't even acknowledge that the neighbor was talking to him.

This all came in the year after Brendan had been fired from his job, which was very much a situation in which Brendan was told he wasn't allowed in a place where he thought he belonged.

I'll keep the ground.

The ground's there.

And you're going to tell me you're going to keep the ground for me, the man who keeps the ground?

I will set on fire.

Now, one of the activities that those with ASD and ADHD engage in is something called stemming, which is a physical action that helps the individual deal with sensory overload.

For me, I now recognize that chain smoking used to be my main stem.

These days, I play with plasticine clay if I'm at home, I play with coins in my pockets if I'm in public, or I obsessively chew nicotine gum no matter what's going on.

You sure that's not just your crippling addiction to nicotine?

Well, that's the thing, it's actually connected.

Oh, yeah, people with ADHD are actually far more likely to be addicted to nicotine.

It's the stimulant.

I like playing with this rat.

There you go.

You're stimming.

I just fucking, honestly, I mostly clean my guns.

Every time I'm nervous, I just clean my guns.

For others, though, stimming can be far more harmful, manifesting as hair pulling, skin picking, or in the case of pyromaniacs, starting fires.

See, stimming is a way to calm yourself down, and many pyromaniacs describe the act of starting a fire as something that alleviates a buildup of internal tension.

I also loved setting fires when I was a kid and was in fact almost arrested when I was 13 for lighting a dumpster on fire at my brother's track meet on the campus of South Plains College in Loveland, Texas, because I was so incredibly, mind-numbingly bored.

And that boredom was causing anxiety.

You're also calling out for attention.

It's about like, I know my brother's bigger, stronger, more handsome than me.

He's more loved than me.

I'm going to set this fire because then you're all going to come look at Marcus because Marcus needs some attention.

Oh, no, it wasn't about that at all.

I just want to watch it burn.

Yeah, I loved being left alone.

No, no, no.

It was, yeah, me and a friend of mine, we were just wandering around and we saw a dumpster and I was like, hey, why don't we light it on fire?

That could be like a lot of fun if we just lit that thing on fire.

Let's light that thing on fire.

And then we decided to light it on fire and the fire didn't really work out.

And so like we went across the street to this tennis court where there was some tennis balls.

We started throwing tennis balls at each other and then we heard a big boom, which was an aerosol can exploding because the dumpster had very much lit on fire.

And then while we were staring at it, that's when we got caught.

A buddy of mine lit a tennis ball on fire, threw it in the yard across the street, and the whole yard caught fire.

That was awesome.

That is very frightening.

I didn't do any of this stuff.

Robin's sitting there would be like, I can't believe these men.

I am not.

I have never set a public fire.

I'm very lucky that Florida is as moist as it is.

I never set a fire.

I'm very lucky I grew up in like a wet period in West Texas, like where it was raining all the time.

I would have grown up in the last 20 years.

Wow.

Yeah, you really could have killed some people.

We used to go behind publics and steal all the pallets of wood that, you know, that they would just leave outside.

Then we bring them in the middle of the woods and have giant fire.

A bonfire is different.

I went to many bonfires.

Yeah, bonfires are different than just like, hey, I want to set that thing on fire.

Let's go set that thing on fire.

We would put like random shit in it.

Well, of course.

But no, the bonfire.

Oh, my God.

Right after Christmas, we love, oh, lighting up everyone's trees.

Oh, that was always the best bonfire of the year.

Like January, we all lit our Christmas trees on fire.

But one asshole wouldn't take the ornaments off, and so it was a fucking lot of smoke, a lot of weird plastic.

Plastic, yeah.

God, our lives are just fucking so weird.

We're very lucky.

Live from North Blade.

Speaking of horror stories, do you ever feel like there's something spooky going on with your Wi-Fi?

Then it's time to check out T-Mobile 5G Home Internet.

With their fast speeds and effortless setup, T-Mobile Home Internet takes the mystery out of getting online.

Just plug it in, and you're connected in 15 minutes or less.

And you get all that and more at a great price guaranteed for five years.

So you don't have to worry about any jump scares on your bill.

Get T-Mobile Home Internet and get online with a simple setup, their fast speeds, and a five-year price guarantee.

Visit t-mobile.com/slash home internet to check availability guarantees monthly prices of fixed wireless 5g internet data exclusions like taxes and fees apply service delivered via 5g network speeds vary due to factor affecting cellular networks guarantee exclusions and details at t-mobile.com slash home internet

when was the last time money stressed you out made you feel guilty jealous money can make us feel a lot of things but what if it made you feel hopeful get more out of your money and start building a better future with acorns Normally, I would tell you to get all of your money out of a bank, buy gold, and bury it in a field because that's the only way money's going to matter when the grids go down.

But Acorns is the financial wellness app that helps you invest for your future.

Save for tomorrow and spend smarter today.

Acorns makes it easy to start doing more with your money.

Lot like me, where I want to put my money in a big pile and burn it so I can smell the smoke and and get high on George Washington's blood.

You don't need to be a finance whiz to understand Acorns.

Acorns puts your money into an expert-built portfolio to make sure you're investing wisely, not wildly,

and it's an easy-to-use app.

Sign up now and Acorns will boost your new account with $5 bonus investment.

Join the over 14 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns.

Head to acorns.com slash left or download the Acorns app to get started.

Paid non-client endorsement.

Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns.

Tier 2 compensation provided.

Investing involves risk.

Acorns Advisors, LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor.

View important disclosures at acorns.com/slash left.

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.

Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online.

And I will not be destroyed by these children that keep purchasing my businesses.

Yes, I have lost horsepicks.com.

And yes, currently I am in some form of tete-a-tete with Putin's daughter who purchased umupaintings.com.

So now I'm a man alone who's decided I'm out of the sales business.

Yeah, I'm starting a new website.

It's called Henry Zabrowskisfeet.com.

And that's because I'm sick of Wikipedia.

Going out there and slandering my good name on my feet.

Alright?

My feet are good, and this is all I have.

So, you need it.

Support me and Squarespace.

Squarespace makes it all possible.

It makes the podcast possible.

Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid.

Squarespace domains make it easier to find the best name for your business at one fair, all-inclusive price.

No hidden fees or add-ons required.

Head to squarespace.com/slash left for a free trial when you're ready to launch.

Use offer code LEFT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Now, Brendan Sokolak was certainly autistic, but intellectually, Brendan was said to have the mental capacity of an eight-year-old.

Brendan, however, was also more clever than he let on, and he could also be extremely manipulative if he wanted to be.

See, as I said earlier, Brendan was a perfectly capable person, but he was known to play up his disabilities if it suited his needs.

He would froth at the mouth, or he would use a mentally disabled voice so people would underestimate him.

He'd also use it to get out of trouble at work.

