And That's Why We Drink - E204 This Year's Sandwich Predictions and the Old Synaprague

Episode Date: January 3, 2021

Happy 2021 and episode 204! Christine has already met her quota of songs sung to Em, but don't worry she has more. This week we're starting the new year with a bang as Em brings us the story of the Golem, straight out of Jewish folklore. Then Christine covers heavy hitter Son of Sam and throws Em back to stories Linda told of living in the area Son of Sam terrorized. We also speculate on the horrors of Fantasia and we, like Golem the Pokemon, would also like one hundred candies in order to evolve... and that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us! FabFitFun is the only subscription that delivers full-size, self-care and wellness products straight to your door. Use coupon code “DRINK” for $10 off your first box at www.fabfitfun.com. #fabfitfunpartnerWhether you’re looking for peak performance or better health, covering your bases with Athletic Greens makes investing in your energy, immunity and gut health each day simple, tasty and efficient. Simply visit athleticgreens.com/DRINK and join health experts, athletes and health conscious go-getters around the world who make a commitment to their health every day.If you’re getting ready to hunker down for the winter, make sure your home is up to the task with Burrow. Right now, you can save an extra $75 off your purchase by going to Burrow.com/DRINK!

i don't know this you don't know the song teach me teach me welcome christmas christmas day i have i'm the most tone. I mean, you all know this because I, as I said earlier, Christine, I keep asking you to not sing. Well, I just keep saying like in our relationship, I think you've really met your quota when it comes to how many songs I want to hear from you. But you keep finding ways to exceed it. Yeah, our listeners feel exactly the same way. And I just, as you said, I shan't, I shan't and I shan't. That's exactly right. for those of you who don't uh recognize if you're watching youtube you might notice that we're dressed in

the same clothes as our last video and it's because we are recording these back to back so you haven't showered everyone else has had a week to uh really process what christine singing sounds like i have had five minutes. So if you didn't listen to our holiday episode, you really missed out on a doozy. You really did. It was I would say, easily one of my top five favorite. That was one of my favorite stories you've ever covered, which is like, not shocking, because no one actually died in it, which is great. Yeah, it was a dog that ended up just being a happy non non-abused dog. But if there's one thing that I love about you and our friendship is like your wildly, unnervingly creative mind.

Oh, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me, Em. Well, so it was very nice to see it in action there because you got to be creative with your story this time. Well, it's frightening that you and I have somehow the universe has allowed us to be in one project together aka this podcast because like after the escape room i think everyone is fully aware of how unnerving your mind and creativity are and so if mine are the similar status or at least in your mind then we must be a tornado of chaos that's that was poetry right there yeah you know we have said i remember last time we had a sleepover i was like can you imagine if we were enemies like we would be

we would be our perfect rivals like we would like destroy our other and ourselves we would royally fuck each other up but like in like the most creative sinister ways like a fun way like thank god the world decided to put us on the same side because we would be like mortal yin yang perfect perfect enemies yeah and i think honestly like we've had this conversation and we've talked to people who are like psychic mediums who are like oh you've lived multiple lives together and we're like yeah we know i was like trust me don't worry this is not a new occurrence we i've been dealing with this bullshit for millennia don't worry about it i feel it all the way to my very fucking core that i cannot soul can't escape i

could literally drop dead on this in this life and she'll just be there tomorrow when i open my eyes in a brand one a brand new one oh my god it's true anyway welcome to 2021 everyone aren't you oh my gosh bringing in the new year with us? A year that we refuse to make predictions about because last year it didn't go so well. I predict I will predict one thing this year and it's that I'm going to eat a lot of really delicious sandwiches. Let's hope you don't fuck that up, too. God, please don't let me like all of a sudden like have like a gluten intolerance. There's like a bread shortage.

Yeah. You never know what you could do with that. Those words words i have no idea how damaging one sentence could be manifest yes that's actually terrifying i i would like to eat a lot of sandwiches this year that's really my my only takeaway yeah why don't we just vision board stuff and like let the universe do what what it will you know rather i'd like the podcast to go well and i would like to uh eat a lot of sandwiches that's pretty much it okay i i think i might actually put the both of those exact things I'd like the podcast to go well and I would like to eat a lot of sandwiches. That's pretty much it. Okay.

I think I might actually put both of those exact things on my vision board and leave it at that. Perfect. Oh, I wanted to tell you since I didn't get to mention it. So we're recording this like before Christmas, shortly before Christmas. So Em asked earlier, how's Gio doing? And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to tell you on the show. He's at doggy daycare today because we're recording and uh i was able to take him out of the premises for once uh and i they were like would you like to sign geo up for pictures with santa and i about

fell out of my what fainting couch what evil evil wench would say no to that can you imagine can you imagine i was like i don't i don't participate in that no i don't and i truly i was like wait what and they're like here's a sign-up sheet and i oh my god i put him on that little sign-up sheet and they did a secret santa like a santa pause a secret santa pause and we had to buy a toy and put like what size range the the dog that it goes to and then write like love Gio and then he's gonna get a toy. It's like the cutest thing ever. And every day they post photos.

I mean, I'm like, I'm just enamored with this place. My heart is like dripping into my stomach because it's so melty. Like, I mean, really what we were just saying about how powerful our collective mind is. Can you imagine if we ran like a dog service? Oh God. The shit that would come out of us

every holiday would be noodles fucking noodles noodles all linguine all the way to the top the linguine the fettuccine you know all of it the bow tie um only on classy affairs doesn't have quite the same ring um but yeah so hopefully by the time this episode comes out i'll have a copy that i can put in the youtube video i hope i hope it works out i mean i this is my first year there obviously but i think geo knew because on the way he was like shaking with nervousness and i was like maybe he knows that i've done something terrible to him and made him like approach a stranger i was gonna say maybe he's so excited but you're right he probably knows you well enough to be like knowing geo you fucking stirred

something up that now i have to i have to get through this it's true he's like i'm just as anti-social as you mom and yet somehow you force me into these scenarios especially during quarantine when like he has seen very minimal people and now a big burly red suited person is going to be like sit on my lap oh my god but i've seen some of the other dogs who signed up earlier and it is the cutest freaking thing so i will hopefully post that somewhere on social media and we can post in the video you know what i would like to do next year if this is at all possible and like we just happen to be in cincinnati near december at all or cinc or Cincinnati or you're where wherever the hell

you live anymore uh I think it would be precious at some point and if it doesn't happen near December we can we can you know chop it to be a different situation I would like to be dressed as Santa in your home and then take off the Santa clothes and surprise Gio I was like where are we going with this okay got it I think it would be precious if like, we took a picture and then like, you got like a live reaction of him realizing it was me because we hadn't seen each other in so long. Right. I mean, I think since he's a dog,

he'll probably smell that it's you, but we can pretend. I'll roll around in some dirt or something. It'll be, he'll love you even more. He won't even notice. I will say too, just like on that note, a lot of people are very baffled and like, understandably, because I don't think I ever explained this note, a lot of people are very baffled and like understandably,

because I don't think I ever explained this properly. And I think people are very, some people are concerned because now they think I've moved again to another place. Like everyone's just very concerned. Oh, cause I keep fucking up the city that you're in. Is that why? No, cause well, no, no, no. Cause like I said, Oh, by the way, I'm in Kentucky and like, I guess I never clarified that. And so now people, and so every time I tag it on social media, people are like, you've moved again.

Like, why do you keep moving? OK, I only moved once. But as someone who doesn't know geography myself, I shouldn't have assumed everybody knows this. But Cincinnati is like right on the border of both Indiana and Kentucky. So I'm about 10 minutes away from downtown Cincinnati, but on the Kentucky side. So I'm technically in Northern Kentucky, like on the river. But like I can like it's like literally you can walk across the bridge to Cincinnati. So I'm closer to Cincinnati than I lived even when I

grew up here. But technically, my state of residence is Kentucky. So to clarify for anybody who's worried that I'm like, upsetting. All over the fucking place. Livelihoods all over the place. I'm still in the same place. And if you are like, you know, you were listening forever ago and now you're listening to like this random brand new episode. Yeah. Christine did leave, but we also nothing has changed. Yeah.

Nothing's changed. Clearly as the amount I sing has just increased. Well, that's also that was one of the reasons why we waited until after a few months of you getting settled in because nobody really seemed to notice that anything changed. Oh, I know. The point was so like, if we announced at the time that you were moving, we were afraid people would think, oh, now the dynamic is going to change. We were worried people read into things. Yeah, but we wanted to be to the punch and be like, you had no idea. She moved forever ago and nothing has changed. part i think one of the coolest parts is that um i was on instagram like the month i moved here last spring and uh suddenly kenyan from wine and crime posted like in our new home and she lived in south uh africa and all of a sudden she's like in our new home home. And it was like Louisville, Kentucky. And I went, wait, what? And I'd literally moved that week to Kentucky. And I was

like, wait, so I moved from Los Angeles. She moved from South Africa and we both ended up in Kentucky. I feel like if quarantine weren't a thing, the two of you would have a, like a, a, a set, like weekly coffee arrangement, a wine arrangement arrangement but yeah close enough well let's but so i was just like this and she was like oh my we almost we tried to make plans because the ikea is up here and so she's like well zach and i want to go to the ikea so like when we come up we'll like meet up but obviously then quarantine got you know thing messed up but that would be precious so if you had like a standing uh weekly rendezvous together listen i don't know how she feels but i certainly plan on it so uh but i was just like so excited and surprised because i'm like i felt very isolated

out here and now i have like a neighbor and that's it's literally like an hour and 20 minutes from me like it's not far so i was just like especially now this is the weirdest maybe to other people that's far but like let's remember like you have been perfectly primed as an la driver yeah yeah that's not far an hour drive is just like what you do like i would drive an hour to my house to record exactly it would just be like me driving over to your place to like to have dinner so yeah yeah exactly or to like you know borrow 500 bucks or whatever that that one occurrence where you appear to my door i'm glad you mentioned that because every single time that that memory comes to mind, I'm like, I don't have a better friend

because I really- I don't know about that. Just saying at you. I straight up showed up uninvited to your home while you had other people over. And I said, I need $500 in cash immediately. And you just fucking gave it to me. Well, I wasn't gonna be like, no.

I mean, that's a homie. We're like, no questions asked. Clearly, you're asking for a reason. I mean, you are fortunate in the fact that I somehow had $500 at this point in my life. If you had asked me a year before, you and I both would have been like, well, neither of us have a dollar.

I'd be like, I can offer you one penny and you can find the rest on your own. Yeah. Which is precisely how the podcast started, by the way. We put our entire $200 savings into this show. 50 we each had I had 250 the day after we bought our equipment and I gave you $250 I literally had uh 18 bucks to my name yep yep and I remember ordering ordering food and being like I have to order a small pizza because I cannot afford a medium and that's the end and not like I can't afford it because I'm trying to budget things out it's like no I can't I do not have literally the funds

yeah so anyway sorry that went way on a tangent but point being uh to clarify Gio is currently with Santa Claus oh right being traumatized my child as you can imagine I'm traumatizing him and uh I'm in snowy Kentucky where it's snowing. And it's 2021. I'm wearing a sweatshirt in LA right now. And that was bold of me because it's a little too warm today. So that's where we stand. But I do. Nothing has changed.

I do think that we should find a way. When I do, when I am reunited with Gia, we should do it in a very cute, obviously filmed way. Oh, we should probably hire an entire tv crew am I right get on it Eva okay Eva you're a tv crew now welcome Eva you uh produce everything actually also you have to dress as an elf so that everyone's in on it you know actually that's wait a minute she would be like a cute elf though right she'd be a precious elf actually that feels like the exact mythical creature she could be yeah maybe she is like a little fairy elf or something you know eva are you an elf eva

okay step one get a polygraph and then we're gonna test to see if you're an elf step two um get an elf outfit step three produce our the rest of our lives on camera and also step four let me play with the polygraph because i've always wanted to play with one and then step five please never ever ever leave us because i i won't know where to return the polygraph machine so you're gonna have to do that also sorry we just called you an elf please don't leave me yeah okay let's start the show okay let's start over actually editor take every single thing out welcome to and that's why we drink um where we only stay on topic where we only uh talk about everything except our stories actually um okay so let's let's get into this i wanted to do another wintry-esque i don't know if this is a one-story thing i wanted to do

another um uh cryptid of sorts i did the yeti last week because it was the closest one to christmas and i was like okay let's do something wintry because i can't snowy i don't have too many christmas stories i get to cover um and so i wanted to do the yeti for some reason was like my version of like a christmas episode even though it wasn't very christmasy i think it fits well i wanted to uh i'm very late to the game now i'm literally like three weeks behind but i was like i should also throw in like for other holidays like like a hanukkah one or something so welcome january 2021 now i'm going to cover hanukkah um this is just a very very early hanukkah story look you you can you're

jewish all year long so So really, this can be special for you anytime. Okay, still seeking mensch on a bench, still, still looking for my mensch, if you know what I mean. So this is the I tried, basically, I was trying to come up with something for like, people outside of like celebrating Christmas. Because I use my Christmas episode on I don't know it felt christmassy so i'm trying to do something other than that so spread the cheer i got it spread the cheer uh and the new year so this is what are you covering i can't figure it out this is the golem gold golem oh okay have you heard of the golem i feel like i've heard of it but i don't

really know i mean i the golem the golem's I feel like I've heard of it, but I don't really know. I mean, I assume it's... The golem's really made his way through pop culture. L-O-T-R. What is that? Lord of the Rings? Lord of the Rings. Golem is different than golem. But close.

It's not, like, based on it? Oh, okay. I, maybe. I would say in a very loose way. I would say... Oh, okay. Then I probably don't know much. I would say golem, he's known to be a protector.

