And That's Why We Drink - E330 Psychic Grandma and Swimming in Jeans

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

It's our birthdays! Episode 330, here we come with some special topics to celebrate Gemini season. Going off the Gemini theme, Em covers the Kinsella twins UFO encounters, giving Christine both a twin tale and a story of creepy abductions. Then Christine really knocks it out of the park and gifts Em with the history and crimes of the Duggar family, leaving it open for Em to fill in the blanks for us and show off their trivia knowledge. And we thought we saw a baseball... and then it hit us! And that's why we drink!

who needs eva not i not on our birthday you're hearing this out of a 30 year old voice but when you hear this I'll be 31 and my body will be decrepit yeah you won't recognize the trembling elderly voice coming out of your mouth I'll have significantly more wisdom though you'll see they'll all see

I wonder if that's why Eva's not here today she put on the calendar she was unavailable and I feel like she realized we were recording our birthday episode and just didn't want to be part of it which i don't blame her she's like i'm outtie yeah no well i feel bad christine because i really wanted to wow you with the the the vibe and so you're wowing me to an extreme level and i don't think you realize it i'm loving the color changing lights em literally has like rainbow lights on in the background to celebrate and you know they're like they're hmm i feel like they're cool to us because we never i never have them setting like the setting is rainbow but to all the like the cool like

twitch streamers and shit and they've got a whole setup like nonsense this is a typical tuesday for them so um and also like a significantly terrible quality compared to what they offer but well i'm glad you're happy i'm happy and that's what matters right now i feel like you're talking me out of my now now i feel like man you're right um you should have stepped up the fucking game well then we'd be on the same page christine because um i just i'm thinking back to like you know remember like our first birthday together and you like decorated the whole apartment and then we did it you did it a couple times in a row and then even for like our our live show birthday party i like had balloons everywhere

and i really thought i'm gonna fucking deliver this time and i truly had a plan to wake up early and like have decorations everywhere and then i realized I have been exiled from the closet that holds all of our birthday stuff because, you know, time timeline wise, this is confusing, but my birthday hasn't happened yet. And all of my presents are hidden and unwrapped in there. I see. And I have been told under no circumstances am I allowed to go into the closet, which is where all of the decorations for your birthday celebration would have been. You're doing a lot of talk, talk, talking. You know what I mean?

You're doing a lot of skirting around the issue. And I guess I'll just be honest and say I thought about doing something, too, but I thought I don't have the fucking time for that. So I did not. But I have something planned for you during my section. Oh. I brought something special to the table that I have been working on. It's just not visible right now does that make sense it's just all it's your your master mind my mind is the

present you're welcome well it always has been it's been a gift a gift to you and a curse but you know well christine on your 32nd birthday it this comes out on your actual birthday. On my birthday, which is kind of fun. Yeah. And it comes out, we were saying like at midnight. And if we do it midnight Eastern, then it'll be your birthday and my birthday at the same time. Oh my God. How fun is that when it comes out? So it really is like the exact crossover.

What is your reason for drinking i mean obviously your birthday but is there anything else going on well yesterday was mother's day and i think i partied a little too hardy and i did not feel well this morning nor do i currently so is the birthday girl hung over yes for sure and i'm sure by the time this comes out i will have selective amnesia and have decided to not uh you know heed my past self's advice and i'm sure that i'm having a good time tonight as well i was gonna say if it's your birthday i think you're about to experience this feeling again that's right it's like a weird parallel universe yes um so i'm just drinking a lot of water in an attempt to you know know. Okay, let me close this window.

I opened it for Juniper. He's not even here. But somebody's dragging a bunch of chains across the ground. Like that seems so necessary right now. It sounds like you hired someone to play a Grim Reaper for your birthday party. No, wait, did you hire that? You're like the fucking Crypt Keeper. That would be hysterical.

Actually, at the end of the chains is a bunch of edible arrangements. I forgot to tell you. Okay, fine. I was going to say, I don't like that idea, but suddenly I do. Okay. Elevator music. I literally looked out the window and there is a giant decrepit truck full of wood planks and chains and they're just dragging them

around i texted them i said i said abort abort mission call it off we're calling it off he's speeding away uh with all my strawberries oh that's the cruelest trick of all um yeah anyway why are you drinking today m i don't know why'm drinking. I don't have anything really going on. I think I'm drinking because I know coming up there's a lot. And so this is like my last breath for a while. I know. We leave this week for Vegas as we record. And then you're in the Philippines.

And oh my gosh, it's going to be a lot. And as soon as I come back, my mom's in town, which I don't, I'm excited and also a little scared because I don't know what'm excited and also a little scared because I I don't know what she's it's for my birthday and so I don't know if she's gonna be like cranking her energy to 100 I'm like trying to give me a really good birthday and then it'll like will you be pleased about that or not or will you be distressed about that um I don't know I'm not sure I know she will mean very well but she what's interesting about my my mom is that a lot of the interest she thinks I have. She really has me frozen in time from when I last lived with her.

And so a lot of times she'll be like, well, I know you like this. And I'm like, I haven't liked that in half my lifetime, girl. But OK, so wait, what? Dunkaroos? Wait, just kidding. We all still love those. No, she she nailed she nailed my birthday party last year but that's also because i had a lot of say in it i see um you were there to help facilitate yeah and for the most part she does um she does a really good job with gifts and all that but if i if i give her too long to overthink then it ends up backtracking to like oh well i know you like this and i was like oh i did and i do you have an example of like what i'm just curious like what your past interests were that like i

don't know i don't know you from a past life you know oh yeah yeah yeah yeah um think of what you would have liked you know it's so silly i have a music i don't know i actually did like reggae music i feel like i knew that in the back of my mind somehow. I still like it. I feel a little iffy as a white person listening to it. And like, I feel like I need to teach myself more before I can appreciate it. But as a kid, I just, again, we were very into like the beach and pool world. And so I have like a lot of ambient music memories. And so we always had like, we had a lot of like island music playing

growing up but i feel like i didn't appreciate it the right way so i could get back into it let me think um interest wise um i think it's it's weird because she's kind of valid in it that like i still like a lot of childhood things please look at this room um for clarity um but it's like things like spongebob like she'll think i still like spongebob or something like that and i'm like you're oh you're close but not like yeah it's grown a little spongebob it's superheroes now mom leave me alone i've grown i've changed i've matured anyway she's i know she means well but i i think it's also... It's not that I'm worried about her trying to plan something for me. It's that she's trying to plan stuff for me, and Allison's trying to plan stuff for me and my mom. Oh, sure.

And I'm trying... And I also have the nerves of Allison and my mom mingling, which... Not that they wouldn't get along, but I just still... They haven't seen each... Even though we've been together for a long time, they haven't been in the same room together all that often so it still feels new so i get antsy i just want everyone to have a good time so i think they will i do i think they'll be fine i just get nervous anyway i get it hey 32 year old i got a story for you. Oh, I'm so excited. So I went, by the way, I wish you could see how my arms are positioned.

I have like them both like hit like on my hips, just kind of like a dad on in a yard. Oh, just to like look out. I don't know. Yeah. It looks like I'm looking out a window. Yeah. I feel like those TikToks where it's like dad's coming outside when the tornado warning goes off and all the dads appear like they've been summoned by the universe. That's how I'm leaning right now with one foot tapping.

Oh, that's very cool for you. Is that your new 31 year old self coming through? I think so. I've been doing a lot more with the hands on the hips recently. I don't know what that means. I like this journey for you, though. Thank you. the hips recently i don't i don't know what that means i like this journey for you though thank you okay so i've been going i went on the social medias and i hid you from my stories and i asked everybody what they would want to know when you do this i never figure it out i guess that is the point yeah and i had blaze too in case he tried to talk to you about it

he does watch all your stories so yes he would have probably seen something uh-huh yeah i knew that was a tricky game so i just blocked him um yeah i asked everybody what they would want to see on a birthday episode and like 90 of people wrote in saying something about gemini's oh and my thought though is like some people said like just do an episode on gemini's but then i was afraid that was going to lead into like a 12 part series about astrology and everyone gets their own sign that's a big commitment and i don't know if it's something that anyone would truly want to hear so i didn't want to like lose an audience for 12 weeks you know like right so uh yeah that i i appreciate as a business per as your business partner i do also appreciate that

thank you i was afraid like only gemini's will listen in for this week and the next week would be something else we really like cut our listenership down by 11 12th whatever that fraction would be everyone would be like wow you guys are not doing well you have a dip in your audience yeah what happened so uh anyway i was like what else can i do for the gemini gemini gemini and i was like okay let me see if i can find anything on twins and so i tried to do like a creepy twin story there aren't many shockingly i love twin stories but i did find one and it is also a UFO story. And I was like, well, here we go.

Are you serious? Oh, my God. Okay. Okay. So a bit of a leap, but your birthday theme is twins, and I got you an alien story. I was going to say, but I feel like that's exactly what I would have wanted. So you really nailed it. Perfect.

So this is the story of the Kinsella twins and their UFO encounters. Basically, there are two twins, these guys, Ronald and Philip, and they have had collectively to their knowledge, four different UFO encounters. And I say to their knowledge because both of them believe there's probably been more. Oh, no. So the first sighting happened when they were 13 years old this was in 1982 1983 and they're at their grandmother's house and they're out in the garden with their grandma when all of a sudden they see something flying towards them starting out hot

it's like that joke that i love speaking of dads uh i thought i saw a baseball coming toward me and then and then it hit me ha ha want to know how i know that one no because you tell me all the time oh i'm like where did you learn that great joke okay gotcha sorry where did i learn that nugget of comedy gold just like genius yes uh so they were outside and something hit them it was not a baseball it was spherical okay and it was actually the shape of a football funny oh man i was close which is that or the size of a football it was literally a spherical i'm so stupid it was a circle and the size of a football. Gotcha. It was silver. It was seamless.

They couldn't find anything that would be making it move by itself. And it was beyond technology of their time. It flew towards them. It was coming up behind their grandma. And then it stopped midair over their head. Oh, my. Over grandma's head. And they're looking at this thing. They realize pretty immediately they sense that this thing's intelligent for some reason.

And they both see it and they ask their grandma what it was. I don't know if she saw it or if she did. It doesn't really matter. But either way, she says, oh, it's just a fairy coming to get a closer look at us. Is that supposed to be comforting, grandma? that just makes me more nervous right so they literally to this day say that whatever that was we know for sure even if fairies are real that was not a fucking fairy yeah yeah yeah without question that was not a fairy and they do wonder if she had experienced it before and was afraid to scare them or maybe she didn't know and just didn't want to deal with their bullshit and uh the sense

they got was that she was trying to protect them okay and so that makes me think grandma's had an encounter before that's a great point she seemed really quick on that like quick explanation yeah and we find out later fun fact that grandma apparently was psychic oh lord so maybe she was she had some tinglings about what was going on so anyway the twins think that at this point they she just didn't want to scare them but they knew it wasn't a fairy and as soon as they talked about this it started moving again so moved away from grandma's head it's almost like it heard don't call me a fairy and i'm just like how dare you does this is this something a fairy would do bam yeah and zipped away and probably actually well so then it flies all the way to grandma's house so they're outside it flies closer to the house,

stops midair at the second floor as if it's looking through the windows. They said it felt like it was scanning. Good night. Ew. Then it levitates higher up, gets to the third floor, stops at a window, and starts looking.

I'm glad I shut my window. Now I'm getting nervous. And then it flies a little higher up towards the roof and takes off. I thought you were going to say the fourth floor. I'm like, what kind of fucking McMansion are they living in? So grandma's estate. It's full of fairies and a lot of bedrooms. It's Bell Morrill, actually.

We're talking about the queen here. I don't know what that is. It's the queen's house. Well, the king's house well the kings i guess such a thing that's like the name of their estate their castle is it really i genuinely i'm not just trying to be an ass i really didn't know that now you're freaking me out no i don't know anything about the royals this is like an admission that i know nothing i ball moral castle in a state okay thank god listen i believe you 100 anyway joke landed okay so happy birthday uh so anyway he takes off this thing takes off

over the roof and the kids want to follow it so they run around the back of the house to see it and they when they get there they see it still in the sky but speeding up and taking off into the distance uh and philip says that this is the first time they had actually seen something that people had told him throughout his life could not be real and so this was i think the first time he probably felt like i can't say anything but this was fucking crazy um ronald still refers to this orb as an electronic eye because from the second they saw it he said it felt like it was watching them and did watch them for a long time after that that's deeply upsetting deeply traumatic you imagine being a kid and now wondering if it's ever scanning your window when

you're sleeping you're sleeping in bed and you're like any glimmer you're like oh my god the eye is back oh yeah forget it forget it so that was their first encounter with this thing and they did it together at least so yay trauma bonding but but then they each have their own individual encounters. Okay. So the second interaction they have is actually the first time that Ronald sees this thing by himself. So Ronald goes first. And they were still 13. So this encounter happened shortly after the first interaction.

Mm hmm. And he remembers. This is the only encounter he remembers having alone. Okay. Again, to his knowledge. And he only mentioned it in 2012. So it's only been like a decade since he's been open with this. I saw one place.

It might have been 2010, but I think it was 2012. So he's 13 years old. And Ronald's quick and short he was taken in the middle of the night from his bed but to get more into it he's taken in the middle of the night from his bed and he meets the doctors um i hate that so much i hate that so much. I hate it so much. He even later says he was like, and he interrupts his own story when he says doctors to be like, by the way, I call them the doctors. I knew so fucking well they were not doctors. They were not doctors.

I have full goose cam. Oh, my God. This is a quote from Ronald. It's a long one, but this is like, I mean, I listened to a few podcasts that they were interviewed on and just felt like he i mean he nailed it it's his story so this is a quote of what happened to him this is the nasty thing about this you have no control over it of being taken out of his bed it is a violation because you're taken against your will i was taken up i went through the house and i could see this shape in the sky next thing i knew i had awoken when i was awake there was this advanced form of wheelchair i was in this room there was an operating table that's what caught my attention first and there

were three doctors ahead of it who he again says i knew they were not doctors. I couldn't move in the chair. I was paralyzed to a degree and I couldn't turn back. The strange thing about these doctors is they were taller than me and they were clad in a uniform from head to toe. You couldn't even see their eyes

because they wore visors. I couldn't see any trace of them. They even had gloves on. Oh. And so that's why he calls them the doctors because they were wrapped up like surgeons that's so upsetting he thinks he startled them by being awake which is interesting because to this day he wonders if they planned on keeping him asleep and did their own technology fail because he says when he woke up they were like shocked and so no yeah you don't want that even

with regular doctors if there's a look of shock on any doctor's face i'm like something not good is happening exactly if i'm ever being put under it's like i hope to never remember you don't yeah don't let me wake up but so his best guess over all these years he thinks that they were in disguise as a plan b in case he did wake up so he couldn't see what they looked like oh my god that's really upsetting so then that leads him into like being even more paranoid about like okay so did you did your technology was it shaky and you knew it might not work and so you knew you needed this plan b because why were you shocked that i but then why were you shocked that i woke not work and so you knew you needed this plan b because why were you shocked that i but then why were you shocked that i woke up if like so are you just like this all

the time yeah so that that becomes one of the things that i think he might have spiraled on for a while he could sense a male presence behind him and the beings all spoke to him in English, and they were polite but authoritative. And they said, we're going to perform an operation on you, Ronald. No! This is the stuff of genuine nightmare. I mean, true, deep-seated, genuine nightmares. He even said that made his skin crawl

because they knew his name, and they knew how to refer to him, which confirms that they'd been watching. Imagine if said donald by mistake and he's like they don't even know my fucking name you got the wrong patient imagine if they said philip he's like that's my brother send me back oh so we're gonna perform an operation on you ron, Ronald. They said it was for his own good and it must be done, even though Ronald was begging them not to. And I don't know if this was telepathically. It seems like all their conversation was telepathic. This is horrific.

He kept saying, please don't do this. Please don't do this. And they said, Ronald, we will not harm you. LOL. OK. Yeah. OK. Apparently in their world, consent is not part of the protocol i guess not uh they had this instrument that was essentially a needle okay well you know that i'm

gonna leave now right it's not as bad as you think they just they oh they took his left the palm of his left hand they put the needle in gross and he blacked the fuck out so in the palm of his left hand they put the needle in gross and he blacked the fuck out so in the palm of his hand that's interesting yeah i was like in my mind i can't tell if that's better or worse like the the i also have a thing where like my i don't know if this is the normal human condition or if i'm an odd duck but my the palms of my hands are always ticklish oh are yours no are yours oh if i even touch my own hands i really yeah i don't and so in my mind being stabbed with a needle i'd have the quickest fist in the world i'd shut that shit down real quick yeah but then my mind But then my mind's like, oh. You'd be like, ooh, it tickles.

