And That's Why We Drink - E325 Last Minute Lasik and Nonsense for Your Mind

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

Welcome to episode 325 where Christine gets last minute Lasik and Em is in the know about a true crime story for once! First Em tells us the haunting tale of the Union Screaming House. Then Christine brings us a doozy of a stomach-turning true crime story: Jared Fogle the illicit Subway spokesperson. We very much regret the gas station Subway tuna sandwiches we got while road tripping to a live show once... and that's why we drink!

welcome to and that's why we drink i think i accidentally bummed christine out a little sorry i literally am crying i need to stop and get it together i think that was the first i've ever seen christine cry as if on cue it was wild you just immediately went into the water started flowing down my face i just feel so bad em it's okay well they don't know what's going on because it's been a week but just like ruined em's entire family vacation uh i had i had plans to go to iceland with allison's family but this uh what'd you call it what's it called foot hand foot and mouth disease apparently I'm reacting a little wildly to it and I have about last I counted like nearly 60 blisters all over my body yeah it's like a plague it's pretty bad and uh I can't even walk

and the whole point of this Iceland trip was to probably be outdoors and hike which I already God forbid but now it really I can't actually do it more than usual. So, we haven't decided, I mean we still have 24 hours for me to decide but it's not looking good, and also we are worried about like spreading it to maybe Allison's family not getting it so uh Christine feels a little guilty but there's I'm not it's Christine it's not it's it's it's fine I I'm not I'm not trying to make Christine feel better I was just I was just updating but um but I think it you know Christine's feeling a little sad today. It was not meant to make you feel sad, Christine. It's okay. I just know that it's been planned for a long time and now.

I don't know. I just feel bad. It's okay. You didn't know. We didn't know. I didn't even know that I hadn't had it before. It's just now. You should have gone to a hand, foot foot and mouth party when you were a kid

i should i know i should have gone and then it should have you know we should have all just hugged really tight to make sure that we really got five each other yeah oh no um it's a it's a weird it's it's i'm i'm usually not someone that gets like skin things. So I think my body's just also like weirdly sensitive to it. But anyway, that's that's the update. And poor Christine, it's is really somehow going through it more than I am right now. I just feel so bad. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to text Allison later.

No. Well, you know, you don't have to. But I know you're going to because you're you. But you don't have to. I literally have you're going to because you're you, but you don't have to. I literally have tears streaming. What is wrong with me? I appreciate the empathy, but I wasn't trying to put you on blast or anything. I know.

It just happens. And I already told Christine my baby is going to kick your ass one day and karma will fully blend out. But until then your baby's your baby is a flea on a rat that gives me bubonic plague then like i'll understand do you know what i mean i'll just i'll take it okay well thank god because my i was already worried about what type of baby i'd have and i guess a flea on a rat for the plague it's like stewart little or something like at least we can't get worse than that um even if my little baby one day is a flea on a rat during the plague my baby had a purpose

on this earth so to kill me yes thank you to eliminate to eliminate christine uh anyway i guess i was gonna ask why you drink but I think I gave you one by accident. Yeah, what the hell? The last two episodes I've been like prepared with a good reason. And then I'm like, now I'm crying for a totally different reason. What was your good reason? What was your actual reason? My actual reason was that I got a LASIK eye surgery.

But that just feels now like I'm bragging about my good fortune and good experiences. Well, you're putting good work to them with the tears and everything. Yeah, apparently that's true. Maybe they've reconstructed my tear glands or something. Let's talk about Christine getting LASIK because if you were at our Cleveland show. Columbus. Columbus show. I found out on stage with everybody else that Christine got LASIK that morning and didn't

tell me. Christine got LASIK that morning and didn't tell me. Oops. And I felt that was during our show, we do a drinking game and Christine found a way to write it into the script without telling me that she was going to do this. She went, oh, by the way, and it's it's a scripted show. I I know what's not supposed to be said. And when I heard, oh, by the way way guess what i went oh god oh no script what happened and um that was when christine let me know that lasers had been in her fucking eyes

and then she came to work god it it was not my it was not it was a very not a smart idea like i recommend if you're considering lasik eye surgery do it don't do it like a few hours before you have to drive to another city to perform on a stage. Did you actually not feel very good? Because you pulled it off really well. No, I actually like I felt totally fine. It just was one of those things where like I had to just kind of finagle my way into this because they were they were like, well, you know, take a couple take a day or a couple off work. And I was like, well, what if I have something like the next day? And they were like, well, you know, take a day or a couple off work. And I was like, well, what if I have something like the next day? And they were like, well, that should be okay.

And then I was like, well, that's close enough to a few hours. So by finagle, you mean you had to lie to every person? Anyone that was going to be an obstacle on your own plan you've already written for yourself. Right. So I don't see what the problem is. And so I did it anyway what the problem is and so I did it anyway and then you're just a human bulldozer it's amazing that's right thank you finally somebody gives me the recognition I deserve um no I they did they did know I did

tell the doctor I had a uh show that night and he was like that's fine just don't wear eye makeup so I was like well that's not gonna stand no I'm just kidding um but so I I was like oh I went in on Saturday and they were like here first of all I'll explain why real quick I had a reason I'm not saying it's a good reason but I had a reason to do it the day of our show and that's because they were having a thousand dollar off sale until the end of March and it was the end of March. And I was like, well, it really was like the last day or something.

It was like the 20th, the 30th, I think. And I thought, well, tomorrow I'll be in Cleveland. So got to do it today. And so I asked for their earliest appointment,

which was 7 50 AM. And I went in and it took literally three to five minutes. And then I went home and seven to eight seconds to five minutes. And then I went home. You said seven to eight seconds per eye. Yeah, seven to eight seconds per eye. Exactly. That's beyond. They count.

So I'm like, OK, this one took six. This one took eight, whatever. And then like three minutes later, my mom drove me home and I put in eye drops and went to sleep for four hours. Blaze drove me to Columbus and we did our show. And now I can see because these are just blue light glasses i've tricked you all i actually forgot that you had lasik and we're still wearing glasses because i would have been like you're so stupid you're no it's very

exciting because i feel like i always had to wear contacts to put the blue light glasses on i understand now i'm like i can just when i lay in bed at night and look at my computer i could just put these on there's nothing there's nothing worse too than the uh i know they've got those websites like you can like trade out the like they're like magnetic but like there's really nothing worse than having to have like a collection of glasses it's and then you bring them downstairs they're upstairs they're in my bag exactly like i never wear sunglasses because it would require me to bring sunglasses because I can't just. And you have a prescription.

You need to trade them out. It's such a pain in the butt. And that's the other one. Now sunglasses. I don't have to wear contacts to wear sunglasses. I just put them on my face. It's unbelievable. Like to wake up for the first few days, I thought I accidentally slept in my contacts, which is a scary feeling.

And also my eyes were kind of dry from the procedure. So I was like, oh shit. And then I was like, wait, no, I can just sit up and look out the window and like see leaves and trees. It's amazing. It's amazing. So if you're considering it, highly recommend. I am so thrilled. It was cheaper than I expected. It was also a thousand dollars off so you know look for sales uh it was so easy it didn't hurt one bit um i don't know i just i like i highly recommend it um i'm not saying i'm not saying go to work a few hours later because like if if you have the option like fucking take a couple days off hello of course i'm gonna recommend that but if you're a gemini bulldozer like christine you could probably figure it out um is that what color was the laser

um it was these red blinking light well no it's a blue light blue circle that you stare at and then there are a couple like red blinks you don't feel anything don't even feel like something's on your eye you just kind of look at a pulsing light. And they're like, and they were so kind. And they were like, you are doing such a good job. Like, you're nailing it, Christine. Good job. And I'm like, I'm just laying here.

But thank you for all of your motivation. And then they'd come down. They're like, two more seconds, one more second. Like, they're just so, like, gentle and kind. And it took, I mean, literal seconds on each eye. And now I can wake up and see. Technology's fucking crazy. And my mom did this 18 years ago.

With the knife. With the knife one, with the blade. So a lot of places do just lasers now. And they kept saying a word that I'm not going to say because it's one of Em's least favorite words i've already injured m enough today so i'm gonna not um but it starts with an f and it's four letters but it's worse than fuck so it's it starts with an f and then ends with an l a p oh they said it so many times i was like i can't hear this word anymore please and guess and guess guess what that flap of yours was it was moist not anymore it wasn't for a few days but all these eye drops and now me crying all over myself it's really

they're back flaps like just explain it to me you have said on the show how that's your least favorite combination and so many people say when will you ever use the phrase when would you use it well right fucking now a medical professional uses it so shut up that's when for you thank you um well i'm impressed and um i bow down to you because i don't plan on ever doing that i don't think i could so i know you say i know you could because it like really was so easy and they can suggest you take like a Xanax beforehand or whatever. And they also helps you nap. And they gave me two Tylenol PM at 730 in the morning, which I was like, this is a weird feeling. Well, one, I never need help to nap. Let's be clear. OK, fair.

Two, I think I just the only thing that's in my head is the fact that FLAP, there would be one being created on my eyeball. Yeah, it's a scary thought. And I will say, like, when I went in, I told the doctor, like, I don't like that. I don't like it at all. And he was like, yeah, most people don't like it and are freaked out by it. And he said, I've done about 35,000 procedures. And I was like, has the numbing, I asked, have the numbing drops ever not worked on someone? And he was like, no, they have never not worked.

And I was like, what if I'm the first one? And he's like, biologically, that isn't possible because of the way, like he really was like, because the way your eyes are, you know, the drops are going to work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, I guess that's all I need to know. I guess that's all you will know. The end. Ah, geez. Well, I am proud of you. That's a big step. Thank you. I've been considering it for many years. So, you know, if you're out there and you're considering it, this is your sign. I say go for it. I'm not liable for any lasers or flap situations, i say go for it i'm i also never want to be responsible for a flap ever so i guess that's it christine i got a good story for you this time around oh i have a good one for you too i'm excited for this episode i um sorry that was a very nice gulp of london fog um sweet allison made it for

me the little witch okay so here's your story this week i found it um very last minute because i we discussed um stigmatized property laws last week and i I was like, huh. And in one of the articles below, one of the sources was like, you might also like this. And I went, well, surely I will, because the title is the union screaming house. What? So, and. That's funny because my reaction when they're like, you may like this. I'm like, you don't know what I like. And then it's always like, obviously something I will like. And I'm like, how did you know that? You know, after I used to be that way.

But after TikTok, you know, you trust the algorithm, right? It's just too strong at this point. I I used to fight it. And now if someone says and by someone, I mean TikTok, if TikTok says you'll like this, I go, you already fucking know I will. Yeah, I can't even fight you on this. TikTok could tell me I have the most unhinged illness that no one's ever

heard of and was eradicated from foot and mouth disease. And they would be like, hey, by the way, you have this exact thing. The symptoms haven't shown yet, but trust us. And I'd be like, oh my god, I need a doctor. That's really bad. I hope you hear yourself saying that and realize that's slightly problematic for yourself. I at the very least would be like, why did you put me here? What's coming? You know, I'd be like, they know something I don't know. Every day,

every day I wonder how I end up in certain places in the world of TikTok. Anyway, the algorithm brought me to the union screaming house, I guess, this time around. And by algorithm, I mean Google. I don't know if their algorithm is as advanced as TikTok these days, but I don't know. Here's the situation. One of my favorite things about this location is that I would say 90% of these notes, if 90, let's stick with 90% of the notes are the firsthand account of the guy who dealt with this. Oh, I feel like we don't often get a firsthand account. So that's nice. It's so hard.

I really applaud you all the time with all the true crime nonsense you have to read. Nonsense indeed. Well, nonsense for your mind read because nonsense indeed well nonsense for for your mind because i feel like that has to be deteriorating you in some way um and that's why we drink colon nonsense for your mind that's good i like it tm tm tm and um but i i do envy you a lot in that you get so many firsthand accounts and mine are always just like rooted in alleged folklore i see what you're saying yeah so when i don't get a random legend from he said she said right i'm i'm always

impressed with myself that i even found it but really google found it so the algorithm did it for you for once for once so uh the guy's name is stevenachance. And I'm just going to start with a quote from him. Okay. Do you believe in ghosts? I used to be like many of you. I was a true skeptic. Is this like the start of a Nickelodeon show? Do you believe in ghosts?

I used to be like many of you. You probably wondered how I got here. Comedy of epic proportions. Well, so it is a book that he wrote. Oh, okay. I was like, who is he talking to? It sounds like he's talking to me as a 15-year-old watching the Disney Channel. Yeah, I was a little old when I discovered the Disney Channel.