So if Gollum was supposed to protect the ring, we could put that together. I think that is... I thought he was based on a character, like a mythical... Well, apparently we're not going to talk about it today, except in this moment. What do I know? Don't trust me on any of this, especially pop culture. There's definitely a similarity between Gollum and golem so okay um also really hope i'm saying it right i checked google and typed in golem pronunciation and i think that's right it feels

right again don't trust anything i say but i think that's right don't trust anything i say and i'm only like 50 of the uh the information over here on this podcast so okay the golem so very similar in a way to frankenstein because they are both um they were because they were life created by man-made created oh so there are some similarities that you'll hear throughout this that have to do with frankenstein um but uh so the golem is a clay a creature made of clay um and uh that has been magically brought to life and the term golem is hebrew for basically uh incomplete or unfinished um and the golem is said to appear or at least the phrase or the term is said to appear at least once in the Bible in Psalms 139.16. And again, meaning like unfinished substance or shapeless mass.

But so let's do some history. So this is not the first mention of the golem. This is just one of the most popular stories of the golem. So it's not totally chronologically correct today i'm just going with like if this were like a shopping site i'm not going from oldest to newest i'm going for it to like bestseller you know featured yeah got it a trending if you will so um so this is one of the main stories this is from the 16th century and this is the golem of prague arguably one of the most popular stories oh okay

so uh in prague at this time the jewish people were uh having a a good moment finally because in history they really just can't catch a fucking break yeah um so they're saying that they're enjoying a a golden age of security and uh however record scratch record scratch oh no the jews had a pretty tough time all of a sudden so there are uh rumors are starting to spread that the jews of prague were performing blood libel which do you know what that is no i did not either until so you are not alone blood libel apparently um and these were rumors. This is not what was happening, but they were being accused of this. Got it. You basically using the blood of Christian children in their rituals.

Oh my god. They were told basically all the Christians are saying, oh, they're killing us. They're killing our children and they're using their blood and like Jewish, which apparently means satanic rituals. Yes, it's like satanic panic but like but the jewish version and like probably worse got it okay yeah uh and so satanic panic i just thought of like satanic panic and then i thought but with like dreidels i was trying to think of like jewish things and then i thought of satan with a dreidel it got really weird in my head artistically but now i want it as a poster of like no no like let's get a whiteboard in and just like let's just get it out do a real pictionary situation here where we've got like you know everyone except like the christian children apparently yeah well we have the time to

brainstorm for hours and hours we've got nothing but time on this podcast you you you refer to episode 202 where it was even like please stop just go uh okay so yeah so rumors are not look it's not a cute look for the for the jews right now um and so obviously they are terrified of violence ensuing or riots or some sort of like jewish massacre um and so needing a symbol of hope, the Jewish people, there's one rabbi named Rabbi Lowe, who decided that he was going to help his community come up with this symbol of hope. So Rabbi Lowe wanted to protect the local Jewish people from, like I said, attacks on them. And this is kind of going off of, I guess, this is a, I don't know if it's artistic license or it's, it becomes a little magical, just so we're clear. So I'm not going to base this entirely on in fact, this is just the story that has been passed on.

So the rabbi or rabbis in general are seen as, you know, nearly godlike. The rabbi or rabbis in general are seen as, you know, nearly godlike. So they were able, they had this power, this superpower of sorts where they could control the elements. And so this one rabbi, Rabbi Lo, he brought two other rabbis with him down to the river. And three of them, the three of them represented three of the four elements so they represented water air and fire um and then for earth they started taking clay like um kind of like wet ground from the by the river and the three of them started molding this man-made creature out of the clay so all four of them together made the elements okay um and so they basically they molded this clay thing into a human shape and then they performed this ritual and this is uh basically this is a quote from uh i think the

book itself that uh tells the story low takes two of his pupils down to the river where there is a lot of mud he shapes figures out of the mud and encourages them to do the same. This is a ritual found in earlier sources. He and his pupils walk around and around the rudimentary form of the golem. And then it happened. A golem appears from the earth and turns reddish. Light appears around him. He rises even higher and goes redder still.

He then begins to breathe. It's not like God. Breath isn't blown into him. Instead, he sits up and then stands. He is very big and they already figured he would be naked. So they brought clothing for him. I like how they figured he'd be naked, even though they literally made him naked with their hands.

They couldn't like just like with an extra layer, throw like a flannel on him or something like a clay poncho yeah uh and let's see they give him a name um so he's not actually called golem they called him joseph or joseph um and uh they take him along and tell him what he needs to do and he basically he's just supposed to sit there well-behaved in the synagogue. And when they need him for protection, they will call him. So like... That's a good gig. Okay.

Yeah. So they were like, you're just going to be here for protection if something were to happen to the local Jewish people. Until then, just like sit pretty. Just like J-Chill, you know. Just NMJCU, you know. So the golem is now alive. alive apparently the golem had superhuman strength also some sources said that it had the invisibility had the power of invisibility

um if it wanted to do that okay um the golem looked out for people once even rescued a girl from being kidnapped by people and uh so he was just kind of like almost like a little jewish superhero i do too um and so so there are a few ways to bring a golem to life according to like uh i guess jewish traditions the one that the rabbi did however was he put a shem which is like a clay tablet um he wrote uh god's name or wait hang on yeah yeah yeah all right so it's a clay tablet bearing the name of god sure so he put that shem under the tongue of the golem so basically like wrote god's name put it under his tongue and that was kind of what activated the golem and when he would take the shem out uh he would just kind of like turn to stone and not do anything it was like he was just like it's like his power switch exactly yeah okay

so either he was alive or he was like just a stone creature got it um and the way that the rabbi in this story did he would put the shem either in its mouth or not um the golem i was going to mention this later but this just seems like an appropriate time to say it the golem is also mentioned in a lot of um pop culture which i'll get to but one of them is the simpsons and there's like a whole episode where they have they find the golem and they communicate to it by like leaving notes under its tongue oh and then um or like they're able to like control it by saying like wake up or meet me at midnight and like. Oh, I haven't seen that. And putting the note under it.

And then Marge and Lisa like make out of Play-Doh a female golem for it to have a girlfriend. Okay, that sounds pretty on point. Yeah. So just so you know, that's like one place people have probably seen the golem before. So yeah, so the rabbi would put a shem under its mouth and that's how it would light it up. I guess like a Christmas tree. Um, other ways to bring it to life are to recite the proper letters of God's name, uh, putting God's name on their forehead, um, or writing E-M-E-T, so Emmett sort of, um, on its forehead or its body in some way, kind of like either

chiseling it in or, but the words, there are the letters E-M-E-T, which I'm going to get to that a little bit later, but it basically, it spells the word truth and it's Hebrew for truth. And so that story basically ends where the golem saved the day, but he apparently got too powerful or was, because he was so successful, the rabbi decided to keep him for too long.

And there's a concept where the longer the golem is alive, the more powerful or the more dangerous it becomes. And it's not like because it like slowly like build strength or anything, but it's kind of the Frankenstein mentality of it starts developing like human tendencies and it strays from being strictly obedient for what its purpose is. So like every human's fear about like AI and all that stuff. Like it just starts thinking for itself. And if it doesn't want to obey you, maybe it won't. Ooh, goose cam. So it's he found that out the hard way. can they uh so it's he found that out the hard way and basically uh this uh golem started like terrorizing the town and so and then he kept closing his mouth so nobody could pull the thing

out he went he was like no like a dog with a tv remote that it shouldn't like like geo with socks yes precisely and much like a golem or a frankenstein's monster geo definitely does not do what he's told and decides that he has superiority over everyone so it's it's pretty well so that's exactly it but uh somehow the rabbi found out that uh the golem was terrorizing the town was able to pry its mouth open and and get the shem out and turned it off and now there's this um folklore that he left that shem in the old synagogue in prague and you can still which i don't know why they don't call it the old cineprog um but we'll write that down we need to write a letter to prague uh eva we have to build the

cineprog immediately we need to we need to call the Cineprog immediately. We need to call the Prague president. The construction company of Prague. Okay. Yikes. So there's a legend that it's still upstairs in the attic and just kind of waiting for the next time it's needed to protect the Jewish people. But I really went out of order. So let me read through my own notes. I just really decided to run with it.

What, I derailed you? You don't say. Okay, so here's a fun fact about that story, is that Rabbi Lowe, who I'm pretty sure was real, I think I'm going to commit to that. He was real. Rabbi Lowe was real.bi was real um but he actually didn't believe in miracles he didn't can or he condemned magic and he never wrote about the

golem so this was almost like a story where someone really respected the rabbi and just kind of inserted him into the story of like he helped um create a protector for the jewish people when they really needed it okay so people say that the rabbi told the story and it's a real story but in 1909 really what happened was that a manuscript from his son-in-law was quote found or discovered but like nobody's ever actually seen the legitimate manuscript it's just like this story is this is how like the legend has kind of grown of like, oh, well, there's no like real hard context where this story existed. But it's allegedly from this manuscript that was found and then went missing again. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

So apparently this manuscript was discovered by a guy named Udall Rosenberg. by a guy named Udall Rosenberg. And he ended up using that manuscript he discovered to write his own version and publish it as a real manuscript. And it was called Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague. The Maharal of Prague is Rabbi Lowe. Oh, okay. So The Wondrous Deeds of the Rabbi Lowe. rabbi low oh okay so uh the wondrous deeds of the rabbi low um so he wrote his own book after a potentially fake manuscript he potentially never discovered fun got it i think you just needed like

an explanation for like how he was inspired to write this yes yes um so anyway so he published it and when the book came out or when he was writing the book, actually, it was at the same time that there were more blood libel accusations. And then there were also problems in Russia for Jewish people. So like, I think he was writing during that kind of headspace where he was like, I'm going to write something about this golem and make him look like a protector. and make him look like a protector just because it's what we need so yeah yeah this is why i mentioned earlier that this is not in chronological order because i think a lot of people would be confused here before this whole story about rabbi low and creating the golem and now he's in the attic that was a story after the golem had already existed but it was known beforehand as more of like a servant that you could create to help you with labor. So and then this Rabbi Lothing, that's where things change, because now the golem was seen as this like protector or guardian of the Jewish people.

And that's why it's probably best known, because all of a sudden the golem was like this revered character. Like the superhero. Yeah, yeah. So and also the relocating of jewish people for many horrible reasons um and other you know just general reasons just the the general spread of jewish people across the world has helped perpetuate the story of the golem sure so um that's probably how it's best known is just through word of mouth um before uh like i said before the rabbi low story the golem was seen as a servant to help aid jewish people with their work um the earliest mention

of the golem is actually in germany's rhineland in uh the 12th century so that was four centuries before the rabbi low story and oh wow okay yeah at the time there was this movement for jewish people called the pious of ashkenazi which fun fact 23 and me tells me that i am 49 ashkenazi nice i am only 10 oh 49 no i'm 51 and then i'm 49 my dad so i'm technically more mom than dad which is fun linda wins i was like by like one percent i beat him out i love it so anyway 51 ashkenazi over here uh i had also at iss uh someone else there was uh had ashkenazi like was a majority ashkenazi jewish or something and uh every time he saw me we would walk past each other and say ashkenaz and i don't know

why and it felt like if anyone else said it it would have been slightly anti-semitic or something but like it was just like the way we like you like bonded over it it's the way we recognize each other i every time i see ashkenazi now i just hear his voice scream ashkenaz and i'm like that feels wrong to do but it's like a fist fist bump yeah i was like i hmm i wonder how other people feel about this but it was it was done with love at least so um between two ashkenazi people so also can i just say one thing real quick i'm so sorry to interrupt you did i fuck up did i say something no you did it at all i feel really bad that i'm interrupting you. No.

So like when you were mentioning like the exile of the Jewish people, I was like, oh my God. Because so my mom's PhD was in like German Jewish exile literature. Oh, great. And so I texted her just real quick, like, what was your PhD in again? Which I was like, this is a mistake to like open that door. What'd she say? She literally just started sending me pictures of her PhD or her like thesis.

For a second, I thought you were going to say she just sent me pictures of the golem. And I'd be like, oh my God. Can you imagine if Dr. Renata of the golem. She sent me pictures of her dissertation. I was like, okay, I'm not going to like read it on air. I just wanted to know. Ask her right now, though, what she knows about the golem.lem and then maybe at the end we can have like an excerpt of her if it's if it's how do you know what do you know about the golem or how do you spell that

g-o-l-e-m-e-m-o-e-m i just want to see what she'd say because if she has something to add i'm sure she'll have something to add whether she knows what it is or not uh but yeah her her uh dissertation was on the change of the religious voices through the trauma of exile in the works of jewish writers elza laska schuler nelly zox and barbara honigman so wow you know anyway i just heard you say like jewish exile i was like i would be remiss if i didn't give my mom some props in this area of expertise i would love to hear what she has to say she'll probably blow my entire like argument out the water i'm certain she never existed she is the golem she is the golem wait a minute sometimes i'm gonna tell you when you're not in the room she just turns to stone um okay so anyway there was a this the pious of ashkenazi

there's a documentary actually called the golem a legendary jewish clay man and his impact on art where they talk about the pious of ashkenazi which is uh the rhinelands jewish people at the time they were quote very sure of their capabilities and they did what god desired and they were complying with all the commandments and that's why they could achieve what others cannot now uh that's where we first find the accounts of rituals to create a golem that were also successful so it was at this time where i guess just like the purest of jewish people they somehow had this power because they were so perfectly righteous that they could almost perform godlike acts including creating life okay if that makes sense yes it does um and i guess throughout time we've all just been you know slowly turning more into sinners and we're less likely to be able

to do that or something but at the time there was a specific group of ashkenazi people who had this ability like the rabbis okay um and so uh i just want you to remember that and then also i'm going to come back right now to that phrase emmet the e-m-e-t oh yeah so putting that somewhere on its body usually its chest or its forehead um that was part of the ritual to create a golem to basically write the the word for truth on the body um and that's i guess truthfulness is like the highest value in judaism and the three letters in uh emet so i know there's two e's in there but there's only three letters that it takes to make up the word each of those letters um it it's weird but they're uh so they're the first the middle and the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet.

