504 - Eyeball Territory

Speaker 1 This is exactly right.

Speaker 2 This podcast is sponsored by PayPal.

Speaker 4 Okay, let's talk about holiday shopping.

Speaker 6 When you want to make the most of your money, head to the PayPal app before you check out.

Speaker 7 They give you the flexibility to pay in for. No fees, no interest.

Speaker 8 You can get 5% cash back when you pay later with PayPal.

Speaker 4 PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday.

Speaker 6 Save the offer in the PayPal app.

Speaker 10 Expires 12:31.

Speaker 12 See PayPal.com/slash promo terms, subject to approval.

Speaker 14 Learn more at paypal.com/slash pay in for PayPal Inc.

Speaker 16 NMLS 910457.

Speaker 18 Goodbye.

Speaker 13 Hey guys, did you know that you can order from the Home Depot on Uber Eats?

Speaker 20 Yeah, that Home Depot, really.

Speaker 21 And here's the kicker.

Speaker 23 Right now, you can get $30 off $70 or more when you order from the Home Depot on Uber Eats.

Speaker 26 Use code Depot30.

Speaker 15 So if you're in the middle of a project and realize you're out of light bulbs, glue, or that one tool you swore you had, don't stop what you're doing.

Speaker 30 You can get your home improvement essentials delivered in as little as 25 minutes.

Speaker 32 No waiting on shipping, no last-minute store runs. Just tap and get back to work.

Speaker 33 So stock up on DIY essentials, holiday decor, small appliances, or household must-haves like cleaning supplies and trash bags, all without leaving your project behind.

Speaker 24 Order from the Home Depot on Uber Eats.

Speaker 25 Use code DEPO30.

Speaker 36 And December 31st, exclusions may apply. Terms and minimum order apply.

Speaker 37 See at for details. Goodbye.

Speaker 19 Goodbye.

Speaker 38 No one brings out your inner monster like a bad neighbor.

Speaker 43 Claire Danes and Matthew Reese find that out for themselves in The Beast in Me, a new eight-episode drama from the team that brought you homeland.

Speaker 42 Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a grieving writer.

Speaker 41 Reese plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer.

Speaker 44 But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor?

Speaker 45 That's another story.

Speaker 41 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 46 The Beast in Me, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 47 You will not want to miss this.

Speaker 19 Goodbye. Goodbye.

Speaker 29 Well, we're so excited to be sharing the trailer for our brand new show, Brief Recess, a legal podcast with Michael Foote and Melissa Malbranch.

Speaker 51 You may know Michael as the immigration lawyer from TikTok who gives an insider's perspective on the legal system, usually with way more humor than it deserves.

Speaker 51 And Melissa has spent her career as a nonprofit leader, a writer, and most importantly, Michael's best friend.

Speaker 55 And together, they discuss real-life legal issues that affect us all.

Speaker 57 It's smart, hilarious, and it makes the law accessible in a time when we all need to know what's going on.

Speaker 51 So stick around after this episode of My Favorite Murder to hear the trailer for Brief Recess premiering Thursday, November 13th.

Speaker 19 And you can follow Brief Recess now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye.

Speaker 19 Hello.

Speaker 50 Hello.

Speaker 50 And welcome to My Favorite Murder.

Speaker 29 That's Georgia Hartstark.

Speaker 60 That's Karen Kilgareth.

Speaker 61 And we're back for a moment from the road.

Speaker 51 We are in the midst of our tour. Let's see.
When this goes up, we'll only have two cities left.

Speaker 19 Can you believe that?

Speaker 51 We've just done L.A., which is insane.

Speaker 69 Yeah, it feels like it was just a gleam in our eye, and now it's almost over.

Speaker 51 What's your favorite moment? I know what your favorite gift is from the road.

Speaker 19 You do?

Speaker 51 Yeah, we haven't talked about this yet for some reason.

Speaker 61 Favorite moment.

Speaker 72 I did enjoy kicking that stuffed animal back out into the audience after they threw it at us.

Speaker 60 That's right.

Speaker 53 Someone threw up like a big plushie and it rolled on to the stage like a grenade.

Speaker 49 It was very scary.

Speaker 66 It was a very surreal, quiet moment where we just stared at it and we didn't know what to do.

Speaker 51 And then Karen just took two steps and punted it back into the audience.

Speaker 73 I mean, one of my proudest moments.

Speaker 54 What about yours?

Speaker 51 Well, I was going to say to you, do you remember when someone in the meeting greet very early on was a dentist and brought you the little scrubby

Speaker 53 toothbrush, toothpaste thing from the after you got your your tooth clean.

Speaker 70 It was the most meaningful gift. Like, what, you know, the real gift is people actually hearing you when you say things.

Speaker 77 Right.

Speaker 50 He came up and he's like, I'm a dentist.

Speaker 79 So I brought you the gift that only I can give you, or whatever, you know, his little speech was.

Speaker 51 Yeah, that you asked for an episode like 200-something.

Speaker 72 Yeah, where the story of me asking my own childhood dentist that when I was like 10 years old and he just started laughing.

Speaker 19 He's like, What are you talking about? Yeah.

Speaker 83 And then he was like, I'm a dentist and I got it for you.

Speaker 60 He gave you a baggie like full of dental scrubs.

Speaker 69 The scrubbiest tooth polish that I can't really use at home.

Speaker 88 I don't have a polisher, but oh, I'm so glad you reminded me of that.

Speaker 17 That was so incredible.

Speaker 83 That was really good. Yeah.

Speaker 59 Well, thanks to everyone for coming to the show so far.

Speaker 17 They've been just absolutely.

Speaker 51 Incredible to come back. Just having not done that in six years, I forgot what it was like to walk on stage with people screaming at you.

Speaker 19 And it is just like unlike any feeling you'll ever have.

Speaker 59 I'm assuming what giving birth is like that. I don't know.

Speaker 53 I'll never know.

Speaker 50 I think it's a lot louder than giving birth.

Speaker 90 Although who am I to say?

Speaker 53 A lot more fun.

Speaker 91 So good.

Speaker 92 So like, I do think it's that electricity that you can only get in that situation.

Speaker 87 It's easy to go like, oh, yeah, I remember and whatever.

Speaker 79 But it's like, once you're doing it, I don't know.

Speaker 19 I find it addictive. I love it.
Yeah.

Speaker 51 I'm worried I'll be like chasing that high for the rest of my life once this in 20 years when this all ends.

Speaker 19 All right. What do you got?

Speaker 94 Well, let's see.

Speaker 82 Oh, can I read you this email that's from a listener from a story I told about pulling up behind somebody that actually had an SSD jam bumper sticker?

