Part Two: The Surprising Evil of 1950s Men's Adventure Magazines

Big Bobbo E-Money and Magpie the Killjoy read a magazine for racist pedophiles.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Ah, wow, there's some that's nice.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Wed. That's how we started it, and I thought that
was I thought that went well. I thought that was good.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
I think I think, you know what, I think we
should leave this incredibly lucrative world of podcasting behind and
start a traveling barbershop quartet and more or less recreate
Oh Brother war out Thou with me as the Clooney.
Of course, I think that's obvious.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
If I get to play a washboard bass, I'm all right.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yeah, absolutely, why not? I don't remember much about that movie.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
No, I don't know if there's a watchboard base in
it or not. No, I remember there's a.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
There's dapper damn Dan harecream, which I don't think would work.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Makes him a greaser.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
I think he is technically a greaser. You're right, Margaret.
I think I think cloon Tang in that movie is
a greaser.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
It explains why he stabbed all those people just because
they tried to.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Get uh classic Clooney. That was on the set of
Er though. So are we ready for part two of
our exploration into its men's adventure magazines?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, I'm sure it's gonna stay nice and get nicer.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
That's a that's absolutely the case. So to start us
off today, our next men's adventure magazine is the Noble
Exotic Adventures, and boy howdy it has a special cover.
If what, what's your guess for the Exotic Adventures cover
island late like.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Brown skinned women wearing not much clothing.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
No, it's racism, but but yeah, you kind of guessed that.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
So we'll give you. We'll give you half.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Okay, Sophie, will you show her Exotic Adventures?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yeah, that is a very racist drawing of a shake.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
I forgot that all of the women who are sexualized
in danger have to be white in this yes.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Well not entirely, but largely, yes, okay, largely. There is
actually a naked photo spread of a Japanese woman in
this article. Oh I'm not saying that makes it better,
don't get me wrong, I'm just saying they're not always.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, so articles in Exotic Adventures.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Should we describe this cover to Yeah, we should excress.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
So there's a very i would say, like second Indiana
Jones movie level racist like caricature of like a shake
looking dude with a beard who seems to be both
holding a python of some sort and a one of
those like curved bladed like like like slithery bladed knives

(02:43):
that he's got as he's ripping the shirt off of
an otherwise naked ish white woman whose hands are bound
above her, while behind them, a slightly bloody adventure looking
dude is about to throw a knife into his back.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
That guy's white. Yeah. Also, that curvy style of dagger
is a Celtic thing. It might also be an Indian thing.
There's actually a lot of cultural overlap, but like the
flame bladed dagger was, Yeahltic thing.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, yeah, I do believe there's a number of culture
but anyway, yeah, yeah, you've got like a yeah, I
said shake. But you're probably right. He's probably supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
I don't think he's supposed to be Irner And yeah,
I think he's just supposed to be not a white guy.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
I don't know. Yeah, yeah, they're trying to signify that.
And his eyes are like vacant and evil. It is
not an.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Absolutely, absolutely, very racist drawing.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
In terms of what we see on the cover, the
South American strip tease Mill the Sexiest Girl in Japan,
That's the one I was telling you about France's Nude
Model Ball and the special The Sex Orgies of Sarawak.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
It only says sex three times on the cover.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
There is there's a lot in this one. They're really
and this is the porniest of the ones that we're
going to be covering in these episodes. This is just
a straight up porn magazine. I did warn you both
ahead of time. We're going you the listener. This will
be no different from listening to anything else because you
can't hear naked pictures, but there will be naked pictures
in this I did provide a warning ahead of time.

(04:14):
So the first ad on this is for the least
shady product service so far, an amazing pocket radio that
fits in the palm of your hand. The only thing
amusing here is that the argument the advertisement brags it
works indefinitely, which is an odd way to frame it.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
That plugs in.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
No. I think it's one of those hand crank radio
type deals. Oh okay, Yeah. Then we get our table
of contents, which does feature quite a bit of soft
core pornography. I mean, that's just that's a lot of
naked people for a table of contents.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
I'll give it to them.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, so we get some we get a heads up
as to some of the fantastic stories we're going to. Also,
it's worth noting the editor of Exotic Adventures is George Wallace.
I don't think the same one was the segregation governor,
but may maybe perhaps. Articles in this magazine include The
First and Only Love of Rami, Safari of Death, The

(05:09):
Sexiest Girl in Japan. I was a Tangi or smuggler,
Modern Madahari, The sex Orgies of Sarawak, Attacked by monster crabs. Margaret,
we are going through that entire story. It's magnificent. That's
what happens when you have a little black book. Yes,

(05:31):
you go through too deep into that little black book
and you be attacked by the monster crabs. What a
glorious magazine. So our first story is the First and
Only Love of Rami, and I found myself interested in
it because I miss and I think I read wrong
the premise. I thought it said that it was about
a man who becomes a sex slave, which I was like, Oh,

(05:54):
that's an interesting reversal of the normal story.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
It's not.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
It's a normal story about a man who falls in
love with them with a sex life anyway, OK. Yeah,
So the story is framed as this is like an
article written by a journalist who like had always wanted
to visit Kashmir because of these you know, Golden Age
of adventure stories he'd read about this mystical land, and
so he successfully cons an editor into paying for him
to fly over there and do some fact finding. So

(06:19):
he has to he has to work a couple of days,
and then he's you know, he gets his payment and
he's able to sort of like hang out in Kashmir.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
For a while. Now, huh.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
The first fun fact about this is that like after
he'd yeah, he after he finishes his job, he decides
to stay on for a few days, and he notes
that he'd been paid up for the article that he'd
been like researching for and quote, I had money in pocket,
a sometime thing with any writer. Now, this is like
accurate to how life as a freelance writer is. But
it's also very funny to me because, like he is

(06:49):
making that note in a time when you could casually
get an editor to fly you to Kashmir for like
three days work.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, Like it's also like having that be your character
is like writing the movie about the screenwriter, because I'm
assuming these are all fiction, even though they pretend on the.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yes, yes, I don't think this is a real story. Yeah,
but I do think this guy probably got paid more
for this article than a lot of like, I don't know,
war correspondents get paid for deep dives. I'm like, yeah,
fighting in Ukraine and shit. So anyway, our protagonist checks
into the only hotel in the city that he's in.
He orders a gin and tonic immediately, which is pretty

(07:26):
on brand for our field. After the room service brings
his drink up, we get this line. I noticed on
the platter a small printed card plainly left for my perusal.
It said, with frank honesty, buck Nelu, we have the girls.
What it lacked in grammar, it made up in succinctness,
always a virtue in advertising. I was at first amused
and then curious. Was Kashmiri prostitution any different from that

(07:50):
of the rest of the world. Why not find out,
I thought, And so, having had a second and then
a third gin and tonic and eaten my supper, I
strolled down the main street and the direction of the
business establishment of boch Nelu. So I do love that
he's like I'm going to do a journalism on how
prostitutions different in cash. This guy was ready for vice news.