And also, visually, I like how there's like a reason. I know, I was just like, okay, I accept it, but there's a whole reason behind it. Well, I read this and I was like, this feels like someone had ADHD. This feels like this is too specific. But if you look at the words E-m-e-t apparently visually the the letters rest on very wide bases like they're wide letters ah yeah um and uh that suggests that truth itself stands on a broad and stable foundation like holy shit okay okay we're really looking to tell me twice really looking for all the metaphors here also apparently the word uh sheker s-h-e-k-e-r which is the opposite of truth it stands for falsehood all the letters in that are uh either narrow or round bases that suggest instability

so ah very weird i don't know who i don't know who realized that i can't imagine that like you know that's someone someone hundreds of years ago. I think it was just a coincidence. It sounds like something like someone on pot would be like, hey, you know what? It literally sounds like, you know what I just realized? Yeah. Truth and false are opposites, man. Eva, write that down so that hundreds of years from now, my wisdom will be passed to the generation.

Eva, write down that M is like a really wide letter, you know? And it spells M. It's also the middle one of the alphabet. It's also your name. Oh my God, everything's changing. Holy shit. Well, anyway, so I just wanted to mention that because I had to read it and I was like, this is too weird.

So anyway, because M, it means truthful or truthfulness to mention that because i had to read it and i was like this is too weird so anyway because emmet means truthful or truthfulness or um and that's like the highest value that because these righteous almost godlike ashkenazi jewish people if they wrote the highest value on this thing it was almost kind of opening up the potential for it to really come come true i guess um so anyway uh so the other thing about it is so the way that the that rabbi low in that story would take the shem out of its mouth to kind of deactivate it or you know turn it to stone uh one of the cool things about if you were to write emet on uh the forehead or the chest of the golem, it was like also just easier,

which sounds like stereotypically like the most like Jewish thing in my family. Like, let's just make this as easy as possible. Let's just like really like. Just get a Sharpie and we'll do it that way. Well, if you write E-M-E-T and you just erase the E, apparently it only spells M-E-T met which means dead so like it like oh that's clever it's clever and so simple it's like oh i only have to wipe off a quarter of the stuff that i've caused like i love that i think it's uh it sounds exactly like how i would invent something like

absolutely just wipe away what you did but then pretend it means something like really deep yeah but now it like also totally makes sense yeah yeah yeah um so uh yeah so you would just wipe off the first letter and then all of a sudden the problem solved so the people in rhineland were able to make these golems because again they were truly righteous and could perform godlike acts and create life according to legend uh you know adam famous uh for adam and eve You know, of Adam and Eve fame. Yeah, exactly. Adam was apparently a golem for the first 12 hours.

Oh. Because he was made from the dirt, but it was, I guess in the first 12 hours, he like didn't have like a soul or a personality or something. And so they just thought of him as like this living shell of sorts. Weird. i'm sure there's some christians out there who are angry right now but that's okay um in the hebrew bible god brings adam forth from the earth and then god actually is the one who breathes life into him

later is what the i think is closer to what the translation is supposed to be versus he doesn't have a soul it was that like okay so step one was create him from earth and step two will be the part that actually makes him alive because God will breathe life into him. So they think that's why also like golems should represent the earth and they were made from clay because Adam himself was made from the earth. So it's just kind of a tie-in on how Adam and Eve. Classic Old Testament stuff stuff you know good stuff good stuff people are made of ribs and mud it's great um that's a good old days as far as my

religion go my religion understanding goes pretty extensive i would say um so part uh part of the jewish tradition or jewish beliefs is that the rabbi could create artificial man but because the rabbi himself is not god he could not actually uh give full power to these golems so he could basically create it and create life only to a certain point whereas god actually gives you like the power to like speak or uh just weird i would think god is the one that gives you life and then everything else you can learn but apparently the understanding is only god uh can make can give man the power to speak and so a lot of times golems are mute actually i think across all stories golems are mute and don't speak because there's only so much a rabbi can create for them ability wise and okay one of the powers is they can't talk

um and so in many bronze age mythologies fun fact god is depicted as a potter and he's out of potters we all a lot of times making humans from clay and i love that and in the book of job uh job tells adam you and i are the same before god. I too was nipped from clay. So it's just a lot of nods to like all life comes from clay and the earth. And so, you know, the golem is made from the same stuff as you and me. And one fun fact, apparently there is one claim that golems aren't made from clay, but they're made from wood. Oh. that golems aren't made from clay but they're made from wood um oh because there was this one jewish poet named solomon gabberol gabberol it doesn't matter i can't gabberol solomon g and uh he allegedly had some sort of like skin disease and so he put himself he like ran away and like hid in the woods

because he was embarrassed about it oh no um but apparently he was able to make himself a golem out of the wood from the trees that he was living under um so apparently they don't just have to be made from clay they can be made from wood the weird thing about solomon's situation though is like not that the golem was made from wood but that he particularly specifically made a female golem okay that was my next question uh-huh yeah what were the intentions here got it it's not to maybe be a concubine of sorts if you will goodness um it seems like the I mean if you think about it this is like not a cute look but I mean, if you think about it, this is like not a cute look. But I mean, he wanted, first of all, a golem who is historically best known for being a servant to do your chores. There's no way because you are not God to give it the power to speak.

So now it's a silent female servant who he is having sexual relations with. Oh, good. Just everything perfect about toxic masculinity um and there was one rabbi in the 16th century who defended this situation um because he said since golems are not quote born from men's semen or grown in a woman's womb sex with a golem is not a sin which then that could really get messy if it's like it gets messy real quick yeah that could very very quickly trickle into some other stuff when you're saying like oh well it's not made from a human or it's not human so you can have sex with it so i'm just

gonna like i was gonna list a whole bunch of things i'm just gonna let everyone's imagination take their own stab at it everyone else's imagination can can run off and do what you want it doesn't we don't we don't talk about any more of it but i just wanted to make it clear that 2021 i'm gonna step out of it for once this was in the 16th century so luckily if we wanted to just totally cancel that person he's already dead um canceled so he's like physically canceled he's like gone physiologically canceled um so fun fact mary shelly who wrote frankenstein she actually took inspiration from the golem legends because it was a creature created

from by man um in frankenstein she also does confront the ethical issues of creating artificial life which we discussed during that episode i think it was 195 i loved that episode it was a it's a real thinker because it makes you think like you know artificial life how far can you really go yeah because that one got into like true crime as far as like body parts and reanimating corpses and like a discussion on morals of like what's right and what's wrong so oh my gosh so fascinating so you can really talk about that also with the golems of like you're creating something purely to serve you like blindly and just like but at some point if the the fear or the superstition is the longer it's alive the more powerful it becomes and the

more human it thinks then like are are you god by turning it off and keeping it from having its own thoughts so and like if it's becoming more human and you're having quote-unquote sexual relations with it how far along does it get to a point where you're like yep doesn't have a say like i don't know did it ever have a say yeah yikes it could get real bad real quick um so here's uh one thing that's kind of like it ends up being funny. So hang in there for a second. Okay, I'm hanging.

So today, golem is actually Hebrew slang for an idiot. And it's because one of the arguably funniest parts to me about a golem in their personality is that they take things way too fucking literally. Oh, like Amelia Bedelia.. And so like Amelia Bedelia, I would, I literally wrote like Amelia Bedelia. I, okay.

I recently have started. We all know I love to collect things and eBay won't let me buy Pokemon cards anymore. So I've recently been trying to recollect all the Amelia Bedelia books. I love Amelia Bedelia, dude. Amelia Bedelia was one of the only books that i fucking loved i think like reading that's where we formed our sense of humor was maybe like from those that girl was kooky as

ever she was so funny wow she made me laugh draw the drapes and she'd just sketch you a picture oh my god i still think of that every time someone uses the word draw or uh stuff the turkey or whatever i mean oh my god miss bedelia she i loved her so much i um i i really hope i can collect all the books it would be very fun for me so can you read them to me at bedtime because i haven't read them in ages if anyone would like if you have old amelia bedelia books lying around you want to send them to our po box i will happily take them um okay so they take their job way too literally so if if your owner or your creator said can i have uh some water they would literally go out and because they were also freakishly strong

they would pick up the entire well and try to bring the well into your house or like uh i need some firewood and they would pick up the tree roots and all and then it would like it was like like a very beautiful dramedy of like the tree would fall on your house like it was like like a very beautiful dramedy of like the tree would fall on your house like it was like just terrible circumstances would happen so like are you happy and you're like oh no and therefore exactly did i do well and so uh so now it's slang for an idiot okay all right i didn't see that coming so here's a description of what a golem is supposed to look like around eight feet tall with glowing eyes and a thick belt around its waist. Although that image specifically comes from a film in the 20th century called The Golem, How He Came Into the World.

I have not seen this movie, but according to the internet, it seems like it is pretty pivotal in the golems being seen in a lot of pop culture today. So a lot of the references you'll see about a golem have to do with that movie being made. But I did also hear that it used a lot of creative license when telling the history of the story. Apparently, it got real like dark magic-y versus like trying to describe the history of religion. And apparently, there was a few notes that it had some anti-semitic undertones so just just if you're going to watch it just be prepared for that um so uh let's see

so before the film the original description of a golem was that they were slightly thinner and more human-like but always tall and muscular um but at the start of the 20th century the golem uh started looking a little different like having the belt around its waist and being kind of i think like maybe sort of pot-bellied or something um and it started a following that way in pop culture because there was a book called dare dare golem d-e-r it's german how do you say it oh yeah dare dare yeah yeah okay yeah you got it you got it um and uh it kind of depicted the golem as like scarier versus it being like a hero or a laborer or something like that it was kind of more of like a like a kind of spooky looking like a villain yeah i guess so so uh

this is still probably the most famous version so a combination of that and then the golem from the film in the 1900s. Okay. So like Frankenstein, golem is a loose interpretation for films about AI or machines in general who develop human tendencies. Also the head of the neuro robotics research lab in Berlin, their name's Manfred Hilde. And basically they were talking about how the more

a golem becomes a human, the likelier that they are more destructive towards their surroundings because they are less obedient. And Manfred said, it's basically the same concept for golems and robots where fear has become the main element. Because robots and AI are our version of golems in that it's the farthest we can get without creating life. Sure. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So I think that's a really good way to look at it of like we can only build so much with the technology or the abilities we have, but there's no breathing true life into it.

So it's almost soulless life. Creepy. And then the, so the golem also, if you're looking for one of the other ways that we have been inspired by the golem, there is a, there's a poem, which people have heard of, I think, called The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Aha. And here is basically like a quick excerpt slash blurb uh explaining the the poem um as an old sorcerer departs his workshop uh leaving his apprentice with chores to perform tired of fetching water by pale the apprentice enchants a broom to do the work for him using magic and which uh enchants a broom to do the work for him using magic in which he is not fully trained the floor is soon awash with water and the

apprentice realizes that he cannot stop the broom because he doesn't know that that magic required to do so the apprentice uh splits the broom in two with an axe but each of the pieces becomes a whole broom and uh takes up a pail and continues fetching water now at twice the speed at the at this increased pace the entire room quickly begins to flood when all seems lost the old sorcerer returns and quickly breaks the spell and the poem concludes with the old sorcerer's statement that only a master should invoke powerful spirits so fantasia traumatized the shit out of me when i was a kid and that poem adapted into uh was adapted into disney's the

last time i was in la even i like before you and I spent, like, a solid half hour talking about how much Fantasia traumatized us as children. You know what's weird is I don't think I realize it traumatized me, but if anyone were to ever say, do you want to watch Fantasia? My first thought is absolutely not. No. So, like, I think it's because I also, it's just, let's put it this way. If we were to tweet it out, we would say, if you watched Fantasia as a child, you have anxiety now. Like, yeah, I think that's a fair argument. There were three VHS tapes that I hid from my father because he likes, he's like, you know, he like read me Franz Kafka as like a bedtime story.

So he loved watching me like turmoil, in turmoil. bedtime story so he loved watching me like turmoil in turmoil but so the three vhs tapes i hid from him were fox and the hound dumbo and fantasia because i was like these three are i mean and they did stick in my brain forever so those are under my mattress for a long time dumbo traumatized me i think that was a brave choice of disney to recently make a live action version of that compared to other movies i didn't understand i was I was like, of all the movies are going to pick the one that like most people have the worst crying experiences too. Like you couldn't pick little mermaid. You couldn't pick,

you know, literally anything, literally anything else besides Fox and the hound, you know, it would be a precious live action. And the day it happens, I'm going to squeal is so i have three favorite uh four favorite disney movies and they were all the quote boy movies if that even is a thing which it is not

but like i like hercules and tarzan a lot and i but my two favorites were um uh the fox and the hound which apparently i'm a masochist and then also uh oliver and company if they didn't oh that was so good if they did a live action of Oliver and Company, I'd lose my fucking mind. No. Oh, okay. I thought they did, but I could probably be completely making that up. I think it's the reverse, because Oliver and Company is from the live action Oliver Twist, which is from the Broadway Oliver.

Maybe that's what I'm... Yeah, I'm probably making this up. If they did, I don't know about it, And I'm about to go frantically Netflix it. So yeah, I could. Wait, yeah. Oliver and Company is a live action. There's no way. It says Kristen Bell, Bill Hader.

Maybe it's coming up. Maybe I just like. Wait, it is coming up. Oh, my God. Wait, I don't know. I don't know. It says Kristen Bell's in it. Is Dodger Billy Joel?

