And That's Why We Drink - E220 Astrophysics Improv and the Owl Queen

Episode Date: April 25, 2021

Did you want to learn science from someone who just learned it yesterday? Well, welcome to episode 220 in which we do our best to understand multiverses, black holes and spaghettification (which we promise is a real term) all because Em researched the wrong topic. But as space lovers we were enthralled with the Back Door Theory, because honestly the idea of being torn apart atom by atom is just as scary as any cryptid. Em promises to bring you the Back Rooms Theory (also not the Back Woods Theory) next week. Then Christine pays homage to early pandemic binge watching trends with the story of Joe Exotic, his escalating rivalry with fellow big cat lover Carole Baskin and a murder-for-hire ploy that's only the tip of this chaotic iceberg. Christine also gets to practice her dramatic lyric reading skills... and that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Go to reliefband.com and use promo code DRINK to receive 20% off plus free shipping and a no questions asked 30-day money back guarantee! Check out all the amazing shoes, bags and masks available right now at Rothys.com/DRINKFor a limited time, ButcherBox is offering new members a free Essentials Bundle in their first box– That’s 3 lbs of chicken breast, 2 lbs of pork chops, and 2 lbs of ground beef all for FREE in your first box! Just go to ButcherBox.com/ATWWDUse coupon code DRINK for $10 off your first FabFitFun box at www.fabfitfun.comSimply visit athleticgreens.com/DRINK and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today!Helix is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners at Helix Sleep.com/DRINK

something's happening today and i don't know what it is but it's great it feels like the opposite of mercury being in retrograde which maybe i'm jinxing it but it feels like the the air is lighter i'm. I'm feeling nice today. How are you feeling? Oh, good. I mean, I ate like 16 cinnamon rolls, so I'm not feeling light, particularly light. But you're feeling good. I'm glad that you're feeling, I'm feeling great.

And you're feeling zesty, which I, we were just doing the ads and Em was like, I woke up and chose chaos. And I was like, I'm not even, I'm three hours ahead of you and I'm not even prepared for this type of energy. So I don't know what is going on on your end. I don't either. Something chemically in my brain is probably different today. Well, we've known that for a long time.

I, um, yeah, I don't, last week was like super stressful for me just for a bunch of different reasons, but I, I've lost a lot. That's what you said in the last episode, which is hilarious. You literally said last week was really stressful for a bunch of reasons. And this week is so much better. Well, guess what? It happened again. This week you actually mean it.

I did. I mean, I, I, it was a really stressful week last week. And so I, and so I ended up, um a lot of sleep which I you you know what's weird is I usually I'm always sleep deprived I think right now I'm not sleep deprived and that's what's happening I think you literally are repeating unless I'm having like the most intense deja vu you're saying the exact same thing you said last week which is wild really verbatim almost yes I don't remember saying any of that but okay you were like which is weird because I'm always sleep deprived like you had the same maybe you're way too sleep deprived and you're just not even

realizing maybe i am so sleep deprived i've actually gone back in time and i'm hang on a second it could get really crazy i think you just i don't think it's that i don't think it's that the sci-fi network owes me a call so we can pitch a pitch an idea here yeah well we'll try we'll try for that uh is that why do you drink this week emothy tell me uh i drink because i really just feel like weirdly energized like i i woke up today at um i woke up before we recorded for fun like that's very odd something is oh well your hair suggests otherwise no offense but um you do have a little bedhead going on it's because i showered at night usually have to shower in the morning for my hair to not get a little then it does this thing yeah yeah yeah but anyway i've been awake for a while so maybe i'm

just feeling actually energized and that's why i'm like on a whole other level today um i also drink oh go for it i was just gonna say maybe you're energized because of the thing that I think you're about to say, which I guess now you can go ahead and say. Yeah. Okay. So we found out that we got nominated for a Webby. Yay! We're so honored. We're so honored and so amped and so excited.

And oh my goodness gracious. I am super stoked. My mom is also super stoked. Mine too. She started crying. I was like, don't cry. You're teaching online right now. She's like, everyone's going to cry with me.

I was like, no, they're not. They're not. Yeah. Also, when I first called my mom to tell her, she went, I'm busy right now. Can I call you back later? I went, okay. Ouch. No, it's super awesome to be recognized a second time.

It's really, really, really heartwarming. And so anyway, if you would like to vote for us, we're in the comedy section for podcasts. We're at vote.webbiawards.com. Or bit.ly. We made a whole bit.ly, remember? H-E-W-W-D, vote.webbiawards.com and uh or bit.ly we made a whole bit.ly and remember atwwvote we can share that bit.ly slash atwwvote is an easy way to get there if you want to try and memorize that um but yeah so uh right now at least when i just refreshed it we're at 69 percent of the votes so actually don't vote because i'd like to remain at this exact spot um 69 can be our minimal like that's like that's our okay fine that's our limit but uh yeah that's our bar i i am

nervous because uh it's voting has only been up for a day and so like i wonder if like all the and that's why we drink fans are just super on top of it and everyone else's audiences are gonna like catch up later swarm in uh-huh i'm very scared but anyway i for the meantime i'm very proud of us and i'm very very excited and i'm and thank you to everyone who has voted um spread the word tell your your family tell your friends tell your teachers tell your dogs yes tell your dogs especially uh especially if they have like a yahoo account and we're up against some like dope names i And we're up against some dope names. I mean, we're up against Nicole Byer, Sarah Silverman,

some really, really, like, how did this get made? Very cool. I was just beside myself how cool this is. So we're very honored, very excited. Anyway, also, what was I going to say? I feel like, what was I going to say? Oh, you didn't even notice I have a new microphone here. I't where'd your old one go um it's over there so are you just collecting these what's going on yes uh hopefully this audio sounds okay uh sandy and i had to get new equipment because

we're recording in person now for beachy sandy and uh i forgot to put my old mic back so now i have this one but i'm actually kind of liking having this like little arm army guy slinging around it looks sleek it looks very sleek oh thank you so hopefully the audio sounds as uh normal as usual we'll find out the hard way people complain it does to me sounds nice how does How does mine sound? Low key trash? High key trash, but only in the best way. I wear a headband for you too, speaking of trash. You look damn good too.

I'm always so paranoid about my audio just because I'm literally, it's in a makeshift box with a shirt on top. So I always get a little nervous. But anyway, why do you drink christine oh i was just gonna say because uh webby's because uh i have this microphone and i'm nervous about my audio too um that's about it um i think i mean it's oh i know why i drink it's snowing here yeah i've been hearing about this a lot from the Duggars, which I know they're in Arkansas. But I just have assumed a lot of the East Coast is kind of dealing with this. I've seen a lot of people posting Instagram pictures of random snow. Yeah, it's not good.

I got a notification this morning from Google News that was like, Cincinnati breaks 120-year record of snow this late into April. I was like, great. Celebrate, I guess. but there was literally snow on my car this morning that i had to like swipe off so it's not pleasant and it's gonna be 81 on next tuesday so it's confusing but you know that's okay almost as confusing as that time there was that bomb cyclone that we had to deal with or whatever remember when it was like wrapped in denver yes it was like the perfect weather when we rolled in and they were like oh in 10 hours it's gonna be a blizzard and i went what we thought it was some sort of april fools it wasn't the uber driver

made made it very clear he wasn't joking it was it was actually going to be terrible times we were clearly new to the town yeah um yeah but yeah okay well i mean all good reasons to drink but uh i will say the webby is really we're still at least i'm still on a high from yesterday when we found out i like called all my friends i was like a second time it's so cool it's very cool i i can't believe we i can't believe we pulled this off. We tricked him again. Ha ha ha ha. Anyway, so thank you to everybody. Okay, well, then Zach Bagans obviously had to make an appearance. I need to make sure the audio comes.

Oh, here we go. Okay. Okay. I just had to show my blanket off if you're watching on YouTube. I thought you were going to test the microphone. I thought you were going to test the microphone by holding Zach's face over your face, and then you would talk as if you were him. i'd be having a podcast with zach my name is zach bagans is it working i can't see it looks so badass it has like a heart around his head very badass i'm sure you'd appreciate this you're gonna go back and look at that later and

you're gonna have a good time don't worry oh boy good for me good for future me anyway well i'm ready to be regaled is that a am i using that right i think so um but you're not you're not gonna be regaled why because christine apparently this energy i have right now which i'm is i'm shaking in my boots a little bit this is an energy i'm not used to i'm used to feeling so sluggish i don't know what happened but i'm tired as hell so what are we doing i think maybe i'm like the vampire of the day and i like sucked your energy out and i'm just like i'm just like is this what people feel like when they aren't tired i don't know what's going on. Also, I have a London Fog today.

I don't either. I'm scared. What is that? A London Fog. So maybe that's also what's boosted my energy is like I have a drink I love next to me. Okay. So the reason I say you probably won't be regaled is because whatever this energy is, I think started yesterday when I started doing my notes and i was just like

i was there but i wasn't focused the right way or something this is um a story that nobody asked for because i thought i was covering a topic everyone asked for and then found out after I went done that it was the wrong topic. What does that even mean? So to the people, the masses, if you will, I've heard your cries and everyone wanted me to cover this thing called the backwoods theory, which I don't know anything about still. I have a guess that we're not going to find out either today. You will find out next week as a reward for this,

because I thought the whole time it was called the back doors theory. What? And so I, and also like, so that I was doing this whole thing, I learned a lot about this thing that shockingly there is something called the backdoors theory. So I got led astray and just started doing that. And then at the end, I was like, why did people want this? And then I found out no, no one asked.

No one wants this. Wait, why? Is it bad? Is it boring is it boring no i was just like it doesn't sound topical like i don't know i see okay but like everyone like everyone in my instagram dms my twitter dms people have been like telling me on um instagram lives like during movie monday everyone's like you gotta do the backwoods theory and i'm like okay like it's something must have happened for this to have right so that must be topical or timely and now the backdoors theory which i also don't have any clue about is probably not that it's not that it's not i okay i'm shocked i feel like i bamboozled myself the fact that there is something called

the backdoors theory and And so I was like, okay, found it. And then just like, never even thought to double check people's request until the end. God. So anyway, here's the back doors theory that none of us wanted.

Wait, actually I'm as this, I'm going to request it right now because now all I like, cause I feel like we'll hear about the backwoods theory if it's so timely but backdoor theory like i want to know what that is i'm excuse me i'm requesting the backdoors theory uh and i have a bigger vote than everyone else i get 69 of the vote and i like to vote for that story so please regale me with this fascinating theory well done okay so also because this had nothing because nobody asked for this uh it's also like has nothing to do with paranormal wait what it yeah it doesn't have

anything wow you really were you really did choose chaos didn't you oh my god i can't like i said the backdoor series existed i said i didn't say it had anything to do with my normal material so um is it just like like i just thought like what's the topic so it kind of had something i was waiting for aliens to show up because it's about astrophysics oh my god i kept being like where do the aliens come up? Because obviously people are asking me to cover this. So it's Astro. It's about black holes.

And so then there is a section. Oh, that's kind of cool. It's about black holes, but then there was some theories. Every time I got to a new part, I was like, oh, this is the part people really care about. But then it was kind of a dead end but like there was there's some talk of like alternate realities and stuff so i was like oh this is what people wanted it was like just vague enough that like i kind of thought that

made sense but it also doesn't so anyway if you wanted if you wanted to learn science today, you're gonna. Okay. By somebody who learned it yesterday, by the way. Okay, but I feel pretty confident with black holes, just so we're clear. Also, like, this is my jam. Okay, like, I'm actually very excited already for this. This is my jam. Also, this has a weird webby connection.

So I thought it was just, like, meant to be. What, Neil deG just like meant to be because i learned a lot of tyson yeah i learned a lot of it from him and at the last time we went to the webbies i got to meet neil degrasse tyson so i was like okay that that's a sign cool okay so anyway let's learn create our own reality on this show and you either join us or you don't. You're going to have if you're on your way to like a date or if you if you're like trying to impress somebody or new to a relationship. This is going to make you sound real smart. Like you're going to have a real fun fact tonight to blow their minds. OK, the backdoors theory.

