And That's Why We Drink - E364 A Boulder of Salt and a Shot Put of Horseradish

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

It's episode 364 and we're on our backstage, gold star behavior! This week Em takes us to the intersection of the Bible and Corn Belts for their story on Acid Bridge and the "Seven Gates of Hell". Then Christine brings us the star studded, unsolved mystery of Natalie Wood's death. And did we just invent Ancestry.com for vegetables? ...and that's why we drink!Don't miss out on the very last run of our On the Rocks live show. Get your tickets at andthatswhywedrink.com/live

Christine is here and I'm also here but and we're so happy to see you And we're so happy to see you. Thank you. I'm delighted. I'm delighted to be in your presence, quite frankly. I wonder how... Thank you. That's very sweet of you. And not at all feels forced, like I have a gun against your head.

Not even a little bit. I wonder how many episodes start with me going, Christine. Like all of them, really. Yeah. I don't know how to... that's how i make an entrance too when i see you face to face i don't know how to see you i heard you make i heard that's what you do anytime you enter a room whether i'm there or not it's just always confused by it but it's just your opening line um and i think that's a good one it's a powerful one you know really sets the tone well i i gotta i said your name because i

i meant it i wanted to thank you because we never opened christmas presents with each other oh i know we usually do the big like we're we're 10 and we make a huge deal out of it um which by the way let's i don't think you're shaming it but let's continue we're not knocking it we're not knocking let's continue that it was just one of those years where it was too hard to navigate with starting the tour so we had to mail presents lame uh well one of the things that sweet christine sent me i mean you sent me many lovely things you sent me a calendar that is very on par for us you sent me a bagel bites gummies you really you nailed it well done but my favorite thing is christine um sent me some federal drugs through the federal mail okay no no no no no see you haven't even looked you haven't even opened it yet i have

opened it i have opened it okay but you sent me some drugs your Your name is on this prescription, Christine. That part was an accident. It was supposed to say you. What's it supposed to say? My name? Schultz. It says Christine Schieffer, and it is your literal prescription right here on this bottle. And then you mailed it to me.

Can you imagine if in a stop they would have been so confused if they checked this bag and on the inside my friends i don't know how you got a hold of some xanax for me but you got me one whole bar of xanax that very conveniently fits on my crock yay you real by the way what did you look up xanax like drugs for my crocs what did you look up Xanax drugs for my Crocs? What did you look up to purchase this? I looked up drugs for Crocs. How quickly could you find a bar of Xanax Croc Gidget or whatever it's called? Instantaneously. I mean, I don't recall the journey i went on to find it i just recall

the success story it quickly became when i realized there is only and i remember like casually asking you because i don't take xanax or i i did like at one time in my life briefly in grad school but uh i you know as you know i'm a Klonopin girly. But I remember kind of casually asking you if you took any sort of ever anti-anxiety meds and you said something like, oh, I was prescribed Xanax. And I was like, check, check, check, because they had other options, right? They had a Klonopin one. They had other ones. And I was like, well, I need to get the one that most suits you. But I didn't know that it came with like a little cute like label on a prescription bottle or I would have specified like don't put my fucking name on it. It doesn't have your address on it, too?

No, it doesn't have your address. Oh, my God. If it did, that would be wild. This might be actually a drug front that I'm somehow paying for and I didn't realize it. No, it just says your name. It appeared much more realistic than I thought. It appeared much more realistic than I thought. It appeared much more realistic than I thought. It looks real.

Like it looks like all the information is there. And it even has an expiration date, which by the way is 2000, year 2000. So it's heavily. It's really powdery Xanax that doesn't work anymore. And then I do like on the back, does say fake prescription so somewhere if you look hard enough i love that because they sent it in just a little envelope and i remember when i first got it because it was like during the midst of all the christmas shopping and i i got this little thing and it was from i bought it from etsy so it had just some random person's return address and

i was like what is this and i open it and there's a pill bottle inside and I'm like what the hell did I order in my like you know delta 9 drug haze one night or my wine wine wine ordering I don't know what I did but I was like holy shit and then I opened it and was like this is rubber okay it's for last thing I'll say is the fake prescription directions on it would kill a grown man because it says take one tablet up to three times a day and it's like eight times the amount that i take for one dosage like it's so how much is the dosage on that i don't think i got to select that i take 0.25 and it says a full 2.0 so it's literally eight times the amount oh that's not bad i mean it's not as i mean i take less take it three times a day so that's technically 24 times the amount of xanax that i usually take

i know yeah it would kill maybe not a grown man but it would kill you so so maybe don't follow that that label um anyway um i'm so glad that you got it i i sent I sent a little boxy box. Yes. And I did select no perfumes or drugs or whatever the gasoline or whatever they ask at the post office. Thank you. Yeah. With a little teehee. Yeah. Well, I just wanted to publicly make sure you got the credit for your lovely Christmas gift. Cause I'm so glad that you figured out it was a jibbit. At first I thought you really thought I was sending you my, my drugs. And I was like, listen, I'd do that for you if you really wanted me to. But it wasn't. I appreciate that. I didn't just do it without being asked. That would be a little presumptuous. I wouldn't have questioned it at all. I would

have been like, that's a homie right there. I know. You would have been like, great. Just what I was thinking. Anyway, how are you, Em? I miss you. Anyway, I'm you Em I miss you anyway I'm good I miss you I saw you because we had our very first shows oh yeah they all went great no passing out here um uh Christine even complimented my behavior backstage which made me feel very good I'm gonna talk to my therapist about it I gave you a gold star for your behavior it makes it sound like i'm some fucking elementary school teacher no i appreciated the feedback um no it was okay to be clear i wasn't a com i wasn't like you know critiquing em backstage i was just saying wow em i don't i hope this is helpful not i don't i mean this in the most positive way but you are like kicking butt

backs like you're being so you know in the past I feel like there was such deep-seated fear and terror about passing out or about having a heart issue or about getting on stage at all and I feel like you've really um evolved I don't know you've just you seem like a wholly different person now after your surgery sweet well everyone thanks jordan um my therapist um daily in my in my daily prayers i only say one prayer and it's just jordan me too actually uh but she uh we're trying a new tactic for dealing with my sage fright which is i hadn't heard about it before but it's like it's called i it's either ins or ifs i forget i forget what it means but i tried the emdr stuff edmr one of them's music and one of them's therapy edm i tried edm i played a lot of uh dubstep backstage and it didn't seem to help em's heart condition at all which was so weird

the irony because dubstep was like i was a dubstep kid i know you i cannot and now my heart can't take it at all well so i was trying to love a glow stick you're such a sucker for a fucking glow stick homie i literally would go to the day glow festival where they would just shoot neon paint out oh my god it's like anyway the thing that I know the most about you, even though you've never told me, you know? I love it. Well, so I'm trying this new therapy with Jordan. So you tried EMDR, it didn't work? Didn't work at all.

I've heard wonderful things. Which is so disappointing because everyone I know that has tried it spurs by it. It's the thing I'm going to try next. Okay, well, if it doesn't work for you, just know that you're not alone because it was not my vibe. Okay, okay. And now I'm trying this new thing and i did feel i don't want to say it like too out loud because i don't want to like totally like jinx myself but it i

if i could feel a difference when i was backstage so i'm so glad i hope i thank you so um and yeah i didn't i the passing out thing didn't happen i'm very excited anyway and on top of that our three audiences were all very lovely we did a great job it was it was one of those stretches where like i just felt so wholesome after every show it felt like every show was fun and happy not that we ever feel like shitty after a show but sometimes you feel kind of like oh maybe i dropped the ball or maybe they the vibe wasn't right but i feel like they all just were were fun and great there's one city i'm trying to think i'm like which one all those you know the one couldn't be us you know that

you know i'm so good at compartmentalizing I remember absolutely nothing from this I'm not gonna say it here but we did say we may not return what well guys I don't remember so um clearly I had a great time at all the three so uh at these at these three yes I'm saying in the past there's been a city oh oh no I'm sorry I meant this segment of three I was like m you are really scaring baltimore dc and philly right now no no we like what i'm saying is these three against all odds all of them were great usually like in a leg one of them might be off or or things we've had experiences um that's what i'm talking about that has happened yet knock on wood so uh i feel like we got we kicked off to a great start is what i'm saying but yeah i'm excited for the other one shall never return to and i wonder if anybody could guess it probably not i think anyone who was at that show i don't know i would no i don't

think so because my one of my friends was at that show and she was like wait what happened uh so yeah wild wild yeah he we have secrets that we'll probably just say next week forgetting that it was a secret um anyway anyway sorry everyone i just needed to throw an inside joke out that nobody gets to be a part of i don't know why i did that that was so mean um what's that about i don't know i'm really feeling interesting today uh christine yeah go on. It must be all the Xanax you sent through the mail that's actually meant for my shoe and I just ingested plastic. It's like you opened it and since it's 23 years old, all the powder just kind of went up in the air and infiltrated.

Why do you drink, Christine? Oh, okay. Well, so here's the thing. I was supposed to have a really big reason today that I was going to like knock your socks off with. What? I was supposed to on Saturday, which again, not again. I have never said this, but to clarify, I was going to tell you this on Friday when we were supposed to record. And then you and I ended up having like a really long meeting and didn't get to record well we bailed on recording doesn't sound like us at all i know shocker um but today so i was gonna announce this then and it was supposed to happen saturday but then when we

didn't record i was like shit okay i'll have to tell you retroactively but then it never happened i was supposed to go to bobby mackie's on saturday you bitch what happened i know i know so i was supposed to tell you this on friday and i was gonna be like um i have a confession i was invited to a double date on a double date with a new friend and she was like oh have you been on bobby mackie's down in wilder and i was like no oh my god it's probably the best that you would have gone without me first and just experience a little scared and she goes oh I go all the time like it's great I love it there and I was like wait really and she's like yeah I mean it's really kind of hokey but then she says to me what and so at first I'm thinking like uh I don't know then she says to me oh but they're renovating

within the next couple of months and they're like completely like changing and gutting the whole place. So she's like, so you should definitely. I know. She was like, you definitely have to see it before they do that. And I was like, fuck. Okay. So I was like.

No, not that. I'd say we have to go after when they've pissed everything off. Well, yeah, that too. But I want to see like the original like bar, like, cause it's been the same apparently forever and now they're going to try and modernize it and all this, but I want to see it as like a honky tonk bar, you know? yeah yeah i love it glory right like i want to see it as the divey heyday bar so i said okay okay so i told blaze well i told him we had a double date i failed to tell him where we were going for a while and then i told him a few days

later and he goes i just kind of like said it really casually and he was like wait where are we going and i was like oh bobby mackie's it's this bar like thinking somehow he would not know what it is and he goes um isn't that place really haunted and i went yeah but since you don't really believe it and he goes i don't want to go there and i was like wait a minute so i was like wait you don't want to go there and he's like no can we go somewhere else and i was oh my god this is interesting i so there's something about your house that has freaked him out officially because i know i know it's definitely that third floor because i uh it's true i think it's true it's you know what he that's that's you and his version of like whether or not you like salami

because every now and then you're like i love it and then i have to log it in my head as like oh you like salami and then the next day i'll go what are you talking about i literally don't eat i would never eat that yeah so i'm constantly in a whiplash with you about your interest and now he's finally you're getting your i'm getting the the whiplash return. Yes, I sure am. And so I said, Blaze, and I he's one of those people that like if I really am like I would like to do this or I he will relent. Right. But I'm also the kind of person who will not force someone into something. So I was like, Blaze, I really want to go.

