And That's Why We Drink - E351 Mongoose Sound-Waves and Halloween Caroling

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

Happy Halloween!! Beware episode 351 because Gef the Mongoose is taking over the airwaves! Gef's ears are also ringing in hell because Em is taking us on an introductory tour of the seven princes of Hell, specifically Beelzebub. Then Christine covers the history of Halloween pranks turned crimes. We're sorry if this isn't the church you were looking for... and that's why we drink!

happy halloween um i am as confused as the rest of those watching on youtube right now as you can see i got in the spirit by wearing a sweater but i feel like i'm about to be like severely um upstaged because uh the screen is blank. It had Christine's side. It's been blank since we started our recording session. And I've been hearing the craziest fucking sounds coming through her microphone. I think she's just wrapped up in a big cellophane bow. And that was Em's guess.

Yeah. And Eva guessed that I was Mr. Cellophane I was like you I guess sound like it um yeah I don't it sounds like either you just you're dressed as scotch tape or you used a lot of it it's one of the two so um with with that um here welcome to the stage Christine thank you let me turn this on real quick okay oh my god um you're jeff the mongoose i i am not a spirit i am a little extra extra clever mongoose you hello here's my tail wait where's my tail wait where's my tail uh-oh i lost it oh my god that sounds like something the eighth wonder of the world would do

what are you doing why do you have it was ring pops that's what you were opening ring pops why ring pops what's the reference i don't know he's just like oh he's always saying like how extra he is and how he's like the next best great thing so i bought a bunch of ring pops to wear on my hands and a gold crown um and oh there's my tail christine you there it is i gotta be honest your eighth wonder of the world side what's on the other side of that i gotta know it's a cupcake isn't it oh best day ever hungry caterpillar i see okay recycle okay reuse reuse recycle um eighth wonder of the world i now i feel so bad i didn't dress up i was trying to no i was this was a development that occurred within the last hour or so and that feels right your brain just went you know what i should do really fucking you know it would be fun shift the

earth uh as it moves i was on the way to pick leona up and i stopped at target and the what i'm mad about myself about is that I wore a fox costume two years ago when we did our little Halloween yeah and I must have donated it I tore my whole house apart this way I don't get rid of things I was like oh that would be perfect so then I go to Target and I'm like I'll just buy the same one and hope I find the other one and return it uh they don't sell it anymore so I had to buy an eevee pokemon costume i was gonna say those ears are giving pokemon a little bit i shrunk them down a bit they were much bigger oh oh my gosh are you an artiste yeah i am so i can have you not met me i'm jeff the mongoose i'm you know

everything you think i am and more she said it not me also i really actually love the ring pop situation because it's thank you that feel i mean he was we always i think we said in the the episode itself that he really is giving gemini energy and he's got the dramatic flair so exactly that's exactly what i was going for he that would be very um vain bedazzled in some way you know yeah you know i almost i was gonna buy also some chains because he also says i looked up a bunch of quotes he also says i am a ghost in the form of a weasel and i shall haunt you with weird noises and clanking chains and so i did the weird noises already with my you know cellophane um the chains would have been a good addition and then i'm gonna say one more here.

I know who I am, but I shan't tell you. I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet. And if you saw me, you'd faint. You'd be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt. I'll split the atom. I am the fifth dimension. I am the eighth wonder of the world.

And that's me. I mean, I couldn't be more proud to know you and also terrified. You've made my lights freak out over here. I don't know what's going on. That's the goal. You know, the day you did Jeff the Mungo has changed my life. And I realized just how our souls were intertwined. Not yours and mine, but Jeff's and mine.

And so it just felt right. Thank you. Well I even though I look like Evie from Pokemon but no the glasses and the ring pops and also couldn't be more Christine of you to now just like have 10 sticky fingers for the rest of the day it's so sticky it's horrible and I keep eating them for some reason it's not just one ring pop it is your whole hand you look like an italian mob boss you kiss my ring that's exactly what i was going for thank you and your crown is giving uh where the wild things are yeah yeah i had to buy five pack of these so i have to reuse them for something you want to loop it over your ear maybe i guess so that's a good idea oh my god there we go you don't look any worse i'll tell you

that but anyway i'm sorry for all the um you know calamity but here i am sorry everyone we had some technical difficulties where je where Jeff the Mongoose took over the sound waves. And we hopefully Christine sounds a little crisper now. Jim, I have a goddamn cough. I have a hell of a cold. You'll have to get me something. What? Wow, you're really talking like jeff the mongoose you're just saying things he's damned well not going to get to know my inferior complex okay yeah okay i'm trying to find uh things that

are like will you know be naturally fit in but it's not really working um here we go here we go this is what i have to tell you if you're kind to me i will bring you good luck if you are not kind i shall kill all your poultry yeah that sounds like something christine would say except by kill it would be something more humane but still equally threatening so i will steal them away and keep them in my bedroom you know what the threat would be i'll love them forever and they'll never leave your world um christine do you have a reason why you drink this halloween you're looking stop looking turn your head you bastard i cannot stand your eyes that's why i drink um i just i'm like getting into the spirit of jip thank you um worked uh know, I... Where are we going?

I'm taking this thing off. I'm sorry. It's really itchy. I was going to say, there are those shoulders I apparently love so much. Okay, listen. I got hit on two times yesterday wearing this. Not even hit on, but like just creepily catcalled by old men wearing this tank top. And I'm like, okay, so maybe it's a thing.

Maybe it's a thing that I didn't know about. There's a magical ingredient that that shirt is providing you. I don't know what it is. It's literally Spanx brand tank top. So I don't know if that's it. But anyway, anyhow, I'm sorry. Well, I drink. I've done enough talking today.

Why do you drink them? Oh, my God. I drink. What do I do? Why I, why do I drink? I was gonna ask you a question, but if you want to, but if you want to tell the reason why you drink first, that works too. Okay, sure. I drink because I'm a little stressed out. I, Allison is getting two birthdays this year what and by the time this comes out i guess it's

you know it's already happened because her birthday is 10 20 earlier in october and um yeah so last year i don't remember what happened at this point but she didn't get a birthday we kept pushing it off and i kept saying like oh i'll do it later and then there was this one thing i really wanted to take her to but they kept pushing it i think I kept saying like, oh, I'll do it later. And then there was this one thing I really wanted to take her to, but they kept pushing it. I think there was like some like local drama about like, about this event not coming back. And I,

I, they kept saying like, oh, we're going to push to next month or, we're relocating. So I kept waiting and I was like, let's do your birthday when this thing happens, but that it kept not happening.

And so now a whole year, I gave up like a few months ago on it, but eventually got to a point where like her actual birthday was coming up again. And so I was like, what the fuck do I do? So she's getting a double whammy this year. And I'm just a little stressed about getting it all handled, but it will get handled. You'll get it handled.

At the stroke of midnight, I'll have some sort of genius, you know. Just call me. I have all sorts of odd objects laying around that I could ship your way. If you need, you know, a tail, if you need a crown, a mothman wing. Thank you. The thing is, I already have a bunch of presents because I've bought her things throughout the year. Plus, I have all of last year's fucking presents still wrapped. Oh, she hasn't even opened her presents yet from last year that's no and i

know exactly what i'm gonna do like food wise i know what i'm gonna do like i just don't know how to tie it all together like you know i love a theme and i hate that it currently doesn't have a theme feels like too dis disjointed oh here's just like a random day no no no no no no like it's gotta be i wanted to have a thing like every like our her first birthday was a scavenger hunt the next one we went on a trip the next way like there was like a concise thing we did and like and then the next year you did nothing so that was a concise thing too okay yeah that's up that was i'm gonna pretend that was jeff talking but um yeah so i just i feel bad that like i've got a bunch of like ideas but they're not strung

together in like a way and so i'm i'm just panicking about figuring that out but anyway i know you'll nail it i know that doesn't help your anxiety but i know you'll nail it thank you especially because allison cares zero percent compared to me so she's like i don't care i didn't even remember that we didn't do my birthday. No, she, we, she, we've talked about it quite a lot. Okay. Oh, she definitely remembers. Okay.

Got it. Got it. Got it. Not like a fight way, but it's become a running joke of like, Hey, so when are we doing my birthday? And at this point I'm like, are we just celebrating last year? And then I, it's anyway, you got to do double. I get, I see what you're saying now.

It's just come to it to a head. You have to commit this year. The pressure's on. So anyway, that's's why I drank what was the question you had oh so well I thought since we've done our podcast for so long and we never really um talk I don't think we did maybe we did earlier or maybe we do every year and I just forget but I feel like I've never really asked you like what Halloween was like for you as a kid you know and like your favorite costumes I'm sure I'm sure a kid you know and like your favorite costumes i'm sure i'm sure we talked about that before like our favorite costumes but i'm curious like what your halloween was like as a kid like what did you guys feel like we're falling in love all

over again i know i feel like this is one of those like partner like where you pick a card out of like a deck that says like ask your partner questions. I appreciate being. I appreciate your curiosity, Christine. Oh, yeah. I was wondering today and then I was like, why don't I just ask? Stupid. That was me. That was Jeff talking to me.

