132 - Awful Peanut

Karen and Georgia cover the cult of Synanon and the death of Azaria Chamberlain.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to my favorite Murder, the true crime podcast. You
were waiting for.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
While it uploaded, while you're it uploaded and you were
waiting for it to upload.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Can you believe technology? It's so crazy how long it takes,
but also how fast it is, I mean within a minute. Georgia,
what year would you say is your favorite part of technology?
Oh uh? My first thought was alarm clocks. That can't
be right. That's not right. I'm not going to go
with that. I think you should. I think it's first

(00:57):
of all, that makes it sound like you love getting up.
I love alarms. I love alarms. I love to be alarmed.
I'd love to be scared of, love to be woken
up when I don't want to be like deep rim
sleep boom, I'm sitting up, I'm upset. Yeah, that's my
favorite thing. Yeah, that's it. What's yours my favorite part
of technology? Huh? I got of Twitter right? I was

(01:18):
going to say email.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Can we check your phone and it'll tell us how
long you've spent on Twitter?

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Sure? Okay? Is it like gigabytes? It'll also tell you time,
like the amount of time? Really? Okay? Go to Stephen.
You might have to can you actually put her hand
out like I was going to give you. Oh, she
would not pass it to me. The way you can
access my phone. Okay, here's how you do all of
my dick pics that I'm sending everywhere. General, general, Stephen,

(01:45):
you're old, young Steven. How do you do the battery?
Oh yeah, if you go to battery settings battery Oh okay,
and you can look at last twenty four hours or
last seven days what you've been using the most.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Okay, so you go to settings and battery and then
let's do last seven days. What's the number one thing
you've spent Twitter? Fifty six percent?

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Wow? Then then I come in with your favorite my
home and lock screen, which is twenty five percent. Oh
my god, Texts only six percent. You need to start
texting more. That makes me Actually, that just made me
cry a little bit. You're on Twitter more than you're
on Then you're texting your good good friends, an actual interaction, yeah,
people that care about me. Instead, I'm on Twitter going like,

(02:27):
now I don't want to do a pun, but but
I do have this idea.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
But this is really funny. Oh yeah, sorry, what's yours?
Mine's twenty The first one's still.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Fucking reach around out to me like I'm going to say,
hand you my checking out my alarm clock. If I
just handed to do an alarm clock, most precious alarm clock.
This is what in my phone? Yeah? What have I
called my phone my alarm clock? And I just that's
all I use it for. This is you've been The
facade has gone on for three years, and now I
realize you're fucking crazy. I'm insane.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Really, my phone stupid, like more stupid than you initially thought.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
You know, it never seemed like she was stupid on
the road. Yeah, but I never saw her around the
alarm clocks on the road. I never never weigh my
hotel room with me. I've never been in Europe. Well
that's not true. In Australia. Had we snuggled up, we did.
It was fun.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
I have trashed hotel rooms because I didn't like their
alarm clocks before, if.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
That were true. And also i'm picturing I don't know
what kind of alarm clock you're picturing. The first one
I pictured was like a Grandma the kind you wind.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Up thinking of the ones like from the seventies that
had like the flaps.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
The numbers were like, oh, yeah, those are the best ones. Yeah, right,
the flipover. Yeah, because then the one I had, I
was given an alarm clock when I was like eight,
and it was my most precious possession.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
One one when I was like eight in a bingo
and it was like the first thing I had ever won.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Read digital letters. I mean yes, yes, no, it had letters, Karen,
because it was just like wake up, bitch, George up,
it's like eight oh three. Yeah, it was like really
excited about it. Did you put stickers on it? No?
I put stickers. One what kind of stickers? Satan's ye symbols,
don't forget to worship Satan. And then I'd set the
alarm for twenty minutes of Satan worshiping. You got to

(04:15):
get that. It's like meditation out, but it's twenty minutes
of Satan worshiping. I'm so old. I'm so old that
like we used to listen to FM radio, like leave
the radio clock radio and you could put a timer
on no and listen to the radio and it would
turn itself off in like twenty minutes. I was so advanced.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Well, I mean that's what Sama brings. Oh I don't
care because I'm Jewish. And cann't only win good shit
and bingo. That's right, that I fucking I mean, that's
the only time I've ever won bingo before. And I
still remember walking up to the stage and just being like,
oh my god, and like pick any prize, and I
was just like, this is the most amazing moment of
my life.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yes, I remember it exactly. Of course, a pick Okay
for all adults that are planning things for chin if
you can set up a pick any prize if you
win Raffle or bingo, like your.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
We love a black elephant. What's the one where you
can be like whatever color elephant. I'm trying to be inclusive.
I'm thinking I'm the black sheep. That's what I was thinking, right,
That's fun.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah too. No, but I remember my sister there was
like a fireman's daughter's luncheon. Then we went to when
I was probably eight or ten sounds and they had
a pick any prize raffle and the ship was like
ten speed bikes. Crazy. I mean, like some.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Poor kids ended up like has to get the last
like a corkboard, the last prize like they have.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Or even sadder the ones that get nothing. Karen Kilgara,
shut your face. When my sister got an electric motherfucking
brother typewriter that was blue. She got an electric typewriter.
She walked up, picked her prize, shopped like she was hundred. Yeah. Yes,
there was really good prizes and never carry firefighters. You've
done great up until this point. We love you.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Thank you for everybody yet it's your biggest Everyone knows
your biggest hits.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Right now, they're fighting insane wildfires in California.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
All over California and Arizona. Learn how to play a
Bengo game. We're going to get so much email for this. No, no,
because my father being a environment. Our favorite thing to
do in the past, i'd say fifteen years is anytime
my dad is in any way an asshole, we go
America's Hero ladies and gentlemen in restaurants. If he's mad
that like parking isn't good or something. Oh, look at

(06:38):
the American Hero. It's so mean and I love it.
That's how we are. What do you have today? Oh
for our audience? For our audience. Yeah, by the way, yeah,
let's uh. I like how when we started this, we
used to be worried about how much people didn't like
it that we started the podcast this way, and now
it says if we're going off into a tangent and

(07:00):
pushing away anyone who might try to approach purposefully. Yeah,
get out here. Great movie. Okay, not a great a
tactic for podcasting, for for trying to be popular. But
that's just it. Like, I'm not trying to be popular.
I can't try to be a pol like you just
are you are. It's as simple as it's a natural

(07:22):
born saying.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Be drunk that while you're doing that what be drunk? Though,
while you're doing that voice.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
You can say you know how to be popular, that's
what you're like. But here, that's a secret. You can't
try to be popular. Fuck yeah drunk Karen, drunk Karen
love to whisper. Okay, uh. This is perhaps one of

(07:49):
the more exciting pieces of email that we have gotten
in my experience on the show. Oh my god, I
like to overstate things. You know that. I like to
over react. So let's do it so perfect, So let's
make a podcasts. So this is why we work together.
This reads as such. On July twelfth, while driving home

(08:11):
from a long day at work and listening to episode
one hundred and twenty nine, Karen mentioned her good thing
for the episode Lo and Behold, your favorite thing was
the show I work on. I screamed and pull over
and texted all my fella fellow fellow Endeavor Crewe murdery nos.
Remember I said, I love that show Endeavor. Yeah, and
went on and on about how much I love it. Yeah,

(08:33):
this is an email from people on the television show Endeavor.
And she had a freak out, like I'm having a
freak out right now hearing that I said that, and
she said shit. So I texted all my fellow Endeavor
Crewe murdery nos, of which there are so many. I've
been a long time listener of the podcast, and I've
been recommending it to everyone I meet. Thank you. But

(08:53):
on the other but on no other job have I
found so many murderinos. Of course, the ones in my
department were known to me that the assistant producer dropped.
Dropping a stay out of the forest on a particularly
wooded location day changed everything. Now I'm just in my mind.
First of all, I would just like to say this
season of Endeavor, I've watched them all twice already, So

(09:15):
now I'm just trying to think back of like which
one where I'm so excited. It's like you're basically the
star of the show. I think I have been cast.
You're the most popular person on the show. Attaches a
photo of just a few of us outside the wonderful,
handsome and fabulous Sean Evans trailer, who is in plays
Endeavor Morse the detective, the long standing famous British detective Morse,

(09:41):
and the second photo is a local Endeavor Reno's stocky
photo of me and Molly with Sean whilst filming on
location in Oxford. Your podcast has given us endless conversation
starters on what are some of the longest days at work? Yeah,
it can be long, mostly at night in forests, down
dark alleyways, filming murders and crime scenes. Our T shirts

(10:03):
and pin badges are the talk of the set and
we speak about it so often that most of the cast,
including Sean himself I want to start crying, are involved
now too. And you can you can hear Baye's ringing
wrap that's so true, which is we have taken a
saying from Alaska on Rue Paul's drag Race and transitioned

(10:26):
it all the way over across the pond to endeavor
in order to seek out other more shy murdering nos.
We occasionally ask if anyone would like a cookie and
wait for me out. Okay, we are so ridiculously excited
to hear that you are in devor rehos. I can't
And if you guys find yourself in London again anytime soon,
we'd love to have you come visit us and take

(10:48):
part take part in our own nineteen sixties murder world
that we call work Toodle, Pip and Tata. For now
you'll land a Molly and Caroline Amy and all the
endeavor murdering. No, stay sexy and endeavor to not get murdered. Bye. Wow,
that is so exciting. It's incredible. Sorry, that's just a

(11:11):
straight up nerd out fan email. That's incredible for me.
For me also because I'm these worlds, like there's so many.
It's so hard for me to find a show that
serves all the things I need, which is oftentimes being
in the past procedural British. You know a lead man

(11:32):
that is like more interested in doing the crossword fatherly
is yes, I mean not threatening. I'm very easily threatened,
like scare easy when I watch.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
TV and just starts pepper sprang the TV. Sometimes when
it's too aggressive, it's.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Just so exciting. It's great. I know that I love it. Congratulations,
thank you. I wanted to say that I have a too.
Oh yeah, it's called oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, it's called Stevens Mustache. Lost to roller Derby, bout
to Elvis.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Ah shit, I owe somebody fifty dollars. Damn it, Stephen
and all.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Last week thousands of skaters traveled to Las Vegas for
a roller Con, the annual roller Derby Convention, And I
have to say, like, I fucking love roller Derby. My
good friend of my Megan, her name was Judy Gloom.
She was like an incredible skater and I used to
go watch her all the time. It's like the most
If you have a chance to go watch roller Derby,
go it's the most fun.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Roller Con is the coolest thing. I never even knew
that existed.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
And they're like such badass women, the roller Derby gals,
so touta does the bastard daughter of dozens of leagues.
Rollercan brings together skaters from all across the world for challenges, workshops, blah,
blah blah. So this year this is someone named nat
organized a challenge about against a team called Stevens Mustache
and a team called Elvis Wants a Cookie.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yep, long story short.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Steven's Mustache got their beautiful Derby butts handed to them,
but it was one of the funnest games. Final score
one twenty eight to sixty one. So much love from
MFM Derby Rena, Derby Reno, Sisters, Franny Panties number two ten,
Rage Shitty.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
Roller Girls eight Ridge, Alaska. That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Nice from Alaska. Yeah, that's so cool. Go see roller
derby and support support the gals.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
That is yeah. I saw that on Twitter. I didn't
realize it was roller con Yeah, because I skim you
know me and the skimming with the reading. But they
just said that these two roller teams or derby teams
are about to go up against each other, and they
named the two and I you were seriously, you were
like fifty I just wrote back fifty bucks on Steven's
Mustache and I only picked that team because it sounded

(13:40):
funnier than fifty bucks on Elvis Want Do you want
to cook you? Or whatever? Essentially, you owe me fifty bucks.
It's turning into me now you because it's your cat,
that's my cat. All right, I'm sorry, I let you
down here. Steven put your skates on right now. Stephen's
mustache be quiet. Someone tweeted out sorry, but it's someone
tweeted it the other day. Why don't you let Steven laugh?

(14:06):
What does that even mean? I'm not sure somebody is
interpreting things that we've said on here is like that
it's somehow our rule that we have a team meeting
before the show starts that Steven's not allowed. It's a
lot of like a nineteen eighties like made for TV movie,
like why won't you let Stephen laugh? Steve, we won't.
Let's do something, you know, open on an alarm clock

(14:26):
with the flippy numbers, click em but it's letters. Isn't
that weird? It's so weird. It's so weird, very weird. Okay,
we have some summer camp.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
We have a line of merch. It's special, it's tone
temporary for the summer. It's summer camp themed. So cute,
so cute. It's got those like those like mugs that
look like tin campy mugs.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, so cute. Hats all kinds of clothing, a fucking
duffel bag that like I kind of need to get. Yeah,
there's some good stuff, good shit. Check it out.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Lots of different styles of shirts, because we know everyone
likes a different kind.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
So check that out. My favorite murder dot com. Go
to the shop. Yeah, it's in there, it's in there. Yeah,
I don't have anything else to you, don't Stephen was
at a first. I saw Stephen move quickly out of
the corner in my eye.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Now he flips his page around a lot. Oh Stephen,
don't laugh and don't move too quickly. No, yeah, go
slowly or we're gonna have a Actually, can you send
in the closet.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
The thing that I like about that comment too is
Stephen is the consummate podcast producing professional. Like he does
this for lock. You could hear him laugh. He'd be
doing a bad job. Everyone would fire his ass. Can
you imagine if you're trying to record your podcast and
like have a conversation, someone's.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Like, well is someone besides me and you?

