Speaker 1: Welcome to Nightcall, a production of I Heart Radio. It's
Speaker 1: one thirteen am in the Hall of Heads and you're
Speaker 1: listening to night Call. Hello, and welcome to Nightcall, a
Speaker 1: podcast for your strange days and nights. My name is
Speaker 1: Emily Ashida. I am in Los Angeles, and here with
Speaker 1: me as always are Test Lynch and Molly libert Um.
Speaker 1: We were just commiserating over some shared dental trauma. I
Speaker 1: feel like this episode is going to be trauma rich.
Speaker 1: Just for like warning you ahead of time, I'll find
Speaker 1: a bush. It is terror Fighting eighties puppet movies for
Speaker 1: children December, but also dentist December. Um. I got a
Speaker 1: filling for the first time. What made it scary was
Speaker 1: that I thought I had done it before. Like I
Speaker 1: said to my parents, I ever had a filling and
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, yeah, you had a half filling,
Speaker 1: which is specific. So I was like, sure, I must
Speaker 1: have and then I half filling it's not a real
Speaker 1: thing because that didn't have be okay okay um. So
Speaker 1: I went to the dentist. I found out I need
Speaker 1: to feeling, went back to get the filling. They were
Speaker 1: like I'd been My dad was like, oh yeah, but
Speaker 1: they'll probably just give you like a shot, And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, okay, they give you a shot. I
Speaker 1: thought they just kind of got in there. Um. So
Speaker 1: the dentist was like, what made scary was the dentist said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put your teeth to sleep. Oh no,
Speaker 1: and I don't like, um, what does that mean? He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to give you a shot of whatever
Speaker 1: it is. It's not no opcating. It's like something like
Speaker 1: that light. It came probably asked a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: I thought I was prepared for this experience, but then
Speaker 1: it's just like they put a syringe like in your
Speaker 1: tooth gum area. It feels really weird. Um, it feels
Speaker 1: like fine and then just sort of like sensitive and
Speaker 1: tender like and anytime you get like a new thing perforated,
Speaker 1: it's gonna gonna feel weird. Um. But it felt so
Speaker 1: much weirder than I thought because I didn't really understand
Speaker 1: what novocaine is or does. So that you your face
Speaker 1: feels humongous. I could not feel my face. Uh, and
Speaker 1: it just freaked me out so much that that was
Speaker 1: like a thing you can do. I just kept thinking
Speaker 1: about audition the whole time. Um more spoiler alert, somebody
Speaker 1: gives somebody else a bunch of syringes of sort of
Speaker 1: paralyzing you. It also made be like, how do people
Speaker 1: get botox? Like this is so scary to like paralyzed
Speaker 1: part of your face for like three hours. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a difference I think of like something that's meant to
Speaker 1: actually anesthetize you to like in preparation for something else
Speaker 1: more painful, versus like a long term like muscle deadening,
Speaker 1: which is like the whole thing just freaked me out
Speaker 1: so much that I was like not prepared, maybe like
Speaker 1: I'm going to brush my teeth. I hearing this so
Speaker 1: much because last week we also our guests the Least
Speaker 1: Simonson mentioned that she had her first cavity ever. I
Speaker 1: have my first cavity, but it won't be my first
Speaker 1: filling because I had two pre cavities when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and I got novocaine for one and then
Speaker 1: was and the other one was on the other side
Speaker 1: of my mouth, and I I declined the novocaine and
Speaker 1: said like, I don't want a shot, and they were like,
Speaker 1: this is going to be tremendously painful and uncomfortable for you,
Speaker 1: and I said, go go ahead, try me and it
Speaker 1: was horrible. But I'm so afraid to get I have
Speaker 1: to have a feeling a Tuesday, and I'm so afraid
Speaker 1: to get it done. But I've also had two epidurals,
Speaker 1: so it's like your spine. You think I wouldn't care,
Speaker 1: but I do care. Well. I was thinking, if we
Speaker 1: can't find the Ewok Adventures for next the next episode,
Speaker 1: maybe we can do Little Shop of Horrors, which I
Speaker 1: think falls under eighties puppet movies. I've never seen it.
Speaker 1: You've never seen it? No? Why not? What? I don't know?
Speaker 1: I missed a lot of the eighties. I feel like
Speaker 1: you were such a mark for a Little Shop of Horror.
Speaker 1: It feels like such a Molly movie. I've seen the original,
Speaker 1: the Roger Corman serious horror movie one with but I
Speaker 1: would see that, not the music. Oh it's good. I
Speaker 1: want to see it. I mean, I wonder if it's
Speaker 1: good as an adult and your rotation dental horror of
Speaker 1: dr One of my like continue like my favorite things
Speaker 1: to think about is just the statistic that you know
Speaker 1: and I don't even know if it's true anymore, that
Speaker 1: like dentists have the highest rate of suicide because there's
Speaker 1: something both about the mouth, Like obviously people a lot
Speaker 1: of people have like a lot of sensitivity about getting
Speaker 1: donal work done. It's like a very like anxiety and
Speaker 1: do sing thing. But then also the act of like
Speaker 1: looking inside people's mouths all day. Something about that like
Speaker 1: like leads to despair or something you're looking into like
Speaker 1: a gaping hole. Yeah, I'm just like, what is it
Speaker 1: about the mouth? Like it was like the tedium of
Speaker 1: doing that over and over again. Maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: but like doctors get to mix it up. But like
Speaker 1: every dentist I've ever had always seems like it always
Speaker 1: seems like a really fun job. Like I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a dentist when I was a kid because I
Speaker 1: actually loved going to the dentist for some freakish reason,
Speaker 1: and it was like my dream. I guess there's so
Speaker 1: many toys. There's so Yeah, the idea of the water
Speaker 1: pick is really like I took toys out of the
Speaker 1: toy chest on my way out this time. He deserved it.
Speaker 1: Deserved it, like dice eracer, so the toy chest that
Speaker 1: they give away toys. Yeah, okay, I I thought you
Speaker 1: were just admitting to stealing from hundreds of dollars worth
Speaker 1: of dental equipment. I want to give myself more off brandental.
Speaker 1: Why not? So we were talking about today's the Friday. Also,
Speaker 1: yesterday was a full moon. It was a notable full
Speaker 1: mayor are some really intense vibes happening? Did you? Did
Speaker 1: any of you see? I think it was Alex Miles.
Speaker 1: There was an astrologist who an astrologer who posted something
Speaker 1: on Instagram that was widely shared, and it was about
Speaker 1: the energy portal that's going on from the twelfth to
Speaker 1: thee It was a very intense I'll find a link
Speaker 1: to UH to put in our show notes, but it
Speaker 1: was about how this is a time when we're going
Speaker 1: to be feeling like we have to revolutionize our lifestyles
Speaker 1: and get rid of toxic things, and we're going to
Speaker 1: be feeling all of this crazy energy around us and
Speaker 1: we're going to have to try and wrangle with it.
Speaker 1: Isn't that just the holidays? Yes, but it's also full
Speaker 1: moon energy. I think like the Pluto and Capricorn thing
Speaker 1: or something. I think this was specific to the full moon.
Speaker 1: And then there was also the retrograde that happened recently
Speaker 1: was very powerful, very powerful. That was a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago. But yeah, it made me think that the
Speaker 1: kind of swirling vibes in my brain were real. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I rarely ever feel like like a palpable sense of
Speaker 1: anxiety or unease. It's like this unexplained like I've just been.
Speaker 1: If you look at my Twitter, I'm clearly very stressed
Speaker 1: out right now. And I'm just like I like and
Speaker 1: and like doing dumb ship like getting into the wrong
Speaker 1: car and stuff like that, and and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: is it the moon? Is this the only thing that
Speaker 1: I can I'm pin it too, is that I'm I'm
Speaker 1: the moon is just so close that it's like zapping
Speaker 1: my brain energy. I don't know. Family got in the
Speaker 1: car and this is like the first thing we started
Speaker 1: talking about. I was like, Oh, it's a hundred percent
Speaker 1: the moon. I have been feeling so weird all weeks
Speaker 1: and I feel felt so emotional. And then I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's the moon. Obviously, it's clearly it has to be
Speaker 1: the moon. Um. We I have a really weird experience
Speaker 1: of watching So I'm watching the Sopranos, as you all know,
Speaker 1: for the millionth time, and um, my husband and I
Speaker 1: went out to Ramen and I was telling Molly, oh,
Speaker 1: like we had We went out to ram and it
Speaker 1: was so fantastic. It was a beautiful, rainy day. We
Speaker 1: like way too much food. And then later we get
Speaker 1: home and we're watching the Sopranos Anything run season three
Speaker 1: right now, And in the middle of the Sopranos, my
Speaker 1: husband was like, I have food poisoning, and he ran
Speaker 1: out of the room. And then the next minute Tony
Speaker 1: got food poisoning, and I was like, something weird is
Speaker 1: there's a lot of synchronicity going around. Muscle memory. Muscle memory. Um,
Speaker 1: if you have any reports about your December full moon experience,
Speaker 1: please please let us know. It was the cold moon.
