A Geek History of Time - Episode 350 - Vampires, Opiods, Werewolves, Meth, Ghosts, and Depression Part V

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

I 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, it's bonded. It's not even, yeah, it's not even frosting. But he failed, so fuck them buddies. Now, after World War II ended. Lockley started mapping out foot trails for the newly created Oh god, Pembrokeshire, so Pembrokeshire

Pembrokeshire, okay, Pembrokeshire God, 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 We're going to be able to be. 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 spent the day today doing demolition work in my shower. And I may have mentioned the vintage of my home. Previously, my house was built in 1950. And so everything in my house is massively overbuilt by modern standards. And our shower, the floor of our shower, was waterproofed with five layers of tar paper on which they then poured a generous layer of just straight up fucking tar which hardened into obsidian's rubbery brother bitumen which meant when we when we finally broke down and rented a jackhammer in order to work on the floor there was a period of time during which my bathroom smelled like we were doing road work which was much fun. Um, so yeah, that's, that's, that's what I discovered, uh, about my home today. Um,

how about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a U.S. history and economics teacher up here in Northern California at the high school level. Um, and, uh, I was in a discussion with my kids. My son kind of wandered away from it a bit. My daughter stuck around. And essentially, she asked, she's like, what is people's obsession with butts? And I, um, and I, said, well, it's actually tied to their obsession with breasts. Do you understand people's obsession with breasts? And she says, no, I really don't. I was like, okay.

And I explained to her the anthropological and primatological reasons for the enjoyment of roundness and some cleavage in the middle, and how we as a species evolved to being able to engage in quotas for missionary style, specifically

because we had people around watching out for us. So kind of like a century-based orgy. yeah um and i explained that and then we were talking about other things and then i talked about how a lot of our makeup is designed to mimic the sex flush uh that people have and uh she she's like oh that's the thing that you told us about when we were watching daredevil i'm like exactly because karen page is a very light-skinned lady and about 20% of um humanity gets sex flush the redness at the chest as well as like you know and so then i was explaining

to her how one of the tricks that people in concentration camps and death camps used to make sure that during morning inspection, they weren't selected for extermination, was to prick their fingers and then rub it on their lips and get some color into their skin. And I said, I just stopped and I was like, hmm, well, because I was explaining what he, Ed is looking at me askance and that yeah, that's a thing that happened.

And it's, it's what drove home the, the, the, meaning of sanguine to me because I didn't used to remember what it would mean because blood seemed very serious and dark and it's like no it's cheerful and it's because the color rises to your face right right and so I was like wow in five minutes I took you from primatological coitus being rear entry switching to missionary style or I said switching to front entry and all the way to how you stay alive in a death camp yeah and she said well it is Saturday and it's dessert time so so there we go there's there's there's a lot to unpack in that response yeah well and there was a lot of other subjects that we covered in that five minutes i'm just showing you the bookends but yeah no yes yeah you know

you know i've i've heard conversations between you and your your kids and all of this is a thousand percent believable yeah yeah all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again yeah yeah when i tell you damien and his children have always been like this exactly yeah oh i got to remember that phrase too yeah uh so all right uh last we talked we were talking meth and were wolves yeah speaking of cheerful and sanguine things that i've shown my kids uh multiple multiple Multiple meanings of sanguine in case of werewolves. This week, we're going to talk about the third leg of the stool, the third member of the triumvirate,

the third housemate in being human. So as you recall, the house in Boston was essentially a house where a vampire and a werewolf could retain some shred of their humanity. And upon moving in within a few weeks, They met a ghost who was trapped in the house for the last six months named Sally. So, Sally, whereas Aden represented sex addiction and opioid addiction. Right. And heroin addiction.

And Josh represented meth. Right. And to some extent, the domestic violence that comes from that. Sally represents depression with just a smidge of disassociative identity disorder. okay I'm glad I decided to open a can of cider before we started recording yeah yeah wow um okay so before we go oh sure in all of that I I kind of have to wonder the thought occurred to me I kind of have to wonder okay if I as an ordinary mortal yes moved into an apartment and you know weird shit started happening and you know come come to the somehow inescapable conclusion no no it's it's haunted

there is in fact a ghost who is now you know talking to me like that would be absolutely terrifying like a thousand percent um and i don't know if i was already part of supernatural hinky shit like i don't know if that would be less scary or even more so well it kind of depends it depends on your experience level now keep in mind um there's a whole uh well i'm going to get into the mechanics of being a ghost in being human and i think this will kind of uncork some of that because the odds are you would not notice a ghost where you were living okay as a mortal um okay some people can see through the veil a little bit but even then it's shadow puppetry so okay now uh megan rath plays a character named sally malick and megan rath is a

phenomenal dynamic beautiful and very courageous actress she really really did a great job with this role and i've yet to see her in something where i thought that she did a poor job um sally malick was murdered one night, shortly after being engaged. She was murdered by her fiancé Danny, who did, like everyone else does in the show, didn't listen to her reasonable explanation for the thing that he had concerns and objections over. In this instance, she lost her engagement ring down the sink while she was brushing her teeth and doing her nighttime care routine. These things happen, right?

But her fiancé Danny instead freaks the fuck out and throws her into a wall by the stairs from which she rebounds and falls down the stairs cracking the back of her head on the tile on the landing at the bottom. She died then and there from the impact and presumably the blood loss and she's in her nighttime yoga clothes and cardigan. Okay.

Fast forward by seven months and Aiden and Josh are moving in. And again, I have to tell you how much this show strains crudulity. a house like that going for such a low amount of rent it's just not yeah it was it was all the other stuff i can agree with i can i can you know hand waive him yeah but like the rent being that low i'm sorry no well it was the site of a murder so it's boston yeah okay everything's the site of a murder yeah an old enough town

I suppose. But, yeah, there was a point when, I'm trying to remember when, yeah, my parents were newly married. Mm-hmm. And I think they were trying to find a place in Milton. And they were, they were. Milton is where? In California? Florida.

Florida. Milton, Florida. Where in the shaft? Not. It's up on the panhandle. It's near Pensacola. Okay. So it's where you'd want to measure from.

Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Measure from the Milton. That's what they always said. Yeah, I can't believe I forgot. Yeah. Yeah.

Dad was at the time assigned as a flight instructor at Pensacola. Okay. And Milton is like the next town over. And if I'm remembering the story right, this is where it was. But they were looking for an apartment. And dad was at work and mom visited one place where the previous tenant had been killed in the bedroom. The landlord, you know, had to let her know that. that it had only happened like two weeks before.

Right. And the cleaning job had not been thorough. Yeah. So mom was like, yeah, no. Yeah. Thank you. Peace out. Yeah.

Well, so these guys, they're the first renters for the place. It's been available. It's been empty. Yeah. Okay. So they move in. And eventually Aiden and Josh can actually see her, and she's over the moon that they can actually see her.

So the house becomes a halfway house for monsters like her. the boys. Now, Josh immediately wants her to get out because he didn't sign up to live with a ghost. He signed up to live with Aden, right? And Josh is very, cut the, you know, very, very, like, particular, annoyingly so. Aiden is way more chill. Of course, Aden is 200 years old. Josh is trying to manage a condition. Yeah. And he doesn't like somebody who can just walk in on him. And that's fair. That's fair. Yeah. So there's some conflict there that quickly gets kind of set aside because it's like, Josh, she's a ghost. She doesn't know why she's here.