Speaker 48 So, I got to see it in real life, and it was the first time.

Speaker 71 Well, someone wrote in, and it the subject line is, Karen honked at me and it says, Let's get into it.

Speaker 10 It was a weird day.

Speaker 72 I was rushing home from work because I got a call that my wife was in a bike accident.

Speaker 97 And then it says, She's okay, banged up and bruised, but okay.

Speaker 72 I was just focused on getting to her at the urgent care off Pass pass avenue i exited the 134 pass and was

Speaker 101 and was letting my mind go to dark places when honk honk huh that was weird who's honking i look in my rearview mirror and the woman behind me is waving okay weird the light turns green and i'm making my left turn and honk honk honk Now said woman has her window rolled down and she's waving emphatically.

Speaker 74 She's smiling, so she must not be pissed at me for something I've done.

Speaker 102 In my confusion, I wave back because it's the polite thing to do.

Speaker 19 Oh my God.

Speaker 84 This person was having an actual emergency and you were like, you were concerned as to why they weren't paying attention to you, but they were literally having an emergency.

Speaker 87 I demand that you talk to me about my podcast. No matter what's happening in your family.

Speaker 19 Okay,

Speaker 104 it says, I turned left into the parking lot and she kept going.

Speaker 83 I figured I'd never know what the hell that was about.

Speaker 59 Did you even know it was you?

Speaker 19 Oh my God.

Speaker 94 No,

Speaker 19 this is hilarious.

Speaker 105 So cut to a few weeks later and I get a frantic text from my friend Anne.

Speaker 95 And then it says, quotes, was this you?

Speaker 106 And then she sent me an Instagram post where Karen describes her version of this encounter.

Speaker 83 I wish I'd realized it was Karen, even though I was in the middle of a weird damn life sucks sometimes moment.

Speaker 56 It would have lifted my spirits even for just a passing moment.

Speaker 61 Oh, that's nice.

Speaker 56 Karen, if you see me again in you, Honk, I promise to be as joyful and excited as you looked last time.

Speaker 84 Oh, oh my God.

Speaker 17 I can't believe we're getting the other side of this story.

Speaker 19 Hilarious.

Speaker 83 And then it says, My friend Amber and I will see you ladies in Pasatina.

Speaker 54 Can't wait.

Speaker 56 We'll be the ones waving in the middle section.

Speaker 10 XO, XO, Cat C.

Speaker 53 We gotta wave at them.

Speaker 99 We gotta say hi to them.

Speaker 107 That is the sweetest. I mean, what a horrible.

Speaker 48 And yet, thank God it wasn't, you know, it turned out okay.

Speaker 60 Yeah.

Speaker 60 Man.

Speaker 51 But just to have that happen while you're having a panic attack, essentially.

Speaker 19 Oh, my God.

Speaker 102 It's a real act out of you never know what other people are going through.

Speaker 66 And it's like, Hong Kong Kong.

Speaker 19 Hey, Hong Kong, Kong. Are you all right?

Speaker 88 Hong Kong.

Speaker 19 Oh, that's, that's amazing. All right.

Speaker 59 Should Should we do some highlights? Yeah, we have a podcast network called My, what's it called?

Speaker 19 Exactly Right Media. That's right.

Speaker 17 I'm so tired.

Speaker 51 Here are some highlights.

Speaker 82 Okay, so tomorrow, Buried Bones, we'll have a very special bonus episode from the high seas.

Speaker 82 Live from the Virgin Voyages crime cruise, Paul and Kate take on one of their most requested cases ever, the Black Dahlia.

Speaker 19 Whoa. Yeah.

Speaker 51 You can watch the full episode on the Exactly Right YouTube channel, youtube.com/slash exactly right media, or you can listen to the audio wherever you get your podcasts wow what a show speaking of youtube a brand new halloween episode of mfm animated premiered yesterday head over to the exactly right youtube channel again youtube.com slash exactly right media to watch child devil out now

Speaker 71 we got to see nick terry in seattle he's the greatest he is and episode five of our newest series hell in heaven produced with blanchard house and i heart podcasts is out today it is a hit podcast.

Speaker 95 It's so exciting. This thing shot up the charts.

Speaker 56 And you should listen, one gunshot, one body, and a mystery that only gets stranger from there.

Speaker 20 It's hell in heaven.

Speaker 51 And in honor of this week's episode of Rewind, we're re-releasing our classic Triflers Need Not Applied merch design from 2017.

Speaker 52 You can pre-order a ladies' boxy tea, which you guys seem to love, a unisex tea, or a hat now until November 4th at exactlyrightstore.com.

Speaker 51 You guys love that design, so we're bringing it back.

Speaker 2 This podcast is sponsored by PayPal.

Speaker 4 Okay, let's talk about holiday shopping.

Speaker 6 When you want to make the most of your money, head to the PayPal app before you check out.

Speaker 7 They give you the flexibility to pay in for. No fees, no interest.

Speaker 8 You can get 5% cash back when you pay later with PayPal.

Speaker 4 PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday.

Speaker 6 Save the offer in the PayPal app.

Speaker 10 Expires 12:31.

Speaker 12 See PayPal.com/slash promo terms, subject to approval.

Speaker 14 Learn more at paypal.com/slash pay in for PayPal Inc.

Speaker 16 NMLS 910457.

Speaker 18 Goodbye.

Speaker 13 Hey guys, did you know that you can order from the Home Depot on Uber Eats?

Speaker 20 Yeah, that Home Depot, really.

Speaker 21 And here's the kicker.

Speaker 23 Right now, you can get $30 off $70 or more when you order from the Home Depot on Uber Eats.

Speaker 26 Use code Depot30.

Speaker 15 So if you're in the middle of a project and realize you're out of light bulbs, glue, or that one tool you swore you had, don't stop what you're doing.

Speaker 30 You can get your home improvement essentials delivered in as little as 25 minutes.

Speaker 32 No waiting on shipping, no last-minute store runs.

Speaker 64 Just tap and get back to work.

Speaker 33 So stock up on DIY essentials, holiday decor, small appliances, or household must-haves like cleaning supplies and trash bags, all without leaving your project behind.

Speaker 24 Order from the Home Depot on Uber Eats.

Speaker 25 Use code Depot30.

Speaker 35 Ends December 31st.

Speaker 36 Exclusions may apply. Terms and minimum order apply.

Speaker 37 See at for details. Goodbye.

Speaker 19 Goodbye.

Speaker 42 Don't miss Netflix's new series, The Beast in Me.

Speaker 58 It's a riveting psychological thriller from the team that brought you homeland.