Speaker 1: I had a tweet go super viral about the moon.
Speaker 1: Uh so viral that it ruins your Twitter, but it's
Speaker 1: it's awesome because I was about how it's you can't
Speaker 1: take a picture of the moon on an iPhone. UM,
Speaker 1: about how I respect that you can't capture the moon
Speaker 1: on an iPhone, um even though you try, and people
Speaker 1: sent me a million great blurry moon pictures, which is
Speaker 1: the best thing. Um. But also we learned why you
Speaker 1: can't take a picture of the moon on an iPhone.
Speaker 1: It because the aperture is too wide. Emily explained it more,
Speaker 1: can you explain to me, I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: iPhones are made. iPhones are not professional cameras, despite what
Speaker 1: many people try to do with them, and then they
Speaker 1: get better and better, but like they're not. They're made
Speaker 1: to be able to be used in low light without
Speaker 1: a flash, because that like most of your life is
Speaker 1: in little light without a flash, So they are made
Speaker 1: to be able to take in light when there is
Speaker 1: low light. But then it's like the contrast of the
Speaker 1: moon against the night sky is just it's too like
Speaker 1: there's not the breadth that the aperture cannot pick up
Speaker 1: that those distinctions, and like if you have a film camera,
Speaker 1: if you have like a professional film camera, you can
Speaker 1: obviously take a picture of moon all day and some
Speaker 1: people all night. If you put your phone camera up
Speaker 1: to a telescope, some people seem to get some more
Speaker 1: decent pictures. Oh, I did that when at the Star
Speaker 1: party that I went to. After we went to the
Speaker 1: Star party, and it was great. You can take pictures
Speaker 1: of what you see through this telescope and you get
Speaker 1: the creators and everything, But when I was trying to
Speaker 1: take pictures of the moon, which I did and then posted,
Speaker 1: and was like, I don't like these pictures of the moon,
Speaker 1: but I just like that there's something so beautiful you
Speaker 1: can't capture. There are lots of things that are so
Speaker 1: beautiful that cannot be caught on. That's what's so cool
Speaker 1: to think about, especially one that's just like right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's trying to get a photo of it, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: put your phone away. Just so, in talking about the moon,
Speaker 1: we also talked about the moon illusion. Yeah, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the moon illusion. The moon illusion, According to Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: the moon illusion is an optical illusion which causes the
Speaker 1: moon to appear larger near the horizon than it does
Speaker 1: higher up in the sky. It has been known in
Speaker 1: ancient times and recorded by various cultures. The explanation of
Speaker 1: this illusion is still debated. It's not about like atmospheric
Speaker 1: pressure or something like that. There are many different hypotheses
Speaker 1: as to why people think. Some people ptolemmy thinks it's
Speaker 1: about atmospheric refraction. Uh Cleodmodes described it both to refraction
Speaker 1: and to changes in apparent distance. I had a weird
Speaker 1: experience looking at the moon after eating a gummy where
Speaker 1: I was looking at the moon and it looked as
Speaker 1: though the moon was zooming very quickly across the sky,
Speaker 1: and I tried to take a video of it, and
Speaker 1: then notice that it was the clouds moving. But for
Speaker 1: for a second there it really had me. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I have enough. Oh oh no, I was gonna say
Speaker 1: just about the Well, there are times on the Moon
Speaker 1: is closer to the Earth. Well, that's apparently. There's also
Speaker 1: the apparent distance hypothesis, which cleomotes. And also Schopenhauer wrote
Speaker 1: about a good diagram. It doesn't explain anything, but it's
Speaker 1: like it looks like the cross section of an eye. Um.
Speaker 1: Speaking of ominous circles. Um. There was a story that
Speaker 1: came out in in Vice recently about rings. Are they
Speaker 1: just called rings? Ring? Ring cameras? Yeah, the doorbell camera
Speaker 1: that has become pretty popular. It's a is it an
Speaker 1: Amazon thing? Is it a Google thing? I believe it? Yeah? Amazon, Yeah, Amazon.
Speaker 1: They were staying on a good expos about it. On
Speaker 1: the outline. They were like selling selling the in photocops. Yeah, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this has been a known issue
Speaker 1: with ring an now There's a new known issue with Ring,
Speaker 1: which is that there are groups that are dedicated to
Speaker 1: hacking RING devices, and even a podcast called an Oldcast
Speaker 1: where people basically prank Ring users live on the podcast.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a total it's not a dark
Speaker 1: web thing, it's like a discord thing. I guess that's
Speaker 1: all you need to know. Um, this is the world
Speaker 1: we deserve, I guess. I remember when I saw Ring pitched.
Speaker 1: It was called something Else I think on the Shark Tank,
Speaker 1: and I was like, that's the dumbest thing, Like the
Speaker 1: the idea that you could set up cameras, like you
Speaker 1: just need so many and you're going to have the
Speaker 1: whole perimeter. And it's like such a paranoid, horrible thing.
Speaker 1: I know, I bother Ring. What do you? How do
Speaker 1: you feel about that? Did this make you feel it? Twice? Well,
Speaker 1: it's not inside. So the two hacking things that were
Speaker 1: kind of outlined in the Vice article, I think we're
Speaker 1: indoor ring cameras and the doorbell. I hack baby cams.
Speaker 1: There have been known hackings of baby camps. I believe.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you would want a smart baby cam.
Speaker 1: Why can't you just use the ones that it's like
Speaker 1: a closed circuit, Like it's unhackable. Can you hack just
Speaker 1: like anyone's computer camera? Also like, well, that's why I
Speaker 1: want people put That's how we all put stickers over it.
Speaker 1: I don't put a sticker. I don't really why are
Speaker 1: they going to see? Would they see when you're walking
Speaker 1: around your house naked? I don't like them? Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I got the ring because I because there
Speaker 1: were two burglaries on either side of my house that
Speaker 1: I was sitting outside for coincidentally both of them. Then
Speaker 1: I had like someone was ringing my doorbell a lot,
Speaker 1: and then by the time I got there, they were gone,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm just I'm going to lose
Speaker 1: my mind over this. So I got one, and now
Speaker 1: I don't want someone to talk to me through it.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. So one of the ways people
Speaker 1: were hacking it or you know, doing these pranks to
Speaker 1: use the speaker, I guess that's in the ring. What
Speaker 1: is that used for? Uh? Normally the idea is that
Speaker 1: if someone rings your doorbell, so there's a camera and
Speaker 1: a microphone, so someone's like your intercom. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: an intercom that you can use from anywhere. So it's
Speaker 1: really for if you're out of town or you're at
Speaker 1: work and then someone rings your doorbell, you get a
Speaker 1: notification on your phone where you can say hello, go away.
Speaker 1: It's so scary because also like if somebody, oh, if
Speaker 1: you're like in Florida on vacation and somebody who with
Speaker 1: ill intent comes to your door and you pick up
Speaker 1: the phone and you just like watch helplessly, right they
Speaker 1: like burgle your hat. It's a horror movie. It's a
Speaker 1: horror movie. It's like sometimes like I feel like the
Speaker 1: much less stressful version is to just come back from
Speaker 1: vacation be like, oh, bombash, it's gone. Like watching I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of the more you know, the worst it is.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I mean there's so there's
Speaker 1: an alarm feature, I think as well, So if there's
Speaker 1: someone who you don't want to be there and you're
Speaker 1: freaking out, you can push the alarm ideally like neighbors here,
Speaker 1: or you can just call the police and then then
Speaker 1: you don't come. But yeah, I mean it's it's a
Speaker 1: conundrum obviously, And since it's since I bought the ring,
Speaker 1: all of this has come out so it's probably my fault. Sorry,
Speaker 1: we're just putting like a mirror on your door. What
Speaker 1: would that achieve? You're just like take a look. I'm
Speaker 1: feeling you see that it's a monitor and no shame
Speaker 1: that works always. I'm kind of into phone freaking coming back.
Speaker 1: Phone freaking, yeah, well like hacking, like old school phone
Speaker 1: freaking was like people would like hack people's phone coming back,
Speaker 1: because that's so this seems like a new version of Yeah,
Speaker 1: phone freaking is so quaint. It's like it's quaint. This
Speaker 1: The really messed up thing about this was that people
Speaker 1: were speaking into the One of the cases highlighted in
Speaker 1: this article where people speaking through the camera to children,
Speaker 1: it was in children children's room and like saying like
Speaker 1: racial things and like just threatening people. It's so icky.
