Speaker 1: Welcome to Nightcall, a production of I Heart Radio. It's
Speaker 1: November in Los Angeles and you're listening tonight Call. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Night Call podcast for your strange days
Speaker 1: and lonely nights. I'm Molly Lambert and I am joined
Speaker 1: as always by Test Lynch and Emily Osheita. And Emily
Speaker 1: did a little investigation, a little investigation. I you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people ask questions on the Internet and it seems
Speaker 1: like a value question, and so, um, you just want
Speaker 1: to follow them down that hole. Uh So I saw
Speaker 1: a tweet that I sent to UM to Molly and
Speaker 1: tests from Emma Best, who's a a hacker activist. UM
Speaker 1: runs the site muck rock, which is sort of like
Speaker 1: UM like scripty or something. It's just like a place
Speaker 1: for documents and uh foya documents and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So they had done a FOYA on looking up materials
Speaker 1: mentioning or describing psychological operations involving astrology, such as those
Speaker 1: described in a series of numbers. UM, this is from
Speaker 1: the CIA, and they got the response that said there
Speaker 1: were several documents, most of them we cannot share with you.
Speaker 1: They're still classified. Thanks guys. So so to be fair,
Speaker 1: this is inconclusive. We don't know anything. There's only so
Speaker 1: one document was what had been declassified and it was
Speaker 1: from the Vietnam War and it was from this It
Speaker 1: was like a kind of document about UH from Henry A.
Speaker 1: Kissinger about a psychological offensive in Vietnam. And it was
Speaker 1: this propaganda radio show called Mother Vietnam. And it was
Speaker 1: just a list of like the kinds of programming we
Speaker 1: could have on said propaganda radio station, like UM and
Speaker 1: astrology that tells you to go out and kill for
Speaker 1: the America. So rebuttal of Radio Hanoi UH, interviews with refugees, relatives,
Speaker 1: wounded soldiers, advice to North Vietnamese civilians and soldiers, and
Speaker 1: astrological predictions. So WHOA, So we can infer that the
Speaker 1: psy ops that used astrology, we're basically like maybe to
Speaker 1: instill fear and people to be like, oh, looking at
Speaker 1: your horoscope, like looks like you should definitely not oppose
Speaker 1: the powers that be. We did. TuS and I were
Speaker 1: on Behind the Bastards, another show on our network that's awesome,
Speaker 1: and we were an episode about Nancy Reagan's astrologer that
Speaker 1: was all about how the Reagans were totally into astrology.
Speaker 1: The astrologer was a horrible person and she only wanted
Speaker 1: to be an astrologer for rich people. But they made
Speaker 1: a lot of their decisions about meeting times based on
Speaker 1: what she said. So they would like circle the helicopter,
Speaker 1: for which had the effect of making their opponents be
Speaker 1: caught off guard because they wouldn't meet ever at like
Speaker 1: five pm. They'd have to meet at like five twelve.
Speaker 1: It's actually kind of a great it's for good. But
Speaker 1: they were notorious apparently for like they would only hold
Speaker 1: meetings at these weird times, and it was because the
Speaker 1: astrologer told them to. Was it like numera numerology, like
Speaker 1: the straight up astrology? I think it was like this
Speaker 1: is why? Um? I mean I I then just googled
Speaker 1: is astrology a sty op um? Which is you know,
Speaker 1: of course opens up. I mean, this is not a
Speaker 1: new question. Plenty of people of have thought of this before,
Speaker 1: but most of it's like on conspiracy sites and not um,
Speaker 1: not actual documents, not anything clickable by us. Right, It
Speaker 1: never occurred to me until until you sent me that tweet,
Speaker 1: and then I felt like right, because I was like,
Speaker 1: of course it can be used for evil. It never
Speaker 1: seemed like that's why you would use there was There
Speaker 1: was a person who responded to this on Twitter and said,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a very old practice, like obviously it
Speaker 1: can be used anyway people want to use it. But
Speaker 1: they were like, if you want to be safe, though,
Speaker 1: don't use this. The astrology apps like you are listening
Speaker 1: to you, listened to you in therapy and then they
Speaker 1: give you a base period tracking app. Wait what what?
Speaker 1: Back up? What was that? Somebody was like, I know, okay,
Speaker 1: somebody I know was like my astrology app was saying
Speaker 1: stuff that was just about stuff I had just talked
Speaker 1: about in therapy, and I was like, well, your phone
Speaker 1: one was on in therapy. I'm sure it's here's what
Speaker 1: you're saying. That means that she has like a personal astrologer.
Speaker 1: I think that's what I'm saying. I think it listens
Speaker 1: to you and then it gives you advice based on
Speaker 1: what it thinks you want to You'll be like you
Speaker 1: thinks are getting different reading and you're like, it's incisive.
Speaker 1: It knows what I am going through right now, because
Speaker 1: like the that's what what's what's the benefit for the
Speaker 1: person who's doing all this labor to create your personalized astrology.
Speaker 1: Maybe that you to this feeding you the premium. Look,
Speaker 1: we know some people who work for astrology apps, and
Speaker 1: I would like to know what they have to say
Speaker 1: about this. I will also say that I'm the skeptic
Speaker 1: and the crew. I don't think astrology is real. You
Speaker 1: go through phases, sometimes you admit that you are one
Speaker 1: does not need to believe that astrology is real. To
Speaker 1: not believe that there is an app in which like
Speaker 1: there's a room full of people who are listening on
Speaker 1: headphones to you in your therapy. I think that true stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't think astrology is real. But my worst boyfriend
Speaker 1: was a scorpio. See of course of course he was.
Speaker 1: He was a Scorpio. I don't think people also in
Speaker 1: it's a feedback loop for people internalized traits that they
Speaker 1: think they're going to have because of what their sign is.
Speaker 1: Definitely mean personality, because you're like, yes, for sure. That's
Speaker 1: why I don't believe in it too, because I'm a
Speaker 1: Virgo and I'm so not a virgo in any way
Speaker 1: or such a virgo. I'm not there like meat, That's
Speaker 1: all they say. It's like they're o c D about
Speaker 1: being Now, there's two kinds of virgo, as every virgo
Speaker 1: should know, it's not the most boring. It's actually, isn't
Speaker 1: it the most popular astrology. We've talked about it, I know,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying you can't really there's there are
Speaker 1: many different types of virgo. Speaking of predicting the future, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should talk about later on before we do, Can
Speaker 1: I bring up an actual sourceable fact about apps tracking
Speaker 1: you and then I'll let you go? Yes? Okay, So
Speaker 1: someone reported that they had been using a period track
Speaker 1: her app and then forgot about it and just didn't
Speaker 1: do anything with it. So the app communicated or sold
Speaker 1: the data that she was potentially pregnant because she hadn't
Speaker 1: listed that she had had her period, so she was
Speaker 1: being served. All of these ads were like because they
Speaker 1: calculated and they were like, oh, she must be do soon.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying all the apps do stuff like that
Speaker 1: instead of just she's lazy and doesn't care about here,
Speaker 1: like we're going to take a flyer on this one. Hious.
Speaker 1: I saw the story about how the Uber self driving
Speaker 1: car killed a pedestrian because it's like not programmed to
Speaker 1: recognize jaywalking right, just like the first thing you would
Speaker 1: think you would like check four if you were building
Speaker 1: a self driving car. Right. Um, what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: that technology is evil. Okay, now we can go to
Speaker 1: technology is evil and it's certainly what would you do
Speaker 1: without Twitter? You guys, I enjoyed my hiatus from Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about taking Twitter to me is actually the
Speaker 1: worst one. I'm actually never on Twitter. Now, listen, let's
Speaker 1: take a journey to right now as visualized from thirty
Speaker 1: seven years ago. You guys, we watched Blade Runner two
Speaker 1: version of Blade Runner because it's November twenty nineteen in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Certainly is the kind of person who's been
Speaker 1: waiting for all the apocalyptic sci fi title cards to
Speaker 1: come into being. This is the bigs. This is one
Speaker 1: of the most iconic ones. I think, like the other
Speaker 1: one for me is whatever it is and back to
Speaker 1: the Future, to which I think was um, I think
Speaker 1: that was there's something in running. I think it was
Speaker 1: running man. Um. But it was very funny because on
Speaker 1: November one, that was the day that the cycling plaque
Speaker 1: caught on fire and out water and it smelled like
Speaker 1: burning plastic in the entire east side and the sky
Speaker 1: was orange, and I actually took a surgical mask from
Speaker 1: our room where I work and used it to drive
Speaker 1: home because I walked outside and immediately started like hacking coffee,
Speaker 1: and the run or weather came right on time, exactly
Speaker 1: on time. I also felt as though the air quality
Speaker 1: and the fumes, the particular fumes that were being emitted
Speaker 1: from this fire were downplayed, Like I think people really
Speaker 1: should have taken because it does look bad. You could
Speaker 1: smell it everybody I know. I feel like I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm having all these really bad headaches and like headaches allergies,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, that's the fire. We're all
Speaker 1: like inhaling disgusting particles. There are a lot of schools
Speaker 1: right around that area, and I feel as though they
Speaker 1: sometimes there will be kind of a like mandate that
Speaker 1: children stay in school, um, and I think maybe they
Speaker 1: kind of. I feel like school should have been closed
Speaker 1: in that area, that's how bad the air in school.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was. I think it should have been a
Speaker 1: small day. We wouldn't get it off. We don't have
Speaker 1: to play in the auditorium anyway. This blade Runner like
Speaker 1: it's such a like it is. It is the most
Speaker 1: iconic dystopian I think movie maybe. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: obviously like lots you can choose from, but I think
Speaker 1: like this particular vision of this like perpetual night time
Speaker 1: because of the smog, like uh Asian culture has running muck.
