A Geek History of Time - Episode 347 - Vampires, Opiods, Werewolves, Meth, Ghosts, and Depression Part II

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

They mean it is 2 o'clock in the fucking morning, where I am. The 1848ers were so much more radical than what we're comfortable or familiar with. The layer, the layer of sarcasm involved in that entire delivery is, like I've seen, I've seen, yeah, it's not even frosting. But he failed, so fuck them buddies. Like that now after World War II ended Lockley started mapping out foot trails for the newly created Oh God, Pembrokeshire

So Pembrokeshire Okay Pembrokeshire Just please let me just read Latin all day We're way into the 19th century now I'm sorry Well Damien It's 3 o'clock in the fucking morning

Thank you. I don't know. We're going to be able to be. I don't know. We're doing. We're going to be able to be. This is a lot of it. geek history of time where we connect nerdery to the real world my name is ed blaylock i'm a world

history teacher here in northern california and um i just got some really actually very exciting news a day before yesterday um for a while now i have wanted to teach uh actual fencing in a in a flex class at my school and uh the only tools i've been able to get a hold of and the only thing i've had time to really do with them has been pool noodles and being able to kind of tape handles on one end of them and then treat them like lightsabers which I mean it's fun but they don't make very good trainers for swords because parrying with a pool noodle is kind of pointless um no pun intended because I'm not Damien and and they also don't hold up very well, especially when they're being used by, you know, 11, 12, and 13 year olds.

So I have wanted for a long time to try to do something, but like the tools just haven't been there. And I found out on Thursday from a community representative who works with our school district that they will be able to provide me, we will be able to do. somehow they'll be able to fund it as a special project to get me the funds to buy a set of 20 actual foam swords to use so I can actually start teaching my kids how this is actually how a long sword handles and I am I am giddy with excitement I'm going to meet with this with this gal on the next week during my prep And I cannot wait to figure out how we're going to do this and make it happen and actually start doing this for real. It's going to be amazing. So that's what I've had going on. How about you, sir?

Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a U.S. history teacher and economics teacher at the high school level up here in Northern California. So, by the way, I've had— And you're so thrilled about that, clearly. Yet another Econ class added to my schedule. Oh, fuck. So wait, hold on. So now you're doing three Econ, two, history?

Other way around, but yeah. Okay. Okay. So the majority is still history. But it's three, two, six. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, okay.

So I totally just dated this show, but. Well. So, yes, I am those things. So this week, okay, my neighbor is. Somebody I've spoken of before, he runs a game, the Curse of Straw game that I play in. Right, right. He's my buddy Kevin. He's my neighbor at work.

He is, I think, entering into his ninth year. And that's what I call your young veteran status. Once you get to year nine, you're a young veteran, right? Okay. And so he's in his ninth year. and I saw like because because prior to that you're still getting your feet under you they're throwing different things at you you're still doing this but by the time you get to your ninth year or so you've found your stride you're able to absorb whatever's coming at you and you're able to keep going largely at speed like you'll still need some advice from time to time but you largely have now figured out how to figure things out on your own yeah and you've got enough bags in your tricks in your bag that you can just handle almost everything. comes with you. And most importantly, you still have the vibrance and enthusiasm because the hope hasn't been beaten out of you yet. Okay. I also think that having me next door means that he's allowed

to have more of that hope because I'm the, I am the, the shammie cloth to which all the lint comes, you know, in terms of the things that will steal your hope. The amount of text messages I've had to deal with this week alone from colleagues and what have you. You're the one draws the agro yes yes so you draw agro which is which allows because your personality yeah your personality uh comes across as as barred but you really do tank in a very big way like do how how does that work okay i'm a skull i'm a skull and a scold a little bit sometimes and when they're done they've been schooled so there you go but uh but uh there was a kid came up to him

was talking about something deeply personal just and and he's he's the teacher that kids very often will go to and trust right and just like hey I you know da da and I saw him handle the whole situation asking the perfect questions to validate their experience talking about his experience but without like trauma dumping or turning it on him or getting too personal I saw him absolutely like giving them kind of the you know this is going to to be a hard gear for you but you've got enough pieces in play that you will be able to do this and don't forget if you ever need help you can ask me and i can put you in connection with these other people and also if you need a quiet place you could just come and he handled it so

master this is during passing period within five minutes this kid went from i accidentally vomited out what was happening in my life i'm horrified i'm embarrassed to i'm looking up in life and he did it in five minutes and not everybody can do that but like and I but there are those who can right yeah more importantly though I think I told him right after I'm like there's no no notes like this is what being a young veteran is like you seven years ago would have overstepped here or here you would have overshared this or you would have you made it you maybe would have done this and you or you wouldn't have asked the right things or you would have needed more time with them but like you handled every moving piece.

So it was just really cool to be able to recognize that. Yeah, that is good. It's awesome. So that's largely all the news that's with me. Let's cheer things up. Last time we were talking about heroin addiction. Yeah, yeah, let's cheer up by talking about a massive public health crisis. That's awesome.

Yeah, great. And how it was mishandled. So brilliant. Yes. So you remember the crossover point on the rising heroin deaths where synthetics overtook non-synthetics in the additives to their overdose was in 2017, right? So that's after being humans stopped. Being human stopped in 2014. But, you know, this way you can kind of see the trajectory.

And again, 2017 is also when heroin overdoses peaked in recent years at about 15.5,000. Um, Jesus. Now that number is down to 3,900. So we're doing better. Um, but 90% of those 3,900 are in combination with synthetic opioids, uh, opioids. Um, so a question. Yeah. About that based on where we are now.

Uh-huh. Do you have a breakdown when you're talking about synthetic opioids? Do you have a breakdown of how many of them are like oxy and how many of them are fentanyl? No. Okay. Yeah. Um. Because fentanyl has the, you know, hey, look how much more powerful this is, you know, effect of, you know, being a widowmaker if you fuck up with it.

So, yeah. Now, the number peaked in 2017, like I said, but then it has dropped off a lot since then. I think the studies that I was getting from the CDC hold, number one, fentanyl is still new enough. Right. That we might not have collated all the data. Number two, you could look at what's happening federally in terms of being able to collate any data. And number three, I think fentanyl is being classed differently

than heroin and synthetics. Okay. But I did notice that, again, the number peaked in 2017 has dropped quite a bit, but the prescription-based opioid overdoses have only dropped from 17 to 13,000 from 2017 to now. So those are holding steady.

People are overdosing much more on prescription-based opioids than they are on heroin. And about half of those deaths, half of the 13,000 that I believe happened last year, were in combination with synthetic opioids. So people aren't just sticking to one thing or the other. It's not mayo or ketchup. You know, it's now a combination. It's combo sauce. Yeah. So, but like I said, I want to largely focus on a TV show from 2011 to 2014, featuring a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost.

And I want to focus largely on what people saw and knew then. But I just wanted to remind you, kind of a bridge to the previous episode, here's where that went, right? Right. So back to the show, finally, being human, which you can find streaming. Again, this is the American version I'm talking about. being human the vampire is clearly the cutout for heroin and opioid addiction and in 2011 both of those things were rising the character his name is aden played by sam whitwer

right uh and the the name aden is a call out to the actor who played uh the vampire in the british version oh aden i forget his last name but he's the dark curlyish Curly, curly-haired, yeah, yeah, yeah, byronic-looking dude. Yeah, yeah. But they literally named the vampire after the guy that was playing it. So anyway, I believe that actor's name was Aden Turner. That sounds familiar, yeah. He was in like another show called like Polkingham or Polkinghorn or something.

I don't remember what it was called, but it was like, you know, a period piece. Yeah. So anyway, so Aiden, the American vampire, played by Sam Whitwer, is a nurse when the show opens. Okay. And he's trying hard to be good. He regularly talks about the yearnings that he has, the physical withdrawal feelings that he has. And he's found that drinking bagged blood from the hospital slakes his thirst, but only just.

So it's like methadone. Now, it's funny that you say that because I was talking this over with my, daughter Julia and she says oh are you going to highlight the the fact that he was like using bagged blood which is like processed and and something that you have to get a doctor's signature for compared to drinking live as being like the difference between oxy and uh and heroin and i was like i found my replacement for the show um like i never even connected that she's like oh that's the first thing i went to because i explained to her what heroin and what oxy and how Aiden represents that

And she goes right there I'm like holy fucking shit Because like what happens later in the show 100% highlights that And he talks about Needing to get a clean supply So I might be adding stuff in Based on my daughter's analysis from a week ago

Yeah well your your daughter's pretty fucking smart Yeah Yeah There's no shame in that It's like god damn Yeah But he calls He calls

Unbagged blood bag or blood from the source blood from people um he calls that drinking live um and drinking live is a constant temptation um and and drinking live is so much more rich and tasty and vibrant and he gets high off of it okay anytime a vampire gets blood in their system there is a euphoric feeling there's a high that they get so all right this this uh goes back to um kind of the erotic subtext of vaporism

and I'm going to get into that too there is there are linkages there now so Aden is using a medical facility supply which like you said is like he's trying to wean himself off of live blood with a lesser product so yes methadone yeah and in the very first episode he relapses

that's how we meet him it's post relapse, kills a woman during sex. So here's your combination. And the combination of his addictions are very dangerous and very well signaled throughout the series. In fact, every time Aden starts dating someone who is a vampire, they both end up going after live folks, even though Aiden is trying to stay clean. So this is the...