Speaker 8 The Beast in Me follows acclaimed author Aggie Wiggs, played by Claire Daines, who has withdrawn from public life after the tragic death of her young son.

Speaker 44 She's unable to write and is a ghost of her former self.

Speaker 21 But Aggie finds an unlikely subject for a new book when the house next door is bought by Niall Jarvis, played by Matthew Rees.

Speaker 41 Niall is a famed real estate mogul who was once the prime suspect in his wife's disappearance.

Speaker 66 Horrified and fascinated by this man, Aggie finds herself compulsively hunting for the truth, chasing his demons while fleeing her own.

Speaker 41 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal fatal consequences.

Speaker 46 The Beast and Me now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 47 You will not want to miss this.

Speaker 19 Goodbye. Goodbye.

Speaker 53 All right, Karen.

Speaker 53 You're only up and only.

Speaker 61 I'm the only one up.

Speaker 70 You're sitting up with me.

Speaker 97 So thank you for that.

Speaker 107 And thank you for everyone else doing it too.

Speaker 90 I'm going to tell you guys a little story in honor of Halloween tomorrow.

Speaker 96 It takes place in Lake Geneva, Switzerland in 1918.

Speaker 106 And that summer is remembered for two big things.

Speaker 116 One, gray skies and very little sunshine, and two, the birthday of a very, very famous monster.

Speaker 71 The real story of his creation is fittingly gothic.

Speaker 93 There's death, disaster, a lot of drama, and a handful of bohemian literary heavyweights huddled in a room, drunk and fawning all over each other while thunder and lightning rages outside.

Speaker 107 And among those bohemians is our famous monster's true creator, and she is only a teenager.

Speaker 70 This is the story of Mary Shelley and that gloomy summer vacation when she created Frankenstein.

Speaker 19 Holy shit.

Speaker 102 Okay, so the main sources that Maren used in this story today are works of several Mary Shelley biographers, including Charlotte Gordon, Fiona Sampson, and Miranda Seymour.

Speaker 1 And the rest of the sources are in our show notes.

Speaker 96 So truly, to really set the scene, the story starts in 1815 in Indonesia on the island of Sumbawa.

Speaker 118 And that is where the volcano Mount Tambora erupts in a deadly series of blasts.

Speaker 60 There is a book I was just going to tell you that I am obsessed with called The Year Without Summer,

Speaker 51 1816, and the volcano that darkened the world and changed history and her story. She's in it.
Mary Shelley, like, yes, yes.

Speaker 60 This is it.

Speaker 51 It's by William Klingman and Nicholas Klingman.

Speaker 50 It's so fucking good.

Speaker 45 I'm about to retell you this story that you that you know.

Speaker 19 No, but I'm like, no, but I had never heard of it before.

Speaker 84 And like people don't know it.

Speaker 85 And it me either. It changed history.

Speaker 49 And it's such a big, like the kickoff disaster event is such a gigantic disaster.

Speaker 103 It's like beyond belief.

Speaker 60 Yeah, the volcano.

Speaker 51 But the thing is, that's cool too, is that nobody knew why everything changed, that it was a volcano until the future because they didn't have just like weathermen telling you what was going on.

Speaker 86 Oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. A mystery.

Speaker 101 So they're just like, it's rainy.

Speaker 56 It's just summertime, but it's thunderstorms and crazy.

Speaker 51 Not only that, it's like none of the crops are growing.

Speaker 17 Why is this happening?

Speaker 53 No one knew. Okay.
Oh my God. I'm so excited.

Speaker 75 This is so widespread.

Speaker 19 I feel very dorky about loving this book.

Speaker 51 And now I'm so excited to hear this.

Speaker 87 No, it's so good.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 112 So then tell me and jump in when you know stuff, please, if there's like details or whatever.

Speaker 106 So it's Mount Tambora.

Speaker 81 erupting in a series of deadly blasts.

Speaker 115 The final explosion happens on April 10th, and it is particularly catastrophic.

Speaker 76 To put it into perspective, it's considered the most destructive explosion in recorded history.

Speaker 71 It is 100 times more powerful than Mount St.

Speaker 113 Helens eruption in 1990.

Speaker 53 100 times.

Speaker 48 100 times.

Speaker 1 And if you want to know how powerful that eruption was, you can go to episode 370, Necessary Yelling, and I will tell you all about it.

Speaker 10 Okay, so some reports say that the blast could be heard more than 2,000 miles away.

Speaker 79 So that would mean if you're in Los Angeles, you can hear an explosion in Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker 56 It blows more than 4,000 feet off the mountaintop, and eyewitnesses say that it looks like Mount Tambora has been, quote, consumed by liquid fire, a fountain of ash, water, and molten rock shooting in every direction.

Speaker 113 So this explosion creates fiery, hot, extremely powerful gusts of wind that flatten homes, uproot trees, and toss human beings around like ragdolls.

Speaker 120 Pumice stones the size of grapefruits are falling from the sky.

Speaker 51 Oh, pre-pumice stones. Right.

Speaker 121 Just grab one for your heels and get indoors, please.

Speaker 56 But it won't matter if you're indoors because 15-foot-tall tsunamis hit land and destroy everything that is still standing.

Speaker 117 Heavy ash falls from the skies, burying everything within 20 miles of the volcano and most lethally scorching.

Speaker 72 1,000-degree debris shoots down the side of Mount Tambora at 100 miles an hour.

Speaker 117 in what look like fiery avalanches that incinerate everything in their paths, vegetation, homes, and of course the people.

Speaker 56 It's estimated 10,000 people die instantly in this explosion.

Speaker 102 But then, as you were saying, in the months that follow, the nearby villages reel from destruction of crops and all the ash that's still in the air and no clean water.

Speaker 78 And then the death toll in Indonesia grows eventually to 90,000.

Speaker 112 According to Scientific American, quote, no other volcanic explosion in history has come close to wreaking disaster of that magnitude.

Speaker 49 Wow.

Speaker 73 So it's obviously humongous and then has all these repercussions because once that debris is in the atmosphere, it forms a massive cloud of volcanic

Speaker 96 junk and it envelops the entire planet in two months.

Speaker 72 And that causes bizarre, unprecedented weather systems all around the world.

Speaker 107 So some places see strange, sudden frosts, some see unending rain, others suffer horrible droughts.

Speaker 113 And it all causes the following year, 1816, to go down in history as, quote, the year without a summer.

Speaker 23 So crazy.

Speaker 51 And if you look at paintings from that time, landscape paintings, the sky is a different color in all those paintings because the sky was literally a different color for years.

Speaker 59 It's insane.

