Doomed to Fail - Ep 6: Put your dead wife in a mausoleum - not a blue barrel - Drew Peterson & The Taj Mahal

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Episode 6 is our TEN year anniversary episode!! Not ten years of the podcast, that would be insane, but ten years of friendship. Cheers to us!This week Farz slowly sips scotch and tells us about murderous “cop bro”™  Drew Peterson (who might have got lost in all the stories of Petersons murdering their wives in the news). Taylor brings the basics of the most famous love story and building in India, the Taj Mahal. Do you know more? Let us know we’d love to dig deeper!Follow us on Instagram & Facebook!  @doomedtofailpodhttps://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpodHistory of the Taj MahalTHE TAJ MAHAL: 5 CREEPY, DARK STORIESDeccan famineMy Day - MARCH 22, 1952Story of The Taj MahalThe Untold Story of Taj Mahal : 100+ Shocking Secrets, Facts of Hindu TempleReality Check: Whose Taj Mahal is it anyway?Drew Peterson via Amazon and Rob Lowe as Drew Peterson via imdb. Taj Mahal, Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan - via the creative commons. 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. Welcome to Doom to Fail, the podcast where I consistently test Taylor's patience with me. I'm joining here by my co-host Taylor. Hi, Taylor. How are you doing today? Oh, I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. And I got to put a note on how I tested your patients. We usually record these at 10 a.m. on Saturdays central time. The last two weeks, I've had to push it back multiple times. And Taylor's been very, very accommodating. And I want to thank her and her family

for being okay with that. You're welcome. Mostly my family. Thank you, Juan Carlos, for not murdering me. Yeah. Thank you, Juan. So let's go ahead and start things off, Taylor. I see you have a lovely new tattoo. Do you want to talk about it? Oh, sure, sure. I just got a new tattoo. It's a scorpion. It is, it was hand-poked today. There's a woman here in Joshua Tree named Taylor, and she has her name's Taylor also. She has a place called Love Always Tattoo Shop. And this is my second thing from her. I also got this dinosaur from her as well. Is hand-poked a lot more painful because i assume that it's more nuanced in detail is it more painful than normal no and i think the only i think well this is like just an outline like you know intentionally like a

simple outline i think the worst thing is the shading of a tattoo that's the part that hurts the most and there isn't any shading in this so nice it looks awesome it looks very very cool thanks and my my maiden name is stearic and a stearic is a little tiny scorpion so like this species it's a species of a scorpion right sweet very cool did not know that when you told me that earlier this week i learned something you did not know that was a thing who would know that yeah yeah well so let's go ahead and kick things off by figuring out what we're going to be drinking today taylor do you want to maybe let us know what yours is and i'll let you know what mine is yes so for mine mine is going to be a non-alcoholic drink but it's going to be like a nice like spiced like chai indian style tea

So if you wanted to, you know, pour yourself some tea, brew some things, we're going to go to India for my, for my portion today. But also, physically, I'm not drinking tea because tea gives me a headache and whatever. I'm drinking champagne, but-pa-pah-pah, because it's our anniversary. Cheers. It is. It's a totally normal thing to have a friend-diversary with someone. And it's exciting because it's our 10-year friend anniversary.

So that's pretty cool. We didn't even know what podcasts were a 10-year-year-old. ago and here we are so yeah crazy yeah taylor and i met 10 years ago at our last company in l.a we start on the first day part of the same cohort and um yeah been homies ever since ever since so my drink is lefroid 10 it is a scotch and the reason i have this because i'm actually drinking it while i'm doing yeah you're holding it very aggressively which usually i don't drink and do these but i'm going to do it this time and the reason i pick scotch is because to me scotch is a celebratory drink today and i was just absolutely related to get it back

as it relates to our story again i'm celebrating that i'm not this guy that we're going to talk about he is so awful he's one of the worst people i've ever read about in research and i just can't i'm so thrilled that i'm just on him so awesome great i don't even know who it is yet but I'm also thrilled that you're not him because that sounds bad. Yeah, so I'm going to go ahead and... I heard it open. That was nice. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and pour a little, a finger or two of scotch here in this plastic cup. It's also a very bright side of you to be like, I'm grateful that my lights are back and not like, fuck the Texas power grid.

So I appreciate you half, half full with that one. Yeah, yeah. it's it's been it's been awful and you know it's funny because today it's 60 degrees here so you don't you didn't wake up just shaking in your in your bed and the the night two nights before was in the 30s and I was like really could have used power of those nights I really could have instead of tonight but it's okay it's okay I'm just I'm thankful it's here and I'm off to Florida tomorrow so all good things so let's go ahead and dive into what my topic is so I'm going to be discussing Drew Peterson. You know who Drew Peterson is, right, Taylor? Yes. It's part of the

Peterson men murdering wives era of American true crime. Yes, but not related to Peterson's, but they're just Peterson's. Totally unrelated. But I feel like, like, I wasn't super in a true crime when this went down with Drew. So I think I personally confused the two together. I just didn't really care. Maybe it was just like saturation of people killing their spouses and I just didn't really pay attention to it at the time. And also, there wasn't much to the story, as we're going to see. I mean, the outline is extensive, so there's a lot to talk about. But I'll explain why there wasn't all that much to the story when this actually first came out. So to start things off, I'm going to say, I guess what might be a controversial opinion. Okay.