Wow. Okay, the levels on which this operates. And then every time Aiden dates somebody who's not a vampire, his friends are constantly worried that he's going to drain his new paramour in a major uh you know like in a bad way and that's a constant plot point wow so he relapses in the first season this is the first we've met him right his old mentor who finds aden's desires to go clean idiotic swoops in and helps aden and and the thing is his mentor is kind of like one of the the he's like the chief of of Boston

as far as the vampire community goes he's a cop who also runs a mortuary and so he's got all the legal all the connections yeah and so he's got this network of people who take care of shit right people who want to be

close to power who will help bag a body up and quickly and he hires moving companies and all this kind of stuff so so yeah to go back to earlier episodes in Vampire the Masquerade terms. Yes. He would

be the prince of their city. Yeah. Okay. So that would work. Yeah. And so he swoops in and helps aid. His name's Bishop, by the way. Okay. Oh. So comes in diagonally. But he helps Aiden and he of course pressures Aiden into

returning to the ways of the vampire. He's an enabler. And kind of a push it sounds like uh-huh okay he's also and because aiden was his right-hand man and now he's kind of the prodigal son right and he's like kind of you know no i'm gonna go clean we can be better than this and blah blah blah and he's like there are food man what are you doing now what's really fun is he's played by the same guy who plays the devil in supernatural oh really yeah yeah that blonde dude oh yeah yeah and he actually leaves this series to go play the devil to go play lucifer yeah well yeah

I mean, how do you think they found the guy? Like, oh, oh, him, oh, him. Okay, so. So him, that one that you're visualizing and seeing, he also played Jacob in Lost. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Not entirely typecast, but like he has a type. Yes. And we cast him at it often. but yeah um wow that's that's amazing the other parallel that i'm that i'm hearing here uh in the in the writing of the character not not so much of the actor but in the writing of the character um i know i mentioned the tv series forever night when i when i

talked about vampire the masquerade yeah um and nick knight's uh vampiric father mentor. Okay, anytime there's a vampire name Nick, it's hilarious to me. Yeah, well, yeah. But go on. But his vampiric father, you know, a mentor figure, is Marius, is his name. Okay. And he is, in fact, a Roman.

Like, he was, he was from, he's from the Roman imperial period. And he has, he has much the same attitude. Only it's, it's constantly. delivered with this with this lovely um bemusement like like he he finds it funny yeah he's he's also like you know this is stupid you're you're being foolish they're just cattle right it's that same vibe it's that same like and he's playing the long game he's like okay you'll slip up in 60 years you'll get over this phase two yeah right yeah so yeah it's mark pelagrino who plays him by the way yeah yeah um so anyway yeah similar kind of

archetypes going on yeah so Aden's description and the way that it's portrayed when he's drunk and drink and drank drunk I don't I don't really know how to say the past tense of drinking live drunk and live drinking live when he has

drunk live drank live yeah anyway when he's when he's sucked somebody dry yes it's very similar to what the immediate effects of heroin and are first there's a removal of the pain that he was feeling from with the withdrawal yeah then there's a rush of euphoria and sometimes there's an engorged feeling that he exhibits but it just makes him want more and

more and more and what's doubly interesting here is heroin users tends to use heroin intravenously it leaves marks on their veins right for in the vampire he leaves those marks on other people yeah and the destructive and isolating effects of being a vampire also mirror heroin and oxy addiction because once aiden gets going he can think of very little else besides his next feed uh other vampires who never got off of it bishop marcus all of the are all of the omish mother and even henry wait wait wait time out i knew i couldn't get that past you i'm fucking out hold on the omish the omish There's a sect of Amish vampires Yes, they're from the old country

And they come up and they are They're very old school about being vampires And they're way more powerful than Bishop And he has to appease them And there's all kinds of like Traditional versus modern And country versus city and all kinds Okay, okay

But yeah They're Amish Yeah Like literally the straw hats And the outfits It's like no collar, you know, no mustache, but beard. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. So it's not just a term that the modern vampires use to refer to them. No. No. No. They might actually call them the Dutch. I forget.

But like, it's adds to it. I need to watch this show now. You do need to watch this show. Fucking bonkers. It's great. Oh, my God. Okay. So anyway, all of them.

the mother, Henry, all of these are characters that I'll talk about later. They all seem to be much better at managing their use of live blood, although they also will indulge in a good blood den from time to time. Because, again, part of Bishop's power in Boston and part of the power of the Amish and all that is to have hangers on, people who want to be in proximity to that kind of raw. power you know right because at least i won't get eaten right yeah now aiden is a feast and famine kind of guy and uh all the new vampires he encounters are also feast and famine because they're brand new vampires so they have a hunger um they usually remind him anytime he encounters a new vampire

they usually remind him of why he's trying to stay clean and it almost always ends with them dying due to being able to control their urges so he ends up staking them by the way staking a vampire in the heart very common you can still use wood to do it okay right um actually the the woman that he relapses on in the very first episode her name is

Rebecca and she ends up getting turned like bishop was like yeah we'll clean it up for you don't worry turns her instead and there's a whole subplot about that and she fucking goes off the rails and I'll get to that okay anyway um in the first

season. Aiden actually, remember when I told you there's like some really beautiful scenes and there's some really horrifying stuff that happens. This one just broke me. Aiden ends up turning a child.

I think his name was Benny. And because the child was getting bullied by the guys across the street and they push him and then a car comes and da-da-da-da-da. And Aiden actually turns up because he can't bear to see little Benny die.

and then he has to stake him like two episodes later wow because you don't turn children and bishop just like grabs him by the collar practically he's like oh i'm the bad guy look what you fucking did you turned a child we have rules aiden which is wild because bishop's just this manipulative prick but like he's like we have rules you do not do this shit and da da da da blue and orange morality yeah so he also has to stake the woman that he thought killed in the first episode, Rebecca, because Bishop had turned her. She first, although her arc is a little bit longer, and at one point, Aidan is trying to recreate a nuclear family with her and Benny, and it doesn't work, but at first she engorges

herself in her new vampire lifestyle. She, I think, murdered several friends, murdered her family, called it the best meal that they'd ever had, which was clever. She murders random people on the regular, and then over time, she comes to hate herself for it. Yeah, okay. And Aiden tries to help her to clean up. Starts with the bagged blood.

And then like it just she can't handle it, right? She needs live because she's a brand new baby vampire, right? And so over time, she's hating herself and she continues to relapse and the cycle continues. And he's trying to help keep her clean. So, okay, it was a relapse. It's okay. We can work toward this. You were almost there.

you almost were beating the hunger pangs and then at the end of the first season she begs him to stake her and he does because she cannot take it anymore and she just wants to be dead Aiden has to live though yeah so I got a question

thinking about this so far all of these circumstances that you've described involve either a victim being turned or victims dying Yes

Is it canonically not possible For a vampire to feed without killing Oh no it's very possible Okay Yeah Aiden like there's There are There are places that you can go They're blood dents

So people volunteer themselves And they get paid very well There's also like this underground Like dirty old women Whose house you go to And she cuts herself right on, you know, the elbow pit vein. Right, right, right.

It sucks from that. Again, clear, like, you could see all the scars on her arm. Clear talking about heroin, the seediness and all that, you know. Okay. So I just wanted to, yeah. And in fact, that is a plot point when dealing with the Amish. I don't think I spent much time talking about the Amish, but they come up and Bishop is engineering a hostile takeover. And he's going to take all of Boston.

the Amish won't have any say in what they do anymore right now they come up every 50 years and they give you shit right and you have the cow to them and so he takes them to a blood den and they are looking down their nose at how modern this shit is and people just willingly give their blood like what's the and he's like you know well it's it's tonight is is your night you can do whatever you want and they're like well we don't drink blood we drink live or we drink life that's what they say and they slaughter all the women there just kill them all kill all the people in the blood den and bishops like man what are you gonna fucking do you know um and then the next day he's got them over for dinner you know and you're gonna love this one it's a pregnant woman with twins

that's who's tied to the dinner table it's it's bad it is like super perverse wow and they're like okay you know that sounds good we'll go for that it's just like like it's a fucking delicacy and he he basically um entices them to eat and and they do and then they all start kind of having like throat troubles and like allergic reaction issues and stuff like that and he says oh yeah um i've been feeding those gals down at the blood den for the last couple weeks they've been having a heavy diet of juniper berries um and uh and this is how we find out canonically that juniper fucks with a vampire uh vampires also don't like garlic that's also a thing but like Like you can smell that on someone.