You know, and I actually don't know what it was like for you either. I just imagine some like crazy, like German folklore situation. You're correct. Like Krampus snuggled up to you or something um so yeah i don't know what yours was like either um mine was um well the school always had like a halloween parade situation i always it should have been obvious much earlier on mom but i always picked very masculine presenting you weren't like jasmine like every other girl in uh no i was always something either in like like mad scientist vampire star wars batman

territory um and um mom mom uh and she goes i never knew i never saw it coming okay never knew i guess you just walked around with your eyes closed. So I so I would always do like the Halloween thing. And then I don't know what the appropriate time was. Maybe I like I no one ever told me like when the general time is supposed to start for Halloween. But we were pillowcase kids, not back bag kids like not like bucket kids. pillowcase kids, not back bag kids, like not like bucket kids. So my mom and I would take a pillowcase and walk through our neighborhood. And a lot of the neighbors were also kids I went to school with. So we all knew each other. So like the parents met up and I think this was Halloween. I'm pretty sure it's just been so long now because I don't trick or treat anymore. But a lot of the

moms would all get together at the cul-de-sac and drink wine while like they would bring out their lawn chair and a bottle and they would just say candy and since they're since they're at the end of the cul-de-sac they could look directly down the entire street and they would just watch all of us go from oh that's like kind of ideal huh yeah and then usually it was my house but i remember the kids coming over and hanging out in the basement afterwards and doing the candy exchange thing. How much candy would you get? Like a ton? Like a third of a pillowcase, half a pillowcase.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. What was your favorite costume from growing up? Like, did you have one where you're like, oh, this one was epic? Are we on like a fucking first date? What first date what's happening because i don't know i'm just curious and i feel like um if i don't ask now i'll have to wait another year i'm no i'm flattered i'm just like oh my god the attention's on me um i like want to make a good impression on you maybe i need to dress like jeff more often it like changes my personality somehow yeah yeah it's and then also

show your shoulders apparently i guess i'm like really flustered on this first date um uh what was my favorite candy i was a milky way kid oh yummy nowadays it's still in my like top 10 but it's i think i've i've definitely fallen into take fives i like twix oh i like a take five and a twix i mean i like it all i don't know who am i kidding i don't like anything with nuts i i tried to be like a snickers kid but it just didn't work out so i like the texture better with nuts but i don't like heath bar i don't like malt or like butterfinger my dad was always my tongue you look like an actual cryptid um holy shit i look like hold on let me get him where'd he go oh he fell krampus oh here he is you're inverted

i feel like i need to be krampus for halloween next he's got a black body you got a black tongue vice versa oh my god look at us um speaking of krampus and what i imagine is your life in a haunted castle above a cemetery um which was reality by the way what on earth did halloween look like for you because i imagine you were the house on haunted hill that everyone was scared to get candy from nobody ever came to our house but also it was on a private drive and like up a hill that you had to walk past a very steep hill with a cemetery on the side and there were no street lights so like nobody ever came or if they did it was like wow you trekked all the way up here for just this house for us to not give you candy because we did not plan for this um so nobody really ever came but when we were like younger

we lived on a street with like tons of houses. And so it was a riot. We always loved Halloween. Like it was a big deal. I had like countdowns. I got like the Oriental trading catalog and would like circle everything I wanted. We didn't like actually order it. But just looking through it. That was what I did.

Isn't it fun? Maybe that was like a generational thing. It had to be a generational thing or like be a generational thing right keep in mind if you happen to be younger and listening to this we didn't have online shopping we had internet we had the like one or two catalogs that came to the mail would come and we'd be like whoa and you would get a sharpie and you would circle all the things you liked and you would like very obviously leave it somewhere on the counter and it would turn up in the trash and i was like mom i circled all the things i want she's like i know congratulations

that was like for christmas my mom would always be like oh here are some magazines circle what you want and that's how i would request things otherwise how would i know um but uh okay so what was your like your costume aesthetic for the most part? And what was, how did, what was it like for you, especially with a brother and then a sister later? Like, what was, would you guys go out together? Did you, like, conspire at school with a group of kids? Or was it just the two of you? It was always our neighbors, Celine and Austin and Sophia, who are next door neighbors.

And we always went trick or treating together. Our dads would always be the chaperones and they all, my stepdad and their dad would always dress up as train conductors. I don't know why. I don't know if they like. That's the most Tim thing I've heard my entire life. It is. And like, they were both engineers, like chemical or plastics engineers. So I'm like, maybe they, and they like had worked together before. That how my mom met tim so i'm like maybe they had some weird meeting about like i don't know why but and to this day tim always dresses as a train conductor and they had like the train whistle it was i will say he looks like a drawing of a train conductor he does imagine the suspenders

i mean yeah it's like and the little ascot and shit. Nailed the handkerchief. Nailed it. Yep. I feel like he I don't know him well enough, but he also does give vibes of having a special interest in trains. Yes, he does. He does. And I feel like he would and I wouldn't know it.

And then one day he would just like say something really specific about trains. And we'd all be like, of course, you would know that, you know, he'd be like, oh, come down to my basement. He'd pull a dusty tarp off a big table. And there's the whole city and tiny miniature train world. That is he is a very dad guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He definitely likes trains and cars, all that business. But yeah, we'd always dress up, but we always had really weird costumes.

Like I know that doesn't surprise you, but like one year I dressed as my third grade teacher when I was in third grade. And I wonder why. You and I never had friends at school, but I was such a jerk. This is where I have to ask for the rest of us wondering, is this your first clue that maybe you were... Did you have a crush on her? Is that where we are? The problem was she was like 85. That doesn't mean anything to some people, you know? It doesn't, but like it was definitely just me being like, I don't know, sucking up to my TJ.

Well, she and I all used to email to each other a lot. Girl. Please, you were having a love affair. You totally, either you had a crush on her or a therapist would deep dive into why you felt so safe with her you know I think I definitely also had a or people pleasing complex maybe um yeah there are a few things looking back where I'm like huh that's interesting like one year I was Harry Potter and everyone's like oh you're Hermione and I was like no I'm Harry Potter because I I think like I was kind of in love with Hermione so I thought like oh if I'm Harry Potter like me I don't know and then there were also um some things where one year I just

dressed up as a boy nowadays I'm like girl me too yeah I know I know I still do it right now I sharpied I took brown sharpie and drew myself like a nice little some facial hair and it didn't come off for like two weeks do you know how affirming it was the first time i drew a beard on my face and then and then like my i heard like the door opened and my mom came home and i was like no no no no no no why did i use brown sharpie oh boy anyway uh it you know it's always very chaotic. One year, my mother did. She always made our costumes. But one year, she finally broke down and bought me a costume out of a catalog.

And it was, of all things, a cheerleader costume with sequins on it. Did you like it? I loved it. I was probably like seven or so. And there's this photo of me. And it looks like I'm just i don't know in heaven and i have like for the first time ever my mom put like a tiny bit of blush on my face i was so happy um so that was like the most memorable even though you know we just fucking we used to come home like

genuinely with like humongous like our stepdads are also or my stepdad is also very like dad in that he's like let's find the perfect route and get as much candy as possible. And so we'd like take shortcuts and, you know, run from one street to the next. And so we'd come home with like, I mean, it's like pillowcase fulls plus more. It was crazy. And then we'd count them all. It was so fun. them all it was so fun it's the one time a year when you don't like feel embarrassed by your dad because his like weird level of practicality is coming in handy like it's like oh you're gonna

like take us on a fucking candy it's like the first time i cared about a map i couldn't read it because i still don't understand how they work but like it's the first time where i thought okay tim's writing down a map that i'm actually gonna to follow. Yeah. For once, I think I will learn how to use a compass. Such a good point. It's like, cause he's embarrassing. Like any dad is embarrassing most of the time until all of a sudden you're going to get a pillowcase full of candy by the end of it. Extra Milky Way to bring home. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we just loved Halloween. I just figured you also had like, and it was the same thing where my mom and her, our neighbor's mom, while our dads were trained engineers or whatever, they would sit on my mom's porch and drink wine out of like a giant, they call it like the big giant bottle and eat candy and just like hand it out and drink and wish us to come home.

Did you then become the chaperone when your sister showed up no tim still did that because then i was old enough that i wanted to go out to bars okay all right i went once with her and she was a raccoon princess and i was like i don't know what that means but you're doing a good job it's like you're a very pretty trash panda yeah you're a pretty trash panda princess with a staff and like a horn you know you're doing it really great um but i have to go drink coors light with my new boyfriend blaze um so i was not always the best at being an older sister but now i sit in the front of my house with a bottle of wine with my mom and we eat candy and hand it out. It's really fun.

I'm like, oh, I kind of get it now. Full circle. I get the desire to just sit there and, you know, look at cute kids' costumes and drink wine. It's the best. Is next year, this is again, I know nothing about children. Is next year like the first trick-or-treating year for Leona? I don't know, Em. I'm not really sure but i

think so i feel like this year we might like kind of walk down the street but like i don't think i mean she's not gonna remember it she doesn't really know it like get it i don't know yeah well like four-year-olds i think like eat that shit up yeah i feel like that's when she's gonna be like oh i understand how this works i get candy we'll have a new little addition to our coven maybe yeah oh boy uh yeah if you don't want to come over come over here and be a chaperone yeah if you're free because i don't want to do it you at least gotta do it by four i think so all right i got some time cool well all right thank you for asking and thank you for answering my surprise questions. I mean, I'm sorry to everyone else who just listened to us like for 40 minutes, like just learn all about each other again.

Like it's the first time. Like we've just met. Did your mom dress up? Sorry, last question. Like did your mom dress up every year or not really? Because mine did not. She had no interest. I don't think I even know if that was like a thing.

I think like if we were hosting a halloween party okay fair point i feel like i feel like moms didn't really dress up unless like they were part of an event or something i think if i asked my mom to she would have done it but i think she's also wearing a tail around my neck like a lunatic i think she's very glad that um i never asked her to do it. Yeah, mine too. Had I known that was an option, I probably would have. Yeah, yep, yep. I know when she was, I think up until like the year I was born, she was doing Halloween though, because I have a picture of her dressed as Wonder Woman. And by the way, she looked fine.