Now, the mechanics of being a ghost and being human, you are a ghost clothed in whatever you were wearing at the time of your death, which can be fucking terrifying when you realize how many people die in their hospital clothing. Also, you don't show any signs of how. you died. You die as you were just a bit before your death. So that's kind of nice, right? Okay. Yeah. Now, ghosts and being human are only ghosts if they haven't settled all their shit by the time they die. So if you die and you've got shit handled, you just move right on. Yeah. However, if you have not settled your shit, whatever it might be, and you don't necessarily know what it is, you still have something to process. You are stuck as a ghost until you process it. Okay.

The purpose of being a ghost, therefore, is to resolve that shit. And then you get what's called your door. And the door is what you pass through to go to the afterlife. And it's literally a door. It just pops up when you've finally realized whatever and you've figured it out. And boom, you turn around, there's your door, right? And you know it's your door instinctively. Like, it's clearly your door.

And you're drawn to opening it. And it's evidently holy good and awesome. And you're with your loved ones who've already died. and so on on the other side of the door. So there's very little, there's so very little of that exposure, though, that this is supposition based on just a few lines from the show. So my understanding of it is based on what two or three characters told her throughout the series. And also what happens when Aiden goes through his door.

Remember, Sally is waiting for him there. And that's, it's kind of weird that I'm, I separated these out because I want to diagnose each one. even though I've taken literally one class in psychology. And it was African-American psychology. It was not even like Psych 101. Right. So there's a lot that I'm missing in my ability to diagnose. For instance, the ability to diagnose.

Yeah, well, technicalities, whatever. Right, yeah, details, details. But there's not that much explanation of it. And so this is based on what I can figure out from. the show. The ghosts can also be destroyed either by exorcism or by something called shredding in which case the ghost goes to a place

called limbo and limbo is not like where you go under a bar repeatedly it is constant torture and it is endless and you're kind of made to relive the same awful thing over and over every day. It sucks

and there's no coming back from it like it's just awful unless you're Sally Malick and whomever she brings with her because through Sally we break all the fucking rules okay ghosts can also be temporarily banished essentially they get fragged and they have to reassemble uh elsewhere if they get hit by iron oh otherwise they're incorporeal they also can't cross a line of salt oh okay um ghosts are also a bit touched in the head uh given that they have unresolved shit and it sometimes takes them Years and years.

Right. And honestly, they often have nobody to talk to, and they have no idea what their problem is. And so very often, a ghost can just be stuck on this plane, and they wander in pain and never resolve it. Yeah. So more often than not, there's crazy and sad as fuck ghosts. Okay. Okay. And there's some urgency for Sally that Aiden kind of lets her know, like this, the

longer you stay here, the crazier you'll get. Ghosts also have the ability to teleport pretty easily. They're also intangible and can inform and influence people's dreams. Some can do telekinetic and or fuck with electromagnetic fields around them, burnout light bulbs, that kind of stuff. Okay. And of course, they can haunt houses as well, but they

usually use those abilities, or all those abilities I just mentioned, when doing so, right? So they will fuck up the bulbs. They will make a terrible clog in the sewage. You know, they will do stuff like that. Oh, they can also possess people. Okay. But that gets super troublesome because it's easy to get stuck in someone's body.

Evidently, possessing people weakens the spirit of the ghost, and it's taxing to go in and break out. Okay. So if you stay too long in that body, you're stuck. And the possessed person may have their memories intermixed with the ghost's memories, too. so this is kind of like responsible for psychotic breaks or like schizophrenic stuff right and it really sucks because when the ghost leaves the possessed person comes back to their senses and it's as though they just came back from being blackout drunk for however long right um they have no idea how much time has passed or how they got where they were or what they've done they might just have

fleeting kind of memories wow yeah and and the thing i i know a comedian who i remember a lot of us about being worried about him at one point and then like two years later he put something up on social media saying like I just came out of a blackout and I think it was about three and a half years and he got the help that he needed and he's actually he's living a really good life for himself now but wow yeah like anyway and and he he functioned the whole time you know made his rent did all this but like suddenly came clear right wow so that's what it's like being the possessed right uh you can imagine then possession is kind of an addictive thing for ghosts it's certainly an escape from their problems that they haven't resolved um and i think that's as good a spot

as any to discuss what sally seems to represent at least to me she is depression she's not anger she's not rage she's not despair she's not sadness she's depression okay now as you may remember for my teenage mutant ninja turtles episodes depression comes from the melancholia which itself means black bile right the ancient greeks thought it was an emotional expression of a physical problem being out of balance and having a spleen that was an overdrive right now throughout human history shit has always been depressing and some of us are better able to hand it in a way that allows us to still operate within society's bonds than others for so much of the time depression was considered a vice something that you don't want to engage with or catch

and the people who had it were maybe to be pitied but definitely to be avoided because it could be catching now by the 1700s melancholia was a common diagnosis and it was an umbrella term for a time that didn't really make much use of umbrellas yet uh so Okay. Of course, the belief was still stuck in the humors, and thus it was considered to be a mostly physical ailment that required all sorts of quackery-based treatments, often including downers, which would, of course, only make it worse. That's great. You're depressed. Have some opium. Right, which, of course, meant that if you were even more down, they would prescribe more and more of the downers to get ahead of the melancholia and so on and so on until you either, found respiratory failure or suicide.

Wow. Great. Or plenty of other heels for it as well, but it was definitely tied to the physical up until the 20th century, which is probably good because World War I physically destroyed a lot of bodies and left the owners of those bodies and those who lived in them or lived with them, depressed. Yeah. But I digress.

Back to 1806. There was a French zoology. a physician, and a proto-psychologist, who defined melancholic patients as, quote, overwhelmed by an exclusive idea, endlessly recalled in their words, which seems to absorb all their faculties. Now, this differed from the explanation of idiocy and mania, which was, quote, nervous excitation or extreme restlessness, sometimes to the point of fury and a variable level of general delusion and dementia. Now, this was Philippe Pinell who said this.

If I recall correctly, I actually might have skipped over the guy who trained him, but I'm pretty sure this is Philippe Pinell who said so. Philippe Pinell, P-I-N-E-L, so Pynel, he came of age as a doctor at the worst time to have been a doctor trained in the provinces of France. Okay. In Paris, they simply just wouldn't let him practice because he was such a bumble. And having gotten his degree from Toulouse. Okay.

So, okay. Go on. So he wrote, if I'm understanding the timeline, I'm trying to put two together. So he wrote what he wrote about depression in 1806? Yes. Okay. He came of age about 20 years before that. Okay.

Yeah. So I'm back in a lot to explain. So, okay. So, okay. So, okay, so that's, that's Ancian regime, if it's 20 years before that. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, a, yes, that lines up.

Uh-huh. Okay. Got it. So when Pinal applied for a grant, the jury that grants such grants said that his application was painfully mediocre. So that's rad. Wow. Yeah.

They called him a mediocre. talent. Yeah, they Bill Maritam. Wow. He had a friend who successfully committed suicide owing to a nervous melancholy that degenerated into a mania that led to his death. And Pinell saw that friend's death as a tremendous waste, and he began to study mental illness specifically.

Penel worked for one of Paris's most famed private sanitaria. The, oh God. All right, give it a try. T-A-S-P-T-A-S-P-P-R-T-R-T-R-H-T-R-E, there are accent marks and, like, P-I-T-I-E with an accent over the E. Okay, P-T-A. Yeah. And then Sal Petriere, so S-A-L-P-E with a tent over it, T-R-I-E with the accent going the other way. Okay.