I'm not anti-police personally. Totally. Okay. So I have not had many negative interactions of police and I'm totally aware that that's not everyone's experience. I see the news. I pay attention to what's going on. I understand that these people have impossible jobs, very little salary, incredibly high stakes. It's kind of like teachers and professions like that where it's kind of like a thankless job and your ability to screw up is incredibly high. I have that framing in my mind that I'm totally aware that There's, like, really shitty versions of these people that are out there.

But this is a general thing. I'm just going to start at the top that I'm not anti-cop. I'm prefaceing that because I also think there's another category that I don't know if anybody's ever coined before that I just thought of when I was drafting this outline. Tell me if you've ever heard of this. Cop, bro. Is that a thing? Oh, no, but I don't know exactly what you were talking about. It's the George Zimmerman types that.

power without the ability to harness it and use it productively and constructively. So I'm corning the phrase, if it has been done before, if it has, let me know, and I'll give you credit somewhere in the notes. But copro's a thing. Yeah. And we are talking about copro today. He was Drew Peterson. His entire career was in law enforcement.

And so everything I said about police, take that out of the equation here, because that is not who we're talking about here so totally oh wait can say something real fast please did you watch brooklyn 9-9 yeah um i loved how they handled everything post-covid post you know george floyd and all of these terrible things happening with the police i don't know if you got that far in the series but tell me they handled it really really well yeah so um spoiler alert rosa um one of the cops she ends up leaving because she doesn't want to be associated with the police force anymore um and so they talk about it and like they really like talk about her decision how hard it was for her because she'd love being a police officer but she just didn't agree with the way that you know america

was going with their police force and all these things and um i don't know they really like they wrapped up the series really beautifully in a time when it was like a real hard anti-cop time rosa was a character so the character was wanted to exit the show yeah no yeah yeah the character she like she's still in the show it's only the last season that this happens but she just she quits working in the police department and talks a lot about how like as a Latino woman, she can't continue to work for the police force. That's interesting. They did a good job.

They didn't ignore it. That's awesome. That's very cool. So, yeah, like I said, we're going to be discussing Drew Peterson today. I'll start by saying, if you're a woman, you do not want to be married to Drew. He is a unique brand of sociopath. And we're going to get into a bit of his background here. So like I said earlier, Drew's background is entirely in law enforcement.

He had a 30-year career as a police officer and later a sergeant in a suburb of Chicago called Bowling Brook. I look this town up. It looks idyllic, not celebration idyllic. It looks sensible idyllic. Like it's a normal small town vibe. I'm from Libertyville, which is a very similar town of a suburb of Chicago. Yes. you're from a suburb of Chicago

I'm from Libertyville, Illinois I lived there until I was 13 then I moved to Las Vegas Yeah I was gonna say I thought you were always from Las Vegas Ten years That little nugget of Taylor Tribia comes out There's still so much to learn So much to learn

And I found another interesting thing about Bolingbrook Was that the income level was high It was somewhere around 107,000 I didn't write it down in the outline But it was above the national average so this is we're talking about a relatively sleepy town despite the fact that it's in a chicago suburb so just like frame that as like that's where this guy is trying to enforce the law there's not much going on and this is me just projecting if i was him i'd be bored out of my mind

maybe like the way he turned into a sociopath was he just like i'm so tired of writing tickets for like parallel parking in the wrong spot and then he went down this horrible rabbit hole that he ended up down. So he retired in 2007 and was given a pretty nice pension. It was about $60,67,000 or so a year, which is awesome. Great. Yeah, free money. So that's his professional background. Not much more detail we need to go into there. Apparently, he wasn't a terrible cop. He did have actually one and only one misconduct allegation. And that was only for running police searches for fun rather than for work reasons. And then later on, somebody else said, we all do that. We all, like, if we're trying to see what our in-laws are up to, we'll run back.

It was a comment. Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. Okay, okay. Not going into someone's house and being like, I'm going to go through your drawers. So being like, I'm going to look up on the computer if you have any felonies. Exactly. Exactly that. Sure.

Like I was talking to someone today about how if you give me your address, I'm going to Zillow your house, like 100% for any reason. I will zill your house. I want to see how much you spent on it. I want to see the last one was sold. I want your square footage on the whole thing, the rent estimate. it, all of it. I love how thorough you are.

I get it. So let's start with our red flags. Drew's relationships. I promise I'm not picking these types of, I'm just picking stories that I find interesting. And the fact that there's a lot of marriages involved is just ancillary to that. Taylor, how many marriages do you think Drew had?