Speaker 1: It's so bad. It's not definitely make you think twice
Speaker 1: about having it. Yes, well I don't have any whatever.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before we come on. Let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. We'll be back. We are back. Molly
Speaker 1: and I took the plunge this past week and immersed
Speaker 1: ourselves in the far off kingdom of Noah Vomback's marriage story.
Speaker 1: Don't worry We're going to talk about return Us soon,
Speaker 1: but we had to get to another horrifying movie. I
Speaker 1: did them back to back, um order. I did Return
Speaker 1: to Oz first and then Marriage Story, which was the
Speaker 1: wrong order. Yeah, I did it while I cleaned the house.
Speaker 1: Um Marriage Story. I wish I had been watching the
Speaker 1: whole time I was cleaning my bathroom, because that felt
Speaker 1: like what it was the perfect movie for. How do
Speaker 1: you watch a movie while you clean your bathroom? You
Speaker 1: put it on your computer, and you put your computer
Speaker 1: on the toilet and clean your bathrooms. You're not really
Speaker 1: watching them? Yeah you're not. I don't know if you're
Speaker 1: doing a lot of attention. I was paying attention. I've
Speaker 1: seen Return to Oz before. Um No Marriage Story. I
Speaker 1: wish I had been doing more activity while I was
Speaker 1: watching it, because I was like, oh, I wish I
Speaker 1: had been a little distracted watching this movie instead of
Speaker 1: just fully. It is one I will say, like right
Speaker 1: now where I live, I can I can go to
Speaker 1: the kitchen and still hear the movie, and like if
Speaker 1: I look through I can like move two feet and
Speaker 1: see the screen if I want to get a snack
Speaker 1: or something. And this is one of those movies there
Speaker 1: are some movies we have to pause even if you
Speaker 1: have that to me. But this is like, it's totally fine.
Speaker 1: This movie could be a podcast. It's it's not like
Speaker 1: visually so sure, right, well, I mean it's very talkie.
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of monologue. My theory about no
Speaker 1: Bombox movies okay, Emily, but I both have theories. My
Speaker 1: theory is that they're like the vegan meet substitute replacement
Speaker 1: for Woody Allen movies, which is good. It's a service. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a service. And it's like we all kind
Speaker 1: of like ship talk them, but we also watched them.
Speaker 1: They're about like just rich white people in New York
Speaker 1: in the media class having affairs and stuff. But they
Speaker 1: don't make you feel like a terrible person for watching them,
Speaker 1: like what Allen movies do. I'm not saying that that
Speaker 1: needs to exist as a genre necessarily forever. I don't
Speaker 1: think it needs to be like re upped again after this.
Speaker 1: But for those of us who enjoy those kinds of
Speaker 1: movies about over educated people having like dramatic fights, it's fun.
Speaker 1: I think there's always going to be a space for them.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's one of these things where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if that was all movies, if that was all prestige dramas,
Speaker 1: that would be super boring. But I like it in
Speaker 1: the Salad. It's like it's like I'm not I go
Speaker 1: hot and cold on a bomb back movies. I really
Speaker 1: like a few no a bomback movies, and I really
Speaker 1: dislike other ones. Yeah, I love Greenberg. I love Greenberg tests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he's did. I like The Squid in the
Speaker 1: Whale like men, I thought it was in black and white.
Speaker 1: I can't claim to be a fan. I just knew
Speaker 1: I was going to watch this movie. Then I heard
Speaker 1: what everyone had to say about the movie, and I
Speaker 1: was like, there's no place like this movie. I don't
Speaker 1: need it. I mean it's I find custody disputes really depressing.
Speaker 1: And I got nervous because of my Blue Valentine Curse
Speaker 1: theory that the curse was going to be cured. Not
Speaker 1: that at all. I'm not going to roll the dice though, Molly,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not even a little cursed. How do
Speaker 1: you know it takes it takes a year, it has
Speaker 1: alan Alda. I've I've decided that it no longer takes
Speaker 1: three months. It takes a year. So I'm just saying, like,
Speaker 1: my thoughts are with you guys. Well, but also like
Speaker 1: in the way that I'll know a bomba movies are related.
Speaker 1: There's a part where like she's like, you're just like
Speaker 1: your dad, and you're like, oh, we've all seen the
Speaker 1: squid in the whale. You know what that means, Emily,
Speaker 1: what's your big theory? Well, I mean that that I've
Speaker 1: had to endure so much of this like Twitter discourse
Speaker 1: around this movie, which is really funny. It's like not
Speaker 1: even the first Noah Vomback movie to be on Netflix.
Speaker 1: But I guess because of the biographical and and like
Speaker 1: scare quotes around that nature of this movie and the story,
Speaker 1: I guess people feel like there's much more of a
Speaker 1: kind of lucky lu gossipy aspect to it. But I
Speaker 1: just like, I don't know, I feel like that the
Speaker 1: criticism has been so much around um like what he's
Speaker 1: chosen to depict and in what way, And like I
Speaker 1: saw somebody refer to his movies as like being bereft
Speaker 1: of creativity, And while I understand that argument, I think
Speaker 1: it really underestimates the act of actually sitting down and
Speaker 1: writing something because you can experience something and just tell
Speaker 1: your friends about something that bad that happened to you,
Speaker 1: or like a bad breakup or something like that. But
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a lot of there's There are
Speaker 1: still decisions that are made, and thus it is not
Speaker 1: the characters are not named Noah bomb Back and Jennifer Adjacently,
Speaker 1: some of the decisions are so specifically about them that
Speaker 1: you're like, why not lean more into it actually being
Speaker 1: about them instead of pretending part where they're like the
Speaker 1: Adam Driver character isn't from New York, but he moved
Speaker 1: to New York and now he's the biggest New Yorker
Speaker 1: of all, and it's like, we know, you're just from
Speaker 1: New York. It's fine to just be a guy from
Speaker 1: New York. You don't think that he could take inspiration
Speaker 1: for maybe other people who knew, like say somebody who
Speaker 1: moved to New York from Indiana as Adam Driver's characters, like,
Speaker 1: do you think that it's meant to be the only
Speaker 1: reason that guy knows songs from companies because he grew
Speaker 1: up in New York. As we were discussing earlier, I
Speaker 1: didn't grow up in New York, and I'm familiar with
Speaker 1: some song time. I mean, like the company, Company Company.
Speaker 1: I get so excited. The only proof I have that
Speaker 1: people from man Haround in the eighties no company, I told.
Speaker 1: I told Molly and Emily, it's what your parents would
Speaker 1: play on the long, long long drive to try to
Speaker 1: get out of the city, and you would I found
Speaker 1: it very I told him I found it very cheerful
Speaker 1: and uplifting, and they were like, but it's about affairs love.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I don't like Adam Driver. I actually
Speaker 1: have said some horrible things about Adam Driver on this
Speaker 1: podcast that I've then begged to be edited out. So
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to go down that right. But
Speaker 1: I just can't go like the Adam Driver discourse though,
Speaker 1: because it's so polarized, polarizing. I like that we got
Speaker 1: a funny looking hot guy. He doesn't do anything for me,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad he does something for other people, and
Speaker 1: I don't. I am generally a very pro funny looking,
Speaker 1: hot guy person. He's got he looks like he can
Speaker 1: build a deck. He takes himself so seriously. There were
Speaker 1: there were a lot of examples on Twitter of him
Speaker 1: calling restaurants and things and saying can you can you
Speaker 1: shut down my wife? And so it takes actors to
Speaker 1: make act towards movie. It's true. I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: like people. It got nominated for SAG Awards. So there's
Speaker 1: a clip of like the big argument scene from Marriage
Speaker 1: Story that's been circling around and so of course, like
Speaker 1: Sam's contact sounds like the hour and a half leads
Speaker 1: up to that scene. Everybody's like they're just yelling and screaming,
Speaker 1: like is this all acting is? I'm like, like this
Speaker 1: is this is actually like a very very clear crystallization
Speaker 1: of how the internet. It doesn't I feel like that
Speaker 1: something didn't super work for me, though I did feel
Speaker 1: kind of like screamy and talking and I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I thought that scene worked and it
Speaker 1: worked when it worked because it just felt like that
Speaker 1: fight had been coming for an hour and it had
Speaker 1: they kept kind of being nice to each other, and
Speaker 1: I was like, it's gonna blow, It's gonna blow, and
Speaker 1: I don't know. He was like, I wish a dump
Speaker 1: truck would run you over and you die. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean that's like, I don't know, that's like a
Speaker 1: very specific, voicy thing to have somebody say to another
Speaker 1: person everybody else. The best part the ray Leota Laura
Speaker 1: Dern is a kicky divorce lawyer. Disagree. I actually think
Speaker 1: Laura Dern is actively bad in this movie. Love Lord
Speaker 1: Der's having fun. I think this is it is a
Speaker 1: distracting and weird for the best part is Alan Alda
Speaker 1: saying about a cat, don't expect a lot from that cat.
