Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Armchair Anonymous: Blessing in Disguise

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us about a blessing in disguise. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I say it throughout the episode and I'm gonna say it again publicly, I was way wrong on this prompt.

I have very low expectations. I thought it was gonna be really earnest and saccharine and a new word we just learned, tri-tri-fee-o? Tricol. Tricol. Just learned Tricol. Still won't have my hands around it. I would not be able to use it for a while with confidence.

Okay, we'll work on it. But I thought it was gonna be a little bit of that. And this turned out to be one of our best prompts ever. It was so fun. I mean, there's murder afoot. Well, ding ding ding, Easter egg. Easter egg, but it could come in any one of these stories. True, I really do wanna get a board in here that has words we're learning.

Oh, that would be fun. Treacle would be the first. Is there another one that we've been circling? No, that's the first. That's the first one. Okay, first submission, Treacle. Yeah, I think you can listen to this. Unless you've been circling? No, that's the first. That's the first one. Okay, first submission, Treacle. Yeah, I think you can listen to this. Unless you've been murdered.

Yeah, it would be triggering if you've been murdered. Yeah. And you hear this. It would remind you of being murdered for sure. Please enjoy Blessings in Disguise. We are supported by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. We, of course, have our website built by Squarespace by WabiWab. He found it very easy and intuitive. You've heard

us talk before how we actually host our own website on Squarespace and we're so happy with it. Rob did a beautiful job. He used the templates. It was easy, fast, and its functionality is off the charts. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to set up a site for your business or you've got a passion project that's ready to reach the masses, Squarespace makes it easy for you to get your perfect website up and running. And if you're selling on your website, Squarespace also makes checkout seamless for your customers with simple but powerful payment tools. Except credit cards, PayPal, and and Apple Pay and in eligible countries offer

customers the option to buy now and pay later with after pay and clear pay. Check out squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash DAX to get started today. What's up guys? It's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you, it's Squarespace.com slash DAX to get started today. What's up guys. It's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season. And let me tell you, it's too good.

And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest. Okay. Every episode I bring on a friend. I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on. So follow, watch and listen to baby. This is Kiki Palmer on the wonder react or wherever you get your podcast. and listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello. Hey. Is this Mandy? Yeah.

Why do you have such a wonderful recording setup? My friend has a podcast, so he gave me this microphone. I think he might be our best sounding caller to date. Wow, that's a big, I don't know. I shouldn't say that because we did have a musician today. We'll put you in top 10. I'm gonna let him know because he was like, you're gonna be on a podcast we did have a musician today. We'll put you in top 10. I'm gonna let him know, because he was like,

you're gonna be on a podcast, I have the whole setup, I'm gonna give you everything in headphones, and I was like, no, no, no, just the mic is fine. Oh, this is great. Where are you at? I am in Durham, North Carolina,

from Tennessee originally. And what town were you from in Tennessee? A small town right outside of Knoxville, it's called Oak Ridge, it's actually part of the Manhattan Project. What part of the Manhattan Project were they doing there? I think they's actually part of the Manhattan Project. What part of the Manhattan Project were they doing there? I think they were building part of the bomb there,

but that's the reason the town started in the 40s, and now there's like a big national lab that's still there, and that gets only claimed to fame, but kind of a cool one. I like that. Very. Okay, so you experienced a blessing in disguise. Yes, so this is the summer between freshman and sophomore year of college for me, and I'm back home for the summer.

Growing up, I had pretty strict parents, and we had a particularly rough summer. Right before I went to freshman year of college, I was sneaking out, they were doubling down, they were trying to be like, okay, you're 18, but here are still the boundaries when you're living here. And I'm like, well, I'm 19 now. I've been living on my own for a whole year. I have all this wisdom. So we're kind of trying to figure out our boundaries and I decide I'm going to get a job at the only bar in my hometown. And it's like a bar and grill.

So it's open at 11 a.m. and open until like 3 a.m. on Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I'm one of five or six servers that's working there and everyone else is showing up late, showing up drunk, not showing up at all. A couple people got fired for selling drugs at work. Like it's the most unhinged place I've worked at in the service industry. And at 19, I'm loving it. I'm like, this is great. There's drama all the time. It's interesting. These people are fun. I'm trying to like hang out with people after work, testing boundaries with my parents about like,

am I just gonna say I'm working later? How much am I gonna disclose? And so anyway, I'm opening and closing pretty regularly because everyone else is not showing up. So I'm the lead server within a couple of weeks. And I was opening with this guy who was the head cook. We'll call him James. And so he's like 25, 30 years older than me, and he is one of the only dependable people

in the kitchen at the time, so we're regularly opening. Okay, I just wanna be clear. Did you say he's 25 or 30 years older than you, or he's 25 or 30 years old? He's like 45 or 50. So just think of me, okay. Young at heart, same as you. Sure.

He's super friendly, kind of a hippie vibe, hanging out with everyone that's in their 20s and 30s, working there, and he's part of the group. It doesn't seem weird to me at all that we're opening together. Couple weeks into this, he decides to ask me out. Oh, sure. I can friendzone this, we can keep it cool.

We just have the rest of the summer. He's really friendly, and I'm like, there's no harm in going to see a movie with him and then meeting up with other friends. So I'm like, okay, this is on my day off. How do I broach this subject to my parents? And I'm just going to be very casual about it. I'm just catching a movie with a coworker. It's no big deal.

And my dad, he was in the service industry for 10 years. He was a bartender when he met my mom. He knows what the fuck's going on. Exactly. So he kind of knew the vibe of this place. And so he starts asking, what do do you mean your coworker who? And I'm like, oh, you know, it's just the head cook. I'm thinking I'm going to say he's dependable. My dad's like, he's how old?