Three. Four. Four, okay. Almost five. actually he was engaged a fifth time predictably he was crushing it on both ends of marriage and divorce his first wife carol brown was his high school sweetheart they married in 1974 and divorce once it came to light that drew was cheating the two kids one of whom stephen is somewhat relevant later on in this story so we can forget the other kids marriage number two was to vicky connelly they stayed married

for 10 years, and Vicki had reported domestic violence against Drew before. Later, once the facts of what we're going to be discussing came to light, she alleges that Drew threatened to kill her make it look like an accident. They divorced, and their divorce was finalized in 1992. Okay. Marriage number three is where things take a darker turn, an escalation turn. All right. I, yeah, I think that's kind of what's going on here.

like he's just slowly inching his way and it's being more and more abusive there's like something about this and the story we told like two weeks ago around like how the older men get the more they start becoming crazy and i guess maybe that's an indication of this so marriage number three is to kathleen salvo they got married just a few months after the divorce from vicky so again i would say that's a red flag right yeah and it must have been really hard for vicky to like accuse him of that if he's a cop right yeah like i don't know who you'd go to like where you'd feel safe making that accusation because we'll we'll learn later on that the copro culture in this story comes out and so yeah that that that had to be that's a that's actually a really really good point i didn't put it in here

but that's that's a that's a good um point the i'm gonna have to cut it out the fact that i'm saying points so many times i think well keep the part in where you're telling me i did a good job I'll keep that in. Okay. So I put down here that I don't care who you are. If someone just gone out of an extremely long-term and serious relationship, and it doesn't matter what they tell you, they are not ready to get married. I just don't think that humans are wired like that, right?

And like, why could we talked about this before? Like, you can tape people. You can live together, whatever. You know, like marriage is so much paperwork. Like, why do that? He just insisted on constantly marrying these women. I don't. Yeah.

What do you make of that? Like why? Yeah, actually, again, another good point, Taylor. Why does someone just keep getting married over and over like this? I don't know. I mean, I can't even imagine, like, having to move out of my house and, like, divide myself up again. That sounds exhausting. And to do that, like, three times.

It sounds like, that just doesn't make any sense. Like, I feel like it has to be, like, we talked about with, like, Henry the 8th and the tutors. And why you couldn't get divorced, it has to be just like, I want to have. legal control over you did that do you hear that no was it um Matt Langer's texted me and it audibly sounded so I need to mute that I didn't hear it at all yeah I don't totally so we'll learn later on that Drew actually didn't have that problem of having to follow paperwork and yeah he actually found another way around that yeah yeah he's a creative creative type

So in March of 2004, Kathleen died under suspicious circumstances. She was found in a bathtub, and her death was ruled in accidental drowning. Just keep cop bro in the back of your mind. Yeah. And this is kind of where the shenanigans start. Taylor, do you remember any part of this case? Because I only remember it because it was part of like an investigation discovery thing. And I always turn that channel on when I have a chance.

I feel like we're going to, I think the part I remember that is going to come in the future. Is it involves, does it involve his daughter-in-law in some way? It does not. It doesn't. Okay, then I don't know. Okay. Yeah. So the bathtub she was found in was dry and contained no water.

Oh, my God. Apparently, her cause of death was decided on by what's called a coroner's jury, which I've never heard of this before. thought that when someone dies, they just go to a coroner and they do what they do to identify the cause of death. In this case, in some jurisdictions, in this jurisdiction in particular, a jury, they are the ones who decide the cause of death. I suppose, I don't, I think it's super in the weeds on this, but I suppose what it is is that somebody does like an investigation into like the body, and then they send off the report to this group of six or 12 and they make a determination on what the cause of death was. Are they like, are they professionally able to make the distinction?

because it feels like science should be involved. I will dive way deep into that in a second. Okay. I'd like a scientist to think about my cause of death and not like... Really? You don't want copro to do it? No, I have like an actual scientist. I like a really good scientist.

Oh, you're going to be disappointed then. So that's where things are. Kathleen is found in a dry bathtub, ruled an accidental death by drowning. And that's where things stand, sand and Drew just moves on. Okay. Okay.

Okay. We're now on to wife number four. Her name is Stacey Ann Kale. You're going to keep finding patterns in my stories. Here's another red flag. At the time they married, Drew was 49. Guess how old Stacy was? 22.

19. Oh, no. 30 years. Oh my God. Like what do you have in common with a 19-year-49? 19 is too young to get married for most people anyway, like in any way, shape, or form. Yeah. Yeah.

And they ended up having two kids. And she actually even adopted Kathleen's kids and raised them like they were her own. And by all accounts, Stacey was a very sweet woman and mother. Mm-hmm. In late October of 2007, Stacey was reported missing by her sister Cassandra. Drew claims that Stacey, this is so stupid, Drew claims that Stacey called him and said she's leaving him for another man and that was it that's it like yeah like i don't know what happened to stacey she just called me and said she's leaving me for somebody else and she left

your kids there and all that yeah and that's all we know stacey is still missing and presumed dad i've been researching this to figure out like has anything at all come out in the year i mean this is i mean oh i'm going to do math again 2007 to 2023 that's six plus 16 years, right? 16, yeah, yeah. That's... Good job. Good job. That's 16 years of absolutely nothing coming out about what happened to this, this woman.