So first, I'll just say that the theory comes from a study in 2016 and uh it's from like i think it was the institute of institute okay institute of the corpuscular physics okay yikes the thing i'm a master at now um and in 2016 there is a study from there that suggests that black holes are basically back doors to other universes. I'm excited. See, that makes me think like, okay, we're on to something. Obviously, I'm amped. So basically, what a black hole. Do you know what a black hole is?

Or what is it? What do you think of when you think of a black hole? Oh, geez. I feel like I should. I find space fascinating. Oh, geez. I feel like I should. I find space fascinating. And it's where the matter is so dense that I don't know. Damn, that was a good first sentence. Well, I mean, I like vaguely know, but I don't want to say it because I'm going to sound like I don't know anything about corpuscular physics. You know, Christine, that that half sentence alone impressed me because I wouldn't

have been able to give an answer. So the fact you just said matter and dense, I went, holy shit. She does know what she's talking about. Matter gets, well, listen, then there's wormholes. But okay, I'm sure you'll get into all this. All right. Go ahead. Sorry. You tell me the definition.

So I'm going to give you an A plus on just even knowing anything. Okay. So according to NASA, black holes are, quote, a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. And the gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. Right. Cool. Got it. Got it.

Even light can't get through. Yeah. So basically when a big enough star dies, here's a quote, its core collapses and a funny catastrophe happens. Even something moving at the speed of light can't escape from this region of space and when that happens everything collapses down at its center so you've created a black hole and over the next trillions upon trillions of years all it will do is grow eating whatever falls inside spooky so fun fact black holes are not black um they are more or less invisible but since light can't escape they're referred to as dark and therefore black got it they are seen with a certain type of telescope where researchers can track the stars and the gas around them and

there are three different types of black holes, according to NASA. So there are primordial black holes, which are likely to be created when your universe is created. So when a universe is created, so are the primordial black holes. And they are the smallest ones. So they range, you know,

a given broad range of from an atom to a mountain no really yeah wow so if if you see a black hole and you're like that's the size of nothing at all or mount everest they're like okay that's a primordial black hole don't even worry about it a plus next time you see one you know uh astronaut christine let me know. Size of a saltine? I know what that is. Primordial. Then there's these stellar black holes, which are the most common ones.

And some of them are even in the Milky Way. And they range from mountain size up to 20 times bigger than the sun. Oh, okay. So mountain is a vague term. So I guess if it's bigger than that by like a couple feet you know what you know where you're at now but like a like a given inch or two yeah okay okay um and then as if 20 times bigger than the sun wasn't the biggest size that exists um there is also super massive black holes super massive black hole i like how the first one was called like primordial and sounds very like fancy and then they're like yeah super massive it's so big like you guys don't get it it is so big they might as well call like this so fucking big uh

black hole it sounds a little bit like uh like megan invented the term. By the way, that song by Muse is one of my favorite songs ever, in case you're wondering. Oh, perfect. Well, listen to that while we learn about... Listen to that. Oh. They are the largest, and they are, I guess, range from 20 times bigger than the sun to forever. I'm not totally sure.

To infinity. bigger than the sun to forever i'm not totally sure to infinity and uh nasa says that every large galaxy probably has a super massive black hole at its center oh interesting um the one in the milky way is called sagittarius a hey and it is the size of this is apparently a legitimate fact it's just hard for me to wrap my head around Sagittarius A which is I think our supermassive black hole it is the size of four million suns how do you measure that how do you measure that that's so and did you round up or down because you have to have rounded there's no way it's specifically exactly 4.000 million suns there's some estimating rounding going on here i'm sure of it and at that point you might as well save like

a hundred million suns i'll never know the difference no we're not gonna test it uh so anyway what is the purpose of black holes christine so according to the atlantic uh here's a quote basically they said that black holes actually don't won't hurt us at all. Really? I'm scared of them. So I didn't know that. Yeah, I always fell for the like the lore of like one day Earth is just gonna get sucked up by a black hole. Yeah. So the Atlantic, there's an article in there that says, quote, if anything, we benefit from their existence. The stellar explosions that produce black holes also spew elements such as carbon nitrogen and oxygen into space and the collisions of black holes and neutron stars help spread heavier elements such as gold

and platinum these elements make up our earth and our own selves supermassive black holes in particular might play an important role in star formation with galaxies okay okay okay so we've all got a purpose that's what i just learned um so nasa says like with my fear of like oh earth is just gonna get like eaten by a black hole one day nasa says black holes do not just go around inhaling planets um they just go around they just they just troll around on their tricycles like they uh apparently no black holes are actually close enough to our solar system anyway to eat earth if it would eat earth so it's not going to do it and even if it could it's not close enough got it um even if the sun were to randomly turn into a black hole one day because the sun is a star and they form from stars collapsing within on themselves.

If the sun turned into a black hole one day, it's not possible because it's too small. So I guess it wouldn't have the energy to do that. Oh, okay. And also it's, even though I think of the sun as very big, it's light enough gravitationally where we would just orbit around it not actually get pulled in oh interesting so probably screw up our whole you know environment and everything but i guess we're already doing that so yeah we would not be okay but we at least we at least wouldn't get eaten by a black hole i feel like if we're not gonna be okay we might as well get eaten and see what happens you know like we're not gonna live throw okay, we might as well get eaten and see what happens. You know, we're not going to live.

Throw me in a black hole. Maybe I'll end up on the other side. Exactly. Bingo. That's that's where I'm at. I'm glad we feel the same. I'm so glad I'm your TA now because I've just promoted myself. Look, that information alone, you could really entertain a first date.

I'm just saying. Or like, okay, let's try it. You can go downstairs and be like, hey, Blaze, Mr. I-know-everything-about-medicine, let me tell you a tale or two. About space and supermassive black holes. So here's the pre-backdoors theory. uh einstein's theory of general relativity said that the center i guess the theory is that the center of a black hole um is where the gravity is the most intense okay uh and time and space eventually or essentially end so once you find the center of a black hole space time just vanishes it just fucking goes away how How freaky is that? And this center point of a black hole,

this like critical point where gravity is the most intense, it is called a singularity. So if you say like the singularity of a black hole, you're like, oh, the most intense fucking spot. Okay. AKA, since time and space end apparently at a singularity, if you fell into a black hole, there would be no time or space

anymore and i with no true understanding and yet complete certainty can tell you you would die oh no wait are you sure i feel like we would just not could you die or would you just so if the original thought was if you fell into a black hole, your remains would just kind of just be like at the bottom, like the pit of a black hole and just stay there for eternity. Like you would just kind of like hit it and not be able to get out. But in the 1970s, Stephen Hawking proved that black holes time and space doesn't just end, just slowly vanishes at the singularity center point.

And therefore in theory, I think he actually proved it. You also would vanish away. So it's not that you like your remains would just sit at the bottom of a black hole. You would just cease to exist. Just evaporate. Yeah. Wow. And so this is where my main man, Neil deGrasse Tyson, who gives a lovely handshake by the way uh he's he i went up

to him and i said like i used to uh in high school i thought i wanted to be in get into quantum physics which is you're proving your point now i think you're doing a great job thank you i wanted to be like my high school dream was like one day i would be involved in uh the creation of time travel and then my physics teacher was like, it's already been created. And I was like, well, I guess I need a new plan. My physics teacher was a real asshole. I said I was fascinated in quantum physics after I had rented that movie, What the Bleep Do We Know?

And he was like, you're not cut out for science. Ha! And then he laughed. And it was really mean. But then it was almost like karma because there was a projector pole. And it swung down and hit him in the head and he started gushing blood it was actually really terrible and then that was me on my that was me on my first time travel journey oh you came to save me oh my what if right now you're like i'll be right back and then you like

vanished and you were like i just swung a projector into your teacher's head after he said that mean thing to you wait my brain's breaking a little bit i the energy that i came with today can't tolerate that i'm so sorry i'm making this so much worse but then so then he got it repaired okay so the repair person came down and fixed the pole it's like you know those big ones and it swung one side and hit him and um hey god i gotta i gotta i'll be right back and then then i'm back what happened so then we're all sitting there and it was like the next day or the next class and the fucking things it was like somebody it really was like you were there like fucking just detaching it unscrewing the screws the screw fell out the thing swung and hit him in the head i mean this guy got hit twice and then we

found out later which i didn't know at the time he had an anger issue that he was like working on outside of school. And he, I mean, I think he was about to punch a hole in the wall. And then this kid Sergio in my class laughed. And then we all started laughing. And it was actually like really bad. And he kind of cracked his whole head open on that pole. So sorry about that. Anyway, point being uh that's

my dreams of being in quantum physics died that day so at least it's a memorable exit like but i my big thing was like i wanted to get into time travel and therefore anyway this is a long tangent to say i when i met neil degrasse tyson i said like in high school science was my favorite class because of you and he and he shook my hand or he didn't even he was one of those people who didn't just shake your hand he just kind of held your hand and you could tell that it really meant something to him even though he's probably heard it thousands of times from much smarter scientists and um I like how you say much smarter scientists as if you're a smart scientist

to begin with and then much smarter scientists also. Today, as we discuss black holes, I am a scientist. Got it. I just picture him like holding your hand and being like, and what do you do? Well, I want a Webby tonight. So it wasn't in science. Self-deprecating comedy. How's that?

I made it. I made a big time. I loved science because that doesn't mean comedy how's that it's i i made it i made a big time just to feel like well i i loved science because that doesn't mean i was good at it um i talk about aliens i guess it's sort of on brand okay so anyway uh so neil degrasse tyson when talking about what happens to your body if you were to fall into a black hole he has an answer for that he starts out by saying that the old and this is a youtube video i think it was it must have been a some sort of ted talk or conference it was he was clearly on a stage giving a an audience a speech and um it's uh he was saying that the old adage of like what comes up must come down he was like in space that's not true

it's only in the context of earth. Does that make sense? And this is a quote of his with rockets with high enough speed, you can send anything so far that it never comes back. And for earth, that speed is seven miles per second. And seven miles per second is considered the escape velocity. So if you move as fast as the escape velocity,

you can escape earth and not come back okay bye hang on finally my answer wait a minute how do i get everyone find your own escape velocity and let's just all shoot off into the air finally and ndt gave us an answer and i'm out of here i wonder if he like cracks jokes with his wife like oh i'm only seven miles a second like i'm this has been a rough day give me seven miles a second i'm out of here and like there's like all these weird little like science things he picks at when he's being self-deprecating well i know that's what you would do i don't know i don't know that he does that but i guarantee that's what you would do um it's about to be something i do yeah so uh so for earth that

speed is seven miles per second we call it, that speed is seven miles per second. We call it the escape velocity. At seven miles per second, anything could go to the edge of the universe. Okay. Edge of the universe. That sounds like a really cool band name. It sounds like Mudes' next album. So in a black hole, though, so on Earth, the escape velocity is seven miles per second. But in a black hole, the escape velocity isn't, per second but in a black hole the escape velocity

isn't i mean it's faster than the speed of light because light can't even get out remember so uh like the speed of light isn't fast enough to get out of a black hole so and then this is a quote of his so if light doesn't come out nothing's coming out it's black you fall in you're not coming out it's a one-way trip okay okay geez i get it oh my gosh he really made that that hit home he had a point and he delivered it so then he said he's the next question is well okay so you're stuck in the black hole so what happens how do you die if you die um because i think the leading thought right now after stephen hawking that you vanish. So so what happens once you're in the black hole? So he goes on to say, given the theory that I guess given the theory that in a

black hole, you would vanish, Neil deGrasse Tyson says, you die way before you end up just disappearing in the black hole. So like you do vanish eventually, but first, you die, you don't even you don't get to experience the vanishing very quickly before you will feel the space around you literally tearing you apart okay um that's because the gravity in your feet and the gravity in your head are so different that your feet are being pulled into the black hole faster than your head so um so soon uh i'm paraphrasing here but soon the forces will be strong enough that they will uh be stronger than the forces that hold your flesh together okay aka your bottom half will literally tear away oh boy and then he says you will survive