You're 19. Absolutely not. You're not hanging out with this guy. And so I'm upset because they're yet again being strict. I'm like, listen, I can suss people out on my own. You barely wanted to do it, but now that you can't, you're probably like, I'm going to. Right. Now I want to. This is how it back You barely wanted to do it, but now that you can't, you're probably like, I'm gonna. Right, now I want to. This is how it backfires.

Yeah. Parents, listen up. Well, I don't know. We're gonna hear this story. Okay, okay, okay. And so I actually didn't go. I didn't try to sneak around. It was a daytime thing. So I was like, okay, there's really not even a way

for me to sneak out. I'll just be upset with them. It's fine. I'll go and hang out with people after work another day. So we finished out the summer still just hanging out with a larger group and never hung out with people after work another day. So we finished out the summer still just hanging out with a larger group and never hung out with him alone. And I find out later that it's good that I didn't and it's a blessing in

disguise that they were strict. So that was in August of 2018 that I went back to school. Nothing happens until August, 2020. I get a message from this girl I went to high school with on Instagram. Shout out to Caroline. And she goes, Mandy, I know this is very random, but how do you know this man? And sends a screenshot of his Facebook profile and shows that I'm friends with him. And she says, isn't he the guy who murdered that girl that's on the news?

Uh huh. No, I thought, okay, whoa, I was prepared for some sexual impropriety. Whoa, what? So definitely still think of Dax. Remember when you equated? Yeah, keep that image in your mind. So I was like, yeah, I know him. I used to work with him.

Can you send me the link to the article or whatever it is that you're looking at? The article title is Suspects Raped and Tortured a Woman Before Killing Her and Stuffing Her Body in the Freezer. Oh! Oh my God. Wait, is it at the freezer at the restaurant?

No, he apparently rented a freezer for his house after this happened. So my next message is what? I worked with him every day for a summer and she was like, what was he like? I looked back at my message and I said, oh, he was actually really nice, super friendly. And I'm like still defending him thinking like

something must be wrong. It must not be this guy. I actually sent in, Rob should have the. And I'm like still defending him thinking like something must be wrong. I must not be this guy. I actually sent in Rob should have the picture. I'm gonna flip it over. Okay, so the screenshot of his Facebook is first. Oh, okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh no, is that the mug shot?

Well, there's both. And so what I wanna say is do not picture me any longer. Now that I've seen him. I don't know. Fuck you, I don't know. In the Facebook profile, he's got like three feet of silver hair, middle part, huge shades, orange top. That's a look.

He looked like that when you knew him? He had long hair, but he looked a little younger and basically like that. I know we're not supposed to do this, but it feels fair now. He gives murder vibes. Well, definitely in the mug shop. You know what he looks like is Charlie Manson.

Yeah. He looks just like Charlie Manson. Maybe he took some inspiration. I love that you're protecting his name though. That's kind of comical. Cause it's like public record that he's been arrested for murder, but we're going to protect his name. Right.

I'm sure if anyone hears this story, they're going to find it immediately. Did you ever learn the sordid details, like from soup to nuts? What happened? Was it a co-worker? Was it a date gone wrong? What happened? Yeah. Okay. So this is the funny part and kind of sim. So on Monday, I got the email from Emma and I started looking things up to try to like fit together timeline. And I was like, when was this article posted? What actually happened to him? Is he in prison forever? What's going on? Monday of this week, four years later, is when they actually convicted him

and his trial ended on Monday of this week. Oh! No way! That is so sad. Oh, that's creepy, Sim. I know. The Sim's been deathy lately because the Phil Donahue thing. Oh yeah, we had a Sim.

About this. Oh. Unfortunate. Hopefully it's not continuing to be murdery. No. So I was reading some of the article and I actually watched a clip of the trial from this week where they were doing their closing statements and talking about it. So apparently this is what happened.

He knew this girl from his next job at the next restaurant he worked at. He and his girlfriend at the time, who was 22, so also 30 years younger than him, they told this girl that they knew from work at the restaurant that they could give her a place to stay for a few days or said something to her to get her to come back. And then ended up chaining her to a bed and kept her there for like four days, drugged her with their parents medication. Sounds like it was morphine. They said in their questioning that because of what happened in those four days, like they weren't planning to kill her,

but then they couldn't let her go without consequences. They painted themselves into a corner. Yeah, what else are you gonna do once you've tied someone to a bed? Also, what is the plan? What was ever the plan? Like as soon as you have chained someone to a bed, you have to expect consequences.

One of the things that they did not get convicted for, one of the only two counts was like premeditated murder and kidnapping. They convinced her to go, but like she also went willingly with them. And then that's when the kidnapping happened. Ugh, that's horrifying. Wow.

There's a little bit of the story left. So they actually found her body eight months after this happened. So she was there from December of 2019 to August of 2020. And the reason they found her was the girlfriend went to the neighbor and said, hey, I need to help getting to a women's shelter. I'm not in a safe relationship.

Also, there's a body in the freezer. And the neighbor's like, what? And then the police show up without a warrant and they're like, hey, do you have a body in the freezer? And he's like, nope. And so they leave. It takes him a few days to get the search warrant. Again, small town stuff.

It's not very organized. They come back with a search warrant and all he's done to try to cover his tracks is he started to clean out the freezer. And so to clean out the freezer, he took the body parts and put them under his bed. Holy smokes, did you call your parents and tell them and admit that they were right?

