And That's Why We Drink - E337 An Empire of Ems and a Sitcom about a Wizard's Origin Story

Episode Date: July 23, 2023

It's episode 337 and it's all garlic, no sun this week! First, we've got some catching up to do on Christine's side of the health table. Then Em takes us into the world of ghost towns with the story of Dudleytown, Connecticut aka the "village of the damned". Then Christine covers the unbelievably juicy case of the Ebay Stalking Scandal. And if you're going to be a rat at least be a hydrated one... and that's why we drink!Don't miss the very last week of the Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet tour! beachtoosandy.com

oh look at my hair look at her she's crazy she's like a silly little club girl oh my god that's me wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy. What an obscure reference now. What do you mean? Isn't that relevant? Hi, my name's Christine. How are you, Em? And I'm a victim of being a millennial. Oh, I thought you were gonna say and I'm a victim of Christine. Oh, and I'm Em, a victim of whatever this Sunday show is. Yes. How are you, Christine? Are you feeling OK today? No.

Thank you for asking. I'm feeling like trash. Yeah. Or as I've said through tears to blaze, trizash so many times now that he's like not faz it was it in tears of joy and laughter because that's deep pain deep pain deep-seated pain to be fair i would have been in tears of laughter if you were hospitalized calling yourself trizash yeah to be fair blaze did not find it he did not laugh he was more concerned because i was not finding my own jokes funny and i think that's when he gets really worried. Sure. Yeah. When you're not the only one laughing anymore and it's just silent. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just silent in my house. There's no laughter. Do you want to talk about what happened or do you want to keep it vague? Absolutely. Let's fucking go, guys. I have an illness. You all know this already. It's called Crohn's disease. Some of you have it, too. I have an illness. You all know this already. It's called Crohn's disease. Some of you have it too. And some of you found out you have it as the podcast has been going and have messaged me about it.

It looks like Emma's frozen. Uh-oh. All right. I'm here. Oh, there you are. You're back. No, I just tried to escape, actually, and I couldn't get away. That's all.

You tried so hard, though. I thought you made it. Oh, boy. Anyway, so I had for the first time ever. And by the way, here are the fun statistics that WebMD told me. Within the first 10 years of being diagnosed with Crohn's disease, I think 60% of people have an intestinal blockage. I was diagnosed 10 years ago. This is my 10 year anniversary. I'm a little bit bummed out nobody has congratulated me. But it's 10 years. So I really just made that statistic right, right in the nick of time. Perfect. Yeah. And then as I read on, I was like, cool, I'm a statistic finally. Then I was reading and it was like, of those 50 70 to 80 will require surgery to to

rectify this issue and i'm like uh-oh that's not a good number if i'm already in the 50 you know so in any case um it thankfully seems to be resolving on its own it's just basically exactly what it sounds like and then your whole body goes haywire because it's a immune autoimmune disease and so it feels like you have the flu on top of a stomach bug on top of like getting hit by a mac truck so i wasn't super great for a few days but i'm back baby sort of and i'm back taking a lot of Tylenol and just drinking water. Trizash is back from the dump. Trizash is classy as ever.

You know what the worst part was? I had no appetite for three days, which is when I know something is deeply wrong. I've never experienced that. No, it was scary. And I could not fathom the thought of eating um and so i at one point took a sip of water and i felt it like in my tummy and it hurt so it hurt even like what did it feel like what did it feel like just like you know when you have like well especially you know when you have an ulcer well it's actually yes i yes i've had one so you have an ulcer and then you're just like pouring

like cold water on it inside your tummy it just feels like someone is stabbing you from the inside a little bit um so it's not enjoyable and you know every time i haven't had one of these before this blockage thing but anytime i do go into a flare and this is my first one in like five years. Every time I do go into a flare, I'm like, oh, yeah, this really fucking blows. Yeah. I forget, you know, I feel like it's with like childbirth and stuff where your body's like, let's not think about that, you know, and just like compartmentalizes it. So is it because like, well, so don't you do your infusions, though? Is it just like even with an infusion i do and and so that's the scary part is sometimes over the years and they say after a

decade oftentimes it starts to lose efficacy and so i already had that kind of nerve in the back of my mind and then i went to my infusion a couple weeks ago and I'm only like halfway through infusion so I should be fine but I went and they did like a their regular blood draw and my inflammation markers were high and I was like hopefully that's just a fluke well does not seem to be a fluke so you know what this might be an interesting rest of the year for all of us we'll see well finally in a very sad way I finally have a partner and this is stupid medical world health bullshit that we talk about non-stop it's very rare we hear you talk about the pain you're in so this is an exclusive as far as i'm concerned oh welcome

everybody i'm so sorry at the table i'm so sorry you're dealing with that though because i just i just want to give a quick thank you i appreciate that you and everybody else has been so kind and supportive and so patient when I just canceled our recording and etc. Boston and living my best life solo doing Beach T Sandy shows having the time of my life and he was solo parenting that whole time then I came home and I was like I actually need to be unconscious for 21 hours straight so I just like slept and then the next two days I was like I can't move my body because I'm I feel like trizash you know and so he was like it's not a problem it's a little funny he's like no problem no problemo you get your rest we'll take you to the hospital whatever we need to do um and he just you know did the solo parent thing and you know it's not it's even if i were in that case i think he would be very thankful for me so i want to throw it back at him he's a very good parent and a very responsible and um uh i don't know i'm just thankful because otherwise i don't know what

the hell i would have done he's a good man he's a good man christine he is he's a good one um so i feel very fortunate that i didn't have to worry about the well-being of my child while i ailed away i you know honestly don't know what you would have done without him i don't know no i don't i would have probably called my mom and just been like i'm moving in with you i think i don't know right xandy time to be uncle of the year yeah oh yeah oh man park i don't know i didn't i hope i didn't mean to like force you to talk about that on me or anything no we know it would have come up because i can't keep my mouth shut about anything so well are you treating yourself to anything to help

your situation any any yummy treats recently now that you can't eat again i've been cricketing a lot with my cricket maker my cricket machine you're back on your bullshit christine bullshit which is why when we started you saw me running running around. I couldn't find the adapter, my dongle, to plug in my microphone because I had been using the dongle for the Cricut. Yeah, unsurprising. Also, is it on the table behind you, do you have a bunch of art stuff going on? Because it looked a little busy over there. That's actually my new hobby. I'm doing nails now.

Oh, Christine. Nails by Christine. busy over there that's actually my new hobby um i'm doing nails now oh christine nails by christine these have been on for nine days which is a record and they're like fake wow and i i may they look very she she thank you i'm trying to move them fast so you don't see all the flaws but okay wait can i show you the shirt i made for the fallout boy concert yeah obviously just the back i've made the front isn't done yet hold on let me grab it i'm so excited okay here's the back right okay first of all i'm so sorry if you can hear banging that's my maintenance man doing something to my fucking ears apparently that's one hang on let me wait for it to pause so i can read it to everybody okay well okay it says part-time soulmate full-time problem and in case you were not lucky enough to see this with your own eyes on youtube um that's incredible congratulations

i designed it too like i went and i learned how to make font like you keep in a shape but then make it wavy and so I learned what is the font Christine oh great question it's called surf wave it actually looks very cool I could see that that's an easy Etsy purchase and then the yeah you know I was looking at shirts on Etsy and I was like wait I can just make that instead of paying $35 also here's the front I haven't finished what's going underneath it but this is the name of the song hold me like a grudge yeah christine the best it actually is very cute i'm not saying you need another side hustle but that could actually literally thinking nails cricket what can't i do just kidding i can do i can't do a lot can you imagine a little nail pop-up that you didn't let people come and get their nails done by you and they could just tell you ghost stories while you did it?

Oh, but it would be so bad. It would be so bad. The shirt thing I could at least do over and over until I figured it out. The nails, I think people would leave feeling a little bit like duped, you know? I do think you have it in you to be able to have that side hustle on Etsy or Redbubble or whatever. But I have to be honest, I have already been a part of your journey of having to mail out individual shirts multiple times. Oh, yeah. That's right. Wait, how could I forget? It did drive you insane. Oh, yeah. It did drive me thoroughly insane.

That's true. But you could do it again. But this time would be different. Okay. How would that be? I didn't think you would ask me how. I just thought you would take my word for it. Okay.

I disagree. But I think if you decided you wanted to do that, I would say I'm looking forward to that for you. Love that journey. I can't wait to see in about a few weeks when you give up because it is a little bit long. When I'm done. But that's what we do. We're Gemini's. We get really excited about something and then we go, eh. You know what would be interesting though?

You could probably make, think of like for Patreon or something, like the merch. If you remember when I had handmade merch and people like lost their minds. Imagine if you handmade merch. Okay. Now, so now this is your time to shine there. Okay. Now, so now we're talking. This is your time to shine there. Okay. So basically what you're saying is I would be doing all the same work, but it would just be for many more people.

Got it. And more work because you'd be doing my half too. Right. Your half too. And I wouldn't be making additional income because it would already be part of the Patreon. You know what? I'm in. additional income because it would already be part of the patreon you know what i'm in that sounds you know sometimes our most chaotic decisions end up leading us to great things so

especially when we say them on air and can't take them back so you know that definitely is um a winning financial plan i don't see any any any holes wait what if i i want to make patreon something i'll make patreon something i mean oh god christine i don want to make patreon something i'll make patreon something i mean oh god christine i don't know i'll try i'll try i'll try what about what else can you do besides shirts well stickers can you make like nail can you make nail designs nail stickers wait that's cute i don't know how to do that but i can i know by 3 a.m you'll know how to do it i'm sure okay fair but i will have had to invest probably two more two grand more in materials and supplies so at this point we're just like losing so much money that's the

other thing i buy so much shit for my hobbies and then i'm like i'll make a side hustle and then i just spend all the money okay how many how many companies how many podcasts alone do you know that have made it six years very successful having a good time people still like to hear what we have to say somehow and sometimes it's because you just got to make an irresponsible choice the whole podcast was an irresponsible that's exactly right we're built on irresponsible choices the show is like they keep wanting to see the downfall but we keep proving them wrong you know is that a fallout boy lyric could it be i think you should put on a shirt holy shit i'm gonna put actually do you have uh like two hours i have to go put that on a shirt now

okay but make 80 of them and then sell them and let me have 50 of the income podcast is built on irresponsible decisions i can't wait we gotta find a snappy way to put that on a shirt. Put it on a dumpster fire or something. Oh, wait, that's cute. Make Kesha say it or whatever you were singing earlier. Make P. Diddy say it. How are you? I'm sorry.

I've been talking a lot today. Finally. Finally, it's your turn. Well, I'm a little nervous today because, as I said, my maintenance man has decided that now is the hour to just throw his hammer into every inch of my ceiling. Cool. So there may be moments today, which we can edit out later. Thank you, Jack, in advance. But, well, if you see me mute, let's just, like, kind of chill.

We'll just have, like, a moment until he's done hammering part about uh our relationship with jack and um incidentally eva because obviously is that we promised jack beer for the episode that just came out and um then we just promptly forgot because we said it on air and then eva was suddenly responsible for it and was like wait you guys promised him beer. And we were like, oh yeah, can you send him some beer? What is wrong with us? We want to do it. Our brains just are a sieve, you know,

just sand through my fingers. It's like, I wouldn't want to give Jack the- Sand through my fingers, is that a Fall Out Boy lyric? Yeah, so is this. What about a shirt? So is this, I want to give Jack the world, but sometimes I forget what I said. So, you know, Eva, thank you for reminding us always and for keeping us...

What? Honest? Yeah, that's the word. Responsible? Anything. Those words are hard for me to conjure up for obvious reasons. Well, so I don't know what this guy's situation is, the maintenance man today. Someone upstairs, it sounds like, needs an entirely new apartment.

Oh, maybe they're expanding into yours. It sounds like they are just drilling a hole into my ceiling. Yeah, maybe they're creating a basement for themselves in your apartment. So people can't see it, but right behind my computer is a wall. And I think that wall must have a bunch of pipes or something because he's banging what i imagined is the pipes up there and it's it feels like he's literally saying and it sounds like he's just knocking into the wall so anyway uh apologies in advance but that's why i drank because i feel like this is going to be a real clumsy episode for no good reason so and no one's even gonna no one's even gonna have to hear

how choppy it is because they're gonna hear the edited version can we just blame me though because as you said before we started recording if i need to run to the bathroom which um if if never before now is the most likely time for this to occur uh because in the past m would say that to me because i'd be having like tummy ache and m would be, oh, you can leave anytime you want. I'm like, oh, thanks. I won't, though. It's fine. This time I'm like, I might, though. So I appreciate the leniency you have. I'm really hoping Jonathan, the maintenance man, and you perfectly sync up your situations

where you're running to the bathroom and that's when he decides to say it's go time. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I'll text him. OK, cool. Thank you. it's go time yeah yeah exactly so okay i'll text him okay cool thank you um until then christine yes i've just got a story for you oh i'm so excited for today i feel like we haven't recorded in a while and i i really am aching for a ghost story and i kind of yes sorry i did not mean to

interrupt you no no go ahead i was gonna say i'm all it was me jumping in because i'm also incredibly excited to hang out with you and i feel like there's i feel like this is um to your detriment because i i think we vibe the best when you're on tour with sandy because then we when we see each other it's so few and far between that we oh yeah we're having other experiences because it means you and i are off tour which means you're planning stuff so i'm having a i'm having a great time i'm falling into disrepair my body's falling apart and then when we get back together it's like we're thriving you know what i mean i honestly though like that might be it i don't know what it is but my mental illness is at an all-time high in case anyone's wondering i've just like off the wall lost it, but it's okay.

