Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Caroline Fraser (on serial killers)

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Caroline Fraser (Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Caroline joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why Christian Science churches and parishioners are disappearing, consequences of healthcare ideologies and practices defined by religious exemption, and tracing her interest in writing about violence to growing up in the 70s. Caroline and Dax talk about why the Pacific Northwest is so associated with serial killers, women’s relationships to and the ethics of true crime, and her argument that violent crime is a human health issue. Caroline explains Missing White Woman Syndrome, why mass murderers and serial killers might be following different kinks, and whether she feels more paranoid as a result of writing this book.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 add 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 Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman. We have a Pulitzer Prize winning author on today, Caroline Frazier. She's got many great books. Prairie Fires, God's Perfect Child, Church, and she has a new book out now called Murderland, Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers.

We love serial killers. You, you, a show on Netflix. Please enjoy Caroline Frazier. Travis fell in love with the perfect woman. Beautiful, understanding. Available 24-7. There was just one catch. She wasn't human. Binge all episodes of Flesh and Code early and ad-free right now on Wondry Plus. Think about the most disturbing government secrets you've learned from history. Now imagine discovering one that begins in a hospital room

and leads straight to classified military operations that were buried for decades. Listen to a redacted medical mystery, a special episode from Redacted and Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries, available now wherever you get your podcast. In New Yorkerxper In New York They're not moving off of it No, they're not

You and I were alive when New York Seltzer water was all the rage Do you remember that whole era of our lives where those were everywhere those little bottles. Yeah. Yeah. And they came in flavors. Oh. Black Cherry, maybe, was a popular one.

Yeah, I remember those hit the market and my father just couldn't get enough of them. He loved that. He went all in on the New York Cells Royal. How fun. It's funny the arc of things that are novel. Yeah. How exciting they are and they almost seem like, oh, well, these are going to be around

forever. And then everyone just tires of them. Yeah. That's my prediction with AI-generated media. Oh, I hope so. Yeah, it's like really interesting at first. And the more you see of it, you're like, oh, yeah, I get it. They can do anything and really, who cares? Except those babies, they make really cute babies, baby videos.

They get me every time. You're going to get some now that we are talking about it. Okay, so you grew up in Seattle in the 60s and 70s. And I want to talk first a little bit about the Christian science book, God's Perfect Child, Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church. So it's rare that I get to talk to someone who grew up Christian scientists. And that was your experience. Yeah, they're all disappearing.

I mean, demographically, they just kind of peaked during the 70s and then just fell off a cliff, really. Yeah. And now, you know, they're all dying because they don't accept medical care. and they have never figured out how to draw people to the religion, really. I mean, it's a very chilly kind of experience to go to a Christian Science Church. Yeah. Because it's just reading.

You know, people just read Mary Baker-Eddy's book, Science and Health, which is possibly the most boring book ever written. Do they read the Bible as well? Yeah, but it's kind of secondary. Oh, it is. It is. So even in just researching you, I'm embarrassed to admit I had no clue that that had been invented by a woman that religion. And she died in 1910 and they kind of pretended that she didn't really die.

Oh, they did. They made her like a deity? Yeah, I mean, she's buried in this spectacular cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in this monument where you kind of can't tell is somebody actually. buried here. And they put a phone famously in her tomb in case she resurrected herself so that she... No, it's like, let me out. And it's connected to a live phone line? Well, it was. I mean, I don't know what the status of it is now. I'd love to get the number for that. Just drive her crazy in her. No, you don't want her to haunt you. What were the unique circumstances by which she was able to write a book that was then taken on and practiced by so many people?

Well, a lot of it had to do with the, you know, failures of medical care at the time because there were so many things that you could get that you couldn't really treat. And a lot of doctors were quacks or didn't know what they were doing. And so, you know, if you got TB or something, I mean, it was just, there were a lot of things that were a death sentence. And so anybody who came along and said, oh, you know, if you pray about this, if you know the truth, that was their big kind of formula, then everything will be resolved and you'll be fun.

So your father, this is curious to me, your father had a Ph.D. from Columbia? Yeah, in education. In education. And yet he was a devout Christian scientist and he did not believe in matter. That's right. Yeah. That's a foundational tenet of the religion is that the physical world doesn't exist and that it's just an illusion of kind of fantasy that we're all having.

Oh, kind of the matrix kind of simulation. Or maybe ahead of the curve on the sim. Yeah. Weird. How long into it were you going along with it? When did you start having some major disagreements? Or can you recall in your own life when you started going, Is this possibly how it all works? Part of my problem always was my relationship with my father,

because he was so difficult, and I just kind of kept wishing he would go away. Can we get rid of this guy? Yeah. And did you sense your mother was in accord with how you were evaluating him, or was she? Well, she was not raised in the church. He was. And so he was incredibly devout and kind of doctrinaire about everything.

And I don't think I, you know, as a child sort of consciously thought, oh, this is a load of crap or something. You know, not until I was like in high school. But I associated the belief so much with him because he was so into it and like he would sit on the couch. And he always kept the books next to the couch and would read sometimes and we would kind of have to sit at his feet. and listen to this stuff. And, you know, and he was always sort of enforcing the beliefs. If I got sick, for example, threw up in the car or something, that was like a big deal. What was the solution for that?

Yeah. Well, the whole way it was framed was that these things are kind of your fault. Oh, my God. Because you're not practicing. Oh, you're not praying. They're manifestations of impurity, kind of? Yes. And manifestation is actually a huge word.

Oh, it is. In science and health. Well, maybe I should join. That came very organically to me. Maybe I would be horrible. No, I'd be a bad, bad member. I'm kind of attached to matter as a concept. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

What prompted you to write the book? At the time that I started, the church was going through this kind of big crisis where they had invested all this money. It was kind of their last ditch attempt to invest a bunch of money in a TV, you know, know, a news organization that they were trying to launch. And by the way of this, they were going to attract new members and appear, you know, on the kind of international stage. And they had very high hopes for this thing. And yet they made a bunch of mistakes.

They invested too much money. It turns out the TV business is kind of hard. You need to be an expert to be profitable. Yes. And at the same time, in the 80s, there were all these, what they called the TV. child cases, which were various cases around the country where Christian Science parents were prosecuted for the deaths or neglect of their children who had died under, you know, really pretty grotesque and preventable circumstances.

And I think prosecutors by that time had just gotten sick of this whole phenomenon and And we're like, we're going to make sure to kind of put the kibosh on this by prosecuting a few people. But you do explore in your book. There was a moment where they had lobbyists where they were effective at getting themselves kind of inoculated from that type of prosecution, right? How did that work? I mean, ironically, this was during the 70s at the same time that Nixon had ascended his position of power. And a couple of Nixon's most powerful lieutenants, Bob Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman, were Christian scientists. And some of the people who worked for them were Christian scientists, like this guy, Eagle Crow, who you may remember.

Eagle Crow. Eagle Crow was his name. Was he native or he just has a very native name? No, it's E-G-I-L. Oh, wow. Not like the bird. That is unfortunate. I was like it's a Native American Christian scientists working for Nixon.

This has got to be the most unique person. But anyway, so there were these Christian scientists in positions of power, and they used that to basically kind of push through various federal acts, legislation, regulations that would allow, mainly on the state level, but some on the federal level, that would allow people to refuse vaccinations, for example. or any sort of health care. Under the guise of religious freedom. That's right.

These were called religious exemptions. And they still exist in most states. Yeah. And Oregon overturned theirs because one of the really terrible things about this religious exemption stuff is that all these other religious nuts, you know, in addition to the Christian Zionists. Yes, and so like in Oregon, there was this thing called the Church of the Firstborn who did not believe in any kind of health care for mothers having babies.