Bangin'. She looked so damn good. To pull that costume off, man. She looked good. I've seen that photo. Have you seen that photo? Yeah, you sent it to me once. And my dad was Superman them both i was like okay justice league what's going on couple i know well for for a minute maybe

i i'm excited to tell you my story i can't wait i was trying to think of something very halloweeny and i led into it last week with talking about black cats and this time around i kind of did a bit of a shift it's not like a classic halloween but i thought for halloween we should talk about something that's like dark and scary and so but then anyway let's just get into it because um i just wanted to try a topic that we haven't done before and i've been holding off on this um because i'm afraid that like i'll be expected to like do a like a series like once i've done one i should do all the others but i don't know if that's the case but we're starting with one today i thought we should talk about one of the seven princes from hell one an arc demon if you will oh my my my my i'm ready

so today for halloween we are doing a 101 on beelzebub shut the fuck up i feel like jeff jeff's ears are ringing he's amped for this he's saying oh my buddy down there oh my friend so let's crack into it oh beautiful i already opened mine but you can pretend i've been looking at this water oh no i've been talking for 40 minutes and you're just thirsty i just wanted uh for the vibe i was like i can't open it i can't open it okay so let's talk about beelzebub and by the way i don't know if you know but like history is very long and um there's a lot in general is long or in general but also like as long as beelzebub's existence is also pretty long okay um and it's also like very controversial there's like a lot of hot debates on his origins

um scholars don't totally know where he came from so i'm giving like if you wanted like a six hour thing on the backstory of beelzebub i hate to break it to you this is yet another dipping your toe in 101 okay um otherwise it was going to be way too overwhelming i think we can all appreciate that though as probably most of us are new to the to the backstory of beelzebub i didn't know it at all and so like my understanding up until this point especially as someone who was not raised um in a christian household which in my mind means something different um i always assumed it was just a nickname for the devil right i didn't know that he was his own demon a separate create creature creature i don't know yes yeah sure entity

entity figure hottie icon hottie icon yeah yeah that's it that's the one yep nailed it so um these days he is wildly associated with christian demonology he is known as one of the seven princes of hell and uh it's not a name for satan like it doesn't become completed with satan until the new testament when beelzebub um is the name is used when talking i think about see this is like immediately where it gets confusing because and one way beelzebub's being mentioned uh and it gets conflated with satan but also i think in judaism uh jews started using the word and conflating it with satan because satan at the time was a verb for um satan wasn't a person it was a verb for like temptation or um having a hard time like getting over something or like a noun a verb it was like tempting or overcoming overcoming

temptation so and then over time kind of morphed into a figure. And so that's another whole theory. I'm telling you, this was hard. This was very complex. So we're going to go with kind of the mainstream stuff before I just get into nitty gritty. Fair. So before all that, Beelzebub had roots

in ancient Jewish, Jewish Christian and pagan lore so his story is very difficult to pin down but um starting out hot there are a lot of variations to his name too that are all they all vary by culture by language and they have their own histories but sometimes you'll hear Ballsabub, Beelzebooth or Beelzebuth above and then beals bull but if you hear anything like that it all becomes beals but um mainly it's theorized that before he got wrapped up in like officially christian demonology um like seen as a demon he was actually a god. There is a story about Ahaziah in the Bible, which if you know more than I do, which I'm sure you do, please jump in. But Ahaziah, no? Oh, okay. I don't think so. It's not ringing a bell yet.

Let me teach you about the Bible then, Christine. Finally. So Ahaziah was a ruler of the kingdom of Judah, and he suffered very badly from a fall. And he sent messengers to seek answers for him about his recovery. And he sent these messengers to the city of Ekron. And I guess Ekron was a Philistine city, which was they were a major enemy to the israelites um and so even though i guess they were enemies he was like i don't care i want to go i want my messengers to go to the city of ekron anyway because i want advice from the god of ekron balzabub oh okay and so um balzabub is a name that might have actually meant ball of

b-a-a-l not ball ball of flies or lord of flies so that's why he's associated now with flies and why when you think of like the exorcisms uh the exorcism stories out there. There's like flies everywhere. Yes. They think that that must be one of his indicators that he's nearby. And so in Hebrew and Jewish literature, Beelzebub actually means Lord of Dung or Lord of Filth. Oh, that's nice. But those also often include flies, right? Right. Sure.

That makes sense. So flies are kind of his thing. If your stepdad is to trains, Beelzebub is to flies. Listen, someone had to be the stepdad to flies, and I guess it's Beelzebub. It's got to be. So in ancient religions, Beelzebub is linked to sacrifice. So remember, he like still seen as a god right right and he's linked to sacrifice because he's the one that would drive away or

control flies when bloodshed appeared oh okay and for a long time flies also symbolized plague death and sickness and although those sound like really dark things, he was still in charge of sickness, therefore preventing sickness. So like the opposite, right? Yeah. Interesting. And so maybe he could help with a Hosea's sickness after he had this fall

and he had these injuries. So that's why he sent his messengers to this God, because he is the God of sickness and health. I see. But like I said, Ekron was a Philistine. Am I saying that right? Philistine, not Philistine. I think so.

I don't know. I was wondering that too. I looked it up and on YouTube, a lot of people were saying Philistine, but maybe they're also all like me. Philistine, Philistine, Philistine. Maybe you are a Philistine and that's why you're saying Philistine, Philistine. I think that's fine with all the authority that that holds. I think that's fine. Look, if you I'm sorry, this isn't the church you were looking for. If someone's upset that I'm saying Philistine wrong, I'm trying.

So he was the god of Ekron, which was Ekron, which was a Philistine city. Again, major enemy of the Israelites. which was a philistine city again major enemy of the israelites and ahaziah's messengers were supposed to go anyway and meet one of balzabub's oracles so that way they could ask what balzabub could do for their king but they get stopped along the way and they don't actually get to meet balzabub and that's because the god of in israel was mad that Ahaziah didn't go to him for help. And instead he went to the God in Ekron. and he has the angel it's like such a fucking long game of telephone like this is where i get confused with christianity i'm like god could you not just like send a text directly to a right like can't you just say it you know make it easy you're so messy like why are you telling the angel to tell elijah tell the messengers to tell you want to be part of the drama i mean like girls and what it looks like if you create everything including the fucking problem like oh whoa you heard it here first loaded statement well i'm

sorry i'm not part of this anymore and that was all m all i'm saying is in this scenario you sound like a little bit of a shit stirrer i'm'm just saying. That's correct. So he, he, and also like you're mad that, okay, whatever. So he's upset that like, he wasn't like discussed with or talked to.

So he tells the angel, go to Elijah, tell Elijah to go to the messengers and tell the messengers to tell Ahaziah a message from me. But I couldn't possibly fucking say it myself, even though I'm God. And make sure you get it right. Okay. It's like, just slip a note in the locker.

Jesus Christ. Like, just be done with this. Don't you come in dreams? Just like whisper it. Like, honestly, no wonder Ahaziah didn't want to talk to you. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I get it.

It's no offense, but like, it seems like he needed some more urgency and you're taking things like the long way for no good reason. The long way. You're making a lot of stops at gas stations on the way to the destination. That's exactly right. So, OK, so God's mad. He tells them, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So the angel finds Elijah, says, I've got a message for a hosiah but i like god i'm not going to say it directly so you have to go do it for me and elijah finds the king's messengers along the way because remember they're going to ekron to talk to a middleman for balzabub all these people are so fucking messy um but elijah and the messengers find each other. And Elijah says, tell Ahaziah that he has to talk to God. And it's like, oh, my God. Like, that's not even helpful. Oh, for God's sake. Exactly.

So you have to talk to the God of Israel. He's mad at you. So Ahaziah's messengers tell Ahaziah this. messengers tell ahaziah this and ahaziah is pissed that elijah disrupted them from this whole goose chase to find somebody who could help him so he refuses he's basically saying all the things i'm saying right now and he refuses to consult god he's like this is crazy like this is so petty um this makes god mad um and god goes back to elijah and then tells elijah again tell ahaziah something for me since ahaziah is mad at me now i'm mad at him even though i was mad before tell ahaziah since you went to a different god than me you're gonna die oh which is hard to mess that up during the game of telephone like you're gonna die oh which is hard to mess that up during the game of telephone like you're gonna die

it's like pretty clear message at least there's no like ifs ands or buts about it this time also like why go why like elijah at this point has to be like why don't you just kill him like why do i have to just tell him and it's like so awkward that i have to go tell him that yeah yeah it's like this is you're putting me in a tough spot because you don't want to confront him um so anyway some believe that in this whole story uh because balzabub's origin was like him as like this philistine deity that must have made him a natural god a natural enemy of god in israel and so because it was god versus balzabub uh it led to him over time being seen as a demon because

he was the enemy of god okay i see which i feel like god was mad that they that they talked to him instead of yeah okay yeah like so god was jealous of him and now he's a demon like talk about a pr stunt like smear campaign i mean and it worked it worked by the way balls but keep in mind ahaziah sent messengers to talk to an oracle who they never even got to so the oracle never even got to talk to balls balls about didn't even talk to anybody in this whole story and now he's a demon like he just like wakes up from a nap and is like wait what why why am why is my phone blowing up why why am i canceled all of a sudden exactly he's like i literally didn't even know these fucking people had a meeting with my guy what are you talking about what where yeah and now he's really unfair honestly by the way if there was ever a bible class where it was discussed like

this i might have actually become a christian i would say you're doing a really good job at like being god when you're like tell him that i said i heard what he said and i think he's gonna die i feel like you'd be very good if we did like a nativity play or something like you'd be really good at being the role of god was like then Balzabub was like, motherfucker. I'll be Balzabub. I'll just sleep in the corner, wake up and be like, what the fuck did I do? Covering flies. If this is how it was discussed to me in youth group, I would have fully converted for the drama.

Same. I would have been all about Bible study, man. It'd be like how I got into, like, my stories stories, my shows where it's like, I don't even want to watch it, but I have to know what happens next. So, okay. So now we know where in theory, Baal-Zubah became a demon. He went from a deity who would protect people against illness to becoming this like evil entity who sends flies symbolizing sickness to people.

So now he's like causing plagues. Okay. Other scholars believe that his name comes from the ancient words foe, enemy, and adversary. Oh, wait, wait for it. Wait for it. I have three spirits and their names are foe, faith, and truth. That's one of the Jeff the Mongoose quotes. Wow. You really did find a way to

fit that in i don't know why that's a quote from jeff the mongoose but it is so are you just apparently that's one of my spirits faux hang on let me have a think are you just um scanning the quotes over and over while i tell the story looking no inserts the one with foe i had in my head already and then you said foe so i went to the tab and i typed in control f and typed in foe and found it sneaky sneaky that's the only one i remember so it's not going to happen again unfortunately or fortunately i understand well eventually the figure beelzebub evolves from those words of foe adversary to become an archdemon in religious lore. Wow. Really blows up all of a sudden.

Just like villain of the century. And I'm saying archdemon. Is that right? Because archangel, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not archdemon. That's right. No, I think it's arch.

Okay. So archdemons, for those who don't know i didn't know i i mean they sound like the head bitch in charge it's which is pretty much how it is also explained to me on google which is they're leaders of the demonic hosts in hell the same way that um like arc angels are kind of in charge of the other angels in heaven. I see. They're like the manager level. Head bitch in charge. Supervisors. Yeah.

