Doomed to Fail - Ep 13: Watts the deal with Cleopatra - Chris Watts & Cleopatra

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

This week Taylor goes way back before year 0 to talk about Cleopatra and her bf Mark Antony. 2000 year old spoiler alert. > She’s powerful and also a woman, and also had another bf named Julias Ceaser. NBD. Everyone dies horribly.Farz talks about this horrific more recent story of Chris Watts and how he’s the absolute worst and killed his family. If you are ever in the middle of murdering a group of people and you stop to think, maybe I don’t have to murder EVERYONE in this group? You are right! Just leave, stop murdering. Go away. #hottakes Follow us on Instagram & Facebook!  @doomedtofailpodhttps://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpodYoutube - https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpodPhotos of Cleopatra and women who’ve played her via the public domain.Watts fam via People, Good Housekeeping, & NBCOther Notes:I listened to a ‘rest is history’“Roman Empire” on NetflixDefinitely some Dan Carlin in therehttps://www.history.com/news/10-little-known-facts-about-cleopatra  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Okay. Taylor, we're recording. Accepts. You accept? Okay. So we'll go ahead and get started. Welcome to Doom to Fail. the podcast where one of us is going to be sick for a while. And this time it's Taylor's turn. I'm joined here by Taylor, my co-host.

Hi, Taylor. Hello. How are you? I'm probably better than you. Yeah, I was sick. This morning I couldn't really talk when I woke up, and now I feel like a little bit better, but still like kind of dizzy.

Yeah. So we were discussing changing up the production schedule and recording more than one of these a week so that we can have moments where we're sick and not have to hop on and record while feeling, shitty so we'll make that a reality and stuff yeah exactly we'll do it exactly um so taylor we're gonna go through our drink schedule at this point so why don't i tell you mine then you can tell me yours mine is going to be cores which is a tasty rockies because we're going to go to

colorado for the true crime side of our story today so for my drink we're going to be having some cores because we are going to be in colorado for the true crime side of our story today and cores is a the taste of the Rockies. Apparently they say that they brew it using water from the Rockies, I believe, but mostly they're famous because their cans turn blue or the mountain turns blue when it's cold enough to drink. So I don't know why I'm giving people a lecture on what Coors is, as though people don't know it's like most ubiquitous fear in the world, but there you go. I'm like, is there a Coors that's not a Coors light? Is it like a not light cores? I feel like I've seen like a yellow tan or

champagne colored cores before that feels like that might be the regular cores that's right it's like a champagne color i do right yeah but good for them good for their marketing and branding people because that's more i mean when i think of course i think cores light actually kind of with light too totally i feel like i wouldn't i don't know anyone who's like oh i just have a good budwiser or not light but i don't know what that tastes like so maybe i should try that too you're like i want to buy i'm going to drink a lot of these so i'm going to pretend this is like a diet food Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, another podcast idea, we'll reminisce about different alcohol things that we like.

Katie of the Schmidt clan, I'm calling them, texted me this week saying there's definitely farting. They listened to the last episode and said there's farting from seven minutes to 11 minutes. I went back and listened. People, it is my dog. Who would record themselves farting and then publish. it publicly and advertise it publicly. Why would I do that? I mean, I'm sure people do that and they get a lot of money for it, but that's a whole different ballgame. That's another genre. We are not, that is not the demographic I'm shooting for here. It's obviously coming from my end,

but why would I do that? Because so, so Luna's going to shake when she shakes her collar makes sounds, and then she'll tap on glass when she wants to be let out or she'll like wine in the background. Like, I need to figure out what I'm doing. It's a dog. It's a dog. It is, I would never deliberately record myself farting and then posting it publicly to the world. So I don't know, Kincaid, Katie, y'all have a very similar perspective on this. Yeah, maybe it's a you problem. It's a them problem. Anyway, that's my rant. That's my quick rant for the day. But I'll, okay, so let's get to your drink, Taylor. Awesome. So I also have a little bit of notes from last week and some things I wanted to share.

I'm drinking a hot toddy because my throat hurts, but that has nothing to do with my story. Are you actually drinking a hot toddy? Uh-huh. That is awesome. I love hot toddies. It's delicious. I made it out of honey and a little bit of lemon and some tea and some whiskey.

Did you use regular lemons? Yes. Okay, so here's the secret to like a phenomenal hot toddy. Use Meyer lemons, which are sometimes hard to come by. are they a little sweeter they're a little sweeter they add this little kick to it they just completely because it's acidic so it balances out the you know harshness of the the bourbon which is amazing so yeah we really need to start an alcohol podcast i think i'm in that sounds fine it's a thing that's going to kill me so that's cool um cool okay so i have some notes from last week r e jo rogan Juan from california says Vars is on the wrong side of the pitchfork on this one. Sorry, Juan from California, how convenient. Is this Juan Carlos, your husband?

It is my husband, yes. It's also a Rick and Morty reference, which I thought was funny. And then George from New York, who is my friend George, who lives in New York, says, here's what I'm willing to agree with about Joe Rogan. He has a podcast. He has guests. He has an audience. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I mean, he nailed it. Nobody can deny that. Yep. True. All true. I also have been having like a rough week in general because I'm just like wasn't feeling well. And so I've been thinking like I should be nicer to people who believe in God and not be such a jerk about it and have some balance. But I'm also just so mad. And I also saw something this week from a dad on LinkedIn who's like, how can dads do work life balance? And I've just like never been so mad after reading that. And so I was like I just I was wondering if there's some sort of like strangle thing you can buy to like strangle it to like the rage out that's where i'm coming from i don't have children so i don't understand the sentiment oh it's just like it's like a mom thing dads have no problem dads get paid more money dads are fine you know so whatever um i've been kind of mad this week um and another thing i've been annoyed about it is which i've slacked you about is i've been like hey everybody like our podcast

and read it and then like no one does it and i'm like just do it because i'm a terrible salesperson so I'm just like I said so do it so I'm going to work on our pitch I just added us to LinkedIn I'm just trying to get in front of more people so I mean you got to you got to offer people something like I offered in that Facebook channel to send people autographed pictures of our face nobody took us up on it 35 people saw it and like two people liked it so no one wants that I don't know we have to think of something else we have to think of someone else okay yep alcohol recipe book by far as a Taylor I love that I love that so I'll also So before I get started, I wanted to say thank you to some people who are actively listening to, especially Christine and Kelly, who've been giving me a lot of feedback.

And I know they listen to it every weekend. It's really fun. So thank you both. Okay. So now I'm after that's, those are my notes and kind of where I'm coming from. But so, of course, we're doing like relationships and events and things that are, that are failures throughout history. This relationship is one of the ones that kind of comes up first, whenever you Google. historical relationships that were like tumultuous and ended in tragedy. So I also was making a timeline that I showed you and I'll post it on our socials. But I'm like, what timeline am I in when I'm talking about my historical things? And so much of it is like after 1600, which makes sense because there's records and it tracks. But there's so much stuff that having before that. So I'm like, how can I find stuff that actually is ancient? And then it gets me into my two types of existential dread.

have like the future existential dread. Like, when will the robots kill us? When will we kill each other with nuclear weapons? When will the aliens kill us? When will nature kill us? How will nature kill us? You know, all those things. That are normal. You got to stop watching the news. I know. I also have historical existential dread, which is like, what don't we know? How can we possibly know anything? How are we gathering these stories from like remnants of clay pots and coins? And there's just so much that I don't know about and I wish that we knew more. So anyway, this is the best that I can do in 20 minutes of a topic that people spend their whole entire life studying from like bits and pieces of pottery and the stories of the victors. So I don't know.

I don't know if this is true. It's kind of true. And it might as well be true. And does that matter? It's very stressful. Is your point that whoever wins is the one who defines a story? yeah that's fair especially with these like super ancient stories i just don't know but i'm going to tell you as much as i can about cleopatra and mark anthony oh that's a great one yeah you know what

when you said the oldest story i thought cleopatra and i was like who was the guy and i kept thinking it was that guy who Colin farrell played in that movie the biopic where oh my god this is i'm like i have to edit this out this is terrible what's her name Angelina Jolie was the mom, remember, and then the Asp killed her. The Asp killed is Cleopatra, potentially. So who's Colin Farrell? Wait, Colin Farrell is Mark Anthony then. I am right. Right? I guess. I didn't watch that, but probably. There's also Caesar. She also was with Caesar for a little bit. So we'll get to that.