And they'd be like, we're trying to sedate you. Yeah, I don't think I could tolerate that. Because also, at least if they, like, I already have needle issues. But, like, if they're going to put it in my usual spot, at least I can, I'm expected to close my fist like a reflex. Right. And now they're just like, open up. Oh. Yeah, the palm feels incredibly like intimate like

vulnerable and it feels like why would that be the spot like it doesn't seem like that would be the most effective way to administer anything i know i don't maybe that's where their like elbow vein is oh maybe that's the iv oh god horrible uh. Horrible. So he blacks out. And when he wakes up, he is in the middle of exiting the UFO, which is a fancy way of saying he's fucking free falling. He's in the middle of exiting. That's a fun way to put it. He's in the process of disembarking. He's essentially horizontal in the air at a speed. Cool. that's just great uh he said that while this was happening he was like maybe it's because i don't remember going up

into the ufo so i don't know what the you know physiological experience was because i was asleep and then i woke up when i was there right but going down i remember my skin feeling like it was electric and my hair was standing on end. And I had like the belly flopping of being on a roller coaster. But at the same time as he's feeling all this, he's not like, I don't know the right word. Free falling? Yeah, he's not free falling. He's still under their powers or something and he's floating down okay so they're like lowering him basically yeah but it still feels to him like he's falling i guess yeah which

is its own version of hell if you think you're free-falling or not leaf through the sky yeah yeah as a child i mean i wonder too if like when he says his skin was tingling if it was like a yeah those things those i don't okay i don't know but you know those balls that have like electrostatic i wonder if that was like how they maneuvered him i wonder if the tingling on his skin was like some sort of like electromagnetic draw that they were like bringing him down like he could feel the stand on end you know when you touch those and your hair goes up yeah i wonder if that was happening that's a good point i don't know um but yeah scientist i know it's hard to believe but

no all right well had me fooled i thought maybe so he floated back down to uh uh he floated into his bedroom. I guess they also brought him through his whole house, which is also so weirdly intimate and violating of like, you know, the layout of my house. Yeah, and it's like, I've got this from here, bud. Like, I can walk down the hall back to my room. You don't need to like deliver me. Well, they delivered him to his bed.

And he said, shockingly, the scariest part of this entire experience, he was scared throughout but the scariest part was when i guess he was like when they turned the the kill switch on of him his like magnetic draw to them yeah and all of a sudden he wasn't being pulled and floated by them it was just he was back to being on his own the first time he felt himself drop out of this force and onto his bed that was the scariest part really because he said the the touching of his bed made it real it wasn't like he woke up from a dream or something he felt the impact of landing back and then all of a sudden you're like you just have to sit there and face all of what just happened. Oh, yeah. That's a great point. And while he's lying there, in hindsight, he says it was a hologram.

In the 80s, he didn't have a word for it. Oh, interesting. But there was a hologram projected on the ceiling of his bed. So as soon as he laid down, it was already really fucking like discombobulated. All of a sudden, this hologram shows up on the ceiling of the cheshire cat what i was not expecting that and the cheshire cat is smiling and where he can see all the rows of its teeth and it's waving at him and it just stared at him for minutes and then eventually dissolved away why are they like this will make him feel better yeah right is that was that supposed to be comforting like what the fuck he says of the cheshire cat experience he said it was the most awfulest thing i ever i have ever seen and in fact it scarred me because i've never forgotten

it same i mean i i've had nightmares that have scarred me like from watching certain characters but like i think it's also because like like the whole everything up until that point was whatever quote is expected of a an abduction story but that was a real fucking curveball like that's a fucking plot twist for sure and you know i've heard some alien stories where uh kids say that they felt like that the beings were like trying to project something that they would the kids would recognize like one kid said they appeared to him as like circus monkeys as if like they were playful and fun and like he's like they didn't realize probably how terrifying that was but they were like oh don't be scared we're your friends we're fun circus monkeys like

don't be scared there's a fun cat smiling at you can you imagine just like several monkeys getting in your face being like we're nice oh my god um yeah i've heard that's a thing it's very creepy and one of the things that he has said in hindsight um ronald said that a few years before he had seen alice in wonderland and so one of his beliefs on what these aliens are capable of is like tapping into your memory right and so maybe you're onto something where they were trying to come up with something where he felt like relaxed familiar yeah but his thought too which is a little more sinister is that they picked something that was of an imagination so that way if he ever brought this up to people it would sound more like it was a dream okay that's upsetting he could be gaslit into like oh well you tricked yourself it

like immediately invalidates the story if someone's like oh it sounds like a bad dream yeah are like oh we all saw the cheshire cat freaked all of us out at some point like yeah you should stop watching scary movies and i wonder too if like it was meant to make him gaslight himself like oh maybe i didn't see all that it was just a weird dream yeah it was all a dream i wish which like that that does feel sinister of like oh maybe he seems to be remembering too much let's just let's do whatever we can to make him think this wasn't real so after this incident he ended up uh quickly after this having really intense pain um and he was at school one time and he had

three big waves of horrible pain flow through him bam bam bam and then all of a sudden he passed out next to to the onto the student next to him like fell over onto the student next to him and uh he was saying that he was having like it made him like he fell over and then he fitted which he was he's british so i think that means he was having a seizure um and he kept saying i i never fitted before i never fitted before that must be what it is yeah that's what i'm thinking but anyway he that was the only time it had ever happened it never happened again but he definitely attributes it to that of like i all of a sudden it was like i don't know it feels like maybe his body was like trying to like repel whatever was in him or like maybe they had or maybe they had

something implanted in him and that it caused what i was thinking is like with that surgery or whatever i mean like oh i mean you can't just go back to the doctor for a follow-up right like yeah yeah it's horrible. Well, they talk about that a lot because they were saying Philip, actually, I listened to more interviews from him and I would assume Ronald feels about the same way where they were saying, like, at that time, like, you couldn't tell anybody about this stuff. Like, there was no alien UFO craze where people believed you. Like, it was there was a UFO craze sinceze since like the 50s and people thought they were like cool stories.

But if you ever told anybody you were right. There wasn't like a support group for you or anything. Yeah. Yeah. So they they said a lot of times we couldn't tell our doctor. We couldn't tell anybody. And I think I heard this right in an interview but after this happened to ronald every two or three years after that experience ronald would see a ufo at some point and i i think it was more of like a distant noticing i don't like that i wonder if they want him to see it like we're still here

that's always the creepiest part is the what is the intent of our awareness like do you want us to know or are we catching you and you're really bad did he like pass some weird veil where now he always the creepiest part is the what is the intent of our awareness like do you want us to know or are we catching you and you're really bad did he like pass some weird veil where now he can see them and we can't oh you know what i mean like maybe he acts as something oh christine i swear to god you're gonna give me the worst nightmares tonight happy birthday so it was uh that was ronald's personal abduction. And that was the second encounter. Now, the third encounter that they had was Philip's individual experience.

Oh, no. So this actually happens years later. Imagine your brother telling you about what happened and being like, does that mean mine is coming next? Oh, yeah. That feeling of impending doom. Well, he had impending doom for seven years oh my and then right when you probably think you're safe yeah i don't know if they uh i don't know when ronald told philip and vice versa right ronald must have said something to philip because

philip pretty immediately tells ronald about his experience So I'm thinking they at least had each other. But so anyway, the year is now 1989 and Philip has his personal encounter where he recalls it as quote, not in any way benevolent. It was very truly a horrific experience

and one I've never forgotten. That's so sad. They were both really, really tortured by this. Seriously. I'm sure they still are. Yeah. So they have been doing an insane amount of interviews about it, though. So at least they're talking about it now.

But I can't imagine decades of keeping it to yourself. Of having to be quiet, yeah. So Philip believes that he may have had a few more encounters um either more than ronald or just more than he's aware of because he says there were a lot of odd events and leading up to those events um he would like something really weird would happen or he would find marks on his body or he would find marks that like didn't make sense and so he thinks that there were more abductions than he's aware of so it's like it's like i guess it's a good thing you don't remember but also yeah like how how invasive i don't know what's better or worse to be honest yeah because also i mean like like if they're

getting marks on their body you know something's happening to you and it's like i don't know it's like do you want to know i don't yeah i don't think so but i don't think i'd want to know either but then i'd be paranoid about like i would want to get x-rays every five seconds on every part of my body being like is there something here is there something here is there something here and then if they didn't find anything i'd be like well isn't invisible to our technology i would just live in constant constant paranoia and i'm already clumsy like i get mystery bruises all the time so i would be like oh my god like every cat scratch or like oh boy constant paranoia for sure well so he does believe that there have been other events, but both of them have said, like, we're not here to like bullshit people.

We just want to report facts. We don't want to report guesses. So they really only talk about these four encounters. Interesting. They do. Like, they'll say anecdotally, like, oh, I'm pretty sure there were more. Right. But on the record, officially, they're only talking about encounters they remember fully.

Right. So his time comes when he's 20 years old. He's coming home from work, and he walks into the kitchen, and his siblings are there. He has his twin brother, and then their sister is there. And he's just hanging out in the kitchen with them and he says all of a sudden the energy changes and the air felt electrically charged and he said many things happened at once but the main thing is that he remembers looking at his brother his brother freezes paralyzed looks up at the ceiling as if he can see something nobody else can and says, there's going to be an earthquake or grandma's going to die.

Oh, no. The dog starts freaking out. And down the hall, he could see glass doors and through the glass he sees this huge light come through the house he thinks at first it might be his mom's headlights shining through the glass doors but the light grows so bright that the only way he can explain it is that eventually the light began to bend the door's glass oh my god and the glass became quote pliable like jelly okay now they're just showing off yeah right how for what like what to open the door it's like two days ago i was abducted and didn't even notice it now like you really want to put on this performance

yeah then the monkeys come in juggling it's like well great well that really is its own story like its own um like thing to question right of like well why before did you not have to put on the show or did you always put on the show and i've never known and i've been asleep and i just didn't see it and why this time am I able to see it or why this time do you want me to see it? Oh, no. And so anyway, the light grows and grows. The glass of the door literally just does not exist, apparently. And his brother is still frozen looking at the ceiling and said that really awful string of words. Philip keeps looking down the hall while this is happening and sees a creature appear no not a creature he describes it as quote a small three-foot being all clad in black with an

oversized helmet on its head and it walked through the pliable glass and ran into our bedroom his brother comes his brother comes out of this trance the dog i think stops freaking out and everything feels i guess like it's supposed to be going back to normal but he is still so fucking on edge and saw this thing that philip philip grabs a knife and tells the siblings like there's an intruder in the house which like good and even though it's marvin the martian and his big big helmet and like honestly that alone shows that he has more like gusto than i'll ever have because if that all happened to me the last thing i would even remember to do is grab a knife and go looking for the intruder i mean literally i don't know what i would do but nothing productive i just look

you in the eyes and be like, we got to roll out. It's been great. It's been real. It's been fun. We're never coming back into this house again. No, no, no. But so they go looking for this creature that he saw run into the room and it wasn't there. They couldn't find it.

Great. Just what you need. It's like that thing when you see a spider and then you can't find it. And like, yeah, could he be? And now it's that. But so much worse. So much. Yeah.

Except the spider is going to maybe operate on you. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. So he did say he saw at one point that the creature darted from their room down the hall. So he even looked he looked through the whole house and they never found anything. Great. But later that night slash the next early morning,

Philip wakes up in the middle of the night and finds himself floating. Forget it. He is out of his bed and he's floating out towards the hall. He was, quote, on my back, I can't move move but i'm being pulled forward i'm fully conscious but i'm not able to move as i'm being pulled through the kitchen glass doors through the glass doors i'm wondering how it is that i'm able to pass through solid matter

so they came they came back into the jelly door thing all over again or maybe they did the jelly door thing earlier and it created some sort of weird setup where later on they could bring him through it like maybe that was all the preamble see my thought was maybe they thought that if there's a procedure to abducting somebody and the first one is to like make them paralyze or freeze up or fall asleep i feel like they forgot to flip that switch and they thought they had so then they came down made the doors jelly they were going to abduct them and then that little creature saw that one of them was awake and he ran away and he was like oh no no no no interesting yeah that actually makes sense too and then they waited till the and then they waited till they were asleep and came back and tried again oh that's

my thought i don't like that especially because i wonder if it's a twin thing because it's interesting that everyone else froze and even his brother froze and maybe that was them switching on the okay let's disable him thing of like but then they maybe because they're identical twins maybe it only worked on one of them and not the other or something and so they came down i don't know i'm totally rambling but that was my thought of like oh shit it didn't work and yeah actually it does i i want to say make sense but you know in yeah in a very fucked up way it makes sense but also it could totally be your preamble idea could also totally work like that weird martian was sent in

advance to yeah i have no idea man he was like the first guy on the ground to see if they were like totally like frozen and able to be like manipulated yeah he's doing like a test run i don't know oh well so anyway he is now it's it's worked. And so the doors are back to being jelly. He floats through the doors. And by the way, he says the dog this time was asleep for all this. So maybe he makes a joke of like, oh, maybe the dog just didn't give a shit after the first time. The dog is like, oh, our friends are back.

Right. But also maybe they made sure the dog would be asleep. So didn't have a threat to them that's true i'm glad the dog wasn't traumatized at the very least yeah at the very least so the dog not the dog philip floats through uh the door he's now outside he got brought through his whole patio through his whole house and got to the patio. He's now outside. He sees the sky. And when he's looking up at the sky, he sees that there's multiple UFOs all lit up and moving around him.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Which feels like, did they bring the cavalry? Like, why are there so many UFOs for one person to be abducted? I don't know. Or do they all do this together like a little family? is it like they're doing their rounds as doctors residents like everybody's gathered to like watch a patient interaction i don't know that's so weird it's very odd and it makes me wonder just like how you said earlier like were they tapped into being able to see things that others can't

so are there always multiple uf, but you only see one? Are they always? Right, right, right. Maybe he can see through the veil now all of a sudden. Well, he remembers thinking while he's looking up, he remembers thinking, wow, UFOs are real, but not being able to react because he couldn't move. Oh, no. Of all the moving UFOs, there was one that was not moving and it was gray it was disc shaped and once he saw it his body was immediately being pulled towards it without his control oh no

oh no as he approached this thing and got closer and closer, he started browning out. Eventually, he blacks out and doesn't remember anything. He loses a big chunk of time, as far as he knows. And when he comes to, he finds himself in a medical facility. Oh, no. He said it was very hot. He was naked. And he was strapped to a bed. And he said, to his his right there were three reptilians

and in uh and in the ufo was also a gray so there was a gray and three reptilians without going any further he was essayed and uh when he he said one of the more like embarrassing parts for him which i hope he still doesn't feel embarrassed about this is that when he later wrote an account about this and tried to get a book published they told him to omit that part because nobody wouldn't understand what he was going through god which like excellent yeah seriously like what the fuck so uh by the way like hindsight he's now written like i think 20 books or something so he's he he's handling it he's good getting his story out there good so once it was over um the gray then told him to get dressed and follow him to the door of the ufo and he could look out and see

once he got to the door he could look out and see his village from above and he actually saw another craft that was closer to his house um and then he was told by the gray to leave and he was like what do you mean leave like and the alien was like go down there and he was like you mean he was like And he was like, you mean jump? What do you mean? Literally. You want me to skydive out of your UFO into my house? And he obviously didn't do it himself.