But he says, and the funny thing is, is if you had just drank the way we drink, you wouldn't be paralyzed right now. And he goes through and kills them one by one by cutting off their heads. That's another way you can kill a vampire. And he's like, yeah, you guys are greedy little fuckers. And like, you know, because of your greed, now you're paralyzed. And so there's just this whole thing. Aiden stops it. There's a whole subplot because Aden's trying to like, he's trying to live.

within the status quo he thinks that if bishop takes over it's going to be too much and also he wants to live clean and so he actually rescues like one of the only omish um and this is where rebecca like helps him to escape and kills marcus and begs him to you know this and uh and a few episodes later uh aden ends up having to um well anyway uh aden ends up having to kill off his mentor at the end of season one oh wow which is apparent like there's a bit of a discussion as he's he's wrapped um what's that called razor wire around his neck and he's he's telling him he's like i begged you to stop i begged you to stop and you wouldn't stop and bishop like reaches back and caresses aden's cheek and said it was always going to be

this way and they'd been together for like two 300 years and aden pops off his head right um and And one of the reasons for that is it allows Pellegrino to go and be a more frequent character on Supernatural. Right. That's part of why. On a business level, yeah. Yeah. And then season two starts with Aden having to kind of struggle with the infrastructures that are faltering to keep the vampire community from going just all in on devouring the city of Boston. Right.

Right. And so much of season two is focused on Josh and Sally, the werewolf and the ghost, but. But Aiden ends up being beset by those who were even more powerful than his mentor, bishop, the Amish, as well as mother. And Aidan's desire to keep clean is even more alienating with those vampires because they're like, oh, you're a heretic. You're not just like doing this little experiment. You are a dangerous heretic, so you'd better knock that shit off. and he basically is given the task of taking care of a woman named Surin who is the daughter of one of the most powerful vampires in the area named mother

um she basically her daughter Surin went crazy in the 1930s there's a whole subplot with the the guy that Aden made um okay and so there's there's all kinds of stuff here um and Surin basically slaughter you know kills somebody an open open view of an entire party at a hotel in Boston. So all the vampires basically have to eat everybody there and the amount

of, you know, obviously fall out. Yeah, and so mother punishes her daughter for shaming the family by burying her alive and it's 80 years later. And so she's dug Surin up

hopefully she's learned her lesson and it's Aden's job to rehabilitate her. And I say this ironically and unironically to rehabilitate her by getting her all the live blood she can drink and getting her healthy again. So the layers upon layers. And at one point he even tells Josh, he's like, I am going to have to get deep into this shit. And I will need you to pull me out. Find a way. Because the only way I can keep us all safe with what we're doing is to do this. Because what they're doing, ultimately, is Aiden and Josh are best friends. Josh is a werewolf.

Aidan is a vampire. There's enmity between their communities as always. Traditionally. Yeah. And the two of them don't like being the monsters that they are. So they want their house to be a safe haven where they can just be human. Cute credits. And that's where they meet Sally, the ghost, who is not letting go of the fact that she's, you know, like she's dealing with.

the fact she's dead. I'll explain her story a little bit later, but like the three of them are essentially running their own halfway home for themselves. And Aden's like, the only way I can keep you guys safe and keep this place safe is if I go do this for the vampires. They will not take

no for an answer. They don't have the values that I have. So I need to pull me out. Like that's... So the thing is, is that one of the reasons that Surin is this way is because Aiden indulged his son, I guess, because he made

Henry. And actually, Aden, um, Aiden was playing around with Suren and then Henry was playing around with Sourin. And Aiden was like, Henry, you're banished. You can't fucking do that. And, and so Aiden's relationship with Suren.

And, you know, he's kind of a lowborn compared to mother kind of thing. Right. Right. And so this is mother's way of punishing him and putting the two like it's manipulations within manipulations

right right yeah okay so it's so it's a hundred thousand percent vampire shit oh yeah yeah yeah like so if you want to have your independence from our community fine

um you know you you teach Surin to take over Boston and when that's done you can have your independence now of course you can have your independence ends up turning into like that means you're banished from Boston

but, you know, at the time, this is the best deal he can get, and she's super powerful, right? So, yeah, Surin is a very powerful vampire, but she's always been a little touched in the head. She's always been kind of indulgent and bloodlusty. And so Aden's job is to control her and teach her the ways of power. Like, you know, like, we're going to discipline you. You killed your mentor. We're going to look the other way because of all the shit that he did. By the way, he was creating, like, he created over 300 vampires.

You have to call that herd by over, by two thirds. So you got to kill them. You got to prepare her. Like, it's... Wow. Yeah. It's that, it's that, you know, I remember, I don't remember what book it was in, but there's a, I want to say it was...

It might have been Dark Saber, where Luke talks to, a one of the Star Wars books Luke talks to an Imperial he says do you know why Palpatine named all of his ships the way they did and the person was like oh fuck I don't care and he's like no I think it's important

like you don't fly a ship called the corruptor as its captain and feel good about yourself and yet nobody really mutinied against the emperor the emperor named all of his ships horrible things to remind people that he was corrupting them.

Yeah. And CERN is kind of the same way. Or not CERN, mother is kind of the same way. So. Wow. Yeah. It's quite something. I'm just, I'm sorry, I'm going back to the whole 300 vampires thing.

Yeah, in Boston. Like, because Bishop was trying to create, like basically make Boston its own self-sustained community and probably to expand. He had big dreams, right? Okay. So mother's like, he's off the reservation. You killed him. You're not supposed to kill him.

But, you know, it's kind of like the trial of Heratus, right? Yeah. Like, look, you did the right thing, but also you don't get to do that. Yeah. So. Yeah. Wow. And I had something, but it went away.

So he's tasked with culling two-thirds and training Surin-up. And this is kind of as punishment for killing his master. And also letting Bishop get that far afield. There's all kinds of like, again, like I said, one of the defining features of this show is nobody actually ever listens to anybody's reasons for anything. It's like a French farce without the humor. Yeah. And so his past indulgences have come back to bite him. Okay.

Yeah. There you go. But yeah, he has to bring her back from her exile punishment, which means a lot of live blood. And of course, all that live blood represents a huge temptation to him because, like, he's got his back to, you know, like just outside of the room where she's just sucking people and draining them dry. Yeah. And he's like, all right, bring in three more, you know, that kind of thing. And I think they're actually keeping them alive. But, yeah, we see all sorts of flash.

to when he was fine with his vampirism and how it led to the deaths of hundreds in the 1930s, which 1930s totally fits the heroin thing. Okay, yeah. Yeah, totally. Based on the history we had.

Right. In fact, in fact, the heroin act of 1924 was the first act really to specifically regulate heroin by way of prohibition. It was just as successful as the Volstead Act

of 1919. Yeah. So in that it wasn't. But it just made heroin more glamorous, more dangerous, and more likely to kill people doing there being no regulation besides prohibition.

And by the end of the 1920s, more than 200,000 people were addicted to heroin in America. Boy. Yeah. Now, Aiden's past that we focus on in the second season is exactly at that time

in Boston. and the absence of easily obtained alcohol, the largest group to get addicted to heroin was actually middle and upper class women. Really? Yeah. Huh. Interesting.

There was a definitive split philosophically between people who were willing to make money on prohibition. Some had zero problem adding heroin to their profits, and others thought that it was too hot for the police to ignore. They'll look the other way on alcohol. they won't look the other way on heroin. Okay, yeah. But none of them were vampires capable of slaughtering an entire gala of wealthy people and then hiding it.