Sorry. He's got a little green screen stick. Yes. Yes. Precisely. By the way, I found out that that was literally a drumstick wrapped in green screen tape no i wanted it to be something so much cooler but it makes so much sense they would just kind of like schlep it together i never thought of it but it does seem

like it would at least be like a cool lightsaber toy or something yeah well go figure do you believe in ghosts i used to be like many of you. I was a true skeptic, a true disbeliever. That was me until three years ago. Now I do believe. I wish I didn't. It would be easier for me to sleep at night. Even now, three years later, I'm still woke up in the night by the memory of the screaming man,

the child in pain, and the dark ghostly image that turned my world upside down and changed my beliefs forever you're probably wondering how i ended up here that's me oh no he literally said that was me oh my god okay that got dark but you know but he he knew the shtick he knew that that captivates people and he went i'm gonna i'm gonna fucking lean into it so captivated I got to say some of his writing was actually pretty funny. So, um, I mean, sound, I told you, it sounds like we're starting a comedy. It got dark pretty quickly. I didn't expect that, but, uh, yeah, he's a, he sounds like he, he's a good communicator. He's a good writer. He did. And I watched a few of his interviews. I don't know too much about him, but based on his interviews, he seems like just a very lovely guy okay so now

we're in may 2001 this is in union missouri and steven and his three kids were looking for a new place to live the kids i found out their names were all forms of eli so el Eliza, Elliot, and then I thought maybe like the next one would be Elijah, but it's just Eli. Oh, they were like, we ran out. We just cut off the end. I wonder if they had like a problem with the Zha part or something. So it's Eliza. Sorry, say it again. Eliza, Elliot. Oh, okay. That's probably why they didn't do the Elijah, Eliza, Elijah. Oh, maybe if they were twins twins that might have been fun i feel like it'd be the least fun because you'd be like elijah no eliza no it sounds incredibly complicated also i feel like in some languages or dialects maybe the j and z are a little too

probably similar yeah so eliza elliot and just good old eli so i like it the buck stops here with yeah we're done uh so they it's the three kids and i i tried to figure out their ages i know one of them was 11 and i don't know if that was the oldest or the youngest though i was some i'm very confused about that but they're all um you know living at home age and i think they all seem to be around like maybe middle school early high school that was the feeling i was getting um they find out about this one large house which they had just come from an apartment and it was a guy and his three kids and he was like i we need to expand for sure so they find this big house and they're kind of at their wits end it sounds like they had been looking everywhere for a house for a while and they needed a place right away they found this house it was two floors with three

bedrooms um so he goes to check it out uh with one of the kids at an open house apparently this house is huge it's very ornate it's very elegant there are literal cherubs lining the walls with someone painted them on there. Okay. In the basement, it had a fruit cellar, and it also had a butcher's shower. Do you know what that is? Ew, no. Okay, I had to figure it out, too. Is that where the butcher showers after he cuts everything up?

Fuck. So if you have an older house, and you have a concrete shower in your cellar for some reason and you don't know why that's there, it's because that used to be, especially in like maybe more rural areas. I think a lot of houses still have that if you're like in the hunting culture. I see. But it seems like it was kind of from a few decades ago, but a lot of people just so randomly have like a cement shower in their basement that maybe is near a back door. And it was so you could, if your cellar was fully concrete at the time with a drain in the floor, it was just easy to slaughter your animals. And then you could shower without dragging blood through the house. Cute.

That's thoughtful, I guess. I mean, I understand it. I do. I just am pretty grossed out. We're just so not of that life no we're not and i'm just picturing the smell and it's just gruesome what's it smell like christine just blood blood blood blood blood just nasty gross it made me want to literally blow my nose you asked me i didn't want to say it but smell of blood is such a once you've smelt it you can never not smell it once you smell till you probably dealt it so check yourself because you might be bleeding i don't have a witty report of that but it's my psa for today you said what that's your saying for today my psa oh well thank god

you found one we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel yeah we were lost we were the what was it the nonsense that ruins your brain or whatever um i think if our if our tagline is something about nonsense riding your brain it makes sense that our brains would slowly forget you know brains are just evolving yeah we change the slogan every time because we can't remember that's a good point something about nonsense every time okay every time so there's a butcher shower which i had to learn about then i didn't really enjoy learning about that um there was a fruit cellar in the basement um and then the cherub so interesting about the cherubs is that this place this home if you can't guess from my side of um this paranormal podcast this house is haunted so it's interesting that

there were cherubs lining the walls and in an interview steven responded because they were like oh isn't that weird like maybe they already felt like they need to put like angels around the house to make it safe his comment back was people don't realize that satan was a cherub oh god what the fuck you just gave me goose cam out of nowhere and i was like steven you came back real hot with that answer that was i knew this guy was something else this steven he said i i'm ready for that comment i've been thinking about this one for a while he literally was so prepared for someone to finally ask him about those cherubs in his head he was like this is my moment this is it steve you got this so he um anyway he didn't know at the time he just saw cherubs and i guess his daughter was like in an

angel phase and so he was like oh that's great she'll have a good time with this and does he mean a satanic phase or like an actual angel no that's your daughter that's right sorry i got him confused when all of a sudden there's like melted candles and like pentagrams by the butcher shower we'll know by the butcher shower where others stood no so he was very excited about the house they were really blown away by the size of it i don't know what the situation is maybe i looked up the wrong address but i zillowed it because that's what we did last week the house didn't seem that big in comparison to like what I usually hear are big houses. But I am also aware that they just came from an apartment and it probably seemed massive.

Say it's like a one or two bedroom apartment. They're all sharing bedrooms. Yeah, they're probably really cramped in there. Yeah, for three kids and a grown up. Yeah, it feels like a big adjustment to probably have like i mean your own walls around you your own address your own yard yeah well i was actually gonna say one of the things they were really excited about was the yard because they didn't have one so i think it all all felt really big sure um and so steven said that the uh he asked the landlady for an application and the landlady for an application. And the landlady has the goddamn nerve to say this right away.

You understand the responsibilities that come with living in an old house such as this, don't you? Was that Cindy? She was like, I... This landlady, by the way, is for those who are listening backwards for some unknown reason. who are listening backwards for some unknown reason. Cindy is someone we talked about in our last episode where she runs a, like, I don't know, some consulting business for people who are trying to sell their haunted homes.

Right, right. She basically helps you sell your, like, stigmatized property, your haunted home. And I feel like that's kind of what she's doing here. She's like, you're accepting all liability for this old, old house. And this landlady probably could have taken some tips from Cindy. But this landlady, as I heard in many interviews, is a real fucking character and maybe not in the best way.

Oh, no. She seems a little too erratic. And if they made a movie, I think they would dress her in a feather boa. She seems a little un erratic and she if they made a movie i think they would like dress her in like a feather boa she seems a little oh no unhinged in some ways gotcha that's the vibe i'm getting she got lasik eye surgery that morning and people were like she cannot get a fucking grip that's so weird because my next bullet is he calls her a gemini bulldozer oh boy um so she says you understand the responsibilities of what a house like this entails basically and he didn't know what that meant he was like uh yeah that it's old sure sure

so he said the landlady showed the house off in a weird way like it was almost a museum and pretty much within the week she said oh we want you to move in so they move in memorial weekend and as steven is grabbing some of the last boxes out of the moving truck to bring into the house a car slows down in front of the house and the passenger shouted hope you get along here okay and then the car just drove off and that's when the dad was in the car was like, now we wait to see how they react to that. What a fun prank. See, I would be holding those boxes that I just took out of the truck and I just put them right back in. You'd be like, and on that note.

I'd be like, okay, well, I guess I'm not moving in here. So this is a quote from Steven. I just threw a lot of his direct quotes in because otherwise I was going to just be summarizing what he'd already done. So he says the first night in the house went by without fanfare, maybe because we were so tired from the move or perhaps because the house wanted to draw us in a little closer before beginning its series of attacks and assaults upon me and my family. before beginning its series of attacks and assaults upon me and my family. So the first morning, I guess, starts a little weird because he notices, now that he's getting a better look at the house, he's going in and out of the rooms, he notices that each door had hooks and latch locks on the wrong side of the doors.

That's never good. The quote from him is, the latches were on the outside of the rooms as if to keep something in oh my god that's like the skinwalker ranch house like immediately i i'd be like where are those boxes i meant to put back in the truck serious they're still in that trunk probably so later that day steven um is hanging up a picture and it had two angels in it. And he was like, well, I'll hang this in the cherub room, I guess. So he tries to hang it on the wall. Then he walks away. And as he's walking away, it crashes to the ground.

Oh, no. He hangs it up a second time, crashes to the ground. Third time, he's walking away and he feels something hit his ankles. And the picture had flown off the wall and hit him it was like how many times do i have to tell you yeah it's like are you fucking kidding me jeez so steven was yeah he was like oh my god stay on the fucking wall so he hangs it up again oh my god wow he's really he's stubborn it sounds familiar to me but i can't think of who it might be with this right bulldozing kind of characteristic yeah it's crazy i wonder i wonder too i wonder if he nailed

the curtains to the wall also just to see what would happen i wonder if he just like nailed this picture up through the canvas or something yeah um so he hangs up again and this time it doesn't move uh so he's like okay i'm gonna slowly back out of this room and he hears the daughter on the So he hangs up again and this time it doesn't move. So he's like, OK, I'm going to slowly back out of this room. And he hears the daughter on the porch say, Dad, come look at this. No. And this is a separate instance. It's just weird that they overlapped. But he now goes outside to see his kids on the porch and they're watching the neighbors because the neighbors that are on their side of the street

anytime they're walking towards the house they will cross the street before continuing to walk past the house oh no and he's like of course his daughter who i imagined before i tried to figure out their ages i imagine she was like four so it was extra creepy but the daughter says they don't like walking in front of our house isn't that weird and like so steven then spent the next three hours watching neighbors do this and then if he tried to like say hi to them or wave they would literally like dip their heads and ignore him this is like the definition example of what you talked about last week the stigmatized property like people are stigmatizing the whole family and they didn't even know i'm telling you that

algorithm knew they're like if you like uh if you like these types of these things like stigmatized property this will do this will do but yeah the whole neighborhood is like against this. They're like, we don't even want to look. We don't want to know them. And so at the same time, the kids are starting to notice things, too. The son, he's noticing that he's waking up to things walking in the hallways and he thinks it's maybe his dad. There's a box of toys that he still hadn't unpacked and they would move by themselves. The toys would get taken out of the box and you'd think it was the siblings he would wake up feeling stared at and no one was in the room but anyway so one of these days uh they decide it's going to be a big work and play

day out in the yard and again this is a big deal because they hadn't had a yard before um or at least not at their last place and steven noticed that the trees were acting weird which i didn't even know to pay attention to plant behavior acting like normally i think so he said that the leaves were dropping like it was about to get really cold out like the seasons were changing and so i think that was kind of a nod to the fact that like even plants were dying on the property um it doesn't really get mentioned again but i did think it was weird that like now that as he was writing the book he was probably thinking back and everything just felt like a fucking symptom so um so anyway

he asks one of his sons or maybe both of his sons to i think it was one of his sons to go get the garden hose from the basement and kid runs down to the basement with the butcher shower, of course. And a few minutes later, Stephen hears his son screaming in the house and runs to find him shaking in the kitchen. And he, I think, well, it says that he peed himself. He was so scared. Poor baby. And he said, something chased me up the basement steps.

And when Stephen asked what it was, the son said, I don't know, daddy, but it was big. Oh, buddy, that's so traumatizing. Yeah. And terrifying to an adult. Can you imagine if Leona said it was big? Like it was. So they didn't find anything in the basement obviously and after this nothing really happens for a few days but soon steven catches on that every time they come home all

of the lights in the house are on um he thinks it's the kids it's like it feels mocking because it's literally every single light um and he thinks it's his kids and eventually he walks through the room and turns off every single light before they leave one night. And when he comes back, they're all on. No. While he was walking through the house and like trying to figure out why all the lights had come on. He realized it was so hot that he was like sweating. But his daughter was in the living room and said, Daddy, it's cold. No.

No, no. He goes into the living room and it's dropped like 30 degrees and then steven says that was the first time i felt its presence he said it felt like an electrical current coursing through his body and after that it left uh it left and he didn't have that feeling anymore and the temperature rose back to normal and he even watched the thermostat go up 30 degrees oh no no soon after that the family is talking all in the same room together and it's right before bedtime and the kids backs they were um the back their backs were facing the living room steven was looking into the living room They were the back. Their backs were facing the living room. Stephen was looking into the living room and he even was quoted saying, like, thank God, because I'm something like I'm so glad that they didn't see what I saw.