that no wait wait what do you mean you will survive? I don't think you'd survive that. Medieval torture. He says your top half will survive for a little bit because it's the one with vital organs. But, here's a quote of his, so your torso will stay alive for a little while until you bleed to death. Yeah, it's the top half of your vital organ. So in theory, you could survive it. But he says,

your torso will stay alive for a little while until you bleed to death. But don't worry, this all happens much faster than that. So in theory, you could survive it, but something else is about to happen in space so that you won't even be alive to make it out. I was scared it was going to be like and time is so slow that you experience every millisecond of it that's where my head went i

was like this is somehow you somehow you made it so much worse that's what i thought we were so quickly heading toward but obviously that's just my own anxiety talking so okay so now the force so now you're ripped in half and in theory you're able to survive this tearing sure sure sure sure um so now the forces that were so strong on your body that tore you in half let's think of it as like a funnel the black hole is a funnel so as you're falling deeper into it the force is getting more and more intense because you're eventually going to hit the singularity the center point that is the most intense point of the black hole so as you're falling you're getting closer and closer with more and more intense force so if you ripped up here

as you fall you're going to just keep ripping so uh he called it bifurcating because apparently you just keep splitting into twos so um really so it was your top and then your bottom and then each of those split into two more pieces and two more pieces um let's see so sense of singularity is i i started um i started improv-ing there so i got to find my spot again got some ad-lib astrophysics over here that goes to show you by the way that i know what i'm talking about i didn't even have to say on the notes um certainly does so oh yeah my favorite quote so he says as you're splitting and splitting as you descend further and further quote that will continue until you are just a stream of atoms descending toward the abyss and it turns out that's not the worst of it stop he said it turns out the fabric

of space and time funnels like i said down towards the black hole so basically the further down you go the smaller the space gets so even eventually if you're only atoms the the singularity point of the black hole is still smaller than you as a collection of atoms. So you eventually still won't be able to fit through it. So, so this is another quote of his. So while you're getting stretched apart, you're also getting squeezed and extruded through the fabric of space. And apparently that they have a name for that kind of death and it's called

spaghettification. No, come on. Um, so you're a little spaghetto. You're a spaghetto a spaghetto and uh this has nothing to do with it but i thought this was a funny way to end that talk uh he says one thing we're good at in english is having words for ways to die we have a word if you kill someone else we have a word if you kill yourself a different word if

you're killed by electricity, add spaghettification to it. Spaghettification is number one. Yeah. So thank you, Neil deGrasse Tyson, for that lovely ending to a conversation. So like I said, it was originally thought if you fell into a black hole, your remains would sit at the bottom

and then Stephen Hawking proved that you would just vanish with it. Eventually, once you were broken into a million atoms and squeezed through into the singularity or the center point of the black hole but according to mike.com steven hawking and two other colleagues uh later also discovered this was a i think i think it was around the same time i actually don't know what year this was at all so don't quote me on that um but so steven hawking This was, I think, I think it was around the same time. I actually don't know what year this was at all, so don't quote me on that. But so Stephen Hawking, the last thing we had heard was he proved that you could vanish through it. But him and two other colleagues later discovered that there was probably, quote, soft hair on black holes.

What? Which is basically, what was the quote soft hair uh it is a layer of particles that record information about objects that fall in so basically black holes have receipts on the shit that goes in it shut the front door so i mean the back door so basically if you were to fall in there would be like there'd be information on that black hole now like oh yeah christine went in they're like taking it's like taking notes inventory yeah oh my gosh there's another theory oh so this is where then the back doors theory comes in so in 2016 which felt recent enough it's within five years And that's why I thought people like maybe were into this all of a sudden. Okay, whatever. No comment.

No comment. So in 2016, there were three physicists named Gonzalo, Almo, Diego Rubiera, and Antonio Sanchez. And according to Science Daily, they all looked at the singularities. They all looked at black holes singularities. So I guess they were like, what the hell? Why does this exist? Why does everything funnel into this one spot? And they decided that, you know, black holes, the way we look at it, maybe we're not looking at the right, maybe we're not looking at it compared to similar structures, or maybe we're looking, the shape of it is wrong. Like, how could we look at this in a different way? So they ended up looking at black holes as if they were crystals.

Oh. Because crystals have so many imperfections in their geometric structure. They were like, maybe the singularity of a black hole is just a random imperfection in the black hole. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be there at all. And so I think if I'm saying this right right i could be totally butchering it and if you happen to be one of these three renowned physicists who listens to this podcast please let me know i guarantee they're not but just so i guess just in case if i fucked it up i'm sorry but by my civilian uh very poor understanding of this as i think they were looking at the geometric

structures of crystals and noticing how lots of the lines and a crystal will like kind of go in on itself and then split off at the other end i oh i see how they have so many the structure is just kind of so random with a crystal that like it could it looks like it could be closing it on itself but then you can see that the the lines in the rock will split on the other end in a different direction and they were like how oh sorry no go for it go for it could it be like how when you shine a light through crystal it'll refract in the opposite direction because like probably floyd i didn't i didn't i didn't i mean i literally did not read the paper so i don't know what other information was in it but i would bet i would bet they practiced and studied light on that

and that's probably something they talked about okay it would make sense i mean that's a great question so if these singularities in black holes or space time if these singularities are similar to the anomalies in crystals where the lines close up and then reopen or split off, maybe the center point in a black hole also closes or opens or splits. And this would mean

that black hole singularities could then be wormholes. Open on the other side. Got it, got it, got it, got it. Yes. So, if this is true, then it answers the mystery because scientists to this day were like how does matter just fucking vanish if you fall into a black hole like that matter can't be created nor destroyed bingo damn are you sure you're not a scientist i'm telling you i like i love physics and my teacher was such an asshole

sorry no offense well kind of offense but he really was not a nice man so i just kind of whatever i was like fine so anyway scientists were like yeah like where the fuck is all this going you can't just vanish that literally breaks science sure but so if thing if these singularities in a black hole were wormholes then it would explain that oh the matter still exists it's just on the other side and we can't see it. Oh my God. That's amazing. And so instead of vanishing, you just pop out on the other side of this weird anomaly, the center point of a black hole and just pop out and they don't know where you would pop out to.

So they think it could be another part of your same universe, or you could pop out into a, uh, like a, another universe and alternate reality um so if you so to break this all down if if all of this is correct you fall into a black hole you would spaghettificate as you fall into the uh as you fall closer and closer to the center point or the singularity of a black hole and then then you would pop out, reassembled on the other side of the swarm. Oh, you would be reassembled.

I think their way of thinking of it is like, if you're falling this way, then when it splits this way, you would reassemble. I mean, no one's going to see me if you're not on YouTube. But if you're falling into a cone on the other side, the cone is going to- Like an hourglass. Yeah, like an hourglass. I think they just assumed the reverse would happen on your way out because then my question is what about your soul what about the the things that aren't physical like do those come with you do they

reassemble has that already left you uh is that even part of your matter is that separate oh my gosh i have so many questions that's all those are all great topics i mean i mean no no because i so when i was really into like science back in the day uh the scientists listening are like you guys stop acting like you're scientists well i don't think i'm a scientist but back when i was 16 and had high dreams of getting into science one of my big things that i was obsessed with was teleporting and all of the things that i had i remember I did like my like senior high school thesis on teleportation. Wow. And for all intents and purposes for a 16 year old, I fucking was able to explain teleporting like, very well. I was very proud of myself. It's like one of the only papers

from high school that I kept, like I still have a copy of it but the the biggest issue of that was well okay if you teleport where like does your soul right because your atoms are right being moved so does what does it come with you right that's a really good point they always thought of it as like a like a fax machine where like it would just be like a replicated version of your soul like a carbon copy so it's like what are the moral um issues with that of like, are you willing to lose your original soul? Like, so like only get like a facsimile,

a facsimile of it, or like, even then, like then it really gets into philosophy and religion and spirituality of like, if you recreate a soul and have like a fake version of a soul, you know, then what happens after that? Can you not come back? It's the original soul because you don't lose a copy if you yeah, fact something. Does it stay behind? Is it a ghost now? Then we

ghost Can you be a ghost? Even if you're a facsimile of a person? Fascinating stuff. It really, it was so overwhelming. i think that was the first time i experienced anxiety and then oh i had an existential crisis of like i cannot learn anymore about this also i think you and i would have been excellent friends if we were both stoners in high school if we were both stoners indeed i would not nor am i but if i had been wow what a time so okay so let's get back to wormholes so um you would spaghettificate and then as in theory he would reform and we are ignoring the question of souls right now this is what ems and my sleepovers are like truly we're like well what about if you like we're not stoned

but i think we act like we are it's really a fun time for like us and probably no one else it's fun to be able to ask questions with zero judgment right that's true exactly so um so yeah so this answers the mystery of how space and time and matter just vanish because instead of vanishing they you just come out on the other side right so wormholes were theorized back in 1916 for the first time they were originally called white holes oh funny that there are white holes at the bottom of black holes really interesting fun fact um so they were called white holes and they were originally seen at so this might also explain why people think that if you fall into a cone and break apart then when the cone starts to grow it all over again you would reassemble um because back in 1916 when they called it a white hole they considered it

a theory for time reversal in a black hole oh that makes sense okay i get it now i get it i get it i get it it feels like almost a cosmic way of what comes up must come down like what breaks apart must reform totally um so einstein and another physicist named nathan rosen they went on to suggest that it wasn't actually a white hole um that was a time reversal of a black hole but it was actually a bridge through time and space in general which i don't know any i'm totally guessing here but i would imagine a bridge through time could be a time reversal of a black hole like that they sound similar enough to me so um no wormholes have

been discovered to date just so we're clear which is weird i thought wormholes were just like rampant in this in space i it's like that old meme of like everyone made me think uh quicksand was quicksand traps were all over this world and they were so dangerous it's like the same with wormholes i just thought an epidemic in the sky so um not only could wormholes connect multiple universe universes with some theories but some scientists also believe it could connect to different points in time so uh stephen hawking does not think this in case you're a big stephen hawking follower but wormholes um into other times and universes does mean the literal existence of a multiverse so in this case if you believe in the multiverse which i do me too apparently you uh you and steven hawking would be debating at the dinner

table i wouldn't be debating i would say you're right're right. I'm wrong. Trust me. I'm not going to try to debate you, sir. Good, sir. I'd be like, you're probably on to something. I think I am a big, big fool and I should wear this dunce cap in the corner. Enjoy your meal, sir. So now multiverse theories. How could this be possible? So these are a few that the BBC mentioned. There are three different types of multiverse theories there are a few others but um these three were the only ones that i could really wrap my head around and be able to explain to another person um so there's a patchwork universe that's one type of a multiverse where basically the universe is infinite and our universe happens to be like a patch on the quilt of time and space so the patchwork theory is that there are several patches or regions in the universe and we can all only interact on our own patch

so if we saw another universe or saw another patch it would would break our brains because we're only supposed to know about our space our world which like by the way if that's true can you imagine how many uh like how many patches are there like if it's infinite like does that mean that it goes forever are there are there 100 christine and m's that are just all lined up on a quilt in space or how beautiful would that be though think of how many lemons there are a quilt of you and me a lemon for each season that's my new problem hang on whoa that was think of how many think of how many mothman slam poetry is we have it's beautiful well so the

theory with a patchwork universe is since there are so many and i i'm a big believer in the multiverse so i've i've definitely thought of this theory a few times but if all of these universes if you're next to a universe if the one next to you is so similar except in like one small way and as you know as the universes get farther and farther away from you they differ from you so like the universe right next to us could be exactly the same except like the sky is green and everything else is the same and then as you get further and further away there's more and more differences so that's part of the patchwork universe of that they're they all kind of are a gradient of oh gradient that's a good point i like that word yeah so the lives around you are more similar than the ones

farther away got you so like on the exact opposite of our infinite universe i love lemon and you hate him um no now you know what? I don't believe I no longer believe in the multiverse because that is even Hawking was right. Impossible. Mr. Hawking, I knew you were onto something. So the another one is the inflationary multiverse, which is basically the Big Bang. I never thought about this before, but it is such a such a concept. It really kind of broke me last night. So the inflationary multiverse is that if the Big Bang happened for us, it could have happened a million times over by now

for other universes. And we just don't know about those Big Bangs and those universes that were created. It could have happened countless times. It could be happening right now. I don't remember. I don't know the science well enough, but the people did say we

will never be able to prove this because in order to go into these other universes you would have to go through black holes aka be faster than the speed of light and by the time we got there the big bang of that universe would have already happened so there's no way we'll ever be able to guarantee this but the theory is that there's an infinite amount of big bangs going on in universes around us nonstop, consistently. Our universe is getting bigger and bigger for infinity. Oh, OK. Tell that to a stoner. I don't think I will.