As such, Brendan began playing up his disability very soon after his arrest for one of the Black Saturday bushfires because I think it may have taken him a bit to remember that the fire he started had killed 11 people.

Yes, and the way they talked about it too, it's like he really, it's just because he did not, he truly did not grasp that there was consequences.

Like, and there, that's what they kind of tried to get him on legally, all these guys.

They all just kind of be like, I never thought the fire would consume half the city.

And it's like, because you weren't doing that, you were following an extreme lack of impulse control that's caused you to set a bunch of fires.

Now, after investigators spoke with his neighbors and discovered Brendan's penchant for fires and skulking, it was decided that there was enough circumstantial evidence to arrest Brendan for starting the fatal bushfire that he himself had called into emergency services.

Now, Brendan didn't get nervous or anxious like most people do when they get arrested, nor did he react when he was read his rights.

But outside of his non-reaction, Brendan was reportedly carrying relatively normal conversations with the police who arrested him.

He actively tried to negotiate with the police officer to say, hey, can you just tell people that I found the fire and that I'm a hero.

But during his videotaped intake, when Brendan knew people were watching, he suddenly became more disabled by slurring his speech and pretending like he didn't understand what he was being told.

Once the camera was off, however, Brendan would drop the slur, stop drooling, and return to the relatively normal way of conversating that he'd engaged in before.

It's a great move.

It is.

I just want to say to all you husbands out there, they know now.

Every single time you try to do something like that, I've tried to do that just to act.

comatose.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Do you know?

In the hopes that maybe she'd just go away and forget about it.

But guess what?

That wife, she's there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And she knows that you know how to do better, especially if you run like a business.

Because then she's just like, well, then your business should be taken from you and your life should end.

And you should not, in terms of your career, should end it.

You should just become a simpleton that lives as a drifter if you are incapable of doing this.

And you can use that again because when I used to have to ride the Greyhound bus all the time, I would like, while they're loading on the bus, I'd get in, you know, and I'd grab a seat.

And then I'd, you know, if there was a seat open next to me, I would just like pretend pretend to like chew on my lips and shit.

Oh, yeah.

And like be all weird and crazy.

You also taught me the skill that nobody would sit next to me.

And then it worked.

You taught me the skill of acting sick.

Yes.

The key on a bus, if you want to sit by yourself, you go, oh,

and then as soon as the bus takes off, you're normal.

Now, eventually, Brendan did take credit for starting the fire, but he maintained that the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding.

He said that he'd been smoking a cigarette while driving down a gravel road and the bumpiness was causing his car to shake.

The ember of his cigarette popped off amidst the bumps.

So Brendan, still driving, used a piece of paper to gather up the ember, which he then threw out the window.

The paper then ignited and when Brendan looked in his rear view, he saw the massive bushfire and called emergency services.

Never use a piece of paper to pick up a cherry from a cigarette.

That seems like the first thing you don't do.

Yeah.

Right?

I'll always be haunted by one time.

We were shooting late for A to Z back in the day a tom a tom man place and we were coming through topanga canyon and they have these signs everywhere that say don't smoke don't throw cigarettes out because it's tri-land and i was half asleep it was two o'clock in the morning this is when i was smoking cigarettes i was driving and i was smoking didn't even think about it and i threw the cigarette out the window and i was and i went oh fuck and i pull the car all the way around and i go and i'm walking through the brush this like 2 30 in the morning looking for the cigarette trying to make sure it didn't set anything on i'm like walking walking around.

I was like, oh God, oh fuck, oh fuck.

And then I remember having to go to a hotel room because that's where we were staying.

We were staying on this side of town.

And I went into the hotel room just like watching the news all night, being like, please don't, please don't let me burnt down the entire Pacific Palace suits.

Turns out, no, it was just some dickhead with an open fire pit.

Yep.

Remember when we almost lit Adam's apartment building on fire during Dollmaker?

Oh, I remember.

Yeah, we put like four candles in the same cup and then they all just like ignited together and produced this giant flame, and then we hit it with the ceiling at you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was a fucking mess.

It was a real close one.

It really was, yeah.

Wow, a lot of near-misses today.

Really, it's amazing.

That's the thing.

Life's full of near-misses until it's not.

It kind of just makes my like skin both crawl and tingle thinking about it.

Yeah.

Now, to me, Brendan's excuse sounds like utter horseshit.

But Brendan's lawyer, a woman with the incredibly Australian name of Selena McCrickard, thought differently.

Selena McCrickard.

Selena McCricket.

Attenniate Law.

See, we know that the intellectually disabled and people with mental disorders, they get framed for crimes they didn't commit quite frequently.

And they often confess to those crimes because they think if they just admit to it, the cops will leave them alone and they'll be sent home.

And the cops actually lie to people and tell them this.

That's what happened with Jesse Miss Kelly in the West Memphis 3.

You just tell us what you did and you can go home.

And And we'll get you out of here.

Now, I could be wrong here, but in the many false confession stories I've read, people who falsely confessed to crimes usually confess to the crimes instead of trying to make up an excuse like Brendan did.

But Brendan's lawyer, Selena McCreckard, believed that Brendan had been pressured into taking the blame for the brush fire because, admittedly, the only pieces of evidence were his call to emergency services, his reputation as a firebug, and his half-confession to being the Mr.

Bean of Australian wildfires.

He also lived right next to the ex, what was called, I think it's called the, I forget what it's called, the term of where the fire starts.

There's a good term where he lived close to one of the starting points of the fire, and then he also was the first person to report the fire.

Yeah.

So, I don't know.

I'm not going to say that he did it, but he did it.

Isn't that nice?

Yeah, that is nice.

I'm not a judge.

There was, however, one more piece to this story.

Yeah.

See, as I said earlier, Brendan was the worst kind of skulker.

And when police searched his home computer, they found not only lots of photos of firefighters fighting fires.

Which is great.

I remember when you were researching 9-11, that must have spinning your whole fucking computer.

You think I just saved.

You know, there really weren't that many fires.

There was one big one.

Two.

And

there were many pictures of the firefighters fighting fires.

Did I see him squirt that?

Not really.

Not really.

They had to, right?

Well, it was so high up.

How are they going to squirt it?

Yeah.

They were inside.

Aim it up.

They were inside squirting it.

Someone do better.

Someone should have worked harder.

Someone should have made it wetter.

Where was the water?

They found copious amounts of child pornography

on Brendan's computer.

Get a bit of a smoking gun.

Yeah.

Not necessarily for pyromania, but for pedophilia.

Yeah.

For child pornography.

Yeah.

Doesn't make you look innocent.

I'm not a pyromania.

I just want to have sex with this baby.

That's all.

Additionally, when investigators looked deeper into Brendan's past, they found that he had been a volunteer firefighter in the late 80s.

He had, however, been kicked out for dishonest conduct, meaning he'd started several fires that he and his fellow volunteers would then have to put out.