Hold on. I'm going to look this up right now. What is the movie? I didn't watch that movie. Alexander. That's what it is. Okay. has nothing to do with your story. Yeah, I definitely have to edit this out. Well, it's like similar. You know, there's this, there's so many, there's so many stories, like, of these dramas and there's so many civil wars in this story that I'll talk about. It's just, it's constant battle. So if you're thinking of like what it was like to live at this time. And we are pre zero. So we're in the BC times, which is, as I've already said, is really hard for me to go backwards in time. But I'll give you some dates. So we start, start in BC in this story. And I, I didn't watch. as many like dramas but i did listen to a rest his history podcast definitely i've learned the story from dan carlin i watched ancient rome on netflix which is like half documentary half show which is kind of fun and i also just was looking at article on history dot com and then i also i don't

know if i told you this but when i was a little a little girl i wanted to be an egyptologist that was like my dream i like that's pretty cool yeah hey do you think we should go to dan carlin and and ask him for sponsorship money at this point, given that we plugged him like every other episode? Yes. All right. I don't know how to go to his house in some way. Okay, I don't know how to get a hold of him.

I guess we need an agent. Okay, this process, this might be a longer process, I thought. Does anyone know Dan Carlin? Tell him we said hello. Just write to us and let us know. Yeah. Oh, he's the best. Yeah, so I just loved ancient Egypt history.

I think it was like, I don't know if it's still a big thing for like kids to know a ton of about, But I had, like, hieroglyphic stamps. And I remember in, like, the 90s when my family moved to Las Vegas and the Luxor was brand new, I was just like, oh, my God. You know, just so excited about it. So I loved hearing the history of Egypt because it's super interesting. It's also interesting as I, like, learn more. Like, the civilization of Egypt didn't change for thousands of years.

And now this story is going to be the very end of Egypt as, like, being ruled by Egyptian pharaohs. So we're at the tail end of it. so speaking of tail end and timelines here are our main characters is Julius Caesar he was born in 100 BC there's Mark Antony

is not Anthony it's Anthony it's Antony A-N-T-O-N-Y born Marcus Antonius in 83 BC and then in 69 BC Cleopatra the 7th Philopator was born in Egypt so just thinking about

I wrote oh Christ so here's just like a little bit of their ages is Caesar is 17 years older than Mark Anthony. He's 31 years older than Cleopatra, and Mark Anthony is 14 years older than Cleopatra. If that matters, I'm to tell you how old they are. Does it matter or no? I mean, kind of. I mean, we have talked about like huge age differences.

I think 31 years is a big age difference for people feeding. But, you know, they also were very similarly like the similarly politically inclined and everything. So I don't think it was just that, but it is a big, a pretty big difference. So this is something that, like I said, someone will spend their whole entire life studying and talking about, and I'm going to try to do it in 20 minutes. But I'll try to benchmark some dates around Cleopatra and her life. And then also remember, we're going backwards because we're in BC time. So Julius Caesar in a nutshell, and I think I mentioned him in the Nero episode as well. He is a general and a dictator of Rome. He was a big part of the end of the Roman Republic. So at this time, when we're in like the 50s, the 50 BCEs, Rome is having a ton of civil wars So specifically Caesar is in a civil war with Pompey So P-O-M-P-E-Y

Who was once part of the Triumvirate Which was a group of three who ruled Rome together Around 60 BC So that was Pompey, Caesar and Krasis We're trying to kind of stop the Roman Republic And turn it into an empire And they had the triumvirate Which was like the first group of people being like

We're going to over Our rule is higher than that of like the Senate of like the Democratic role. Yeah, it's just expansion, right? It's like a land grab. Yeah. So Pompey, who's once time for it, him and Caesar are potentially, like they're friends. Like they're talking about, you know, doing this ruling together.

And Pompey marries Caesar's daughter, Julia. And by all accounts, they did really love each other. But Julia died in childbirth and it devastated Pompey. And his relationship with Caesar was never the same, which is like a lot of this probably wouldn't have happened if Julia had lived because. then they would have continued to kind of rules together. But they started to drift apart now that they weren't family anymore. So that's happening in Rome.

There's a big civil war. In 51 BC over in Egypt, Cleopatra becomes co-ruler when her dad Tolomey the seventh dies. She co-rules always with a man who's both her sibling and her husband, which is a thing. So she marries her brother, Telling me the eighth. So it's a whole thing. It's a lot of the Egyptian rulers. It's a whole bunch of marrying your brother or your cousin or whatever. Like it's very much, like we've talked about a million times.

Like, you shouldn't do that. It makes bad rulers because of genetics. At this point, it just feels like there's so many of these out there that we've already covered. Like, the shock value of its one-off. Yeah, it's banana. So she's married to her brother. He's younger than her. And they're co-ruling Egypt together.

So just to talk about Cleopatra for a little bit, like as a person, And obviously we don't know a ton about her. That's true. We know the records that people have of her. She is one of the last pharaohs of Egypt. Civilization has been around for thousands of years, but we're here at the tail end. She was very smart and very charming. She spoke a ton of languages.

One of the actual kind of firsthand accounts comes from Plutarch. I think it's about 100 years after she died. But he wrote about that people said that she was known for her beauty and charm. She could speak several languages. She was very intelligent and quick-witted, captivating personality. She was very popular. So this is all stuff that we don't know for sure. But I think, like, the one thing that is maybe unfair to her and her, like, intellectual prowess is that conventionally, she's not very pretty.

So there's, like, busts and coins with her on them, and she's not, like, a perfect, like, beauty. So some people say that she was, and I feel like they might be using that as an excuse. used to be like, this is how she got so powerful because she was so beautiful and seductive. But she also, like, other people are like she wasn't that beautiful. So it's like a couple of things that we like know about her that are facts. She was Greek. So she was from Macedonia, like Dan Carlin says, and in Greece. And she comes from like a long line of of Greek emperors of pharaohs of Egypt who were not ethnically Egyptian. She was one of the only pharaohs who bothered to learn how to speak Egyptian, just like Catherine the Great,

bothered to learn Russian when, like, other people hadn't. And people have had issues with, like, the movies that she's portrayed in, like Elizabeth Taylor and Galgado is about to play her because they're white. But Cleopatra wasn't ethnically African or Egyptian. She was Greek. The issue that I have with those actors playing her is that they're gorgeous. I was going to say, like, you have Elizabeth Taylor, who's like, I guess, considered back in the day and even today, like, one of the most iconically beautiful women that's ever existed but you're saying that she looked more like buzz from home alone like i don't know if like she was just like this astounding beauty and i don't know if that matters like that's just i don't know i don't know where that fits into her story and i'd have to

think about it for like years to try to make sense of it but she wasn't like striking beautiful like galgadro is distractingly beautiful you know yeah like yeah well it's also hard to tell because you're looking at like renditions that yeah it's a painting it's hard to really visualize i mean i'm looking at one of them which was it looks like a modern painting based off of a bust yeah i mean the ones that you would look for the look at the coin like the coin of her is probably like the closest yeah she's got a roman nose like you can tell she's got she's definitely got a roman nose like that's normal that's whatever yeah so like some of my opinions on this are like Beauty is subjective, A, so whatever.

Our historians writing away her power is something she got from being so beautiful and sexy. Are they harping too much on her not being beautiful? Does it matter? Like, I don't know. But just so we know, like, the answer, I think, and I think that we've maybe talked about this before in, like, the realm of, like, dating and relationships, it's just, like, be cool and people will like you. Yeah. So, like, she was cool. And so regardless of what she looked like, people liked her.

and she got some dudes to like her too. So that's a little bit about her, maybe what she looked like, maybe what she came from. In 48 BCE, she is forced to flee Egypt. She goes to Syria. Her and her brother-husband,

Ptolemy the 8th, start a civil war. So the civil war in Rome and now a civil war in Egypt. So her and her brother are fighting for the Pharaoh throne. In 48 BC, Julius Caesar arrives in Alexandria,

which is a port city in Egypt. ship. So this is where a lot of this like action takes place. It's at like the tip top of the Nile. And Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE. So it's been around for a while by this time. And it's a center of learning culture, diverse populations, like Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, other cultures, a lot of people live there, as well as obviously a ton of enslaved people live there as well. But it's the port city, lots of trade, grain, papyrus. Like it sounds very fun. It sounds like very bustling. The library of Alexandria is still there. It has between 40,000 and 400,000 scrolls, all this, like, information. That lighthouse we talked about is one of the wonders of the ancient world. That was still standing. Education was really highly valued. So it's like a pretty cosmopolitan city for being in BC times. Yeah. Sounds like King's Landing, kind of. Yeah, it probably is. You know, like all these are very similar to like things that we've heard in fantasy things. So.

or in 48 BC, Pompey and Caesar have just had a huge battle. I cannot pronounce this. It's the Battle of Farsalis, and a lot of Romans died. And so I've been saying there's been a bunch of civil wars. Like, these are legions that are going back and forth between civil wars. There's been so many. So imagine if in like the U.S. Civil War, the North and South fought. And then it ended.