No, I'm gonna send them. You're gonna send them this episode? This is the first time I will ever say you were right for being strict. This is how they'll know. I wonder if they've heard about it now because this week it's like national news. Just all of that, like with it being someone he knew from another job and wasn't really

truthful with them about what they were doing when hanging out. Makes me really glad that I didn't even get close to that scenario with him. Listen to your parents, y'all. Exactly. Strict parents are good sometimes. Maybe life saving. Oh, wow. That's a new one for us. That's a big one. Maybe life saving. Oh wow. That's a new one for us.

And great mic. Oh. Double whammy. I was nervous about this prompt cause it could be too earnest. He's always worried about my prompts. Yeah like me, anything earnest I'm just a little nervous about.

But boy this was anything but earnest. I'm gonna throw out there cause I missed one detail of his Facebook profile. Behind his image is a kind of cartoon of what looks like a rabid Rottweiler in a chain choker with a huge chain leading to what looks like a warlock holding the dog. What a off-putting. It's very ominous. I didn't notice that until today. I was like sending this over in the email. I'm a little worried about you, man.

Thank God your parents, you say they're strict, they might just be totally regular. They might just be completely normal. There's a lot of other things where I was like, there's no reason for you to tell me no to this, that or the other. And this thing, I'm looking back and I'm like, Oh my God.

There were some questionable decisions on my part. Yeah, there's quite a few red flags. Wow. Well, that was a great story, Meanie. Yes, thank you. Thanks for having me on. This is so cool to see you guys and say hi. And I wanted to give a little shout out

to my friend Olivia. She actually just texted me and was like, how was recording earlier? Oh, lovely. Shout out. We like talk about the show every week and we always accidentally bring up something that we've just heard you guys talking about.

And then we turned to each other and we're like, did you listen to Armchair This Week? I guess. Well, it's great meeting other and we're like, did you listen to Armchair This Week? And we're like, yes. Well, it's great meeting you and I'm certainly glad you're alive. Me too. I'll have to say thank you to my parents for real after this.

Yeah. Good job parents. Well, nice meeting you guys. You too. Take care. Bye. Do you remember in seven when Brad Pitt's like, no, he's not smart. He's probably walking around

in his grandma's underwear. Oh yeah. And Morgan Brad Pitt's like, no, he's not smart, he's probably walking around in his fucking grandma's underwear. Oh yeah. Morgan Freeman's just like, so disappointed with how immature he is. Oh, I love that movie. Me too, I love Brad Pitt in that. Oh, he's so good and hot. He was so willing to be stupid, yeah.

But also. Oh, but gorgeous. I wanna watch it right now. Me too, let's stop. Sorry. Sorry guys, we. But also. Oh, but gorgeous. Oh, God. I wanna watch it right now. Me too, let's stop. Sorry. Sorry guys, we couldn't finish. We had to call the other people. Wow.

Hi, you guys. Hi, can you hear us? I can totally hear you. Okay, so we're gonna pick a fake name for you. Do you have one picked out already? I do, it's Stacy. Oh, great. I can see that.

Yeah, if you introduce yourself as Stacy, that would feel like a fit to me. Do you have a girlfriend that you love that's named Stacy? Why that name? You'll find out, Dax. Oh, snap. Easter egg. Where are you?

I'm in Orange County. Oh, neighbors. Not too far. And are you from there? Yeah, I'm from Southern California, so close by. Let's hop in. Yeah, let it rip. My blessing in disguise takes place when I was in college. So that was about 1998.

Oh, me too, girl. But I'm gonna take you back a little earlier so you'll have some background. I knew as a very young girl that I was gay. I didn't know what to do with that, growing up in the 80s and 90s, it's not like it is today, which I'm so happy. For the youth, they have options.

I just felt like I didn't. And were you most nervous about your peer group or your parents? Probably peer group. Parents are awesome, but that too. I mean, it's all scary. My plan was that I was just gonna not date and wait until I leave California.

Oh God. Which is ironic, because most people will move to California to be gay. Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna move to the South. Right, but the generations of living in California, like I had never really left the state and it was time. That was my long-term plan.

Also growing up, I realized I wanted to be a nurse. And so when it came time to pick a college, I was gonna be out of state. Let's get out of here and become gay. For no reason I wanna take a stab at where that landed you. Can I? I just have a feeling. Did you go to Washington?

Mm-mm. Damn it. Okay, sorry. Midwest, I get there and I'm realizing that it's a very conservative, straight, white town, like zero diversity. Sure. Midwest. Yeah, not the greatest place to come out, maybe. Thankfully, I found an amazing therapist.

She's like, there's one gay bar downtown and just see what it's like. I walk like, there's one gay bar downtown and just see what it's like. I walk in, there's nothing but old white gay men at the bar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got a bad hunch. My memory and my stereotype of it is that, yeah, gay bars existed, but it was always dudes. There wasn't like lesbian bars that were super known.

I feel like they're still kind of new. Yeah. Even in West Hollywood, when you walk through, it's like primarily dudes. The lesbians are at home nesting. That's what they say. So I'm getting depressed. I'm not dating anyone and I'm like, okay, it's time. Like I'm just going to start dating guys.

And I did. I didn't date a lot, but I did date some guys and they were awesome. The interesting part is that I felt obligated to tell these guys that I'm gay. I like that. I think it was just you being honest. There's probably gonna be a limit to where this goes

cause I'm ultimately. But it is a little bit shooting yourself in the foot if the point is to find a partner and then you're like, and just letting you know, like I am gay. Yeah. I like that you did it too, but I see that it's complicated. For people who are attracted to unavailable people, you were the hottest thing in the world. I end up meeting this older guy at a bar who's super good looking.