He felt someone push him. Oh, no. And then he is also now falling out of a UFO. But what's interesting is it sounds like Ronald was on his own floating down and having like this draw from the ufo where they brought him down gently this time around he was also being brought down gently but he had two greys float down with him oh weird and when they got down uh they told him not to look back to like not look at the ufo would you look back i don't know what i would do honestly at that i don't know what i would do i think i wouldn't have even really registered whatever they had to say because i'd be processing so much more i'd probably i would

look because i think i'd be like i just want to get out of this situation yeah i i think that might be what i'd do too i could see myself not hearing them and just like involuntarily, just accidentally looking back and then being like, are you fucking kidding me? We just said don't do that. You didn't say it loud enough. So when he did see another gray or what he did see was another gray down once he landed. So the two dropped him off and said, don't look back. And he sees another gray waiting for him oh god this gray is wearing a pointed hat he's wearing a one-piece khaki suit so like okay romper yeah i love that for you he's wearing knee-length boots

which i think is i don't know if this is like a usual phrase in the uk but the way that philip described him was suited and booted or booted and suited or something and i was like what a what a way to put that um here it is suited and booted i just looked it up yeah it says uh it means according to cambridge university cambridge dictionary dressed in formal clothes yep. He was suited and booted in a khaki suit, annealing boots and a pointy hat. He was feeling himself, I think. I guess so. Or I wonder if that means he had a different ranking or something.

I don't know. Right, right. He also apparently looked a little different. Apparently his face shape and his eyes looked a little different. And he eerily felt familiar. That's not good. I don't know what the deal is there, but he felt familiar. And what Philip noticed was that this thing was angry at him.

Oh. Like had his arms folded and Philip felt like someone had hit him in like his solar plexus and like he felt like the wind was knocked out of him and he just knew that it was coming from this thing and it was really mad at him and philip he was like i immediately wanted to like fucking punch this thing i was like yeah i was like how can you possibly be mad at me this all all this shit just happened to me and like what the hell did i do wrong yeah i didn't even want to be here and you're mad at me so he wanted to like get violent with this thing and i don't probably know i wonder if they sensed that in him or could read his mind i don't know which like that sucks too because you can't even have an emotion and without without feeling unsafe i wonder that all the time

when it comes to like the telepathic side of the alien encounters, like because how do you filter and can you filter anything out? Like, can you have any personal thoughts or is everything just going straight to them? Like every thought is unsafe. Yeah. Yeah. So he does think he's like instead of like he's he's mad, but he's like, I just have to ask them a question. I have to do something. And so he said it felt very natural to assume this was a telepathic communication so he

didn't even have to think about it he just knew if i'm talking i'm gonna do it telepathically and he asked how come i was able to get through the door how come i was able to get through solid matter because he i think he thought if i can figure that out that in hindsight i can like try to start doing my own research on their technology or i can do my own research on like how advanced they are myself in some way next time yeah so his only question was how did i get through the door yeah and he says that this entity or this being when he said that looked fucking floored looked shocked and i don't know if it's shocked that philip was able to communicate with him or that philip yeah like about what shocked about what

i wonder if he i wonder if this thing felt shocked like wait a minute you're not supposed to be able to go through matter and like realize that they like fucked up their own plan like wait you can't always do that it's, hang on a second. Did we show you too much of our hand? It sucks to be human. Yeah. Well, he said that the being even like his mouth went into an O. He was that shocked of like, like.

Which it really sounds like it is in my mind. The alien looked like, oh, I don't think I realized that we fucked up something. Yeah, we clearly saw or somebody dropped the ball. Somebody dropped the ball. Or I wonder if he was just shocked to like, oh, you were supposed to be asleep and you saw that? You weren't supposed to see that. Yeah, that's interesting. So these people need to get their shit together because every left and right, need backup plans and then oh no he woke up like fucking handle your shit.

They're falling asleep technology is glitchy at best. They gotta figure it out. They need to put new batteries in their machines or something. Have you tried turning it off and on. Anyway he says how come I was able to get through the door this thing looks shocked looks at him for a moment and takes pause and then looks up to the ufos in the sky and tries to speak with its mouth but what comes out maybe the other aliens can understand it but philip did not know what was going on because what came out of his mouth was a garbled metallic rasp oh and it didn't sound

it didn't make any sense it was just sound emitting out of him as this is still happening philip feels himself being pulled and floating again and he's now being floated through his house but while he's and he even goes back through the glass the jelly glass window and as he's looking out of the window to see he just wants to see for as long as he can as he's floating away and into his bedroom he looks out the window and he can still see it standing there staring up at the ceiling and like this his mouth open making sound that horrible metallic grinding noise okay that like i bet the sound is like fucking nails on chalkboard like that's what i'm imagining has to be like a fork

in a fucking whatchamacallit uh garbage disposal yeah yeah has to be the worst sound and to know that like they're just paused like that it feels like the end of a skit and it's just like holding on for a little too long or something it just feels it feels very very odd so philip then floats through his house uh he ends up um floating onto his bed which just like happened to ronald and all of a sudden he can move again and as he freaks out he gets up as soon as he gets up out of bed he has a nosebleed oh he later finds out that he now has three triangular marks behind his right ear, which if I heard this right in his interviews, they don't show up on camera. They've tried to take a bunch of pictures and they won't show up, which is interesting. That feeds into your

technology idea of maybe we're not supposed to be able to see that. Yeah, that is so gross that you would be able to hide something from a camera. Like, what does that mean? That means so gross that you would be able to hide something from a camera. Like, what does that mean? That means so many. It has a lot of implications. And Ronald can also see the marks, too. So there's that. Can anyone else see them?

Do we know? I wonder. I wonder. If not, then I feel like a skeptic could use that very easily. Totally. Like, oh, well, they're twins protecting each other or something. Totally. But they both can see it.

And he also said he has three marks on his right arm that burned um he also had continuous nosebleeds for a while after all this happened but they and he also had trouble walking um doctors oh it's all so upsetting doctors later discovered that there was actually something in his ear and he refused to have it messed with. I think he was like, I don't want you to accidentally turn something on. I don't. Or if you take it out, then they're going to do it all over again.

Like, yeah. Yeah. They have to drag me back up there. Oh, yeah. So and for this is a really odd part, too. He said, I have no reason. And for this is a really odd part, too. He said, I have no reason. I have no memory of anything that would allow me to feel so confident in this.

But I have a very strong feeling that in the last year, whatever it was in my ear has actually been removed. AKA, he had another abduction and it was removed. That's almost scarier that he just knows it without. Yeah. He said, I can't really unsettling. I'd like to see him like go to a doctor and get it like checked again and see if they see anything there anymore. But he said, I can't explain it. But there was a time later on where me and my brother both found marks on our necks.

And after that, I just had a knowing that that the thing in my ear wasn't there anymore. So I think it's interesting, first of all, that both of them woke up on the ship and couldn't be kept asleep. They were both dropped right into their beds. And I think it was interesting that the parallel of Ronald in the kitchen at the beginning of all of this, freezing up, looking at the ceiling and

saying a bunch of garbled string of words because their grandma did not die and there was no earthquake by the way so oh yeah I forgot about that already but for him to just say that it was just like thought it's almost like they were trying to tap into like our language and they just like had like oh you know when you're when you're learning to type it'll just be a random sentence that you have to like type out or something yeah like the cat the brown fox jumped over over the lazy dog or something and uh and so i wonder if they were just like they had like some sort of like sample sentence to like tap into our language or something yeah it's just the least alarming sentence ever grandma's gonna die and there's gonna be an earthquake let's try

that one out for size just for fun if you're typing that one on in second grade being like oh i know all of a sudden the floppy disk that we learned to type on is like the lazy dog and the fox and also the grandma's gonna die wait what sounds like a bad horror movie so uh but it's interesting that it parallels the the gray at the end looking up and saying a bunch of garbled stuff that we couldn't understand what if he was saying grandma's gonna die at there's gonna be an earthquake maybe that's like the code words yeah maybe they're like nobody would just say this that has to be the password for us it's a password yeah but but yeah so it's i wonder if they were tapping back into their own language before they left or something or i don't know one researcher actually thinks that this phenomenon

was um them trying to tap into our reality or they were trying to intentionally scramble our reality so that way they had more control over us or something like to throw us off that's bad anyway there's all that and now the last sighting happened in 2016 oh geez um so many years later and this was april 8th it was uh and this one's actually like pretty quick i didn't I feel like the information I got on this was nowhere near as in depth as the others. But it was in 2016. It was coming up on midnight and the brothers were in the same car coming back from a birthday dinner with the rest of the family. They were the only two in the car, though. And their niece, who was driving either ahead or behind them

saw these three objects in the sky and she called to tell them about it but when she called to tell them they could already see these objects and they were already floating above them they're like oh don't worry we fucking know but thanks for the heads up i feel like it's straight out of a movie of like, yeah, don't worry. We figured it out. And then it like zooms out and they're like up in the sky. Oh, my God. So the crafts were apparently, quote, three white objects hovering 90 to 100 feet above them.

Oh, no. And Philip said they were huge and we were amazed, which is interesting that they're still amazed by this. You'd think, oh, fuck, not again. Seriously, like my first reaction would be panic, not like at this point, like insert any textbook traumatic response like I'd be all of them. fight flight fawn maybe that was the fawn it was like oh what a cool spaceship you have i love it you're beautiful please don't come near me hurt me yeah despite all and that was the whole thing that we know about that encounter was just that they saw it together i think they've they've drawn a few diagrams to show people what it is they saw but despite all these encounters the kinsella twins did not publicly discuss any of their you know experiences until recently the 2010s um partially out of fear of not being believed especially because like i said earlier they're very no nonsense and they even say they can't explain what happened to them uh but fun fact one of the people who has helped them through all of this is actually the niece

of barney and betty hill no way is like one of them i covered them a while ago but they're one of the most famous uh alien abduction stories kentucky right yeah and so where can i ask if you know whether where uh ronald and philip lived in the uk oh okay um i don't know the uk well enough to bravely say a place yeah no i i just curious yeah i didn't realize what uh whether they were here or abroad uh i don't know if they live here now or but at the time of their experiences they were in the uk um and like i said earlier, they think there were previous experiences when they were kids that they're unaware of. And they wonder if their being twins is involved in their abductions. Especially because, fun fact, their abductions, their individual ones, were seven years apart.

And they were born seven minutes apart. Ew. I don't know what it means, but I don't like it. That's what they said. They were like, I don't know if that's a coincidence, but I hate it. Yeah. One way that they've gotten their story out is through writing and art. Ronald, especially with art, he draws the beings that he saw.

And he actually he's really good with like 3d modeling programs and so he's actually been able to create like 3d models of oh good for him yeah that's a good way to process it i guess well also like if it's 3d i feel like you can really get into the details of like what this thing looks like right it's not just like a stick figure it's like i could print this out and make it an action figure for you pores on this thing you know exactly yeah um so he's gotten into art a lot and both of them have gotten into writing they have a website um it's the called the cancella twins.com and they have like easily like 20 books on there that they've written either together or individually um and a lot of them are either about the experience or they are inspired off of

the experience. They have a lot of like sci-fi books they've written now. Yeah. And when asked about all this, they started sharing their podcast main or they started sharing their experience mainly on podcasts. They also share their theories of what happened. They actually host a uk radio show called twin

souls and i don't know if it's still if they're still making new episodes but you know worth the the look i yeah and they also talk a lot about their research and ufology ufology and so um after all this happened they really leaned into the wanting to know more. And it kind of became part of their whole future is just doing research on UFOs and aliens. And Philip said, there are hundreds of thousands of people that have had their own unique experiences.

And I kept wondering why, because there's no revelation from this. There's no clues as to their origins or where they come from or why they're here or what they're doing so this is why i wanted to look at the subject matter outside the box outside the normal framework where people assume a ufo is from another planet and is very physical in nature i'm not saying they're not physical but this led me into areas of psychic exploration consciousness and, and also interdimensional hypotheses. Oh, sure. I think we're dealing with something

that's more than what Hollywood has led us to believe the phenomena is. Holy crap. So he thinks it... I do like his outlook on, like, he's very open-minded to anything as possible in terms of looking for answers. Right.

Because he very much seems like. I think he said it in part of the interview where he was like, there's been decades of people being abducted and we assume that they're just from outer space. But we've made no big. There's no big milestones that have come out of our research assuming things like that so maybe it's not from outer space like let's try a new angle all together yes and so he's very much um he's very pro any answer could be right we have to look at everything interesting he's even looked at if uh these aliens are part of afterlife and if they're are you dealing with something from something from another realm. He has wondered if they are like they are able to manipulate time and space in a way that we can't.

And so they jump timelines. Maybe the same aliens from the 50s are the ones that are still here right now dealing with us instead of another generation of them or maybe they're one collective consciousness or um he also said that he realized later in life that he was a sensitive and that messed with him a lot because one he was like oh maybe i inherited that from grandma but and then that makes you think shit did grandma have things going on she didn't talk about because she seemed real quick with that answer i love that she's like it's just fairies yeah and maybe she had had her own stories probably sucks for her too because she's like no like i don't want my grandkids to go through this yeah and and he also thought like so maybe it came from grandma

or maybe this just maybe i had it in me and it was never you know tapped that like i did yeah and then maybe it was activated as a result of the abductions oh yeah that's an interesting thought because there is a common theory that those who've been abducted are quote left with a residue of psychic phenomenon oh interesting we've heard that a million times of like oh someone gets abducted and all of a sudden they have these weird senses or they just feel like they're more in tuned with things and or they have a knowing about things yes and philip said uh it's almost as if the force or intelligence behind this phenomena is when it rips through our space-time continuum and perhaps there's other alternative dimensions

that are left open for a short period of time that seep through into us. So he's thinking about every possibility here, but it is interesting that maybe if you're already crossing those boundaries, maybe other doors are open and you have access to things others don't. Yeah, I can see that for sure.

I mean, I feel like we've had stories like that where people, I mean, you just said it, but where people go through something like this and then suddenly it's like, oh, they can see UFOs everywhere or they have suddenly ESP. So they may. Yeah. So a lot of his theories are that they may come from another planet. Maybe they're connected to the afterlife or another realm we're unaware of. Maybe they jump timelines. Maybe they're able to jump into our consciousness. Maybe they're connected to the afterlife or another realm we're unaware of. Maybe they jump timelines. Maybe they're able to jump into our consciousness.

Maybe they're one consciousness. Maybe they jump through our memories and try to manipulate us that way. But he did say he's very invested into the research because he thinks every area must be explored. I love that. Thorough. That is the Kinsella twins and their UFO encounters. Holy shit. I love that. Thorough. That is the Kinsella twins and their UFO encounters. So does he feel like, do you know if he considers them to be malevolent? Or is that unclear?

I think in an interview I heard him say, I don't know. Okay. So it seems, I really, I don't know if he doesn't know. Sure. I know he did not like what they were doing. Right. I mean, I consider them fucking malevolent because they're just taking children and doing quote unquote operations on them. So I mean, and he said, you know, openly like, oh, I was R worded by these things.

And it was not. Yeah. He even said it was not benevolent and I did not want any of this. So I think maybe I don't know if he has to compartmentalize like that was malevolent, but this part isn't or maybe all of it is. I don't know. Oh, God. I mean, I have no idea. So, dear Lord, that is terrifying. I thought originally, because this is one of those stories where like I couldn't find anything like news wise or like usually I try to go off of articles. Right. This was one that I really had to go. It was pretty much fully podcast based. Oh, wow.

But they have. I mean, I thought, oh, I'm going to listen to all the interviews they've done and then I'll have all the information. But they've done like 50 podcasts. Wow. And every podcast is like an hour and a half long minimum so I was like okay well this is the best I can do with the time we have but interesting but the the stories a lot of their um time on podcasts is them talking about the theories versus their stories so do you wow do you how do you wow. Do you how do you spell Kins? Is it Kinsella? Yeah. K-I-N-S-E-L-L-A. Got it. OK. Wow. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm definitely going to look into that Kinsella twin podcast. Wow. i'll say real quick i had to be really choosy with the um podcasts i used for their interviews a lot of people who hosted those podcasts seem to be um maybe a little too deep in a rabbit hole

that i don't want to promote if you know what i'm saying um felt a little i felt like some of the people maybe are a little too um extremist on the wrong side of history. Okay, so we're getting some QAnon vibes, maybe? We're getting some QAnon vibes, which I feel like that's such an easy trap to fall into if you're in the UFO world. Because I definitely believe that there's something going on in outer space. And I want to believe people who have absolutely stories of abductions but then i think you find yourself in um some very interesting there's like a cross over there yeah yeah so just warning you before you go into those podcasts i do not promote um yeah really too many of them appreciate the heads up i feel like that happens

sometimes with and you had talked about that in the q anon episodes of that that weird pipeline of like new age beliefs to fringe you and on yeah yeah to like extremist stuff so that is a great point and like there was there was one interview they did which i'm not you know poo-pooing on you know how they choose which interviews they go into or anything like that i that's not my business but they they there was one that I was trying to listen to. And within five minutes, they were talking about all the Democrats. And I was like, OK, well, this is this is not the one I'm going to be. What an enjoyable thing to listen to while I sweep my floor and vacuum and do some chores. The ones I got interviews from were ones that felt like okay whatever

whatever version i could align best with those were the ones i tried to go with but understood just warning you before you do your own deep dive i absolutely appreciate the uh the heads up and i'm sure all of the other people do as well yeah before people think i like enjoy these podcasts i was listening to you know oh lord um m wow that was a fucking doozy yeah well i i'm glad that you liked it because i i was really stressing i was like i want to do something birthday and i thought for every you know how many people said i needed to do a 2.0 on the hersine shifter i was like, my brain can't possibly do that again. Yeah, I feel like I would have figured that out right away this time.