One scholar named David Silanko, he suggests that archdemons all actually started just as negative words and concepts that over time figures were created to embody these words so by that theory demons like just don't exist they're just symbolic for negativity um interesting so an example is baliel who is another prince of hell or no i don't know if he's a prince of hell, but he's an archdemon. He's in a crowd. They mingle at parties at the very least. Belial meant to be wicked or to stand against God, and over time, a figure just kind of developed out of that concept, and now Belial as a demon exists.

I see. Or even Satan meant to uh well and i guess in ancient judaism it meant what i say earlier like overcoming temptation there's also the definition of satan out being um meaning to accuse somebody or to point out guilt and sins so interesting i didn't know that. And eventually that role became known as Satan who accuses you of your guilt and your sins. So perhaps Beelzebub also started out as a negative word and eventually evolved into just another archdemon.

And Beelzebub shows up in the New Testament. This is what I was talking about earlier. He shows up in the New Testament when Jesus meets a man possessed by demons who couldn't see or speak.-oh whoopsies but never to fear jesus drove out the demons and he healed the man claiming that he exercised him with divine power very ableist story like he's blind you don't say possessed by demons okay sure it's not only is something crazy wrong with him but it is beyond the scope of the earth it must come from above

god has to fix it yeah or below correct so um the opponents of jesus said okay, you use these powers to drive out the demons and heal him, but your powers must have come from a demonic place. It's like any magic is bad magic, like that kind of headspace. It's like you're not that special girl. You are doing something shady and it seems a little evil and you know how to mess with demons. What's this about? We see right through you yeah it's not like you just woke up today and just learn today how to repel demons unless you know where this is coming from yeah likely story my pal my pal and there's actually that's me being not a narc my pal my guy my guy my my big guy my big strong guy um so his opponent said it is only by beelzebub

the prince of demons that he that he can drive out demons and jesus says this is like such boy math okay so he goes if satan drives out satan he is divided against himself uh how can how then can his kingdom stand and if i drive out demons by beelzebub by whom do your people drive them out um which basically he's saying he's saying like whatever you just said fine i give up that also feels like a dude thing it's like if i say something kind of like vague and complicated no one will like stop me it's like kind of convoluted but it sounds smart it's like when someone in tech is describing their job and i'm like you know what it's better if you just don't say anything you know what you win it's like congratulations honestly rather i'll pay you to not tell me what you do um because i don't need the headache so um basically he's saying uh it

makes no sense to use demon powers to chase away demons because demons don't fight each other because they need each other or else their kingdom would fail right sure okay kind of the point he's getting at whatever you say i would argue that there's less logic when it comes to demonic energy but you know it's jesus so who am i to say anything um potato potato you know yeah so this passage is significant though because it actually names beelzebub as a prince of demons and that makes him officially very relevant in christian demonology okay so there's also the testament of solomon do you has does that sound familiar i actually know this one oh great so true or false beelzebub's involved in that oh i don't know that part i only know the part with the baby oh right okay is that a different thing

i don't know i'm look i totally i went off my notes and i tried my best and i'm and i looked at multiple sources to make sure that all of this sounded right. But I wasn't, I didn't look in a Bible, you know, so. If I'm remembering correctly, Solomon was a very wise king and that was what he was known for. And there were two women who were claiming mother, I'm trying to think of the right, to be the mother of this baby. Okay.

And they were arguing back and forth and they were trying to get the baby. They went to King Solomon and he said, okay, we'll cut the baby in half. Oh, yes, I know this story. You each can have a half. And then one of the women said, no, no, no, i'd rather she take the baby

right and then he said that means you're the real mother because you didn't want to cut the baby which kind of thinking about i'm like would either one want whatever anyway like who was gonna say yeah i'll take the top half yeah yeah great plan i want the one with diapers on it like no that doesn't make any sense so that's a story i know i I'm delighted to hear that Beelzebub is involved somehow in Solomon's story. Yeah. So in it, apparently Beelzebub declares himself the ruler of demons. I don't know how we missed this part. Oh, that part was not related to me, unfortunately. Yeah, I think maybe there's a couple um accounts of king solomon in here and so he declares himself the ruler of demons and convinces him humans to worship

demons instead of god um but beelzebub also claims that he has the ability to cause jealousy and wars and incite murder so you know bad luck he shouldn't have led with that. Wow. But we aren't sure, though, when it was written. It could have been sometime between 100 A.D. and 1000 A.D. And it is the whole Testament of Solomon is rejected by scholars and often not considered religious canon. Oh. Fun fact. Didn't know that. Fun fact.

Didn't know that. But it's still relevant because in the late Middle Ages, European writers got super into demonology and they kind of brought this back and used it a lot for their own writings about specific figures in hell. I see. Okay. So then even though if it's, even if it's not considered canon by all religions, it's still well known by all religions because it got kind of repopularized revamped so revamped yeah and so beelzebub was often written about and equated with satan um

and they both essentially kind of have the same role as being you know a demon i don't know how different you can really be but um in my mind i'm sure there's like a whole group of witches out there like they're very different. One has flies, one has, yeah, I mean, come on now. But in my image of demon, I feel like you could put anyone's name to it and they all kind of, you know. When one calls out sick, another can jump in real quick. That's right. There's a general through line narrative. Yeah, that connects them. I get it. In the 16th century, archdemons became associated with the seven deadly sins which

we talked about in episode 316 and this was so 200 years before this was um when dante's divine comedy came out and was like a really popular book and so yeah a banger of it did not not in its flop era um certainly not so it was huge and that's what uh got people really into seven deadly sins and then by the 16th century so 200 years later archdemons became associated with these seven deadly sins um and that was kind of where archdemons really fucking thrived because now they instead of being a vague demon that you know i guess he's not so vague if he's known for like sickness and you know he apparently either looks like a giant fly or is covered in flies at some point um he it's now you can take like one word one sin and attribute it to

each demon and they just kind of become more part of the zeitgeist their identities are like narrowed down to like a core yes concept okay it's easier to remember um yeah so because there were seven deadly sins they needed seven demons so they had seven arc demons um that were linked to these do you happen to know any of the associations i should i don't i should i feel like we covered this on rituals once or not covered it but talked about it and i can't remember so um the main one the most powerful one is lucifer which is another one i forget that lucifer and satan are not the same person. Those seem conflated to me all the time, but I guess they're not. So Lucifer is the Prince of Pride.

Ironically, he's also the most powerful, although I wonder if he's just saying that because he's the Prince of Pride. That's what he wants you to think. There's Mammon, who is the Prince of Greed. There's Leviathan, who's the Prince of Envy. There's Belphegor, who is the Prince of greed there's leviathan who's the prince of envy there's uh belphegor who is the prince of sloth then there's asmodeus the prince of lust satan or santanus who is the uh prince of i literally my next bullet is this reminds me of that tiktok song i miss it i miss seeing it on my feet every day but you know what's interesting okay so sansanus is the prince of wrath and beelzebub is now the prince of gluttony which

we'll get into okay interesting because i thought that song if you don't know what we're talking about on tiktok there's um there's a an audio clip that people were using a lot that was like an orchestra sound of people singing different demons names and it was like thank you and um but i'm realizing belial and behemoth are not only four of those the six that get mentioned in that song were archdemons so i don't know why they picked those six maybe because it just fit it right just sounded right yeah whatever but fun fact because i always thought oh those must be like all the princes of hell but yeah there's only six of them and two of them aren't princes of for once tiktok isn't factually true which is hard to believe but i honestly

reject that i reject that as well you're you're right so the one to assign each arc demon with a certain sin was this guy named peter binsfield who was a big pro-torture witch hunter um oh he was very into the torturing people until they confessed thing um right it sounds like he was into these demons for more than just like naming them but whatever sounds like he was into these demons for more than just like naming them, but whatever. Sounds like he was into studying them to justify any of his claims against women he didn't like. Sounds problematic. So I don't know why we take his word on this, but apparently he's the expert. So, or it's at least what we now know them by so um and yes beelzebub is the prince

of gluttony which didn't totally make sense to me at first because i think of flies and sickness because it's all we've talked about but he is associated with gluttony because he became so associated with unholy rituals in witchcraft so and i'll explain so witches were thought to use their powers we've talked about this a little bit in the past but witches were thought to use their powers to overindulge in food and dancing and sex and ultimately overindulge in anything that christian society was trying to limit or restrict so if christian said don't do this or don't do a lot of it witches were like i'm gonna do it in excess and there's nothing you can do about it. Hee hee.

I'm going to have my, you know, I'm not listening to you. So an example is that witches gatherings were always described as like having excessive feasts. And eventually that leads into some terrifying blood libel situations because their feasts included human flesh and blood. Babies and shit like that.

Yeah. Which my next, my next bullet point, you're very on it christine's oh for once it is their big excessive feasts were seen as a perversion of the eucharist because instead of a small taste of jesus's blood and body witches were gorging themselves on blood and bodies i never thought about that that's gross it's gross but and i guess if you're in that mindset it makes sense like i see that there's at least a bit of a connection compared to like i suppose other stuff so yeah the connection is that they are all about overindulgence feasting on on humans that are not Jesus's body. God forbid.