He's job creating.

Yes.

But once Brendan's trial came around, it didn't seem like he was all that worried about prison.

He would often fake falling asleep, then startle himself awake because he thought it was funny.

It is.

Objectively.

Yeah.

It's one of my favorite bits.

And that was in addition to the times he'd take loud sips of water in court and let out an audible

after each one.

I know he's a bad guy.

See all my trolling is

great.

You don't do that?

I do that at home sometimes for fun.

Oh, I know you do it.

No, you've done it in my presence.

Man, and ever since I was a kid, every time I bend down or sit down, I just go, ah, yeah.

And now I just do it naturally.

Now it just happens.

Now, Brendan went on the stand himself and repeated his story about starting the fire with a cigarette.

But the fire experts, who also testified, said that the blaze in Brendan's neighborhood, the one that killed 11 people, did not start with a cigarette.

So either Brendan was lying about how the fire started or had falsely confessed.

But also, I mean, when you do look at a story, technically, it wasn't a cigarette that started it, it was a piece of paper that was lit on fire by a cigarette emperor.

But in the end, I think it was probably the child pornography on Brendan's computer that pushed this whole caper over the edge.

No way.

Yeah, it

seemed to color the defense.

That's, you know, as far as whether he started the fire or not, it's just, yeah, the child pornography, yes, definitely has an effect.

But in the end, because of his disabilities, he was given a lenient sentence of 17 years and 9 months in a maximum security prison for intellectually disabled prisoners.

He was, however, released just last year after serving only 14 years on the condition that he live at least 80 kilometers from the town where he was convicted of starting a fire that killed 11 people.

Yeah.

Now he's got to take a highway.

He'll never do that.

He'll never set a fire again.

They should have banished him to Batavia's graveyard.

You now live in SeaWorld.

No,

he's an interesting character because we'll see how it rolls out because it seems like pyromania is a fairly impulse-driven crime.

So we'll see what happens.

Oh, I think it's very much an impulse-driven crime.

Oh, yeah.

Now, Brendan Sokolak didn't have his life together at all, but that's not the case for all pyromaniacs.

For example, one of the most prolific pyromaniacs in American history held a job in advertising, but began a six-month arson spree while going through a particularly rough divorce.

That man was Paul Keller, who was 27 years old at the time.

Paul Keller's one of those guys, when he's one of those like early 90s, 27 going on 49.

Oh, yeah.

He looks like a full-on adult.

And let's just say, I'm just going to clear up a couple of things.

He got the job in advertising because his dad that was his dad's company and he gave him something to do yeah because paul keller was an absolute utter baby maniac he showed up at the house he tortured the entire family throughout his entire childhood he was violent uncontrollable they couldn't know what he would beat everyone he beat his mother he beat his father i had a feeling and they and paul keller though but he'd always be like you know there's a people don't understand me yeah you know yeah that's what he says he'd say you know like i'm i'm like i'm not a bad well i'm kind of a bad guy, but I'm not a criminal.

I'm not a criminal.

I just set fires.

What he was doing is he says that he was checking the firefighters' abilities to do their jobs, and he was also checking to see if their new equipment was up to par.

So, in late 1992 and early 1993, Keller set 76 fires causing $30 million in property damage.

This was all in Seattle, Washington.

Somewhat of a purist, Keller would only start fires on the outside of buildings without using accelerants.

Keller would drive around aimlessly until he would see cardboard or other flammable material near a building.

Then he would say to himself, setting this fire, that's a no-brainer.

And he set these fires because people were stupid for leaving the flammable material available.

If that house didn't want me to set fire to it, why was it dressed that way?

You know,

he was an unrepentant,

like, he was very very impulsive, but his thing really

was his fascination with firefighter technology and firefighters in general.

What he would say all the time was that he's like, yeah, I just kind of like said, I set that on fire.

I saw a piece of fiberglass there and I set it on fire because I wanted to see if their new C-19 flow system really can come around and really zip, zap, zop this whole thing.

I'm not a pyromaniac.

I am a stress tester for the Seattle Fire Department.

That's what his whole shtick was.

Yeah.

He figured Seattle with the rain would be fine.

No.

Fires go.

Yeah.

And Seattle, it's more of a drizzle than a constant rain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I view it like a, like a, like a drip.

Yeah.

Like a, it's like a moist, like a drip.

It's like a cunning strip.

It's a moist town.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hate when you say the word drip.

Drip.

And when you say moist.

Moist.

Now, the portrait that Keller presented to the world was one of a devout devout Lutheran who loved singing in the choir, loved listening to gospel music.

But in private, Keller was an alcoholic pothead who actually burned down several Lutheran churches.

The church burning, however, was not even close to Keller's biggest crime.

On September 22nd, 1992, Paul Keller set a retirement home on fire and killed three little old ladies named Mary, Adeline, and Bertha.

After a composite, I mean, it's just the most little old lady names you can get.

You could just see it with their babushka's just refusing to move when the fires come.

Just being like, no, I wait for puddings.

I will not.

I die here.

After a composite sketch was released of the perpetrator, Keller's own father recognized him and turned him into the police.

From what it sounds like, from what you were saying, seems like he was waiting for an excuse.

If you look at the honestly,

there's two documentaries.

One was in that Evil Lives Here show that covered this guy.

Another one was, it was called Portrait of a Narconist.

His father is the most sad man you've ever met.

He's cry.

He's crying.

He's so upset that it was his son.

And also, you very rarely see it, too, with the father giving up the son because largely they would come and try to cover up the crimes, as we've seen with every other criminal family that we've seen.

But he, like, Paul Keller was just such a,

he was filled with rage and he set fires.

He also did really believe he was correct.

Yeah.

He believed he was correct.

And he was a, he did not, he still does not understand why he was in jail.

Yeah.

Well, Keller was soon after found guilty of 32 counts of arson and was sentenced to 99 years in prison for his crimes and is eligible for parole in the far-flung year of 2079.

And they tried to diagnose him with ASD

and he wouldn't do the testing because, again, his whole thing is, I'm not autistic.

I am just

devoted fan of cataloging

firefighting equipment, firefighting techniques, firefighter locations, and fire.

And he knew each station.

I only have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything firefighting.

And so he's like that, where it was all about this like fantasy, but I believe that Paul Keller needs to stay in jail.

Yeah.

I think that Paul Keller is one of those where he's not a Brendan Sakhalak, where he's...

I think Brendan Sakalak was quite disabled.

Yeah.

I think he was a

halfway.

He knew he had a foot outside, but he kind of, he still was jacked up.

Yeah.

Where it's like, this dude is, he knows way more.

Yes.

Than what he's showing.

Because, you know, he'd be like, I blacked out.

I was getting drunk.

I didn't, you know, I blame all this in the pot and the booze.