Oh yeah, I think you're too... I'll have to do it in like a decade or something. One day when you're old and withered and maybe your mind's not where it used to be. I'll tell you all about the tales and the adventures of the Hurstine Shifter and you'll be blown away. I'll be in the nursing home like, oh, it sounds like a beautiful creature.

I recently listened to a chunk of it again and you just were so wide-eyed, bushy-tailed. You were just like, I so aligned with this. I love this creature. I think the word is so, so dumb. No, you were just, were because i i literally ignorant you were just like wow how come i've never heard of this thing it sounds so lovely i'm like wow it's so weird how it wears rothies and listens to fall a boy hang on a second i think it was the most endearing part when it was when i said like, it gets lost all the time and drops all of its like prized possessions.

Oh, God. And you were just like, oh, my God, that sounds so much like me. If this were if this were a person, I'd want to be friends with them. That's so embarrassing. And I also feel like the part that was embarrassing, too, is like I was like so confused why you weren't more impressed about all the i was like m are you hearing this like it sounds just like me and you were like hmm oh yeah i guess so and you kept going and i was like how is how are you not reacting like this is so crazy well i had a plan it got ruined but i had a plan originally that i was going to

like if i if i gave it away at all then it was gonna like ruin the surprise later whereas i told more of the hints it was supposed to like become more of an aha moment right and there was there was one of the lines i was gonna say something where like that was when i kind of started hinting that i was in on it yeah but it all got ruined so i like didn't know I didn't know how to keep it together. But anyway, it was hard. It was a good time. Wow. You really nailed it. And I'm so proud of you. Well, I'm excited. You said this is also birthday themed. So yeah. Yeah. It's a special birthday gift for you. I today I'm nervous. My palms are sweating why i'm covering a story about a family called the duggars oh my god i told molly and our researcher months ago like this is the episode that is coming

out on our birthday on our both of our birthdays I need to do this so like please can we arrange for it to so while Molly Ann was working on the notes and like some of the research I was like deep diving on YouTube and all these channels and trying to learn everything and I know for a fact I will probably have about 0.01 of any knowledge that you have so i told molly and like let's leave plenty of room for m to like fill us in on the additional that's very lovely because in my head i was just having like a deep heart to heart with myself it's your birthday i kept i really was like you need to make sure you keep your mouth shut during this is a gift to you for your birthday i want you to be as thoroughly

involved and the notes are not very like they're they're normal length but i feel like there is any and all openings for you to just kind of pop in and add your expertise wow i want you to because i know there's stuff that like i only know on the peripheral and that you really have a better understanding of okay okay i'm like i'm so so i guess if you don't know this about m as like just if you're like what is this weird present that's the world's worst present no it's not because m has an affinity for the duggar family media presence i don't know i don't know the right way to put it this is where i remind people again i do not condone them i do not support them i do not give money to even watch the episodes or anything like that. I just happen to be I just have this sick fascination with trying to understand.

It came from so I started when I started watching them when I was like in college and it wasn't even a concept of like Christianity and, you know, fundamentalism and purity culture and all. It really was just like how does a family with 19 children operate right and which i think is what drew a lot of people in yeah and eventually i just watched so much of it i got invested in the lives of all these kids children yeah and so now i'm just and as things are coming out and like because they've had a bunch of scandals and like there's all these not all of them but a few children have like started to leave the family or they don't say that but they're slowly stepping aside and kind of telling their version of what's going on so i'm just like i'm we all know i love drama so i have been invested in for quite some time it really is like the perfect crossover i

mean and i i will say i feel that i was unfairly critical of your interest in this family because I just I will be the first to admit I didn't really get it. Like I didn't I was like, what? They just go to church and you watch them be like hateful toward queer people. Like, I don't get it. But after doing all this research and like, you know, learning about how the show was framed and like how the kids have grown and like like i get it i do get it i get it i mean i watch horrible shows like true crime shows all the time because no i don't condone what's going on but it's like a fascinating insight into humanity um it really is this is probably my hey that's the gift right there is just i get it and i

apologize for forever critiquing you and i didn't critique you in a jokey way but like still i was very like what's wrong with you but no i i listen i take it back and like i guess this is my point um on my birthday to announce that i've been watching a lot of Vanderpump rules, which is something I swore I would never do. And I would say, I don't understand why all these people from different walks of life in my life, Renee, Eva, my, my neighbor, and like all love the show. And so finally I was like, okay, there are enough different people who watch this,

that there must be something to it. Started watching it. I got two episodes in and I was like, this is such a waste of my fucking time and life. This is such trash. Suddenly it was three o'clock in the morning. I'd finished the entire first season in one night. And I was like, oh, I'm in it now. And I eventually on season five.

And this was like a couple of ago so it's sick okay and and I feel like I have a lot of backtracking to do here walking back some of my like kind of judgment on people's tastes in tv which like you know it wasn't meant to be harsh ever but I just I think I just didn't get it and now I'm'm like, okay, I get it. Eventually something bites each of us with the reality shows. It fucking clicked. And I'm like, I don't know what this means for me in the future, where I'm going to go and develop from here in my relationship with shitty trash TV. But, you know, I'm thriving and I'm trying my best. Yep. Anyway, this is a story about the duggars okay and i'm really nervous because like this is your fucking expertise so

please jump in if there's a correction um if there's like a crazy fun fact that i totally missed just let me know. And yeah, I do want to say going into this before anyone judges me, I just want to say, if I sound excited, it is not because again, I do not. I'm only excited because we're now finally talking about something.

I like have like a dirty little interest in. No, I mean, it's like not true crime show. So it's like, you know, you get excited about a story because it's like, oh, wow, this is something I know about. And this is something I can discuss and like, it's just like insight.

And it's also it's been a show that's been on since like the early 2000s. So it's been years of just like being in the know of this family. So if I sound excited, I swear to God, i i do not like this family i just like this family you know like totally totally totally get it okay yes just before people think i'm like against the right side of history and yeah and i'm glad that you said that because i feel like maybe somebody didn't need to hear that um but yeah so i mean without further ado let's just jump right in. So the way that I'm going to approach this is from kind of the early days of this family and how things kind of developed. So we'll start with good old Jim Bob. Every time I hear that name, I'm like, that can't be

right. That can't be real. It never it never gets good, just so we're clear. It never gets good. Okay, great. So Jim Bob Duggar was born in 1965 to Jimmy Lee and Mary Duggar in Springdale, Arkansas. He was their second child with an older sister. And we don't know too much. I say we don't know too much. Maybe Em has some deep insight. But we don't know too much about his childhood. It's a little vague on the details.

But we don't know too much about his childhood. It's a little vague on the details. But his father was apparently so bad at handling money in the family that his mom once had to cook decorative rice, like from a decoration to feed the kids. And so, you know, obviously a very traumatic situation. And he sought refuge and community in his local Baptist church. And that is where he was introduced to the religion and or I guess and community in his local baptist church and that is where he was introduced to the religion and or i guess to religion in general and that is uh when he became extremely active as a member in his local church when jim bob was 17 he met 16 year old michelle ruark rourke rourke rourke while he was walking door to door with a friend uh just kind of

visiting potential new church uh converts i don't know like trying to bring the word of jesus to the neighbors i guess and michelle herself didn't come from a particularly religious home but uh she had recently chosen to convert to the baptist church aka she'd been saved so jim bob went to her house to invite her to sunday school and was instantly taken by her uh as soon as he left her house he prayed lord i would love to be her spiritual leader can she be mine vomitous yeah vomitous and he it is funny in interviews because he'll say like it was love at first sight and then in her interview she'll be like i didn't remember him literally the next bullet awkwardly in an interview michelle admits she doesn't even remember their first meeting so clearly he did not have quite the most striking effect that she had on him yeah it's okay it happens um but luckily

for jim bob michelle applied for a position at the yogurt shop that jim bob's mother managed so this was totally by chance and he told his mom to please give michelle the job and that way they had like a more of a connection now and they started hanging out and it was one night after a four hour long conversation about the bible that they started officially dating because what could be more romantic than that i can't think of a single thing i'm gonna tell alison we have to start over be like this is we're doing a refresh let's start from square one get your bible out start to get genesis page one god jim bob and michelle were married in july of 1984 this was months before michelle even turned 18 so she was still a youngin and this is where the duggar story the duggar family story i should

say as we know it, truly began. So the Duggars kicked off their marriage working in real estate, and they invested in properties to make money. And on March 3rd of 1988, they had their first child, a beautiful baby boy whom they named Joshua James Duggar, a.k.a. Josh, a.k.a. the villain. Trash story. Trash. So Michelle used birth control between pregnancies because they were trying to plan when they would be ready for their second child. Unfortunately, her second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. And so the couple consulted a doctor who told them, interestingly, that using birth control can cause miscarriages. And I would just like to take this moment to explain to everyone there is absolutely zero empirical evidence to suggest that birth control causes miscarriages um or that taking it in

between pregnancies has any effect whatsoever uh so michelle i guess heeded the words of this doctor and quit using birth control so in 1990 she then gave birth to her twins do you know the twins names oh come on now i'm trying to do like a fun pop quiz but i also don't want to just keep putting you on the spot oh no i could i could run through all 19 if you want but it's janna and john david and i will say they um but uh so she actually uses that as part of her testimony i don't know if you get to that of like why they had so many kids because she felt so guilty about the miscarriage and blaming birth control for it. God. And and so that was when they decided that they were going to trust the Lord with how many children they would be having.

And so then because they committed their life to never using any form of birth control again they think that god blessed them with twins to make up for the lost baby that's right yes just to just to give more clarity on like why the twins were such a magical experience for them nailed it nailed it so they took the twins like you said as a sign from god that they would be rewarded and blessed with many children if they left family planning in capital h his hands yes sorry literal literal capital pronouns okay yes yeah uh so they decided to forego any form of contraception at this point um and however many children they would have was up to god delightful so from 1991 to 1997 they had six more children m what are their names you went just the first six so we have the first two uh right joshua we have three josh josh

and then they had the other three are uh it's i can only rattle them off why don't you just do Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Jeremiah, Jason, James, Justin. Oh, my God. I've never gotten to do this in real time. Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johanna, Jennifer, Jordan, Josie.

That's insane. I always thought I could fire them off immediately without laughter in the middle, but I'm realizing how ashamed I am at the same time. No, don't be ashamed. You were put on the spot. And if anyone should be ashamed, it's not you in any of these scenarios. So don't worry. I don't believe you.

But the first six, if you were asking, it was Josh, Shanna, John, David, Jill, Jessa, and Ginger with a J, which is Christine's favorite of them all. It kills me. When Em first told me Ginger, and I went, oh, but Ginger, and Em goes, oh no, it's Ginger with a J.

And I went, that can't be real. Like, are you fucking kidding me? Because obviously, I don't know if you caught on, but all of the kids names start with J yeah it's cool well so they started with Josh and then they accidentally liked Jana and John David so by the fourth kid they're like well we can't we can't not use a J and they kept just having kids and they're like oh shit but also like you and i have talked about this i think with eva too like there are so many names that start with j that are more but they didn't use ginger like oh they like they could have used like like julia or something right like there's so many options that are actual names that start j on reddit every now and then

there's a uh a form of like what are the j names that they missed and it's like normal names like jake joel like jacob is even like isn't that like a religious name or something yes it is a biblical name so they're jesus can you imagine somebody would say hey zeus and they'd be like that's not correct oh my god that probably was too far for them are they jezebel no i don't know jezebel i think probably is the arch nemesis of this family they did have a uh 20th who was um they ended up losing that baby but they also went with the name jubilee so just to show that like they really were just neglecting a lot of j names that are used normally so yeah jubilee i mean i guess at least it's a word it is a word yeah and ginger is a name but also spelled wrong so you know they're sort of almost there you know what i mean even on the 20th kid they were they were testing the waters

yeah they were really pushing it and you know what whatever it's none of my business but uh i just always thought that was such a wild fun fact ginger with a j uh so in 1998 jedediah robert and jeremiah robert became their second set of twins so now they are at nine children by 1998 michelle and j matter just just to tell you it's 11 it was 11 kids under 10 or something it was something crazy molly ann you're fired no just kidding um i'm clearly just bad at math so jeremiah robert that was their second set of twins. After nine children. So they had 10 and 11. Seven, eight. Okay. They had Josh, Jana, John, David, Jill, Jessa, Ginger, Joseph, Josiah, Joyanna, Jedediah, Jeremiah.

Got you. And that's 11. Okay. I think maybe there was a confusion with the twins getting. Yeah. getting yeah yeah so michelle and jim bob subscribe to something delightful called the quiverful movement uh which comes from a certain psalm do you know the psalm i don't have it memorized but and i'm sure you have it written down it's essentially that a man should keep his quiver full and his his quiver being essentially his he should have a family his pp his quiver being essentially his he should have a family his pp he just is quiver full he should

have like as many arrows as you can in some way and essentially you're building your army of god with as many children as you can have yeah so it's psalm 127 and it goes as follows behold children are a heritage from the lord the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. Quiverful movement is essentially to have and raise as many conservative Christian children as possible to represent their views in what some call a raging culture war. So kind of hinting at what you said of like creating God's army under your own roof to like fight back against cultural, I don't know, developments that are not godly, I suppose. i don't know developments that are not godly i suppose according to an article on the quiverful website marital fertility is the most important indicator of social health if people are having babies outside of marriage or married people aren't having babies at all society is in big

trouble okay not great not a good look not at all vicky garrison a former member of the movement who now speaks out against it says quote the wife is obligated to provide sex to her husband on demand your body does not belong to you and you are just required to submit to that and that's just one of many of the very upsetting aspects of this quote unquote religion. So I don't know if you'll get to this. I have a hunch you will. But in the most recent news of the Duggars is that one of the daughters has been coming out and talking about how she has stepped away from that intensity of conservative Christianity. Is it Ginger? With a J. Ginger with a J. that intensity of uh conservative christianity ginger with the j ginger with the j i love i knew i loved her from the moment you said her name to me years ago i was like that one's gonna go places

oh do you talk about free ginger at all no oh my god this is the problem is like i was i felt so bad but i was like molly and like we could make this a multi-parter, but I feel like it's OK. We didn't know how to address this. So we've kind of had to condense it a lot. That's OK. So I'm just trying to make sure I'm respectful, not totally screaming over you the whole time. Take listen. It's your day.

