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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh arf Clark,

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Speaker 1: and there's Charles rough Bryant and Jerry. Oh no, Roland

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Speaker 1: is out there somewhere too. You put us all together.

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Speaker 1: You have a really weird Scottish type mystery for this

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Speaker 1: short stuff. That's right, the mystery of the Overton Bridge.

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Speaker 1: That was great. You suddenly turned into like a character

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Speaker 1: that the Scooby Doo gang would meet towards the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the episode. Who set everything up for him? You know,

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Speaker 1: when we did our tour of Edinburgh, I met a

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Speaker 1: I met a dog there. I met a very kind

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Speaker 1: lady on a walk through town and she was walking

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Speaker 1: her dog that looked sort of pit bullish and she

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Speaker 1: was just so friendly and I love that accent, so

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Speaker 1: I'll do anything to get them to talk to me.

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Speaker 1: And so I engaged her and her dog and I went, oh,

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Speaker 1: what's the breeze? And oh, just a wee stuffy. It's great.

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Speaker 1: I remember you telling that story because you're saying that

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Speaker 1: you were missing your dogs, because that was towards the

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Speaker 1: end of that tour. Remember hearing about that dog. But

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Speaker 1: this dog did not leap to its death, no, which

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Speaker 1: is good. Probably because it was nowhere near Dumbarton, Scotland,

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Speaker 1: or maybe Dumbarton. Let's go with Dumberley, Dumbarton, not Dumbarton. Um,

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Speaker 1: dumb American is more like it dumb Dumbarton, Scotland. That's

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Speaker 1: way better. Um. There is a bridge there, the Overton Bridge,

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Speaker 1: like you were saying, and it's really beautiful. It's made

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Speaker 1: of stone, very ornate. It's not the longest bridge you'll

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Speaker 1: ever see. It's pretty short actually, and it's fairly low um.

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Speaker 1: But it does cross a substantial um gap, something like

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Speaker 1: twelve meters or about fifty ft drop into a ravine,

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Speaker 1: a little stream with rocks and all sorts of stuff

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Speaker 1: below it. So there's a good reason for that bridge.

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Speaker 1: And it's also not the oldest bridge in the world.

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Speaker 1: I think in the mid nineteenth century. It was built

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Speaker 1: to connect this estate that had just been built, their

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Speaker 1: Overton House UM, to the rest of the town. So

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Speaker 1: it was a pretty useful bridge too. But it is

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Speaker 1: now considered widely considered a haunted supernatural death bridge um

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Speaker 1: by the locals in Dumbarton. Yeah, and namely because of

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Speaker 1: the weird thing that has happened dating back to the

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, at least as far as we know. There

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Speaker 1: have been many cases, and we don't know how many.

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Speaker 1: I've seen. There was a terrible website that said six hundred.

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Speaker 1: But um, and I was going to read some of

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Speaker 1: it actually, but then I felt bad because it was

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Speaker 1: in very broken English. It was either a bot writing

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Speaker 1: it or it was someone who doesn't speak good English. Well,

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Speaker 1: we have a good twenty or thirty years before you

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Speaker 1: need to empathize with bots. Okay, it was pretty funny though,

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Speaker 1: but um, they reckoned about six hundred. Other people have

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Speaker 1: said in the hundreds. Some people say fewer. But dogs

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Speaker 1: leaping off of this bridge evidently unleashed. I mean, this

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Speaker 1: is a very easy way to stop this. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of the elephant in the room. But um,

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Speaker 1: I guess you know, it's it's a quaint bridge, and

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Speaker 1: it looks like a pretty lovely small town, so maybe

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Speaker 1: people can just walk around with their dogs off leash.

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Speaker 1: But these dogs leaping that fifty ft and many of

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Speaker 1: them dying, many of them suffering bad injuries. Uh. Supposedly

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Speaker 1: one of them jumped from the bridge, survived and ran

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Speaker 1: up and jumped off again. Man, which is just crazy.

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Speaker 1: That's second times on the owner. If you ask me, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know from bridge. Once shame on you, second time,

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Speaker 1: shame on me the dog go owner. That's right. UM.

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Speaker 1: I saw in the New York Times article on this that, UM,

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Speaker 1: they seem to think that there is at least fifty

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Speaker 1: that have been definitely documented. So this isn't just like

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Speaker 1: local legend like this is this is known to happen.