I'm not saying you wouldn't make a million dollars from a shirt that says my mental illness is at an all-time high, but you should make one just to see what happens. I think that would be copyrighted because I'm almost positive that's a Fall Out Boy lyric. Like there's no way it's not. I feel like anything moody but true that you say is a follow-up point. The angst is real. So here's the situation today.

I've got for you a spooky town, a ghost town, if you will. Ooh! And this is the story of Dudleytown, Connecticut. Oh my, I've never heard of that. Have you? Okay. Interesting. Because as the ghost side of things, I have heard about it a lot, but I don't think anyone

else would know about it or even people who... And I would say I'm sort of the Connecticut side because I go there pretty often, several times a year. So, you know. Well, now you got a place to talk to blaze about all the way there maybe he knows i'll be i'll be very mad if he knows and he's never mentioned it i don't i'm that's it would it would make me giddy uh to see a silly little fight like that sprout between the two of you just something about you know the trizash would get thrown out again no word not

the literal trash wouldn't get thrown out it doesn't matter okay sorry go ahead you're good so dudley town connecticut i've heard of a lot i don't know i don't expect anyone else to have but um it is a very very small village in an area of connecticut called cornwall and anyone in dudley town uh back up back in the dizzay since we're going with this weird way of talking again uh anyone in dudley town regularly had to still go into cornwall because their town was so small so just to give you an idea of like the population was i think max 26 families oh wow tiny um they didn't have schools or stores they didn't have their own cemetery they didn't have schools or stores. They didn't have their own cemetery. They didn't have their own church. Losers. I know.

Lame. So they had to rely heavily on Cornwall, but Dudleytown itself is the little section that's spooky. You can still, if you were to go there, there is some remnants of the old foundations of the house, but nature has slowly kind of taken the reclaimed the space if you will and deadly town is between bald mountain and woodbury mountain and this is my favorite fact about deadly town because you know i'm probably part vampire and that i am like just always uh anti-sun anti you're not anti-garlic though no no see i said half vampire you're right that is all garlic no sun that's from your other side of the family yeah yeah all garlic no sun don't follow up where to write that wait a second that is also something i can vibe with finally we found a matching slogan we can both get on board with so um uh dudley town one of my

favorite fun facts is that because it's between two mountains i think it's actually surrounded by three mountains but it's a very hilly area in some like thick forest and so it's 100 all the time dark like even at like high noon it is dark and you know i love gloom and doom and i wait a second so it's like just shaded always always oh no that sounds horrible uh to me no to my doctor who's already told me i'm severely vitamin d deficient yes yeah um boo you gotta you gotta listen i'm also vitamin d deficient but you can take a pill for that. It doesn't matter. I do take a pill for that. Right? But so do I. But seasonal affective disorder, man, that kicks my ass every year.

I've never had that. I'm very lucky. Oh, it hurts me. So I could never live in like a place like Seattle or Dudleytown. Oh, really? Because Seattle's like the only city that I haven't lived in that I wish I lived in. I really can see it for you. I would only visit between certain months because i think i would just get sad but then guess what just like when you're on tour right now you'd be gone and we would we get to re-fall in love with each other again great point great point anyway apparently this um little thicket hillside area is the equivalent of seattle to some um so only but it's very dark all the time it has been and i'm sure that you know contributes to it being seen as very spooky

it's been called the this is a quote the most evil location in the world the most haunted place in new england and one of the scariest places in the u.s it's also been called the village of the damned oh it's very dramatic i feel like which like speaking of emo bands was there not a band called village of the damned or should there have been great something it has got to be something like that let me look it up because you know like their fans would be called the villagers um that's definitely a movie uh horror sci-fi film there's also a horror movie just called the village which sucked oh i know about that one i've heard about the village my mom dragged me to that one of all movies she thought it was going to be about a lovely little village and then it

ended up being people getting slaughtered like a little swed Swedish village that's what I thought midsummer was gonna be and then I shit up and was like this is so upsetting um my mom when I was when I lived with her back in my teenage years my mom I don't know what her deal was but she had this reputation across the family that she was just the worst movie picker worst TV picker she would always say we have to go see this one we have to watch this one it'd be great and then it was just the fucking worst most boring thing in the world or it would be really crazy that she was not expecting so none of us were expecting it she didn't do her research example whatever i don't remember what age i was i had to have been like 15 ish

my mom was like oh i know like vampires are a big thing right now so you should we I just heard about this new show called true blood we should all watch it together and the first episode is like all these vampires anger banging like sex like I was gonna say I remember my friends being like just don't watch it when your parents are around oh well all I did was watch it with my parents around apparently and my mom refused to turn it down like turn the volume down the channel off none of it she was like what are you talking about this is my favorite movie um my favorite show it was a it was a really good memory for all of us and in terms of like awkward laughing stories right it's just there goes mom again silly silly linda anyway she also picked the village and it was like someone with like a

like a pig face mask killing everybody it was awful oh no how did we get here oh village of the damned okay so that's what dudley town has been called and it's because dudley town is said to have a weirdly high amount of deaths and people losing their minds well yeah there's no vitamin d you see you're already picking up on the skeptic side of things mrs blaze um so there is also a weirdly high amount a weirdly high amount apparently of drownings tuberculosis and animal attacks that other villages don't seem to have and not even the rest of Cornwall, Connecticut itself. OK, that's very odd. The town was said to, like I said, drive people mad or they would eventually die.

Citizens were, quote, mysteriously killed, drowned, burned, clawed, poisoned, suffocated, bludgeoned, every vile and violent kind of death imaginable. What the fuck? Bludgeoned? Bludgeoned's crazy. That's crazy that's crazy that one's wild claude claude i didn't even catch claude i don't know which of those would you prefer none of them what a fun sleepover game but it is what the game we would play yeah it is the most emmigrating game ever but also probably the worst so uh as you were saying a few reasons why this might have actually happened because

so that's the i tried to pull from a few sources but the the rumors have really gone rampant on these deaths because the actual documented deaths all have like seemingly reasonable explanations right but the rumor of this town is if you go you'll be cursed forever your family's gonna die you'll die if you try to leave after you've already moved there you'll die like it's but also everyone dies right so That is what I've heard. That's the big rumor we were all trying to debunk. So another big reason why people end up leaving, because it's a ghost town now, right? And it's not because everyone died. It's because a lot of people just evacuated, just like jumped ship.

Right. And realistically, it could be because the rumors were messing with people's day-to-day lives but also they were in the middle of like a 24-7 dark hillside and they were farmers like they didn't i was about to ask well what were their jobs because if it was anything to do with agriculture i'm sure they weren't thrilled with the outcome yeah people the soil degraded very quickly their winters were incredibly harsh they didn't have any crops that would survive their livestock would go missing in the hills um so very quickly it became a ghost town oh no many people think that the soil can't possibly be enough reason for why this town becomes abandoned. So they think the town has to have been cursed all along, which, honestly, if I lived in a town with like maximum 26 families back in like the 1700s, you got to make up stories to keep yourself interested, you know, keep yourself entertained.

Especially if it's dark, like you can't go play hoop and stick, you know. You know, you took the words right out of my mouth that's what i thought so uh they thought the town has to be cursed and there are now because it's been like what's from the 1700s that's three centuries going on more than three centuries there's a lot of time for versions to spread and, you know, there to be a bunch of different twists to whatever origin you've heard. But there are some major beats, which we'll go with today, which is that starting in 1738, Dudley Town was settled by a farmer named Thomas Griffiths. And he owned at least half the land originally. And fun fact, he thought about actually naming the town Owlsbury.

Wait, I like that. Because it was always so dark. So it was the perfect area for all these owls every night and day. He's like, nothing spooky about this. I'll move in and call it my own. Exactly. I don't know why they didn't keep Owlsbury, but he didn't actually ever really name it. And then not even 10 years later, the first Dudleys arrived.

And I guess just by having so many Dudleys in the area, they kind of claimed the territory themselves. I know. So the Dudleys arrive. They all have some very interesting names. I actually I think one is barzalai what um and then one's abeel martin gideon those are less as wild as martin's yeah can you imagine going i think that you're saying am i i know i i like i'm notorious for mispronouncing things but after googling it i got barzalai itai listen i've never heard anything even remotely similar so i'm gonna trust okay that one so these are three to five different

men with the deadly name they were allegedly all brothers some other sources say cousins a lot of sources also say there was only three of them instead of five of them so i don't know at all what the right version is but a slew of dudley men show up let's just say that um a a murder of dudley's what's like another what's the one with d can i actually of dudley's can i ruin something for you right now yeah okay hang on oh gosh where's i'm going oh no okay i was okay just because we're talking about it um so i got you a present and ironically i got it while on my anniversary with halson um and that's not ironic that's how it should be so i'm if you have this book already i'll keep it for myself but since we're on this conversation i got you a book and it's called a conspiracy of ravens do you know what this is i

don't have that book do you know what it is no but it's so do i know what it is it's a collection of stories or something or well short stories very short stories um as in like half a sentence maybe a phrase wait really um i know you love birds i do and so this is it goes it tells you every book and what or every bird and what their group name is called oh no i've never heard of this just kidding oh my gosh this is so that is way more fun than what i thought it was gonna be some edgar allen poe shit this is way more fun um so you know there's a murder of crows right there is an asylum of cuckoos no oh cuckoos like cuckoo like your coo. And a curfew of curlews. Irene! Did you know that? No, I had no idea about either one of those.

And there's a paddling of ducks. Wait, you got me this and I just started talking about a dirge of Dudleys? Is that? Yeah, there's, by the way, a confusion of guinea fowl. Did you know that they're called a confusion? That's what we're called too. That is what we're called. Anyway, I just shout out to this book by the way but i'm gonna put that like directly behind me while we record just in case i need to grab it and find out what

bird anyway i literally got it like not even a week ago and i like have been trying to figure out if i'm gonna send it to you or wait until I saw you again. But anyway, you had an asylum of lose. Oh no, sorry. An asylum of loons and a mischief of magpies. Oh,

why are you know? It's so crazy. Cause magpies do cause mischief. They like shiny things. So they take shiny things. And you know what I learned too, because we were just at a pride bar is the reason that flamingos are notoriously gay. One of the reasons is because as a group, they're called a flamboyance.

Yes, precisely. And the reason that loon probably because it's like you're a loon, you're loon, loony. And then that makes sense with the other one. What was the other one? Cuckoos, an asylum of cuckoos or something. Yeah, something like that. that wow that's cool anyway for dudleys i guess we can pick um it's a dirge of dudleys a dirge of dudleys okay because it sounds dark and menacing you know yes for sure what would what would you be called of of a village of fallout boy fans or something a village of one um that's a great

question i think you would be an empire of m's that's the truth yeah i think i'd be the christine chapel and that's it population you my friend i didn't get it i didn't get the assignment so um anyway a dirge of dudleys come into owlsbury sure okay nice try i tried um i meant to the dudleys nice try dudleys try to take over owlsburg they do it pretty good because it's never called owlsbury ever again. Until now! Until this very moment. The Dudleys, they show up and apparently they bring this curse to town. So not only are they invading the space, but they did it knowing what they were going to do. So here is the curse that they brought to the town,

these Dudleys. Look at you. You are extra beautiful with the light hitting you like that. I'm so sorry. This light, when I put it over there, these dudleys look at you you are extra beautiful with the light hitting you like that light like when i put it over there it makes the microphone a big shadow on my face so i'm trying to find like where to i mean you'd think i would know how to do this after seven years of podcasting i don't like no i can't figure my shit out again we've been doing this for six years and people have been

waiting for the downfall this entire time so they're like any day now they're like eventually you'll learn eventually learn how to fucking light your face i can't promise that everybody sorry okay we'll we'll go with that for now you look great thank you m look at you look at that jawline ow ow look at little cheekies those are nice good good face all around 10 out of 10 thanks thanks it's very ill okay it wasn't like she mentioned the tummy the tummy is zero out of 10 that is correct yes um okay so where were we the dudleys just bust down the door they say i'm here what's taylor say i'm the problem it's me oh that's the other shirt i made but i didn't make it in time for the concert but it says oh it's me hi i'm the problem

it's me but you know everyone had that oh my favorite shirt was it's me hi i'm the dad it's me when like teenagers went with their dads it was so cute that's actually really precious um so they show up and they bring this curse and it comes from their ancestors and it starts all the way in 1510 in england it starts allegedly with edmund dudley and he tried to help overthrow king henry the eighth king hen 7th? What are the letters? V's and I's, man. And eventually, because they found out he was trying to overthrow the king, he was beheaded.