R-E. S-P-S-E. Petriere. There you go. Petriere. Yeah. Yeah, actually, you're pretty close. Wow.

It's a hospital. Okay, now that, now the E with a tent over, it might be an E. Oh, okay. So, Petrie. But, puttrier. I don't know. Yeah. But, okay.

Anyway, he worked there before, during, and after the French Revolution. So, so you're saying he saw some shit. That's what you're saying. Yeah. Um, and now I'm trying to remember which, which, uh, asylum it was that, um, de Sade. Oh, the Marquis de Sade? Yeah, I'm trying to remember if that was where he was. I don't know.

I don't think it was. Yeah. But, okay. Yeah. Wow. Now, the Pitya-Seltrier Hospital was initially built as a gunpowder factory. Salpetriere. Okay.

Salt Peter. Oh, oh, there you go. And then Piteers, like, we take pity on these people? I don't know. Okay. That I don't know. But Sal Petriere. Okay, Salt Peter, yeah.

Yeah. Now, architecture means a lot to what happens inside of a building, I think. Yes. If it was built to be a place to hold combustible elements, I don't know that that's a place you should put people who are suffering from depression. No, probably not. yeah now lou the 14th converted it into a hospital for the mentally ill for epileptics for poor unwed mothers and for women with severe learning disabilities yeah okay all of that

based on based on all of the social social assumptions that were that were part of society at the time that I really keep doing episodes that deal with this kind of shit don't I yeah it's it's a recurring theme yes it is that's that's really interesting but anyway but yeah so yeah so if you're crazy in the head or you're an unwed mother that means you're crazy in the head right you know if you're if you're degenerate in any way yeah if you're yeah yeah there's going to be a podcast someday that analyzes our podcast and it's like here's what was going on in damien harmony's life when he came up with this um boy if we ever get to a universe like that i don't know yeah yeah okay so anyway

Their logo will be 2 D10s Yeah, there you go. There you go. So. Wow. Okay. But yeah.

I, it just strikes me again because I know we've talked about it before. But the, the level of unconscious but so overt to us today, sexism involved in all that like oh yeah well these unwed mothers we're gonna put them in the asylum because it's just that's too shameful i also think that though here's the thing if you're an unwed mother you have a child so you cannot go to a nunnery right so you have to go to a place and you can't work for yourself because the again the sexism of the time women were not allowed like wage labor right yeah yeah they were not allowed economic independence right like if you were a sharecropper or the equivalent thereof, I think they call them serfs.

If you were one of them, you were working with your family, with your husband. Right. Yeah. So, like, there's a lot of fucked up structures here. Yeah. Literally the building as well. So the children that were, you know, being raised there made sheets for the military. So it was in many ways and on many levels.

a workhouse for society's undesirables. Okay. And eventually they added a women's prison to it. And the conditions continued to be predictably fucking awful. By the time Pinell worked there, it had capacity, albeit wretched capacity, for over 10,000 patients and 300 prisoners. Oh, wow. And because France was going fucking crazy during the September massacres, this facility became a target for the crowds.

The crowds demanded the release of some 130-plus prostitutes, but then also dragged out more than two dozen women who were classified as, quote, mad, and murdered them in the streets. I didn't learn about that when I learned about the September massacres. No. I'm going to go back and fix my world history curriculum.

Yeah, I wonder why not. Right? Jesus. Now, after the revolution, see, this is why I understand conservatives saying the French, well, I don't mean today's conservative, people who call themselves conservatives, I mean actual conservatives, right? Right. I understand why they would say the French Revolution was a disaster because look what happened

to social order. And there's a lot of proof of that. You don't even need a guillotine yet. yeah um no you you need oh i i spent a course uh several months ago uh in my in my masters uh doing comparative history on the french american and haysian revolutions and yeah the the french revolution is really complicated yeah it's like hey take the best ideals and do them the worst way. The absolute

worst possible way. Every chance you get a chance to make a choice, make the worst possible choice. Just make the ugliest fucking one you can. And yeah. Yeah,

it's, it's, you could, I mean, obviously, and I'm sure plenty of, plenty of professors have spent entire courses,

entire careers. Oh, yeah. Focusing on the French Revolution and all of the circumlocutions that the different factions within the revolution you know went through but well i mean you could spend an entire career just studying paris for the one year yeah you know you could spend an entire career just studying the military aspects or the the uh social political aspects you know there's

yeah there is a lot there anyway uh yeah they were murdered in the streets after the revolution Pinell began calling for a reform of the Piteer Seltrier Hospital, wanting better for the people who were housed there. So this guy was a very progressive thinker. By 1794, he was the chief physician of the hospital there, and he had some sway. His reforms were based on five years of observation of the people who had tremendous mental illness in his custody, both at the Pitiatea-Sel-Petriere Hospital and at the B-I-C-E with a tent, T-R-E, Bicatry?

No. B-Shetra. What the fuck? Well, okay, spell it again, spill it again for me. B-I-C-E-T-R-E. And the E has a tent. Oh, sorry, I thought I heard an H. Bichetra.

Bacetra? Sure. So the Bichetra Hospital for four years prior to being at the Pity-Seltier Hospital. So he had nine years of observational evidence, and he's like, we need to reform the shit because this is not okay. He called for moral treatment, and what that meant was nonviolent, non-medical management of people with severe mental illnesses. So prior to that, beating them, chaining them naked to a wall for years on end, and giving them all mix of concoction was the standard of care. well i mean yeah because

they're because you got a thousand of them in this building and you got to make rounds yeah they're craig cray what are you going to do yeah exactly come on right they're nuts come on now so pinel was credited beyond what he had done actually which is a fact that he always pointed out because he

wanted the credit to go to his friend jean paptiste pussin pussain p ousss ian no p u ssssin Pussin. It's still probably, but it's lessen, ooh, and more of an a, but Poussin, yeah. Poussin, all right.

So, Jean-Baptiste Pussin, who had taught Pinnel his ways. He wanted, he wanted to give credit to him. Good old J.B. Pusson. Now, Pinell was known as the man who'd freed the insane from their chains, And I mean that literally. Like that was that was what he was known for. Because again, at the Bichetra, the Bicetra hospital, those deemed insane were shackled to the fucking wall. In fact, during the September massacres, many of the madwomen were still in their chains when the crowd murdered them.

Jesus. And he did do good work with people. Okay. I want to make sure that we recognize that for his time, Pinawine, did good work way beyond humane for its time. Penel used therapeutic conversations to bring patients down from their delusions instead of beating them.

He also didn't go straight to the threats of incarceration or punishment. And I didn't bother to look at his religion. But to be honest, Protestantism at the time and French Catholicism at the time would have said beat the shit out of the person. So,

Calvinism yes French Calvinists yes yeah the Huguenots yeah Huguenots maybe um within I will say within Catholicism there are there were strains uh within Catholicism that would not have But I think based on the timing, I don't think his motivation was religious at all. I think it was, you know, I have observed this. He does have a humanistic approach here, but he also uses the phrase moral treatment. Well, yeah, but they did. Yeah.