So there's that. Yeah, I mean, yeah. But heroin definitely made its way into the music scene along with jazz, but, but, you know, that's also a thing. But back to Aiden. He's tasked with rehabbing Surin. And at the same time, his own son, the made vampire Henry, comes back. to town now just real quick henry was a medic in the army in world war one aden went off to fight in world war one he made henry okay uh questions sure just based on that um so by this by the time

world war one had happened aden was already a vampire yes uh turns out later on we're going to find out that Henry is or not Henry Aden was turned into a vampire during the Revolutionary War Okay All right Now how

How does sunlight work For vampires in this setting Is it is it Host Noseferatu traditional Which is to say sunlight It burns we're dead Or is it like Dracula in sunlight a vampire

is just significantly weakened or like okay so in the first episode when Sally finally obviates herself to Aiden and Josh she's asking Aiden all the questions that all of us are interested in knowing and it's a really clever way of

telling us the rules right so he's brushing his teeth okay I think is funny but he's brushing his teeth and she says like do you eat food he's like we can eat it in front of people to blend in but it does us no nutritional value okay and she said what about sunlight? He's like, we used to be more sensitive to it. Now it just kind of hurts our eyes. So we'll, we wear sunglasses. She's like garlic. He's like, yeah, that kind of brings out our fangs. Um, but not a big deal. He doesn't mention the juniper berries. Okay. Um, and, uh, you know, he talks about how blood has healing qualities and it's kind of like being drunk. Um, and that's, you know, and so they, they go through all the rules. It's kind of cool. All right. Nice. So. Okay. So that, that, that, that narrow.

He theoretically gets the writers around a lot of issues. Yes. Oh, and he's brushing his teeth in front of the mirror. He can see himself. Okay. So we got the reflection taken care of too. Yeah, right. So now, like I said, at the same time, Henry actually comes back into town.

He had been banished from Boston. Aidan banished him under threat of death for fucking Suren because Aiden was fucking Surin. And he's doing all, Aiden is doing all that he can to manage. both Henry and Surin, both of whom have a heavy hunger for hemoglobin. And the whole time he's trying to keep himself clean. Jesus. Yeah.

He even asks Josh to support him. And Aiden hardly ever asks for support and help. And this is what I was telling you about. Josh is the werewolf. And he says, like, I'm going to need you to, like, help me keep Henry safe and healthy and help me do this. And Josh, like, just like, Josh is a very moral person living with a person who literally is a human predator, like a predator of humans. Right. And so, and Aden's trying to stay clean, but like, he's like, I need blood to keep these people going and to help these people out.

And Josh is like, fuck no. And he kind of Nancy Reagan's it up and says, no, just don't drink the blood. just say no um but aden's not able to operate as josh sees fit and eventually he relapses again um and this time he actually has brought two girls home to feed to henry and they can still glamour by the way and so he glimmers oh and they also still need to be invited in oh okay um and i can't remember if glamoring actually counts as being invited in um like you glamour someone they say won't you come in? I can't remember if that's, if that happens. Okay. If they can cheat that way, right.

Right. But anyway, so Aiden brings two girls home for a party with Henry. Henry, Henry comes back. Okay, he's the kid that he's the son that Aiden made. It's the 1930s. Henry oversteps and fucksuren and basically Aiden, like I said, exiles him in the 1930s from Boston to save his life because mother would have killed him. And, okay, wait, hold on. So you said, oh, okay, right, because mother is Aiden, not Aden, is Suren's mother and finding out that he had done that. Okay, got it. Right. Got it.

Okay. So now Henry comes back and Aiden's like, hey, if I'm going to help Surin, you got to let Henry back. And mother is like, we'll let Henry back on one condition. I get to flay him. And so they do. like Ramsey Bolton style like yeah oh shit so he's a giant open sore

Aiden asks Josh to please invite Henry in because he's the only living person there right and Josh is like no this is our house and he's like this is Henry like this is my son like you look at him like I have to get him better and Josh like fine come in and he tells Aiden like no blood no blood

And Aiden's like, they're clamping down on the bag blood. I got to help him. And again, he's one open sore, right? So, Aiden brings these two girls home. And Henry is, he's glamored them to think that Henry's the most gorgeous man ever. He's glamored them to just, you're having a great time. And it wears off when they see themselves in the mirror bleeding all over the place. And they see Henry for what he is.

And they start freaking out. And Aiden has to kill them. in his own home and Josh is very very angry yeah um so he yeah aiden kills two girls who are like I said being used to rehabilitate Henry from his

being skinned by Suren's mom um and uh and and Josh is super angry he's like you brought this into our house the one place that it doesn't exist and he's got legit grief here yeah and like he's got a legit point here but at the same time like there's this Again, you're really angry and you're not listening to this guy.

Right. Also, there's two dead girls upstairs. I kind of get it. Yeah. What jumps out at me right now thinking about all of this whole situation you've just described, is this is exactly the kind of thing that Vampire the Mascarade was designed to be like, this is the horror. This is the moral horror. Yeah. This is the, you know, these are the choices you now need to make.

And, oh, my God, how awful is that? Right. Yeah. So, Aden's trying like hell to help Surin and to help Henry. Right. And to help the orphaned by Bishop's death vampire community to go clean. And he's, like, really dragging his feet on culling 200 of them. But the problem is that, like, they can't stay hidden because they're fiending for the live blood.

So Aiden's like at his wit's end and there's the whole plot of murdering the excess vampires that CERN actually ends up being a part of. So essentially she's rehabbed up enough, right? Right. And she, as I recall, Aden has her over for dinner with Josh and Josh's girlfriend. And it's really tense. And then the girl, the lady's kind of slip into the girl talk. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no.

I'm sorry, it's not, it's not Nora at that time. Josh is actually dating his ex-fiancee by this point. There's a whole plot point with that. And Josh's ex-fiancee, unbeknownst to Josh or Aiden, met with Aiden and the two of them had a fling for a little while, but he didn't know that she was the ex and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's this whole, like, tense dinner where Aiden. and Josh know that like they both know that

Aiden and her name was Julia. Aiden and Julia slept together and they both know that like she knows and and now Suren like kind of cracks the code. Right. And Aiden's like she gets really jealous. I don't know what she's going to do.

But like it works. They make it all work and there's like this again his house is like this place to try to be human. And Suren's like I understand why you are trying to do this it's not for me though and Aiden's like look we can build a life together

the two of us and he's trying to save her right right right and he's like we could build a life together the two of us we can make this work and she's like mother will never let me do things this way and blah blah blah he's like but we can try and she says I have to do what mother says and so what she does is she buys a house where all the vampires were hiding

okay she buys she gets a human to buy that house okay like you know she signs it over to him and as soon as he finishes signing it they're all uninvited guests

and they all emulate and it's and Henry has she's co-opted Henry by the way and Henry tells Aiden like okay let's go talk to them let's go make it right for them let's go let them know where they're going to be henry fully knows what's about to happen and he gets aiden to leave just in time and you can see them through the basement window

kind of thing like begging and dying so it's a whole fucking plot like yeah it's well within wheels like it's one of those like it takes almost as long as an episode to describe the episode you know Sheen does that because that's the price of doing business for her mom. She's got to show that she's like grown. So she's she's killing off the people that Aden couldn't. And Aiden still tries to run away with her. And the problem is, this comes back to the heroin thing. The problem is Surin cannot stop drinking live.

Okay. And there's a lot of talk between the two of them about withdrawal and being strong enough. And you just got to get used to the bagged blood. And so when Aiden is out trying to secure passage, like trying to find, you know, the Underground Railroad to go to Canada, basically. Right. Zerun Boltz. And she says to him, like, you know, she basically, she's like, I can't leave behind this lifestyle. And I can't escape from mother's clutches.

So Aiden decides to do what any good vampire would do. He figures he's going to kill mother. So, and he gets Henry to help him to do so. but Henry gets captured and that's just about the end of Henry and Aiden then gets captured and mother kills Suren right in front of him

and everyone else and Aiden straight up says like you what does he say he says something to the effect of like you never loved her and now you have to live with what you've done and she says

maybe but so do you and they lock him in a coffin and they bury him alive with his hunger as his only company. Wow. And that's the end of season two. It's awful. Now,

between seasons two and three, there's about a year in that universe, right? And eventually Aiden gets dug up and he's emaciated and very bearded and so season one was 2011, Season 2, I believe, was 2012. Okay. Season 3 is 2013.

Okay. Or it's, you know, it's the 13-14, right? Yeah, yeah. Or it's the 12-13, sorry. He's emaciated above ground, there's been an enormous flu outbreak that was, it hit humans pretty hard for about a week. Okay. But we got over it.

If a vampire drinks from a human who had that flu, they die within a week. like die die die wow yeah like like creeping like looks like black plague almost they're necrotic um this flu is deadly to vampires and so aden uh escaped all that by being buried alive oh great and there's very few vampires who are uninfected and there's very few humans who are unaffected and now there's no way to screen for it Oh shit Yeah so

Aiden escaped all of that by way of a fate worse than death And while he's being Dug up and is nursing himself back to health He's actually doing it by drinking Interestingly enough Somebody the guys who dug him up We're trying to sell his blood To other vampires who were starving

because the going theory was okay you can't drink from humans maybe you could drink from a vampire who's not infected and so they were draining him with like vile like big fucking like gallon milk cart or milk jugs and they're draining him and he ends up you know killing them and and he's drinking his own blood that someone drained from him uh to to do this it's it's all kinds of weird anyway It turns out that Henry actually escaped from mother and he set himself up with a young lady whom he glimmers daily and she's never allowed to leave the house. Oh, wow. So she has been indoors for a year, which means no flu, which means Henry's living.