Speaker 1 (15:44):
We don't jump? I can laugh, like I can go
fall all I want. Yeah, we get to well. And
also the goal is that he make Stephen break and
actually make a noise, right, he laughs, but he doesn't. Yeah,
he he knows, he knows. He's good.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Trust Steve, I say, been here for four hundred episodes.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, he knows what he's doing.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
And we don't even have four hundred episodes, that's how
long he's been popular in all the land.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Who goes first? This week? Karen goes first?

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Is it me? Because last week was the oh okay.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Okay this. I am so excited to do this once
and I was glad to have the extra time because
I needed to, you know, I need to actually work
on it. Help sometimes. Yeah. And I love it because
it is from near my hometown, and it is a
creepy cult, which is one of my favorite things. And

(16:41):
I had so I'll tell you the inciting incident, as
they call it, an writing, So I have this memory.
If you don't know anything about my hometown of Pedaloma,
which you probably didn't know.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
Anyone knows if you don't know about so basically every
picture you see of the Golden gate Bridge is the
stance is or the view of it is you standing
on Alcatraz in the bay looking basically what would be
westward toward the Golden gate Bridge.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
So above that to the right is northern above northern California.
Thirty miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge is my hometown, Pedaloma,
and that's the first city in Sonoma County. And up
there that's all dairy ranches. That's where he used to
be the chicken. Pedal used to be the chicken capital
of the world or the egg capital of the world
in the thirties. Where's the chicken capital in the world

(17:37):
of the world. For them, we couldn't hit the number
of chickens, but we fucking turned out those eggs. Got
those eggs. Yeah, I don't know how they decide which
of those products you're going to choose, but because it
was called the egg basket of the world anyway. And
then but right outside of my town, so that's the

(17:57):
town itself. I grew up five miles out of that
town in where there was like basically cattle ranches, and
then further out ten miles to fifteen miles out of town,
it's completely undeveloped dairy ranches. So they're big, huge ranches
with thousands of acres because the cows need to graze
and they need to eat grass all day long and

(18:18):
they make real good milk, not homogenous. Are happy cows
make happy milks? Right, that's right. So, and you've seen
this part of the country there, they shoot car commercials
out there all the time. It's very picturesque.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
It's like they shoot cottle commercials out there all the time.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
They shoot cows out there all the time, commercials for cows,
a lot of shooting, lots of shooting. So it's just
incredibly picturesque. And it's also if you go a little
bit south of that area, it's more in county, it's
west morein Okay, but still this exact same thing and

(18:58):
the exact same kind of farmland, and it's awesome. So
in when I was eight years old, I was driving.
My parents used to when people would come and visit us.
The big thing that they would do is drive people
to essentially Bedega Bay, which is the ocean, and we

(19:19):
would drive out these windy roads with these beautiful rolling
hills and we would end up at the bay. Oysters, yeah,
all kinds of lobsters. There was a place I think
it's I want to say it's something landing. It was
a place that we would always go and end up
and they had a restaurant and they had a fresh
fish market where literally those are my.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Favorite fucking places, not just the restaurant, but like they're
always in cool like vacation swats right.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Where they're like a guy just pulled up on his
boat and brought these four lobsters. Now they're on ice,
and then here's some fish with their eyes in still
on ice, like all that shit. And when you're eight,
my sister and I used to be, you get carsick
really easily. So we're always in the backseat of these
cars that were like whiny, whiny, winding, and then you
get to the Dega Bay and it would be like

(20:08):
probably low tide or at noon, and so we'd have
to get out of the car and then go into
the fresh fish market and then go into the restaurant
and have our choice of what clam chowder or some
soul or fish sticks. And so that's why I cannot
eat fish, that's right.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
So you would you associate the smell of fish and
fish and eating fish.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
With being nauseous? Oh my god, So you won't eat fish,
can't eat fish. That's so funny. And they made they
made it that way, They made both of us that way.
Those rue, they really do, and those those are the
kind of things you can't really anticipate. So anyway, all
of that is to say, on one of those trips,

(20:52):
one time, uh, we were driving and I saw and
everyone in the car saw, there was like four people
on this the road and they were dressed in all white,
in these weird rappy things that it was weird they
were dressed, and they were dressed very odd for the
times and flowing things. Well it was like, yeah, I

(21:13):
can't really remember, that might have been that might be
an exaggeration in my head. They're just wearing white, but
they all had shaved heads, and it was women and men.
And I remember hearing my mother say to my father
and be careful and like go basically go around, make
sure you don't go anywhere near them, and.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
She gives them supernatural power, like if you can't even
drive near them.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Right, And my mom who was missus, oh please not
never scared of anything, never like intimidated, and she was
like keep away. And I of course, as we drove by,
I stared at all of them and they were just
these weird people that were like staring straight ahead, riding
these bikes. And then of course, I'm like, why why
can't we go near them? And my mom's like, we'll

(21:56):
tell you. My mom what always say, we'll tell you later. Yeah,
she made it sound like we're gonna when we get home,
but she meant like twenty five years. So it turned
out that they were members of a cult called Synanon.
Oh my god, and Synanon was this cult that I'm
about to tell you all about right now, but it is.
So they're known for a bunch of stuff. They're synonymous

(22:19):
with a bunch of come on. They started as a
rehab center essentially, that's a good like, oh yeah, yeah,
that's how you get people. And also the guy that
started it, the tenants of the of the beginnings of
this organization. Actually, it's like he went off and went

(22:40):
cult direction. And then most of what modern rehab facilities,
what their the systems and the way they do things
are based on, is based on Synanon. Wow, Like it
started there, but then they took it. One went science
and the other went I am you know, a golden
god or whatever. And the interesting thing is, if you've
ever seen George Lucas' first movie, which was called THHX eleven,

(23:04):
thirty eight, yeah, which is all shot in a white
negative space. Robert Duvali as a shaved head and they're
wearing all white and they have these weird things around
their neck. Remember that. Yeah, And it's like this creepy
dystopian future where people aren't allowed to have relationships, have children,
everyone's they take drugs to repress their emotions and there's

(23:27):
it's very like Orwellian horrible future. And there are the
extras in that movie because it was the early seventies
and when George Lucas went to shoot that movie, no
actors wanted to shave their heads because it was the seventies,
and it's like, who are you, Steven Spielberg, Yeah, you're exactly.
You're no one. We don't know. You're like a local

(23:47):
making a movie. So he went and got Synanon cult
members to come and be in his movies. So if
you ever rent or watch that movie and there's ever
like a group or kind of city, they're trying to
make it seem like they're in a city area. A
lot of the people in the background are cult members. Wow,
that's cool there, and siting on the cult is actually

(24:09):
thanked in the thank yous of the movie. So it's
really it's such a crazy story, all right. So I've
just I've painted as much of the personal picture as
I can. You know, I love talking about myself. I
would continue, but we have to get into the actual
more about your car sickness. Well, what's weird about this
is when this cult moved in. The people in the

(24:34):
dairy ranchers and the people that I grew up around,
they're very modest people. They're very keep to yourself, good fences,
make good neighbors. A lot of them are crazy wealthy,
but you would never fucking know, right because they work
on their own ranch all day long. Yeah, and they
save and they don't they just drive. Don't want slash shit, No,
that's not their style. And so this cult moves in

(24:57):
and buys this ranch. It sounds like wild Awou Country.
That's what I was gonna say. It's basically a very
small version of that same thing, but in white and
not maroon in white, and they didn't try to make
a whole fucking city or whatever, but it's the same
thing where it was just like everyone's looking around going, okay, sorry,
what's this now? What are we doing? Okay? So here's
the beginning. Okay. This Synanon was founded by a man

(25:20):
named Charles E. Ddrich. Oh, by the way, I should
say that I got a lot of information. There's really
good like YouTube short films and interview type things that
I got a lot of this from. But there's a
twenty fourteen article for Paleo Future blog on Gizmoto written
by a guy named Matt Novak's that has tons of

(25:42):
great information and it's really good. So I got a
lot of it from there, and also from an attorney
named Paul Morantz. He has a website Paul Murantz dot
com and he's attorney that ended up getting involved in
basically taking down this cult and he knows a lot
of great information. Cool. Okay, So the founder of Synanon

(26:05):
was a man named Charles E. Ddrich. He was born
in Toledo, Ohio, in nineteen thirteen to up upper middle
class parents.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Also again, Wikipedia, thank you so much for everything you do. Shit,
no shit, no shit. His father dies in a car
crash when he's four. When he's eight, his younger brother
dies of the flu very common back then, and then
his mother kind of in her grief makes him he's

(26:33):
really young, but she relies on him like he's the
head of the household, which is a bad setup because
four years later she gets remarried and then he's out.
He doesn't take it well. He doesn't like the man
she's marrying anyway, and then he's basically out and all that.
He becomes a serious drinker before he's even in high school. What. Yeah,

(26:55):
so he manages to graduate from high school, he gets
into Notre Dame. He flunks out of Notre Dame eighteen
months later. Still he's part of our club. Yeah, and
then he spends the next twenty or so years getting
and losing jobs, getting married, getting divorced. He moves to
Santa Monica, decides he's going to be a beach bum.

(27:15):
He gets remarried. Something you decide to do or you
just do. I mean, the word decide was in the sentence,
but yeah, sometimes you just end up in Santa Monica
asking for coffee money. He gets remarried again, and his
second wife begs him to go to AA, and he
finally does. She ends up leaving him anyway, but he

(27:37):
does get to AA from her recommendation in nineteen fifty six,
and it works. He totally gets sober, he gets really
into it. He's a devotee and he's like a natural
salesman type, be gregarious, not going. So everybody loves him
and he becomes, you know, like this is his community

(27:58):
until they don't love him anymore because he's one of those,
as my friend Bradford calls them, a dominant psycho. So
it's the kind of person that can't sit back and
let other people do things and always has to be controlling.
Just a typical addictive personality. And he also starts doing
the thing which happens a lot in program where you

(28:19):
get in your life is fucked up, you're insane, you
get healthy, you get a little sobriety, and then you
start going this program doesn't work and here's why, and
you know, suddenly you know better than everybody. Very typical.
So he did started doing that, but he was actually
kind of right because the problem he had was that
AA would not let drug addicts come to AA meetings.

(28:41):
They'd already established Narcotics Anonymous, but they weren't consistent, they
didn't have consistent meetings. It wasn't like as strong of
a program as AA. So people that were drug addicts
trying to get sober kind of had nowhere to go,
and Charles Diedrich was like, that sucks and that should
you know, those people need help to I know, I

(29:04):
couldn't read anywhere where it said he particular in particular
was a drug addict, but it seemed like he had
a lot of compassion for people that were like hooked
on heroin. So around this time, it's, uh, there's a
doctor named doctor Keith Dittman and he does an experiment.
He's taking volunteers for an experiment to see if LSD
can cure alcoholism. He has this theory that like if

(29:27):
you break from reality and you can kind of like
reset your brain and then not be a drunk anymore.
That sounds fun, right Some people believe in it, and
totally yeah, that makes sense. I think ecstasy as well,
or in the what is it called is very helped
me get clean? You know? Datis floors and welcome over

(29:57):
Colisseum floors. Stephen cut that okay, So while he so
he signs up for this experiment and while he's tripping,
he has this epiphany where he decides, if AA is
not going to do it, I'm going to do it.
I'm going to start my own rehab and it's going

(30:17):
to take people that are on addicted to drugs and
it's going to be called the Tender Loving Care Club TLC. Yeah, baby,
he's clearly on drugs. Who it's only that's something that
always one on LSD we think of and be like,
that's a great idea. You know what the best name is.
Everyone needs it and it's just the truth, let's say it. So,

(30:41):
so that's what he actually does. He he starts meeting
with people that are kind of you know, there are
people that are drawn to him. He has a very
plain speaking way of you know, he's what truth teller,
and he's like one of those kind of people, and
he encourages other people to be that way. So he
has people start meeting in his Ocean Park apartment and
he least makes up this thing that becomes one of

(31:03):
the hugest parts of this cult. And it's, uh, it's
what they call it. It's it's called the game. He
calls it the game, But basically it's a version of
talk therapy where you sit in a circle it's usually
like ten people or so, and it starts off with

(31:26):
quite really like normally upsetting questions like who's the most
boring person in this group, or what's the what thing
happened today with someone in this group that made you
really mad? Talk about it or whatever. And basically someone
gets picked out of the group and then everyone starts
attacking that person. Uh huh. Everyone starts telling that person