Like, you know, they were humanists, but, you know, Sir Isaac Newton was, you know, famously very humanist, but he still had a belief in a prime mover. Right. You know, they were not, they were not quite ready to completely abandon the idea of God. And so I don't, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that his motivation was not tied to any organized religion. It was, you know, this is, this is the best way and the most humane way to handle this. you know based on reason yeah you know and well and his approach is very logical so it's not

I prayed and God said yeah like you know so yeah no he's he's yeah he strikes me based on everything so far he strikes me as a man of reason and a product of the enlightenment yeah more than anything else now like I said he didn't go straight to threats of incarceration or punishment but that doesn't mean he didn't do that he did result he did result to them resort to them when nothing else worked right but pinel uh tried to get through uh get tried to get through support and encouragement and validation what others simply use straight jackets for and he also was still stuck in the physiological uh thinking that a lot of the physiological issues psychological issues that he dealt with in patients were due to physical issues so there's

lots of gut stuff going on, lots of enumas, lots of laxatives. Jesus. But he does issue most punishments, only allowing straight jackets and isolation as the negatives, and only after all else had failed. So he's also very big on giving people as much liberty as they could handle. So like least restrictive environment. Right. Anyhow, according to Patel, melancholia came in two different opposite brands, like sweet and salty.

the first was quote a heightening of pride and the chimeric idea of possessing infinite richness and power without limits now the second one was quote the most fearful despondency of profound dejection or even despair therefore considering two forms of melancholia depressive and expansive so that sounds like manic that sounds like bipolar disorder right because the first part is clearly mania right you know thinking your jesus you know being being absolutely convinced of some level of some delusional level of of power or or exceptionalism yeah yeah and the other one absolutely is your wallowing right um and he stated pinnell stated that melancholy was able to be explained by quote drunkenness abnormalities in the structure of the skull trauma in the skull

conditions of the skin, various psychological causes such as household disasters and religious extremism, and in women, menstruation, and menopause. I mean, it is the late 1700s, so. Yeah. Well, yeah. What's interesting, though, is to put a little nuance on it that wasn't there for him, you know, all of those things that he's describing can potentially

lead to depression because of the stresses that they involve. You mentioned a skin condition. Right. People who suffer from disfiguring you know, conditions tend to have

higher reported levels of depression because it sucks, you know. Yeah. Well, and I would also say the tail could be wagging the dog here too he might be noticing things and not realizing these are actually symptoms of the depression right so if you're depressed and you know you just you're constantly doing that you know that kind of stuff yeah you could give yourself skin conditions if you're depressed like fucking it's the 1700s people aren't bathing that regularly everyone's got a

skin condition yeah but also like if you're depressed what's one of the first things that like people stop doing is is the self-care right right and then all the other things like getting drunk drunk drunk I I know depressives who are drunks yeah you know well it's a common it's a common form of self-medication yeah exactly and and trauma to the skull absolutely I mean Phineas T gauge called um he like his frontal low back right you know and and household disasters yeah you know there's PTSD right yeah yeah and I do like that religious extremism makes the list too yeah so this kind of feeds you your theory of his religiosity well one and and two um i just need to say that you know if you look at

the writings of say martin luther just to pick a name out of a hat for no reason at all um the man was clearly suffering from obsessive compulsive disorders and and had long periods of profound depression Because he was absolutely convinced that there was no way he was ever going to be able to make God love him until he had, until he had his epiphany. Right. And, you know, you know, discovered his, his theology. Yeah. And so, yeah, the extremism, you know, that he was, that he was trapped in because of the nature of the way the church was failing to teach people. you know definitely yeah absolutely absolutely and and you could absolutely have a depressive break

when you realize how fucked the game is and how you've played along with it and how it's you know he had very legitimate grievances at least the numbers one through 10 you know oh a thousand yeah no i'm not i'm not you know i mean but also i like to i like to make a point of you know I'm the Catholic here and I'm ragging on him But no, he was A thousand percent Yeah You know, yeah

So but yeah And then religious extremism And then I cannot speak to menstruation Menopause part I don't think he should have either But it's the 1700s And he's running a women's prison Yeah

So like People match their cycles Yeah And and And You know Blood chemistry does things It does

And also So if you're in a women's prison and your needs aren't getting met. Yeah, that would be a big thing. Yeah, it would be a big part of it. Now, I think what became depression in the 20th century was much more of Penel's second explanation of it than the mania one. But before we get there, I mentioned that he had a successor. John, I know that J-E-N-N-N-N-E, so I got that. E-T-I-N-N-N-E.

Etienne. Etienne, Jean-Eetienne, Dominique, Esquirol. Okay. Spell the last part for me. Esquire, but instead of the E, it's O.L. Esquirole. Okay. Now, Esquerole specifically was Pinell's successor at the Pite-Seltrey Hospital.

I got to stop doing things that go back to France. You've got to stop fighting. You're going to start looking for sources in Vienna or Great Britain. Yeah, give me German, give me Tongan, give me Latin, give me, give me like the Middle Empire. Yeah, I was like, I'm great. There you go, yeah. But fuck a duck.

All right. So, Esquerel seemed to shadow just a couple years after Penel, literally everywhere. He took over after Penel left the Seltreux, uh, South Petrieh. in 1811. Penel had specifically hand-picked Esquerell because of Esquerell's singular focus on insanity as a concept. Okay.

Escarol saw insanity as a national and institutional issue. Essentially, where the state put its money, people got better and were productive. He got famous by way of his approach to insanity to caring for those deemed obsessively insane and for his efforts to influence the ever-changing French governments from 1810 to about 1838 when he was the main author of a new law

that instituted specifically departmentalized asylums for any and all French mental patients. Oh, wow. A proper fit for each one as being the goal. Oh, wow. Like, it sounds like an IEP. Yeah. It sounds like the precursor.

or of modern psychiatry. Right. And this is still the basis of French mental health as an institutional approach today. It was Esquirol who coined Lipomania or Lipomania, L-Y-P-E-Mania. I think it's lip-o.

Yeah, lipomania, which eventually gave way back to melancholia, but it was basically the same thing. Right. Now, to get to the 20th century, we have to look at the Duke family. So took care of, like, people who first identified.

identified it. That's France. Right. But if we want to look at 20th century approaches to depression, we have to look at the Duke family. These are English Quakers who had a history of being interested in mental illness. Okay. There's a lot of them, actually. I'm going to skip to Daniel Hack Duke, even though his great-grandfather, William Tuk, it's Tuk family, not Duke family, I apologize. William Tuk warrants some discussion. Basically, William Tuch, set up just the shortest version I can give you for William Took, the great-grandfather of Daniel Hacktook. William Toek set up a retreat,

an outdoor, nice English garden-style retreat for people with mental illness to get away to. And it was actually called The Retreat, and it was in York. And the idea behind it was that there had to be something better for people who are suffering than the hospitals that they found in London. Okay. Now, at the time, melancholic women would worsen and mania could set in, and the hospitals in London were not equipped to deal with such folks. So a woman in the time of William Toek, who was born in 1732, by the way.

Oh, okay. So we're moving. We move back, yeah. We're moving backward in the timeline here a little bit. So we're bouncing back to go forward, right? Right. So during his time, okay, so he was born in 32, so we're talking like at least 20 to 30 years later, so 1750s. A woman could start out depressed, get made worse to the point where she's manic,

and end up shackled to a wall and naked for her own safety and for their ability to control her more easily. Ugh. William, too, didn't see such a treatment as being purposefully cruel, but it was nonetheless cruel. And he's called it as such. He was so upset by the 1790 death and treatment of Hannah Mills, a fellow Quaker who suffered from melancholia. She was a widow. So, of course, she's fucking depressed.