And so all these women were having babies who died within a few days because they had problems giving birth or various other things that could have been addressed in a hospital setting. Yeah, the infant mortality rate for these Christians, scientists were some standard deviations above the national average. Yeah, the Christian scientists had always had kind of carve-outs in a weird way. And so, like, I was born in a hospital, but it was with a doctor who I think was friendly to Christian science. Right, right. They were kind of okay with glasses or dental care, although I remember my father had his wisdom teeth pulled with no anesthetic. anesthetic. So it was fungible. Yeah, that's what always has been an issue for me is humans are full of

contradictions. I don't think anyone has monopoly on contradictions. But I do find that in religions in particular, the contradictions start piling up at such a degree. The Amish, they can't have anything electrical, but they can borrow their neighbor's car. Like, that's such a curious part. And I don't know how people make peace with the inconsistency. There's a lot of mental gymnastics that goes on to justify a lot of the things. Okay, so in 2017, you wrote Prairie Friars. I'm laying this out because they share some connective tissue, as we'll get into with Murderland.

But Prairie Fires, the American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Am I saying Ingalls right? Yeah. So I didn't even know who she was, but she wrote. I do. Did you read? Girls, yeah. I was when I was younger, much younger.

And then they made it into a show. And I watched the show too. Yeah. What is it called? A little house on the prayer. Little House on the Prairie. What drew you to write about her? Well, I'd read the books as a kid and loved them.

Yeah. You know, I was always really into reading because I think it was a sort of way to learn about the world that was outside of the religious, you know, framework. And I'd love those books. I mean, they're great adventure stories about a girl and her family. And they, you know, are sort of about family and domesticity and farming. and, you know, all my grandparents were farmers of one kind or another, or most of them. So I think I kind of recognized my family's kind of emigrant journey to the Midwest and struggling to survive out on the planes.

You know, all that seemed like it was adjacent to my family story. So that was kind of fascinating to me. You won the Pulitzer for that, the National Book Critics Circle Award, numerous awards for that. Did that come as a surprise to you? Yes, yes. Yeah. I would imagine, like, you as a writer's not terribly different than me as an actor, which is like, I'm doing it for a long time. There's some period where I go, oh, right, we're not really in search of an academy.

That's really not what we're going to be getting in our lifetime. And if it just happened out of nowhere, it might be surprising. So it must have been... Yeah, it was. It was kind of a bolt out of the blue. I mean, I had no idea. Because, I mean, for one thing, it's a biography of a children's book author. And they're respected, but maybe not the center of the literary universe in some ways.

And what do you think was the proprietary angle that made it so appealing and well received? I think a lot of it had to do with the history, you know, that I was kind of presenting her as a historical figure who had been through all these pretty major events. We would modernly call her, like, she'd be high on the A score. She had a lot of trauma, if you look at her life. Endless uprooting, scary people maybe lurking around. I mean, it's a very heightened arousal childhood. Yeah, I mean, she was somebody who survived, like, really bizarre and terrifying catastrophes.

You know, the locust invasion of the 1870s. which, like, trillions of locusts fell out of the sky. Oh, my God. And destroyed their farm and their crops. One of the harshest winters of all time. Yeah, the hard winter of 1880. They practically froze and starved to death. And then a crop failure one year, and that's all you're betting on.

I mean, just one after another. Yeah, and just sad. She had a child who died less than a month after he was born, and their house burned down. So she sort of went through at all. Yeah. And then just survived for many years, kind of working at odd jobs. And then finally, you know, in her 60s, which is really pretty late to adopt a new career,

she, with the help of her daughter, who kind of bullied her into it, started writing these memoirs, which turned into the fictional stories of the little house books. She's writing them during another crisis. because it was, you know, the Dust Bowl. It's just one of the hits won't stop. Yes, yes. And so that kind of unfolding all the history behind her life and the writing of the books, I think people really responded to the history, which is itself kind of.

Harrowing. Yeah. Okay, murderland, very juicy. Our theme that we're exploring is in general you're kind of attracted to violence or exploring violence. Yeah, that's like a theme that runs through a lot of these. Do you have an explanation for that fascination? Let me just say iTunes, very interested in violence. Yeah, I was thinking about that Vigo-Mortensen movie, you know, a history of violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think that phrase is meaningful to me. I guess it has a lot to do with being, you know, a kid in the

70s, which was an incredibly violent era. You know, crime rate was going up, up, up, kind of topped out in the 80s. The economy was stalled. You had the oil issues, Vietnam. So it was a really violent time. And everybody was kind of tearing their hair out, like, you know, why is this happening? You know, are we just terrible people? And it became this societal question. Why is this happening. And people had all these sort of theories about we're losing our morals or people are not going to church. People are leaving the church. Yeah. Yeah. So that's always a kind of perennial favorite. And at the same time, you have all these serial killers. I think for me, looking at the serial killers was just kind of one extreme. Yeah. And you're looking specifically at

the Pacific Northwest, which both makes sense. A, because you're from there. I could see why you'd be interested in it. But the Pacific Northwest does have this eerie stereotype. It's lumber, it's aeronautics, it's Starbucks, it's serial killers. Is it associated? I didn't know that. From the region, we have Ted Bundy, the Green Mile killer, Gary Ridgeway.

He killed 49 people. Wait, I don't know about him. Oh, my God. 49 people. That's a low end. That's what he was convicted of. Yeah, probably way more. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. Robert Lee Yates, 13 folks, the I-5 killer, the night stalker, the hillside strangler. Oh, my God. This is the Mount Rushmore of serial killers. Yeah. It really is. So what have been the common explanations? People talked about the weather and the lack of light for, you know, much of the year.

And also the Joan Didian people. going to the West Coast, running out of land, people who are sort of antisocial, or sort of they washed out elsewhere. They washed out on the East Coast or Midwest or whatever. So they end up kind of trapped in this place. Yeah.

This is true of Alaska, too. Well, I was going to say, the reason that opinion is appealing to me is Alaska's number one per capita for serial killers. And I've been there, and that too is like, everyone there is like, I had to get the fuck. Like the anger by which that drove them to Alaska is pretty common.

It's definitely weather then. Or just the spirit of who wants to go live in the middle of nowhere, I think, is a curious for a social primate. That's a curious desire. Okay. So those were kind of well-worn explanations. And as you set out to write this book, what did you start discovering? We start the book, weirdly, with a lot of geology. You love geology.

I do love geology. so I wasn't bothered by it, but I was like, well, this is an interesting place to start. Yeah. Maps. Those explanations that we just talked about seemed like, you know, reasonable things to talk about, but they just never felt like enough. And I'm thinking about this, you know, the kind of aha moment of it came when I was, my husband and I were kind of thinking of moving back to the Northwest.

And so I was looking at these pieces of property. There was an ad, a real estate ad. for a piece of property on Vashon Island, which is just across Puget Sound from Tacoma. And I read this ad, and it said remediation required for arsenic or something like that. And I was like, what? On an island with no industry. Yes.

Vashon is just a kind of farm, you know. Edenic. Yes, yes. Strawberry farms were a big thing on Vashon when I was a kid. So I thought, how the heck did Vashon get arsenic on it? And about, you know, five minutes later of Googling, I see the smelter in Tacoma and that that is the source of the arsenic on Vashon Island. What's the smelter? The smelter is the Asarco American Smelting and Refining Company, which was built right in the center of the city of Tacoma.

And the smelter was originally a lead smelter and then a copper smelter. But for years, like decade after decade, it's just pouring tons of arsenic and lead into the air. And so I said, hmm, that's interesting. I wonder what all that lead did to people. Yeah. And like, again, you know, you Google lead. And what you find out is that lead is associated with. aggressive behavior and kids especially who are exposed to lead show a tendency to become

impulsive irritable aggressive and in some cases violent it's replacing the calcium that should be there in your brain during development and you're impairing regions that would be in charge of impulse control and other things right so it's a structural damage in the wake of lots of lead poisoning. Right. Quick question before we get into the nitty-gritty of it. When you go into a book like this and you're curious about an alternative explanation,

you don't start with an alternative explanation. You were just kind of open to discovering an alternative. Yeah, and this in particular is not something that I can prove. One of the things that was so intriguing to me about it was, you know, Ted Bundy grows up in Tacoma. Gary Ridgeway grows up just to the north of Tacoma. Charles Manson is imprisoned for five years on McNeil Island just across from Tacoma. And so all three of these guys are kind of in the same place at the same time.