Well, it's literally your day. My day was yesterday when this comes out. Listen, it's about it's a it's a belated birthday gift. Thank you. Well, so free. So there was years ago when the all the kids were still kids and they hadn't grown up and had their own families they uh would go to a lot of like press junkets or they would like be asked to go on the news and promote something and so they would

go to new york every now and then to do like good morning america or. And during their show, which I know you'll get to eventually because they had a reality show, they filmed Ginger or they filmed all the kids saying like, oh, what do you think of New York? Because it's so different from rural conservative Christian Arkansas. What do you think of the big city? And all of them were like, I prefer the country. I prefer the country. And Ginger was like, I kind of like the city. And she said something as vague and simple as that and the world took it by storm and they know everyone was like ginger wants out of the

family like everyone everyone was like if anyone's gonna leave it's gonna be ginger just because of that she's given she's hinted at her dissatisfaction so then there was this website that came out a long time ago and is still often mentioned called free ginger.com oh my god does this still exist i'm going right now it does it i think it might still does it let me see it's uh not looking good because it's just kind of spinning on me free ginger i spelled it right i mean ginger.org oh.org oh i'm so sorry god forbid it should be .gov at this point it's literally the icon above is her family and then her running away running away also i love that like they put a suicide prevention lifeline right up top which is awesome they and it's it became originally it was like now it's still a form where they talk

about the quiverful movement and like how damaging that is but so it became this whole thing because she simply was neutral to new york city people just were like she's the one that's gonna get away trying to be polite like oh i think it's a nice town yeah holy shit and ever since then she's even had to like address free ginger and been like i like i and you know what by the way like the secret is that she ended up really liking new york she ends up getting proposed to in new york one day she says she wants to move to a city all of her siblings knew she was like the city girl of them all and now she lives in los angeles so okay see i yep see but so there was something

it's just a coincidence but i'm sure there's a lot of people who think like no we knew from the beginning with free ginger so yeah i love it somebody was like i fucking called it and don't you forget it i am the uh webmaster of free ginger.org and i knew soon to be dot gov. Dot gov. And I knew. I knew what I was doing. So speaking of the Quiverful movement, their official site also includes fact sheets about the danger of using contraceptives. Because birth control pills prevent a fertilized embryo from implanting in, quote unquote, the mother's womb. And they believe that life begins at conception at fertilization quiverful considers birth control to be full stop abortion and according to their site uh given the scale of these quote unquote silent abortions based on the millions of women

worldwide using various drugs and devices what we are considering here this is according to their website is truly a pharmaceutical holocaust oh is how they refer to people using contraceptives damn yes it they equate it to Yes, they equate it to having an abortion because you are preventing fertilization. Yeah, I mean, I understand the reference of it's like, oh, it's like an infant genocide. Yes, which is what they call abortion or pro-choice movement. I mean, there's a lot of sticky and icky language around all this. Very, very toxic so one of the reasons i mentioned ginger early and then i obviously went on a tangent is uh because now that she's kind of

she's not fully deconstructing her faith uh she is still very much a conservative christian but just not part of that movement okay but she but she has said um like living in the fundamentalist uh quiverful movement now that she is stepping away and like kind of reinventing what she thinks the role of a woman should be she was raised just thinking your whole job is to be a mother your whole job is to submit to your husband and you need to be where they say joyfully available for him at all moments. But when you also like you don't believe in birth control, you're pretty much your only option is to have as many children as possible because you don't get to say no and you don't get to not be pregnant if it happens. Right. Exactly. And there have been a few of the siblings who now are team birth control and family planning and things like that. But she said that that was a big struggle for her because her whole life she was indoctrinated into thinking,

I'm going to have as many children as possible whether or not I like it. Yeah. Just wild. Does she have any children? She has two. Okay. And she is not to like, you know, question too much like someone's, you know, family life or anything like that.

But she has openly said that they're using some sort of birth control. I don't know what type. It could just be like natural family planning. But they she said, which doesn't sound like a big statement. birth control i don't know what type it could just be like natural family planning but they she said um which doesn't sound like a big statement to most people but people in that world it's a huge statement where she has said like i don't want a lot of children and like yeah children are a blessing but you're allowed to be grateful for just like some blessings and like you don't need all the blessings and like you don't need abundance and blessings so and to have had like the trauma of helping raise your siblings

i mean we'll get into that but like oh yeah i mean look of course you don't want to repeat that and then live that out again in your own family yeah she's like i'm sure she hasn't said it but i'm sure she's thinking like i already I already raised 19 kids. Like, I'm done. Literally. Great point. Yeah. Great point. Sorry, I'm stressed eating candy. That's okay.

That's okay. I'm, wow, I'm just so excited about this topic. Okay. I'm so happy. I didn't want you to feel like I was, like, taking over your territory. No, please. So, right. feel like i was like taking over your no please so right so quiverful considers birth control to be abortion they consider the use of contraceptives as a holocaust of fetuses uh the duggars actually

for what it's worth deny being part of the quiver full movement publicly publicly but at the same time on their official website they reference psalm 127 about the fucking quiver full of children and that was in response to a question about why they decided to have a big family so if they're not in the quiver full movement they're at least creating their family based on that bible verse so it's a little confusing um it feels like they're not doing a good job of lying about it like it's literally on your website i yeah i i wonder when that got put on their website because i wonder if it was after the show got canceled and they didn't have to like really hide it anymore i don't know maybe i don't know maybe um likewise fun fact quiverful fully

endorses the duggars and even sells duggar merchandise on their website which is like so embarrassing it's also embarrassing that the duggars are like no we're not part of that we love our favorite supporters they're our icons they are our spokesperson yeah yeah like again they're not doing a very good job of hiding this uh affiliation so regardless of any official affiliation or non-affiliation, the Duggars did publicly model Quiverfull's extreme patriarchal beliefs to their children. So the Duggar girls grew up learning that it is God's will for them to serve the men in their lives, including their own brothers. The girls were not allowed to wear pants, only skirts. The girls were not allowed to wear pants, only skirts.

It was their responsibility to dress modestly so they wouldn't cause men to stumble on the path to God. And in one of their books, the Duggar said they used the code word. Do you know what it is? Nike. You're so smart, Em. I'm so proud of you. I knew you would just nail my little pop quiz. This is easy.

This is the only place where like I would dominate in trivia. It's like those themes where they do like Harry Potter trivia, the office trivia. Like you need to get involved in some sort of Duggar trivia because you probably nail it. Some quiverful fundamentalist Christianity trivia. I was going to say maybe they'll do that in L.A. And then I was like, actually, that's probably not the right audience. Oh, boy. in LA and then I was like actually that's probably not the right audience oh boy um so the code word Nike as Em said was used to warn the boys to look down at their shoes if an attractive or a scantily clad in their mind uh woman walked by they had to do that a lot in New York City oh I betcha I betcha if they were walking because there were billboards everywhere and there were people

like with their shoulders showing because girls couldn't wear anything without sleeves. And so they the girls or the parents would have to say Nike and all in like an alley line. They're all in like one line like walking down the street and all the boys are just looking at their shoes and like just

because they just can't look. I can't even get into it it's really disturbing um but by the way in case you're wondering because like like even when they go swimming they have to wear like full clothes like no and i think they think that even like swim shorts are um uh not modest enough for men and so they would all go swimming like there's episodes multiple episodes of them going to the beach in their jeans swimming no swimming in jeans no big good jeans at the beach no like it was bananas honestly that's too far like yeah all the patriarchy stuff like whatever that's a normal day. Swimming in jeans at the beach.

I no longer have any support of these people after that. Too much. So women and girls, if you haven't guessed, were responsible for men's reactions to their bodies. If a man makes unwanted sexual advances, well, then why were you tempting him and what were you wearing? well then why were you tempting him and what were you wearing on the other hand if a husband cheats on his wife well then why were you not being tempting enough and why were you not pleasing or satisfying him in the bedroom so it's like a catch-22 you know what i mean it's all it's never the men's fault always the woman's fault right so in the dug world, girls are raised to fear and avoid sexuality until they're married, in which case they should suddenly be fully accessible at all times to their husbands. In 1999, Jim Bob dove into politics and he became a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives.

He was often gone for work, leaving Michelle alone to homeschool their 11 children, which is like I saw in one video. Someone's like, that's an entire classroom of children. Of different ages. Oh, true. Yeah. So Michelle and Jim Bob relied on a highly structured buddy system to raise their kids so each younger child would be assigned to an older sibling and then that older sibling was almost solely responsible for all aspects of the younger siblings daily care everything from feeding and bathing to homeschooling like basically it's paraphernalia parentification of these children they were called it's called sister momming oh that's what they that's like the at least that's

what reddit calls it term yeah it's uh it's that each of the sisters are becoming a mom and there's never any brother dadding so even if there's right so even if there's like 10 older siblings and 10 younger siblings the boys never have to worry about that it's always the the ones who are going to end up being a mother anyway. So exactly. And this is like definitely a very it can be a form of abuse, neglect, you know, when you are basically putting the pressure and responsibilities of a parent of an adult on a young child who has a not consented to be part of this but b should not be having to do this labor of parenting their siblings like it's very toxic um and it can be very insidious and in this case i think it was and there was um forever ago there was an interview they did about the buddy system that basically as soon as one of the older kids, which they did not say older girls, but that's what they meant.

As soon as they were basically old enough to get themselves dressed, they would then be assigned a younger sibling to help them get dressed. Yeah. So it was like it's not even like once you hit 14 high school age. It's like once you're once you can put on your own fucking pants or I'm sorry, skirt, then you can help other kids. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's very insidious, very toxic, very abusive. It's just like. Scratching the surface of everything that's wrong, but already it's it's big, big red flags. thing that's wrong but already it's it's big big red flags and and i do want to um say one last thing too which is important to future parts of this story that you're going to tell is you were saying that um as you know the a lot of times the kids are not even taught any version of sexual education um a lot of them don't even learn until their wedding day and a lot of times it's just they're the men

because they're supposed to be able to handle it or and i'm sure they hear about it you know through some other like sources through friends or whatever and they've heard of it but the women are really kept in the fucking dark pretty much until their wedding day if at all and there have been a few people that have come forward and said that like i was once part of this you know community and i was expected to get married pretty much as soon as i turned 18 and i didn't know anything about sex and a lot of them a lot of them have equated their wedding night to being essayed because they had no idea what was coming of course and they were also told their whole life don't even think about that part of your body don't be tempted by oh absolutely i mean even traumatic even uh ginger now says like i felt

guilty for having crushes on guys because i felt like i was giving part of myself away yeah to someone before i was supposed to so you're basically told don't be interested boom be interested hey it's your wedding night and you've never heard about sex and this is what's going to happen now and so it's just very traumatizing and it is very traumatizing it's you i mean it's abusive to just like send your children into a situation where they know nothing about sex but they just have to comply after being told forever don't ever let anybody think of you in that way or touch you or do anything like that the power dynamic is so

fucked like in a relationship like that where your partner knows your husband knows at least the basics about sex you know nothing but you just have to go along with it without any knowledge or consent and do you

do you mention the like their dating etiquette at all no well a little bit um but maybe when i get there you can okay expand because i've heard some stuff from you that uh i did not put in the notes that i think you'll be able to like add to clarify um so anyway all the kids are expected to raise the younger siblings and they're kind of like buddied up and, you know, day in, day out, this is how they've created this structure in the family. So as far as school goes, the kids were homeschooled and the Duggars followed a curriculum from the Advanced Training Institute, ATI. And ATI is run by a Christian nonprofit group, and its founder, Bill Gothard, is a literal

piece of shit. Like, I'm silently nodding because I'm trying to keep my mouth shut. But yes, you're right. He is a fucking piece of work. I mean, let's just put it this way. because i'm trying to keep my mouth shut but yes you're right he is a fucking piece of work i mean let's just put it this way he ended up resigning in 2014 after uh decades over 30 what over 30 uh allegations accusations came to light about sexual harassment sexual assault uh as one youtuber put it uh everything from the bad to the really

fucking bad like there was just such a range i don't know that more detail than that do you um well yeah so it was at least 30 women who'd come forward and just from being underage too some underage a lot of people have said that he always gave really fucking creepy vibes and um it was so i don't think jim bob himself was ever involved in like the board of right so ati is the um curriculum i think used for the iblp do you talk about yes yes yes okay so that's like it's essentially ginger is being very um she's been doing a press tour recently where she's answering questions about her time in the faith. And she keeps saying like, oh, it's cult like, but I wouldn't call it a cult. And it's like, girl, you're just trying to protect your family. It's a cult.

Yeah, it's very bad. Yes. I don't think she has the heart to say it, but I might. But Bill Gothard was essentially their leader, and it was very disturbing. And he would hire anyone who was very heavy in the faith. A lot of them were either on the board or they had homeschool conferences that they would do every year and he it even felt like he was um grooming a lot of the younger children to eventually not realize that he was harming them um there's just the fact there were 30 allegations that's just who came to light yeah um but he's and also he was the irony of all of it is that so he wrote a lot of the um foundations of christianity that he that the

duggars oh yes totally followed um especially like when it came to i'm getting into the specific curriculum okay cool okay go go go well i don't i don't want to i don't want to make sure i miss i don't want you to miss just miss something just that he uh he he basically created all the rules outside of normal biblical christianity that they followed and he didn't even have a wife or kids and was deciding all these things about relationships and i actually incidentally as we were talking about him pulled up the iblp like website and they have like a bill gothard like our leader you know bio even though he resigned it was like more of like a pr stuff like a pr move to leave yeah but they still all love him and respect he really has like a glowing review here um and it says in order to focus

completely on the lord and the life work God has given him, Bill never married. And it's like, OK, but then he raped a bunch of people and assaulted underage. And he also told thousands and thousands of people like how to have a relationship and never had one. How to properly treat their marriage and their children, even though he had neither. So, yeah, you're right there. There's a lot of fucking. Hypocrisy is like the least like i wish there were a bigger word for hypocrisy like yeah he really he came out during like sex drugs and rock and roll and all that and so i think he was a way for a lot of conservative

families to think they were saving their children by putting them in like the most restrictive yes limited space possible what's the word uh sheltered like extremely avoidant of of any culture and also he like his beliefs were fucking crazy they had nothing to do with the bible like no he would take a verse and he would just totally warp it into like his own personal opinion. Yeah. And people just write it. They just write it out. And that was like one of the things I saw an interview with Ginger where she said basically. None of this stuff that he got was even in the Bible, like he would just make up his own kind of rules to follow. And like you said, people ate it up like they were like well this is how we're

going to raise our children um which is very unfortunate because i'll get into the actual curriculum here yeah so the ati curricula includes lessons for families to guide them through any religious or moral conflicts they might face so it's sort of like a help a self-help book for for christian families um in the late 90s, the ATI distributed an alarming lesson plan in its curriculum called Lessons from Moral Failures as a Family. And here is just a fun little synopsis of this lesson plan. The lesson plan provided the following scenario. Social workers tell a couple that their oldest son was caught sexually abusing his younger siblings. No legal action is taken. Instead, the son repents for the sin and prays for forgiveness. and how they failed him and how they can do better in the future to keep him from stumbling,

so to speak. And when he kind of gives his reasoning for why this happened, he blames immodesty in the home for the abuse that he committed. He wrote, it was not uncommon for my younger siblings to come out of their baths naked or with a towel a different lifestyle with more modesty might have prevented what happened oh my god i mean it's insane uh he also says his sisters didn't behave appropriately in their dresses finally he says his mother a nurse was too casual about the human body and didn't properly teach her children that men see bodies from a very sexual point of view so this lesson plan basically told parents and this was just like a made-up thing like a conundrum that you might face what did you call it a hypothetical hypothetical exactly exactly um and so the lesson plan basically told parents that to avoid sexual abuse among their children daughters should be modest at all times and boys should not ever be

exposed to naked bodies even changing diapers could lead to temptation which is like so sickening yep and just another way and just another way to say that oh well women need to do everything with a baby true yes true like what do you want him to have impure thoughts? No. Well, then why don't you change the diaper so he doesn't have to? So in the end, as we can probably all gather, everyone was to blame for this kind of abuse, except the abuser. And the ATI also released a lesson plan called Counseling Abuse, which was meant to guide victims of abuse. And the lesson suggested that sexual abuse can be this is so upsetting and just i mean i know i know what you're gonna say trigger warning you do i'm pretty sure yeah i think i know you're gonna say okay uh just trigger warning for you know i mean this whole episode really or this whole section, but. The lesson suggested sexual abuse can be considered a moral vaccination. Founder Bill Gothard used an example of a woman who used to struggle with sexual thoughts and desires.

One day, however, she was raped and afterward, she no longer wanted to have sex with anyone or even think about sex at all. So this rape was a successful moral vaccination that protected her from lust yep so basically the idea is well maybe it was good for them yeah it's like like first of all what i know i know i know and this is where my like again sick fascination comes in with this because i'm like how can people believe this shit like how would you and this is where again like ginger is currently like oh it's cult like it's like are you fucking kidding me like your leader thinks this is okay and there's thousands of families who believe this and yes about their own children like young children young girls being like well it's their fault that they got out of the bathtub with a towel on.

I mean, the I mean. And also like the the massive lack of critical thinking of like, oh, you want like they think it's a shock that all of a sudden this victim of a very intense rape all of a sudden doesn't want to have sex anymore it's like well it worked it's like well she duh she got oh my god it's like it's a good consequence yeah it's foul so anyway that's why i can't stop reading about this fucking family because there's always something like this i get it it's fascinating the lesson plan also explained that the abuse victim might be guilty of their own failings. For example, if they fail to report their abuse and then the abuser went on to abuse other people, they were responsible, the previous victim, for letting it happen again to other people. Right. Which is like, oh, OK, not the person doing it.