I don't want to tell my friend like two days before that. My husband's a scaredy cat yeah my husband's too scared but okay he also framed it then like as because he's gonna listen to this and be like so mad at me um but he also framed it as more of a so it's it's down south of me in Kentucky and he framed it as like isn't that where all the trumpers go which it is and it's still a smoking bar like people still smoke in there and he's like i don't know that doesn't sound like my vibe he did start off with isn't that place really haunted so that was the first cover try to recover then he tried to recover that's right

he was like what are things that christine doesn't want to touch with a 10 foot exactly and then i was like well i can't argue against that okay this isn't sal. Trumpers are not my salami. You know what I mean? Like I'm always an anti-Trump, anti-Trump. I'm mostly an anti-salami, sometimes not. And so I said, okay, I'll see what I can do. And I kind of awkwardly texted my friend and was like, oh man, like Blaze is being really weird about it. I'm so surprised. She's like, oh, well, I mean, we can change it. And Blaze was like, don't change it let's just go so for two days I felt really on edge about it and then when we met on Friday I was like okay I have to like tell Em when we record but then the next morning I woke up to a text from my friend being like shit my fiance's sick um so like we have to cancel I'm so sorry I'm just saying the cosmos really made sure that cosmos does not

want me there we have i feel like yeah like we haven't really talked about it but like i've tried to go down folks like when eminem were in town like we've tried to go and something always comes up or something always stops us from going to the point that now i've got it in my head that i'm not supposed to be there so we started having like we thought about like going there one time and christine started having nightmares about the place like hurting us. I felt and it was so embarrassing. Like I had to tell even I'm like, I know it was my idea to go and like do a ghost hunt there when you guys visit because it's so close to me and it's so much easier than like traveling somewhere. And then like two weeks before I was like, you guys, I have to admit something.

I'm really scared scared like too scared like i started having nightmares about falling into the pit in the basement and it was just horrible anyway yeah so anyway we ended up going somewhere else i never so i'm still still not there but i'm afraid about them renovating because i want to see it before and after um so you better come on back and yeah we can do we can do a redo maybe i don't know maybe the universe will literally put we'll just go in the middle of the day if anyone's gonna be scared of the trumpers midday it'll be me don't worry you'll have nothing to worry about you'll have to excellent yeah yeah you'll be fine uh i'll just be la-di-da yeah yeah yeah lose your social security card there

you'll have a good time um but they do ghost tours like while you're there which i didn't realize my friend was like oh yeah they take you like downstairs and then i started getting really freaked out so uh that's the story of how i almost and then didn't go to bobby mackie's so and that's very and that's why i drink yes uh alone without any trumpers just in my house it sounds like you ended up having a good time then i am fine with that i mean i did i i just stayed home and drank wine worst case scenario is you didn't have to hang out with people who are against history so right like i'm not who don't believe in science so i i felt like all right

fine it's not the worst outcome um you know aside from my friend being sick but anyway um why do you drink this week i i drink in a stressed way because i have a lot to clean the the the troll hole is at a threat level midnight currently. Oh, no. I have to, like, I've created a path to be able to walk to this laptop. But it's bad everywhere else. You cannot see the floor. And I'm leaving in two days for us to go back on our next leg. Oh, right.

And I'm leaving early, which I chose for myself. But I've never gone to Salt Lake. And I'm trying to. You've never been to salt lake and i'm trying to you've never been to salt lake i mean i've like passed through like we've been on tour i know but that was when we got really really uh altitude sick and so i never got to appreciate the town oh okay i was like i swear i've been there unless i'm having like a no i'm going i'm going early this time because i want to like get like acclimated and then have fun versus like just feeling like I want to vomit and can't wait to leave um well I

mean honestly I'm that alone has been a huge improvement like last year you were not even thinking about going anywhere before I know so yeah I know and I'm you. I'm trying to. I'm very lucky to be in a position where I don't have a lot of responsibilities back home. Like, I feel bad that you have to dash off. I know you're happy to dash off because you have loved ones to go home to. But while I don't have that, I am like, if I'm going to a city I'm probably never going to go to again. I really need to, like, fucking commit to the bit i totally get it and enjoy the city so it's such a healthy way to travel i'm like i want to stay inside in my hotel room and door dash food because i'm no that sounds lovely too that sounds like its own vacation but i also know if i go back again and don't appreciate it then i'll be like oh man like when am I ever going to fly back there except for another show? So I'm excited. It's very respectable. I think I will just live

vicariously through you and figure out what Salt Lake is like. I'll text you pictures of the things you missed. Wonderful. Wonderful. So anyway, I'm looking forward to that. I think the thing that I drink, the reason why drink and it's um also in retrospect is that uh it's finally happening folks i'm getting leona on my side oh yes you did okay i told you it happened eventually and i was i waited i played the long game it wasn't even a long game you've only met her like three times and on the third time she was old enough to like have fun with you third time's charm the other time she just stared at you third time's the charm anyway it it was indeed and she really uh she taught em all about wobbly mountain um and the the first thing that she actually said

to you aloud was she tumbled off wobbly mountain which is part of the game and she landed and she just out of nowhere goes sorry funkle m and we all were like what i was like first of all you know my name and second of all what are we apologizing about we were all kind of frozen and she just kept apologizing for falling off wobbly mountain i don't i don't know but we just we took it as a win yeah and uh my personal favorite at one point we were all eating pizza and she looked at me she she went, Uncle Em, I'm so happy we both eat pizza. Oh, yeah. And I went, me too.

You were like, Christine, did you see that? I was like, yep, I saw that. And I was not at all trying to like freak her out and like approach her at all. I would also be doing the same thing if I had a kid where you're trying to teach her like boundaries and she doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to do. So I was not expecting any physical interaction with this child. And three different times I got organic hugs. I think that's why. I think it is because we didn't say like, you have to go, you know, I'm still struggling with that a little bit with my, with certain like older people in my family where I'm like not not like immediate family but you know

where i'm like you know she doesn't we're teaching her she doesn't have to hug you if she doesn't feel comfortable you know or things like that which have been kind of an uphill battle for i feel like our generation and younger i'll totally get it like yes exactly i think there were just a few people who didn't quite catch on right away um but yeah because we all grew up with like oh go give them a hug go say hi it's like yeah go kiss them on the face and you're like who is that lady yeah um no so i'm very excited that um she knows i like pizza uh which is like what more does she need to know really i mean because at one point i went are you happy that you're eating pizza she went i'm so happy and then she went funkle funkle m i'm so happy we both like pizza and i went now i'm in i'm in that's the green light that's all i need now you're in the fold

and um uh what was i gonna say about her oh she we have started something over here at schultz fourth manor which is me and allison's apartment by the way yeah um at Schultz Fourth Manor, which is me and Allison's apartment, by the way. Yeah, sure. At Schultz Fourth Manor, we now have a, it's customary. We've picked it up from Queen Leona, Queen of Wobbly Mountain. Oh, sure. That when you leave a room, you go, you go, ciao, ciao. Which, by the way, was also new to me.

I want to add to everybody that that was new to me when it happened in front of em i was like listen you and me both i'm i'm shook also every time she leaves a room with with uh christine's mom she'd go ciao ciao mom ciao ciao ciao and i just sat there like em i'm just as stunned as you are otherwise Otherwise, I wouldn't have told you about this. I guess she's overheard for her whole lifetime at this point that Christine and Blaze, before they leave, they'll say like, oh, you look good. Bye. Or something. Because now when she leaves the room, I don't know what started it, but I witnessed it, is that as she was leaving, she would just say out loud over and over again, I look good. I look good. Until someone would agree.

Yeah, until someone said, you look good. And she'd go, yeah. Ciao, ciao, mom. Yeah. Ciao, ciao. Yeah. It really is the wildest thing. Like, I look good. And it's funny because she says it in just such a very calm, like, matter of fact way. It's not really like, oh, I look so good. Like in this like sassy way. No, it's just like a oh I look so good like in this like sassy way it's just like a factual I look good I look good and like she usually does because she is wearing you know a big pink puffy jacket and like a lion hat so I'm like you do look good but she needs someone to and my mom was like you look great and she's like I look good and I'm like mom you have to say she looks good you look

good ciao ciao I mean it's just the weirdest thing But I'm so glad that it stuck with you because chao, chao really became a hit. It did. It's now become multi-coastal now over here. Wow. We're trying out chao, chao quite a lot over here. Chao, chao is making waves, you know. Kiss, kiss. Yeah, yeah.

Kiss, kiss. Okay. Anyway, that's why I drink because Leona and I, the alliance is forming before our very eyes. I love it. I love to see it. Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. And with that, that's why we drink. I don't know why everyone else drinks, but this is your reminder to drink some water, you thirsty little rats. Yeah. My basic bitch Stanley that I bought before I realized how basic bitchy it was. But I love it. It has a Bigfoot sticker from Lisa Lampanelli on it.

I love it. I feel like you just missed the VSCO era and now you're really leaning into the Stanley era. Remember when your sister kept saying you were like a wannabe VSCO girl, but it already kind of passed? Fucking rude, by the way. I was like, what the hell is that? But they were like, you know know they're hydro flasks and now you've got your stanley i know and i i kind of also had a hydro flask so i'm like man i think i just follow the water trend which is that's fine embarrassing but you know your doctor would be proud that's a that's a trend you should follow it's a trend that actually makes my life a little better so i might as well lean into it you know well christine tell me speaking of water i've got my ld my liquid death and i say we crack into it

i love the theatrics of it all you know you do and i do and we all do so okay i have i tried to throw a fun little spin on this um because we were like you said we were going to record on friday it's still only a few days away from that so we're still within the week and i'm gonna lean into it um we were going to record on friday which happened to be the seventh anniversary. What? The seventh anniversary. I said St. Nicholas Day, which is December 6th. Never mind. I don't know what plan I'm living on.

Whatever calendar you're working off of, you have a good time. But I'm over here on Earth. Sorry. My mistake. I'll come back. Well, this was the seventh anniversary of me asking you, proposing, if you will, to start a podcast with me and to take this crazy adventure that we call life. And so. Oh, my God.

Hold hands together. Oh, it's beautiful. And so as the seventh anniversary of you and me building something greater than we could ever imagine. We have our on the calendar. It's listed as podcast conception day, which is an interesting choice of words that we committed to seven years ago. It was the day you and I conceived something. A miracle. Yeah.

A miracle of twinkle in our eye was finally brought to life that's the truth and um to be on brand i thought that we should cover uh the seven gates of hell oh what and by that i mean this is a bit of a great value seven gates of hell um and we're a bit of a great value brand in general yeah i was gonna say i think if it were anything more nobody would know what to do so so this is the seven gates of hell of collinsville illinois what wait a minute what's happening now now i'm in and also we're gonna do a little drop off at acid bridge which happens to be nearby the gates of hell so let's talk about okay are you on board i just um yeah yeah i mean i want to say willingly but i'm not even sure if

that's true i'm just i'm here for the ride none of this has been willing it's seven years of just dragging each other one direction i mean you're right like i didn't even barely agree to doing the podcast to start with but yeah this is also the seventh anniversary of you saying no and rejecting me which is we always kind of brush over that part but just to be clear i did say no everybody and um and thank god was uh insistent and blaze told me i needed a hobby so here we are um thank god thank god blaze was on to something so maybe it's for the best you didn't go to bobby mackie's without me and that's why when he says shit like that that's why that's why when he says shit like that i'm like oh fuck maybe he knows something you know yeah maybe he's he's got one of those like weird guts where he doesn't want to believe in anything like he's a skeptic but he listens to his tummy

you know and that doesn't that makes me nervous yeah yeah collinsville illinois it's no galena i'm so in love with her so galena if you're listening it's not we got a message from galena i get quite a few messages from galena everyone sees the cobblestone street and they just got to let me know about it oh no fungal m we got i don't know if you saw this in our slack because you don't go in Slack, but I finally went in Slack and I saw that this is maybe an incentive that somebody who works there, like either a tourism board or something, reached out and said, like, come on down to Galena. And I said, Em, we're doing this. I tagged you in it, so you better go look at it after this. Okay. Yeah.