Speaker 123 Like ashy, ashy gray.

Speaker 60 Like reddish, weird.

Speaker 19 Yeah, ashy. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 72 Like when it's sunset, but there's been a fire and it turns those crazy colors.

Speaker 53 Yeah, we know that here in L.A. too well.
Yeah.

Speaker 76 But that's not the end of the devastation.

Speaker 72 The eruption sends more than 35 cubic miles of ash, gas, and debris into the skies.

Speaker 92 Wired magazine will say it was enough to, quote, bury all the playing surface of Fenway Park in Boston, 81,544 miles deep in ash.

Speaker 77 What?

Speaker 53 I can't even wrap my head around that.

Speaker 113 I know it's because we're not baseball people.

Speaker 121 But it's basically like from here to that far into space, essentially, is so much.

Speaker 106 That's how much shit was in the air.

Speaker 116 As far away as the southern United States, snowfall is reported in both June and July, with one Virginian note that, quote, on July 4th, water froze in cisterns and snow fell again, with Independence Day celebrants moving inside churches where hearth fires warmed things a mite.

Speaker 48 End quote.

Speaker 80 Of course, that all makes for very bad harvests, meaning food supplies around the world are much smaller than normal.

Speaker 102 The prices for basics skyrocket, and that leads to a widespread famine.

Speaker 90 A writer named Gillen Darcy Wood notes that, quote, villagers in Vermont survived on groundhogs and boiled nettles.

Speaker 19 Oh dear.

Speaker 113 While the peasants of Yunnan in China sucked on white clay,

Speaker 106 summer tourists traveling in France mistook beggars crowding the roads for armies on the march.

Speaker 45 So it's horrible and it's horrible everywhere.

Speaker 50 Hunger, cold temperatures, and social chaos is all around, making it hard for the average person to fend off disease.

Speaker 10 Europe sees a brutal outbreak of typhus that kills 40,000 people, and the first deadly global cholera pandemic begins soon after that in 1817.

Speaker 102 There's not an exact global death toll that we can attribute to the Mount Tambora eruption, but writer Gillen Darcy Wood estimates that it's somewhere in the tens of millions.

Speaker 51 Yeah, that's because the cumulative issues that caused more and more death.

Speaker 51 It reminds me of the Spanish flu of 1919, which I love reading about, where it's just this kind of mystery of where it came from, but the devastation it did is just so fascinating and widespread.

Speaker 51 And like it doesn't discriminate.

Speaker 59 Like everyone's fucked, essentially.

Speaker 19 Right.

Speaker 91 Okay.

Speaker 72 So it's a terrifying, disorienting time to be alive.

Speaker 56 Death and desperation permeates everything all around.

Speaker 89 And this is what's happening in the world when we meet our hero, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in London, England.

Speaker 72 Mary is a quietly intense redhead who comes from a famously radical family.

Speaker 72 Her father is a well-known writer and anarchist named William Godwin, and he is also credited with publishing the first English detective novel called Caleb Williams.

Speaker 19 Oh, I had no idea. I know, right?

Speaker 102 Such a good title for a detective novel.

Speaker 101 Saying Caleb Williams.

Speaker 19 It's not.

Speaker 114 It sounds like a seventh grader at a local junior high.

Speaker 78 And her mother is Mary Wollstonecraft, who is a trailblazing feminist writer and philosopher whose fierce devotions to women's rights inspire the men of her time to dismiss her as, quote, a hyena in petticoat.

Speaker 78 So she must have been good.

Speaker 88 Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 73 But the sad thing is Mary never knew her mother because in 1797, days after giving birth to Mary, Mary Wollstonecraft dies of infection because the doctors removed her placenta with dirty, unwashed hands.

Speaker 19 Guys,

Speaker 19 I mean, it's so

Speaker 23 horrifying.

Speaker 119 Mary carries the burden of her mother's death from a very young age.

Speaker 73 She spends a lot of time in the cemetery where her mother's buried.

Speaker 72 It's said that Mary learns to write by tracing the letters on her mother's headstone.

Speaker 102 And when she's a bit older, she spends hours sitting on her mother's grave reading her mother's feminist works.

Speaker 19 Oh my God, heartbreaking.

Speaker 64 She's like a little Edward Gorey character, like playing in the cemetery.

Speaker 44 So then her father remarries, and sadly, her stepmother, Mary Jane Claremont, is a jealous, controlling woman who openly favors her own children, especially her daughter, Claire.

Speaker 56 It's a a tense, crowded living situation.

Speaker 45 Mary feels completely cast aside, and she spends even more time at the cemetery to escape from her increasingly fraught home life.

Speaker 78 And then it gets worse as she grows into a teenager.

Speaker 109 Mary starts to look exactly like her mother, which seems to be more than her stepmother can handle.

Speaker 73 So under the guise of a health treatment, Mary is sent off to Scotland to live with family friends.

Speaker 73 So at the time, Scotland has a huge arts and literary scene, and there's tons of inspiring revolutionary thinkers.

Speaker 59 So her stepmom kind of did her a favor by kicking her out.

Speaker 79 Yeah, getting her out of there and suddenly it's like, ooh, best case scenario.

Speaker 53 Yeah, the world opens up.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 92 So one of Mary's biographers, Charlotte Gordon, describes it as, quote, like going to San Francisco during Hey Dashbury.

Speaker 73 And it's here while in exile from her own home that Mary really starts developing her creative voice and her interest in writing.

Speaker 72 So from time to time, Mary travels back to London to visit her beloved father.

Speaker 44 And it's on one of these visits that she first meets a poet named Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Speaker 92 He's five years her senior.

Speaker 44 He is now famous for his sonnet Ozzy Mandius.

Speaker 77 But when they meet in the 1810s, he's not a famous poet.

Speaker 69 He's actually an authority-bucking young bohemian from a filthy rich family who spends a lot of time with Mary's father trying to learn about his philosophical takes on anarchy.

Speaker 74 Percy also has some notoriety after being kicked out out of Oxford for refusing to admit that he'd circulated a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.

Speaker 115 Percy is also a married father, though he's sometimes said to be estranged from his wife, Harriet Shelley.

Speaker 56 It seems safe to say Percy is not a particularly present husband to his wife, and he has actually adopted a non-monogamous ethos that Mary will struggle with from here on out, as will Harriet, of course.

Speaker 80 But all this is to say, when Percy and Mary first meet, sparks fly.

Speaker 116 She will bring him to her mother's grave.

Speaker 92 That's where they'll first say, I love you.

Speaker 44 They end up running off together not long after.

Speaker 113 And pretty soon after that, Mary gets pregnant.