We end up dating and to my surprise, I'm really this older guy at a bar who's super good looking. We end up dating. And to my surprise, I'm really falling for him. Oh, wow. We're gonna call him Tom. Tom wasn't really into the relationship, I could tell. And I could play it off by like, oh, I'm not either. But I was.

Time went on, couple months. It was confusing, it was hard. I didn't know what was going on. And so I'm 19 now. I was like, I'm gonna confront him. I'm gonna call him up and say, what is this all about? Are you seeing someone else? And he says, yes, but you're gonna laugh. And he goes, okay, her name is Stacey.

She wants to be a nurse. And her door swings both ways too. No. Interesting. You guys. Devastated. I knew he had a friend. It was a small town and I was like, not her.

And I hang up the phone, I pack up my stuff, and I literally get in the car and I drive home. To California. Oh yeah, dropped out of school. Whoa. Whoa. What's up guys, it's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season and let

me tell you it's too good and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest. Okay, every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation. And I don't mean just friends, I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on. So follow, watch and listen to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. We've all been there, turning to the internet to self-diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

Though our minds tend to spiral to worst-case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery. Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated. Or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings. Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night. Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music. Also, why do you say you're gonna laugh? I mean, I know there's so much coincidence, but I thought he was gonna say, yeah, but it's a man, I'm gay.

That would have been something that maybe you could laugh at, but just like, oh, it's another girl that's just like you, but I like her instead is not that funny. Yeah. So you can get the devastation. It was about six months. I was just heartbroken, confused. I still had some good friends that I didn't even say goodbye to in college. They literally got in the car, came out to get me.

See, here's the upside of the Midwest. That's a very Midwest gesture. We don't know if they were from the Midwest. They were. In the car on the road trip back, we're planning out my life. So I'm going to live with so-and-so. My father friend's going to get me a job at this really great restaurant that I know is successful.

And so I'm feeling good. I get an interview at the restaurant and it's like right after the lunch shift. So there's not too many people in the restaurant and this super cute girl starts walking by a waitress at the restaurant. I see that her name tag says Stacy. No. Oh, yes. It was her and I needed money.

I end up working there. I had covered for her and she was super awesome and great, which made her even worse in my eyes. But she's like, I'll buy you a beer after work one time. And I'm like, okay, whatever. And so that one time came, the one beer turns into two and three and four. And I'm like, Stacey, I need to tell you what I know about you.

And she had already broken up with Tom. I was like, look, not only am I the girl that he was dating, but like he told me that your torn swings both ways. In that drunken moment, something changed and we were immediately drawn to each other. We totally hook up that night. 24 years later, we're married. Oh, I love this story. This is a cute Anna blessing in disguise.

Anna Bad X, three prompts. Oh, wow. Wow,, three prompts. Oh wow. Wow. That's great, love that. I love her so much, she's incredible and your person's out there, if you're looking for that person, you never know where you're gonna find that person.

Besides having my son, that's like the best story that I have. I love it. I also love my favorite friends are mine where I hated them first and then we became friends. That's like kind of my favorite group of friends. You didn't hate me at first. Excluding you and I liked Erin at first. But I have a lot that I thought I didn't like

and I like those. That is always a fun story. Oh, this is great. You guys have been together forever. Thank you for sharing that. That was lovely. I wonder what Tom's up to. Hopefully.

Tom's got his hands full still. Hopefully he found love. Fulfillment. We're somewhat acquaintances, we keep in touch. He's doing fine. On some level. We have him to thank a little bit. We gotta thank him.

Yeah, thank him, honey. And he reminds us that. Oh, of course he does. Of course he does. He sounds like that. He's a man. That type. Yeah, yeah. Oh, of course he does. Of course he does. He sounds like that. He's a man. That type. Yeah, yeah. Oh, well this was a blast.

And I'm happy for you and Stacey. Thank you guys. Very nice to meet you. Yeah, really fun. Take care. Bye bye. So adorable. Looks like we're two for two on blessings in disguise.

Total slam dunk thus far. Mm-hmm. Hello. Hello. I thought maybe I was being pranked. This is real. in disguise. Total slam dunk thus far. Hello. Hello. I thought maybe I was being pranked. This is real. This is real. Who would prank you?

Do you have a friend that could have possibly set this up? Maybe Emma thought it was a funny joke. I don't know. She's such a prankster. She's bored. She's in New York, bored out of her mind. She's like, well, let's fuck with Ryan. How are you, sir?

Doing well, how are you guys? Wonderful. Where are you? I am in my closet in Aurora, Colorado. How How are you, sir? Doing well, how are you guys? Wonderful, where are you? I am in my closet in Aurora, Colorado. How long have you lived there? Since April of 2022. Oh, okay, so semi-recently. Did you have like a COVID change of heart? I'm gonna go in a different direction?

Yeah, that's actually part of my story. Oh, okay, okay. I won't jump to the end then. First things first, I also went to UCLA. Oh, you did, what years? 2012 to 14, I transferred in from Santa Barbara City College and then finished. I went there for a year myself.

Wow, it's the path. And were you from California? Yeah, I actually grew up just north of Santa Barbara in like the Santa Ana's Valley area. Oh, I know it, well, dirt bike country. You're already used to the beauty of Santa Barbara, but I moved from Detroit and went to Santa Barbara City College

and there's a lawn there that's like five acres of grass, just on a cliff looking at the ocean. And I would be there studying, I just thought this is impossible. I would park at that better beach and then have to turn around and walk away from the sand to go to class. Wow. Yeah.