Why don't we just tell Andrew that we need to go to Galena for a show? Well, I don't think we even have to because we've already been invited, baby. Okay. Hey, okay, okay, okay. Well, maybe Collinsville will be the next one. I don't know. We can perform at all seven gates of hell. What do you think?

Why not? Okay. Collinsville, Illinois is about 15 miles away from St st louis just to give you an idea where in the world we are at its peak which was a long time ago the town's population was as large as the population of london what today it is now 24 000 people which is roughly fredericksburg virginia wow okay just a fun fact. This, by the way, we're going to really get into the fun facts of this place. Can't wait. The town is in the Bible belt, which you and I are both familiar with. It is also in the heart of the corn belt, which I

wonder if you know what that is. Dab, dab. Of course. The bread basket basket corny belts is not what i was talking about christine but okay oh my bad yeah now i'm the corny one um and fun fact this is a personal favorite and we're gonna do a mini deep dive for the next few bullets this place is also the horseradish capital of the world i knew i had a had a liking for this place They even have an annual horseradish festival, which will be held this year on our birthday weekend. You're kidding me. Okay, well, Tourism Board of Collins, what is it? Collinsville. Tourism Board, Collinsville, please reach out.

In case you were interested in not doing something with me on our birthday, but going to Collinsville for the horseradish festival, you would experience a cornhole tournament. There is a craft village. There is a Bloody Mary contest. I mean. music, a 5k run, games for everybody, and then a root ceremony, including a root toss, where I'm pretty sure they like shot horse radish. Radish. Okay, everything but the car show, bike show, and running, I'm in. I think the point is there's something for everyone so someone else can do

that stuff but i'm really i'm very interested in this root toss because it does sound like they just throw horseradish across the field and that's their ceremony it's like a pumpkin chuck but with horseradish yes you've got it loving it loving it i also wanted to throw a fun fact about horseradish out there that it is not a type of radish which is what my brain went to because radish is in the word so well sure um but they are both part of the same family family not and not radish radish and horse radish uh both come from the mustard family which is also called the cabbage family so i guess mustards and cabbage are the same thing in science like mustard greens you know well so they're cousins of the cauliflower which is interesting to me because they all kind of have that snappy you know yeah it's interesting to me that they have a family

tree but you know i guess that's besides the point if i if there was an ancestry.com for vegetables i'd lose my fucking mind i mean it sounds like you're literally reading off it right now. Well, I've only gotten like a cousin in. I haven't gotten to like the real web of it all. The twice removed and all that good stuff. So the other fun fact I want to give to you is horseradish is not related to radishes or horses. But the reason it's called horseradish is because originally there's two versions of how this went. Is that horse of horseradish was originally a figurative term for strong because it has a strong taste.

Oh, sure. And radish is actually Latin for the word root root so at the time it just meant a strong root okay that's interesting also the other version is that horseradish is a over time bastardized word for coarse radish and so if it were coarse a a coarse root, that would also make sense because in its original form, it is coarse. Very chuckable. Very chuckable. And the last thing I'm going to say, since we're all about the science in every possible form on And That's Why We Drink. Fun fact, horseradishes are not actually spicy or have that kind of bite to them really until they are

ground up or macerated in some way which includes being chewed so if you were to just plop it in your mouth as a whole root it is not spicy at all it's only when you actually start it's like a volatile compound as they say where once you actually start chewing into it and grinding on it, then that heat feeling is because of a release of cells. What? These cells are called isothiocyanates. Shut the fuck up.

And when you chew on them and they are released into oxygen, that's what creates the hotness when it mixes with your saliva. So it's not actually spicy until everything reacts with each other. So if you lick it, you wouldn't taste spicy. That's crazy. Mm-hmm. Wow. Fun fact.

Okay. Did you know I love, love horseradish? You know. I mean, you did, right? I took a guess. Deep you know i mean you did i took a guess deep down yeah yeah i took a guess um because i hate i ate some last night that's great on my bread i went downstairs at midnight and had a midnight snack of bread with horseradish and swiss cheese it was delicious it was delicious i bet someone else agrees with you, but it's not me. I don't know. I don't know, to be honest. I'm not sure. I do like a radish. And I am weird because I don't know if this is weird, but I've never met anybody who's agreed with me as I shared

this information with them that I like to just eat radishes like they're grapes, like just plop them in and chew them. I mean, my mom, but she eats a lot of weird things. So I don't know that she's the best example. I love a radish. Yeah, they kind of have like, they're zingy, right? They're a little bit zingy. Yeah, I thought I first, a while I thought I was allergic to them. I didn't know other people felt that. It was like, but I like it. I love that you're like, so I just kept eating them like grapes. I just kept going. Anyway, that's my, that's my bit of a deep dive, shallow dive on horseradish.

I mean, listen, I am thrilled. Thank you. Well, hey, if you ever need to know where the horseradish festival is, Collinsville, Illinois, which has their own personal urban legend that their town is the entrance to hell. legend that their town is the entrance to hell and will be the gates of this of hell will open to anyone willing to pass through and go through the rituals of seeing each gate oh my lord if you want to pass through the gates there are seven that you must pass through in a particular order to summon hell to this plane. So it's almost like hell is hidden in plain sight. And the only way to actually access it is to do these things.

These gates are actually old railroad trestles or like the bridge overpasses over like a road or a river. And it would have a train on the top. This town used to be a mining town. So they have a lot of railroad trestles oh and love a mining town and seven of them have become known as the individual gates to hell if you drive through them in order what makes it extra creepy is that a lot of them have graffiti on them or like nature's reclaiming them they just look super scary maybe not i saw a picture one just looked like kind of not that bad but at night when like the teens are out oh no i'm scared already i know

all of a sudden it's a real creepy place the best way to find these bridges is to drive down the one road that goes through all of them which is called lebanon road i hope it's lebanon road and not lebanon or i know it looks like lebanon but then there's a type of baloney called lebanon baloney and i didn't know there's a lebanon ohio called lebanon so you know but the lebanon baloney i'm mispronouncing it right now it's like lebanon or something what it's something rj's obsessed with it and then i tried talking about it with him he was like that's not how it's pronounced so anyway we're hoping that it's lebanon road folks okay okay and ironically to get to this road it originally starts as church street so you have to take church street to get to the seven gates of hell

sounds right um so you take this road it will lead you out of coll church street to get to the seven gates of hell sounds right um so you take this road it will lead you out of collinsville and to make the ritual work there are specific rules which i guess depending on what group of teenagers you talk to there's different versions for what the right rules are but like some will say you have to go through the final gate at midnight some say you have to go through the first gate at midnight you know um but it's important to stop at each gate and really take in the night which i appreciate because it's giving the ritual intent and you're not just speeding through them to say like oh i drove through all seven and now i'm in hell ha ha ha yeah right ha ha ha uh you stop at each one you like try to just enjoy the silence.

See what you're experiencing. Take it all in. And that's kind of it. You just drive from each location, which actually sounds like a lovely date idea if we're doing this during the day. It's like, let's just go. I'm down. Let's go. Let's just go to a bunch of little like parks or areas with a bridge and just like pull over and enjoy the nature yeah it feels

kind of lovely if it weren't for the teens i'd be if it weren't for the but they're at night so if you go during the day oh great yeah i mean great and then i'll bring my horseradish sandwich and it'll be beautiful i will bring a jar of horseradish and i'll put it in the picnic basket and you and i can go and look at bridges you know someone's stepdad is obsessed with this idea if you have a stepdad in Illinois this is his birthday dream to just go to all seven bridges and just be allowed to fucking stare at it and talk about it all appreciate nature and bridges like what more does a stepdad want right which makes me wonder are stepfathers the escorts to hell the answer is yes but don't tell tim that i said that well he's the escort to whatever hell comes through trains well i guess the railroad trestles

this still works i was gonna say it's pretty pretty spot on if you ask me okay renata do not take tim to collinsville illinois he you might be too late they're probably they're literally probably already there um so anyway the very first gate just happens to be near a cemetery. Totally unassuming. It does say it's unassuming, but I feel like if you're seeing a cemetery on your way to the gates of hell, it's not that unassuming. No, it fits. So there's nothing much to really say about that one. You just kind of pass through, maybe enjoy the cemetery.

I actually think cemeteries are very peaceful, you can make that part of your like picnic day um and then half a mile down the road is the second gate and this one has like a lot of prolific lore to it people claim to see yikes bodies hanging from the overpass which adds to the creepy factor it's giving bunny man bridge yeah which i did see pictures of it it really doesn't look any less similar than bunny man bridge it's just a random fucking bridge that teenagers say at night you'll see shadows hanging from the overpass but if you're a teen in collinsville illinois just get ready that's the one that you gotta be worried about another version of the story is that there were at one point two best friends who fell in love with the same girl and they fell into this rivalry um and some say that

in the story one guy hanged himself on the overpass out of like heartbreak because the girl picked his friend others say that he killed his friend so that way he could be with the girl but either way it's the story ends up being that one of them was hanged on the overpass and now you can see their shadow at night even though there's no record of it although there a lot of these were not actually recorded at any point. There's another story that a black man, or honestly probably black child, was murdered at this bridge by a lynch mob. And I don't know why we're inserting a fun little racist tidbit

into an urban legend. An urban legend, wow. Like I said very there are big patches of lynchings that went undocumented so maybe there really was something but if there wasn't then why did anyone create this storyline to begin with um anyway so it's a the whichever version you believe someone was hanged there um and as you drive by there are said to be ghosts at this bridge a lot of people swear that they see a man and a boy um just standing as you drive by and just stare at you as you drive away straight out of a horror movie yep anyway the second bridge

seems to be the one that i like the least so far. Let's leave it there. Me too. Then there's the third and the fourth gates. They are both so close to each other in proximity that they are often clumped into each other as just one gate. They're called the twin gates because of how close they are. They happen to be surrounded by a patch of woods, which feels like just, again, meant for a horror movie. woods which feels like just again meant for a horror movie in this patch where the twin gates are apparently this spot is always eerily quiet no birds come here there's no bugs the way that it's like the forestry is that there's no breeze that comes through no rustling leaves um this one's giving devils tramping ground i was just gonna say what was that circle yeah the circle yes uh so imagine that circle but now with two massive bridges going

through it the only sound people hear is of water from a nearby stream apparently part of the ritual is to just park there and just enjoy listening to the water. But the sound often lulls people into thinking that they're hearing something else. And a lot of people have said that they've heard what sounds like another car in the distance approaching them and getting so close that they think it might hit them in their car. Weird. Like, how loud must this sound be that you think another car is about to fucking hit you? Yeah. I wonder if it's just because maybe it has happened if like, I mean, if you're a teenager in the middle of the night, maybe you do hear another teenager coming up in the middle of the

night and then it just kind of turned into part of the legend. But right. I wonder if like you hear about it in advance and so it's like kind of you're primed for it and then you're listening you have to sit there and listen to the running water for 10 minutes and it like starts trance trancy yeah yeah yeah because you know when you listen to like people say if you listen to like white noise for a long time you can start like hearing things that aren't there um or staring at something for a long time maybe it's that kind of phenomenon feels like an audio version of like bloody mary or something where