Speaker 111 She is 16 at the time.

Speaker 80 Uh-huh. And Percy is 21.

Speaker 106 So that's a huge scandal. So.

Speaker 74 to escape the dirty looks and the gossip they leave england and they just start traveling around europe mary's stepsister claire the one that the stepmother favored she dabbles in writing and speaks several languages.

Speaker 119 So she joins them and acts as kind of a local translator.

Speaker 1 And Mary is actually very close with her stepsister, even though she doesn't like her mother.

Speaker 50 They're like a year apart in age.

Speaker 72 So as the three move throughout the continent, Percy encourages Mary to write, but she's so exhausted from her pregnancy.

Speaker 1 She feels constantly sick and weak.

Speaker 73 Her lack of energy is only intensified by the fact that they are constantly traveling.

Speaker 78 And then she tries to start projects and then she can't finish them and it's all, she's just all kind of exhausted all the time.

Speaker 53 So I sometimes travel and I'm not pregnant and I can't fucking imagine.

Speaker 19 I know. Writing a gadget

Speaker 56 and not being able to take like vitamins or something that you're just kind of like on a train for four hours.

Speaker 19 Oh God. Okay.

Speaker 97 So in February of 1815, Mary goes into premature labor and they lose the baby.

Speaker 65 She's overcome with grief.

Speaker 102 And just one week after losing her child, she writes in her diary, quote, dreamt that my little baby came to life again, that it had been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived.

Speaker 93 Awake and find no baby.

Speaker 117 I think about the little thing all day, not in good spirits.

Speaker 19 So sad.

Speaker 73 But it is a significant moment for more reasons than one.

Speaker 44 So it's two months after this tragedy that Mount Tambora erupts, and it is...

Speaker 90 a fitting reflection of her grief, the way the skies all darken and the sun never comes out.

Speaker 67 Everything turns to unending gray.

Speaker 72 Before long, Mary's pregnant again, and in January of 1816, as that volcanic ash circles the earth, 19-year-old Mary gives birth to a boy named William.

Speaker 2 This podcast is sponsored by PayPal.

Speaker 4 Okay, let's talk about holiday shopping.

Speaker 6 When you want to make the most of your money, head to the PayPal app before you check out.

Speaker 7 They give you the flexibility to pay in for. No fees, no interest.

Speaker 8 You can get 5% cash back when you pay later with PayPal.

Speaker 4 PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday.

Speaker 6 Save the offer in the PayPal app.

Speaker 10 Expires 1231.

Speaker 12 See PayPal.com/slash promo terms subject to approval.

Speaker 14 Learn more at paypal.com/slash pay in for PayPal Inc.

Speaker 16 NMLS 910457.

Speaker 18 Goodbye.

Speaker 13 Hey guys, did you know that you can order from the Home Depot on Uber Eats?

Speaker 20 Yeah, that Home Depot, really.

Speaker 21 And here's the kicker.

Speaker 23 Right now, you can get $30 off $70 or more when you order from the Home Depot on Uber Eats.

Speaker 26 Use code Depot30.

Speaker 15 So if you're in the middle of a project and realize you're out of light bulbs, glue, or that one tool you swore you had, don't stop what you're doing.

Speaker 30 You can get your home improvement essentials delivered in as little as 25 minutes.

Speaker 32 No waiting on shipping, no last-minute store runs. Just tap and get back to work.

Speaker 33 So stock up on DIY essentials, holiday decor, small appliances, or household must-haves like cleaning supplies and trash bags, all without leaving your project behind.

Speaker 24 Order from the Home Depot on Uber Eats.

Speaker 25 Use code Depot30.

Speaker 36 And December 31st, exclusions may apply.

Speaker 13 Terms and minimum order apply.

Speaker 37 See at for details.

Speaker 19 Goodbye.

Speaker 42 Don't miss Netflix's new series, The Beast in Me.

Speaker 58 It's a riveting psychological thriller from the team that brought you homeland.

Speaker 8 The Beast in Me follows acclaimed author Aggie Wiggs, played by Claire Daines, who has withdrawn from public life after the tragic death of her young son.

Speaker 44 She's unable to write and is a ghost of her former self.

Speaker 58 But Aggie finds an unlikely subject for a new book when the house next door is bought by Niall Jarvis, played by Matthew Reese.

Speaker 41 Niall is a famed real estate mogul who was once the prime suspect in his wife's disappearance.

Speaker 66 Horrified and fascinated by this man, Aggie finds herself compulsively hunting for the truth, chasing his demons while fleeing her own.

Speaker 41 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 46 The Beast and Me now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 47 You will not want to miss this.

Speaker 19 Goodbye. Goodbye.

Speaker 77 So now it's May of 1816, and it's the beginning of the so-called volcanic winter.

Speaker 106 Mary, Percy, and the baby are cushioned from the worst of it.

Speaker 75 When their funds dry up, they just get money from Percy's father who bails them out.

Speaker 92 So they always have food.

Speaker 89 They always have shelter.

Speaker 99 But the world outside is very bleak for a lot of people.

Speaker 79 And there's just a sense of dread everywhere.

Speaker 48 So it's at this point that Mary and Percy decide that they're going to go to Geneva, Switzerland.

Speaker 78 And Claire is the one who actually suggests this idea, but she does have an agenda.

Speaker 44 Claire actually knows that 28-year-old poet Lord Byron is going to be in Geneva, Switzerland.

Speaker 53 She's like, he's totally going to be there and I've got to meet him.

Speaker 85 Yes.

Speaker 101 Well, no, she'd already been having a bit of an affair with him.

Speaker 60 I've been fucking him and I've got to see him.

Speaker 99 Exactly.

Speaker 103 She is kind of obsessed.

Speaker 10 She's been writing him witty, flirtatious letters and basically propositioning him.

Speaker 93 He takes her up on the offer, but then she kind of won't leave him alone.

Speaker 106 And he's, Lord Byron is infamous for being really awful to his exes.

Speaker 89 So he's just like a love-em-and-leaving type of guy.

Speaker 57 He is also the titan of the romantic movement, but unlike Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron is a massive celebrity at this point.

Speaker 103 Charlotte Gordon likens him to Mick Jagger at the height of his fame.

Speaker 118 Wow.

Speaker 93 So one of Lord Byron's most famous literary works, which is called Child with an E at the end, Child Harold's Pilgrimage.

Speaker 73 It was published a few years earlier to serious acclaim.

Speaker 119 But he's as famous for his private life.

Speaker 100 He has a reputation for sleeping with anyone he thinks is interesting, men or women, married or single, even his own family members.