Right. And she got admitted to the York Asylum. And then her family wasn't allowed to visit because it was a private treatment facility. And then she died that march. William's daughter, Anne, suggested that he creates something specifically for Quakers. And the Quakers did what a lot of religious groups do

when it's time to take action. They bulked. Yeah, so William Took did it himself They went to the Quaker You know the big Quaker consortium And they're like yeah well you know They acted like Presbyterians So he's like

He's like no we're gonna do it ourselves then And then the Quaker's like all right you go do that then So they approved that Yeah Now William Toek had planned to let experts run the show But shortly after the York retreat open in 1796 Another patient died At which point William

Tuck stepped in to run things, and he would defer to doctors and their treatments so long as they were gentler than prior efforts. Okay. Now, this family took me some getting used to because they were both long-lived and especially young when having kids. For instance, William Tuk was born in 1732. Right. His son, Henry, was born in 1755.

Okay. All right. Yeah. Wow. All right. Yeah. Samuel, Henry's son, so William's grandson, was born. in 1784.

Okay. Daniel, Daniel Toek, was born in 1827. And they were all, as were many of their brothers, involved in the York retreat. It became like the family thing to do. Daniel Hacktook, the one who's born 1827, traveled and examined other asylums for mentally infirm. And he wrote and collaborated and published many books on the subjects of mental illness. and the causes and cures for all of them.

So in 1892, Daniel Hack, who is at this point about coming up on 60, he's like 55. Okay. Daniel Hacktook published a book called A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, given the definition etymology and synonyms of the terms used in medical psychology with the symptoms, treatment, and pathology of insanity. Yeah, they were. not big on concise titles. Bradley was not their thing.

No, no. It's one of, I think it's because at that time you had to judge a book by its cover. Fair. Just put the abstract right there. Daniel Hactuke defined melancholia as, quote, a disorder characterized by a feeling of misery, which is in excess of what is justified by the circumstances in which the individual is placed. okay i like how compassionate that comes across to me yeah i like how compassionate that comes across to me yeah i like how it's more than justified in that person's circumstances so yeah it allows for the person who has

no grief in their life whatsoever to still be depressed right it also allows for a person whose life is nothing but grief to be depressed to be depressed yeah it further goes on and says quote as a rule the disorder of feeling is accompanied with more or less evidence by a disorder of thought and actual delusion accompanies the melancholia and then he presented the term quote mental depression as the antithesis of the exaltation and synonymous with melancholia so this this is the shift this is the in 1892 this This is where depression gets used specifically. Oh, okay. And this is where you're starting to see the shift from melancholia to depression.

And it's still considered physiological, though. Okay. Okay. And then the 20th century comes along. World War I, Avion Flu, the Great Depression, Nazis, the Cold War, lots of shit to get people to bottle it all up and frankly never resolve anything. So, yeah. Yeah. And so the American.

to sum that up. Yeah. The American Psychiatric Association set out to codify what the census had actually started recording way back in 1840 in the United States, mental illness. The American Psychiatric Association put out the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, the first of its name, in 1952. We are now up to the DSM-5. Yes.

But this was the DSM, later renamed DSM-1 in the same way that WrestleMania won. is now called WrestleMania one, despite it originally just being called WrestleMania. Yeah. It's fine. Now, here's what the DSM won. Henry the first wasn't Henry the first until there was a Henry the second. Exactly, right?

You know, it's, again, until we get a sequel, we don't know we have a prequel. Right. Now, here's what the DSM one says about specific kinds of depression, a specific kind of depression. I apologize. Depressive reaction, the anxiety in this. reaction. This is the 1952 version. Depressive reaction. The anxiety in this reaction is allayed and hence partially relieved by

a depression and self-depreciation. The reaction is precipitated by a current situation frequently by some loss sustained by the patient and is often associated with a feeling of guilt for past failures or deeds. The degree of 34 mental disorders, the reaction in such cases is dependent upon the intensity of the patient's ambivalent feeling toward his loss, love, possession, as well as upon the realistic circumstances of the loss. The term is synonymous with reactive depression and is to be differentiated from the corresponding psychotic reaction. In this differentiation, points to be considered are, one, life history of the patient, with special reference to mood swings, suggestive psychotic

reaction, to the personality structure, neurotic, or cyclothemic, and to precipitating environmental factors, and two, absence of malignant symptoms, hypochondrial preoccupation, agitation, delusions, particularly somatic, hallucinations, severe guilt feelings, intractable insomnia, suicidal ruminations, severe psychomortar retardation, profound retardation of thought or stupor. Wow. Yeah. Quite a laundry list. Yeah.

And I mean, it's the point of the DSM is to give people something to, oh, this sounds like this. Let me read further. Let me get into this. Yeah. And let me see what the differentiation is, et cetera, et cetera, right? Yeah. That's differentiation is the point. That was what I was about to say is it's a guide for.

Differential diagnosis. Yeah. Yeah. It's basically diagnosis Plinko. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Less random. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't hate that analogy.

It kind of works. So I always thought that, like, if you watch somebody play Plinko, you could trace the path and you would have a literal flow chart. And there's something deeply satisfying to that for me. I don't know why. Yeah. So. I can kind of understand that. It doesn't hit me on the same level, I think, as you.

Sure. But I can understand what you're saying there. Yeah. I can get it. Yeah. Now, in 1992, the DSM-4 updated the idea of depression quite a bit and expressed it this way. Quote, major depressive disorder is characterized by the presence of the majority of these symptoms. And again, I like how it's already the majority of these, right?

If you don't have these, then see this other page. but if you have a majority of these, now we're heading toward MDD. Depressed mood, most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report, e.g. feel sad or empty, or observations made by others, e.g. appears tearful.

In children and adolescents, this may be characterized as an irritable mood. I really like that they're distinguishing now, you know? Again, this is the one in 92. This is the DSM4. Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all or almost all activities most of the day, nearly every day.

Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain, e.g. a change of more than 5% of body weight in a month or decrease in appetite nearly every day. And I get that some people would like use this to like, oh, see, they're just saying if it's this or it's opposite. But it's like that literally is how depression hits people. I know people. Like I myself am a comfort eater. Yeah. And therefore. If I am stressed, I will eat and eat and eat. However, when I was going through my divorce, when I was going through a breakup of some significance, I stopped eating almost entirely.

Yep. So I contain both of those things. Yeah. And so I'm listening to you reading this. Mm-hmm. And I kind of wish when I had already. gone through my divorce and I was living alone I wish somebody had had brought me a copy of the book yeah with with like just a just a highlighted section of it sure or like the

arrow saying sign here but like just pointing to these things sticking sticking to that sooner because it took me oh it took me a very long time to come around to recognizing and accepting but that's what I had going on. And I'm listening to you describing all this. I'm like, oh, yeah. Hmm. Yep. Yep.

Yep. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day. Again, I've known folks with both. Psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day. Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day.

Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt nearly every day. Diminished ability to think or concentrate. or indecisiveness nearly every day. Recurrent thoughts of death, not just fear of dying, recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan or a suicide attempt

or a specific plan for committing suicide. Yeah. All that is to say this is what the DSM was when the writers of being human wrote their show. And Sally exhibits a ton of this.

At some points, it's entirely reasonable to claim that she had a schizophrenic break or suffered from the dissociative identity disorder, as well as a few psychotic breaks and bouts of extreme mania. Jesus Christ, the mania on this woman. But largely, they all seem to be reactions to her overall depression at being a ghost or in response to having ghostly limitations lifted. And I will explain this.

To start, though, remember, ghosts are emotionally and psychologically fragile. Okay. Aiden says this from the jump. Okay. Because presumably being over 200 years old, he's encountered more than a few of them. He's made a few. He is the vessel through which Sally learns about a door. Oh, okay.