Speaker 1: It's really good, like I want them. The spinoff series
Speaker 1: just about Alan Alda is like coming out of retirement
Speaker 1: to be a family lawyer, and like and silver Fox
Speaker 1: ray Leiota, I would totally watch the l A Law
Speaker 1: reboot with all of these people. I just want to
Speaker 1: mention that my favorite movie B movie has a ray
Speaker 1: Leota plotline that I enjoy. I just want to mention
Speaker 1: that ideally I would mention Bioda. No, it's ray Leiota
Speaker 1: has a brand of honey and these are mad good times. Hey,
Speaker 1: do you guys want to take a night call? Yes,
Speaker 1: this is actually a night email from our listener Sam
Speaker 1: who wrote to us and said your episode on Labyrinth
Speaker 1: was like the sleep over my eleven year old self
Speaker 1: always wanted which is to say perfect podcast. Hearing y'all
Speaker 1: talk through the weird burpie smelly, horny but undeniably magical
Speaker 1: qualities of that movie was super fun and I can't
Speaker 1: wait for Night Call. Does the Dark Crystal maybe maybe? Um.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, I'd like to direct your attention to
Speaker 1: the story of the Lost Hoggle Puppet, which you can
Speaker 1: view in Scottsboro, Alabama. The story goes that the puppet
Speaker 1: got lost in air transit, only to be unearthed many
Speaker 1: years later at the Unclaimed Baggage Center, a place strange
Speaker 1: and mysterious in its own right. It had been stuck
Speaker 1: in a pile of junk for so long, though, that
Speaker 1: the puppet had basically rotted through. The photos are some
Speaker 1: fucked up terminator ship. They've since restored him, not particularly well,
Speaker 1: and you can see him on display at the center
Speaker 1: as one of their prized finds. That's the thing about puppets.
Speaker 1: They need to be maintained by professionals or they just
Speaker 1: kind of dissolve away. But I think that ifemorality is
Speaker 1: just another thing that's really cool about it versus c
Speaker 1: G I, on the other hand, I guess I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to ponder rotting hoggle. But for baby Yoda, oh no,
Speaker 1: your daggers, untold Sam. I have to say, I don't
Speaker 1: remember who said this on Twitter, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys thought that the characters in It's a
Speaker 1: Small World have to get their hair cut okay, because
Speaker 1: it's made of yarn and the yarn overtime slackens and
Speaker 1: so they have to get haircuts. And I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing that puppets are organic, you know,
Speaker 1: so they kind of decompose and like change and age.
Speaker 1: That's it's so cool. Ones that are made out of
Speaker 1: latex and stuff in latex is like an organic material,
Speaker 1: like it breaks down. The pictures of rotten hoggle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to link to these must see incredible. It
Speaker 1: is some terminator ship because eyeballs are exposed and the
Speaker 1: foam is all kind of like fucked up and be prepared.
Speaker 1: It's not raised yourself trigger warning childhood wonder. I didn't
Speaker 1: know about the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Uh did you guys
Speaker 1: know about that? No? Um, I feel like we should
Speaker 1: go to the air go to their It's just in Arizona.
Speaker 1: It's not that I mean, that was what other eighties
Speaker 1: puppets we could find. How many puppets do you think
Speaker 1: to get left Hoggle has to be a special case.
Speaker 1: I mean it seems like I'm looking through and they
Speaker 1: mostly have pictures of like books and and and shoes
Speaker 1: and a camera and stuff. But I'm sure that there
Speaker 1: are some fun things that people. Do you think that's um?
Speaker 1: Do you think that that's ethical? I think we should Okay,
Speaker 1: you know how Storage Wars was faked. Yeah, we should
Speaker 1: just do that. We should unclaimed to store a show
Speaker 1: called Unclaim Baggage. That's the three of us caught a
Speaker 1: very weird logo. This place looks like a toothpaste. Um,
Speaker 1: anyway we should go. If you have been to the
Speaker 1: Unclaimed Baggage place, would you please leave us a night
Speaker 1: quality four or four sex night. Thank you to the
Speaker 1: Night Called listener who sent us a Bluesifer update. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, wait what the blues offer update? The Bluesifer
Speaker 1: picture which one Emily texted that from Emily that was
Speaker 1: just for me. I am the night called owner. The
Speaker 1: Nightcalled coming from inside. Emily texted us a picture of
Speaker 1: Blue an intimate picture of Blue Suffer. It was via
Speaker 1: the Twitter for the band on Amana Gucci because they
Speaker 1: were going to play a show in Denver, and that
Speaker 1: was the tweet that they decided to retweet as a
Speaker 1: part of their like Hey Denver. There was just a
Speaker 1: picture apparently blue Sufer the horse, which we have discussed
Speaker 1: on this podcast. There's a double horse, a douvil horse
Speaker 1: maker giant double horse. A blue horse with demonies also
Speaker 1: has a fully like articulated I guess, not articulated, that's
Speaker 1: not the right word, but just like fully sculpted out
Speaker 1: um asshole and bal sack with veins with veins, the
Speaker 1: veins that don't need to be there. The veins are
Speaker 1: truly lightning veins because it's a devil. It's a devil. Um.
Speaker 1: I respect the the commitment. Yeah, accuracy again, most cursed sculpture.
Speaker 1: It is. It definitely is. But okay, So while we
Speaker 1: are on the subject of our puppet based fantasy horror memories,
Speaker 1: we watched Return to Oz this week. Some of us
Speaker 1: for the first, no, none of us for the first.
Speaker 1: We've all seen it. Okay, this time, we've all seen
Speaker 1: this one. I was trying to remember, um, it's uh.
Speaker 1: I could not actually get through it, so I have
Speaker 1: to I have to just like put that out of there.
Speaker 1: A visceral repulsive. I mean, this is the scariest movie
Speaker 1: ever made. I think I think, Um I saw it.
Speaker 1: I guess when I was seven or yeah, some some
Speaker 1: age that was. I mean, there's no right age to
Speaker 1: see this movie. Is what did you make it through
Speaker 1: when you were a kid? Yeah? I think I did,
Speaker 1: And I think I you know, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where Okay, So the story of the film is
Speaker 1: it takes place after the Wizard of Oz beloved childhood
Speaker 1: story MGM musical movie. Uh, and it's that Dorothy has
Speaker 1: come back to Kansas after her um was it all
Speaker 1: a dream adventure in the Land of Oz and has
Speaker 1: been telling Antem and Uncle Henry about uh, the Tin
Speaker 1: Woodsman and the Scarecrow and all of her fun friends
Speaker 1: that she met, and they think that she has lost
Speaker 1: her mind. So they sent her to a I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's a sanitarium, but it's some kind of clinic,
Speaker 1: old timey mental hospital, an old timey mental hospital with
Speaker 1: like the first lecture shock therapy machine. So this child
Speaker 1: played by Fruzi balk And can't be older than ten,
Speaker 1: gets wheeled down the hall and a gurney to get
Speaker 1: electro shock therapy, and then the power goes out and
Speaker 1: she escapes and then finds herself back in Oz, except
Speaker 1: now everything's fucked up and the whole kingdom has been destroyed, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a lot like so that in
Speaker 1: return to Oz, we opened them so we can see
Speaker 1: the destruction of the tornado six months later hasn't really
Speaker 1: been repaired. Her. Her house is like half standing. Her
Speaker 1: uncle can like fix the house because he has a
Speaker 1: broken leg and he's depressed. So they're living in kind
Speaker 1: of like a ramshackle situation. And Kansas looks really bleak
Speaker 1: because it's still kind of in the aftermath of the tornado,
Speaker 1: so much like Oz is now kind of you know,
Speaker 1: and it's basically in ruins. Um I did. I had
Speaker 1: some vague memories of watching this movie. I think the
Speaker 1: one thing that everybody remembers from this movie is the Wheelers.
Speaker 1: Probably if you remember one thing about this movie or
Speaker 1: something that gave you nightmares from it, it's probably the Wheelers,
Speaker 1: which are like the standings and this this story for
Speaker 1: the flying monkeys just the kind of like bad yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but they are like full grown men on roller skates
Speaker 1: on their hands and legs, and they have these terrifying
Speaker 1: mass that they were on the top of their heads.
Speaker 1: And it's just like the It's just one of those things.
Speaker 1: It's like if you ever went to like a street
Speaker 1: fair something when you're a kid, and they like they
Speaker 1: were like still people also always gave me the lose
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, like just just unnatural sort
Speaker 1: of like body like full body puppetry is like very
Speaker 1: very upsetting to me. Um, And I was like bracing myself.