Makes total sense. Yeah, makes total sense. Which is like, oh, OK, not the person doing it. Yeah, makes total sense. Yeah, makes total sense. So although there is no real proof that the Duggars specifically use these lesson plans, the family was a strong supporter of ATI for many years. They did use their lesson plans. They attended annual ATI conferences.

Still do, by the way. Still do. OK. And promoted ATI curriculum on their website and in their other media. So we can all pretty much assume that this was part of their learning process and teaching they also have on their um on the i don't know if it's the ati website or the iblp website but they're um on in their shop you can buy pamphlets i have not bought them i've seen the samples though because i just had to know they have like pamphlets on like how to them i've seen the samples though because i just had to know

they have like pamphlets on like how to be a good husband how to be a good wife and it's literally just like a listicle and each one is just worse than the last the things that you have to do to be a good wife it's awful oh it's it's sick it's really sick so again we're not 100 sure that they had those specific lesson plans but we can kind of guess that probably they did because they also had the same beliefs. Ginger, just so we're clear, they were very close with Bill Gothard and Ginger has said he felt like a grandfather to her. Oh, God. Just to give you an idea of them saying how close. How close.

OK. OK. I didn't know that so the ati's approach to addressing sexual abuse and incest shed some disturbing light on the way the duggars uh spoiler alert would eventually handle their own intra-family incidents yep among the duggars more typical fundamentalist christian rules were no tv no alcohol and no tattoos and were there more weird ones like couldn't they like not they had to just side hug oh yeah they also they weren't allowed to have music with drums because the drums drums would like summon the devil or something cracking up it was like drums are the devil's instrument like the play things yeah are they i mean even like uh so the ones that

you're probably wanting to hear the most are like the etiquette the dating etiquette were like they would all save their kiss for their wedding day they weren't allowed to like hold hands until they were engaged they would at best if you were courting somebody and you were allowed to have any physical contact you could have a three second side hug oh sexy and you couldn't even hold hands i guess when you were praying together there had to be somebody else in between you and so that there wasn't any temptation um and no coca-cola is that them or a different family that that's the plaths that which are also from a fundamentalist christian group i don't know if it's the iblp but probably

um but they were the the duggars did have soda though but um but they also had and this was more bill gothard's thing but i mean they i'm sure they followed it to some degree that like they had to be really intentional with everything they had in their house so if you ever look at their house there's like a bunch of like decals of scripture all over the walls and like um really like you know not suggestive things but ginger even tells the story now that she's like coming out with all this she said that like bill gothard would always tell this story about how um this woman had a picture of like a ship in her house and she really liked the picture of this ship and it was out in the ocean and because she liked it she just hung it up on the wall but then having that picture in their house for their entire life her children were influenced

to want to go out and be in work at sea and work on ships. And because this one picture influenced them, they love the picture. So they went to go work out in the ocean. And eventually all three of them, or I think there was like three sons, they all became sailors and they died in a shipwreck. And it was my God. And it was her fault that they died because she wasn't careful about what influences she brought into the house. That's like, I mean, Ginger was also saying that she would be so afraid of driving in a car and music coming on that didn't fit like this family standard of what you're allowed to listen to.

And she's like, I would hear drum music. And she said drums, even in Christian songs, like were not allowed, even like kind of the new agey Christian pop and stuff. Yeah. Christian rock. And she said she the story that she was told was that a young boy in one of these lesson plans was listening to some rock and roll or like some modern music with drums and died in a car accident because of it and it's like what like you're putting this in children's minds and psyches one of her big things that she's talking about now on her whole little tour is that um that she just like lived in constant paranoia and constant fear that god was gonna kill her because of something she didn't even know she had done wrong because there was rock music playing in another room and she was unaware of it but it was close enough she might die instantly so like that's traumatic truly traumatic she's like 30 years old and now finally like becoming her own person but still probably has that lingering fear from childhood yeah but so uh

yeah a lot of the things that they taught the family was all the way down to like you have to be careful of every influence you bring into your house. And, you know, you can't kiss on your kiss on your wedding day, but you can't do anything else. You can't even know about sex. I mean, it's just it's very, very gross. It's so controlling, but in like the weirdest, creepiest, specific way. Yeah. And on like every level.

I mean, it's just I mean, it's full on abuse. It's it's very upsetting they weren't even allowed to have internet their phones this is another thing where it was like patriarchal and i'm sure jim bob thought he was doing the right thing but like wow talk about control he had trackers on all their phones to see like what they were doing on the internet so like he could see whoever they were texting if you were dating somebody um you like he would it was a group chat with the parents so like it was oh god i have that coming up too yep fun so michelle for what it's worth was running a far different household than the one that she

had grown up in which was secular and she recalls some unimaginable freedoms from her own childhood, like wearing pants. She was a high school cheerleader. Yeah. High school cheerleader, wearing pants. She said she sometimes even mowed the lawn in her bikini. She uses that one a lot. Lord. And it's speculated that Michelle's transition into such a religious life estranged her from some of her own family who was not in this world um such as her older sister evelyn who is gay and has only appeared once on the show um but josh for some reason denies this estrangement and says his own aunt has chosen to live a gay life and he loves her uh and he also said evelyn has told me she is not for all these measures that are being pushed when it comes to

marriage and things she believes that marriage is between one man and one woman and i'm like okay so he's saying so he's saying evelyn is claiming that she doesn't want gay marriage to be acceptable even though she's chosen like that okay that's crazy first of all you guys are like pretty darn estranged and also i think that that quote came from when he was working at the frc which was uh he worked at the family research council which was like this conservative group in dc and i he was like i think he thought he was gonna grow up to like be fucking president one day and so he was in politics before all the scandals came out of course well and uh i think it came it was like around some sort of election time or when he was like trying to campaign and they were asking his thoughts on on if he is

queer friendly and he was trying to use his like aunt as a boy i understand okay it's like i have an aunt who's gay but she's also on our side yes and so she gets it yeah exactly god uh that's yeah that that does add a lot of uh context to that quote because i was like where did that come from yeah yeah other than that they've really never mentioned anything queer unless it's incredibly phobic okay yeah so according to the Duggars uh their family was loving and thriving and closer than ever while Jim Bob worked in the house of representatives he and Michelle welcomed three more babies what are their names Em? After the 11 Yes, the next three. Jason, James, and Justin? Look at you. I can't believe it. I hate myself, to be clear. I'm so proud of you. I

am. So in 2002, Jim Bob left his position to run for Senate, and he lost. but TV producers were homing in on this whole situation where he is standing in his campaign photos next to Michelle and surrounded by their 14 children. So on September 6th of 2004, Discovery Channel featured an hour-long special called 14 Children and Pregnant Again! Exclamation point. And this followed the Duggars through a typical day in their home. They went over the immense charts for the chores, which they called, do you know what they call those? Jurisdictions. You're such a hero.

You're my hero. You're my hero. Seriously. Well, that's all it took this whole time i mean really yeah i'm just so impressed uh the special even covered the birth of their 15th child you know that one jackson levi that's right uh by this time there were so many kids that the buddy system was not doing it so So they replaced it with the groups system. And sisters Jill, Jana, Ginger, and Jessa

were assigned a group of siblings to essentially raise as a team together. A buddy team, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so babies were assigned to a team on a rotating basis and their teams were chosen before the baby was even born so that the older siblings would be prepared once the baby was born to start that the older siblings would be prepared once the baby

was born to start caring for it right away yep in 2006 another special came out uh do you know the name of this next one there's like so many with weirdly similar 14 kids and pregnant again is it is it is it 15 kids and pregnant again or 15 kids and counting? It's raising 16 children. Oh, okay. Yeah. So this was just another like one hour special. And this one featured the birth of Johanna. Is that how you say that?

Johanna. Johanna Faith. Three more specials followed the family as they moved into a new home and went on trips to the Grand Canyon and Disneyland. Specials followed the family as they moved into a new home and went on trips to the Grand Canyon and Disneyland. And the last special in 2007 featured the birth of baby number 17. Jennifer Danielle. I didn't know we were doing middle names this whole time. I could do that, too.

Don't worry. OK, great. They're both there. I have both. Great. First and middle on all these. Oh, great. OK.

Yeah. Yeah. So the family was a total hit uh and in 2008 discovery's partner station a little channel called the learning channel began airing 17 kids and counting uh which is so this part's so backward to me but like they're you know reality tv stars this family but the kids are not allowed to watch tv so it's like such a bizarre concept yeah they even well they've said that in the past too it's like we don't even know what people are seeing like we can't even watch it it it's so backwards it's also backwards i think because they didn't have tv they also didn't really know what

the concept of fame was and so when they started getting recognized in real life, they were like, what the fuck is going on? That must be so weird. Yeah. That must be so weird. I hadn't even thought of that. So this series would ultimately span 10 seasons, 229 standard episodes and 16 specials, all of which Em has on Blu-ray. I'm sure of it. The box set.

I do the not so legal version of that because I don't want to pay money. Oh, interesting. You know, I never support that until this very moment. And I think now I'd like to say, let's get it on LimeWire. But, you know, I do still watch it every now and then just to like see how young all the kids look back then because like yeah so i started watching when jackson was born which was which he was the first duggar to be born on television and now there's i love that there's a first i know and now there's like i feel like there was like 30 eventually but um but so i've been watching since he was born and he just turned 19 so just to give

you an idea of how long i've been in touch with this family that's crazy i know and he back in the day i'll watch some of the episodes jackson was like the star child of the show he was like this cute little kid and he was so sweet and everyone was really rooting for him to one day make it out maybe there's a free jackson.org or something one day but he was the cutest little kid and him and joanna uh johanna were best friends and they would call each other um the lone ranger and tonto or something they were like they were like i don't know thick as thieves but then it got really sad because then once they like hit puberty, you can tell they were separated. And they like. Gosh, that is sad.

And it like puts such a fucking. Like weird spin on what should just be a healthy, happy sibling relationship. Yeah. And now they know really. Now you're inserting all this crap into it like it was going to be sexualized. And it's like, like god let kids be kids the uh jackson ended up having to go like hang out with the boys and like learn boy things and like he got taken away from really is so sad boy well jordan grace micaiah is that how you say it

yep uh ultimately became the 18th duggar and uh who's number 19 um Josie Brooklyn that's right and so when Josie Brooklyn was born TLC renamed the show 19 kids and counting that's probably the most recognizable one at least to my ear so during the Josie Brooklyn pregnancy Michelle suffered from uh preeclampsia which is as a former pregnant person an extremely dangerous uh blood pressure issue to have during pregnancy um it can be fatal it can cause uh seizures brain injuries if it gets too far uh fluid buildup in the lungs it can impair your liver and kidney function so basically like your body like starts shutting down if you. So if you have preeclampsia, you got to get that shit figured out.

Otherwise, it can turn into eclampsia. And she was already getting older as in terms of like what pregnant people age ranges are. Right. They start calling it a geriatric pregnancy at 35. So in he and she was in her 40s when she had Josie, I think. And so I think people are already worried that it was a high risk pregnancy. Yeah, there's more complications. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So and preeclampsia is like very alarming. And so, you know, that must have been scary. So Josie was born by emergency C-section. Do you know how much she weighed when she was born? I know she was she weighed less than a pool ball.

Like, like, that's that's weirder than actually knowing the specific number. So I know for two reasons. One, because that's what Jim Bob said on the show. And also because the show would often have like these little like fly away like fun facts in the corner of the show. Fun fact. Yeah. I think they said her weight in one of those like fun fact clips where it was like a pound, like not even. She was a pound.

One pound, six ounces. Six ounces. Like that is. So small. She was when she born at like four months or something? Oh, I don't know. It was something she's either was born at four months of pregnancy and had five months to go or she was born five months into pregnancy. 25 weeks.

Okay. So like, what's that? 25 divided by four. So that's like six and a half months. So she had three and a half months left to before she was supposed to be born. Two and a half, I think. That's 25 weeks is quite early. She was, I mean, in the pictures, like you can see she's like the size of a hand.

Not even. Like she's so tiny. And she really was struggling. Yeah, that's very that's scary. And, you know, with current medical. I don't know, advancements. A lot of the babies do survive, but often have health complications. She was she was in the hospital for so long.

Yeah, I bet they relocated. A whole season was in like a rental house next to the hospital just to be with the baby. Geez. Yeah. I just looked it up just to see kind of what the Internet says. But, yes. So any infant born before 28 weeks is considered extremely premature or a micro preemie and have a 75 to 85 percent chance of survival which is scary very scary yeah um and so you know she's born at the weight of a pool ball or whatever i'm sorry no i i just like i was so taken aback by that fun fact it was it that's why it always stuck with me because i was like wow like why would you say that i consider i can see it just like scrolling across the bottom it's like one of their like little did you know it was no it was either one of those like fast facts or i know he said it to someone over the phone it was like she weighs

like a pool ball or something anyway anyway so she spent several months in the hospital until she was able to go home with her family as the 19th thugger child once josie was stable enough she was assigned to be cared for by her older sister janna for several years critics of the show spoke of spoke up about how damaging this could be for children to grow up with their lives just plastered on tv um i think this is now also a big thing with youtube families and tiktokers because there's no protections in place for children who especially when they get into these really big successful youtube channels these family vloggers like sometimes put their kids through all this labor

like they're they're they're working they're on camera and there's no like child labor law in place for that kind of thing so I know people are scrambling to try and find like ways to protect kids well also as for the Duggars specifically they told the kids because even if it felt like work there some of the kids kids would ask why there were cameras in the house. And they were told that it was a ministry for God, because if they let people film in the house and air it, then maybe they would maybe someone would like the show so much or like their family so much and see their good Christian values that they would convert and be saved. That is just crazy town. And so now think of the additional pressure if you're a true Christian and feel like you're like going to save people through this.

You want to you want to put on your your best attitude. It's not even a job. It's like you're suddenly also a warrior for Christ and having to like convert people and you're seven years old. And even when you're home, like I mean, if you're imagine you're a teenager and you just want to be moody and have an attitude. But like you're there's cameras in your face. Not only is America judging you and watching you, God is also judging and watching you. It's like, yeah, OK, well, I can't win in this scenario.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like doubling down on the trauma of being like a kid in the limelight. on the trauma of being like a kid in the limelight so you know no privacy whatsoever everything they did millions of people watch uh in 2015 when josie was five there uh during filming yep and uh i did appreciate the channels that i watched about this blurred all the children's faces out because you know that's what a decent person would do uh but of course tlc did not not blur any faces out and also just filmed the entire thing. Like, like, Jana's on the phone with 911, frantic. And they're just the cameras are rolling. And Jana's like a 20 year old. Like, she's like, yeah, she's.

And there's also people still talk about that with Jana because she was essentially what a lot of people believe is she was more of a mom to Josie than even Michelle was. I don't I don't know what was going on with Michelle. I don't know if maybe she was. It's the way it came across as it looked like Jana was like, I mean,anna was crying and scared and michelle seemed to not be as panicked so i guess michelle and yeah jim bob were out of town when the actual seizure occurred which then also created a big conundrum or not a conundrum but like some backlash in among the public because it's like wait so the parents aren't even home and this child is having like a medical crisis and so her older sister has to call 9-1-1 and like be frantic and then you're

right the episode aired and michelle the mom was like oh well seizures aren't that unusual for josie and she fucking called them one of josie's quote little glitches yeah like yeah hello it's so upsetting so uh by the way um janna is now like in her mid-30s and is still not married she's officially like a full-blown spinster in the world but a lot of people think it's like she had to like raise josie they think the way that the show made it look is she pretty much raised a micro premium with seizures all by herself yeah and on top of that she raised like 15 other children and so she's just like a lot of people think she's intentionally not getting married because she knows that she would have to get pregnant and she doesn't want to raise any more kids so she's still in the faith yeah okay that's too bad um so when the show aired uh michelle and jim bob published books uh that covered financial advice parenting tips the secret to a long

loving marriage which by the way is god's doing you just gotta love god enough and then it'll work out so yes this seizure thing basically showed viewers like okay the siblings are taking on the true parenting roles whereas jim bob and michelle are just like ambivalent or like out of the house or not putting the. Or putting their celebrity first because they were often away doing like guest lectures and like they were doing promo stuff and the kids were always at home babysitting each other. Right. And they're like writing books and doing press tours.