And again, this, like I said, this got into blood libel because it was used to persecute Jewish people because witches wanted the blood of Christian children for feasts and rituals. And I guess they think the Jews would also be really into taking the blood of Christian children for feasts and rituals tracks totally tracks because this fell under gluttony or this overindulgence it was thought that of all the

demons beelzebub would like this the most and hang out amongst witches the most and um this made him a bit of an icon for the stereotype of witches who make deals with the devil for power. Because, how do I, how do I put it? Well, I guess I should mention for there to be more of a connection for people i think we're stepping away from um uh from beelzebub representing sickness where we should also say that um he was also known to be able to command other demons he was like oh the operator on the end of the line if he was the hbic yeah he was the one who was able to summon other demons or contact other demons or reach other demons and so that's one of the connections that i didn't mention that he that's why he's like the demon for witches because if they want

to summon demons yeah exactly exactly so um and he happened because he was then associated with witches. I think he was then associated with gluttony. I think that's the, okay. The line. Um, but so he became a bit of an icon because, uh,

if witches wanted to make a deal with him, um, speaking of black cats last week, he is said to be the demon who would send a witch their animal familiar. Oh, good for him. because he could summon dark you know forces so he would be able to um either bring you some sort of demonic familiar or he could be witched animal on earth to um be like your your medium uh for him that's kind of nice, it's like Beelzebub, I want a cat for Christmas,

but also I really need her to be able to contact other worlds. I want a cat for Christmas too. So Beelzebub was apparently the SPCA, if you will. Oh, that's nice. He founded it. The witches say,

I need a friend. Beelzebub says, let me go through our system and see what I can find. Oh yes, here's a black cat for you and then he would also give these familiars their gifts again because he could summon that kind of uh magic or that kind of magic wasn't the word but power so he often gave familiars the gift of flight premonitions and or shape-shifting so full circle he was once considered the god of preventing illness and now he's helping witches spread plagues of torment to christians that's how he's now okay at least that

like connects i feel like a lot of the story people were just reaching but this like actually i can see the connection i can see the um as you said earlier the the villain origin story yeah there is he's like i was trying to help but okay fine yeah it's like okay well i guess like you don't want me to prevent sickness i guess yeah i guess so this reasoning um kind of all started during this is where sickness comes back in um the reasoning of all this kind of started during the bubonic plague and people needed someone to blame and so not only they didn't blame demons just yet but they wanted to blame someone during this very heated controversial time so they blamed witches and also excuse me they ended up uh later also blaming jews and equating them to witches because

they're anti-christian why not and because beelzebub was helping them this meant that the witches must be spreading sickness and that they were immune to sickness because they were in cahoots with the demons so which is like another fucked up thing that like so if you didn't get sick from the plague and you survived now we're going to accuse you of a witch because you must yeah because like why did you why didn't you die and it's like yes you're being accused by someone who also didn't die so seems like kind of a right exactly hot calling kettle black situation yeah and i mean i guess you're a man who survived the plague and you don't like a woman who survived the plague that's true imagine if you're like like a mad married couple that both survived the plague

and he's like like she's still here oh i know oh man you know so uh it is believed that peter binsfield who created the connections between demons and sins um he died of the plague and that only helped like spread rumors that witches just got him back oh geez telling on them i guess so although few were probably actually doing this back then a lot of modern occultists today actually do work with beelzebub and um because we're trying to reclaim his original title. He is not all bad. Yeah. Okay. I like that.

He's said still, I mean, he's like known to be an arc demon, so he's not someone to be summoned lightly. Um, you have to like know what you're doing, but can you imagine his, his bio? He's like, I'm not to be summoned lately. And it was like, guy calm down relax relax so he is said to be helpful when it comes to overthrowing or escaping from an abusive person oh interesting i wonder if that's because of like mental health like i don't know if we're like stretching the word sickness they're stretching the word health but fair point yeah oh no i actually i do know the answer to this it's because he's also um he's the demon of oh i didn't write it in my notes about um conflict or something yeah like something like he's like he's for for the

tyrants or something like that so if you're like running from an authority figure or something like that. Yeah, that would that makes sense. OK, so he's helpful when trying to escape from an abusive authority. him about like improving your health or to cast a powerful protection over your body which i guess is again we're stretching like your health and your safety so he's good at casting powerful protection he can also be linked to rebirth in the circle of life okay that makes some sense some people say i saw like one blog which like this is i i liked where he was going but i don't know how true this is he was saying like because he's involved in health um and he knows your body at a cellular level if he's like the one that can prevent sickness then like you can

also use him in like rituals about biology i was like like which like i'm sure he meant that's what i thought i'm sure he means like some sort I'm sure he meant. That's what I thought. I'm sure he means like some sort of like if he's about rebirth, maybe like plants or something stupid. We're like, oh, I need help with my AP bio homework. And he's like, that's not what I meant. I meant like I can help with cellular regeneration. I'm like, OK, I don't know what that means. I was like, that makes it sound like Beelzebub has like beakers and is working with iron man or something like but he's like dissecting frogs actually he might be doing that that seems

like something he might actually do which is disturbing whoa sorry a huge thunderstorm just started and it like like hit the windows scared the crap out of me it's very good timing i feel like i'm i'm in it now um even crazier because my next bullet point is that one of the things you can offer to him is storm water. Is what? Storm what? Storm water. Oh, yeah. You can have it.

I'm not going to take it. I think that's because of like the kind of, I guess, in my opinion, it's like a bit of a stretch. But health equals health and rebirth can also mean like nature and plants. Yeah, fertile lands, all that business. So I don't know a situation where I would need this, but Beelzebub can also help you cast curses if you need that. And he's also helpful when it comes to summoning other demons for rituals because that's one of his powers that he can command other demons and i can see why that would get dicey if you didn't really know what you were doing and you were doing it out of anger or something and you wanted to cast a curse exactly or a hex and then you

involved an arc demon it seems like it would probably work, but then it might come back to bite you, or I don't know. It seems like it would be a little messy. Like, and I can see why religious conservatives would hear something like that and be like, I don't want to fuck around with witches. Totally. But like, at the same time,

I was like looking for an example of why you would need to summon a demon through another demon. And one of the examples was like to perform exorcisms is like you might need him to contact another demon for you and like be the mouthpiece to i mean i don't know how many witches are out there performing exorcisms but like it's an example of what you could positively use a demon for right right right. And interesting that that's even mentioned because when we covered the exorcism of Anna Eklund, which was episode 32 all those years ago. Oh, my God.

Beelzebub is said to be the one who possessed her. So wait a minute. You can possess people, but also you could be called to help with an exorcism. I don't know. He's like, yeah, I'll be right there. I'm totally not the one in here. on i'm coming that's like so awkward that's the funniest thing i think you've said all day that wasn't me that was jeff and we all know it no that was beelzebub inside of you so oh shit

if you do summon him you might actually also do the opposite of your requests or he'll do the opposite of your request to keep you on track if you don't listen to him it's pretty much like if you woke me up from my nap it better be fucking worth it that's what his mentality is okay i get it that i can relate to a lot of people will reach out to him because they want to improve their life, improve their health. But if you're not going to listen to his advice or accept his guidance, then he will make things worse until you listen to him. Okay. I can see that.

That's a fair reaction. It's like, do this better. And then if you don't, he's going to be like, you fucking got me out of bed for this. And why did you ask me? Right. Yeah. Why did you even ask? me out of bed for this like no no no right yeah why did you even ask so the overall advice is summon him at your own risk um and only when you're ready for his influence because otherwise

things could be more chaotic for you and he will often appear as flies in unusual numbers and it bodes well for you to make an offering to him including storm water he also appreciates insects taxidermy composting and plants guess, for the rebirth kind of thing. I just took the compost out today. And by I, I mean Blaze took the compost out. But maybe that's what's happening. The rain, the compost. Yeah, yeah.

It's all making sense. Also, another offering is expensive alcohol because it would acknowledge his royalty as prince. But the best offering. Crown Royale from Target. Put that out for you. I only said that because when I was looking for crowns on the Target app, I kept bringing up Crown Royale. And I was like, I'm not looking for that right now. I'm looking for a paper crown.

Yeah. Well, my last note is that the best offering you can give him is healthy food because it symbolizes his space in health and sickness. That's weird because if he's the glutton, you'd think. That's a great point. But keep in mind, that fucking pro-torture witch hunter is the one who made that claim. Okay, fair point. So maybe he really isn't gluttonous. He's like, I like soy milk.

Maybe he is a glutton for healthy food okay that could be possible yeah um especially of the healthy foods apples is a good one for any demon because it represents the knowledge from the tree of life oh they like that shit yeah and one blogger because i was like what about junk food one blogger who apparently has experience with beelzebub oh said he does not appreciate junk food quote he won't even eat waffles hey now i know that's honestly blogger i know it's beelzebub but that is my biggest problem with him out of everything so far so we both ate frozen waffles today i meant to tell you i ate one for lunch with leona so you know i have no this is this is nonsense talk about a full circle is that we ate waffles

and then i'm ending my notes on waffles so it seems correct that seems like how it was always gonna be yeah anyway that is beelzebub i genuinely did not know even 10% of that, I think. I'm really, you know, and this was one of those topics where I'm scared to present it because, wow, there's so many theories and wow, there's so much history and wow, there's so many people who know this topic better than me. Yeah. I mean, and including like people who read their Bible every day or witches who have worked with him before. Like, I don't want to say anything that like was wrong, but I was also giving like- People who read their Bible every day stopped listening a long time ago after the bullshit I say about the Bible and pretend to know what King Solomon did.

Yeah. I guess I'm more worried for the witches out there because I'm sure there's books and books and books just about this guy and I barely scratched the surface but yeah but that's what this podcast I think that's the gist I think that's the gist yeah I feel like this is just a this is not a educational podcast in in the grand scheme of things at least it's it's not often like a two or three parter so if I can't say it in 45 minutes it's probably not coming out of my mouth that's right that's right but um anyway i hope for people who are not heavily into it that it was i hope it was a an okay crash course and if you did a great job if you know more than me please you know let me know so all right that was beautiful all i have

to say is i am not evil i could be if i wanted you don't know what damage or harm i could do if i were roused to i could kill you all but i won't i can't tell if that was jelsvab jeff or christine that was too fitting so i might say you'll never know i feel like did we say something where we needed more merch with Jeff. Yes. Jeff talking or Jeff something with quotes. I feel like just one quote isn't enough. We almost need like a post like a motivational poster. So many good ones like this is me. This is so I guess Jim was the guy whose house he lived in.

But I'm going to change it to M. And it says upon noticing that Jim noticing that M was reading the Bible, this is what Jeff said. Look at that pious old atheist reading the Bible. He will swear in a minute. That's me talking about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reading the Bible.

I know you're going to swear at me in a second. Blasphemous. Nice try. Oh, my God. Put the bloody gramophone on i'm so proud of you um for dressing up by the way i feel so stupid didn't even occur to me to dress up i was just the most halloweeny of all trust me yours is way better i was really proud of my sweater but now i'm realizing like how stupid am i i didn't fucking dress up for halloween

oh my gosh it's this is october 5th we're way early like recording this and again But now I'm realizing like, how stupid am I? I didn't fucking dress up for Halloween. I didn't even cross. Oh my gosh. It's this is October 5th. We're way early like recording this. And again, this was an hour before recording decision. This was a very, I know, but now I'm like planned. What do you, if you could dress me as anything for Halloween or undress me, Christine, what would you dress me as like what's a costume you fucking wish i could deliver on or you think i could deliver on okay okay okay okay okay i mean you've already nailed zach bagans

like there's not even room to explore that again i mean you could be cute as a little hot stuff devil, you know? That's true. Maybe next year we, you want to tag team it next year? That would be cute. We could do Casper and hot stuff demon. I'll be Casper. You'd be Casper. I'd be demon.