Like he's known, because he's, yeah, like you said, he's made plenty. He's haunted by a few. And actually, at some point, Sally shows up and she just hits them both with iron. She's like, I'm sorry, they were getting out on my nerves. and it's like he killed them like this is a weird place to be yeah yeah so when we first meet sally she's been isolated as a ghost with nobody able to perceive her for the last seven months she's been unable to leave the house in which she died we only know that she died she's surprised that they can actually see her and she is elated like overwhelmingly elated

which makes plenty of sense she's been isolated for more than half a year yeah she constantly reminds josh and aden that while they're angsty about their conditions they can touch things get touched enjoy tastes etc there's no flavor to her life there's no contact in her life she's touched starved and can't do fuck all about it aden has lived a long time and killed lots of people and is well aware of ghosts and their needs and he lets her know that there should be a door once she works her shit out and that this is not purgatory but she just has unfinished business

it's through Josh that she finds this or it's through Aiden that she finds this out Josh hates change and doesn't want her there at first but Aiden convinces him to chill the fuck out and frankly everything that she does keeps Josh from being chill though like she is an irritating little sister

which is a great thing to have when you're living with a werewolf That's like, yeah, do you really want to be irritating this guy? Right. But also, if you can't be touched, what danger are you really in from a werewolf? Granted, there is that. So now, the thing is, Sally does not remember how she dies. She has no idea.

She just knows that she fell. And she just knows she died right there. She really, really wants to see her fiancé Danny come back. and Danny is the landlord he's renting the place out he doesn't want to live where she died which I totally get that and and our introduction is not to know that Danny killed her right we don't find that shit out for a while so she wants to see Danny this makes perfect sense he left in grief he's renting it to them he's giving them a really good deal on the place he just wants you know to kind of cleanse the place out energy wise he doesn't say any of that but that like

makes sense yeah she convinces sally convinces aden and josh to have danny come back and do repairs for the house and then to lightly interrogate him about sally and eventually they relent and they do so so she's got this obsession and danny reveals to them that she died right there on the landing cracking her skull after falling to her death down the stairs and what follows is cinnamon one of the most beautifully shot scenes there is in TV history, and I really wish more people saw it. I don't know if I can give you a link to it or whatnot, but I'm going to try to set it up, okay? In the house, actually, hold on one second. All right, okay.

Okay, it took a few minutes, but I found it. It was season one, episode two, about 15 and a half minutes in. it's a wide shot the landing butts into a wall and then on the other side of the wall is the walkway to get outside right yeah kind of a mud room

entry or like a foyer and so we see both sides of that wall now Sally's a ghost Danny doesn't see her at all but he's just talking to Josh and Aden about how wonderful Sally was now this is before he's revealed as her killer right and she doesn't know that he killed her she only knows that she's dead and he's saying

wonderful things about her how she was the best thing ever happened to him how she lights up the room and so on and so forth and then he's very sad and he leaves and he goes across that wall now that wall is only about you know the width of a wall right right but to me it was he's leaving the supernatural world even though he doesn't know that he's in it yeah and he crosses across the boundary and when he opens the door there's light that pours in and he's going back out into the world. Sally gets up and walks down and stands on the landing

where she had died. And he, Danny, opens the door and then turns and looks and if the wall wasn't there he'd be looking right at her. Right. So we're it not for this barrier between life and death. Yeah. And it's just

the music plays so beautifully. It's just an amazing. The only scene in TV I think that's anywhere close to is gorgeous. And I think this scene and the one I'm about to mention are 1A, 1B is when Bernard and Rose reunite and lost in season two, where like, I mean, you just, you have this older couple, but they're so in love and so relieved and her faith has been validated and he gets to, he's finished his journey to find her and it's just, oh my gosh.

Yeah. One of the things that I noticed right at the beginning of the, you said, you know, go to this, go to this moment in the video. While he is talking to Josh and Aden, she is sitting on the stairs. Hearing everything. And viewing the whole thing through the railing. And they do a couple of very, very close shots of her face. Yep. And the railing looks like bars.

Yes. It just, there's so much to it. Yeah, like, it's so many levels. It's amazing. I love that such beautiful cinematography is hidden in a show that so few people watched. It's such a shame. Yeah. Now, Sally is still pining hard for her fiancé Danny.

Aidan knows that she's trapped and that a lot of it has to do with her own lack of knowledge. So Aidan goes and finds a ghost named Tony to teach Sally how to ghost it up. Now, Tony is a mullet wearing 20-something who never grew up even after his death. He died in, like, 86 or something. So he shows Sally how to ghost. He shows her out of teleport. He tells her what the door is all about and how to get there and how to get outside of the house and so on. So finally, she can leave the house.

She has a mentor. Now, he's hella thirsty for her, and she spurns that. But eventually they reconcile, and Sally tells Tony to go find. that one true love that he had and see that the life that she's lived has been a good one even after his death right he comes back to sally to tell her what he found and of course his door appears and i think this is at sally's gravesite actually oh okay now after that sally immediately uses her new power to teleport to danny's house right uh not not the one he's renting but the one he's living in and she sees that he's meeting her best friend bridget and between the two of them

Their love for Sally is drawing them to commiserate together, and there is a growing attraction forming between them. Okay. Now, at this point, we still have no idea what killed Sally, and so we still think Danny is a really good guy, and he and Bridget kind of kiss. And so to us, Sally's jealousy is just jealousy. She's young, she's impulsive.

While she was alive, people would have said that she was spunky and spirited, now that she's actually a spirit with spunk she's you know she's impulsive either way she thinks that bridget is moving in on danny taking advantage of his grief and run wonders at how much bridget valued their friendship really

okay she's also pissed at Danny for being able to move on so quickly and I don't know seven months is a lot of fucking days and it's a lot of days without fucking so I could definitely see seeking the companionship of another to get through the loss of your fiancé.

Yeah. I could see the bond over their love of Sally being the kind of thing that could draw them together seven months later. Yeah. Now, after Sally comes down from her anger about it all, she talks with Aden.

There's some talk therapy going on there. And she talks with him about loss and love, which he knows a fuck ton about. Yeah. And she stops trying to sabotage Bridget and Danny's Trist's time. And she switches to trying like hell to bring the two of them together. And in this plan, Sally is still centering herself in the relationship.

And she thinks that she should find a way to communicate with Bridget about their relationship to tell Bridget that she approves of this relationship because Sally finds that sometimes she can actually communicate with the living. And the thing is, isn't this kind of the classic center of the universe? type of thinking like where you are the only player character in a story very much yeah when you're feeling so depressed and helpless with what's going on there's that semi-dilusional thinking there that nobody has ever been through what you're being going through and no one has ever suffered such as you have and no one else really matters and then sometimes you

scratch out a symptom but you don't actually get at the problem and you are elated with that right Like, oh, my God, I figured it out. And it's like, no, you didn't. You just relieved yourself for a minute. Yeah. Sally has a big case of that. So she's very upset. And she said all of her goodbyes and she's performed all the things and she still doesn't get a door, which means that her efforts were really about her getting the door and getting things to occur according to her own desires.

And additionally, she still has no idea how she died. So, yeah. Yeah. This is, and when Sally's upset, her tie to the house is this strong. The plumbing gets all fucked up, which, I mean, that's a pretty clear metaphor, right? Yeah. And you go back to Pinell, and he was all about gut stuff. Yeah.