And this answers your geology question because that line between the three of them just kind of leapt out of me like, oh, this is fascinating. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Navigating family matters can be tough. At learners, we understand the challenges you face. Whether you need help drafting a pre-up, filing for divorce, or making support arrangements. At learners, our team of experienced family lawyers are here to guide you every step of the way. These are life-altering events that come with many questions and concerns. trust learners to help you move forward visit learners family law.ca that's l-e-r-n-er-n-r-r-sfamily-law.ca.

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Join the conversation and head over to YouTube to watch Nick Cannon at night, or subscribe on the Wondry app, or wherever you get you. podcast. Want to watch episodes early and afree? Join Wondery Plus right now. Are you able to aggregate any public data from Tacoma in general? Are they over indexing as a total population for certain things? That's one of the really frustrating things about Tacoma is that Asarko controlled that area so completely and was so central to the economy during the time when it operated that they did not do and did not allow any, you know, wholesale testing of a lot of the stuff. There were some limited testing of kids involving arsenic, but not lead. and they certainly do know now how much lead. I mean, there's a GIS map generated by the Washington State Department of Ecology

that will show you how much lead was in Ted Bundy's front yard and his backyard. And so you can see how much lead people were getting. When and if you've compared that data, say the lead in Ted Bundy's front and backyard to the primary exposure, of lead to kids and everyone in the 70s and in 80s was lead gasoline being admitted from cars. What I read today was like 58% of lead was being absorbed from the exhausts of cars. So if that was the primary contributor to lead poisoning, how did that level of exhaust compared to the level that was just sitting in their yard? Like if an average person was consuming X amount a lead? How much were these people living that close consuming? Well, for a place like Tacoma,

it was a double whammy because it was leaded gas, but it was also significant amounts from the smelter. Chemists and scientists can actually identify the molecular component. You know, like in El Paso, another place that I talk about, they actually did studies that show that the lead that was polluting a lot of the city directly came from the smokestack, the Asarco smokestack that was in El Paso. They have a fingerprint. Yes, they do.

And I don't think they did that in Tacoma, but I mean, since they have spent millions of dollars trying to clean up the lead, I think a good portion of that did come from the smelter. That's so interesting. Also, I'm sure it's not everyone who's exposed to lead becomes a serial killer, obviously, or becomes that impulsive, but maybe you have some predispositions that that pushes you over the edge.

Yeah. Potentially. There's a whole theory that overlaps what you're suggesting. There is a led crime hypothesis, as people will know or not know, from this period, mid-80s till now, we've seen homicides get cut in half. We've seen a overall huge reduction in crime. and there is innumerable theories. Pre-economics put forward the abortion explanation, right, that you had a lot less unwanted kids entering the population.

That's what you're seeing the result of. A lot of folks will say, well, the interconnectivity of police forces improve. So you saw this with Ted Bundy, right? He's like moving from one place to another. It's just down the road and no one knows the same thing's happening. One county over, so that's kind of an explanation. And then there is this lead crime hypothesis that we see the outline of lead in fuel and in other places and that we're seeing now kind of the response to that.

So like walk me through some of the people that you have outlined in this book and just kind of tell me how you think that fits in or doesn't fit in with any of these theories. I don't know that we're ever going to tease that apart in terms of, oh, we can assign this number to the abortion. Yeah, there's no way to know. Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult, but they have done a number of studies looking at the connection between violent crime and psychopathy and lead exposure. So we know there's something going on there. Yeah. I think the question is how much do you assign to that? And what became a sort of, you know, obsession for me during COVID was sort of looking at where each of these guys grew up and what their lead exposure might have been.

And some of them, you can't answer the question. But for the people who lived in Tacoma, it's pretty easy. You know, when I was sort of doing the research, you know, I looked at the smelter in Tacoma, which was owned by Asarco. I mean, they owned stuff all over the West. But one of the other big lead and copper smelters they owned was in El Paso, right on the border across from Ciudad Juarez. And when I saw that, I thought,

oh, there's no serial killer that's from El Paso. Google that. What pops up? It's Richard Ramirez because he grew up there. He's not associated with it because he killed people in Los Angeles. This is the Golden State Killer. Richard Ramirez is the Knight Stalker. Oh, the Nightstock.

Yeah. Right. Okay. 1886, I think. Got it. Well, what was Ted Bundy's childhood like? Well, it was quite disrupted because he's born in a foundling home, essentially. His mother gets pregnant outside wedlock.

She's sent off kind of in shame to have this baby in a place that's run by nuns. And she has the baby and leaves it for two, three months. If you go and look at what psychologists and psychiatrists have to say about that, that's a real issue. She goes back to get the baby, takes it home with her to her home in Philadelphia, which is fondly known at the time as the city of smelters, has incredible lead pollution. And so he grows up there. His mother remarries. He seems to have been confused about the status. of this stepfather, like he thought maybe it was his real father.

So there seems to have been a lot of confusion, a lot of anger about his mom, and you start seeing him acting out at a very young age and doing violent things. And that's another thing that all these guys have in common is they start having these fantasies about women, about murder, about rape, very young. And did Ted ever say why he was doing it? It's one of the really frustrating things, though, about him is that they talked to him a lot. They got him to make statements. Most of them hypothetical and a kind of, if I had done this, I would have done it that way. Right.

Because he wouldn't admit culpability. Like OJ's book. Yeah. If I had done it or whatever, oh, my God. Jesus. I know. That's so dark. But there's so many things we just don't know.

We don't even know how many people he killed when he started killing. Yeah, the first we know about it is an eight-year-old that he took out of a house. This is a theory. We don't know for sure because she has never been found. He would never admit to it. Although in other cases where we know for a fact that he didn't kill the person when he was asked about it, he would just say, no. No, I didn't do that. And it turns out he was.

right about those. In the case of Anne-Marie Burr in Tacoma, who he may have killed when he was 14, he said stuff like, oh, I never went to that part of Tacoma, which is not true because his uncle lived around the corner. He said, I was too young to have done that. You know, the more somebody kind of embroidered on their denial, the more it kind of sounds like they're lying. And it isn't consistent with the other way. Right, right. What do you think the ethics are of true crime? And why are women predominantly the creators and the audience of true crime?

This is a fascinating phenomenon. I think, you know, Anne Rule had a lot to do with this because her relationship to true crime. I mean, she was making a living at it as a single mom writing for detective magazines. but I think she also experienced it as a way of, like, the more I know about this, the safer I can be almost and the safer my daughter will be. If we know who these people are, if we understand where they came from and how they do what they do, then it becomes a kind of protective. Yeah, it's like having the knowledge.

Right. That's now why so many women are drawn to it. But, of course, the ethics are just all over the place. The desire to sensationalize this stuff is almost overwhelming. It's undeniable that violence is a human health issue. You know, I mean, where's it come from? You know, why do so many men commit violent crimes? So I think it's legitimate to engage in conversations about it, to write books about it, to examine the history of it.

And I also think it's useful to kind of pull it out of the standard treatment where you kind of have a silo. You know, you've got a book about Ted Bundy and a book about the Nightstocker and a book about Jack the Ripper or something. But you're not looking at the whole history. There's no synthesis of it. That's right. And so I think historically, it's useful to look at. Yeah. It's very Malcolm Gladwell to kind of be like, this is what was going on for all these people. Oh, wow, there is a through line. Yeah, my explanation has always been kind of intuitively just we are all afraid of the thing that we have the highest probability of dying from.