Hang on a second. I got to see something. But now it's not in like IMDb or anything. So, oh wait, it's a casting thing. Maybe it never actually happened. Oliver and Company live action. No, okay. Everyone needs to know at the same time together.

And it's a fan cast. It's not real. Damn it. I know. Anyway. Sorry. I think I probably fan casted it myself. Well, I am excited that Hercules is becoming a live action.

So. Very, very excited also i just want to i just made a realization that this is like right eva write this down for my therapist later i just realized my two favorite animals are elephants and foxes and they're the movies you refuse to watch in disney maybe you have the most and they traumatize me because the the like victims in those movies were the baby elephant and the fox. Also, the fox and the hound was actually much fucking worse. Because it was adapted from something like a Brothers Grimm or something. Yeah, they were both really bad. Dumbo was like, his mom was caged up and tortured and taken away.

Well, no, I mean, the fox and the hound disney movie is like arguably much less traumatic oh certainly so yes i think like in the real one like the dog like tears them to pieces or something yes yes i'm certain that's right that sounds very like the hunter like forced the dog to like eat his best friend or something it was really no wonder that like my parents thought it was fun to watch this as a family but yeah those are my favorite those just a weird connection i made anyway anyway fantasia right remember that right right right right right um so here's a fun fact about fantasia apparently walt disney when they uh first uh premiered it uh they decided that they wanted to like stimulate the senses of the audience and so they uh put perfume in the theater during the Nutcracker Suite. And they also did the smell of gunpowder to fill the room during the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

That's not frightening at all. No. I know a lot of Broadway shows do that, though. Like, they'll do, like, the smell of a certain food in the show or something. I mean, it's not uncommon, but I think it was probably, like, ahead of its time back then. Yeah. I mean, I didn't know that existed. Also, gunpowder is a scary thing to smell in a crowded theater, just saying. Well, apparently not back then yeah i mean i've i didn't know that existed also gunpowder is a scary thing

to smell in a crowded theater just saying well apparently not back then uh not back then and also when the whole theme of the entire thing is uh anxiety terror let's also smell gunpowder um so another fun fact is that the film's uh music conductor uh the so fantasia's music conductor actually originally pitched to walt disney that instead of mickey b the main character and play the sorcerer's apprentice uh he pitched that it would be dopey from the seven dwarves which that's fun i think it kind of actually would have worked really well to like i mean i think it would have been less anxiety inducing yeah i think so too i think it makes sense though if it were going to be dopey the one who like didn't didn't know his like the magical powers he needed

to be able to you know yeah i don't know it does make sense i think it makes sense uh apparently walt disney was like that was the stupidest idea i've ever heard um okay all right so the golem legend uh has also been found in many folktales. There's a Yiddish and Slavic folktale called Clayboy. And apparently it's like a weird combination of the golem and then like the gingerbread man. And the story, I guess there's a million different versions of it. But the general premise is that a couple makes a child out of clay and there are disastrous consequences so okay that sounds about right so one russian version is that an older couple whose children left home made uh wanted another kid so they made a boy out of clay um and when the clay boy comes

to life the he starts eating all of their food and he won't stop growing he soon is eating their livestock then he eats them Then he destroys the village. And then a goat kills him. Oh, dear. So it gets real out of hand real fast. Sounds like a Disney film from my childhood. Sounds like the early adaptation of a movie for sure. So in the Czech Republic, there are many golem touristy things to do.

I forgot to Google what things because I wanted to give you a list. So about that but everyone take a little googs if you'd like um uh throughout the czech republic yeah there it's also the golem is still a very popular figure you can see statues signs of the golem you can buy little figurines made of clay if you'd like you can also visit a rabbi lowe's grave which apparently mich Michelle Obama has done. Oh, cool. If you want to be like Michelle Obama. I do. Go visit Rabbi Lowe's grave. You can also visit the old Cineprog, if you will.

The old, the Prague's old synagogue. It sounds like a Cinebon. It's just making me hungry. Maybe they could have Walt Disney pump in the smell of Cinebon in the Cineprog. And then we've like got ourselves really something. A marketing yeah yeah uh Cinnabon are you listening okay Prague no okay Prague I told you to get Prague on the phone are they here yet okay I guess not so like I said in the or the original legend uh of the golem of Prague is that he's still waiting in the attic of the synagogue uh to be reactivated

so that he can help protect the jewish people again when they need him most and uh the uh the i keep wanting to call it the center prog because i fucked myself up um the golem jesus the golem is has been seen in a lot of pop culture i already mentioned the simpsons uh it's also used a lot as a creature in games so like dnd um apparently the golem in dungeons and dragons is a monster that is made from either flesh clay stone or iron and based on what it's made of determines its strength um it is also in uh pokemon hello Golem is number 76. Okay. Yeah. I'm starting to understand why I've heard this name before.

So Geodude turns into Graveler who turns into Golem. Right. Oh my God. So Golem is, I mean, now that I'm looking at it, it makes total sense. I used to think he was like a rock turtle or something. Yeah, same. But now it makes sense that he is like just a creature that's made of like clay and rock um and he is like one of his big like powers he's like you know a protector and like he like everything can like bounce off of him and stuff so oh um and one of my favorite

things about golem which like i don't know if pokemon was trying to do this but it certainly fulfilled my stereotypical jew Jewish needs of my stereotypical Jewish family is that Golem requires 100 candies to evolve, which sounds, it sounds like me. Like if you want me to be the best version of myself, I need minimum a hundred candies. So 99 won't do.

It won't do. So you give me a bag of Reese's and we'll see where I end up tomorrow. And then it's also a Golem is seen in Minecraft as apparently iron golems and snow golems. According to PC games, an iron golem's primary function is to protect villagers. And despite being able to punch the life out of most things this is like an actual like review i think or something uh despite being able to punch the life out of most things they're also incredibly kind-hearted and can often be seen spotted uh offering villagers poppies that they can magically create in their own hands oh that's nice so that's sweet um uh so here's my favorite way that they

have been mentioned uh the golems are you ready yeah not not well they haven't been not that it not in a bad way but i mean like not um consistently it was just like almost like a little cameo of sorts but the golem is apparently uh was mentioned in marvel so oh uh the golem i think it was like 10 different comic book issues they're all from different series but in 10 comic issues out there um the golem is seen as a humanoid creature they by the way stan lee or jack kirby or whoever at marvel decided to create golem really didn't even want to fucking mess with the back the backstory at all oh interesting this is how golem the superhero was created golem is a humanoid creature made in the 16th century from clay by rabbi low to protect jewish people from persecutors in prague um they just copy copy and paste that wiki right they were like we don't even want to

mess with this love it yeah oh uh so their superhero story there's two different golems i think in two different series it was like a different alter ego or something that becomes golem. So one of them was this archaeologist named Abraham Adamson. And he was looking for the stone. He always heard about golem and he wanted to find golem. Finally finds golem. And then something happens to him where he is dying right next to golem and so he ends up putting his life force into golem um at the same time that he's dying he's praying

that his family would be safe and something would protect his family so he becomes golem a protector and uh basically he's reanimated as golem and And I'm pretty sure like the superhero thing is like, you know, I don't know if you know this, but like Superman with a kryptonite or like, you know, like once he's near kryptonite, like all of a sudden his powers are going away or like his powers are really like, his real source of energy is the sun.

So if he's like not near the sun for very long, his powers start to weaken. Apparently Golem, if he is not near land for very long, like near the earth, then he loses his strength. He like becomes less and less superhero-like. So in one of the issues, he's like at sea the whole time and he's like becoming weaker and weaker. Oh no. And so let me see. Apparently he's 8'6".

He's 1,600 pounds. This is the superhero. 1,600 pounds? Just a safe 1,600 pounds. Hey, remember when you said the Yeti was 8 feet tall and 200 pounds? This thing is literally eight times heavier and six inches taller than the Yeti. Oh, my God. Slash the Abominable Snowman, if you're listening from our last episode, I covered the Abominable Snowman.

Right. So, 8'6", 1,600 pounds. Apparently, his superpowers are that his strength is drawn from the earth. He is durable, a.k.a. he can take, like, shockwaves and bullets and explosions and, like, nothing hurts him. And he's apparently stronger than Captain America. Oh. and like nothing hurts him uh and he's apparently stronger than captain america oh um his first appearance ever was in 1970 in uh the incredible hulk and uh that was the abraham uh the abraham adamson one but then there's another alter ego or a different character that becomes golem one day and it was more historically uh i guess pivotal this was in 1977 the golem shows up

in the invaders and this guy's name is jacob goldstein which like wow they really ran with like the classy jewish names uh so he was apparently uh in a jewish ghetto during world war ii and he became golem purely to fight the nazis so wow i'm down with that too yeah um the enemy this is kind of weird and i don't totally understand it but the enemy of um golem is kabbalah which is literally like the word for ancient jewish tradition and mysticism but like the the villain's name was kabbalah also the villain's name oh god i got it got it yeah so the bad guy was kabbalah and he had, the villain's name. Oh, got it, got it, got it, got it. Yeah, so the bad guy was Kabbalah and he had like these little minions

who worked for him that were all different demons made from the elements. So like they had, so Kabbalah would tell like air demons or fire demons or water demons that they had to fight Gollum. So it was all like weirdly,

like they paid attention to the history before they made this comic um and then i'm just going to end on my favorite fact of them all is that uh the golem at one point was also a member of shield's howling commandos which if anyone is a captain america fan knows that the howling commandos were the unit that captain america led in world war ii um and so apparently the golem is from the same unit as captain america oh and he was uh guess who else was in the howling commandos apparently i don't know you i wish the the fucking abominable snowman shut up so apparently marvel had like a series called

like monster force and they were all about like weird cryptids. I've never known this. Oh my God, how weird is that? So the unit Howling Commandos, apparently there's a whole series where Howling Commandos has this break off, they're called the Monster Force of the Howling Commandos. And two of the people on it were the Golem and the Abominable Snowman.

And so the Abominable Snowman, I'm the abominable snowman i'm gonna say real quick his name his alter ego was carl hansen um and he was an explorer looking for the abominable snowman and he steals a cursed picture of the yeti in the himalayas and over time as he climbs the mountain looking for the yeti he becomes the yeti it sounds a lot like stealing that finger and all that yeah so the abominable snowman actually at one point worked with the X-Men. He was also known for being able to take, you know, he was bulletproof and all that. He had superhuman smell. Apparently he was a pilot.

Good for you. And he first appeared in 1960s Tales to Astonish. and here's the the the trifecta here is in one of the issues uh that the abominable snowman is mentioned in on the monster force with the golem the abominable snowman teams up with sasquatch to fight groot from guardians of the galaxy stop how weird is that anyway that's the golem slash a little marvel trivia for you wow that really ended on an M note there. On a weird note. I had no idea about any of that comics. I have to go read that now for sure and catch you up on what Sasquatch is doing

with Captain America or whatever. Yeah. Anyway. Because you did like the Yeti back to back with the Golem. That was so bizarre. I learned about, I did the Golem second,

my notes for the Golem second. And I was reading about this Marvel shit and I was like, Howling Commandos, that's so wild. And then then it said also with the abominable snowman i went so weird i'm sorry did my own notes get accidentally copy and pasted onto this page what happened and apparently they're both mentioned on this like monster force i don't know i think it's a pretty recent series i think it's from like this series. I think it's from like this decade or something. Like it's not like a classic, but still like I'm going to go check it out. So anyway.

Wow. Okay. Well, that was cool. You kind of bridged a gap there without even knowing it. Sure did. Okay. Well, let me just check real quick because earlier I Googled if Gollum was Gollum.

I don't know. But I don't know. Apparently it's very much argued on the internet whether or not Gollum had anything to do with to do with goat but now that you know the history it does i mean he's supposed to protect the ring i mean so that makes sense it does make some sense yeah and he does kind of look like he's made of clay like he's kind of right gray and weird looking but he is kind of weird looking you're right right. So, I mean, who knows? Did Dr. Renata say anything about a golem?

Oh, my God. She always says something. I said, do you know what a golem is? And she said, yes. So that was good. And then like, I guess a few minutes later, since I didn't respond, she sent another text message that says, it depends on the country. I kind of think of it as a vessel.

You can put good and bad in it think of it as a vessel you can put good and bad in it and it stands for whatever you need oh so well it was seen you know for a long time across the traditions as like a symbol of hope and protection during times of like genocide and shit so i guess it was like based on how you manifest it or perceive it yeah well it's interesting too depending on like which country was experiencing what kind of persecution or whatever sometimes a dwarf is just a dwarf and a golem is just a golem so just sit back relax and enjoy the movie okay seth geez get over it seth god i'm sorry i'm just curious about the history behind the movie damn all right so apparently probably not is the answer so my bad

okay emothy i'm ready i'm so excited i'm starting 2021 out with the bang oh i for you today emothy first story of 2021 i'm covering the son of sam oh man okay My, I was going to say my aunt has a story, but she doesn't have like a legitimate story. But my whole family is, was from the area. My mom also was from that area at the time. And so they all at least kind of like how I've told you, like, I remember like little moments of like the DC sniper, like having to run from the car into buildings and shit. My mom and my dad and all of his siblings have said like oh we remember like no parking here no doing this like if you drove near this area you tried to

find another route like just because there were son of sam it was like he was like terrorizing the the area yeah so they i think it's uh oh that's fun i've heard i've heard uh my mom kind of poor sadly reminiscing about like the times where she had to be nervous so anyway wow okay well i wonder what i wonder if you'll make any connections here so let's just crack into it and son of sam by the way in case anyone else is wary is a legitimate actual criminal. This is not the Grinch 2.0. Oh, yeah. Linda remembers him well. Well, look, I think for generations, we all remember the Grinch pretty well.