But then he'd show up at one of the scenes of the fires and he'd tell them every single moment of the night.

Yeah.

And he knew every single thing.

And then he'd the same thing.

I don't remember until he showed up at the building.

He's like, Oh, yeah, it went up to this side and went like this.

The flames are about this high.

He was just like, Well, he loved it.

That music video he made was amazing.

The reverse mohawk, and he's dancing in the sewers and stuff.

Good away, get away, get away, get away now.

No, I'm the no, no, I'm the fire starter,

twisted fire.

That's right, wow, prodigy.

He was a prodigy, yeah.

That guy died, yep, really, yeah, fire.

Wow, no, actually,

suicide, um, Actually.

Suicide by fire?

No, actually.

By ice.

Now for our last pyromaniac today.

Yay!

This guy fucking terrifies me.

We're going to go all the way back to the 1970s when a teenager named Peter Dinsdale terrorized the Yorkshire port town of Hull over the course of six years with fires that killed 26 people.

Now, Peter Dinsdale was dealt a bad hand from the beginning, born with a defect that caused him to limp and hold his right arm across his chest.

He was literally dealt a bad hand.

You know, I actually didn't

think about the pun when I wrote that.

That pun was unintentional.

I want everyone to know that the pun, the pun was unintentional.

100%.

No intention behind that pun.

You got to believe me.

You got to believe me.

There's something wrong with the hand.

The hand's not bad.

It's just,

it's not like the other hand.

It's unintentional.

Dinsdale was referred to as the freak by his own mother.

who sent him to live with his grandmother at the age of three.

Now, the children of Yorkshire were no kinder than Densdale's mother.

Definitely not.

I can't imagine a child from Yorkshire having anything but cruel thoughts.

See, yeah, this is the land of Fred and Rose West.

This is the land of Peter Sutcliffe.

Like, it's just, it's, it is a,

it's a cruel land.

It's like they tried to name it hell, but their horrible accents made it whole.

Yeah, Yorkshire is the reason, like, that's the reason why, like, England loses all rights to, like, make fun of America.

Hey, you got one too.

Yeah, you have one too.

You have your own little America right in the middle of your country.

Now, because of Peter's low self-esteem and quiet demeanor, he quickly earned the nickname of Daft Peter and was bullied mercilessly for his disabilities.

But unlike Brendan Sokolak, who waited until his 30s to act out, Peter Dinsdale's pyromania started at a young age.

Before Dinsdale even reached his teenage years, he'd started a fire in a timber yard and had confessed to setting a shopping mall on fire, a fire that caused tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

By the time Peter was a teenager, he was bouncing between jobs, working on construction sites, worked at the local pig market.

Oink, oink.

It's just a piggy axe like a man.

And incredibly, he got job.

I will never fucking understand why people give guys like this jobs as babysitters.

You know what?

And Gein also was a babysitter.

From what I've heard from people with kids, is that like you get so desperate to leave the house?

Yeah.

At some point, you couldn't even care less who's there.

Yeah.

I think that you

can leave them with anyone.

But I mean, you know what?

The regular fucking Nancy canceled.

I'm sorry.

This is a guy that I met.

His name is Cyclone.

He, that's all I know him.

He seems like a nice guy.

We got to go to dinner.

All right.

We're going out.

We're going to have one night out.

My babysitter was Mel Brooks.

Whoa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not in real life.

The VHS.

Mine was Evil Dead.

They didn't know that was my babysitter, but

he was.

Now, partly, Peter gained the daft nickname because he would do things that seemed very odd.

Like the time he brought a child home, that he was supposed to be babysitting.

He told people that the child was his son, even though the child was obviously of a different race.

It's just that

real different Janes come to the top.

But But some people thought that Peter's daftness may have been an act, something that Densdale turned on and off when it suited him, just like Brendan Sokolak did.

Reportedly, Densdale would tell people that they would never guess what he'd been up to, which to me meant that he was very aware of the power of his pyromania.

If you ever say those terms to me, Marcus, I know for a fact it's that you're setting fires.

Have you ever been like, you would never guess what I've been up to?

That's never going to be good.

No, it's never going to be good.

It's always going to be starting.

Not always going to be starting fires, but it's going to be.

You'd never guess what I've been getting into.

Now, even though Peter Dinsdale wasn't the brightest person in general, he was able to get away with arson and murder for six years for three simple reasons.

Firstly, he only set fires in poor neighborhoods, and those fires only killed poor people, which, as we know, results in cursory investigations at best.

Marcus, please, roasted persons.

But the other side of that coin is that the people in Dinsdale's neighborhood knew that he was at the very least setting fires, even if they didn't know he was setting the deadly ones.

But Dinsdale was not reported for the longest time because the locals distrusted and hated the police.

And again, fire-starting and firebug activity was kind of seen as harmless boy stuff.

Yeah.

But mostly, Dinsdale evaded capture because he was one of those people who are really good at one thing.

And when it comes to arson, Dinsdale knew how to make the fires look accidental, at least at first glance.

As such, the only fire he set that was ruled arson at the time was the one that got him caught.

It's like Ed with Connect 4.

Yeah.

I hear you're like incredible at Connect 4.

Can't be beat.

He's the only.

I don't know understand.

Like, that's the closest I'd say to that you'd be on the spectrum.

Is the fact that you see everything in just four circles?

Fours and lines.

And yeah.

I don't know why I'm so good at at it but i really

do it connect four i once beat this guy 45 times in a row and it made him insane yeah it was like wild i remember when you used to bring it out used to bring it out at the creek and you used to just play people all night collect connect four and people would just go like i don't understand and you just sat there like a silent prodigy just like

click click click click You ever do it for money?

No, no, I don't gamble.

Ah, yeah, that's right.

That's not gambling, dude.

That's sport.

If there was like a prize in like a contest, I would do that.

We should set it up.

Sure, but then you'd have to beat me.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And if you win, you get the money, and then you put it back in the company.

All right, great.

Let's set it up.

All right.

Sounds good.

Beat Ed at Connect4 coming 2026.

Ah, that'd be awesome.

Now, Densdale had always been a truly dangerous individual, as his first murder by arson was committed when he was just 12 years old.

And it's important to remember that all of the arsons I'm going to talk about, he did before he was the age of 20.

Like he was a teenager during all of this.

It's a young man's game.

Yeah, I suppose so.

Yeah, you don't see any like 75-year-old like pyromaniacs.

New ones.

Yeah, new ones, yeah.

Yeah.

They always end up catching themselves on fire by at least 40.

You know what it is?

Suspenders.

Yeah.

Super flammable.

Well, in 1973, Densdell set fire to a house belonging to a family called the Elleringtons, who had a disabled six-year-old boy who rode the bus to school with Peter.

By the time the Elleringtons smelled smoke shortly before 7 a.m., the flames were already too powerful, and their child died in his room.