Speaker 1: There are there are robots that look like people and
Speaker 1: you can't tell the difference. Like all of that stuff
Speaker 1: feels very like this has just soaked itself into all
Speaker 1: science fiction. It's also a utopia because it's raining all
Speaker 1: the time. What's in that rain? And I love it?
Speaker 1: And it's diverse, yes, exactly, how is my complaint? We
Speaker 1: did a North Mollywood episode about um The Runner where
Speaker 1: they said, as you said that the best shot was
Speaker 1: when they cut to a pile of garbage and the
Speaker 1: title just so San Diego, that's the best diss in
Speaker 1: the world, most earned diss. But also yeah, that it
Speaker 1: was shot in Europe, so all the extras are white.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, that's the most ystopian future l a
Speaker 1: ever And was like, you're thinking about it more than
Speaker 1: they did, right, it feels original. Blade Runner does feel
Speaker 1: like such an eighties movie because it does feel like
Speaker 1: that fear. It's like the white fear of the city
Speaker 1: getting taken over by the other. But the thing, but
Speaker 1: the thing about Blade Runner, the world of Blade Runner,
Speaker 1: is not that it's been taken over. It's that those
Speaker 1: are the people who had to stay behind it are
Speaker 1: not on the off world exactly. Um. So it's not
Speaker 1: like the white people have been killed off by all
Speaker 1: the Asian people. Um. It is it is that like
Speaker 1: they have, not because of class or because it's like
Speaker 1: some it's implied that some disabilities you can't like, Um,
Speaker 1: shef Sebastian can't go up because of this syndrome that
Speaker 1: he has a disease with methuselas syndrome. That makeup terrible
Speaker 1: and I relish bad makeup like that it would be
Speaker 1: bad c G. I now kind of. But also just
Speaker 1: because it made him like it added an extra layer
Speaker 1: of wondering if if he was like putting on a front,
Speaker 1: because isn't that part of it too, that some people
Speaker 1: seem really conflicted about whether they actually want to populate
Speaker 1: the planets or whatever. You know how night Call feels,
Speaker 1: you know how Night Call fields And I was staying here,
Speaker 1: I mean you get amazing apartments apparently if you stay
Speaker 1: by it. Uh, we're all moving into the brad. The
Speaker 1: worst part of the the lifestyle of living in those
Speaker 1: apartment buildings is being on the elevator that is attached
Speaker 1: to the exterior of a building. You mean like an
Speaker 1: outdoor the outdoor elevator that goes up to like the nineties,
Speaker 1: and I don't like you mean like the like the Bonaventure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so I couldn't deal. I got to see the elevator.
Speaker 1: Not the biggest fan of elevators in general, except for
Speaker 1: the one at Lego Land that hasn't big elevator fan,
Speaker 1: but I feel like you might as well be outside.
Speaker 1: They looked like they were going to fall off the building.
Speaker 1: It was so stressful to me. I think the funny
Speaker 1: thing about the design of Blader in Our being as
Speaker 1: like influential as it is, is that it's not really
Speaker 1: straight up like cyberpunk. It's super noir and it's super
Speaker 1: like like early half of the twentieth century, like um
Speaker 1: and the fact that they shot on all these locations
Speaker 1: from that era in Los Angeles, Like, that's the architecture.
Speaker 1: Those are the bones of the city. It's not all
Speaker 1: these crazy pyramids and um, you know, sleek architecture that
Speaker 1: really defines most of um, just like like you know,
Speaker 1: I candy type stuff like it's it's very it's very
Speaker 1: dirty and kind of craggy and wet, very damn. We
Speaker 1: love the wet future future. Was that because Ridley Scott
Speaker 1: was like I thought I read somewhere but not couldn't
Speaker 1: verify it that he wanted like an England to feel
Speaker 1: um weatherwise because he's British. I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's actually kind of a realistic like it feels. It's
Speaker 1: also like now it's cold enough to wear a trench coat,
Speaker 1: but we are I feel like a boats were not
Speaker 1: believable to me. They are now gets cold night huge
Speaker 1: for Coch. It was so foggy last night. It was
Speaker 1: so blade runnery. I was saying to Test I deny
Speaker 1: that it was fogg. I think it was fog last
Speaker 1: night for sure. Yesterday it was nasty. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There are many nights climates you could have been in
Speaker 1: a foggy set weather app said fog because it was
Speaker 1: listening to me and knew that that's what I wanted.
Speaker 1: Just wanted to make you feel good. Sorry, please give
Speaker 1: me fog. How do you think the movie has held
Speaker 1: up since you've seen it last. The thing that okay,
Speaker 1: so I have like a very like I saw this movie,
Speaker 1: this movie like blew my mind or whatever when I
Speaker 1: was fourteen or however old I was when I saw it.
Speaker 1: And there's an article in the news about me saying
Speaker 1: it was my favorite movie, which I don't think it's true,
Speaker 1: but wait, really yeah, because I I did a kind
Speaker 1: of Blade Runner indebted thesis film in college, like I
Speaker 1: did like an l a cyberp movie, um so, and
Speaker 1: then the local paper in Tacoma interviewed me about it, uh,
Speaker 1: and I said that Lade Runner was my favorite movie
Speaker 1: because it's just like that sounds right right, like this
Speaker 1: girl loves bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, But I think the
Speaker 1: thing that's always surprising to me every time I come
Speaker 1: back to this movie, and like also the more that
Speaker 1: I kind of steep myself and like, here's how you
Speaker 1: make a movie that like stands the test of time.
Speaker 1: Here's the perfect formula for a movie. Here all the
Speaker 1: beats you need to do, and like promises and uh
Speaker 1: and like you know, things like fulfilling all those promises
Speaker 1: that you make to the audience. It's like Blade Runner
Speaker 1: is so arty and weird. It doesn't have any of
Speaker 1: those like satisfying buttons that are pushing, and all of
Speaker 1: its big ideas are like hinted at and kind of
Speaker 1: sideways and nothing is like hammered down in a way
Speaker 1: that most side five two one and that it's like
Speaker 1: a sci fi movie that also gets to be like
Speaker 1: capital a art. Yeah, it's like a mood, not like
Speaker 1: a Star Wars movie. It doesn't. It's not like a
Speaker 1: popcorn movie. It's like a junior man's movie. It's very
Speaker 1: like I was thinking about, even the opening, like where
Speaker 1: decords at the noodle stand and then and then where
Speaker 1: James almost comes up and they take him to the police,
Speaker 1: but they say he's under arrest and they put him
Speaker 1: in a cop car like a floating car, and they
Speaker 1: take him to the police station or um and uh
Speaker 1: that's it has the Vangelist score. It's like the slow
Speaker 1: shot of the car rising up over the city and
Speaker 1: it's all dreamy and the rain is falling, and I think,
Speaker 1: like probably the first three times I saw that movie,
Speaker 1: I never picked up that he was getting arrested because
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like anything Urgent is happy. He's not
Speaker 1: being arrested. He's like he's not. Later, yeah, they but
Speaker 1: like that's like the reveal when they get there. But
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't I was just watching The Flying Car.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Also, he was like, you can't arrest
Speaker 1: me because I'm still eating my noodles, and they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds pretty fair. We'll wait to arrest you while
Speaker 1: you finish your noodle. It is um. I was looking
Speaker 1: into the Wikipedia for this, uh, and I had had
Speaker 1: no idea about Hampton Fancher Hampden Fancher. Interestingly, well, first
Speaker 1: of all, now I'm going to have to see The
Speaker 1: minus Man. Hampton Fancher is a screenwriter. Yes, he wrote
Speaker 1: it with David Peoples. But I had to look into
Speaker 1: The minus Man, which was his directorial debut with Owen
Speaker 1: Wilson and Jeanine Garoffalo, and seems like, you, how is it.