Because as he's talking to them in the living room, he sees a man standing there. And this is a quote, except there was a moving, churning, dark gray black smoke or mist that made up his form. A few moments pass and I was sure that when I looked up again that it would be gone. But he was still there and he began to move. Moving into the family room and pausing in the center of the room, his form was still a mass of churning turning blackness he stood there for what seemed an eternity but in actuality it was only a few moments and then he melted into the air oh god i mean it's like such a fucked up thing because it like breaks the cliche of like i glance back and he was gone it's like no you glance back and he's like i can move closer i can't think of anything more um like uh more convincing of an intelligent being because i feel like if you glance up and

it's gone then like oh maybe i missed maybe i caught something or oh that wasn't for me we're just existing in the same space but like when you look up again i just to me it always feels like it wants you to see yes and it knows that you expect it to be gone is what it feels like like it yeah and i feel like surprise i feel like even like like ghosts that you love and like that you wish you could see more of they're still polite enough to not freak you out that they're gone when you look up they're like we'll just make this really brief yeah like even like there are times where i've glanced i thought i saw like my grandpa or something and i like wished that when i looked up again he was there but like even they don't do that so i feel like if you look up and see something it's it feels sinister immediately

because it's breaking the rules another thought it is breaking it's breaking the rules breaking etiquette breaking the etiquette the ghostly etiquette and i i will also say on that note when you say like oh if a good spirit is around and you know only shows itself briefly that also makes me wonder like does this thing just have so much more power that it can hang around for as long as it wants versus oh maybe it takes a lot of energy for a spirit to like present themselves even for a moment but then like if he's like no i can even walk around a bit like does that mean he's just super strong too i don't like it yeah i hate that or like maybe what if you have good spirits next to you and it's like sucking up their energy and it's oh god he's like yeah hey hey let's keep making it worse um yeah let's just theorize on

how bad this could get well so he sees this moving black mass who is aware of him and wants him to see him cool presumably um and this is where some of his writing was really funny because he was like in my calmest dad voice i said let's go get a soda and see grandma and like oh he's like when i get ice cream and they're like why which i appreciate the vulnerability because i feel like we've already started in a space that's you know not the cookie cutter like we've got a single dad with his three kids you don't get that a lot and he seems to be incredibly close with all of his children and then also in interviews i've seen recently he's so proud of all of his kids like he's just like i just i really like this guy um i hope i really hope that there's like not something about him i'm unaware of but he seems very kind and wonderful

um and i just i think it's also really interesting that he was so quick to be like i was freaked the fuck out because i feel like a lot of dads would be like i'm macho and have to protect you know i thought i could fight it yeah zach bagans with three children in the house oh god no i don't want to see that i don't want to know but um no but he very i like that he you know if he feels a little human of like the second i saw that i also did not want to fucking be there let's get that all yeah i just appreciate the honesty so he was like in my calmest dad voice he said let's go get a soda and i guess even his kids were like it's about to be my bedtime and i get to go have a soda like yeah i mean like no questions asked i am following you to the car good choice because honestly you wouldn't have liked the answer so just go get the ice cream so they all head to the door before they can get

to the door oh fuck they hear a man in the house screaming in pain at inhuman levels oh no oh my god so loud that the neighborhood can truly hear the sense since his time there uh neighbors have reported like oh yeah we could all hear it we all heard what steven yells at the kids to run to the car he's like fuck the soda thing get out of the house oh no and as he drove away we just sped off into the night one of his sons in the car said daddy the basement monster is standing in the upstairs window steven looked at the window and he saw the same figure he'd seen downstairs looking back at them from the window. And the kid is like, yeah, that's the big thing that chased me out of the basement. Yup.

Fuck. So they stayed at grandma's for the weekend. Good. And then the kids ended up, they were already planning on being there for a week because Stephen had to leave town for work. planning on being there for a week because steven had to leave town for work um but while he was gone for work i think he just had enough time away from the house that he was able to like kind of you know i guess convince himself that it wasn't as bad as he thought and so i think we would all probably do or at least try to do especially i mean this is like the classic family who moved into a haunted house that they spent way over budget just trying to make things work they

invested all their money and time into forever home and they really need this to work because they don't have any other options like it just it sounded like he didn't have much of a choice and he had to convince himself yeah and i understand i mean even if we did have a choice i feel like our natural reaction is to try and rationalize it yeah definitely so he's like okay i'm gonna grab the kids from my mom and we're gonna go back to the house everything's gonna be fine well now that he's back at home with the kids he is looking through the shed one day and he finds a bunch of items that's the last tenant or tenants had left there in the shed um and he's like his his mom i also love that he's like very

close with his parents and he was he was telling them what was going on so even they were like i guess getting updates about how haunted this fucking house was and his parents were like you need to call your landlady and be like what the fuck is going on seriously is this place haunted which if there were more protection laws about stigmatized property maybe if he asked in advance they he would have gotten a response i don't know she seems still again a little like she would be the person who would not honorably answer that yeah and so we're in missouri right so they would have to jump on the um new york new jersey bandwagon is that right yeah that i think i don't remember

what i said about missouri but it wasn't one of the four states that have anything no directly about the paranormal in their right they just disclosure laws right so i think he could have asked and still not gotten anything so yeah it was by the book but i feel like a story like this is a perfect reason why there should be more disclosure laws about the paranormal. I mean, to be honest, like I would just ask, what is this shower for? And if they were like a butcher in the shower, but butcher shower, I'd be like, actually, I'm not interested. I'm stigmatized against this property now. Thank you.

Well, that's all a lot of trouble, folks. Just saying. I hear you. I honestly would have. I would have tried to like piece that i think i would have seen like a whole cement cellar i'm like i know some bad you would have looked at this thing from 10 miles away and been like nope it's haunted i just beg to differ i think the angels would have made me feel uncomfy me too i'd be like why do you need to be here

what's the situation what are you doing here? What are you looking at, by the way? I'm just trying to eat my fucking chicken pot pie, Marie Callender's. Leave me alone. So when he, oh, so his parents are like, you need to call the landlady and ask what's going on. So he got back. He sees the stuff in the shed. And now that he knows that there were previous tenants and he never heard their stories, he's going to call the landlady. He asks her about any ghosts.

Landlady conveniently can't remember. Oh, good. She takes her boa and she's like, hmm. Flick it behind her. Her like her her like scroll and quill to like, let me let me check my notes. Huh. Ghost, ghost. I don't think so

but she does say oh you know what's so interesting hmm interesting interesting interesting um is that i i don't know about any ghosts but i do know the stuff in the shed belonged to former occupants who just casually fled in the middle of the night oh come on and when steven asked how long anyone had lived there before him this was in 2001 the house was built in the early 1930s and i don't know how long this landlady has been in charge but to her knowledge how long has anyone ever lived here and she again very casually basically said a year oh no that's not a good sign uh his parents are still in the know about this they've come over his dad said that he would hear

quote a herd of elephants upstairs he would hear the screams of a little girl in the house um also one of the sons this is fucking crazy one of the sons got brave to like go to the bathroom by himself which the fact that he's already scared to go to the bathroom by himself he walks down the hall and he sees this smoky figure appear in the hall and he's already scared to go to the bathroom by himself he walks down the hall and he sees this smoky figure appear in the hall and he's staring at the smoke and it begins to morph into the face of a clown with no eyes this is so messed up this is like when they say that they know what your fears are and they just manipulate that oh clown with no eyes it sounds like it knew my fears and i know it sounds like you're right it's probably everyone's deepest fear honestly

a few days after this steven is on the phone with his mom while the kids are in his room and he starts to hear the doors rattling and he thinks it's the kids from the other room he tells him to stop playing games the doors rattle a little harder he says a stop the kids from the other room. He tells them to stop playing games. The doors rattle a little harder. He says a stop. He's on the phone. They rattle even harder and the doors are shaking like crazy. All of the doors. So he already, he's like, I have only three kids.

One, two, three. Oh shit. But the doors are freaking out. He scolds them still thinking they like, you know, did something or were playing a trick on him. Yeah. So he scolds him and says, cut it out. And then the door starts to rattle again. And he hears his daughter say, I'm reading and my brothers are asleep.

Well, they're not anymore. Tell you that much. Yeah. And as she said that, the temperature dropped 30 degrees. And just like last time, with the temperature drop came an electrical surge that hit Stephen's body. And this time it was paired with an awful stench, which we've talked about before is ingredient number one for a demon. Yeah, it's like pretty obvious formula there. And as Stephen is feeling this energy, smelling this stench, it's cold and the doors are shaking.

He begins to hear a scream and the scream gets louder and louder and louder until it's impossibly loud and the doors are shaking the floor is shaking the house is booming he's hearing the screams and his mom is still on the phone and he screams into the phone i don't know if he like can't grab the phone he's paralyzed or if he's still on the phone there but he says you need to come over help us we're leaving and as he says we're leaving quote then the whole house began to come alive oh no i thought it was all gonna stop but it gets it just kept going the house freaks out it's rattling everywhere the man's screaming is getting louder he's hearing boom boom boom of something running down the stairs at him then steven sees the floor shaking and he tries to get to the bedroom to grab his kids.

And he says, I felt something behind me and I knew I didn't want to turn around to see it. Boom, screaming, boom. A new scream mixed into the man's scream. This one was from a child. Boom, screams, boom, screams. I made it to my bedroom door, but it wouldn't open. And by this time, I too am screaming, throwing myself against the door, and it still wouldn't budge. So now he can't get to his kids.

Oh, no. He's throwing his body into the door to get to his kids. Finally, the door opens, and he tells the kids to run to the car, house still shaking and screaming everywhere. He grabs his daughter and tries to run for it, but then the door behind them flies open as if something was trying to follow them through the house holy shit he says this is a quote from him it was on our trail and i knew i couldn't let it reach us like chase them out of the or right follow them out of the house the whole house was shaking and alive with noise and something big on our heels when we reached the front door and out onto the porch, I slammed the front door behind us. As we got in the car,

we could still hear the noise coming from inside the house. I drove away and parked at the top of the street where I could still see the house and wait for my parents to arrive. We could see it searching through the house. No! Searching for us, its blackness moving from room to room methodically.

That was our last night in the house i sure hope so which i like that he straight again this makes it feel a little more human that because we always say like which i know it's a privileged thing to say like why didn't you just leave and like there's always all this you know laundry list of reasons that are all valid but i like that this guy was like i fled once and i came back fool me one shame on you fool me twice i'm the fuck out of here i'm not participating any longer and so uh steven would so that was their last night in the house that was the last time the kids went there but the uh there were a few times where steven had to go back to grab things but he never went

he never went back alone um but something would always happen while he was there people would either hear whispers or breathing or um anyway so he goes to the landlady to turn his keys over literally covered in bruises from trying to break this door down she gaslights the shit out of him she says some people are meant to live in an old house like that and and some people aren't. And I never thought you were the old house type. She's a lunatic, and she's not very nice. Like, girl, you live there.

Right, why don't you move in, lady? You love this house so much. So it only took, that whole story was only 13 days, not even a full two weeks. Oh my god, i assumed it was spread out much longer so that was like bam bam bam bam bam it started very hot and so it only took 13 days for the family to flee um and to this day he says the scariest thing that happened to him in that house was just the constant sound of someone breathing over his shoulder which is so weird because like all the other things did not freak him out the same way,

but the breathing freaked him out. I can see that though. I feel like that would be just like a fear that you have every day now. Like is someone just going to start breathing behind me and I know it's going to all start again. Well, I guess it was like a more sinister and like it's letting you know it's there and like if it wanted to do more, it could. Yeah, exactly.

So what I'm saying is like maybe he still fears it. Like if I hear that sound again, I know it's like followed me and can do it in this new place so a month later a friend tells steven to look up john crow captain john crow and this guy apparently used to be the property owner and we found out that um when he lived there the land dated back to the civil war and he was a slave owner um it doesn't say it in that few of words but they danced around it nicely but um don't you love that he definitely had enslaved people on his property yeah and um so also nearby they were they were trying to i there was one source so i tried to like look up the property or the land

near the property to see if there were other reasons for all this they found out there was other like violent death activity um in other houses nearby that could have been on john crow's original property it could have all been the same plot at one point but someone else was homicidal someone else was suicidal some which like i that could be anything else but people were trying to piece as much together as they could also nearby is union city park which is said to have several mass graves on the property so that could contribute to the spirits um apparently after steven uh the next family very quickly fled in the middle of the night. Other families have moved in there. For a second, I guess the landlady gave up and it became like a dog kennel, which I can't imagine those poor fucking dogs.

Oh, no. I don't think it's a dog kennel anymore. I think other people have tried living there also. Allegedly, at some point, the Roman Catholic Church put out a 156 page report about the house. They classified it the Union Screaming House Haunting. And they called the house a, quote, demonic infestation, oppression, obsession and possession. But like nobody asked them to do this. Like apparently.

Very weird. Like Stephen did not. He found out after it already happened. That is so odd. Like, Stephen did not, he found out after it already happened. That is so odd. Like, why? Yeah. For what? And then I, like, obviously I couldn't find the reports.

I don't know. Maybe they found out there were, like, angels on the walls and they were like, we got to put this straight, okay? Yeah, they were like, well, hang on. If we're talking about cherubs all of a sudden, Satan was a cherub. Let me get in on this. So, that's when we get to the quote steven says i do believe in ghosts i still drive past that house every once in a while and when i get enough nerve i look up at the upstairs window and it's still there watching waiting angry sometimes it screams still wake

me from my sleep and in my dreams i see a faceless man standing in that basement washing away blood from his naked body oh grunting panting breathing oh god oh my god i just got chills like from the scalp all the way down um so he's become you know pretty well known for this house and neighbors still reach out to him or, you know, people who have lived in or near the property or on the property have all reached out to him and he's built up a little community, but he's reached out to his old neighbors and asked why they never warned him. And they all pretty much said, because I knew you wouldn't be there for that long anyway. They were like, we didn't want to become friends. We knew you'd be gone by the end of the week. Nobody ever lasts. Uh, and the neighbors, neighbors like i said they did confirm that they would hear screams they constantly

still see shadows and figures in the windows and he uh steven himself was like anyone who has lived in that neighborhood knows what's going on there um after he left the house uh in an interview someone was like so did anything follow you after that i remember they left in 2001 steven says that after he left the house something followed him until 2011 10 years later oh no that's a long attachment and very poltergeist activity he would walk into the kitchen with his drawers and cabinets all open and one time he found all of his knives lined up in a row on the floor oh fuck that's really bad interestingly i don't know if the connection is there or not but i'm very quickly making a connection that in 2011 the reason that it

stopped after that is he had open heart surgery and died on the table and it pretty much all went away after that like survived like like he died on the table but then came back to life died on the table and came back okay i was like well yeah he's dead m of course it stopped but then um but no after that nothing's really followed him and so i wonder if this thing had some sort of commitment to like follow him until his death and then he like came back and gets to redo it i don't know i don't know what the rules are the fuck yeah maybe he severed some connection yeah maybe like in that life they had a connection and in this life i don't know like a technicality the guy had to move on yeah it's like a technicality yeah um i don't know

that's my guess but it's interesting he did say that something still follows him a little bit but like the lights go on and off and that's really it um he was talking about his open heart surgery and terrifying for me he said i've noticed that a lot in the paranormal community a lot of people in the paranormal world have heart problems stop so i don't know fucking fantastic great news i had to stare into the void for a little bit after that um in 2008 steven wrote the uninvited the true story of the union screaming house and later he wrote blessed are the wicked which is the sequel to that um he's also written other books but those two are about his experiences in the house. And after writing the book, he gained some notoriety online. He got in touch with one of the newer tenants who lived there. And her name was Helen. And she was being terrorized at the house around the time he wrote this book.

next to her and someone coming up and down the stairs um some of the things that she experienced were quote light bulbs keep blowing the gutters catch on fire the transformer in the front of the house blows up every few months the hair is cut off of her daughter's dolls though the girls and nigh is doing it herself and far far worse i'm so sorry christine they got a new kitten no what and and when helen takes her granddaughter upstairs to see it in a bedroom, the granddaughter said, I found the cat dead on the floor. Its neck and back were both broken. What the fuck? Her grandson. I don't know if it was the granddaughter or Helen who said that, but that's what they found.