(08:12):
He was writing for him before they were ever born.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Vice burst from the head of this fucking writer, like.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
So he gets to this brothel and the bach Nellu,
the operator of the brothel, asks him what his pleasure
will be. To be honest, I confessed, I am a journalist.
My interest is mostly mere curiosity. His face fell a little,
and so I added, however, I would not want to
take up your time without reconvincing you for it. So
our hero insists it's kind of unclear what he actually

(08:45):
wants to do. He insists he doesn't want to buy anything,
but he just wants to see the girl. So the
writer brings some of his women out. Our hero comments
on very critically on their breasts, and then he makes
them give him a lap dance, which he eventually begs
off because he doesn't actually have any intention of paying
for sex. Back, Nelu frowned. You like something special, he said,

(09:07):
I can arrange for a showing a boy, a girl,
two girls, whatever you desire ten rupees, very inexpensive. No really,
mister neahlu I said, I'm just not interested. His frown deepened,
and then in a moment it vanished. Ah, he said,
I have someone very special, something that is very rare
among us. But perhaps you will be interested in this,
although I warn you the price is four hundred rupees.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Guy, is it a white girl? No?

Speaker 3 (09:30):
No, well, no, no it's not. It's not a white girl.
Girl is appropriate? Though that was a lot of money
by KASHMIRI standard, something like one hundred dollars. In Kashmir,
a laborer lives comfortably on fifty dollars a year. My
curiosity was piqued. What did he have worth one hundred dollars?
All right, mister nehlu, let's see her. He clapped his
hands again, and from behind the curtain a young girl

(09:51):
hardly more than sixteen appeared. Now, I will admit when
I started that, I assumed the whole offering children for
sex thing came up earlier was to make it clear
that this is like a bad guy. This was like
the villain of our story. I guess he technically is.
But our hero has no problem with being offered a
teenage girl.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
That is not the thing that is going to be
an issue for our hero in this story. Yeah, mister
Naylou tells us that her name is Rummy and that
he's just purchased her from a village nearby. She is exquisite.
She is also a virgin, and this is where our
hero has an issue, because he does not believe that
this girl is a virgin and thus would not be
worth one hundred dollars that is being charged for her. Sure, yeah,

(10:36):
he tells mister Nayleu, and again, this is our hero.
He tells mister Naylou that this claim at this that
the sex slave is a virgin is quote the oldest
pitch in the book. Mister Naylu promises to return the
money he's paid if it's not true. Then we get
this revealing paragraph.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Again. I backed off.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
I wouldn't have much chance to get my money back.
At the first sign of trouble, mister Naylu would scream
for the local gendarmes and have me removed. I'd seen
that game too often, mister Naylou, No thanks, and that's
what we get before the magazine tells us to move
on to page fifty one for the rest of the story.
Because print magazines are just a horrible, horrible, user unfriendly product.
In fact, when I turned to page fifty one, there's

(11:14):
like a half page of text surrounded by the middle
parts of two other stories, and then I'm told to
move on to page sixty four. Anyway, I'm not going
to keep this. I hate this shit. Yes, anyway, here's
the next lines of the story. As the author tries
to turn mister Naylu down the flesh, merchant shrugged. I
cannot convince you, all right, then, would you care to
look at REMI She is truly a wonder. The price

(11:36):
for that is less fifty rupees. That sounded more reasonable.
I could afford to risk ten dollars to see something
as charming as mister Neylu made her sound. I gave
him the money, and he gestured towards the girl. Now,
I'm not going to relate to you how this author
describes the naked body of a child. Safe to say
that he uses the phrase the first flush of womanhood
in a way that I think should be punishable by violence.

(11:57):
Speaking of things that should be punished by a violent
After being overcome with this child's beauty and seeing her
stare at him with unabashed eyes. His first words to
mister Naylu, are you are right? Your Rami is exquisite.
But I cannot believe that she is a virtuin. So
I don't I don't know what to say to that.
It's pretty bad. Our protagonist leaves the establishment after tipping

(12:20):
mister Naylu in other ten dollars. I don't know why.
He has received very little, certainly not enough for a story.
He's mostly just oggled and naked child.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well it's enough for this story. Oh, I guess it's enough. No, no,
it's not, Margaret. No, we're building to that.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
So he decides to head back to his hotel for
more gin. He sees someone following him, but he decides
he doesn't care all that much, so he gets back
to the hotel. The person tailing him, you know, he
figures it's just a harmless weirdo. He gets drunk with
a guy he describes as a bush man before going
up to bed where he finds I know it's pretty bad.

(12:55):
Where he finds waiting in his room Rami. She snuck
out of the brothel and she has come a calling
to him. So at first he's like madly in love
with him.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
It's not quite that.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
I'm not gonna say it's better than that, Margaret, I'm
not gonna say it's better than that. She is like
first At first, off, he's like outraged because he thinks
that like she's been snuck there by bochnello, and he's
going to try to like, you know, charge him for
it and like fake that, you know, anyway whatever. He's
going to like try that this is some sort of scam,
right yeah. But then she disrupts his thoughts by saying,

(13:28):
do you want me now? He is still initially outraged
at this because he doesn't believe she's a virgin and
thus doesn't think she's worth the price set on her head.
She insists that she is a virgin. In a profoundly
uncomfortable sequence, she nodded vehemently. Oh yes, sir, I am
a virgin. I have never slept with men. I looked
at her, frowning. This is so, oh yes, it is so.

(13:50):
I come from a poor family. There are not so
many men in my village. I was engaged to a boy,
but he got killed in a rock slide. Then later
my family was poor. They could not keep all the children,
and besides they knew that I would always be poor
if I stayed in the village, so they sold me
to mister Neylou. He could pay well since I was
a virgin, and then I could work for him and
save my money and perhaps make things better for my family.

(14:10):
So I guess the upside of this scene is that, like,
I don't know, is this like a slave or just
sex child prostitution. I don't know if that's a distinction
that's worth laboring over either way, pretty gross anyway, Here
is where we get the big reveal of the whole piece.
Rami feels her family was cheated by mister Naylou, who
paid much less for her despite compared to the value

(14:33):
that he views her as having for this white guy.
So she wants to have sex with our hero for
free to get back at her pimp. Now, obviously he says, yes,
there's no real detail given here, Thankfully. The most interesting
part is that he throws in a line about feeling
bad that she has condemned herself to a life of
white slavery, which what I mean, she's not, I don't anyway.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
What else does that just mean? Is that, like the
way that Western people refer to sex slavery. At this point,
it's like, all that's.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
The feeling I get, because he does describe her as
like a Kashmiri girl. Yeah, okay, So the story ends happily,
and after having sex, he asks for her family's address
so he can pay them the money that mister Neyleu
didn't pay them. I don't think there's a particularly good
moral lesson there. I think that's pretty gross, But that's

(15:25):
the story that's I think it does like that's a fantasy,
like the fact that like that is a fantasy that
they thought would be that the men buying this magazine
and like normal American comic shops would identify with as fascinating. Again,
that's not a real story that happened. Yeah, it's just
a story that a bunch of gross dudes in the

(15:46):
sixties wish it happened.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
If it been written in the eighties, she would have
gone home with him and they would have gotten married.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
Yeah, they would have gotten married, and it would have
been uncomfortable still, but we wouldn't realize until like the
mid nineties.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah. Yeah, if I'm remembering, I'm thinking back.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
To some of the things that George Lucas said about
Mary and Ravenwood in the first Indiana Jones movie, which,
like Lucas, clearly grew up reading these stories. Right, So
it's one of those like, oh, well, that does make
that make a little bit more sense. This was probably
poisoning his brain from a very early age. Yeah, so
that's interesting, I don't know, a little journey into the

(16:25):
mind of a sixties guy. So, returning to our smut magazine,
the next story after the start of that child molestation
adventure is a story about some rich guy's wife murdering
him via safari. I like that one a lot better.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, is she the bad guy?