When Densdale confessed to the crime after his arrest and was asked for his motivation, he said he'd done it for no real reason at all.

Now, do you think he was trying to kill the people, or do you think he was just trying to set fires?

It's unclear.

It's actually very unclear with Densdale, but he did almost, he mostly focused on setting fires when people were at home.

So I think he loved the fires, and I think he also liked the fact that people died in the fires.

But it's interesting because they all, every one of them have said vaguely the same thing, that the impulse, they swear that the impulse to start the fire has nothing to do with the outcome of the fire.

They're all just like, I just said fires.

Yeah, but Densdale also tended to set fires at homes, homes you know people are home and specifically families that's just because it's funny to hear them everybody screaming and stuff i understand that i get that like the idea of watching a whole neighborhood burn it's i get it if you know everyone's home though that is that is murder yeah that's definitely murder and as we'll go through it yeah there's definitely there's absolute definite murders here okay good

Yeah, so the ambiguity, the ambiguity will disappear soon enough.

Frick.

No childport in this one?

No.

Now, a few months after his first fatal fire, Peter went out one night and spent the evening walking around with a can of his favorite accelerant, paraffin oil, which is a highly flammable substance used in cosmetics.

See, like some pyromaniacs, Peter had a physical feeling associated with his urges, and he claimed that when his fingers began to tingle, that was his sign that the location he'd come upon was the one where setting a fire would give him the most pleasure.

It's a sign of diabetes.

Tingling fingers.

You gotta be careful.

Tingling toes.

And I feel like also, just lose the fingers.

So you're saying if he would have cut off all his fingers, he wouldn't be setting any more fires.

Wait a second.

Does this come from the hand?

The bad hand?

I think it just was all of his fingers.

But what if all of this came from?

It wasn't, and he didn't have a bad hand, it was just that his arm was like he had to hold it.

What if it's evil?

What if that was where it all started?

It's the bad hand.

Well, it definitely explains the tingles.

Every time he he went to the hand, it was like, shut another fire.

Shut another fire.

Don't you want to shut another fire?

So you believe that his hand was possessed.

Yeah.

You never do that.

With Natalie, she gets really concerned.

I've been doing this kind of funny thing where sometimes if I say something really upsetting, she gets upset in the car if I say like an angry thing.

So what I've been doing is I say it through my hand instead of saying it out loud.

And then it kind of cuts some of the heat.

Oh, you mean when you're yelling at like other drivers?

Yeah, yeah.

Natalie says she's super scared.

I literally do it because I think it's funny.

And she like, it just makes it more real.

Yeah.

Yeah, because it's like, yeah, because it says there's like a lot of intention behind it.

She said something like legitimately like, please stop with the hand talking.

And I was just like, but why?

It's funny.

And she's like, I just feel like you're going to escape into it.

By the way, looking this up right now, paraffin oil is only $16.99 a gallon on Amazon.

It's not bad.

It's really not bad at all.

You can start your pyromania journey in 48 hours.

Thanks to Jeff Bezos.

Wow.

And this wonderful world we live in today.

It's a great,

beautiful tomorrow.

Now, as it happened on the night of his second murder by fire, Peter's pre-teen fingers began to tingle as he walked by the house of a 72-year-old hermit with gangreneous legs named Arthur Smith, who had no relation whatsoever to Peter Densdale.

Now, we sure that's not Smythe?

I think it's Smith.

It's British Smith.

British Smith.

Yeah, British Smith.

Yeah, it's the old British spelling.

Not smelling.

Spelling.

Old British Smelling is an entirely different show.

That man was old British Smelling.

Who's the gangrene?

Yep.

Even so, Dinsdale climbed in through the window, covered the room where Arthur was sleeping in paraffin oil, and set the old man on fire before leaving through the front door.

The investigation, however, deemed a faulty oil heater as the cause of the fatal fire.

About two weeks after the Smith fire, Peter broke into the home of a man named David Brewer and lit his house on fire while Brewer was in the bathroom.

Oh, no, not Walt.

Don't kill me while I'm taking this shit.

Yeah.

What would you prefer?

On my knees with a gun in my mouth, because I've led the revolution to this point.

Yeah, that sounds nice.

That's not going to happen, though.

No.

No, it's going to be diabetes.

When When Brewer returned to his living room, the flames were already large enough to catch his clothes on fire.

He ran outside screaming and subsequently died from his burns.

But the fire was blamed on Brewer drying his clothes too close to the fireplace.

Had to have been.

In this case, however, Brewer and Dinsdale did have a connection.

Prior to the fire, Dinsdale, who was just 13 at the time, he had put himself in the middle of an argument between Brewer and a neighborhood boy who kept pet pigeons.

For some reason, Peter offered to kill kill the boy's pigeons, I suppose, to end the argument.

I can always just kill all the pigeons.

Yeah.

All right.

That'd be fun.

Yeah.

But for this comment, Brewer threatened to punch Densdale if he did so.

A couple of days later, Densdale set the fire that killed Brewer, then strangled the boy's pigeons to death a couple of weeks after that.

Finally, a pyromaniac I don't relate to.

Pigeons gotta be, I mean, like, I guess they're easy to kill, but it's gotta be rough afternoon.

Yeah, just killing a bunch of pigeons, strangling the pigeons.

Yeah.

No, it's going to be a rough afternoon.

He's a bad guy.

They should have sick Mike Tyson on this motherfucker.

Oh, wow.

If Mike Tyson punched a little British boy, he'd explode.

Like, his skin would just separate from his bones.

Now, Peter Dinsdale settled down on killing people with fire for a while after the Brewer murder.

But after staying quiet for a year, Dinsdale's fingers began tingling as he walked by the home of an 82-year-old widow named Elizabeth Rokar.

Peter later admitted that he'd snuck into the widow's house through the cat door and set the old lady's bed on fire while she was sleeping, causing eventual death by smoke inhalation.

Upon discovering that the fire started in the bed, though, investigators chalked up the incident to the widow falling asleep while smoking, despite the fact that the widow's family told them that the widow did not smoke.

Yeah, but she's smoking now, right?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, everybody.

Firefighter humor.

It just gannies humor.

But since the widow wasn't important enough, no further investigation was done, and Peter was free to continue killing.

Now, like a lot of killers, Dinsdale started off strong but tried to tamp down his urges after the initial spree.

Two and a half years went by without a fatal house fire started by Dinsdale, but eventually the desire won out.

On June 3rd, 1976, Peter, now aged 16, snuck into a house where an old lady was babysitting her grandchildren.

The woman had just put her infant grandson to bed upstairs when Peter doused the cupboard under the stairs with paraffin oil and set it on fire.

The baby was trapped and died in the flames.

Now Peter set another fire about six months later that killed another baby, but his most murderous fire came just three days after the murder of that second baby, when Densdale set fire to a retirement home.