And somehow it totally escaped me. So yes, no. Son of Sam, I think, is one of those that gets gets quite a quite a following, I think. Quite a following. Yeah. And in one way or another. Yeah. So our story begins Julyuly 31st 1977 stacy moskowitz and bobby violante were on their first date sitting in his parked car

in brooklyn's lover's lane when stacy spotted a figure lurking in the shadows shit she asked bobby to leave but he convinced her it was nothing to be afraid of. But he would forever wish that they had driven away. Because unfortunately, moments later, the man walked up to the car and shot both Stacy and Bobby. Oh, my God. Tragically, Stacy died and Bobby survived. However, he lost his left eye and was blinded. Wow.

Fortunately for police, though, there had been a witness. Okay. The witness had seen a man getting away in a car that had a parking ticket on it. Only a handful of tickets were given out that day. One of which belonged to a man called David Barkowitz. Yep. Okay.

So rewind. A lot of this info is from my favorite site murderpedia uh as most of you know i i just love murderpedia it's like a basically like an amalgamation of of just tons of articles on like a single killer all kind of like laid out it's like it's a christine bible if you need yeah yeah for the for the the christine chapel as some christine chapel that's our testament yes that's your testament yep um so okay david berkowitz was born richard david falco to a woman named betty broder on june 1st 1953 here we go gemini season did not have to attack me like that christina yeah i know this is a pointed attack from the universe i think at us specifically and you know how people are always tagging us in those memes that are like most serial killers are gemini's i'm like well

yeah we're not denying it like we don't make me mad then and keep telling me exactly then why don't you step off yeah uh like it shocks me zero percent that any serial killer would be a gemini it it it just fits you know absolutely we are very emotional people uh-huh yeah very emotional too emotional that some of us have are emotionless actually yeah yeah exactly so he's born in bro was born in Brooklyn on June 1st, 1953. So Betty, his mom, was also bringing up a young daughter, but she had begun a relationship with a married man. And apparently his wife actually knew about it, and they'd like sometimes have dinners together. So it wasn't like a secret. Like it was a secret to the outside world, in the family like this man's wife knew he

had a mistress so they were potentially like just poly before it was like accepted by the world sort of okay we're not i think the wife just accepted it because she didn't really have a choice i don't think it was like this is fun for me as the woman i think it was like got it he's the man he gets to do what he wants is is more of the understanding i've gotten i see i won't i won't attach uh i won't attach the poly community to david berkowitz i'm not gonna put labels on this because it's just not a good look so apologies to uh to to everyone listening to everybody just i was gonna say to the poly community and i was like no no just just to everyone just like a general apology to to fill the gaps if you will yeah yeah yeah yeah um so

she sometimes so the wife apparently knew about this but uh the one condition of betty being supported by this man that she was having an affair with was that she could not get pregnant because they were like if anybody like he was like i from the outside world i'm like a great husband and family man and if it gets out that i have a mistress with a baby right this is just not a good look so the one rule is that she not get pregnant well i think we can all guess where this is going oops maybe in nine months there was a little baby crying in the background of the story little itty bitty baby so he was not happy obviously but uh betty didn't have enough money to continue a livelihood without his support um and so basically richard the baby was put up for adoption when he

was just a few days old and he was adopted by nathan and pearl berkowitz so they were hardware they were jewish american hardware store retailers and they had been trying for a baby for a long time and were very ecstatic uh to finally have a baby um and they changed his name so his middle name his name originally was richard david falco so they changed his name to david and then his middle name and then uh sure gave the last name Berkowitz. So when he was about 11, his mom and dad told him that he was adopted. And this completely blindsided him, especially because they kind of fudged the truth. So they told him that instead of saying that his mother had given him up for adoption, they said his mother had died in childbirth and that his father wasn't able to

care for him it didn't have like the means necessary to care for him and i think they might have had good intentions but this backfired because for the rest of uh his childhood he had this guilt that he had killed his mother in childbirth and that like his dad maybe hated him because he was the reason his mother died so i i first of all i hope i hope you know that's a sad feeling to have but like i also like i feel like if i were in that situation i would feel the same way i'd always completely especially as a kid like you don't know any better you know i'd be like you know what was the the emotional process for having to give me up it was my dad excited because he was getting rid of the thing that

right hurt someone did he not want me like so he felt unwanted and he felt like guilty because he felt that he was the cause for his so you know they didn't i don't think intend that but that's kind of what ended up happening what comes from it yeah yeah and so uh yeah sorry so he was known to be be like actually a very smart kid. He had a high IQ. I think his IQ was like 118 at the age of like seven or something. Like he was real smart. My IQ is 2000.

So like. Oh, yeah? Yeah. You know, he doesn't hold a candle to me. And you're only eight. That's the truth. That's the truth. So but with his high IQq he also had some pretty intense

behavioral issues uh in later testimony he recalled now this is kind of a long quote but hang in there okay ever since i was a small child my life seemed to be filled with torment i would often have seizures in which i would roll on the floor sometimes furniture would get knocked over when these attacks came it felt as if something was entering me. My mother had no control over me. I was like a wild and destructive animal. My father had to pin me to the floor until the attacks stopped. When I was in public school, I was so violent and disruptive that a teacher who had become so angry at me grabbed me in a headlock and threw me out of his classroom. I was getting into a lot of fights, too.

Sometimes I started screaming for no reason at all. a lot of fights too sometimes i started screaming for no reason at all so he was a troublemaker for lack of a more specific word also yikes seizures i feel bad for him yeah in that one regard ever so just yeah well and i'm not it's it's not clear whether he was like having seizures or whether he was faking it spoiler alert later on he claimed that he had been possessed by the devil so oh my word okay how much of it is like scrap what i just said health issue or because there was never any mention of like he actually had a seizure condition that's not something okay got it okay well i think he mostly was referring to like having fits and like tantrums okay got it throwing things around um but i mean it could be uh but so despite his outbursts

he was extremely close to his mom his parents for what it's worth were like very loving they really really cared for him um apparently he was somewhat spoiled being like the you know only child that they had wanted for so long um but unfortunately she passed Pearl passed from cancer in 1967 when he was only 14 years old, and he was completely gutted. He was devastated by the death of his mother. At the age of 18, Berkowitz graduated from Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx and then attended Bronx Community College for a semester before being enlisted in the U.S. Army. college for a semester before being enlisted in the u.s army he qualified as an infantry sharpshooter with the m16 rifle and went on to serve in south korea where he excelled as a proficient marksman so that comes into play depending on how much you know of the story well you started it with someone got shot in the eye so oh that's right i already told you that

another person also got shot and died so i'm like how mysterious and you're like no you literally already said like one can take a hit remember my iq is 2000 so that's right gotta be quicker than that six so it's fine i i together we average out to be a pretty good team i think that's true yeah i um i literally i'm still on the same page and I'd already forgotten the entire beginning. So good for me. So let's see. He excelled as a marksman and early in his army service, for whatever reason, he left Judaism to become a fundamentalist Baptist. He just kind of one day decided to walk into a Christian Baptist church and said, this is for me now, I guess. It's kind of unclear why um it is speculated that when he joined the army he was still a virgin and that his first sexual

experience during his three-year service was with a sex worker okay and uh let's just say it didn't go well for him because afterward he uh contracted venereal disease and this is thought to have greatly exacerbated his anger toward women so uh okay he hadn't really had any sexual experiences before then and then when he did have one it ended very poorly and that just was not a good step in his in his life toward a murderer yeah got it got it got it checks out checks out check i think so eva put it on the whiteboard does it check out yes or no we'll do a poll just say yes or yes because i don't want to hear no i don't want to do it we're going to do a poll and you're going to answer and then that's the answer and you're going to say the right answer

yeah yeah and the answer is yes after finishing military service in 1974 uh berkowitz returned to new york where he got a job as a letter sorter for the U.S. Postal Service before working as a security guard. And so this is a fun fact. I don't know how much Seinfeld you watched at all growing up. My family was more of a friends kind of household, but I do know of Seinfeld. Yeah, my family was none. I liked friends and Blaze's family was of Seinfeld. Yeah, my family was none. I liked Friends and Blaze's family was definitely Seinfeld. So, you know, it keeps things interesting in this house. I think we've all aged into becoming a Seinfeld family.

Back in its prime, we were a Friends house. But now as time goes on, I'm liking Friends less and liking Seinfeld more. Yeah, I would agree with that. But I like get the merits of it. But I'm not like a huge fanatic. So I don't know how much I would know based on what you're going to say next. Yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry.

Can I like do a complete like 180 tangent here? Not tangent, just like a note. Because I meant to say this at the beginning of the episode. And I feel like such an ass for not mentioning it. Because I was going to mention it last episode. That I was just on an episode of Astonishing Legends and I got to read like a personal story from my from my family it's like an astral projection story and I got to read it in their Christmas special and I literally had it written down on this paper and I just went oh my god I didn't mention it at

the beginning of the episode I got too wrapped up in my singing oh my god so complete side note that has nothing to do with seinfeld but i was gonna say where we took a lot of turns there i'm so sorry i like how your excuse is you got wrapped up in your own singing like we we know we know what happened don't worry oh my god i also got wrapped up in your singer yeah yeah it happens it's okay um okay anyway sorry we'll also we'll mention it at the end of the episode too okay. Okay. Okay. I just feel bad because I was like, shit, I told them I was going to mention it in this episode and then I completely blanked. So I'm really proud of it.

So go listen to it. Okay. Back to Seinfeld. Seinfeld. Anyway, they're like, what a show is this? Okay. Everyone's got whiplash right now. I'm sweating a lot.

So I don't know about you guys, but that's where I stand. So for Seinfeld fans, a detail about David Berkowitz working for the Postal Service is referenced in an episode called The Diplomats Club, where Kramer asks Newman to bring over his mailbag worth thousands of dollars as collateral for his gambling. But the bag isn't any old mailbag. It actually belonged to David Berkowitz. And then at one point newman even jokes about dogs speaking to him while he's on his mail route so depending on how much you know about that story right the rest of the story that will make sense later but um there is like a run there was

like a joke in an episode about he got a hold of david berkowitz original mailbag huh okay so back to the real story uh it was when berkowitz returned from the army that he decided to look into his biological parents he was both shocked and elated when he found out that his mother betty falco was still alive um because he had been living with this guilt for his entire life basically wow can you imagine like now you are a your formative years are over like you have developed under the guise of you killed your mother or like yeah according to yourself in your own psyche in your own psyche that's what you've you've built up your identity as and now all of a sudden like it's too late to say never mind like now you just have this

information but you you grew up and turned into this person who believed this other thing. Yeah, you probably like internalized it so much. It's hard to like revert that. So I listened to an episode of Serial Killers, the podcast show on. It was a two-parter. And they had like a voice actor reading a lot of his quotes, a lot of Berkowitz later quotes describing this. And he basically, I mean, just to paraphrase, he said something like a lot of people thought it was like a really fraught and terrible reunion but it was actually a really happy reunion when i met my mother so just i don't know worth noting i guess sure um according to him they had a happy reunion but he eventually lost contact with his birth mother uh he began he also learned about

his sister remember he oh his mom was raising a young girl when she got pregnant and gave the baby up. But she still had the... So he had an older sister now at this point. Cool. He began working a number of blue collar jobs. And after hearing about what his mother called an illegitimate birth and how his father basically didn't want him because he wasn't going to fit into the family. like basically didn't want him because he wasn't gonna fit into the family um he this belief was growing in him that he was unwanted not just by his own mother now but by all women he just started feeling like the world specifically women were out to get him and um he let's just say he lashed

out about that so uh neighbors originally like didn't really think much of Berkowitz. He wasn't like a huge character. Like some of these serial killers are like outwardly speaking. He kept to himself. He was known to be odd. Like a friend remembered quote, he used to laugh a lot by himself. He'd roar and couldn't stop,

but he wouldn't tell you anything about it. That's like me on tech talk in the other room. It is like you. don't worry about it i'm not gonna tell you what it is don't worry about it it's just i don't i don't know if you won't get it it's okay you had to be there you had to be there in my tiktok you had to be on my couch in silence with me um so apparently feeling isolated by the world around him he became uh what you do an arsonist oh wow what else you know how it is um according to his meticulously kept diaries later found in his apartment berkowitz was responsible for around 1500 to 2000 fires that's almost one for every pound that the golem is oh my god can you imagine wow yeah so he started most of them in brooklyn before 1977

and as we've seen in the past uh this behavior pyromania can uh often signal that something worse is coming sure um and i'd also like to add that this behavior started young uh like he started this when he was young it wasn't like oh he was in his 20s now and he decided to start fires like time out hang on i gotta do math on that how on earth do you be how do you even find the time to do 1500 fires hang on 1500 divided by 365 that means you have to do oh that's not too bad for a year wait what wait no that's literally 365 years old yeah i heard it i heard it i heard it that's if you're 365 years old yeah i heard it i heard it i heard it that's if you're the age of a golem okay so how old was he like by like at this time in his life around like 30 or something

no he was younger okay let's pretend he's like 30 okay so no he's definitely way younger than that 20 i think he's like 22 okay divided by 22ivided by 22. But then also we got to think like he probably didn't start the shit until he was like five, right? I don't think he started fires till he was like a teenager. All right. So let's say, let's say 12. I loved fire at 12.