Oh, that would be really cute. You know what I think we should also do? We should tag team sometime is our ghosty guys, our logo for our tour. Our fucking logo. That would be genius we love it i mean i could do that anyway because that mine's the ghost yours is a skeleton though mine's easy because i can just wear like one of those skeleton costumes and hold yeah it's too easy except we don't have fun we don't have very comfy armoire chairs or whatever they're called but oh we could get our hands on those some Some armchairs. Some fancy armchairs.

Armchairs, not armoire chairs. I'm so fucking stupid. You just said it fancier. Casper and hot stuff. That'll be us next year. I love Casper and hot stuff. That's a great costume idea. TM, TM, TM.

Okay, Amethy. I have a kind of like a little hodgepodge for you today. Like a smorgasbord, if you will. I have some Halloween pranks and some Halloween crimes. Oh, a trick or a treat. A trick or a treat. That's exactly right. Except it's sort of like a trick and a terrible homicide, but it's close enough.

Trick or really bad trick. Or really, really, trick or worse trick. So here we go now we've talked about some of this before and when you've done like history of you know certain like carving jack-o'-lanterns and that kind of thing like there are a couple little nods to your past notes but i figure since you and i barely remember what we've said and i assume most people have moved on with their lives after they listen to an episode i'm gonna say them again for fun so as you can probably imagine the relationship between halloween and criminal mischief goes back four centuries uh halloween uh was actually traditionally believed to come from the ancient pre-Christian Irish fire festival Samhain, which we once said, I said Samhain, or I don't know, we said it wrong at one time and everyone kindly corrected us.

Samhain, which now we know very well. It was believed that fairies and the dead could more easily access our world on Samhain and cause trouble for living humans. Sort of like the veil is thinner at that time. This belief persisted after the Christianization of Ireland and there were stories about the Pooka coming to collect your leftover harvest, shape-shifting fairies sneaking into your barn, shape-shifted as rabbits to steal your cow's milk. Unless you bless the door with holy water, then they can't come in. It's just, there's a lot to remember. And, you know, people celebrated Halloween, but it was also like you had to be very cautious around Halloween. You had to be on your toes.

You had to look for mischief from people and from not people. Creatures, magical creatures. All walks of this life and other lives. And the other life yeah in more recent centuries though halloween became a night for playing games at home to predict how your year would go like i don't know if you remember covering this but some of those like young girls would play like games to figure out who they would marry and all that kind of thing was it like bobbing for apples and like like each apple was a different guy or something?

What a nightmare. It was something. Yeah, you'd write the name on a piece of paper. I don't know, some ridiculous game. But you could also predict how your year would go. Like, would you get married? Would you emigrate? I feel like nowadays that's not really as relevant.

But back then in Ireland, would you emigrate? Yeah, maybe. Would you become rich? And it also became tradition, which I like, to give gifts to your less fortunate neighbors who would come collecting alms. They would come to your door. So all the while, people remembered the old stories of Samhain and kept an eye out for wandering spirits and any trouble that might come their way. And eventually, as part of almsgiving, people would start wearing masks and costumes as like just a way to entertain as they walk door to door seeking like little handouts, like little gifts.

Yeah. And children, especially boys, would dress up and go to houses in disguise to perform tricks and sing songs in exchange for cakes and other treats. And I feel like you've covered that where they would go sing, sing a song and you'd have to like guess what they are it was like essentially christmas caroling but like a different a different taste of it a different flavor bring back halloween caroling okay i love that can you imagine just knocking it on your they would call the police if they would if you knocked on someone's door and started singing Love Potion number nine, they... He did the mash. He did the monster mash.

Yeah. I love it. 5150 immediately. I would be the only one to open the door and be delighted, but I think everyone else might be upset. If I saw that through a peephole i would be like i am locking this door never okay hide under your bed oh my god others would paint their faces to look as strange as possible and children in scotland engaged in something called guising like g-u-i-s-i-n-g which is a tradition of dressing up to blend in with the spirits who are out and about, which I love that idea that like you're out and about with the fairies and other spirits.

And I, yeah, I feel like that's not even, I mean, I see how quickly it can be diluted. It's like a fun kid thing, but also like the spiritual, the meaning behind it is actually like so beautiful of like, Oh, we're all amongst each other. Yeah. Like we all, we all mix together. You can't tell us apart. i really like that amongst each other yeah like we all we all mix together you can't tell us apart i really like that as well once several countries made a tradition for kids to hit the town in masks after dark we had to worry less about shape-shifting fairies and more about children on the loose and running from house to house so you know the priorities shifted a little bit, understandably. Now, here is a little recap on some Halloween crimes that you covered last year, Em, as far as Halloween traditions go. In 18th century Ireland, kids began going out on Halloween to steal cabbages from neighbors' gardens.

This is one of my favorite fun facts. gardens this is one of my favorite fun facts and they would knock on the door shouting halloween night and when someone opened the door they would chuck the cabbage into the house and just my dream prank to do to somebody but not to have done to you because that's a baseball coming at you that's a bowling ball i can make some sauerkraut out of it. I, you know, when life, when kids hand you cabbages. This is why my imagery of you as a child in your German household on Halloween, because your mother would totally be like, I'm just going to make some sauerkraut out of this. Oh, for sure. I feel like, like, I want to know the size of these cabbages.

Like, are they just still Brussels sprouts or are they fucking cabbages i'm picturing like these guys like these like these really weighty ones you know that are like i don't know uh eight inches big and they're really hefty and you could just you could palm it and just chuck it see i and i don't even know which would be worse because if you know like the smaller they are the more like of a projectile they are but like if it's true like you get pelted with brussels sprouts and it feels like little rocks but if it's one big thing can you dodge it like are there kickball rules here yeah well i also wonder can you catch it can you throw it back and one annoying thing would be if it if you throw it hard enough a cabbage i imagine would kind of create a mess it would be like it would be a little

explosion projectile of mini cabbage also what if you have pets can they eat raw cabbage like what it's a mess it's you have to be ready with the dustpan if you have pets i imagine they can probably eat cabbage because they eat broccoli but geo would not go near a cabbage unless it was covered in a dead animal or something um what if you're not home that night what if you're not home that night and someone leaves an old cabbage on your doorstep and now you have a rotting cabbage stink on your house that smells bad that's worse than getting egged that's you smell like a like like a butt you smell like a butt you smell like a butt. And is there any way around it? No.

Sorry. No. Only the grossest smelling foods that rot are the things that people are leaving on people's property. Eggs and cabbages are like very bad smelling. And broccoli, which could also be a fun addition. So, yeah. You'd throw a cabbage into the house. Delightful.

I'm sure everyone was making sauerkraut that night. They had a very fancy lamp on the table next to the door and now it shattered. Now they do. Oh, you'd be in trouble. Oh, boy. Yeah. So this practice came to the U.S. briefly, and it was at one point such a problem in Massachusetts that Halloween, October 31st, was briefly known as Cabbage Night instead of Halloween. I mean, that is a delight to me.

Wait, where was it? What was regionally? Where was it called? Massachusetts. Okay. Because I've taken the dialect quiz, and I've always seen that as an option. And I'm like, where the fuck do they say that? That's where we both lived.

If I had known that. Remember I had a Halloween party in Boston that you came to. We literally lived across the street. If I knew about Cabbage Night, I would have chopped a cabbage right near your fucking face. I would never have gotten a fucking security deposit back from that apartment. Oh boy. deposit back from that apartment oh boy so eventually toilet paper became the cheaper and probably easier to access alternative to throwing a literal cabbage into people's homes so on top of toilet paper kids started vandalizing churches with molasses painting entire houses

black in the night committing arson throwing flour at random passers-by and setting off literal pipe bombs in public places or private properties so one halloween flower attack for example involved a group of 200 boys like this is how out of hand things got then in 1930 some kids in california greased so many streetcar rails that special crews had to respond in oakland because the cars were skidding off the tracks so now this is becoming like a public emergency and also like threatening people's lives so people were very uh frenzied about trying to figure out what to do about halloween and some people were even shooting at children who trespassed on their properties or even just around halloween who were

near their property to try and scare them off in 1930 one city was so desperate to curb youth crime and endangerment that the police considered handing over temporary police badges to as many as this is like not a joke as many as 500 bad boys quote unquote who were supposed to use their powers for good like a what catch me if you can situation i don't know like they know how to try and curb the bat like they they join forces with the police uh and so they would give them a um uh give them a title or give them power and maybe they'll like a special clearance and uh some power and then they can tattle on their compatriots to the police um this just reminds me of like a prefect in harry potter is all i could think about like percy the prefect who like i just tattling on everybody you know it's like we'll turn that we'll turn all the bad kids into

vigilantes yeah great idea we'll give them police badges okay that seems like it's gonna work great have we never heard of like what's it the milgram or the stanford exam what the experiment really let people pretend to be cops and then they like got all fucking abusive like prisoners and and jailers and then it got so out of hand yeah that's great point great point have you also ever heard of lord of the flies aka beelzebub giving kids like the power to reign over their environment does not usually end well oh my god anyway during world war ii things got a little more heated because pranks like letting air out of tires or putting soap on the windows was considered treason or sabotage because people were using value. Yeah, because it was the war. And so people were using valuable resources like soap and grease, which was like trying to be limited, you know, for personal use to be sent for the war effort.

And so laws were actually passed criminalizing many halloween pranks okay that's why eggs came into play i think yeah with my eggs i got a chicken out back i know how to use it you can't stop me in 1940 a man wrote to a newspaper columnist advocating for Halloween to be permanently banned. And in response, a columnist named Elsie Robinson wrote, The only cure I know, friend, is that of substitution. Let these worrying mothers get together and see that the young folk have their fun at home and be ghosts and witches, black cats, devils, or any wild thing that suits their eerie fancy. Good for her essentially yeah so essentially she was on to something which is don't cancel halloween just like change gears

like shift it so that we're keeping kids out of trouble and so that's why in the 1950s halloween underwent a major rebrand okay they revamped this whole situation i love it like who the hell is in charge of this rebrand i hope it's lc robinson because she was like on it from early on yeah so trick-or-treating in the 50s became a beloved tradition it was featured in media like the peanuts comics and so suddenly people kids were wanting to trick-or-t treat through the neighborhood in a much safer way than running around like hooligans throwing i don't know cabbages in people's windows so people figured out that passing out candy mostly kept kids out of trouble and close to home and it was basically bribery like if you stay home and walk through your neighborhood, you'll get a shit ton of candy if you come home at a reasonable hour.