Peter later said that he was riding his bike around Hull while carrying a bottle of paraffin oil, looking specifically for a large house to burn.

He came across Winsley Lodge, the retirement home, where he broke a window, poured oil on the floor, set it on fire, and rode away.

Eleven old men burned to death in this fire, but again, arson was not suspected.

Instead, the fire was blamed on a plumber who was working with a blowtorch in the boiler room.

This fire, however, is the one that Dinsdale may have just confessed to without actually doing it, as his disabled arm would have made carrying a bottle of paraffin oil while riding his bike quite difficult.

But for me, that's a little infantilizing because disabled people find ways to make it work every single day.

Yeah, backpack.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's sent multiple fires.

He's done many fires.

Many, many fires.

And he's traveled on his bike before.

There's no way way that that's the one that he just couldn't do.

Also, you see someone riding around a bike with a big gallon of oil, ask them some questions.

Say, hey, what are you doing?

Hey, stop covering my grandmother in oil.

Unless you're going to fuck the hell out of her.

And honestly, I hope that you do because she deserves it.

Grandma hasn't been lubed up.

She hasn't had one of those big booty like lube days in a long time.

So please have your way with her.

Keep going with this.

I'm just saying that sometimes you got to get, especially the wider wider the butt, the more oil you slap on there, and you're slapping it back and forth like little puddles oil on there.

It's fun to do.

Is paraffin oil a good lubricant?

Only if you're looking to set her on fire afterwards, and I'm not.

I'm looking to move on.

Yeah, you're just looking to make sure that your grandmother is sexually satisfied.

All I want is for some man to dig up my grandmother and have sex with her bones so that maybe that cunt could smile.

Marcus

Now from there, Dinsdale set fire after fire, burning a swath of murderous destruction across the Yorkshire town of Hull.

The targets were chosen randomly, anytime Peter got the tingling in his fingers.

And all the fires were blamed on anything but arson.

While he certainly started many fires by breaking into homes, Dinsdale also took to squirting paraffin oil through the mail slots before shoving in pieces of paper that he'd he'd lit on fire to ignite the flame.

In one case, a mail slot fire resulted in an explosion that killed four people, a mother and her three children.

But the fire was blamed on the kids playing with the container of lighter fluid that had been on a shelf near the front door.

These fucking Hull cops suck.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, like, how many do you're like, oh, we just live in the most flammable town ever.

You know, like, it's sucked.

Yeah, because there was at one point, there was like four within like two months where like all these people were dying in these horrible fires.

And it's like, well,

I don't know.

They can't figure it out.

It's hard to figure out arson.

And also, I think it just comes to truly once you, if you look too hard and have found out you missed this throughout all of these crimes, then you are even more fucked as a police officer.

So they legitimately just decided to kind of.

be like maybe this will end yeah i feel like there's a little bit of like you know these fire bugs they go in and out they killed 20 30 people, and then they stop.

This kid's like one of the most prolific serial killers we've ever covered, right?

This man's like a terrorist.

Yeah,

he's up there.

He's actually one of the most prolific killers in British history.

Crazy.

Isn't that crazy?

And did it by, and I honestly can see why Pyromania works for people that have these issues and where the way it works for like people that have this style of personality disorders where they are legitimately like a small little action leads to a lot of attention.

Now the first time arson was ever suspected in a fire started by Peter Densdale was when he burned down his 10th house by again using the mail slot.

This fire resulted in the deaths of three young siblings by the surname of Hastie, and all of them took about two weeks in the burn unit to die.

But because the Hastie fire was a lot more chaotic and couldn't be blamed on anything else other than arson, a detective superintendent named Ronald Sager decided that a full investigation was finally warranted.

Now, upon arriving at the scene, D.S.

Sager noticed matches near the front door's mail slot, and he smelled the distinctive scent of paraffin oil.

Later, it was discovered that Dinsdale had poured several liters of paraffin oil throughout the hasty house and had started the fire through the mail slot.

You could say that it was hastily set.

Correct!

You would be correct.

You would be very, very correct in that.

The light bulb moment, however, came when Sager discovered upon questioning neighbors that the Hasties were not a well-liked family.

The father, Tommy Hastie, was a career petty criminal, and the eldest Hastie boy, one of the victims in the fire, 15 years old, he had also begun a life of crime.

Almost worse, though, were the two youngest Hastie siblings, aged 12 and 8, who were actually kind of little terrorists in the neighborhood.

True agents of chaos.

They'd throw rocks at old people.

They'd piss through mail slots.

They'd shit on doorsteps.

They would rob local children of their pocket money.

I say, set them on fire.

That's what I say.

That's a larican.

But this is beyond Larican.

Like, I don't know, because Alarican, that's Australian.

Laricans to me seem a little more.

Like, Laricans don't throw rocks at old ladies.

Alarican's heart still sings a song of freedom.

Isn't it crazy, though?

He kills a bunch of nice people, they don't investigate it, but he kills three assholes.

And they're like, I think this is murder.

Yeah, this place is murder.

Well, yeah, because he started to see, like, oh, there's motive here.

Like, everyone hated the Hastie family.

D.S.

Sager couldn't find anyone in the neighborhood that didn't have at least like some sort of grudge against at least one member of the family.

The mother had even received a threatening letter about a month before the fire written on a piece of cardboard cut from a cereal box.

It read, quote, A family of fucking rubbish, we all hate you.

You don't live on an island, devil's island, but I'm not kidding, but I promised you a bomb, and by hell, I'm not kidding.

So why don't you just flip what you've got the chance?

If we can't get you out normally, then we'll bastard well bomb you out, and it's too good for you.

But when they analyzed the handwriting in the note, it was sent by a little old lady who lived up the street.

Yeah, I did this a bomb.

This ain't the first time time I've done it long, not corn logging.

You just harassed me by cardboard.

You know, it's fucking real.

You mean it when you rip open a cereal box and you just start writing on the inside and talking about rockets and fucking rubbish.

And I know all of our Yorkshire listeners right now are just saying, yep, that's Yorkshire.

Nope.

That's my grandmother.

Yeah, this woman, like everyone else, hated the Hasty family and had shoved the letter into their mailbox herself to save the cost of a stamp.

Yeah, I wrote it.

Yeah, I did it.

But if all were going to kill him, I'll do it with the gun.

Now, since Arson was suspected, and since the Hastie family were such characters, their triple funeral was a mass media event.

In front of the cameras, their mother addressed the neighborhood and shouted,

It was one of you, bastards.

One of you in this street is the murderer.

In the 70s in England.

Yeah.

But the road to Peter Dinsdale getting caught for the crime is a bit of a winding one and damn near accidental.

See, after six months with no leads, police received an anonymous tip from a man who said he saw three young guys running near the Hastie home on the night of the fire.