all of a sudden you your brain gets tricked into hearing or seeing new things yeah anyway so that's the twin gates where it will be very creepily silent but once you really focus in on the sounds you'll start hearing other things that aren't really there and that's three and four right that's three and four okay um so and the really creepy thing of course is that a lot of people swear they hear a car coming up to them and then they open their eyes and nothing's there the sound stops abruptly um but i guess that's how you know that the ritual is working if all of a sudden you think you're about to get hit by a car. Um, yeah, you're like, yes, we did it. Uh, people who traveled to all seven gates have used different gates as spots for occult

activities. So this is where I'll tell you that the twin gates, gates three and four happen to be the most popular probably because they've got their own name, their own, their own legend of like some someone coming up to you yeah but at all seven of these areas you should be careful about maybe it's not just teens in the woods maybe it's nefarious teens in the woods oh so now it's getting scary in like a real life world too not just paranormal super duper ding ding ding christine um you might run into other people while you're out especially those performing rights after midnight which i guess again is

technically a good thing if you're trying to open a portal to hell so maybe you want to find them i don't know um yeah yeah it's all mixed signals here like how far it's like i wanted to go through the portal of hell but not like that yeah exactly you can choose it's like i feel like you could at least like keep them within your eyesight and you just kind of follow them through and let them do all the dirty work but don't like yeah yeah you could like keep one eye like keep one foot out the door metaphorically speaking you know like you can run still um so anyway you might run into other people so just a warning um gate five here's another warning there is no good place to pull over so a lot of people even though this is

technically against the rules just for safety they do just drive through and not like stop to appreciate it because there's nowhere to do it um it barely bends in a way that you're not able to even see the bridge until you're already driving through it so um there's really it's kind of just the inconvenient one there's always one you know there's gotta be one attention-seeking one you know yeah i wouldn't know who that is in our group but um certainly not me me neither weirdly enough it could be any of us so the sixth gate is often confused with the nearby acid bridge acid bridge is also haunted so the ghost stories of acid bridge and the potential satanic gates of hell stories of the sixth gate Gate, they overlap a lot.

And so if you hear someone say like, oh, Acid Bridge is a gate to hell, close, but no cigar. Allegedly, Acid Bridge is the most haunted bridge in Illinois. So if you accidentally end up there instead of the Sixth Gate, you're still going to have a good time. You know what I'm saying? I sure do. But imagine.

In fact, I'd rather go there. It seems like less work than all the other ones. It does. Especially when the work so far has been just appreciate nature. Yeah. It's like, ugh. Like, who do you think I am? Ugh.

But I will say Acid Bridge, it's the most haunted bridge in Illinois. But I will say Acid Bridge, it's the most haunted bridge in Illinois. But can you imagine like accidentally getting there and you're on the sixth of seven gates and you just fucked up the ritual? Infuriating. Like, you know what? No, now I'm just going to appreciate this fucking bridge because I'm over it. I'm not doing any more work. Forget it. The road from we'll talk about Acid Bridge in a little bit, but I just want to finish this out real quick.

The road from gate six to gate seven, there are a lot of long winding turns and it's actually a lot of people like give up and turn around because they think they either missed it or it doesn't exist or they read the rules wrong. Or I'm throwing up because I'm car sick. Yeah. Or that.

And so once you do find it, if you pass through gate seven, you're supposed to get out of your car and wait or you're supposed to stop just before the gate and wait but either way you are waiting to be greeted by satan himself so you'll be probably waiting a long time um if you wait long enough the story goes that satan himself will escort you through this final gate into hell but if satan if satan is busy he might send a proxy which uh is he'll just send a random demon to greet you so i guess that's where a lot of people will say like i saw a shadow in the woods and I assumed that was my escort, you know? What the F?

Why do you want that? As a 17 year old, I can tell you, I would have wanted it for sure. I can't. I like, I feel like I would have said I wanted it and then like halfway through I would have been like, I'm really afraid.

I would have wanted it so bad. I would have wanted it so bad. But like, what is the, I know that it's teenagers and they don't think things through necessarily. But, like, in your mind, like, way back when, what would you envision if you really believed it? Like, what would you think would happen? Like, it would – somebody would appear and you'd just run away?

Or would you, like, follow them into hell? I think if you're asking me to think like a 17-year-old, I literally – Like you yourself, yeah. Right. follow them into hell if you're asking me to think like a 17 year old i literally like you yourself yeah right i think my my frontal lobe was not fully developed and i didn't think what would happen next i just wanted oh i see i hadn't thought about after the fact i for it could have been a literal murderer and i had not thought through the fact that i could be in danger i just wanted to see something happen so that i was the person that had a success story of doing these rituals i would have been like yeah it worked and then that's that's what

i mean i yeah i can't i can't deny i mean i would have been with you like there's no doubt that i would have joined in like for sure but uh i think the whole time i would have been like guys what do we do when when satan shows up um i don't think i would have actually thought it was satan i would i think i would have just wanted something even if it was like a little bunny rabbits run by that i could have gone home and told everybody oh he was the escort to hell like i i just wanted right i get yeah yeah i wanted something to happen but it did not occur to me that that something could be just so bad understood Understood. Okay. Thank you for reminiscing. You're welcome.

About your teenage brain development. I was a dummy, but I was fun, you know? I mean, yeah. I would have. And I was a sucker. I would have gotten sucked right in. If you would tell me, ask me two times the second time, I would have been like, all right, I'll go.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I would have. And I would have probably dragged you on the third time if you were still saying no so i would have joined you yeah no doubt anyway if you wait long enough satan or his proxy a bunny rabbit i guess in my opinion um will come greet you people also often say that they hear dogs in the distance so they think that that could be like hellhounds escorting them through the final gate i think people will just find any reason to consider it a success that they got there well and i think they did a smart thing by saying you have to just

wait as right eventually something will happen yeah something's gonna happen even if it's like a bird flies by or you see headlights in the distance, like something will happen. And if you wait long enough in the dark, you'll get creeped out. So what hell actually wants from you is unclear because like once you've entered the portal, it's like, OK, now what? Like, do we get tortured? Is there like a pact, a blood pact that I've made and I didn't know? Like what happens next? like a pact, a blood pact that I've made and I didn't know.

Like what happens next? I think this is where, this is no surprise to anybody, but I think the guess is that this is just an urban legend that teenagers kind of do as a tradition in the area and then they go home. Because the next bullet I have is, if you want out after all of this, and like this wasn't fun for you, if you got freaked out, this is how you get out of the seven gates is you just do everything in reverse, which is to me that that just sounds like a U-turn. Just just go.

So, OK, but you don't have to reverse through. No, that would be hysterical and so dangerous. Oh, my God, because I'm thinking of the winding roads and I'm like, I'm vomiting in my mouth right now just thinking about how carsick I am. If you're doing it backwards, you're technically just swallowing it. This is my... Okay, gross. So it's just getting worse for me, basically. It's just like my own personal hell.

Okay, got it. Although you are the best reverse driver I've ever met. So if I were to have that with anyone, I would want it to be you. That's true. If I'm driving, I won't be carsick. So I'll drive. You tell me what to do. You know, I don't know where I am at any given moment. So you do the directions. I'll drive and we'll be good. We'll be fine. If you want out, you do everything in reverse except drive in reverse. But you start at gate seven and then you do the whole trip. Six, five, four, three, two, one.

and then you do the whole trip six five four three two one as you pass through the first slash the final gate you are to look in the rear view mirror and glance back as a way of like saying goodbye to your time at that gate but you're also allegedly supposed to be able to see hell for a moment as you are leaving the area now that's what i would do i'd be like i'll do the safe version you know i'll do all this just to look back in the mirror later yeah locals who locals who grew up in this area they have done the bridge thing and they have seen reflections of eyes in their pictures like they'd been watched all night other people claim that they have seen shadowy ghost dogs or hell hounds some people say that they've just heard dogs.

But also remember you're like in an area of nature. Maybe someone's just walking their fucking dog, you know? Yeah, fair point. One person who used to go all the time as a teenager, a nefarious teenager, said, At night it literally changes. The urban legend pales in the face of the truth. So that would have been me at 17 i would have been like they don't even get it sure yeah your live journal yeah i was like wow anything else

to elaborate no just that cool well some people said that they would it was a common thing to put flour on your cars and as you would appreciate the nature you'd get out later and see handprints all over the car um a lot of people have claimed to see full-bodied apparitions balls of light i can see the stepdad the stepdad now being like you put one on my car i know and it's just like all the hands my perfectly good car all the hands are real tiny because they're raccoons, you know. Just like eating off your car. Yeah. It's like, no, no, that's that's that's Satan's escorts. It's like, dude, it's raccoons. Could be both.

Could be both. People have seen full-blown apparitions. They've felt a sense of dread. They felt being stared at in the woods, which ghostly or not, I don't like feeling stared at in the woods. Itly or not i don't like feeling stared at in the woods it's not um no me neither and warning people have uh also discovered a lot of animal bones out here which could be from nature or they could be evidence of sacrifices people do go out there and still do occult things so look out um one of the ghosts that people have gotten the pictures of a lot happens to be, according to the legends, the victim of a car crash that happened on this route. And this was by Acid Bridge.

So the Acid Bridge story, the reason it's called Acid Bridge is because I'm guessing in like the 70s-ish era, this was where a bunch of kids would go and do acid. Drug hangout. It was where all the nefarious teens were i'm telling you this area is just riddled with them my goodness so teens were hanging out on the bridge they were dropping acid and listening to rock and roll and one of the friends this is a fucking wild version of the story there are other versions but this one like really um lures you in very quickly it's got a hook one of the friends who was dropping acid he's got a book had a had a gun oh and he okay started randomly shooting targets for fun like just like oh there's a tree let's see if i can shoot it there one of the bullets ricocheted

off of the guardrail and hit one of them in the head homegirl survived but the friends panicked thought they had killed her and so they threw her over the bridge and then they actually killed her because she drowned in the river. The guardrail at this bridge does still have bullet holes in it. But to be fair, I would not be surprised if people have shot at that thing more than once. So I don't know if it's like from the actual lore. Anyway, another version is that teens were doing acid by the bridge and uh either way they were speeding through or they were driving through and didn't see headlights in time but they swerved to avoid a crash and ended up crashing into the actual wall um there's a bunch of stories of some sort

of car accident with a bunch of teenagers who were being reckless and uh it just sounds like there is a ghost from one of these stories that now sits in this area and a lot of people see her as they drive by a similar story at the fourth gate which is one of the twin gates is that again teens were speeding through and they saw another car last minute and swerved ended up killing themselves at one of the gates a ghostly car appears as if like you're about to cross each other's paths and then it follows you in the dark for a while before vanishing so then some people think that's the escort to hell driving you or making sure you're getting to hell properly or it could be another teenager and you're like doing this right it could be anybody it could be anything but as a

teenager my brain would have immediately thought this is part of the ritual yeah satan drives an 08 honda yeah he drives an f-150 or something i don't know and he yeah i guess we're in the bible belt huh okay so anyway a lot of people see a ghostly car that apparently then vanishes out of nowhere and like the gates at acid bridge people will leave flour on their car to find handprints but apparently the handprints here are much smaller like that of a little girls or like a raccoon. I have seen enough possums as of Fredericksburg, Virginia. I know they got little. Yeah. They got something going on. Yeah.