And they were like, great, now it's east and west. And now it's tall people versus short people. And now it's like this versus this. And it just goes on forever. And so like you're fighting someone that you fought with last year. you know you're like this year we're enemies because of something new and done sounds tiring yeah so Pompey and Caesar you know they used to be almost related because of Caesar's daughter now they're in this fight so many people have died Pompey gets to Alexandria

a little before Caesar and he asks Ptolemy to help him so he says help me defeat Caesar and Ptolemy wants to have Caesar on his side so in his own civil war against Cleopatra And so he cuts, Ptolemy, Cleopatra's husband, brother, cuts off Pompey's head and gives it to Caesar when Caesar arrives because he knows that Caesar's coming to Alexandria as well. And he does this to be like, hey, I want you to be on my side. Look what I did for you. I killed Pompey. And- Such a morbid gift.

It is. And Julius Caesar, surprisingly, is not happy. He's like, ew. Like, he doesn't, he's upset. And there's, like, some things that are like, a lot of conjecture, like, why? Why is he upset? Like, they've been fighting for years. They used to be friends.

They're fighting for years. Tons of, like, normal people have died during this, these, like, battles and this huge war. But I imagine, this is what I think I've been reading about this as little as I have, that seeing the head of someone who used to be friends with, who was married to your daughter, who almost brought you a grandchild, it's a little bit of like a fuck, how did I get here, you know? Just like, yeah. But, like, I don't know, I think just as a general rule, kind of like we always say, don't kill your family. Also, just never give somebody a human head. Like, it's just never

going to be received well. No, that's definitely fair. It's a good life role. I think I think I can stick by that one. Yeah, totally makes sense. So, like, definitely not like a silver platter with like a thing over the top, you know, like that's not great. So Cesar is not impressed, but he's in Alexandria. And now, tell me, this is, it's hard to say, tell me because it starts with a P, so hopefully I'm getting it right, but it's P-T-O-L-O-M-E-Y. So Ptolemy is like, okay, well, now Caesar, since you're not happy about this great gift I bought you, he puts him sort of in jail in Alexandria and is trying to wait to figure out what his next step is. So while Caesar is stuck in Alexandria, Mark Antony is in charge of Rome. So he's been like a high up general in Caesar's army for a whole time.

And he does a pretty bad job. He's just like living a nice life in Rome while people of Rome are starving, which we've seen again and again. and then we're only on episode 13. But another thing that I think we could maybe stand by is, it seems like if you just feed people, everyone will be happy, you know? Yeah. There's got to be something biologically in humans that once they attain a certain level of success, they just literally cannot think like normal humans anymore.

Yeah, they just like can't remember that like, oh, maybe I should, you know, spend money on the people that I've, that I rule rather than a gold hacked, you know, or like anything else. just so so crazy did you ever watch that interview that ellen did with bill gates back in the day people would like ask him how much he thinks things cost and he was like so comically off on it i think he said like a banana's probably twenty dollars because he just doesn't know they're so out of touch you're right no that's definitely fair there's like so far away but they can't even imagine like what do you mean you can't you know like marie antoinette saying let them eat cake

she didn't really say that but like the idea is like well we have all this cake here why don't they just have this you know we're like no they have nothing like you don't understand like what it's like to live on like that side of the of the spectrum did she really say that i could have sworn that i heard somewhere that she said something different she didn't say that yeah no and also yeah that's definitely revisionism but she did not say that but but it's the same idea that like if you're living in a place where like you've never been hungry you don't really understand what it could possibly be like for people who are hungry. So that's what happening in Rome.

There's also riots in Rome, you know, tons of riots during this time. A lot of people are starving. Rome has a population about a million people at this point. So there's a lot, like a lot of people there, which is, you know, a huge city even in now times. Famously, Cleopatra comes back to Alexandria. She sneaks in to come to Caesar's aid and asks him to take her side. So some of the rumors are that she came rolled up in a carpet. So like they brought him a carpet and enrolled.

was like, ta-da, I'm here, or in like a linen bag or like in a box or like whatever. Like she came in like a fun way and surprised him because she had to sneak back in. And so she, he really, he likes her. He likes the kind of her jib. You know, he likes this like trick that she did. He likes that she speaks to all these languages. She's really smart. He's in his 50s.

She's in her 20s. But they see something in each other and they start a relationship. So in 47 BCE, Cleopatra gives birth to their son, who she named Cesarian. So they have one child together. And another thing about, like, Cleopatra being like this, like, crazy tempteress, it's probably that she only had, like, two lovers in her whole life. And they were Caesar and Mark Anthony. That might have been it for her, you know?

Sweet. So the next year. By the way, Taylor, just so you know, I'm actually looking up if we named them Cesarian sections because of this guy. Yeah. Can you tell me more about that? Let me know what you find because I don't know what that means. It's weird. It's not spelled like the way we spell Cisarian section, but let's see.

I'm going to be a little, I'm going to put a finer point on this. Why do we call them Cisarian sections? Roman law under Caesar decreed that all women who were so fated by childbirth must be cut open, hence Cisarian. Other crossful Latin origins include the verb cedar, meaning to cut in the term, say, sonis, that was applied to infants born by post-mortem operations um that makes sense if the mom dies they just take it out gross yeah but i don't like that is actually like whatever so it is definitely roman in nature but we don't know where the word actually originates from but it's i mean it had to be like something related to this guy yeah definitely and i don't know again like

talking about uh like fake things like in the the new game of throne show the house of the dragon They are, there's a ton of childbirth and death and childbirth, but when they do perform a cesarean, they're like, the mom is not going to live. You know, they just cut her open. They're like, this is like, the last chance to get the baby out. And then I did also do something on Instagram a while ago about maybe when that was happening that like midwives or whatever they're called in Africa have been performing them for like hundreds of years because they knew how to do things like wash their hands with alcohol and like make a small cut and get the baby and take care of the mom and like all the things that like we didn't figure out in the West until like a hundred years ago. Wow. Which is super interesting. Yeah.

So anyway, also this dude's name is Sarian which is just that if it is related to that it means cut and somehow. whatever. So they have a son, same cesarean. And then Caesar defeats Tell me the eighth and restores Cleopatra to the throne of Egypt. Tell me Cleopatra's brother, her husband, dies in the Nile. He drowns while escaping. She may have had a, that might have been on purpose, like making sure that he didn't survive while he was escaping Alexandria. So the next thing that she has to do is marry her other brother, Tell me the ninth, who I think is like an infant at this time. She just like has to be married to someone else in order to rule. She can't. like technically do it by herself which is dumb but she's married to her infant brother now but she's definitely like dating caesar and um she also has her annoying sister arsony killed and in one of the podcasts i listened to they described arsony as the prince harry of egypt so you can make your own assumptions about how annoying she was but is harry annoying yes okay you feel see we we decide i think at some point taylor that one of us feel strongly about one thing and the other one doesn't. I don't have any opinion of him. So I'm just going to, I'm going to go with your

version of who Harry is. We just watched the South Park from this past season about him and Megan Markle where they're like, they do go on a worldwide privacy tour. And during the tour, Harry's like playing his drums and has a sign that says like, leave us alone and stop staring at me. It's really funny because they're like, they're like holding these signs that are like, stop looking at me. Leave me alone. We want our privacy. But they're like yelling it in the middle of all the town squares. So that's the idea what I'm doing right now. Yeah. So all of her siblings are dead. She's co-ruling with her baby sibling. They stay in Alexandria for a while and they both go to Rome. And so we've talked about this before 44 BCE, Ida, March 15th. Julius Caesar is assassinated. He stabbed to death in the Senate. After his death, Claypatter returns to Egypt. So she was there while he was murdered and she had to like get out fast. So she got out of Rome super fast. Huxeserian with her. They went back to Alexandria, and they did some ruling of Egypt there together.

In 41B.C.E. Mark Antony is now part of the second triumvirate, so a second group of three dudes who are trying to rule Rome together. And he summons Cleopatra to Saras, which is a place where he wanted to get her to be an ally to him. So they had this meeting. They might have met before, but the myth around this meeting is that she arrived on like a golden barge, you know, like carried by enslaved people with like purple sails and rose of silver and she made herself to look like the goddess Aphrodite and there was like a gold canopy and she people dressed like Cupid and just like a really big like show going into to meet him and Mark Antony loved it because he thought he was he thought he was the embodiment of the Greek god Dionysus so like

he was a lot and he loved the show she loves these grand entrances Yeah. She loves it. And I think that's probably because she knows that like these dudes love that shit. You know, they're like, oh, I love, you make me feel special. So that was totally working for them. And so they had a lot of fun together. They had a group called the admittable lovers, which was like a group of people that would hang out every night and have like a game night and drink a lot and eat a lot and like just have a lot of fun. By 37 BCE, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra had three children together. Alexander Helios, Cleopatra, Selina, and Taledomy, Philadelphia. They rule Egypt for a little while during this time as well. The rule is loose because they're children, but the children are definitely heiress to the Egyptian throne. And so they have those kids in 37 BC, they're living together. They're super happy. But Mark Anthony's actually been married this whole time from 40 to 32 BC.