Speaker 1: It's depressing, it's about heroin addiction. It's good. I was
Speaker 1: just like this came out of nowhere. But also I
Speaker 1: didn't know that Hampton Fancher was married for two years
Speaker 1: to Sue Lion the original Lolita, and it was super
Speaker 1: There were a bunch of really weird things that happened
Speaker 1: right before I watched Blade Runner. One of them was
Speaker 1: that Molly gave me a book, the Real Lolita, the
Speaker 1: Sarah Wineman book. Um, so I had Lolita on the
Speaker 1: time book about the case that Lolita is like supposedly
Speaker 1: based on this, like Nabakoff has sort of disavowed it,
Speaker 1: but she makes this point of like he would have
Speaker 1: seen it in this paper, like he knew this other
Speaker 1: guy who got in trouble for having sex with kids.
Speaker 1: Like so that was two days ago. Then there's the
Speaker 1: Sue Lion thing, which I just has happened to read
Speaker 1: about on Wikipedia. And then also the other day I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm bored of my music. I need to
Speaker 1: start looking into Yes, I listened to Evangelists for like
Speaker 1: two hours. I put a Tangerine dream song on the latest.
Speaker 1: I put love on a Real Train on the last
Speaker 1: night collms nice. I think that is like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that mix. Also, I was like, this mix really
Speaker 1: like feels out are unified aesthetic to me, which I
Speaker 1: guess is like there's no escaping it, but it feels
Speaker 1: like beyond it. Being November in l A, I was like,
Speaker 1: WHOA Blade Runners, It's seeping into my life from all angles,
Speaker 1: and I loved watching it. It has been forever since
Speaker 1: I'd seen it, uh, and I had forgotten lots of
Speaker 1: great parts of it, which there are many, but it
Speaker 1: also has the weirdest tempo, if any mode, it has
Speaker 1: a super weird tempo. And like also it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where now, I mean I used to own
Speaker 1: it on DV, but now that you like stream everything,
Speaker 1: I think I own it digitally. But I was watching
Speaker 1: it and I like the Internet started to go out
Speaker 1: during like like one of the few things that like
Speaker 1: qualifies as an actual action scene in it, which is
Speaker 1: where he's chasing down Zora the like the stripper snakes dipper, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the snake stripper um, and she's like, you know, running
Speaker 1: over the cars and then he shoots her in like
Speaker 1: this series of glass um, this like glass hallway, which
Speaker 1: just looks incredible because it's just like neon reflecting off
Speaker 1: of every surface. And my Internet started to go down
Speaker 1: to it. I was like, I need faults. I can't
Speaker 1: I can't live like this. Any of the versions have
Speaker 1: you seen, um, I've seen I've seen the original one
Speaker 1: with the voiceover one that watched Okay, yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: watched that one for a long time. I've seen that
Speaker 1: one like maybe once, and it was out of curiosity.
Speaker 1: I've seen the director's cus one I've seen the most
Speaker 1: because that's the one that's most widely available, and I
Speaker 1: had that that DVD that everybody has um with the
Speaker 1: black cover, and then now I have I should look
Speaker 1: this up, but I have something called the Final, the
Speaker 1: Final Final for sure time we're done really this time,
Speaker 1: which is the one that's it's available on iTunes. So
Speaker 1: that's why that's when I have on. I showed it
Speaker 1: at every film class I took in college. Really actually hilarious.
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen it until college. That was the last
Speaker 1: time I've seen it. Because also they'll do like they'll
Speaker 1: show you Metropolis and then they show you Blade But
Speaker 1: it was funny because it was like every professor like
Speaker 1: found a way to work Blade Runner into the curriculum.
Speaker 1: But it's also because they're all like eighties postmodernist, and
Speaker 1: that's like the writing they assign also. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think of Blade Runner as not an eighties
Speaker 1: movie but a now sis. I've talked about the class
Speaker 1: I took in college that someone actually a listener wrote
Speaker 1: in to remind me of the professor's name, and it's
Speaker 1: um Professor Noyman. But he taught a film architecture class
Speaker 1: and Blade Runner was featured and Metropolis was featured. Um
Speaker 1: and yeah, and watching it now in the time that
Speaker 1: it was to be set is really fascinating in terms
Speaker 1: of I mean because also we used to all work
Speaker 1: at l A Live and we often talked about how
Speaker 1: that is like a but I was just going to say,
Speaker 1: the most haunted, but it also lacks any vibrant, has
Speaker 1: no time. That's my boyfriend. Johnny Coleman wrote a really
Speaker 1: good piece with the guy Jacob Butcher for The Nation
Speaker 1: about the gentrification of downtown that started with the Staple
Speaker 1: Center and how it's just been a massive failure um
Speaker 1: and how sort of public money goes to pay for
Speaker 1: things like this. They're supposed to reinvigorate the community but
Speaker 1: displace everybody. Oh, I mean, it's the craziest thing about
Speaker 1: l A Live too, is the Ritz Carlton Residences or
Speaker 1: whatever are pretty much the facade of l A Live.
Speaker 1: And they're these it's this huge mirrored skyscraper in the middle.
Speaker 1: They set themselves up for Blade Runner because they were like,
Speaker 1: we'll build all this stuff without dealing of anything with Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing the thing about like the thing about
Speaker 1: the Blade Runner Future is that it seems largely accidental
Speaker 1: and ad hoc and also it's like pedestrian domond needed
Speaker 1: Like if that opening scene and like most of the
Speaker 1: scenes that we see are supposed to be taking place
Speaker 1: downtown probably like on Broadway, Um, because the Breadbury building
Speaker 1: is on is that on Broadway? Is it on Spring
Speaker 1: I think it's on Broadway, But that part of downtown,
Speaker 1: like that historic core area of downtown, Like if it's
Speaker 1: supposed to take place there, then they've like they've banned
Speaker 1: cars because there are no cars, and they fly but
Speaker 1: they come down like you know what we're realizing as
Speaker 1: Blade Runners utope is and it rains. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like and also in the dark rain is so lovely
Speaker 1: and because because also the idea of like that eighties
Speaker 1: fear of like especially downtown being like completely bought but
Speaker 1: like Chinese investors. Uh now, I just feel like the
Speaker 1: fear that everybody I know has at least it's just
Speaker 1: like they're whitewashing like the entire city of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: If we end up with the Blade Runners. Now wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a utopia though, if like all the people who
Speaker 1: popular at the Earth where the main industry was like
Speaker 1: genetic engineering. What if all the what if all the
Speaker 1: agents were just like replicants, the agents, Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: like just like Hollywood agents are replicating. I mean that's
Speaker 1: a solid thesis. Like I believe that. Who else would
Speaker 1: you not be surprised if you were, like, all of
Speaker 1: these people are actually vent Your capitalists are replicants and
Speaker 1: their bio engineering each other. Um, I don't know. Siegfried
Speaker 1: and Roy could be replicated, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: and the Tigers could be replicants as well. Hot button topic.
Speaker 1: Do you guys think Deckert's are replicate? Okay, so fast?
Speaker 1: I spent forever thinking about this. Uh, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I think he is. You do? Yeah? But I mean,
Speaker 1: so that's the big thing of all the different cuts,
Speaker 1: is it? Some of them lead you to think that
Speaker 1: more than others do. Some with the unicorn, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: one with the unicorn, which I believe is the director's cut.
Speaker 1: The unicorn was in the voiceover as well well, though
Speaker 1: there was the unicorn origami, but not the Unicorn dream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think couldn't that also be read as like
Speaker 1: the humans and replicants share some kind of like yeah,
Speaker 1: all humans are replicants, man, man. I mean that's the
Speaker 1: whole thing of Battlestar Galactica, which takes a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff and like then explores it for seven eights.