(31:47):
what's wrong with them, why they suck, why they're a
bad person, what they do that's irritating, and they just
rail the person and they can even say things that
aren't true. But it's just basically this a barrage of
shittiness and insults to break the ego down. I think
this is a bad idea.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
I just want to go ahead and give my medical
expertise thoughts on this.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Well. I was thinking about how that would feel. Like
I told you that story of how one time I
thought my therapist tricked me into going to group therapy
and I got really mad because she's she recommended like
a meditation group. But when I got there, they were
all talking in a circle and I had this panic
where I was like, I'm admiring her she tricked me

(32:32):
because it's so frightening the idea of having to sit
there and be in therapy in front of like eight
strangers or ten strangers. So this idea really does. It's
almost like an emotional bungee jumping.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
But I have to say groups for people. Group therapy
can be great for people. Therapy isn't like that? No, no, no,
because that specifically sounds I mean, I don't know it works,
but it sounds insane.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Well, I think what happens is and they and they
talk about it in a lot of these articles and stuff.
Is what it is is you get broken down and
then and much in the way that like the theory
of like the LSD would break you from reality or
whatever you get. The theory is you're going to get
broken out of your little world and have to kind
of face the possibility of the other, you know, like

(33:21):
what other people think of you, or just that the
world is much different.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
The worst is happening like that. Maybe for some people
the worst is like getting yelled at by a bunch
of fucking strangers about how much they suck.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Right, Because if you are, I mean that is a
thing of like being when you're you know, having been
in a program a little bit. The thing that is
very true is addicts have a this. It's a combination
of a sense of grandiosity about themselves and incredibly low
self esteem, which is a terrible combination. Yeah. So it's

(33:55):
like you hate yourself and then don't let anyone fucking
see that. No, And at the same time, you also
think you're the best thing ever and you can't be
told anything. Everybody knows and you know better than everybody.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
And yeah, the same things that happened and all the
other addicts isn't going to happen to you.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
That's right, You're different, You're the exception to the rule. Yeah,
all these things. So I think the game maybe was
structured in the beginning to set up to kind of
break that, but in this very public, very forced, and
very kind of awful way that most people fear. I mean, like,
you don't have to be an addict to be like, yeah,
I don't want people yelling at me. Oh, I don't
want that at all. Ever. So but here's the weird thing.

(34:34):
People love it, so the people that are in this
and also he calls it the haircut when you're getting
a haircut. Yeah, basically, these sessions, the way he did them,
they could go on for up to seventy two hours.
What the buck? Yes, it doesn't sound okay, no, no, no,

(34:56):
it's well that's where the extreme part comes. So when
you starts setting up this rehab thing, he's like, oh,
you have to do like three to four hour sessions
three times a week. But then the more you sit
in it, because did you see that movie about what's
his name? L Ron Hubbard? That's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah,
it's that, except for it's much more aggressive. Where that

(35:19):
was more of like you kind of don't know what's
happening here. You're like, how are they doing this because
I don't know what this is about. This was more
like we attack you, you don't defend yourself, and that's the game.
Can you deal with not defending yourself and being broken down? So,
but when they start going into like seventy two hour
sessions is when he starts getting the sense of how

(35:42):
sleep deprivation opens you up to being controlled and sleep
deprivation you know, there's shit I should have printed it up.
There's like the seven or ten brainwashing steps that you
can take where you can brainwash people if like you
remove the protein from their die, you don't let them sleep,
you repeat the same things over and over, you separate

(36:04):
them from their family, all these things. So basically this
is what he was doing. But in the beginning it
was with the best intentions. But as he sat there
and was able to kind of like commandeer people, he's
probably not sleeping either, so he's going a little bananas
as well, Yeah, exactly, and kind of loving these results
because the results are all coming back and being to

(36:25):
his credit, and everyone's starting to hear about it, and
people in the world around town is this is actually
working for people. People are actually getting clean. So like
it starts to get popular in Hollywood, of course, because
this town is of course filled with addicts and people
who love things like that the attention. So they used

(36:49):
to have like a night where everyone would people would
show up that weren't in rehab, but they would just
go to play the game just to be in there,
Like Leonard Nimoy used to do it, and yeah, like yeah,
that's the one name that stands out. But anyway, then,
but also it was popular because a lot of jazz
musicians who were really popular at the time were addicted

(37:12):
to Heroin and went there to get off, and so
they started having these music nights. So people were just there,
and it became this community where people were like, this
is a cool place to be and you don't have
to drink and you don't have to do drugs. But
all this cool stuff is happening and people are being
real and people are telling it like it is. Yeah,
so people get really into it. So it starts getting

(37:33):
all this good press. The theater is claiming that there's
an eighty to success rate. That's not a thing you
should say, Yeah, that seems a little extreme, yeah, but
that's what he's saying. They start to get really good press.
Life magazine does a fourteen page spread on sin and
On and the title of the article is a Miracle

(37:55):
at the Beach. And they start and eventually they made
a movie about it. A couple of years after that.
It becomes like the talk of the town. And so
once all of that kind of positive press, some politicians
talked about it on the Senate floor like there was
finally a power for addiction, and so they start getting
crazy amounts of donations and huge donations, to the point

(38:17):
where they go from they had a house in Venice
Beach that was kind of shitty, and they make so
much money that they buy you know, right on the
one when you write in Santa Monica, when you get
onto the one and you start driving up pch and
there's that big hotel on the beach that's kind of
old fashioned looking. So so that place, hold on, let

(38:41):
me turn the page. It was called Club Casa del
Mar and they moved senan On into that place. Got
They were at one point making ten million dollars a
year with this rehab facility. It's like us in this podcast,
Earth the Kid hangs out with us all the great

(39:04):
Chad jazz. We makes you even play all the instruments. Now,
the problem is there are no licensed therapists. It's all
based on Dietrich's theories and the game, and there's no
no governmental or health department overseer of any kind. And

(39:24):
of course that plus ten million dollars people go nuts.
So more money, more crazy people. Yeah, that's what they say.
That's the how that. So the first ten years of
Synanon can be called a success because he really did
set up this program for people to go to. But

(39:47):
then the next ten years start and of course everything
goes ape shit. So in nineteen sixty eight, two things
happened that changed everything they had started a what they
call the club for the non addicts that wanted to
come and play the game. And there was at one
point thirty four hundred members of this club, of the

(40:08):
non of non addicts. But they would go down to
that crazy place on the beach and they would go
do these sessions and get real with everybody and Yale
and be told things about themselves. And so Charles decides
to open up the community because you were when you
were there, you had to when you signed up, you

(40:28):
got there, you immediately quit whatever drug or drink cold turkey.
So you just had to get through your withdrawals and
everything by yourself or like you know, just wrapped up
in a towel or whatever. And then you had to
stay at the facility for two years. And that's and

(40:48):
that's how you that's how you rehabbed. So there was
so that's when they started the house in Venice. He
really was giving people who were like you know, hero
and addicts that were literally on the street us to live, jobs,
things to do. They moved to the Venice, sorry, they
moved to the San Monica Beach, the crazy hotel. Like

(41:10):
if you saw this place, it's so crazy that there
was a rehab center. There an unqualified rehab center, and
so everyone starts working at the rehab center. So so
they decide that the people who have joined the club
are now allowed to with hundreds of dollars a month donation,

(41:32):
they're allowed to live in the facility and experience the lifestyle.
So just don't do drugs. Yeah, but it's the you know,
you learn to blame instrument or you like whatever, chopped
vegetables or whatever you do, you do whatever and participate
in the cult well, in the organization without having to

(41:54):
be an addict. And so that was that brought in
a whole other revenue stream. And then also Charles made
a new rule which was instead of the two years,
because what was really happening in reality, which went against
his eighty two one success rate. The fact was that

(42:14):
when people would leave after two years, they would immediately
go back to doing drugs. And so he decides he
tells everybody, instead of two years, you now have to
live for the rest of your life here, and that's
how you're not You get clean, and then you take
all of that health and well being and you put

(42:34):
it back into the organization and you stay that's bananas.
It's crazy, but that's what people started doing. So it
becomes this like it's like a communit. It's like he's
trying to build a utopian society. There's he you know,
that's his whole line of thinking. And the pitch is like,
we're we're remaking how you live. And that's why those

(42:57):
lifestylers would come to live because they're like, I'm not
on but I love this idea.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
That's when it sounds like a cult to me. As
soon as this that happened. That sounds like a cult
that you live here forever now. Yeah, and it's like, okay,
this is a fucking cult.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah. I mean I feel like that's the number one rule,
is giving your entire life over to someone else's made
up beliefs to stay that they were not qualified to
make up in the first place. And then they have
no autonomy anymore, right, Yeah, that the idea is no autonomy.
They like that, yeah, and that's crazy. Yeah, but all

(43:32):
these people do it, and smart people and talented people
and people who are have lawyers and doctors and shit
like that. So they really are starting to build this
community and it's making a ton of money. And it's
branching out everywhere. There's people everywhere, even if they're not addicts,
that are kind of devotees to this Synanon organization. So

(43:54):
he starts calling it. When he says, now you're going
to stay here for life, he starts calling it. It's
not a rehab facility anymore. It's a human progressive program
being say do you want to progress, then you better
stay in this hotel on the sounds.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Like a human progressive program. That just sounds like a
way to mask, like if you were to be like,
you're not eating human flesh, you're eating the protein of
a you know, of your fellow right, this is like
rewording something really awful.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Well, And also I think it speaks to how much
the game instead of being this like I had a breakthrough,
it was actually breaking people down because it is detrimental
to your ego and to your self esteem and everything
to have people just being like, you know, I hate
about you, or it's like then also like the people
who are yelling all these things at you, like they're

(44:49):
getting this fucking complex too, probably where they're getting total
boners by screaming at people and telling them how fucked
up they are, of course, and everyone and you know
with your whatever it is that it's going on there
if you're not sleeping, whatever kind of if you're on
a restrictive diet, if you don't have enough like protein
in your system or too.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
Much sham, and you're an addict to fucking already drugs
and shit.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yes, so you already have tendencies. Like for me, if
I'm not drinking or if I'm not doing drugs and
I'm just doing something else to the extreme, I'll shop
all day long, like weird shit. And that's the personality
because it's about like it's about suming, consuming and quantity. Yeah,
and all this it's so crazy and you don't trust
your own brain. Yeah. So essentially he breaks people down,

(45:36):
brainwashes them to believe that they need to live there.
And then they're like, you're right, I do want to
be in rehab for the rest of you. Well, okay,
I can't because I can't.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
I tried it and I can't function in society, so yeah,
I can stay here.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
It's so much easier to be here, be sober and
just do whatever. This guy said.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Man, I was in rehab for fourteen days and I
was like get me the fuck out of here.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
You noped out. I noped out. I was fourteen and
I knew better. Yeah, okay, So so they take they're
taking the whole time. They're taking this money and buying
big amounts of property with this money. So they buy
in Oakland, they bought thing it's called the Athens Athletic Club,

(46:17):
which was this big, gorgeous old building costs ten million dollars.
Oh my god. Yeah. And they're and they're basically, you know,
putting these rehab centers in places where they're really needed
or you know, there might be a bunch of drug
addicts or whatever. And then it's just basically they're like
absorbing up all of the people of society that like
AA doesn't it's going to deal with them, the cops

(46:38):
don't want to deal with them or whatever. So they
just are like, yeah, now you'll live in this big house.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Yeah solved, We've solved your problem. You're not going to
do drugs, and you have a place to live and
work for the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, now do every single thing we say. So. So
they're doing that all around and basically when the authorities
start hearing about the lifelong rehab facility thing. They smell
a rat, but before they can investigate, and they had
so many lawyers and they had so much money. It

(47:09):
reminds me so much of the bad Blood thing I
went on and on about this week, but oor last time.
It's that thing where when you have so much money
that you don't have to do what the normal law says,
and that people can't fight you, and you know it,
so you just break people. Yeah, like that's what happened here.
So before anyone can do anything about you're not allowed

(47:31):
to have a lifelong rehab center. They move out of
southern California and they move up to Marshall, which is
basically the town which is tiny, tiny that's in that
area that I was talking about outside of Pedalima that's
on fucking Car Sickness Road. It's basically halfway between my
hometown and Bodega Bay Center of Car Sickness. Right. Wow.