Speaker 72 He actually is rumored to have had an affair with his own half-sister.

Speaker 1 Jesus.

Speaker 53 Sounds like a vampire.

Speaker 19 Is he a vampire?

Speaker 59 Right?

Speaker 19 Oh shit.

Speaker 19 That will come up. That will come up.

Speaker 59 Classic vampire moves right there.

Speaker 113 Classic.

Speaker 100 Just being like, there's no boundaries.

Speaker 79 I'm really open and I love blood.

Speaker 72 So in 1816, amid accusations that he's engaging in, quote, sodomy and homosexuality, both illegal in England at the time, he moves to Switzerland.

Speaker 56 So, the problem with Claire's plan is: Lord Byron has made it clear he is not into her and he, like, doesn't like her, but she can't help herself.

Speaker 72 So, she basically hopes if they go there, Mary and Percy will be the ones that help rekindle the connection because Lord Byron will be like obsessed with them because they're two young writers, you know, doing it all.

Speaker 102 They're bohemian, they're creative, and they're all outrunning scandals.

Speaker 67 So, it's there's just a lot of, it's very juicy.

Speaker 56 So, in May of 1816, the Shelleys arrive in Lake Geneva and they rent a house there just steps from Lord Byron's lakeside mansion, Villa Diodati.

Speaker 110 Even though it's supposed to be a summer vacation, the weather's brutal.

Speaker 90 The fallout from Mount Tambora is hitting Europe hard, especially in Switzerland.

Speaker 122 It rains nearly every single day that summer.

Speaker 102 It floods Geneva with mud and rotting crops from the soaking wetfields.

Speaker 120 On June 1st, Mary writes a letter to a family member saying, quote, an almost perpetual rain confines us principally to the house.

Speaker 117 One night we enjoyed a finer storm that I had never before beheld.

Speaker 56 The lake was lit up, the pines made visible, and all the scene illuminated for an instant when a pitchy blackness succeeded and the thunder came in, frightful bursts over our heads amid the blackness.

Speaker 53 Wow.

Speaker 51 Moody.

Speaker 51 So moody.

Speaker 19 Right?

Speaker 76 They're like stuck in the beginning of the movie Frankenstein.

Speaker 62 It's just like constantly that thing.

Speaker 29 It was a dark and stormy night.

Speaker 19 Oh my God.

Speaker 107 So one afternoon, amid all this intense gloomy weather, the Shelley household finally crosses paths with Lord Byron.

Speaker 80 And Claire was right.

Speaker 68 He hits it off with Percy and Mary immediately and he invites them back to his villa.

Speaker 77 So they meet his fleet of dogs, monkeys, and even a falcon and his 20-year-old traveling companion, John Polidori.

Speaker 110 He serves as Byron's personal physician.

Speaker 56 Polidori also has literary ambitions and he's being paid by Byron's publisher to keep journals on their travels together and then they plan to publish them as a book.

Speaker 56 So word of Byron and Shelley Camps linking up makes it all the way back to England where they're talked about as like a scandalized super group.

Speaker 80 Newspapers refer to them as quote League of Incest.

Speaker 75 A gaggle of British guests at a nearby Geneva hotel set up a telescope aimed right at the villa, but the thick fog makes it impossible for them to be able to look inside, but they're trying to look inside.

Speaker 108 If they could see inside, what they'd see is everyone drinking tons of wine and laudanum, which is diluted liquid opium, and then either sleeping with each other or getting into fights with each other or some combination of the two.

Speaker 74 So even though Lord Byron openly despises Claire by the end of the summer, he's still sleeping with her, and so she gets pregnant.

Speaker 53 I think this is Love Island, UK.

Speaker 70 It's almost like better.

Speaker 103 It's like haunted Frankenstein Love Island.

Speaker 104 Totally.

Speaker 17 Oh, I'd watch it. It's crazy.

Speaker 19 I'd watch it.

Speaker 110 There are some historians who've speculated, but nothing's been proven, that actually this child is Percy Bysshe Shelley's child because he and Claire are suspected of having an affair.

Speaker 122 And depending on which source you're reading, it's also been said that Polidori is infatuated with either Lord Byron or Mary.

Speaker 68 Drama aside, it's impossible for these people to enjoy the outdoors, so they basically spend every night.

Speaker 96 by a fire at the villa reading spooky poems and stories while thunder and lightning rattle the mansion.

Speaker 122 They're reading from a book named Phantasmagoriana, which is a collection of German horror stories recently translated into French.

Speaker 65 It has a bit of everything.

Speaker 91 Ghosts, malevolent spirits, family curses, haunted places, stuff like that.

Speaker 105 And they are all drunk and high, so these stories hit pretty hard.

Speaker 70 One night as Lord Byron is reading, Percy jumps out of his chair and bolts out of the room.

Speaker 67 And he later says, quote, he'd seen a terrifying vision of Mary who'd been in the corner nursing their child with staring eyes instead of nipples on her breasts.

Speaker 59 Dude, take a nap.

Speaker 53 I'll take a nap. Freak some orange lice with that.

Speaker 29 Stop with the opium for one second.

Speaker 59 High nipples.

Speaker 53 That's fucking a new one.

Speaker 19 That's not cool.

Speaker 53 That was not from Ashberry, I don't think.

Speaker 71 No, that's not cool.

Speaker 107 So after a while, Lord Byron switches things up and tasks the group with writing their own horror stories.

Speaker 106 It's a contest, and whoever creates the most chilling visceral work wins.

Speaker 104 So by day they all go to their respective rooms and pull out their ink pens and they write and at night they come back together and they share the works in progress and they give each other feedback.

Speaker 19 I love this.

Speaker 53 I want to do this with my friends, but without so many drugs and alcohol.

Speaker 60 Without?

Speaker 51 Not as many.

Speaker 8 I don't want to see eyeballs.

Speaker 19 Let's not make a rule right now.

Speaker 105 Let's just see what happens.

Speaker 51 Let's not. Let's not.

Speaker 19 It can go however.

Speaker 119 We don't want to go into eyeball territory, but yeah, you're right.

Speaker 85 Well, here's what I think is kind of cool, and I'm giving the credit to Lord Byron, which is everyone's fighting and fucking and doing all this crazy shit.

Speaker 20 It's like, how about everyone gets creative and puts their work on the paper and just puts their energy that way?

Speaker 56 And then look what comes out of it.

Speaker 86 It's wild what comes out of it.

Speaker 106 So it doesn't seem like Percy Bysshelle or Claire contribute much to this little writing group, if anything.

Speaker 116 Instead, they're working on their own projects that have nothing to do with the horror genre.