Speaker 1: Also getting right to that point in terms of tech,
Speaker 1: and there's obviously been a lot of action around that
Speaker 1: because a lot of really evil people want to use
Speaker 1: tech for the most evil things possible, especially with artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: It's scary. It is scary. I was kind of into
Speaker 1: the idea of the bioengineered animals though, because I was like, look,
Speaker 1: they can just have owl. It's like I love that stuff.
Speaker 1: I love the Eye Guys, like my favorite guy guy.
Speaker 1: I know you love I know you love the Eye
Speaker 1: got with stuff now, but I love like, well, going
Speaker 1: to the Eye Doctor is the most sci fi thing
Speaker 1: when they put that thing down. But that's like one
Speaker 1: of my favorite like nods to Blade Runners. The actual
Speaker 1: I wear a brand called Eli I Works, which is
Speaker 1: the name of the Eye Guys store, and it's the
Speaker 1: same same logo and everything. Really they turned it into
Speaker 1: like they took that logo and made it like an glasses,
Speaker 1: like a glass of store. Store is so eighties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I had no idea. So it's great.
Speaker 1: If you go back and watch a movie when they
Speaker 1: go in, Uh, when like Roy goes into the eye
Speaker 1: Guys place, it says l a, I works above the door,
Speaker 1: and it is the exact same logo. Yeah. Do you
Speaker 1: think this coat? I mean, I love a trench coat. Jesus.
Speaker 1: I hate long coats. I'm probably hated long coats on
Speaker 1: people because I'm short, So it's not a great I
Speaker 1: think people look absolutely ridiculous when they walk. Oh man,
Speaker 1: you're about to be very disappointed by me. When I
Speaker 1: changed when I went to a Colombo themed Halloween party
Speaker 1: called Colombo Ween, where everybody was wearing trench coats, and
Speaker 1: it was great. It just looks like you're at a party,
Speaker 1: Like it just looks like it's cops. Don't actually wear
Speaker 1: trench I know, but it just looked like or like
Speaker 1: a bunch of FBI agents or something. I don't know. Uh,
Speaker 1: my friend Sarah got a green trench coat that looks
Speaker 1: so cool. It made me be like trench coat. I
Speaker 1: had a long red coat that I wore a lot,
Speaker 1: and I thought it looked so good, and then literally
Speaker 1: it took one picture, seeing one picture of myself, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I look ridiculous. I'm humiliated. There are
Speaker 1: so many different cuts of to try horrible. But speaking
Speaker 1: of coats, I mean not the trench coats and not
Speaker 1: the big fur coat, but the see through raincoat. Those
Speaker 1: are awares. When she gets shot is one of the most.
Speaker 1: Like if I had to make a Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: list of props and costumes for movies that I want, Like,
Speaker 1: do you ever realize those things have seeped into your
Speaker 1: consciousness and you didn't even notice. I watched The Secret
Speaker 1: of Nim recently and I was like, oh, I've wanted
Speaker 1: a cape for like twenty years because as a cape
Speaker 1: and like a little like jewel neck. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think seeing how people wear clothes and bodies and stuff
Speaker 1: like that makes a huge impression on you when you're young,
Speaker 1: Like when you're seeing you're like doing that, it's like
Speaker 1: cats seeing themselves in the mirror or something. You're like,
Speaker 1: what if that was on me? Like I feel like, um,
Speaker 1: which is why we're all so fucked up by Disney movies.
Speaker 1: What if I were a seashell braw every day. But
Speaker 1: that coat went up for sale once. Um, it was
Speaker 1: like on auction some with some estate sale, and I
Speaker 1: was it was so expensive. But I thought, I thought
Speaker 1: real long and hard about it. Couldn't you make that?
Speaker 1: It just doesn't seem that hard. Yeah, it's a clear
Speaker 1: trench coat. It's clear. It's like, but isn't it short.
Speaker 1: It's like no, it's like it's like a hip length
Speaker 1: hip length. Oh, I get. I'm fine with a hip
Speaker 1: length coat. By the way. If anyone wants to buy
Speaker 1: me coat, that's fine. I don't like it's we're talking
Speaker 1: like midcalf to ankle that I really won't go for.
Speaker 1: But if it were see through or if you know,
Speaker 1: I absolutely refuse. It was a decision I made and
Speaker 1: I haven't turned back on that decision. Um. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: clothes are amazing. Alright. He just died right, just and
Speaker 1: I love him so much. It was also very fun,
Speaker 1: um in the years leading up to now to go
Speaker 1: through everybody's birthdays, all the replicants birthdays, because I think
Speaker 1: that right, Patty was supposed to be born in Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one two, So it's like I marked all those
Speaker 1: as they went five, and it makes sense they last
Speaker 1: a song as like a computer. That's the whole point.
Speaker 1: Why do the male replicans have last names and the
Speaker 1: female replicants have none? Why do you think? But why
Speaker 1: doesn't Sirie have a last name? Why a series female
Speaker 1: to begin with? What would series last name be? You
Speaker 1: can make serimale. Yeah, it's like programmed default females, because
Speaker 1: that's that the service class is going to be programmed
Speaker 1: default to be. But even just pleasure programmed by men,
Speaker 1: pleasure bots should have last names, pleasure boats. It really
Speaker 1: bothered me the more that I was like, why do
Speaker 1: any of them need Chris Johnson? Maybe it's just her
Speaker 1: stripper name. She still needs a last name. Can be there,
Speaker 1: she was born on. It can be her first pet.
Speaker 1: I don't care. Do you guys have favorite um like
Speaker 1: bits of design or art or something? Harrison Ford the
Speaker 1: greatest intelligent design. There was the best story about Harrison
Speaker 1: Ford in some book that was about Michelle Phillips from
Speaker 1: the Moms and the Papas seeing him on screen and
Speaker 1: I think Star Wars and saying, hey, that's my pot dealer.
Speaker 1: You're kidding. It's great so good. Yeah, Um, do you
Speaker 1: have a favorite? Yeah? I mean I really like the billboards,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you a weird way that having
Speaker 1: been no, because having been to l A Live recently,
Speaker 1: I felt like what was missing was like an element
Speaker 1: of kind of overt tackiness, like that something so huge
Speaker 1: with a human face on it selling you something would
Speaker 1: have endeared it to me. More of that, though. They
Speaker 1: have like digital billboard. When you're standing at the movie
Speaker 1: theater and you're looking at l A Live from that
Speaker 1: kind of like alle thing or whatever, there's like a
Speaker 1: very kind of demure digital billboard. But it's I really
Speaker 1: love the like I mean obviously the like neon at
Speaker 1: night and the like you know, all of those tiny
Speaker 1: little lit up windows with the rain and these like
Speaker 1: angular structures. But I really was so into the lady's
Speaker 1: face like taking the pill and then the Coca Cola billboard,
Speaker 1: because I was like, this must have looked so horrible
Speaker 1: in two, like this is the worst thing that can happen,
Speaker 1: But now it looks like art. It looks like it
Speaker 1: looks like my friends said. My friend Sarah saw Double
Speaker 1: and I'mitty on a big screen. She said, there's this
Speaker 1: line that gets a big laugh where they're talking about
Speaker 1: like the tacky little nineteen thirties ranch houses and everybody's like,
Speaker 1: ha ha ha, I wish I had him. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there is that thing too, where it's like
Speaker 1: what's supposed to be scary from the past becomes like
Speaker 1: warm and fuzzy because it reminds you of the path
Speaker 1: he just had. There's so much just too. You can
Speaker 1: smell that movie, like you can smell Blade Runner, and
Speaker 1: you can kind of like feel how damp it is
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, Whereas obviously the worst thing about
Speaker 1: l A in my opinion is the crowd. And here
Speaker 1: there was fog last night. It left drops of water
Speaker 1: on my car. If you felt fog last night, give
Speaker 1: us a call to four oh four or six night.