(47:55):
So they first first land in Tamalis, which was our
rival high school. Okay, we used to play Tamolus and
hate them and it's hilarious, but there was nothing else around.
It's like both schools had three hundred kids. Yeah, But
then that was the they bought like an old radio
station into Mallis. But then they ended up buying Walker

(48:17):
Creek Ranch, which was a seventeen hundred acre ranch that
was I mean, like right, it's so funny. It's just
right where I grew up. And they begin this utopian
society like on this ranch. So they build these hexagonal
yurt type of things, these buildings that are in hexagon

(48:39):
shape so they don't neat heating, you know, they don't
need like they're they're doing all these things kind of
to be the cheapest. It's like the cheapest way they
can live because they have to house like thousands of people.
They all start wearing overalls. Oh you lost me. Yeah,
in my child's memory, they were not wearing overalls on

(48:59):
those bikes. They were wearing like almost like har Krishna white.
Maybe they were higher ups or something. Oh yeah, maybe
they had bike privileges and the yeah that they were
in charge.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
That you don't have a bike, you don't. No one
could bike in overalls. Everyone knows that. No, it's flowing
cloth a bike. You got to white claw near smokes.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
At some point, to show solidarity with the men, all
the women shave their heads and I swear. I mean,
I know it's a cool look, especially if you like
have a nose ring or you know, you're a punk
or whatever. But seeing just like a bunch of thirty
seven year old women wearing like glasses of the day,

(49:45):
those weird brown secretary glasses, but with shaved heads is
so unnerving. Yeah, it's really crazy.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
There's something about a group of people with perfectly shaved heads,
like more than one essentially like with the same lenk there,
that you're like up to something that's a gang.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
They're up to something no good. It's a gang or
a concentration camp, like nothing good, nothing good? Is that visual?
Totally it's upsetting. Yeah. So they also they declare Charles
declares Synanon is now a church, and so he gets
tax free status because because they can't be they're not

(50:22):
a nonprofit anymore. It's what they were when they were
centered in Santa Monica. So he has to make that change.
So now they're a church, they're tax free, and all
the money that they're starting to make is just go
straight into his pocket. And they had started getting people
to basically this is something the Moonies did too. They

(50:44):
basically got the members who were in like full like
cult mode to go out and get donations from businesses
and from like individuals, and that the donations made up
a huge, a huge amount of the income of the
of the organization because there would just be these like

(51:06):
shaved heads, like zelots that were like getting or religion.
People were religion and we're curing people of addiction. Okay,
so they were really selling that that point. At this point,
Charles was married to his third wife, Betty, and he
sets up something called the Wire, where it's essentially a
PA system that goes to every building they own, and

(51:29):
then he hangs a microphone. The one article I read
it said they hung it right above his seat at
the dinner table and he would just sit there and
talk all day and all night. It's like Jim Jones. Yes,
it's totally Jim Jones. When it's the same time period too,
isn't it in fact a month when they went down.

(51:49):
Oh we'll get to that later, will you remind me? Yes,
I actually there's part of that in my story too,
so like is it really okay? So it's totally Jim
Jones where he's it's just droning on about what they
are versus the outside or never have thoughts. Nope, And
it's always him. It's what he's telling you. It is.
So he's telling you the outside world is, you know,

(52:11):
we need to keep together. This society is the best
way to live. The outside world is trying to make
us addicts. Again. We can't let that happen. And he's
just brainwashing, constantly, brainwashing everybody. In October of nineteen seventy two,
the San Francisco Examiner runs two articles about synan On,

(52:32):
one describing it as quote the racket of the century,
and Synanon sues the Hearst Corporation for forty million dollars. Shit,
that's ballsy, It's super ballsy. They what's crazy is the
Hurst settles out of court with them for six hundred
thousand dollars. Hurst gives them, fucking gives them almost a

(52:54):
million dollars just to go away, and they see that
as this huge victory. Not only do they have a
way more money, but then they also are keeping people
from exposing them, essentially, and so then it kicks up
a notch. In nineteen seventy four, Synanon starts contacting parole
officers around the Bay Area, asking if they have any

(53:16):
juvenile offenders, because they'll take them in. And so the
court system starts sending juvenile offenders to shinnan On and
it's like, yeah, it's such a bummer. It's kind of
like the what later on is like those outward bound
kind of like are you a bad kid? Will make
you hike it off? Oh God? Except for Synonym was

(53:37):
just this ranch and these it was mostly boys. They
would show up and they were just like, what the
fuck is this? And they were of course made to
do the game, and they were made too, but they
none of them wanted to do it, so they weren't
there voluntarily, and they weren't addicts, so they were rebellious
and so they were like, yeah, fuck this game, and
I'm not doing this. Fuck you if you're telling me,

(53:59):
I'm a piece of shit, and like they fought everything. Yeah,
they were made to march like day and night. They
got woken up the middle of the night, made to march.
And when they rebelled when they were trying to do
the game, and Charles Ddrich realized they weren't going to
be willing participants, he removed the one tenant of the
organization that the organization was founded on, which was no violence. Yeah,

(54:24):
and he starts this thing called the Imperial Marines, who
just basically his muscle security within the cult, the Imperial Marine.
The Imperial Marines. So when these punks are up doing
the game and they're not playing, three guys walk up

(54:45):
and just beat the living shit out of a kid,
and with all the other kids sitting there watching, So
the kids start running away from this ranch. Yeah, but
you're out. This is okay, I'm telling you now. I've
complained that, like, oh, we couldn't get pizza deliver and
we never had cable and all that shit. Yeah, out
where these people are, there's no street lights. You are

(55:07):
out in the middle of nowhere, and it's pitch black
at night, you see. It's like the stars in the
moon are your light and that's fucking it. And cars
driving down the street and one car would drive by
maybe once every four hours, like you're out in the
middle of nowhere. So these kids would get up in
the middle of the night and run away and they
would go to the neighbor's ranch. And the neighbors were

(55:27):
two people named Alvin and Doris Gambanini. Now the Gampanini's
ranch was really well known in Pedaluma because they used
to have these big barn dances out there. So if
you lived in Pedaluma, you would go out. You'd pay
like ten bucks and they had like live music and
people would dance, and they had a bar, and it
was like a whole thing that they used to do.
It's very country of like we'll have our own bar,

(55:49):
we'll make our own fun. And the Gampanini family, you know,
they were cattle ranchers. I can't I can't remember if
they were dairymen or if they actually bred cattle, but
they had a humongous ranch of their own. So they
were like when the you know, when they moved in,
it was just like, well, no, who are these weirdos?
But for the most part, people kept themselves. It was

(56:10):
not that big of a deal. Well, suddenly in the
middle of the night, you know, teenager. They have teenagers
knocking on the door who are beaten senseless. There's one kid.
There was a really amazing obituary when Doris died. When
she died, they talked about all of this involvement that
they had, you know, against their will. But kids would
knock on the door. They'd bring them in, she would

(56:31):
comfort them, she would give them something to eat, and
then Alvin would pay for their bus ticket home and
they would be the ones that were like getting these
kids out of this cult. And they said in this
obituary that she kept all the thank you letters from
the parents when the kids finally got back home and
were like, these are the people that helped us get there.

(56:51):
Oh my god. So the Gambaraninis were like huge and
helping these poor trap children and these poor people who
were just like out in the middle of nowhere. But
they so the rumor starts going around town that like
that these people are getting violent and they're getting militaristic
and they're starting to buy guns, and so they're starting
to get worried, and they're like, there's a they own

(57:13):
a they have a common fence line, there's an easement
on it from the Walker ranch side, and they're like
starting to get worried about who owns what, and like
it's starting to get worrisome, and they start finding out
that the kids are running away and the Gambaninese are
helping them escape. And one night Alvin and Doris are
driving up their driveway to go home and their truck

(57:34):
gets surrounded by all these shaved head overall people with
hammers and they attack the truck. They bust out the
driver's side window. They grab Alvin and Doris has to
hold him and keep him in the truck because they're
going to pull him out to beat the shit out
of him. And they get away, they get home, they
get safe. They've actually knocked out Alvin's front teeth. What

(57:56):
the fuck? Yeah, And so like it's fucking like it's on.
It's like war with them and everybody around them, and
it's really violent. It's like they are letting people around
the area know. There was another story about somebody in
a purple truck hit a Synanon member who was on
a bicycle, and oh, that's why your mom was like, yeah,

(58:18):
I'm a wide fucking birth. That's what it is. Because
then they went into the town of Tamalis, found a
purple truck, waited for the guy to get into his truck,
and then beat the living shit out of the guy
that was in the truck. Holy shit. So they're going
crazy and it's all being fed by Charles Ddrich on
the wire telling everybody that everyone's trying to get them,
and they need to get before they get got type

(58:39):
of shit. Yeah. So in nineteen seventy seven, oh and
by the way, just because it's like you then you
hear that story about the gamaninies and you're like, so
call the cops havening them fucking arrested. But these people
had legal teams, they had so much money, and they
had so many lawyers. They knew that if they called
the cops on them, they get arrested, they get out,
and then the revenge with them. So they didn't do anything.

(59:03):
And they found out that over twenty thousand businesses and
organizations were giving to or interacting with Sinnnon by the
late seventies, so it's one out of five corporations in
the fortune five hundred we're donating or doing business with
the organization. Like they were. They had infiltrated all these

(59:24):
places under the guise of we're helping addicts get clean,
we're the new we're a rehab center. Yeah. Okay. So
in nineteen seventy seven, Charles's wife Betty dies of cancer,
and this is when it all goes crazy, because up
until this point it's crazy enough. But they said that
his weirdest, craziest tendencies she was keeping under control. And

(59:46):
when she dies, he now decides he's going to have
he's going to pick a new mate. He picks it.
He's in his late sixties. He picks a thirty one
year old. Then he decides no one should be married.
If he can fall in love with strangers, so can
anybody else. So all the married couples have to they're
switching partners, and the and the cult decides who their

(01:00:08):
new partners are. They put out and they make a
big spreadsheet. Oh and reassign everybody's wedding dining seating. Yes, sure, yes, fuck.
But so that year that he decided to do that,
six hundred couples got divorced, what so they could be
reorganized into different couples. That's true love. It's just so crazy.

(01:00:30):
And then he never liked kids being around, so he'd
always kept them separate, and that would always be like
you can see your kid once a week. And in
the early days, for a lot of people they were like,
you're insane, But then of course later on it was
how it should be. So all the kids were kept
at the school what they called the school, and they
basically listened to his teachings, were taught to worship him.
The little kids did the game like that. There's a picture,

(01:00:54):
you can look it up. There's a picture online of
a little boy sitting in a chair yelling like he's
doing it to somebody else. Put it on Instagram. Guys,
it's fucking nuts. Okay, So everybody, everybody gets a new
husband or wife. He tells all the men they have
to get vasectomies. Any woman who's pregnant has to get
an abortion. They're shamed into getting abortions. Yes, because he

(01:01:17):
doesn't want kids there. Holy shit. Yes. So the health department,
there's been complaints everywhere, but nobody can take action. The
health department contacts Synanon to say they're going to come
and inspect the ranch because they have gotten reports of
child abuse there. And Synon Charles basically tells them if
you show up, you're going to get a beat down.

(01:01:37):
Holy shit. Yeah. And they think that when he won
the lawsuit against Hurst Publishing, they think that's what made
him start to believe he had all the power and
that like basically his money was going to buy him
out of everything. So but these but hearing that he's
getting more and more paranoig, and his and what he's

(01:01:58):
saying on the wire across the world is getting more
and more paranoid and all about. Basically it's turning into
a militaristic thing. He then decides he has to cut
out the uncommitted members of the organization, and he brings
the membership down to one thousand people, So sounds like
there's pretty huge at one point, but he basically is

(01:02:20):
so paranoid that even the people that are there that
are shaved heads, dyseectomies, dedicated their whole life, He's like,
not enough, you're out. Damn luck they got lucky, I know,
for real. So then August nineteen seventy eight, the NBC
Nightly News airs a segment about Synanon and how it's
a cult, and after the broadcast, several executives, NBC executives

(01:02:42):
and corporate chairmen get hundreds of death threats, hundreds of
death threats because there's so many synnon members kind of
like all around and supporters of it. And then soon
after this, two members of the Imperial Marines put a
d rattled four and a half foot diamondback rattlesnake into

(01:03:06):
the mailbox of attorney Paul Morantz. He reaches in again
his mail, he gets bitten by a four and a
half foot rattlesnake no humongous, and he is hospitalized for
six days. So shit. What happened was Paul Morance brought
a lawsuit against Synanon because and they'll try to tell

(01:03:30):
this the quickest way possible, but essentially what happened in
nineteen seventy seven, this woman was kind of having a
nervous breakdown. Her husband was really worried about her. He
was like they were trying to make a plan of
where they could bring her, what to do, and he
had her drop him off at work, and she went
to the family planning clinic in our neighborhood to ask
if she could have a tranquilizer because she was like,

(01:03:52):
she was having like all these thoughts and she couldn't
calm down, she couldn't stop crying, and she was losing
her shit. And the woman who worked at this family
planning center was in syn and On, and so she was.
She sent her to Synanon. They take her in, they
don't let her leave. She's like, no, no, no, I
don't want to be here. And they're like, no, you
need to be here, and she's like, I need to
call my husband and they're like, no, he wants you

(01:04:15):
to be here. He doesn't want you Holy shit. And
they're like, we're your family now. They keep her for
two days in that Santa Monica crazy hotel on the beach,
and then they ship her. They buss her up to
Walker Creek Ranch where they do the game on her.
They do all the shit, and she has a psychotic break.
Oh my god, because she's like the kidnapped. She's been kidnapped,

(01:04:38):
she's been told her husband doesn't want to be married
to her anymore, and that this is her new life.
Oh my god. So when they finally so, the husband,
of course, is frantic. He calls the police. They say
there's nothing they can do. She's a grown woman. If
she wants to join that book, she can like all
that shit. He can't get anybody to help, and he
finally gets referred to Paul Morant's, the attorney who had