And his family was cursed right before his death. I hope your family suffers something. I didn't get the right words. I never even saw the words, but he was cursed, trust me. And so then his son after he's been cursed his son john also tries to take over the throne oh boy crazy dude um and he tries to do this by getting his son gilford which like this isn't just a random

dude named john by the way he's like an actual duke um and like his son gilford is a lord so just to keep in mind it's not like some joe schmoes like i'm gonna overthrow the yeah yeah yeah it's not like a j6 situation so um they six situation january 6th oh it's not just some random joe schmoes thinking they're gonna take down the white house i literally thought j6 was like a boy band or something it's like oh cool it's not just some random joe schmoe's thinking they're gonna take down the white house i literally thought j6 was like a boy band or something it's like oh cool it's not like a dream street thing that's j j14 is the magazine oh maybe that's where my brain went i thought it was like some boy band anyway i get it uh it's the insurrection okay cool yeah ha ha ha isn't that funny did we find a way to make a joke of that yet no okay it's too soon so uh so edmund he gets beheaded he gets cursed his son john tries to also take over the throne by getting his son gilford to marry lady jane gray who i feel like she's this is like the second time we've ever talked about her, right? Yes, you talked about her in Tower of London episode quite a lot.

Man, I hear little footsteps. Is it Lady Jane Grey herself? Or is it Jonathan? No, they were a little too dainty. Jonathan's a bit of a barrel walker. Literally the walls are shaking because he's throwing his hammer around. He does. He's a force to be reckoned with um so he tries to marry lady jane gray because she was

next in line for the crown so for a moment this plan actually worked where john got gilford to marry lady jane gray she becomes queen and they thought they figured it out but then it gets off the whole plan gets found out and so they end up getting executed both of the dudleys so john and his son guilford and lady jane gray oh shit but isn't that why anybody got married then for like to please i know i don't understand what the plan was like obviously they got married so that he could whatever okay like no one's marrying the queen by accident because like i fell in love with her and then she took off her helmet and i realized she was the queen yeah what are you talking about that's of course that's why they got married

she actually she started at the top of the stairs wearing glasses with her hair up yeah exactly her hair down and took the glasses off and everyone realized she was the queen and also the prom queen but then she tripped at the bottom of the stairs because she's so relatable. She has to. Yeah. Well, we're all her a little bit, aren't we? We want to be anyway. So because of this, all three of them ended up being executed.

So now that's Edmund being executed, his son John, and his son Guilford all being executed. But also for like all doing a crime apparently like trying to like apparently they knew that this was a risk they were taking you know but apparently they're cursed i feel like immediately we're dealing with privileged white men who are like oh it's not my fault you know i always say that when something's going wrong i'm like oh it's that curse you know not my bad decision. It's not the foundation upon which I built this podcast and my life. All those irresponsible choices.

It's just the curse. I'm sure there's a lot of people currently in prison today who are like, oh, it's the curse. I don't blame them. So John's other son, not Guilford, who is the third generation to be beheaded, but a different son. He returns from fighting in a war in France and he ends up you would think he's like in the clear because he's like actually not doing anything. He shows up. He's like, where the heck did everyone go? Oh, they all got beheaded. Exactly.

But so he comes home from the war and he brings home like the plague. He's like apparently like one of the patient zero or something. Oh, no. Because somehow he is attached to the storyline that British soldiers are wiped out in droves from the plague. So somehow that's his fault. That does feel a little bit like a curse. It does. So he's died.

Now John has a third son. So there's Guilford who got beheaded, third generation. There's homeboy who wiped out all of a nation with the plague, I guess. And then there's a third son, Robert, who left England and his descendants ended up in Connecticut, which is how we get to Dudleytown. Okay. So the third son, William, his descendants end up in Connecticut. And these are those like four, three, four or five like brothers who all showed up maybe all at one time or different times. And they all essentially established Dudleytown.

The dirge of Dudley's. The dirge of Dudley's. Exactly. Come bearing a curse. You get it, yeah. I get it. I'm following, for sure. So there are already some issues with this story because records show that William's

descendants moved to Italy, not the U.S. So if a dirge of Dudleys did show up, then maybe it's just a random other Dudley family, but then they wouldn't have the curse, right? Yeah, I would think not. Unless they have some other random curse, but the odds of that seem a little silly. Also, different stories mention that, like I said, there were three to five brothers. Some of them were cousins. Some of them came first. Some of them came later. There's no official story on how they all showed up there. So we don't really know the right number, the right origin, any of that. Okay.

At any rate, they all show up in Dudleytown. This village has up to 26 families at one time. It was still dependent on Cornwall, but it was used as farmlands for flax, wheat, and corn. So not even like interesting things, in my opinion. Hey now, watch it. I don't know what the interesting thing would- I live in Ohio. What do you think we do over here i don't know what i would

consider soy i'm pretty sure i don't know what i would consider interesting i don't know what i want them to grow but not flax not in a gross way just like i don't know a random way yeah eggplants would be cool like purple carrots or something something fun yeah be different you know i'm growing tomatoes right now and they're pretty fun because you can just pop them off and eat them you don't need to shock them you don't need to turn them into something i love it i love a tomato um so the area was very was never sorry it was never a good area for farming it was dark the soil was never good the winters were rough but the town did have iron ore which they um used they had iron ore and they had timber and those were used in nearby areas but then those places just got lumber and

iron ore from other places so they ended up not needing deadly town oh so they only were successful for like a second then the town again just started having oddly high numbers of death and people who apparently are going quote insane or just vanishing out of nowhere and the only dudley to live his whole life in dudley town because there's all those brothers was just one his name was abeel and he lost his entire fortune he apparently did go a little loony and he couldn't pay his debts. He lost his property. He became a ward of the state at 90. Oh.

But also in my mind, like if you're 90 in the 1700s, you're doing pretty fucking good. If you're 90 now, I'm like, good for you. You know, like that's. Yeah. That's pretty. You're doing it. Doing it right. And also, like, here's an argument. argument like maybe he wasn't losing his mind.

Maybe he was fucking 90 and like just kind of really started losing it. You know, don't test my fucking rationale at 90 because I promise you at 30. I'm going to be at 30. Don't test it now. That's a great point. Forget it. Don't ever test it. So after he moved out of his house there was a guy named nathaniel

carter who moved into the house and the curse seemed to follow him because i guess it was like because he was just so he lived in a dudley's house in dudley town oh no so nathaniel carter um came home one day this was years after living there but he came home one day and his wife and kid were murdered and his other three children were kidnapped oh my god what his house burned down and eventually he was also murdered what do we know by whom so it sounds like he was in like uh like right in the middle of some like indigenous territory and i don't know the history but it sounds like there was um some hostility between yeah tensions were high yeah um so just by living in a dudley house he ended up the curse kind of i guess transferred to him they say like we stole all this land it must be a curse that

somebody's exactly that's what i'm trying to get out i'm glad you're saying it yeah i was like um i don't know if you're cursed or you're a colonizer and you and karma is my boyfriend yeah you know the weirdest thing so anyway his house was burned down i mean i don't i'm not like happy that someone's wife and children were murdered. No, of course. No, there's nothing good about it at all. You can't expect to live in an area that's... It's just not necessarily a curse.

More just like that's probably a risk that was going to... I'm not trying to fully victim blame here, but you did put yourself kind of in that space. In a very dangerous situation. Yeah. So in 1792, there was a resident of Deadly Town named Gershon Hollister. I really wanted him to be like the Mr. Hollister of mall fame. Oh, of mall fame. I wanted him to be the reason I smelled like Jake Cologne for seven years.

I was so intimidated about going into the... Somebody recently commented on one of my photos like, oh, is that top from Hollister? And I was like, no, it was like an old photo. And I was like, no, it was from Gap. I was too scared to go into a Hollister. Like I still never been in one. I was a Hollister teenager. I know you were.

And I would have been so afraid of you. Can you imagine though finding out if I were little and you were going to Hollister and I found out that the owner creator of Hollister's first name was Gershon. I'd be like, did you know that the guy who created your shirt is called Gershon? That would be me trying to take you down. Yeah, you'd try to shame me out of never wearing Hollister again. Gershon is cool now and then I'd be the loser again. This is how I tell stories

in my head because I'm mentally ill. Because your mental illness is at an all-time high. Just at an all-time high. Well, also, like, grandpa names and grandma names are back.

So Gershon might actually be, like, someone's baby right now. It could be. Anyway. And they're destined for great things, by the way. Were you an Aeropostale apostille girly like what was your vibe i did go into air apostille that is the one and i don't i was american eagle and

hollister and i think american eagle was like my jam and still is i'm not great jeans grown they have great leggings they have great bras they have great underwear i swear i love their i love their stuff. Not an ad. Not an ad. Not an ad. Not an ad. Maybe at 14, I would have desperately wanted it to be an ad. Oh, for sure.

But no, it's not. So Gershon Hollister, he lived in Dudleytown in 1792. And he was killed while building a barn for a neighbor named William Tanner. Other accounts say that he didn't die while building a barn for William Tanner, but he was murdered by William Tanner in his own home. Uh-oh. After this, Tanner started acting kind of wild and he started muttering about monsters that he would see come out of the woods at night. What? So if he did kill gershon it sounds

like he was just mentally ill yeah but whatever apparently it's the curse so sure and in 1804 resident general herman swift of revolutionary war fame um we all know him his wife sarah was struck by lightning on their front porch in Dudleytown and died. What? General Swift also lost his mind and died shortly after. Although I would like to consider that PTSD from being in the fucking Revolutionary War. Yeah, lost his mind. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of mental illness, but also a lot of good reasons to have maybe some mental illness. Like, understandable. Yeah. So there's also the story in Deadly Town of a woman named Mary Young Chaney who was born in Deadly Town. And other sources said that she was just born nearby Deadly Town, but I guess, like, you know, this curse doesn't know GPS, right? So maybe it's like, it kind of smatters into other spaces.

It's just one into other spaces or something nearby so in 1833 mary young cheney leaves dudley town and moves into what i think i read correctly as a vegetarian boarding house cool catch me there and this sounds like a fever dream but she moved into a vegetarian boarding house and it was owned by Dr. Graham of Graham Cracker fame. Shut the front door. Wait a second. This is actually starting to make sense to me. Is it?

Tell me. I'm serious. Like, I know it doesn't sound like it, but you know, the whole story of the Kellogg family. No. Oh, my God. I got to cover that one day as like a true crime story. The Kellogg family, like basically. Oh, my God. Can I not eat Kellogg's now? What's this now? No, no, no. It's like the origin of cereal, basically. The guy. Hold on. Let me find his name. Please

hold elevator music. Is it Dr. Graham of Graham Cr cracker fame okay so i was right it is the it is cornflakes like kellogg's cornflakes they were originally created in 1894 by will kellogg for patients at the battle creek sanitarium and it was their whole thing was that they wanted to have a place where people i mean mean, this is not made up. Their patients could not masturbate, could not eat anything like tasty or enjoyable. So they basically created cornflakes as like the meal to serve. To curb their horniness. Yeah, basically.

And, you know, that is not don't take my word for that exact uh thing but there are some really good episode podcast episodes about this but it is a talk about looney tunes like this story that's wild is kooky uh and i'm i think john kellogg is the one who like took it to the next level. He had this like really wild, like religious view. And it's something. Let me let me find. Oh, here we go.

So he believed that his sanitarium, he promoted vegetarianism, which is why. Oh, there it is. Yeah. Which is why the connection reminded me the use of enemas. So they would like constantly use enemas on these people, exercise, sunbathing and hydrotherapy, as well as abstinence from smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol and sexual activity, including masturbation. And then he dedicated the last 30 years of his life to promoting eugenics. So, yeah, yeah So it's not great. But anyway, he created the invention of breakfast cereal cornflakes.

I mean, wow. A lot to discuss at the breakfast table. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he actually created these vegetarian foods for his patients and then they would be marketed. So it would not surprise me if the graham cracker was part of this i wonder if he was graham crackers literally he followed the teachings of sylvester graham is that the guy's name i just know dr graham oh yeah sylvester graham who recommended a diet of bland foods to minimize excitement sexual arousal and masturbation oh great anyway fun fact um okay sorry my light went out totally

derailed but i gotta tell you when you said grandma i was like you're never gonna believe this but i think i actually know where this is coming from that was the most alexander schieffer thing i've ever seen in my life i was like such like by the way i know that trivia um so anyway so there's a woman who lived in dudley town named mary young cheney and she moved into a boarding house owned by dr graham excellent where she met apparently her future husband named horace greeley oh i've heard of him because he was the founder of the New York Tribune, and he ran for president against Grant. Oh.