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Or yeah, yeah, she's the bad guy of course.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
Then we get the Sexiest Girl in Japan, which has
the header text strange as it may seem, the Sexiest
Girl in Japan doesn't live there anymore. When an American
producer saw the exotic Dolly, he whisked her off to
the States as a promising showgal. I don't know, she's
not in Japan, but whatever you do, you don't need
to be I guess expect much accuracy here. So there's

(17:08):
porn that follows, and then immediately after that we get
back to our adventure stories. There's a crude drawing of
a naval vessel in the text. I was a Tangiers smuggler,
which I thought was going to be much more up
my alley. Here this is another piece of middle aged
guy wish fulfillment. And it's really clear. It makes very
clear what we talked open the series talking about that

(17:29):
like these are largely for dudes who like served.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
But didn't see any action.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, because our hero in this is a guy who
he goes over and he fights in Europe through World
War Two, and then after ve Day he decides to
like stay in England doing odd jobs, some on this
side of the law and some on the other. He's
like this, you know, veteran Nazi fighter who becomes cut
but like a sexy criminal.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Right yeah. Yeah, he's got a switchblade comb he pulls
out every now and then absolutely fixes his hair. He
acquires a boat, probably in something cool like a game
of dice. He's a Han solo character, right yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
And thinking about like these is partial inspirations for some
of Lucas's later work, Like he's he's that's the kind
of guy he is.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
He did the Castle run and yeah, not so many
nautical miles.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, however many or whatever the wrong term for nautical
miles is because yeah, so he gets this boat and
he decides like, well, why not make spare cash smuggling
stuff out of Tangiers, which is a pretty cool lifestyle choice. Yeah,
I would argue in the nineteen fifth.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Jimmy Buffett thinks he was doing.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, exactly, James Buffett. Sorry, yeah, so alright, So yeah,
now I will say I wish this was a better story.
I love the premise. This is one of those ones.
It's so badly written that I cut. There's paragraphs in
it that feel like chat GPT, and I think it
may just be because, like this guy was trying to

(18:53):
pump up word count, right, he's getting paid by the
word and so he's really overwriting this motherfucker. But let
me let me read this to you and you'll see,
I mean all right. Tangier is a free port. Ships
of any nation can unload any kind of cargo at
all there without paying duty or undergoing inspection. A highly
organized trade smuggling trade operates out of Tangier, therefore farying

(19:13):
goods from the freeport to the nations along the Mediterranean coast.
The smuggling ring specialized in such desired items as Jim's coffee, watches, drugs, currency,
antibiotic drugs, and gold, as well as American cigarettes, which
are heavily dutied in Europe, in which so many Europeans
became addicted to thanks to the presence of GIS during
the forties.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Okay, wait, I have a theory. These guy have a
middle name in his author name. It's a great question.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
What do we got here? Shit one sec I can
scroll back up to the table of contents.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Okay, because there's like the side the Gorman No oh,
all right, all right, there's like the like long standing
joke that the reason that all like science fiction authors
or whatever you use their middle name also on the
cover is that they get of like short stories. You
get paid per word, and it's like a free ten
cents ten cents.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah, yeah, no, but he's definitely overwriting. I also, I
feel confident that no reader in nineteen fifth this is sorry,
this is published in nineteen fifty seven. I don't believe
there's a single reader in nineteen fifty seven that needed
it explained to them why Europeans wanted American cigarettes. Like
that's simply an unnecessary sentence. Yeah, but I am equally

(20:23):
confident the hero who wrote the story was again being
paid by the words. So godspeed brother, right, you know
every Yeah, everyone in this story is an adult.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
So this guy's fine with me. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Anyway, the story is what you'd expect. He gets hired
to run cargo and he'll get paid generously, but he's
also got to transport this beautiful rich crime bosses like
girlfriend who falls in love. You know, you get the
you're aware of the thrust of this story. It is
kind of Star Wars the more I think about it, Actually,
there's elements of that there. You really do like definitely,
I don't know of this story, but Lucas was reading

(20:56):
magazines like this as a kid obsessively. I don't think
there's any doubt about that. Now you have a solid
understanding at this point what to expect from this magazine.
So I'm going to follow this up with a full
reading of the only story in here that has real
literary merit. Attacked by monster crabs. Now, Margaret, look at this,
Look at this crab art. You know that's that's a

(21:18):
good naked lady attacked by monster crabs, drawing like like
anatomically the crabs look exceptional. Those are good. Clause like,
look at the details. Oh that's art, that's all. Yeah,
that's art. Yeah, it's beautiful. This is really something special
by Dave Callahan. So the pull text of the story.

(21:40):
Can you think of a more horrible way to die
than to be torn to streads by a horne of
monster crabs? I can't, because it almost happened to me.
I can't. Actually, Dave Callahan, that does seem like a
pretty bad way to die.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, And I am now fully on board.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
And this this is I dare I say a work
to those of Melville or le Gwynn, or dare I
say it William Shatner, author of Tech War, just a
true classic of the genre. Here it opens with starts
with an iconic horror story opening line, this is the
place Pamela said, We'll be all alone here. Nobody ever

(22:17):
comes here but me. Perfect completely set the moon in
the first two sentences, Ah Callahan, you.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Bastard, you did it.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Now those of you, we are a versed in literary theory,
will know that a statement like that by a character
means that they're going to die from a deadly crab attack.
Now our heroes have just taken a motor boat to
an inlet in British Honduras, north of Belize. Pamela and
the author Dave Callahan are both looking forward to relaxing.
Dave is especially excited for a long afternoon of love

(22:51):
with this busty daughter of a British diplomat, but he writes,
I wasn't prepared for the nightmare evins that would take
place that afternoon. One thing I will say for Dave
is that his female lead here is very definitely an adult,
and is also insinuated to be sexually active and in
control of her very interesting love life. So because he's

(23:12):
not fetishizing a child, I'm going to read his lustful
description here because it's kind of funny. It's pretty funny.
Hand in hand, we climbed up the beach flank. It
was a warm, muggy day. Pamela was wearing a man's
white shirt whose buttons rarely managed to hold back the
magnificent thrust of her bosom, and a pair of khaki
trousers that clung tightly to her hips and thighs. Overhead,

(23:33):
the hot sun was burning its way through the thick clouds.
I spread a blanket for the two of us. There
were two bottles of local rum in the boat for refreshments,
and we had forgotten them. I'll go back to the
boat and get them, I said. When I reached for
the boat, I scooped up the bottles and looked up beach.
Pamela was peeling off her blouse. She had nothing on underneath.
I oggled her gently, swaying breasts appreciatively. As I approached.
She had buttoned the trousers, kicked them off, and stood

(23:55):
lovely and nude before me. Now she says she wants
to go for a swim. She's like, come on, take
your clothes off, let's get in the water together, in
one of those crisp British accents that sounded so out
of place in this primitive Central American country.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
So fifty babies. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
And then, because it is nineteen fifty seven, he responds,
you go ahead and get your feet wet while I'm
opening the bottle.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
I want to nip of rum before I get in
the water.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
You do also get a lot of context by the
fact that they are spending an afternoon on a beach
and they bring two full handles of rum.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
That is quite a quantity to swim on and then
drive a boat back on.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
I mean, every character in any one of these stories
is a hardcore alcoholic. I feel like that's less worth
mentioning in fiction from the fifties. But yeah, so our
character uses his trusty pocket knife, which you will not
hear from again, to open a bottle of rum and
drink what would kill a small pony. Then he starts
to take off his pants and head in after Pamela.
When we get a glorious line, David, David, help the

(24:58):
crabs the crab. I shaded my eyes and looked down
beach for her. She was almost completely hidden around the cove.
All he could see of her was her body from
the breasts upward. She was leaping around wildly in the
shallow water, some thirty feet off shore, grabbing the unopened
bottle of rum to use as a weapon. I sprinted
towards the water. What's happening, I yelled, what's the trouble

(25:21):
the crab?