If you park near acid bridge and leave your car unlocked, some spirit or entity might crawl in behind you. But also if you're leaving your car unlocked in the middle of the night, a human could fucking crawl in there. So this is where I'd rather have a spirit i think i'm only i'm only i know usually i'm all about the like believing things but we really leaned in heavy that this was going to be an urban legend and on top of it as someone who was a 17 year old who thought there's no way i'm being a dumbass and yet only did dumbassery if you're 17 and you're listening

to this please fucking lock your car i don't care what the urban legends say do not just leave it unlocked and wait for somebody to enter it is not a ghost it is a literal murderer don't don't play around with that no no do not play around always lock your car um so a lot of people say that something crawls into their car and hides in the back seat and it's like i could be someone with a literal fucking and also like if it's a ghost why does the car need to be unlocked it doesn't even make sense like can't can't i get in without unlocking and opening the door so just lock it and it'll get in if it wants to that's the voice that we reason that we need it.

Keep in mind, like I said, that's a PSA, like be actually safe, please. Like a lot of these, I'm all for being 17 and doing things that like your mom would disapprove of probably,

but please try to do it with some caution of like, if you're on a road and there's no place to pull over, maybe don't park in the middle of the night and get out someone will hit you um don't get yourself killed please yeah just be careful car crashes in the middle of the night especially from kids trying to like pull off the seven gates of hell can be common here it is you would not be the first car crash to happen around here in the middle of the night um you could get hit when you're pulled over if you're walking around, any of that stuff. And there is also the chance of running into actually not so good people, especially when there's like, I'm not saying a cult is bad, but if people are going there because they want to see something creepy or taboo happen, people could be walking around with with not so good intentions uh people could just be

partying in the woods or there could be like truly there could be murderers and rapists out in the woods waiting for like a teenager to just walk outside that's what i was gonna say if they know people are gathering there as kids and don't tell their parents then you know it's it's uh exactly not a lot not a big jump not a big leap to to consider the worst possible scenario anyway that is the uh seven gates of hell for our seventh year of conception wow um you nailed it thank you i'm a little i feel like i'm still on the galena train though like i did maybe it's because i said it immediately to you but i agree okay like it sounds interesting i just galena sounds

charming this is like this is like galena's younger brother who like had like yeah maybe has some friends in jail and like you know what i mean like it just seems like like the bad the bad boy little brother but like galena's like this polished experienced woman you know and don't get me wrong like as m said i absolutely would have been involved in this tomfoolery as a child but uh you know i just don't need to be around teens right now i'm like i have a toddler that's enough i if i'm gonna go somewhere i just don't need to be around teens right now. I'm like, I have a toddler. That's enough. If I'm going to go somewhere, I don't really want to be surrounded by reckless teens looking for a thrill.

You know? Hooligans. Although, while we're here, let's do a redemption moment. Oh. Collinsville, Illinois. I want to see what the actual town looks like. Oh, okay. Well, while you do that, I'm going to let Junie in because he threw his body into the wall and scared the shit out of me

any luck okay so galena i i think it's just because i'm already in love with her i i don't think collinsville is galena but i will tell you collinsville we really buried the lead and if i already did fun facts about horseradish, I should have handled this too. It looks like Collinsville has like the world's biggest ketchup bottle. Collinsville really does feel like they know that they're not Galena, but they have the fun. They bring the fun. They like don't need to be, you know, they're like, we got our own shit. What is it?

Collinsville? I literally just typed in Collinsville, Illinois, and then did images. And the first thing that came up was ketchup bottle. Do you see it? This is hilarious. Yes, I sure do. It's spelled cats up. Cats up.

Yeah. Collinsville cats up. I love it. Okay. I mean, she's got her own reasons you know colin is about it colin's like i know my big sister galena is like a little more polished than i am but we have fucking ketchup and horseradish and ghosts so wow yeah i mean you already got me with the horseradish obviously and i'm starting to lean back you know i'm kind of into it and also it's

on route 66 and i feel like that does something for me you know yeah she's a good time she's a good time oh and she's called historic collinsville you know that gets me you know that gets me some bricks some painted brick that says historic collinsville i mean all right i'm in it does you know they've got at least discuss this fucking bridge it doesn't take much to convince me of anything so um i feel like if i'll be there you're a place who is really promoting a ketchup situation in a horse ride situation you know on their main street they've got a great burger joint you know they've got a good fucking sandwich place you know they do oh with horseradish man that that sounds delightful thank you the end good job m um i've got my little demonic entity here uh if you can see him can you see him oh

there's a sweet little kitty oh as soon as you pointed your camera he did his little he showed off his claws yeah he said look what i can do i own you um and he sure does okay well m i have something special for you today not really i, every day with me is special. I know that. But this is the story of the mysterious death of Natalie Wood. Oh, OK. I'm glad you're covering it because, homie, you and I watched this on. Remember how scary that was?

I can't get over it. this on remember how scary that was i that was out of sight so we were free before christine says anything i'm going to fully interrupt i'm going to fully take advantage of the airspace unfortunately for everybody but i need to remind everybody that zach bagans is a business genius i don't like a lot of things about him but that man knows how to keep a brand moving. And during COVID, he did a series called Zach Bagans Quarantine or whatever. And Natalie Wood was one of the episodes. It was. And I'll be honest, like I sort of vaguely knew about Natalie Wood's story back when we first watched that.

It was when I was visiting L uh at one point um and we were fully ready to just watch this like new installment by Zach Bagans and kind of like you know poke fun and laugh and drink and whatever and we got genuinely scared like we I've never been actually like help we're're really afraid. I had to like slow clap for Zach Bagans because I was like, you know what? I want to hate this man. But you actually got me this time. I'm really just so scared. Yeah. And, you know, now that I've done all this research and actually watched like several documentaries just about Natalie Wood's story, I would be interested to go back and watch that episode with that knowledge because you know i don't know i i mean i think we can all agree that sometimes for better for worse zach bagans

kind of leans into the more sensational side of a story um and so i wonder you know looking back like how he presented it and how i just want to see like how it lines up with like what i've kind of learned the facts of the case are um but that that episode that one shook me up so uh if you're looking for something frightening watch that but also don't make fun of us if you're not scared and we were i guess okay because we were really afraid people are gonna be like what's your problem it's not that scary it was only like a four episode series too, which is wild. How in those four episodes did we actually get so fucking rocked compared to everything else he's ever put out? We were freaked out.

You know what? Part of me wonders if part of the marketing genius was that it was right during the start of COVID when we really didn't know what was going on. And so it was almost like it had this air of like the world is shutting down and i'm trapped in this you know he really lead it i remember the opening sequence was like so far like 200 000 people across the globe have died and we were like oh you know this was like four months in we were like oh but it wasn't even i remember like i remember part of the news saying like we're only 15 days in right now and and i was like oh my god like it was something crazy but numbers were like so small but they seemed so shocking so when we watched it

a few months later we were like oh buckle up folks it's about to get a lot worse than what it was 15 days in which does make me wonder though because i'm like he had there's no way like did it just work out perfectly for him that covid happened because they started filming this thing like two weeks into covid like how fast does his production company move like to be able to like pitch a whole fucking new show idea this had to be something before covid and then covid just happened it's very interesting yes very suspicious quarantine when did that even come out maybe it maybe it was gonna be called something else and then they called it quarantine and then they like okay it came out the first episode came out june 11th of 2020 so it was definitely a few months in yeah so

at least i imagine maybe they were starting. Maybe they were considering production on something or starting production and then like pivoted really hard. I don't know because it was all at on location. So, I mean, they didn't really have to like travel anywhere, you know. Welcome to today's installment of we just analyze Zach's business practices for some reason and get no answers. Anyway, let's cover Natalie Wood's mysterious death. Now, Em, real quick, before we start, do you know much about the Natalie Wood story or not really? Because I was kind of a newbie to it, to be honest. I only know what Zach Bagans told us. Oh, God. Okay, here we go. Natalie Wood, she was born Natalia Nikolivna Zaharenko. Okay, I wanted to get that right.

And she was born of Russian immigrant parents. That was her given birth name on July 20th, 1938 in San Francisco. and studio executive William Goetz, who would put her in her first film, changed her name from Natalia to Natalie to kind of Americanize it. And then with the name Zaharenko, he said, I'll make it Wood. So he changed it to Wood, which was apparently in honor of his friend a director named sam wood you know whatever i have thoughts on that it was the 40s you could i guess just name people whatever you wanted um yep so natalie wood uh allegedly this is part a big part of the story um and actually i say allegedly but quite a few people have confirmed it.

A fortune teller told Natalie's mother, Maria, when she was pregnant that she would have a famous daughter. And that same fortune teller was also said to have predicted that daughter would someday die in dark water. Oh, my God. Okay. What a fucking terrible psychic, by the way i get some ethics like i mean like what a great psychic but a little too to the point you know like maybe yeah like no bedside vague in it just a little bit yeah no bedside manner indeed yeah that's a good way to put it so natalie did indeed achieve fame um And apparently she actually grew up with a phobia of water because her mom, maybe not the best move, told her about this psychic or this fortune teller and said, this fortune teller told me that you would die in dark water someday.

And so there are several interview clips where Natalie Wood says she's terrified of water. where Natalie Wood says she's terrified of water. And so whether the fortune teller said it or not, whether that part was real, she definitely did grow up with a fear of water based on what her mom had told her. Which makes it even creepier. In and of itself. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like, oh, so like in her gut, then she would have known something that was off about water. There's something that stuck. Exactly. There's like something for her that really stuck. I had that exact same thought. So Natalie began dancing ballet and acting at a really early age. Her first small film role was at four years old.

But in 1947, she took on her first major starring role in a movie called Miracle on 34th Street. And of course, we know that became a huge Christmas classic. And she kind of was vaulted into fame after that. And while filming the 1949 feature two years later, The Green Promise, a kind of traumatic incident happened where the bridge that Natalie was running on actually collapsed and she broke her wrist and fell into the water. And this made her even more terrified of water than before. So she's kind of it's almost like building on itself. hit Rebel Without a Cause and she actually received an Academy Award nomination for that role so now she's becoming an A-lister and it's interesting to watch people cover this kind of progression of her acting because people have pointed out it's difficult for a child star you know to transition into that like adult or even teenage role of like rebel without

a cause like love interest you know but she really did it very well um and i think that's a testament to how good she really was as an actor and uh in 1961 going off that she famously starred as maria in the hollywood adaptation of west side Story. So if you've seen that. Fucking big hit after big hit after big hit. Hit after hit. And she really was like a Hollywood star, you know. She was a dancer, but she wasn't a singer. So she didn't actually sing in this role.

A Broadway actress named Marnie Nixon sang the part for her. But, you know, if you watch it and, you know, it hasn't aged well in that, you know, there are white people playing Puerto Rican folks and all that. But she really did, again, kind of cement her A-list status as Maria. So Natalie herself outside or off the screen was charming and adorable in person. People loved her. She was like very easy to follow. She was very easy like tabloid fodder or like Hollywood news fodder. Like people just loved following her story. Sure. And there was one documentary, it's called Natalie Wood, What Remains Behind.

And they put it this way, generations of people watched her grow up. And I just thought that was so cool because it was like people saw her as a child actress and then watched her as she became a teenager and was in Rebel Without a Cause. And then, you know, she just got more and more famous, almost like alongside them growing up as well. But of course, you know, Hollywood is not all glitz and glamour. She was under contract. She was sometimes forced to do projects she didn't want to do, whether that was like the film companies forcing her to do them or her mother pressuring her to do them. forcing her to do them or her mother pressuring her to do them. But apparently she and her younger sister Lana were both put under tremendous pressure by their mother, Maria, who is said to be a very,

very classic, like big persona, like kind of, what do you call it? Like when you're a pageant mom. Yeah. Stage mom. Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. And so there was a lot of pressure there. And that's why a lot of times people kind of question some of the stories like about the psychic and the fortune teller. It's a little shady because people say they can't necessarily trust what came from her mother. Sure. But we do know that she was a very, very obsessive parental figure when it came to all the Hollywood stuff. She was taught from a young age that she could not leave the house unless she looked absolutely perfect. She was raised to be very obsessive about her appearance to the point of destroying

her own sister's wedding photos because she didn't like how she looked in them and she felt so self-conscious that she just destroyed them uh so there's a real deep complex here that had been had been built um and just in case you need a cherry on top natalie's mom was known to tell the press god made natalie but i invented her ew that gives me goose cancer i invented her you that gives me a goose camp i invented her oh that that woman's got a she would just a psychiatrist would love to work with her or hate to i would i would or hate to right i was like well so in 1955 when natalie was just, her mother dropped her off at a hotel for an important meeting that supposedly was going to make or break her career. Her mom waited outside in the car with Natalie's sister, Lana. And Natalie was ushered into a private suite with Kirk Douglas, who, you know, we all know now, but was back then also an extremely famous and powerful actor at the time.