Although ironically, we don't because we don't care about dying and stuff. But the flashy stuff that we have no control over, we tend to fixate on. And there was this moment going around last year where women would ask men when the last time they talked about the Roman Empire was. I don't know if you saw this. How often do you think about it? Think about it. Talk about it. And it really did lead me down the path of like, well, that isn't.

I recognize the reality of that. And then go further. World War II in color. What husband isn't watching World War II in color? And the wife is like, what the fuck is the obsession? with World War II. But it occurred to me, that's how we die. We die in war. We have been dying in war at the level of tens of millions. And we're not even one generation out of it. My father was in Vietnam. You know, people went to Desert Storm. Like, that's how young men are

going to die. So guess what? We're pretty interested in war. And we consume it over and over again because that was the high likelihood of how we will die accidentally. And so it just kind of makes sense that women have found their way to being murdered by men or abused or hurt, and men are focusing on getting killed in a war. And there was that other sort of meme thing that happened about bears, you know, women. Oh, that's right. Would you rather be trapped? If you're hiking alone in the wilderness,

who would you rather encounter a bear or a man? Oh, my God. Yeah, that was a big thing. And women pretty consistently said bear? A lot of people said bear. Yeah. Guys, I don't know if that's the right decision. If we just look at statistically, the kill rate of bears versus random men.

I know. I think the message is important. Yeah, I can imagine walking through the woods and then seeing a random man. That is so terrifying. I know if it's more or less than a bear, but that's a real fear. Yeah, my husband and I once did a sort of six, seven months stint at this place above the Rogue River. It was like a writer's retreat thing that didn't, you know, have electricity. or whatever, and it was really remote.

And we did see bears and mountain lions, which was very exciting. But the scariest thing that happened when we were out there was when this guy came hiking out there and he had a rifle with him, which he said was for bears. Right, right. But you just don't really know. Yeah, exactly. Ooh, yeah.

Let's talk about missing white woman syndrome. That just came up on a show I was watching. You, the show you. Yeah, yeah. About a serial killer, basically. Yeah, it's a huge thing where white women are obsessed with other white women going missing or abducted or raped or murdered or whatever. When, in fact, most violent crime is being experienced by women of color. It doesn't get all the headlines.

Yeah, Compton had a serial killer that was worse than most of these other ones that got headlines, but he was killing black prostitutes and no one cared, some astronomical number of them, And no one even put together that this was happening. Right. That grim sleeper killer in L.A. was killing women, most of them were black, most of whom were prostitutes for decades. And nobody was really paying attention. And recently, this guy made a documentary about that and actually went to the community and

talked to people. And they all just said, nobody cared. Nobody's even been here to ask us these questions. women who had been involved, women who had been attacked by this guy, said, you're the first person who came in tough to us about it. So it's a huge issue. And even on the podcast and the true crime stories, it's like who you're choosing to put at the center of the story. Often it's a white woman because, yeah, that gets more clicks. What is genetic science?

How is it shining a light on some of these cold cases? Oh, well, they've, of course, caught the Golden State Killer, who you mentioned. That was the big one, but I think there have been a couple others, whereby they can go back and they can find, even if they don't know who the person is, they can use DNA from the case, they can locate a relative of some kind and kind of move forward until they can pinpoint the exact person. But I also think that all the stuff that we now know about neurology and brain development, that should also be playing a part in how we sort of think about violent crime. Because we know now, I mean, the whole football brain injury thing is huge because some of these guys had significant brain injury from being beaten or being in an accident or something. And so that, I think, is another thing that should be looked into.

Interestingly, with that, we just had a CT expert on. Weirdly, the mechanism becomes the same as lead, which is it is an area of the brain that is now obstructing communication with other parts of the brain. And the result of that is, yeah, a lot of unpredictable. Erratic behavior. Erratic, often violent behavior. Did you consider in this because another thing that I don't hear pushed forward a lot in all these different explanations. What seems quite likely to me is the contagion effect of these things. So it's like, yeah, it had this enormous peak and serial killers seem to beget other serial killers in the same

way that reporting on suicides leads to outbreaks of suicides, that psychosomatic illnesses are contagious. When people see this in press and in the media, other people do it. How much do you think was it just a self-fueling phenomena? I would say now it's been replaced with school shooters. We can easily identify these patterns of when they're heavily reported, all of a sudden we have another outbreak of them. Yeah, although I wonder about that because the serial killers, the vast majority of them, are motivated by the sexual compulsion. They're getting off on what they're doing. Whereas the mass shooters, that seems to be a slightly different. Yeah.

I mean, they're both obsessed with getting credit. Yeah. They do in the publicity of it. Notariety. The mass murders seem more motivated by that celebrity aspect. They're manifestos. Right. Yeah.

And obsession with guns and so forth. But I think it's a different kink. Yeah. Whereas the serial killers, the wiring got caused in some devastating way. that left them with this sexual compulsion to do the same thing over and over again and achieve gratification through that. And that seems really different. Now, in all of this research and formulating this theory, did you have any vision forward? Do you have any, I mean... Prescriptions? Yeah, any prescriptions?

No. And I think what I wasn't doing was writing a kind of academic argument or a thesis about this because I was more interested in a subjective approach, one that kind of captured the era and the feeling of it and the look of it and my sort of memories of it. Because that felt like a kind of drama that people could maybe relate to, there have been great works of academic histories of lead and the corruption that allowed lead to become such a huge factor in this country. So those are out there. You know, they've been done. I think I was after something a little less programmatic and more expressive or evocative of the era. Yeah, it feels like you felt like V's stories were missing context. Right. Exactly. And that you

wanted to provide this context. And then even furthermore, these things which are incredibly low percentage things, these are statistically negligible, really. One in 13 million is the current estimate of serial kill, you know, but that in some ways these larger societal problems do feed into that downriver. That this is yet one of the many downriver effects of this kind of corruption and greed and lack of accountability. Yeah. When you were researching this book. Did it make you more, are you more paranoid now post-writing this? No, I don't think so because I think it was a factor of that time.

I mean, I'm more paranoid probably about like keeping the door locked and the windows locked. I mean, that serial killer at the end, Israel Keys, who I kind of close with him, and he would always say, yeah, why don't people lock their windows? Oh, wow. So I'm more aware of things like that, but I wouldn't call that pair of the way. Yeah, that seems just sensible. I'll tell him why. We're laziness.

No, yeah. Yeah, it's just laziness. Oh, my God. Oh, well, Caroline, such a fascinating topic and such an interesting look at it and way to evaluate it. It's such a pleasure meeting you murder, land crime, and bloodlust in the time of serial killers, Seattle, Washington. Yeah, I mean, minimally, you have to be a little more optimistic because the trajectory has been pretty consistent. we are getting better at this somehow. Yes, we are. And crime is down, actually. We'll see what AI does. There's something to be learned on that little spike during COVID.

That could be a telling when we fully understand what happened there. Oh, that's exactly. We have all these corollaries, but these corollaries now make this a little more compelling. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I wish you tons of luck with the book. Thanks a lot. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Hi, I'm Monica Lewinsky. Welcome to reclaiming.

I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours. Something you possess is lost or stolen. And ultimately, you triumph in finding it again. Miley Cyrus, welcome to reclaiming. My 2013 is your 1998. I lost everything during that time in my personal life because of the choices I was making professionally. Chelsea Handler. Welcome to reclaiming.

I did have a teacher who instilled in me that I was going to do. do something special. And she was like, you're going to have an impact. Sophia Bush, welcome to reclaiming. You went all the way. You committed. And if it wasn't for you, you had the courage to tell the truth and get out. And I had to say that to women in my life. And I had to learn how to say it in a mirror to myself. This last decade for me has really been what I consider my own reclaiming. My own journey, my own reclaiming story is in the bones of this show. Please listen to reclaiming on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay tuned for the fact check.