(01:05:00):
had a little bit of experience of getting people who
had been put into nursing homes against their will. Wow,
that's how he had kind of started. And so he
was like and he heard the story and was like,
I absolutely have to do this. This is fucking crazy
because he finds out when he calls like the health
department all that the people are like talking and whispers
like yeah, we really can't do anything whatever, and he's like,

(01:05:23):
who are these people? So he devises this plan. He
has the husband called the wife. They demand to talk
on the phone, and then he basically says, keep asking
her if she wants to come home until you get
her to say she wants to come home, so that
we have the verbal thing that she's being held against
her will. And then he went in and was like,

(01:05:44):
now we're taking her, and they were like, fine, you
can take her. She's like because she wasn't contributing in
any way that was meaningful. She couldn't go out and
get donations. She's psychotic, and so they said, you just
have to sign this waiver saying that we're not responsible
for anything that happened to her while she was at
Walker Creek Ranch, and he was like, sounds great, I'll
sign that waiver. Signs the waiver as the attorney, they leave,

(01:06:07):
and he slaps all the lawsuit for what happened her
in San Monica when she first got taken because he's like,
are you crazy, Like we're taking you down. So he
sues them for damages and they end he wins and
they have to pay him three hundred thousand dollars. And
so that's when Charles Ddrich is like, we have to
take care of this guy and sends out two members

(01:06:27):
of the Imperial Guard to put a fucking rattlesnake in
his mailbox, crazy, which absolutely would have killed him. Yeah,
like a snake that size, so insane. Okay, So that
basically is the beginning of the end. When that story
breaks that they have done this thing, they get caught,
like it's all immediate, on top of the news reports

(01:06:49):
that had started to trickle out. They go and they
arrest Charles Ddrich. He's drunk when they arrest him. So
this didn't work. Now, this whole time he's been running
this fucking cult, he's been drinking and apparently at one
point he reintroduced acid where he was like, yeah, and
you guys can't drink or do drugs, but we should

(01:07:10):
all be doing acid because it's going to help us open.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
He was so bored having to stay in that fucking
branch all days like you know what, acid, Acid's fine too,
but he was completely a drunk.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
He agrees to a plea bargain to avoid chail time
because his lawyers say that his health is so bad
that he wouldn't he would die if he went to jail.
He in that plea agreement, it stipulates he has to
discontinue serving as an officer. And the directors sent it
on and the other two cult members plead no contest,

(01:07:42):
and they end up going to jail, even though they
were brainwashed into fucking doing it by him for him.
So in nineteen eighty and this is the coolest part,
and this is the part where like the movie will
be based all around these people. In my opinion, there's
a tiny so Point Raise is a tiny town. Yeah,
that's good cheese. That's right right north of the Golden

(01:08:03):
Gate Bridge. If you basically went left instead of up
the freeway and you went stick to the coast, Point
Raises right there, there's a very famous lighthouse and it's
like it's gorgeous. They have a newspaper there called the
Point the Point Raise Light, and in nineteen seventy five
it was bought by a husband and wife Dave and
Kathy Mitchell, and so they've owned it for five years.

(01:08:24):
They keep hearing these stories about Synanon. So in nineteen
eighty they, along with Professor Richard Offshe who taught at Berkeley,
they write an expose of Synanon, and the articles that
come out in this paper break nationwide, basically crack the
story open like as this what it is, and they

(01:08:48):
end up winning the Pulitzer Holy shit for it, this
tiny newspaper in a town that probably has eight hundred people. Yeah.
So basically the IRS gets rid of Synon's tax exempt
status and orders of debate seventeen million dollars in back
taxes for all those years that they pretended to be

(01:09:09):
a religion. It's hurt. So they go bankrupt and by
nineteen ninety one they're disbanded, although there is a branch
of Synanon that was founded in Germany in nineteen seventy
one that still exists to this day. Oh my god,
and Richard diedrich died in nineteen ninety seven, which means
he completely could have gone to jail and should have,

(01:09:31):
because really he made those two gutters, just brainwashed cult
members do it. But he didn't and oh and then
Richard Offshi, that professor says that of the six to
ten thousand residents of Synanon between nineteen fifty eight and
nineteen sixty eight, only sixty five people were ever rehabilitated

(01:09:52):
and lived normal lives in society afterwards. Fuck that the
entire thing was a fucking lie. Oh shit, And that
is the cult of Synanon. Dude. That's the craziest story
I've never heard of in my life, isn't it the best? Yeah?
Shape your head, Okay, okay, I'll do whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
And I'm not wearing overalls. That's where that's where I drop.
I'll join a cult. I'll shave my head, I'll fucking
handle snakes. Not wearing over snake in.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
A mailbox, beywhere but not you won't go so far
as to wear overall. No, Well that was amazing, great, thanks,
great job, I thank you. Actually all right, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
I just get I sometimes get these, like you know,
that nervous flattery feeling in your heart.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
Yeah, like what I'm about to start my story?

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
Yeah, sometimes I get those, and I'm just like, you know, nervous, Well, you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Are about to tell me something terrible. Yeah, But just
like suddenly I have to give a presentation. I think
it doesn't happen when we go on stage, but for
some reason, like right now, it's like it's all you, dude,
don't forget your gestures. Don't this up? Yeah, okay, so
Moster's dictionary define No, sorry, go ahead. No.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
I wrote a rap about the Good Murder to the
song of the mom Spaghetti No. Okay, okay. So I'm
really obsessed with this podcast right now called Teacher's Pet
that I can't stop listening to. That's this investigative journalists
podcast about this probable murder in Australia in the eighties.
So that's where my fucking brain is right now.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
I was listening to it while I was in Hawaii.
We doo and did you that's what my Hawaii about? Though? No,
that's funny. Yeah, And I was. I kept doing the
thing where I fell asleep listening to it. So I
would listen consciously to two episodes and then subconsciously to eight. Yeah.
And it was weird because then I would re listen
to like, oh now I'm on the third one, but
I'm like, I know what's going to happen in that.

(01:11:52):
It's weird. Yeah, I do that too. It's such a
good it's such a good podcast. It's so good, and
it's like it's like it's going to break as it's
happening right now, Like there's no it's it's great and
so creepy, so creepy. Okay, I love it. So my
brain is there right now.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
And so I'm doing a story in Australia, same time period.
I am doing the death of Azaria Chamberlain. Aka, I
didn't go eat my baby.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
Oh my god, I know this is no wonder you
have butterflies. Yeah, this is a this is an epic story.
It's an epic story. It's fucking horrible. It's I didn't
know and like, this is a I used to hear
that we used to say this joke. It didn't go
eat my baby in elementary school here in the States
as kids, and I didn't fucking know what it meant.

(01:12:46):
And up until I really did know this research, I
didn't completely know. But it's bananas. So I hate, just
have I hate to say that I didn't go eat
my baby like a joke, because it's not a joke.
It's horrible. But that's just what everyone knows. It as right.
It was very It was almost like completely separated from
the movie and it is more of people like to
do that accent. It was. Yeah, it was a playground

(01:13:07):
version of throwing another shrimp on the barber.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
Yeah, it sounds funny and silly. Nobody knows what a
fucking dingo. I didn't know what a dingo was until, like,
you know, an adult.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
So it's not like little kids were saying, a dog
ate my baby and people are like, ha ha mayan
ada baby. No, yeah, that's not with that right, all right?
I think it was even a dingo took my baby.
She stole my baby. Eight Okay, it's eight all right.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
So the Chamberlain family consisted of thirty eight year old Michael.
He was this family's off Seventh day Adventists and he's
a pastor for Seventh Day Ventist. His wife of ten years, Lindy,
she's thirty four, and they live in the northern in
Northern Queensland mining town of Mount Isa with their three

(01:13:49):
children of a six year old boy named Aiden, a
four year old boy named Reagan, and their infant little girl, Azaria,
who's ten weeks old.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
The cup was like super attractive. They're like cool whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
She has a Dorothy Hamilt haircut and wears the eighties
dresses that I fucking am obsessed with with no bra
like that stylish kind of thing the day. Yes, and
in the eventual made for TV movie A Cry in
the Dark, she's played by Meryl fucking Streep, so you
can imagine she.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
Was very beautiful. Now was that a made for TV
movie or was it a full noison movie? You're right,
full on movie. Thank you for corrections, corner, just because
Meryl Streep, that's no for you're correct.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
I think I think I see a movie from the
eighties and it looks so corny that I'm like, there's no.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Way this had this had to be well. And also
it had that thing of like a family torn apart,
you know, it has all those right, But you're right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
And the father's played by Sam Neil, Yes, the great
Sam Neil.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
You know him from Jurassic Park and Twitter. He is
the best Twitter. He is the best on Twitter. He
just shows pictures of all the animals on his farm
and like and basically it'll be like him with a
duck leaning in and he'll be like, no, the life
or whatever you have to follow.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Samuel he's doing Twitter, right, Yeah, if he's on Twitter
for sixty eight hours hours a week, then he's.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
Doing Wait, can I just say one more thing? Yeah?
Sam Neil is also on Peaky Blinders. Okay, moment of
silence for Peaky Blinders. Okay, all right, Season five come
and Coming to you.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
Email Karen tell her Peaky Blinder REOs.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
I can't please, don't do that. I'll have a nervous breakdown.
I can't handle it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
Okay, So we're in August nineteen eighty. We're fucking picking
up where you left off. Basically, the family goes on
a camping trip to Central Australia's most famous natural feature,
Ayers Rock It fucking basically looks like a desert version
of the mashed potato sculpture that they make, and close
encounters for the third time.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
Yep, you know I just saw. I just started watching
Zachary Quinto's new version of In Search of You Ye
from Leonard Moore. That's so amazing that it's Leonard Moore
and Zachary quinco plays him because he played yea and
he also is interested in all the weird stuff and
I love Zachary Quanto. At the very beginning of that

(01:16:04):
saying they have this beautiful time lap shot of airs rock. Nah. Yes,
because I watched it last night and went, that's that's
so weird. All I think it was. What a great
shot it was because they did this thing where like
the Star it shows the stars, how many stars you
can see because you're in the middle of nowhere. Yeah,
And it's gorgeous and it's like you see the entire
like swooping across the sky the way they do it.

(01:16:25):
I love that, Like when you can see the milky
way in the sky. I have to watch that's I
love it. That's amazing. It's in the Northern Territory of Australia.
You got it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
You gotta be like, why would you bring it? The
thought of fucking camping with a ten week old baby
sounds horrible, but so I am. I thought of camping
with myself sounds horrible. So I'm not the person to
talk to about that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
Not your style.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
No, they pitch a tent next to their car at
a campsite. There's other campers there. It's you know, it's
a populated place. It's not like they were all by
themselves or anything. Right that day they did normal camping
people stuff, like the boys all went hiking and the mom,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
Kind of just wandered around, looked around the ship.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
And Lindy later said that she had seen a dingo cave, sorry,
a dingo near a cave and she felt uneasy and
it found it staring at her, and she said she
had a feeling that the dog was casing the baby.
And like, okay, so then I write, so what's a dingo?
Webster's Dictionary definds a dingo, right, so weird that you

(01:17:29):
knew I was gonna do. So what the fuck is
a dingo? It's basically a fucking wild, feral dog, you know,
and that makes you think it's really cute.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
So you're like, oh, it's not that harm it's like harmless,
but it's not. It was like a coyote. It looks
like a coyote.

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
Yeah, the dingo, it's a medium sized canine, lean, hardy body,
blah blah blah blah blah. Some of its prey includes kangaroos, cattle,
water buffaloes, and horses. And it's a dog size, so
imagine like to have to take.

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
A dog attacking a Yeah, so they're fucking serious. They're serious.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
Their jaws like apparently open wider than like regular dogs
and stuff. They're like fucking scary and they're like scavengers.
You're not going to fucking tame of this dog. So
that night, on August seventeenth, nineteen eighty, I was just
maybe two months old at that point, two months old baby.
Oh my god, I was the same age as her.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
Okay, oh that's crazy. Yeah, shit, No, it's not. It's
actually not that interesting, I mean, but it's personal, which
is fun.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Yeah, eight pm, so it's well after dark.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
Those stars are up in the sky.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
Lyndy finishes breastfeeding, Azaria takes her to the tent. The
tent's about thirty feet from the picnic table where everyone's
kind of congregating and hanging out, places the baby in
the bassinette on the ground, though like makes a little
makeshift bed, covers her with blankets. Then she takes one
of the boys who wanted something to eat over to
the back to the picnic table, and that boy, for

(01:18:57):
the rest is fucking life is probably true aumatized and
has to have so much therapy. You have to feel
so bad for these kids. At eight fifteen pm, the
chamberlains and the other campers hear sharp cries from Azaria
in the tent.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
They hear the baby cry out.

Speaker 2 (01:19:14):
Lindy fucking books it for the tent just as she
sees the dingo run out of the tent with something
in its mouth.