Usually I don't know things like that, but for some reason that name really- You just tapped a part of your brain that knew too much, and so it's all kind of spilling out now. Oh, wow. It's like I opened a can of worms. Oh, no. Oh, no. Well, so apparently a week before the election, this woman died by suicide.

And on top of that, he did not win the election, her husband. And for some reason, even though she has moved away from Dudley Town, they blame the curse on both the election results and her dying by suicide. Oh, geez. Okay. Which like neither. like neither no no no um also sources say that she actually had like a chronic lung disease and so there might have been some maybe she just couldn't it was apparently a very painful illness and she maybe just couldn't take it anymore i i don't

really know but apparently because once you're a resident of dudley town the curse follows you which by the way becomes a curse right like it's just like now you're stigmatized as someone of dudley town and anything that happens to you is now true like you can't win really like the curse is just part of it yeah so after the civil war many of the villagers in doublytown simply just packed up and moved away they were tired of not being able to really farm that well i'm sure again the rumors were not helpful um maybe they really did believe i mean this was only well this was after the civil war but i wonder if that means maybe like was i think was that at the beginning like a spiritualism? Maybe they thought like there really was something dark going on there.

I don't know. What year was that again? It was just after the Civil War. So the 1860s. I feel like that makes sense. And so soil was very rocky, like I said, so the crops were just not happening anymore and the rumors of the town being cursed basically by the early 1900s nobody lived there anymore that fast wow i thought it would have at least been more recent it was a hundred like 70 ish years that from

being established to being abandoned and one of the last residents was a guy named john patrick brophy and his wife died from our favorite consumption um his kids apparently vanished into the forest to never be seen again although there's like a weird story that maybe the kids ran away out of shame because they had been caught stealing sled blankets weird what okay sure really so i think they maybe were embarrassed and like ran off or something that doesn't feel like embarrassing yeah what all 26 families know what happened except they've all already moved away um so his kids apparently just vanished right after his mom or after his wife died then he started talking apparently about creatures in the woods that he was seeing.

And then one day his house burned down in a random unexplained fire. And eventually he himself vanished without a trace and nobody knows where he went. Oh, no. Only a few years later, Dudley Town was completely deserted. Only a few years later, Dudleytown was completely deserted. And there was a doctor named Dr. William Clark who came to Cornwall and found this like several hundreds of acres of land or, you know, found all this land, including Dudleytown. And he was like, I'm going to buy this. This is all like totally private.

Great. And he bought out Dudleytown on top of all that because there was no one there. Right. So it became his home and he built out dudleytown and on top of all that because there was no one there right um so it became his home and he built a summer home there um and dr clark was called away for business one day but when he came back three days later his wife was upstairs he found the door ajar which is already a problem his wife was upstairs and he found her sitting in a room maniacally laughing to nobody oh my god what she started talking about seeing creatures in the woods and keep in mind this is years after it's already been abandoned so i don't even know what they've heard about the city oh no

no no that's creepy she was never the same and was never never fully recovered from that um the rumors was he gone again three days i mean that's not i'm sorry i don't think that's long enough like you hear people at lighthouses like who are alone for months kind of lose it but three days like that's yeah wild maybe back then was like a fortnight or something. I don't know. But it was just three days. So they say that she was hospitalized or that she also died by suicide. She was also said to have a chronic illness, to be fair. So we don't really know the official origins. But Dr. Clark did stay in Dudleytown on his own for a while.

And I guess some other private owners have come in and tried to build homes there so together they co-founded the Dark Entry Forest Association and Dark Entry Forest sounds spooky but that's actually the name of the road because the whole place is dark all the time that is still spooky yes it is also the road is called dark entry jesus it's so creepy and so he created the dark entry forest association to preserve the land um although i have seen in more detail that maybe it's just a bunch of like rich people in a society who are i don't know they like living out in the forest by themselves and are keeping trouble away. I get it.

This is everybody's reminder to drink some water, you little dehydrated rats. We want you to be a good old drowned rat. Yeah. If you're going to be a rat, be a drowned one. Or at least a hydrated one. Okay. So since the descendants of, or since then,

since Dr. Clark created this association and now a bunch of people are preserving the land, descendants of the Dudleys have tried to debunk the town's curse. And the Cornwall Historical Society has also joined in on this. And they're basically trying to stop people from spreading that there is a curse and in a way that's like actually giving people, you know, reasons to want to go visit. I feel like the Dudleys are just like, it wasn't us. Right.

At this point, though, if I was even if my last name was Dudley and I lived in Connecticut, can you imagine the jokes you get? Can you imagine the comments at a bar like, oh, Dudley Town, oh, you're cursed. Don't come near me. Exactly. They're trying to clear their name. So there's one guy named Gary, of course, Gary Dudley. And he has, he's a historian, a genealogist, and he is trying to, oh, he's back. Is that what that is?

I was like, a little rat has come knocking gary dudley the dehydrated rat oh no gary dudley i'm not calling you a dehydrated rat i'm sorry um but he decided that he was going to try to debunk the town's curse so his family could have a cleared name cornwall historical society joined in and this is a quote from the new england historical society talking about what the cornwall historical society has said so the new england historical society this is what they this is a quote from their website about the cornwall historical society um debunking all of the stories of deadly town Town. Right. So this is a whole quote from their website. The Deadlies of Deadly Town has no connection to the noblemen beheaded in England.

So immediately they're shutting it off. There is no curse. That's what they're saying. I feel like it's the ghosts telling me I'm wrong. No, that's what I'm saying. If that weren't, if we didn't know that was Jonathan, I'd be like holy shit the ghost is having an opinion about this okay so there's no curse right gershon hollister was not murdered he fell from a rafter during a barn raising abeel dudley didn't go mad he lived until 90 and got a little senile the carter tragedy of the guy who found his wife and children dead and the other ones kidnapped, that happened far away from Dudleytown.

Furthermore, they lived right in the middle of a heavily aggressive territory. And his three children that were kidnapped did survive. And his son became a state Supreme Court justice, apparently. Holy shit. My goodness. Horace Greeley's wife never even set foot in Dudleytown. So the rumors of her being born there is not true, apparently. She died of a lung disease in New York City.

One of the things that a lot of people say is super eerie and spooky about Dudleytown is that it's just wildly quiet all the time. No wind, no bugs, no birds. It's just eerie sounding. What they have to say about that is sometime in the 1960s, Dudleytown was sprayed with DDT. Oh, great. Was sprayed with DDT. So Dr. Clark, when he bought the house, he only used it for weekend visits.

So his wife wouldn't have stayed if he had to leave for a business thing. And the wife had a chronic disease and she couldn't stand the pain very often. That's their words. So she probably if she died by suicide, it wasn't because she like lost her mind. You know, yeah. Still, people claim that this somewhat abandoned town has its spirits and visitors have come from all over to check it out. So they say i don't even give a shit if it's cursed or not we're gonna go see for ourselves so a lot of

visitors have come out um it became a dare for locals to walk down dark entry road at night and people claim to hear monsters and see creatures with glowing green eyes looking back at them to be fair that could be the hordes of owls or what are owls called uh something oh what is an owl yeah look at your book it's your book i'm just here oh yeah look at my book i'm trying to remember i feel like i should know what a group of owls is called a wisdom oh that's because they're so wise i love that anyway apparently a wisdom of owls. I would imagine those are the glowing green eyes.

But by the way, that's like almost scarier than any sort of monster. Yeah, just staring at you. Like if a wisdom of owls was staring at me in the dark. And it would make sense why you can't hear birds at night if owls are the main bird there and they are notoriously silent. Yes, that's a great point. Yes, that's a great point. People still, regardless of all of the ways that skeptics can easily break down the story, all the way to the fact that the origins have a bunch of plot holes and don't make sense and nobody even knows the right legend.

People still say, I want to go and see some spooky stuff. At the very least, it's an abandoned village, which is definitely creepy. And I would want to look at that. But there's people ever since the 1940s have seen ghosts and heard of creatures in the woods and they have feelings of overwhelming fear and sadness and they feel themselves being suffocated and watched at night. It could be that situation of like, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but it could be that situation we've talked about,

about like the more you talk about it and create the lore around it, it almost develops its own identity as like a spooky place, even if it doesn't have the like true origin. Yeah, the power of persuasion or whatever it might be. People have also seen lights. They've heard sounds. They've felt someone push them, scratch them. Investigators have called this area a negative power spot for spirits to travel. Okay. Sure. People have also claimed to see half man, half animal creatures with snouts on their face running through the woods at night. Oh. One teenager reportedly got

attacked by a creature out there with glowing green eyes or glowing red eyes and had gashes all over him. I feel like you could have just maybe fallen in the woods and okay i don't know or it could i i'm still also i would not be a hundred percent in disbelief of something spooky happening but yeah i mean first of all m's the first to believe you whoever you are so don't worry we're just trying to sound intelligent i just this this story i really wanted it to come off spookier. But I also want to do the the people justice, especially since they have so proactively tried to make sure people don't go visit. You know, I understand that. Yeah.

Yeah. That makes sense. So one common report, again, is that the village is weirdly silent. And for decades, this town used to actually go right through the Appalachian Trail so a lot of hikers would go through the Dudley Woods um and those hikers reported hearing really weird stuff at night and seeing men with hooves and they would see orbs in the trees and they would see UFOs and apparently there's a whole bunch of other like UFO adjacent stories to this area okay now we're talking but that also could just i mean

that's one day i'll have to just cover the appalachian trail because that's just so goddamn spooky oh god i would i would die for that um i i just love the appalachian trail and i'm so close to it now i just i just love it apparently um tv crews have gone out there trying to film spooky things for their own content and equipment has broken and malfunctioned one reporter apparently got violently ill when she started talking about the stories out there and after years of pestering that this place is haunted someone has to go check it out guess who attended not zach the warrens oh next best thing the warrens went out to check this this village out they said that they'd heard a different version of the curse's origin they thought somebody in uh someone who they thought like one of the puritans

slash colonizers slash religious zealots um was the person to get cursed not someone from england in the 1500s oh i see okay um and he was the governor for like four terms here and he killed a bunch of quakers and one of the quakers cursed him so that was the story that they had heard um and the area was found. Oh, sorry. I just read the wrong part. Their story, by the way, also had a lot of plot holes. So I don't know if either story is accurate.

But basically, in the 1970s, the Warrens went there. They taped themselves in Dudleytown as like a special. And they called it public. They publicly called it demonically possessed. And this poor town that just wanted people to leave them i know it's not fair now every paranormal enthusiast went to dudley town warren's the warren's this is the most ironic part to me the warren said that even if the legends weren't true it's now officially haunted because people are now going there and doing rituals in the woods and going ghost hunting and summoning things. It's like you caused it to be haunted then.

Yeah, that's not fair. So for her to go, I'm saying her as if Lorraine's the only one, but for both of them to say, oh, it's definitely haunted. And now I can't be proven wrong because it's haunted now, even if it wasn't when I said that. And now I can't be proven wrong because it's haunted now, even if it wasn't when I said that. So anyway, the visitors started going through here all the time. Amateur ghost hunters started coming in. Teenagers around the area started trespassing and trying to like, you know, they were like daring each other to stay in the woods. This led to huge vandalism and graffiti problems. Tour buses started coming through.

One of the residents said that tour buses one of the residents said that he had to start like helping visitors tow their cars out because they were driving in like areas they weren't supposed to be and getting their cars stuck oh my god how infuriating would that be and of course the warrens went right right to this place only a few years before the satanic panic and so now people are afraid of dudley town because people there's rumors of cults going in there at night and by the way the warrens did nothing to help this situation in fact they posted the dudley town address on their website so um whoops oopsie oopsies it even got worse in 1999 when people spread that the Blair Witch Project was based on Dudleytown oh my god uh and so around that time in the 90s early 2000s

now everyone's coming in again in a whole new wave and around the same time lots of the land was burned in a fire when the town was hit by a lightning bolt so then people started freaking out that this was a curse from like the skies some people also say that this land is a vortex for spiritual energy um and nowadays because it has to be i think the land is private privately owned still by the dark entry forest association um but they started banning visitors they had to start like really strictly controlling the land because so many visitors were coming in and ruining things but that has now led to conspiracy theories about who the dark entry association is oh i mean they do have quite a

spooky name and they can claim that that was just based on the road but like you could have been the dudley town association but you chose the dark entry like come on it's spooky and also like to i mean you're a a private very small group of people that live in an abandoned, potentially spooky, potentially dangerous forest. That sounds like a wizard's origin story, right? Right? I mean, with like owls and like spooky creatures. So some say that they're a cult using the land for their own rituals and communication with spirits. Others say that they are keeping the vortex for themselves because they don't want to share it with anybody.