So she's presumed dead, obviously, and Drew's not saying anything to anybody. We do have some details that seem relevant. So a friend of Drew's told police that he and Drew bought three blue plastic barrels sometime around 2003 for a job they were contracted. do. This is totally 55 gallon blue drum Jeffrey Dahmer vibes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. Drew's stepbrother. Wait. Okay. Keep going. I'm like, when you said that, I'm like, oh, but he's a cops. What does he mean what a job he has to do? Like a home construction job, I guess? Yeah, he was, he was contracted out like he has a side hustle to like do odd jobs around town.

Yeah. Drew's stepbrother attempted suicide two days after helping Drew. carry one of these containers and he later said he feared it contained stacy's body in it so that's where things stand with that but again that's basically all we have at this point i think the police may have done some covering up of things but who really knows it's worth noting that none of that slowed drew down a year after stacey's disappearance he got engaged to a 23 year old woman named Christina yeah now he's like 50 something yeah yeah how did he meet her at like a singles event like where do you meet these people so i know with one of his earlier wives they actually started a bar together while he was still a cop and so i assume she ran it or or

somebody maybe he held on to it so maybe like that's where i don't know i don't know how i don't know how you organically run into a 23 year old when you're in your 50s dog parks maybe that i don't know we'll talk about that this week on dating far as in austin lovely uh luckily christina's dad had a ton of sense and basically forced her to break things off and move out of drew's house so like it was basically like an ultimate i'm like you're not doing this because at this point i would assume that there was news stories popping up around this guy yeah totally and weren't all the kids there were the bunch of kids there yeah i actually don't know where the kids were because the first two kids would have been old enough to have moved on by then.

It would have been way past 18 years old, but I don't know about the youngest, too. So let's circle back to Kathleen's cause of death. After Stacey went missing, Kathleen's body was exhumed and a forensic forensic examination was conducted. When I read this, Taylor, I thought back to our first episode and you pointing out the great fact that if you kill someone and you control what happens to their body, just creamate the body. Yeah, for real.

Why don't you get rid of the evidence? Yeah, be smart people. The conclusions were that she had in fact died by drowning, but it wasn't an accident. There had been a struggle, and she was later placed in the bathtub, because of course she was. They showed up to a drowning, and she's totally dry, and there's no water in the tub. What did she drown in then? We don't know. We don't know what happened. Okay.

But we know that she had bruising on her back, her torso, her face. There was a gash on her scalp. Oh, my God. At which point, that death was then classified as a homicide. In 2009, Drew is actually finally indicted for a murder. This murder, in particular, Kathleen's. Again, don't know anything about Stacey. This is just for Kathleen.

But it's interesting that that is what spiral imprompted this to happen. In 2009, Drew was indicted for Kathleen's murder. Because there's no direct evidence of what happened to Stacey, there's a curious legal procedure thing that the prosecution started to do. so generally speaking hearsay evidence i someone told me this thing happened isn't allowed except for certain circumstances because the whole point of american justice is you have a right to question your accuser but if the person is not there you're just saying here's what they said you don't have that right there was such hearsay in this case where it should not have been

allowed and it wasn't but the hearsay was something along lines of Drew told me he killed his wives. Illinois, the state legislator, the state legislation really wanted this guy in jail. So they passed a law just for him called Drew's law, which allows this kind of hearsay evidence to be admissible. Basically, yeah, it's like ghost testimony. And they're saying like, fuck you, you're guilty also. And yeah, make this law after you because that's how much you believe that you're guilty. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, this law, basically. So yeah, this law, basically, basically allows the hearsay of a dead witness as long as the prosecution can prove they were killed to prevent that testimony. Cool.

Yeah. So also it's funny because I feel like every episode I say we're not a legal procedure show and then I go into legal procedure. So also, I mean, it's relevant. You did go to, you did spend like a million dollars to go to law school. So you got to use that money somewhere and you'll use it here. So paying off. Congratulations. Yeah.

Lucky me. so ultimately drew was found guilty of Kathleen's death the jurors did say that drew's law testimony is basically what swayed them so good on the state legislators for taking quick action yeah he was ultimately sentenced to 38 years which is where he's at he's in jail right now apparently got his ass kicked in jail like his first like couple of days or week there and so they ended up having a transfer somewhere different i think the last i read he was somewhere in Michigan or Indian, I can't remember exactly where, but he's just bouncing around. Right, because he's a cop who's in jail. Yeah. And I think that's not good. Yeah. And I mean,

he kind of killed like almost kids. Yeah, no, he killed like young women and like why did he, did he, is he still think he's, does he still say he's innocent? Oh yeah. He. See, I really didn't want to turn this super legal procedurally. But a large part of this case, everything that happened after he's convicted, which is just like the multiples of appeals that were run and everything else. And so like that's the state that it's at right now. He's constantly appealing and he's constantly losing appeal after appeal. And hopefully that's, I'm going to get into another piece. Like he is definitely going to rot in jail forever. So I wrote down a subcategory here called other gross weird shit. And he's so gross. Like he's such a disgusting human being.