Her grandson says something tried to push him down the stairs injuring him the police turn up in the middle of the night claiming someone had made a suicide call from the house and helen was the only one home and had not made the call what the fucking fuck so she's somehow having like an even worse yeah i mean people i wonder if she's been there longer i think she had been i mean longer, longer than 13 days. Yeah. Right. Even worse, she claims that she was being forwarded by this thing. And eventually it gets so bad that Helen spirals mentally, which again, I will caveat, this could mean an attachment.

It could also mean actual mental illness that needs to be taken into account. I'll be honest. I'm kind of worried about this daughter too if it's like her doll's hair's getting cut off and then her cat died like i'm not saying she did it i'm just saying seems like some sort of psych evaluation should also be undertaken on the child i think all facets should be looked into um apparently she really did start spiraling after living in the house she started having homicidal thoughts she started using language that was out of character her eyes became black what the entity not only affected her but her friends i guess helen was starting to

wonder if her husband was cheating on her and her friends were encouraging her to stab him what this whole friend group is like all of them to be they need like a groupon for like therapy just to just make sure states and not talk again i think i think so um and uh eventually she was so possessed that she holds steven at gunpoint the steven like the former yeah because he decided he was going to try to help her like oh no because he had been there and he knew like what the terror of that house was like so he tried to help her and then she like held him at gunpoint she ended up going to a psychiatric hospital by the way and that's probably good either way um and before any of that happened steven did really want to help her and so he tried to dig into the property's history by the way. Okay. That's probably good either way. Um, and before any of that happened,

Steve, it did really want to help her. And so he tried to dig into the property's history. Um, not only do they at first find very little, but they're like convinced that the library's archivists were like withholding information about the house because there was so little about it. I don't like that.

Um, after all this, his career in the paranormal world also took off he founded the missouri paranormal research society he became a lecture speaker he's been featured in like docuseries he has a radio show he they did an episode um called well an episode of a haunting called fear house about his family um and in that actually the story expands even further to after him where the tenants after him eventually met with steven because steven had like a bad dream after he moved out of the house and felt like he needed to warn the next family and all that apparently is real

because even that family was interviewed on the show oh wow so um the the story continues i guess but it seems like no one stays longer than a year and eventually all of them seem to find each other. And now they've got like, you know, I'm sure they're all texting each other in a very scary group chat. Oh, no. But it seems like they find each other very quickly. So I will say there have been skeptics who say that his book is incredibly vague. It has no witness testimonies. The random 156 page report has not really been seen by anybody.

A lot of people think this was just to boost his career in the paranormal world. But I do think this is interesting, like just to validate his experience is that quick fun fact, he does do lectures about the house. is that quick fun fact he does do lectures about the house and one time he opened up a q a to the audience and the first person to raise her hand was the landlady no her boa just flew through the air when she stood up and she went dear lord yeah the smell of chanel number five wafted through the crowd mostly gets did she say? She was being very snooty with him and like ready to call him out because it was making her look bad. But what she and Stephen did not know was that apparently in the audience, they were like almost all other previous renters.

Oh, my God. She was like among her own tenants. Yes. And so some people pretty much went after her when she tried to attack Stephen. He literally said the phrase, they took care of it. And then I guess just to add like salt to like her as a wound, she apparently, Stephen said that she also used racial slurs and people quote people really took her down for that so yeah yeah so she's not favored favored by a lot of people no um especially all those fucking

people were like because there were no disclosure laws protecting them all of these people all these renters probably are like are you fucking kidding me you would let us in the house and like knew we would leave within the year like whether she believes it or not like you'd think that if you can't even hold a tenant for more than a year that like you should at least let the next renters know i don't know exactly uh so the investigators or they've had investigators come to the house if they've like wanted that i guess in times where nobody's living there they've had investigators come to the house if they've like wanted that i guess in times where nobody's living there they've had investigators or maybe they pay the people to leave for the night i don't totally know but investigators have gone they've been pushed they've been bitten they also smell the same stench just driving by it feels really weird

at least one of them has gotten a vision i'm so sorry uh they saw in one of the trees a baby hanging by its foot um what the fuck and this apparently happened to a lot of people people have had really terrible dreams and then when they woke up something really bad happened to something or someone that they love um wait like people who are living there or just these investigators just the investigators will get an attachment to the house oh no so one person uh told their story where uh they had a dream this is really gonna be i think hard for you um it's already been so hard i don't like the things you already warned me do you Do you want me to skip this part? What's it about?

It's more baby stuff. She had a dream that a clown was harming babies, and then she woke up and a baby she knew was not doing hot. Okay. That's as vague as I can keep it. I appreciate that. Thank you. Sorry. And then there is an investigator named Tracy who said the house caused a but also let's go back for a second. I remember like another clown thing. Right.

Yeah, I remember. All right. So an investigator named Tracy said the house also caused a group of people to absolutely deteriorate within six months from each other. People were having horrible marital problems, personal problems, mental issues. They just turned into not nice people. And for some reason, everybody turned against each other in this group that we had. In a matter of weeks, everybody was hating everybody and personally attacking everyone. This house has this effect on people. It's depressing. It's oppressive. And I think that's how it works. It just wants to suck the life right out of you. It just destroys anything good that you have. Oh, my God.

I mean, I'm not usually one to say I'm too scared to go somewhere. I do not want to go near this fucking place. I also don't want to go there. Like, I feel like typically I'm like, I'll check it out, even if I get scratched or bitten or whatever. This is like a no-go. Like the curse and stuff and attachments and hurting people you love no i also heard something about how there used to be sacrifices on the property but that i heard that from like one kind of vague source so i don't know

how true that is but there were also um a lot of um enslaved people on the property and then i heard one one source say that um all of the um male enslaved people or all the enslaved men were killed on the property at one time because uh that captain crow guy thought that his wife might be oh sleeping with them aka fully r-wording them let's be clear um and so when he felt threatened, he probably did some really horrible things to them. So the only good, I tried to find something with levity here and all I could find, I know all I could find was that this house was, um, built using a building kit from Sears. That's all I got. Are you serious? Yeah.

They just bought it out of a catalog. Okay. That looks, that actually works for me cause I have a picture of it and I think it's so cute. And I know you've seen it, but I'm sending this to the group chat because like you would not expect it to look this way. Like it, I mean, it's adorable. I think. I don't know what picture you're going to show me.

Okay. I'll send it to you. I think it was like a cute little home. I mean, it has like little, like you can see was it was like a cute little home i mean it has like little like you can see that it was in a catalog like sears catalog it's this like tiny little it just looks like a little cottage it has like a little gingerbread yeah it looks almost like gingerbread like it has like shutters and like little white trim scallop trim around the rooftop and there's i see now what he's saying

when he says we would look at and see it upstairs. There's only one window you can see street facing upstairs. And so like, if you were driving past, you could look in that one window and I guess, presumably see a figure in there. And also, how did you find this address? Did you just look up Union Screaming House? Yes. I must have looked up something else then because the house I saw earlier wasn't this. But I also felt like something was off about that. I think you're right. It's called the John Bauer House is what Wikipedia tells me. That's weird.

I didn't even hear anything about John Bauer. Okay, wait. Maybe that's the wrong house then. Hang on. Let me see. Because that house would make sense why they were impressed oh wait that's not right that's not right that's not right this is in illinois i'm sorry union screaming house i did type in union screaming house so apparently wikipedia misled me here i'm sorry about that

let me see address so i think the i have a link oh i see, I see it now. I'm sorry. Is it a little white house? It's a big, actually a big white house. Jesus Christ. We cannot find this thing. Okay. It looks big to me. Send me the link. Oh, wait.

No, that's the picture of the set that they used in the haunting episode. Oh my God. I have a real picture of it. I'm pretty sure. And it is a small white house. Is it? That's the one. Yeah. is a small white house. Is it? That's the one. Yeah, that's so that house.

Okay. It's not quite as adorable as the one I found in Illinois, but it's not like it doesn't. I can see now because when I saw the other house, it looked like out of a Sears catalog and it looked like quaint and precious. This one does look a little more ominous to me, but maybe it's just because I'm biased. Okay, so if you type that address in to Zillow, it's on Zillow. I'm also looking at it on Google Earth, and there's a sign on the door that says no trespassing. Yep.

So this is what I saw. Let me just send this to you. The Zestimate is $130,000. Fun fact. Here's just the link to the Zillow. Man,estimate is $130,000. Fun fact. Here's just the link to the Zillow. Man, I wish it was this other cute house I found. You made it look real cute for a second. I'm like, wow, scallop lace trim on the...

That house, that's called the Union House in a different place. All right, let me see what you sent me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's one. Oy, it's scary's scary anyway that's what the house looks like but it's um yeah scary time it's off market so apparently it's being remodeled but i don't know when that was that post was made yeah i saw that wow anyway that is the Union Screaming House. Oh, what a friggin' story, man. Thank you. I don't like it.

I don't like that. The story was probably one of my favorites you've ever done, but it scared me a bit. Well, yeah, I watched a few of his interviews on YouTube. He has his own YouTube channel, of course, because he's like a dad. You can guess how the channel looks. It's about three videos and nothing else. Oh. But he's very, I think one of them is like a compilation of times they've done interviews. He's very, I think, proud of it.

I mean, good for him. I'm glad he made the most of it i guess i just always wonder because i've been watching a lot of um the dead files which is one of my favorite uh ghost shows it's on discovery plus and basically what it is is there's one psychic medium named amy and i love dead files yeah oh you do okay and then there's the guy who's like a cop like a new jersey cop or something new jersey cop and he basically is like has this accent like this new york i guess he's in new york sorry he's nypd i think but yeah he's a he's a tough cookie to crack like literally that's how he speaks so it's hilarious because you have like this like psychic medium who's all kind of like woo and like up you know in and this man's like real ass elliot

stabler he's like literally and they show his like nypd ring and he's like i get to the bottom of the case and it's you want to you want a knuckle sandwich yeah it's like a delight to watch because of their dynamic it's so weird but um i've been i'm only on season nine i've watched every single episode through like a crazy person um but there are times when amy's advice oh sorry so just to clarify she does a reading of the house without knowing anything about the family or the property and then he does like you know he goes and finds genealogists and goes to the library and like pulls out the actual you know information about the property and then they kind of compare notes at the end with the family. And she gives advice to the family of like what to do next, whether they

need to like talk to a local shaman or like just leave the property altogether. Or, you know, one child has an attachment and that's what's causing the issues. But what I wonder is when Amy's advice is you just need to leave. I'm but what about the next people like I know I I don't understand how that works like what would you do because you you can't just leave and like not sell the house you know you can't just like leave it abandoned so do you tell like I don't know I just always wondered about that because like there are times where she has said this house is this property this land is cursed you can't be here no one can be here it's just nothing good will happen on this land and i'm like well so now who's gonna buy it yeah i feel like just like how we were saying we should have like some sort of spiritual avengers team to like i feel like they definitely need one of like

let's you know let's point you in a direction of like what to do after this after we leave wonder right because i'm like i feel like that's just creating trouble for now the whole family you know who would fucking know cindy cindy i swear to god i need to talk to the cindy person she would at least know because even if like something was so haunted you didn't morally feel like you could sell it she probably would at least know a lawyer on like how to like you know get yourself off of having to deal with it sure yeah or somebody who would want to buy it for that reason or something like yeah like there just need to be more zach bagans in the world who the amazing prentice all right you take that back the amazing prentice yeah we need more amazing pre Amazing Crentist, not more Zach Bacon. Creston.

Oh, Crentist. Crentist is the dentist in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Oh my God, you're totally right. It's going to be Amazing Crentist. Oh God. Okay, yeah, we need more Crestons to buy up those houses so we don't have to worry about it. I agree. To make the most of it. Because what if they move in and they have an infant? more crestins to um to buy up those houses so we don't have to worry i agree to like you know make the most of it because like what if they move in and they have like an infant and it's like

oh it's just such a bad idea yeah anyway okay so um i have a story for you today that i'm very excited about uh this is a story of jared fogel aka the subway guy christine shut the fuck up because no no no what i'm saying shut the fuck up because does he have um he has i know there's a documentary was it on discovery plus did you just watch it i was on your account and just watched it. So I think I put it on your queue by accident. No, I've been watching. I watched it like months ago. So you put it on my queue. I literally watched it two nights ago.