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Speaker 1: This actually happens. These dogs are jumping to their deaths

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Speaker 1: off of this bridge. Um. And it's a really weird

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Speaker 1: thing that no one has been able to explain, and

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Speaker 1: we're we won't be able to explain it. But um.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand and ten, the Dumbarton Council, the city,

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Speaker 1: the town council UM contacted a behaviorist to animal behaviorist

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Speaker 1: named David Sands and said, hey, can you come help

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Speaker 1: figure this out because we're actually a fairly superstitious town.

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Speaker 1: And right now, the prevailing theory is that it's the

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Speaker 1: White Lady of Overton, the ghost of the widow of

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Speaker 1: the son of the guy who built Overton House, that's

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Speaker 1: causing these dogs jump, and it's giving the White Lady

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Speaker 1: of Overton a bad name, because why would she want

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Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, why don't you want to have

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Speaker 1: all these dogs die by their own Paul? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Maybe she she just always thought dogs were just so stupid,

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Speaker 1: so now in death she's amusing herself by making them jump.

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Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take a quick break here and

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Speaker 1: terrible cliffhanger. Let's say something happy and positive instead. Rainbow bright,

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Speaker 1: rainbow bright. Okay, go ahead, right back and talk about

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Speaker 1: David Sands right after this. Alrighty, so they bring this

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Speaker 1: animal expert over there, David Sands, he visits this bridge.

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Speaker 1: I love how this article says he concluded first that

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Speaker 1: the dogs weren't doing this on purpose. It's like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think suicide is uniquely human. He mistaken. He earned

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Speaker 1: his money right out of the gate. Someone will probably

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Speaker 1: prove me wrong. There's probably some animal that does this,

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Speaker 1: but certainly not dogs. Well, don't even bother writing in

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Speaker 1: with Lemmings, everybody, because we debunked that years ago. That's right.

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Speaker 1: Uh So he had a couple of things to say,

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Speaker 1: one of which was that the way the bridge is built,

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Speaker 1: and the part of it has to do the tapered

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Speaker 1: edges of the bridge. Um part of it has to do.

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Speaker 1: Apparently I saw somewhere else that the foliage around it

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Speaker 1: creates a little bit of an optical illusion that looks

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Speaker 1: like you may be able to just run right off

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Speaker 1: this bridge on the ground. Um. I was surprised when

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Speaker 1: I looked at the bridge. I thought they were slipping

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Speaker 1: through a trestle or something on ground level. But it's,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's a wall, like they have to jump

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Speaker 1: up and over, which is totally on the owner. No, totally.

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Speaker 1: It is like you said, like the dogs that are um,

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Speaker 1: that are the victims of this are the same dogs

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Speaker 1: that belong to people who like to show off how

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Speaker 1: cool their dogs are that they don't need to be

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Speaker 1: on the leash, that kind of thing. But the dogs

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Speaker 1: like inevitably go up and like approach another dog or

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Speaker 1: get too close to somebody who's scared dogs. It never

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Speaker 1: ends very well. But yeah, the the dog does have

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Speaker 1: to jump over this wall into a fifty ft drop below. Right.

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Speaker 1: The second thing that he came up with was he said,

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Speaker 1: I think that it could be possibly just some of

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Speaker 1: these smells down there driving these dogs crazy. Of these

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Speaker 1: animals he reckoned it was mink urine. Um. I did

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Speaker 1: see where one local hunter said, you know, there's there's

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Speaker 1: no mink around here. That's what one local hunter said.

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Speaker 1: But then an official like an animal I don't know

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Speaker 1: who the official body for animal. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: it was rescue or just preservation or something that's oh

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Speaker 1: is it? Uhuh? The Scottish all right, well, I think

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Speaker 1: it was an official from there did say that where

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Speaker 1: these dogs are jumping, specifically on the bridge, he said,

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Speaker 1: there are lots of mice, squirrel and mink nests. So

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Speaker 1: they refuted this hunter at least. Yeah. Um, so the

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Speaker 1: the I guess. The theory from Sands and Sands also

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Speaker 1: points out that the dogs um that are jumping are

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Speaker 1: buying log buying large jugs with a long nose, that

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Speaker 1: are um scent dogs, scenting dogs, hunting dogs, that they

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Speaker 1: would be more prone to pick up on a bunch

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Speaker 1: of sents or respond to a bunch of sense like mink,

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Speaker 1: especially mink urine, and that that combined with this potential

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Speaker 1: optical illusion, uh that there is flat ground right on

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Speaker 1: the other side of this wall, is what's causing these

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Speaker 1: dogs to jump. That's probably what it is. Apparently they

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Speaker 1: even did a little testing and mink urine just makes

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Speaker 1: these dogs crazy. So here's the thing, Like, yeah, that