He was nearly 40 years old. And it wasn't until they were adults that Natalie told her sister Lana what had happened at that hotel. And in her words, Kirk Douglas hurt her. So that's what we know. We don't know real details of that, but it sure doesn't sound good. Nope. Maria told Natalie that accusing Kirk Douglas would ruin her career. So this is her mother talking.

So she just had to suck it up. And that was that. Oh, lovely. Lovely. Lovely. Lovely. Now, this one, speaking of getting goose cam and feeling icky all over, later in life, apparently, Natalie banned her mom from entering her own home, her home, Natalie's home, when she overheard her mother on the baby monitor telling her infant daughter. So like Maria's granddaughter telling her granddaughter that she would make the baby girl a star one day and that nobody loved the baby as much as she did oh oh my god oh my god this is so toxic which like it's like it's extra horrible because i i you've already listed a few

things that like where natalie was dealing with things but i'm sure there's so much more beneath that like the tip of the iceberg for her to be like you will not touch my child like yeah yeah yeah right like that's the final straw it's like that must have been enough to say nope we're done um so she kicked her out said don't come back and Natalie and Lana um because they were great mothers, became really adamant about protecting their own daughters from Maria. They didn't want their children to have the same childhoods they had. And Natalie was especially strict about this. She was hugely popular in the press. Her fans were obsessed with her, obsessed with the details of her life, especially her love life. She had actually dated several very high profile stars, including Elvis

Presley, of all people. Yeah. And so in 1957, she entered her first marriage. And this was with actor Robert Wagner. And she was 18 and just turned 18. And he was eight years older than her. And so any diciness there aside, because they hadn't known each other for a long time, they actually divorced five years later because Natalie caught him having an affair. The way he puts it now is that because he's in a lot of these documentaries, the way he's kind of described it is that he couldn't handle her being more popular, more famous than he was. And, you know, she was an insecure man. Yeah, right. Exactly. And that's what he claims today is the reason that their first marriage fell apart.

OK. So she was devastated by the divorce after her relationship relationship with warren baity uh ended because why not she began seeing another guy who was in the industry this was sydney pollack who was a married man and the director of a film she was starring in oh and yep bad news so natalie loved him but he was unwilling to leave his wife for her. And when he actually ended their affair, she was totally inconsolable and actually attempted suicide in 1966. Because this had hit her so hard. Thank God one of her close friends intervened, took her to the hospital and her life was saved. And at this point, wisely, I think she took a break from acting to focus on therapy and recovery, which seemed to go pretty well.

She seemed to kind of become more secure in herself and, I don't know, pick herself back up from rock bottom. She married writer and producer Greg Richardson in 1969 and had a daughter with him, whom she named Natasha. And then she divorced him in 1972. So they were only together for a couple of years. And then you better believe the tabloids love this shit. She got back together with her first husband, Robert Wagner. And they said they were always meant to be. And they fell back in love and

got married again and the two of them had another daughter together named Courtney in 1974 so when Lana asked Natalie about this decision just take all this I guess with a I don't know i don't know the right word but i'm just gonna rock of salt a boulder of salt but a boulder of salt right yes uh so you know she said oh we're in love we're getting married again but apparently when lana asked natalie about the decision natalie said sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't great so he was the lesser of all evils. The lesser devil. He was the bare minimum shitty man is what I'm hearing. I suppose so. She definitely put it that way, at least. So Lana

later said, I would have really liked to hear I love him dearly and I can't live without him, something like that. But to give me a quote about devils, it really didn't sit well. Right. Yeah, totally. It's like, well, he's fine compared to the others. Yeah. You could just not be married, girl. It's OK. Yeah. Yeah. It could be worse. But to be honest, things seem to go pretty smoothly in their second marriage. I think he really tried harder this time around. He he claims he had grown up a lot since their first marriage. And so things seemed pretty smooth. They were raising the girls together. And through the 70s, Natalie continued to enjoy her successful acting career and film and TV. She refused to pull any strings or even arrange introductions for her younger sister, Lana,

because she wanted Lana to make it in Hollywood by her own merit, not because she was setting things up for her. And Lana did achieve a successful acting career, but of course, you know, not quite as tremendously big as Natalie did. So in 1981, Natalie was wrapping up a sci-fi thriller called Brainstorm, and she was preparing to kick off rehearsal for a stage production of Anastasia. And she had joined a new production company. She was excited about exploring new projects that were coming up, new genres she could explore. And Lana remembers 43-year-old Natalie being very happy and just excited about the future at this point in time. And apparently her daughters were her whole world. So Lana later wrote, Natalie had the home and family and children she'd wanted all her life.

So late 1981, Natalie and her husband, Robert Wagner, start planning a routine trip to Catalina Island, which is 22 miles off the coast from Los Angeles. And, you know, we're all about Catalina. I've actually never been. You would love it. I know my brother went and that's where he ended up in the hospital. We talked about that a lot on Beach T Sandy because he only ate Oreos and beef jerky for three days on a hiking trip and got heat stroke so uh you know i had a great time uh no it has it has it all um but uh that is something that they did all the time they took a boat out to catalina and they had a boat who uh boat and a boat captain who drove the boat question mark i need to i need to look at my boat lingo captain the boat see but the thing is they said he wasn't even a captain i don't know the

right word i'll get to it i'm sure it's in my bullet points okay okay so they did their usual they took a routine trip to catalina island which is like we like we said, very close to L.A. It's a popular, like, long weekend spot, I would say, for people in Los Angeles. And they invited along several friends, and a few declined because they'd heard, like, the weather was going to be a little bit rough, making the water a bit rough. And she really wanted someone else to join them. So in the end, they did manage to get one of her friends to to join and this friend was her co-star in brainstorm and his name was christopher walken wow so yeah christopher walken joined them on their boat ride so the three of them set off uh it was robert christopher and dennisvern. He was the yacht's pseudo captain, something pseudo captain. Let's

say captain. You know what? I don't know. That's what most people say. Technically, he's the skipper, I guess. He was the one who managed the boat. He took care of the boat. He worked on it when the boat went out. He's not technically the captain but that's kind of how he gets portrayed he's driving them along and he's responsible for the boat which by the way is called the splendor and which probably i shouldn't be saying is a boat because it's a yacht and i'm sure that that's something i would get in big trouble for sure it's a yacht it's called the splendor with a u splendor splendor. Splendor. And Splendor. November 28th was the day they took off.

They moored the Splendor just offshore and used a dinghy to go ashore for dinner at Doug's Harbor Reef. And in case you're unfamiliar, a dinghy is basically a little boat that goes on your big boat. And then you can hop on the little boat to get to shore instead of like bringing the entire yacht with you you know so they went out to dinner and apparently they drank so much wine that night that the restaurant manager was actually worried about them navigating the dinghy through the water back to their boat um so that's just to give you an idea of how drunk they were and when they left at 10 30 the manager of the restaurant actually sent a member of the Harbor Patrol with them to make sure they made it back to the Splendor safely. And with that escort, they did. They made it back to the Splendor.

But after that, as you can imagine, the story gets complicated because there are different versions, different theories about what really happened. But just after 11 p.m., the three men, this is their official story, realized Natalie was missing. They also realized the dinghy was missing. That was at 11 p.m. At 1.30 a.m., Robert made a ship to shore call to ask that people look around for Natalie in town in case she had gone back to town. Two hours later at 3.30 a.m. Robert was finally convinced by others to reluctantly call the Coast Guard to report his wife missing. And this was four and a half hours after they had first noticed that she wasn't there anymore. this is sorry sorry so as of 11 they noticed she was missing but the harbor patrol guy did see her with them so the harbor patrol guy saw them leave at 10 30 from the restaurant and and it was all four of them at the time saw them all four of them saw

all four of them arrive or i'm sorry the three of them arrived back on the boat and um dennis was on the boat okay okay so he's just an employee basically sure but the so harbor patrol guy did see her at 10 30 with them yes they made it safely to the boat they left the restaurant at 10 30 he escorted them safely all back to the boat so there's a half hour window where all of a sudden she went missing and we don't know what happened in between then. Allegedly, yes, precisely. So the story is, right, they get back safely to the boat. Thank you for bringing us safely here, escorting us.

We're all good now. Bye. That's around 1030-ish. And then around 11, allegedly, the three men realize Natalie is nowhere to be seen. And then around 11, allegedly, the three men realized Natalie is nowhere to be seen. And so it's not till 3.30 a.m. that Robert finally calls the Coast Guard to report his wife missing. Then at 8 a.m., tragically, searchers found Natalie floating, having drowned in the water that last night, roughly a mile from the yacht in a cove called Blue Cavern Point. And pretty quickly, police ruled Natalie's death an accidental drowning. Robert told police Natalie must have taken the dinghy out to go party hopping on other nearby yachts.

And when they did an autopsy, it revealed she did have a blood alcohol content of 0.14. a blood alcohol content of 0.14 and so with that alcohol uh impairing her coordination robert and investigators assumed she had just fallen off the dinghy at some point while trying to get to another boat but everybody else who knew her was a little confused because first of all natalie was discovered only in her nightgown and a coat uh And her sister, Lana said that makes no sense. Like she wouldn't even go get the mail without putting makeup and her hair together and putting on a nice outfit. Like, you know,

as we said, our mother put a lot of very intense obsessions in her, including her, her outward image. And so it just didn't make sense to people who knew her that she would go party hopping in her pajamas basically right um it just didn't strike them as as likely it was also inconceivable that uh she would go out into the water alone in the dark on a choppy night right like it it just felt so unlike her uh especially because with her fear of water she had

never learned to swim so it just seemed very strange with this fear of water fear of drowning which she had talked about on live tv uh she got in the dinghy and went off without telling anyone in her pajamas. It just struck family and friends as a little bit odd. Years later, Dennis, the skipper of the boat, recalled that when the news broke that Natalie was found dead, Robert was, quote, very serious about having the stories be the same. He apparently told the three men aboard. So that was himself, Dennis and Christopher Walken, told them to have a timeline together before they talked to the police leading up to Natalie's death before they were questioned.

so robert and christopher walken then left in a police helicopter leaving dennis to officially identify natalie's body because robert said he didn't want to do it so that seems like the definition of above my pay grade right like he's your yacht skipper and you're like anyway go identify my wife's dead body while we go in the helicopter back to shore. It's just so outrageous to me. And also, wasn't Christopher Walken, like, Christopher Walken didn't know them that well, right? Didn't he, like, just meet her on a movie set or something? So they were starring together on this film. And they had been really good friends.

