A Geek History of Time - Episode 349 - Vampires, Opiods, Werewolves, Meth, Ghosts, and Depression Part IV

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

you know the thing is you have you have reached farther for less good to be blunt the money in tabletop games isn't great we have to wind up with the church of England because obvi I'll start I mean you're you're here to be the expert but um that doesn't stop that one oddly doesn't make me angry because you know who's the boss you know what I'm going to keep my head down and be as inoffensive as I can to everybody possible. And that's it. You want to fight? I'm going to dry hump your leg until we're friends.

Of course, reminded me of that one woman that I went on a single date with who said, you know, the downside about my job is that we don't show kids drowning anymore. S. ...you know... ...woulda... ...and... ...the... ...that... ...you...

...the... ...and... ...and... ...the... This is a 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 I think I mentioned on here a couple of episodes ago that I had finally, after

four years of playing the game gotten a Marauder 2. Mm-hmm. That was like, that had been like my white whale. In the original Battletech game, it is possibly my favorite mech, you know, to have on the table.

I finally got one. And it had taken me four years to find it. And then literally, I want to say five long-ins to the game later, it might have been six days, but it was like, you know, not even a whole week after

finding that one. I pull into an industrial hub and, oh, hey, rare, rare mech for sale. Let's see what it is. Oh, hey, it's a variant marauder, too. Like, I mean, I'm not complaining, and I fucking bought it because, I mean, come on. Which, you know, knocked me down below the 100 million mark. And there was a moment of, do I really want to do this? And I was like, why do I have this?

Why do I have these sea bills if I'm not going to spend them? Right. Right. You know, and I'm not even in, in the whale category you're in. Like, you know, I'm, I'm an orca, you're a blue whale. Like, you know, but, you know, so, yeah, I, I now have two of them in my, in my inventory. Nice. And, yeah, yeah, I need to, I need to tune the variant, though, because it's all energy weapons,

which on the one hand, you never need to worry about ammo. Right. But I don't usually need to worry about ammo anyway for the one, the one auto cannon on the regular one. But what I do need to worry about is heat. Yeah, I was going to say all those energy weapons, you got heat issues. And on top of that, you can't hit people if you don't have a line of sight now. You need missiles. Yeah.

Well, yeah, no, I mean, missiles. That's an issue with the marauder, too, anyway. And the regular marauder. That is a problem. but like you know being able to make a fire starter evaporate in three hits is is a special kind of satisfying i yeah i have to say so yeah that's yeah that's that's what i have going on how about you well i'm damien harmony i am a u.s history and economics teacher here in northern california at the high school level uh-huh i was at a party recently friends

birthday. And I had been at his husband's birthday earlier in the summer, before the summer, I think. I don't quite remember when. But I'm sure they'll invite me to the next one, so I won't have to keep in track. Anyway, I was over there, and the guest started to arrive, and I remembered some faces from last time. And people came up to me, like, oh, my God, I love your podcast. I'm like, oh, thank you for listening. Like, this is really cool. like that happened three times at this party so there's at least like yeah like holy shit wow yeah apparently so people are yeah and and because of the podcast people are like wow when i challenge you to a game of jeopardy i didn't realize i was going after somebody who

would just wipe the floor with me i'm like i don't know what you're talking about i did the research on those topics like that i don't i don't know shit about fuck like i just i just know this these things but got him coughing yeah i i have i have access to an extensive research library that's not the same thing right as you know knowledgeable like yeah dude so anyway that was that was pretty cool that's awesome by the way i got to say um it is easier to make a a firestarter evaporate if you just use that thunderbolt and you alpha strike its head fuck you not not all of us Not all of us have the, I worked at virtual world levels of precision shooting skill. Oh, God.

I am getting better. You are? You are? I am getting better, but I'm nowhere near there yet. It's still the most reliable thing. Like in a game earlier today, and I don't know how the fuck this happened, but it was like a difficulty 45 mission. And the last two me They threw at me were a pair of fucking banshees

I'm like These are 90-ton mecks What are you doing? So anyway But you know The most reliable way to take them down It's still for me to just aim at the legs Sure

You know Because that that level of Called shot I can I can reliably make But That's a good shot to take That's yeah But

It doesn't provide the same level of you know, and now I'm going to sell the Mac for 90% of its value exactly, you know, that a headshot does, but um, and I, I also, before we get started, um, I also had somebody

mentioned to me that they really like the podcast. Oh, neat. Uh, yeah, it was a former student. Uh, huh, on campus between periods. And I was like, okay, I have permanent status. I'm not going to sweat it too much. Um,

Yeah. But there was a moment of like, oh, I know this kid's heard me say fuck at least four or five times now. Oh, yeah, easily. And he's not even the one that I slipped up and said it to him at work last year, you know, which is a story all its own. But, yeah. So. Now, kids regularly find mine. And, you know, I mean, I've got a tattoo of it, right?

So there's that. but they regular find our podcast and like Mr. Harmony I found your podcast like they like wow congratulations you typed in my name and I hard shit yeah it's really demanding yeah in all fairness one of the first assignments I always give to students is to email me

and sure enough my name gets misspelled more times than my grandma she used to misspell my name all the time but like kids would be like well I you know how come I don't have a point for emailing you well because you didn't email me no I emailed you show me and they show me I'm like yeah you spelled my name wrong what well I should still get the credit I'm like no you shouldn't it's not like going next door to your neighbor's house like you have to get this completely right you can't just be like within the neighborhood so but but yeah I I heartily recommend alpha striking a hunchback

um you get to sell them for a lot you you and the fucking hunchback I don't man I'm so easy yes right there so actually I shot my way out of a really brutal fight um today so I saw that you were on but I was like I'm gonna let him do his thing

yeah you remember that mission that like we ended up with uh like all the the giant mega cityscape I hate those oh fuck yeah and where we all died uh yeah yeah i don't i don't have that i went back and we started it yeah and uh i still i lost a guy completely completely um but that was okay because i found three other guys to hire who had traits and you know i've been like oh yeah you've been hunting for them but uh i lost a guy completely lost two mecks um but the only reason i didn't lose more was because i just started headshot and motherfuckers and i was just

like and fuck you and fuck you and fuck you yeah And so it was... We're cool and fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Damn. But that's right.