Speaker 56 Lord Byron, meanwhile, takes inspiration from stories he's heard while traveling in Eastern Europe of vampires.

Speaker 50 But those ones are a little different than our modern vampire.

Speaker 89 Per the folklore that he heard, they were grotesque, undead corpses that would rise out of their graves at night like zombies and suck the blood of the living.

Speaker 103 Different kind of monster.

Speaker 109 Sure.

Speaker 82 Different flavor.

Speaker 19 More of a Roquefort situation with those ones.

Speaker 56 So he starts a story that he never ends up finishing, but in it he takes the concept of a vampire and makes it a little sexier.

Speaker 92 His vampire is a a socially intelligent British aristocrat who also has a thirst for blood, but he is able to blend in with the upper class and he's a romantic.

Speaker 51 Imagine that.

Speaker 60 Who are we talking about?

Speaker 17 And he's so hot.

Speaker 60 He's so sexy.

Speaker 19 So hot.

Speaker 114 But essentially, this version of the vampire is actually the one that sticks in our culture from Dracula to Twilight.

Speaker 109 So that does come from Lord Byron's original idea.

Speaker 72 So when the rest of the group hears this, they tell Lord Byron he's onto something, but he doesn't listen and he scraps the story.

Speaker 67 Basically, he doesn't enjoy writing horror or gothic horror.

Speaker 44 But John Polidori takes it and he makes it his own and he eventually releases a novella called The Vampire, P-Y-R-E.

Speaker 119 And that is said to be the first English language vampire story ever published.

Speaker 51 Was Byron pissed that he fucking copied him?

Speaker 76 He doesn't seem like the type.

Speaker 68 He seems like he's like, you can have mild idea, whatever.

Speaker 114 And he's got like a kerchief in his hand at all times.

Speaker 56 But obviously, the inarguable winner of this writing contest is 19-year-old Mary Shelley, whose entry starts as a short story.

Speaker 77 It's so compelling that the others urge her to expand it into a novel, and it eventually becomes Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, which is the full title.

Speaker 19 I never knew that.

Speaker 56 The condensed refresher that no one needs, but it will be fun to do, is that Frankenstein's about a young scientist who makes the very risky decision to play God, designing a a creature that looks somewhat human and using electricity to jolt it to life.

Speaker 73 Frankenstein's creature is born with a kind heart, but he's very lonely and he longs for connection.

Speaker 122 And he's beaten down by people's fear as well as their cruelty toward him.

Speaker 117 And he's abandoned by his own creator.

Speaker 44 All the poor treatment hardens the creature until he becomes a monster.

Speaker 71 Just as Frankenstein's abandonment of the creature turns the scientist into a monster. And if you watch young Frankenstein, that's exactly what happens.

Speaker 51 There was a Frankenstein bar that we went to in Edinburgh that was fucking incredible. Edinburgh, Scotland.

Speaker 51 Ooh, did like, did a thing go every like hour or whatever, the monster would come out, the like music would go down and like the crazy ass creepy shit would happen.

Speaker 17 There's like all these lights.

Speaker 19 It's a fucking rad bar.

Speaker 92 Yes.

Speaker 94 That sounds so good.

Speaker 106 Okay, so as this group leaves Lake Geneva at the end of the summer, Mary does keep working on the story when she gets back to England, but her writing is sidelined once again by even more tragedy.

Speaker 72 And I have to tell you, there's so many more things I'm going to tell you that are sad that happened in her life that it's like kind of devastating how much bad shit happens to this woman.

Speaker 116 So her half-sister, Fanny, who is a daughter of her mother's from a different relationship, takes her own life.

Speaker 92 And then weeks after that, Percy's estranged wife, Harriet, also dies by suicide.

Speaker 117 So as horrible as all of that is, it does allow Percy and Mary to finally get married, which they weren't, they had kids together and stuff, but they weren't married.

Speaker 67 So they finally get married.

Speaker 56 But mary is consumed with guilt over harriet's death the next year in 1817 she finishes frankenstein it's published in january of 1818 on new year's day when she's 20 years old

Speaker 77 it's released anonymously so her name is not on the book in the beginning and it's a small publisher not particularly well known.

Speaker 116 There's only about 500 copies that they put out on very cheap paper and with no fanfare.

Speaker 56 But people still end up buying it.

Speaker 93 And then the people who buy it and read it talk about it.

Speaker 92 And so the word spreads that because it's just that good.

Speaker 44 And some critics love it, some find it distasteful, but it captivates the public's interest.

Speaker 54 And nothing like it has ever existed before.

Speaker 92 Frankenstein is as romantic and philosophical as it is horrifying, and it's often called the first science fiction novel.

Speaker 56 And it just keeps growing in popularity, even getting adapted into incredibly popular stage plays.

Speaker 56 And because the book includes a dedication to Mary's father, William Godwin, and a preface that's written by Percy, rumors swirl that one of these men are the ones that actually wrote this book.

Speaker 102 Mary, meanwhile, stays in the shadows.

Speaker 67 She doesn't make much off of the popularity of her book.

Speaker 80 It's not clear how much she actually earns from it.

Speaker 56 We do know that the bulk of the money goes to the publisher.

Speaker 72 And of course, there's no copyright protections at the time.

Speaker 99 So the theatrical productions that use her story don't pay her for it.

Speaker 19 Wow, what a fumber. Yeah.

Speaker 72 And then in 1818, a year after Frankenstein's published, Mary loses another daughter.

Speaker 113 One-year-old Clara dies in Mary's arms after contracting dysentery.

Speaker 72 The year after that, Mary's son, William, dies of malaria.

Speaker 110 So these losses compound Mary's existing grief.

Speaker 73 She goes into a deep depression with Percy writing around this time, quote, my dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone and left me in this dreary world alone.

Speaker 121 That's a Percy Bysshe Shelley line.

Speaker 19 Oh my God.

Speaker 78 So sad.

Speaker 80 But the same year, year, Mary will give birth again, this time to a son named Percy, and he will be the one child that they have that lives to adulthood.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 48 Tragedy seems to follow the whole villa crew from Lake Geneva.

Speaker 115 In 1821, John Polidori, the author of The Vampire and Lord Byron's one-time physician, takes his own life.

Speaker 58 He's only 25 years old.

Speaker 80 It's been speculated he was suffering from depression and felt buried under the weight of his gambling debts.

Speaker 78 Then the Shelleys continue to cross paths with Lord Byron, though he does refuse to see Claire,

Speaker 82 Mary Steph's sister Claire, and he treats her with hostility, even though they have a child together.

Speaker 48 They have a daughter that Claire named Alba.