I put it on your queue? Wait. Because I forgot to, because I logged into your Discovery Plus account and then I forgot to switch it over to. To a different profile. Yeah. So I was on your profile. Oh, I watched it a watched it a long like i mean not a long time ago but like at least a month or two ago well it was there and i went oh i'm gonna watch that i'm sorry i'm so excited no i'm so excited because i can finally fucking contribute because i never know where

things are going and now i can talk about it. And wow. Stay off my discovery plus. Honestly, I'm so glad like of all the topics, but at least I'm warned ahead of time because talk about fucking graphic. Um, yeah, it's not good. I mean, I was so excited for my plot twists. No, no, no. I'm glad this is this is going to work out just fine. Don't worry.

Okay. Okay. I finally know how you feel when I'm like, I know about this. Yeah. If anyone wants to watch that documentary, I'll tell you, if your stomach churns easy, maybe look out for like the later episodes. It's disturbing, but I mean, I watch a lot of true crime. So that's true. I would argue in the scheme of true crime, this is one I would recommend above many shows I watch. Oh, really?

Okay. So, I mean, I know it blows people's minds a lot, but I am part of a true crime podcast, which I'm very grateful for. But the whole thing is that Christine teaches me about this stuff. So I really stay off of like, I don't watch true crime shows. Until now. So I think I had some virgin eyes and watching that was really shocking to me so the fact that you're just like you know like oh that's kind of that's my every day yeah yeah that was one that i've been just recommending to people because i'm like oh well maybe i mean i might just be

kind of fucked up in that way of like well it's disturbing but i mean they're all disturbing yeah it's all disturbing but i never i never sit down and watch anything true crime so i was like captivated so this is oh well this is probably going to be now you're your gateway drug now you're going to be logging into my discovery and stealing all my inspiration i'll be i'll be sneakier you know i watched that so that i could prepare this episode and then you were like i'll watch it too oh man wow okay that's okay this is good you're right you're gonna you're gonna this is gonna be a new fun little way of doing this so okay first of all i listened to the red-handed podcast episode about jared fogel and if you tell

me right now that you don't listen to podcasts but you listen to this episode of red-handed i'm gonna kill you but i did not okay they uh live in the uk and they it was so funny because they had to describe what subway was like oh my god in their notes and i was like well duh you know that's obviously like wait how did they describe it what they say oh i don't know like it's a fast food chain where people order sandwiches like it was it was just so trippy to hear like some another country discuss like our food and have to explain it to each other and themselves huh that's very um and i know there are subways internationally i know that but i think it's just not as no like this whole

jared and all this is not really an international thing it's it's a u.s thing it's it's wild though because that feels like a culture shock to me that people would be shocked that there's a fast sandwich place well i don't think it was like they were shocked i think they just like had to explain what it was and it was so weird for me as someone who has basically always known what subway was to be like oh yeah i guess some people don't haven't heard of subway gotcha gotcha you know what i mean like i don't think they were weirded out by food i think it was just like it's just weird to hear people describe something that's you know so obvious to us it's the to hear the mechanics of something that feels so natural yeah yeah and subway feels so natural to me so i was like you know um we have gotten subway together

on the road i don't know what we were thinking we were probably in a gas leak or something but oh christine you know what don't even with me because i think you're confusing it with i don't know what you were thinking because we would go to subway i would get a normal and i said normal sandwich and then christine on the road at a gas station would get the tuna fish which we both got the tuna did we shit yes and then ev on the road at a gas station would get the tuna fish which has we both got the tuna did we shit yes and then Eva was like I'll try it and then we all got in the car and sat there and went what have we done why did we do this on a show day in the middle of Texas I think I so I think I was so ashamed that I removed myself obviously from my own memory but

also even I just discussed how we all realized we ordered tuna. Like, not one of us was safe. From a gas station subway. Something was wrong from a gas station subway in the middle of nowhere, Texas. Well, I think, so I also sense right around that time, I, like, started, like, personally stopping eating the tuna there just because I've heard enough, like, of. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we know it's not real tuna, all that. Don't worry.

I know. And I ate it anyway. Okay. I just, I got scared because I didn't know what was in it. enough like of oh yeah we yeah we know it's not real tuna all that don't worry i know and i ate it anyway okay i just i got scared because i didn't know what was in it and the mystery meat freaked me out so i was like nah not my thing anymore so now i'm like i'm sticking with turkey for a little bit i mean you're making probably the right choice i i just uh yeah i sometimes get a really intense subway craving and i'm like why i don't know why it just happens sometimes it gets you they have a rotisserie chicken option there that really can fuck you up in a good way. But you know what? I like, how dare I say like, oh, I'm not going to eat the tuna at Subway. But like, then I go to fucking Taco Bell and eat whatever. Yeah. You were like,

oh, it's just mystery meat. And I'm like, well, there's something about mystery fish that's worse in my mind. And I don't know why. why I understand I think I think most people had that reaction about the tuna like oh then what is it you know um it's alarming it is alarming you're not wrong um and I can't cast dispersions because I know how sick it is you know what I do uh anyway so let's get into this so I heard the red-handed podcast episode and I was like oh interesting topic and then I listened and they did like a two-parter maybe even a three-parter and this was before the docuseries ever came out and I remember going oh my god this is so much worse than I thought like so much worse than I ever knew oh so I only know about the documentary so if there's any twists

and turns outside of that I not really I feel like then the documentary came out and i was like okay now i can kind of put a face to everything and really like and by the way the if you guys want to see it i i thought it was really good um it's called jared from subway catching a monster on discovery plus uh so you know if you want to check it out i i recommend it i think it's good um but i will say there there were things in the red-handed podcast that did not make it into the docu-series just like more detail basically about um the specifics of what he did so talk about stomach churning like that those episodes are deeply upsetting um okay and definitely more in depth as far as like the detail of what went down and so i remember listening to that and going oh my god i had no idea how like they go into all his

international escapades and all that which i don't think the series really touches i mean they touch on it but they don't like they let you know what happened but yeah they don't i don't think they had room to like really you know break it down that far. But so it was just a different angle. But I thought they did a really good job. So shout out to that show. And then the docuseries. Here we go. And I'm excited actually now.

I'm sorry that I got flustered. I was just I think I got nervous. I like when you get flustered because it means in about five minutes you'll be really jazzed. You're totally right. You're like you ruffled my feathers, so to and then i was like hell yeah but i ruffled them like how you ruffle like a puppy dog in the ears you know and they get like all bent out of shape but then they get the zoomies they get the zoomies okay we've nailed it i got the zoomies here we go jared fogel was born in indianapolis indiana in 1977 and as he was growing up, he was pretty introverted. He spent

most of his time playing video games indoors. He spent a lot of his time eating as kind of a coping mechanism for feeling lonely. And he gained weight steadily throughout his childhood. And this just fed, you know, more isolation and made him feel, you know, more just alone than before. Also, I don't I don't i like to pretend that kids are better today i hear that maybe they're not but um that was also like a time where like bullying people for like how they look was very okay i was gonna say i think this was definitely you know it's hard to say a different time and it's not an excuse but it is you're right an explanation of it was definitely more normalized to bully people and to be fat phobic it was just the way it is the way it was you know there was

no one trying to like correct that later in life it was just yeah it was just like part of part of childhood and i think bullying even since we were young has taken on a whole new meaning nowadays and i know that yes kids are still bullying is still a huge issue so we're not you know downplaying that um but it's definitely more i think more adults are concerned about it now than they may have been uh back then well because they probably got fucking bullied for it and i know what it's like it's sort of like finally people are coming to realize like oh that's probably not normal and good for our kids you know um and so yeah and and and you know fat shaming was much still obviously an epidemic but you know it was it was considered

just more normal i guess or more normalized and i know like even teachers were given a lot more freedom to be teasing or joking with their students and that kind of thing. Even physical punishment, all of that. So it was a different time, so to speak. And so, yeah, he felt really isolated. And so in 1998, he was a college student at Indiana University. And he felt like his weight was really getting in the way of him living a full life. So he was 20 years old. He weighed 425 pounds, and this made mobility really difficult for him. So it was difficult to walk more than a few steps. He was suffering from sleep

apnea, which can like really harm your way of life and I know cause many issues down the road health-wise as well. So he was exhausted. He was not getting good sleep. And so as a result, he started to fall asleep in class and fall behind. And it's just that vicious cycle that like health can have, you know, bad health can have on your life. Finally, the kind of the breaking point, the tipping point was when he fell asleep at the wheel of his car and he veered over a grass curb onto the sidewalk. And fortunately nobody was injured. Um, but it scared him badly enough that he was like, I need to make like a drastic change stat, uh, if I want to, you know, live a long and happy life. So on his own, uh, a professional or anything, which I definitely don't recommend to anybody, Jared decided to go on kind of a weight loss journey. And so the way he did this was that he cut his calories drastically.

He kind of cold turkeyed it, so to speak, and began eating only 20 percent of the calories that he had been eating previously which is like a massive cut and it is not good for you typically like that's yeah i feel like if he did that in today's world where like you know people i don't know i feel like in i like to think in today's world it would be different but maybe not but i feel like i don't know have you seen those juice cleanses that's basically that wrapped up in a really expensive fucking that's a good point i i'd like to think someone would be like hey why are we especially like since subway ended up sponsoring him it's like i wonder in today's world if they would want to brag about like hey someone did like a really like unhealthy thing i don't think that they framed it that way it's like a juice juice cleanse. They're like, oh, well, look at how many veggies you're eating and you're cleansing your body. You know,

I think it's just it's the same. It's just a different packaging of like a crash diet. You know, I mean, good point. It was a crash diet. And to be fair, like the amount he was eating in a day wasn't like three grains of rice. Like it was 20 20 of what he had been eating when he was at his heaviest so it was still you know it was a massive cut not very dangerous it's a crash diet but you know it's still it wasn't like like he was still eating multiple meals a day so it didn't look on the outside like as probably drastic as it seemed um but so for whatever reason his body handled this dramatic change uh just fine. He lost more than half his body weight in one year, which is just shocking. Yeah. Talk about a crash diet. And so people obviously noticed this. This is really jarring. And so his campus newspaper

asked to feature him in a story about his weight loss. And that is when Jared revealed his secret. And you know, Americans love a good secret to weight loss. All everybody wants. I've been there. It's really tough out there, man. Everyone's got a secret. So this is his secret. Every single day, he would eat the same thing. He would have a six inch turkey sub from Subway for lunch. And for dinner, he would get a footlong veggie delight sub. He also ate a small bag of potato chips and a diet pop. And on his sandwiches, he would keep mayo, oil and cheese off his sandwiches. This is his meal every single day. And that is how he cut his calories. And that is how he lost half his body weight. So when they asked why Subway, he said, well, it was right next door and it was easy to access. Okay. Good enough, I guess. Sure. He said he craved pizza and other fast food, but he forced

himself to stick to his plan. And that is how he had lost all this weight. So next thing you know, Men's Health Magazine picks up this article and they feature Jared in a segment called Weird Diets That Actually Work. And when they published that, Jared's story took off majorly. He ended up on the news and then ding dong, Subway's calling. They have found the story and they are very excited. calling they have found this story and they are very excited i'm sure especially like can you imagine if you're looking for a new angle and someone just literally just says how about this on a silver fucking platter and that's what he did it was 1999 and he filmed his first commercial for subway which aired january 1st 2000 so let's think about new century day one weight loss i bet that i bet the gym ads and diet ads on the first of january 2000 were like at a peak you have to

imagine like oh if we survive y2k into the new millennium. Oh, yeah. I mean, can you imagine the, because they always say like, oh, if you're going to go to the gym, like January and February are the worst because that's when everyone's doing their resolutions. And then like eventually they taper off. Imagine when people thought that like the world was truly going to end and they were like, if I make it, I promise I'll do this. If I make it, I'll do that. Oh, my God. The resolution. You're right. It's like you're bargaining. Oh, I promise I'll do this. If I make it, I'll do that. Oh my God, the resolution. You're right. It's like you're bargaining.

Oh, I didn't think of that. The resolutions of the turn of the millennia. I can't imagine how many people were in the gym on January 1st. Yeah, because you wake up and you're like, well, I'm still here. I guess I have 50 more years to live. I guess I have to go to the gym like I promised I would. Yeah, that's a great point. I hadn't even thought of it that way.

But yeah, so he basically started off the new millennium hot with a Subway ad that aired the first of the year. So the commercial's goal was to rebrand Subway as a healthy fast food. Well, the healthy fast food option for Americans. And it fucking worked. Of course. It did. I grew up thinking Subway was healthy. I did not because my mom is crazy and was like.