I have now dipped below the 600 million mark. Largely because I also bought another mech. Oh, what did you buy? It's the new type. It's like the Longen hanker or something like that or the Lumpen Shanker or the Lungenekker. I don't remember what it's called. Okay. but yeah

anyway looked cool I was like all right backer no maybe I don't know I don't know Lozum gain I don't know Okay All right so when last we talked

Yeah we were talking about Domestic abuse and meth Yes Fun shit Wow And I pointed out that Josh's experience In being a werewolf Throughout the series

Is marked by A tremendous amount of self-loat right and a feeling of trapped by the violence that that now permeates his life like either the violence that's brought against him because vampires and and the um werewolves have a whole thing um or the violence that he accidentally brings on other people when he loses control because he does a lot and and even when he's not a werewolf there's there's issues of violence um so again i I wanted to look at what the public consciousness of meth was, irrespective of what the actual facts were.

So last episode I gave you all the facts. Yeah. And I want to get kind of a cultural baseline of it. So I went to a group called the American Addiction Center's website. And it's largely because of their timing with regard to being human. They started as a group just two years ahead of being human getting started. now for the record this group is far from perfect um i do not have i don't have that much respect for them as a group um

because they've been credibly sued in california in 2018 over a patient who committed suicide within 20 hours of arriving at their facility for legal purposes of this podcast all of these things are alleged even though the things are like just out there in public domain mother jones didn't invest investigation on them. Mother Jones reported that they often left their patients unattended, which then Mother Jones reported had led to deaths and injuries of more. Now, the American Addiction Centers responded by saying that their death rates are the lowest in the industry, and the fact that they're a publicly traded company leads me to be more than a little skeptical about their

alleged standards of care. Yeah. And the whole rehab industry itself, which is, an industry is all sorts of worrisome and it grew specifically because of the opioid and meth epidemics private non-profit and for-profit and publicly traded rehab companies are all on the rise and have been for the last 10 years the only rehab facilities that are not on the rise government run yeah well yeah big shock yeah jesus i guess hates addicts um so here's a quote from the article talking about the American Addiction Centers website or the American Addiction Centers organization they're talking specifically about the founder a guy named Michael Cartwright and the business model that they use they says the

article says quote today AAC has nine inpatient centers 15 outpatient locations and four sober living facilities the business has paid off for Cartwright who made 1.3 million dollars in 2017 the average residential, this is still from the article, the average residential patient brings in roughly $800 per day in revenue for AAC, most of it is paid by private insurance. Cartwright acknowledges, or acknowledged to Mother Jones, that AAC's rate is far higher than those of publicly funded facilities, but said that it's on par with other private providers. Quote, the type of clientele that we have, usually upper middle class families throughout the

United States, they're expecting a nice facility, nice amenities, laundry service. as good food and client-staff ratio, he said. Further, Mother Jones also says that some 65 sales reps marketed AAC services to therapists, DUI attorneys, and doctors. The company operated more than 100 websites ensuring AAC showed up frequently in search results. Quote, if you type in heroin addiction or methamphetamine addiction, Cartwright, the AAC's CEO told his audience, quote, you're probably going to

to come across one of our websites. And each month, roughly 30,000 calls came into AAC's call center in Nashville, where he said, Cartwright said, quote, we have 100 sales reps answering the phones every day. AAC had dozens of facilities across eight states, including high-end residential centers, outpatient programs, and sober living houses. According to Cartwright's slides, the average residential client brought in more than $22,000 in revenue. you know okay yeah so based on all of that um it leaves me kind of wondering all right so their rates are what they are how much of those rates goes to the marketing and the sales reps That's a good question

I did not look to that You know as opposed to They're publicly traded So I bet you I could have found that information I'm sure I'm sure you good questions I mean if you if you You know looked around

But yeah If I thought to look I would have You know And and You know right off the bat Obviously there is the Suspicion of anybody

Treating addiction treatment As a for profit enterprise which is not I'm I don't want to say it's inherently unethical but it it it's feels off it does um and it feels like people charging exorbitant amounts for insulin yes um and then you know the founder, owner, saying, you know, our clientele expects a certain level of, you know, amenities and whatever, whatever. And all I can think, and this is, this is obviously your long con working, turning, turning me into a social Democrat. But the next thing I think, part of it is also my lived experience, you know, that's turned me into a union thug, you know, even before your long con started. Oh, on Labor Day, told my kids.

this last year like you know the thing that made me like this was bad bosses I would have been fine being just a company guy I would have been fine being like in love with my own excellence and thinking that I was exceptional enough that I didn't need any of those things yeah but I had bad bosses so now I'm a thug now now solidarity forever motherfucker yeah but um they just left well enough alone if they had just not fucked with us right um um but Because I was in love with being the smart guy in the middle. I absolutely was. I think that's why I rail against them so hard now.

Well, yeah. Because, you know, I just project. But, like, no, no, shitty bosses had to, like, take it one step further. And it's like, okay, I guess I'm going to understand how my labor is separated from me and the alienation inherent in the capitalist system. Here we go. Help, help, help, I'm being repressed. Right.

Look, come look at the violence inherent in the system. All right, so for-profit enterprise. For-profit enterprise, you know, the next thing, the next thing that immediately occurs to me is like, okay, your rates are higher than others in the industry. What is the pay of your employees like compared to them? Well, how much are your therapists getting paid? How much are you, you know, site support staff getting paid? I would guess it's probably market standard. yeah probably which is low and fucked up um now by the way cartwright doesn't actually call his

salespeople on the phone salespeople he calls them navigators because of course he fucking doesn't call him salespeople so because that would uh uh blow up the the illusion and yes and you know make it obvious that we are selling a service mm-hmm and if you weren't feeling yourself at least on some level like what you're doing is not reputable you wouldn't feel the need

to gloss over it yeah like no we are like no I am selling a service my service is I take care of your kids for seven hours of fucking day and I teach them how to fucking think and in return I get paid for that

I'm selling a service like I have no shame about this. Yeah. So, anyway. I mean, I would love to do it for love of the game, but I also need to eat. You know, I need to keep a roof over my head. Yup.