Speaker 2 (25:22):
She shrieked. The monster crabs.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Perfect, perfect pros a masterpiece. No, no, I want to
teach an English class just about this story, Like some
professors do with Moby Dick, where we just every day
we go through the monster crab story again.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
See, I actually feel like there's like something to be
said about you learn all of these rules about how
to write well, and then you look at what sells
best and it does not follow those rules, and like
what is read the most does not follow these rules,
and there's like something to be said for that. That
is like a tension that all writers must cope with.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
It is it is, and that's why more writers need
to write about monster crabs. I think that's a very
very clear lesson that I have a solarless story. Half
stumbling over myself in my hurry, I reached the edge
of the shore. There was Pamela off shore and water
no higher than her lovely knees, and monster crabs a
foot across were leaping out of the water, gnashing their
ugly pincers at her nude form. The water seemed to

(26:24):
boil with their hideous forms. There must have been hundreds
of the crabs swarming up from their slumbers in the mud.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
And you know this is like based on a true story
where he like like I've had this like where you
have like a nice date and then something slightly weird
happens and then you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, wouldn't it
be wild.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Thing like this ants or some shit? And it's like, yeah,
what if the ants had been foot long monster crabs?

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (26:52):
But you know, I love this story, Margaret. I you know,
all these weirdo right wing culture warriors talking about like
how our society has gotten away from its first principles,
and I understand that now because I want to live
inside this moment, this glorious frozen instant where a man's
a man, woman's a woman, and a boiling hive of
crabs is a boiling hive of crabs, right, you.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Know, perfect, perfect story.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, it's also very funny that he instantly goes to
the rum bottle for a weapon.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Even though he's a pocket knife.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
He's got a knife on him, but he whips out
that rum bottle. Very fifties guy, smart, like woke modern
youths could never they'd have only a can of white
claw to defend them from the.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Crabs, or they would have been swimming sober. Yeah, they
would have been swimming sober and thus doomed. Yeah, it
is interesting because he's drunk, but she is swimming sober
and spoilers. She is doomed.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
So you're right, Margaret, I think that's exactly how this
story would end if these were gen Z kids, gin
Z kids who could never fight off a crab in
the waters, off belize. But you know who could fight
all a boiling hive of crabs?

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Is it the people who pay us to put their
advertisements into our shows? Arguably, Margaret, Arguably.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
And they just take a handful of rigging coins and
just throw them.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
Yeah, huk them at the crabs, Ninja star like like
ninja stars and ye yeah take this you crabs stead
of a bitch, Yeah don So back to the crabs.
She was screaming another light, mindless panic. I could see
a bloody gash along one arm, another just below a

(28:37):
jouncing breast. She was doing a wild dance, a death dance,
and the water around her was stained with red. Oh god,
I had Yeah, yeah, they're gonna murder, right, the crabs
are going to kill this lady now, Margaret. When he
described her jouncing, I did not know that was a word.
I thought, like, did he just make up a word
to describe like?

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Is it like jiggly bouncy.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah, it means to jolt or bounce, So you win
this round. Fifties author, I learned a word from this story.
It was not in my vocabulary prior to it. All right, daddy, okay,
daddy own guard.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
And I heard the sound the crabs made, the dull
ominous clack clack sound of heavy pincers cracking together. Pamela
was trying to beat the monsters off with her hands,
but they were slashing her mercilessly on hip and thigh
and arm and belly and buttock and every other part
of her body they could reach. Raising my bottle high
as a club, I waded out into the water, conscious
that my unprotected nakedness was terribly vulnerable to the attack

(29:40):
of the crabs. I didn't care. I had to see. Yeah.
So this is the point at which the author of
this story makes his first structural mistake, which is that
he breaks this fascinating narrative to take us back in
time to explain how he and Pamela met, which is
not a question on anyone's mind reading this.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Crab fight story. I could not care less about these
people's backstory. I just want a naked man fighting crabs
with a rum bottle. That's all I need. His battle cry. Now.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
He explains that he was in the country on legal business,
and her family had fled there from Belgium before the war.
They had a standard kind of rom com honestly proto
rom com. Like they literally bump into each other while
turning a corner, which I was like, oh, okay, interesting,
it's a normal Like again, it's a middle aged guy fantasy.
She's immediately into him for reasons that are never discussed.

(30:43):
She takes him back to her dad's mansion and they
get housed on rum. Then she you know, she strips
and stuff.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
I will say it's not off putting after the last one,
because like she's very clearly an adult who's in control
as opposed to you know, a child's slaves. So I'll
give this off their credit anyway. I mean, he invites him.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
He's going to murder her pornographically for the purpose.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Of well, the crabs are going to murder yes, yeah, anyway, yeah,
So she invites him out to the beach, and finally,
after a torturous diversion, we're back to the crabs. Oh good,
Pamela's beautiful face was a hideous mask of sheer terror
in pain. As I waded towards her, slipping and sliding

(31:28):
on the slimy mud, evil claws flicked up from the
water around her, drawing blood at every touch, and she
was cut off from the shore by a solid mass
of the crabs. The drifting tides and sent slicks of
blood up and down the shore as more crabs were
on their way to join the attack. I was thirty
feet from her twenty fifteen. My breath was coming in
ragged bursts. As I tried to run through the shallow water.
I slipped and fell headlong. The rum bottle dropped, and

(31:49):
because it was the closest thing to a weapon I had,
I knelt and groped in the choppy surf until I
found it again.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
I'm coming, Pam, I yelled, hurry, kill them. They're tearing
me apart. Now. I like that.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
In the middle there, you kind of turned into doing
your bench of Europe boy, I.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Did a little bit by Sorry, it's impossible not to,
I will admit when this when I started this story,
because so many of the stories I read for this
that you didn't hear are like great titles and then
very disappointing. I expected the crabs to mostly be a
visual threat. Maybe they'd nick Pamela a little bit, but no,
this is a brutal murder. Like it is a horrible