in 2009 so after he like he like tried to turn this into his 15 minutes of fame the fact that his wife was dead i don't know if you saw videos of this guy you should look it up you should know look him yeah because there's there's videos of him like he's just like smiling at the camera like a huge great like he is overjoyed that people are paying attention to him in this way that he's being photographed like he thinks that this is like that this makes him cool or more desirable or something i don't i don't know how to describe it it's just it's just he's too happy and i don't i don't know if he understands a gravitas of what's going on or he just thinks hey i i mean he kind of committed the perfect crime right his first wife they said it's accidental

the second one we still don't know where our body is so maybe he was just like so happy with himself and pleased with himself that's why he's grinning year to year in every one of these pictures are you looking his picture up yeah is that rob low that plays him in like the lifetime movie yeah i think so nice yeah That's like pretty good casting. Yeah. I mean, obviously, Roblo is much more handsome, but they make him look less handsome. It's pretty funny.

Yeah. So one thing that he did that was so gross, we're going to talk about his lawyer in a little bit. He and his lawyer went on a talk show, like a morning show, radio morning show, with this guy who just kept making fun of Drew Peterson about how, like, obviously guilty he was. And his lawyer suggested that the host. do a dating game segment with Drew where women can call in and who wants to want to date with Drew. What? Yeah.

And did they call in? No, this radio host had enough sense to say that's incredibly bad taste. We're definitely not going to do that. I definitely read something today that already women are writing to that, like, the Iowa, Idaho murderer guy and being like, I love him, he's perfect because he will write to, like, convict somehow.

Wait, who is that guy? The guy who just killed all those, like, college kids in that place. Oh, my God, that's so gross. Like, already women are like, what, go to a bar, find a dude that hasn't killed someone. Yeah. I just don't think it's that hard. Most people, your odds are better to find someone that hasn't killed someone. I hope so.

Yeah. So another curiosity here, it's so stupid, too. In 2015, so this is after he's convicted, and he's in jail for 38 years. He tried to hire someone to kill the prosecutor in his trial. It's impossible to hire someone. You can't, no one, no one is a contracted killer. There's never been one. But think about that.

Like, if he had done, like, assume he had done this and he got in away with it. He's still in jail. They're not going to overturn a conviction because the prosecutor's dead. Yeah. Right. That's not, what's the end of that just to kill him? Because he's mad. Yeah.

Ugh. Yeah. And then, so he did this in 2015. In 2016, he goes to trial for this. And this is the part that, like, I don't totally get, he had 40 years for this. Maybe because it's like a state government worker or something, attempted to kill one of them might have carry more weight than definitely killing a woman. Yeah, yeah, I don't totally get that math. But yeah, he was, he did he tacked on another 40 years.

Wow. Yeah. So his lawyer, this guy, he's such an idiot. again i'm drinking scotch because i'm so glad that i'm not this guy so his lawyer apparently knows or he says he knows where stacy's body is he knows he's been stated as saying he knows everything but that communication is protected by attorney client privilege because there's no harm to be done now she's already dead so there's there's no there's no way that he could break that and disclose it it's worth noting though that he actually lost his law

license for like totally unrelated reasons to Drew Peterson so like yeah okay I don't understand yeah well so it doesn't matter that he lost his license later on like the communication that was had was done earlier than that and so that's why it's protected and in addition of that he's actually under a court order under a gag order to not disclose anything so if he does he's basically gonna yeah he would probably be held in contempt of court at this point and he could probably be sued by drew Peterson but who cares at this point so what about stacy's family like don't they deserve to know where she is aren't they the victims yeah yeah but like but in this case you know this this supersedes that the attorney client privilege wow yeah so i mentioned stephen his son earlier so his son was

actually a cop too in a different part of town he was a cop for about six years when this started happening he was fired for obstructing the investigation into his dad. So he wasn't, like, he wasn't doing it internally as part of that police force. He was in a different part of town. So that police force was not investigating the crime. He apparently hid Drew's guns. There was three guns that, yeah, he went into the house when Drew, when the police were going to execute a search warrant of the house and then took, took out the guns. In addition to that, he accepted $250,000 from his dad. Do you remember we talked about this with the Murdof family? How, yeah, like moving the money.

around yeah moving the money around because because drew was like i'm definitely going to jail over this yeah totally and somebody can attach themselves this money like one of these families of these women that i married into they could sue me for wrongful death and this money just goes away because that so instead of doing that i'm going to give my money to stephen and stephen took it and he was um yeah he was uh forced out of the police force as a result of it which oh that's good i was going to ask He's still a cop, I hope not. Did I mention that when that jury, the coroner jury pool was put together, one of the members on that jury was one of Drew's close friends.

He was on the police force. They worked together on the police force. And he's the one who told the rest of the jurors. Drew would never do this. He would never kill his wife. I know him. He's a great guy. Again, cop bro coming out.