A real force of will to attend there and actually go to class. Wow. Yeah. A real force of will to attend there and actually go to class. Okay, so you went to UCLA, what'd you major in? I studied physiological sciences. All right, let's hear your blessing in disguise. Okay, so I'm a bit hesitant to say it because I know it was such a traumatic event for so many people and I don't want to minimize

or project toxic positivity, but the pandemic itself is actually my blessing in disguise. So it's January of 2020. I have moved back to Los Angeles to start a postdoctoral fellowship. I'm about a month out from having finished my PhD. So I'm living alone in walking distance from Cedars. Fast forward a couple of months, we are now basically shut down.

All research studies are no longer allowed to continue unless they're like life-saving and important cure and treatments, which is not the nature of the study I was working on. So my supervisor gives me a call and says, we have to shut down the research study. We're not able to be withdrawing any funds from this study because we're not actually collecting any data, which means we have no money to pay you. So you have until basically the end of June to find something else and then that's all the money we have that we can give you. So of course, my entire field research is in the same situation, so I can't get another

job anywhere. So at the end of June, I have to make the decision to move in with my mom back in the San Tienes Valley. We get along well, fast forward some more. It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving of 2020. And I'm sitting at my desk. And the next thing I'm aware of, I have thrown up in the toilet and I'm rinsing my mouth out in the sink. So I flush and I have no idea how I made it down the hall, into the bathroom, closed the door, lifted the lid, lifted the seat, got it all in there. And I'm now aware of where I am. Because of the pandemic, my mom is working from home and she's heard me spewing. So when I open the door, she mom is working from home and she's heard me spewing.

So when I open the door, she's standing right there and she says, are you okay? Were you just throwing up? And I'm like, it tastes like I was throwing up. And she's like, okay, well, was it something you had for breakfast? It's like, I don't remember. She says, well, we had the same thing for dinner And she says, well, we had the same thing for dinner and I feel fine. What did we have for dinner? And I'm like, I can't remember. And she says, okay, that's it.

Get in the car, we're going to the hospital. I was like, no, mom, it's fine. I'm done throwing up. I feel totally good. You're overreacting. She's like, no, we're going to the hospital. Ryan, were you having any problem processing other stuff other than just your memory was absent?

I didn't think so. But when they were asking me obvious questions, like what day of the week is it like it's Tuesday, right? Mom. So she was definitely detecting some disorientation. I had an altered level of consciousness. My brain was not functioning properly at the time. About eight hours later, I have a CT and an MRI done and they're coming back and telling

me that I have a mass the size of a walnut in my right frontal lobe. I sent pictures. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We have them. Let me see. So those are more recent MRIs, but you're able to see the gap. Oh, no. That's just missing from where that was. Oh wow, because I thought you had a stroke. No, thankfully it was just brain cancer.

Oh my God, thank God. Oh, thank God. It was just brain cancer. Oh my God. I guess you're allowed to make that joke, you're entitled to it. So it was malignant. Oh my God.

Yeah, so over the next couple of weeks, I have Zoom consults with neurosurgeons, oncologists, neurologists, we get insurance sorted out and we schedule surgery for January 5th, 2021 back at Cedars. So I go in, have surgery done. You can see the huge thing that they melon balled out of my noggin, medical terminology. Just for the listener, it's like a cross section of your brain. And if I had to say what percentage this melon balls taking up, it's like a good 15%, the black spot. I mean, it's a considerable size.

It's not small. Have surgery a couple of nights in the hospital, have another seizure, and then get discharged back to go home with my mom. February start five days a week of radiation treatment, daily chemotherapy. And then in March of 2021, I start one week on, three weeks off of chemotherapy cycles. And those go for basically 12 months. Oh my gosh. Things go pretty smoothly.

A few minimal complications end up finishing my last round of chemo in March of 22. April of 22, I move out here. May of 22, I start a new post-doctoral fellowship at the Antutu Medical Campus here. Had dozens of scans since then and everything looks pretty clean. No evidence that it's going back. The way that I have processed the pandemic

as being a blessing in disguise is that if I had been living alone in an apartment by myself and had any sort of symptoms, I never would have gotten them checked out. I would have been like, I threw up and then forgot about it. That happens all the time. I'm good. Yes, you're right. The next time something had happened, I might have been driving and I might have killed someone else or myself, or I might have been in a shower and fallen and drowned.

So blessing I'm still here. And I also might've let it just keep growing. Well, as I was going to say, yeah, who knows how fast moving it was. It could have been inoperable at the point. That's sort of number one too, because I'd only worked for five months. I had made such little money that I was still well below the poverty threshold in California. So I qualified for state-funded health insurance, surgery, chemo, radiation, follow-up scans, medication, all of it, totally covered. I could have been in hundreds

of thousands of dollars of crippling medical debt. And then the most persistent, sustained blessing that I can take out of this has been that it really forced me to stop and recalibrate my values and to sort of reevaluate work-life balance. I had spent a lot of my 20s with the mindset of, I'm just going to work, work, work, put my head down and I will enjoy myself when I get where I'm going. When I get to the top of the mountain, I'll look around and enjoy the scenery. And that allowed me to be very productive and

make it through school and a PhD quickly. But that's not a good formula when the next season of life is just adulthood. If it had not been for COVID, I don't think I would have been forced into that hard reboot sort of situation. And then I would have probably still had been just like, notice the grindstone, I'll enjoy myself when I'm finished working. The great lie we all tell ourselves. Exactly, there is no finish. I got to have a balanced life where I'm able to actually enjoy

what I do outside and the work that I do. Wow. Yeah, it's almost unimaginable to think someone would have a positive spin on getting brain cancer at your young age, but yeah, that is all very legit. Yeah, and true. Another important one, if it hadn't been for COVID, I would not have moved here and I would not have met my friend Molly,

shout out to Molly, who introduced me to the podcast. Oh. We wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for the pandemic. We'll just call that the cherry maybe. The arm cherry on the cake. Thank her for us. Yeah, that we got to meet you. Well, my goodness, what a crazy story.