So. Anyway, soccer cleats. So, yeah. All that said, AAC actually talks a good game on their website about the dangers of meth. And again, they came up just a bit before the show, and they went public on the stock exchange the same year that being human ended. So this organization. is contemporaneous with the cultural understanding of meth addiction and therefore this was

kind of born in the same period of time as the writers of being human are swimming in the culture. So it's it's it's it's a relevant source for I think so the time period. Okay. And again, they do a decent job talking about the dangers of meth and and that's the thing I keep coming back to is that like they have the same cultural understanding that the writers did so they talk about how the long-term use of meth can cause significant damage to the brain and that the cells that make dopamine as well as to the nerve cells containing serotonin

both of those can get damaged by meth the DEA warns that chronic and prolonged meth exposure can damage as many as half of the dopamine producing cells in the brain and potentially even more of the serotonin containing nerve cells. Individuals who use meth long term, a lot of this is from the website. I've re-termed some of it, but by and large, this is what I was able to pull. Individuals

who use meth long term can have severe cognitive and emotional issues, including now this is absolutely from their website, aggressive behaviors, trouble with verbal learning and memory, violent outbursts, anxiety, depression, paranoia, confusion, distractibility, difficulty sleeping, movement, motor

and coordination issues, mood disturbance, visual and auditory hallucinations and delusions. And most, if not all of that, lines up really well with what they say about the damage to serotonin and dopamine. Yes. Producing cells. Like, if you fuck with those two chemicals, all of that is going to get whacked out.

Yeah. So, yeah. Also, a lot of this absolutely lines up with lycanthropy. yeah so yeah wow now to Josh right Josh and his buddy Stu were camping when they were attacked by a werewolf the werewolf they later will find out we will we the audience will find out later the werewolf is is Ray now all three of these guys were white and in a suburban and semi rural setting okay Josh Stu and Ray like the houses are on their own one acre plots of land

surrounded by nature like that kind of stuff if you wanted to cook meth nobody would notice like that kind of area right right all right it's a small small place uh Josh's first transformation after the attack that took Stu's life led him to leaving his family and his fiancee so as to not hurt them but we find all that out over the next two seasons or so

when we first meet Josh he's working as an orderly in the same hospital in which Aden is now a nurse. And Josh is awkward and avoidant. He and Aden are looking to move in together as the show opens. Josh essentially wants to be completely isolate so as to not hurt anyone and try to live as uneventful a life as possible. He has tremendous violence in him, which he cannot control, and so he does the best he can to plan how to absent himself from civilization at every turn. It's a true. It's a tremendous source of angst for Josh, and he spends most of his 27 to 29 other days of the month obsessing on it.

So far, this does not actually sound meth-y, to be honest, but, of course, there's more. So Josh is obsessive about cleaning his place. Okay. And what is one of the, like, first things that people started joking about with meth addicts was that they would stay up all night with a toothbrush cleaning the baseboards. Right, right, right. Josh also notices on his skin and his teeth the notes of first change when it happens. So again, the skin, itchy, and the teeth, right?

Yeah. We talk about meth mouth, right? And he doesn't really feel like he can trust anyone except for Aiden and eventually Sally. Okay. Paranoia. Now, at the outset, when he and Aiden are talking about moving in together, do they already, like, in episode one do they already know that one's a vampire and one's a werewolf?

Yes, they both know each other's monstrosity. And that's the point of moving in together is to have some shred of humanity, to have one place where they can be human. Right, right. Okay. So after the turn, and Josh comes back to being human, he has no recollection of where he's been or what he's done.

And for the next 27 to 29 days, Josh is moody as hell and deeply paranoid and later when he's close to the turn he often ends up in violent confrontations where he kind of lets go a bit on people like beats the shit out of folks so I've hit on paranoia confusion mood disturbances anxiety

depression and violent outbursts trouble with his memory obsessive behavior telltale skin and teeth issues and aggressive behaviors yeah it lines up pretty well yeah so all right I have I have lore questions. Okay, because I'm going to tell you all about the lore, but yeah. Okay.

Go ahead. So maybe this is our segue into it. So as a werewolf, you said, you mentioned somewhere, either in this episode of the prior one, that he became a werewolf because he got scratched in the attack that killed his friend. Yes. So it is a communicable curse. Yes. And it is a curse, not a disease. Although Josh treats it like a disease

He's trying to cure it like a disease Okay But it is in fact a curse And that comes out later Okay Now Are there Trueborn

Werewolves Like if a werewolf has a child Yes Okay Okay So if so the curse is passed down Genetically as well Or

By having a child Yes Yes Yes okay so that that shows up in later seasons as well okay um and vampires and warwolves don't get along you've established that typically yeah typically um i'm trying to think what the vampires tend to beat the shit out of werewolves that they find because they can smell them okay they can they tend to smell each other um but they can they can smell them and uh they

are repugnant to they're repugnant to vampires in their smell like there's a scene where remember that gal that Aiden accidentally ate in the very first episode right right and she gets turned well that woman Rebecca she starts

bullying Josh and she goes to bite him and she's like oh you smell like a wet dog and then she just starts like treating him like shit got so so they're repugnant to them you remember actually Actually, it's a huge plot point that Aden does drink from Josh a little bit. Right, right.

And that leads to all kinds of shade. But by and large, you don't, you don't mix the two, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right.

I will, the other stuff that I'm curious about, I will wait until any other more stuff comes up. So in the first season. But I wanted, I wanted to especially, sorry, I wanted, I especially wanted to establish the curse. aspect of it as a thing. It'd be incommunicable. All right.

Yes. Thank you. Yep, absolutely. Okay. So in the first season, Josh meets Ray, who's another werewolf, and it turns out, we find out through subsequent episodes that Ray is actually the one who turned Josh. Ray is a drifter, kind of a, he's odd. He's very odd, but he's got a magnetism to him. He's got that charisma.

that creepy dudes have with women and Ray actually teaches Josh some really important tricks of being a werewolf but he has this real sleazy sleazy is the word I'm looking for he's got this sleazy rough around the edges kind of side to him and it's Ray that alerts Josh to the fact that his libido

heightens the closer he is to a turn and so this is why vampires beat the shit out of werewolves in the middle of the month or right after a turn but never heading toward the waxing moon um because that's when world where wolves are growing in their power before their change um and ray shows him by beating the shit out of vampires uh that josh is powerful enough to beat the shit out of vampires closer to the full moon

okay and also with that increased libido uh ray goes and gets laid um ray is genuinely paranoid about anyone who's not a fellow werewolf and he hates Aden. And so Josh is kind of like trying to bridge this thing like Aden's his best friend, but also Ray is teaching him how to werewolf and Ray understands wherewolfing. Aidan doesn't.