So in the middle of this, he was married to Octavia the younger. And she seems nice. They had some kids, but he wants to marry Cleopatra and they get divorced. And in 32 BC, he does marry Cleopatra. So she's his, like, fifth wife. He's already been, like, married a bunch of times. But they're finally do get married. And then we're almost to the end.

And there's so much more that happens during this. But so the second triumvirate is Mark Antony, a man named Repidius and Octavian. Octavian sounds like Octavia, you may have noticed, is the brother of Octavia who Mark Anthony was married to. And he's pissed because he's like. you were very clearly having another family with Cleopatra in like, oh, so this wasn't normal.

This isn't like how they just do things. Yeah, like it was like kind of normal everybody knew, but like also Octavian was like, fuck you for doing this to my sister, you know, and God was like, there's other things, but he was like really mad. And so this turns into another civil war between people.

And Cleopatra and Mark Antony are on one side and Octavian is on the other side. And there's a big battle called the Battle of Axiom. So many people die because these people's personal problems. But Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, they lose. They lose the battle. They flee to Egypt.

Anthony knows that they're defeated. It's a rumor. This feels maybe a little too romantic to be true, but that he hears that Cleopatra is already dead. So he stabs himself. And then he finds out that she's not dead. And they bring him to her. And he dies in her arms, which is like Romeo and Juliet and also there is

Mark Anthony and Cleopatra Shakespeare play that I have not seen or read. But it sounds a little too good. be true, but he dies first. He dies by his death himself from the stomach. Oh, so that is, so that is what happened. Yeah. Why do you say you don't believe it? Well, I don't believe necessarily that he killed himself because he thought that she was already dead, you know? I see. I see. So he might have had suicidal ideations on his own abolition. Yeah. Yeah. Because they knew that they were like going to be in trouble because they just lost this big battle and they've lost control of Rome and Egypt. So she does get to organize his

funeral she knows that he has has died and the sort of next step for for cleopatra is there is a thing that they do in rome when you return from battle is you get to have a triumph and a triumph is like a big parade so one thing that caesar did a long time ago was he had his own triumph which you're technically not allowed to do has to be like approved by the senate and people really mad but it's like a huge parade where you're like i am victorious i came back and you you parade through rome with you know your spoils of war. And one of the spoils of Octavius winning this battle was going to be Cleopatra. He was going to come back and kind of like parade her through Rome and be like, look what I did.

I like, you know, won the war. And now this, this pharaoh is mine. So she doesn't want that to happen. She doesn't want to be a part of that at all. So she dies by suicide as well, possibly by asp. And that's the thing that maybe she had a snake bite her or like a cobra or like some kind of cool snake that killed her. It also could have been that she kept poison in, like, a hairpin to kill herself with. But either way.

So apparently, yeah, like, that's an asp is just like the old-timey way to say any venomous snake. But it sounds like it is probably a reference to a very specific Egyptian cobra. How scary is that if that was like. What a horrible, horrible choice. Yeah. Like, what do you do you like, put your hand near? it or do you like near you until it strikes or do you like trying to scare it like it's just so scary to be like I purposely want this thing to bite me even without knowing that without the

dying part you know trying to having to get that close to a snake so scary because like I think the way that the venom of a cobra works is that it causes collagulation in the blood that's in your body so it's not like a chill death it's like you're turning kind of the stone from the inside out Like, it's a horrible. I mean, just throw yourself off a roof or something. Like, this sounds so much better. It does sound so much better. So that sounds terrible.

Hopefully it was quick. But now they are, they are both dead. And the kids, their three children, do go back to Rome with Octavian. Octavian is actually his, he gets renamed as Augustus. So he is the first emperor of Rome. And we talked about this in one of our first episodes because the fifth emperor of Rome is Nero. So we're a little bit before Nero, who we talked about before. but Augustus, formerly Octavian, is the first emperor of Rome, and now Rome is an empire

is going to do a whole bunch of stuff all in this ancient time. And then I guess the last thing that I wanted to say is, which I thought was interesting, is that they're kids, the three kids that Mark Anthony and Cleopatra had. So Cessarion dies in one of these battles, so she has those three kids left, and they go back to Rome, and they're raised by Octavia, who is the sister of the emperor and the ex-wife of their dad, and she raises all of the kids together. And they live for a while longer. Wasn't Nero's mom named Octavius? She was, I guess an A. Okay. Agrippina. Then wasn't he married to someone named Octavius? I'm sure there was. Maybe it's a common

name. It is, no, it's common as in like, yep, we're definitely in, this is the the beginning of that family line. Okay. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because he is going to be, you know,

yeah, one of his spouses was Claudia Octavia. So she was one of the empresses and she is, yeah, it's like, like they all know each other and all they're all related and all of that stuff that we know. So she's part of the Julio Claudian house, which is what Nero is. And yeah. So sort of. Do you remember during that episode how you said he went somewhere? and was in like 1,000 singing competitions.

And you were like, how many do you think he won? And I literally sat there. I was like, oh, let's see, if you look the percentage number, you're like, no, he won them all because he was obviously rigged. Like, it's like sitting there going to actually do the math. Like, what do you think the percentage number will be about? Like, yeah, fun times. And that's all, that's the same thing.

Like, you're doing this when people are starving? Like, what are you doing? You know? Disconnect, total disconnect. Because you guys have no idea how much bananas cost. Yeah. Oh, no idea. Absolutely not. Yeah. So I am, you know, I will definitely watch the Gallagode movie, the Cleopatra movie, whenever it comes out in a few years, because it's, I'm sure it's going to be beautiful. But I don't know how much, I don't know what is true and what isn't true. But what I know is true is that Cleopatra was, you know, the most powerful woman in ancient Egypt. And it was because she was able to, you know, partner up with two of the most powerful men in Rome. Okay, I'm going to put you on the spot. Who is the right casting for Cleopatra?

Oh, that's a good question. Kind of. Want to say maybe Lady Gaga. That is so good. Because I thought of Lady Gaga, while you were talking about how she like unfroled herself from a carpet, my first thought was Lady Gaga should totally do that at one of her concerts. And then when you brought up that she met Mark Anthony in like, had this whole you know festivity around her coming up but i was like i'm positive i've seen lady gaga do

that so you yeah way to go yeah that's a because she's like she's pretty but in a weird way she's got a roman nose she's definitely got a woman nose yeah yeah yeah and now that you said that and i'm looking back at that picture of her yeah she looks like lady gaga like she doesn't look as good as lady gaga i would argue but yeah no that's fair maybe yeah closer to lady Gaga than Little Elizabeth Taylor and Golgadow for sure. Yeah, exactly. And it would be Mark Antony. You know who the person who in the, so I was listening to a, and the rest is history

podcast, and it's by author Tom Holland, who Dan Carlin reads and talks about. So it's an author named Tom Holland. He's like a British historian. But in that thing, in that episode, they were laughing saying that Tom Holland, that actor, should play Mark Anthony. That would not be good casting. Yeah, I'm going to push back on that one. I think I'd be good at Mark Anthony, you know?

I think I could probably make it work. Yeah. I got the nose, right? You totally do. Yeah, there you go. I'm ambiguous. You don't know what I am. I could be Greek, I could be Egyptian.

You have to cut your hair, though, have that like Roman Senate haircut, which is just like short hair. Definitely not doing that. I'm sticking with my stick my camera on a light socket hair. No one would know who you were. I know. I know that's my identity at this point. Awesome. That was very cool. So we that's our second, well, so this was Egypt and Rome kind of together. So yeah, we got two Roman stories now, I think, under our belt. And there's probably so many more. Well, so yes. Okay. One thing I was going to say first is like, so also our second Egyptian story and how like Egypt was so like, it. with the dad who killed his daughters and how like that was like honor killing that was a huge thing about it which i think is interesting remember that and then but secondly yeah that's part of my

historical existential dread is that like there's so many stories that like i that will never hear and that i want to know about when i hear things about like like there was a native american city in the middle of the united states that had you know 50 000 people live there and they just found like the ruins of it you're like what happened there you know what happened there you know, like, there are so many things that happen there. And then, like, I also feel like then with like that, you know, that city in Turkey, that underground city in Turkey, do you know what I'm talking about? No. It is, is it called? It's called Darren Kuyu. So it's literally a farmer in Turkey was like clearing some land and found a hole and went into the hole. And

it's a city that could have housed like 100,000 people underground. Is this recent? it was like in the past 20 years but now they've been like excavating it and there's like rooms and markets and stairs and it was dark because all underground and like what happened in there is that crazy it's wild one jo rogan plug i guess that i have to say is another awesome show on netflix is ancient apocalypse which is like talking about you know but mostly it's like this idea like what are these cities like and like when their civilization ended you know what did we lose, you know, but Joe Rogan is in it as like the expert. Why is he an expert in this?