That's very impactful. I think that will hit a lot of people. I hope so. I'm now in a position to share that story and be able to come out from that kind of experience with some processing and being able to work through it and go, okay, well, that was not great at the time. Don't get me wrong, zero for 10 would not recommend brain cancer, but it's nudged me

into a positive direction and a positive sort of perspective on things. Does it at all, Ryan, change your worldview? My fear of like, if something like that happened to me, I feel like I would forever feel vulnerable. Like, well, fuck if that could happen. Could it happen again? Certainly. I mean, having a background in physiology and sort of medical adjacent knowledge.

The first thing I did was go on the internet and start looking up like, okay, what's the prognosis to these things come back? If so, did it come back worse? What's the timeline on all of that? And I brought all the information to my oncologist. And he was like, okay, what you got to understand is that there's so many other factors. So you're young and you're healthy before this happened, which means that your body is going to be able to withstand the chemo and also help your body when the chemo kills off cancer cells, your body is going to be able to withstand the chemo and also help your body when the chemo

kills off cancer cells, your body is gonna clear those out. But also, if you could pick a place to put a tumor, that's the place to put it because the functions of the left and right frontal lobe are a lot more shared than other parts of the brain. One of my questions was like, well, when you do surgery,

are you gonna be like digging out grad school? Right, exactly. my questions was like, well, when you do surgery, are you going to be like digging out grad school? Right? Exactly. And they're like, no, we think it's been in there for a while. And so whatever that tissue should have been doing, it hasn't been doing this whole time. So like whatever should have been there is already on the left side of your brain. So they were able to go in and be very aggressive and get not just the cancer, but some extra margin around it and take out some healthy tissue, just to be sure.

Boy, thank God we have figured out how to do that. That's wild that we can get into the brain. Oh, well, Ryan, that's an incredible story. Thank you so much. Of course, thanks for having me on the show. Yes, please tell your friend we said hi and we hope you stick around with us. Absolutely. All right.

Take care. See, earnest can be good. Yeah, you're right. There's a lot I told you. So it's happening in this episode. We should change the name of this prop to I told you so. Can you knock on wood right now? Thanks. Hello. Hi. Where are you, Shaina? I am sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. It's like the American Girl doll.

And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout.

And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout.

And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. And also, I'm sitting in my daughter's cubby little hideout. It's like the American girl doll. And also we have some squish mellows just to kind of help with the sound. Very good choice. Yes, and I live in Pittsburgh.

And have you your whole life? I have my whole life. Okay, so you have a blessing in disguise story. I'm gonna be honest with you. I was not wild about this prompt and we have three for three. They've been great. So I stand corrected. I submitted this to something else that the prompt was still up and then it aired.

And then I saw this one pop up and I was like, I think they wrote this for me. I have a daughter, she's 10 years old. And like most 10 year old little girls is fully obsessed with Taylor Swift. Oh, yeah. Oh, I already love this story. I thought you would. Okay. So when Taylor came, it was last June. So like June of 23. And then the tickets went on sale months prior. So this whole Taylor obsession, it was not really present then, and especially not when the tickets went on sale. So actually I turned down tickets.

I thought they were too expensive. Hindsight, ha ha, they were like pennies. Oh no. Fast forward six months from the concert, and now my daughter's entire life revolves around Taylor Swift. And all of her friends and who's going. Yeah, the concert came and went, most of her friends went, her best friend was there. I take her to the movie and she knows all the words, she knows all the dances and I

was like, where the hell did this come from? We had a Taylor Swift birthday party and I'm like, I fucked up bad. I should have taken her. I probably have to take her. And if I'm being perfectly honest, you cannot get wrapped up in that and like only listen to Taylor Swift in the car for months on end and see the Ares tour movie

over and over and not wanna go. I wanna go too. Same experience. I took her to the movie and I'm like, fuck, I wish I had gone to that show. Yeah. This is now this winter. So I started looking on StubHub for tickets

for anything North America this fall. And I kind of zero in on Toronto. It's like five hours from here. It's not a bad drive. And of the shows that were left, they were the most reasonable. And I use that term very loosely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Some also pertinent information into me making this decision is that we also have a 13-year-old son. He plays soccer at a really high level, which means we travel a ton. My husband travels for work, and he doesn't really wanna travel on the weekends, so I end up doing all this with him.

We spend a lot of one-on-one time together, and Lucy, that's my daughter, is home with my husband. Ordering pizza. Lots of pizza, lots of spicy fried chicken sandwiches. I really start thinking that this is something I have to do for her. I'm looking at StubHub one day, and if you look at the homepage, it lists all the shows, and it'll say tickets from and give a price. And as I'm scrolling, because you see all the European shows listed first

and the prices are a fraction of what the North American shows are. And I started doing some math, looking at some flights and realized we can go to Europe all in for four or five days for basically the same price as to drive to Toronto for one night. I just want to commiserate.