And there's a lot of speculation because people said people were speculating whether they were having an affair like before all this happened um and there's a lot of speculation about robert being jealous of her friendship with christopher walken gotcha and they were you know like co-stars and they had that kind of um. And so they were, she and Christopher Walken were much friendlier than Robert and Christopher Walken, if that makes sense. Gotcha. Okay. So they left in this police helicopter. Poor Dennis had to identify Natalie's body. And following Robert's order, Dennis told the police he figured Natalie must have left on the dinghy by herself it wasn't until years later that he came forward and said there's a major problem with that story he said

if natalie wanted to go to a party she no doubt would have asked him dennis to take her in the dinghy not to go she would not go by herself he was like she would have asked me to take her right he was also literally hired to do that yes exactly that was his job and he's not drunk right like they're they're all out partying drinking he's just their employee he's yeah I'm trying to vote I'm trying to imagine a world where like she was so drunk she was like I can I can do it or like maybe I need to face my fears and i don't know what i'm so scared like i'm trying to think of a but then also her pajamas and everything is there a way that the dinky just like got loose and like that's a separate thing from her just like falling off the boat

yes so there are theories about that um so you're you're definitely onto one of the theories with that so i will i will get there um but like you said this was dennis's job so he says you know if they're claiming oh she went to go party hopping like that doesn't make sense she wouldn't have done that by herself she didn't even know according to dennis how to operate the dinghy and so she couldn't have taken it herself it just didn't make sense and indeed the dinghy. And so she couldn't have taken it herself. It just didn't make sense. And indeed, the dinghy was discovered washed ashore on some rocks with the key in the ignition, but the key had never been turned. So she had never even started the dinghy. It looks like a setup.

Yeah, precisely. The engine had never been started. The oars were fixed in place as well, meaning the dinghy wasn't even manually rode by anybody. It had just been kind of let go. But with all three men having told investigators the same story, you know, they just kind of went with it. However, looking back, Natalie did have bruises on her body and a cut on her cheek. But it was kind of overlooked as like that must have happened

when she fell overboard, you know? Right. They did also find a broken bottle of wine in the yacht, but Robert said it had fallen and shattered in some rough sailing conditions, and that was his explanation. Two weeks after Natalie died, they closed the case and that was that. But Lana, her sister, was really, really struggling with this kind of just open and shut case angle on her sister's death. And after Natalie died, Robert just completely cut Lana out of his life, like just totally cold, cold shouldered ghosted her. cold cold-shouldered ghost at her lana continually asked robert uh despite him you know closing the door on that their relationship as in-laws uh continually asked him to explain what happened

to natalie that night and how what happened when she died what happened before what what was the situation she just wanted more clarity and she really didn't have any details and was obviously traumatized by this. So she's asking just, I want to know the events leading up to it. And she thought maybe having more information would help her grieve and understand this and heal from it. But Robert basically told her, I'm not talking about it and don't speak to me. Totally cut her off. So he criticized Lana for selling some of Natalie's estate, like her valuable clothes. And that's something that Lana has been kind of criticized for. But

Lana, who was divorced and really hadn't quite hit big time Hollywood status, as Natalie had said, she was just trying to support her daughter. There was a little bit of that back and forth. And then Robert made her sign legal documents giving up any other claim to her sister's estate. And she was forced to sign those papers and then he immediately stopped speaking to her altogether. He invited Lana's mother, Maria, who was still alive, and even Lana's daughter over for dinner all the time regularly. But Lana was not welcome. Interesting. Strangely, you know.

Lana continued to try to find more work behind the scenes in Hollywood, but she just wasn't, I don't know, she wasn't the star that her sister was. And so she struggled to kind of find those same type of opportunities one day she was allegedly contacted by a trusted source and told she would never find work there again because robert wagner had blacklisted her he's so fucking guilty i don't know what's going on something so fishy is happening right now something is so fishy on some side and it's like it's hard because you watch one documentary that features Robert Wagner and Natalie's kids and they're like yo Lana's crazy she just wants like she's like her her

mother she just wants like all this drama and she wants to create this storyline about herself and that's why we cut her out and you're like okay i can see why you would not want that in your life and then you flip it and watch a different documentary with like police investigators who are like this is not like something's wrong with this picture of the way this investigation was handled so you really do see conflicting sides um it's it's something's fishy you're i mean you're absolutely right something's up um one of them knows something that's all somebody knows in indeed i absolutely agree so apparently ilana struggled to understand why he was so hostile toward her and wished he would just like meet

with her once to to get this on the table and and figure it out once and for all and discuss her sister's death but meanwhile robert insisted that dennis the skipper of the boat the yacht excuse me move into his guest house in beverly hills so he like basically pressured this employee who was there the night Natalie died into moving onto his own property into the guest house. And apparently when he did do this, Robert insisted that Dennis remain indoors at all times and communicate with no one. Oh my God. And that's according to Dennis's take on how this all went. Okay. So Dennis said he moved in thinking like, okay, well, he wants me to live closer.

Maybe, I don't know, be more involved with his day-to-day life. But he said once he moved in, he felt like a prisoner. And he said he just had to get out of there. So he eventually made a getaway to the East Coast. He said he had to flee basically as far as he could to get away from Robert. And apparently he really struggled at this point and kind of had to come to terms with everything that had happened. And it wasn't until the nineties that he started drunkenly calling Lana to

tell her that her sister Natalie's death was not an accident. I mean, yeah, lana to tell her that her sister natalie's death was not an accident i mean yeah i mean i mean but also yeah so this is where obviously the paths diverge right because? Because on the one hand, you've got Dennis and Lana, who are making very big claims, who are writing books about this, who are getting paid for these books and getting press. And of course, you've got the family saying like, look, they're just like money hungry. They're just trying to profit off our mother's death and yada yada. And then you've got the other side which is like well maybe the guilt was eating at them or maybe maybe this really is how it happened and they're trying to get her story out there so there's a lot of conflict here um oh my god so many question marks

so many questions there's someone there's someone with like the red string all over their walls like there's totally. Like there's. Totally. I think there's probably a lot of people who do. And you know what I realized? Remember in that episode of Quarantine, the Zach Bagans show, the guy on the Zoom call was Dennis. Oh, that was Dennis. That was Dennis.

Yeah, I remember him because I was like, why is that guy so familiar? And I was like, oh, right. He scared me a lot in that one episode of Zach Bagans distraught he was like just sobbing he was upset because like he was really really upset because even though so dennis was technically like the skipper of the boat but it sounded like they were like best friends it sounded like yes they'd been very close yeah so that that goes to the point of like she would have asked him to drive her to a party or something. Right. Exactly. And he knew her very well. So like he knew like Natalie wouldn't have gotten on the dinghy by herself. She didn't even know how to drive it. You know, like he knew those kind of things.

And like you said, they had a relationship that he'd been working for this family for years. And they'd done this trip to Catalina so many times that he just knew well enough. So basically the situation now is like either he's lying, like just blatantly lying. He didn't look like he was lying on quarantine. Well, certainly not. And, and that's, you know, where you get into the, he said, she said either he's lying or he really believes that's what happened. Um, and so, you know, the question marks remain, but I'll tell you, I lean one way, but we'll get there. So after nearly two decades of refusing to speak about his wife's death, Robert finally said he would open up and talk about his wife's death. He was

interviewed and he told the story, but interestingly, his story was different this time. Convenient. Interesting. Interesting. This time, he said Natalie didn't take the dinghy out. Instead, she was below deck going to bed. And because the dinghy was loosely tied, it was banging against the side of the boat. the dinghy was loosely tied it was banging against the side of the boat and to for what it's worth this was something apparently that had driven her crazy in the past like when the dinghy would

clank against the side of the boat and she was trying to sleep down there so he said his theory is that she went out just grabbed a coat went out to go retie the dinghy so it would stop banging uh and fell in and that was his new theory okay that makes more sense that's a it makes a good lie it's a good lie yeah if it's a lie it's if it's a lie then it's it's a sensible one i think especially if it was something that really bothered her um in 2011, now this is 30 years after Natalie's death, investigators reopened the case. Okay. Yeah, because some new information had come to light. Was it from Zach Magans?

What was it? In 2011? No, I don't think so. what was it in 2011 no i don't think so um lieutenant john carina of the los angeles county sheriff's department basically says robert's story makes no fucking sense is essentially i like him i like this guy cliff's notes of it yeah he said quote the reality is that's not her job she would never go worry about the dinghy she's gonna tell to tell Dennis Stavern, Hey, can you go tie that dinghy down? It's making noise. That's his job,

which is like, again, the same kind of thing about like with, with driving her somewhere to a party, like that is not something that she ever would have done on her own. And so he's like, she would have just said, even if she was like really pissed,

she would have said, Dennis retie that thing. It's fucking making noise, whatever, you know? And so it just didn't make sense to the lieutenant. Investigators also called into question the bruises that had been found on Natalie's body, which actually, now that they thought about it, didn't seem very consistent with falling off a boat. Oh, okay. Yeah. Detective Ralph Hernandez said, I think i've been a cop long enough to see

that those appear to be assaultive in nature oh okay so now we get back to dennis the skipper he's kind of like the crux of all this right so dennis according to him the night before natalie's death she and robert her, got into a heated argument. She was so upset she had Dennis take her to shore where she stayed the night in a hotel. But Dennis is considered a problematic witness because when he finally changed his story years after the incident, like I told you, he sold it to tabloids and he wrote a tell-all book so people are like yeah it's just hard to use him as like an impartial witness when he's made so made like he's not impartial anymore he's like definitely inserted himself into the opinions exactly and so whether it's true or not it's like it's just hard to rely on that uh as fact so dennis for what it's worth insisted that he came forward

um not just not for money at all but just for his own conscience and because he felt like he needed to say something um but what we do know is natalie did call a friend from ashore that night and asked them to come to catalina to get her and take her back to the mainland. So this was the night before she died. So a friend basically said, oh, she called me and said, I want to come home. I had an argument with Robert and I left the yacht. And so we do know from another separate witness, a friend of Natalie's's that she did in fact get into an argument and leave the yacht and go to a hotel because she called her friend but even though she wanted to go home uh the rain and the choppy seas prevented natalie from getting there so in the morning

after cooling down she decided you know what i'm gonna go back to the splendor i'm gonna try to enjoy the rest of my trip and get over this argument we had. But apparently that night, when the three of them returned to the boat after dinner at 1030, when the, what was he called? The harbor guy helped get them to the boat. When they returned, Dennis claimed that Robert angrily smashed a bottle of wine on the counter after walking in and seeing Christopher Walken and Natalie kind of just like laughing and and kind of leaning to each other just not you know almost flirtatiously not kissing or anything but just being like a jealous man would read it the wrong way correct like it just read as they're having such a good time together they click so well clearly this was just pouring you you know, gasoline on the fire.

Which makes sense because if their if their first divorce is because he was insecure. He was insecure. And he's only she's only gotten more powerful and like famous. And more self-assured. And, you know, and so at this point, according to Dennis, he walks in. He's immediately enraged. He smashes a wine bottle and he shouts at Christopher Walken, what are you trying to do? Fuck my wife?

Whoa. And that is the story Dennis tells. Apparently at this point, Natalie was fed up. She went off to bed and said, I'm out of here. Went to bed. Apparently Christopher Walken went to his room. Robert followed Natalie trying to like keep the argument going, shouting, throwing stuff, making a whole racket. And Dennis said he went to try to intervene in the argument.

But Robert like freaked out at him now. And Dennis said he was so upset and enraged that Dennis was afraid for his own safety and was like, okay, you know what? I'm out of here. Like above my pay grade once again. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so he's like, I'm out of here. This is a clearly a marital thing that I'm not getting involved in, but he claimed he could still hear all the commotion. So he said the argument continued outside to the back of the boat and then there

was sudden and complete silence. Wow. Hmm. Hmm. So that is Dennis's story. And in 2018, a 48 hour special came out. And in this special, investigators said two new witnesses had actually come forward to corroborate Dennis's story. These witnesses claimed they heard an argument outside, recognized the voices of Robert and Natalie, and said the argument just suddenly ended in silence. So soon afterward, Dennis found Robert crying and Dennis was like, what's going on? Is everything okay? Where's Natalie? And Robert said, Natalie is missing. Okay.