Well, maybe not. Well, OK. OK, great point. But it was sort of anything where I was like, oh, that's healthy or that's X, Y, Z. She'd be like, no, it's not. I'd be like, OK. Well, I mean, compared to McDonald's and Burger King and burger i mean it's kind of very you can quickly kind of go to like oh well this place has like deli meats and produce so no you're totally right and yeah exactly compared to like a taco bell you know

crunch wrap supreme sure yes you're totally totally right um and i think and to be fair like we ate subway way more than any other fast food growing up. So my mom probably also believed that. I ate it all the time. Like if you were like on a sports team or something, you would always like somehow it would end up at games or on buses or for lunch at school sometimes. Yes. And I remember we would go. So even when I was on, I guess we can discuss this because it's sort of topical to the story. But when I was on Weight Watchers, which is now WW, very toxic, you know, folks, just be careful out there. delight with no cheese and it's like basically just whole grain bread whole wheat bread with like a bunch of like mediocre lettuce and tomatoes and like vinaigrette on it and I would just eat that

and be like yum I'm eating fast food and it was like six points of my like allotted eight points of the day or something insane you might as well just like eating a bag of carrots I know it was like really sad and it was like oh look I can log my six inch veggie delight with no it just is sad to think about but it is uh it was still prevalent and that was after that was when i was in college so you know that tells you something that was after all of this scandal went down and i was still just looking at it as a healthy fast food option so you know that tells you something I mean even they're like chip options they try to always have like the baked chips and that's I think I misspoke that was what he ate a baked chip oh they suck sorry but I really just like

I think they're fine but I'm I they're not as good as regular chips I think that's why because I'm sure they don't suck but they're not amazing they're not they're not regular chips. I think that's why, because I'm sure they don't suck, but they're not amazing. They're not a burrito. I'm always like, that's not worth it. I'd rather just eat a regular rag chips or not eat chips. I don't know. Anyway, okay, so he was suddenly skyrocketed to superstardom in the sense of, in like america's sense of the word so basically he was like the geico gecko i don't know i don't know another flow from progressive like somebody where

everybody just kind of knows who that is i mean we also we grew up in the time where we unfortunately were his you know his victim demographic and he he without giving too much away he becomes very active in like children's organizations and stuff like that but i mean the whole thing was like they promoted to kids like look at jared the subway guy he's gonna like lead you to healthy eating don't you worry and i remember like i remember his face so well as a kid being like jared the subway guy made subway healthy jared the subway guy tells me i can have fast food and not feel bad about it. Jared the Subway guy.

And like, I remember his cardboard poster everywhere. I remember every commercial. Every commercial. He was in all the posters. Like, we were very. Do you know how many years he was on TV? Like, at least a decade. At least.

15 years of this. Yeah. I remember him so well. And I feel like usually when you tell stories about like this guy was an icon i wouldn't fucking know jared the subway guy isn't that wild and you know i wonder because like i feel like my sister i'm just wondering like if i had asked her she'd be like oh yeah he's familiar but i don't think it was it would be as prominent because we were that exact age where that we were like pre-teens this came out it was like it was just a huge deal and also

noting that at the time that we were that age we couldn't just skip commercials like commercials were on yeah you had to watch them we had to watch them and so if it was like on tv but it was also like through it he was part of he like started some organization they i remember they did like promos and like nickelodeon and disney so like it was fully targeted at children again at a time when you had to watch the commercials i mean everyone knew jared the subway guy everyone yes yes um and we're not trying to gaslight you if you're like who's jared allison if you're listening my poor girlfriend my poor girlfriend she's like always the last on pop culture so i but i bet she doesn't seem to mind.

To be honest. Let me text her. I'll give you an answer at some point in the show. Well, I think she'll know. I think she'll know. We had we had a subway. She had to witness me eating my six point veggie delight sandwich. So I think.

Let's see. You never know. Who is the subway guy? That's what I said. She's going to Google it. I said, do you know Jared is the subway guy? That's what I said. She's going to Google it. I said, do you know Jared the subway guy? Oh, OK. OK.

Anyway. So anyway, he becomes this like sensation. People are suddenly totally on board, not just for the subs, mostly for Jared himself. Overnight, he became a beloved celebrity. He was on Oprah. he was on all the talk shows he was doing circuits he was doing ads for all these different commercials it was crazy and it was this like bizarre phenomenon because usually people don't just become famous for being in an ad you know but for eating sandwiches that's my dream are you kidding me like i know and to clarify also like he does

he's not like super hot or like yeah it's not like oh you would he's a dude he's just your average joe and i think that was why this worked so well is like everyone was like oh i can relate to that i could be that guy i could 200 pounds. And so it just seemed to really hit America in that right spot. Somehow it was like a story people aspired to. And, you know, at first, for obvious reasons, Jared was like, well, these are my 15 minutes of fame. I'm sure they won't last. But as we know, his momentum did not slow down. He signed a contract with Subway for an annual $1 million salary in exchange for ads and public appearances. Damn.

I know, like immediately getting a million dollars a year just for that. Over the next 15 years, he would do 300 ads for Subway. And these, I mean, also they show them in the docuserieseries but like he was having like doing commercials with like famous athletes like oh yeah the NFL like celebrities I remember seeing like football players with him and he would like throw a subway with them like it was yes and it was so cheesy but people like ate it up because it was just I don't know why but it worked I ate it up yeah me too I think it really was just because like we all knew him as like, like you're saying, like he was so human to us and he just like kind of stumbled onto the television. Yes.

You know what? That's also part of it. And remember American Idol came out right around this time and people just loved the concept of like the girl next door, the every guy. You could be this instant celebrity you could just be plucked from a diner like kelly clarkson and suddenly like skyrocketed to fame like for whatever reason in the early 2000s we were like so obsessed with that concept it's it was very wild the turn of uh like the early 2000s really was a time where before that, nobody processed like anybody could be someone. Yes.

It didn't even occur. And then all of a sudden, like even like High School Musical was like, you can be a basketball player and sing. Yes. Like didn't like blew people's fucking minds. Whoa, that's so true. And also, I feel like we were of the generation where our parents generation was saying to us you can be anything you put your mind to you can be the president you can be yeah a rock star you can be like the next i don't know famous math guy i have no you could literally eat a fucking sandwich

enough times and then end up like throwing a football with a nfl player yes like it felt like you're totally right and like even the sweepstakes at the time remember we're always on cereal boxes like you could be flown to hawaii and meet tony the tiger and be featured in a commercial and people were like i want that like yeah i don't know what the psychology is there but we were obsessed with it and i guess now with people going viral and stuff it's kind of the same but i mean hello tiktok like i mean to go from the early 2000s of like shocked that anyone could like make it to like people make it every fucking day now like yeah it's such a weird turnaround of like

now we just assume anybody can be famous yeah it's like wild thought so yeah anyway sorry i didn't mean to go on a tangent but that was the best way to put it like people were just so enthralled with this idea like you could just be suddenly skyrocketed to fame and like it happened and so just to give you an idea of like how successful this was in 2013 uh subways chief marketing officer credit jared with up to one half of the entire corporation's growth in that holy shit which like massive which by the way like that going back to what you just said too about like how at the time people didn't didn't couldn't understand that anyone could just make it like this i i think the only reason that he had profits like that or stats like that is because

at the time that was so rare i think today if someone lost a bunch of weight eating subway like best they would get is like subway would like collab with them on a tiktok like and i guess i was gonna say it would be like a blip on the social media radar you'd be like oh did you hear that one guy like you see that one viral video that's so i feel like maybe now if you were sick and we're sleeping through it and you woke up next week you've missed the whole thing it's too late and also if you post it at the wrong time no one would even fucking see it so like i i think maybe it was a bigger deal then because there was no such thing as oversaturation like there was a great point there wasn't internet there wasn't again because we didn't have a choice we just had to watch what was in front of us so it wasn't like we could change channel

or you could change a channel but you couldn't like just skip anything you wanted or avoid anything an algorithm like a lot of people i mean like i had direct tv so i was privileged there were some people were like you only had so many channels like what was there some people yeah me either pbs kids well either you watched it or you didn't fucking watch it either you were in the note or you weren't and like there was no like you know swipe for a half an hour and find a hundred different people getting famous right now like it was yeah it's just beyond it's out of control like it feels so distant and different um and i'm sure a lot of you listening are like oh yep in there uh it's probably very familiar so just to give you an idea in jared's first year with

subway subway's profits grew 18 just in that one year then the following year an additional 16 so just to recap 34 profit increase by bringing fogel Jared Fogel into their branding in the first two years. Yes. I also wonder if that was because, like we just said, this was the 2000 Y2K resolution where everyone was really dead set on losing weight. But the only reason they said they were healthy is because they brought him on. Like they had never branded as that before. So like he was the only reason they. So you mean like a combo of like him coming on board and the 2000s oh for sure i think it was i think it was the timing

yeah i think it was a perfect storm that like all of a sudden like a bunch of people probably more than usual even if by like one percent all these people now want to lose weight because they have this big resolution and then this one guy shows up and is like well you don't have to do anything but eat sandwiches from subway exactly yeah exactly i think it was a combo of the two so 34 profit increase uh in the first two years which is just outrageous um so america just fucking fell in love with this guy and jared's ads usually featured what they called this is the official name of them, his famous fat pants. It's genuinely the name of them. He would hold them up to show how big he used to be.

And I think the cardboard cutout had that as well. There were cardboard cutouts of his pants and you could like stand in them. Stand behind them. Oh, yeah. That was a big photo op. So outrageous. So they would obviously compare, you know, his current size to the pants. And that was the big thing, the big shtick.

And, you know, Jared was marketed as this inspiration to aspire to. But really, he felt just a lot of shame about, you know, his weight previously. And when describing his fat pants, he he said it's a good reminder for me obviously you know people are always fascinated to see the pants it's a great visual aid especially when i'm talking to kids you know to have a good message for them about the mistakes that i made so like he you know it's it's really fat phobic obviously very very shame-filled rhetoric and you know like oh well i made all these mistakes and children should wrong and make these mistakes and it's just very already kind of fucked up um but people were

eating this up so to speak and jared ended up founding a charity called the jared foundation love that for him the jared foundation I guess you kind of have to go with that because no one knows you by any other name. But the Jared Foundation. Subway guy or fat pants. Right. Yeah, you're right. I guess out of the three options, this is the least bad. And so what he would do, the goal of this organization was to combat childhood obesity in the United States. And so he would travel to schools with his fat pants, quote unquote, to teach children how important it is to eat healthy. And this foundation ultimately became not really helpful to anybody, more just a tax

write-off scheme for Jared. He actually pledged over $2 million in grants to combat childhood obesity. And in the end, the charity only gave out $100,000. Oh, okay. And he had pledged $2 million. Wow. Does Allison know who the subway guy is? I just saw something come through and it was not her.

Oh, bummer. Oh, well. So people, like we said, thought of him as like the everyman. If he could do it, so can I. And, you know, he had this average Joe look. He would even he was even considered like inspiring and dedicated because after his talks at different schools, he would stay. He would answer questions. He would hang out with the kids, ball chat with them answer any questions they had

take photos and you know throughout this of course he's he's doing like circuits of the united states and he's meeting all these different people and in 2001 he married his first wife whose name was elizabeth christie and they eventually divorced in 2007 when elizabeth reportedly fled and filed a restraining order against jared um and all we know about that is that elizabeth's friends told the media that jared had a mean streak quote unquote which is a scary and alarming red flag and i i'm unfortunately we don't know they didn't talk about they didn't talk about that in the documentary okay i was gonna say i'm not sure what of this is from where as far as like a lot of it is just from my head not the stats but you know like some of the stories and stuff so i don't know what's from the docuseries what's from the podcast i mean i i do also wonder like was it because of his

skyrocket to fame or going from like a quote loser to like all of a sudden now that's he oh oh you mean that he because he met her like several years into this yeah i'm saying like i wonder if like where his anger issues started oh i see i see like was it because he's like now a diva or is it like was he always this way or right right right yeah yeah that's a good question like is he now finally acting out his his mean streak he's always had. Who knows? But either way, all we know is that he apparently had, quote, a mean streak and his first wife fled. So, you know, not many people talked about this and Jared just continued to bask in his success. One day while traveling for work, Jared was struggling to write up a speech he had to give the following day. And he met this man named Russell Taylor,

who worked as the youth market director for the American Heart Association. And Jared was like, oh, perfect, somebody who can help me with this speech. So he asked for help writing this last minute keynote, and Russell wrote it, and it turned into this smash hit. And Jared was like, I need you to work with me from now on. Come join me. Join the Jared Foundation. And Jared was like, I need you to work with me, you know, from now on, come join me, join the Jared Foundation. And from then on, Jared and Russell worked together on events. And eventually, Russell became the director of the Jared Foundation. So as Em knows, and if you've watched this docuseries, you know, they had a really weird relationship. I don't, I don't i don't again remember

how much of this they talked about on uh the actual show but they had a really weird relationship they traveled together constantly and according to russell jared required him to drink heavily uh he spent thousands of dollars on wine just to like basically pressure Russell into drinking a lot as part of the job. Jared would rent hotel rooms for them to share when they traveled. And one night, this is kind of the start of the downhill in this relationship. He took Russell to a strip club and after spending thousands of dollars on dancers, he told Russell he would pay him to convince a dancer to come back to their hotel for sex. So Russell worked it out with one of the dancers and they both paid her for sex that night and from then on the two consistently engaged in sexual activities

with other people but like together yeah it sounds like he was into watching or something yeah yeah he had some proclivities and um it seems that that was one of them well he seems to it sounds like he liked either watching or being watched and yeah there was definitely an element of that so that's probably exactly nail in the head of why he would force him to share a hotel room um and so jared was just strange in general like it sounds like of all people to rocket to fame um this is not a good one because he took his power and money and influence and just like fucking ran with it and suddenly all the shit that was probably buried in his subconscious just came tunneling forward and basically okay i'm not gonna get ahead of myself let's just let's get back to the notes christina okay so jared was a seriously strange man in general okay he

liked to hold power over people he would make really weird demands of russell um like forcing him to eat gluten even though he had a really severe gluten allergy and like or gluten intolerance and it made him so sick but jared just forced him to eat it which is like bizarre i don't know if this is like a psychology thing but i'm getting a vibe that it feels like maybe he just felt like um this isn't justifying it i'm trying to like analyze that i feel like he's maybe like he never got to be in control or like be seen as like gross the alpha before because he was always like quote the loser so maybe he's like really into like this dominance thing or something like having finally having power and like i mean forcing a grown man to like hurt a food that hurts his tummy.