It's where the parties at. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Big Apple. It's a scorcher today. It's hot out. The only thing I was looking forward to about leaving Nashville where the day I left, the day before I left, it was like 95.

They do the real feel, kind of like they would do in Michigan with the wind chill or what it really feels like. Uh-huh. And it was 95, but it felt like 100. And it did. Yeah. So it's like, oh, that won't be bad. Sticky, sticky. Go up to New York, get a little fresh air.

Yeah. It's 95 today. Today is hot. Yeah. Yesterday, though, was, in my opinion. Tolerable? Nice. It was hot.

It was hot. I do think real feel. Real feel. When you're surrounded by buildings. Yeah. It feels hotter. There's no breeze. It's true.

But when I, so when I left the hotel, when I left the airport, I had a sweatshirt on. And I got to the hotel. I had to drop my bags. My room wasn't ready. And so then I was walking with my sweatshirt on for a while. And I was like, I'm fine in my sweatshirt. Yeah, but you, I know. I'm an anomaly.

Let's talk about this. Okay. So I went home to see my parents. and it was, it's, it was so hot there. Probably even hotter than Nashville, right? It's a little bit further south. It felt similar, but yeah, it was, it was so hot. And, but as we know, as we looked up the humidity.

We did. It was 1% higher. Yeah. You're like, it's a little bit more humid and it was 1%. It's pretty much the same, but there's something a tiny bit different, and I was right. But yeah, so I went, I got to my parents' house, and I was like, oh, I'm going to walk to the grocery store and my parents were like, it's too hot. And I said, it's fine. It's close. It's very close. How far did they live from the grocery store? Very close. Like, let's see.

Could you put it in miles or kilometers? Less than a mile. Okay. Definitely less than a mile. To me, no brainer. Yeah. And then, you know, they're like, it's too hot. And I was like, it's fine. It's going to be fine and then it turned into this crazy like you can't and I was like they were like worried you're going to die yes they made they load you up with water and stuff no they were like you can't go like I'll drive you and I was like well no you don't don't drive me and then I was like well I'll just drive if you're that worried and they're like well you can't drive because this car is here and and and then my aunt was coming over and it's like she won't be able to get in and I was like well I'll take mom's car and like you can't she she just bought it you don't know how to drive

that car. I was like, oh, I was there for five minutes and I was like, I got to go. I'm shocked you even agreed to drive a car, which was shot down. I know. I already was being like, I don't want to do this. It's fine. I'll just drive. You were bending over backwards. I was. Thank you for acknowledging that. And but then ultimately I was like, I'm walking. Yeah. And then I'm a big girl. I'm a biggest girl in this house. I did, I said, I'm 37. Yeah. I live in L.A. I'm okay. I'm weeks away from 38. Well, just don't say that.

Okay. Okay. So I left. I walked. It was very hot. At any point, did you think they were right? Okay. No, but I was starting to feel like I think I'm getting like in my head about it.

A little anxiety panic attack. Yes. And then I made a whole story in my head where I was like, this is what they do. they everything's so scary they planted the fear yes they planted the fear and now i'm like feeling fearful about a thing i have zero fear about yeah and this is my whole life yeah and look what i've overcome yeah so then you felt good you're like i've overcome this yeah but i also felt like righteous being in the south really has forced me to think about temperatures way more than i normally would there's so many weird inconsistent things about it one is when you walk inside of a house

down there the air conditioning is only set at like i don't 78 or 77 or something in the house which feels ice cold but in l.A you would never have it at 72 yeah you would never have it on 78 why is why does it feel completely it feels colder in the house and in Nashville, because relative to outside, but then you do the myth, the temperature's not higher. Like, when we get into late August, September, October, and L.A., it'll be 98, 100. It won't feel as hot as 93. Real feel. Real feel's different.

It's different. And then I still don't understand why the gap in the ACS has to be so much more dramatic out west. It doesn't make any sense. I think it's because, well, I guess I don't know, but I think, like, we always set in the summer to 78 and in the winter. to 68. That's like what you're supposed to do, eco-friendly-wise, but also money-wise. Yeah. So for my parents, it's always about money and spending. So is it, it's probably more, it probably requires more energy. Yeah. Yeah, of course. To cool it more. It when it's hotter outside. Yes. So that's why people are doing, you're just saying it feels

different. You don't feel warm in the house. Like, were you feeling warm in your parents' house at 78? No, but I don't feel warm at 78. But if you walked into my house in L.A. in September and it was 78, you would go, why don't you guys have the air on? Maybe. I'm telling you, because our bedroom will be 70 and I can't go to sleep. Really? In L.A. in the summer, or when it's hot. We're not really hot in the summer. We're hot in the floor. It's very confusing. I can't believe that something like temperature and humidity could be that relative. Yeah, it is weird. I mean, humidity Changes the whole game. That's the...

Changes, yes. It throws the rules out. Yeah. It did remind me, too, like, my whole childhood in Michigan, I never once was in a house with AC. Maybe my dad's, when I go to my dad's on the weekend,

he would live in a condo and he would have air conditioning. But never in my house growing up here. Really? No, we never had air conditioning. My grandparents, Pop Bob and Grandma, no AC. Every window had a box fan in it.

Yeah. It was noisy as hell. Yeah. that made it kind of tolerable. It was, is it hot? It gets hot there. Oh, my idea. Then why didn't they have it?

It was too expensive. Oh. Most of the year, like, I think everyone was just like, yeah, you just got to get through July and August. Well, that's, that's how California is now because it used. You got to get through September and October. Exactly. And it, it didn't used to be like that. So most apartments and stuff, they don't have AC.

You have the box. Yeah. And you're not going to put in AC for. for something that you only need for 20 days a year. Like in Santa Monica, when I live there, almost none of those apartments at AC. Yeah. And you only needed it like nine days a year in Santa Monica.

And it's changed. Like, it's gotten a lot hotter in L.A. over the past 10 years. So, like, now I think these apartments do need AC, but they don't have it. I wonder, I want to look that up. Oh, can you look at that? I remember in Santa Monica, there were, there was always a few brutal weeks that Brina would be like in their smoking cigarettes.

Again, with a box fan in the window and one out the back trying to get a little airflow. Sure. Yeah. Has L.A. gotten hotter. But you don't like the way that's worded? Oh, no. Okay. I'll sign off on that search.

From 1990 to now. AIO review says yes. By how much? Approximately 2.5 degrees in the last 50 years. 50 years. Okay. I don't know. And then you cut that into a third.

I don't know. I just know when I lived with Anthony. You also, though, live further east. I live further east. You were at Fairfax. Yeah. You think that's much cooler? It's seven miles closer to the ocean.

That's true. But it wasn't... I'll tell you, Santa Monica is a full 20 degrees cooler. Yeah, even... That's fine, but it... That's fine, I can accept it. I understand that I'm at Santa Monica, but the grove was hot. Yeah.

But not as hot. That's a fun thing in L.A. So our house in L.A. is a good 10, 15 degrees warmer than Santa Monica. But then I drive one mile on the 101. I go over the hill into the valley. And then it's another 10. It's like 30 degrees hotter. Yeah.

Within two miles. So fun. Mountains. Mountains, valleys. Sea breeze. Equid aqueductice. Did you ever use sea breeze? No, tell me about it.

I think that was like an astringent for the face for acne. Sea breeze. Yeah. The stuff that they were selling us in the 80s was. That wasn't around when I was. It was not good for your skin. It was just like. put turpentine on your face.

Seabree's face cream I'm going to put? No, it's like a cleanser. Cleanser. C-Bree's astringent sensitive skin. Is it still? It's still. Okay, then I take all that back. I don't want to be sued.

It's a great, great product. When I used it, it made my skin a little dry. Yeah. Well, you do have to be careful, obviously. They used to think you should just dry your face out in the 80s. Yeah. You know, I go to corrective skin care. Yeah, that's right.