We were like five episodes in and then all, you're like, okay, the guy who is like the main guy is definitely kind of crazy and you definitely can get the feeling that historians like are not his friend, they're not stoked on him, but he and then like episode five, he's like, here's my friend Joe Rogan and we were like, oh no, like what is this show we're watching? But it's fun to, it's fun to think about essentially to be like, these, cities and these places we have like stones left like what did we lose we lost all the paper we lost all the fabric we lost all the stories like where what happened in the world before we remember it yeah yeah and i mean with alexandra you mentioned Alexandria too like the burning of the library of Alexander is not like the source of like all knowledge the world had it was like the Wikipedia of the world and then it was just gone yes but I've also heard recently that maybe that's not true I'm like god damn you never know so much yeah you'd never know what's So many different variables there. Like so many different ways to like interpret all that stuff.

And apparently now it's not true. So there you go. I know. So it's like I don't know if that's true. Yeah, there's no truth. But like it's fun to think about like did that happen? Like how cool is that for, you know, to think about like, you know, sneaking in and like getting your enemy's head on a platter and then being like,

I don't know what's going on. And then like some girl comes into your room and like a sack and or carpet. And she's like, let's roll together. And then you're like, okay. And then you go home and all your friends stab you to death. That's a wild story. It definitely sounds Shakespearean, which it was. Yeah.

And it also kind of sounds like a Burning Man story. But maybe that's just me. Cool. Well, Taylor, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that. And we'll transition over to, I'm going to call it a layoff of the week because this story has gotten a ton of play. So I usually try and find things are a little bit more obscure.

But I'm going to be honest, I've also had a hell of a week. And I went with a layup story. So apologies, everyone. It's something that you all already have probably heard about, but I'm going to put my own little spin on it. I am going to be discussing the Watts family murders. Okay. Yeah.

I have some opinions. Should we start with you? Should we start your opinions? I want to say, number one, don't kill your family, no matter what. Okay. But number two, not Shannon, it's Shannan or whatever. shit on yeah yeah like shannon spelled weird this thing was super annoying sorry she's super annoying yeah did you watch the the netflix documentary i did i did she's like super mean to him in like

the videos like he makes fun of him and she's like oh my husband's the worst is why he always does this stuff and just like she just seems like not someone i'd want to be married to again but this thing like i mean i've been divorced people yeah i've been married to that i'm sorry i like this none of that None of that seemed that atypical to me of like a married couple. I thought it was a lot. I thought I would never do that. I would never be like on Facebook, be like, oh, my husband's the worst. Because like my husband A is not the worst, but B, I would just, that's so rude.

Like, I would never do that. It's just like not in either of our natures to treat each other that way. So when I see that people treating each other that way, I'm like, just get divorced. This is terrible. We're not fighters, so I don't know. You don't you don't browbeat one into submission on a daily basis? No, we're actually very nice to each other. Like sometimes we annoy each other, but like for the most part, we're fine.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, look, yeah. I, here's the thing, I, I don't know. Maybe I wasn't being totally myself as I was going about doing this because I actually shared your sentiment. Like, but I was just like, oh, God, the way things that happened were just so, so bad. But it's just like, it's like, I've reflected back on, I was like, God, like, yeah. How could you, could you, could you, could anybody be that annoying really?

Yeah. No, no, no, nothing, nothing is. No one deserves what happened to her. Zero. I'll say this. So, like, I read, I saw a lot of her social media posts. And actually, a lot of her posts were very like glowing of him saying like, what amazing father.

We're so lucky to have you. The girls are so, whatever, this, that and the other thing. I just, there's something really weird to me about, like, people with like a life or like responsibilities careers family and things like that being super into like social media I mean at this point I don't really I don't if it's not about my dog or it's not about this podcast I don't post anything because I just like why is my life important enough to give a show what other people think you know like it's a weird psychology of like I need everybody to know

about my life and care about it and it's just like I'm here for the likes I'm here for the comments like i don't yeah understand that and she was like heavy internet which like that would be the part that would drive me insane is like why do you give a shit about what these strangers think about like your ultrasound results or like how you feel about what the girls ate for breakfast or how they were fussy like who are you talking to when you post this shit like that's what would drive me nuts yeah totally so i'll i'll get to this Okay, I'll get to actually being delivered about this outline and actually not going on that side ramp. But so I'll start by saying, you know, again, this story has been poured over extensively.

You called it out as well and the fact that there's a whole Netflix documentary on it or series on it. And I don't know for sure, but there's got to be at least a dozen plus podcast dedicated justice murder because it was both horrific and what happened. And also incredibly stupid. But the one thing I would say is, if you do decide to do something like this, A, you're never going to get away with it for sure. Like, that's never going to happen. So always contemplate suicide immediately after. And if you don't, don't do this when you have, like, another 50 to 60 year lifespan ahead of you.

Like, that's the dumb part of all this. It's like, this guy is less than 40 in prison in a solitary cell. that's it like that is literally it's like it's like dude at least wait until like cancer starts kicking in your liver starts failing like then maybe go this route but like don't do it beforehand that's fine or like i mean don't do it first and foremost um but like or have like a better plan like you were saying you said at one point like send your credit cards the people around the world and have them use them and then just disappear yeah yeah yeah i got it all worked out I got all worked out.

And, like, isn't it John List who, like, was gone for, like, a long time? Because he did it right, because he did it right, because he used only cash. Okay, we need to stop giving people game plans here. But the fact that he took out cash, left his car one spot, and then just, well, John List was also lucky because he was in an era where, like, there was no cameras, there was no social media. It was like the six cameras. Camera phones. Yeah, like, nobody, nobody's going to see him and, like, take a picture of it and send it to, like, the FBI's most watch. it like so he had you know i mean should if you're gonna do it maybe the time to do it is

already over for you but i don't know where there's a will there's a way right so you car don't do it your way to murder your family so so to your point like this guy didn't fool anyone for even a minute that he didn't do it it was so obvious and transparent so obviously what i'm I'm talking about is Chris Watts. And yeah, it's, it's kind of, I don't like to get into the house because the house is actually like really, really terrifying. But so the story here starts in Frederick's. Wait, but get into that. Do the terrifying stuff. Can you? Well, yeah, yeah. I'm definitely going to get, I'm not white watching this as well. I'm going to tell you exactly what happened. I'm actually going to go into details that I didn't know that Netflix never covered. So we're going to go even grizzlier on this one than usual. Again, It's kind of a layup story. It's like a lot of details are kind of out there. But so the story is in Frederick, Colorado, which is maybe 30 minutes east of Boulder.

It's an incredibly white and incredibly middle class town. If you street view their home, you'll see that it's just like a very, very normal looking suburban life that you would live there. There's kids parks. There's, you know, it's that kind of a kind of a vibe. I wrote down like think more home improvement than Roseanne. Like it's not trashy. It's just like a notch above that, you know? Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Our main characters, we're going to start with who you just mentioned, Shanan, not Shannon, Shannon Watts. I know. It's just like, oh, even... It's so annoying. It's like, come on. It's not her fault, but God damn it, it's so annoying.

Yeah. She was 34 at the time that this all transpired. She and Chris were married in 2012 after having dated for about two years. She worked for... Even her job fucking drives me nuts. I got to stop shit talking to this dead woman. She worked for a company that produced and sold a product called Thrive, which seems to be kind of like a health and weight loss supplement. Taylor, have you ever heard of a company called Cutco?

Yes, like the knives. Okay, I wrote down, like, I thought at first I was like a Texas thing. How do you, was that like a Nevada thing to or California or New York thing? It's an everywhere thing. You know, I think it was like, it was one of the like, you could cut co sell knives like door to door. And I feel like there's like my husband has a great story where he was like he worked for a day for like a thing selling like meat door to door like steaks and like that's something that you could do but now there's just like I mean there's an infinite number of MLMs you can get involved in you know infinite infinite like that's what that's what I thought this was kind of like I heard what the business model was like this is cutco this is basically hey I will say cutco nice are amazing but the entire business model is you had a hired bunch of 18 to 22 year olds. have them tell their aunt, uncle, and parents to buy these knives, and they see that they're good knives.