And so Josh very often is moderating between Aden and someone else. Just kind of a codependency there. Now this prompts Josh, because of this increased libido, there is a nurse at the hospital name Nora and he has a little bit of chemistry with her it's kind of like nerdy kind of he breaks into like a British accent at one point he's like my lady you know and it's and and then after he's like why did I

do that um so he keeps fucking things up as he goes along um but uh essentially he he then like ray shows him like how to hit on women when when you're close to the turn and he basically sexually harasses her like that's and she basically says look I will call HR you pull this shit again if you ever come near me blah blah blah blah right right and he's like I blew the shit out of that one that's just terrible but eventually they kind of rekindle because they've got this chemistry and eventually his flightiness about the two of them is enough for her to try to confront him of course this is as he is you remember he and Aiden found a Heidi spot

in the basement of the old hospital he's on his way down there she's working night she confronts him and he like he's he's got the beast in him and all this kind of stuff and they end up fucking

okay like she like goes to him confronts him pushes him into another room and he basically he's like you know I got to go and she's like no I'm not letting you leave and blah blah blah and then he just they have sex now of course it's doggy style um and it's super brief and and like he pulls out and he runs like he takes the fuck off and like there's just this scene of her like just having been plowed right for 30 seconds um but uh and she's just like kind of like can you believe it like

what did i get myself into what did i just do that kind of thing right yeah yeah so she's bemused so you don't know if she's hurt or upset or kind of turned on or just laughing it off you don't know because we're focused on him right so he he pulls out he runs down the hall trying to get to his hidden place um and he does just in time now they reconcile uh the next day pretty much she shows up at his house she's like uh what the fuck dude and he's like look i am so sorry blah blah blah and he's like i i like i like i like us. I want us to try something. I'm not that guy. I don't randomly mount coworkers in the middle of the night. And like she has a few lines back and forth with him. She's like, no, I was

into it, but I'd rather not do like that next time. Like, let's do something. And so they reconcile and they really try to make a go at a relationship. But Josh absolutely keeps having these dreams that he's going to hurt Nora and he keeps pulling back emotionally. And while I think that I have established that a hallmark of this show is that people drop question bombs and then accusations on each other and then leave before the other person actually gets to explain. Right, yeah. I think this second one is as signature a move as well. As soon as you're about to go to fill in the puzzle for the other person, you get kidnapped.

Wow. Okay. It's like a forced French farce. Yeah. So sure enough, the vampires that Aidan doesn't like, but he's, semi beholden to Marcus and Bishop they kidnapped Josh and they force him into a dog fight with another werewolf at the start of the full moon this is to entertain the Amish of course it is and Aden is powerless to stop the fight because there's too many older vampires around laying their rats and the Amish are coming to town or they're in town and their whole arc is just a

fascinating one that I'm going to sidestep the Amish um as season one comes to a close Josh has now killed the other werewolf and so we hear that he has a killer nature but we never see it on screen he's still trying to find a way to balance his condition with having a normal -ish life

despite the kidnappings meeting his maker and having a best friend who's beholden to the people who kidnapped him in the first place right Nora is pregnant from that one time and she and Josh go get an ultrasound

and the baby is twice as far along as it should be. So, of course, there's some question. And she's like, no, you are the only one. I can't believe you'd even accuse me of that. And he's like, okay, but this is weird. But also, Josh is, of course, afraid that he's passed on as lycanthropy to a child. Right. Now, when he's hiding out and getting ready to turn toward the end of the first season,

Nora follows him this time, finds him in the hidey place, and she's going to confront him yet again and he's pushing her as he's literally like changing and he doubles over and screams in pain like his bones are breaking his heart is enlarging it is a visceral experience for him his face is like forming into a wolf's right so as he is trying to push her away

he of course scratches her before pushing her out and then and then on the other side of the window she witnesses the entire transformation and later she tells him that's the first time I truly saw you. But also, she's been scratched. Right. Now, his condition is the meth addiction

that he's trying to hide. Yeah. And he's trying to live a normal knife and deal with this meth addiction. And it dominates his entire life. Now, Nora turns on the next full moon and she's worried about how it's going to feel. And while she and Josh are in Wolf Farm,

The Amish, of course, tried to kill Josh. They didn't know about Nora. And they're trying to kill Josh on behalf of mother, remember her. Right, right, yeah. So that Aden can stop being split between his loyalties, you know. And here's where it gets interesting. It seems very meth-y to me. Josh hates his condition.

And he also hates his violence. And he hates everything about being a werewolf and wishes he could stop it. He can't, but he wishes he could. And he's passed it on to Nora, so he's gotten her addicted to. Right. Through violence. Right. Nora, however, it has a totally different reaction.

She fucking loves it. This is revealed over a few months. Josh is still trying to cure himself, and he's doubly so trying to cure Nora, and she is reluctantly and demurely supportive of his efforts, and including they rent out, like, storage units next to each other, to like rig cameras in cages to study the transformation. But then they meet a pair of purebred twins. Yeah.

Brin and Connor McLean. Okay. This is, you know. Connor is in a psych ward for getting too drunk and partying too hard. And because it's right before a full moon, Brin goes up to him and Nora and says, I know that you're like me. You have to get my brother out of it.

there. And they're like, what are you talking about? And she's like, I can smell it. Fucking come clean. We got to get my brother out of there. And they're like, oh, shit, okay. So it's right before full moon. Josh helps to spring Connor. So now we've not only got Josh, who hates his condition, but now Nora, whom Josh introduced to the condition he hates through violence, she has a growing appreciation for it. And the McLean twins who've had it their whole lives are trying to find a way to turn whenever they want, not just when the moon takes them. So they're looking.

Yeah. So I had a thought, and now I'm trying to recapture what it was. So the twins are they, is part of the reason they're trying to learn to turn whenever they want. so that they are not beholden to the moon? Partly, but it's more because they really like being wolves. Okay. So you have a reluctant addict. You have a new addict who's enjoying the euphoria,

and you've got the two managing addicts who have very violent and outbursty temperaments who want to have more. Okay. Okay. And Josh all but cuts them off, but Nora continues to hang with them. Okay.

And they help her to murder her abusive X while they're in wolf form during their next turn. Oh, wow. Yeah. Now, oh, boy. Aiden at this point has turned a female cop into a vampire. Okay. To help Surin to run things. Remember that whole plot.

Yeah, I do. Josh goes to her and convinces her to attack the twins in order to... So the murder of Nora's ex is spilling back onto Nora. Josh goes to the cop and says, look, I know you're a brand new vampire. And what will really make all the other vampires really like you is if you kill two purebred wolves with this here rifle that I got off the Amish. Yeah.