What the hell is a coroner's jury? makes no sense i want i want it's a weird curiosity i want like 12 doctors yeah yeah 13 baker's dozen of doctors to be on that court nurse jury i don't want hit the murderer's best friend who's a cop and that's the thing it's like did no nobody do research and understand like who they're putting on because think about that if they had so that actually probably would have saved stacy's life right because yeah if they had actually done a thorough investigation to kathleen's death, then he probably would have gone to jail then over that. And there would be no Stacey Peterson to speak of. Right. Exactly. So yeah, that's where things are. So as of right now, again, I look,

I researched this. There is no updates on Stacey's whereabouts on her body. Nobody knows. All we know is that people saw this blue drum being loaded into Scott, Drew's, I call him Scott. Again, like the overlap is exactly. It was a, it was a Peterson's murdering their wives. period of American history. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so that's kind of where things are right now. He's in jail. He's presumably going to die in jail, again, and totally attacked on about 78 years for what he did. And we're never going to get any sort of resolution or conclusion on to what happened to Sacey in theory. Yeah. Yeah. When you saw his pictures, did he remind you of anyone?

No. Who does he remind you of? He looks like a cop. He does look like a cop. He, it's not that it's a person. that he reminds me of it's more like the ongoing theme of the shitheads that i bring up he reminded me he reminded me of chad valet yeah yeah yeah or chad daybell yeah i can see that for sure for sure just beer gut way too happy and confident in himself like i don't know a lot of commitment to this mustache he's a type yeah he i just want to make it clear that he looks nothing like Roblo they made Roblo look worse to play him in a movie he looks yeah he looks like a retired professional wrestler like it's 60 years old like he does not look good they were they were so generous giving him Roblo so generous that's like George Clooney played me it's like guys like

yeah you got to do something here but that's um that's true that sucks as poor kids those poor ladies. They're kids. 19 and 23 years old. Like it's again, ladies, like, pay attention to this stuff. Like, if the guy is just constantly getting married, if women come in and out of his life and disappear under circumstances that did not, I don't, so I'm trying to think to myself. I don't, I, most of my friends at this age are married.

And none of them have, I'm trying to think, I don't think any of my friends have spouses that, died no i know i know i know someone who's you know spouse died tragically but but the it wasn't suspicious you know sorry i mean like i mean like like sure like somebody god forbid dies in a car accident or whatever like i i get that but like yeah my fully able body wife drowned in the bathtub like yeah it's like that's like a weird that's a next it's too close to she was killed yeah totally and like and even like well the disappearing is like real bad yeah like oh my last wife she disappeared okay is she a magician like what the fuck does that mean you know like that's not it's not okay yeah yeah so i don't know like to me it's

like the age gap thing is crazy the constantly marrying people over and over again like if somebody gets out of a 10-year marriage with like kids involved and like immediately is in another relationship and marries that like nobody's wired like that almost i would say almost nobody's wired like that to actually do that i do have a an idea for a dating app called widow or boncha for people who are widowed in like their late 20s early 30s who like to no fault of their own really wanted to continue to be married but like something terrible happened so they're ready to be married Because I know a lot of women in their like mid 30s who really want to be married, but they're not finding that men want to be that committed.

But if you find someone who like wanted to be married but couldn't be because the person died and don't feel like they could match together. It's for not for widows to get with each other. It's for a widow to get with a single person. Why wouldn't they just go on a regular? Because isn't everybody on a regular dating app? I mean, I don't know. I've never been a dating app.

But my idea, the idea is that like the widow is like really, really ready to be married they were married and then someone who is also ready to be married they can find each other because sometimes i presume i'm getting i'll be find someone who's like not that serious anyway i'm going to workshop i'm going to workshop it i'm sad on widower won't you i feel like well the name is good but i feel like the demographic is pretty niche and i'm wondering who the advertisers would be for that box wine cellars like i don't know who yeah funeral homes It's getting dark All right, I'm going to work on it

I'm going to work on it I'll decide A little bit Yeah, yeah That's my story for the week I hope that he's having a terrible time in jail I'm sure he's having a terrible time Tell someone where Sisi is because her family deserves to know where her body is

And give her a proper All the things It has to come out at some point It just has to Yeah, it's true not to Cool, well thank So what do you have for us that is tea and or champagne related? It's mostly tea related.

But I know I've talked about how I definitely don't want to do just like Western history and like white people. So today we're going to go to India. So what is the most famous building in India? Taj Mahal. That's what we're talking about today. It's going to be a good one. Did you know that Taj Mahal is one of the seven wonders of the world of the moment? No.

Can you name any of them? There's seven wonders of the ancient world and seven wonders of like the world that are still around. Grand Canyon, the towers, the gardens of Babylon, Tosh Mahal. I'm out. Amazon rainforest? No, those are like natural things. We're talking about these are all things like people built. Oh, the Great Wall of China.

Yes. So good. I'm just going to tell you. So I just keep guessing. The ancient world, there's a bunch of big statues. It's the Colossus of Rhodes, which is like a big statue of a god. There's a statue of Zeus at Olympia. The only one that we can still see is the Great Pyramids.