(32:26):
crab death. Pamela was surrounded by crabs. Now they had
almost bitten completely to the bone of her left arm.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Blood spurted in terrible gouts from the wound. This is
HP Lovecraft writing under another name.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a horny HP Lovecraft writing his
weird crab fetish.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
This is absolutely the author's baffling kink that they died,
never openly telling another soul about.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
But absolutely they tried to tell their wife, and their
wife left them. No, no, their wife is gone. Yeah,
within minutes, took the car.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
He was like, could you walk? Could you walk sideways
to the car. She's like no, No.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Spent the rest of his life going out to the
aquarium every weekend wearing loose fitting pants. I tried to
help her, smashing my bottle against them to stun them,
tossing them as far as I could, but it was helpless.
A naked man and a naked woman armed with only
a glass bottle between them could not defend themselves against

(33:31):
a seething ocean of monster crabs. I felt them nipping
at my cabs, my thighs, my loins. A crab was
crawling up Pamela's body, she screamed as its pinchers. Yaha, YadA, YadA, yeah, YadA.
A lot of breast biting from the crabs here that
we don't necessarily need to get into. So he eventually
pulls her out of there, right or yeah, After like

(33:52):
a difficult fight with the crabs, he gets his hand
bitten to the bone, so he nearly loses a hand
for his troubles, but he manages to drag Pamela out,
and we get a pretty unsettling description of her mutilated
body that I will not repeat here because I do
think the writer was working for through a fetish in
this article.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yeah, anyway, she dies from the crabs. Yeah, does she
get any like last words?

Speaker 3 (34:14):
No, she's dead by the time he gets her back
to shore. I don't know if the crabs actually killed her,
if she bled out, if she like drowns in the surf.
It's not really it doesn't really matter. Pamela's dad after
he gets back, there's like a scene with like our
hero and this young woman's father, where it's just made
clear that her dad doesn't care about what happened to her,

(34:35):
and then our hero returns home forever scarred. When I
recovered from my experience, I finished up my business in
Belize and flew back to the States. That was three
years ago. I haven't been able to go near saltwater since.
And I lay awake at night thinking of the long
limbed redhead with a calendar girl body he gave herself
to me one night in British Honduras and who met
a death of unimaginable grisliness the next day.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
I mean, what a strange tale. Okay, bye, Hi if
this was true and it's not, but yeah, that I
would spend the rest of my life. Yeah, I mean, yes,
of course you would. That would be you would never
leave that moment. Yeah, or my house. No, that is
the kind of PTSD that you would never recover from.
No crab murder. Fortunately, you could write one article about

(35:20):
it and buy a mansion.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
Yeah, you do get a single article in a men's
adventure magazine.

Speaker 4 (35:25):
I'm just so glad I know this very real story.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Yeah, yeah, I think this is this has changed my
life for the better. For one thing, I'm going to
bring a weapon to the beach better than a bottle
anytime I go, because you'll never know when.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Crab You're right, You're right, You're right. He had a knife.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
I was a pocket and I honestly, if I was there,
like a stick or a rock is probably going to
be a better bet against a bunch of fucking crabs.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
You're not going to just like pull out a handgun,
so a shooting the ocean.

Speaker 3 (35:55):
Well, I would, in fact pull out a handgun and
start firing at the ocean.

Speaker 4 (35:59):
Think I know about Rob He's doing exactly that.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
Let's be fair here, if there's not crabs, I'm still
shooting that ocean. That's the only one that keeps the ocean.
That's why saw that gun control on the East Coast
is why they get hurricanes, that Florida gun control. Yeah right, yeah,
And you know that's that's why we need anyway, shoot
at a hurricane, folks, It's the only thing that can
save you from climate change. Let's move on to our

(36:24):
next magazine.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Uh huh, so it's called Climate Change Denial magazine from
nineteen forty.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
Yeah, it's just a picture of a handgun and the
weather system.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah, so like one be prepared for everything, but real things. Yes,
the name of the magazine, for example, an attack of
killer crabs. Oh god, wait, hold on, but the name
and the picture of what you've just shown me agree magazine.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Oh it's glorious. This is from December of sixty nine,
I do want to say, And yeah, you want to
describe this one for our listeners, Margaret.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Sure. There's three white women in lingerie pointing a knife,
but also sexually or like caressing a man's shoulders who's
on a bed, and there's like nothing in the background.
It's sort of an empty room and it's called Man's Combat.
And the reason that I'm upset is that these are

(37:21):
clearly women in combat and this is a rasure unless
actually they could be transmasculine and not expressing that visually
in a clear way, and that is totally up to them. Also,
it has headlines exposed swinging sex in women's prison. The
Nazis turned them into prostitutes and paid plenty for it.

(37:42):
Exclamation mark, Oh god, I just got to the fucking
the art. The title that goes with the cover art yes, yeah,
the hippies raped him and then they told him how
much it was going to cost exclamation mark.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
I want to be clear here, we will be going
into the story. The hippies do not rape him at
any point, like this is purely this is an old
man having consensual sex with a bunch of hippies. Like don't, don't,
don't get that wrong, Like the title is not accurate.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
What the kids are studying in college this year sex
exclamation mark, which is just a current right wing talking point.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
And then, of course I was the love slave of
the geisha. Yeah, the Japanese geisha girls almost killed him
with affection.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Perfect.

Speaker 4 (38:28):
Thanks, what a great magazine.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
You don't love Man's Combat.

Speaker 4 (38:32):
Oh, Robert, I don't love Man's comm I almost.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
I do.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Also want to note one of the girls who's the
one who's holding the knife on him, has big coke
bottle glasses, so you know that she's like a kind
of a mod girl, you know, right it's nineteen sixty nine, baby, right, yeah, yeah,
well nerd, great cover, great cover. We'll turn this magazine now.
I almost closed with a different issue of a different series,

(38:56):
but it was titled four Men Only, and I thought
I might violating some sort of I didn't want to
get a curse right.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
From like me and Sophie wouldn't be able to hear it. Yeah,
it would just be blank space. Hugh Hefner's mummy might
come for me in the night. So this transfer of
the Men's Combat magazine, it cuts out half of the
first page of advertisements. I think because somebody cut out

(39:23):
one of the ads for some purpose. But it looks
like it was an ad for a muscle supplement scheme,
which does fit entirely with the kind of publications that
these are. Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
How to gain up to fifty pounds of mighty muscles.
How to develop sixteen to eighteen and a half inch
big arms powerful enough to land a knockout blow.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Fast, Oh my god, nothing changes.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
How to build a forty five to fifty two inch
heroic chest housing tireless lungs for endurance and works sports
or for attracting girls all gaps. How to mold a
broad muscle packed back, and wonder why Superman's shoulders tapering
to a slim punch proof weist.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
I ever heard of a weights described that way? Punchproof?