What a weird thing to be like so aggressive about. Yeah. But yeah, it was just like a very, very toxic situation. Jared also would call himself daddy when he spoke to Russell. So like there's clearly a power dynamic there of like, this is what i consider myself around you like you have to do what i say just very weird and at this point jared started making jokes and dropping hints about here we go if you haven't caught on yet here's the big gross twist it the what the aha moment the aha moment uh he starts making jokes and dropping hints about being attracted to children.

And Russell would just kind of laugh it off at first, even though he knew Jared was serious about this. And then Jared took it further and started getting Russell to find him child pornography on the Internet. And whenever the pair would hire sex workers from then on, Jared would offer the women that they hired even more money to find him children who had been forced into sex work. And Jared would tell them, the younger, the better. So the pair then took the Jared Foundation International. And I kind of alluded to this, but basically he told people, his, I don't know, investors that it was time to fight childhood obesity on a global scale. So they went straight to Southeast Asia, countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and immediately began participating in exploitative sex tourism,

where they would go and pay sex workers premiums to find them victims of child sex trafficking and would just openly engage in this and discuss it with one another. And it just became their norm when traveling. But of course, as we've also alluded to, Jared had access to children in the U.S. as well because he had a little something called the Jared Foundation aimed at fighting childhood obesity. And so his whole thing, his whole premise was I'm going to elementary schools, middle schools and teaching kids about how to be healthy and playing basketball with them and answering their questions and giving them hugs and letting them stand in my pants and taking photographs together well as you were saying earlier is that he would stay later too and exactly he was he was like so dedicated and engaged with the children and i'm sure he was he would call it for some reason like networking or connecting with a client he could come up with whatever he wanted. Yeah, he's just working overtime

to make sure that he's saving all these children from the mistakes he made. It's so sickening. And he just, of course, of all people, it's like devil in disguise. Like he's just there. Also, again. Helping children, quote unquote.

Again, like he's just like an average joe so like no he's unassuming in both ways no one thought he'd be famous and no one thought he'd be dangerous exactly exactly he looked just so average and i think nowadays we'd be maybe a little more heightened awareness i like to think but who knows i mean people get by all the time without getting caught for things so he of course began victimizing children that he met through the Jared Foundation. Russell Taylor, his cohort, had recently married a woman named Angie Taylor. And Angie Taylor now goes by Angie Baldwin. And she had two daughters. So these daughters were interviewed on the docuseries. I just found them very, I don't know, engaging to watch. They were

very, what's the word, just well-spoken. They were just like very great at being interviewed. So at the time, Hannah was 10 and Christian was 13 when their mom met Russell, their new stepdad. So they moved into a beautiful home with russell and things seemed great at first uh did you know i don't know if they talked about this jared actually owned russell's house and oh no i didn't know would like use it as leverage of course against russell to like you know get him to do what he wanted well i also feel like if you're making him get really really drunk like i feel like he's doing a lot of shameful things you're later holding over his head right exactly he did right he has a lot of like what's shameful when you're already r-wording children you know like well that's different god okay I know so Hannah and Christian

said in an interview that their childhood looked idyllic from the outside according to Hannah it looks like we were all doing well we were going going on vacations. We were moving up in the world. But all of that was a facade because our lives really started to take a turn for the worse. So at first they thought Russell was pretty cool. This is their new stepdad. He's moving them into a really cool house. He worked with the subway guy. And, you know, they're that exact age where all their friends are like, oh, my God, you know, Jared, the subway guy. And they're like, yeah, I totally would have. I mean, we were also that demographic.

I'd have been like, absolutely. Wow. You know, celebrity, you know, and they're in Indiana. So it's like how many, you know, local celebrities are around. And so they thought, like, this is pretty cool. We're getting like social points and, you know, he's making good money. We have this beautiful home and this is pretty quickly going to become a nightmare for them because their mom angie and their stepdad russell uh start grooming them to ease them into let's call it an all adult

world so apparently their family motto was age is just a number. As long as you're mature enough to do it, you're going to do it. I want to vomit. That's fucking sick for it's sick. So their mom and stepdad would host parties where they encourage the girls to drink and do drugs. I mean, these kids are like preteens, like they're in middle school. They're very young. It's very disturbing. Russell would constantly tease the girls for being virgins as children. He told them it's sick. He told them at their age they should be exploring more. I mean, they're just fully grooming these children. presence in their lives he would make sexual remarks about them he would make inappropriate

comments about their friends some of whom were as young as eight years old he would look at photos of their friends and rate them all by who he thought was the most attractive and like ask them to send more photos of their friends he also at one point i think it they said in the documentary too that like when you were saying the stepdad was, like, picking on them for being virgins, he, like, started, like, leaving, like, sex toys in their room for them with, like. Yes. He started leaving a note that was saying, like, like notes saying, like, have fun or some horrid, horrid something. Yeah, he would leave, like, vibrators in their room and write notes that said things like uh you should try this out and then when they would be like what the hell he'd be like it's

just a joke ha ha ha and their mom was like just uh whatever you know it just was like so grotesque like i mean yes yes also i'm sorry for speaking over you so much i just never get to contribute no i love it because honestly that that i'm glad you mentioned that because it'll come back but it definitely fits here better um and and so yeah they were getting like fully groomed into this of course as children they're like what the fuck is going on like they don't know what's happening um and they're being like pressured to drink and do drugs and, you know, under their own roof. It's all very, very toxic and abusive. So in late 2013, Captain of the Indiana State Police Chuck Cohen got a call from a state trooper whose friend had concerns that someone they knew was distributing bestiality porn and that someone's name was Russell Taylor.

So at the time, possessing images and videos depicting depicting bestiality was actually not a crime. Only the act of bestiality was. So investigators kind of looked into this and they saw that the messages, you know, had been sent from Russell Taylor and it was a woman performing sexual acts with a horse and so they took this uh to get a warrant to search the taylor's home and that's where they found images of his wife angie engaged in sexual acts with animals and they thought like wow this is pretty bad but little did they realize it would get far worse than that because they also as they're going through the house discover hidden cameras built into different facets of the home clocks uh you know other things just places where you wouldn't

know they were there and so of course russell, oh, it's for safety to prevent theft, which is like super weird considering the cameras were pointing at his stepdaughter's beds. Oh, that's a rough that's a rough explanation he's going to have to put together. Yep. Precisely. Precisely. And this is where I was going to mention he would leave sex toys on their beds. And when we think, think oh there were cameras pointing at their beds you could kind of conclude what's happening here um he had cameras uh investigators described the places where cameras were located as places that were intimate for children such as beds showers and any space where they might be undressing so i mean talk about absolutely violating just like to find this out.

And ultimately, investigators did find a video produced of clips from all these different cameras put together of children involved in sex acts, children just undressed, changing clothes, just a big back-to-back like montage of this and so investigators this is just horrific to hear christian and hannah explain they were brought in to identify not only themselves but their friends in these videos so police basically brought them in they didn't know what was gonna happen and then they pull out these videos and are like who's this person oh it's my best friend wearing no clothes you know it's just like so violating so horrific um and if you know and i'm assuming this eventually got into the hands of jared is that where we're going with this uh not yet okay okay so this is like the the point where the kids are kind of putting it together like oh okay it's starting to click why our stepdad is such a creeper why our friends are so uncomfortable

around him and our house this is what he's been doing this whole time um they you know the police blurred out their bodies in the videos but they had to identify the faces of all these different victims who were themselves and their friends. And at first, one of the girls said she was frozen because she couldn't believe what was happening to her. And then she remembered, I think I was starting to reconcile what was really going on. Everything that ever happened with Russell finally made sense. Everything that ever happened with Russell finally made sense. So Russell Taylor at this point was arrested. And immediately, Jared and the Subway Corporation released statements.

And Jared's statement read, I was shocked to learn of the disturbing allegations against Mr. Taylor. Effective immediately, the Jared Foundation has severed all ties with Mr. Taylor. So basically, yes. Covered his own ass. Exactly exactly and you were totally right like jared was a big part of this grotesque you know operation that russell and angie were you know enacting it under their own roof like he jared was instigating and perpetuating and getting the content from them as far as like well because you said earlier because i i don't remember this part from the documentary you said that he was like paying him to collect

child pornography for him so was that that was what this was like a home project to then give it to him yes he was funneling this back to jared and you know since he was also part of this whole underage operation as far as like going abroad and also engaging with children minors you know he was also part of this but ultimately yes the this was being sent then to jared for okay his consumption it's just sickening. It was like, you know, Jared had access to these children was like, okay, I'll exploit that. And their stepdad is totally 110% on board. Great. And then he gets caught and Jared's like, that's sick. You know? oh god i cannot believe this has happened they had they said they had no affiliation uh they were disgusted by these claims they were so glad jared had taken such swift action and then they were like phew glad we dodged that bullet and um once again they had no idea what they were getting into because pretty soon the other shoe dropped and that's when investigators were going through

russell's correspondence while building his case and they found that russell had texted an explicit image of a child to his boss jared fogel and they were like uh-oh he's part of this so it turns out jared actually this is very fucked up knew this child personally through the jared foundation And so, you know, they could very easily link this directly back to Jared. And Jared had received this picture in the text and replied enthusiastically. And thankfully, that's all the information I have on that. Russell told police that he was only committing some of his crimes to meet Jared's demands, which is like, not a good, like, yes, I believe that. But I don't think that that's an excuse at all. Not as helpful as you thought it was. Right. Exactly. It's like,

yeah, I know. I only half mean it. Yeah. He's like, well, I did like I did it for for that. Does it matter? Fucking A. So on July 7, 2015, investigators raided Jared's home and, you know, they tried to avoid media attention the the people leading the investigation didn't even tell the officers whose house this was because they wanted to keep this under wraps yeah but of course the media found out even though they went super early in the morning the media found out people gathered in the street I mean full like helicopters vans full circus situation and there are videos of them carrying out just stuff from his house they remove 5.6 terabytes of information stored on thumb drives computers

multiple phones and the nation is shocked but they're kind of like i don't think he would do that what public opinion is like charioteer wouldn't do that in today's world q anon would be like it was planted oh no yes cute oh i thought you said you said q anon for some reason i was thinking anonymous and i was like i don't think they would say that okay anonymous would absolutely help us get this guy this is the one who found it okay got you yes uh q anon would be like hillary did it it's the emails you know um my nurse said that to me the other day i was like i can't do this right now i was like you just put a needle in my arm i'm vulnerable to you right now please don't tell me more about hillary so anyway the

nation was shocked people were were on Jared's side. A lot of people. One investigator said in the public's eye, people were still siding with Jared and believing he had been duped. And like, I mean, to be fair, they had Russell Taylor to point out. They could be like, oh, it was that creepy guy he worked with, you know, not him. So one journalist even said when the story broke, she didn't believe it because Jared Fogle was considered one of the most trusted people in the country. That's so alarming. about it but they would they would have to they would have to there's got to be a bit of like mob mentality denial of like but i would have been able to spot that and my kid exactly i want my kid to be safe i didn't feel my nobody wants to feel like they've been duped or tricked by somebody

they trusted or especially let their children trust yeah so exactly people wanted to be in denial of this and they were. And so as Jared's house was raided on national television, a woman named Rochelle Herman, who is the main character pretty much of the docuseries, calls into her local Florida news station, ABC7, and says, I have something to say. Now, Rochelle had met Jared Fogle years earlier when she worked as a radio station host and had interviewed him. And this is from an article on investigation discovery dot com, just to give you an idea. So this article said Herman got her first disturbing glimpse into Fogle's mind as they shot the interview at a middle school. According to the journalist,

Fogle whispered into her ear at one point quote jared leaned over just out of the blue and tells me how hot he thought middle school girls were like the boldness you don't even know this fucking shocking like it's not like if this is russell taylor where you have like built some weird connection like rapport to go up to a stranger like that that's the level of like the narcissist cockiness that i think must have come from fame because he really thought he was untouchable enough. Untouchable. With all of the how quickly he could have gotten fired, but he thought there's no way I'll ever get fired. I can go up to a stranger and say, I like middle school children and nothing will happen.

And nothing will happen. And he did that. And she recalls, I just shut down. It was such a shock to me. She was so shocked. Like she basically her reaction was, I know I need to do something. I can't just let this sit here. But she knew no one was just going to believe her or say like, oh, you must have misheard. was which has gotten a lot of controversy over the years it was to start a relationship with jared and ultimately try and basically go undercover and try to get the proof she needed to go to authorities so according to rochelle i knew i needed to get jared on tape in his own words his own voice expressing his desires his confessions and especially even his plans for children she explains it wasn't the most thought out plan, but once the evidence was acquired, I could hand it over to the authorities. So Rochelle claims she maintained their relationship to gather evidence.

And to her credit, she does have now infamous recordings of Jared discussing very dark shit about children. And they play these in the docuseries as well. They're deeply disturbing. Rochelle submitted these recordings to the FBI, but they were like, well, it's not enough evidence. He's just talking about it. You know what I mean? Like he's just saying stuff that's in his head. It's not proof that he really did anything. So in May 2013, which was two years before Jared's home would be raided, Rochelle went to local police in Sarasota and was like, the FBI is not doing anything.