Yeah. So as the show, you know, continues, the oldest Duggar children are starting to grow up and consider marriage. The Duggars are anti-dating. They instead endorse courtship. And the idea is that couples' outings are always chaperoned. Couples engage in family activities together instead of like a traditional one-on-one date. And this is something that I always found fascinating, and I'm sure you can shed some light on this. But Jim Bob had a questionnaire that men would have to fill out if if they wanted to

court his daughters. And some of these questionnaires were up to 30 pages long. And I wonder, do you know? I don't know. Do you know any of the questions on this questionnaire? Actually, I did for at some point. I don't know how I got a hold of it. I got a hold of the questionnaire at some point. Oh, I found it. Did you? Okay. So it was easy to get. It's not like I did anything sneaky. It was, I think at one point I actually heard it was a 50 page questionnaire. Oh my.

And there's different sections. Some of them are financial based, like how do you make your money? How do you plan on staying out of debt? Sure. One of them is like your what's your testimony? Please write your testimony in full detail of how you were saved. What's your relationship with your family? You know, all the all the good things that require 50 pages of questions, I guess. Jesus. Yeah. But it was. Yeah. Which like I don't't know like what he thought

like couldn't you just get that information out of like asking a person and getting to know them as they're dating your kid but no because there's like a hundred and oh 200 300 400 uh there are 423 questions we should fill it out for each other and see where we stand. Okay, yeah. Let me ask you... The testimony question will unfortunately be blank from me. Well, I think a lot of these will be blank. To the best of your understanding, are you able to have children? Gross.

Yeah. What is the best method of disciplining children do you believe in spanking children which by the way they've i don't know they haven't openly said it but they do follow uh gothardism and the iblp and there's uh a big following in the iblp for blanket training i know i can't you've told me about this on the show it's upsetting i think about it a lot they're they're very um pro-corporal punishment for children the the the faith in general well here's number 265 when does corporal discipline begin how do you begin to train infants like oh what the fuck it's it's upsetting um it's upsetting so anyway this is like the situation that people hits the press so this was only a month after this whole seizure debacle in touch weekly published an article using uh open source

uh you know files and documents they found online they published an article called bombshell duggar police report jim bob duggar didn't report son josh's alleged sex offenses for more than a year so this started to kick off horrifying revelations about the duggar family going back 13 years in 2002 jim bob duggar had notified local police that a quote female minor reported sexual abuse in their home josh who was 14 at the time uh admitted to molesting one of his young sisters at night more than once in fact josh actually confessed this to his parents unprompted before any of the victims came forward. And this became a big thing when Jim Bob and Michelle were trying to explain how great their parenting techniques were because he felt safe to come to us and admit his wrongdoings. And it's like, yeah, but your children don't feel safe sleeping in their own beds.

Yeah. They really tried to make it look like our teachings work because he felt so riddled with guilt that we know we can trust him because he's so honest. And he came to us because he knows that like we will he can confide in us about his shortcomings. It's like you're touching, he's touching your daughter. So what are you talking about? It's shocking how that's just not relevant in any of these interviews. Like it's about Josh, not about the girls.

And so his parents, you know, he came forward to his parents. It took them 16 months to take any action whatsoever, simply ignoring it mostly, while Josh began to molest more of his younger sisters. When Jim Bob finally did report it, the police took no legal action and basically told Jim Bob he could do whatever punishment he saw fit to take care of the situation. Wow. Only nine months later, Jim Bob's daughters complained of continued abuse. Instead of going back to the police, Jim Bob decided to meet with several church leaders about it. Apparently, including what's his face? Gothard.

What's his name? Bill Gothard. Bill Gothard. uh got gothard what's his name bill gothard bill gothard they sent josh to a christian counseling program for four months which at first they claimed was a reputable cred accredited counseling program but instead he went to one of bill gotard's like extension centers that needed some construction work done. And he basically did physical labor and like some vague counseling. He dug holes. He dug holes for like four months.

Which sounds like the book Holes, which is a much better story than this one. No, he and it was so he it ended up being uh four of his five sisters that were and because he only had five sisters at the time and then uh a babysitter yeah that was the that's right that's right minor that came forward but yeah he um he dug holes and i guess he went through some version of a program where like they like shaved his hair that was part of it and it sounds like some sort of boot camp thing you know which they do have we won't even get into it but they do have a christian boot camp that they send all their sons to so and it wasn't that that he went to but there's uh one of the specials early on it was filmed right around the time that he admitted to

his family what happened and then they sent him to this camp but they were gonna film a special about all 19 kids or however many kids there were at the time and they thought it would look weird if josh wasn't there to be a part of this special so he came back for a weekend and whatever special it is where his hair is like buzzed off oh geez that was when he was actually at this camp and he like got sent immediately back after the filming or something that is so fucked so yeah you can basically tell by his fucking haircut whether or not he was in this counseling program which again like had no license to therapize anyone um so josh came home eventually and apologized to his victims in In the end, a state trooper named Joseph Hutchins had a stern talk, a lecture with Josh and said, you know, this you can't continue this behavior,

but also took no action. And this guy was a mandatory reporter, which essentially means he was a professional who is required to report cases of suspected child abuse and neglect. So, you know, if he sees something, he is required to report it, even if it's just a hunch. But nope, didn't report anything, even though he was legally required to as law enforcement. And according to Joseph, he tells a different story. He says he thought Josh had only offended once and he didn't believe it would happen again. And he says he loses sleep over his failure to report Josh when he should have saying, I am a Christian myself

and I worry that something else may have happened. I would be responsible for it in my opinion by not reporting it the young girl should have been my first priority now here we do a big old plot twist where turns out joseph hutchins uh this guy who is just riddled with guilt about not reporting the alleged abuse uh is currently on parole after serving 15 years of a 56 year prison sentence on child pornography charges. That'll do it. Like, are you kidding me? This one guy that they had talked to him and give him a stern lecture and didn't report anything.

Well, guess what? He was also in the same fucking circle participating in the same fucking bullshit. I think he was actually in the same circle because I think this is alleged because I don't remember where I heard this from. But I think one of the rumors was that he was actually, yes, he was a cop, but he was also part of the same faith and the same church that the Duggars went to. And so they're like, we'll go to a cop we can trust is not going to actually do anything. Right.

It's like, oh, we'll have him talk to you and give you a lecture, but not take any action outside the home. That's what that's. I think that's I'm not trying to spread any misinformation, but I'm pretty sure that's that was one of the rumors that like he actually knew the family. And so he was like not as harsh about it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can definitely believe that and as somebody who then ended up getting busted for the same shit like child pornography it's obvious why he was not concerned with reporting this yeah a 14 year old touching his

his sisters which then a bunch of people came out and were like trying to defend josh to say like and they were like usually people who I would assume are like on the right side of things because they were saying like, oh, well, this is what happens when you don't teach children about, you know, sex. And he was too curious, but he couldn't go to anybody and talk about it. So on. I know they were saying like he like because he never gets to interact with any other girls. These are the girls that he was surrounded by and he got curious and like it was like it's like why yeah a lot of people aren't taught about sex and are curious that i've never fucking touched any children and i was sorry

yeah that it's not that hard that's an insane fucking like a lot of people tried to twist it into like oh he he didn't know any better and they were like trying to defend him and like criticize jim bob michelle and it's like you're doing it backwards like you're almost there but like no yeah but like no yeah yeah yeah yes holy holy holy, holy shit. Holy shit. So the Duggars are now supposed to be appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show in 2006. But shortly before the family would appear on the show, a letter appeared at the Harpo Studios. An anonymous tip came in about the abuse from a family friend of the Duggars. I think you told me how this happened, but wasn't there a letter written by

one of the girls that had been tucked into a book? Did you hear about this? There was a letter. That sounds familiar, but I don't remember it one of the girls wrote about the abuse put it in a book and then this book ended up getting like switching hands and going to a different family and oh that does sound yeah something like that through the family friend found this letter that was never sent out and so they anonymously contacted oprah and said like there is shit going on in this family i don't want you to give them this platform like they're just fooling all of you and all of us uh and so oprah is not one to be made a fool of and so she involved police who launched an official investigation into

the family yeah because i remember i remember saying something to you about it. I was like, how did Oprah end up in this storyline? Yeah. Oprah just like was like, OK, well, then let's fucking nail them like they're not coming on my show. Let's get the police involved. But unfortunately, it was too late because Arkansas has an extremely short statute of limitations on molestation, sexual abuse. So there was no case to be made or to be had. So the abuse continued to remain a secret until 2015 when InTouch Weekly used legal public information routes to access the initial abuse complaints. And that's when this big bombshell article came out. So in the wake of the report tlc made a statement condemning josh's actions and they removed all 19 kids and counting episodes from the air even though it was like their biggest

seller like their hot ticket item the show was officially canceled on july 26 2015 but of course, Josh had his own supporters backing him, including the ever graceful Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, trash monster who rallied behind Josh and the Duggars. Of course, Josh's wife, Anna Duggar, also made a public statement to assure people that she knew about the abuse before they got married and she believed that he had been forgiven in the eyes of God. And then Jim and Bob, I'm sorry, it gets me every time I'm like, that's not a name. Oh, my God. Jim, Bob and Michelle made the following public statement. Back 12 years ago, our family went through one of the most difficult times of our lives. When Josh was a young teenager, he made some very bad mistakes and we were shocked. We had tried to teach him right from wrong. That dark and difficult time caused us to seek God like never before. Even though we would never choose to go through

something so terrible, each one of our family members drew closer to god so like all in all this was a good thing is kind of what they're arguing and during that same interview because i think that was with megan kelly or something yes yes they um which those clips are crazy town oh yeah they and then right after they went on uh two of his sisters who were two of the victims came on jessa and jill and they they did they said they were like fully in defense of josh they were like uh this you know happened so long ago in our family and we had truly gotten over it as a family we had forgiven him so much time had passed that he has like rebuilt his trust with us and you know and then all of a sudden this came out and now we're having to like relive all of the experience and it's retarnishing us but the thing i want to

mention about that interview is at the end megan kelly is like okay and and now like now that this has come out nothing else no other drama in the family. There's no other scandal. We're never going to find out anything else about the family. And they both unknowingly, but they vouched for Josh being like, this is the only drama. This is the only scandal our family has. You're not going to hear about us. Dad keeps saying Jim Bob keeps saying. We have nothing to hide.

That's why we did this show. We had nothing to hide. Famous last fucking words. Let's put it that way yeah or this is you'll never hear from us again this is the last scandal you'll ever know of that was another famous last famous last words so josh himself also spoke out uh in his own defense and this is what he had to say 12 years ago as a young teenager i acted inexcusably for which i am extremely sorry and deeply regret i hurt others including my family and close friends i confess this to my parents who took several steps to help me address the situation we spoke with the authorities where i confessed my wrongdoing and my parents arranged for me and

those affected by my actions to receive counseling. Digging holes. I understood that if I continued down this wrong road that I would end up ruining my life. I sought forgiveness from those I had wronged and asked Christ to forgive me and come into my life. I would do anything to go back to those teen years and take different actions. In my life today, I am so very thankful for God's grace, mercy, and redemption so some of josh's sisters which you've alluded to who were his victims spoke in his defense as well and like you said they had chosen to forgive josh uh when he asked for their forgiveness years ago and jill specifically said when the news broke um when in touch shared this information uh she felt

re-victimized by the story coming back like coming to light and according to her statement this was something that's already been dealt with we've already forgiven josh we've already moved on um and you know for what it's worth in touch plastered their names all over the story even though they were minors and you know it's a it's a that's a toughie i don't know i don't know i don't know where to stand about that um also like not so i think one of them had just like gotten married or something another one had just had a baby at the time and so i feel like like their first baby i feel like they had just come into this world where now they're supposed to be like open to sexuality and things like that and like it happened right in the moment when they're

supposed to finally allow themselves to be vulnerable about that stuff and now they're sexually active and now they have to think about that on top of like point the first time they're having like intimacy moments with their partners and it's like i just can't imagine the layers of trauma that they're like unfortunately having to live through it's hard because like obviously i think this news needed to come out like this needed to be investigated but also like i can understand that that would be deeply traumatizing to be like re-victimized so it's a hard nut to crack i feel like i don't yeah know that maybe they didn't go about it the best way i'm not really sure but um

it just breaks my heart because like god these poor girls like they've gone through enough they've already raised 19 children they've done nothing wrong and now they're being like put on blast all over again in the media all over again and now expected to be vulnerable with partners like while they're being re-traumatized and talk about it on tv and all this yeah i mean it's one thing i mean i'm not trying to compare traumas but you know it's one thing for someone to talk about this yeah on media and it's like a really vulnerable hard time to to reflect on but if you've also grown up in a family that says you're never allowed to talk about this stuff and as you said earlier if something bad happens to you it was either your fault or it's a moral vaccination or like god like this was meant to happen and you should be

content with whatever god gives you or and so on top of a normal traumatized a normal trauma with this now presumably some support system and hopefully some support system behind them they are like at a loss here with no recourse like they're the statute of limitations has expired their parents are basically teaching them it's their fault they're in this corner and one of the things that ginger's been talking about on her on her book tour recently is that and a lot of people who have come out and said oh i knew the duggars and this is what they were like they've said oh they're weirdly robotic like they don't really have a lot of personality like like individual personality.

Ginger during her book tour has said we were all kind of raised to like be very specific and calculated with the way that we responded to things and that we talked because not only were we on television, but we wanted to, quote, keep sweet and be good for the Lord and all this stuff. And so every she was saying in one of her interviews that every time someone talked to her, whether it was a friend or the press or even her own fucking family, before she said anything in her mind, she would be thinking, what's the right thing to say? What's the right thing to say?

So she never even felt safe. Freedom of thought, no freedom of expression. freedom of thought no freedom of expression like and so to go on a megan kelly's show after a scandal and have to essentially freestyle a conversation about a really intense traumatizing family against about the thing they did to you i can't imagine the pressure you're right it's it's so many layers and it's like you know we can't even begin to understand what it's like to live under all those layers but um it just yeah it makes me sad and you know the family argued at this point that oh don't worry we took steps to protect the girls after the abuse we put locks on their bedroom doors and we made we made sure that the girls wore shorts and leggings under their skirts.

Fomitous. What the fuck? Like, oh, we put things in place. We locked the doors. Yeah. That was it. That was fucking. So one of Josh's sisters was angry that the media was calling Josh a pedophile.

According to Jessa, quote, he was a boy, a young boy in puberty and a little too curious about girls. She insisted Joshosh that's exact argument she insisted josh was no longer a danger to anyone and that he was a good man again famous last words in 2017 jill jessa ginger and joy filed a lawsuit against in touch weekly the city of springdale and washington county claiming their privacy was breached when in touch weekly released their names with the 2006 police report. And Josh hopped on the bandwagon and also sued because the report on his teenage actions had hurt his reputation. Well, he got I think that's the I think that might be the one where he got fired.

Oh, probably. So maybe that's why he was worried about his reputation because he lost his job he lost his job and the lawsuit was immediately dismissed well not immediately but ultimately dismissed so he didn't get any sort of compensation for all the trauma he's had to go through boohoo in total josh had five victims only four are i guess specifically known uh his family continued to defend him as a good man who had just made mistakes as a young boy and he and his wife turned to a little something called do you know what this service is that they started to use oh yeah i yes i do It's the. Shit. Shit. It's are you talking about the program to like keep trackers on their phones and everything? Uh huh. Something with the word I don't know. What is it? Covenant eyes. Covenant. I wasn't going to get the word covenant. basically is like a christian software that alerts your family or friend or spouse if you are looking at porn and it's basically the whole point of it is to try and live a porn free life and keep your

eyes pure yes to get out of the spiral of like the shame around porn and then watching more porn and like damaging your partnership and so essentially what they did was put this tracker on his phone and computer uh but one day at church of all places josh josh was chatting with a friend about how frustrating it was to have this covenant eyes thing always watching him and his friend said oh well you know there are ways around it and he was like really interesante let's write that down boy interesante uh-huh uh-huh and so he's working at a car dealership uh and one day the fucking fbi show up and his response to the fbi's arrival do you remember it has someone been looking at child porn what kind of fucking moron are you and by the way it was his it yeah it was his car, it was his it was his car shop. It was his family car shop.