And one of your many personal sponsors. I actually, so I kind of freaked out because I have a little breakout now. Now everyone's going to be staring and that's fine. Can I tell you something right now? You do not have a breakout? I do. And I do. I worry about your sanity if you think you're having a breakout right now because I'm staring

at your face. Listen, I make up on. I make up on. Okay. Anyway, I was like, oh, fuck. Like maybe she doesn't work anymore. You decided she had retired while you're gone. I got so worried.

I was like, I think maybe she's like lost her touch or something. something. And then I was looking at my calendar and I was like, oh, oh my God, I am about to start my period. It really snuck up on me. Oh, okay. I didn't know. And, and that is standard. I'm definitely going to have, regardless of corrective skin care, a little break. You could, you could bathe in sea breeze, but every 28 days you're going to. I'm getting something. Yeah, I'm getting something. But she does, for my skin anyway, she likes it to

be dry. Okay. To, you know, I use a, I use a cleanser. By the way, people who don't live in L.A. and are like, I want some of these things or I need help. I think you

can buy some of these products on her website. Okay. So, yeah. So I use a cleanser that makes my skin pretty dry. And it's good for my skin. And then I use ice on it. Did you ever do acutane? I think you said.

I've never done it. You never did. I was scared of it. You were scared of it. I did everything else. So I took the antibiotics. Because it can, what it can have kidney outcomes or? Also like some mental stuff.

Interesting. Yeah, like some depression. Again, we're not doctors. We don't know. We love C-Breeze. We love Accutain. This is all alleged. Yeah.

This is alleged. Yeah, some like depression, some potential suicide allegedly. That could also be a very easy correlation, not causation. Because think about why you're having the acne, you're having more hormones. You're at an age where you're starting to have more of those. Yep, it could be that. But also it's really, it's like intense, I think. It's kind of like a carpet bomb.

Yeah, I have several friends that did it. But I have several friends that like had really bad acne and then they never did. It's gone. Yeah. You can't, like, get pregnant. You can't drink on it? You're not supposed to drink on it? Probably.

And then you can't get pregnant, like, for a while. Okay. Which always is a little when you hear that. Also, if you have it in your teenage years, maybe don't get pregnant as well. Yeah, but people have acne like me when they're adults. Would you call what you have acne at this point? It doesn't have anyone. Yeah.

The floors. You could get down on the floor. Oh, boy. Yes, I would. I say I think I have it under control. Okay. But yes, at any moment, I could slip. If someone said, does your friend Monica have acne?

No. Well, that's nice. I would. I would never, ever describe it. And the many things I could list about you, acne would never be on that list, ever. Well, that's nice, but you'd be lying to them. Would you Rob ever say that Monica has acne? I wouldn't put that

No That's very nice But also what's he What are you guys going to say right now? Like that would be If I did. I would just not bring it up Well

You got to understand like I When I just don't bring it up You asked Rob You put him on the spot That was compromising for sure Yeah That wasn't fair But I said not bad skin

I also ask Yes I put him on the spot Yeah B That was A Yeah B, I only ask questions that I'm certain are going to be, that it's not going to be hard for him.

I know he would never describe you as having acne. I just know it. Well, that's. We've talked about it a bunch of times while you weren't around. Okay, great. Like, we'll be having lunch sometimes. I go, you think, uh, Monica's got acne? Monica, Monica?

Yeah, Monica. Yeah. No, why would you ask that? That's what he was. That's what he says when I ask him that. And I go, yeah, same. He says, why would you ask that? Why would you ask that?

Of course she doesn't. Okay. When we're having lunch. And then he's like, what do you think? No, of course not. But I heard her say she had acne. I was like, bitch, look in the mirror. You ain't got acne.

What should we order? And then he goes, you shouldn't call her a bitch. And I go, I only say bitch affectionately. I never use it pejoratively. And then we stopped talking about it. I don't know if she'd like that. Then we're in the weeds. Yeah, obviously.

Listen, it's not, it's not crazy. Like, I do. I go to a place that is acne-centric, and it is why it's under control for the most part. I also had acne for so long. It's not like, this isn't like I was a teenager with acne. Like, I am a, I have acneic skin. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. I am an acne.

No one can tell me I'm not in acne. I'm Monica and I'm an acne. Oh, acne. What a horrible name for it, too. It's not bad. I think it's bad. I'll tell you what's bad. I was not going to tell this story.

What? I'm reading the Mark Twain book, as I've said a million times. I happen to be in a section for the last couple weeks where almost every night I'm hearing about is Carbuckles. Okay, teach me. He's got these carbuncles. He's on tour in Europe and he's got carbuncles like on his thighs and there's these big sis, boyles sis. And just the name carbuncles. It's such a rough fucking name.

Like shingles. Yeah, shingles, yes. But car like, oh, my carbuncle hurt. You're like, oh. But it sounds kind of whimsical too. I do like that it has car in it and bunkles of fun. Bunkles fun. But you don't.

I just, this is crazy. So I've been kind of obsessing for a couple of weeks about carbuncles. Yeah. Just because I keep hearing it all night long as I'm falling asleep. Carbuncle, carbuncle, carbo. So I take a bike ride five days ago. We have a whole night. We go out to Nashville and then we go see Superman.

Oh, fun. Great movie. Our boyfriend's so good in it. Oh, God. Nicholas Holt. It's really funny, by the way, when, like, Lincoln starts liking somebody a lot. And, like, she has no interest in our job. But then she, of course, is loving Lex Luthor.

And I go, I go, I'm like, Nicholas holds so good in this. And she goes, you know him? And I go, yeah, honey, I've interviewed him a couple times. You have? Yeah, we're friends. We text each other. You are, like, it's only in those moments that's- You text him.

I text him. It's pretty one-direction. Yeah. But anyways, we see that. And then we go, and I am feeling all night, like, I almost felt like my boxers were pinching my thigh. or something, right? Okay.

I get home, I pulled on my pants, and I have fucking, like, a Maricino cherry hanging off my inner thigh. It's so swollen. It's irritated. Were you worried it was a tick gone bad? No, no. I immediately went, I have cancer. Sure.

Of course. This is like, it's now coming out of the skin. I have cancer. Of course I have cancer because this house is too nice. I mean, literally, I was so quick to think, of course the shoe's dropping. I have cancer. I'm in a panic in the bathroom by myself. And then I go, man, I think AI is really good at identifying, you know, radiology charts and stuff.

I take a photo of it. Great. I upload it. Okay. And I did, this is a little dicey. I did say, is this a boil? Okay. So you sort of led.

I could have potentially led the witness. Okay. But it was like, yes, this looks, this is definitely a boil. And I'm like, oh, my God, I have a boil. A boil is a bad word. It's terrible. I don't want a boil. I do prefer acne to boil.

I'm like, oh my God, I have a boil. How did I get a boil? What do I have a boil? What do you even think it was a boil? Why wouldn't you just say like? I was just, like my best, like my, my hell Mary pass was that this was a boil. And it was, right? But in reading about this boil, now it gives me this long thing.

It's a for nunkle. Oh. If you get multiple, they become carbuncles. I was like, Oh, my God. This is impossible. I've been obsessing about car bongles. And now I have, I'm in route to a car bongle.

I know you don't want to believe in the sim, but like, come on. I know. If the sim was fairer to everyone, I'd believe in it. But I just can't get on. But just because, okay, this is in, like. All right. Let's, okay. I think we'll get sidetracked on that.

But so, and then, and then I really enjoy this interaction with AI. It says if there's any more information, you know, And I say like, okay, well, I took a long bike ride this morning, blah, blah, blah. And then, I mean, like, that makes a lot of sense. People who cycle get them often because you're wearing extra tight clothes. And what a boil really is is generally staff infection. And I'm like, oh, my God, now I have a fucking staff infection. I'm not pumped about that either.