She offers Aiden her blood, and so he ends up eating live again after a year of not. and this is because Henry has compelled her to do so, right? He's glamored her, he's compelled her, and Aiden kind of figures it out, you know, he figures out pretty quick, like, you know, like, wait, this is not her own free will. Like, you've been compelling her, and he's like, I'm staying alive, Aiden. You don't know what it's like. You had it easy compared to what we've had, which is wild and impetuous and something that, like, you know, somebody who's only 80 would say. right so um aden uh yeah henry and aden uh are are trying to um they're trying to figure out how to get a clean fix right because aden while henry's out and about doing stuff aden lets her go and henry's like we got

to find her he's like there's no way dude even if you do find her somebody could have sneezed near her She's in the wind We have to find another way So in other words He threw out Henry's supply Yeah Right Henry's pissed

And Aiden's like Look I've lived off of bagged blood Before we will find a way We can go clean We can So he's trying to Right right right again And Aiden asks Josh

To try to prescreen patients Now in this year that has passed Remember Josh Was an orderly at the hospital he has now worked his way up to being a nurse. There's his whole story I'll tell when I get into meth. But he asks Josh to try to prescreen patients with the question of, did you get last year's flu?

Okay. But what if you were asymptomatic? Yeah, that's a problem. So it's not too effective. And Henry dies because he can't go without drinking live. And he ends up drinking somebody who was infected. And after Henry dies, Aiden basically hits rock bottom. and he doesn't care where the blood's coming from

and he's drinking live. And he's out there engaging in all the risks all the time. And again, this is just wonderful inversions. Instead of using potentially dirty needles, he's drinking from potentially dirty people. Right. But right as he's giving up, his friends, of course, refused to let him continue to self-destruct

and he tries to go clean again. And that's when he meets... Now, I misnamed a kid earlier. His name was Bernie. that little kid that Aiden had to kill. Okay, yeah. The kid Aiden meets now is named Kenny, and he is a bubble boy.

Oh. In the hospital. So he's a clean source of blood. So Aiden is running blood. He gets his job back, right? They get a fire back because there's a nursing shortage, of course. And so he draws blood for samples for tests, you know, in finger quotes on Kenny

and Kennedy eventually figures it all out and actually has Aiden's stand near he's like oh I'm taking a video for like this documentary I'm doing on my time in this hospital can you stand over there the lights better by the window seeing if the sun hits him how about over here can we get a shot of you

reflecting in the mirror you know and Kenny has figured it out and Aiden's like Kenny what do you think I'm a fucking vampire like you've been watching too many horror movies like what are you doing and Kenny has befended this kid And it eventually comes out that, yes, Aden's a vampire. Remember, there's not that many vampires in Boston.

So when they find out that there's a bubble boy in the hospital, one of the more powerful vampires who's only like 12 because all the old ones died off, including all the Amish. But there's, again, I'm skipping over a lot of really important plot. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, but our purposes, yeah. Yeah, so this one particularly manipulative vampire shows up in the hospital and she's tried to manipulate Kenny. She registers as his aunt and Aiden's like, look, you come here again and I will fucking end you. Like, I'm 200 plus years older than you, so don't. And so she kind of has to back off, but like she basically promises Kenny, like, when you're,

turn 18 I'll turn you into a vampire because Kenny's been stuck in this bubble all his life right and he's like when I turn 18 I'm getting the fuck out of here and he asked Aiden and he's like no no fucking way and then she kind of steps in and she's like I'll do it because you're fresh blood until then you know yeah and so Aiden's like all right fine I'll turn you just because I don't want you to be under her thrall um but you got to know what you're getting into and so he kind of takes Kenny through, like, what it is to be a vampire. And Kenny's like, all right, um, despite this, and any, and it's like, so you sure you want to be a vampire? And he's like, yeah. And it's like, no, you don't, dude. Like, you missed the whole point. And Kenny's like,

look, when I turn 18, I'm walking out of there one way or another. Now I can either die or you can turn me. Um, Jesus. And, and, and, Aiden's like, fine. And this very specific relationship is between them shows me the opioid crisis in full. Aden is the conduit through which Kenny can live a normal life. So Kenny has a medical condition, right? Aden's vampirism in many ways represents the opioids. Because Kenny can have a normal life, but it means a lifetime of addiction. So you can be pain free if you're addicted.

And that's the trade. And Aiden is also involved with the whole subplot with a werewolf patriarch of purebred twins who's trying to kill him. His roommate Josh has actually reunited with Nora, a woman that he accidentally turned into a vampire. And she fucking hates Aiden's guts. I'll get more into that later, don't worry. And when Josh and Nora taken a teenager who just got turned into a werewolf herself, the purebred patriarch named Liam, manipulates her into poisoning Aden with her own blood. and vampires, if they drink

werewolf blood, they just puke it all up. It's known to cause vampires to get violently sick and weak after consuming it. So if she doses his clean doses of blood with her vampire blood or with her werewolf blood, he'll be too weak to fight off the patriarch who's trying to kill him, right? Right.

So Aiden has drank werewolf blood unwittingly. And he actually had drank it earlier, like the previous season when there was a thing that happened with Sally and Aiden like basically had to drink some of Josh's blood and he gets violently ill and all this shit happens right so Aiden has drank her blood unwittingly she dosed his clean supply right and Aiden like she basically is getting ready to stake him

and Aiden like kicks her and knocks her into a wall which hospitalizes her and Nora hates him even more and right around this time Aiden starts trying you know he's trying to live clean again and he's only drinking from Kenny and then and this shit happens right right so now

like that kid is on life support we'll get into that more and he ultimately makes Kenny into a vampire okay now Nora is like at the bedside of this kid who she's like you know 16 17 very

troubled kid right um she's at the bedside and her tenant because she's been subletting her apartment um her tenant comes and that woman's name is cat and she shows up and she runs into aden um and she turns out she's an historian who loves the early pre-revolutionary period of massachusetts okay and that's when aiden had been turned okay so nora's like you stay the fuck away from cat and he's like Like, what, leave me alone. Like, chill the fuck out. And Josh is like, I'll make this better between, you know, he's trying to. So Aiden goes on a date with Nora's friend, Kat.

And the patriarch, Liam, finds him and kidnaps him. And so Kat's like, what the fuck? Like, he just walked off with these two guys. I'm a little worried. But he goes quietly to keep cat safe. Because the werewolf is like, we could take you alone or we could take you with a corpse, you know. Yeah. And Aden is being tortured by Liam with silver, because silver hurts vampires.

He's being tortured, but also silver hurts werewolves, so Liam puts on gloves to use it. Kind of cool. And he's cutting him, and he's stabbing him, and he's beating the shit out of him. And the whole reason is because Liam had these twins who got to know Josh and Nora, and they both are dead. And what's happened is that Aden killed the son, but Nora killed the daughter.

And her killing the daughter happened off screen. I'll get to that. But essentially, Liam blames Aiden for killing them both. Okay. And Aiden didn't kill them both. But Aiden is getting tortupt. and he finally says you know because guys the guy's like you know what happened to my son he's like I fucking killed him and he moaned like a little bitch and just like infuriates Liam so Liam's just

beating the shit out of him with like chains and stuff and just like brutalizing him Josh is coming to save Aden and then he's like what happened to my daughter where's my daughter you know who did it and everybody knows that Nora killed this guy's daughter he's like who killed my daughter and Aiden says I did I wanted a matching set, basically. Like, I killed your fucking daughter, and she moaned like the bitch that she was and da, da, da, da, da. So just he's taking it all on him.

Right. And Nora was the one that killed it, but Aiden is, like, claiming that he did. And so Liam injects him with tainted blood. Like, here's the blood of somebody who had the flu and injects him with it. now you're going to die and it's going to fucking suck and all this, right? Right.

Josh rescues Aiden and he's like, dude, Nora hated you. Why did you still cover? He's like, I was dead already. Like, at least this way this guy would leave you guys alone finally. Right. Josh tells Nora this. She's finally chill. Okay.

She starts to realize that Aiden is not the awful person that she thinks he is. So Aiden has the disease in him He's got the flu in him Right Like he's been injected with yeah With his blood And this is where we find out That Aiden is actually immune to the disease

Because he had drank werewolf blood So There it is Right so Aiden comes home And he goes to Kenny And he's like All right I promised you

I was going to turn you, I'll turn you. Okay. Um, and again, he, you know, he, he only did this because this other younger vampire was going to try to turn him. Yeah. So he turns Kenny after he finds out that he's immune to the disease. Okay. I drank werewolf blood. And apparently that gave me the antibodies to fight this shit off. Right. Okay. So in 2011 to 2012, it was well after H1N1, which is what we used to call the swine flu. Right. Um, and, um, and, That was one of the shortest and narrowest peak years of the disease. Okay.