Speaker 3 (40:15):
Oh, first off, folks, a slim waist is never punchproof.
If you want a punchproof guy, go go look at
a powerlifter. Look at one of those guys who can
deadlift seven hundred and fifty pounds. Like, look at that
guy's belly. That's a punchproof West. You can hit that guy's.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Belly all day long and you're not gonna make any progress. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
Whatever, fascinating, fascinating period of time.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
So that never ended.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
Now I am absolutely certain that this product, whatever supplement
this guy is selling to help people put on muscle,
has killed people. But it's probably beaten in deadliness by
the next ad, which is a home study course to
become an electrician. And the reason why I say it's
deadly is there's a little cartoon at the top with
two men talking to each other, and one man's said,
do you mean I can learn to be a skilled

(41:02):
electrician by studying at home in spare time? Yes, the
other says, and earn while you learn thanks to advanced
shop method draining.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Now, hell yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
I don't think people should be doing professional electrical work
until they've been licensed and bonded. What But that's my
attitude on being an electrician.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Why do you hate dy to stand in a puddle.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah, yeah, stand in a puddle barefoot and just start
poking wires.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Yeah, that actually helps disperse the electricity in a larger area.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
You may not know that, but uh yeah, you want
to be barefoot and ideally standing in water if you're
doing any kind of work with electricity.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
You don't pay for the extra for those cuck boots.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
No, no, those just keep the electricity in and endanger you.
You can find more tips like this and Robert and
Margaret's Guide to Surviving Dangerous Situations for people we hate
you know, here's another free tip. Got a grease fire,
water that son of a bitch. No, as much water
as you can dump on that grease fire. Really, it's

(42:04):
the opposite of fire, obviously, right, if that's how you
want to deal with a grease fire. But only if
we hate you.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Only if we hate you.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
If we do not hate you, do not take this
advice or by this book. Yeah, so we should go
to ads at this point, including ads for in Margaret's
exciting new book How to Survive Dangerous Circumstances. If you're
a person that we don't like very much, that's right,
which we'll be giving out for free at seapack next year,

(42:35):
We're back.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
So Man's Combat next provides us with its table of
contents page, which which gives us some summaries for each
of the stories. There's sex orgies on campus. They don't
give some kids degrees in what they're studying. Every night,
women's prisons. The chicks behind the bars quickly learn how
to make out without men. Yeah, great, incredible. The Nazis

(43:02):
died smiling. The Huns turned them, turned them into high
priced prostitutes, but the girls made them pay too much
in the end.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Oh, this is this is two separate things. I thought
the Nazis died smiling because the Huns turned them into.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
No, No, it's the Germans make these. Well we'll get
into this. Yeah, but anyway, I was the love slave
of the geisha. This is by Lieutenant G. E. Lavelle,
US Navy. They whipped him, tortured him, and almost loved
him to death. Murph the Surf, the golden boy of crime.
They convicted him of murder and sentenced him to a
life in prison. Will he beat this rap to the

(43:37):
boudoir Battle of Washington, d C. The Russian thought she
was smitten with his charms, but she was after the
secrets in his briefcase. And then of course the hippies
raped me and made me pay. They didn't have much
as much trouble talking him into it as expected. Kent, okay, whatever,
I'm not gonna get into man Man's Combat for its

(43:59):
improper use of terms like that. Also, the very next
page after this is straight up softcore pornography, several pages
of it, so we're not going to get into that.
We're going to get into a story next. But after
that softcore pornography, there's two pages of ads, and these
provide a searing look into the male psyche circa nineteen
sixty nine, a better one than I've gotten before.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
It is basically the same as.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
The male Psyche circa twenty twenty three. So we've got
shape up, muscle up, shop, build muscles, gain weight, lose weight,
everything you need to muscle up and make out. That's
the first ad, which is for I guess, a series
of videos on how to get muscles and make out
with girls. Then the second ad is for this killer
karate crusher all three ks. I don't like that gives

(44:45):
you pulverizing hand power. Don't understand. I think it's just
a rock to hit people with. The end of the
skinny body is a Yeah, gain fourteen p in fourteen days,
that's us healthy. Yeah, that seems like a sustainable rate

(45:05):
of gain here for masculine virility. Create a new exciting
fun going you the slim guard. I think it's literally
selling like a fucking shatner. What do you call those things?
You use it to tighten it around your belly?

Speaker 2 (45:20):
The you mean like body shaping stuff or like yeah, yeah, yeah,
chicle belts that like, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
I think it's a body shaping deal. Yeah, the slim guard. Yeah.
And then there's loose thirty five pounds in a few weeks.
That's probably just methamphetamine.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, given the healthy rate of health, yeah, weight loss,
all of this seems healthy.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
I wonder why half this generation died at forty one
from heart attacks now.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
No clue. Probably the woke agenda. Probably the wok agenda. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
Next we get the monthly news segment Hot Flashes for Men,
which starts with a paragraph long blurb about a bunch
of former wax who are suing the military because they
got accused of being lesbians and thus suffered harms to
their careers and reputations. Now, what's a whack a whack
is women's.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Air Corps or auxiliary Corps.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
I think it was basically like if you were a
woman and wanted to serve in the military in World
War II. Obviously our military was not gender integrated then,
but the whax are like how women could serve and
contribute to the war effort as part of the actual
like defense department.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
So it was, yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
It was a military service kind of deal. And this
is a story about like, it's really just a blurb
about these women who like got accused of being lesbians
and like lost their careers, but there was never any
evidentiary hearing at all, and so they were like suing
the government over that.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
That's actually kind of interesting.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
Yeah, the story is just kind of like, again, this
is hot Flashes for men. I think literally the only
reason this is included is because they get to use
the word lesbian, like these ladies.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Yeah, yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
They were excited by that. After that, we get this
fascinating section. If you have a taste for pornography and
haven't been getting enough of the real thing, why not
organize a chapter of citizens for decent literature in your neighborhood.
The CDL is a highly respectable group which has appointed
itself the guardians of public morals, vested with the responsibility

(47:14):
of protecting all of us from our baser selves. In
doing so, the various CDL chapters must first view the
objectionable materials, whether the smut and the former printed literature,
stag films or whatever. These meetings are often heavily attended,
and even more attended by heavy.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Breathing, flushed faces, and a high degree of prurient prudishness.
That's funny.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
I can think of very few things I want to
do less than be in a room full of nineteen
fifty seven dudes and watching whatever a stag film is.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Also, just there's so many layers. Yeah, there's a lot
going on in that one. Huh. They're admitting that most
anti porn crusaders are just porn addicts. Well yeah, I
mean this is a porn im stock died with a
warehouse full of all the pornography had been like confiscated.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
I mean, in fairness to them, I think they are
like purposefully doing this is total. This is they're making
fun of, like the people who don't like.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Although for a little while I thought they were just
earnestly selling antiforn ads in their porn magazine, which also
kind of rules just as a way to be like whatever,
we're getting money.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
So enough of that crap. We're going to start with
the story The Nazis Died Smiling, which has an incredible
title art piece. Right, that's this is this. This one's
a banger. You get a great drawing of a Nazi.
He's like in the doorframe with a woman in lingerie's
like leading him into the room.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
There's like a naked lady.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
In bed, missing an eye or something.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Yeah, he's got well, he's like a Prussian officer, so
he's got like what do you call those, like a monocle. Right,
and then behind the door is like another woman in lingerie,
but with a fucking stiletto knife. She's she's gonna stab
the ship out of this Nazi. Pretty dope. I say, yeah,

(49:03):
this it's based on true stories.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
There are absolutely women in the resistance, and you're like, oh, yeah,
come with me into the woods, totally not going to murder.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
You also just love the normal proportions they've given these
women's bodies.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yes, yes, just very normal French peasant girls. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
So after a brief summary of why Nazis are bad,
we get told that the German invasion of France. During
the German invasion of France, an SS unit with their
general took over a nunnery. They massacred all of the
older women and then they raped all of the nuns. Now,
the author of this takes great pains to tell us
in a talisized text that every girl had been a

(49:43):
virgin before sun up. Every girl had been ravaged many times.
So that's unpleasant. There's a lot of unpleasantness. But then
the girls who survived the night decide, what if we
become fake prostitutes in order to entrap and murder Nazis?