They're so selfish. I love that one, by the way. It just sounds like a bunch of like only children got in a group together. Yes. It's hilarious. Like they're just like, I wouldn't write a screenplay about that, like a sitcom pilot or something. I just feel like that has a lot of legs. That would actually be a great story to just do like a secret society that actually does

own the secret woods. And they're just like, I feel like it should be like a normal just like town society, like the dark entry force. And they're like, God, will you guys stop? Like, there's nothing here. We're just trying to preserve the legacy of the town. And then at the end of the pilot plot twist, you find out like they actually do have a portal and they just don't want to share with anyone else tm tm tm tm for our half-assed

idea right right but just in case just in case if we decide at 3 a.m we're gonna write the entire series folks so some say that they're actually good people this could be the other plot twist at the end of season two that they're good witches who are actually protecting us from the bad curse now that wait and then the foil is someone who's infiltrated the group and is like oh i want to use this for nefarious purposes but is posing as a good witch you know that's the one tm tm tm so can you write that down please eva can you just write the series for us please i don't know if you saw and i don't really listen to um mfm much anymore but steven has has stepped back from mfm has left the building i know and it's like it feels so monumental he's

like the third he's when someone asks like wait which one's steven again like my brother somebody who doesn't listen to podcasts i was like well i was gonna say steven's the eva of my favorite murder but i was like honestly it's eva was the steven of our show before you know because he was kind of the we were like we need someone like steven so i feel like steven created such a an entry point for so many people to be like oh so many people that's a great like a position for a podcast somebody who can help us record and yeah i'm just uh i mean the only the only reason we even knew we could get and i mean steven if you're listening for some reason we've never met but the only reason we even thought we could have an eva is because there was a steven we were like what a is because there was a Steven. And we were like, what a great, like, that's such a great idea.

So we almost, like, modeled our posting on ZipRecruiter, not an ad, but sort of an ad, based on the fact that, like, based on Steven's job description, I was like, oh, what a great idea. We could use someone to help us like that. So anyway, just side note, I saw that on Instagram. And so I want to say Godspeed to Steven, you you know whatever your wherever your life takes you next you know who told me that steven left who eva and i went girl if you ever leave us i was like you know who told eva you well i did but then then she's like oh ray just told me so i'm like okay i feel like ray ray and i both told her

but i forget why i was texting her separately but i was but i didn't say don't leave me she just immediately responded but don't worry i'll never leave you and i was like thank you for reading the thoughts i didn't even realize i know i know i was like i didn't even realize i'm so glad that for once i don't have to demand the answer from you. You'll just voluntarily say I won't leave you. She's learned very well. Yeah. We need it. We need a lot of reassurance.

No, I said I was like she was like, oh, did you know that Steven left? And I was like, what are you saying? I was like, is that your way of saying you're out to that poor woman has to like think before she says anything to us, which is like just i was like eva if you ever leave like christina i will also leave just so it's clear we will leave we will leave this plane we don't know how to function help us anyway just to end all of this um this nonsense so the dark entry forest association they uh banned visitors they have had literally since like 2014 i think they're still like having to like call the police and have them arrested if they're like

trespassing because people still think they can get away with it people are so fucking they have no respect and maybe they're good witches maybe they're maybe they have a cult maybe they want to have the vortex to themselves and whatever the reason, they just don't want the town to be explored any longer. They want nothing to do with this curse. And the Cornwall Historical Society, this is one, two, three, four different quotes from them when discussing this curse and how they just don't want it around anymore. Right. So they've written this pamphlet apparently for if you come to dudleytown they have a pamphlet called the true facts of dudleytown and

it puts all the rumors to rest and the cornwall historical society has said for decades there's been this perpetuation of misinformation go to dudleytown they tell you it's a real ghosty place but the truth is Deadly Town's a big fraud. If you would like to visit the forested ruins of an old building, or if you would like to visit a stunningly beautiful forest, Mohawk State Forest will satisfy your interests, and Cunningham Tower is full of eerie ambiance, if that's what you're looking for. But today's owners of Deadly Town are professional people who live there for privacy and seclusion. They do not welcome tourists or those seeking tales of chilling experiences.

Please do not come. There are no ghosts, no spirits, no curse. Oh, it's like so hard because I get that. Like, I feel like we've been in that position, especially at live shows, when you've covered a topic locally back when we did like local stories. you've covered a topic locally back when we did like local stories and then you would say but please don't like go over there drunkenly after this you know what i mean like we can respect it from afar like but the people who own it like we have to respect their privacy and exactly and yeah that's a hard line um i'm like kind of let me let me check did we did i i didn't talk about it in our book did

did we which one did dudley town did i cover no i don't believe so i would i feel like i okay good if i did if i didn't put it in there enough don't actually go unless like you know somebody from there who's willing to invite you in and also grab a pamphlet from the cornwall historical society while you're at it send me one because I'm so curious about it. And just sidebar, too, if you want to go to Damned CT, Damned Connecticut dot com, they do have if you look at their Dudleytown page in the comments, a lot of people have talked about some of the spooky stuff that's happened to them. It's a lot of stuff I already mentioned where people have seen glowing green eyes or their cell phones will malfunction a lot of people say spooky stuff happens and it could all be coincidence but it could also be like kind of a what what's it called when enough people have put energy toward it yeah like i mean a tulpa is like a thought form that

yeah yeah yeah anyway but that's deadly town and i'm sorry it took like an hour and a half to get through that. No, no. I mean, I think, let's be real, that was mostly my doing. Wow. Listen, the second you said Dudley, I was on board. This is a story for another day. But at my parents, my dad and stepmom's wedding. Nope, other way around. My mom and stepdad's wedding. We went to Salamanca, New York, which is my stepdad's hometown.

And we stayed at the dudley hotel and that place is creepy and so when you said dudley in the beginning i was like oh my god is this the same it is i like how immediately you hear you hear dudley and you're like they have to be connected i i mean that's what people said about the Dudleys over here and the Dudleys over in England. Okay. They made the same kind of stretch. Yeah. It's called the Historic Dudley Hotel. I swear to God, this place was haunted.

I'm going to send you a picture of it because like you'll just see. It's like the only hotel in town. And my dad, it's like right by a reservation so there are a lot of locals who like go to the bar there and my grant my german grandfather showed up and after the wedding started buying everybody like uh buying the whole bar like rounds of shots and they partied like all night and i just uh sat in the corner and drank shirley temples and played cards with my friends oh that's a really fun place but it's definitely spooky um it's definitely spooky yeah well i will say i just looked up dudley town to show you a picture of it and it's all just essentially i mean you've seen the woods you know um i have seen that yeah on realtor right now there is a house in Dudleytown that is for sale. Oh, I am.

And it is... I know. So I'm not saying... How much? $888. That's a lot. It is. $888?

Mm-hmm. Jesus, that seems like a lot. Also for only 1,700 square feet. What? Whoa, look how old this fucking building is though when was this built 1783 i was gonna say that's a 1700s house friends i have a friend also in 2017 it sold for like almost half of that so i think it's just like spiked recently we um we have friends who live in new hampshire who live in like a 17 50s or 60s farmhouse and they texted

me when they bought it and they were like hey do you think this is haunted and we were like and blaze said i'm just gonna step in here before christine even has to like the answer is obviously but it looks kind of like this it's like old-timey barn with like a couple windows like you know that spooky old colonial style oh yeah house yeah it looks like that i mean i feel like if you have to ask is it haunted i know i know like what's making you even ask you know like read your gut feelings i'm kind of loving it I love also that they want this kind of money, but they have no photos. It's like the one photo of the outside and then they're like, just trust us. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.

Anytime, even I go on Zillow a lot and I go on Zillow truly because it's 3 a.m. And I think I love Zillow all the time. I go on Zillow just to pretend that I'm a multimillionaire and can afford whatever I want. And I like to look at like the 30 million dollar mansions or whatever and some of them still only have one picture and i'm like how on earth like how on earth do you i mean i'll i'll i'll buy it in an imaginary world but because it's probably not for us fucking looky-loos because they're like this is where celebrities live we're not going to show you the inside of the house and where the keypad is. You know what's for sale right now, though?

Yes. You told me. The Brady Bunch house. Five mil. That's easy. Easy money. Easy money. Easy, right?

Patreon, I will send you a pin or something. And it might be crooked and it might have dog hair on it. It's just a cool easy breezy five million dollars and um but but i so obviously i looked through the pictures it actually did have pictures and the entire inside also looks like i mean it's the exterior and interior of the brady if you were to buy that house first of all would you if it were like in your budget um first of all i have like 20 million dollars so of course it's my mistake i'm so i'm so sorry you know what's so weird is i thought

about it and i was like i don't think i well i don't think i would for a few reasons one because you're already spending five million dollars on a house that you you can't furnish it because like it's already decorated for you that was my question yeah i was curious because i wouldn't either i don't i wouldn't want it to be like exactly the way it is like unless i were some huge brady bunch like fanatic but i'm not i think on principle and like i like the like nostalgia retro kind of vibe like i'm i'm down with how it looks on the inside but like what would i i'm fine with that but like if i didn't own anything else i'd be so stoked to go live there and it's already furnished for me and looks really cool and it looks like a television show that i've watched but since i have

a bunch of stuff like i hope there's just one storage room that i could just put everything in that's where and think of how much money you have to spend on a 24-7 basis for security. I was going to say, then you have looky-loos like us. And it's on, like, not a major road, but it's off of a major road. Like, it's easy to get to. So, anyway, no, I wouldn't, but I really wish I had a friend who would, you know. See, that would be the ideal. Like, you're one party removed, so you can at least enjoy it, but you don't have to be responsible for it. Yes.

Yes. That would be delightful. Anyway, you have to tell me about murder before we go off on Zillow because I won't shut up. First of all, I got my water out. Somebody gave this to me. I think at the Cincinnati show. I forget where. But this beautiful actually knows a different live show but this

beautiful lemon uh cup okay that they made on their cricket machine by the way uh and so I'm I rediscovered it recently and it's my recording cup now so I apologize it's lemony um but i'm trying to rehydrate myself my recording cup is actually a vase um i a celery vase oh no that's like a like a real not actually a cup it was in the vase depart i mean it's very big but it does have a spout i think that's support not to pour water down my gullet as i do it but um it's i wish you could see it. My whole fist could go in there. Is it like for, it looks like a pitcher. Yeah, it's a small pitcher.

I found it at World Market. It looks like World Market, by the way, my favorite store. And I was like, this could be a good cup if they had a smaller one texture is really doing it for me i love in a bad way or a good way no no best way i love it i think she's so cute so delightful it's like those starbucks cups we talked about that have the i love her and i because she's got good grip that's why but i i'm a basic bitch with my stanley cup and this probably holds more water than your giant pitcher so don't feel bad like okay this is meant to be a cup and it's outrageous so i think you're okay i was looking for an actual cup version of

it in world market because i was it was literally in the vases and i was like i guess anything can be a cup if you want it to be so I mean that's that's the attitude that I'm here for yeah okay so I support you on that anyway I did quite a lot of talking and I'm I I'm excited for you to regale me and also I'm excited for Jonathan to leave because I hate this but um please distract me until that's true happily um i'm really excited about this one because uh our wonderful researcher molly and reached out a few months ago and said have you heard about this and sent me this tiktok and i went down this kind of rabbit hole because i had not heard of it and it seems like something i should absolutely have heard of.

And I cannot wait to tell it to you. This is the eBay stalking scandal. What? It's giving Craigslist killer. It is, but in a totally different... I'm going to love it. I already know. Have no idea what's coming. is i'm so excited a wild ride uh so i'm just gonna hop into it um and it's also a relatively recent story like this starts back in the 90s with like the rise of ebay and these e-commerce sites but uh the actual crimes took place in 2019. So it's a much more recent story than I at first realized.

Cool. So, oh, it's such a doozy. Talk about like this is like the stuff that those HBO documentaries like three parters are made of. Like the John Fogle. Like this is one of those stories where you're like what the how like how have i not heard about this so i'm sure something's in the works because it was so recent um if not hit us up uh hbo netflix whoever wants to get in on it christine wants to be a talking head christine wants to be a talking head my dream get me a talking head come on okay this is the

ebay stalking scandal so um we all know ebay right uh it's famously one of the first e-commerce websites to ever exist um and do you have you ever heard the uh kind of urban legend of how eBay was created or founded. Because I hadn't heard it. So don't feel bad if you haven't. But I feel like someone's told me. I don't remember. I truly don't remember. I bet we've heard it before.