The young men had jumped into a distinctive car, a Rover 2000, which was identified as being similar to a car that was often seen in the part of Hull where the male sex workers plied their trade.

As it turned out, Peter Dinsdale had decided to make a little money by giving hand jobs, and he just happened to be in the area when D.S.

Sager decided to round up all the male sex workers to see what he could see.

I'll just like to grip and rip.

I don't like to set fires.

Well, all I like to do is I play a bit with the balls,

I make the ice cream come out, and I'll move on, all right?

I ain't no reason to be getting money at me.

By this point, however, Peter Dinsdale was no longer going by his given name.

His mother had married a man with the surname of Lee, and since Peter was a big fan of Bruce Lee, he legally changed his name to Bruce George Peter Lee.

He was now asking people to call him by his legal name, which was Bruce Lee.

I'm British.

That's the difference.

Don't confuse me with the real Bruce Lee because he's a movie actor.

Me, I'm just a British boy.

That's why my full name is Bruce John George Ringo Peter Lee Smith.

If you really love Bruce Lee, we'd have became water, not fire.

That's a good point.

It's a good point.

It's a good joke.

It's a good Bruce Lee joke.

Yeah.

And I also think that this points towards Peter Dinsdale being actually a little more clever than he let on because it's difficult to legally change your name.

Yeah, it's a pain in your ass.

It's so difficult.

Yeah.

Now, Diaz Sager was pretty desperate by this point.

I don't know.

I've met a lot of dumbass people with like, you know, vanity plates and stuff.

Like, it's super easy to get.

Sometimes

that, it's what you put your energy towards.

I guess so.

Now, DS Sager was pretty desperate by this point, so his plan was to just bring a bunch of male sex workers and gay kids down to the station where he'd accuse them of being the arsonist in the hopes that one might confess or give information.

That's right.

Really?

It's like it's fucking, it's horrible.

It's just throwing out like.

See what they do.

Someone will say something.

Don't try to get out of here.

Especially when we put the older ones with the younger ones.

You know what I'm saying?

Throwing a little spaghetti against the walls.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, D.S.

Sager didn't even think that Peter Dinsdale, aka

Bruce Lee,

was even a suspect when he brought him in.

But when D.S.

Sager accused Dinsdale of being the arsonist just to see what would happen, Dinsdale looked at Sager and simply told him didn't mean to kill anybody.

Peter went on to say that he had set the fire to get back at the eldest hasty son because he owed Peter money for a handjob.

That's why, man, you always fucking get that money before they come.

Yeah, damn.

Get the money up front.

Up front.

Peter also said he had a crush on the eldest hasty sister and had been rejected, while all the hasty children had mocked Peter for being educationally subnormal, as the British put it.

Do you think that she rejected him because he was jerking off her brother?

I just feel like things are getting complicated.

Jerking off the brother.

That was a secret thing.

That was a job.

Yeah, yeah.

That was his job.

Yeah, that was his job.

That's his, that's just what he does for a living as a child.

Yeah.

All right.

He's a lover of women.

Yeah.

And fire.

Now, Peter was sticking to the story that he was only trying to scare the Hasties.

But when the news broke of Dinsdale's arrest, a local came forward and said she recognized Peter as the teenager who started a fire at her house by squirting paraffin oil through her mail slot.

She actually survived.

She was pregnant at the time.

Sounds like a British euphemism.

Squirt your paraffin oil up in some of my my mouth slaughter.

You dirty boy.

Squid my paraffin oil.

You go all back a false fire on top of my clitoris.

Yeah, that shit's the big one.

It's the big noob.

Cover it in oil.

That's what I imagine when you were covering the grandma's butt with oil.

I understand.

I also got to say, British pornography is horrible.

You know what I mean about British pornography is that I'm actually very you know I'm fine with it whatever it's just the oh no I'm giving to you love

it's the British guys go oh oh oh

now we're getting in there now we're getting in the guizance

I'm coming to completion

now I'm stabbing you muffins

it's also business like yeah yeah

very good then all right well we're done every guy's name Tony yeah it's me, Tony Gribbons.

I'm all empty now.

Now, bugger off.

I gotta have my grave.

You're nothing but fruit and cake.

Well, confronted with the accusation that he had squirted paraffin oil through a woman's mail slot.

Yeah!

Yeah!

Don't wait to get out the ships!

Peter confessed, saying he did it because someone he knew didn't like this woman.

When D.S.

Sager pressed Peter further, the floodgates opened, and Peter eventually confessed to 30 fires that killed 26 people.

Now, D.S.

Sager was a little skeptical, because most cops are skeptical when someone confesses to the murders of over two dozen people, especially when those murders had never been investigated as murders.

So, D.S.

Sager took Densdale out on a tour of Hull.

D.S.

Sager was quite surprised when Densdale was able to direct the car to each and every fire he started.

And I find it really interesting again because they all say they blackout, they don't remember, and it's so impulsive.

It's this truly impulsive thing, but it's each one's, I mean, to pardon the pun, but it's seared into their memory.

Yeah, this really would have been a great finale for the British office.

They just set the paper.

It's really going up, right?

Yeah,

really going.

Well, as it would later come out, quite a few locals knew that Peter Densdale had a habit of starting fires, but their hatred and fear towards the police outweighed their sense of civic duty, and they therefore never reported him until after he was arrested.

Once Peter was put on trial, he pled not guilty to 26 counts of murder, but guilty to 26 counts of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility.

Now, this made Peter Densdale, aka Bruce Lee, one of the most prolific murderers in British history.

But he was soon overshadowed by another Yorkshire monster.

God damn it!

Right around the time Peter Dinsdale put in his plea, another Peter, Peter Sutcliffe, was arrested for the infamous and far more salacious Yorkshire Ripper murders, which pushed Peter Dinsdale off the front page.

Dinsdale had double the numbers.

He did have double the numbers, but it wasn't as flashy.

That's the thing.

His victims were really depressing.

He killed a bunch of old ladies and babies and families and old men.

He set them on fire.

He set them on fire, and it's really disturbing and weird.

But with Peter Sutcliffe, you know, he killed mostly, he killed women.

Yeah, sex workers.

He killed a lot of sex workers.

He killed a couple of teenagers that weren't sex workers.

But for the most part, yeah,

people are much more comfortable

reading about murders

when the victims are people they they can't imagine, when they can't picture them,

when they can say even subconsciously, they deserved it.

Densdale was a sex worker.

You know what?

He was.

Yeah.

He was.

Hi.

He's trying to do it all.

Hi.

I'm a sex player.

I had a good time.

Now there was some suspicion around Peter Densdale's actual guilt here, as some believed that his intellectual and physical disabilities would have made it impossible for him to be as cat-like as he claimed to be during some of these murders.