Legal action, criminalizing, none of that worked. So candy, just bribery with candy is what worked. I'm telling you, Elsie knew it. But thousands of years of folklore and tradition does not die away easily. So many people were determined to keep the spirit of mischief alive on halloween however unfortunately some halloween pranks in the u.s continue to go terribly wrong and have become full-blown crimes even homicides i have some examples uh and they're upsetting because i couldn't bring a story to you today without absolutely bumming you out, even though it is Halloween.

So on October 31st, 1998, a group of teenagers threw eggs at a car, which is a standard Halloween attack. The driver was 21-year-old Carl Jackson, and he was a computer programmer from the Bronx. And he had spent the evening at a children's Halloween party with his girlfriend and her nine-year-old son, Clyde. The couple were in the car on their way to drop nine-year-old Clyde off with a babysitter so they could go to another Halloween party when the eggs hit Carl's car just after 11 p.m. Carl was known as a quiet person, but he was was very very upset by the eggs that had hit his car and so he got out of his car to scold the teenagers and then he got back in the car to drive away but he had pissed off these teenage egg throwers and they were not done with Carl

after he sat back down in the passenger seat one of them pulled a gun and shot him through the window. Oh, my God. The bullet hit Carl in the temple and killed him. Oh, my God. And then a little kid and his girlfriend watched it happen. A little kid and his mom, the kid's mom, yeah, his girlfriend watched it all happen., I mean, just very shocking and tragic. And the kid who shot him, 17-year-old Curtis Sterling, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison. And Carl's friends and loved ones were so shocked by this event that they could not believe it happened. His mother told the New York Times, We were just devastated. We never thought that anyone from our family would be murdered, especially on a holiday for something so stupid.

And she said it took her family several years to even talk about it because they were so stricken by shock and grief. Sure. And according to a 2010 article, Carl's mother sent a Halloween card to Curtis every year in prison that said, I'm glad you're still in there. Halloween card to Curtis every year in prison that said, I'm glad you're still in there. Oh, do what you gotta do, girl. But damn. Getting dark. Tragically, this is where this part.

I don't know. It's just somehow upsetting in a weird way that I didn't expect. So Carl apparently used to avoid Halloween festivities growing up because he was so scared of Halloween. Isn't that eerie? That's eerie. Yeah, it really freaks me out. And he said they scared him, but he wanted his girlfriend's son to have fun. So he agreed to take him to this Halloween party, even though he did not like to leave the house on Halloween most years and as even as a teenager and a kid he he was scared of Halloween which is is just so dark it's just like add such

a heavy element to this like an eerie and like now by accident has only perpetuated it for another generation with that kid who's never gonna want to leave. Yeah, it's horrible. I mean, oh, it gives me goose cam. So Carl's father even said, a young life was snuffed out over nothing. But that's what Halloween has gotten into. He never used to go out on Halloween. He always said it was too dangerous, even as a teenager. But this year he wanted to take the child out. Makes me sad.

And historically, this is worth noting, marginalized minorities, of course, have been at higher risk of danger on Halloween. And this goes all the way back to the cabbage throwing days because children often targeted neighbors that they thought were bad tempered or different. I mean, it's like you said, like the like the old spooky house on the hill that might be the witch of the neighborhood. You know what I mean? That might be the witch of the neighborhood. You know what I mean? Like there's this kind of like a Boo Radley vibe. Like, oh, we never see that guy. So let's throw cabbages at him, even though maybe he's disabled or just likes to be alone.

Or scared to leave the house on Halloween. Or scared to leave the house on Halloween, precisely. And so, you know, this tended to be a pattern that people who were different got targeted. a pattern that people who were different got targeted. And it's similar to, you know, cranky elderly women who were unmarried became targets of witch hunts. It's people who, even that same descriptor, became the witch in the neighborhood or, you know, the scary guy on the corner who you make up, you know, urban legends about. guy on the corner who you make up you know urban legends about likewise people in the anti-halloween camp have taken measures to ban festivities that could lead to troubling and dangerous biases biases biases cities across the u.s have started passing laws banning teenagers from trick-or-treating

period so like if you're over a certain age you are not to participate in trick-or-treating period so like if you're over a certain age you are not to participate in trick-or-treating and this doesn't make sense on a few levels first off it seems to be a bad move because historically trick-or-treating is the only thing keeping teens out of trouble so it's like if you can't trick-or- a teenager, you're going to go do something else like a party or drink or throw a cabbage at someone. So maybe don't cancel trick or treating for teenagers. And in Belleville, Illinois, children older than 12 are not allowed to wear masks with their costumes. So they cannot cover their face. And kids past eighth grade cannot appear on the streets highways public homes private homes

or public places in the city to make trick-or-treat visitations over than 12 that seems really young to me i mean i would have thought like by driving age or high school yeah 16 maybe i feel like but 12 seems young 12 is like so also 12 is awkward because it's already that age where like you still want to go trick-or-treating but everyone else is kind of growing out of it. And so like cool. Yeah. You already like are feeling a little shame about it. And now it's like, no, but maybe it's helpful because now you don't have to feel shame.

It's like, oh, well, I can't. You know, not allowed. But 12 seems so little to me. But maybe I'm maybe I'm just feels little to me, too. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't know. But you made a really good point. little to me too yeah i mean you know i don't know but you made a really good point and there are also some other questionable iffy points about this because until a 2019 that's pretty damn

recent 2019 revision of the law children older than 12 caught trick-or-treating in chesapeake virginia could face six months in prison if you were older than 12 so imagine if your 12th birthday was the day before halloween what if your 12th birthday was halloween then you're a scorpio and you're just trying to create a chaotic situation like are you gonna go to jail for six months if you were 11 yesterday it's like insane it really doesn't make any sense and they have since taken this jail time penalty off the table so this is not uh this is no longer a risk like truly imagine being in juvie it's like what are you in for trick-or-treating i literally i literally thought when you first said imagine your 12th birthday i thought you meant like imagine if your 12th birthday was behind bars and you had to have visitation from your friends.

Well, it fucking happened apparently in Chesapeake, Virginia. So they changed the jail time threat, thankfully, and they also changed the age limit to 14. So slightly better, slightly better. And critics of these laws say they're unfair for everyone, but especially in special cases, which I always thought was kind of troubling part of this, is that disabled teenagers, teenagers with unstable home lives who maybe didn't get the chance to trick or treat when they were younger. Or, you know, I've experienced this in some of the neighborhoods I've lived in where there are families who, you know, go door to door sort of similar to the tradition and are seeking food. You know what I mean? Like candy, sure. But like maybe they don't have access to that in their home life. And so this is kind of targeting them as well. And critics also worry, which I found very interesting, about non-white children being criminalized and targeted even when they are within the legal age to participate and i was gonna say yeah because when you're 12 it's sort of like some people look much older some people look younger some people have boobs some don't you know puberty hits differently

on different people even then not even physically but just to be a black person, you are adultified so early. Exactly. You know, if there was a 12-year-old who did something wrong, all of a sudden they're not like a kid in the eyes of the news and society. Exactly. If you're 11 and you're like a black kid who wants to go trick-or-treating, someone is going to have already decided for you that you're actually much older than 11 and almost assessed the situation and you were absolutely correct because according to the american psychology association research conducted on 176 police officers who were mostly white males and 264 undergraduate students mostly white females revealed that black boys as young as 10 may not

be viewed in the same light as of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime. So already subconsciously we're facing these biases. So it is a troubling thing to say, oh, we're just going to decide on an age like 12. And no one has a driver's license at 12 to prove how old they are. So it's like all just very messy. In communities with trick or treat age laws, young black boys are at very high risk of dangerous bias. And of course, the same risk could extend to other racial minorities. And here's where I

have another upsetting case for you. Woohoo. This one is from October of 1992. A 16-year-old boy named Yoshihiro Hattori was excited to celebrate American Halloween for the first time as an exchange student from Japan. Yoshi was excited. I know it's already just so deeply upsetting. Yoshi was excited to experience a new culture and share his culture too. And before he left for his exchange year, he wrote in his journal, wherever I go, I wish I could make the country a second home country. I can make Japanese cooking like tempura cutlet for host families and introduce the living way of Japanese. And he was beyond excited to spend some time in the United

States. His host parents, Dr. Holly Haymaker and her husband, Dick Haymaker, were thrilled to host Yoshi in their Baton Rouge, Louisiana home. In Japan, Yoshi was a dedicated rugby player. And in Louisiana, he started taking jazz dance lessons. He really fit right in. Everyone at his new school loved him. He was extroverted. He was a free spirit. His host father, Dick, said he was a really, really extraordinary guy. He was life. He moved through space like a dancer.