I gave them this information and this guy is still running around out there. And she showed them the recordings. And of course, they were disgusted. But they were like, this guy lives in a totally different state. We have no jurisdiction. We're sorry. If the FBI has this, that's like all we can do. So Rochelle told them if the FBI failed to act for much longer, she would go to the news herself.

And it wasn't much long after that that the FBI showed up at the radio station and confiscated all of the evidence she had collected against Jared. So she basically had no recourse. So they raided her home as well and they told her to stay quiet or she would be charged with impeding an ongoing investigation so now she is just in the worst possible spot because go ahead sorry no no i just because she knows all these things there's just nothing she can do well also and the the first time she went to the police i think they also forced her to continue going undercover because i think she was she was so fed up with having to hear all these like she didn't want to do it anymore. She was like, this is where I've left it. And then they said, well, under this law, you have to get permission.

You have to get permission to record somebody. And since you didn't do that, you technically came to us and admitted you broke the law. So if you want to stay out of getting arrested, you are now going to be an undercover informant for us. And you have to keep this. I cannot believe I forgot that they basically coerced her into being their undercover pawn. And then just to do nothing with the recordings until she threatened to leak them. And then they stole them and then still seemingly did nothing for a while. Yes. And there were times where she said she had to leave her children at home alone because the FBI were like, you need to bring this to us right now.

And she's like, children have nobody to watch them. And they were like, we don't care. And so she was put in this horrible position. And to be fair, yes, she was like, I'll do this cool undercover thing, which like probably not the wisest. But I mean, I think she did have I think she had good intentions. It's hard to know. But, you know, I mean, I see where she was coming from. It's a little harebrained, something I would do, bulldozer, you know.

I get it. But it did not work out well for her ultimately. So she basically just had to sit there and watch Jared thrive on television all while she knew everything about him but knew no one would believe her. And this whole thing was so stressful that it tore Rochelle's life apart she said when someone undergoes such a stressful situation for so many years it makes you susceptible to other things and she was diagnosed with a chronic pain disorder which has been nicknamed the suicide disease because of how painful it is and she had to quit her job. She got she had debilitating PTSD. And so finally, when she sees on the news that his home is being raided, she's like, finally, finally, this is happening. Someone is taking him down. So that's when she calls ABC News and says,

I have something to say. So investigators needed her to build their case, but they, because they worried that, you know, the public opinion would be so on his side that, you know, they needed people to basically come forward as anti-character witnesses and be like, this guy fucking sucks. So the assistant district attorney said, my conclusion was that Jared Fogle was fully involved in criminal activity with Russell Taylor. My question was, was I going to be able to hold him accountable for the totality of what he did? So the defense didn't argue that Jared was not a pedophile, but they said he was a good candidate for treatment. And a psychologist testified that Jared became a sex addict when he gave up his old eating habits, like trading one addiction for treatment. And a psychologist testified that Jared became a sex addict when he gave up his old eating habits, like trading one addiction for another. That's not how that works. They also said Jared was only guilty of mild pedophilia because most of his victims were

16 or 17. Oh, my God. I thought you were going to say something even more fucked up that, well, the others were international or something. Oh, no, no. But like, I feel like some some sort of bullshit like that is going to be part of the defense or could be part of the defense. But he's like, I mean, he's been sleeping. He's been part of the subway thing for like 15 years. I don't know when his first time with a child happened, but it seems like for the last 15 years he's been causing a lot of fucking problems like this isn't a minor issue deep-seated damage yeah mild pedophilia is a wild thing to say one kid by the way would be more than two minor pedophilia not

not mild right exactly it's like well some of them were 16. Well, some of them weren't. Right, exactly. It's an insane thing to argue. It's like they had nowhere. They just needed to persuade enough people. But, you know, of course, the 80 was not buying it. He said, I think you can have a number of addictions and you're not suddenly going to find someone underage sexually attractive. Yes. So texts and recordings like the ones rochelle took

also proved jared was attracted to children as young as six so they had this on audio this wasn't going to help his case any he's younger younger than six or as young as six but also it's just minor pedophilia but it's just my mild you know it's not that big of a deal and everyone's being dramatic big deal he's just like you no he's not so multiple women like rochelle came forward and said he had talked openly to them about his attraction to young children so he's doing this all over the place well he's so willing to do it to a stranger strangers right before she interviews him on television thing ever that he's telling other people too which also feels like a dominance play right because she's about to have to interview him and like be on but he knows her yeah he knows he's in her head now kilter yeah exactly so in the recordings rochelle has of

their phone calls he said things like he would love to put a video camera in an elementary school locker room quote at the very least. Oy vey. So prosecution said this demonstrated a longstanding and persistent pattern of behaviors, not just one moment of bad judgment. They said this is about using wealth, status, and secrecy to illegally exploit children. So in the end, he was charged with conspiracy to distribute and receive child pornography and victimizing, quote, prostituted minors. distribute and receive child pornography and victimizing, quote, prostituted minors. The judge sentenced Jared to 15 years and eight months in prison with a minimum of 13 years served.

And prosecution had recommended a shorter amount of time. And the judge was like, nah, I want to do longer, which is really rare for a judge to do. But Jared said this was absolutely unfair because the judge had two young daughters and jared felt the judge was quote prejudiced against pedophiles uh guess what hello judges are and all judges should be hopes at the very least i would hope so it's like well he doesn't like pedophiles so i think this is like a bias case because he's judging someone's dog but that guy has a dog so he can't judge me fairly it's like wait that argument is insane it doesn't make any fucking sense also he literally said why is he judging a pedophile he's literally a judge and you're a pedophile really hired to do that

and that only um so he was also registered of, as a sex offender and had to pay out a million dollars. Not very much, in my opinion, since that's what he made the first year with Subway in restitution to 10 of his victims. So each of them got like $100,000. And that was only 10 of his victims. We don't even know how many there are. And we also don't know, you know, how many didn't get paid at all or didn't get any you know we don't know it's just it's just you know really sick like he just gave a hundred thousand dollars to each of the 10 named victims and many more got nothing uh so i'm honestly surprised he didn't do any hush money situations all right that we know probably try this is too late now oh you mean like uh i mean maybe he did but it's not gonna stand up in court yeah no i know i just i i'm surprised we didn't hear about anything like that yeah i don't know he probably seemed felt like he was too good untouchable for that so his second wife katie mclin, filed for divorce as soon as the trial began and also filed for custody of their children.

And when she spoke out publicly, she was absolutely devastated. She said through tears, finding out that your husband and the father of your children is a child predator is devastating. You cannot even begin to imagine. imagine uh she actually filed a lawsuit against subway when it came to light that several reports had already been made to subway about jared and his sexual misconduct and they did absolutely nothing so that's cool well he was the cash cow and apparently that matters more apparently a subway franchise owner named cindy mills had reported jared in8. She had met him at her franchise grand opening and they had started a sexual relationship. And the requests he had made, sexual requests, became so strange and uncomfortable that she felt unsafe.

So she approached the Subway CEO and he said Jared would just be banned from her franchise and it's fine now. Oh my God. He also told her that Jared's new wife Katie would quote keep Jared grounded. Allegedly there were two more reports made to Subway about Jared's behavior which were never addressed and the lawsuit was ultimately dismissed. Jared's accomplice Russell was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his part in this whole nightmare and you know a lot of people think Jared got off easy. Russell's stepdaughter hannah said now looking back on it it makes me angry

jared was completely complicit in taking videos of us when we were in our most vulnerable moments he was a puppet master and russell was the puppet so disturbing in 2020 the case was reopened to investigate their mother angie and both girls were asked to testify against their mom christian said you exposed me i'm going to expose you okay okay i just got full body chills wow hannah said i've asked myself many times why would our mom do this to her children and christian said you just feel so unloved. Someone who is supposed to love you and protect you, supposed to be your mom, is dangerous. It's just heartbreaking. So in 2021, Angie was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 33 years in prison. And Christian

and Hannah, for what it's worth, finally feel like they've been able to start to move on now that they're adults. And Christian has her own child a daughter so in the documentary that aired this past month or two uh Jared from Subway Catching a Monster it's called Christian said having a child has changed my life I've never loved somebody so much I just want to give my daughter what I didn't have which just makes me want to cry heartbreaking yeah Hannah said our entire lives we've just been surviving. I didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. And now I can finally see that light.

I can finally get a little bit of the taste of freedom and happiness. And it tastes so good. It really does. Both women are really thankful for Rochelle and the role she played in taking Jared down. And, you know, Rochelle has said doing the right thing is very important to her, but she regrets how much she's lost as a result of this. Her son was also interviewed and he says he and his sister both struggle with anxiety and depression. Their family relationships are severely damaged. One issue that she discussed in the docu-series which i don't know

if you remember is her daughter finding a journal in which rochelle had documented her conversations with jared and so you know she told her daughter like no i was just saying all these things because i was undercover but like it's hard to unsee that as the child. And, and some of the conversations were about Rochelle's children. Like Jared would ask her to describe her own children to him. And, and, you know, she's documenting all this and her daughter finds it like, of course, that's, it has a devastating impact on you and your relationship. And, you know, it's deeply disturbing. The last I heard Rochelle and her daughter are still estranged um you know i don't know if anything has changed but rochelle's son thomas uh moved to taiwan he

never came back to america um but despite that he has said i'm very proud of my mother she did something heroic and it was selfless because she lost a lot in the process. And Rochelle has spoken out in the docuseries as well to Jared's victims. And when asked if she had any advice, she said it would be, do not give Jared the power to define what he did to you as who you are because that's not who you are and love yourself because you survived.

And I personally thank you for coming forward to help stop a monster. Wow. And that's the fucking outrageous story of Jared Fogle, the subway guy. That's wild. It's dark. It's dark. It's fucked up.

No one would have known. It's just like hiding in plain sight, you know? And also like hiding right on your television screen like right in front of you well great job christine i'm glad i got i'm sorry i really felt like i kept interrupting you i'm glad you got to add to it because i feel like i i totally fucking forgot about the whole fbi being like you like trapping her you gotta be ours now yeah like it's so fucked up well no i'm just i'm i i'm glad i could contribute but for the people who uh don't like me stopping you every five seconds i'm sorry you probably hated this episode but no no i feel like it was probably fun to hear that the back and

forth but um i have a i have a light-hearted thing to say like how you had a fun fact at the end of your story. Okay. Was Subway, did it start in a Sears catalog? Sears catalog. What happened? No, but there's a butcher shower in the basement. Just kidding. No, but on Beach to Sandy, I made my brother play a game where I read reviews of either

Subway stations or Subway restaurants, and he had to guess which one was which did he get did he do well he did you know what he did surprisingly well i remember being like surprised at how well he did um but it was it was a fun game for me to put together because i was reading reviews of like new york subway and being you know subway stations and being like oh yeah this could probably be a subway restaurant i mean both could probably like have rats and weird people you know yeah it's actually like yeah you're you nailed it um there was in college the the sandwich place everyone everyone went to it happened to be called the subway station and it threw so many people off because it was confusing it was a sub place called subway station exactly

and it was next to an actual fucking subway oh well see there you go and so people would be like oh let's let's go get subway and you never knew which one it was and it'd be like oh subway station and it's but it was they made the same sandwich it was really a rude thing to do in my opinion in my mind it was like before subway was a chain and they were like we're gonna dig our heels in and we're committing because we've been here longer and they just and then subway built a fucking subway next to them just to piss them off just to be like let's settle this once and for all yeah okay christine let's end on this for the for the episode go to-to Subway order.

I want to say the tuna sandwich, but I feel like I can't say that anymore. You can say it. Here's the thing. I don't eat meat, really. I don't. At least I try not to. So, you know. Do you like a veggie delight?

I do a veggie delight. But I put on mayo and cheese and I get a foot long and I don't log any of the calories. Sometimes I get the, is it the spicy BMT, spicy Italian? It's got like salami and pepperoni and all that on it. So it's the exact opposite of what you do. Yeah. You go straight to the butcher shower. I know. Spicy mustard, all that good stuff. Yikes. Yeah. I love a spicy mustard. That's probably the only thing that we have the same on our sandwiches. Unless we order, shamefully order tuna, which has happened despite your flawed memory.

I think give it a couple more months and after like a full year, I'll be like, oh, I could really try that tuna again, you know? Yeah. Maybe when we're on tour next, I'll be like, what do you think? I will tell you, they got a mean chocolate chip cookie. So they do have a good cookie. I'll, they got a mean chocolate chip cookie. They do have a good cookie. I'll at least see you at the cookie counter. The exact opposite of their health campaign.

Yeah, we'll be wearing mustaches since I don't really want to support them after all this. But I will eat the cookie. I will. All right. Well, I guess if you want more, you can go over on Patreon and join us for an after chat to see us probably giggle about sandwiches i don't know what else until then i guess i see you next week do you want me to start it oh i thought you were gonna say yeah i'll see you next week i'm okay yes see you then well because no you and i are actually gonna see each other next week because of florida right oh yes yes i will see you next week yes i'm excited

for it oh okay well it's not next week because you're supposed to be traveling so but yes in a couple weeks yes we i will see you i don't know days anymore i'm excited to see you and maybe your baby if i'm all healed so i don't think so because i feel like last time like we said she's really done a number on you so i don don't want you to. We'll have to restart the relationship. It's only been like a year. So we can. Square one. Okay.

We can come back quick. All right. And. That's. Why. We. Drink.