There's the hanged gardens of Babylon. You got that one. There's a temple of Artemis, a mausoleum at Helicarnassus, and the lighthouse of Alexandria. So most six of those we can't see anymore, but we like know that they existed. Of the current world, the people, things that we can see, there's a Coliseum, the Great Well of China, the Taj Mahal. Chrysler Redeemer in Brazil, Machu Picchu, Tuchinica, and the Pietra in Jordan. So it's one of the seven wonders of the world.

It's a beautiful building. We'll talk about the architecture and when it was built. But I wanted to also start with reading some of the one-star reviews on Google reviews, just to get an idea of what it's like to visit the Taj Mahal. So a person named Kevin recently wrote, One Star. There was Nolan McDonald's nearby, which for a tourist spot is a time. shame. Also, it needed an audio tour as I refused to learn how to read.

I think maybe he's joking. Yeah, I kind of like Kevin's sense of humor. And there's a Hulia with an accent over the U that says, the beauty of his place is just destroyed by the stupidness of the people. You can't even enjoy the moment

because you will be told millions of times, move or taking a picture. So it sounds very crowded when you go visit it. This is my favorite. It's one from Z-H just the initials, and it's long, but part of it is they visited it three times. And this time was the worst ever. There was no internet and no mobile network.

They provide Wi-Fi for 30 minutes, but after 18 minutes, it was turned off. They say you can pay for a longer connection, but there is no link to pay the website anywhere. I went inside, expecting to pay and get Wi-Fi, but I wasted an hour trying to connect to the stupid Wi-Fi. These people are not living in the moment. You're in the Taj Mahal and you're looking at your phone credit on the Wi-Fi. just take some pictures and put them on instagram later so i uh i vehemently refused to visit italy or france because i know you have a i know that the italy thing is probably weird to you but because it's because it's so touristy it's like all the stuff that you want to go to it's like

like i like i said like i avoid crowds i avoid large gatherings as much as i possibly can like the Eiffel Tower, you know, the Louvre, like all the things he'd want to do there, it's just could be cram packed with Kevin's. And that's what it sounds like with Taj Mahal is like, too. It's like very, very crowded, like almost constantly. But you know who else gave a positive review of the Taj Mahal is Eleanor Roosevelt. She went to visit it in the 1950s. And so Eleanor said, I think of all the things I've seen in the world, this is the most

perfectly proportioned. The purity of the white marble makes the conception of the internal purity of the real love a very living thing i escaped the guides as much as possible because i felt that this was a perfection that one must feel and let sink in it could not just be talked about so it's a nice review from our dear er about it she's so eloquent consistently that was in my day her her daily column about what she was up to that was in the 50s so the taj mahal is really hard to research. So I looked at like, you know, like Wikipedia pages and some articles, but it felt like there's either like a pretty straightforward history or there's conspiracy theories and there's

not much in between about like what actually happened. So I had a hard time. I was like looking around the internet and I was looking at podcasts and books and I couldn't find anything. And this morning I finally found one that I listened to this afternoon that was from the BBC called You're Dead to Me. And it told a more nuanced story of the mogul empire and the Tash Hall that we'll talk about. But it was hard to find more. And I feel like there is a lot more to this story that like just isn't available for whatever reason. But the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum located in Agra, India. So it's the north center of India. So if I take my hand and flip it over, it looks like India is right here, like in the top of my palm. This is an audio medium. So nobody

can see what you get it. India looks like a palm upside down. Got it up in the top. Okay. That's where it is. It's in the middle. It's not on the coast. It's in the middle. It is next to a a river. It was built by Mogul Empire Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. So Shah Jahan was born in 1592. When he was born, his name was

Prince Coraham. He is a direct descendant of Jenghis Khan and a powerful line of cons and warriors that are moving into India. So a lot of violence to kind of get here, but this empire was huge. So this is, we're at the same time as like the tutors, like right after Elizabeth the first. So we're like,

100 years after the Henry the A story. So it's pretty modern, really. It's like not that long ago that all this happened. And it was like these like Mongol empires moving down into India. This empire is called the Mughal, M-U-G-H-A-L. But that's kind of where he comes from. Their Islamic empire that came down into India. And I also want to mention that everybody to listen to the wrath of the cons by Dan Carlin.

He talks about Jenghis Khan. and I'm really, really nervous and I'm going to say it wrong. Exactly. Because you have to say Jenghis, because that's what Dan Carlin says. And I'm like, I have to say the correct way and the correct way is the Dan Carlin way. So we're going to Jenghis Khan. So a direct descendant of Jhajan becomes emperor. Shahjahan means king of the world.

And in order to become emperor, he needed to fight his brothers, essentially. So it wasn't always the oldest became the ruler. It was, you know, the one who could, you know, maybe fight to the death, fight to the blinding. They would blind each other, you know, things like that. So people were pretty like mauled to get to, to get to power. And so it's a lot of that. And a lot of also, like, even like the, the Mongols, when I listened to Rath of the Khans, halfway through, I was like, why aren't we all Mongols? It makes no sense that they didn't just, you know, took over the entire world.