Because I killed one of them, right? Okay. And he's like, here's a rifle, silver bullet, go kill the twins. In exchange for this favor, I want you to make sure that the case against Nora goes away. Okay. And this leads me to the question that occurred to me, and then I lost it. So the vampires in this setting have essentially something kind of like in the world of darkness, the Cameria. They have, they have, they have, you know, there's a prince, there's, you know, the Amish or in this case, a queen princess, whatever you want to say, the Amish and whatever all.

Is there, other than, like, the twins being able to recognize, hey, you two work in the hospital and you're both werewolves like us, you got to spring our brother, or you got to spring my brother, do they, like if, if there had not been werewolves on the hospital staff, would there have been somebody from werewolfdom who would have shown up as a cleaner no werewolves have packs they do not have

a hierarchy beyond that they are I mean it's very much more like how wolves are in nature they have a pack and they have a territory there's no hierarchy you beyond that really right okay that makes sense i'm just curious about the world building right absolutely um now uh the wolves that he sets the cop after capture the cop and then they use hers bait to draw aden in

and then the the twins brin and connor um basically tell aden here's a silver knife we're about to turn and we're going to hunt you if you can survive till dawn you can live wow now this also means that nora and josh are turning too right so it's all kinds of bad um and they go hunting down aden and and the the cop for sport uh during the full moon this puts josh into a huge conflict while he's turning and all the wolves and aden chase round and round that night um aden ultimately confronts Connor and Bryn the next morning and straight up murders Connor shoots him with the silver bullet from the

Amish gun that Josh had given to the cop Oh wow okay And when Connor dies he reverts to wolf form And then And by the way one of the Amish was with Aden as well But the Amish ditches out on him

He's like I'm getting the fuck out of here There's no way we can take on two pure red wolves And Aiden's like What the fuck dude you you And he's like I'd rather live a coward than die like this. So Aiden survives.

Brings the corpse of Connor back to that Amish vampire. And he's like, you get to claim this, but you get the fuck out of here and I don't ever want to see you again. Oh, well. Take it back as a trophy. Now, Bryn is freaked out

that her brother gets killed and she wants to do something, but she just finished turning so she can't turn again. Right. And Aiden just turns a gun on her. He's like, I got one bullet left. and Nora basically grabs her

and they run off together and Nora tells Josh essentially that they only met because Josh wanted to be human but she wants to be a wolf now that she's been turned

and her transformation has made her embrace her wolf self she is diving into the condition and she goes off with Bryn so now you have the new addict going off with the managing addict, and Bryn, who is grieving and furious that Aden killed her brother. So you can see where this is going. Yeah, nowhere good.

Yeah. Now, Josh is alone again, right? And his sister comes back to town to reconnect with him. But his sister is a massive fucking day drinker. And she's actually been drinking with Josh's ex-fiancee, who, as it turns out, was a doctor now at the hospital. that uh that he and aden and formerly nora worked at oh no um actually aiden gets it on with her for a little while and josh doesn't put two and two together until he sees her walk downstairs in aden's shirt after having been plowed all night oh wow and so yeah that's tense yeah you know um and so then

you know uh things between aden and her name's julia by the way which was really weird sitting next to my daughter watching this whole series. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. But so the two of them actually end up rekindling things for a bit. There's some reconciling that happens. And they actually kind of start to make go of it. And he's looking to tell her about his condition.

Now, his sister doesn't even know about his condition. He's looking to tell her about his condition. But shit keeps getting in the way, et cetera, et cetera. They are starting to fall back in love with each other. he's kind of doing the apology tour with all of her friends and he's taken his lumps the whole way like he seems to be in recovery is really what the vibe is

but also full moon's coming anyway right so he has to come clean to her about his condition and he's getting ready to and then an eclipse happens oh no and his condition absolutely spikes he has no control over it he runs off

rather than to endanger her in broad daylight but then she like comes to find him and he's in an alleyway and they argue a little bit and he's going through the pain of transforming and he turns and she sees him and he's like halfway there

you know he's got the hair and the teeth she runs into the street and gets hit by a car and shit and he can't even stop to take care of her. He has to run off because there's a whole crowd gathering now.

So he just takes off and wolves out. And then when the eclipse is over, he gets back to being a human. He comes back and she's just sitting there on the curb. And he sits down and he talks with her and he sees it. She's like a little bit

hurt and he goes to touch her and she goes, no, no. You know, and she's, you know, don't touch me. And she reconciles She's like I had no idea that this was what you're going through I wish you would have told me blah blah blah blah And now I understand everything makes so much more sense Blah blah blah

Now just real quick While he was dating Julia Nora came back after like a six month absence with Brin And Nora straight up says like Brin and her went on quite a road trip Which ended up with Nora killing Brin It's fucked up Wow

yeah so anyway he's sitting down next to julia and they finally reconcile and then she says god i wish you told me this earlier and then she like nods over to the side her body's being loaded into the uh the morgue wagon fuck he's talking to her ghost yeah she gets her door fucking right away but like oh my god it's good tv it's really good so um so okay nora comes back uh and she tells josh that he can in fact beat his condition and he's like how I've studied and blah blah she's like you're thinking of it like a disease it's a curse

and curses have supernatural fixes if you kill your maker you will stop being a war wolf so he's got to go find Ray but now Josh has a way to stop being a werewolf but it involves him being a murderer he doesn't know if he can do that And so after Julia dies, his ex-fiancee with whom he was rekindling things, he then goes and gets the gun with the silver bullets in it.

And at the end of season two, Josh and Nora and Ray are in like a three-way standoff. And Josh is disarmed. Nora points a gun at Ray. Ray points a gun at Josh. Josh is begging Nora to just kill him to lift the curse on her. she doesn't want that because she's still super into being a wolf and you hear gunshots and credits roll

and that's the end of season two damn yeah now season three opens up with us finding out that Nora grazed Ray Ray turned oh you hear two gunshots Ray then turned on Nora and then Josh attacked Ray and bludgeoned him to death with a fucking rock nearby

whoa which means then that Josh has committed murder, not as a wolf, and he's killed his maker. Right. But it's, I think it's a full moon. And so Nora's still turning. And so, and remember, this is all while Aden was buried, right? Right, right, yeah, yeah. And we'll get to Sally eventually, but enough right now to say that Sally's in limbo because there's a whole fucking thing that goes on there.