Perfect. Like I said, perfect. So like I said in the early timeline, Robert refused to let Dennis turn on the floodlights to look for her in the water. Right. He's like, let's find her. And he's like, no, don't turn on the flood lights don't call anyone and so it he wanted forced them to wait hours four and a half hours before they called the coast guard that man is

a prime suspect number one to me i'll tell you i'll be honest i don't feel good about it i'll tell you that much it sounds like he threw her overboard and didn't want any lights because he didn't want anyone to find her struggling so he'd have time for her to drown that's yeah or yeah something like that or he knew what he'd done and he was just like trying to hold off as long as he could. Yeah. You know. Something.

Something not legal or good or nice. The thing is like she didn't know how to swim. So it wouldn't even have been a long wait. You know, it's not like she could have been treading water and saying. Right, right. And shouting, you know, which is also so upsetting to think about. But yeah, so he had them wait which is factual we know that the story that robert tells is that she went missing at 11 and they didn't call the coast

guard till 3 30 so we do know that's true um but lana now believes robert is responsible for natalie's death and she openly accuses him of foul play. But again, Natalie's own daughters are very close with their dads. They're separate fathers, but they're both very close with both of their dads and claim that this was all just an accident. So it's hard because you see these two girls who like lost their mother and they're like, no, of course my dad didn't do that, you know?

And so you want to believe them and you want them to be right but it's so hard to wrap your head think of a way where it's not you know yeah i don't i mean i am i'm not an expert but i do have gut feelings and i do have i have some wherewith. It doesn't seem like, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of options here on what could have happened. It's just a little too shady. Some people seem a little more damning than others, you know? Yeah, I would absolutely agree. So Robert, who's now 93 years old, continues to maintain his innocence. In the HBO documentary Natalie Wood, What Remains Behind, which came out in 2020, Robert sat with Natalie's first daughter, Natasha, and discussed the night Natalie died in more detail. And Natasha said she personally remembered that the dinghy did often irritate her mother and she had frequently asked robert to go move it so it would stop banging on the hall so in some sense i guess if they're in an argument

and she hears it and she's annoyed she's like fine i'll do it myself you know i guess i could see that being the situation but she asked in the documentary so this is now uh his daughter or i guess his daughter his first his stepdaughter let's put it that way his stepdaughter but she said she calls them both she calls him like daddy wagner so she calls them by she calls them both dad okay uh that's how close they are but she asked him how it feels to be considered a person of interest in the reopened investigation i like how she's like one of the only people who can probably ask him that direct right without without like what's like to know you might be a murderer oh my god dad isn't that weird yeah so he told her he doesn't pay any attention because the media

and the investigation cannot redefine or change who he is or the truth uh and natasha said but it's important to me, Daddy, that people think of you the way that I know you are. And she says in the documentary, she knows Robert would have given his life for Natalie, for her mother, and that she doesn't want anyone to think otherwise. Now, Natasha's younger sister, Courtney, said of the accusations, it was so transparent that certain people exploited my family like this and it makes me very protective of my father i love him so deeply and it has gone on for so long that i still can't believe they actually write such untrue things so they've really split from their

aunt lana um obviously and today lana remains very vocal and convinced that robert was somehow involved in her sister's death. But the rest of the family just wishes she would stop accusing him. Let them move on once and for all. Leave this in the past. But of course, you know, people don't like to let stories like this die. So tabloids continue to run stories accusing Robert. But basically, it's a he said, she said.

You know, Dennis, Robert, and Lana each have their own stories of what happened. None of them can be fully proven or disproven. And as of May 2022, so a year, almost two years since recording this episode, Robert Wagner was finally officially cleared of involvement in Natalie's death by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. That being said, the case remains open and unsolved, and investigators do still welcome any new information, any witnesses who have yet to come forward to help clarify events that might lead to answers as to what happened to Natalie that night in 1981. The hell happened with Christopher Walken's opinion of this? that might lead to answers as to what happened to Natalie that night in 1981. What the hell happened? What's Christopher Walken's opinion of this? Oh, so he's actually been asked repeatedly and he has never. He says, I don't speak about that.

Wow. Yeah, there's there are a few clips I saw where he's been asked to say, you know, we have to ask. And he says, I understand. I'm not going to speak on that. Either he knows nothing or he definitely knows something and he's or he knows everything right isn't that crazy like it feels like i mean i don't maybe there's a world where robert wagner didn't do anything but it feels like he's been threatened into silence it feels like either he my my take is almost not even threatened because I feel like Christopher Walken would be like, fuck you and your threats. My take is that he doesn't necessarily know because he was like, I'm out of here. They're having a marital spat. I'm going to bed.

But maybe he has an idea or maybe he he's like, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut because. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like maybe he doesn't have any hard facts but he has like an inkling you know is the vibe I get but again I don't this is all conjecture I have no idea I mean my hope would be maybe someday on like Christopher Walken's deathbed or something yeah like or writes a tell-all right before you know what I mean like maybe we'll find a journal I don't know I I wish there were more answers but it is so shady so fishy and like

just really tragic I mean overall just really fucking sad you know yeah yeah and man well I guess Dennis is still around and kicking and talking about uh I mean he didn't seem like he was um i guess he didn't tell like an actual side of the story on the zach bagans show but he was very um emotional about it it still really clearly fucks him up he was and remember something weird happened like something very jarring happened that scared the absolute shit out of us something happened i think he was like talking like he still like talks to natalie or something and like like talks to like her ghost and then like at the exact same time something happened at the house yeah something really weird happened i remember you and i both jumped like out of our skin um yeah and i think like their call dropped or something it was just

very weird um but again like i'm gonna re-watch it now that i kind of know more about the story and know who he is. Yeah, I want to, too, especially because now I remember anytime we've gone to the museum, too. We've seen the Natalie Wood room where like the wine bottle and everything is at Zach's museum. Yeah. So this sheds so much more. I wonder if Dennis donated like the whole fucking yacht to him or something. Well, it wasn't his his so i don't know

what happened what happens when a like does a boat when like a notorious person or like a famous person ends up like dying in a bombshell story like does that boat still get used i know this is such a random question but i'm like i feel like that should have been memorialized somewhere that it's probably owned by robert wagner he probably sold it to somebody didn't want anything to do with bitter i don't know was the highest bitter zachary alexander bagans i mean like genuinely maybe how old was he like four when this happened no um yeah i don't know i don't know it's a good question i have no clue clue. Hmm. Well, good story. I mean, good telling of a bad story. Well, thank you.

It's, it's pretty dark, but, um. But it does give us a reason to go watch that show again. Because I don't think we ever even finished the four episodes. I think those. We didn't. I think we got so scared that we never even finished it. Oh, which also one of the episodes we did watch, though, I think was about Kevorkian. If, if I'm putting in story requests oh yeah yeah his fucking museum i don't know about

it man i'm i know i like it but i know i'm scared at the same time i don't like it i think it makes me feel bad and weird i appreciate that he's collecting things that other people don't know what to do with anymore. He's like, I'll take it. It's like a real mixed bag of all the weird shit that nobody else really wants. And he's like, I'll be the goodwill. Give it to me. Sometimes I don't like that he does like he puts on display, you know, paintings by Charles Manson. And, you know, I don't i don't love all that i don't

love the room of serial killers where he has like all their artwork i was gonna say what's the room that we went to on your bachelor party which was such a fucking bummer well like the one that i can't the one that i felt physically ill like just truly i can't even really think about it because the mattress skin crawl yeah it's that room where there's a mattress in this many men had been tortured on this mattress yeah and it's still like stained with like it's still stained with like all sorts of fluids and stuff and i thought that was totally distasteful i was like i don't know how that's not well it's gone now staring at that so i think enough people complained it's like has not. The last like two or three times I've gone, it was not there.

I did not find that to be it. I was like, that's too far. Sorry, folks. Which I don't know how that does not just get like burned or like left in like an evidence archives facility. Like that was a lot. I thought we were going and it was just going to be like Bela Lugosi's mirror. Creepy dolls.

Yeah, exactly. And that part I think is great and fun and like spooky, but the thing with the like actual deaths and like this, like let's all stare at it and it just feels like very distasteful to me.

Well, what was extra, what was extra terrible? That one, that one room I remember being like, this was a bad call. This was a bad call. I backed out of there. Yeah.

But they also had not only are you looking at a mattress i mean like if there wasn't glass like it's it's still set on a cot so like if the glass weren't in the way if the glass wasn't in between the two of you you could have just sat down on it like any other bed it was like right fucking bear and the thing that made it incredibly awful is that whoever was responsible for torturing people on that bed had audio recorded and they were playing the audio they were playing the audio it's like what are you so yeah that was like beyond like i've never like that was that was so tone deaf and so not tasteful so not i was just really troubled by that yeah agreed agreed um so yeah

i mean you know what all with a boulder of salt as we say um enjoy at your own risk i suppose yeah although i will say that room is not there anymore so i think enough people were like that is so beyond fucked up yeah you did say that okay uh no, the ghosts, all the things that he's inherited that were ghost things, I'm glad somebody's taking it in. And then I found out from one of the employees there, because I was like, oh, it seems like since last time I was here, things have moved. Like, where are, where's this pile of dolls and where's this and this? Apparently, this museum, this is what i think they should do i'm not like the business guru like uh like zach is but apparently that house is only ever holding like a 60th of the shit that they own at one time oh wow so it's like a like exhibits are moving in

and out of it like yeah apparently zach has like not only did he buy this museum he also bought an entire not like a storage like he bought the whole facility facility and like oh my god that's what it sounds like he's just got like like ceiling to floor stacks and stacks and stacks of all haunted things i mean god forbid but imagine that man dies tomorrow and someone has to go like through his estate. I know. Whoa. You know who you'd make fucking do it. Aaron. By himself. You're so right. The guy would read the lawyer and reach out and be like, hey, you know, you're on the list.

You're his executor. And Aaron would be like so touched. And they'd be like, now figure out what to do with all this shit by end of week. And also Zach stopped paying the electric bill. So it's pitch black in that storage facility so get yeah get crawling and he also uh he also maintained from beyond the grave that you must video record the entire thing and but also i honestly christine i guarantee in his will the final ghost Adventures production would be Zach as a ghost. Oh, for sure. For sure. No doubt. Go ghost hunting in Zach's own home looking for Zach.

He's planning that already. Fade to black. That is the final. I guarantee it. Mark my words. When he goes, this will exist. I know it's already written down somewhere. It's like Dolly Parton. Did you hear about the song that she wrote she has a song that she's

already created and she's already said it's like her favorite song and so she's so bummed out like she'll never get to hear what people think of it but it will uh it's only going to get released after she's died dude i am not patient enough to be that way and she's like it's such a bummer i won't hear people respond to it because it's my favorite dude good for her for being so like restrained but i don't know how people do that anyway that will be the like there's gonna be two series one's gonna be aaron going through all of zach's shit and then the final episode will be looking for zach and that'll be it looking for Zach oh god it's so tragic but so

true and we all know it anyway okay all that to say those the seven gates of hell and Natalie Wood those are the reasons why we drank this week indeed and I'm very excited to

be getting so much time with you you christine because i've been i saw you with my face and i'm seeing you with my screen and then like in a few days i'm gonna see you again with my face it's gonna be very fun i can't wait i can't wait and i can't wait that's why we drink