Okay. Which means that in our public consciousness, the swine flu was still there, even though it was actually off of our collective radar as well. Okay. Yeah. Because that had happened in 0809. In fact, in 2009, it was such a big deal that when I was in childbirthing classes with my then-wife, the flu vaccines were discussion. pregnant women should you get the flu vaccine right and i will admit here that i was being a bit ham handed or hamheaded in my thinking um basically i was apathetic i was like i don't care one

way or the other about it um you know hurt immunity is going to be fine if i don't get it it's not a big deal if i do get it you know the vaccine it's it's not a big deal um i was not as informed as i am now about vaccines i was you know speaking from a position of quite a bit of privilege but there was another couple in there where he cared a great deal and she was significantly younger than him if i recall correctly but he cared a great deal and she preferred not to get the vaccination while pregnant and a couple weeks later like i noticed that like that divide in them you know well sit in the circle I'm like, oh, that's interesting. A couple weeks later, she shows up to the, you know, they'd shown up, or I guess they missed the next week.

And then two weeks later, she showed up, they'd split. Oh, wow. So H1N1 was big in people's consciousness. It was one of the first big flus that, like, we were like, oh, shit, this is a big deal. Now, by 2012, 2013, the flu was on the rise again. It was a huge jump for the previous year. It was 38% higher infections. So this flu plot line made a lot of sense from a cultural perspective, right?

We had a name for it. We had the swine flu, right? H1N1. I mean, it was scary either way. We'd been frightened within recent memory, and then our fright had lulled. So a plot about the flu when the writers are putting together the third season and it's rising in public consciousness because it's an especially bad flu year, absolutely, you know, makes sense that this would be a major plot point.

Okay. Yeah. Now back to the sexy vampire. Aiden has been passing out at random or in random alleyways essentially because he's relapsed. Now that he knows he can drink live with no health risks to himself, the only thing stopping him would be a moral issue and he is relapsing. So that's out the window. Right. he's accidentally made a few people into vampires too um and uh he finally gets around to making kenny um one of the people he makes vampire by the way is one of cats ex-boyfriends who like tried to embarrass her in an archive or some shit uh um she shows aden a book that was written by his his actual grandfather oh wow yeah or is his actual father it was kind of interesting okay um but anyway uh so he finally makes kenny

uh who is just living it up on his last day of being a human right right um and uh the problem is though that kenny is has been turned by aden who is a vampire who now has drank wolf's blood and that changes the kinds of vampires that aden can make it's he's kenny is all sorts of fucked up think of like nos ferratu but with a lot more facial tumors oh Yeah. So instead of getting to be like Lestat, you're like that. And by the end of this season, Aden is back in recovery. He's trying to live a fairly normal life.

And Kenny is massively deformed. So in season four, Aden's arc is much more about trying to guide his shrunken community to live in a way that doesn't hurt other people. He's basically kind of becoming a pretty close to a 12-step guru, if not actually. actually. And he has to deal with all sorts of his, all sorts of aspects of his past. And he absolutely has another relapse, but then he seems to go pretty clean after that. It's like his final relapse.

A lot of that, a lot of season four is actually much more focused on Sally and Josh. Aden finally found a measure of stability through his, although he does run into his ex, to his ex-wife from the 1700s. Oh. So that's got him definitely living out the hardest part of the 12-step program. So essentially his wife, Susanna, he gets made into a vampire by Bishop during the American Revolution. He comes back and like he spends years away, you know, because that's what fighting is. And he and Bishop are living it up and they're drinking and he's learning how to be a vampire under Bishop.

but then he goes to live back with Susanna and his little boy whose name I think was Liam but he Aden is trying to live a good life married and all that kind of stuff there's all kinds of tension in the town

with the minister and shit like that and essentially trying to see yeah okay so essentially his wife Susanna is put into a dunking chair because she's in league with the devil because the minister thinks that Aden's the devil because they keep trying to conceive a child and the child keeps getting stillborn. Oh, wow. Okay.

Happens many times. So clearly you keep having stillborn children is a punishment by God. And the only reason is punishment by God is your husband is a devil. And so we're going to drown you in front of the town. unless you admit it. And so she drowns. Yeah. Downstream, Aiden slaughters the whole fucking town.

Right. Like you do. Yeah. His son, he tells, before he does this, though, he tells his son run home. So the son runs home, but his son is actually peeking through the reeds. Aiden kills everybody. Susanna is gone, right? Aden goes on and lives his life.

He leaves the place. his son is a an orphan etc well as it turns out Bishop found Susanna and turned her and in her bloodlust she ends up finding her son

who's an orphan and kills him well Bishop was a real fuck man he was so wow a aden runs into his wife who now she's been living for almost as long

as he has. Yeah. And she has figured it out down to a science. If you drink 70 milliliters, is it milliliters? Milligrams. Millileters would be the, yeah. It'd be in a vile. If you drink 70 of those a day of blood then you can get by.

And she whips herself every night for penance because she killed her fucking son. Yeah. And she goes and kills other vampires all the time. Aiden basically is like, I have to stop you. She kidnaps him.

And she chains him to like the sink in this hotel room. And they have a long talk about what it is to be a vampire. And in that talk, she basically like she has him recount. all of the people that he has hurt. Again, the most intensive fucked up 12 step, right? Yeah, no kidding. And at first, he's like, oh, you want to know? Fine, I'll fucking tell you.

And he just dives into the evil. He's like, have you ever drank somebody who was afraid? You can taste it, can't you? It feels, and he's describing it. And he's like, oh, yeah, I enjoyed being a vampire for a long time. We could do this all day, you know? And he basically, and she's like, that's fine. But I know you're a good man.

and eventually you're going to feel bad about this, and you're going to face yourself, and then the real work can start. And she basically, like, threatens him with staking him if he doesn't clean up. And he kind of pretends and pretends for a while. And eventually, she lets out that she killed their son. And the two of them just have this breakdown moment of utter grief. grief. Yeah. And like you think that there's been a breakthrough here, but she, she's clearly holding on to that self-hatred. And he's like, you've got to let that go. He says, look, I, I absolutely,

like, I miss him and it's terrible and it's awful. And I know that you didn't have any control over yourself. You have to forgive yourself. He's like, that's unforgivable and blah, blah, blah. And he grieves a ton. But then he points up, he's like, I'm going to slip up a again in the future because I'm a vampire and all I can try to do is stay basically he's saying one day at a time right and she's like no you have to commit now and you have to promise yourself and if you don't then I will kill you and all this and he's like you've never slipped and she's like oh that's you know that's what this is for and all that so essentially through that through that mutual greeting he ends up having to kill her also or she I forgets she does

dies, I forget exactly how, but he's, he's tied to it. So after this, like, this is the, this is toward the tail end of season four, the final season. He finally, like, she degriefified him. She got him to let go of all the things. Essentially, he's the addict who has really found his center. Okay. Where you're like, he's not going to have another relapse. You just, you kind of know, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like when people are like, yeah, I got my 25th year chip. And it's just one day at a time. It's like, it's very rare for you to slip up at this point anyway, though, right? Yeah, yeah. So he's found his center and he ends up having to stake both. Oh, that's what it is.

He ends up having a stake Kenny and his wife. And then he goes and fights a bunch of werewolves to rescue Josh and Nora again. And Sally, she's a ghost, but she gets witch magic. I'll talk all about that. talk about depression um she's gained in ways that i'll explain later and she actually resurrects aiden to stop him from murdering josh and she basically puts all of her witch magic into him and she she essentially shows him the light as it were and he has a heartbeat all of a sudden and she disappears right that's that's the end of her existence on the show but like he has a

heartbeat and he starts to hunger for actual food and the thing is he's over 200 years old so he starts to age really quickly but his last week or two uh is him devouring food and and like trying to live a life and and like dealing with that and he's aging very quickly and and about a week into it he's going to vampires and begging them to make him a vampire again so he has cleaned up he has regained his humanity and he's trying to throw it away because as it turns out he's truly afraid to die yeah he spent his whole life hating how he lives but when it comes to the specter of actual mortality he's gun-shy about it right and so here's a man who's got every chance to stay sober to stay off of the

all-consuming addiction that he's had for longer than the country has existed which is its own commentary on addiction I think and Aden is so scared of the actual feeling of true and authentic feelings

that he has not had to deal with because he's been always fighting his addiction that now that he's not addicted he's trying to get hooked again and I think that's that's wow yeah that's the profundity of it and and that's the perpetual addict behavior right like he's just one bad relapse away from cascading down again and he's trying to chase it down wow now one of my favorite parts from this is that he actually sits there and feels the weather

because he hasn't had live skin. Like, it looks alive, but he doesn't have a heartbeat. He doesn't have a pulse. So his nervous system is not, like, excited by the wind or anything like that. He actually feels the weather, and he's actually tasting food for the first time in 200 years. Wow. And there's a line in the show where he said that everything he ate always tasted like garbage, like actual garbage. But that's how he managed to blend in with people.