So let's say 10 years. So that's 150 a year. Okay. So 150 now divided by 12 months. Yeah. 12 and a half a month divided by four weeks you do like three a goddamn week every week like how i used to calculate how many dollars i had left to buy ramen after my pa job and it was always like negative eight and i was like oh so literally he had to have been starting a fire for in a decade he had to start a fire every other day basically yeah yeah holy shit okay so i think

probably he would like set several at a time i don't know you know you'd think like he would just like one in every corner one in every corner yeah i'm in a mood to set fires i'm gonna run to like 10 abandoned buildings and set them on fire i don't know but he did he wrote down every single one so like they never would have attributed these fires to him by like fire number eight i would have been so over logging that shit i would have been like yeah that that's that takes a lot of i was i worked as a lift driver and they were always like write down your your logs and i found the log recently it had two rides in it because i gave up after two i was like this is too much work this is not driving to be clear but i stopped writing them down i was like exactly like i'm not

i'm just the thought sounds so tiring yes it does uh this is a spiral notebook i mean so they they that's how they figured out how many he had set i assume not all of them like turned into a major blaze i think he was just like sending little ones i don't know but so anywhere from 1500 to 2000 fires they were mostly in brooklyn before 77 um and according to his own accounts uh berkowitz oh i forgot to also mention that uh coupled with the fire starting when he was young he also liked to torture cockroaches which is just like a really weird and disturbing thing he would like try to drown them in glue and like pull off their leg like it's if you had to torture something like at least it's a cockroach but like also you really

shouldn't be torturing anything no and it also just shows like a lack of empathy or yeah no i like i fucking hate cockroaches i know first of all i couldn't get close enough to fucking torture one but also like i that's, I just want them not near me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, torturing anything is no bueno. It's not good, and it's like, if you're gonna do that, who knows what else you're gonna do.

Right, yeah, start with cockroaches, end with humans. That's how they, that's how it goes. That's the saying, that's the wives' tale, so. According to his own accounts, Berkowitzowitz first murder was on December 24th, Christmas Eve, 1975. He walked up behind a 15 year old high school sophomore, Michelle Foreman, and stabbed her in the back with a hunting knife. Fuck. That's like also a really we've talked about this before, but that's a real gruesome way to kill someone like it's. Yes. a really we've talked about this before but that's a real gruesome way to kill someone like it's yes like if i had to kill someone it would be like the cowardly way of like shooting them from miles

away or something like i could not with my bare hands thrust something into another life well it's interesting they've like so i also listened to an episode of true crime all the time and they were like you know discussing theorizing why he switched from a hunting knife to a gun and they were saying like it probably was like such a up close and personal thing and then he never used a knife again to kill he only used a gun he was like that was too intimate yeah yeah yeah exactly and like i know they say this like disproportionately women use poison and other means like gun or i think so right women use poison and women i the way i've always heard it in my head is that women are uh more sneaky and thought out about it and like distance themselves from the situation versus men being like on the scene doing there's like strangulation

stabbing like that's much more like yeah hands-on basically exactly um anyway so he walked up behind 15 year old high school sophomore stabbed her in the back with a hunting knife she her injuries sent her to the hospital for seven days but she did survive um and then hours after that stabbing he attacked another woman and she's actually never been identified um he stabbed her repeatedly even in the head in the fucking head how do you i don't even okay oh it's just sick it's just hard for me to even imagine the head in the fucking head. How do you, I don't even, okay. Oh,

it's just sick. It's just hard for me to even imagine the head because like in my mind, there's no, like in my head, it has to be like the knife would retract on itself because it's a skull. Like it's hard. It's hard for me to think you could stab through bone anyway. Yeah.

So he, and it wasn't like the face, it was like the head, which is so weird, you know, Jesus, that's really intense. Okay. And so to clarify, at this point, he was only 22. So that's kind of why I gave that guess.

So I'm not actually sure when the fires began and started or ended. But the stabbings were his first murders, according to him, were when he was 22. So his next. So those were the only two stabbings that he ever did as far as we know um so his next attack was six months later in the early morning hours of july 29th 1976 18 year old donna loria a young woman training to be a new york medic and 19 year old jody valente a nursing student were sitting in jody's car at 1 a.m after being out at a disco donna opened the car door to leave and noticed a man quickly approaching the car

startled she said now what is this the man pulled a 44 caliber revolver from a paper bag he was holding this is weird crouched down braced one elbow on his knee aimed his weapon with both hands and fired donna was struck by one bullet that killed her instantly jody was shot in her thigh and the third bullet missed both of them the shooter then turned and quickly walked away that is very odd the the crouching down and like setting up so that's like the where we get back to like the marksmanship yeah that he learned in the war or in the army no it makes total sense it's just like it's so creepy first of all i can't imagine anyone like fingers crossed i'm never put in a situation like that where you know someone could possibly point a gun at me yeah but also it's just

like if that were to happen the way i have envisioned it in my mind at no point in any circumstance have i thought like okay so now they're gonna set up now they're gonna get done on one and then no like they're gonna do the wind up it's like just extra eerie that like you're watching the intent happen before your eyes before like just like oh my god that extra weird so extra creepy and like just like the like the wind up at all yeah it's like a formula and like a process yeah it's not like in my head like if some if i would ever get hit with with a bullet i would think that it would happen so instantly that i wouldn't have time to process what's going on but in that situation like you're allowed to you're like watching it unfold yeah like holy shit i'm

watching yeah yeah yeah oh i know it makes it so much creepier honestly like even like resting his elbow on his knee i mean it's it just adds such a creepy element to it um so when a question by police jody said she didn't recognize the killer as someone she knew but she described him as a white male in his 30s with a fair complexion about five foot eight weighing about 200 pounds or 91 kilograms um his hair was short dark and curly and interestingly donna's father claimed to have seen a similar man sitting in a yellow car parked nearby neighbors gave corroborating reports to police that they had also seen an unfamiliar yellow car cruising the area for hours before

the shooting and now i'm thinking if you're a fucking murderer get a silver toyota why are you driving around in a yellow car like well that's why an svu every time they identify as like oh they're in like a black suv they're like well we're just never gonna fucking find this guy then because everyone's got a black suv can you imagine an episode where they're like oh lucky us he's driving a yellow volkswagen beetle with like with eyebrows on eyelashes on the headlights whatever the fuck people do with paint and blood and just all of it spells out i'm the murderer right in front of the right on the side of the car it's me mario and you can here's my phone number you can find me here yeah that'd be really oh my god i know it's just like

wow okay so this guy's like just trolling around in a yellow car um so on october 23rd 1976 berkowitz struck again so this now three months later or so so it was about six months later now it's about or seven months later now it's about three months later and as we go as you can probably guess the time periods get shorter and shorter the intervals yes yes yes so october 23rd 1976 berkowitz struck again, this time in Flushing, which is in Queens. 20-year-old Carl DeNaro and 21-year-old Rosemary Keenan were making out in their car. Ayo! Ayo! When suddenly the side window just shattered.

Rosemary immediately started the car and drove back to the bar they had come from to call for help. Remember, they don't even have cell phones, so it's like, God, I can't imagine. I know it sounds so millennial, but I'm like, oh my god, you have to like drive somewhere for help. Like you can't even. It was especially wild because when I think of them back then, like the concept of a phone of a cell phone wasn't even thought of. So it's not like they knew of an option of any other option. But for me, if I like time traveled to a time like that and then i was in trouble i would have extra anxiety of like i know a simpler way like i i know come on give me an iphone or like having to call 9-1-1 with a rotary phone good night

like so long nine is the farthest away nine is the farthest away honestly i used to think about that all the time i was like why isn't it just like one one one like truly why isn't it just one how come there's not like a special situation where you only have to press it once oh boy and we're brilliant you and i listen they don't they don't call me uh the expert in user design for nothing that's correct they don't call you that okay so so uh right the window shatters they rushed back to the bar for help um and it wasn't until they like got help that they realized the window had been shattered because they'd been shot at like they didn't even realize why the glass had shattered because they didn't see the shooter um although a rock like a rock hit the window or yeah yeah they thought maybe like something else something had hit it rock like a rock hit the window or something yeah they thought maybe like

something else something had hit it or like a rock um although apparently they then realized carl had a bullet wound in his head what so i guess the adrenaline just like didn't catch up with them until they got there i get it i mean i feel like i mean there have been times like i got really severely hurt and i told myself was like, do not look because. Your adrenaline, like, takes over. I was like, once I look, I know how bad it is. Yep. And I'm not going to look until, like, I'm already next to bandages and a doctor.

But, like, it's never been bad enough where it was a literal bullet wound. So I feel like if that were the case, my adrenaline wouldn't be able to kick him that intensely i'd be like no like even though i'm not looking at the wound like this one's pretty bad i can tell something's wrong i wonder though if like if the window shattered maybe he thought he got hit by a rock like who knows like what he thought maybe hit him you know or you're right i don't know but like because like why on earth would you think somebody was out right outside your car while you're making out with someone? Like, I think your brain would just not process that.

Only you and I would because we have. Right. Certainly. If there were true crime podcasts back then, like cell phones, then, you know, then people might be more scared at the time. Yeah. Probably no one would be safer, but we'd all be more scared. So great. That's fun for everybody.

Higher alert. Higher alert. Higher alert. Okay, let's see. So both Carl and Rosemary survived the attack, and neither of them saw the shooter. Police determined the bullets were.44 caliber, but they didn't initially draw a connection between this shooting and the previous one

because they were occurring in two separate boroughs of New York. So, I mean, obviously, like, shootings in New York, it's not immediate that you would like piece two together you know right right um however the type of gun was becoming a trademark for david berkowitz so barely a month after the attack on carl and rosemary shortly after midnight on november 27th 1976 17 year old donna damasi a senior at martin van buren high school and 18 year old joanne lomino a recent graduate of the same school were sitting on joanne's porch in belrose queens after

a night out as they talked a man approached them dressed in military fatigues uh he began to ask them for directions in this like strange high-pitched voice weird uh before taking out a revolver and just like shooting them on the spot like as they started to give him directions that's like then why do you why did you even take the time to ask like it's so bizarre why didn't you just there's it says something about like how this guy seems to want to get close enough to look people in the eye first because like yeah you would think if you just wanted to kill them like you could have done it when you spotted them from across the block, you know? Yeah.

And he and he had a thing, quote unquote, for for women with or girls or women with dark long hair. And so that's why my mom was terrified. She was like, I thought of that when you said Linda. I was like, well, yep. She was like, I got to go. I think a few of her friends had like blonde wigs in their car or something. I remember. They're like interviews where people are like people are cutting their hair off they're putting buns or like dying their hair or something or dying their hair just to like not have apparently

hair dye like sales went through the roof in new york city yeah that reason very weird very wild very wild um so he shot them they both fell injured and the shooter ran away but not before firing several shots blankly into the apartment building. Like not aiming for them, but just like out of like excitement or exhilaration. He just kept shooting. Miraculously, both survived. But Joanne was. I know.

I know. That's the other weird thing. A lot of people end up. Not a lot, but like a few people end up surviving. Luckily, like for a marksman, he was pretty bad at it. I know. That's what that's what kind of gets me too is i'm like huh i thought you were you know does he ever make a statement like he wanted these people to die or is it that he just wanted to hurt them because maybe if he's like no he actually made a statement that he didn't ever

want to hurt anybody he only wanted to kill them so like the opposite okay got it yeah okay got it um yeah so uh both survived but joanne was paralyzed from the waist down and then suffered from paraplegia so still a rough a rough go a rough outcome um police were able to determine that the bullets were again from an unknown 44 caliber gun so on january 30th 1977 only about two months later 2016 sorry 2016 jesus 26 year old christine freund and her boyfriend of seven years 30 year old john deal who was planning to propose to her two weeks later on valentine's day jesus why did you have to say that i know they were sitting in john's car in queens after having gone to see rocky in theaters and suddenly shots were fired into the car john suffered minor injuries but christine died of her injuries at the hospital

and neither of the victims ever saw the shooter after this shooting police finally like took all of these cases and publicly announced that they were connected um they observed that all the shootings involved a 44 caliber gun and he was therefore now called the 44 caliber killer and that was like his initial moniker sure uh and they told the public that the shooter seemed to target young women with long dark hair so when the composite sketches from the various attacks were released uh nypd officials originally noted that they were likely searching for multiple shooters so oddly enough like even though the cases were connected the composite sketches that they made ended up looking like two different people

so we'll get into that but it's just uh it's it's something to note i guess okay so at this point uh the front of the new york this became like as you said a colossal circus people were terrified i mean this man was terrorizing new york city City and he was striking like in different boroughs. It wasn't like he was isolated to one spot. No one was safe. Okay. The front page of the New York Post read, no one is safe. Jesus.

Okay. Maybe you were there in a past life with Linda. Maybe. I was just watching out for her, making sure she dyed her hair blonde or something. I was just a little devil on her shoulder being like, you know would be a cool idea right now and it was shave your head just shave your head my mom did shave her head in the 70s and 80s so maybe that surprises me zero percent yeah right it was for a ray-ban uh a ray-ban ad in a magazine um every time we speak i have listen at least 10 questions every time i speak to my mother i'm like

what so don't worry it's not just you um and then i ask her do you know what a golem is and she goes yes and i'm like well this is okay the time where i need you to elaborate versus versus the time i wanted to hear nothing at all versus the time my friends are over and i'm 13 and i really don't want to know about how you model for Ray-Ban. Okay, thanks. Oh, Dr. Mom. Okay. So the police tip line had basically, and this is NYPD, had never seen anything like it.

They were receiving 100 calls an hour, according to Time. A police official told the magazine, women are naming their husbands, their ex-boyfriends. People are calling in about their coworkers, like saying, it's him. I think it's my husband or my co-worker. I like how everyone was like on top of it, though. They're like, we are ratting every man out in this city.