Speaker 1: And that's when I told you guys, like I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna vomit. And I was so stressed out just
Speaker 1: about the Wheelers showing up again. I was not ready
Speaker 1: for it. And even the characters who kind of are
Speaker 1: the stand ins for the Tin Man, the Lion and
Speaker 1: the Scarecrow, they're off, like they're off. Instead of the Scarecrow.
Speaker 1: There's a Jack, a guy named Jack who has a
Speaker 1: pumpkin head and his body is kind of tied together
Speaker 1: and keeps falling aparty. That's what I thought the movie
Speaker 1: Pumpkinhead was going to be about. But and then the
Speaker 1: tin Man is um this character called TikTok who's like
Speaker 1: a wind up robot and he keeps kind of like
Speaker 1: winding damn, much like the tin Man needs oil. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's something called Gump. I was like, who
Speaker 1: knows how to exist? A moose head attached to us sofa.
Speaker 1: There's a part of ittories like what am I like,
Speaker 1: no one knows. It's like you didn't exist before, but
Speaker 1: now you do. There's a lot of like weird existential
Speaker 1: you know, kid level existential dilemmas brought forth it in
Speaker 1: Return to Oz. I mean, you know, like the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz and Molly, you've read like all of the
Speaker 1: books I was saying, they're like just they're like twenty
Speaker 1: books in the Wizard of Oz series. There's the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz, and then there is Ozma Princess of Oz.
Speaker 1: I think it's called it's like Narnia. There's like a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of books. Dorothy's not even in most of them.
Speaker 1: After the first couple they're about Ozma some of them um,
Speaker 1: and I think they start being written by ghostwriters after
Speaker 1: a while. It's just self Frank baumb for the first few.
Speaker 1: But it is kind of like Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: or Narnia or something where it's like the stuff in
Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz is like a small slice of
Speaker 1: this world that has all these different types of weird creatures,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a whole other verse. So I
Speaker 1: think even in the first ones, there's like a map
Speaker 1: of Oz. It shows you were, like the desert, the
Speaker 1: Deadly Desert exists somewhere. Um. And I remember liking these
Speaker 1: books because I was like, oh, I would like to
Speaker 1: know more about the weird mirror words that I do. Also,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are the things in Oz in Return
Speaker 1: to Oz that are really charming, like the lunch pail
Speaker 1: tree where you pick like a lunch box off a
Speaker 1: tree and you have to get a ripe one you
Speaker 1: don't know what's inside. Um. And then later in the movie, Uh,
Speaker 1: Dorothy and her friends are having tea with like the
Speaker 1: evil dude, the Nome King, and they're drinking what is
Speaker 1: either I couldn't make it out. He was either like
Speaker 1: it's like steaming liquid silver or steaming sulfur, and I
Speaker 1: was like, those two things are very different. I want
Speaker 1: to know in my mind what they are. And limestone pies.
Speaker 1: But as a kid, those kind of things were the
Speaker 1: things that I kind of latched onto so it's still
Speaker 1: seemed to have a lot of whimsical fun stuff. While
Speaker 1: the other thing, if you got freaked out by something,
Speaker 1: it was probably Princess mom by right, and the Hall
Speaker 1: of Heads. Yeah, the Hall of Heads is so good.
Speaker 1: She can take her head off and put on other heads.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is why she would want to sleep with
Speaker 1: no head, because is she trying to preserve, like not
Speaker 1: wrinkle her heads. Probably because she's really vain. She's really vain.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. You think she just have a sleeping head,
Speaker 1: because why does she has to get up to pee?
Speaker 1: Like the idea that she's so obsessed with, like if
Speaker 1: if there's a head that's like nicer than her, she's like,
Speaker 1: I want that and want that head, that head, and
Speaker 1: she wants that chicken. I mean, the thing about this movie,
Speaker 1: and it does kind of make you realize something about
Speaker 1: the original Wizard of Oz with the movie and the book,
Speaker 1: which is that I mean both are this one more
Speaker 1: explicitly so because it begins with a opening sequence involves
Speaker 1: a mental hospital, but it really both are kind of
Speaker 1: about kids processing trauma. And then the first one it's
Speaker 1: a tornado and it's like about about losing your home
Speaker 1: and about losing everything that's familiar to you and you're
Speaker 1: innocence and yeah, and like reconstructing it and trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of it in this dream world and like
Speaker 1: the code of it is just like there's no place
Speaker 1: like home, but it's like her home was destroyed. Like
Speaker 1: there's something really rough about that. I mean, there has
Speaker 1: always been something kind of dark about The Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 1: regardless of doing a dark, a grim dark sequel to it,
Speaker 1: as I think Returned to Oz qualifies, um, but it
Speaker 1: just really I mean I would like to see like
Speaker 1: a child psychologist or something take apart Return to Oz
Speaker 1: because so much of it feels really primal and unexplainable
Speaker 1: in a way that I think that's why it gets
Speaker 1: to me. It's just and and I I can't I
Speaker 1: said I couldn't watch it, but it's not because I
Speaker 1: don't think it's good. Like it's also like the only
Speaker 1: movie that Walter Merched ever directed, like amazing, and well
Speaker 1: I was saying, I feel like it has a lot
Speaker 1: in common with Night of the Hunter, which was the
Speaker 1: only movie that Charles Lawton ever directed. Um, and is
Speaker 1: another sort of like dark fairy tale that has children
Speaker 1: and in it, but also like put them in real
Speaker 1: danger in a way that like most kids movies don't,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, where you're like, oh, this kid could die,
Speaker 1: which also I think never ending story yeah, and all
Speaker 1: the good kids movies do you have a little bit
Speaker 1: of that you know people will die? Yeah, feeling. And
Speaker 1: I was watching with my husband who had never seen
Speaker 1: it before, and it's like, holy sh it, like that
Speaker 1: this was for kids, Like how is this movie not illegal?
Speaker 1: Like how did this not like repel every single kid
Speaker 1: who watched it? And I don't remember feeling repelled by
Speaker 1: it when I was a kid, because like a lot
Speaker 1: of this really dark like Dorothy and danger Ship is
Speaker 1: the stuff that kids I think eat up because like
Speaker 1: you feel that a lot when you're a kid and
Speaker 1: when you're control. It's actually when you're older that you
Speaker 1: can actually go back and watch something like Return to
Speaker 1: Oz and be like, holy shit, what are they do?
Speaker 1: Because you understand the context for it. When you're seven,
Speaker 1: you're just like she's in a spooky house and they're
Speaker 1: trying to get her, and like that's I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's like a very compelling thing. I think also because
Speaker 1: Dorothy has played by Ferusa Ball. Yeah, who's amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: there's just sort of like you're not as worried about
Speaker 1: her as you are about Judy Garland. I disagree. She
Speaker 1: was only ten, she was so little. I was like
Speaker 1: baby face, she's so like, I know she's going to
Speaker 1: get out of it. Oh no, no, no, she's a
Speaker 1: more powerful witch. I love everyone else. I'm worried about
Speaker 1: both of them for different reasons. I think juty because
Speaker 1: it's just duty. But I think taking the situation that
Speaker 1: she's in and return to OZ at face value as
Speaker 1: a child is much less unsettled. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: you you assume everything will be fine, because if she
Speaker 1: can escape from OZ, then she's escaped from all you know,
Speaker 1: and she can go back, and so you kind of
Speaker 1: accept this narrative that it's a physical place and that
Speaker 1: you have faith that you'll escape from it. Whereas as
Speaker 1: an adult, I mean the fact that she starts off
Speaker 1: in a mental hospital, where you realize that if she
Speaker 1: did have the electroshock therapy, and this would have been
Speaker 1: like a very primitive electroshock therapy, that she could have
Speaker 1: basically becoming capacity. You guys think that the whole movie
Speaker 1: is like she's been lobotomized, and this was her fan
Speaker 1: of I don't think she's been lobotomized, but I think
Speaker 1: that she's had electric shop and I think that it
Speaker 1: has like the desolation that we see when she returns
Speaker 1: to oz is what like how that fantasy world of
Speaker 1: hers that she was using to cope with this first
Speaker 1: cataclysmic thing that happened her has been decimated by this
Speaker 1: this procedure, because the procedure is aimed to take the
Speaker 1: bad thoughts out of her, take the nightmares out of
Speaker 1: your part? Do you think she burned down the mental
Speaker 1: hospital with her mind with the mysterious blonde girl who
Speaker 1: just shows up and is definitely not an imaginary friend
Speaker 1: that that she invents in a time of need like Ozma. Yeah, Ozma.