That's not good, yeah. It tells me to do hot compresses four times a day and it'll probably clear up on its own. Okay. But I'm not happy with that because we have to. go to New York in 36 hours. Yeah. And staff infection can turn into shingles. Yes. I did get one round of the Vax.

Hopefully that would have protected me. Anyways, I find a doctor that'll take me in Nashville. Great. Kristen's already gone with Lincoln at a vocal lesson. The Richardson's are leaving Delta. I don't want her to be home. So I have this

like mad dash race to this doctor. I get there. I love the nurse. She's so fun. And she, I think I'm going there to Lancet. They go, yeah, come in. We'll lance it.

Oh, okay. And then we'll give you an antibiotic. And she's like, ah, I don't think that needs to be lanced. Okay. And I'm like, oh, man, I really wanted you to lance it. And she goes, I really wanted to lance it. I was excited for you to come in and I'm going to lance it and all that's good. She loves that.

I don't, I'm not even sure it's a boil. It looks more like just a big blood blister. Oh, okay. But you're leaving tomorrow. Blood blister, also not a good word. All preferred to staff, carbuncle, fernuncle, and boil. So I'm disappointed. So I'm so anti-compress, hot compress.

Chris is always begging me to do hot compresses on stuff. I'm like, what the fuck does that do? Get in bed that night. I do a hot compress for 15 minutes. It felt so nice. no even better oh it burst it just starts opening no yes i took pictures along the way i have many pictures wow and then it just it completely like drained so it was like god damn this hot compress thing really works so that night i actually went to bed feeling pretty good because i it was drained

antibacterial spray neos born on top huge bandage woke up the next morning took it off loved what was happening on the bandage, flat as a pancake. Great. Now I'm down to a small band-aid. Everything's delicious. Great. Don't say delicious. It looks pretty delicious. This is not the time to say delicious. Okay. You're not in a position to this.

Okay, fine. Let me ask you this. Are Maricino cherries delicious? Because that's what the first thing that look like. They're not for you. Only arm cherries. Okay. Okay. Cherry. Yeah. I had a cherry. Okay. So what, so you got the small band-aid. That's it. But then you also have a wart. What's happening? I don't know what's happening. Is it a war?

That's a side thing. I know. There's another thing. I don't want to talk about my war. I was happy to talk about it. Oh, no. You know me? I like talking about things that have already resolved themselves.

It's so confusing. I know. I have a weird pattern of honesty. You just talked. I'll be honest about anything once it's over. Like if I've shit my pants, yes. I'll never tell you while I'm shitting my pants and I'm shitting my pants. Okay.

Well, I... Yeah, I'm falling up. part, I guess. So I have a, I don't know if it's a word. I just felt something on my thumb. I'm like, if that's a word, I want to handle it. What if it's a farm uncle? I have a band-aid on that erodes.

And are you worried it's a farm uncle? Farm uncle. A carbuncle? No, that's when there's a lot. That's a lot. No, we're all, yeah, we're at foreign uncle level. Okay, speaking of like this. Gross stuff that's happening to me.

My friend, when I was home, I was with my friends from home, And they had bedbugs this summer. Oh. And the pictures are on on. They eat you up, right? She's covered in bites. It sure it wasn't scabies. It was bedbugs.

Okay. And both her and her husband. You have to burn your house down virtually. Exactly. They were in another, they were at their parents' vacation house. Oh, my God. No one else in the house got is just in that room. There was a big New York City bed bug thing I remember reading about a couple years back.

Yeah, a long time ago. Disgusting. Yeah, it's rough. We're talking about gross stuff. Yeah. So after dinner last night, I'm like, oh, I'll walk through Central Park on the way home. I love Central Park in the summer. And as soon as I get on the path, I'm hearing all this rustling in the bushes.

And every time I look over, I see a rat in the undergrowth. And then I just start seeing rats all over the walkway. And I'm like, I guess it's just. You look at them like squirrels. We don't mind squirrels. I know. It is like it's racism against rats. It is.

It is. It is. Species. Haven't I? Even mice versus rats, we think mice are so cute. Yeah. Miniture mice. Exactly.

If you were miniature rat. Honestly, I'm offended even just hearing that. Yeah. That's so bad. It's tasteful. And it's, but I feel bad for them. They're just little animals on the planet trying to make it work. I know.

But they were, I couldn't believe how many or. just running around the pathways and no one seemed worried but me do you think i was like are they gonna bite my ankles what do you think there was a dead body i don't i would have smelled it that body's maybe your smell is gone because of all this other stuff that's you have a sickness yeah possibly i mean all of those rats in one spot wouldn't they be all over the dead body chowing down instead of running around the path they or they tell them their friends yeah They're gathering. Yeah, they're gathering.

But, oh, wait, real quick, because we're talking about dead bodies. Yeah. Which that's just, that's really distasteful what I just did. Because I am going to talk about some sad stuff, which is Malcolm Jamal Warner died, which is so sad. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So sad. Swimming. Yeah.

And you guys never take my drowning talk seriously. Just saying. Okay. Okay. And then Ozzy Osbourne died. Yeah. Do we know what? Of what?

I think just a hard life. Hard life. He was, I mean, it was like, he was. So exactly. So this is what, so when I was with my friends from home, they, they were like, well, Ozzy Osbourne had died that day. And they're like, well, you know, these things come in threes. And I was like, no, that's not real.

And they're like, we'll see. And they were right. They were right. They do come in three. I don't like that. The Hulk Hogan thing. So my friend Dean text Aaron and I, a picture of Hulk ripping his shirt off. Yeah.

I hadn't heard he died. Oh, you just thought it was a ranch. Yeah, which would not be unlike Dean to just randomly send a Hulk Hogan picture. Yeah. And luckily, I wrote a God among men. Oh, that's nice. And then an hour later, I found out he's dead. And then I was like, oh, he was letting us know.

And I'm like, oh, no, that really worked. It really worked. It almost worked better. I don't even know if I would have come up with something as appropriate. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Is there still a phone in the tomb of the women who invented the Christian Scientist Church?

She said that they put a phone in there. Oh. In case she, like, rose. And wanted to order a pizza because she was starving. She was starving. She was under there for so long. Okay. According to a long-standing rumor, a telephone was installed in Mary Baker, Eddie's tomb at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This is not true. Oh, boy. The origin of this rumor seems to center around the circumstances following Eddie's death on December 3, 1910. After her funeral on December 8th, Eddie's casket was kept in Mount Auburn Cemetery's receiving tomb until the graveside could be made ready. In order to protect against vandalism, the casket was guarded around the clock. At that time, a telephone was installed for the guards to use. It was removed after the casket was transferred to the gravesite in January 1911. You also have to imagine what a phone in 1910 was.

I think it was an enormous plywood box. I don't even know if they have plywood yet. But a huge. Remember, you never watched Green Acres, did you? You're too young? No, I don't think so. Do you know the theme song? Sing it.

Green Acres is the life for me. farm living is the sun and then josh jacobore would say darling i love you but give me park avenue oh you are my wife goodbye city life green acres we will do do do do do do do well that was a mess but i got some pieces okay so they left the big city yeah it does he drug jaja gobor out of the big city and took her to a farm it's plus this mess i guess yeah what about it um telephone oh yeah because it was going to say on that show, they had the kind of telephone you pick up and you hold the big part to your ear and then you talk into a little mouthpiece. And there was an operator and that phone was enormous. And I, and that was, that was probably set in the 40s. I don't know. So just imagine how big is. That's all I'm saying. It might have been the size of a casket. How are they even having it outside? At the cemetery? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. With the guards who were, who were using it or whatever, like.