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
She goes to the tent.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
She's fucking looking in the blankets for the baby and
can't find her. Runs out of the tent, runs in
the direction of the fleeing dingo and yells help, A
Dingo's got.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
My baby.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
There the adjacent the other campers form a search party.
They are there's authorities and local residents. Eventually totally over
three hundred volunteers, including aborigine expert trackers with their dogs
come and people are fucking trying to find this fucking dingo.
Layer where this dingo took the baby. Dingo paw prints

(01:19:56):
rended in the sand outside the tent the trail and
the trail is which shows marks indicating a dingo was
partly dragging an object, periodically setting it down, maybe to
rest or to readjust its grip, and.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
Where where the object was put down.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):
The depressions contained the imprint of a knitted garment, so
it's pretty clear what had happened. The trail indicated the
destination towards known dingo duns, but they lose they'd lose
the track and couldn't they couldn't follow it any further.
So initially at this point, everyone's like, clearly, this is
exactly what happened. There's no doubting their story's by authorities

(01:20:34):
or anyone. And a dingo was seen in the campground
before dark by campers that same night, and one of
the other campers said that a dingo had and she
ended up testifying had tried to grab her older daughter
by the arm, like and they were feeding the dingo,
like throwing food at it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:50):
Kind of. They were like, you know, not scared of them, right, sorry,
but the way you just said that I've tried and
grabbed her daughter by the arm. It seemed like the
dingo hooked his arm with her arm like get over
here here you we're gonna go to my cake. Let's skip,
but no, no, with its mouth aggressive dog shit, yeah,

(01:21:13):
dog stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
Yes, And other campers heard a dog round minutes before
the baby. They heard the babies cry, so everyone was
backing them up. Also, the park ranger had recently warned
that the dingo population was increasing and becoming very aggressive
and had wanted to make, you know, do extra things
to make sure people knew that. And the following days,

(01:21:35):
dingos in the area are fucking shot and killed, and
their stomach content's gone through to see if there's any
human bone or human protein, but there's no sign of
his area and the Chamberlain's return home, which is so awful,
so horrible, Okay. Then a week later, August twenty fourth,
nineteen eighty, a photographer is shooting.

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
In the area.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
His name's Wali Goodwin, and he noticed some baby clothes
in the brush and found are a bloody jumpsuit, booties, diaper,
and an undershirt, all belonging to his area. Zaryah, sorry,
and he is like, I know what this is, and
he doesn't touch anything. He doesn't want to serve it.
He doesn't even take photographs of it. He fucking calls

(01:22:18):
the authorities. They come, and he's really fucking surprised when
one of the cops reaches down with his bare hand
and just grabs one of the clothing before he even
takes a photograph of.

Speaker 1 (01:22:28):
Where everything is laying.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Yeah, he quickly examines the clothes, maybe to look for bones,
I don't know why, and then attempts to place the
clothing back in the way it was, but he lays it.
It looks placed because it's it is placed, which makes
leads to people thinking that it was placed there by
the parents the clothes and it was staged.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
So okay.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
So they also failed to probably examine and photograph the
tents interior, so there's no proper photos of those things. Blood,
vegetation and hair samples found on Azaria's clothing are examined
and the tears and the fibers are studied to see
if it's, you know, what a fucking dog or dingo
attack would look like, and then at a wildlife reserve,

(01:23:17):
dingos are tossed meat wrapped in babies diapers so that
the marks and the diapers could be studied and compared
to Azaria's. Right, the media and the public go fucking batshit,
like this is their O. J. Simpson trial, and like
they go crazy for this story. Everyone is like torn

(01:23:37):
on whether a dingo did it or not. People are like,
there's no way I didn't go would do that. Dingos
did do shit like that, but it was usually the
Aboriginal people. So they didn't so, you know, white people
didn't care, didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
Give a shit.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
It didn't like hear about it. Yeah, okay. So of course,
as always the case with this type of things, the
chamberlains their demeanor is scrutinized by the media and the public.
They don't observe what they would expect from a couple
that had just tragically lost their child. And I kind

(01:24:10):
of fucking get it, because I mean, it's totally it's creepy.
So Lynne Is asked in this one interview if she
was surprised that the clothing that was found was hardly
torn because there was just one tear by the neck
and one little tear in the arm, not a ton
of blood, and she calmly describes, and there's a video
of it of how a ding how a dingo attacks

(01:24:31):
its prey and that it pause at the prey, you know, say,
like a fucking kangaroo, to rip the skin off, and
she says, peel it like an orange. So that's probably
what happened with the clothes and why there wasn't a
lot of like bitemarks and shit on the clothes. They
just peeled it off.

Speaker 1 (01:24:47):
But she's talking about her fucking baby and she's like
so stony faced and not fucking reacting at all. And
it's weird.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
But we all know that, you know, you can't We
all know now that you can't judge someone's grieving process.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
But it's fucking weird. Well, and also, could she be
on like xanax or some kind of intense medicine.

Speaker 2 (01:25:05):
That's well, here's what she is as a Seventh day Adventist,
and their belief is that whatever happens is God will
and they trusted in it. So they weren't in mourning.
That's what some people say. Oh, they were like, yeah,
she God wanted her this to happen. They're not, like
they're not devastated and a Seventh Day Adventists fucking tell

(01:25:29):
me about email me, Well.

Speaker 1 (01:25:30):
I mean, you're in mourning because you still have lost
your child, but there's something it's not that thing of
like clawing at your hair going why why why? Right,
or like you know, yeah but still yeah, but either way,
like it is so crazy that there's only thirty years
ago or whatever, but yeah, that it's such a different

(01:25:50):
thing now because it's like you don't who knows who
slips people pills when they're like, oh, you're in the
worst grief of your life, they'll just take this for
next two weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
Well, of course, in an interview, she has a point
where she's like, if I had been crying they and bawling,
they would have said that I was faking and acting,
and if I had a stony face, they would have
said I was heartless, which is what they ended up doing. Also,
she's really beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
Which of course just turns people against her immediately as well. Yeah,
that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
So newspapers, like the media, this is on the front
of every It sells so many fucking newspapers that any
little thing they could get, and they were being fed
a lot of secret information from the police, they would
print it. So newspapers fuel suspicion that they'd killed their
baby because also Seven Day Adventures at this time in
Australia is really misunderstood. No one really knows much about it.

(01:26:39):
They report that rumors that the Chamberlains killed their baby,
possibly as religious sacrifice to atone for the sense of
their church, or they were somehow linked to the Jonestown
mass suicide that happened two years earlier, so they think
it's either culty or they think like they're witches and they.

Speaker 1 (01:26:55):
Had sacrificed her. Yeah, we didn't talk about your jonestown.
It was just that Jonestown when the rattlesnake thing happened.
Jonestown had happened the month before Holy Show, so it
basically people were like, uh oh they shut it down. Yeah,
uh okay.

Speaker 2 (01:27:12):
So even Azaria's name, which is Hebrew and it means blessed,
blessed of God or whom God aids, they mistranslate it
and they say it means sacrifice to the wilderness, which
is I think the translation in like a different language.
So that's they're like fucking see. But like imagine if
you really believe that was true, that they sacrificed her
on a ors rock, and they're like, oh my god,

(01:27:32):
we just found out that the name means like that's
fucking spooky.

Speaker 1 (01:27:36):
Yes, And it's the it's the thing people love and
it's the it's how you know, like that tabloid press
works in that way where it's kind of like a
beautiful person. That's the worst thing we can say, like
we're unmasking a devil, right, everyone loves that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
Story, and it's like, you know, I was watching all
these shows and shit about it, and it's like the worst,
the more unfathomable, unfathomable the vent is, which is a
baby getting murdered.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
Yeah, the more insane and like crazy the theories are
going to be because people can't fucking handle it just
being an accident or just being something. You know, it
has to have these connotations and shit, which kind of
explains like the thing that bothers me so much, which
is that the Sandy Hook Truther people, which is Alex
Jones telling people that this is a conspiracy. But the

(01:28:25):
fucking fuck. But if you are the kind of person
that has either mental issues or a faced extreme loss
or whatever, somebody coming in and telling you, hey, guess what,
that's not real, Thank you God. I didn't want to
believe in it. Thank you. Twenty two kindergarteners did not
get shot. Like it didn't happen. You don't want it to.

(01:28:46):
So you grab it what he's saying, and then you
hold on, really that's right, and that sounds like what
this is. It's like, we can't have the idea, we
can't have random chaos eating our babies. We need it
to be we can't.

Speaker 2 (01:28:58):
Yeah, we can't have that Camping is a safe even
though there's a ton of people around, and that something
as simple as a dingo snatching your baby like that
wouldn't happen because that's you know, last week, when I
was having a bad week and I talked to my
therapist about it, she was like, the reason you're having
a hard week with all these things that are happening
like the shooting at Trader Joe's and shit, is because
it's chaotic, yes, and it's unexpected, and that makes it

(01:29:21):
so much harder than if it's like someone you notices.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
Of cancer or something. It's you know, it's horrible and awful,
but it's expected, and yeah, it doesn't make you feel
like a complete lack of control, right, And it's that
issue of you, I'm such a good parent, this could
never happen to me. And if the story is that
it just happened to two great parents, not just good parents,
but like religious, you know, good people, responsible parents, that

(01:29:46):
opens a reality pocket that like there are people who
can't have it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:50):
Well, that makes antal sense because the shit they grabbed
onto like once Lynn or Lindy dressed Basaria in all
black and a cute little black or like, and that's
fucking its. People can't handle a baby wearing black. God forbid,
it's not that weird. Yeah, they must be Satanists or whatever.
I'm just trying to picture, and I also can't picture.

(01:30:11):
It is weird and hard to picture.

Speaker 1 (01:30:13):
But I mean it was like a baby's dress, but
it also someone gave her the dress. Yeah, I don't know. Whatever,
you can wear dress your baby more a fucking color
you want. I mean there's people who have babies who like,
have shn the fund that says like I'll shit on
your hand or whatever, and people think it's great or
like daddy's fucking I'd love to spend daddy's money or whatever,

(01:30:35):
and you're like, what the fuck is this? I'm the
daddy in this situation. What you're six years old? Get
out of here. Daddy in this situation is our new
sure immediately, Stephen, please write that down.

Speaker 2 (01:30:50):
And actually, the fan cult, in the fan cult, we're
going to be having contests to see, uh, who can
design our next piece of merch or whatever. And so
I joined the fan because I feel like that has
to be the first one.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
I'm the daddy in this situation. I'm the daddy in
this situation. But here are the rules. Please don't involve
any babies in that picture. I got that baby is.
We can't have a dingo or a baby in that picture.
Go to my favorit murder dot com. Join the fan cult,
put your what's it called, Put your name in the
in the fish bowl. Put your business card in the
fish Count the marble. How many marbles are in the jar?

(01:31:23):
Fucking five hundred, that's always say five hundred. This has
gone off the rail, yes, entirely.

Speaker 2 (01:31:29):
Hey, there are rumors, okay, there's all these rumors about
what really happened and why, like they needed to give
her a reason as to why she did it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
So there's all these bullshit stories. It's boring.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
And then of course there's like a TV crew invites
the A TV crews invited to film an experiment that
the police do with a dummy baby pulled through the
desert brush to see if like a didn't go, we'll
get it or like what like, So they're they're wanting
the media to come see all this sensational bullshit. Another
another to film a search of a sewer of a

(01:32:02):
motel room where the Chamberlains had slept the night of
the disappearance. So they're like fueling this shit. So none
of these rumors fucking matter. Because on February twentieth, nineteen
eighty one, after an inquest, magistrate and corner of Alice Springs,
Dennis Barrett gives his conclusion on live TV. You're like,
why would you do that? You're just fueling it. But

(01:32:23):
he's like, this has gotten so fucking insane. I like,
let's just get this over with. And earlier in that
day there had been.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
A bomb threat called in the fucking courthouse.

Speaker 2 (01:32:30):
They had cleared out, like because people are so incensed
by this whole story, Like everyone is fucking losing their
fucking shit. And he states that Azaria had died by
a dingo attack and that he the corner also chastised
the police for a shitty police work and said that
he had felt some of the police may have been
against the idea of a dingo being balked from the

(01:32:51):
start and had like tried to find you know, bullshit stories,
and that their evidence against the Chamberlains did not stand up,
and also note said that the clothes were tampered with
after the fact, all this shit, yeah, and the police
are like, fuck this, dude, fuck this shit will show you.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
Uh uh uh huh, that's not good.

Speaker 2 (01:33:09):
No, And they refused to accept the coroner's findings. And
this is the Corner's in Crest and as we listened
to in the Teacher's pet, like, that's a really big
deal in Australia. I feel like we don't do that
as much here, right, don't lean on that as much here,
But it seems like in Australia, it's like what the
corner's inquest says.

Speaker 1 (01:33:25):
Goes, yeah. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:33:28):
So the authorities theory is that Lindy took Azaria from
the tent to the car. She took her into the car,
slit her throat the baby's throat, then stuffed her body
and a camera bag, the family's camera bag because they
found like clothing fibers in there or something. And then
with Michael's help, and after the searchers had gone home,

(01:33:49):
they fucking run out to the desert and leave the body,
bury her body, plant the clothes as a decoy because
they had been folded and shit, and yeah, that they
have no motive.

Speaker 1 (01:34:01):
They just they just did it because their Seventh day adventist, right,
because they're different.