I know. I don't care. Even the one I'm married to and sleeping next to, like, yikes. Women were advised to either get shorter haircuts, bleach their hair or wear in a ponytail. Parents also insisted their daughters have their dates at home which is very convenient dad should be like why don't you just have your date here in the living room where your mother and i can watch also very topical for you know as we're in quarantine of like yes true okay well you know what it's been done before i guess okay as you were saying that earlier about like going out and like avoiding i i don't know i was just thinking to myself like huh i wonder if serial

killers that attack people outside are like shit like i wonder what the what the numbers are so much easier i wonder what the stats would look like in terms of like crime right now when it comes to like public violence like how far the numbers have decreased or if they've stayed the same in places where people aren't taking it seriously or like if home invasions are like more on the up and up or like i'd like to see be less common because people are home right i feel like they're like i wonder just violence statistics right now you know what would be really sad though is domestic violence right now well that actually has been statistically proven to have gone up unfortunately so that one we definitely know i mean you make a good point about home invasions because like you can't it's harder

to rob somebody when they're upstairs but what if but what if it's like a like a serial killer who planned on hurting you anyway because it could be like a night stalker situation where they don't they want you at home sure so you'd have to like differentiate between just like a burglary and like an assault or something yeah an assault or murder exactly hopefully the answer is just zero across the board but like let's just go with zero i can't my brain m it's too early it would be an interesting comprehensive uh study somebody eva can you figure that out real quick eva can you get us a comprehensive study can you actually do all of the research and then let us know the data thank you yeah but just

wear a mask okay thanks all right just knock on every single person's door in the country wear a mask you'll be fine man we're every single person's door in the country wear a mask you'll be fine man we're being real aggressive toward eva today her she's just paper paper shards and pencil shavings are flying off the table right now just poor eva um okay so they okay so parents were like have your dates at home how fun okay uh some girls decided to dress in baggy clothing or skip dating altogether until cops caught the killer fair and then a yeah definitely fair a month and a half later on march 8th 1977 columbia university student virginia boscarichian was walking home from class when she was confronted by an armed man in an effort to defend herself she pulled her textbook

over her face but the bullet penetrated the, she pulled her textbook over her face, but the bullet penetrated the textbook and struck her head, killing her. Fuck. So she actually just lived one block away from Christine Freund, who had also died previously. Did that help at least? They could triangulate him a little bit? You know what? I'm not sure. Probably not if he's still just all over the goddamn place it seems like he's still kind of all over the place i because i don't have a great grasp of geography period and definitely not of me no it surprises you to know i i mean i even told people i lived in the wrong state for the last six months so um but so i don't know i even visited columbia because i don't know my dad

i guess thought i could get in lol um spoiler alert i didn't but so i once went to columbia on like a tour but i have no idea where it is and he lived in yonkers so wherever yonkers is in relation to columbia university is where this shooting took place and but it says she lived a block away from christine so i don't know okay where she anyway it's all very convoluted but it is a weird it's either a weird coincidence or it has to do with like his triangulation. Sure. So and then the following month on April 16th, 1977 at 3 a.m., a 20-year-old tow truck driver named Alexander Esau and an 18-year-old model and actress Jodina Soriani were hanging out in their car only a few blocks from the scene of the jody and donna shooting so maybe he had like pockets of areas that he was targeting uh when they were

both shot twice uh both died unfortunately before they could talk to police but investigators determined that they were killed by the same suspect in the other shootings with the same 44 caliber firearm at the crime scene though there was something new oh what a new twist to the mo they found a handwritten letter addressed to the captain of the nypd joe barelli okay now i'm gonna read you this letter and it is like yonkers bonkers yonkers bonkers if you will it's uh next level and there's a lot of spelling there are a lot of spelling mistakes for example he spells women we we mon w-e-m-o-n so it it's all over the place but just bear with me while i try to read this to you it's like you're trying to morph it into the word lemon it sounds like demon lemon yeah women yeah all of them women woman yonkers bonkers okay i am deeply hurt by your calling me

a woman hater i am not but i am a monster i am the son of sam i am a little brat when father sam gets drunk he gets mean he beats his family sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house other times he locks me in the garage sam loves to drink blood go out and kill commands father sam this sounds like a terrible dr seuss book i'm realizing the cadence go out and kill says father sam yeah sam i am sam i am oh god he is saying i am sam i will not drink your blood sam i am or whatever i will not murder people on your behalf okay i will not do it with a draft only with a 44 caliber rifle okay yikes go out and kill commands father sam behind our house some rest mostly young raped and slaughtered their blood

drained just bones now papa sam keeps me locked in the attic i can't get out but i look out the attic window and watch the world go by i feel like an outsider i am on a different wavelength than everybody else programmed to kill however to stop me you must kill me attention all police shoot me first shoot to kill or else keep out of my way or you will die papa sam is old now he needs some blood to preserve his youth he has had too many heart attacks too many attacks i'm sorry too many heart attacks ugh me hoot it hurts sunny boy i miss my pretty princess most of all she's resting in our lady's house but i'll see her soon.

I am the master, Beelzebub, the chubby behemoth. I love to hunt, prowling the streets, looking for fair game, tasty meat. The women of Queens are prettiest of all. I must be the water they drink. I live for the hum, my life, blood for Papa. Mr. Borelli, sir, I don't want to kill anymore. No, sir, no more, but I must. Honor thy father. I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don't belong on Earth. Return me to Yahoo's to the people of Queens. I love you. And I want to wish all of you a happy Easter. May God bless you in this life and in the next. And for now, I say goodbye and good night. Police, let me haunt you with these words. I'll be back. I'll be back to be interpreted as bang bang bang bank bang

ugh yours and murder mr monster oh i'm sorry that gave me a headache so i i just associated halfway through there yeah i think everyone i think he did i think if anyone were watching the youtube channel and that were on my face the whole time at some point my eyes deadened i think it definitely was one of those slow zooms on your face the entire time i i i checked out i i tried and i remember hearing happy easter and my brain was like i think no no i think that's one of the ones where that that lady was saying her husband complains about my laughter that like if you're zoning out while you're like doing something at work and you like suddenly hear like a bang bang happy easter you're like

wait what are they talking about i that was exactly i just heard like i mean there i i i think the first half that i really was trying to process what you were talking about and then you you had me at like chubby behemoth and i was like i i'm out i can't figure this out. What did you say last time? I am Santa. Goodbye. I am Santa. Goodbye now. Oh my God. I like this whole, he even wrote ugh!

I'm like, yeah, ugh! Is how I feel too. So, okay. It started off almost like it was like a diary entry about like being like with an abusive father or something. Yeah. Then the dad also drinks your blood. And then now like the dad's kind of dying. And also now you need to go get him blood.

But he's had heart attacks. Ugh. And then. Oh, by the way, happy Easter. Before I forget. P.S. The bunny rabbit says hi. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know. I'm the Easter bunny. Goodbye now. I'm Santa. Hello. I'm the Easter Bunny. Goodbye now. I'm Santa. Hello. I'm the Easter Bunny. Goodbye.

There's a lot of things happening. Yours in murder, Mr. Monster. So I don't know where to... Should I try to start or begin? I think I should just... No, I think we should just not even try because it just gets worse and weirder. Did anyone ever try to like decode it

or did they read it one time and they're like there's not really anything to decode i think like i'll get into it more but basically what they did get from this is son of sam he calls himself the son i am the son of sam and so instead of 44 caliber killer now they he gave himself his own moniker which is like yeah kind of like like really awful that they were like oh i'm so sorry i like it's like it is weird that that they took like they the letter is so you and it sounds very much like if he were like actually those aren't my pronouns and they went oh oh okay so like from now on we we all call you this got it it's right you're still

going to hell but i guess i'll respect your your name your name but also like you're a serial killer and like we are you already got a name i don't want to i don't want to even like give you the the the satisfaction of having a name you picked yeah well he later on says that he doesn't want the name so don't worry about it he gets this man can't make up his mind okay no he cannot so in the letter obviously berkowitz refers to himself as son of Sam. He expresses his desire to continue his shooting sprees, even though he, quote, doesn't want to. A police task formed at this point. Officers recruited psychiatrists to help them come up with a profile.

Criminal minds, anybody? Okay. BAU? All right. Spencer Reed? No? All right. Just me.

Anyway. After consulting. All right. Spencer Reed. No. All right. Just me. Anyway, after consulting with several psychiatrists, police released a psychological profile of their suspect. He was described as neurotic and probably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and believed himself to be a victim of demonic possession. And quite frankly, they were spot on. Really? Okay. and quite frankly they were spot on really okay so 70 detectives worked the case full-time starting in april 1977 police volunteered to help on their days off but there were really like no real clues

or breaks in the case um and like witness descriptions were basically a man in his 20s with medium build and like it just was really hard to pin that down uh in a place like new york especially yeah so then on june 26th that's uh like two months later uh there was another shooting 20 year old sal lupo and 17 year old judy placido had left a discotheque in queens and they were sitting in their car when judy said this son of sam is really scary the way that guy comes out of nowhere you never know where he'll hit next and moments later shut the fuck up that's so creepy i know i have goose cam right now and it's so horrifying moments later three gunshots blasted through the car and obviously it's not like he knew they were talking about him the windows were closed were those her last words that is horrific well uh both were

struck but neither was injured seriously so it was not their last words but it was probably the words that were seared into their nightmares for the rest of time definitely the words like i mean i've never heard of stronger manifestation ever like oh i know even when you say oh i can't believe like you know you have no idea where he'd be you still think in that moment but he's not here like you know like yeah right like why would you the odds are so outrageous yeah yeah so it's just so wild like the guy just shows up and as you're saying wow this guy just shows up and shoots them so they they were injured but they neither of them died. Sal ran back to the club for help.

Police offered composite sketches of the suspects in the shootings based in part on the testimony of people who had survived the shootings as well as witnesses. But again, there were these two separate images that were coming up, like the dark haired man and then somebody else. Although publicly publicly police were insisting that there was only a single suspect being sought so one sketch and description roughly matched berkowitz so medium height slightly pudgy with hair that was short dark and curly but another suspect was reported to be quite different a taller and slimmer man a hippie sort with jaw length hair that was either light brown or dark blonde so now police are thinking maybe it is the same guy but he's wearing a wig uh-huh

yep uh-huh yep so on may 30th 1977 columnist jimmy breslin of the new york daily received a handwritten letter from the son of sam what does this one say a lot a lot of weird it's gonna be like uh hi i'm the saint patrick's day leprechaun goodbye now happy flag day before i forget it's arbor day uh let me tell you all about trauma that i'm not really sure exists but also i'm in the garage i'm a chubby behemoth do you get that's the only thing you need to know so okay basically the son of sam is a huge fan of this calmness, which must be the worst compliment ever. Just saying. Right.

So the letter read, hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood. Hello from the sewers of NYC, which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of nyc and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead that have settled into the cracks then the writer said he was a fan of uh jimmy bruslin noting jb i also want to tell you that i read your column daily and find it quite informative oh god by the way everything up before that like very wonderful compliment uh you could have read any of that uh as zach bagans just so we're oh yeah oh i regret okay i'll read this part then yeah ominously the writer added what will you have for july 29th

which ominously was the one year anniversary of the son of sam's first shooting and was quickly approaching so a week later after consulting with police obviously he like sent this letter to police and they withheld portions of the letter but they published some of it uh urging the killer to turn himself into police and he was later quoted as saying he actually breslin sorry was later quoted as saying he actually had admiration for the son of sam's writing style uh he said quote i remember when i read it i said this guy could take my place with the column he had that big city beat to his writing it was sensational that big city beat that's that's all you need that's all you need they did note that like compared to the first letter which was like so all over like the sentences didn't make sense like this one was actually coherent and like what

like thought like there were thoughts yeah there he was he was really trying he was like that first one i didn't it wasn't my best work let me it was like a rough draft let me really judge it up yeah yeah it was like these were fully formed thoughts um so it was a little bit odd that they were so different um so despite breslin's advice to stop killing uh berkowitz didn't listen what a shocker and he killed again uh just the day after july after the anniversary july 30th 1977 uh police set up a sizable drag net because they were expecting him to attack right on that day sure or like around that day um and so like around the queen or sorry around queens in the bronx um however this time the son of sam struck in brooklyn so oops all over the place so stacy moskowitz age 20

and robert violante age 20 um in case you're wondering if they sound familiar they are the uh the couple from my little intro story so stacy and bobby uh were parked under a street lamp on their first date making out and they were kissing when suddenly a man approached within three feet of the passenger side window shot in the car shooting both of them in the head stacy died tragically and she actually would become the only blonde victim of the son of sam interestingly enough and although robert survived like i said earlier he lost one eye and uh although no one knew at the time stacy moskowitz and robert violante or bobby would be the son of sam's final victims wow okay and so

that's why when i read that little intro at the beginning i mentioned that there had been a witness this time who i see the parking ticket great story look at my that's that's my best after the after the grinch i'm like i need to zhush things up a little bit are these are you submitting these for like the pulitzer or something i'm confused yeah i'm submitting a story about the son of santa the pulitzer and you know and also the grinch but posing him as a and a famed criminal to jimmy breslin my favorite columnist okay jb jb i just want you to know i'm such a fan okay um so that evening cecilia davis who lived near the crime scene saw a man remove a parking ticket from his yellow ford galaxy uh-huh which had been parked too near a fire hydrant so that was clearly his undoing she saw this man only a few minutes before the shooting so she contacted

police who determined that so they were like okay, yellow cars in the Bronx who got parking tickets for being by a fire hydrant. Like, yes, we can narrow this down for sure. So they figured out it was Berkowitz and they thought, Hey, this Berkowitz guy, he's probably an important witness.

He might've seen what happened here at this shooting, which like, why would you immediately go like, Oh, he's the murderer. He got a parking ticket nearby, you know, but she was like, well, I guess I'll point out something odd that I saw. So thank God she did.