I think that's dangerous. The next one is my favorite because it's the most precious to me, is called Cosmic Natural Selection. Uh-oh. It doesn't sound sweet. So this was proposed in 1992 by Lee Smolin. And basically the universe is its own living, breathing thing that evolves over time and can create its own universes. So we are from a bigger universe who's from a bigger universe is from a bigger universe and the only way you can create

if i were a universe the only way i could create a universe you are my universe if i wanted to create a universe, like make a baby universe, the only way you can do that is if universes are created with a black hole. So it's almost like the birth canal, if you will. Oh. So only universes with black holes can produce another universe.

Okay. Which I guess makes sense, because if you have a black hole then you have in theory a wormhole attached on the other end that can create can keep like branching off and branching off yeah right right right so um if a baby universe cannot properly create things and they call it natural selection because if a baby universe cannot properly create things like planets and matter then a black hole might form it might be one of those imperfections in the structure because it's almost like it has like you know a dimple like a mutated gene or something because hey i knew you would rub your bowl uh so if it had some sort of uh genetic i don't know cosmic genetic flaw to it a black hole would show up in its spot maybe like a birthmark or something um and then through that birth defect

i don't know it could then create a baby baby universe which sounds like backward survival of the fittest yeah agreed only if you have an imperfection can you carry on the line yeah so anyway i thought that was really just kind of sweet because now i'm thinking of like a universe in a diaper like okay well i was just thinking baby universe sounds very precious it sure does um there's other theories but they intimidated me so those are just three of them um there's one called the brain universe the brain multiverse then there's the quantum multiverse which i could not even get into right now and then there's the marvel cinematic universe which i could talk about for way too long yeah let's not

um that one would overwhelm you more than quantum mechanics maybe i would pull my hair out yes so uh so now the very very quickly this is only bullet, but I did want to give a shout out while we're in space to Xenon. And so then there's the theory about aliens that if we can use, let's say we could find a way to get ourselves into a black hole and we wanted to fall into a wormhole onto the other side. Which I'm sure at one point in thousands of years from now, maybe we'll be able to figure out. But if we can use black holes to time travel, which in theory is possible, so could other species. And so in 2019, the Metro said that some scientists theorize that aliens are already doing this. And they are hopping in and out of either our space or our time or both our space time continuum which is interesting because that means that like aliens that you know alien stories from like the 70s it would make sense why they saw such a futuristic looking ufo because they just hopped

into a wormhole i mean then again maybe they're just they have advanced technology like who fucking knows but it would be another interesting plot point of like oh maybe they're from the future and hopped in through a wormhole and found themselves in our universe or from the past and they're just trying to see what's going on who knows wow that's fascinating because now that i mean that goes into well i don't know if it does but i'm going to force it into the thought of like uh some people believe cryptids are, you know, can enter and leave the this plane of existence. So maybe they're coming through and out. And that's why we can't catch them. Yeah.

Well, there's a lot of people who and a lot of people wanted me to also cover this. But are you sure? Yes. This one I'm sure. In a in a in a quick little 10 second shout out to what people have been asking is that there's apparently random doors throughout the woods that have no explanation and so some people think it's like an art installment across the world or like it makes no sense but some people think that's how like cryptids go in and out of different worlds with like a literal door a literal door into a wormhole

into the next universe or whatever but so anyway so it's i mean that one i have not covered yet but that it's interesting that you brought that up and this is literally the back doors theory so interesting uh but yeah so scientists have theorized that aliens could quote be hopping across the universe using black holes to blast their spacecraft closer to the speed of light and therefore they can travel through time and space. And they can also probably do it invisibly, since if they're going through a black hole, which has to be faster than the speed of light,

then it almost, just like how a black hole is invisible because light can't get out, their machines and their aircrafts might also be invisible. And that's why a lot of people say they can't see them, or why they're flying around in the sky and you can't see them maybe it's because they used they harnessed the energy from a black hole to power their craft and therefore they're still invisible to us i wonder then why sometimes we see them are they do they want to be seen are they making a mistake like that praying mantis who thought he was invisible i think i think of it as

if like if xenon wanted to be invisible right now it's almost like going through a black hole is also like going to the gas station and refilling on the energy and so like you get to be invisible for a little bit and then like as your craft gets more visible you're like oh gotta go to another black hole so i'm gonna and then and then that would explain also why you only ever see them for a second because i gotta go back to the gas station i don't know and that is not a neil degrasse i'm just trying to think of it as like if you're if they're using the black holes to even harness the energy to propel themselves into our universe then and that is what makes them invisible if i'm trying to explain away why people only see it sometimes i would imagine that's like their way of seeing the,

like, like the low gas symbol on their car of like, people can see you got to go through another black hole. I don't know. It's the totally random. Fascinating. It's the only way I can explain it, which is I'm already taking a lot of leaps and bounds here.

Cause then I wonder why sometimes they vanish in front of you though. Like just poof. There was a gas leak. I't know oh okay i don't know you're really asking me to i'm sorry now i'm just on the fly here no i have i genuinely have no idea but the the official theory goes that they at least use the energy from a black hole to blast themselves into our worlds. Wow. Which would also, quote, therefore allow them to travel invisibly. Wow. So in 2020, Sky News also said that there were researchers at the University of Glasgow. Glasgow? Glasgow, right?

Glasgow. Okay. I'm never going to. I am sorry to all of the people anywhere near that place or who just know how to say it. So there are researchers at the university of glasgow okay uh think of it like glasgow glasgow oh okay cool that does help um they proved that black holes could be used to generate energy if you were close enough to them so that also kind of not confirms but it um it goes along with the previous research that basically xenon could harness black hole energy if needed

on her way to starbucks drive-thru yeah and so uh progress in the last two years with the backdoors theory is that um so in april of 2019 so two years ago astronomers took the first ever picture of a black hole and it was from galaxy m87 and apparently professor falk told bbc news that it the picture that he was looking at was actually larger than the size of our entire solar system so imagine looking at a picture and being like oh wow that's that looks kind of big and it's like it's bigger than our entire fucking that looks kind of big um but anyway so just further uh we're getting closer because now we can take pictures of actual black holes which could help us in the theory of like the backdoor theory of

are there multiverses on the other side of a black hole singularity which may or may not be a wormhole so in october of last year astronomers also saw a star spaghettificate and uh they saw it from 215 million light years away that's some good eyesight wow there's also apparently a reenactment on youtube which i have not seen but i imagine it's like they had an artist draw it out what they saw so so that's out there if you want to look up october 2020 star spaghettification when they saw it spaghettify or whatever did it did they see it reassemble or was that not part of what they witnessed i don't think they would have been able to because that would mean that they could see on the other side of it.

Sure, sure. So they only saw it go in and I guess they never saw it come out. So if Stephen Hawking, this is the last note that I have, but I just wanted to make a point. If Stephen Hawking had lived one more year, he would have been able to see the thing he had been studying. Oh, ow. Well, maybe on the other side he's uh on the other side of the wormhole i don't know on the other side he's uh the celestial realm i don't know the celestial realm yes but anyway that wasn't a point that was uh i forget what website i i i got that note from i would have never thought

of it on my own but i saw that point and i was like whoa fascinating stephen hawking was so close to being able to see that and he'd been studying this shit since the 70s so wow wow wow wow wow so anyway that's the backdoors theory i listen i'm all about it if you just said people want you to cover that and you did i'd been like great me too i'm on board i i'm glad you liked it it do you know what i mean like it's it had so many almost oh yeah relevancies that i was like i guess people want me to cover this and then i didn't even realize until i literally said done and i saved the document and then i was about to go to bed and i was like i was like people did want this right like and so i looked up like on twitter dms and i went back in my history and everyone said back rooms theory and i went motherfucker so i thought you said back rooms theory. And I went, motherfucker. Oh, I thought you said back woods theory.

Now I'm confused. Back rooms. Back rooms theory. That is confusing. Back door, back room. They do sound pretty similar. Or maybe I did say back woods earlier and I fucked it up. It is back rooms.

Can you imagine if you had said back woods and then everyone was like, that's not what we said. Okay, if I said it earlier, I'm sorry. Back rooms theory is what I'll be covering next week because currently tweeting now saying oh i just got to the part where you corrected yourself yeah unless maybe i just misheard you that could have just been me um anyway next week i will cover the thing people actually wanted i loved it i'm glad you did this just for me thank you um i'm not gonna google back room siri because now i'm just gonna be so excited to hear what the difference is because i'm sure they're completely different they are completely different and i knew

that i had done the wrong thing when i was like backroom siri what is that and so i googled it really quick and every there were so there were zero links by the way about backdoor siri it was so hard to research and then backroom siri all of a sudden it was like tiktok sensation and i was like okay tiktok sensation apparently it was like it's like a it's like a thing on tiktok you're like my dad when he bought me an eye river instead of an ipod you're like oh i know what you want let me just do that i know what the youths want whoa that almost all came out of my nose oh sorry that was i don't want to be bernie schieffer and yet the world is uh against me on that yeah the world is proving otherwise uh holy crap um wow well that was very good um i loved it no matter what anybody else thinks i'm sure people will love it uh thank you we could always talk about you know m and i would

always talk about uh we'd talk about this all day alternate universes it is fun it's just a shame we never get any answers by the end we just get more frustrated i guess but that's the same with paranormal right you never really get the answer which is a part of that's true i guess that's true uh well i have a story for you today that also no one asked for but I don't care because it's fascinating I'm gonna read you I mean I'm sure people asked back in the day when this was more relevant but I'm gonna read you um some song lyrics I'm not gonna sing them and I want you to guess by the end if you know what story this is this is the story of fallout boy the true crime story okay I don't I I will play along i just be prepared i'm not gonna know the

answer because i never do you might well okay we'll try okay i can give them a home safe and warm but the law wants to ban me can you tell me who's wrong every time they move every time they breathe i can feel their power i can feel their beast time is a ticking will soon be gone so you better take a picture what a sad sad song all that armageddon such a painful loss when they kill all the tigers in the holocaust because i saw tiger now i understand i saw tiger and the tiger saw a man well i saw tiger now i understand i saw tiger and the tiger saw a man. I mean, I'm gonna guess this is Tiger King. Joe Exotic! Yay! Okay, the only reason that I, the only reason is because you said tiger a thousand fucking times.

85 times and then I kept glancing at you. The whole, if you were looking at me before, my face was just like this. I was like, what are you talking about? But okay, that's awesome. Well, you're like a whole pandemic too late for relevancy. But you know what? This is actually, I'm going to say, a wonderful full circle because the pandemic is finally ending.

We should bookend it with the Tiger King since that's how we all began. Actually, weirdly relevant because I hadn't even thought of this. But at the start, like back when this movie got huge on netflix i guess it must have been last april or may maybe april um alexander and i did a an episode of beach to sandy uh where we covered reviews of joe exotic zoo and carol baskin zoo they're like you know wow uh whatever they're called uh yeah the sanctuary or the sanctuary yeah yeah you that's actually that's that is an eerie start i hadn't thought of the pandemic with one podcast and ended on the other yeah i hadn't thought of that really at all um and interestingly i've i had known about

joe exotic for a long time because when we were in florida the year before when the bomb cycle like right after the bomb cyclone incident during flu rita for you um i had looked up covering the story and it was like i was just so overwhelmed by the entire thing that i was like i'm not gonna be able to cover this in a live show and then i completely forgot about it and then when the netflix documentary came out a year later i was like why does this sound so familiar but like so crazy uh and so i guess every year somehow this story becomes relevant in my life unfortunately for me. I'm interested to see how it, how it formulates next year.