Like, well, is it good enough for this price? Probably not, but whatever, it's my kid. I love them, so I'll buy the damn knife, right? And that's basically what this was. This was like, because the model, I think, is you buy the product. So you are the wholesale drop shipper of the product. So like, they make their money because they sell to the salespeople

and the salespeople have to upload that to everybody else. This guy in college did it was so hilarious. he thought he was so smart he went and bought fucking like three thousand dollars worth of these supplements i went to his apartment and we're just going to like hang out or something you just had box of this stuff and he was just like this is amazing it like it turned out we weren't hanging out he was trying to sell me he invited me over there's a little studio to be like this is the best thing ever anyways i didn't buy it but i love i love when they i love that i want to like i love when they do that or someone buys like a ton of supplements and it's trying to sell them

it's like such a hilarious bit they do it and only murders in the building which you should watch if you haven't yet but it's just it's great yeah yeah i remember my mom getting like roped in a tupperware parties yeah like all these women would get together and sell tupperware to each anyways um so that's what shenan was doing she was selling this product called thrive the weight loss supplement essentially and she seemingly made decent money at it she had about 60 to 70k by some accounts and apparently the product did actually work we're going to get into that a little bit later because there is some thought that this product actually had a hand to play in what ended up going on she was also a lupus sufferer which is an autoimmune disease where the body's

immune system attacks healthy parts of the body she would discuss lupus quite a bit on her youtube channel and her facebook post again it's just like somebody who like thinks that her life is really important and people should know everything about her which is like just a i don't know it's personality type that i just don't bond with well yeah like on the on the note of the social media stuff like i mentioned you before like she did talk a lot about her life the kids she talked a lot about chris it was just every it's like everything had to be documented yeah exactly like literally everything like yeah yeah we're on the same page right like they so i actually have somebody in mind that does this and it's like man like it's weird because like they'll post and like nobody will

like or comment but like every day it's like 17 posts about like what happened today it's just like nobody cares nobody's like maybe the catharsis just put this in a diary like whatever are you are you talking about me and how much i post about this podcast no i actually really really appreciate it no no i actually really appreciate like i've actually had that thought multiple times where I'm like I should be doing as much as Taylor is doing and I just get like swamped with work shit and it's just like I don't want to look at my computer screen like at this point when I'm when I'm doing work Zoom meetings I tell everyone like I'm turning my camera off and I'm walking because my eyes are fucking bleeding from

just staring at this screen so I don't want to do it anymore so that's that's part of my problem but I will try to get better we should talk about that at some point I'm gonna you can do my review my employee review for doom to fail and tell me how I'm doing So her and Chris had two daughters. Their names were Bella and Celeste. Celeste went by Cece. I'm just going to refer to it with Celeste here. And they had a third on the way who would have been named Nico.

Bella was four at this time. Celeste was three. And Shadam was pregnant. She was four months pregnant with Nico at this time. So I think four months is showing, right? It's pretty big. Yeah. You definitely have told everybody, you know.

You definitely, yeah. If you're like conservative and like about it and like worried about it, you wait until like three months to tell people, but after that you've definitely told people. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Chris himself, he was an oil field operator. And by all accounts, you know, from what you could see, because again, everything was documented. He looked like a happy devoted father and husband. He was always smiling and, you know, he put on the act. He put on the show, essentially. Chris was apparently also a fan of Thrive that supplement company. and he was apparently kind of doughy part of the events that we'll be discussing and lost somewhere in their neighborhood of 35 to 50 pounds through some combination of like using Thrive which is like a patch apparently you put on like it adheres to your skin and like doses you throughout the day with like a bunch of vitamins are you trying to sell it to me so i have a i have like about 50 pounds of these patches here that are waiting for someone to be shipped to so if you just then though me $600 you will i will send you this of Thrive. Oh, my God. Amazing.

Yeah, like, apparently this guy got, like, pretty jacked and ripped. And what typically happens when someone is dopey live in one way, and then they ended up living in a different way that gets them jacked and rip, he started looking outside of his marriage for company, which is exactly what he ended up happening. So that's kind of the secret. If your partner starts suddenly getting, like, super healthy and good looking, like, you're headed to divorce city. So just keep an eye on that as well.

He had a mistress who will play into this. I feel pretty bad for the mistress because she actually, she had no idea, no idea what was going on. Totally. Her name is Nicole Kessinger, not Kessinger, Kessinger. And I can actually say her name and not feel that bad for saying it because after this, she changed her name and moved away. And we actually have no idea who she is now. I was going to say, should we say her name? So good for her. Yeah, yeah. I thought about not saying it at first. I was like, I should

I probably shouldn't even name drop her at this point, but later on in the article, I was like, she changed her name, she's gone, like, nobody knows who she has. Somewhere like she probably went into like witness protection program, I don't know. For real, I'm sure people were mad at her and like she didn't do anything wrong.

No, I'm gonna get into a lot more of her involvement. Like she was actually a very good person in this situation and this dynamic. So she, the way she met is that her and Chris also, they worked with the exact same company. I think it was called Anna Darko. And she was a geologist there, as he was a fuel or oil-filled operator.

That's cool. And yeah, yeah, she was, yeah, she had her ship together. Like, I mean, that's like, when I learned about her and I saw her person, I was like, this was like, she thought like, oh, I met this great person. Like, this is the start of the new life. And like, it was just like, now, I, but you know what?

It's like that feeling where like, okay, I did all the right things. I went to college, like my master's degree. I became this professional. I got hired. I have a 401k about my first house. Like I'm doing all the boxes. And I met this person who was gonna be like the next thing

that's gonna, you know, that's how I felt like, That's how she looked at their pictures and didn't work out that way, obviously. So Chris had apparently told her that he was undergoing a divorce from his wife. He was like separating going through a divorce and was honest that he had two kids with this wife that he was leaving. So she knew that much, but not anything else. So let's get into the actual events. This happens so fast, which validates how fucking stupid this guy is.

On August 13th of 2018 at around 2 o'clock of the morning, it was like, one, 48 a.m. Shannan came home from Arizona from a business trip she was on. That same day, so the morning, later on that morning, she had an OBGYN appointment that she didn't go to. And she was also supposed to attend a really important work meeting that she also missed. And she wouldn't respond to her text messages. So her friend, someone named Nicole Ankinson, grew concerned and went to the house to check on her. So I don't know if you're going to say this, but that girl is a badass hero. like if you saw the video of her she was like I'm not going to let this go

yeah I remember thinking she's the kind of friend you need yeah I know I was also looking at from the perspective of Chris of like man she is going to blow up my spot oh yeah no as soon as she got there he he knew that he was like as this isn't going to last more than like a day you know because she was not going to be like she was not going to let it go she is just best friend of the decade award to her yeah she was a dog with a bone absolutely absolutely and like you can tell like that is not a woman who moves easily like she was going to just stand there until this was figured out like she was not gonna cow down anyone yeah exactly so he was fucked from the second she should get interest

because because her interest in this yeah like her interest in this is why like there was never really a chance to like digest anything absorb it what's going on what do they just do how do I get out of this where's my cash where's my passport like no She got in the middle immediately. Amazing. Congratulations. You're the best. Exactly.

Exactly. So she's there. Obviously, nobody else is. She sees that Shann's cars in the garage. It's got a window. She can see through it. She calls Chris expressing concern of what's going on. Then she calls the police.

So the police arrive. They do a welfare check. And there's obviously no sign of Shannan or the girls. None of the belongings you would expect of someone leaving a house were actually missing. so like her keys her phone prescriptions because she was a she had an autoimmune disease she had to have yeah medication with her all this stuff was at the house chris comes home in the middle of this and taylor have you seen any of the body cam video of this that's what i was talking about yes but he's just like no no no no what's her friend's name again Nicole Nicole and Nicole is like

no this this like it's incredible like that's yeah that's what i've seen I have the body cam image, like, actually my brain. I actually didn't watch him when I was researching this because I've, like, read about this case so much before in the past. The way he walks up to the house, it's like that was the moment it just snapped up like, I'm fucked. Like, this is the, like, when you know, you have to be on the news being like, please don't know. He didn't even, he even opened his mouth and the look in his face is just like, this is the end. like and it was he was right because he had a horrible horrible poker face throughout this entire thing anybody who has a remote interest in this case i mean obviously a Netflix documentary incorporates

the body cam image like there's a lot more like there's a lot of body cam imagery or videos that you can go watch of like this entire interaction he has with the police he has with Nicole he has with the neighbors like this guy was inundated like think about this obviously spoiler alert you just killed three members of your family and a fourth was on the way you spent the entire night getting rid of the bodies then you went to work yeah yeah and then you you come back to this scene of what you just did the cops are there you have your neighbor there you got Nicole there the immovable object and you're just like he knew that moment that it was kind of over and you could see it written on his face completely so you asshole you got caught immediately yeah he just looked

totally deceptive totally shifty and i actually wrote here it's irrelevant we we discussed sorry but i wrote that maybe if nicole wasn't so on the ball he would have had time to gather himself yeah he didn't because she was just right there just johnny on the spot get yourself a friend like nicole yeah no kidding i saw one video um where the neighbor where one of chris's neighbors he's with chris and the police and he goes hey i have a camera that captures part of their drive wave should and left me seriously we should be able to see it on this video and Chris because again we have it's all too only laughing because it's like you you were you are the worst you did like you thought of nothing but of nothing can you imagine what must be going

through your mind in your chest if you're chris in this situation he's just like oh that's great let's look at this video he has no idea what's on it oh my god we're gonna fire later they might have just captured him loading her corpse in the back of the car but yeah that's what he's because he has no idea where it's pointed to so they go to the neighbor's house the police and chris go to the neighbor's house and you can't make anything out like it's like obscure the truck's too big there's bushes in the way you really can't see what's going on but as the video starts playing there's a point when chris looks away like he like turns his back to the video almost like just like fuck this is it and then he turns