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Okay, okay, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
This starts with them, like they decide to like hold
a party for these Nazis who are occupying the nunnery
and they feed them arsenic and murder them all fuck yeah,
which is fine, And then yeah, you get this kind
of you know, pretty fun story about traumatized nuns ensnaring
Nazi officers and.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Brutally murdering them. As you noted, there are.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
Some real events like this, some actual women who like
would entice Nazi officers into their beds, often acting as prostitutes,
and then murder them as part of organized resistance plots. Yeah,
specifically though, and this is the thing that's messed up
about this. This story is based on a real tragic story,
the tale of the Blessed Martyrs of Noah Grodek. Okay,

(50:43):
I think kind of based on it, because this is
one of the better known stories about like Nazis killing
a bunch of nuns, right, and you know, this story
starts stated in France, but other aspects of it are
kind of similar. And the gist of it is that
in nineteen forty three, the Gestapo are like massacring a
bunch of civilians, specifically a lot of Jewish civilians in
this uh Polish town, you know, no Noah Grodek and

(51:04):
a bunch of a group of the nuns basically like
come forward to the Gestapo in public and are like,
take and murder us instead of murdering these people. And
because they do it in public, it like the Gestapo
temporarily has to cancel a bunch of deportations and stop
because like they looked really bad. In front of the
whole town, and it's like a dangerous situation for them.

(51:24):
They do eventually punish the nuns by like coming and
grabbing them and murdering them all. I think they kill
eleven nuns something like that, all of whom are like
not sainted. But another thing that the Catholic Church does
to say you were pretty rad.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Oh. I don't think I would know it, but I don't. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Yeah, So it's like an actual tragic story, I mean,
an also heroic story of these ones who like gave
their lives to try to protect a bunch of you
know people from being murdered.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
By the Nazis. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
I think they've kind of taken part of that because
it involves nuns and turned it into a fetish story.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
So, you know, yeah, men's adventure stories. Hooray, Yeah, hooray.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
Next we get a horny college story and then a
bunch of dimpled pin up tales, the story of a
sexy surf bum murderer and then swinging sex in women's prisons.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Yeah. Oh, I was saying about the surf the surf murderer,
because they've got the hatchet wielding hitchhiker guy Kai the hit.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I did like Kai up
until it became clear that he was also a murderer.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Well, I hold that it is possible that his story
about what happened was true and that he was defending
himself from I think it's entirely bosler John anyway. Yeah,
it's an unfortunate tale. Yeah, and completely unrelated. Sorry.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
It's one of those situations where he was a hero
in a situation in which an axe was the best
tool to use, and then he was in another situation
which it might not have been but uh.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Right, or it could have been, but it was not
publicly acceptable. Yeah, it's hard to tell. Yeah, difficult tale.
This is not that story.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Although we can try and go back and talk about
the Sexy surf bumb if you want.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
All right, I just got excited about Kay the Sexy
surf bumb mercer.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Anyway, Swinging Sex and Women's Prison is the next one,
and then after that it's s e X The Love
Slave of the Geisha, which has some of the one
of the first pieces of like straight up like bondage
art I've seen in one of these, so that's interesting.
It's like a man tied to four corners of a bed.
Oh interesting, yeah, there, you know.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
There's a lot of like male submissiveness in this, right,
This is like, yes, a lot of like women as
the active agent of yes, trickery and assault. And it's interesting.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
And I think one of the things about that is
because obviously they are servicing a group of men who
are attracted to that, who find who fantasize about that,
but also don't feel like they can fantasize, so the
fantasy has to be I have been put in a
situation which I legitimately don't have a choice, right opposed
to like you wouldn't. These probably are not meant for

(54:03):
people who actually like do this kind of play. It's
meant for people who, like you need an excuse to
feel like, well, you know, this is a situation in which, oh,
you know, he just had no other option. The hippies
tied him down, and you know, what else could he
do but submit? It's yeah, it is interesting. And speaking
of what, let's get to that hippie story. Excellent, because
this one has quite an opener, Margaret. Of all the

(54:25):
stories we've seen, this is probably most honest about its
intended audience, which is sad horny white guys who live
in suburbia and are board as hell.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
I'm a married man with three children, and I own
a small hardware store and a town in Massachusetts. I
belong to the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, and
I'm a deacon in my church. I'm a really solid citizen.
Ask anyone who knows me. It's all upfront, though deep down,
I'm the same man I was twenty years ago when
I drank too much, slept with every girl I could
get into bed, and some of the things I did
with and two the women I had weren't very pretty.

(54:57):
Then I met Emily, cleaned up the mess of my life.
I went to church with her regularly and tried not
to get caught aggling the women and the congregation, and
then subsequently went into business. Twenty years and three children later,
I'm about as dola character as you're apt to find
on any rotary or sea of c luncheon. Inside, though
I haven't changed. There's a motel I drive to about

(55:17):
twice a month where I know a fairly pretty young
prostitute will be waiting. I take fantastic pains not to
be caught, and so far, I've been lucky. There have
been a few women I've met in my store who
let me know they'd be delighted to have a little
extra marital fun, but I avoided going all the way
with them. It seems safe enough, but each time I
backed down at the last minute. It's like you can
see who this is being marketed towards, right, And there's

(55:39):
even that thing about like, well, I used to be
a wild man, because like, yeah, you want to feel like, ah,
I was just these this wife and kids that took
me out of my wild years where I was cool the.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Arrow to the knee proverbially speaking.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, his was Emily. So now, look, my
heart does go out to this guy because he is
clearly unable to communicate with his wife and probably in
everyone else and his wife, which is probably I think
accurately describes a kind of guy whose heart exploded after
two years of you know, too many years of chainsmoking
cigarettes and being filled with resentment.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Right.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
That's like, that's like a decent.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Chunk of that generation that was their Vietnam also Vietnam.
So yeah, he spends he spends several paragraphs giving us
descriptions of all the things he likes seeing on younger women,
and then we unfortunately find out what young means in
this context, my teenage daughter's friends are another source of temptation.
Now that's a sentence that should never be written.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
I mean, there's that whole American beauty.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
Yeah, yeah, it's still you can you can find very
recent movies fantasizing about this.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Yeah, this guy's a creepy he puts it, speaking of
American beauty. I put a concrete pool in my backyard
a year ago, and all the kids hang out back there.
I mean, some of them really do hang out. The
way they make bait. I don't want to read this line, Margaret,
but it's it is kind of too revealing to not read,

(57:08):
all right, the way they make bathing suits today. It's
a wonder there isn't a mass rape daily at the
public beaches.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
So what if we put all them like this?