Speaker 83 Lord Byron takes custody of the baby, renames her Allegra, and then cuts Claire off from ever seeing her.

Speaker 54 It's just like a horrible thing.

Speaker 113 He takes custody of the baby, but then puts her in foster homes, like rotating foster homes, and then in a convent.

Speaker 92 And when Allegra is five years old, she dies from typhus at the convent.

Speaker 92 And then Lord Byron dies two years later of a fever.

Speaker 116 So Claire herself lives to be 80 and of course mourns her daughter for the rest of her life.

Speaker 115 Then in 1822, three years after their son Percy is born, 29-year-old Percy Bischelli drowns in Italy when his sailboat gets caught in a storm.

Speaker 80 So Mary's widowed.

Speaker 58 She's 25 years old.

Speaker 77 Jesus.

Speaker 72 And she will live another three decades.

Speaker 117 She dies when she's 53 of a suspected brain tumor, but she never remarries.

Speaker 72 The year after Percy's death is when Mary finally reveals that she is the author of Frankenstein.

Speaker 112 She basically needs money, and they're reissuing the novel so she can get some cash.

Speaker 117 She only receives a small allowance from Percy's family as a widow, and she mostly supports herself and her young son by writing and taking on editing work.

Speaker 114 But the reveal that Mary is the one who wrote Frankenstein is literally unbelievable to some people.

Speaker 98 Akamen.

Speaker 93 Critics immediately try to give the credit to her late husband, thinking there's no way a woman could have written something so dark and layered.

Speaker 121 But Frankenstein is so unmistakably hers.

Speaker 71 It is about grief, alienation, and guilt, things Mary has felt since childhood.

Speaker 92 And she even lifts passages from her own personal journal, particularly dispatches about the wet, stormy weather in Lake Geneva during the year without a summer.

Speaker 103 Even the premise itself of generating life from something not living echoes the dream Mary had after her first daughter died.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 90 Oh my God.

Speaker 93 I dreamt that my little baby came to life again, that it had been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire and it lived.

Speaker 19 Oh my god. Right.

Speaker 114 Both Mary and Frankenstein's monster yearn for the type of unconditional love, a motherly love that they've never had.

Speaker 96 Frankenstein has been interpreted by many modern scholars as a feminist text and one that's clearly shaped by Mary's grief and longing for her own mother.

Speaker 91 I know, right? It's so sad.

Speaker 72 As biographer Charlotte Charlotte Gordon puts it, quote, Frankenstein is actually a book about women.

Speaker 50 I would say it's a dystopian novel about a world without mothers and a world without strong women.

Speaker 117 Unchecked male ambition, says Mary Shelley, is going to wreak havoc on the world.

Speaker 81 Wow.

Speaker 102 And that's the story behind one of the greatest works of Gothic fiction, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Speaker 19 Wow.

Speaker 53 What?

Speaker 51 A fascinating story that I didn't know.

Speaker 53 I didn't know.

Speaker 19 Right?

Speaker 19 Oh, my God.

Speaker 19 That's incredible. So good.

Speaker 17 So good. Great job.

Speaker 53 Good job for Halloween, especially.

Speaker 48 Thank you.

Speaker 115 And great job marrying Melashen once again. Just killing it.

Speaker 107 So good.

Speaker 19 That was incredible. Great job.
Thank you. Will happy Halloween.

Speaker 53 Thank you. Happy Halloween.

Speaker 51 What are you going to be for Halloween this year?

Speaker 53 Home? I think this year

Speaker 88 I'm going to be a person who's at home.

Speaker 110 I told someone what I was going to be the other day, and now I can't remember what it was.

Speaker 102 What a great joke that I can't remember.

Speaker 75 What are you going to be for Halloween?

Speaker 51 I'm going to be me in a cute Halloween dress with maybe cat ears on passing out candy to all the little kids in our neighborhoods, my favorite.

Speaker 122 Nice. Oh, yeah.
You have to go on full-on candy, dude.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 48 It's the best. Well enjoyed.

Speaker 19 Thank you.

Speaker 53 Last year we counted on a clicker and there was 998 kids before we had to, we ran out of candy and had to

Speaker 53 turn the lights off.

Speaker 49 I know. It could have kept going.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 It's fucking insane.

Speaker 102 I love it. It's so crazy.

Speaker 53 Well, I hope everybody that's listening is going to trick or treat their asses off and really enjoy themselves that's right have so much fun be safe and watch out for spooky spooky and watch out for volcanoes

Speaker 111 yeah watch out for teenagers trying to egg your house it's real and stay sexy and don't get murdered goodbye

Speaker 7 elvis do you want a cookie

Speaker 39 We come to this legal system for justice.

Speaker 126 But we don't always get it. I'm Melissa Malbranch.

Speaker 39 And I'm Michael Foote. You might know me as everyone's favorite lawyer from TikTok.
I'm sick of this whole like my life is separate from my job. It ain't.

Speaker 39 I'm a fear Steve in the courtroom as well as at home.

Speaker 126 Every week on our podcast brief recess, we take the legal world out of the courtroom and into real life. Like, can your boss actually fire you for what you post online?

Speaker 39 What happens if ICE knocks on your door?

Speaker 126 Or what should you do if you get arrested at a protest?

Speaker 39 We break down insane headlines, answer real questions from listeners, and share wild stories about what really happens in court.

Speaker 126 Friends, please remember while Michael is a lawyer, he is not your lawyer.

Speaker 19 Unless you want to hire me.

Speaker 46 I mean, that's a different thing.

Speaker 39 I am, everyone has a price, and I'm actually pretty cheap.

Speaker 126 From the Exactly Right Network, Brief Recess premieres on November 13th with new episodes Thursdays. Watch Brief Recess on YouTube.

Speaker 39 Listen to Brief Recess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 127 This has been an Exactly Right Production.

Speaker 8 Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

Speaker 66 Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 41 This episode was mixed by Liana Scolachi.

Speaker 127 Our researchers are Maren McGlashen and Allie Elkin.

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Speaker 10 While you're there, please like and subscribe.

Speaker 19 Goodbye.

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Speaker 38 Goodbye. No one brings out your inner monster like a bad neighbor.

Speaker 43 Claire Danes and Matthew Reese find that out for themselves in The Beast in Me, a new eight-episode drama from the team that brought you homeland.

Speaker 42 Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a grieving writer.

Speaker 41 Reese plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer.

Speaker 44 But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor?

Speaker 45 That's another story.

Speaker 41 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 46 The Beast in Me, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 47 You will not want to miss this.

Speaker 19 Goodbye. Goodbye.

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Speaker 19 Goodbye.