But, um. Yeah, me too. So I'm glad you're covering it because I tried, I remember, I don't, to be fair, I don't remember Tiger King at fucking all anymore because so much time has passed. And also I only got through like the first four. Yeah, you were like not into it. I remember being horrified that you were like, I don't get it. I didn't get it.

I was like, I think I don't remember what I mean. It was literally so long ago at this point. I don't remember what I didn't like about it. But I was really I like you told me two of the episodes. You told me it was boring. And I was like, how on earth is it boring? I think at some point I missed like a critical piece of information that bridged things because i remember at one point getting really confused so i'm really happy that

this is okay well thank you there's nothing really that um makes any sense so i don't i can't promise any of this will be clear or sensical but i will tell you the story and maybe maybe you'll find it slightly interesting we'll see but anyway those were of course the infamous lyrics of singer songwriter of tiger king fame self-described as a gay gun-toting cowboy with a mullet we are diving into the man the conspirator the prisoner and the jungle cat slash also uh wannabe president himself joe exotic the uh the enigma himself the enigma indeed so there are eight episodes of tiger king it's a great docu-series fascinating stuff um and so there you know if you want the whole story check that out i'm not gonna be able to cover all of it uh there's also a reference uh a texas monthly article by leaf reichstad uh that covered a lot of this in written form, which is also helpful. So let's get,

let's crack into it. We start in Kansas of 1963. Joe Exotic was born Joseph Allen Schreibvogel, you know, German. How is it? How does it go? Schreibvogel.

Schreibvogel. Uh, which means a writing bird is the direct translation, but, um, it really has no bearing on any of this except that um it's a fun german word it is i i look any opportunity to get you to say something in german i'm gonna it's so fun i just just music on the ears i will say i'm definitely rusty so i apologize

if i'm messing it up but uh so his parents franc Francis and Shirley, had come from wealthy farming families, but they didn't really show him and his brothers or his siblings, I guess, much affection. So he didn't growing up, he didn't really have a lot of, you know, healthy love with his family and siblings, aside from one older brother named Gerald, which is really the greatest name I've ever heard. So so spelled likeerald and yet actually spelled like herald with a g oh wow we're really going all over the alphabet today we are it's also i'm pretty sure an old germanic name so god's probably or something but gerald is just the greatest so

gerald stripe i guess you'd say stripe vogel gerald stripe vogel which is quite a name in my opinion uh so he and gerald i hope i'm saying it maybe it is gerald i'm just pronouncing it wrong maybe in america it's gerald but like when he he was originally named gerald and then it got americanized it could be it could be thank you for backing me up on that now that i think about it i'm like oh god, what if I'm completely saying that wrong? I mean, realistically, if I had to look at a roster and see his name, I'd be like, oh, is Harold here? Yes. Okay. So it does say it's, I mean, listen, babynamespedia.com says it's pronounced Gerald. So I'm just going to go with that. My ultimate source, babypedia or whatever.

Okay. Look up Tiger King next. What is that? How far down the list is that one? My ultimate source, Babypedia, or whatever I said. Look up Tiger King next. What is that? How far down the list is that one? Where does the surname Exotic come from? So let's see. He and Gerald got along because they both shared a love of animals, to the point that Joe actually would regularly participate in the Future Farmers of America projects, where he'd often bring home all sorts of creatures, includingcoons and ferrets just you know for fun. At a young age it was his dream

to live in Africa and see the great beasts there which I love that I love when people just say Africa like I just want to live in the entire massive continent somewhere in Africa. Just anywhere any old fucking spot drop me off. So that was his dream i guess and when he was 11 the family moved to wyoming and then ended up later in texas where he graduated from high school in 1982 so at age 19 this is like a little known fact that i didn't realize uh when i watched the docuseries is that he became a police officer in nearby eastvale which had a population of 503 and he was soon promoted to chief of police by at the age of 19 so by age 19 joe exotic was literally the chief of police of a town uh it checks out it was a small department only a few officers worked under him uh they

didn't have many serious crimes but it is still a wild fact fun fact uh newsweek even has an article called joe exotic was chief of police as a teenager because of course he was so everyone else kind of shares the same sentiment of what the fuck but nothing surprises us anymore so at the time he was living with his girlfriend but soon he ended that relationship to explore the gay nightclub scene and that is where he met his soon-to-be husband brian ryan at a gay cowboy bar in dallas okay fun times so joe wasn't comfortable telling his parents about his sexuality so when one of his siblings outed him to his father uh his dad did not respond well at all mr stripe vogel did not appreciate this news and it was pretty traumatic according to joe and some people believe that at

this point he attempted suicide by crashing his police cruiser over a bridge which obviously did not kill him but left him with a broken back but over time he has told the dallas morning news that someone forced the car off a bridge during a police drug investigation and that it was not a suicide attempt so nobody's totally sure but he claims it was part of a drug chase or drug investigation got it uh so either way he survived but he was severely injured and he decided to move to west palm beach florida to begin a few months of physical therapy he continued his relationship with brian and eventually he got a job working at a pet store this is where it all begins so lucky for joe his neighbor i mean this is florida i guess this isn't as weird as it sounds

but his neighbor also worked at an exotic animal park so uh he just let joe bottle feed the baby lions and monkeys that he'd bring home from the exotic animal farm which is dope by the way that's amazing like if i if if my whole thing was like oh my neighbor lets me like feed little baby animals that's so cool well no no we don't really like exotic animals being you know caged and bred in zoos but oh i wasn't thinking i thought it was like he had like a house and was just like fostering like a little kangaroo or something no exotic animal park a lot of this i mean i guess trigger warning none of it gets some of it gets a little wild but it's not like super gruesome or anything but you know there's

nothing good coming out of keeping all these giant animals on in florida on farms. It's just... Just, folks, don't do it. Don't... Exotic pets are not a thing you should be having. I'm just going to say it. Unless you have some sort of, like, true understanding of how to care for them and they can't be on their own and whatever, yada yada.

Unless you're Bindi Irwin. Unless you're Bindi. Maybe she can do it, right. And I bet she doesn't even keep a bunch of things in small cages in her house. Just saying. Oh, I love Bindi. Maybe she can do it. Right. And I bet she doesn't even keep a bunch of things in small cages in her house. Just saying. Oh, I love Bindi. Anyway. So right. So he's like suddenly fascinated. This neighbor is literally just bringing home like animals from the animal park and like lions and monkeys and just like letting them loose in his house. And so Joe would bottle feed them.

house and so joe would bottle feed them and uh in 1986 he and brian married at the bar where they'd met in an unofficial ceremony and he also bought a pet store with brian and gerald so the three of them bought a pet store in arlington texas they were back in texas by this point and alongside selling reptiles birds and small fish joe and and Gerald began thinking of how to save money, which they do. Now, this is a wild way to save money or make money. They would dumpster dive for materials and then turn them into cat playgrounds and then sell them. So, you know. Doesn't sound like the wildest thing I've ever heard. It is pretty wild.

It's DIY in a really weird way. You're just upcycling with free materials. Upcycling with trash yeah yeah so yeah they would sell these cat playgrounds which i feel like if someone was like look i made this cool cat playground for you and it was made of like tupperware boxes or dumpster trash i'd be like i can tell that's not you know at least there's some paint on there so nobody knows what's going on damn maybe they did because they made money so i don't know what they were doing maybe they were better crafters than i am but they you know they they sold them saved some money and using this money they started buying bigger cages

for other exotic pets like three-banded armadillos four-eyed possums snakes etc but unfortunately the pet shop would become the target of thievery so So in 1993, it became the target of snake snatching, which Joe thought was born out of homophobia. In total, seven snakes were stolen, including a red-tailed boa constrictor called Scooby and six pythons. Oh. Oh, boy. So to remedy this or to at least try and protect his store from future burglaries, he began sleeping in the store with loaded guns in case anyone tried to break in again. Oh, okay. So, you know, just in case. JIC. can you imagine if you're walking around like i don't know some small town it's like midnight you're glancing into shop windows and you look in and there's like this exotic animal shop all

these boa constrictors and there's a man just lying with like an you know as someone who's lived in fredericksburg yeah i can i can for sure see that i not to say that fredericksburg like has that and people need to like go rescue animals but if you told me like hey there's a shady pet actually there is a shady pet shop in freder. I've never even gone near it. I don't think it's actually I think it's abandoned now. But if you told me someone was in there like with their pet boa constrictors and a gun, I'd be like, that sounds pretty Virginia. Yeah, it sounds like Virginia, Florida, Kentucky, where I live now. It's all pretty on brand. So I guess now that you're saying that I'm kind of

like yeah I wouldn't shock me I wouldn't be okay with it I would be unnerved but I would take a photo for sure for posterity's sake a 1000% yeah maybe not with flash that might end poorly but you know no careful yeah you gotta and make sure the volume is off so they don't hear that you know like shutter sound yeah yeah we don't need to to start anything so he started sleeping on the floor uh with a gun or with multiple guns and unfortunately in october of 97 uh tragedy struck when gerald died in a car accident suddenly and tragically so according to business insider gerald's widow and children were looking to build a soccer field in honor of him but joe convinced them he had a better idea so instead of creating

or building a soccer field in his memory in his brother's memory he a got a tattoo of him on his arm that you can see in most of videos or photos of him and he bought a 16 acre old horse ranch in winwood oklahoma with the help of a lawsuit his family had won in relation to gerald's death so he had been left with 140 000 convinced the family not to build a soccer field but to instead buy the 16 acre ranch and in 1999 the gerald wayne exotic animal memorial park better known as the gw zoo opened with the first two inhabitants which were gerald's pets a deer and a buffalo so this is the start of the zoo it's the start of something like had i known it was like no um like the animals were were in good care had i known if i knew that information i would immediately be intrigued

of like we're starting hot with some variety in this place like it is quite a variety it's a weird start a deer and some and a buffalo it's like huh it make it's like what's what's next i could literally not begin to guess no clue right uh so soon to follow i'll tell you what came next a mountain lion a bear and then in 2000 joe got a call from a game warden telling him that someone had abandoned two tigers in a backyard. So he went to pick them up, named them Tess and Tickles, and brought them back to his zoo. So that's where the tiger thing began. Okay. Perfect.

Yeah. So in 2001, two years later, GW Zoo was now home to 89 big cats and 1,000 other exotic animals. Business Insider gives some good context in that Mike Tyson once owned three tigers, as many of us know, which cost him $4,000 a month for food to feed them. So essentially, if you're thinking three tigers cost $4,000 a month just in food alone, this place now has 89 big cats and a thousand other exotic animals so the expenses must be through the roof yeah you know i don't know the numbers but it must be wild so i mean not like 90 big cats times 4 000 a month is like 360 000 not including the other thousand animals right i would say probably like a nice chunk of a million dollars yeah well i mean that's just that's also just food that's not even like um

you know housing and yeah medical care and whatever else you have going on there insurance i assume uh but you never know with all these people you don't know let's say like two million two million a month i'm not gonna say either way because i have no clue and i don't want to get in any sort of hot water but it is it sounds like it's a lot of money um so whatever it was he needed a way to make his money back um and so he would start charging $25 to hold a cub for a few minutes and another $25 for a photo of the interaction. And this was on top of general admission, which was $15 a person or $10 for any child under 12. So that's kind of how he was making his money back at this point. But unfortunately, around this time brian also passed away this time from hiv complications and in the tiger king docuseries you don't really hear

much about him but apparently joe was like devastated by brian's death he apparently passed away in joe's truck as he was trying to drive him home so like just really tragic and traumatizing uh and so after brian's death joe started a new business venture slash scheme to try and bring more revenue in for the gw zoo and that would be a traveling show so here we go on this like now it's like basically a traveling circus he's got going here so under the name joe exotic joe began performing magic shows with the Cubs. And according to a New York Magazine profile, this kind of show would bring in a lot of money once it brought in, like for one event, it brought in about 24 grand. So he was making like big chunks of change, bringing these animals around to like malls and shopping centers and doing like shows with the tigers. So there's a one-day podcast

called joe exotic tiger king and uh one of joe's old assistants aaron stone revealed on that podcast one bizarre incident that happened on one of the tours which i'm just going to quote him and say at one show the centerpiece illusion involved a loud explosion and pyrotechnic display clearing to reveal a tiger in a cage which had appeared on stage unfortunately for the tiger and joe the loud noise made the tiger really stressed and it would cower in the back of the cage every time so when joe noticed this he conjured a plan uh and he got some orange and black spray from a fancy dress shop and he painted a sheep orange and then okay added black stripes to it however the sheep obviously was also freaked out by the noise so aaron this assistant had to hide in the cage with the sheep slash tiger but really

a sheep uh to keep it calm and when the pyrotechnics went off aaron was revealed cuddling this sheep on stage and when audience members asked joe what creature that was, he told them it was a tiger. So it was literally a sheep painted orange and black, but he told everyone it was a tiger. Okay. So this business venture became hard to maintain because according to the animal welfare guide, cubs are only safe to handle between four weeks and 12 weeks old. So in order to continue his stream of income, he needed a steady stream of tiger cubs. So you guessed it. He started breeding them because he needed to get them from somewhere. The easiest way is make them yourself, I suppose.