So hopefully next week I'll get to her condition. so Josh and Nora are going back going to every so fast forwards Josh is human nor is a wolf Josh is helping her to manage her condition okay he feels a little stymied by it but she's like letting him do it because she feels so bad for him seeing like not seeing her for what she loves herself as right right okay okay so Josh and Nora at this point Aiden is missing for like six months, right? Or a year. Right. And so Josh and Nora are living in the house together. Sally's been gone this whole time. So Josh and Nora are going to every medium they can find, every witch, every occult expert, anybody they can find to try to find a way to get Sally back and to try to

find a way to track down Aden. And the whole time, Nora wants more from being a wolf and only truly feels free and alive when she's a wolf. Remember that thing I talked to you about last week where it was all their thoughts are on that right Josh on the other hand having ended his condition is now trying to help her manage hers in a way that keeps her employed and from eating other people

yeah he has done the standard addict to addiction counselor path route yeah and he is gone he's gone from getting a woman addicted and hating himself all along the way to helping her manage her addiction

And eventually they find Aiden, which I think I discussed above. And they also eventually find Sally, which I will detail below. But the father of the purebreds from the prior season, he shows up. His name is Liam. So both of my kids were represented here. I think there was a character named Damien as well. So that's kind of cool. Sorry, Edward is too uncommon a name for them to use.

But anyway. So Liam McClain. he goes on a killing spree to kill all of the vampires who've been weakened by the flu remember that part Right, right, yeah, yeah. So he attacks the Amish

and he sees his son's head mounted in an Amish house. Oh shit, okay. So he rages in his grief and at this point, Nora is super into being a wolf and also super anti-Aidon and it's only because he's friends with Josh that keeps her from turning

on him fully. This puts Nora in direct cahoots with Liam, who's trying to find his daughter, even though Nora's the one that killed his daughter. There's a whole web of lies going on there. Now, because Aiden in the prior season had drank Josh's blood in the hopes that he would be strong enough to overpower Sally's alter ego of the Reaper, I'll get into that later and open up the house, allowing Josh to leave during a full moon, keep from killing a nurse who's also a medium.

Again, I will get into all of that later when I talk about Sally. Josh is unwittingly, or I'm sorry, Aden is unwittingly immune to the flu that's killing vampires and droves. But Liam doesn't know that. And so when Liam finds out from another vampire that it's Aiden who killed his son, he knows that all he has to do is kidnap Aden

and torture him before killing him with the flu, and he'll find out what happened to Bryn. And I talked about this last time, right? He beats the shit out of Aiden and does all these things. So Aiden takes the credit for killing Bryn because he figures because Aiden doesn't know that he's immune and he figures that he's dead no matter what

and at least he can save Nora from Liam's wrath. That is what turns Nora from an enemy into a friend. So it's cool that it took all of that. So during the whole plot line, Nora, who's still a werewolf and Josh who is a recovering werewolf, they meet a little girl named Aaron.

A little girl, I mean she's like 16. Okay. She's a teen who got scratched last month. after she ran away from yet another foster home okay and she's about to turn for the first time this month so of course nora is like we have to help guide her she doesn't know what she's about to run into we do you used to be one i am one we can do this and so they kind of adopt her and their their whole goal is to guide her to set her up in a healthy way right she's a homeless knew who got scratched, just know what's going to happen to her, Nora and Josh take her in,

and they try their best to tend to all of her myriad of needs, but there was a lot of fucking needs that this kid had. Okay. Now, in 2010, there were over 637,000 people who were unhoused, and it has been hovering a little above and below that number since at least 207. So the writers in 2012 were seeing a small decline, 624,000 unhoused people in 207. 2011, which is such a difference that it may be a rounding error, to be honest. It's certainly not a, hey, look, we solved it kind of story. Yeah. So dealing with were were

unhoused makes a lot of sense if you look at it from the meth perspective. More than 25% of people who were unhoused said that they had tried drugs since becoming unhoused, whereas 33% said they'd been using before they ended up unhoused. By the way, the Nadeer for unhoused people in the U.S. housing crisis yeah which is really its own weird thing was in 2016 there were 550,000 unhoused people living in the US okay last year in 2024 there was 771,000 boy okay and I would just like to point out that there are close to a million empty homes anyhow yeah more than 25% of unhoused youth who answered a UCS study. Now, keep in mind, this is all self-reporting, but this is what I got. More than 25% of unhoused

youth who answered the study said that they had used meth in the last month. And in 2008, there was a study of unhoused people in L.A. more than a third of them had used methamphetamines for most of their adult life. And of the people surveyed, more than 90% of the meth users were white, and more than 50% of all white unhoused people surveyed said that they had used meth. I'm going to say that part again. Over 50% of white unhoused people said that they had used meth. Wow. Half of the current users that year in 2008 said that they were daily users. Gee, any Christmas. And if you extrapolate this out farther, between 2012 and 2024, the in-house, the unhoused population in L.A. doubled. So then you could see very logical increase in meth users who are unhoused. Someone,

Somewhere near 50% of all unhoused people are under 18. So again, extrapolating that out, you find a fuck ton of kids who are unhoused and using meth. Aaron, as a plot point in 2012, makes perfect sense. Yeah. Especially when you look at her backstory of her hating foster care and being abused there. Up to one third of kids who age out of foster care become homeless in their lifetimes. if you remember from our Gabriel Bell riots episodes nearly 48% of women who are unhoused experience a non-weapon assault in the six months span 18% more with a weapon and another 18%

experienced sexual assault yeah so when Liam manipulates Aaron into poisoning and possibly killing Aiden he strikes back and Aiden strikes back in self-defense it's really easy for Nora to be angry at Aden for victimizing a teenage girl and putting her back in the hospital. And when Liam murders her to further that wedge, mind you, this is before he's captured and tortured Aden, it isn't wholly groundless that this happens to a kid who was unhoused and a newly cursed werewolf. Wow, that's fucked up. Yeah.

So this is the soup that the writers are swimming in, right? These are the stories, the believable. What if we threw this in there? And there's a whole thing where Nora meets a werewolf named Pete who's hell is then about being a werewolf and he lives in an RV traveling all over the United States. He mostly sticks to rural areas, smokes a lot of pot, and is pretty chill.

Pete gets killed by a bunch of vampires who are trying to get immunized against the flu, as mentioned above. Oh, right. Okay. But you remember, Pete was really cool and he taught Josh how to meditate and make friends with his wolf instead of just try to do away with it. Pete is a very functional addict. Yeah.

Now, once Liam is trying to kill Aiden, Josh comes to his rescue. And of course, he stabs Liam in the eye with a silver blade and gets scratched by Liam. Shit. So he doesn't get to kill Liam. And so Josh is back.

So relapse. Okay. Okay, hold on. Yeah. Hold on. So Josh stabs Liam in the eye with the silver blade? Yes, but it doesn't kill Liam because it's kind of a glancing stab. Okay.