Speaker 1: And that's the other thing is that obviously all of
Speaker 1: the characters who appear in the mental hospital, including the
Speaker 1: men who wheel the gurney down the hallway, are then
Speaker 1: the wheelers. So it makes sense that she is taking
Speaker 1: what she's seen and trying to fight what they're doing
Speaker 1: to her to try to kind of rebuild oz in
Speaker 1: her memory, taking like what she's just seen and integrating it.
Speaker 1: But what comes out is this is this a nightmare?
Speaker 1: I do too. It's super smart and I think it's
Speaker 1: like really, I think it's a really valuable movie. I
Speaker 1: just like it. But it's so effective because this is
Speaker 1: all traumatic ship that we're talking about and like and
Speaker 1: happening to a child no less, and so it is
Speaker 1: I find now like so actively unpleasant to watch for
Speaker 1: these reasons, not just because of the puppetry being spooky
Speaker 1: or whatever, but just because you know what's happening to
Speaker 1: her and why why she's making up what she's making up,
Speaker 1: and the fact that it is made up. It's not
Speaker 1: I think it's real, guys, man, I think it's not real.
Speaker 1: But I loved it. But well, I was saying too,
Speaker 1: I feel like the first like Wizard of Oz is
Speaker 1: Alice in Wonderland, and then this is like through the
Speaker 1: looking Glass. It's like even in the context of the
Speaker 1: fantasy world, the rules that the made up rules don't
Speaker 1: exist anymore or they're totally different. Yeah. Um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's something so human about this movie. You know what
Speaker 1: we're going to have to do because of this now
Speaker 1: the whiz Oh have you guys ever seen the word? Definitely? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Talk about some full body puppet tries. Yeah right, we
Speaker 1: should do the Whiz and we also have to do
Speaker 1: the Dark Crystal, which has been also requested by some listeners.
Speaker 1: But if you have other requests of eighties puppet horror
Speaker 1: that you would like to throw our way, please col
Speaker 1: horror for children? Well yeah, I mean, I mean, what
Speaker 1: what what are we talking about here? The wait? What's
Speaker 1: that music video? I always forget the name of it.
Speaker 1: The Genesis video with all the splitting image videos. I
Speaker 1: was just talking about that because they show this is
Speaker 1: the most sucked up thing. But in an Epstein documentary
Speaker 1: I watched in order to get Prince Andrew to molest
Speaker 1: one of the victims, they had a splitting image puppet
Speaker 1: of Prince Andrew and they were like, look the puppets
Speaker 1: putting its hand on her breast. Would you like to
Speaker 1: do that? Yeah, because he's like an imbecile. UM was
Speaker 1: the most up to the documentary was. I was also like,
Speaker 1: Julainne just had a splitting a spitting image puppet of Andreid.
Speaker 1: I knew what that meant because I've seen that Genesis video,
Speaker 1: which is terrifying. UM on that return to return Us trauma,
Speaker 1: UM alright, we're gonna take a break and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to have our guest Katie Golden on.
Speaker 1: And we are back. We are joined today by Katie Golden.
Speaker 1: Posts of Creature feature a great podcast right here on
Speaker 1: this podcast network that we have all been guests on
Speaker 1: already at some point. It's super fun. Everybody should check
Speaker 1: it out. Hi, Katie, Hey, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Of course, we you know, as listeners know, we frequently
Speaker 1: get into creature news, animal news, new bugs, new crabs, um.
Speaker 1: They usually make an appearance here. But we also don't
Speaker 1: know that much about animals, or at least not as
Speaker 1: much as you do, so we felt like it would
Speaker 1: be appropriate to pick your brain about newsworthy animals that
Speaker 1: take my brain like a parasitoid wasp. Well what do
Speaker 1: you what do you think about? I mean, there is
Speaker 1: a there's totally a cottage industry of viral animal news
Speaker 1: that we obviously love and thrive on. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think the general rule for journalists is the more
Speaker 1: penis shaped the animal is, the more viral it will
Speaker 1: be the better story. Don't don't bury the penis is
Speaker 1: what they call. Well, they struggled this week and there.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if they wanted to bury the penis,
Speaker 1: there were just so many. I don't think I don't
Speaker 1: think there was room. I don't know if anybody saw. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this was very this is like a misnomer and
Speaker 1: some people are very angry about this because it was
Speaker 1: being called a penis fish on twitter. Um it is
Speaker 1: not a fish, no, but it is called a penis
Speaker 1: fish like that is that is used for it. It's
Speaker 1: got a fish. So more, it's related distantly two leeches,
Speaker 1: earthworms basically worms. It's a warm it's also known as
Speaker 1: a spoon worm or it's in the family of spoon
Speaker 1: worms because it's proboscus is shaped like a spoon. Where's
Speaker 1: the proboscus? You know, comes out at one of the ends,
Speaker 1: probably front, which is the front. Okay, So so if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen a picture of this, first make sure
Speaker 1: that you're not at work. Maybe at the work you
Speaker 1: can look, can you you'd have to You're going to
Speaker 1: have to explain yourself. Is the one assuming things that's true?
Speaker 1: That's true? What are those penises? And you say penis? Why?
Speaker 1: Who I know? It's nanimal? I would never I'm a scientist.
Speaker 1: It is a fat innkeeper worm. Yes, that's the I
Speaker 1: guess that's the official name of it. That that's the
Speaker 1: official name. Yeah, it's a very rude. Uh. It does
Speaker 1: look like a pink dildo. Um. And they're found in
Speaker 1: the West Coast and usually Northern Town, California. Is that right, Katie?
Speaker 1: I guess so. I'm actually not an expert on this
Speaker 1: particular worm. There's just so many worms out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd think that I would have specialized in the penis
Speaker 1: shaped worm, but now there's still time. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the cool things about the penis worm or the penis fish,
Speaker 1: the fat innkeeper worm, my friend, is they they eat
Speaker 1: by spitting out slime nets tea and then they like
Speaker 1: pull the slime net back in and eat whatever's in it.
Speaker 1: That's actually a pretty common tactic by a lot of
Speaker 1: different worms. There. Proboscus worms that basically spit out their
Speaker 1: proboscis inverted or everted, I guess which is where it
Speaker 1: like spits it out and then like pulls it back
Speaker 1: in to pull in prey. It's a disgusting fun way
Speaker 1: to eat. Why would they not just evolve to have mouths?
Speaker 1: Is that the dumbest question, Like it doesn't it expend
Speaker 1: a bunch of energy. It's not a dumb question. It
Speaker 1: just depends on the type of environment you're in. So
Speaker 1: if you're sort of a filter feeding animal or an
Speaker 1: animal that eats a bunch of small detritus that winds
Speaker 1: up in the ocean, by casting a net, you've created
Speaker 1: a system that's a lot more You get a much
Speaker 1: more bang for your buck. Then if you're just going
Speaker 1: around hungry, hungry, hippoing all those little bits of marine snow,
Speaker 1: which is like little bits of organic matter, do they
Speaker 1: have any kind of a colony or anything? The penis fish,
Speaker 1: the independent contractors, I mean, apparently they have something going
Speaker 1: on because of this massive amount of penis fishes that
Speaker 1: washed up on the shore. Well, this is saying that
Speaker 1: it was a storm. Is the reason right that they
Speaker 1: that they all got caught in like a cyclone of
Speaker 1: just that would be such a sight to see a
Speaker 1: cyclone of wieners. I mean, that's the concept of Sharknado.
Speaker 1: It's just with dicks like um, it's truly raining. I
Speaker 1: want like, if I ever have a bachelorette party, this
Speaker 1: is at a very high bar where if there's not
Speaker 1: a cyclone of Wieners. I don't know, you're not trying,
Speaker 1: You're not my friend underwhelming. I'm like fine with all
Speaker 1: these images of them, like they're they're they're just covering
Speaker 1: the speech. What about the image where it's on a
Speaker 1: plate to be eaten? God? So yeah, they are also
Speaker 1: a delicacy. Yeah, that's right. Well, I'm looking at a
Speaker 1: photo of there was a photo of a like an
Speaker 1: otter just sort of like snacking on. But there's another
Speaker 1: one with it like mid eating it where it just
Speaker 1: looks like it looks like happy, let's be adults about it.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's giving it a be j Yes,
Speaker 1: yes that's what. But that that's the first one. That's
Speaker 1: the before picture. The after it's just like like stretched
Speaker 1: out remains of the worm. I wonder what the texture
Speaker 1: is looks like. Also, I feel like I think it's
Speaker 1: like a gooey duck. I like, I've seen the otter
Speaker 1: eat a good duck. It's like a shell less, gooey duck. Actually,
Speaker 1: I bet it. I bet it's sort of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a muscle or maybe even scargo that kind of
Speaker 1: like kind of looks like a nice yeah test making
Speaker 1: a face I'm not a funatter for I'll leave them
Speaker 1: for the otters, just a million floppy dicks for them.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. They're very like easy prey. It
Speaker 1: sounds like from what I've read that just they don't
Speaker 1: have any defense mechanisms. They're just like just like a
Speaker 1: penis exactly do you think the seagulls are just like
Speaker 1: having a party? I guess a penis party. Yeah. Party.