So that is what he started doing. Yikes, indeed. So while his business was going steady at this point, his romantic life was kind of coming back together. his business was going steady at this point his romantic life was kind of coming back together and in 2002 after brian's death uh joe who at this point was 39 married 24 year old jc heart pence and they had met because jc was an events producer and was helping out with the magic shows and even though they kind of took off with a bang the two of them uh their relationship turned toxic pretty quickly let me give you an example in mid 2003 uh heart pence or jay-z no jay-z oh my god jay-z oh my god yikes then jay-z showed up okay and then so did my lawsuit yeah yikes now I'm sued. Okay. So JC walked into the zoo's office and he found a piece of paper on his desk. It was a printed color photograph of the zoo's largest tiger, Goliath, eating a slab of

meat. And in white letters over the picture was typed JC's remains. And attached was a post-it note that said, if you don't get your shit together this is going to be your reality so now he's being threatened uh with his life and later that year things got so bad that jc ended up pointing a loaded gun at joe and saying he wanted out so that's how they split whoa yeah healthy healthy breakup so in the docu-series jc was not featured much either uh however later he was found guilty of aggravated indecent liberty with a child under the age of 14 he was entered into the sex offender registry and is currently serving life in prison for a murder unrelated to joe uh so that's where we left off with jc not jay-z jay-z to be clear please lawyers help

uh and shortly after breaking down of marriage number two joe struck up a relationship with 19 year old john finley who also worked at the zoo and of course became a fan favorite in the tiger king docuseries so as joe's zoo grew and his traveling show booked event after event he started getting more and more attention and with that came more and more criticism from animal rights groups and federal regulators who were like hey this man's touring around with a bunch of tigers that he's breeding himself and like putting off fireworks and letting like yeah children it's like the children hold them it's disgusting so he started getting a lot more attention and criticism and then in july of 2004 the oklahoman

published an article about a disabled lion cub named angel that had been born at the zoo uh and was had disabilities because of inbreeding because he was breeding these cats to the point that they were you know having being inbred and causing problems that way genetically um and so one activist piped up saying no legitimate animal animal sanctuary would allow that to happen and guess who that activist was none other than the one and only carol baskin enters the scene now carol baskin became a hit character sure did i don't i at least know who carol baskin is a year later especially that fucking song oh my god yeah anyway we're gonna talk more about carol baskin our basically secondary main character here so carol baskin

about 1200 miles away in tampa was hyper aware of Joe Exotic and his work. In 1991, at the age of 20, she had married wealthy real estate investor Don Lewis, who was 22 years her senior. And in 1992, Carol and Don attended an animal auction where she made her first purchase. So there was a bobcat named Wind song who went up for auction and she overheard a bidder saying that he was quote going to club the cat over the head and stuff it so carol hears this and it's like well now we have to get this cat like we can't just leave this bobcat to be you know stuffed and right killed by this fucking asshole so they know murdered murdered so they had no option but to buy winsung themselves and when they brought winsung home they realized she needed a playmate

so they found a man in minnesota who agreed to sell them a second bobcat and when they rolled up at this man's place they were confronted by a metal shed full of bobcats that were being bred and then slaughtered for their fur don't worry um whoa again carol and don were like shit we can't just leave them here um and so they were but to buy all of them and by all of them i mean all 56 of them so he's louise they went to pick up one bobcat and left with 56 oh boy no big deal no big deal look and then that that other that poor fucking winsong was like i just wanted one i just wanted a playmate you just gave me an entire like high school worth of friends i don't want this they're already forming cliques they already know

each other now i'm the new kid i hate this oh my god this is my home first yeah so now they suddenly had 57 bobcats i guess including winsong and this was the beginning of their housing exotic cats which resulted in the acquiring of 40 acres of land where they built their now famous or infamous big cat rescue so as news of carol's sanctuary spread she became overwhelmed with calls from people asking like about different zoos and sanctuaries and like which ones were you know okay or they would call and say like hey this place which one's legitimate yeah yeah or like hey just a heads up this place is like clearly not it's mistreating its animals yada yada right so she's getting millions of calls and so she decides to create a website to

compile all this information in one place and she calls it 9-1-1 animal abuse.com she also at this point begins uploading content onto youtube which she usually begins with her catchphrase hey all you cool cats and kittens uh and this is where one of her many fun quirks comes into play is born. I'm surprised you didn't start this episode with that. I know. Well, it was either the song lyrics or, you know, it's a guessing game or just throw you right into the Carole Baskin mix,

which, you know, and I will say, I think one fun feature, fun is not a great word. Future story could be Carole Baskin and whole uh oh we're not we're not covering that today we do not have room for that today but we could we talk about it but i don't cover the entire story there's a lot behind it um we'll get to it but yeah so if i ever do that then maybe we'll start with hey all you cool cats and kittens that'd be great yes that's a great idea i have to remember that so as heroic as carol may seem, people have questioned like how her business venture is so completely dissimilar from people like Joe's. Some have even speculated that Joe's animal cages were bigger and cleaner. But, you know, there's just debate back and forth. Like, well, Carol, if you're saying, you know, he shouldn't be treating animals this way. Why are you going to Minnesota and buying animals to be friends with your other animal like you know people get into debates about this i mean i don't know specifically

but that's just just pointing it out both sides of the story so there is also a darker side to this woman's story that we kind of just hinted at which is that on august 21st 1997 um her husband Don Lewis disappeared right yeah yeah Don disappeared and Carol reported him missing she hadn't heard from him in three days and he had told her he was a pilot and he had told her he was flying out to Costa Rica on the 18th they found Don's van in Pilot County's airport parking lot but he was nowhere to be found so in 2002 which was five years later uh she had him legally declared dead and that's notable because well people use this to argue against her being involved with the death but essentially like the moment it was legal to declare him dead she had him declared dead uh despite no proof that he had died if that makes sense like there was no sign of like any

hope being held out or anything it was like it was almost like she was waiting for the exact moment that she could call and declare it yes yes yes exactly so it was like even though there was no sign he had died she had him declared dead which is legal so it's not like oh you can use that right really as evidence but people use that to kind of prove their point um so she was never really a suspect like an official suspect in his disappearance but she was accused responsible for his murder by the media and uh notably by don's children and ex-wife who thought she had something to do with it okay because two months before he disappeared he actually had filed a restraining order against

carol and he had claimed that carol had threatened to kill him and had taken his gun away so he couldn't protect himself and yeah so there's like all the shadiness that occurred before he vanished that his family was like hold on like we have information here so don's ex-wife gladys and his children all claim he had told them he was planning on leaving carol and believed she she was dangerous and uh a year later in 2003 after she had declared him dead carol married chairman of her advisory board howard baskin and they are still together to this day uh you can see them wearing cute cat face paint together in their videos they are quite a pair, quite a duo.

Couple of kittens. Couple of cool cats and kittens, if you do say so yourself. So back to 2004, Carol Baskin is like public enemy number one to exotic animal owners and private zoo operators all over America through her 911animalabuse.com website. all over america through her 911 animal abuse.com website she's tracking violations of animal rights across the country and the backlash she receives is immense she is hated so much uh that once she opens her mailbox to find it full of snakes yeah wow a nightmare yeah you could i could be doing the i could be doing the thing i love more than anything in the world and if i found out that i got a mailbox full of snakes i'd be like i'm never doing the thing I love more than anything in the world. And if I found out that I got a mailbox full of snakes, I'd be like, I'm never doing that thing again.

A mailbox full of snakes is really the ultimate. If someone said, like, if all of a sudden I got snakes with a note that said never nap or eat steak again, I'd be like, I guess I'm a changed person now. I guess I'm never sleeping again. Yeah. I mean, if I got a thing of snakes with no note i'd probably never sleep again anyway so okay we'd both be in the same boat just really awake and nervous just super awake oh my god yeah so she finds this is this is basically just to indicate how people are how much they hate her and how much they're outright threatening her so um she'd often find online news articles about joe's magic shows and at this point he is

fully aware of how much she does not like him and is calling him out and he fucking detests her so uh he is aggravated as hell um she would often go online find articles about his magic shows and leave angry comments about the how he breeds his cubs and how like unethical inhumane it was um and it even got to the point where she would get her followers to like bombard the places that were booking him with emails and calls questioning like like they would call for example the mall he had a show at the next day and be like oh so you're endorsing animal abuse and all this stuff. And so she was basically getting his shows canceled and like losing him business. Got it. By calling the people who were hiring him or having her followers call.

So suddenly Carol started getting calls and emails of people asking, wait a second, if you're so against Joe Exotic, then why are you sponsoring his new road show? She's like, what well it turns out that joe had begun using carol baskin's big cat rescue name and logo to advertise his shows oh my god he's just fully did he do that just to piss her off yeah okay yeah okay so she's like what do you mean i'm endorsing it and they were like your fucking name and logo are all over his like traveling circus and she was like no it's not and uh turns out it was so in january of 2011 carol rightfully if i do say so sued him in federal court for trademark infringement i mean that's about as as sure that's as blatant yeah yeah okay um that's like if zb like started saying he goes no that would never

happen if he started ghost hunting under our name and that's why i drink that's called a dream that's called wow we're fine we finally made it you're right you're right that's called you do whatever you want zach bagans that's fine you know what i'm gonna leave him out of this equation because i feel like anybody could turn this around on me and be like, well, what about what you do? So I'm going to leave it. Leave it be. Okay. My bad. Sorry, Zach. Stepping back. Don't sue me. Okay. Finally, we found a limit.

As I lift my blanket with his face to my chin. You know, by the way, like this all stemmed out of just you should have just tweeted someone back. That's all this was. You know what, ZB? If you had just done the simple thing and tweeted me back, we wouldn't be in this mess today. Do you hear that? Just thought you should know. Em said it first. Okay.

So, right. So she sues him for trademark infringement. And as court proceedings follow, Joe began his own internet warfare. He built his own TV studio at his zoo to broadcast Joe Exotic TV on his website. These clips are on YouTube. They are as batshit as they sound. And alongside releasing marketing material for the GW Zoo, he essentially just used Joe Exotic TV to direct anti, to like create anti carol baskin's hate campaigns so this ranged from slandering her like he coined the famous phrase that bitch carol baskin which has become now like a meme and is all

over merchandise on etsy not that i've looked but i totally have uh and he created videos for research for research just for research, just for research. Okay. To anybody checking our bank account where I may or may not have. No, I didn't order anything. Only on my card. I promise. I did actually, when we did that episode on Beach T Sandy, I did order my brother a cool cats and kittens.