And he has his hand. He really picks himself up. He's like, oh, I can't, I have to look at the video. I have to express concern for my family. And so he looks at the video. Then he puts his hands on the top of his head when he's being arrested. He's just, it's not funny. But it's not funny. But it's funny just because like he's yeah, I just like couldn't have it. 24 hours ago. Yeah. Was it totally different thing for this dude. Not even. It wasn't even 24 hours. It was way less than it. It was like maybe like 12 hours. Yeah. Totally different life. at one point Chris walks away I think he like left to go move a car or something in the body cam video captures the neighbor look at the cop and say yeah he's acting weird which he was

everybody could tell he was just not being himself being normal there's another video that you just pointed out where he's on the news pleading for Shanan and the girls to come home and this is so cringe worthy because like he says it in this

tone that is so dead pan so devoid of feeling and his eyes are just like black and it's like i what are you supposed to do i miss the bright eyes of smiles of my daughters please come back come back and he's like looking at the camera and just like it's like the most poorly acted thing you've ever seen your entire life yeah which yeah like what are you there's no choice you're supposed to do right yeah you have do. I've seen so many of those where, like, you know, people are on the news and, like, the in-laws are crying, and, like, you're in there and you're like, you know what happened and what are you supposed to do? Oh, my gosh. It's crazy.

You tell him you're going to get coffee and you just fucking leave. That's what you do. Yeah. Because you're never going to get out of it. Well, like, okay, maybe you'll talk about this eventually, but didn't the other Peterson who killed his wife, didn't he try to leave to Mexico and died his hair? Yeah, but, yeah, but he was. was stupid because he stopped to go golfing he stopped to do a back nine on the golf course with his dad with like a wig in the back of his car with like a hundred thousand hours in cat it's like you got

all the evidence that prove your flight risk on you you don't have three hours to play golf today like right right white people problems yeah between you seriously so Chris apparently he goes willingly to the police station he's not under arrest this point they're just like they don't they don't know anything right they don't know if anybody's debt so that he goes there to answer questions he also goes to take a polygraph test he obviously fails the polygraph when asked get anything to do with his wife or the kid's disappearance the police grill him on this and at first he maintains a story that he has no idea what happened to them by this point that was the story i've no idea what happened to them and then his dad is the police station and he asked to see his dad and again just like going

back to you got to remember like you know you look at him you're like what a you look at the picture someone as a family like what a wholesome dad looking guy you gotta remember some people can look normal and be totally more complete wards on the inside like this guy was one of those guys just seemed like a normal all-American dude and had rocks for brains he's being taped obviously in a police interrogation room and he brings his dad in and he whispers to his dad as though he doesn't think that people can hear him whispering to his dad that he confesses that he killed her he tells her i killed shadan and the dad's concern puts his hands on his shoulder like what happens son you can tell me and then he starts like coming up with the story like he literally just kind

of events the story in the spot saying that he walked in on he said that he told her that he's having an affair she flew into a rage killed the girls so he and a rage killed her and the dad's just like i mean i guess you know i mean i don't know if you're a parent i guess you believe what your kid tells you because you don't want to believe the alternative and so the dad is very concerned and it's like yada yada yada so anyways that's what's going on and the police come back in and he starts kind of unraveling and telling this this story and i remember here that i really loved watching the police interview of of chris because they were just so good and patient about drawing out the lies and teasing them apart one by one part of this methodology is like she's the bad one right

we all know she's the bad one you're the good one you did it for a reason it makes sense like think about it this way like he they break it down lie by life so during this process he goes from i've no clue what happened to i'm having a fair to i told her i wanted to she killed the kids to then i had to kill her ultimately ending with our bodies are in crude oil tanks at my work that's the the disparity of the hours-long conversation they had here so the The prevailing theory is that Chris and Shanan got into a fight the morning she came home from that work trip. Chris essentially saying that I'm having an affair and I'm leaving you, basically.

Chris strangled her in their bedroom and Bella walked in on him doing this. He then wrapped Shanan in a bed sheet and placed her in the back of his work truck, the floor of the back seat, not the bed of the truck, and then placed the two girls in the back seat as well. But they're alive, right? Yeah, they're alive. And they were asking him, what's wrong with mommy? And he was like, yeah.

The most sociopathic, unbelievable thing I can possibly imagine. I was wondering, like, what are you thinking? I mean, it's supposed to be like total panic, but like, oh my God, don't strangle people. Well, like I said earlier, maybe we need, I, there's things I want to strangle. So maybe like a fake strangler that you could strangle, like a stress strangling thing. because he was so angry at the world. But, like, God, I mean, if he's going to kill the girls anyway, like, why make them sit through that drive?

Yeah, that's why didn't understand. I was like, why don't you just do it at the house? Maybe he didn't know he was going to do it. Maybe he was just like, he was trying to figure out what to do. Yeah, maybe like that drive to wherever he was going was the time he, like, decided, oh, I guess I have to do it now. But like, why? Yeah.

Because, like, because I'm trying to do the math on this. Hold on. Let me do circular math real quick. So, like, okay, let's say you. just killed your wife and you have two kids and at that point if you have even paid any attention of true crime you know that you're going down for it because it's always the husband every single time yeah so at that point when she's I mean you just kind of take off with the girls right like why do you need to oh you know what I'm sorry I got to

he was stupid as shit he thought that he could do all this and start a whole new life with his girlfriend Nicole that's what it was right right that's the logic that's I told I was like I keep forgetting this guy's really really dumb okay sorry right back on track now um so the field where chris worked was about 40 miles from the house and that's where he ended up taking all of them i don't know exactly how long it took but i would assume it took at least 40 minutes maybe 60 minutes to think about what to do once you get there and once you arrive at the oil field he took shenan out and dropped her face first into a shallow grave which apparently resulted in a partial birth of the kid because he like

just plopped her down the belly just compressed oh no gross Yeah, really, really gross. That's horrifying. Yeah. He then drove a bit further up to near the oil tanks and took Celeste out of the truck and strangled her before dropping her into the oil tank. This is a tank. This is a huge. It's so scary to me. It's like, it's so dark.

It's such like a dark thing. It's like this is where like they fill barrels. Oh my God. This is, it's crazy scary. Yeah. This is horrifying. He then turned his attention. to bella later on he would say that he was surprised at how much she struggled saying

this is a quote little quiet bella had a had a will to live out of the three bella is the only one that put up a fight yeah yeah yeah it's worth knowing that after like after like the conviction everything he kind of gave up the whole story about shudan he came clean basically about everything so that's why we we have we have a lot of quotes about this from him so he then took bella and dumped her body in the other wall tank there was two tanks sitting next to each other he later would say quote i couldn't this is so protest the way he phrased this i understand i understand what he meant but the way he phrased it was really grotesque the quote is i couldn't believe how easy it was just let her drop through the hole and let her go i heard the splash

when she hit the oil the part of that's like grotes is like where he's like i came with how it was to let her go because like i get what he's saying but it's like you're letting your daughter's You don't know what I mean? It just hits different. Wow. So, so turning back to Chris's girlfriend, Nicole, on this day, so the day of the murder, he texts her saying that his wife had taken the kids on a play date, it never returned. She ended up learning that Chris was still married because of that news report I mentioned earlier that was absolutely just like gut-wrenchingly cringe, she would ask him about his family and he would just kind of avoid answering questions or change the subject. So like she's getting

that like something is happening here because i mean if she watched the same video that we all did of that interview it's obvious that there's something going on here yeah she she later would state quote it got to a point that he was telling me so many lies that i eventually told him that i did not want to speak to him again until his family was found so she was like setting that boundary like no no like you're something's going on you're doing something like you can't talk me anymore going back to so shortly thereafter you know this trial became the trial itself was actually really cut and dry because chris pled guilty to the murders like there is no what's the defense there's like there's zero way to defend this case right so he confessed the murders he pled guilty he was only spared the death penalty because shenan's family requested the state not pursue it thinking that like there's already been enough death we don't need to kill somebody else in the middle of all this that's nice of them but it's is it though because to me I'm like I imagine the life you had and then imagine that you're in a cell for 23 hours a day and you're like 33 years old like I think