I didn't remember. But apparently there's an old story that the founder of eBay created the site to get rid of his wife's overwhelming Pez dispenser collection. And that's how it started. Oh, you know where I learned about that from? I wandered myself into a Pez museum one time. And that was one of their fun facts on the wall. Yes, I do know about that. Okay, well, it's not true, which is why I said it was the urban legend about how it got started. Well, by the way, the Pez Museum definitely told me all about that. Uh-oh. Let's just say they were doing it tongue-in-cheek so that we don't get in trouble.

Yeah, it's funny. Obviously, it's a great story, but it's not true. So here's what actually happened. The man who created and launched eBay, his name is Pierre Omidyar, and he was a French-born man living in Silicon Valley in San Jose. And he launched eBay over Labor Day weekend of 1995. 1995. Now over this holiday weekend, while he was at home in San Jose, he was writing code on his personal computer. And he launched a website, which at the time he called Auction Web. And he was just kind of playing around like, you know, everyone is out on vacation during the long weekend, and he's at home writing code. And it was all worth it because he created this website

called Auction Web, and he described it as a site, quote, dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace. The first item up for bid, Pierre posted his old, barely functional laser printer for sale for a whopping $1. Oh, okay. And if anyone ever asks you a trivia what was the first item up for bid on ebay that is what it was okay fun fact great so people actually bid on it and

they're not sure nowadays like internet historians are not sure if it was just for the novelty of bidding on something like an auction online i mean that's kind of a wild and it's it's low stakes it's a dollar um and so people started bidding and it sold to a man in canada for 14.83 and uh pierre was like cool this is it's working so it's interesting does that mean only like 14 people yeah it was like a small amount or oh i don't know how many specifically but yeah probably around there so probably a small number but you know for somebody to start their first website and put one thing up and it's already drawing in you know viewers uh it just started to work and so the rest kind of is history so ebay as it later became

known uh quickly gained popularity and in the late 90s its founder and staff largely credited the beanie baby craze with the massive growth of ebay which i also found very interesting. It's almost like all of these zeitgeisty phenomenon were intertwined, you know? Yeah. So people joined the site to buy and sell their Beanie Babies, and they would stay for other purchases. And so Pierre's original $14.82 sale turned into his current net worth, which is estimated to be $13 billion.

Whoa. Right? Whoa. Right. And you should see this guy. You should look up Pierre Omidyar in like 1995. Like he looks just kind of like the dorky, like a computer nerd who's like at home writing code while everyone's at the barbecue look at him right and now he's a fucking 13 billion dollar

wow high flying macho man that's incredible yeah it's crazy talk about like rags if not rags to riches but 14 to 13 billion is pretty wild to me holy crap um so just last year to give you an idea of how ebay has become uh one of the leading e-commerce sites in the world still to this very day uh just as an idea last year in 2022 users sold over 70 billion dollars worth of products on ebay wow 70 billion in just one year basically the sheer size of ebay's online market is like unfathomable like it's impossible to comprehend and of course with that amount of wealth behind it, there is opportunity for people to, what a shocker, abuse their power. Yeah. And you said there were you said 70 billion last year, right? In 2022. Yep. Wow. That's sorry.

That's just that's just the amount of money that people sold their items like everyday folks were selling stuff. So that's not to say you know i don't know how much the top are making i don't know what their incomes are like but it must be out of control uh wow being at the top of this kind of a company 10 billion of it was probably me with pokemon cards it might have been um you could have you you know you could have bought that uh that whole town of uh i know dudley town no, you had to go buy your Pokemon cards. I know. So Ina and David Steiner, this is the main couple at the center of this story.

They live in Natick, Massachusetts, which is about 40 minutes outside of Boston. And early in their marriage, so they've been together for 30 years at this point, but earlier in their marriage, they both began working from home together. And I kind of love this because, you know, 30 years ago, you're thinking, like, the internet is very young. It's like the 90s.

We're all just playing pinball. We're playing pinball we're we're playing minecraft or even though we don't get what it is you mean minesweeper i mean did i say minecraft nowadays i'm playing minecraft have no fucking clue what it is well what's the difference really they're all squares difference they're all cubes squares we invented minecraft you know so anyway i just love the idea that this couple in the 90s was like let's get into business together work from home and work on the internet like when it was so early and ahead of their time yeah way ahead of their time and i love that they did it together that's precious i know

and so the cup oh wait i have a photo of them i meant to send this to you because um like right right now because i just was like these these folks man uh actually i'm gonna send it to the group what was their company um i will tell you momentarily i'm was going to say, in 2023, if they said, oh, we're going to work from home together, it'd be like, yawn, we're all doing that. Yeah, yawn. Look at them. Look at them. We're going to put this on Instagram, folks.

But they are just, this is like later on into their business. But as you can tell, it's an online business where they are kind of in cahoots with these e-commerce sites. So let me give you a little more of a description. So the couple themselves were early fans of eBay and other e-commerce websites, and they were so passionate about the world of online marketplaces that they decided to start a newsletter. Oh, OK. so they launched a news website called e-commerce bites as in b-y-t-e-s like like bites of pieces of e-commerce not like uh e-commerce blows man not e-commerce bites you know but genius yeah bites you know information in fifth grade we i was at a play called bits and bites and it was about the digital age and it was a bunch of computer viruses hanging

out together it was like what it was clearly like a play that was that someone had just written because like computers were all the rage for kids i love looking back at those where they were like wow they thought they were on to something like it was so topical bits and bites and i i think like the bad guy was a computer virus but we were all computer somethings what was your role oh christine uh very foreshadowing i truly needed propranolol at 10 years old for this because it was one of those plays where you all had to stand on the stage and like step out and say a line and that's it oh god and I couldn't imagine

the idea of being up there and so I tried to go to my teacher which by the way at 10 years old with like confrontation issues was so brave of me to be like I can't get up there and say anything and they went well you have to so um they basically gave they made me the narrator where i had to say the most things

oh my god that's not fair it was cruel it was so fucking cruel and i thought i was gonna fall over and die the entire time um but anyway bits and bytes but not like bytes yet, but more like computer bytes. Yeah, I'm proud of you. So their reports covered all things e-commerce from stocks to sellers' concerns. Ina did the writing and reporting, and David handled the behind-the-scenes business end. They were basically a power couple just kind of documenting the ins and outs of the e-commerce world. And so they had these subscribers following for like industry news. Like, you know now how there are newsletters about like podcast news and like acquisitions and this is what they were writing about, but just in the scope of e-commerce.

Okay, got it. So in an interview, Ina explained, we cover industry news. So what I do is I follow what's happening and how it impacts sellers. So when major changes on e-commerce websites rolls out, basically sellers could rely on Ina and David for accurate information like, oh, what's shifting? What tools are they adding on eBay? What's coming next right like it's a really useful tool and they have 600,000 readers which to me seems like quite a lot uh most of those are online merchants so people who are like small businesses and are selling um their goods and services and wares on these websites and uh you know rely on Ina andid's website to kind of make sure they are on the right track and up up to speed with all the the fast-paced changes on these websites like ebay in the digital era the digital era the bits and bytes so even though 600 000 readers most of

them are online merchants the steiners were always aware that there were kind of other high high flying folks who were also following these reports because much like the trades uh for tv for now podcasting um not only do like kind of the small time like podcasters like us have to follow or like to follow these kinds of things, but the big high ups at companies like, I don't know, I'm trying to think like iHeart or just as an example, like also follow this kind of news. had some big wigs that also followed and subscribed to their newsletter to see what changes were being rolled out on other websites just to keep kind of their finger on the pulse. So eventually readers started reaching out to Ina with specific issues they were having as sellers on sites like Etsy, Amazon, and eBay. And Ina never, ever set out to report anything in bad faith. She wasn't biased against any particular website, but she only wanted to platform these sellers' voices, like the ones that were having problems, to give them space to say back to the companies like,

hey, this isn't working for us. This is my small business. And eBay has done this, that or the other. And it's it's hurting my business. So she wanted to make sure they elevated the voices of these small businesses that were selling on these websites. Love that. Love it. Otherwise, you know, if a person were to reach out to eBay and say, hey, I'm having a problem with XYZ, that's probably going to get lost in a customer service email inbox and probably nothing's going to get done. So if it's in this more professional released newsletter that actual bigwigs are reading, maybe they'll take note. So Ina created a dedicated section of the site for user reports where users could go in and report the issues they were having on specific websites.

And she said she wanted it to be a conduit for sellers to tell their problems, tell their issues and share information. So people took interest. and even Wall Street contacted Ina and David sometimes to get the scoop on like these e-commerce giants because Ina and David knew all the behind the scenes like they got intel from all these folks. Can you imagine just working from home and Wall Street is calling you? I mean it's like 1995 you're like I guess we'll start this fun little blog and then like suddenly wall street's on the phone like what is amazon doing we must know and that's kind of where this goes m so buckle the fuck up okay like remember this is a true crime story it's out of control okay okay so and just like i feel like you would have said something, but you don't know this story, right? Not at all.

Okay. I had not heard of it ever either. So you and me both. So, I mean, if you think about it, the Steiners were reporting on multibillion dollar corporations and they had like 600,000 followers, a lot of whom were the reason that these companies were billion dollar companies. They're selling on these websites. They need these people to be loyal to them. And they never really imagined that these multi-billion dollar companies would feel threatened by their kind of reporting because it was just like more small time reporting well i'm sure the newsletter yeah i was gonna say there's no way that they thought there was gonna be like

actual credible people watching them or you know enthusiasts that are relying solely on their opinion or their their work you know who are taking it so seriously yeah yeah exactly so most of all the steiners believe that the sellers on these websites had a right to know about what was going on behind the scenes on these websites that they were using and subsequently like giving money to as a cut every time they sold something. So they felt like this is the right of the people to know what these billion dollar corporations are up to. what these billion dollar corporations are up to so this went on very smoothly for about two decades okay okay and they were living the dream like had a very loyal following and that all stopped on august 8th 2019 whoa it's that recent it's that recent? It's that fucking recent. I've been still imagining them in like, like the picture I showed you. 1990s. Yeah. Like, and they've been doing, first of all, they must be, I'm sure they already were eventually,

but in my mind, I still thought of them as like sitting at home in their den together versus like having a full ass company. They have to have like a full ass company now, right? Yeah. You know, I don't know how big the company is. I think it's still relatively small. And I don't know whether they still work out of their home. I'm not sure. I believe they do. But they're still heavily relied on for trends and things like that. Wow. Good for them. I know. I was like so impressed because I'm like, you start a business in the 90s based solely on the Internet.

Like you have no idea where that's going to go. I was gonna say based solely on the Internet when it was so new. It's not like now you started. You couldn't predict any trends. Yeah. You were just like, this is my best guess of something that everyone is unsure of. So, like, I almost feel like back then you had a better chance at Wall Street paying attention to you because there was only one of you. Not like 30,000 TikTokers exactly like you. That's so true. And it's like, how do they even like I bet Wall Street and those people were probably like, wait, how do they get all this aggregated information in one place? You know, like websites are a new thing. Like usually you'd have to read the trades, read the paper. But like I just went on the website and it's funny because the website

this is not meant to be offensive but it really does look kind of like an old time like it looks like it has not changed that much like it's very simple um it's still called e-commerce bites blog um i'm gonna look it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. E-commerce. Bytes with a Y. Yeah, wow. Right? Okay. It's nothing to write home about. Okay, but then you scroll down.

It says Etsy adds weekends to processing time. So for sellers, it's like, oh, this is so crucial to know. That's wild. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what's shocking, though, is like when they first started doing this and paying attention to all the online companies out there that are that were doing sales there was like maybe 20 and now like how do you keep up with etsy how do you keep up with redbubble how do you keep up with so you're right they must have

amazon online yeah yeah and paypal and all this like i mean, there's a new eBay glitch. This is from last week. So people who sell and make a living on these websites rely on this site to make sure they are getting the information. If there's a glitch, if there's a holiday delay that they weren't aware about. They really must have at least one person person at each company, like major company. I would hope so. I wonder if they have like a team or some page on here. I don't know.

But it's pretty wild because it looks so old school, but it does what it says it does. It does what it says on the tin, you know, like they are helping the people who are merchants on these sites and need guidance. Wow. And they also have all of the, just scrolling down, they have the full archives. You can see everything from at least 2012. Wow. That's pretty fucking cool.

Wow. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. This is crazy. No, no. And so to think, like, they've been doing this for almost 20 years in 2019 so that's only like half up to 2012 that means like they'd been doing it for about 10 years earlier than that so in any case uh everything has been going great for them right they're building this they're they're relied on by these big wigs they're they're they're an important part of this whole machine they've got going online

until August 8th, 2019. That morning, Ina and David woke up to some strange emails in their inbox. They had unknowingly been signed up for hundreds of newsletters that they had never even heard of. Hmm. Some of these included the Satanic Temple. Irritable bowel syndrome news. Oh, wait, no, that's just mine. I'm just kidding. I am actually.