Speaker 1: It's got to be a site to see a bunch
Speaker 1: of goals and other scavengers just floppings around, you know,
Speaker 1: just letting them flop down their Goallet's seagull bachelorette. Yes,
Speaker 1: this podcast this isn't. This was in Drake speech in
Speaker 1: California at the mass beaching of wieners. Yeah, is um
Speaker 1: elkhorns slow? I've been there? Is that more? Obey? No,
Speaker 1: it's like up near moderate, but it's where you can
Speaker 1: see a lot of otters. It's really cool. So other
Speaker 1: than um animals that look like dis uh, what, what
Speaker 1: do you think is like? What what makes the perfect
Speaker 1: viral animal story? Like? What for you personally and maybe
Speaker 1: for the world at large? For me, it's good writing.
Speaker 1: I love a story that starts with a nice hook.
Speaker 1: I think that with science writing sometimes it falls short
Speaker 1: of my expectations. I think it's important for it to
Speaker 1: both be accurate and have a nice narrative. There is
Speaker 1: a story I think it's by ed Young. It was
Speaker 1: I think it was in the National Geographic and I
Speaker 1: loved it because it started with, you know when Dr
Speaker 1: so and so got a big sack full of reindeer eyeballs.
Speaker 1: At first he didn't want it. That pulls me in
Speaker 1: that you must know more, to know more. That's a
Speaker 1: good hook, and it's you know I do sometimes I
Speaker 1: think that viral stories exaggerate the facts a little bit,
Speaker 1: which can be frustrating. So I think you can, if
Speaker 1: you know how to write a good story without exaggerating
Speaker 1: the facts, you go and really try to dig down
Speaker 1: into the science. It's never you never have to. Really.
Speaker 1: Nature is so crazy. You don't have to make anything up.
Speaker 1: You don't have to kind of stretch the truth for
Speaker 1: it to be really interesting. Yeah. I feel like we've
Speaker 1: had debates on this podcast about certain headlines from certain
Speaker 1: websites about science stories, um, guilding the lily. Nature is cool, Like,
Speaker 1: you don't need to mislead people. I feel like, you
Speaker 1: don't have to stretch a fat innkeeper worm, you don't
Speaker 1: have to guild a penis fish. Um. We also wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about I came across on Live Science a
Speaker 1: story about a pig monkey chimera hybrid. Interesting um, and
Speaker 1: it it just seems like a bad idea. It's intriguing,
Speaker 1: but we were kind of wondering what you thought about hybrids,
Speaker 1: especially because there was also an article by the person
Speaker 1: who created the lab redoodle saying it was his or
Speaker 1: her life's regret. Um. And since then I went on
Speaker 1: kind of like an internet spiral and started looking into
Speaker 1: like the mini bernardoodles and all the kind of like
Speaker 1: new designer dogs, and it was like the pig monkey. No,
Speaker 1: I actually have very strong opinions on all of these things,
Speaker 1: so I'm happy to be here to sort of force
Speaker 1: my opinions on other people. It's my favorite thing to do. UM.
Speaker 1: So the I'm actually I wasn't aware of the the
Speaker 1: pig monkey hybrid, but I know so it's My guests
Speaker 1: would be that it was an embryo and it wasn't viable.
Speaker 1: I think it was viable, so it says okay. On
Speaker 1: Live Science two piglets recently born in China look like
Speaker 1: average swine on the outside, but on the inside they
Speaker 1: are a very small part monkey. A team of researchers
Speaker 1: generated the pig primate creatures by injecting monkey stem cells
Speaker 1: into fertilized pig embryos and then planting them into sarroget saws.
Speaker 1: According to a piece by New Scientists, two of the
Speaker 1: resulting piglets developed into interspecies animals known as chimeras, meaning
Speaker 1: that they contained DNA from two distinct individuals, in this case,
Speaker 1: a pig and a monkey. It's the first report of
Speaker 1: a full term pig monkey I see. So it's not
Speaker 1: I think, more accurately, it would be a pig born
Speaker 1: with some monkey cells in it, a dash of monkey,
Speaker 1: a dash of monkey. And it also looks like I
Speaker 1: just looked up a little thing. It looks like they were.
Speaker 1: They died after about a week. So typically that's what
Speaker 1: happens when you try to Uh, it's either not viable
Speaker 1: or they're not gonna make it because it's I think
Speaker 1: it's hard to play god. Yeah, in general for this,
Speaker 1: it's so seductive. So actually, there was a pig human
Speaker 1: hybrid made in seventeen at the Sock Institute in San Diego,
Speaker 1: which is actually my hometown, and they, I guess I
Speaker 1: got out of there just in time, injected human stem
Speaker 1: cells into a pig embryo, which created a pig human
Speaker 1: hybrid sort of. I mean, I think so. The pig
Speaker 1: embryo was like only point zero zero one person human,
Speaker 1: which I assume is similar with the monkey one. It
Speaker 1: was probably a very tiny amount of monkey, and it
Speaker 1: was only able to develop for about twenty eight days,
Speaker 1: and it was also I'm not I think it would
Speaker 1: have probably terminated, but I think they also would not
Speaker 1: allow it to develop further because that would be super illegal. Right,
Speaker 1: Is it illegal? That's my question? Yeah. I don't think
Speaker 1: you're allowed to make human hybrids. You're not allowed to splice.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't think the splice was
Speaker 1: it sex? Yeah? Yeah, it's that was an interesting movie.
Speaker 1: I think. Isn't the point to get closer to being
Speaker 1: able to manufacture organs for organ transplant? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: that's the hope. I don't think we're an evil masterminding
Speaker 1: stem cells, right, I don't think it's trying to make
Speaker 1: sort of a half pig half human hybrid. That it's
Speaker 1: not gallops around just trying to make a monkey pig
Speaker 1: in order to be the most viral animal story that
Speaker 1: would be the half shark all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting. I think it's something where obviously,
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of ethical concerns when
Speaker 1: it comes to creating hybrids. I think when if if
Speaker 1: it's just in the name of creating, like growing organs,
Speaker 1: you know that that's something. Of course, if you're growing
Speaker 1: organs within a living animal, then you have to consider
Speaker 1: the quality of life for the animal. It seems to
Speaker 1: me though, like the ethical concerns haven't been a big
Speaker 1: issue in tech biotech recently. Do you think there are
Speaker 1: people who have like a secret island of Dr Mureau already?
Speaker 1: I was sure, probably now that we know sociopaths have
Speaker 1: seen grid islands kind of some kind of Epstein pig
Speaker 1: monkey hybrid just doing his bidding. What would the island
Speaker 1: of Dr Golden look like? What kind of creatures? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what would you populated with? Good question? I mean bird people, probably,
Speaker 1: you know I do. So here's here's the thing, and
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope nobody steals this idea of idea
Speaker 1: from me. But I'm I'm in the works of creating
Speaker 1: a you know how Cats the movie is coming out.
Speaker 1: I'm creating a rival Broadway production called Birds, where it's
Speaker 1: bird people dancing around and talking about sort of bird issues,
Speaker 1: which you may know it is very important to me.
Speaker 1: I'm the author of pro bird Rights, which is a
Speaker 1: Twitter dedicated to the supremacy of birds. But do you
Speaker 1: know about the rival conspiracy theory birds don't exist? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I know this what we're in a very protracted a
Speaker 1: legal issue, right, Yeah, it's um, I get ads for it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes exist. It's a fake conspiracy that says that birds
Speaker 1: are all just drones. Now like birds do exists. The
Speaker 1: bird conspiracy theory that birds don't exist is actually a
Speaker 1: reverse psyops ci, a shadow plot to undermine birds. Birds.
Speaker 1: We have seen that, you know what birds on documentary. Wait,
Speaker 1: so what are the what are the bird issues? What
Speaker 1: are the major bird issues? Well, the Twitter account itself
Speaker 1: is I hate to say it, it's a satire. It
Speaker 1: is actually written by a real bird. I just interpret
Speaker 1: the birds sort of speaks. I'm a channel, a medium,
Speaker 1: a bird medium, and the bird speaks through me, and
Speaker 1: then I put the birds thoughts into words. But it
Speaker 1: is a satire. It's like political satire, basically making fun
Speaker 1: of people in power who feel like they're they're suppressed
Speaker 1: when really they're not, like the Trumps of the world. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: bird rights, Um, what's the best bird? The best bird, Well,
Speaker 1: the cutest bird, in my opinion is the European robin.