Oh no, it was a, um, a wine or a beer mug that said, I like to drink wine and rescue Bobcats. So, you know, I bought that mug it's pretty cool I got you also cut his hair to look like Joe Exotic too that's right yeah we had a weird you've done a lot of damage in terms of Tiger King action we've I've gotten too close to this story for some god knows what reason but for some reason yes good point I forgot about that so anyway he has this tv studio he's like directing these anti carol baskin campaigns um you know everything from that bitch carol baskin to creating videos of him firing guns at random

things like mattresses and toying with explosives warning her and other animal rights activists to not fuck with him essentially like threatening you know shooting things and being like don't mess with me yada yada uh in one instance for example in 2012 he said the following for carol and all of her friends that are watching out there if you think for one minute i was nuts before i am the most dangerous exotic animal owner on this planet right now and before you bring me down it is my belief that you will stop breathing got that oh so he's not being. Let's just put it that way. In February of 2014, Joe dressed up a blow-up doll with a blonde wig and started talking to it saying,

You want to know why Carole Baskin better never, ever, ever see me face-to-face ever, ever, ever again? And then he shot the pistol at the doll's head and continued, That is how sick and tired of this shit I am. So he's just i don't i mean there's nothing to say about that just like okay my guy yeah it's a little too much i think it's a little much and you know picture him with his mullet look no it's not a cute look i mean his mullet is a little bit no not even that oh i can't stop. I think every time I watched, I couldn't think about anything except his little eyebrow ring and how it was only dangling by a thread. I just wanted to rip it off.

Oh, oh, M. Oh, no. It wouldn't have even hurt him. It was like a centimeter into his face. It was like barely there. So anyway, I remember what he- If you don't know what this fella looks like, folks, Google him. It is Google Jugzotic and you will see. Out of sight. Out of sight. Out of sight. there so anyway i if you don't know what this fella looks like folks google him it is google jugsotic and you will see out of sight out of sight you don't know what you're missing

his eyebrow thing specifically i remember just watching it being like if that thing got torn out of his eyebrow he wouldn't even feel it it's like literally like it's seconds away from falling off on its own anyway so well that is probably why you were distracted uh i really couldn't listen to him whenever it was a close-up of his face and i could see it just like it's pretty holding on for dear life it's pretty horrific stuff um yikes i forgot about that uh eyebrow piercing so basically he's shooting blow-up dolls pretending they're carol and saying like all right threatening her um and around this time, Joe had hired a new employee that if you watch the show, you will recognize

named Travis Maldonado, age 19, who had come from California and was struggling with an addiction to meth. And similar to what happened with John Finley, Joe took an immediate liking to Travis and a couple months later, in what was probably one of the more memorable parts of this docuseries,

they all got married to one another. Oh, I totally forgot about that. Yeah. Whoa. Okay. They had a three-person wedding. And I don't mean three-person, including the officiant. I mean a three-person.

In that case, you, me, and Blaze got married back in 2018. We had a three-person wedding. That's right. Let's consider this a four-person wedding i guess so he travis and uh john finley all got married sort of i don't know how this really works illegally but um the ceremony was zoo themed they had an orange and black striped cake the flower girls were dressed up as monkeys and the ring and by the way the the three of them getting married were wearing these like hot pink button downs it is a wild look yeah if you like look up a photo it is bonkers you know it sounds i mean

i'm not gonna sit here and pretend like if i was invited to the wedding i wouldn't go like i would have gone to that wedding and um for research for pure entertainment actually and also a piece of cake i it's got to be the weird actually i would not eat the cake i feel like it was like made of animals or something yeah i don't want to know what's in the cake so i mean i don't you said you don't know so it's stupid of me to ask when you literally said you don't know but um was do you know if the wedding like was had to be done in utah or something or like where there's like like polygamy is no they did it right there i think um really like civil union you know they did cover this in the show and i don't i did not

write it down and it's been a long time since i actually watched the show uh but they did have a full-on ceremony so you're right it might have been like a technicality, maybe a civil union between two of them. And I'm not totally sure. But I think they do cover it in the show. But they did it right there at the zoo. Party of a lifetime. Party of... I do regret not being invited to that.

I was probably... I don't know how old I was. We were like 20. You probably would not have understood the gravity in many ways of what you were seeing. And what I was apparently in the background of dressed as a monkey. Yeah, I think maybe I wouldn't know what I was getting myself into. So it's probably for the best. But so they had this wedding.

They had an orange and black striped cake. The flower girls were dressed up as monkeys. And the ring bearer was dressed up as a crested black macaque which is a very i googled this i watched some youtube videos they're very very smart primates um fascinating stuff just you know if you're interested in that kind of thing uh so you know he had a vision and he carried it out certainly uh to 110 sure did you know what he had the wedding of his dreams and everyone deserves that so you know this is the third wedding or maybe the fourth depending on if you count both of these as two uh yeah he might you know what it's about time he gets that wedding

of his dreams look if i if i if i were getting married and i said christina want you to dress up like a monkey you better say you know like you ah, ah, you know, like you're in. Christine, who? Who, who, ah, ah? Actually, I'd like to be an owl. As you know, I've been working on my character development. Look, I wouldn't put you in anything less than an owl. Thank you. I mean, a full, just on display, wings and all.

18 feet tall. We'll all bow down to you. And maybe there's some government conspiracies surrounded around that. Do some pagan rituals that aren't really pagan rituals dance around yeah exactly it'll be fun i think it'll be fun you'd be the owl queen yes i would be instead of the tiger king yes i oh i didn't get it i'm stupid i'm like sure yeah okay moving on moving on quickly exactly what i'd be okay sprinting away

from this conversation flying away with my big big wings okay so the wedding in 2014 was a high point in what turned out to be otherwise a very shitty year for joe so his relationship with john finley soon began to fall apart the park had dominated their lives and joe had also become obsessed with the traction that joe exotic tv was inevitably receiving because how could this not become some sort of internet sensation or truly right like it's just meant to be a netflix docuseries uh so in what was a messy breakup on august 18 2014 finley attacked joe and was arrested and charged with assault and battery and on top of this joe also that year lost the copyright infringement lawsuit

not shocking uh filed by carol baskin and now owed her a million bucks so it was just i mean he should have seen that coming i'm sorry like i get that you're trying to piss her off and it worked but like there are consequences to your actions my friend unfortunately this time at least there are uh so it was decided after a long settlement that joe would pay her in monthly payments and a contract was sent over, but he just never responded. And that is until a wealthy but fraudulent businessman named Jeff Lowe, a recent customer of the GW Zoo and a new friend of Joe's. So essentially, this guy just shown up and been like, what's up? What's going on here? This place looks cool.

And then become his friend and decided to partner up in business with him. So they had gone skydiving together um in 2015 and i guess that's enough to bond you for a lifetime i think so in times of conflict people really band together and you're falling out of the sky it's that adrenaline rush will really connect you you know if i hated somebody on the ground once we're jumping out of a plane together i love you like i'm like you were all i had you are the only plummeted to the earth exactly you are my one link to to life maybe the the key to uh if you have like a bully a high school bully just go skydiving with them

and just throw them off an airplane yeah it'll feel good from beginning to end because like by the end you'll have a friend cathartic experience i would say um and maybe a fraudulent business partner you never know maybe maybe an attempted murder i don't know if who's to say i don't know find out so this guy right so this guy jeff low he agreed to put the zoo in his own name so that the property would never be given away to carol if joe couldn't make the payments the zoo wouldn't be taken from him because now it's under jeff's name right so although uh this was like a huge godsend to joe that somebody agreed to do this for him um even though they went skydiving

i mean i understand the shadiness of like so you only went skydiving and had one experience together and now you're just handing over your business to this person well so what i'm saying is even though they went skydiving believe it or not their relationship quickly soured oh no damn so you know what everything i said about skydiving with your high school bully shockingly that's not a good idea shockingly this advice might not work you know with jeff the jeff low when those episodes came out that's when i started getting bored because i think i totally didn't understand like why it was confusing i actually remember that too and i remember being like wait he's and you know i i remember specifically drinking way too much during one episode and going like who's that guy again it's and there's i will

say there's a lot of jeffs joes johns. The Js do get confusing. I have to put that out there. But so this Jeff skydiving fella, he puts the zoo under his name to protect Joe from Carol's lawyers essentially taking it from him. But they have big personalities and they start butting heads. And bigger cats. And even bigger cats. This is a big story. We're in Florida. What else do you expect uh and

so while this is happening carol is like hello i'm still trying to get my million dollar settlement and uh this is now when everything kind of bubbles up for joe and his hatred of this woman manifests in a very baffling way so in another another memorable moment of Tiger King on September 18th, 2015, Joe releases a song about Carole Baskin called Here Kitty Kitty. Okay. And here are some of the lyrics. I'll do a slam poetry type reading for you. Please do.

I'll snap to it in my head. Yes, thank you. So if you're ever down in Tampa on a big cat refuge, don't pick a fight with your wife because it's a big 40 acres. And if you're not careful, you'll be gone in a blink of an eye. No bones, no remains. But that won't change the fact that Don sure ain't coming back. But you can't prosecute.

There's just no use. There's nothing left but tiger tracks. Oh, here, kitty, kitty. Mama's got some treats for you. Oh, here, kitty, kitty. Well, you can't find this taste in the zoo. Oh, here, kitty mama's got some treats for you oh here kitty kitty well you can't find this taste in the zoo oh here kitty kitty well mama carol she sure loves you oh here kitty kitty mama made this for you so that's cute uh so so okay so this guy doesn't learn because like now he's like just publicly announcing or declaring

that this person murdered her husband correct and like you already have a lawsuit that you're you already owe her a million bucks and yeah it's like okay like he doesn't he he's doubling down i feel like and that's exactly he's like i've lost it like i can't lose anymore like what do i have to lose essentially he's like i already lost more money more money your entire zoo your livelihood your your freedom not being in jail i mean but i guess that part didn't come through uh mentally so he sounds like he's a uh a little short-tempered he doesn't i don't think he thinks things through he's short-sighted in that way uh for sure um for sure kind of end of story i think that's really all there is to it so yes we have a claim here that carol baskin murdered her ex-husband don or i guess not ex-husband are

you ex-husband at that point your deceased husband your late husband late husband right we got at least presumed late because, again, nobody's ever found him. So there is now a claim that Joe Exotic has made on his lovely TV channel that Carol Baskin has murdered her husband, Don. And this theory arises, obviously perpetuated by Joe, that either Carol fed Don's remains to her tigers or his remains are in Carol Baskin's septic tank. So he's just like having the time of his life spreading these rumors and the description joe exotic puts under the here kitty kitty video is as follows there is one way to get a message across and that is with music okay well

i wouldn't say that's the one way but i guess it is a way yeah definitely on the list it's on the list there is one way to get a message across and that is with music everyone i guess it is a way yeah definitely on the list it's on the list there's one way to get a message across and that is with music everyone loves music it is believed that in 1997 a woman in tampa florida killed her husband and fed him to the tigers in order to get all of his property and money people magazine even did a story on it enjoy the video and share with your friends in this world if you can sleep at night and you have enough money you can get away with just about anything so he's really out there you know trying to take her name down right at this point it is also revealed that carol had don declared dead as soon as it was legal for her to do so despite there being no real evidence that he had died so that didn't help her cause i guess

right and however that being said she had hired a private detective in 1998 to try and solve this mystery and uh the detective had nothing but nice things to say about her and according to this private detective and the police she had done everything to cooperate had according to them wanted to find dawn and so you know it's kind of his word with no proof against her word with not really proof. So it's kind of an iffy situation. Yeah. Yikes indeed. So this is a good way to put it.

She's commented in the past. Can you imagine having people think you killed your husband or wife and not being able to prove otherwise? Without a body, there's nothing I can do to clear my name. So she really, like, what does she have to stand on? You know what I mean? Like, he can say whatever he wants. I mean I'm am I allowed am I allowed to feel for her like yeah well yeah I mean what someone's accusing her of murdering her husband with no proof I know if we were gonna find out like in a sudden twist in the episode I missed that she actually did it no no that's what I'm saying we might have to do a future episode on that story because

uh there's it's quite a tale and there's not really an answer because to this day no one really knows what happened to don lewis maybe we will find out but if he was fed to tigers there probably would be no trace of him and maybe we'll never know so and what happened with um the guy the guy that took the company. The guy that Joe Exotic. Jeff. Yeah. So what happened with him? He's coming up in my next couple bullets. Oh, okay.