That is both. They're definitely both in your email. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah and also i'm mad at whoever thought that would be like a funny joke because i'm like fuck off don't make fun of people with ibd and ibs i do like your joke though that was thank you um sin city fetish night the communist party and dozens of others. So apparently somebody had signed them up for all these newsletters overnight. And like there is a form of harassment where people will sign businesses, public emails up to newsletters as like just a form of like blasting them, spamming them. And so, you know, at the end of the day, I think I would have taken this the same way.

I would have been like, oh, somebody is just like spamming us, putting our email in because our email is obviously like easily accessible. So a few changes in email settings, they were able to filter that to spam and they thought, well, that's the end of that. not because these emails were only the beginning of a massive terrifying terror campaign against the steiner family oh no okay so the next thing that happened after these emails was they started getting outright threats on twitter anonymous accounts were sending them tweets like shut up or else. Many of the messages were more detailed. And I watched a 60 Minutes episode on this and they couldn't put in kind of the more upsetting and graphic stuff. But there were definitely a lot of swear words and descriptions of violence against Ina and David. The account was called Top Seller 13. against Ina and David. The account was called TopSeller13. And I used, because I'm me,

I used the Wayback Machine because I was like, well, I got to find this account, right? Obviously. It's no longer in existence. I used the Wayback Machine and I found a few results. Basically, they were campaigning against them and trying to like rally people against e-commerce bites saying that e-commerce bites aina and david were hurting small businesses by pushing people to amazon and one of the tweets said guess i have to pay them a visit like just outright threat threat uh and then anytime somebody anybody critiqued ebay they'd respond watch your mouth or like i'll come after you like bizarro threats and now david and aina are like totally reeling they're like wait whoa this has been like kind of a mom and pop thing for two decades. And like what happened? Three days later, they received a voicemail about an order that had arrived at their home.

And the voicemail said they couldn't fulfill the order because it was for a wet specimen. Ew. David called back and asked what a wet specimen even is. Yeah. It was a pig fetus oh my god someone had tried to have a pig fetus delivered to their home how do you even send that in the mail great question apparently you can't because it's a wet specimen oh right okay yes okay no but apparently somebody tried um and aina at this point said her heart sank because this meant someone knew their home address yeah that's when it starts to feel

like it's not just cyber bullying or cyber stalking like this is real so that's when she also obviously put everything together and realized the emails and tweets weren't just like some random troll someone was actually going out of their way to try and get them. And it must have been somebody who was pissed with whatever Ina was writing on the website. The Steiners were desperate for answers, but they couldn't imagine who would go to such great lengths to harass them. So they decided to, this is the first time that they involved the police at this point. They wanted to be taken seriously and they knew they might not be. So the officer arrived and took the report. And I want to say luckily slash unluckily, a package had been delivered as the police officer was there taking their report.

So he was like, you open that and I'll wait right here so I can see. Because of course, like of all times you want somebody there, a third party, like it's to witness whatever's about to happen. She opens the box. At first, all she can see is flesh and hair. Okay. She shrieks. Turns out it's a pig mask, which is interesting because you brought up a pig mask earlier. This is specifically the pig mask from the movie Saw, which the villain wears as he tortures his victims to death.

And guess where else they had seen that mask? Well, it happened to be the profile picture of none other than top seller 13 oh fuck so ding ding ding they are sure now that this is who is harassing them things only escalated their neighbors started getting pornography mailed to their address but had david steiner's name on them so to make it look bad yeah to make it look like it got sent to the wrong address but he was ordering like teen porn and all this like you know fucked up stuff um the mail harassment continued they received boxes of live cockroaches live spiders oh my god yeah someone even anonymously posted the steiner's home address

all over social media and on craigslist advertising events at their home like yard sales and sex parties to the public oh my god i mean this is just like this is very um the bad version of what anonymous did yes it is a similar concept like somebody is i mean there's people out there who do like that's remember like swatting do you ever hear about that oh god yes that's so scary that's so scary it's so fucked up and and so it's already like really really scary but it gets even scarier because a few days later, a package arrived addressed specifically to David, not Ina this time. And it was a book. The book was called Grief Diaries, Surviving Loss of a Spouse. Oh, my God.

And a few days after that, an expensive and elaborate funeral wreath arrived on their doorstep. Oh, my God. Basically, this was an elaborate, blatant death threat against Ina, who was the author of all of these blog posts so in that 60 minute special david told reporter sharon alfonzi i was terrified i was gonna lose her and this is actually the part where he gets the most emotional because it obviously was like so jarring so the steiners became so afraid that they actually started sleeping in separate rooms at night like hoping if somebody broke in at least one of them would be in a different spot to like trip up to save each other yeah and like call 9-1-1 um over the weeks a rental van with new york plates cased their house and they saw it pass by several times in one day had

no idea who it was they installed security cameras but they didn't have a full alarm system installed yet so they put a cart with baking trays on it in front of the door so that which is like such a christine move at a hotel like so i'll hear it if somebody's trying to break in and then one night at 4 30 a.m worst time for anything to happen a man showed up at the steiner's house and poor david was already awake because he was too stressed to sleep so he saw this man approaching the door and terrified he they screamed at him and called the police but unfortunately um it turned out to be a pizza delivery driver but somebody had ordered pizza to their house in the middle of the night just to fuck with them so it was these same people but they were like oh what you

don't want a little pizza at 4 30 in the morning like they're just outright harassing these people then david began to notice he was being followed around town once by a van and then later by a car and he actually managed to get a photo of one of the license plates go david and that is when authorities could finally make a break in this case thank god i know i know because i feel like christine you're stressing me the fuck out i know these never end well i'm so sweaty these never end well they always get but but we got it we got it we we we've got a break detective john haswell took the lead on the case and he ran the license plate through the system finding out it was a car rental so he contacted the rental car place and found out

that it had been rented by someone named veronica zay and uh she had rented that vehicle during the time period that David was being followed. So Detective Haswell hadn't actually spoken to the Steiners directly yet. He had only heard the reports. So he called them and he said, hey, do you know anyone by this name, Veronica? And they said, no, we've never heard of this person before. But before the police could even like run any check on who this person was aina just googled the name and found out oh that's weird veronica zay is an executive as at ebay what that's crazy yeah that's fucking crazy okay said, I cannot describe how flabbergasted we were. Was it eBay that did this to us? I mean, it was inconceivable.

So a sergeant on the case tracked the rental car to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where Veronica was staying in Boston. And he called her from the lobby and he said, I fully expected her to come down, hand me a business card and say, I'm from eBay. We're doing an investigation on all this. So we drove past the house. But Veronica told the sergeant she had a conference call and would have to wait. She never came down. And eventually he had to leave. And Veronica then peaced out of town before ever talking to the police.

So red flag. Veronica then peaced out of town before ever talking to the police. So, red flag. Meanwhile, Detective Haswell discovered that the funeral wreath had actually been purchased with a gift card at a grocery store only eight miles from eBay headquarters in Silicon Valley. Security photos showed Veronica purchasing the gift card, so Detective Haswell turned the case over to the FBI. Wow. veronica purchasing the gift card so detective haswell turned the case over to the fbi now this investigation lasted 10 months and then the u.s attorney in massachusetts made an announcement uh he had held a press conference announcing that they were indicting six ebay employees and a contractor in a conspiracy to commit cyber stalking case, as well as conspiracy to tamper

with witnesses. So there was seven of them? Yes. Why? Why did they hate them so much? Also, so wait, for those 10 months of investigation, there was still 10 months of further bullying, right? You know, I don't know.

It seemed almost like when they started to kind of put the pieces together that maybe they drew back yeah okay i'm not totally positive that's a great question though the u.s attorney said at a press conference the complaint alleges that the victims were targeted because ebay executives were unhappy with the coverage of ebay on the couple's website in 2019 ebay's then ceo so this is where the gargoyles come out because you're going to need to track these people there are a lot of white dudes with boring names okay okay so ebay's then ceo devin wenig sent his colleagues a link to an article that aina had written about his paycheck she wrote that he made more than 152 times the salary of a typical ebay employee first of all good fucking for her yeah she's basically calling out she's whistleblowing yes

and it's like not even like a secret you know she's just fucking pointing at it and saying yeah hey just fyi and by the way before you go any further leave it to this fucking privileged man who like instead of doing something about being called out he is just going to go send you death threats for the rest of your life are you fucking kidding me literally yes so you're exactly onto it because he sent this article right to a group of high-powered executives at ebay one of whom was called steve weimer so there's wenig who's the ceo and weimer who is the cco the chief communications officer and steiner there probably will be a steiner eventually wait is there isn't isn't ida and her husband aren't they steiner oh my god they're literally the steiner sorry you're 100 right i thought you meant like in this ebay ceo you're

right the steiner is the it's very confusing um so there's a weimer a steiner the steiners are the good guys so steve weimer who is the uh cco of ebay replied in this chat we are going to crush this lady what a fucking sick man and by the way this is just a reminder to everybody that like people this people with um like heavy narcissism or like like issues like that they are known to like end up in ceo roles and like yeah like high managerial roles so of course their his first thought is i'll destroy them versus for saying the truth out loud for saying the truth that hurt your little ego for a second yes precisely and made you look a little bit bad you know so ceo so steve weimer responds we're going to crush this

lady ceo devin wenig who had originally sent this article to the group wrote take her down oh gross i just can't stand this me it's crazy so on august 1st 2019 aina wrote a post about a lawsuit ebay had filed against amazon and although it was just a couple paragraphs and contained like only a light note of skepticism about how uh ceo devon wenig was handling this merger this acquisition or this lawsuit i'm sorry even though there was just like a a light note of skepticism um the ceo was irate and 33 minutes after the e-commerce bites article went up he texted mr weimer again the cco he said if you are ever going to take her down now is the time and mr weimer responded on it ew he then texted another ebay executive named james ball and texted him the following hatred is a sin

i am very sinful barf wow you know you know he fucking thought about that the night before and he went to bed thinking about it like this is gonna fucking kill tomorrow i know and i by the way these bullets that i have here are specifically pulled from the new york times article that went into really great depth about this story and um it it says hatred is a sin wrote mr weimer the son and grandson of baptist pastors okay i am very sinful i love whoever wrote this little sprinkle little sprinkle in there, yeah. So Mr. Boss signaled that he was ready to escalate the situation. And he responded, amen, I want her done. She is a biased troll who needs to get burned down.

Said the lover of Jesus. Yeah. Said God's own little lamb. Said God's own little lamb. So Mr. Wenig was going to Italy on sabbatical, I guess as CEOs do, for the month of August. So e-commerce bites, he said, needed to be taken care of before he returned from his sabbatical. So basically they took this plan and decided to plot it out very, very specifically. Johnny B. Good, in which, and this is a direct quote from the New York Times, in which a villainous football coach must deal with a host of pests arriving at his house simultaneously. A delivery guy with hundreds of dollars of unwanted pizza, singing and dancing Hare Krishnas and their elephant, a rodent exterminator, a male stripper. Mr. Baugh asked the analysts for inspiration. One of them suggested sending the Steiners a coffin. Oh my god. So this is basically where they roped in a group of contractors and other people high up at the eBay team to say we need to get some details down and we need to get this rolling stat.

So it just sounds like the entire executive board of ebay was just in a fun little just like game together chilling with it they were finally bonding you know none of those icebreakers worked so this was team building for this team built built this is so sick and also like sadly like think of the mailman who kept bringing this stuff to them it was like yeah first it was a pig fetus and now it's a coffin and like like oh my god like or whatever it was a funeral wreath and yeah spiders i'd be okay so i'd be like what if one of those got out oh my god and like because they're like in charge of ebay i guess i could get whatever they wanted from ebay right so

exactly great point so the security chief chief of eBay made it clear that eBay's leadership supported taking action. And they forwarded a message by Mr. Weimer, in which he declared that Miss Steiner and this other Twitter user named Fido Master, who I also looked up on the Wayback Machine, and was like this really small time just guy who had some complaints about eBay and just tweeted about them. And I guess he was, even though he's like this kind of small fry like Twitter user, he also got targeted. And so basically, Mr. Weimer declared that e-commerce bites and Fido master have seemingly dedicated their lives to erroneously trashing us i genuinely believe these people are acting out of malice and anything we can do to solve it must be explored whatever period it period takes jesus god give a bunch of narcissistic men uh an executive board and see what they do

yeah and then see what they do once they get berated slightly by one random measly twitter user yeah well and they just to all all hell breaks this yeah well then we are in 2023 because that's kind of how all yep all boards work um according to prosecutors this is again from the new york times mr baugh and members of the security team devised a convoluted strategy to secretly harass the steiners and then offer ebay's assistance in stopping the attacks to bribe them of like only if you say nice things about me is that what's no sort of like oh my gosh you're being attacked we'll help you and then win the steiner's confidence and manipulate them into writing nice things about ebay now that they've

saved them from the villain so they called it the white knight strategy uh and foul their idea was like let's harass the shit out of them and then rescue them so that they love us it's crazy so wow it's it's wild uh one of the tweets that uh this is a group of twitter users who again are all deleted but um thank God for reporters who've reported on this and the Wayback Machine. One of the tweets said, I guess I'm going to have to get your attention another way, bitch. And like,

they were just getting really crazy, aggressive, misspelled. And then, speaking of that exact same Twitter user, remember when that pig mask arrived that was like from Saw? So immediately after that pig mask arrived that was like from saw so immediately after that pig mask arrived they received a tweet and it said do i have your attention now what yes very very disturbing and you can also see what they were trying to frame it as so that same user wrote when you

hurt our business and it's all spelled wrong when you hurt our business you hurt our families people will do anything to protect family so they're trying to pretend like they're these small-time ebay users who are so deeply offended because and stupid because they can't spell and stupid right isn't that so fucking embarrassing that they're pretending to be like the everyday person because they can't spell yeah it's embarrassing and meanwhile mr weimer the fucking cco on his personal twitter account he was tweeting fred rogers quotes left and right. Barf. He said a movie, that movie that also made me cry about Mr. Rogers that I watched on the plane made him cry.