Yeah. When I was in Lisbon, everyone there was in that same situation. They had done the math and like, fuck, we can get a European vacation for the same price as going in our hometown. It's because they have regulations on the ticketing. Resale? We have passports. We took the kids to Spain and Portugal last summer,

which makes us sound bougie. I'm a teacher. We do like one big vacation every couple years. That's awesome. Barry Pittsburgh of you to apologize for that. I do a similar thing quite often. So I knew my daughter could handle the flight and the time difference.

The place that I zeroed in on, I had been before with my husband, but like 20 years ago. And I just remember how easy it was to navigate. This is like free smartphone. I felt very comfortable getting around the city. So I knew that this would be a really good place for me to be alone with her. And so six weeks prior to the concert, I pulled the trigger.

I buy the plane tickets. I buy the tickets to the show on StubHub, I find us a cute little boutique hotel, and I am terrible with surprises and secrets. I just want to tell everybody when it's exciting. By some miracle, I am able to keep this secret from her. I made it all the way to the day before we're going to leave, and it is a Monday. My daughter goes to her friend's house for the afternoon. I'm packing, I got her a cute little reputation bodysuit.

That's her album. I had a little lover bodysuit. We're all set. The last thing I needed to do was put all of our passport information into the airline app to get our boarding passes and stuff. I had been packing in my room and now I sit down on my bed with my phone and the passports and my dog, his name's Walter, he jumps up on the bed and kind of like lays across me while I'm doing this. The app had like a scanner to scan my passport but it would not work. It just kept spinning and wouldn't load so I

typed in the numbers but it said I would still have to go to the ticket counter to get our boarding passes. So then I set our passports on my nightstand because sweet Walter was laying across me. I don't want to disturb my dog. I'm getting PTSD hearing this story. Then I look at my phone and like, oh shit, I have to go pick up Lucy. I just run out the house.

Lucy is around the corner. This is a five, six minute round trip. So we are walking back in the house. She's in front of me and Walter runs out of the hallway where my bedroom is to greet her first and I hear her go What do you have? Around the corner it's her passport. He has her passport and

Time stops I grab it out of his mouth and I run to my bedroom and there's my passport on the floor in Way worse shape than hers. Oh, Walter, you bastard. God, dogs. I have them here to show you, and I'll explain too. He had chewed basically like all four corners of the covers and we had renewed specifically mine and hers last spring. So we have the new ones,

I don't know when the last time you guys renewed, but like our photo pages are plastic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There were very obvious bite marks on all the corners. So this is one of them. And on mine in particular, he did chew through my photo page. This is happening. And I'm trying to not let Lucy see just how much I'm about to lose my mind because I'm not gonna ruin the surprise like this. So I run outside and I call my husband. I don't really remember all of this but based on the tone in my voice and what I said, he thought something tragic had happened to one of the children. He was out to dinner for work.

He stood up so abruptly from the table, the entire restaurant is looking at him. And now his tone is matching mine until he can get, he's like, okay, you need to breathe. You need to tell me what's going on. And finally I spit out, well, to toot our passports. I don't remember getting off the phone with him. I start Googling, what do you do with a damaged passport? So I call the passport agency and I explain what happened. As it turns out, I'm not the first person

that this has happened to. Our flight was at 1130 AM the next day. And she said, this is great. I can get you an appointment at 830 tomorrow morning to get a new passport. Like, okay, great, I'll be there. Starts giving me the address, Buffalo, New York. And I said, Buffalo, I just told you I live in Pittsburgh.

That's a four hour drive. Also, what's important is that I bought non-refundable plane tickets, because they were cheaper. Based on the travel time, layovers, day in which the concert was taking place, we had to travel that day. I exhausted every option. It was 6 p.m.

Could I get in the car and drive the five hours to Philly right now, get an appointment in Philly Tuesday morning, and then fly from Philly to Boston to get my connection overseas. And no one had appointments. So I get off the phone with this woman, with basically her saying, you know, if your photo page is still intact

and all the information is there and you can read it, I think you're going to be okay. Yeah, I got off the phone. I felt pretty good. I then text pictures of our passports to everybody I know that does a lot of international travel. And every single person said the same thing, you're gonna be fine. You might have to tell the story, they might laugh. But you know, you're going to be there with your adorable little daughter, it'll be fine. That wasn't good enough for me because I started Googling and everything Google told me was the exact opposite. Sure.

There is no way we are traveling with these. I called the passport agency back. I get a different person who immediately was like, you can't travel with a damaged passport. We ended the call with, listen, I can't see them. If you want to go to the airport. Yeah, you got to. What else are you want to go to the airport. Yeah, you got to. What else are you going to do?

My husband comes home from dinner and he saw the passports and was like, you're fine. He was so confident. I was not, but we did agree to go through with the whole surprise for Lucy. The whole time I intended to wake her up the morning of the flight and tell her. So we do it.

You know, we come in filming 6 a.m., wake her up out of a dead sleep, say, hey, remember how we were going to go back to school shopping? We're actually going to go to the airport and go fly to Europe to see Taylor Swift. Everything that you want, the screaming, the happy tears, the disbelief, the hugs. We got that moment. And then I had to remind her what Walter did to the passports and like, remember why I was upset last night and that's why the passports were out. So I don't know if they're going to let us, but we're going to try. And if

this doesn't work out, we're going to figure something out. So we go to the airport three and a half hours early. Aaron, my husband, he's so sure he doesn't even wait. He just heads home, drops us off and goes home. And we walk up to the ticket counter and she asked for a passport and I'm friendly and confident and make a joke about my dog and pull out the passport. And this woman looks at me like I am fucking insane. Like, I am absolutely crazy to think that anybody is gonna let me travel with these passports. I start pleading my case, but the lady on the phone said,

you could see my picture, and she gets a supervisor, he comes over and says exactly the same thing. Technically, if there is any amount of damage to even the cover of your passport, it invalidates it and any foreign country can refuse you entry. So even if we gave you a boarding pass, you're going to step off the plane. They're going to deny and they're going to put you right back on a plane home. You know, I was trying to keep it together for her and not cause the steam, because she's crying hysterically in the adorable,