That's just what vampires do. Right, right. and now he's eating a hamburger and chili fries. And I love that for a couple of reasons, but like it's that authenticity, right? So while he's trying to deal with that, Josh catches him trying to get turned. Right. And Josh basically is like, what the fuck are you doing? You finally got what you wanted and you're going to throw it all away.

And he breaks down. And then after that, after addressing those feelings, again, he hasn't had to deal with feelings for so long. Right. Right. He has this huge breakdown with Susanna. Most of his life has been about denial, hiding it, trying to fight your addiction, and that takes all the energy. Well, now that he doesn't have the urges, he still has the behavior, and he's still trying to recreate it, right? Josh kind of calls him out on it, and it doesn't kind of, calls him out on it, and Aiden snaps too.

So he's enjoying a hamburger and chili fries with his friends. Now, here's the thing about hamburgers. there has been something approaching a hamburger or hamburger adjacent since the 1750s. In the famed later edition of the early cookbook, the art of cookery made plain and easy by a lady. It's actually the author of her name was Hannah Glass, who in the introduction said, quote, if I have not wrote in the high polite style, I hope I shall be forgiven. for my intention is to instruct the lower sort and therefore must treat them in their own way.

So it's a printed cookbook in the 1750s that was made for servants who knew how to read but who were going to make food for themselves not for the highfalutin aristocrats who are trying to impress each other. Okay. And it was literally titled with that byline

of the art of cookery made plain and easy by a lady. Right. Okay. The 1758 version mentioned a recipe for Hamburg sausages. Okay. Hamburg with an H at the end. Jefferson and Washington each owned a copy. The book was popular before, during, and after the Revolutionary War, and of course

Ben Franklin had a copy. Yeah. This means, then, that Aidan living in Boston, or just outside of Boston might have actually eaten Hamburg sausages and he might remember eating them. Okay.

But Hamburg sausages are not hamburgers. Right. Glass's recipe called for beef. Sueet, S-U-E-T, which is either cattle or sheep kidney fat, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, quote, a great quantity of garlic cut small,

white wine, vinegar, salt, a glass of red wine and a glass of rung. Wow, all right. Mix all that up and then stuff it, quote, very tight into, quote, the largest gut you can find. There you go. Now, you could keep it all year that way, and you could serve it with piece porridge and or with a toasted piece of bread under it. Okay, very, yeah.

Feels kind of like haggis. It's kind of hot doggy. Haggis, but with more versimilitude and less lung. more beef first of all and yeah and yeah yeah okay now it's not until the early 1800s that a hamburg style american fillet was offered in new york called such as many europeans had come from the port of hamburg and still that and the hamburger round stook which is stook with a you with an umlout yeah yeah which was say again Stuka

But there's no E at the end Yeah well yeah I'm I'm I'm Thinking of a different word Oh okay Oh like the dive bombers Yeah Yeah well

Round stork or whatever Stook But it was it was That was mid 1800s fair And those That and the American Hamberg style American flay Also weren't what we would recognize

As a hamburger Okay But they are We are getting at like the name being used and Proto-style hamburgs. Right. Because this had buns, and it had meat and sauce in between the buns. Okay.

But the meat is almost minced, and it's more likely it would be sausage patties that got squashed. Yeah. Sounds delicious. It does sound pretty good. Now, in 1873, we see a Hamburg steak, Hamburg without the age. Okay. At the end. Yeah.

Offered in New York, but in an 11-cent plate with. sides of breadcrumbs and onions okay so still doesn't count right and steak tartar was also ground meat but it was usually served fucking raw with an egg because fuck a parasite am i right well yeah i mean that's that is steak tartar right yeah yeah yeah so now between 1885 and 1904, many claimants that what we now acknowledge as the hamburger were operating. Some credit it to the Hamburg steamer line

of ships, which makes sense. Ground meat, easy to store, right? Ground meat was getting cheaper, by the way. I went deep into like meat grinders, essentially, in the pricing and the generation of them. You started looking at

its trade wins, didn't you? A little bit, a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Also, their trade wins. So ground meat, you know, you could start to use cheaper and you could, you know, pin it down in an ocean-going vessel. And so ocean-going vessels going from a town that had a history of small flattened meatballs or sausages that were served in a dish was now serving up a patty between buns, right? And so that kind of makes sense. It also seems to have multiple inventors from multiple fairs and amusement parks, the hamburger does, which makes sense. we don't know who invented a deep fried twinkie only that they exist, right?

I think it's parthenogenesis myself, but whatever. It's like the Heisenberg theory of food, right? We can point to where it is, but not how fast it got there, or we can point to how fast it's going, but not where it is, right? So, for instance, around the time of the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, which is the one that it was credited with inventing the ice cream cone, puffed rice, and jello. Yeah.

People also claim that the first hamburger was made there. Yeah. But from the St. Louis Globe Democrat, I found this. Quote, in St. Louis, I've heard from, I've, yeah, in St. Louis, I've heard from a person whose grandparents, or whose parents or grandparents came from the southern regions of Germany say that northern Germans in the city of Hamburg were much given to eating ground meat, even in the distant past. Other Germans disapproved of the Hamburg.

ground meat freaks, especially the hamburg types who liked raw ground meat. So the St. Louis Germans may have named the sandwich hamburger as a derisive gesture toward the barbaric ground meat gobblers in the city of Hamburg. It is certain that the people of Hamburg never got around to making a ground meat sandwich. If they did, it never caught on over there. So maybe not. Maybe not. Now, others claim that in an 1885 Erie County Fair in Buffalo, New York, it was born out of a lack of Polish sausage and minced meats that were being sold by two brothers named the Menches.

Okay. As in he's a good minch. Yeah, yeah. So the brothers Mench or the Munches were making Polish sausages and minced meats and they ran out. So they went to a butcher nearby, and the butcher was like, well, I don't want to butcher any more pigs this year. So here's some ground beef for cheap. And then they added coffee and brown sugar to make the meat taste less bland. Okay.

Now, one of the first things to go with this has always been grilled onions and ketchup. Yeah. And that was added to these hamburgers, named for the other name of the Erie County Fair. It was also called the Hamburg Fair. Okay. So some people hang their hat on that origin story, but I was not done. So others made credible claims because I kept finding like and it's like oh yeah but also and I'm just like Jesus Christ this is like I'm watching clue but for hamburgers so others make credible claims such as they are there was a fellow out in Wisconsin in 1885 who flattened out a hamburger steak and put bread around it to get people to eat it on the go during a fair there he can he called it the hamburger Charlie

Okay Athens, Texas also tries to claim similar origins from a restaurant in 1889 Okay Either way, Aden has never tasted a true hamburger as we know it This would be true Right? Yeah Now his turning happens during the American Revolution and this means he really doesn't know the taste of certain alcohols halls plenty of desserts although ice cream did exist back before he was turned um that also showed up

that recipe also showed up in glasses book and yes i bought that book um okay now to me that little mundane part the thing about like he's eating a hamburger and enjoying it for the first time and i don't really like i'm not that guy who's like i want a hamburger everywhere i go like i yeah hamburger's a hamburger like hard to fuck it up um good when it's good but like i can i can go months without a hamburger and be fine right yeah um the thing is this was the thing that meant being human to me this little mundane part where he's aging at the rate of 40 to 50 years a day and he's sitting down and enjoying the hamburger to me this is like the the being human vampire equivalent to you know the monk who gets chased by the tiger and he runs out and he falls off of a branch and it falls and it

catches on the cliff and the only thing holding him up is like a strawberry vine and the tiger is swiping at him and he looks down below and there's alligators down below or you know crocodiles down below and what does the monk do he reaches up and eats the most perfect strawberry he ever ate like this had that same kind of vibe to me right Aiden enjoyed the mundane joys of being human, and we can easily port that over to the addiction, too. When he was fiending on his addiction, he could enjoy nothing simple or mundane. It was long bouts of withdrawal, short bursts of relapse, but now that he's physically free of his addiction. Clearly not mentally so, because he's trying to get back to it, he could actually sit down and enjoy a simple meal accessible to almost anyone.