He also made fast friends with the Haymakers' 16-year-old son, Webb. In October, they were invited to a Halloween party in another town, so the boys dressed up and set out on Saturday, October 17th. Yoshi was dressed as John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever. It's like so upsetting. Webb, the son, said, eventually we ended up on the street. We saw this house. It had Halloween decorations and it had three cars in the driveway and the address was 10311. Whereas we wanted to go to 10131, but I just saw the address and said, oh, this is it. The boys knocked on the door,

but nobody answered. A woman opened a side door, looked at them for a second, and slammed the side door shut. Webb realized, oh, maybe we're in the wrong place, so they started to walk away. That's when 30-year-old Rodney Pierce opened the front door holding a revolver. Why? Why? Webb thinks that Yoshi might have mistaken the gun for a Halloween prop. Guns were so uncommon in Japan, it's possible Yoshi had never even seen one in person. Rodney yelled freeze, butoshi didn't seem to understand and you have to remember english is not his first language and he spoke english but you know he totally different culture different expectations um and he just did

not seem to understand so he started walking back toward the house smiling and greeting rodney he said we're here for the party we're here for the party. We're here for the party. Without another warning, Rodney shot Yoshi directly in the chest and slammed the door shut. Oh my God. Yeah. Unaware of Yoshi's condition after the ambulance took him away, Webb waited at the police station for his parents who spoke to the police and told him that Yoshi had died. The first thing Webb said was his poor mother. Yoshi's parents flew to the united states while the haymakers were wracked with guilt for letting them go to this party for feeling like they had failed him holly dreaded meeting yoshi's parents who had trusted her to keep their son safe

yeah it must have been that's just a daunting nightmare situation. When they met, the first thing Yoshi's mom asked was, how is Webb? Oh, God. That's so sweet. Initially, Rodney was off the hook because he claimed he was defending his property from trespassers, a.k.a. two children on Halloween. a.k.a. two children on Halloween. But international outcry led to his indictment for manslaughter. So the woman who had opened that first door that night turned out to be Rodney's wife. And after seeing the boys who were simply standing at the door knocking, she told Rodney to get the gun. Which is wild because like even if he didn't say we're here for the party or anything later, could have just been fucking trick-or-treating trick-or-treating so like it's so weird it's halloween night and children in costume came to your door shooting it's just like so extreme on

like bizarre i wonder well i guess the party was october 17th so maybe it's like oh it was pre-halloween so they wouldn't be trick-or-treating. I guess. If I saw anyone in costume at all in October, I don't know. I'm also not someone who thinks, oh, let me go shoot someone real quick without any context. Yeah, someone's on my sidewalk. Yeah. So, you know, and it's hard to believe because they had Halloween decorations up.

It's not like they forgot what season it was. It's bizarre. It's just like a horrific response. So no trick-or-treater is safe. It's like it's just so you can just get shot on a front stoop. Especially if you don't look like a white kid from Louisiana, I guess. So Rodney claims he shot Yoshi out of fear because of his, quote, unusual way of moving. What the fuck does that mean seems like maybe not but Webb said Yoshi had a bounce to his step because he was so excited for

the party that was the only thing that may have made him walk differently which is just even worse Rodney's defense team said Rodney was just one of your neighbors who simply acted in self-defense after just three hours of deliberation the jury acquitted Rodney of all charges. And he was free to go. Sick. The tragedy, of course, there's, you know, somewhat of a silver lining in the aftermath of this tragedy because the Haymakers and the Hattori's were bonded together for life from Japan and the United States. They have both both families have dedicated decades to fighting for gun reform in the U.S. They met with President Clinton, participated in marches, and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the cause.

In a civil suit against Rodney and his home insurance company, Yoshi's parents were awarded $100,000, which they then used to fund more gun control campaigns. which they then used to fund more gun control campaigns. The Haymakers gave $500,000 to Dick's alma mater, Carleton College, to create the Yoshihiro Hattori Memorial Fund, which helps cover costs for students studying abroad from Japan, which I think is really beautiful. The family's activism is considered to have played a huge role in helping pass the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act shortly after Yoshi's death, which mandates background checks on gun buyers and a five-day waiting period on all purchases. In recent years, the Hattori's returned to the U.S. to speak

to survivors of the Parkland shooting and participate in the March for Our Lives in March of 2018. Since Halloween's earliest days in the U.S., this has been a fraught time of year for those who are pro-Halloween and anti-Halloween. You know, it's just very high tension, and I feel like that's something we don't necessarily know about in our normal day-to-day, like, fall-girly, basic-bitch experience, at least speaking for me from myself children have been stabbed shot choked by adults in retaliation for throwing an egg at a house or a car for tping houses there's this like sometimes violent outrage that comes out from adults who feel like they're being threatened uh and it's ended in a lot of physical violence.

But on the other side, victims of these pranks have also sustained critical injuries from, you know, say an egg being thrown at your windshield and you crash your car or arson or any of these so-called pranks that can also lead to fatalities. According to a 2010 New York Times article, quote, since 1984, at least 24 people have been seriously wounded or killed in stabbings, shootings, beatings, or accidents sparked by egg throwing confrontations around Halloween. Just the egg throwing has led to at least 24 people who have been seriously wounded or killed. So be careful. And that's just Halloweeneen too because that's just on halloween 365 days of eggs on a car you know but halloween

alone is that's a that's too much that's wild that's very very very alarming to me and you know it's unfortunate because especially nowadays like we consider halloween a fun positive uh creepy time right like especially millennials i feel like we've really embraced halloween as you know a special time but of course there is still that reality that you have to be cautious and you know be careful folks i i get the fun of a prank, but just be careful out there because you never know if the person you're pranking is going to overreact or if you're going to accidentally cause some harm that you didn't mean to. So it's best to avoid, I would say, playing pranks on strangers who can react unpredictably. Maybe don't confront pranksters just for your own safety uh you know it can end very badly but of course tragic cases like yoshi's show that even innocent people with good intentions who've done no pranking at all can end up victims of unpredictable violence and um that is the story of

halloween pranks and war spranks if anything it was more just like a giant psa for like yes yes yes yes yes yes yes uh that's a good way to put it a giant psa well you forgot about all the needles and meth in our candy or whatever oh that's right yeah yeah they're i feel like they don't they don't say that anymore the way they used to in the 90s or 2000s. Yeah, it was like a 90s trend, I think. It was like a huge thing. I feel like we talk about it now as a joke, but I don't know about you, but in my area, people were actually so scared of that. Like so scared that drug dealers were coming in and putting needles in chocolate.

And it's like, why? I think my mom was like that's ridiculous who is going to give away their heroin you're fine so i was like okay so we never really believed it but i i think it was also during like there there was that one big um year of like anthrax scares so there was that was pretty valid i mean there was like people finding anthrax in their like mailboxes and shit so like i and not not like it was like you know a million people but there were cases of it and so i think that was part of the fear of like when you were living closer you were living closer to had more connections to dc which i feel like would have also a little bit of i don't know i feel like the element the anthra bit of, I don't know, added element.

I feel like the anthrax year was a big one for actually being scared to touch your candy. But then, like, if you're grabbing it from the neighbors next door, like, you know exactly who provided you this candy. Like, they're going to jail. You all shopped for it at the same Walmart. Yes. So, you know, I don't, I don't, I't I just remember like there being a year of paranoia. But I remember hearing the things about drugs and both of my parents being partiers in their heyday.

They were like, don't worry, that's not true. Yes. Mine too. Mine were like, I don't think your dumb friends at school know what they're talking about. And I was like, OK. Yeah. Well, dang. Good one, Christine. dumb friends at school know what they're talking about and i was like okay yeah well dang good one christine you thank you for bringing back cabbage night because that really escapes me that was you know our researcher searcher added that in and was like you don't have to say this i was like are you kidding we're talking about cabbages again whether you like it or not everybody i actually just cut up a cabbage uh you did not they're fun to cut up though

i isn't it weirdly satisfying because they're all like crimped crinkly well also i love a crunch and like i but i don't like a crispy like i don't like also you don't like nuts in your candy which is why i like nuts in my candy because it's a crunch so that's very interesting but the crunch doesn't bother me the taste i don't want the taste of nuts in my candy because it's a crunch so that's very interesting but the crunch doesn't bother me the taste i don't want the taste of nuts in my chocolate interesting okay it's like it's like what you're what what are you adding like just give me i want chocolate i didn't come here for fucking nuts you know if i wanted you heard that i'd go buy it i'd buy a jar almonds if i wanted nuts so damn bad but i want chocolate it's halloween um uh i've heard you and i loud and clear loud and clear even with like reeses like i i like it i used to love it i went

through like a phase where i loved it but like i love her maybe yeah maybe i'm just getting older but like after like one or two i like they're very rich very very sweet yeah um no i cut up a cabbage i can't eat 11 ring pops as evidenced by today's episode but that's different i've had minimal sugar compared to christine and watch me drop a fucking ring pop well i didn't know you were watching but i dropped a ring pop and then there was nothing else to look at. It was all you. She's going to put that in her mouth. And no, no, no,

I did. Every, everyone listened to what I had to watch because Christine was taking her ring pops and then she was ring pops by, I'm not kidding. She had like 10 on her hands and then she kept doing the thing that like babies do when their hands are sticky. And she was like doing like the full arm stretch to be able to touch her eye and shit and leona goes leona goes help oh help so that's kind of what i was doing yeah well that's what christy was doing but then like one of them fell although she had nine others this was the one she wanted and she

kept she kept putting it in her mouth and then i would see her look at it after it's been dropped and like pull like a hair or something off it to put it right back in her mouth and then a couple seconds later she'd pull it out again clearly didn't succeed the first time it is now investigating to pull something off of it and i'm like you can just it was like five cents it was like a nickel it's the last thing on earth that still costs a nickel. Like you can just throw it away and use the other nine. Okay. It's fine. Eva was on my side.

She said, sometimes you just want that particular flavor. They all look the same. Were they all different flavors? No, they were. Do you have a favorite ring pop flavor? They were two different flavors. And this one was a blue raspberry and I really wanted to eat the blue raspberry. And the other ones were purple grape.

You know what I fucking love, Christine? You know what I love? Tell me. I need you to hear this. When they had those ring pops that were the twisted flavors, where they were tie-dye. Oh, delightful. Those are good. You gotta be kidding me.

The classics. Halloween includes tongue painters. I love that they're trying to market it as like, oh, we did that on purpose. Like, yeah, right. It's just food dye, girl, but thanks. It's literally red 40, but thank you for pretending like you did it intentionally. No, I... Those tie-dye ones really fucking sealed the deal for me especially

the blue and green one but they also the red and orange one was pretty good those were good i like the swirlies the swirlies are tasty yep if i ever see one i have to get it i have to get it i have to all right well all right what now christine are we i to do another after hours yeah and that's why i drink after hours and actually i have a so what i'm thinking of when it's like my turn to do an after hours or bring something to the table what i'm thinking is what i might do from now on is um uh like a mini crime story like something that's not enough because i have one today that is a doozy that came up in my uh news headlines this morning and I was like I have to tell em about this and then I realized I could tell you in the after hours about this bizarro crime so like maybe weird crimes or like you know crimes that don't have

enough information to have an episode so I have one for you you that's okay it was in the news you found it if it was in the news yes sounds like it's a newsy doozy you're such an idiot i was like why did you make me repeat that it was in the news that's weird for the callback anyway good job okay i'm excited for our newsy doozy i can't wait to hear what the hell is going on and that's why we drink