And since Danny is renting the place to Aden and Josh, he's responsible for the repairs. So when they call him over and he discovers what's been fucking up the plumbing, it wasn't a ghost. It was actually her engagement ring, which means it's totally a ghost. but like shit yeah and when danny discovers it all of a sudden sally's memories of the night that she died come flooding back into her and there's a montage and she'd lost the ring down the sink upstairs while brushing her teeth danny flew off the fucking handle about how she doesn't respect his gift to her so it means that she doesn't respect their engagement and therefore she doesn't respect him turns out he's an abusive narcissistic piece of shit he's raging hard lots of emotional abuse lots of of getting into her face and in her space and she's retreating down the hall and he shoves her hard into the wall so physical abuse too

from which she then falls down the stairs and cracks her skull dying and all of those memories come back and suddenly the plumbing fixes itself wow now Danny leaves he tells them a sob story about what happened and about

oh my god this is her ring etc etc and the night she died and we all know it's a lie Aiden right after Sally says actually here's what happened Aden is ready to kill him for Sally

Yeah Which is also free meal for Aden But let's be real You know We win I don't I you know I'm hungry You're vengeful

Piece of shit It winds up dying Right Everybody wins You know Sally stops him though She then goes to Danny's apartment, and she uses her ghost powers to trash everything in his apartment and leave the ring at the very center of the whirlwind of broken shit in his apartment. Oh, fuck.

Yeah. Now, Danny. That's a pretty clear signal. Yes. And Danny now knows that Sally's ghost and all this kind of shit. He takes her ring and tosses it into the Charles River. Okay. He thinks he's rid of her.

And she's not done with him by a damn sight. Oh, no. Interestingly, the ring returns right back to her at the house. Okay, I need, hold on. I need to bring this up. So this was 2004. One of the ideas that this immediately reminds me of is... Oh, this show is in 2011.

Are you talking about a thing that happened in 2004? No, no, sorry. Oh, okay. So the shows in 2011, meaning it is, it post-dates, wraith and one of the central ideas of White Wolf's Raith game

was the idea of fetters which were physical objects that tied a spirit to the world that prevented them from they were they were sources of power but they were also the things that kept you stuck in the world

and prevented you from moving on and right finding your door or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really clearly that is one. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So the ring returns to her at the house. And while she has the ring, she gets more and more ragey. She returns the ring to his apartment again to terrorize Danny. Meanwhile, Danny confronts and interrogates Bridget about the ring. like did you know about this and he grabs her on the wrist very harshly and then like she's like you're hurting me and he starts crying does the poor pity me card right right and meanwhile sally is back at home celebrating that she haunted danny

until she meets another ghost who is tormenting her ex-boyfriend for like 12 years now um yeah so she kind of sees the future of herself right right now now interestingly know and and the ghost is like celebrating she's like yeah he hasn't busted a nut in three years you know and blah blah blah like i i keep just cock blocking him at every chance i can get and the woman playing the this ghost is actually um tannis from uh letter kenny huh okay i can't there's a vibe yeah yeah okay so but she's super made up and tart it up too like it's a very different tannis it's It's it's the one in letter, Kenny would love to, to, to let her do things to me. This one wouldn't go near her with 10 foot pole.

All right. Got it. But anyway, um, so yeah, she sees like what she's could become if she's not careful. Because obviously if this ghost has been doing this for 12 years, she hasn't found her door. She is stuck in her grief. She is stuck in her sadness. She's just externalizing it the whole time. Yeah.

Um, she stopped every possible connection he could make. she is obsessed with her ex-boyfriend. And this is Sally's wake-up call about obsessing about Danny, at least at first. Right. Because depression has a lot of false starts if you are not getting the help of a professional to help point these things out to you. Indeed. Now, anyway, Bridget comes to the house to leave the ring there, and she speaks to Sally,

not in a conversation, more like, Sally, are you there? I'm talking to the space that I think you're in, and I hope you're listening. Like that kind of thing, right? Yeah, yeah. Bridget leaves the ring and Sally sees Bridget's wrist and it's all bruised. Now Sally has a reason not to let go because she sees Danny's pattern reasserting itself with Bridget. Right, right, right. So now it's about saving Bridget, not getting revenge on Danny, but notice both of these things are I have to do a thing.

Mm-hmm. And that's this thing with Sally, right? She flits from one cause to another. She always does this through four seasons. She's doing this. she's very committed to each cause almost with a mania and at this point it's less about revenge and it's more about saving bridget so that's a step up but it's also still born of sally's need to be the locus of every aspect of things that may be beyond her reach which she kind of made worse by her initial efforts because her initial efforts drove bridget further into danny's arms endangered bridget further right adrian talks to her he tries a different tack

because she's now in the state that she's in and Aden takes her to the hospital where lost ghosts who've not been able to work their shit out tend to haunt she confronts Aiden later about leaving her there alone which means she missed the point entirely so she focuses only on her feelings

and how upset she is about them never actually working through her feelings and after aiden explains the whole point which sally clearly didn't get on her own she then returns and reaches out for help asking how she can get her door even that is her not doing the work right it's her trying to jump to being cured right she's flailing she's running from the unpleasantness of her feelings and she's not doing the work to actually get healthy and she's stuck in the morass of it all. Sally

kind of ends up ghost dating a guy whom she knew when she was first getting together with Danny a guy named Nick and that she met in like I think a polysci class or something like that. And Nick died

and he's been dead for a while and he hasn't found his door and so they explore Boston and all the cool parts of it that we might not notice right. They go to different restaurants and see what that's like. They watch a baseball game from the dugout. And then when it comes out that this guy, Nick,

has to disappear every day for about five minutes to relive his death, Sally Boltz. Now, I would agree that a man who has to go and relive his death of drowning for, for like the entirety of the time that it took him to drown. So about five minutes every day, that is a red flag. but you've met a person who hasn't resolved their issues literally like that's the whole reason you're able to meet them and her response is again not really to see him as a full and complete person with flaws which i know is silly to say about a ghost but you get the idea instead her response and her reactions and her actions with him are all about how she feels she's elated that she actually can kind of sort of touch another ghost and that they can kind of sort of kiss and make out and stuff stuff and then when she finds out that he goes and has to do that every day she's very bothered that he can't get past his issues to be with her okay so i'm curious sure is there an explanation given about why it is she doesn't have to relive the circumstances of her death

no but he does it's just a thing that he does it's just a thing okay now what's interesting is she does end up reliving circumstances of her death. There are several scenes where she is falling through the air, although she's clearly falling in a different direction before she lands on her back. So there are times where she has those moments. Apparently where she died is what's called a death spot, and it's an important thing to ghosts and shit like that in this world. But she doesn't have to go relive it every single day.