I, however, think that Densdale, like certain serial killers, was just very good at exactly one thing, which was starting fatal house fires that didn't look exactly like arson.

It doesn't take quite a lot.

Honestly, it doesn't take that much planning.

It's mostly just.

Well, these days, it's far.

I mean, in the 70s, it was pretty easy.

These days, it's

very, very difficult.

It's very, very difficult.

Yeah, I mean, we figure out, like, we knew who started, like, how the Palisades fire started before the Palisades fire was even out.

Oh, yeah, it's entirely different.

It's just that it's still just not that difficult to set fire to something.

And it's because of the insurance companies.

Yeah, they really couldn't figure out

how fires get started.

Make sure that they don't pay people.

You really get to the bottom.

Yeah.

Well, additionally, when D.S.

Sager was criticized in the media for allegedly manipulating Peter's confessions to fit unsolved arson cases, Sager sued for libel and was able to prove in court that he did nothing of the sort and therefore won his case.

As a result, Peter Dinsdale, aka Bruce Lee, was ultimately put in a mental hospital indefinitely.

Since the mid-80s, however, Dinsdale has been declaring that he is totally innocent of all arsons and all murders.

But during correspondence with D.S.

Sager after his incarceration, Dinsdale made a sinister statement.

He said, quote, My master is fire.

I'm devoted to fire, and I despise people.

So, while Peter Dinsdale may not have committed all of the murders to which he confessed, it seems fairly certain that he was still one of the most dangerous teenage pyromaniacs to ever exist, and therefore one of the most dangerous teenagers in British history.

And that's saying something.

That really is.

British teenagers are awful.

Scared of them.

Terrified.

Nothing almost, you know, what seems even scarier was when we were at Dublin.

And I remember when Edwin Marcus and I walked down the street and all these other, these young boys started going Yankee

Yankee

like following us down the street so fright you got to start jerking off at them next time

that's right they call me the yanker talk their language

wow what an amazing episode yeah that's I love this yeah that's I mean that's our uh short study on pyromaniacs we've actually uh we're actually working on an episode uh in which we're gonna cover a single pyromaniac uh in detail, a really insane guy.

But yeah, this is just a nice little

appetizer for you.

So there's like a worse one?

Yeah.

Dude, there's the worst one of all.

That's wild.

Well, I don't know.

Peter Dinsdale.

26.

I think.

Yeah, I know.

I believe

Paul Keller, they already don't know exactly how many lives were attached to him, like how many people he accidentally killed.

And so, you know, we never really know.

And then, who knows?

The really most prolific arsonist might be out there.

He might not have even gotten arrested.

Is this a call to action?

I'm just saying he might be out there.

And then if he isn't out there, that means that slot isn't taken yet.

We're looking at you, teenagers, because you need to make the world the world you want to be in.

You really don't.

You really don't.

There doesn't need to be.

No, no, absolutely not.

No, you cannot.

It's $60.99 a gallon for paraffin oil, thanks to Jeff Bezos.

Nope.

No, no, not,

not,

not, not, not encouraging pyromania in any way whatsoever.

I'm just encouraging people to have ambition.

Ambition is fine.

Yes.

Reach for the stars because sometimes if you miss, you set fire to a bunch of old people.

And we all know that stars are made of fire.

And we brought it all back around.

Patreon.com/slash last podcast on the left is where you can see video episodes of every single podcast we do.

You can also watch side stories for free on YouTube.

And while you're on the Patreon, you can also catch the last stream on the left every every single Tuesday live at 6 p.m.

PSD, 9 p.m.

ESD.

And you can interact with us on the chat.

And you can see a lot of shit that we're not allowed to put on YouTube.

You can also follow us on the socials at LP on the left, TikTok, and Instagram.

And come see us on tour.

That's right.

Detroit is our next one.

That's going to be on April 18th

at the Masonic.

If you.

It's going to be unbelievable.

Dude, and you haven't been there yet.

I believe it's one of my favorite venues in the country.

Me too.

I'm so excited.

The Masonic is insane.

It's cool to just be in the building.

The stage is awesome.

The room's great.

And Detroit is fucking, the Detroit fans are fucking insane.

I bet.

Yes.

We're going to have a fucking blast.

I'm very excited to be in Detroit.

I will say this time, though, if you do take acid before the Detroit show, like the guy last time did, remember that there are other people in the room with you and that you are not listening to the podcast alone in your house.

And I know that we're there jiggling in front of you.

Just remember that when you're on acid, it's not just you.

So don't try to start having a conversation with Henry in the middle of the show.

I think it's one of the, it's a good advice in general is every time you take a hallucinogen and you start to flip out, just remind yourself, I'm on acid.

Yeah.

Cena, actually, I'll always remember that lesson.

Cena taught me that, where it's like, that's how you avoid all freakouts is just remember, I have chosen this.

I'm on a drug, it will end.

Yeah, it might end in 13 hours,

it will eventually end, and there's always drinking yourself to sleep.

So, remember that.

We also got a whole bunch-that's a little tip from Henry Zabrowski.

We also got a whole bunch of new dates on the website, so make sure you check that out.

We're booked for the rest of the year.

Come check us out on tour.

Check it out.

Come see if we're coming to a town near you or your town

or not.

Yeah, maybe not.

So fucking get in a car.

All right.

You lazy piece of shit.

Fucking get on a plane.

Yeah, statistically, most people listening were not coming to your town.

Yes.

But you can come.

At any point, whatever town, we're gonna come in.

On.

On.

And about.

Hail said.

Hail gain.

Hail Arthur Brown.

Fire.

I want you to burn.

Fire.

From the boogie-down streets of Queens to a pile of beans,

a new cup of piping hot, Polish-Italian Java.

Last podcast on the left, and Springhill Jack Coffey are rising from the rubble with a new brew.

Butterfly dudes, blue-eye blend.

Nothing to do with any moth-based entity.

Don't even think about it.

This is a butterfly dude.

Don't mind the blue eyes.

He's just Caucasian.

Our new proprietary roast might seem eerily similar, but don't let your tongue deceive you.

It's a butterfly dude roast.

This is the butterfly dude blue-eyed blend.

Entirely delicious, and not just the same beans.

Butterfly dude, blue-eyed blend.

From the cocoon to your room.

What's poppin' listeners?

I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it.

Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

Want to know about the fake heirs?

We got them.

What about a career con man?

We've got them too.

Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins.

Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters.

I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more.

Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

Bubba Wallace here with Tyler Reddick.

You know what's more nerve-wracking than waiting for qualifying results?

Waiting for the green flag to drop.

Instead of pacing, you rev up with Chumba Casino's weekly new releases.

It's like a fresh set of tires for your brain.

Play for free at chumbacasino.com.

That's chumba.

No purchase necessary.

VGW Group Void where prohibited by law.

CTNC's 21 Plus, sponsored by Chumba Casino.