And you used to have to crank it. I don't know if that was the supply electricity. I don't know. You had to crank the fucking thing. I kind of wish I had one, actually. You could probably auction for one. I'd love to have one in my car. I'd take up the whole passenger seat

and that would be my cell phone in the car. Yeah, when we remember one, I mean, things that moved so, so fast. Because when we watch what lies beneath, they're on a cordless phone in that. Yeah, yeah. And it's, it just looks wide. Yes. And we've been doing the Tom Cruise Marathon. And yes, what's even crazy is to watch Early Mission Imposibles because it's like the highest tech CIA, a covert shit. And you're kind of looking at all the stuff. And it's like, you know your iPhone would do way more than every single

thing in the movie. It's so weird. I know. Oh, my God. Oh, Lord. Oh, my God. Oh, my heavens. Okay, how many states have religious exemptions for vaccines? 45 states and D.C. Allow for religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements. These exemptions allow parents to decline vaccinations for their children based on religious beliefs. The remaining five states, California, a ding, ding, ding, Connecticut, Maine, a place I really want to go. Mississippi, which I'm very surprised. by, yeah. And West Virginia do not allow religious exemptions.

You'll get surprised, you know. West Virginia and Mississippi, I'm interested in... Yeah. Okay. Can the Amish borrow their neighbor's car, not have electricity, but borrow their neighbor's car? While Amish individuals cannot own cars due to their religious beliefs, they can't and often do, except rides from neighbors or hire drivers for transportation. The key distinction is that they're allowed to be passengers and vehicles, but not drivers or owners. Not drivers.

Yeah. Okay, so I guess you go to your neighbor's house and go, like, take me up to a ride aid. Yeah, but they better not be Amish. The neighbor? Yeah, and don't they all kind of live amongst one another? Well, they probably strategically make sure it's every other one, like boy girl, boy girl. You got to make sure you got one worldly person to the left or right of you in case you need to go to right aid.

Yeah, this is interesting because you would think if this was the case, you'd see more Amish people just amongst non-Omish people so that, yeah, they could like reap the benefits. Well, where my grandparents had their motel in Sturgis, you saw that. It was like, and you would, it's, and you can tell because out there, none of the power lines. are buried. So you're driving and you're seeing power lines come off the main power lines into a house. And then the next house, there's no power lines going into. So you literally could just drive down the road to see exactly who was Amish and who wasn't. But I got to say, I'm often critical of religions. And Amish is quite extreme, of course. But I love the Amish solely because of Rumspringer. I think it's so rad that they go, go out, not just you can,

you should go out and spend a year in the worldly world and we want you to decide to be here. I think that's fucking, that's all you can ask about religion, really. What I hate is like trying to mask reality from the practitioners or hide truths or as this term put it back on the shelf we've heard in under the banner, all these ways to like stifle knowledge and information. That's my issue mostly with religion. So the fact that they encourage a full exploration, I think is awesome. I think it's awesome, too.

I'm a little more pessimistic about the actual chances of coming out of Rum Springer and having a true assessment. Because you've grown up, you know, it's like you've grown up being told these things about the modern world. And then you're just like thrust in. The modern world is scary if you're thrust in. But be clear, again, they're living among the modern world. It's not like they're unaware of it. They're driving in their horse and buggy down the road with, you know, Porsche's driving by. But if they're being told, like, that's not a good way of living.

And then you're in it, I think it's hard to them be like, yeah, I love it. I think it would take a lot, maybe longer to fully adjust than they have for the little spring break. Yeah, I just don't know of any other. I don't know of any sect of Christianity that says go become Muslim for a year, go become Jewish for a year. Go practice on full other religion and we're confident you'll return to ours. Yeah. It's just rad.

Yeah. Okay. Is Alaska the number one per capita serial killer state? Yes. California has a highest total number of serial killings, but it's not the most per capita. Just like California. high GDP. Exactly. Yeah. I just was watching Newsom in an interview on a podcast talk about the amount of money that California gives to the federal government that it doesn't take.

So we're in a like $81 billion surplus that California gives to the federal government. Whereas Texas, and I love Texas, making a mistake, is in a $71 billion deficit from the federal government. So, you know, $150 billion difference there. Yeah, that's something, like, I remember during the fires, um, when Trump was like threatening to like, you know, not help us and not give us aid and stuff. I was talking to my dad about it and he was like, good luck. All California has to do is say, then we're not contributing to the federal government and the whole country. And the whole country is writing on that money. Like we are in New York and.

Yeah, the country is propped up on California. I think about eight states. Yeah, I think somewhere in there, yeah, which is rad, by the way. I love it. That's why that's why we're a union. We all benefit. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So what is the current estimate of serial killers? Well, pinpointing an exact number is impossible due to the clandestine nature of serial killing. It is estimated that there are at least 500 serial killers currently at large and unidentified in the United States. The FBI has previously stated that for every one serial killer apprehended and brought to trial, three more may emerge and begin their criminal activity. While the number of active serial killers has decreased significantly since its peak in the 70s and 80s, there is still a concerning number operating undetected. The decline is generally

attributed to advancements in forensic science, policing, criminal justice, and technology, making it harder for serial killers to avoid capture. For example, the number of known active serial killers in the U.S. dropped from nearly 300 in the 1970s to fewer than 50 in the 2010s. Despite this downward trend, the FBI estimates that the problem is far from eradicated. Yeah, they kind of, yeah. Well, enforcement, the risk they run is they get a little tunnel vision. Like, even if they're seeing a very clear pattern of decreasing, they're like,

don't you dare think about cutting our funding. Yeah. It's still raging. It's definitely come down. It's very interesting. I don't think we really have the answer yet. I think there's, well, Eric and I were talking about on this trip, you know, there's weird outlets for people now. And weird ways to pacify people that didn't exist.

Like you could sit in your basement and just blast people all day long on video games. And you could be talking to other dudes on headsets and yelling at them and being aggressive and, you know, all kinds of. of shit can happen online, and you wonder, is that pacifying a lot of people that otherwise would be out roaming around delinquent and bored with these weird ideas? I don't know. There's some explanation, and it seems like it has to be correlated to technology, whether that's also it's way harder to get away with it. I'm sure that's part of it. But again, I don't believe serial killers exist or don't exist because of deterrence. I think if you're that way, you're that way. It's not like, oh, I was going to be a serial killer,

but then I find out you get the death penalty. So then I wasn't a serial killer. I don't think it works that way. Me either. It's definitely a brain. I think it's a brain, it's a disease. Like I think it's psychopathy. I mean, okay, so here's an interesting question.

Do you think if they discover a gene that is, a serial killer gene. Yeah. But it only appears in the eighth month of the pregnancy. You can only test it. Do you think the country would be like, yeah, you can abort that child that late in the game? I think it would be split.

I think a lot of people would say, no, you can't kill. Again, everyone that's anti-death penalty would say, You know, you can't just kill somebody. That's not the right of any of us or any government, but they would have to live in an very interesting way. There'd have to be some monitoring at all times. Like if there was a known gene.

Yeah. And again, that's so tricky of a hypothetical because so often people are genotypically one thing and then phenotypically not that thing. Like you could, you know, things happen that prevent the expression of those genes. And so you could have that gene and probably not, if not happens. So it's very, very tricky. I think a more compelling aspect that is ahead for us is there's that gene should, and CRISPR is totally ironed out and dependable. Would there be legislation that on that eighth month, on that eighth month, you have to use CRISPR to edit out that gene?

I think people would sign up for that. It's pretty scary. Serial killers or CRISPR? Serial killers. Then we would be putting in so much, it would require a lot of funding to like monitor those people or put them in a place or, you know, whatever.

Yeah. And I don't like, I don't know if people would go for it. I mean, you see the obvious, the pushback would be it's like a very slippery slope. That's eugenics, right? So we're reading out people. That's why it's an interesting conversation. Yeah.

Comment if you'd say yes on the bill. All right. Well, that's it for Caroline. I hope everyone can sleep at night, even though they're scared. They're scared. That's so scaly. Oh, spank a chero. All right, love you.

I love you. Bye. right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.