Speaker 1: But by the way, it was just small. It was
Speaker 1: wet smog on you. If you think test is wrong
Speaker 1: in Molly's right, press one when you call, and the
Speaker 1: louser will have to die. If you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for long coats for tests to wear. I actually I
Speaker 1: should admit that I had to. It was the red one,
Speaker 1: and then I had one. It was I bought it
Speaker 1: used so I was okay, with the fact that I
Speaker 1: had a fur collar and it was tan with a
Speaker 1: fur collar, and eventually like, I love this. It was
Speaker 1: it looked really cool. And then my mom was like,
Speaker 1: this is used if you ever washed this, and I
Speaker 1: was like, washed it. It has a fur call and
Speaker 1: she just kind of backed away from me, and I
Speaker 1: was like, it's fun if one person can make youself
Speaker 1: destroy your Like, are you wearing something different than you
Speaker 1: usually wearing? Please give us a night call about that,
Speaker 1: Emily before we grab up, though, what was your favorite design? Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's the it's the coat. I mean
Speaker 1: it's the sea through raincoat. Another one would be probably,
Speaker 1: I mean. Zora is a small character, but she has
Speaker 1: a lot of memorable stuff. Her fake snake, her coat,
Speaker 1: her hair dryer or amazing. Uh, that whole scene in
Speaker 1: her dressing room is like very It left a big
Speaker 1: impressional me as a teenager us like, wait, is this
Speaker 1: a really fun job? Um? Yeah, no, I I don't
Speaker 1: know this movie. I am continually delighted. It's movies like
Speaker 1: this that whenever people are like, oh, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a certain way that a movie has to be to
Speaker 1: be popular. I'm just like you all worship this weird
Speaker 1: ass movie that has long runs of no dialogue that's
Speaker 1: extremely impressionistic that we don't even really know what the
Speaker 1: ending of it is. Like there's room for that, and
Speaker 1: like it has legs for a reason because it's like
Speaker 1: it's just like takes you to a place, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm same with two thousand and one. I think movies
Speaker 1: and TV shows and things that don't answer every question
Speaker 1: you could possibly have, like those are all the best things,
Speaker 1: like the Shining, just like things that make your brain
Speaker 1: just like go into a weird place of trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out and you can't. Also, Zodiac. It's funny
Speaker 1: now because we do have the thing of like any
Speaker 1: studio person who's like, where's our Blade Runner, Like we
Speaker 1: need an Blade Runner? They made it and it's boring
Speaker 1: and over explains everything, and so you can very much
Speaker 1: the point, especially if Harrison Ford characters. I feel like
Speaker 1: people you can't replicate it, and you especially can't replicate
Speaker 1: it with like Chris Pratt by giving him some like
Speaker 1: one liners. There's just like there's just sort of like
Speaker 1: self consciousness about Harrison Ford, like a seventies actor. Nois
Speaker 1: that makes it great. He's not just an eighties guy
Speaker 1: being like, fuck off princess. He does say something to
Speaker 1: that does something to that effect. But it's also like
Speaker 1: it was coming from Harrison Ford. Maybe it's ok she
Speaker 1: didn't have like a little bit of a forceful seduction there.
Speaker 1: There was a little problemat Yeah, that wouldn't. That wouldn't
Speaker 1: exactly what if they're both robots, then it's okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: I picked into the same conscious app astrology app in
Speaker 1: the dating app or one app. We are all one app. Well,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to have our guest this week, Elizabeth Can't
Speaker 1: Well on to talk about her new book of poetry
Speaker 1: and being a semi prepper in Los Angeles. Welcome back Tonightcall.
Speaker 1: We are now joined by our guest, Elizabeth Can't well Um.
Speaker 1: She is a high school teacher and poet living in Claremont, California.
Speaker 1: Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals such
Speaker 1: as Diagram, The Cincinnati Review, the l A Review. She
Speaker 1: is the author of a chat book, Premonitions, and two
Speaker 1: full length collections of poetry, Nights, I Let the Tiger
Speaker 1: Get you and All the Emergency Type Structures, which was
Speaker 1: a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the regional
Speaker 1: winner of the Hillary Graven dick Prize. She's amazing. We
Speaker 1: all just read All the Emergency Type Structures and it
Speaker 1: is the most nightcall book of poetry ever. It covers
Speaker 1: um zombie bees, which we have covered zombie cicadas. It's
Speaker 1: like the same thing and also a fascinating app that
Speaker 1: we want to exist. So, Hello Elizabeth, thank Welcome to
Speaker 1: the month. This is great because we had Elena Smith
Speaker 1: on last week from Dickinson. So we're doing like a
Speaker 1: poetry months. It's Poetry Month, it's also American History Months.
Speaker 1: We've decided, I decided, Molly decided. This comes down from
Speaker 1: me and then you guys agreed. Season American History. It
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. Secrets. I feel like your poems deal
Speaker 1: a lot with some of the dark aspects of American
Speaker 1: history and also of the human brain. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's an accurate assessment. Yeah, Like Emily Dickinson, there is
Speaker 1: a gothness to your poetry that appeals deeply to me,
Speaker 1: and also a really interesting structure. And then a lot
Speaker 1: of the poems are about actual physical Struck sures, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is such a like this is like a very
Speaker 1: general question. But I always think this, especially with poets,
Speaker 1: because I'm like, I'm so not a poet, but I'm like,
Speaker 1: how does one go about it? But you have so
Speaker 1: many like we're saying, like so many interesting kind of
Speaker 1: conceits and like ideas and little like almost like the
Speaker 1: starts of short stories, and I just like wonder why
Speaker 1: for you poetry is the best way to like explore
Speaker 1: those That's a great question. I feel like writing, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like any other art where you can't really explain
Speaker 1: why you're good at one thing and not another. I've
Speaker 1: definitely tried fiction before, and I am terrible at it.
Speaker 1: I can say that confidently. Horrible short story once about
Speaker 1: a boy who was like locked in a walk in
Speaker 1: freezer at an ice cream store sounds great, died while
Speaker 1: a puppy was like watching it was There's something about
Speaker 1: writing short stories. I was just thinking about this yesterday.
Speaker 1: I was like, is there anything more off conscious to
Speaker 1: a short story? Let me spin you a wee tail
Speaker 1: the first line of any decent short story. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like, I mean, I feel like I kind of
Speaker 1: work in images, Like I think in images and I
Speaker 1: um uh spit things out in images. So poetry works
Speaker 1: really well for for the image. I would say, um,
Speaker 1: originally not not originally at all, um, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that usually I'll have a thought and I'll try
Speaker 1: to write it just as sort of like notes, either
Speaker 1: notes on my phone or notes on a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of turns into a poem eventually,
Speaker 1: whether I wanted to or not. And your stuff especially,
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes me think how actually well suited
Speaker 1: poetry is to capturing what it feels like to live
Speaker 1: today and this weird dystopian reality we find ourselves in,
Speaker 1: because it is like you don't necessarily need to set
Speaker 1: up all these images of these ideas because that's how
Speaker 1: they come at you in twenty nineteen. It's just like
Speaker 1: a like there's kind of a poetry consciousness, a positive
Speaker 1: neural network. I also think it was great because it
Speaker 1: allowed you to set up the tension between technology and
Speaker 1: the natural world, which was some of some of my
Speaker 1: favorite moments in the collection were kind of just sort
Speaker 1: of showing like the disconnect between the people with their
Speaker 1: tiny screens, I think was one of the lines. And
Speaker 1: then having this like deep connection with like water, Like
Speaker 1: I think, so your your book is kind of divided
Speaker 1: into different sections that deal with like earth and water
Speaker 1: and fire and then the home um, and I was
Speaker 1: wondering kind of how you came up with that idea
Speaker 1: of like tying things together that way. Well, I think
Speaker 1: I started out wanting to write something about, like not apocalyptic,
Speaker 1: but like what do we do when the systems as
Speaker 1: we know them seemed to be collapsing? And like how
Speaker 1: do we find a space for ourselves to exist when
Speaker 1: like literally I feel like systems and structures that we
Speaker 1: trusted as kids, or maybe maybe that some of us
Speaker 1: dressed as kids, we're sort of seeing the cracks in
Speaker 1: them now. And so I was thinking about, like what
Speaker 1: do you do, how do you survive that? And like
Speaker 1: what are the kinds of structures one could build to
Speaker 1: like withstand those storms metaphorically and and literally obviously as
Speaker 1: like a lot of the book is also sort of
Speaker 1: climate change. Ee. I mean I wrote a lot of
Speaker 1: it in seventeen so I almost feel like I wish
Speaker 1: I had leaned into some of that more looking back
Speaker 1: on it now from two years later, Were you guys evacuated?