Speaker 1: That's the That's the bird that I use for that
Speaker 1: that account because it's very round and very angry looking.
Speaker 1: It's the perfect bird. It's like, when you think of bird,
Speaker 1: that is bird. That is what? Yeah, that is the
Speaker 1: quintessential bird. When I think of bird, I think of duck.
Speaker 1: Is that weird? It is? I don't know what's wrong
Speaker 1: with you. I don't either trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I think of when I think now,
Speaker 1: I feel like my mind has been poisoned by both
Speaker 1: of this very adorable round bird. Crows talk about Oh,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting question. Crows are hell of smart. They're
Speaker 1: very smart. They're highly social. They do communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: I think you know, they probably talk about oh. Mostly
Speaker 1: it's probably like hey, are you there, Yeah, I'm here.
Speaker 1: Are you there? Yeah, I'm here. What about you? Are
Speaker 1: you there? Yeah, I'm here? You over there? Yeah? Here
Speaker 1: over there. They also do things like hey, I know you.
Speaker 1: You're a bad person. I don't like you. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: they can recognize, they can recognize faces. They will attack
Speaker 1: people that they hold a grudge against. So a University
Speaker 1: of Washington study banded a bunch of crows, and banding
Speaker 1: is when you put that little plastic inklet on on
Speaker 1: the crows and they hate it. And so they researchers
Speaker 1: knew crows could remember faces and attack people. So they
Speaker 1: started wearing masks, and the crows would attack and scold
Speaker 1: people wearing these masks for like years, and they have
Speaker 1: a specific call that is a scolding call. So they're
Speaker 1: probably saying, like, I remember you forced us to wear bracelets.
Speaker 1: We hate you. What. How how old do crows live?
Speaker 1: A few years? That's a good question I think about now.
Speaker 1: I'm like really scared. I'm thinking back on all the
Speaker 1: crows I've wronged, and I'm just like sin. Let's see,
Speaker 1: American crews seven to eight years. Ravens live ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen years. There's a big difference between the two. But
Speaker 1: they're they're different species and they in terms of their size.
Speaker 1: They I think ravens tend to be a little bit
Speaker 1: bigger than crows, but not by too much. The best
Speaker 1: way to tell the difference between them is ravens tails
Speaker 1: are giving you a middle finger, whereas crow's tails aren't.
Speaker 1: So the raven tail comes and has like a comes
Speaker 1: to sort of like a point where the middle feathers
Speaker 1: stick out, so it's like a big old middle finger,
Speaker 1: and with crows is just kind of a wedge. And
Speaker 1: ravens also have a little bit of fluff right at
Speaker 1: the bridge of their beak that's a little more pronounced.
Speaker 1: I feel like ravens have like shoulders more so than
Speaker 1: crows could be. They could be like a posture when
Speaker 1: they're sitting. I mean, like it looks like they have shoulders.
Speaker 1: They're all dinosaurs. I mean it's the big crows are hard.
Speaker 1: It's smaller crows are easy to tell from ravens, but
Speaker 1: there can be some pretty big crows and that that
Speaker 1: can be difficult. Crows often come in brigger groups. Ravens
Speaker 1: usually come in ones or two's. The call is different,
Speaker 1: so crows have a like like that's like the car.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a con and then ravens sort of
Speaker 1: have a croak where it's like those are really good impressions.
Speaker 1: Thank you? Did you see um? Did you see the Lighthouse? Hey?
Speaker 1: The movie with Will Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, there's a
Speaker 1: really good performance by a seagull in it. It's a
Speaker 1: pivotal point. It's actually like I would say, maybe the
Speaker 1: best performance in the movie. But it's a really brutal performance.
Speaker 1: But it is this sort of it's it's about Robert
Speaker 1: Pattinson's character being remembered by the seagull that just comes
Speaker 1: back to funk with him. Um. It's it's kind of great. Also,
Speaker 1: like it has to be hard to train a seagull.
Speaker 1: Do you think seagulls are interesting? I mean, yes, I
Speaker 1: do think it would be hard to train a seagull.
Speaker 1: But seagulls also have social calls, and they'll they'll communicate
Speaker 1: with each other with a variety of alarm calls. They
Speaker 1: even sometimes have these social calls where when they're nesting,
Speaker 1: where they kind of communicate with each other where they
Speaker 1: want to put the nest. They also can learn when
Speaker 1: one of their seagull friends like cries wolf a lot.
Speaker 1: So like if a seagull is overly sensitive and keeps
Speaker 1: calling when there's no danger. They learned to ignore it,
Speaker 1: so they're they're pretty smart, I could. I think the
Speaker 1: hardest thing with training a seagull is knowing what you
Speaker 1: could possibly offer a seagull that it couldn't get on
Speaker 1: its own, because they're very opportunistic. They'll swallow like entire
Speaker 1: other animals. They I don't know what we have that is,
Speaker 1: what do you bias the seagull who has everything? I've
Speaker 1: had a seagull steal a whole sandwich dis so much
Speaker 1: we don't need to give them. They just take. So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how you what kind of blackmail the
Speaker 1: trainer has a They just really wanted to meet Willem Dafoe. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all star fuckers. Maybe the stars are bird fuckers.
Speaker 1: That's true. It goes. It's the two way street. Um, Katie,
Speaker 1: your podcast is so cool. You know, you're so good
Speaker 1: at doing your research and finding out about all the
Speaker 1: creatures that we've talked about with you on the podcast,
Speaker 1: and when you talk about with your guests, like what
Speaker 1: got you into just like the world of creature study
Speaker 1: and and digging into the weird ones. Yeah, So when
Speaker 1: I was in college, I was really interested in both
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology and psychology because I was I think I
Speaker 1: was I really wanted to understand human behavior, and at
Speaker 1: the same time, I really wanted to understand animal behavior.
Speaker 1: And my interest in understanding human behavior actually started when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, because as a child, I had
Speaker 1: child hood o c D. And I was really interested
Speaker 1: in finding out more about it. So I would read
Speaker 1: all these psychology books and things and try to understand
Speaker 1: myself better, and that kind of grew into an overall
Speaker 1: wanting to understand human behavior. And then at the same time,
Speaker 1: ever since I was a little kid, like basically a toddler,
Speaker 1: I've been obsessed with animals. My mom says, when I
Speaker 1: was a toddler, I used to chase birds around and
Speaker 1: I tried and she asked me why I was doing that,
Speaker 1: and I said I wanted to catch one so we
Speaker 1: could become friends. And so i've and I used to
Speaker 1: go bird watching when I was in high school. And
Speaker 1: I think it's it's almost like, I think I've always
Speaker 1: been interested in animals, I've always been interested in human behavior.
Speaker 1: So I kind of like when I was in college,
Speaker 1: I kind of married them together. I got my degree
Speaker 1: in psychology, and I took a lot of evolutionary biology
Speaker 1: classes to understand how behavior fits into the big picture
Speaker 1: of evolutionary biology. Now I'm it's it's funny because my
Speaker 1: career shift from sort of I used to do um
Speaker 1: like medical educational texts and animation, and then I started
Speaker 1: doing the pro bird rights Twitter account. People really loved it.
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe I could do something with comedy.
Speaker 1: So then I got into comedy, and then that naturally
Speaker 1: progressed into doing podcasts and then which and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: when I wanted to do a podcast, I was saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to do it on animals. Gosh darn. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty natural progression from chasing birds as
Speaker 1: a little kid into doing stuff about animals who have
Speaker 1: O c D as an adult. It's great. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's definitely a much needed sector of the podcast, like
Speaker 1: too many comedy podcasts and not enough animal pod comedy
Speaker 1: podcasts about bird right, Yeah, it is a comedy animal podcast,
Speaker 1: but it's not. We don't have to try too hard
Speaker 1: because it's like, you know, penis fish come on right
Speaker 1: in our laps like literally, well, everybody should check out
Speaker 1: Creature Feature. It's a great show. We're going to be
Speaker 1: on it super soon. Two minutes, in two minutes, it's
Speaker 1: another I heart podcast. Yes and um yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming by today, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: And you can subscribe to Nightcall if you haven't already,
Speaker 1: on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: also follow us on social media at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Nightcall Podcast. I don't know, you'll find it. Gets so
Speaker 1: tired of saying our separate. It's like a big glitch
Speaker 1: in our social media. Just look up night Call podcast.
Speaker 1: You will find it. Um, follow the tweets and um
Speaker 1: and you can support us on Patreon. We are at
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Speaker 1: support head in number of levels to get stuff like newsletters, mixtapes,
Speaker 1: bonus episodes, pens, pens, more pens coming in January. Get
Speaker 1: in uh all right, we'll be back next week. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening to Night Call. H Nightcall is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,