I would rather take the needle totally no you're right so I feel like they they were like so who knows what they were actually thinking but maybe they're like let that man suffer by himself in the next 50 years a piece of shit yeah yeah he um yeah he received five lives sentences without the possibility of parole and then another 48 years for the unlawful termination of Shann's pregnancy and another 36 years for three counts of tampering with the deceased body for what he did after they were dead. He is being housed in a maximum security prison in Wisconsin now. He had to be moved around quite a bit because his profile or his crime was so high profile and because he committed this crime against his own kids that he's not allowed to mingle and he can't

socialized with general population because somebody will kill him, like immediately, right? It's presumed now that he's in protective custody and that he's in solitary confinement, which essentially means that he's in itself for 23 hours a day, he gets one hour out for wreck time, and that's basically, he essentially has no interaction with any other human being in real life. Wow. So in person, yeah. I don't recall where I heard this, but I do remember hearing that he sometimes will

have visual hallucinations where he will see the girls in his prison cell with him. which yeah like i totally believe this i think that you know again like it's like again he's not even 40 he's still in his 30s and you know you have a minimum 30 to like 60 years left so you die in this prison cell like you're probably going to start seeing shit yeah apparently they haunt the shadow to him it's like oh man like yeah because like you know what like i'm not going to say i get it but you went into a blind rage, you killed your wife. Okay. But then you had like an hour to think about this with your kids.

Like that's the part of it that is like the hardest one for me to like actually digest. It's like what he did to the girls. Like that's so next level crazy. Yeah. So I do. He should be haunted for sure. But it hasn't stopped his adoration from women. So he apparently gets a ton of, like, sexy photos and letters and stuff like that from women who are in love with them.

So, yeah, that's a whole subset of dating. It's dating is that hard? Like, I don't know. I just feel like it's that hard that you have to, like, write someone, a murderer, an email? Or, I don't know. I mean, dating someone well-adjusted is hard. obviously these women are not well adjusted right do we think that's safe to say like they're probably yeah some like cobwebs and bats in their brains floating around there i yeah and i don't yeah i don't

i don't i don't get it i don't know what it is like is it it's there's something real i don't know like i don't understand what could possibly be when you find when you're like i have to it's a convicted murderer i feel like i remember reading in the beginning of this people were like there's no way you did it i love you and you're like he said he did it what's wrong with you is i feel like this is another plug for widow or rocha because women in their 30s getting desperate so you think of find a widow who's like a widow by not murder there's a widow by not murder is anyone a marketing executive that wants to talk to me about winter rocha please give me a call we're trying to get we're trying to get famous people

If we can get famous and help widows, you know what? That is the sweetest reward of all. So the house itself, Saratoga Lane, they purchased a house in 2013 for just shy of $400,000. The house was listed for sale starting in April of 2019. I don't actually have the very, very first original price that was listed for, but counting the price changes, there was 19 price changes. from when the house listed until a few months later in July of 2019. Ultimately, the house ended up being priced somewhere around $415,000, at which point the listing was just completely removed.

Somebody just the list of the house. I actually don't know what happens in these situations. I would assume, so Chris owns the house, but obviously he's in jail. So his assets and his liabilities, I don't know what happens. Right. Well, is there like a, is that what the civil trial is for, for like, what's it called? Like, like, the money, like, for the family to, like, get money. Like, like, like, Ron Goldman's family, you know, that's where they were able to, like, sue and try to get the money.

Not that they didn't do it for the money, but isn't that the one more money's involved? So they didn't have this. Yeah, yeah. That's where the punishment isn't prison. It's money. But they didn't have that. I mean, Chris has nothing, right? like he has them assets he has nothing it's like maybe maybe oh you know what actually maybe

maybe it would have gone to shenanza state maybe it would have gone to shenan state and then if she didn't have a will then it would have just gone to her parents because her kids are dead so yeah uh it goes it goes up to the parents so maybe it was it was them that actually started listing the house yeah but yeah you definitely i can't believe we bought it though i mean it just feels like seriously you can't believe that nobody bought it yeah i can't believe no one bought it because it's like a nice house and the nice neighborhood and like what else like they just they could sell it for like half that you know just like get rid of it that do you feel i mean so disgust that isn't what a that house would scare these shit out of me totally but they don't want why but they don't want

anymore i would just want to be like get it out of my everything i never want to think about it again oh oh you're saying the family yeah okay okay yeah yeah just list of like 50 000 who gives a shit just like get it get it sold yeah like i want absolutely nothing to do with this place get rid of it somehow some way this house was purchased like what would it be it would be four months ago really four months ago the house sold and apparently sold for six hundred thousand dollars whoa that's way more yeah way more i don't i don't maybe i don't know maybe like the bad vibes wore off but six hundred thousand dollars for that house seems like a lot i mean that is you're living on a in a ghost house like well well yes but there's plenty of

I feel like you're advocating I feel like you're really advocating this house well no I just feel like I feel like there's tons of murder houses like that Los Angeles murder house that was so cool like fascinating where that guy killed his family and then like it was like a time capsule inside and they said there were like Christmas presents that were still there because he happened on Christmas Eve and like all this stuff that was like real fun and spooky and then someone bought it and they gutted it and then they ran out of the money so they just sold it again gutted and it was like a super disappointing because it was really cool like a cool 60s time capsule and like you stayed at a haunted house hotel once didn't you yeah yeah but didn't we talk about buying that

house like pooling a bunch of our money together like having like multiple multiple people go in and buy that too yeah but but i think it's a generate i think it's like um generations removed thing so i think that if the people who were killed would have been dead anyways that is the right amount of time to wait before living in a murker house i think that's fair yeah okay so so like so hold on so okay so the youngest would have been nico so he hadn't been born yet so let's say that it's happened in 2018 so let's say he probably wouldn't live past 100 so like in 21 20 is like when that house isn't officially scary anymore i think that's fair that's the rule just made it up but i mean it's a long time to wait i know i know i know

Especially with Modern House, I'm going to actually be seeing at that point. But yeah. We're in a recession. Yeah. Yeah. Who can wait. But that's this case. And like I said, look, I know everybody's heard about it.

I try to find more obscure stuff. I'm going to find more obscure stuff for next week. But I guess that this week was a nightmare. And also this case is incredibly red flaggy and horrible. And again, I mean, okay, so going back to the theme of the show, a big red flag. is don't let your partner get fit that's a really bad sign like just dose them with like baking grease in their coffee or something like don't let them i mean they're trying to run away if they're trying to get fit i just wonder like this like middle america life what is that like you know

when like the mom has the MLM and all of these social media posts talking about her family trying to i don't know what become an influencer and then the dad is like not great and there's like all these weird it's so cliche it's such like a it's such like a middle it's a middle of america boring story yeah two and a half kids yeah two and have kids the dad has a mistress yeah it's um it was very middle america yeah except it ends in a not middle american way it ends in halloween town is where it ends yeah oh those poor babies just abandon your kids abandon your kids

drop them off somewhere they had family that like he could have dropped them off at shenan's parents' house and he could have driven for at least a week you know by the time Nicole showed up the kids would have been like waking up you could just left them there you're right yeah like it's like daddy's taking his passport in this wig and just leaving like do that he's gone yeah and they'll find him in like six to nine days tops you know but at least the girls are still alive

he legit thought that he was just going to like move on with his life these guys are so stupid an asshole what a moron yeah anyways that is our story for this week we will have more next week are there any disclaimers we want to throw out there or any request sailor yes i definitely want to again, think everybody who gives us good feedback and it has liked us on Apple Podcasts and left reviews there. That is really the way for other people to find our podcast. So we actually, yesterday I was looking at our stats and we crossed 900 downloads. So super awesome that, you know, people have been listening to it. I know a lot of those are me listening to them over and over again, but still, it's super exciting that people are listening. So please share

wherever you can. And just liking us on social media and sharing a post is, super helpful because there might be someone in your life who would be interested in and listening to our stories because we're having a really good time telling them and we want people to listen. Yeah, absolutely. And I would also say, if there's bad feedback, also feel free to share that, but I'm not farting. I'm not recording myself farting. Like, tell me anything else. I'll tell you, you know what? I'll actually volunteer when I do choose to do that and I'll just punctuate it somewhere in the podcast and we'll include it in the description. but that does not happen yet.

Great. I should probably edit that out, right? That's hilarious. Well, good for you. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks Fars. Cool. Thanks, Taylor. Have a great day. Hopefully the sickness wears off.

And thank you everyone for listening. Bye all.