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Speaker 1: would seem like the most logical, reasonable explanation. But then

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Speaker 1: the next question you have is why is it just

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Speaker 1: this one bridge? Why is that not a thing all

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Speaker 1: over Scotland or all over the world wherever there's mink

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Speaker 1: or there's um, you know, whatever kind of animals going

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Speaker 1: to set off a certain kind of dog, Like, what

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Speaker 1: is it about this one bridge that that that kind

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Speaker 1: of It doesn't fully like dismiss sands theory. It just

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Speaker 1: suggests that there's some weird combination of things here that

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Speaker 1: we haven't quite put our finger on yet. Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 1: You did mention the White Lady of Overton haunting the place. Um.

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Speaker 1: There is also another kind of story slash theory that

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Speaker 1: there was a man, and this is just terrible, thirty

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Speaker 1: two year old father threw his baby off of this

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Speaker 1: bridge because he thought his baby was the anti Christ. Um.

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Speaker 1: The baby died the next day, and the father was

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Speaker 1: committed to an institution obviously mentally ill. And some people

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Speaker 1: say that they're jumping from the same spot that this

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Speaker 1: man threw his baby from. But this was It's been

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Speaker 1: happening since the fifties. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just kind

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Speaker 1: of like an eerie addendum almost, you know, I think so,

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Speaker 1: you know, or some people I think think like, oh,

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Speaker 1: it is supernatural. And this man was responding to the

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Speaker 1: same thing. The dogs are um and that the Celts actually,

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Speaker 1: who used to live in the area, actually had a

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Speaker 1: name for this kind of thing. They called it a

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Speaker 1: thin ace, which is where the spirit world in our

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Speaker 1: world kind of overlapped, where the fabric between the two

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Speaker 1: was thinnest, which is pretty interesting. And then there's um

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Speaker 1: in that supernatural camp. There's an author named Paul Owens

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Speaker 1: who wrote The Baron of Rainbow Bridge, And from what

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Speaker 1: I can tell, Owen's book basically says and also you

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Speaker 1: have to see the cover of this thing. It's adorable

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Speaker 1: but also like insane. Like he photoshop dogs jumping like

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Speaker 1: in mid air and made it look like they're jumping

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Speaker 1: off the bridge. And for some reason, Vladimir Putin is

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Speaker 1: dressed like a stage musician and the magician in the background.

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Speaker 1: It's a very odd cover of a book. I'm looking now,

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Speaker 1: that's weird. So doesn't that guy look like Putin? He's

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Speaker 1: sort of, But from what I can surmise, Paul Owens

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Speaker 1: thing is he's kind of mashed up the Rainbow Bridge thing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah with um, which is, I guess what what pets

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Speaker 1: follow into the afterlife with like real life and um

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Speaker 1: somehow suicide Like he, I guess he thinks like the

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Speaker 1: dogs are actually purposely taking their lives, and like you said,

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Speaker 1: at the outside, that's just not that's a human thing

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Speaker 1: that's exclusively human because from what we know, we're the

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Speaker 1: only ones who can conceive of what a life is,

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Speaker 1: and so therefore we're the only ones who can think

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Speaker 1: of like ending that life, you know, and saying like dogs,

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Speaker 1: as far as we know, dogs and other animals are

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Speaker 1: not capable of that. What do you think of the

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Speaker 1: whole rainbow Bridge thing? I don't know anything about it.

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Speaker 1: You've mentioned it before. Um it ended up in the

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Speaker 1: book I think was where I first ever saw it,

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Speaker 1: and I haven't seen it. Is it a book a

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Speaker 1: kid's book? Now? I actually don't know the origin. I

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Speaker 1: just know that that's something that some people say, like

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Speaker 1: your pet has gone over the rainbow bridge or whatever.

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Speaker 1: I I don't subscribe. Um, obviously they don't. It's not

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Speaker 1: supposed to be real. But I'm just don't. It's a

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Speaker 1: little kind of goofy and who who for me? But

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Speaker 1: if if that's your thing and that makes you feel

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Speaker 1: better and stuff, I'm certainly not making fun of it.

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Speaker 1: It's just it's not for us. I got you, so, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I have no opinion about Rainbow Bridge, but don't get

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Speaker 1: me started on Rainbow Bright. You got anything else? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: nothing else. So the mystery remains, which is our kind

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Speaker 1: of thing. We love that. Hopefully you do too, and

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Speaker 1: that means everybody that short stuff is out. Stuff you

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Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio for

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Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart

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Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

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Speaker 1: favorite shows.