Anyway, Aden's dying So his humanity is incredibly short-lived Aden eventually takes on the evil spirit of the house Who's a 12-year-old who was sacrificed in their house in the 70s For some weird fucking cult And in the process he burns down the entire house to the ground Okay Just before he does, the spirit hurls him down the stairs

And he crushes his skull Which is the same way that we'll find out that Sally dies And as Aiden lays dying He throws his lighter at the gasoline, he spread throughout the house and he emulates the house. Nora and Josh come home to find the house to be completely burned down.

They're in some ways free of the house, free of the spirit, but they're also sad because of it. And then they see Aden sitting there on the stairs. He's a ghost. Now the thing about vampires is they don't get their door. A ghost will get a door.

Okay. When somebody dies, if they have cleared up all their shit in their mind, they get to go through their door pretty quickly. Your door appears, you go through. If not, you stay a ghost kind of on this plane until you figure your shit out, work it out, and then you can get your door, right?

It shows up when you're ready, essentially. Aden lived his whole life knowing that he was not going to get a door. Right. He knew ghosts, you know, he's a monster. You can see, you know, ghosts and shit like that. He knew he wasn't going to get a door. That's the price of immortality, right? It's the price of living as a vampire.

Because even if he gets staked, you just turn to dust. There's no fucking ghost vampires. Right, right, right. You're just done, right? You're off the mortal coil. Right. He gets his ghost or he gets his door because there's nothing left for him to work through. He dies.

Yeah. Fulfilled? Yeah, well, as a human. Yeah. And as a healthy human. as a human who has figured out all his shit, which means the addiction is let him go. Right.

And you remember Sally had like sacrificed herself to his rectum, she's actually on the other side of the door. And he finds her smiling and waiting for him on the other end and they were dead happily ever after. Nice. Yeah. So that's Aiden's arc. That's fucking heavy, man.

It is. It is. It's, it's really hard to talk about his arc while leaving out the others. Like you, they're so intertwined because it's how, yeah, all of the ways that you were like, okay, and we're going to come back to that. And so put a pin in that for now. Yeah, I run out of pins, you know? Yeah.

Like, yeah. But I really wanted to just focus on Aden's reactions because it, it's so clearly addict to me. Yeah. It's so clearly opioid addict. Right. And just the enjoyment of the hamburger. Which was not invented until long after he turned. It just, yeah, there's just something so beautifully mundane about that to me.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. All right. Anyway, next episode we'll talk about Josh, which is an exploration of meth. That'll be fun. And lycanthropy. So.

Okay. What have you gleaned so far? Well, first and foremost, I've gleaned that I really do need to figure out how to, how to watch this show. It's on Amazon. Okay. Good to know. With commercials, but fuck him.

As my daughter pointed out, she's like, you're going to get a lot of wet, wet AMD commercials, like, macular degeneration commercials. Oh. So. All right. Yeah. That seems to be what popped up a lot for us, at least. Weird.

Yeah. So. Huh. But yes, you do need to watch it. It's amazing. And the next thing that occurs to me is the ways that the lore surrounding the supernaturals that are involved here without getting into anything about werewolves yet.

Right. The werewolves and vampires don't get along thing is a modern invention that has now, become a standard trope yes it has to be addressed one way or the other yeah yeah and um I find the choices that the writers made and and a lot of those choices were made by the by the people that wrote the British series and were just poured it over but I I find it interesting the choices that were made about what are the limitations of vampires in this in this universe in this version of the lore sure you know um and and that's just you know

kind of nerding out on all that but yeah i mean you've you've kind of uh covered kind of soup to nuts everything there is about the the allegory for addiction involved so there's no whole lot else for me to say like it's it's now it's now inescapable and like like well yeah kind of kind of you know you know and Sam Whitwer actually said that like you know

the vampire is clearly a cut out for sexual addiction and or heroin addiction like it was kind of both yeah you know yeah and I think it opens up more to opioid addiction ultimately because yeah well in the end the way

the way everything yeah kind of goes yeah Oh, and just, you know, Sam Whitwer being awesome is, you know, something to take away. But, yeah, again, I just come back to, I really need to watch the whole series so I can, I can have more commentary, I guess. I don't know how your wife is about blood horror and, like, you know, that kind of violence that goes with it. Not good on it, not good. It's such a good series.

Oh, I'm sure. Like, I'm sure. But it's, it's another one that I'm going to have to figure out how to watch on my own. Yeah, I know. Because there's, there is a lot of, like, there's a lot of romance to it. There's a lot of relationship stuff in there. There's a lot of really, like, and there's a lot of interaction between people. Yes, it's punctuated by, you know, shows of violence.

Hideous, hideous horrific violence. Yeah. Often, yeah. Um, but like, God damn, it's good, man. so yeah cool well um let's see what do you want people to read or watch or imbibe um well in in the spirit of talking about series that we're on the sci-fi channel or sci-fi in in a case of being human i'm going to very strongly recommend folks uh look for and try to find i'm not sure where it can be streamed right now uh but look for farscape uh because

it is mind-blowing and amazing both in terms of kind of what it does with a lot of science fiction tropes and what the Jim Henson studios were able to accomplish using practical effects and and puppetry. You know, it is, it is currently on Hulu. Okay. So if you have the Disney app, I think you're going to get to it that way. Yeah. It probably has commercials, but that's fine. That's worth it.

It's a thousand percent worth it. If only to see Claudia Black. If only. But yes, there is that and a whole lot else as well. Because they managed to create a coherent but remarkably alien universe really well. So, yeah, that's going to be my recommendation. What about you? I'm going to recommend.

I don't know if I recommended this last week or not. I feel like I might have. Can't Find My Way by Martin Torgoff. I think you did, but we can get it recommended again. I still recommend it again. It's that good. Largely for Chapter 1, because it talks about the best place that you could listen to jazz music in like the 1930s was this rehab facility in Tennessee. It was like a methadone clinic practically.

So, Wow. Tell you what, instead of that one, I'm going to recommend the cookbook that I actually was talking about earlier. You can get it for like five bucks. It's not the printing from 1758.

I think it's from like the late 1700s because multiple editions went out. But the art of cookery made plain by, last name was Glass, Hannah Glass. Um, so the art of cookery, um, made plain and made plain and easy. Let me get the, the full title for you. Uh, the,

uh, the, uh, here it is. Uh, the art of cookery made plain and easy, excelling anything of the kind yet published, containing. And then it's like a list of all the shit. And then also the order of a bill of fare for each, month in the manner the dishes are to be placed upon the table in the present taste oh wow all right yeah yeah it's a in that 18th century tradition of um i have to fill up the title page with

something right so it's going to be the title yeah yeah yeah it's yeah it's fun but yeah i recommend that book um uh yeah it's it's got recipes for hamburgers well not hamburg sausages yeah but also like all kinds of other weird shit and and the thing is i don't know who decided how recipes should be written yeah but i'm so glad that they decided it before i was born because this woman's way of writing down the recipe is like what the fuck are we doing it's like watching it's like it's like reading a modern recipe online yeah it's like you know yeah and as we're you know as as you're looking for the brown sugar please remember the song that was written by the rolling stones and you're like what the fuck just could you tell me how

much i don't even care if you're going to say a dash that's fine like yeah tell me stuff but like i need i need measurements i need yeah but yeah check out that cookbook it's fun it's like five bucks you can you can spare five bucks all right nice so cool very cool well uh where can we be found on our website at wubo-wobba-wobba.ggehistorytime.com. We can also be found on the Apple podcast app and on Spotify and the Amazon podcast app. Wherever you have found us, please take a moment to give us the five-star review

that you know Damien's exhaustive research into the development of meat grinders in the early 20th century deserves. Oh, no, no, mid-19th century. Oh, sorry. Yes. Sorry, my bad. Yes, in the mid-19th century.

Damien, you're only allowed to use eight sources for this paper. So, yeah, give us the five-star review that you know his obsessive research habits have earned us. And, yeah, where can you be found, sir, other than the research library? Well, just remember, the research is because I don't have the talent at writing that you do. So I have to make up for it. Okay, I'll take the compliment. Yeah, with discipline. Right.

So. Oh, oh, oh, oh, wow. Okay. I resemble that remark, yeah. Let's see, let's try December 5th at 9 p.m. at the comedy spot in Sacramento. I think this will come out before that. me and the crew at Capital Punishment will be slinging puns

it's going to be a banger of a show we always try to make our winter shows that much better to get you in out of the cold and to send you home and you can smell the pine when you get home remembering the puns because it's December you're going to have Christmas Christmas

Anyway but yeah December 5th and January 2nd I think I will put you on to the tail of those go to satcommodyspot.com, grab your tickets there, $15 bucks. Get them online so you don't have to wait for them to be on will call at the door or what have you. And that's, yeah, that's about it. So for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock.

And until next time, keep rolling 20s.