Speaker 1: At some point for the fires or was that just
Speaker 1: kind of like alluded to as being something Californian There
Speaker 1: were fires near us, Um, but we we personally were
Speaker 1: never evacuated for fires. I did. My parents live in
Speaker 1: Thousand Oaks, so they were evacuated, like, but I think
Speaker 1: that was like last year. They stayed at our house
Speaker 1: for a while. Um. Their house was safe luckily. But um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think just thinking about those different structures and
Speaker 1: then also thinking about like the fact that like whatever
Speaker 1: we build has to come from the earth, right, So
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, either it's going to be the water,
Speaker 1: or it's going to be the land, or it's going
Speaker 1: to be out of space. Um, but whatever we create
Speaker 1: has to be of of a structure that is natural
Speaker 1: in origin. Yeah. I feel like, Um, I really liked
Speaker 1: that you talked about the horse hitch at your old house,
Speaker 1: which your husband talked about when he guessed it on
Speaker 1: the podcast. It was that horse hitch, Like what was
Speaker 1: the one Emily the plant you were talking about recently
Speaker 1: that I didn't know what it was? What plant you
Speaker 1: were like that plant that everybody had in the two thousands,
Speaker 1: horse hair horsetail. It was the hipster plant. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: ter plant. I don't remember this horse teelers. You know
Speaker 1: about horse tail. It's a very it's such a signifier.
Speaker 1: I feel like of like mid two thousand's California gentrification.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not just California. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: horizontal fence. Yeah, it's just like green. It looks like
Speaker 1: really narrow bamboo. It's like if bamboo is grass and
Speaker 1: you can make a very like and it's green. It's green. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think in my mind I thought it was the
Speaker 1: different thing that was the toughty tough no I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I think I think that's how it looks naturally. But
Speaker 1: I think if you trim it to trim your your
Speaker 1: new restaurant. You three people talking about trying to gas
Speaker 1: plant sign when you could use a visual. Do you
Speaker 1: have a favorite California plant or like like maybe I'm
Speaker 1: an evocative plant for you. You guys have great plant.
Speaker 1: I want to say, you guys have a great I've
Speaker 1: seen your garden on the Instagram and you have an
Speaker 1: amazing Halloween display. We did have a was Old West theme. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it was like, um, I think it was called
Speaker 1: ghost Gulch. Is the little sign we painted and there's
Speaker 1: like a skeleton and cowboy outfit, and my younger son
Speaker 1: is devastated that it is no longer in a yard. Um. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I feel like I like, I enjoy succulents, but that
Speaker 1: like such a basic like Visco girl things, Where are
Speaker 1: you from? Are you from? I grew up in Virginia, Okay,
Speaker 1: not a succulent place. Yeah, it's one of those fun
Speaker 1: things and you come out here and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm really like on another plan. And I never understood
Speaker 1: that Virginia was very green until I came back to Virginia.
Speaker 1: Like when the first time I visited with Chris Actually
Speaker 1: I remember he was like blown away because he grew
Speaker 1: up in Texas and then to California, and I was like,
Speaker 1: welcome to Virginia. He was like, why are there so
Speaker 1: many trees the moisture here. I had that experience in Portland,
Speaker 1: and I went to Portland for the first time and
Speaker 1: was just like, trees everywhere. Portland is so beautiful. I
Speaker 1: could live somewhere with trees. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned Ray
Speaker 1: Bradbury in one of the poems also, which I only
Speaker 1: just realized recently that those poems are all about like
Speaker 1: moving from the Midwest to Lost of the poems, the
Speaker 1: short stories about moving from the Midwest to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Uh in Los Angeles is Mars. Oh yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: It also makes you want to move to Mars occasionally.
Speaker 1: I say that as someone who loves l A but Um.
Speaker 1: In one of your poems, when you talk about living
Speaker 1: in a kind of exoplanet commune, I was like, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll do that now because the fires have kind of continued.
Speaker 1: We've already talked about in the podcast, so I won't
Speaker 1: for anyone. We haven't talked about this yet. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about. I read like an obscure etymology, not
Speaker 1: at all vetted, but it said that maybe the Santa
Speaker 1: Ana winds are actually a bastardization of Satanas the devil winds,
Speaker 1: because that is what other native groups called them, and
Speaker 1: apparently like the tongue but people who were the people
Speaker 1: here called them something like that, and maybe it was
Speaker 1: like translated into Spanish as Satanas and then translated back
Speaker 1: into English as Santa Annas. Because they don't come from
Speaker 1: Santana and they are the devil winds. They are super
Speaker 1: that they're also natural, like they're meant to happen, and
Speaker 1: they do happen every year, but it just sucks so bad.
Speaker 1: Every animals hate them. Right, But I think like what
Speaker 1: your poems get at is like there's a way you
Speaker 1: can live in tune with those things, and that's not
Speaker 1: what we're doing at all. Yeah. Well, I feel like
Speaker 1: my my poem about like going to another planet and
Speaker 1: living is also like that's a cheat, you know, like
Speaker 1: if you want to be like, let's blast off and
Speaker 1: live on another planet, it's like cool, but that is
Speaker 1: such a kind of shitty way to go about it. Conservatism.
Speaker 1: M We just talked recently about how scientists have now
Speaker 1: kind of asked us to give up hope on that,
Speaker 1: which I don't think we were ever like really witching
Speaker 1: to go anti planet colonism were anti planet. But it's
Speaker 1: also interesting to explore that impulse when you feel overwhelmed
Speaker 1: not just by like immediate environmental concerns, but also obviously
Speaker 1: what that implies about largely environments. It's like the commune impulse,
Speaker 1: but it's like you can't go anywhere. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: think also if you live anywhere where, I mean, I know,
Speaker 1: you guys didn't have to evacuate, but like in California,
Speaker 1: if you do live anywhere where you're under risk from
Speaker 1: having to be evacuated for a fire, or if you
Speaker 1: live in Florida where you know every year you have
Speaker 1: to board up your house and like the water takes
Speaker 1: over everything. Like I think like having some kind of
Speaker 1: sense of being at the mercy of nature even in
Speaker 1: a non climate change scenario, you guys have tornadoes. Though,
Speaker 1: this is what I now can't stop thinking, right, But
Speaker 1: that's the thing, like I think, I I wish that
Speaker 1: that ingrained more of a like cool I'm gonna like
Speaker 1: let nature take over type mentality instead of this like
Speaker 1: like people who keep the inside of their house like
Speaker 1: succeed degrees all through the year, where it's like like
Speaker 1: that's like the small version of it where it's like
Speaker 1: it's hot. It should be a little bit hot inside
Speaker 1: your house, Like you know, just like learning to like
Speaker 1: like like ride nature is sort of like resisting it
Speaker 1: because I feel like that's what that is what gets
Speaker 1: you climate change events eventually. Yeah. Well, and I feel
Speaker 1: like the other thing that I that I think a
Speaker 1: lot about is like the disconnect between living in like
Speaker 1: a suburban community or in a UM, any kind of
Speaker 1: community where people are sort of comfortable, um, and how
Speaker 1: you kind of have to lie to yourself in order
Speaker 1: to do that. We're like, oh, but we turned the
Speaker 1: thermostat down at our house and it's fine. Um. And
Speaker 1: this sort of like weird almost social pressure that you
Speaker 1: experience when you're like, oh, but everybody does that and
Speaker 1: this is just how we do it, and like no
Speaker 1: one else is changing, So why do I need to change?
Speaker 1: I'm teaching this book right now, actually called The House
Speaker 1: next Door. Have any of you read this book? Now? Oh?
Speaker 1: I think night Call would love this book. It's called
Speaker 1: The House next Door. It was written in I want
Speaker 1: to say nineteen seventies seventy something. I don't know. Um
Speaker 1: that it's Anne Rivers sit Ins and she's like a
Speaker 1: kind of under the radar female UM Southern Gothic writer.
Speaker 1: And it's a ghost it's like a haunted house story
Speaker 1: where the house is new, so it's basically like what
Speaker 1: the haunted house was had just been built wonderful. And
Speaker 1: it's like social commentary about suburban Southern like, yeah, where
Speaker 1: is it funky? It's in like a suburb of Um,
Speaker 1: I want to see a suburb of Atlanta. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure it's in the South. Yeah, it came out. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would love to read it. It's great ghost story
Speaker 1: about a seventies suburbia, like haunting, it's awesome. It's like
Speaker 1: a married couple where if um, if two people got
Speaker 1: married and decided not to have kids, and we're like,
Speaker 1: we're going to lean into just like loving ourselves in
Speaker 1: self care and like being a part of our suburban community,
Speaker 1: and then we're just destroyed by a series of happenings.