Speaker 2 (01:34:05):
Yes, And then so authorities get a second opinion, they're like, well,
fuck you, coroner. Our second opinion is from a British
forensics expert named James Cameron.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
I love his films. Yeah, do you know That's what
I thought? He this fucking pile of shit, dude, he sucks.
He he later get later like all of these cases
that he had expertly testified it, of course and gone
people prosecuted and charged for turns out he was full

(01:34:38):
of shit and a lot of them. Oh no, but
in the meantime that bloods better. Expert exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
He examines the clothing and comes to the conclusion that
Azari's throat had been cut, and that he puts ultraviolet
photos shows up a handprint on the in blood on
the jumpsuit, and you're like, and he's like, here's the handprint,
and you'd be like, I can't say anything.

Speaker 1 (01:34:57):
I ask a question. Really, all of these conclusions or whatever,
there's no body. They're just doing it based on the clothing.
There's no bones. All they have is the body, and
you just said all they have all the bones from
the body are Oh god, that sounds awful. No, no, no, mony, Okay,
all they was clothes, yes, right, okay, that's all they have. Okay,

(01:35:19):
so but okay, we can do this, Okay. But I
mean he's saying these things of like a throat cut
and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:35:26):
Yeah, he's always looks at the fibers here, look at
the way the blood is, look at the you know.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):
And then he's like, there's no dingo.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
Saliva on the on the clothes, you know, all this
crazy shit, and lind and Linda, Lindy's like, the reason
that what might be because Azaria actually had a coat
over that was never found, So she had what they
call a matt and a coat.

Speaker 1 (01:35:48):
Over all the.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
Clothes that they found, and then matt and a coats
never found, so that probably would have taken the brunt
of the blood and the dragging and the ripping because
that's what she was wearing initially.

Speaker 1 (01:36:00):
So she's saying that that's why it's there. But they're like, well,
what this bullshit missing matten a coat doesn't exist. They're saying, Okay,
the Chamberlain's home and cars searched.

Speaker 2 (01:36:10):
Huge quantities of items are taken by police and the
vehicle is forensically grid searched by a laboratory technician with
a biology background. They she finds suspected blood stains on
the council and the floor and under the dashboard, which
was described as arterial arterial spray pattern, meaning like from

(01:36:32):
your fucking neck spraying blood out your deck, which fits
the theory that her throat is cut. Investigators can have
positively identified the blood as fetal blood.

Speaker 1 (01:36:42):
Too, so it's a baby's blood. Okay, this is really
really happening. Like they see blood spatter in the car,
that's what they're saying. They find Okay, I don't like that.

Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
No, Okay, despite all the eyewitnesses and all the eyewitnesses,
all the people at to fucking campsite are like backing
up the fucking chamberlains.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
They're logo, this is exactly this is not what happened.
Blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):
They police go back to question them again, all that
they all have consistent stories once again, but the police
told them they didn't want to hear anything about a dingo.
They're like, tell me your story again, don't fucking say
a thing about a dingo, Like without a dingo in.

Speaker 1 (01:37:20):
It very odd mm hm.

Speaker 2 (01:37:22):
November nineteen eighty one, the Supreme Court in the Northern
Territory quashes the findings of the first inquest, and in
February of eighty two, the second Corners in Quest finds
cause to commit Lindy to trial on charges of murder,
and Michael Chamberlain is charged as an accessory after the fact.

Speaker 1 (01:37:40):
So they go to fucking trial. They go to fucking trial,
and it's of course the mother right, the mother did
the mother did it?

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
An all white jury, nine men and three women, which
of course the women who would have been more sympathetic,
so of course nine men makes more sense for the prosecution.

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
They hear over one hundred and fifty witnesses, many of them.

Speaker 2 (01:38:02):
Are expert forensic experts, some of considerable note, and evidence
that Lindy, who's now, by the way, seven months pregnant
with another baby. They hear evidence that she had slit
her throat a zarious throat with scissors in the family car,
and yeah, and tried to simulate a dingo attack and

(01:38:24):
like planted all this evidence to make it look like
a ding' go attack.

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
Craziest, Yeah, it's crazy, it's go to a plate go
out and then around, get around thirty people and then
stage Yeah, a multi tiered dog based kidnapping. Totally insanity,
but for no reason.

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
Also were like, we don't have to prove, we don't
need to give you a motive, like they were just
not going to get because.

Speaker 1 (01:38:48):
She just because they just want to kill their brand
new Yeah. Also, you know how they say, like the
way babies are, the way their faces are, the way
they look, it's all what do they It's made for
our like base reptilian brain to love it because that's
how we that's why we take care of babies and
care about them. No, it's there's no it makes no sense.

(01:39:11):
It makes no sense. It goes against everything. Oh, evolution,
that's the way.

Speaker 2 (01:39:17):
Okay, Ultimately she's found guilty. What and despite the judge
being like to the jury, yo, dudes, this fucking evidence,
Like you guys know what reasonable doubt is, like be
basically telling them don't fucking do this, they do it
and you kind of understand it in a way like
with the OJ Simpson trial, it's like these jury, the

(01:39:39):
jury members are fucking probably terrified for their life if
they vote the wrong way. Yes, and piss off the
police fifty So there's a poll that shows fifty two
percent of the nation's residents believe that she's guilty. So she,
Lindy is sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor. Fuck

(01:40:02):
and Michael's given a three year suspended sentence.

Speaker 1 (01:40:05):
Right, so he was of course a right.

Speaker 2 (01:40:07):
One month after beginning her sentence, Linda gives birth to
a daughter. Oh I know who she immediately after an
hour has to give away. Well over one hundred thousand
of Australia. Australians signed petitions calling for her release, and
that everyone's super divided on this, like people are fucking
fighting over this.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
It's insane. But then something fucking bananas happens, I mean,
something even more bananas. I just got chills, Yeah, to
hope it because I'm like, this is so hopeless, this
is crazy. No, I don't know, Okay, this is fucking crazy.
So three years later, nineteen eighty six English, an English
tourist in hiker named David Brett was hiking at Ayers Rock. Yes, oh, and.

Speaker 2 (01:40:55):
He lost his footing and falls to his death in
a little to a little frequented side of.

Speaker 1 (01:41:00):
That area off the rock sucks. He dies fucking rip
David Brett.

Speaker 2 (01:41:06):
While they're looking for him, they find the matinee jacket.

Speaker 1 (01:41:11):
Oh fuck, oh what a sad I know, and yet
thank god I know that's it's this whole story is
worst case scenari every way, you know. So they find
it eight days later. Okay, they find the jacket in

(01:41:33):
an area full of dingo layers, like, it's an area
that's fucking crazy. They also, okay, so it's her jacket,
and it's covered in blood and fucked up in crazy
and shit the chief and it also confirms her story
of what happened. So the Chief Minister ordered Lindy's release
from prison immediately, So in February seven, nineteen eighty six,

(01:41:56):
So that's fucking six years after this, after Azaria I
got fucking stolen. She's freed.

Speaker 2 (01:42:02):
And they go and back and test that fetal blood
in the car and it turns out not.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
To be blood at all, Karen.

Speaker 2 (01:42:11):
It turns out the drops are spilled chocolate milkshake and
some copper or dust, and the arter arterial spray was
over sprayed from injected sound deaden or applied to the
car's factories, and they just like sprayed foam on the
car and they were like, nope, that's fetal blood.

Speaker 1 (01:42:27):
What the fuck was forensic fucking science. I hope at
least two people got fired for that shit. I hope
so too.

Speaker 2 (01:42:34):
On September fifteenth, nineteen eighty eight, both convictions were quashed.
They're pardoned, but they're not exonerated.

Speaker 1 (01:42:42):
Oh man, And Linda's fucking pissed and she's like, well,
fuck you, but you need to apologize to me, like
she wants an apology.

Speaker 2 (01:42:50):
And people still kind of fucking hate her for this
shit too. That shit doesn't go away, and this day,
people still don't totally believe her, Like I ask half Australians,
I don't know how many, but they still don't believe her.

Speaker 1 (01:43:02):
Well, can I just say one thing? Because then when
things like get like this, then the rumors start. Everybody
knows somebody who went to school with her, who did
this with her, who has a Seventh day Adventist relative,
who's this weird? And that did it all? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:43:16):
Do you know that in one of our minisodes? We
read a minisode by a girl whose father.

Speaker 1 (01:43:23):
Was the lead detective on this case. Oh shit, And
people got mad.

Speaker 2 (01:43:26):
At us because I was you know, looking up on
our email and in Facebook group just to see if
anyone had anything to say. People were like, because she
was like, well, we have to say it's it was
a dingo, but we all know the truth winky face.
And people were like pissed at us because we just
kind of glossed over it and didn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:43:43):
But we didn't know. We were just reading an email,
so like.

Speaker 2 (01:43:46):
People are still fucking And then I was reading like
the Facebook, you know, threads about it, and some people
are like, oh no, no, wow, it's still divided.

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
I remember reading that email because it was kind of like, uh,
it just seemed like but that's the thing. If you
have somebody that's like the inside information. Yeah, I'm the
lead detective. I know things. I'm pretty information. I can't
tell you trust the lead detective. Yes, and that's and
so of course, of course she's everybody's in their own cults.

(01:44:16):
Everybody's in their own cult. Whether you're the cult of
I believe whatever the police say, you're a fucking weird family,
or I hate anybody that has a religion different than
mine for their other and other has to be gotten
rid of. I'm a fucking sandy hook truther. Fuck bastard.
We have to figure out these human issues before the
world end. That's right, quickly, quickly, because there's so many

(01:44:39):
stupid people out there, you guys, We fucking smart and
popular ones need to fix this now.

Speaker 2 (01:44:47):
Please smart popular people.

Speaker 1 (01:44:50):
Usually smart and popular don't go together. We're changing all
that that and then we mispronounce every city in Australia. Okay,
May nineteen ninety June Northern Terry Territory government announced a
payment of one point three million to the Chamberlain's as compensation.
But that's even less than their fucking that's far less

(01:45:11):
than their bills, their legal bills were, it said, of course.
And also later people from that government were like, well,
we didn't think we thought she was guilty. Still, we
just had to let her go. So even they still
thought she was what more do they need? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):
In February of twenty twelve, a fourth coroner's inquest, finally
into the death of Azaria Chamberlain, was opened by Territory
Coroner Elizabeth Morris. Finally a fucking sane person here. Elizabeth
Morris considered new evidence concerning dingo attacks on humans, including
three fatal attacks on children since the third in quest. Oh,

(01:45:44):
there was a dude, there was like a fucking expert
with forensic witness on this trial on the stand who
said that dingo's mouths can't open big enough to like
grab a baby by the head. And then the fucking
defense attorney just holds up a photo of a dingo
with a doll's head in its mouth, and the guy
was just like silent.

Speaker 1 (01:46:00):
It's just like all of these people being like, this
can't happen. And then it's like, well, you're wrong, God,
that's weird, Like this is a true witch hunt. Yeah, yes,
it's It's in a lot of articles. It's U salem
me bullshit.

Speaker 2 (01:46:13):
Yeah, so including three fatal attacks on children since since
they started the third since they started the fourth inquest,
there's been three fatal attacks on.

Speaker 1 (01:46:24):
Oh children, So it's like happens.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
And then she concludes that after thirty two years, eight
legal proceedings and tens of millions spent on the investigation,
that a dingo did indeed kill Azaria, and Azaria's death
certificate finally has changed from unknown to dingo attack. Wow,
and that's the death of Azaria Chamberlain.

Speaker 1 (01:46:43):
Shit, dude, Yeah, that's aka dingo ate my baby, God,
my baby. It's just mind blowing, I know. How Like
I see these more of them, I'm like, how have
we never done this? Yeah, there's got to be so
many other ones like that. I'll be honest. When you
first started, I was like, we've definitely done that. I
texted Steven, but I bet you it's because of that Minisi.

(01:47:05):
I think it is.