So like, yes. And I remember like there's if you look at the the plot of land, there's like a random shed, which is where they kept the computers or something. Oh, geez. So it was almost like he had a whole I think he used his like actual computer in the main office. But I think there was a second place he could like run off and hide and use his phone or something. So actually what he did. Yes, I think that too but i what he did was he partitioned his hard drive and created a linux hard drive where he could access the dark web but it wouldn't be

tracked by this covenant eyes thing and you know he thought like most predators do that they're fucking geniuses right so he's like oh i no one's gonna figure this shit out but he is on which they kept i i listened to the entire interview between the fbi and him right after he was taken in for questioning about this and it's like 40 minutes long or something but i just wanted to throw up like the whole time it's just horrible because he's in there and and he's like trying to play all chummy. Like, oh, man. He is.

Chummy is the perfect word. It's so gross. He's like, oh, the work you guys do is so great. And like you do such honorable work to these like guys looking for people who are Googling child porn on the dark web. He had to be sweating. I mean, like, but also obviously he was sweating because who just goes up to the cops and says oh has someone been looking at child porn which like you have some of my employees been looking at child porn like you just it could have been like oh hey one of your

cars had like has a busted tail light like and he just like he was clearly so guilty like he like had he just spit out his own fucking crime in front of the fbi yeah exactly he was like oh well sometimes you know we find things in cars like old cell phones in the back of like a honda because it's a used car so and i'm like so you're arguing that so yeah he's asking a lot of questions it is frustrating to hear because the fbi guy is kind of like chummy back with him and is sort of and at first i thought oh maybe that's just a technique but like there were so many chances where josh could have kept talking and incriminated himself and they just kept interrupting and like stopping him from talking and i'm like he's literally walking in circles around it and like he's about to fucking blurt something out

but they keep being like they just keep interrupting and i'm like let him fucking talk so that he can say something incriminating whatever it was very frustrating um and it was gross because he was all chummy and like oh the work you do is so amazing um but so apparently this is what he had been doing and they asked him if he knew what tor was and this is different from torrent which is like you know a file from napster or limewire speaking of which uh but do you know what tor is like what it stands for because i had no idea i didn't even know it stood for something so apparently it's called the onion router tor oh i had heard onion something yeah okay and so it's like a browser you can use essentially to access the dark web basically like i don't know that it's intended for that but essentially

it it's like a free open source software that enables anonymous communication um and so it hides all of your kind of activity whereabouts yeah yeah and so he was using this to access uh the dark web and finding some very upsetting content. And he's just not acting in this interview as if he's done as if he's innocent, because they're asking questions. He's like, listen, I just want to make sure like you get the answers you're looking for. And, you know, I'm not going to say I'm not guilty, but I also don't want to implicate myself. And I'm like, you're not going to say you're not guilty. Like, if you have not been looking up child porn and the FBI is like, hey, you've been looking up child porn, a normal person's reaction would be like, what the fuck?

No, I haven't. Like, oh, yeah, I wouldn't do that. No, I haven't. Like, oh, yeah, I wouldn't do that. If someone ever looked at me and said, you've been looking at child porn, my eyes would glaze over and like complete confusion. I'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? And so he's like not acting innocent at all. He's like, I just really respect your work and I want to let you do your job.

You know, I'm not going to say I'm not guilty because i don't know the details of what's going on and it's like you just said that out loud but then when he keeps talking they keep interrupting him and i'm like this idiot is gonna just blow it in a second let him whatever it was he he has always like if you watch any of the episodes with him he always felt like a slimy schmoozer and like there was a i remember there was at one of his sister's weddings i think it was jill he like goes up before the wedding and like has the microphone is like kind of like telling people like you know hey because they would film the the weddings as like specials for the show right so i think they had to have one of them go up and be like hey

nobody used like flash photography or anything we're gonna be using you know professional cameras but the way he went up was so fucking slimy and he was like he was like no phones does everyone understand like he'd be so condescending and like think he was hysterical and thought he was taking the house down gross he was just like always creepy and there have been people who have shown up on the reddit page which like again i cannot confirm or deny if they like actually sure knew them i was actually about to bring up reddit yeah oh okay well people claim to like have known some of the duggars and they've all said that josh was always a total creep show so yes apparently the one i don't know if it's the one you're thinking of probably but uh apparently one of the former security guards did an ask me anything on reddit and uh he described that the family treated josh

so differently from the other kids and he had like a very special place in his parents heart you know and they always wanted to make sure his protection was paramount and apparently like he would come in the room and during this whole scandal like blowing up and his dad would go ah there he is the man of the hour everyone's talking about him like kind of joking about like how he's in the spotlight and it's it's it's pretty sick uh he was definitely like the golden child for sure. Yes. And he was there first.

Right. Like he's the oldest boy. Yeah. Awful. I mean, it's horrible. These poor kids. Anyway. So he has figured out a way around Covenant Eyes.

He has split his hard drive into a Linux section where he can access tor this uh onion browser that keeps your activities secretive and i i'm not saying tor is specifically meant to access the dark web i just think this is the way some people use it yes so now he's suddenly facing at age 33 by the way uh new charges two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography and the department of homeland security accused him of downloading and possessing explicit images of children as young as toddlers 18 months fuck i mean babies like it's that's sick during legal proceedings josh could not live at home because he was not allowed to be near his own children. I do remember his wife like speaking out in his defense often during this time.

It's like you wouldn't believe. And it was also after. Do you cover the show counting on at all on this? No, not really. But OK i i know i i meant to mention it earlier it's where they like take him out yeah so after like half of the scandals uh they got rid of jim bob and josh but they had a new show after 19 kids and counting was canceled they called it counting on and they focused on some of the girls right they focused on this it was mainly two of the girls but it was really any of the siblings that were 18 and older were allowed to be on the show and it included josh's wife but here's the other fucking drama in between him touching his sisters and this child pornography thing

is right in the middle uh it was right as the show was like already going to happen i think or like the show had just been like greenlit and so it was like the worst time for like josh to finally have his like to have another scandal uh it was when the ashley madison scandal came out oh my god i didn't even talk about the fucking ashley madison that's not even in here i like totally that's okay he he's a he's a messy man so it was right after oh my god that was crazy the irony of the megan kelly interview with jessa and jill when they were like you'll never have there's no more scandals after this like it felt like weeks later the ashley madison scandal came out which if you don't know ashley madison was a

website truly meant for people to go online make an account and find people to cheat on their spouses with quick correction is a website is still still very much active like that's the whole point is like to go cheat on your partner like just to give you an idea their slogan is life is short have an affair i'm sorry i'm laughing out of like disbelief it's outrageous but so there was some drama years ago now where a hacker broke into ashley madison yeah the website it was like a whole hacking group. Let me pull up their name because the impact team. Yeah, the impact team. And they basically held the website hostage and said, like, you give us something in return.

I'm assuming money or else we will release all of the back end login information of all the people who have accounts on Ashley Madison and will basically rip your website apart because all these people will be found out by their spouses. The whole also point about this Ashley Madison is that it's supposed to be under completely anonymous, secret, anonymous, like no one will ever find out. You know, that's the whole point. And so like this was suddenly saying we're gonna blast everybody's email addresses out and everyone can everyone can look up like all the roster of people and they can see if their spouse was cheating on them so then the ashley madison scandal happens shortly after him like touching his sisters and the name one of the biggest names to come off that list was joshua j dougar and so then there became this whole other thing where basically when 19 kids and counting was canceled then counting on

starts the whole first episode is just the siblings and his wife reacting to the ashley madison scandal where they're all in tears and they're all like we were like anna was saying like i never saw this coming, which like, okay, like, I'm sure maybe you didn't. But like, he was also so slimy. Like, it just feels like in hindsight, how did no one see it? Yeah. And but even his sisters were like, we went on television and fucking defended you.

And like, we all backed you. And like, to know that you still like, as you were in the middle of this scandal, you had a whole other scandal that you knew about and you weren't telling anyone. So then he had. So now he like and everyone was like, Anna, you need to like leave him. Even the siblings were like they as we have discussed for the last two hours. So sorry, everybody. But they have they were all very like marriage is for life.

It is a commitment. You do not get divorced. They were all very like marriage is for life. It is a commitment. You do not get divorced. And a bunch of people were a bunch of the siblings were now like old enough to have their own social media. A lot of them had have been married. There's a whole other scandal we never even talked about, which was Jill, which she like

kind of started breaking away from the family. And it was the first real sibling to start kind of like implying that things aren't as pretty as they seem at home. sibling to start kind of like implying that things aren't as pretty as they seem at home um but a lot of people were now old enough to make their own opinions and they left the house so they didn't have to like play you know to the family anymore and they were saying like we like i'm pro-divorce if he's cheating on you leave this is not what god would want for you and so now there's like sides to the family being like you need to leave him and she fucking stood her ground and she was like that's my man oh fuck off and so then anyway they stay

together they end up having another kid they have like three more kids after this um and every time like they'd announce a pregnancy you could just hear the entire universe go, yay, like, we're so happy for you. Like, and during the Ashley Madison scandal, she was pregnant, I think, or during the child pornography one, she was maybe also pregnant. But anyway, the whole Ashley Madison thing happens. And then the child pornography thing.

Oh my God. So then everyone was like, Anna now has to leave him, right? Because she has seven fucking kids with him. Like they are all babies and he could be doing something with them like you don't know and anyway I really went off on a tangent there but I just feel like she was trapped like what else could she do she's also been told her whole life that this is all she'll ever know yeah she's trapped in an abusive fucking situation it's like how do you even and it's it to this day there's still a lot of back

and forth on people's opinion of anna because yeah people are like that's like yes you are in an abusive relationship and yes you don't realize that you can get out because you've been told your whole life you can't operate without a man right and like to a point where like she lives with the duggars still or like lives on their property well and to think like you have all these children like you need somebody to help you like you're kind of stuck and she was told she never have to work so how is she gonna like handle seven children in a house so she like still lives on the Duggar property and like but like so a lot of people are like we feel bad for you there but at some point like your maternal instincts have to hold some accountability for on behalf of your kids yeah oh it's a it's a um it's a rocky topic but a lot of people have

differing opinions on the anna thing so yeah i don't again like a lot of this is so layered and like complicated it's hard to know where you where i even stand on some of it um but i do have some more fun facts about the ashley madison thing that oh okay i don't know if you i'm sure you know this already but for anybody who doesn't um because i totally forgot to even put this sold section in but basically uh this it got leaked that he was one of the primary users. And apparently Ashley Madison has also had quite a few scandals in that it's known for sex workers to get on there and, you know, engage in sex work online. I'm glad he brought this up with married men. also paying for um a guarantee and a fair guarantee which cost 250 bucks which is like if he didn't have sex with someone he'd get his money back and he spent like over a thousand dollars on this website uh to meet with people he also had um i think i don't remember who it was

but there was a sex worker on there who ended up, I think, trying to sue him. So Danica, Danica Dillon, she claimed that she had sex with Josh on two separate occasions. She was a sex worker and she said that he offered her fifteen hundred dollars for sex, but it turned violent, something she did not consent to. And then he only paid her $1,000. And she ended up suing him for assaulting her to the point of causing physical and emotional injuries. And she, you know, asked for damages. And the, oh God, it's upsetting.

He paid her $1, dollars for sex that she claimed was violent enough to make her feel like she was being raped and uh she ended up dropping the lawsuit and the rumor is we don't really know but the rumor is that uh you know he paid her off basically like they settled outside of court um and then they linked his email to an ok cupid account oh my god this whole time he is working at let me pull up the actual spot where he was working uh he was working in dc that's the frc the family research council that's the one in dc at the conservative lobbying group there uh when all this was going on. And he made and this is alleged because there's not real proof about it, but he used someone else's photo and created this Joe Smithson character and wrote like this weird bio.

I'm an executive in the city. I develop strategies strategies meet people crunch numbers and then he wrote i'm really good at humor it's like okay okay yeah i'm sure um and he he just wrote like the weirdest shit about like what he was looking for uh professional well-groomed stylish classy casual jeans muscular petite tall like all the checks of what he was looking for um high sex drive has a secret love nest is disease free and has natural breasts uh and the guy whose photo he used actually sued him because oh good people would google him and the fucking this whole thing would come up.

And so people he was not getting jobs because people were like, oh, yes, like it's a creep, creepy sex offender guy. Also, a lot of people think so. It was like a big thing and a big arc in the show when he moved to D.C. And now a lot of people are like, maybe he just wanted to get the fuck out of town where nobody knew him. So you could just cheat on his wife and do whatever he wanted immediately created all these accounts was paying thousands of dollars um and so that all happened like yeah exactly well before uh the child pornography fbi charges came out um so yeah basically his wife is uh you know was defending him throughout all this. And during the legal proceedings, he actually couldn't live at home because he was not allowed near his own children.

He stayed with a pastor and had to be monitored by GPS anytime he went out. He was only allowed to go to work, doctor's appointments and church. Wow. So kind of them. Yeah, right. Yeah. and church wow so kind of them yeah right yeah josh was ultimately convicted on two charges of receiving and possessing child sexual abuse material and before sentencing josh's family wrote letters to the judge pleading for a light sentence michelle wrote joshua has a tender heart and he is compassionate towards others and his wife claimed in a letter to the court that he is the kindest man she knows so josh faced a maximum 20-year sentence and on may 5th of 2022 he was sentenced to 12 and a half

years which he is currently serving in federal prison and he will not be eligible for parole until he serves 10 years of his sentence his family continues to support him and movements like the quiverful movement continue to endorse the duggar family as an example of living a godly life and you know there's so much more to this like you said like i was reminded right before we started recording of the transphobic robo calls that Michelle would make where like you'd pick up the phone and be like, hi, like a prerecorded. This my name is Michelle Duggar. I have some shocking news to share with you. She has this like weird high pitched voice.

She does. I'm telling you, men. And I said, you heard that right. Men are going into female only spaces and they are sexual deviants and it's like your son it's like a rape what are you talking about that these sexual deviants especially like and then i think that might have also been where a comment about like his well no i don't it might be different conversations but a bunch of queer people came out and they were like oh so like we live like nefarious deviant lives like you can cheat on your wife and touch your sisters yeah look at child pornography but we're the awful people so it was just like there was a

lot of back and forth of like just you couldn't be a bigger hypocrite i mean really like it's almost if it weren't so fucked up it would beical. Like how outrageously backwards all of this is. And this did lead to a bunch of the siblings again, who are now old enough to like have their own opinions or they're married off and all this, they can say whatever they want. Right. They have posted like,

uh, some of them have posted about their opinions on the trial and have like straight up said, like, it's good that Josh is in jail. And like, so at least not all of them feel like they have to still protect like straight up said like it's good that josh is in jail and like so at least not all of them feel like they have to still protect him they said like that's good they're like this is the right thing to do that's good that's comforting at the very least

yeah man it's a shit show dude it's wild it's wild i mean it's crazy town wild i mean it's crazy town well if anyone ever wants to hear me uh spew more scandals about like jill duggar kind of not leaving the faith but like definitely causing waves in her family i want to know so i'll tell you about that that'll be the after chat how about that oh that's a great idea oh my god yes 100 let's do it if hours of Duggar information wasn't enough for you, please head over to Patreon and listen to our after chat where I will be talking about Jill and Ginger Duggar's escapes from the IBLP. Oh my God, I can't wait. Happy birthday, Em. Oh, Christine, this was so lovely.

I know it was three hours and I'm sorry for everybody, but I'm also not because of all, I like a birthday episode like people probably saw it coming. Yes. Wow. You really have been holding out on that topic for so long. I know. And I it was like in February. I was like, we got to get this fucking rolling.

And so I start I've been like obsessively watching like YouTube and I couldn't talk to you about it which was like so painful so we finally have something to to talk about it's so weird to hear you saying oh in an interview Ginger said I'm like I know I know I know I'm so excited and I feel like I'm just coming to the dark side with Vanderpump Rules with 19 kids in county I I have no self-control anymore I it's beyond me okay well wow you really this was such a such a such a good call well done oh thank you and also i'm so glad he's rotting in jail yeah fuck that guy man fuck that guy um all right well i i guess we'll see you over at patreon folks and i hope everyone else has a very lovely uh birthday if you're an early june baby uh happy birthday and we hope you're celebrating

right and treat yourself to a present because i'll always endorse that and eat a lot of cake yes and that's why we drink and eat cake