Speaker 1: But then again, like, is it also just because you're
Speaker 1: narcissistic and have money to be comfortable? And what are
Speaker 1: your opinion is the most haunted architecture if you have
Speaker 1: an opinion on this, because talking about the suburbs, I'm
Speaker 1: like that to me, sometimes mid century houses seem the
Speaker 1: most hauntable, And I tend to go on in a
Speaker 1: boring way about upside down floor plans and how I
Speaker 1: think that they are just ghost magnets. What do you
Speaker 1: mean when the bedrooms are below the rest of the house,
Speaker 1: you are crushed by the way bedrooms have to be upstairs. No,
Speaker 1: they have to be either on the same level or above.
Speaker 1: But if the bedrooms are downstairs, or sometimes if you
Speaker 1: enter and then yeah, yeah, there's all like a split level.
Speaker 1: Well okay, for first of all house floors in certain
Speaker 1: mid century houses, there there's like a main level and
Speaker 1: then sometimes there's either multiple bedrooms or one master bedroom
Speaker 1: that is like subterranean almost, don't you know? I do know? Okay,
Speaker 1: can you imagine waking up like underground? To me, I
Speaker 1: think that's the worst psychic room in the basement. I
Speaker 1: actually have like a vivid memory of sleeping over at
Speaker 1: a friend's house where it was like a weird like
Speaker 1: there was bedrooms on the upper floor, but then also
Speaker 1: bedrooms on the lower floor. What if you're like the
Speaker 1: cool teenager and you get your own room. That's why
Speaker 1: teenagers are so weird that they all want to live
Speaker 1: in a basement. All they're all the bad vibes. Also
Speaker 1: the radar settles. It's true, but it was your least
Speaker 1: favorite structure vibe wise. I do think like a very
Speaker 1: antiseptic modern place is creepy to be in when it
Speaker 1: feels like it doesn't when it feels like it's not
Speaker 1: really lived in. That to me is actually creepy, Like
Speaker 1: the complete lack of texture. Yes, like the books face,
Speaker 1: the spine facing backwards on the bookshelves. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be in a room with that. But it's just
Speaker 1: like the thing we were talking about, because the room
Speaker 1: that I'm writing, and we have a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that takes place at a spa, and we were talking
Speaker 1: about like the idea of spa culture and different in
Speaker 1: different cultures, and how somehow the Western one arrived at
Speaker 1: this thing where everything must be pristine and white and
Speaker 1: clean and made of tiles and like a lot like
Speaker 1: both other like European cultures and Asian cultures, like much
Speaker 1: more value, like would and natural surfaces, and like when
Speaker 1: you're at a spa and relaxed and you want to
Speaker 1: feel like you're a part of nature, but there's this
Speaker 1: whole Like I think that to death. I think on
Speaker 1: everything in America, well in Los Angeles, yes, but I think, oh,
Speaker 1: you mean like done the done, the white gleaming services. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like so dominant minimalism. I hated, Um, what do
Speaker 1: you guys think of the most haunted architecture? Already said
Speaker 1: mid century? I'm sticking with that. I used to like
Speaker 1: mid century houses and I still find them to be
Speaker 1: fun to look at, but having For a while, I
Speaker 1: was just going to open houses all the time because
Speaker 1: it was like free and the thing to do, and
Speaker 1: I felt like I eventually started picturing myself living in
Speaker 1: a house with like walls that would slide, and like
Speaker 1: the downstairs bedroom and the weird kind of like just
Speaker 1: two angular bathrooms. It just I just became convinced that
Speaker 1: I don't think you can be happy in a house
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I don't know. I think like that
Speaker 1: kind of subdivision gated community, like nineties nineties mini mansion thing,
Speaker 1: that's a really bad vibe, especially because I think there's
Speaker 1: a it probably starts in like the seventies or eighties,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's very like I have a
Speaker 1: very tactile memory of being in houses like this where
Speaker 1: it just feels like it's fancy and it smells like
Speaker 1: a new house, but also like everything feels like kind
Speaker 1: of hollow, like that kind of empty feeling that's the
Speaker 1: decorating scheme of all airbnbs. How about that Airbnb just
Speaker 1: read that it was insane? Did you guys read it?
Speaker 1: It's amazing? Yeah, this reporter for Vice accidentally uncovered this
Speaker 1: huge Airbnb scam when she booked a place to stay.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. Yeah, it was like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a picture of a couple. They're like, I forget their names,
Speaker 1: Frank exactly, Jack and Diane when something they have no regulations,
Speaker 1: they are not no, they did they this couple doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: They it's like a guy who bought up a ton
Speaker 1: of property and what he does is basically a bait
Speaker 1: and switch where you show up and he says, oops,
Speaker 1: there was a sewage accident. I need to put you
Speaker 1: in a place that's identical. But it's like two blocks
Speaker 1: away it's the same. And then you go and it's
Speaker 1: not at all the same and it's not what you
Speaker 1: It's like a kind of terrible ramshackle, Like there's like
Speaker 1: beds with no sheets and like and like the multiple
Speaker 1: people staying there. Yeah, and then they don't refund you
Speaker 1: because airbb you cannot speak to a human. But after
Speaker 1: she published this story, Airbnb was totally silent on it,
Speaker 1: and then the FBI was like, hello, what an interesting
Speaker 1: article you've written. We're going to start looking into this.
Speaker 1: So then Airbnb decided that come December something, they're changing
Speaker 1: their whole operations all startups get shut down. Hey, let's
Speaker 1: take a nightcall, high nightcall. I wanted to let you
Speaker 1: know that I've been in the tunnels underneath e c
Speaker 1: l A. I entered through the Art department. Um, I
Speaker 1: guess it's like the north east part of campus, and
Speaker 1: then you go underneath the building and there's like the
Speaker 1: tunnels between the different departments. It's kind of like being
Speaker 1: inside of a ship, where each doorway is like a
Speaker 1: circular raised area that you stepped through, and then they're
Speaker 1: like skinny short tunnels. But then they opened up to
Speaker 1: these like big cavernous rooms underneath the department. So I
Speaker 1: went under theater and it was like filled with old props.
Speaker 1: It was super fucking creepy. And then I also went
Speaker 1: under the library the clooks there, and that was filled
Speaker 1: with out of circulation books, uh and like plat files
Speaker 1: and like an insane amount of books. It was like
Speaker 1: a huge, huge room. Um, okay, right, I'm in suspense.
Speaker 1: I did know that the U c l A tunnels
Speaker 1: like there is an entrance the northeast campuses where theater
Speaker 1: and film is, which is where I went. So I
Speaker 1: was That's why I was like kind of vaguely aware
Speaker 1: of it, but I never went into it. But I
Speaker 1: just looked up a map of the U. C l
Speaker 1: A tunnels and they go through the whole school. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like when you're saying it's like a ship.
Speaker 1: It's like because it's like an artery that goes down
Speaker 1: the campus under Does it start at Royce Hall? No,
Speaker 1: it goes through Royce Um. I mean it starts like
Speaker 1: it goes to like Polly Pavilion, which is underneath like
Speaker 1: the soccer field there. I mean that's how far out
Speaker 1: it goes. But it goes like the whole North campus.
Speaker 1: There's like a square you can kind of see it's
Speaker 1: like that um. But yeah, it's so like I had
Speaker 1: thought that it was only one part of the campus,
Speaker 1: but it like goes through the whole thing. And they
Speaker 1: called in steam tunnels on here, and I was trying.
Speaker 1: I looked at like, this research is all very familiar
Speaker 1: to me because I've definitely looked this up before and
Speaker 1: like tried to figure out what they were originally used for.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess like as a means of transporting
Speaker 1: things from one department to another. I guess during nuclear No,
Speaker 1: that's true. A huge bomb shelter. But but most of
Speaker 1: u c l A pre dates like the nuclear panic
Speaker 1: as they built it. Oh, it's for the lizard people.