And he once retweeted Mr. Rogers line. If there's anything that bothers me, it's one person demeaning another. But inside eBay, he was fucking goading all of this on. He was like ring leading this shit. In fact, he texted Mr. Ball all of this on. He was like ring leading this shit. In fact, he texted Mr. Baugh on August 11th. I want to see ashes.

Oh, yeah. God, Mr. Rogers would not like that. No. And then Mr. Baugh shared the message with his deputy,

David Harville, adding, I've been ordered to find and destroy okay like you're a transformer seriously are they just like oh wow the most exciting thing that's ever happened i guess they've really they turned this into like an adventure side quest of like where and then at the end they get to look like heroes so exactly because they get to save the day. It's delusional. So Jim set up a meeting with his security staff in California at eBay's headquarters, where he put a map of Natick, Massachusetts on the wall, like Criminal Minds-esque, and they hatched a plan on how to enact this terror campaign.

Then they flew out this whole security team to Boston to start this war on the Steiners. In the investigation and confessions, more shocking activities came to light. Apparently, two of these employees of eBay had attempted to put a GPS tracker on the Steiner's car, but fortunately their garage was locked at the time so they weren't able to get in um ultimately seven people on the security team at ebay pled guilty to stalking and harassing aina and david steiner including a former police captain and a former wow it was just like an array of people that worked on this the same office and they all got corralled into it and they all said okay how do you even crowd that many people i can understand

like hey we're doing like an office prank haha like not send a coffin like what but hey you know those older people who write that little blog in natick massachusetts let's fly out there and fucking send them a dead pig fetus what they hurt my feelings one time so now i have to hurt their feelings for the rest of time crazy good thing i make a hundred million bajillion more dollars than you so i can afford to fly everybody out there yeah the irony of like him this guy being all like butthurt because someone said he's a multi-millionaire like what and like now he's going to use that multi-millionaire money to destroy them destroy this mom and pop business yeah that's great so the u.s attorney said what was unique about this case is that you

had relatively senior management at a fortune 500 company who thought it was a good idea to launch what can only be described as a campaign of terror targeting a middle-aged couple in natick massachusetts like it sounds batshit crazy like what a stupid side hustle like what an insane hobby to develop how is this not like a law and order episode where you go there's no way this is real so jim baugh was sentenced to five years in prison and veronica was sentenced to a year of home confinement and probation former director of global resiliency david harville was sentenced to two years in prison philip cook former senior manager of security operations for eBay's global security team, was also sentenced to 18 months in prison for his involvement, followed by 12 months of house arrest and three years of supervised release. Stephanie Popp, former senior manager of global intelligence, was sentenced to two years in prison.

Stephanie Stockwell, former manager of eBay's global intelligence center, was sentenced to two years probation oh sorry keep going sorry ebay apologized to the steiners and said after an internal investigation they had to let go all guilty employees yeah no shit the company oh poor poor them oh i'm so sorry we had to we had to let them go. The company said it had no knowledge that the harassment had been happening and that it disapproved of the employees' actions. But again, like, who's disapproving if the CEO and the executives were the ringleaders of this whole operation? You know, it's like, we disapproved? Who? disapproved who and also like this is where i want to say again like talk about privilege and like wealth or class privilege of like they all some of them just got probation for that because they could afford the lawyers to get them out of this but that's like the harassing that they did

was so gross i can't the fact i'm very i just wish they could have. It gets worse. In the end, eBay's former CEO, Devin Wenig, got away with zero consequences. There it is. Although eBay says the stalking scandal was a consideration in his resignation, he was still allowed to resign in 2019 with a $57 million exit package. Yeah, well, that sounds exactly like America for me. with a $57 million exit package. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, that sounds exactly like America for me. Yep. That sounds right.

Zero percent shocking. People were at a loss. The Steiners obviously filed a civil case against eBay and the former executives, and Jim Baugh's attorney released a memo which said, yes, Mr. Baugh is the most senior eBay employee the government chose to prosecute and bears an extra measure of responsibility for his supervisory role. But stopping there ignores the broader reality of what happened.

Mr. Baugh faced intense, relentless pressure from multiple executives who have evaded criminal responsibility, including the CEO, Devin Winnick, to do something, anything about the threat. According to one of the attorneys that represented the steiners in their civil case uh steve weimer the cco the communications officer uh he's the one who wrote i want to see ashes that guy he escaped charges as well because he destroyed evidence of his involvement. Allegedly, a message went out in the company that a criminal investigation had started into eBay's operations and employees were to preserve all evidence, including emails and text messages. So naturally, he wiped everything. And really, the only thing we had left was I want to see ashes. And it just wasn't enough to prosecute uh in court and so he

got away with it and not only that he now runs the boys and girls club of silicon valley so good for him wow say it with me kelse prees kelse fucking prees he is he is with america's young and brightest stars, you know, teaching them the ways of late stage capitalism. You know, all the ways, all the ones that just didn't have to, they had zero consequences. You know, they went to the bar that night and not just bragged, but like probably complained at the inconvenience of all. I was about to say complained. I'm sure they bitched about it. at the inconvenience of all i was about to say complained i'm like have no idea they have no idea no awareness of how like lucky and privileged they even are to i'm supposed to go on sabbatical

to italy next week um vomit uh he of course claims his texts were mischaracterized um okay rosemary said that's obstruction of justice that's the attorney if i did that i'd be sitting in a jail cell somewhere right now yeah he did it and no no luck as for the remaining messages steve sent like i want to see ashes uh you know authorities say it's just not enough to prosecute because as the u.s attorney said like sometimes people talk in these kind of hyperbolic ways so unless he said something very specific that we can pin on him like it's just not going to go anywhere and it's not worth the time um so you know understandably they were frustrated but it's almost like their hands are tied on that one so the civil suit that

the steiners uh filed is still ongoing and they can't understand really why they were targeted in the first place um aina's whole goal was like to help ebay's customers engage with the site and sell more um and she thinks that should be a good thing for the company and like that they would want to be on her side you know right and she told the boston globe the reason we're suing is we don't want it to happen to anybody else it has to be known what was done to us and you know there was uh there was this other guy that also got roped into this that was that fido master guy i mentioned um who complained because his wife sold uh on i don't know if it's mentioned who complained because his wife sold on.

I don't know if it's Pez dispensers, but sold on eBay. So occasionally he would tweet like, you know, how unfair some of the rules were against sellers. And so the fucking global security team, if they found out they had a whole folder on this guy, he's just like some random Twitter user. And they have like a whole folder because he's just tweeting like this is an unfair rule it's that's so fucked up creepy and crazy oh oh this is the best mr baugh also was convinced at one point and this is from the new york times that there was a sinister conspiracy relationship between the steiners and f. In reality, these were two separate entities, had nothing to do with each other. Like, what are the odds that two people were both critiquing eBay at the same time? I was going to say, believe it or not, two people just might not like you.

Exactly. Shocker. Shocker, I know. And so they believed they were actively conspiring to damage eBay. And he even indulged a theory that Fido master was a Steiner secret alter ego. And so this is how he tested it. OK, eight days after the take her down message from Mr. Wenig, a member of the security team flew across the country and drove to the Steiner's home on a quiet street and on their fence scrawled or spray painted the word Fido master. Like what? What? And it was just the New York Times called it both ridiculous and threatening. I feel like these people are in today in today's world.

Four years later, they're in QAnon. I just have a hunch. Oh, my God. You're probably 100 right like these conspiracies are make less sense than some of the q anon ones you've told me like this is insane the only people in q anon in today's world i think would come up with that master fucking plan of spray paint phyto master on a fence and that'll do it do what nobody thought that far ahead what and nobody really ever found out who fido master actually was um it was not the steiners uh so for what it's worth we

know that much so according to the new york times in mid-2019 fido master actually received an unsolicited message on twitter uh from a user calling herself Marissa and appearing to be about 25. She claimed to be a former eBay employee who possessed extremely damaging videos of executives misbehaving, and she wanted Fido Master to pass them along to the Steiners. Now, she was trying to get him to say, oh, OK, I am the Steiners, you know, like she was trying to get him to admit. But instead, what he said was or that he knew them either. I am the Steiners or like, yeah, I'm meeting with them every Thursday at our fire ritual in the basement where we have skulls and we taunt eBay. Like, I don't know what they were hoping, but they were like hoping that he would admit

some like nefarious scheme with the Steiners. But instead he said, oh, I'm pretty sure her website's on her email address. So you can just use that. Oh, and they were like, well, OK. And Marissa said, hey, I have a better idea. Why don't I leave the videos on a thumb drive at a hotel in the city of your choice to try and draw him there to like see if it was the steiners or like get his identity and his response was why don't you get a lawyer truly yeah yeah and so that is the story that

is the story of the ebay stalking scandal that apparently none of us knew about that's wow well done christine a couple years ago i'm like what the f is going on here i can't believe i truly it's so hard to wrap my head around that it was only a few years ago because that feels like something that should have happened in like well we were recording the podcast it is and i feel like it's something that would have i mean maybe we were tagged and i just didn't have the time to like look into it but wow crazy wild that's wild oh wow well done christine oh my gosh thank you and well done mollyann for finding this on tiktok and uh you know bringing it to my attention and uh which is wild because if it was created by

tiktok there was probably it was probably a gen z or who knew but we didn't know how that happened they were definitely clips of the 60 minutes special oh okay is what the tiktok was so i don't know who i don't know how that works i don't know how people go about that but um it was kind of like an abridged version and i was like i must know more and so molly and helped so much with the notes and then i got to do my like way back machine deep dive and finally use my new york times subscription very excited for you to get some more deets but yeah that was a wild I mean, to mail someone a box of spiders and find out it's the CEO of eBay is just like how batshit crazy. It makes no sense.

Anyway. Wow. That was a juicy one. That was that one kept me on my seat from beginning to end. I was excited to tell you that one. You know, there are no murders in this one. So that's nice. I love when there's no murders in this one so that i love when there's no murders i love when it's a bunch of privileged pieces of shit i love when yeah yeah i love when

they wait they win at the end well they don't totally win because no one really got the justice that they needed to be serving but uh i like that everyone was safe and fine and it was topical because i sure love um online shopping so it was topical because m likes ebay well i like online shopping it doesn't matter where it's from but now now that i've got their their website the e-commerce i'm gonna absolutely look through that and just see like what it's all about that's so fun when i saw the uh the picture of the guy who now weimer who now is the head of the boys and girls club of i was like chills fucking kidding with me like this is the most cliche succession style bullshit like it's just sad it's just sad it's incredibly sad like that's the guy who's gonna be teaching america's future about ethics

and and you know some parents are probably stoked about it because he's like he's a real tough one he's been through so much though you know don't get him wrong don't get that twisted he uh he made quite a bit of money so whatever that's worth anyway boy well so thank you for bearing with me uh only one potty break so you know what i hope everyone had fun me too um that's it that's it if you have suggestions we never say this but if you have suggestions for stories um on our website and that's why you drink.com you can submit your story ideas. And we kind of gather those and over time, you know, go through and pick ones that strike a fancy. So if you see anything on TikTok, that's like, what the F? Yeah, let us know. We would love to know about it. You can either tag us in uh or send it to us or just email in um but we'd love

to hear what you guys want to hear as well thank you everyone and if you um i don't know if you have made it this far thank you because it's a very long episode and we'll we'll see it next week with probably just as long of an episode because we can't keep it together we never stop talking that's why we drink i was beautiful