Yeah. Wow. All right. So this is relapse. And according to the National Institute of Health, only 5% of people addicted to methamphetamines remain sober after three years of sobriety. Wow. Yeah.

So relapse is a really high possibility, right? especially for Josh. And since he's living with one person who has the curse, dealing with at least two others, it's basically an inevitability. Right. Yeah. And notice all these wolves so far, white.

Yeah. Yeah. We do find a few other non-white wolves in the, in the fourth season, but they're side characters at best. Okay. So it's the end of season three. Josh and Nora get married, and Josh changes her, changes with her once again at the first full moon. But in season four, we find out that there's a twist.

Josh is now a wolfware. Okay. He got turned by a pure blood. And so now he's basically only human on the full moon and a wolf for the rest of the month. What the fuck? Yeah. And as a result, he and Nora can only really connect during that day's twilight between the sun going down and the moon coming up. Wow.

Yeah. And when season four opens, it's been three months like this. Nora and Aden are like doing their damnedest to work at the hospital, to keep the house going, and to keep Josh running enough that he's tired enough not to be a danger to anyone else. they live in a farmhouse and the RV that Pete had and the farmhouse like their stables is everything's wrapped in silver to keep Josh off of it right it's like electric fencing gee many Christmas and so Sally learns through magic and we'll get into that later that Josh's wife well she learned she she she learned some magic and she cast a spell and so Josh's wife his best friend and his best friend and his ghost friend all work up the spell that Sally casts on Josh. Doesn't this sound like an intervention? A little bit. Yeah.

And the problem is, as we're going to discuss later, every time Sally does a spell because she's a ghost, she time skips. And so she disappears before the spell can be finished. And what ends up happening is that Josh in wolf form dies. And Aiden is super sad and Nora's super sad. And then we see Josh's hand reaching out of the mouth. of the wolf corpse and his best friend and his wife pull him out so he's cured we think only only once they get back to the house nor explains to Josh that there's not much food in the house because they

don't get much time to go grocery shopping because they've been taking care of him so much uh they're always at the RV in the farmhouse and and helping Josh not to kill anyone um while there Sally finally pops back and she says uh guys that spell wasn't complete and you really shouldn't have pulled Josh out and Nora is like but he looks fine look at him so everybody drops it um Josh is now back but he's got to run all the time he's got to stay physically very active but he's also very distractible mentally and he can't keep his mind on any one thing he gets easily irritated he feels like his blood is on fire just like just before a turn he's more prone to violence he's definitely unable to sit still unless he's weirdly disassociating.

In fact, Josh still has so much of the wolf to him that he has a prey chase response when he sees a guy ahead of him jogging. And Josh is going on like these 10-mile runs. Josh is also much more strong and partially turns, even though it's not a full moon, to beat the shit out of two vampires who try to ambush him. So he turns into like the hybrid form. now at work he's having trouble keeping his aggression at bay and he nearly comes to blows with a doctor before being sent home now because of this new ability that josh has and because he's constantly trying to run off the wolf feelings that he's got right he finds a woman in distress and it turns out that she's a wolf who's pregnant so josh uh and i think

she is one of the two non-white wolves that we meet. Josh and Nora do their best to counsel her and her husband, helping them out as they can, but the rest of the wolves that the couple have come to know, come over to a baby shower that Josh and Nora were just going to have for, you know, these two folks. And all the wolves are getting really rowdy as hell under Josh's roof to the point where Aiden comes home with Kenny, remember the kids. that he'd turned right and he comes home and all the wolves are like what the fuck is this leech doing here basically and aiden like immediately is like we're wolf party and like gets everybody

start partying but then somebody bumps into somebody somebody says something rude and a fight breaks out and aden and kenny are holding off like pretty much all the wolves um and this is because Josh can never have nice things, I guess. But the alpha of the group bullies Josh until Josh lets loose a bit and like bucks up to him and shows his abilities. And to me, this is kind of like some sort of group addict dynamic going on. And Josh just showed them that he has the good stuff. Okay.

And so they all kind of cow to him and dig him. again but it turns out that they actually want josh to turn people for them and so they kidnap him and put him in a cage keeping him as a wolf through constant stress and they provoke him to claw people well that's fucked up yeah so he's managing his addiction and he's being kind of like you know pressured and forced into imbibing a lot now you remember i told you about this with uh when aiden goes to rescue josh in the cage this is what i was talking about yeah um sally and aiden go to rescue him and he's finally free of that group again you have friends coming to help you with your addiction uh eventually sally has to possess him to get josh

to meditate uh and he he basically mediates his will and the wolf's will setting up kind of a hulk banner agreement but in reverse like once a month you get to come out but i'm in charge the rest of the time. Yeah. So, Josh cannot beat his curse on his own. Right. He constantly tries throughout the series to do so, but the only times that he's successful are when he allows his friends to be a help to him.

And only once he leans on them truly that he's able to make his condition manageable and keep it from harming his chosen family. Okay. He's isolated from his birth family. his sister actually sees everything that's going on finally in like a strip club where Josh ends up staking a vampire who is trying to bite him to make herself immune to the flu and his sister wigs out and like it takes a while for his sister to come back and be cool his whole family life is completely disheveled by this condition but he does have a chosen family who understand it better and eventually parts of his family kind of kind of float back to his orbit. Now, once this happens, once he's actually truly able to accept help from his friends and his loved ones, Josh finally makes friends with his wolf, which is the addiction. He finally makes friends with it. And he's able to live a life that doesn't rest in constant chaos. And at the

end of the series, only he and Nora are left. We saw with a couple episodes ago with 80 dying. He and Nora are left. But they're living in. a bucolic environment again and and you see the scene where they fall asleep in this tall tall grass and they wake up and they're like where where are the kids and they call out to their children to summon them up and to start cooking um but they live distant from other people with their kids running around wild and stuff like that but they live in a a rural environment Once Josh stops trying to become not an addict, and he owns the fact that he's forever going to be an addict, he finally gets to live the simple life that he wants. One day at a time.

Right, right. So, by the way, when he calls out to his kids, I'll give you one guess what each of them is named. Aidan and Sally. Yep. All right. And that's how the series ends. And Josh is living the simple life. The isolation that he sought previously and the joy he had of working while cooking.

Because all the jobs he took besides the one in the hospital were jobs that revolved around food. Oh, okay. He's able to finally do it because he stopped trying to end his addiction and made friends with it. Yeah. And that's the best that he can do. And, you know, his wife, Nora, is kind of of the same ilk now. There's also something to be said there about the relationship between addiction and the restaurant industry. Yes, quite so.