But it does come up more than it should. Okay. So her self-centeredness, Sally's self-centeredness in this state is very frustrating to watch. But when you consider the depression that she doesn't even realize that she's in due to her constantly avoiding the feelings and creating a delusion around what she's doing, it makes a lot of sense. Now, during all this time, I've talked about Josh and I've talked about Aden, they are in the middle of their own crises and their own conflicts between their respective species and whatnot. Sally's intangibility and her relative youth compared with them pretty much makes her a non-entity to them. They care for her and they care about her, and most of her interactions with them end up making

things worth for either or both of them. Or Sally makes sweeping proclamations about the morality of Aden's or Josh's choices and actions, or she draws them into whatever problems she's having and centers those problems despite the very existential threats that the both of them face during some of these times in the first season. Sally's increasing antagonisms of Danny and attempts to save Bridget have led Danny and Bridget to hiring an exorcist at the house. And since Danny's the landlord and Josh and Aden are stuck in the underground Amish vampire

were-wolf fighting pits at the time, Danny is able to get this party started. And the exorcism nearly works and Sally possesses the exorcist so that she can see what happened to Sally and it works and this is the first I think that we've seen of any kind of possession actually okay so it's all instinctive she doesn't get taught to do this later until later now when the exorcist has a flash of everything that happened she tells Danny that what he did to Sally was awful and that causes Bridget to leave too now the experience of possessing the exorcist while she's exercising you and damn near obliterates you has left sally deeply deformed by the experience kind of walking around in a black-veined milky-eyed finally not speaking

phase oh hey i just showed you a picture of sally post-exorcism holy holy crap yeah yeah um yeah that's wow uh-huh damn yeah and like yeah it's it is it is striking it is very very striking so yeah clearly that's been that's been a very draining harrowing experience okay yeah now you may remember from the dsm one that there was a quote severe psychomotor retardation a stupor right connected to depression right yeah that is until she teleports to danny's house and uses her ghost powers to get him to cut himself shaving, at which point she reverts back to her normal self and immediately thinks that her purpose is to kill Danny,

which will get her her door. Sweetie. Sweetie, kiddo. Do you see what I'm saying here about her emotional instability? Yeah, you're learning all the wrong lessons. This is not, wow. Hyper-focused on herself and her delusions rather than doing the healing

work necessary. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Sally is the only woman in this trio, although Nora will join them regularly by season three. Right. Sally is also a woman of color. And the writers are kind of drawing on that trope of the emotionally unstable,

vengeful woman of color. Okay. There's even a part in the second season where she seems to get healthier and her hair straightens and she dresses far wealthier than what she was dressed in previously. during an episode where she detaches a bit more from reality. Hmm. Okay. So, but back to her hurting Danny by way of shaving. Right.

Danny knows that it's Sally. And so he shows back up to the house to burn it down. This is the first attempt at burning down the house in the series. There were many. Burn it down the house. Right. She can't stop. It's your ticket back to home.

She can't stop him because she's weakened by the exorcism still and everything that followed. Right. But she is able to trap him in the house while the fire is already going. Now, luckily for both of them, so she's like, I'm taking you with me, right? Right. Now, luckily for both of them, Aiden and Josh show up and Aiden and Sally are ready to kill Danny finally. But Josh intervenes, and they make Danny confess to the killing of Sally and the attempted arson. and once she has this closure her door appears

just before she steps through it this is season one right just before she steps to it bishop remember bishop aden's master aden's father bishop jumps through the fucking bay window without permission so he's starting to catch fire he jumps through

tries to stake aden in his own house house, and so Sally skips out on her door to tend to Aden. Oh. So she finally steps a step down the road toward the healing that she needs, and she finds yet another reason to avoid it. It's not like she's corporeal. It's not like she can help Aiden. Right.

But she is attached to trauma, both her own and her friends, and that's more comfortable than the healing. Aiden even said Go through your door But she goes with him to the hospital first And when she comes back to the house To the house from the hospital Her door is gone

Wow Yeah And I think I'm going to stop us there Because now that I've gotten you through season one I think the rest of it will line up easier And yeah We need to stop the episode soon So yeah

So far what have you gleaned oh dear um that the attitude of society toward mental illness is a whole lot better now than it has ever been it's still problematic but it's a lot better better yeah um number one number two The relationship between depression and, you know, what you said about the, in order to not sound like I'm being pejorative, I'm going to say the intense self-focus of it is really hard to notice when you're in the middle of it. I've often said you cannot get the weather report if you're in the middle of a storm. Yeah, that's a good, again, with the analogies tonight. Yeah, I like that. And, you know, earlier I lamented, you know, I wish somebody had handed me a copy of the DSM for, you know. And again, it's a case of when you're in the middle of a storm, you can't get a weather report.

And the looking back on my own experience with it, the self-focus of it is now obvious. Yeah. But at the time, it was, it was not visible. It was, it was ghostlike. Yeah. You know, it was only, it was only noticeable through. second-hand effects you know yeah so yeah no this is this is a really powerful metaphor that they're that they're crafting whether whether a hundred percent intentionally or not right you know it's still yeah as as a metaphor for this it's it's really strong yeah and again Aiden is the only character where the actor said oh yeah i was about this like yeah could be that i didn't find but i searched a lot it could be that the other actors were focused on other aspects there's there's a number

of possibilities there yeah yeah certainly yeah well cool um what would uh you recommend to people this week uh based on our uh discussion earlier I am going to recommend the play Marat Sade. Okay. Full title, the persecution and assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, as performed by the inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Saad. It is a stage play usually done in the round. It is well worth reading. it goes into

kind of as part of the plot it is a depiction of life in an asylum that is much less humane than the Salpietra and it's very dark I will I will let you know

if the title didn't give it away it is it is very dark but it's very very powerful kind of meditation on revolution and whether social revolution has any meaning compared to personal

personal revolution and change within oneself and it also has an awful lot to say about class and power and all of those kinds of things so that's that's my recommendation how about you I'm also going to recommend a play actually

It's by David Davalos, Davalos, called Wittenberg. And it is about, you remember how in Hamlet he came back from school? Right. It's him in school. Oh. Which is cool, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

His two most guiding professors are Dr. Faustus and Martin Luther. I need this injected directly into my veins now I saw the play yeah it was good oh I'm sure yeah um they what's the uh the psalm of the song of Solomon the song of the song of Solomon yeah the sexy part right oh yeah yeah they have Martin Luther they're reading that at a um what do you call it at a uh sermon and while he's reading that they've divided the the stage and down down down stage so he's upstage doing that and there's people who are and that is being interlaced with dr faustus going down on the woman uh that he sells his cell to the devil for uh and so wow yeah so

it they play off each other and that's just one scene that's fascinating another one is so dr faustus and martin luther love debating with each other martin luther's really uptight dr faustus is very um like he's very much like that that cool boomer teacher yeah uh and uh the interplay between those two is just amazing like to the point where faustus is like fascinating by this copernican uh model of the universe that hamlet is brought to him and martin burns it like it's just so much good shit in there can yeah oh man tracks yeah wow it's a good play so you should check it out it sounds like it cool all right well where can they find us we collectively can be found on our website at wababababwbwbwbwb geekhistorytime.com

We can also be found on the Apple podcast app on the Spotify and on the Android Spotify and on the Amazon podcast app. Thank you for the save there. Wherever you have found us, please take a moment to give us

the five-star review. You know we deserve and be sure to hit the subscribe button. And where can you be found, sir? You can find me and the Capital Punishment crew on the first Friday of every month, I have no idea when this episode is dropping. So I'm going to say it's after January. So, February 6th, March 6th, April 3rd, find capital punishment. And if it's

not during those times, if you listen to this three years from now, we're still going. Emily is still doing a great job. I'm still kicking ass, taking names. I've just got no red hair on me whatsoever. Justine still looks like a million bucks and outpaces me in puns at every fucking turn. Anyway, first Friday of the month, Sacramento Comedy Spot in Sacramento, bring $15 for your tickets. Better yet, go to sackcomedy spot.com. And go to the calendar section and grab your ticket there. Get ahead of the rush. We've been selling out. We will continue to be selling out as long as it goes. So come on down, check us out, buy some new merch, uh, and, uh, yeah, and let us, let us entertain you for an evening with puns. Lord knows what the world's going to be like by the time

you hear this. So, cool. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.