Speaker 1: It could have been for the ninja turtles. Was there
Speaker 1: pizza then, we know? I mean it's a college. This
Speaker 1: is kind of a Ninja turtle situation, it is. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: was saying that her college also contained underground tunnels. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I went to Yale, and there were tunnels at Yale
Speaker 1: that I knew people went into. I never went into them,
Speaker 1: but I did that We had a we had these
Speaker 1: residential colleges, and there were tunnels under our aidental college
Speaker 1: that I went into a lot because it was the
Speaker 1: only way you could get to I don't want it
Speaker 1: wasn't the laundry room, but there was like a weird
Speaker 1: place where you could only get to something through these
Speaker 1: tunnels and you would have to bend double and like
Speaker 1: crouched down, and there was like one strange area where
Speaker 1: it was all like discarded bikes and I don't know
Speaker 1: whose bikes they were, like they were not active members
Speaker 1: of the school's bikes. I just assumed the Yale tunnels
Speaker 1: lead to like the Phantom of the Opera for sure,
Speaker 1: it does feel like the Yale tunnels would be much
Speaker 1: more like kind of decrepit and like colonial than there
Speaker 1: might be more ancient, like they might like ancient Masonic energy,
Speaker 1: where like the U. C. L a. Tunnels have like
Speaker 1: turn of the century Masonic energy. I got really piste
Speaker 1: off when I went back for a reunion and they
Speaker 1: had like renovated our college, which was fine whatever, um,
Speaker 1: but they had taken out all the creepy tunnels and
Speaker 1: put in like a nice basement with like a ping
Speaker 1: pong table and a dark room. Like this feels terrible. No,
Speaker 1: but he's ever going to hang out without a haunted tunnel?
Speaker 1: You cantrive? Were you allowed to go in the tunnels
Speaker 1: back before they were renovated? I mean yeah, in the
Speaker 1: in our residential college, we were, um the other tunnels,
Speaker 1: I think we're not like kosher tunnels to go in.
Speaker 1: And there was also a weird thing with like a
Speaker 1: secret society that used like more water, Like their water
Speaker 1: bill was like higher than any place on campus, and
Speaker 1: there was no evidence of like what that water was
Speaker 1: going to, Like they didn't have a swimming pool as
Speaker 1: far as we knew, hydroponics. Maybe they were in tunnel. Sure,
Speaker 1: I don't know the water torture. I don't know practicing escaping. Yeah,
Speaker 1: slip and slide. They were slipping and slide, and what
Speaker 1: were they using all that waterfall? It's a weird fact
Speaker 1: that I don't know. Okay, if you went to Yale
Speaker 1: and you know why they had the high water bill,
Speaker 1: give us a night call if you remember, particularly which
Speaker 1: secret society hot Yale Center calls a two four oh
Speaker 1: four six night and tell us why that water bill
Speaker 1: was high. We like a regional mystery. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: really understand what the societies are for, except for people
Speaker 1: who then go on to do war crimes to meet
Speaker 1: you mean, basically, Yeah, it's just for boys to feel
Speaker 1: like a sense of exclusivity about what they're It's just
Speaker 1: for if you if you don't feel enough of a
Speaker 1: sense of exclusivity for going to Yale, then a secret
Speaker 1: society might be for you. Also, they have them like everywhere,
Speaker 1: not just at i Vy's, but those are like the
Speaker 1: most famous. Do you c l A have any like
Speaker 1: I don't know about I know about some at UNC.
Speaker 1: Just because David was from Chapel Hill, doesn't u v
Speaker 1: A have that crazy one? Where like it's called like
Speaker 1: seven or something and there's only seven people in it,
Speaker 1: but you don't know who they are, but they chime
Speaker 1: the bell at Uva when one of the seven dies.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything. I'm pretty sure this is I mean,
Speaker 1: this is Virginia. This is maybe Virginia gossip. But I
Speaker 1: did know people who went to UVA, and I believe
Speaker 1: there's something called like seven. See that's dope, though, Like
Speaker 1: I would love to be And that's because if that's
Speaker 1: all that it is, I hope that the whole goal
Speaker 1: is to live. And so like when you come from
Speaker 1: somewhere like here where you're like the traditions aren't that old?
Speaker 1: What were these really old traditions? Like? And then like
Speaker 1: my boyfriends from New Orleans and just like we watched
Speaker 1: something about like all the traditions of Mardi Gras and
Speaker 1: it's all just like so intricate. Everybody's in a secret society,
Speaker 1: um and there's like so much costuming. It kind of
Speaker 1: just totally freaking New Orleans likes like a lot of
Speaker 1: rules and like details their detailed oriented city rules that
Speaker 1: come with the secret society or what really take me
Speaker 1: out of wanting to be in there at the society
Speaker 1: that Brown did we we didn't have any We were
Speaker 1: fraternities and those aren't secret though at all. That doesn't count.
Speaker 1: Those are public stupid apologies to anyone in the Greek.
Speaker 1: But there are also some like there were some things
Speaker 1: that were like fraternities and sororities at Brown, but they
Speaker 1: were all like for nerds, a gameshouse house was like
Speaker 1: the D and D house and they had more sex
Speaker 1: and they had water. They were great. The Seventh Society,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the Summer Society once again Atlas Obscure
Speaker 1: coming through for us UM. All that's really known is
Speaker 1: that the group is focused on philanthropy. Now, it's also
Speaker 1: been around since colonial times. UM, specifically to support the university. UH.
Speaker 1: Donations have been known to come in for amounts like
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand, seven dred and seventy seven dollars and seven cents.
Speaker 1: But there's one thing we know is that philanthropy sometimes
Speaker 1: had some shady stuff. Yeah, how are the seven chosen? Um?
Speaker 1: Nobody knows. The Seventh Society local is the numeral seven
Speaker 1: surrounded by the alpha, omega and infinity signs. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's like the beginning the end and forever. Elizabeth, how
Speaker 1: serious are you about proper being a propper? I saw
Speaker 1: you also quote the world and I was, yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know. We talked a lot about
Speaker 1: leftist preppers. Well, do you think you automatically start to
Speaker 1: get proper tendencies just by like just by being outside
Speaker 1: of a city or being outside like a dense population area.
Speaker 1: I feel like southern California has a specific prepper like attitude,
Speaker 1: especially because of the earthquakes, So you have to have
Speaker 1: like an earthquake bag, and now that there's wildfires, like
Speaker 1: you need like a go bag. Um. I do, Like
Speaker 1: I've never gone into like a survivalist store, but I
Speaker 1: did have like a long conversation with a few people
Speaker 1: about like if we were to like make this happen,
Speaker 1: maybe we should move to the mountain and like just
Speaker 1: create this small commune. How can you also engenders that
Speaker 1: equal part? But also, like some of this is just practical,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not like you're taken with like a
Speaker 1: whimsical notion being a prepper. Because also as a mom,
Speaker 1: you have to like, yeah, the emergency kits are like
Speaker 1: mandated by school. You have to figure out where you
Speaker 1: would pick up your kids if there were an earthquake.
Speaker 1: My least favorite part of those school prep kits is
Speaker 1: that you have to include I don't know if your
Speaker 1: schools do this, but you have to include like a
Speaker 1: note God that supposedly your child would read were they
Speaker 1: to have to access their emergency kit, which to me
Speaker 1: is like what am I supposed to say in the note?
Speaker 1: Like goodbye? If you're reading this you will likely never
Speaker 1: see me again, or civilization? I totally cheer them up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think if you're reading a note
Speaker 1: from your parents from an emergency kit, the amount of
Speaker 1: cheers like I think my mom's just said like I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about you, like don't worry, like just something like that, like,
Speaker 1: which I think is like not. I mean when you're
Speaker 1: a kid, I think that can go a long way.
Speaker 1: I think we should all leave your book of poems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be a perfect thing. It's like a guide
Speaker 1: book for the apocalypse. Well, you should all go out
Speaker 1: and purchase a little bit Elizabeth's book, which I will
Speaker 1: bungle the name of all the emergency type structures structures.
Speaker 1: There you go, all the emergency type structures. You can
Speaker 1: get it at Skylight. If you're a friend of Skylate,
Speaker 1: correct Molley, you picked up a hard copy through the
Speaker 1: poetry section. It is the section. It's really can't recommend
Speaker 1: it highly enough. And it actually it had been a
Speaker 1: really long time since I had read a book of
Speaker 1: poetry cover to cover, and I just sat down and like,
Speaker 1: in one sitting, it was awesome. It's so congratulations, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Thanks for coming on the show, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me, Thanks for listening to Nightcall. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to give us a night call, give us a
Speaker 1: call at two four oh four six night You can
Speaker 1: also follow us on social media. Nightcall Podcast on Instagram
Speaker 1: and Facebook, Nightcall Pod on Twitter, and if you're enjoying
Speaker 1: the show, please don't forget to leave us a rating
Speaker 1: and review and subscribe. Thanks for listening. Bode Bye. Nightcall
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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