Because as he learns to manage it better, he becomes more of the food maker and less of the dishwasher. And he's the one that cooks for the house and stuff like that. Cool. Yeah, anyway, that's that's meth and werewolves All right The next two episodes will be God, I hope it's only two It'll be about Sally

Okay And we'll get into what she does But yeah, this was meth and the werewolf Josh's tale So what have you gleaned Um That How to put it?

the the allegories that we see in genre fiction whether they're consciously written or not right you can't escape them like anytime you write down anytime you sit down to write a genre story

there's going to be some level of an allegory for something somewhere in it just because that's how our brains work like we process

things through story and you know science fiction isn't really about the future it's about the present yeah you know and even if what you're trying to write

is just straight up escapism and like no I'm not trying to have any kind of deep meaning I you know I just think I want to write a cool story about wizard. You know, you're going to wind up writing about something you're trying to escape from. Yeah. You know?

I mean, I think of all the DMing that I do for my kids. Yeah. And it's, I mean, they liberated a group of gnomes from an impressive santi-clause, Nicholas fallen. Yeah. You know, and they started a guild. Like, like, yeah. They liberated an entire island of mimics from these other gnomes.

Gnomes are either really good or really terrible in my rules. But these gnomes who are... What's your problem with short people, man? Yeah, I don't know. I don't. Some of them are good. Yeah, I understand. But, like, you know.

But yeah, they liberated an entire luxury fantasy island of mimics. The whole island was built of mimics. And they freed them. Like, what the fuck? They united orcs and humans in a confederate. in you know in the the unknown realms up to the north like went all over the world to do that wow yeah all right damn i i will say they also they went to space most recently and uh they fought twig blights that invaded their uh their ship and so yes they defeated twigs in space

nice did you actually do that to them yes did you do i even i showed them a picture picture of the ship that was coming at them. I described it first and then I showed them to pick a vehicle. I love it. That's great. So anyway, yes, the stories we tell are absolutely allegorical to our lives, no matter if we want them to be or not. Yeah. Yeah.

So. Yeah. I mean, that's that's the biggest thing. Just beyond, again, the, the shock from last episode of just exactly the scale. of you know the the interrelationship uh there um yeah that's that's pretty much it i think as far as this first takeaway yeah um i know i'm not going to be able to get my wife to sit down to watch this series oh that's a shame so yeah i mean yeah but like yeah it's sam wetwer is really cute so sam huntington like for very different reasons like they're both

beautiful so maybe yeah you know i don't know maybe her she her type is i don't know um i mean i'm i'm i'm somehow fit in the category of her type but like looking at hollywood actors she you know i don't know i'll try that but i don't know um so yeah i'm i'm going to have to find a way to watch it kind of on my own right now i'm trying to work on um getting her to sit down with me to rewatch the West Wing because I need I need that hit of idealism and hope Aaron Sorkin's liberalism I get you yeah you know I you know what when you watch it find out if you're like disagreeing with how milk toast the liberals are and you're like God why didn't you go further because then I'll know it's working

if you still watch it and go like man we had a chance i'll be like all right i got to work harder yeah well yeah yeah we'll see um i will say the um sam seaborne um monologue about uh schools should be built like cathedrals um i i fully a thousand percent am um you know ura yeah about every time i every time i see it So we'll see. But yeah, I'm trying to get her to do that and trying to sell a series like this one to her. I think it might be a bridge too far. Okay. So.

Cool. Well, what do you recommend in for people this week? This is going to sound like a really weird recommendation coming from me. But I'm based on the topic we covered, I'm going to recommend an American werewolf in London. Hmm. because it's a very, very 80s horror movie take on the werewolf legend. Right. It's also a really amazing study and practical effects.

Like, they don't make them like this anymore. No, that's true. It was astounding for way longer than it should have been. Yeah. The transfer, you talk about, you know, the transformation sequences in being human. The transformation, the ultimate transformation sequence

in an American werewolf in London is absolutely body horror to the nth degree. And it is absolutely amazing. And because of, it's weird, because of the nature of the horror in the film,

it's a horror movie I could probably sit down and watch and not really have a hard time with because it isn't external. The horror is internal which which doesn't

fuck with my imagination wanting to mess with me quite in the same way that like ghost stories or other stuff kind of does so yeah as in as an interpretation of the werewolf myth and as part of the development of that myth, I think it's well worth everybody giving it to watch.

I like it. How about you? I'm going to go to the other end of the spectrum as far as Josh goes. You got the werewolf covered. I'm going to tell people to go watch the Michael Keaton, 1988 movie Clean and Sober. Oh, oh, shit. It's about alcohol and cocaine. Yeah.

But the relapsing aspects, the counselor who was an addict, the recognition by the end, spoiler alert, he figures it out, he figures out his sobriety. The recognition at the end that it really is one day at a time and that you kind of have to make friends with it and you can't see it as a source of shame. It is a condition you have to live with. and how long he spent trying to avoid that. It's a really good movie. I mean, Michael Keaton's always been a fantastic actor, but it's a really good movie. So I strongly recommend clean and sober,

which, by the way, the Spanish DVD copy of it is called, what is it, alcohol, and coca. Oh, wow, interesting. Yeah, but clean and sober, strongly recommend you kind of see the relationship between the addict and his addiction more than you see between him and his drug. Like the constantly thinking about it,

the hating himself for it, the hating it, the addiction, but also the I can't get away from it. Like just all of that. And then eventually he comes to that realization. So that's my wreck. Cool. Where can we be found? We can be found on the Amazon podcast app,

on the Apple podcast app and on Spotify and of course there is our website at wauwbwbwbwbwbah geekhistorytime.com wherever it is that you have found us please take the time

to give us the five-star review that you know Damien deserves for his exhaustive research and be sure to hit the subscribe button and where can you be found, sir? Let's see. First Friday of every month at the Comedy Spot

in downtown Sacramento know, come check us out. Capital Punishment, 9 p.m. every, every first Friday of the month. Go to the satcommodyspot.com website, grab your tickets there, 15 bucks, get your tickets in advance, and then come on down and see us. Our host is terrific. My co-star is terrific. Our guests are really, really good, and just see the magic that we make. So you need to laugh. It's a cruel world. out there so yeah anyway for a geek history of time i'm damien harmony and i'm ed blaylock and until next time keep rolling 20s