Speaker 2 (01:47:06):
I texted Stephen when I thought of it, and I
told Vince. I was like, I'm gonna do it, and
he was like, I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 1 (01:47:10):
Want of you did that. In Australia, it's like, shit's like,
texted Steveen and I'm like, please tell me we did it.
Oh it's I mean, I'm so glad. Here's the thing, too,
is like it's you know, we get it. It's like
when you're divided and there's there's lots of details we
don't know, and to actually be there and be involved
in it. Yeah. Also this day and age, we're also

(01:47:31):
used to the tabloid you know, the crazy shit. We're
all in that process. We get it. Yeah, But back then,
it's like the eighties when it really was first you
thought there was a bad Baby bad Boy, if you
saw it on a fucking cover of a magazine. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:47:43):
There's also a thing too where I think, especially in
Australia and like places like where this it took place,
is that unless you understand what it's like and out
there in the middle of the Aboriginals could have been like, yeah,
that totally makes sense that I didn't go would have
done that. But people who are from fucking Sydney, are
in major cities, are like, that's saying a dingo wouldn't
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:48:02):
Thing goes you know, keep to themselves or you know
they're polite. I don't know, right, but unless you're from
that place, you don't understand what it's really like there.
And I think it's the same goes for places like
Petaluma or like with your story, it's like, unless you're
fucking living out there, you don't understand how secluded it
is or now whatever the fuck and what the culture is. Right.
It also makes me think of and this is a

(01:48:24):
little bit of a weird left turn. But I don't
know if you saw this on social media. It was
at a Cubs game and a player through the ball
to the little boy in the front row and it
dropped and the guy picked it up and handed it
to his wife, right, and that clip got played and
all these people went batshit, beganas and hated this guy. Now,
this guy looked he was like blonde shaved head with

(01:48:47):
his Oakley blades. The little boy was really little and
really cute or whatever, and it just looked like this
weird sit to me, I will say, the first time
I saw it looked like the symbol of what we've
turned into an America. Well, people are just grabbing to
get their own, they don't care who they knock over,
and you know, it just I was thinking, I was like,

(01:49:08):
the only reason I didn't immediately retweet it and be like, yeah,
this guy is because I was trying to think of
like something different to say than all the other people
that were doing it. And the next day there was
this article that was like everybody got this wrong, and
it was all the people that were sitting around that
guy and around that little kid. That guy had already
he had caught a ball himself and already given it

(01:49:29):
to that little kid. So the little kid already had
a ball from that guy. And when they when the
wife took the picture of the second ball. She then
handed it to the little kid on her right. So
as opposed to being total monster assholes, these actually were
kind of the coolest people in the section. And all
the people around were like, yeah, I don't know what

(01:49:50):
you're doing on Twitter, but like they just didn't show
that part. They only showed the second half. We all
have this, like what's the word like.

Speaker 2 (01:49:59):
Trigger a hairture of being incensed and angry right now?

Speaker 1 (01:50:04):
Yes, because there's a lot of shit that we should
be incensed and angry about, so much that we are.
That's all we do now. I figure out who we hate,
and I just think like, yeah, it's a human it's
a human thing to do is to get indignant, and
this is wrong, and this guy needs to be called
out because we've now we trust any picture we see

(01:50:26):
the first thing, headline, any headline in line. You don't
read the article, you're just like, I hate that too,
I know this about that. Yeah, And it feels good
to be self righteous. It makes us we feel so
bad about everything else that it feels great to be
self righteous and to call out an enemy and be
like that guy's the worst. And I anyway, after just
reading that article, I just kind of went like, I

(01:50:47):
have to at least put a pause on it and
at least acknowledge that's my instinct. And I need to
I need to start with the man in the mirror
and like, you need to stop and look and listen
to what is going on inside of you, what my
feelings are, What is this triggering in you? This might
be about? Is this about you? Or is this about baseball?
Why do I need to sit? Am I jealous of baseball?

(01:51:08):
Do you love baseball? Do I want to be at
a baseball game? Since has had a baseball game? Right?
This fucking moment? Dollar Dodger dogs tonight? I told him
to sneak one home for me, and that he won't.
I know, I am too sneak one home. Do you
know how terrible a ballpark dog would be? Three hours later?
In a pocket? I still does he do that for you?

(01:51:30):
Does he bring you Dodger dogs? No? Oh my god,
that would be he does. I'll let you know. He's
like onions mustard. Yeah, I put it in my pockets. Right, No,
he doesn't. He does nice stuff, but that's not one
of them, thank god. Yeah, I think that pocket Dodger
dog a pocket dog oh hey, hey, Georgia brought your
hot dog. Oh my god, it's from this afternoon. I said, yes,

(01:51:53):
it's from this I've been sweating you. Open up the
hot dog and there's another engagement being other engagement. This
is the most romantic thing a husband could do for
any married life. We should go to a baseball game.
What is your fucking hooray? I will tell you and
it's now I'm gonna be a little bit riot girl

(01:52:14):
about this and say I'm slightly embarrassed to tell you this,
and I've actually told you this already, but I'm going
to say it for the show and of course for Steven,
who I want to know all my personal thought I started.
My therapist told me I had a certain series of
complaints where she went, I think you need to listen
to Shonda rhymes the Year of Yes, and I roll
your eyes so hard that your head hurt. I was like,

(01:52:36):
I certainly will, and then I walked out angry, like
how dare you? It's so weird.

Speaker 2 (01:52:40):
It is really specific when your therapist suggests an actual
thing like a book or an app or a you know,
person to listen to, because that's the mine doesn't do
that a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:52:52):
Yeah, so you have to take them seriously, yes, exactly. Yeah. Also,
since she's been my therapist for all fourteen years and
she I know how rarely she does it, but she
had just listened to it and she's like a lot
of this reminds me of she talks about a lot
of this stuff, and so essentially it's so fucking good.

(01:53:12):
Might not already have who I feel like many of us,
but I definitely have intense respect for Shonda Rhimes, who
has an entire night of television, has had. I don't
know if currently it's like this, if it's still if
this is still the lineup, but for years she basically
owned Thursday Night, which is fucking crazy. Is the showrunner
of three massive hit shows, and she's had but she's

(01:53:36):
had probably six, but like three have been Juggernauts, And yeah,
there's no question she's a fucking bad ass insane about us.
But then but I don't know, Yeah, I don't know what.
So in this story, she's talking about how she realizes
her older sister tells her that she never says asked
to anything, and it's related to she was invited to
some party and she was telling her sister. Oh, it

(01:53:58):
is this cool party and their sisters, but did you go?
And she's like, well, no, I didn't go, which, of course,
from that moment one I was like, uh oh, this
is me in a nutshell and it's like you're gonna
make me go out, aren't you. You're gonna make me
do things? So her sister. The way her sister said
you never you never say yes to anything bothered her
so much. And it's her older sister, she's the youngest. Yeah,

(01:54:20):
is that she decided for one year she was going
to say yes to everything she possibly could. But the
way she breaks it down, I just listen to it
if you feel stuck, or if you feel like your
life is smaller than you want it to be, or
if it's big in some ways and tiny in other ways,
and like you're trying to find balance but you don't
know how to do it. Stop talking about me, talking

(01:54:42):
about me always. She's not only talk about my book. No,
that sounds like me right now. It's amazing. And it's
also this thing of when you dec she just talks
about why she would make these decisions. And one of
the things that blew my mind the most is she
talks about how she was not even invited. She was

(01:55:03):
just told that she would be going to those Kennedy
Center honors and she was sitting with the Obamas and
she says, the only reason I went is because it
wasn't an invitation, so I couldn't say no. They just
told me show up on this night. And that was
the beginning of it where she of course, because she said,

(01:55:23):
I would have said no, I would have figured out
a way to get out of it. And it's this
thing that I think working people do. If you're a
bit of a workaholic like me, you use the work
and the busyness as an excuse to not do the
things you love, because you go, that's not important, I'm
doing the important shit. And then your life gets filled
up with work and no play and you become like

(01:55:45):
a dried up old one of those awful peanuts, but's
sour in the middle that you bite right fucking into
and then it's sour and that it's like the way
she talked, there's times where I was just fucking balling
because do you think like me as a person who
think it will help me? Yes, Okay, it's just because
also she's crazy smart, And she talks about like the

(01:56:07):
reason she's a writer is because she spent a lot
of her childhood alone, keeping people away and just writing
the reality she wanted to be. And it's really hard
to stop doing that, especially if you then go on
to be a professional writer. It's working for you exactly.
So like we are the kind of people like you know,
when you call your own shots, then you're just like, well,

(01:56:28):
I'm I know best because I've gotten myself this far.

Speaker 2 (01:56:32):
Being a maorcoholic and having a fucking shit to have
anxiety has worked right now. It's like working right now
for me. Yeah, So why would I stop doing that?
That's why would why would I like stop and have
fucking self care?

Speaker 1 (01:56:44):
And she starts talking about like some of the things
are like she plays with her kids, Like when her
kid says, Mommy, do you want to play? She sits
down and says yes, even though she's on her way
out the door to go to a party or whatever.
And how that the way she judges what has been
value on what doesn't have value changes because suddenly she goes,
this is my children's lives. Of course I should be

(01:57:06):
there for it. It's just that kind of stuff and
then I don't know everything about it. Struck so many
one million chords for me in that way. Oh, I
told you this part, which was my favorite. She calls
laying on the couch eating and watching TV veal practice,
and it's my favorite thing I've ever fucking heard veel practice.

(01:57:27):
I have been in such deep veal practice pretending like
I don't care. Yeah, and that's been a big mistake.
So anyway, it's if you have any of those feelings,
I highly recommend. I love it. She's very smart. And
she also gave a speech. One of her there's a
couple of speeches included that she is given, Like one

(01:57:49):
was a commencement speech at Dartmouth where she went to school,
but one was at like the Hollywood Women's Association of
Superstar Women and there's tons of crazy women. But she
gives this fucking speech because it's like they're saying, she
broke this glass ceiling, and she starts talking about all
the women who tried to break the glass ceiling and
didn't but slammed up against it and created the tiny

(01:58:12):
cracks and it I was like fucking sobbing. So she
was like, thank you to all the women are here,
and thank you to all the women who didn't make
it here. Are you kidding me? It's such a good
it's such a good book, and it's such a it's
like self help that actually works while you're listening to it.
I listened because I listened to it. Oh, I'm listening

(01:58:34):
to it right immediately. That's great, thank you. Oh yeah, mine,
I just decided I'm changing a rule. My fucking herrieh
is going to be a thing that I want to
do in the next week, okay, And I'm fucking naming
it right here because I feel like, I say, the
only way I'm going to get myself to do it.
I like this. I also can can I pitch something

(01:58:54):
yeah that we this? I really like this idea of
like future goals. Yeah, and we can make up a
fun name for it later. But like this maybe should
be another thing. I like it too.

Speaker 2 (01:59:03):
I'm just going to go to a yoga class or
go to the gyt because I feel so shitty right now.

Speaker 1 (01:59:08):
I'm bad about myself and I'm not fucking sleeping well
and I know that, and I just don't feel healthy
and you know, my back. It's all these fucking things
that I know, well, I will feel better if I
start going back to yoga or go to the fucking
gym for even half an hour. But I just can't
get myself to do it right.

Speaker 2 (01:59:26):
So when next week, when we're back here during fucking horay,
I'll tell you if I've done it or not.

Speaker 1 (01:59:32):
What can I say this? What if this is week
one yoga challenge, we both go to a yoga class
at some point in the next week, so that when
we come back we have to tell each other about it.
I love it, And this is my problem is I'm like, well,
one's not enough.

Speaker 2 (01:59:45):
It's not going to do anything. I need to go
three time. Like I'm just like crazy like that. So
let's just say we need to go one time.

Speaker 1 (01:59:50):
Let's start small. Okay, that's high five over it. Yeah,
but not with your foot. Okay, great, I love it.
I'm allowed with your foot. Everyone loves to know if
you're fucking joining us for the one one time and
a week yoga challenge. And also, I know it's hard
to go alone. There's all these reasons. I always say
I'm going to go and then I go. I can't
show up with this body at yoga. No, don't do

(02:00:12):
that just don't do it. So I have to work
out for us because I'm not in shape enough to
go to you. That's perfectionism ruining your good time. Yeah,
you don't have to be perfect. Just fucking do things. Please,
don't have to be perfect. And then that means I
don't have to be picky. Yeah, and I would really
appreciate that right now.

Speaker 2 (02:00:26):
Yeah, and we also speaking of if you just want
to exercise and feel good we have. We want to
give a shout out to the hashtag I'd look for
you and all the incredible murderinos who are part of
this movement in honor of our h one of our listeners,
Maggie Dyke Shorn, who passed away recently while hiking. And

(02:00:49):
there's going on August fifth, that's the Sunday there's going
to be around the country now, all these fucking hikes
dedicated to her, and i'd look the hashtag I'd look
for you if you go, if there's Facebook groups, if
you're not on Facebook, just look up the hashtag and
you should be able to find, you know, a hike.

Speaker 1 (02:01:03):
Near you or start one if there's not. Yeah, and
there's but there is a map of all the places
where hikes are planned around the country and I cannot
believe this is incredible. I can't believe it. There's one
right here at a fifth Park this weekend. Yeah, so
really lovely.

Speaker 2 (02:01:17):
We just want to again. I mean, it's such a
beautiful thing. And shout out to Maggie and you.

Speaker 1 (02:01:22):
Know, and shout out to you guys for I mean,
there's the idea that people are creating real friendships and
communities around it pauses and and kind of being there
for each other and do it. It's not like anybody,
you know, people informed us you were doing it, but
you're all doing it yourselves. It's such an inspirational thing

(02:01:43):
to us. Yeah, that you guys get you get this
shit together, and it's just so.

Speaker 2 (02:01:49):
Nice every day or I'm like just blown away. We're
blown away.

Speaker 1 (02:01:53):
That this this is our lives and this has happened
and we're just so appreciative of it and so thank
you guys. We're so blown away that we have to
stay on the couch. No no, and especially like you know,
with that in mind, with that in mind, like go
go outside, move around, take in some other scenery, do

(02:02:17):
it with a buddy. Yeah, and thanks for listening. You
guys are the fucking best. Yeah, thank you for everything.
Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Yah he's right there.
Oh you want a cookie? Yes, he said it right
into the mic.