Yeah, true. See something, say something. So they were like, so they called Yonkers, which is 12 miles north of Manhattan, says the Internet. Okay. And asked the police for some help tracking him down so a sergeant named mike novotny was at the yonkers police department and he said they actually had their own separate suspicions about berkowitz in connection with other strange crimes in yonkers uh crimes that they say referent were referenced in one of the son of sam letters so to the shock of the nypd they told nyc detective uh what's his name again well i already lost it sorry okay they told the

end the end the nypd detective um that berkowitz might not be just a witness but might actually be the son of sam and they're like aha okay we misread the room but let's like regroup face first into the point yeah yeah yeah thank you so much for that update yonkers uh so when they investigated his car parked on so they find his car it's parked on the street outside his apartment uh police find a rifle in the back seat they search the vehicle find find a 44 caliber bulldog pistol along with maps of the crime scenes and a letter to sergeant doubt of the Omega Task Force. So like bingo, bango, they literally have every piece of this guy's crimes in one place. It really like zero to a hundred.

Yes. In terms of, imagine like missing your shift at the police department that day. And you're like, what the hell happened? You're like, I just slept in. My wife and I took a day off and slept in. You wake up for coffee and you're like, whoa.

Oh my God um so they waited several hours outside for him to leave his apartment building and when he did he was immediately arrested he didn't like fight or anything the date was august 10th 1977 and it was 11 days after his final murder his first words upon arrest were reported to be what took you so long oh gross it's still so smug and arrogant so creepy police searched his apartment and found it in disarray with occult graffiti on the walls according to a time article the windows were covered by sheets to keep neighbors from seeing in pornographic magazines were strewn near the bed one large hole had been knocked in a wall

with an arrow pointing to it and a puzzling hand-printed message that read, Hi, my name is Mr. Williams and I live in this hole. I'm sorry. Hmm. That's just like so odd. That's the... Hmm. Okay.

Who pulled the short straw to have to look in that hole, by the way? Who pulled the shorter straw to stick their hand in the hole? I feel like that's like when you personify Lemon too far. That's how I'll know. When you make little text bubbles and you're like, this is... He lives in the walls of my house. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Also on the wall was another irrational declaration that said, I have several children who I'm turning into killers. Wait till they grow up. Ew. They also found a diary wherein Berkowitz took credit for dozens of arsons throughout the New York area. Later counted up to be, you know,

three a week for 10 years. Yeah. For 10 years. If our math is correct, which is probably not. And when Berkowitz was exiting the apartment, arresting officer, detective fellow,

fellow Tico held a gun to him and said, now that I've got you, who have I got? Berkowitz responded, you know. The detective said, no, I don't. You tell me. Berkowitz turned his head and said, I'm Sam. What? Also, it throws me because like he's been calling himself son of Sam and now he's calling himself Sam.

And now I'm like, I know. Right. He's like elevated family tree wise. I like what is going on here junior are you i don't know anyway i'm like are you the one that drinks blood or the one that gets blood for the one who or i mean this is far-fetched but hear me out maybe he has paranoid schizophrenia and bingo okay that's the i mean maybe maybe yeah where did did do we ever find out where the name sam even fucking came from well i'll just tell you what he says uh and you can decide if if any of it makes any sense to you excellent so berkowitz quickly confessed to the shootings

he expressed an interest in pleading guilty in exchange for receiving life imprisonment rather than facing the death penalty um he was only questioned for about 30 minutes and confessed to all the son of sam killings during questioning he told a bizarre tale that seemed to demand an insanity defense he said the sam mentioned in the first letter was one sam carr a former neighbor of his berkowitz claimed that sam carr's dog harvey was possessed by an ancient demon and that it issued commands to berkowitz claimed that sam carr's dog harvey was possessed by an ancient demon and that it issued commands to berkowitz to kill okay so that's sam okay i see yeah okay next page um okay next now i want to tell you in advance there there's some dog cruelty, but it's not fatal. So just,

just a warning. Berkowitz admitted to shooting the dog on April 29th, uh, in an attempt to kill it, but thankfully the owner brought it to the vet and he survived. Um, he claimed that his aim as a professional marksman was spoiled due to supernatural interference.

So that could also be why he thinks he didn't kill all of his victims that so every every single time that they all survived they uh it was a ghost like pushed him out of the way yeah right bang okay got it yeah yeah you get it um according to journalist maury terry's book the ultimate evil during his sentencing berkowitz repeatedly chanted stacy was a whore at a quiet, though audible volume. And he was referring presumably to his final victim, Stacy Moskowitz. And I believe her family was in the courtroom. So it created like this real uproar in the courtroom. Court was adjourned.

Court was adjourned. Ultimately, he was sentenced on June 12th, 1978 to six life sentences in prison for the killings, making his maximum term some 365 years behind bars. Which is weird because earlier you just got goose cam because earlier you did the math of 365 years and how many shots or how many fires that would be. By the way, he would have done four fires for every year he was in jail okay there you go all right there you go it ends up pulling pulling itself together i was like that's odd it's very weird he later claimed that the hollow notes song rich girl motivated his murders so oh what a shame because that's such a great fucking song it is a great song now i don't want to listen to it uh hollow notes are probably like yo back off like that yeah they're like really please don't ruin our song it's like the columnist

who's like thanks but like i didn't really want to be it's like if someone said that they listened to our podcast when they're like killing people i'd be like okay yo you gotta not say that like promo got it all wrong pr wise not a cute look for us. Like, can you not drag us in? Now we have to, like, hire a whole PR team. Also, can you not listen to our show anymore? Thank you. Also, like, yikes. But please leave a five-star rating before you leave. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just check out Kindly. Just, you know, with grace. With grace. With ultimate grace. So, Berkowitz survived at least one attempt on his life by a fellow inmate while in prison. His behavior reportedly earned him the nickname of Davidid berserkowitz which okay i find somewhat clever i'm not gonna lie um it's it's nicer than a lot of prison nicknames i've heard so no i i mean at

least it's it makes like a it's a nice pun it's a good pun i'll say that for sure as someone who appreciates a pun they found quite a way to put two words together i would agree with that yes like like uh like uh hmm i don't know cineprog oh like i guess what's one one example of a perfect pun that i can think of yes it would be cineprog how strange that you and i both thought that that is the only pun that lives up to the berserker wits that's you know what i like how we both had a pun that's where i'm level of skill yeah um in 79 there was an attack on his life someone slashed his throat like really brutally i guess uh according to true crime all the time now if you see him in interviews like he has like a huge scar on his throat from

where he was slashed um he refused to rat out the guy who cut his throat but um he has claimed that it was directed by his former cult which like how much of this is true i don't know berkowitz claimed that he did not act alone in the killings he says he was part of a part of an occult group that sacrificed animals to satan and ran a child pornography racket there's really no proof of that uh also it doesn't help it doesn't make it better no it does not help no no um berkowitz also claims that he is not the son of sam shooter but merely one of the lookout men for the son of sam shooter and that there were multiple other people involved so now he's just kind of saying oh it's not me

it's all these other people i'm sam and I'll confess everything in 30 minutes or less. But I'm not Son of Sam. But also not. You get it, right? Yep. Okay. Berkowitz now describes himself as a born again Christian and says that his obsession with pornography played a major role in the murders. I guess alongside Hall and Oates.

I don't know. I guess according I guess alongside Holland Oates I don't know uh he sent a letter to New York Governor George Pataki asking that his parole hearing be canceled stating I can give you no good reason why I should even be considered for parole so he really is like I'm in here and I don't have a good reason so when so I like rolled my eyes very heavily when you said he became born again Christian so was it like a like a stunt or did he does he legitimately think he's like completely repented here's the thing there is no way to know i think i mean my personal opinion there's no way to know with a person like this what is the truth what is not i mean the number of stories the number of like how mental illness has played a

factor it's just like impossible to know well also like did they in i don't know if you know this but in jail like they would they medicate him like was he oh i don't know if he i don't know if he's medicated um he was uh diagnosed with schizophrenia i do know that um so i feel like i was gonna say like maybe he legitimately is trying to turn a new leaf but like if he like if they're not medicating him or if he's not in therapy like then i guess i'm just not totally going to trust whatever he's saying so yeah i'm not i'm not positive and like obviously i want to make it clear here that schizophrenia is not a uh you know uh like a trait of a murderer it is not by no means what

i'm saying but obviously i think that diagnosis had something to do with like a lot of the erratic behavior had initial clay to it at the very yeah yeah like it had something to do with it but obviously it's like i mean this is a very obvious statement but not everyone with schizophrenia is a dangerous person and that kind of thing i just want to be clear that that that's the case this one sounds like he was not um doing anything to treat uh his situation though no and i mean he also clearly showed signs as a child of other pretty severe issues like uh i believe he was also diagnosed with psychosis i mean he was torturing bugs and that also by the way the animal cruelty is uh i learned this from the serial killers podcast.

Animal cruelty is not associated with schizophrenia at all. So so that was a completely separate thing. So that could have just been like a mix of many mental illnesses just like manifesting in a horrible, horrible way. All at once. Yikes. Just a melting pot of issues. Yeah. Yeah. Which I feel like we see a lot with with these like really well-known serial killers like it's a combination of like their upbringing their a head injury a lot of things not being taken care of or like yeah maintained or even just like bad luck you know i mean i think in some instances like there was no way to take care of there wasn't a good way maybe to take care of certain illnesses or yeah they didn't understand mental illness or whatever so yeah no i agree i think uh it was just he was cut out for for a bad

bad uh didn't get a uh didn't get a very delightful deck, a delightful hand. Yes. When he started out. That's a great way to put it. Yes. So anyway, all of this aside, he now says he is a born again Christian. He's very adamant about it. He also asks now to be known as the son of hope instead of the son of Sam because of his new outlook on life. In June 2004, he was denied in his second parole hearing after he stated he did not want a parole hearing um the board saw that he had a good

record in prison programs but decided that the brutality of his crimes called for him to stay imprisoned obviously berkowitz is very involved in prison ministry and regularly counsels troubled inmates and one major side effect of his murder spree were the son of sam laws which i find really interesting i never really thought about and uh the first of these laws was enacted in the state of new york after rampant speculation about publishers potentially offering berkowitz large sums of money in exchange for his life story wow um and they were afraid that he would like make millions from telling his story right um and so they they quickly enacted a new law uh they called it the son of sam laws and it authorized the state to

seize all money earned from such a deal from a criminal for five years with intentions to use the seized money to compensate victims oh wow okay yeah unfortunately the supreme court declared those laws unconstitutional in 1991 i guess there's like some gray area there. But I thought that was very interesting. Last couple things here. As of 2005, Berkowitz has written a series of memoirs, which he plans to publish despite outrage from the family members of his victims and victims rights advocates. and victims rights advocates um he has devoted his publishing efforts to bringing in funds for the victims families but then again if they're asking you to please not publish them right i don't think it's a good like they're asking you not to do it so saying well here i'll give you the proceeds is like still a slap in the face in my opinion um so berkowitz can now be seen uh but portrayed by oliver cooper in season two of mind

hunter aka one of my favorite shows of all time check it out uh and berkowitz had basically he i mean as you said with your mom like it was one of those things you just remember if you were there or if you were in that time period um with the killing spree and it wasn't you know i hate to say that many people but you know it wasn't like a ted bundy level of but but just like the his letters like the terror i mean it's like notorious like it's like uh super super duper yeah my mom always told me to like with um she remembers a part of the dc snipers where if she had to like go into a store or something she would have me like hide under like the the seat of the chair of the car oh god and uh or she remembers me thinking like asking what the address was and because I asked like can I have your cell phone so if I hear a

gunshot I can know to call the police and she says that that memory stuck with her because it reminded her of when she would hide under the car or hide under the car console when she was with people running in somewhere because the sun is in so god i mean really it's like she was like wow i was like looking at a looking at a really sad sad mirror yeah no it is it's like oh i hate that it repeats itself like that but yeah so obviously it's very notorious um especially the thing about like the dog told me to do it obviously that's become like a really big part of the story sure um so the survivors were of course like wildly traumatized by what they've been through and as jody valenti recounts it took probably about six years of my life to be able to get in a car at night it took a long time to be able to deal with the sounds of popping fireworks and stuff like that.

But I faced my fears. And that is the story of the son of Sam. Oh, but I do have a horror scope for you since he is a Gemini and I just had to own it. Sure. Okay. Here's our horror scope for today for son of Sam. Gemini, you are embracing new ideas now but it looks like you might be the only one everyone around you is behaving with extra caution around you and what

they fear might not be clear to you and it doesn't have to be you don't have to take on the burden of changing everyone's mind but putting some effort in that direction will make you feel good pushing your agenda too hard will turn people off but it will also show them that you're a person of substance and conviction make sure you're fighting for something that's worth fighting for end of review i mean not review that's for my other podcast end of horoscope end of end of end of the show and end of murder story i am santa goodbye now um yikes well well done well done I've I've uh that's one of the only ones that I know more or less the the whole story of so that was nice to finally get the whole picture so thank you how comforting for you comforting yay well thank you

do you want to do your shout out one more time for us oh yeah sorry I know I just. I know. I just like, but I like, I knew I wasn't going to remember. And then the next time we record is going to be in weeks. And I was like, I'm never going to mention it. I was in, I got to read a story, like tell my story of when my grandfather had an astral projection experience. And it's a very cool story, in my opinion, anyway. And they put it in their holiday special episode. And so I was very honored.

And a couple of people tweeted like like is that you in that episode so i'm just very honored to to be in that uh in that episode and astonishing legends is one of my my fave my fave podcasts of all time it's actually my ringtone too but don't tell them that it sounds creepy um all right So that's that anyway. So that's all I've got. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy 2021. We did it. Hopefully. Hopefully. We'll actually let you know in 2021 if we let you know. You'll find out. All right. And that's why we drink. you