So I will actually tell you shortly. Okay. And I would go into it now, but then I always intend to. I ad lib and then I lose my place and then you know what happens. It's chaotic. I hear you. So anyway, who knows what happened to Don? Maybe we'll find out someday.

But back to Joe Exotic. So he's released this music video about Carol. But then it gets to the point where Joe approaches a former strip club owner named James. So we have another J name, by the way. James Gerritsen to ask whether he knows any hitmen. Hey, cool. Awesome. Nice to meet you. nice hey random question now that i've just met you out of curiosity hey what's your favorite color also i have another question he said he wanted a woman named carol baskin dead, and he offered him $10,000 for the job if he could find him a hitman.

Okay. So thankfully, this negotiation never went anywhere. Then in February of 2017, Joe asks a new employee named Ashley Webster, who's now working at the zoo, whether she'd be willing to kill Carol Baskin for a few thousand dollars. And she awkwardly dismissed the conversation and immediately quit her job as good as a normal person would because what the fuck your boss is asking you this not a good sign so she quits the job this ashley woman and she leaves a voicemail for carol baskin warning her hey just so you know this joe who was my boss is like running around asking people to kill you so just a heads up uh anyway

bye i gotta find a new job i guess so it doesn't stop there because in late august the strip club owner garrison uh was pulled into an office with jeff so this is the other zoo owner guy who right now owns the zoo so jeff has a picture on the computer of Carol Baskin's property in Tampa. And the strip club owner, Gerritsen, remembers, he started showing me easy ways to kill her. He showed me Baskin's favorite bike paths, pointed out the location of the gift shop at her sanctuary, and showed images of her house.

And it turns out Joe also had a thick folder containing info about Carol that could help a hitman go murder her. also had a thick folder containing info about carol that could help a hitman go murder her so now jeff and joe are both kind of trying to get rid of carol i guess so jeff's on why is why yeah i was gonna say why is jeff so on probably because the whole zoo is the whole operation is being threatened you know okay is my guess and it's now under his name so he's got to care about it is my guess also i feel like the last episode i saw was when they introduced him didn't he have like a wild backstory yes he is a okay criminal like he definitely is a fraud like he's down to murder somebody yeah he's down to dtm you know allegedly allegedly allegedly yes precisely he he's more down than

i would be let's put it that way i would say on a scale i'm closer to the no on the gradient and he's just like maybe he's like that's all i'll say on the matter yeah um allegedly so thankfully because ashley had informed carol baskin about the death threat baskin had hired an agent named mat an agent named Matthew Bryant to work with her against Joe on the murder for hire case. So she hires this guy named Matthew and is like, someone's trying to kill me. I need help. So as part of Matthew Bryant's plot, the agent, he was able to get strip club owner Gerritsen on his side. And he said, OK, I know they've been approached like Jeff and Joe have been approaching you to kill

carol baskin or to find someone to kill her will you please be a confidential informant for me and carol baskin so and to let you know by by this point the strip club owner guy is not a fan of joe's like i mean a lot of people who seem to spend time with him don't become a fan of his or over time turn from becoming a fan into no longer a fan i guess right so he doesn't like joe exotic to begin with so when this agent is like okay will you be a an informant for us then he's like okay so he puts on he starts wearing recording devices to try and capture joe's conversations in the literal first conversation that he captures with joe okay the literal first one on september 29th 2017 joe said she won't stop until somebody

shoots her her day is coming man so he's like well this is easier than i thought i know i was gonna say wow apparently an informant is not a difficult job yeah at least not with this guy because uh they make it look hard in the tv shows but uh yeah he just walked in and said what about carol what do you think about carol and uh that's about all it took so that should have been his cue of being like what do you mean what do i think about hang on haven't i told you the many ways just watch my tv channel so the following months had the biggest snowball effect so on october 6 2017 travis maldonado died at 23 years old and this was some footage i don't know

if you saw this episode i i did see this one yeah this one's horrific it's a gun accident a gun accident precisely so he uh the footage is shown on the documentary via security cameras that happen to be running at the time. Travis was joking around with the staff. He had a pistol in his hand. He thought the gun wouldn't fire. He fired it at his own head as kind of just a joke. And it went off.

Like, see, it's unloaded. Yeah. I mean, literally the horror tale you hear from every parent. The thing that they say in any gun. Yeah. Not that I've taken one, but that you hear like never always assume a gun is loaded and yeah ready to fire right well like growing up like i was always told like if a friend says like oh you want to go see my dad's gun look it's not loaded and then they accidentally shoot themselves yeah exactly you just have to assume the worst because things do happen um so that's exactly

what happened he didn't think it was loaded and he uh pointed at his own head and he died so really tragic especially because they had the footage of it and at this point joe kind of began unraveling um he was very close with travis it was really disturbing so in october of 2017 he was expecting a shipment of animals from a circus manager and he realized he didn't have enough space for the incoming animals. And this is where it gets pretty fucked up again. He decided he was going to shoot five of his tigers to make space for the new animals. And this is confirmed? He decided to do this?

He said they were aging tigers. Aging tigers, however, a longtime zoo employee named Eric Cowell deemed them perfectly healthy and later testified that there was no reason these tigers needed to be shot. The only reason they were killed is because he was trying to make space for these new animals that were coming in. So, yeah. So the zoo hired a new employee named Alan Glover, and Joe immediately noticed that Alan had a teardrop tattoo under his eye. So he's like, oh, my God, you've killed someone.

Finally, the guy you're not afraid to. And therefore, I can ask you, can you want another teardrop on your face? Yeah, you'll understand. So he's like, finally, I'll give you five thousand dollars to kill Carol Baskin. So Gerritsen, the informant, hears about this plot and he records a phone call with joe where they discuss the plot um in a recording joe said as long as we don't get caught red-handed we got this so in mid-november smooth um in mid-november joe gave him gave glover three thousand dollars uh even though it wasn't the full five that they had negotiated and glover took the money and sped off to go kill carol baskin at least that's what they thought so as far as garrison

and agent matthew bryant knew uh glover was buying a bus ticket traveling to tampa to kill kill carol baskin so they planned to arrest him as soon as they found him getting on the bus well instead of getting on the bus he went to the airport and flew to south carolina uh so yes he basically took the money and ran in other words he was like thank you for the three thousand dollars bye like he just left which like isn't surprising right like you got several thousand dollars to not kill anyone sounds awesome exactly so he uh so he disappeared they didn't know where he was so uh car Baskin was like, shit, I don't know where this guy is. There's an imminent threat.

So she prepared for it by installing blind security cameras. She stopped taking her notorious bike, her infamous bike on her usual trail. And when Glover, Alan Glover arrives in South Carolina, he drives down to Florida, but ends up just spending the money on partying and doesn't kill Carol Baskin. So for Joe, it became quickly, quickly apparent that Glover had scammed him. So Gerritsen, who, again, is the recording guy, is like, hey, I know a guy named Mark. He is a hitman. You can meet with him and he will kill Carol Baskin. So not shockingly mark is

an undercover agent and joe's like cool cool cool yeah let's meet so on december 8th 2017 garrison records this conversation between joe and hitman mark uh-huh and joe offers him 10 grand 5 000 up front saying that bitch has just got to go away. Just follow her into a mall parking lot, cap her, and drive off. So three days after meeting with Mark, Joe was getting married again. Fun fact, side note. Dang. This time to a young man from Austin named Dylan Passage. So after a fallout with Jeff, the guy who owns the zoo, Joe and Dylan pack up everything

and head to Yukon oklahoma and then to a beach in florida i don't know what they're doing a honeymoon i'm not totally sure okay they peace out they're jet setting and they're jet setting in back to florida i guess so on september 7 2018 joe exotic was arrested for conspiring to murder his archenemy 58 year old big cat rescue owner carol baskin as well as for accusations of illegally killing endangered tigers at his park to make room for new exotic animals. He arrived for his trial in Oklahoma City in March of 2019. And James Garriston, Carol Baskin, and Eric Cowell, who was the employee of the zoo who said that the tigers were not aging,

they were healthy, all testified at the trial. the trial prosecutors showed photos of tiger carcasses that federal agents dug and dug up in the back of the zoo one fish and wildlife service agent testified that they had been stuffed in their graves like hot dogs in a pack like he had just totally oh my god it was really sad really really wow um and then on april 2nd 2019 56year-old Joe was found guilty of all counts, two counts of murder for hire, 17 wildlife charges. And he is still to this day serving a 22-year sentence in prison and is currently being housed at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas due to a blood immune disorder that he has. So since the life-changing Tiger King documentary released in March of 2020, Joe has most recently applied for a pardon from Joe Biden because he did not receive one after applying for one from Donald Trump.

So I guess he's trying again. And he's also looking to publish a memoir. So if anyone's out there with a publishing company, you know, hit him up because his memoir, which which is called tiger king the official tell-all memoir uh is i guess looking for a home that's gonna be a wild ride uh and carol herself as many of us may know was recently on dancing with the stars and she danced to songs from the lion king what's new pussycat by tom jones and eye of the tiger um in a very infamous have you not seen it oh m it's painful oh i'm gonna show it to you it's painful is she a good dancer no oh okay i don't know i thought you like learned how to dance maybe she was fine but like i mean

she's probably better than i am but it's like just really awkward i'm very interested in uh what's new pussycat that's's got to be a good one. I only saw the eye of the tiger, but it is something. I mean, you know, she's putting in her work, I guess. So yeah. Anyway, that's the story. It didn't even cover it all. Like I said, one of the staffers named Saf Safri lost their arm in 2013 due to a tiger attack at the zoo um or the fact that joe exotic ran for governor and

then president and there's some footage of that uh so even that we didn't get to cover because that wasn't even like the wildest part of this whole crime story so whoa i recommend watching tiger king on netflix uh and then louis theroux also did a really i haven't watched it but apparently a really well done um documentary called Shooting Joe Exotic so highly recommend checking those out and uh you know let's all add the book to the memoir to the book club the ATWWD book club when it comes out wow wow what a tale I still feel like I hit a dead end on that like i feel like i was expecting some sort of closure that i never got from the from the episodes but now i'm just like oh so he's just

in jail and like he's just in jail oh how long when does he come out do you know um he's serving a 22 year sentence uh i'm not sure how you know, like, early on or is he, like, close? Do you know if he's, like, in the first half of it or anything? He was charged in 2019, so he's, you know. Okay, so he's been here for a while. No, no. Very new. This is all very recent. Got it.

So he is serving a 22-year sentence, but, like, as we know, a lot of times he can get out earlier than that. So we'll see. Oh, wow. I would love a therapist to analyze that person oh i bet they have maybe we should check out youtube talk about a case study if you're like a um like doing your like senior thesis or something like in college for psychology and only you could go back to documentary came out and rewrite your black hole or time travel if i could teleport anywhere it would be too joe exotic to ask what the fuck is going on what is wrong with you yeah it's all very disturbing um you know exotic animals aren't pets they're not domesticated for a reason um

while we're at it can we offer like an animal abuse hotline really quick? I guess you could go to 911animalabuse.com. There you go. Let me see. Just thought while we're in the spirit. If you suspect animal cruelty, submit an official tip by phone to the SPCA at 800-540-7772. I'm not sure if they take exotic pets, but you could try the SPCA. Maybe that's a domestic situation. I would check PETA probably as more of the general animals, all sorts.

Let's land with, if you see something, say something. Yeah. But not to Joe Exotic. Not to Joe Exotic or his TV channel. Like maybe somebody who can do something about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, cool. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, cool.

Thank you. That was a great story, Christine. That's quite a wild ride we took today from black holes to Florida and all the way back. Many different worlds, some might say. Cool. Well, please, just a reminder, please, everybody, if you have not yet, go vote for us for the webbies, please. Bit.ly slash ATWWDwwd vote is that right yes yeah and um closing or voting ends on may 6th so you have uh not too much longer i think it'll be until voting closes so please go do that um and and

spread the word too if you know anybody else who listens to the podcast and maybe doesn't know that um have them also go vote that would be super awesome so thank you guys so much uh that's it for me that's it for me too all right all you cool cats and kittens and that's why we drink