I'm coming for you Taylor t-shirt that I made her just for the trip. That was it, we walked away. And as we walked away, she goes, you know, this is like the craziest passport story I've ever heard. You should just put it online and maybe Taylor will see it. So my daughter took that to heart. When we got home and she composed herself,

she goes up to her room, she records herself explaining exactly what had happened the night before that morning, and she posted on YouTube. I didn't even know she had a YouTube channel. Right. I share it on my Facebook and if anything, it was very heartwarming, the amount of people that reached

out to us that wanted to help. Because my friends' friends shared our story and people that are friends with our state representative, they're trying to get me in contact to get a passport or to get me a refund on my flight. It was really, really sweet. It meant nothing to my daughter, but it made me feel better. But we certainly went to bed really sad that night. And then it's now Wednesday morning, we wake up and I had joined several Facebook groups

for the Taylor Swift shows in this city. And there are a lot of other moms like me coming from the United States with a daughter Lucy's age and we were going to meet up, do some sightseeing and I'm seeing their posts. They've landed at the airport, they're in line at the merch tent, and it is just like a dagger through the heart. Now is a good time to tell you that the show that we were going to see was in Vienna. Oh my God. Oh no.

So about two hours later, in the same Facebook group, that's the first place, because a lot of these people in this group live in Vienna. So that's the first place that I see the news break, first of the arrests from the terror plot. Oh my gosh. I run into my husband's office holding my phone, showing him the headline. He's like, Oh my God, this is. I knew there was a reason you were not supposed to get on this plane and this is why.

I would have been worried sick. Can you imagine being there with her to find out the concerts had been canceled? Yes. All of a sudden it was like, oh my God, did Walter know? Right. Yeah.

Now we're thanking Walter. Maybe Walter's like a great grandpa or something that's reincarnated. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. So in the end, Walter chewing our passports and ruining the trip of a lifetime actually ended up saving us from an even worse disappointment. I know that people that ended up being there made the best of it, but they were still investigating

for hours and even days past. So I imagine that I would have been very nervous to even leave our hotel room with her. I mean, initially they were saying not to gather and wear your Taylor Swift stuff. Even if we had been there, I think it would have been pretty awful. Yeah. StubHub refunded the money for the tickets. I was able to cancel the hotels. We did have to eat the plane tickets, but I've been telling everybody that being able to tell this story for the rest of my life is probably worth $2,000. And that was before I got to tell it to you guys. So I mean, that's the icing on the cake. Happy to have missed the Taylor Swift

concerts. I didn't see that coming. Boy, the pressure we put on ourselves for these things. I went through the whole thing myself. You make it so enormous. Wow, well that really worked out. What if you had gotten on the plane, they did get you a boarding pass, and then you flew all the way there, and then they did not let you enter,

and you had to fly all the way home, and then it was canceled. Oh my God. What if I paid all this extra money? I drove through the night to Philadelphia, then I paid extra money to fly to Boston and do all that stuff only to get there and then have it be canceled.

Oof. I'm kind of still hung up on the dad going like, you're gonna be fine, there's no problem. And then when it didn't work, I was like, I told you there was a reason that I had such a dad move. I knew it. You had like multiple I told you so's and he was wrong the whole time.

Yeah, that is very dad. Yeah. Well, Shayna, there's no way that your daughter can tell the story as she gets older and not recognize how much effort you put into making her happy, and that's really what it's all about. That is. It's not really about Taylor.

Well, she's pretty cool. You know, we did get that moment when I did surprise her. Yes. We were on the local news. I went to the post office today and he asked me if that was me on the news. Oh, that's great. Local celebs.

Yes, that could have been a prompt to tell us about a time you were on the news, which we have. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, that was a prompt. Well, Shayna, thank you for telling us that story. That was terrible for you, yet I guess it worked out. But entertaining for us. Yes. Just real terrible for you. Yet I guess worked out. Yes.

Just real quick. I need to give a shout out to my best friend, Amber, because we listen every week and compare notes. We both have had several other prompts that we've thought about writing in for. But as I mentioned before, I'm a teacher and this was the one I felt safe with. Yeah, this is good. Non-canceling-ish. Well, send her our love. So nice meeting with. Yeah, this is good. A non-canceling-ish. Well, send her our love. So nice meeting you.

Yeah, thanks for chatting. So nice meeting you guys too. Have a wonderful rest of your day. You too, bye. You too, take care. You love when poop makes its way. I love it when Taylor makes her way. Oh right, when the prompt that has nothing to do with poop ends up being about poop.

Yes. Well, that was a great prompt. I'm pretty proud of myself. It was, it was fantastic. And those were great stories. Big I told you so, you're like her husband. No, cause I'm right. No, just like her husband.

You're like her husband. Look, your turn. I'm like the wife. I'm the one who went to Taylor Swift and had a passport issue. Gaslighter. I'm very much like the wife. No, you're the head cook. No, I'm not the head cook.

Okay, bye. All right I love you Do you wanna sing a tune or something? I don't know the theme song Okay, great We don't have a theme song for this new show so here I go go go We're gonna ask some random questions and with the help of Armchairy's book it's some suggestions. On the fly a rhyme dish or on Apple Podcasts.

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