Speaker 3 (57:20):
Son of an Island, Yeah yeah, speaking of your book,
Escape from in Cell Island, Yeah, what a what a
dark dive? This is like, uh, what you might call it?
What's that book? Uh, the one that they made Apocalypse
Now based off.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Of Heart of Darkness.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Heart of Darkness very hearted darkness moment for us here, Margaret. Yeah,
so the basic the gist of the story is that
like he notices these hot hippy chicks out in front
of his store, and then eventually, while he's locking up
after work, they've broken into his car and they're like
sitting in there, and yes they do, they do call
him daddy, oh several times.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Hell yeah, that's important.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
He tries to get them to leave, but they basically
ask him to like take them to a motel and
then once they get there, they like take his keys,
so he like follows them into the room to get
his keys back, and then they like hold him at
knife point, and like there's a light scene where they
like threaten him a little bit, but it's it's he's
clearly enjoying it. And then you know, they all have
sex with him and then he becomes their pimp and

(58:20):
it's a happy ending until they until they get arrested
for I think robbing a bank, wait, bust in the police.
They get busted in a police rate and then they
send him a letter from jail being like thanks for
all of the pimping.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
Oh my god. So it's like they're like the weather
underground basically they're like.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
Kind of yeah, I think it was more they got
arrested for being sex workers.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Oh, they said they were robbing a bank.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
I thought that that was me being wrong. I think
it was. I think it was a look. I had
to read through a lot of these stories.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Yeah, no, I'm sure they all blurn again.

Speaker 3 (58:51):
Yeah, they they certainly do. So, Margaret, that's most of
what I've got for you this week.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
Yeah, I do wanna.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
I do want to end with with one lasd title,
with one last cover page of a magazine. Perhaps we
should have gotten to but boy, maybe next time.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
Maybe so much time I day.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
You know, it's called Rage for Men, and the art
the cover art is two very English explorers with like
white pit helmets and they're fighting off. It would look
like rabid dogs. It's called Fangs at my Throat. They

(59:35):
have such horrified looks on their face.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
They're they're white people, but they're red. They are because
they're British. Right, They've been drinking.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
They've been mainlining nothing but gin and tonics for seventy
three years.

Speaker 2 (59:50):
Yeah all right, Yeah, and then the some of the
other things that says on there is is a woman
making you impotent. It's your fault. I can't get it up.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
Which is right above the Cortisan who ran for president.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Are women coming in to destroy your life? Try rage?
Yes they have. They have been trying that fairly effectively
unfortunately for a very long time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
Elvis Presley defends rock and roll. Sure, that's a fascinating interview.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
And then of course Fangs in my Throat, which is
the cover story of these British men being beaten or
murdered by dogs.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
That is the one upside of all of this is
that the dogs are gonna win.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
I do think the dogs are gonna win. They've got
that one dude by the throat, so I felt pretty
good about their chances.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Well, mag Pie, do you understand you know, the older generation,
you know of both of writers and editors, you know
of in cells any better now sadly?

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Yes. Yeah, that is the price of this show. That
is the price of this show. I think I do
understand them that the nothing ever changesness of it is
the like, really is a woman or it? And it's

(01:01:14):
like pointing out it's all the stuff that you're like
because I mostly read feminism from this period, right, Yeah,
and so I read all this feminism and some of
the things that they're like saying that the men are doing.
I'm like, were they really or are you like exaggerating
or like what And they're like reading, You're like no, no,
it's they are blaming women for making them impotent and

(01:01:34):
can't actually have honest fantasies about being submissive to women,
so they must create like elaborate systems around it, and
and like, yeah, it is the is the it's not
a it's a portal into a damaged psyche.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
It is a portal, like it is a portal, like
the The the healthiest and least problematic article here from
like a like a a sex and gender point of
view is the story about a woman being murdered by crabs.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Yeah, which is not great, but yeah it's not great,
but yeah, you know it is.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
It is by far the least problematic thing we've discussed
in these in these episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Okay, wait, please cut this out. Could I read the
first page of Insult Island? Yeah? Sure, why not? I'm
going to go grab a copy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
Oh, we never left. I don't know why I'm doing
my returning back thing. It's because we had an idea Margaret.
We had a great idea, because this is this is
your Christmas present, your bizarre prelapsarian Orthodox Rosicrucian crypto.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Cryptomalogy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
I don't know, yeah, something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
I don't know enough Christianity to make a better joke
about your obscure Christmas. You want to read it from
your novel that people should buy.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Yeah, well, okay, because we're talking about pulp fic. So
I'm going to read the first, first page, first couple
paragraphs of Escape from innsul Island.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Excellent. Yeah, let's do it. Let's let's entice them a
much better story than the stories we've read today. Although
maybe nobody does get eaten by crabs.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
I give the crabs story there. I know there's people
who would try to feed people the crabs in this,
but they come lately. Yeah. They don't call me man
Killer Jones for nothing. They call me man Killer Jones
because I tell people that's my name, and I kind
of throw a fit if anyone calls me anything else. Honestly,
I have a feeling most people call me Shirley behind
my back or mixed Jones if they're feeling formal. It

(01:03:39):
doesn't bother me too much what people call me, because
I'm never around to hear it. I'm always too busy
infiltrating and x filtrating the deadliest places on Earth. War
and disaster would be my middle name if I hadn't
already legally changed my middle name to danger. I only
feel alive when I'm surrounded by the dead, the dying,
and the people who don't know they're about to find
themselves in those categories. I only feel alive in the

(01:04:01):
hottest of hot spots, spots like in Cell Island, which
inched over the horizon to greet us as the sun
rose behind us.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
Excellent, very exciting. So check out Escape from in Cell Island.
It's a wonderful story. And Margaret, is it possible? And
I'm completely coming out of left field here, no idea
if this is the case, really just inventing shit and
putting you on the spot for it. Is it possible
that there's some sort of story based podcast, like a

(01:04:32):
short fiction show that's going to be launching in a
place where people can listen to it and hear fun
stories about you know, collapse and survival and endurance and
all that good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Should we call it the Cool Zone Book Club, and
I was thinking we could. It could come out starting
October eighth of this year, and it could be an
every Sunday addition to it could happen and hear feed,
so it's already in the feed that you already listen to.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
That's an incredible pitch. Yes, yes, it could be. Well
everyone you've got that to look forward to short stories
and longer stories as well, coming every weekend to the
it could happen here feed in order to basically derive

(01:05:24):
a sneaky way of paying people for fiction again, which
gets harder and harder every year, so somebody ought to try.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
And also because I think it's like the itch that
these stories from these old magazines, even like it's a
specific itch, you know. And I think that that's also
one that because the market is so hard to it's
so gone, we want to encourage people to be writing
these stories because we want to hear them. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
I love short stories. I grew up reading a lot
of like you know, Lovecraft and Asimov and all those.
I mean, they were mostly men. But that's a not
a problem with the concept of a short story just right.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
But I think that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
It's like like journalism, which we also try to find
ways to pay feet before here rid cool Zone. It's
gotten like thinner and thinner on the ground, actual places
like public and there are some there are some really
great magazines still out there where you can read much
higher grade short stories than these men's adventure magazines from

(01:06:26):
the fifties and sixties. And all of the editors keeping
those places alive are are are heroic and great and
that's why you are going to be joining them soon
and doing that. But in podcast for.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Hooray, so yeah, check it out and there'll be more
information about it on it Sundays. Yes, it could happen.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
Here Sundays when it could happen here, Well, folks, that's
going to probably do it for all of us here. Yeah, yep, yep, bye,
go to Hell.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
I Love you.

Speaker 4 (01:07:00):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.