They were very, very far on their way to doing that. And it's the same reason that we talk about with Catherine the Great and with Henry the Ace. It's that you're not guaranteed to have smart kids and you are probably going to have dumb ones. And it's just like dumb kids. Did you? Did you know that the Dothrakees of Game of Thrones is based on the Mongols? That makes sense? Totally.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, we'd think that they would be really like they were on their way. But once Cajankas Khan passed away, his son's device. of the empire and they fought each other and then it disappeared it just is it's as simple as that like one generation and it can be gone but shajahan becomes emperor of the mogul empire he married three women but his favorite was mumtah's mahal which means jewel of the palace she had a different

name before they were married but that was the name that she's you know named by by history she was also semi royalty so she was like part of the upper class they got engaged and were engaged for five years before they got married so in the meantime he had married another person and then he married someone else after but those were like political marriages and he like really loved moom taz mahal and then also the name taj mahal like no one really knows where it comes from and they think it kind of talks it's kind of a way of like saying moom taz mahal in a different way are you saying tas like t a s mahaal her name moom taz m um t a z yeah okay So that is maybe where the word Taj Mahal came from, but like they're not, no one's really 100% sure.

Maybe. So in old literature, you'll notice that the characters might look the same, but they'll be pronounced differently. So for example, in old English literature, I bought a book for my dad that was like a 19, like, or not, it was like a 1500s copy of something or a book, but they had no S's because all the Fs back then were. pronounced yes and so it could be one of those situations oh absolutely absolutely i'm sure that there's i've absolutely no idea how these were actually pronounced so i'm trying my best um and so they were married in 1612 he became emperor in 1628 so again we're about 90 years after henry the 8th so 1603 is when elizabeth the first um her rule ends and the tutor the tutor line end So it's kind of lining up.

So we know that when Taz Mahal dies, like that's the whole point of the whole Tasha Mahal and the whole story. It's a tomb for her. Guess what she died doing? Childbirth. Yeah, she's having a baby. She was having her 14th baby.

She's 38 years old, having her 14th child. Only seven of her kids survived into adulthood, which is a terrible odds. And when she died giving birth to her 14th child. She was 38 years old. And I've been thinking, like, as I was saying, it was hard to find information about this. And I was like, is this a tragic love story? Like, everyone's wife died of childbirth. Like, I don't know. I don't want to be a jerk, but like that happened all the time and he had two other wives. So like, kind of whatever. But all accounts are that they did love each other. She traveled with him on military campaigns. And he only had like one child with other wives for like political reasons. So I guess that's romantic. Yeah. So this was this was, this was his like true love. Yes. And he was devastated when she died. And so he, you know, spent a couple days in exile just like being sad and then came out and said that he wanted to build like a big monument to her. And that is a Taj Mahal. But he also built it to show his power and status because

it's huge and it's gorgeous. And so he really, no, my sister has. I'm trying to find the picture of her there, but I haven't been. It's essentially because with all those old, you know, artifacts, buildings on what you would say but like the scale of it is hard to understand when you see them in pictures but that would be the case with the Taj Mahal too yeah absolutely I think I'm going to talk about that in a little bit because I have some you know stats on what it looks like and like kind of where it is in the city but it took 22 years to build and during that time Shah Jahan was overthrown by one of his sons that he had with Mumtaz Mahal and she put and he put his dad in prison for eight years, but when he, when Shahjahan died, he did get to be buried in

the Taj Mahal as well. So the his life didn't end as like in like supreme power, but his son, um, it did let him get buried, you know, next to his, his beloved wife. So I'll talk about conspiracy theories in a little bit, but some things that I found that aren't very, they aren't like verified, but they're not controversial. So like they could be true and it doesn't matter. Um, so I heard it cost, if you converted it to today's money in dollars, it cost a billion dollars to build. So it was like super, you know, best of the best of everything. 20,000 people worked on it and it was a mixture of artisans and probably some slaves, probably some people who were paid, you know, really poorly. But like the pyramids, so there's like a new thought about the pyramids and it wasn't

just exclusively built by slaves because it had to be, you know, there had to be architects. and people who were invested in it, you know, and wanted to, you know, make it a beautiful thing. So same in this case. There's people who worked really hard to make it very beautiful. This is also the time of the Deccan famine, which was 1630 to 1632, where it was a few years of failed crops. So it isn't mentioned in a lot of information, but it does show that there's probably something else that happened where, like, if everyone's starving and you're spending a billion dollars on this building, like, something's wrong. and people are probably like upset and like a lot of people are dying you know what I mean Taylor you're probably gonna get to this is it literally just a mausoleum

no there's a couple other things in it as well like rooms restaurants hotel like there is so okay wait let me get to this I will okay if I'm stepping on your stories no no no no no wait I'm gonna tell you one more fun thing and then I'll do the I'll tell you more about it so one fun thing that I think we kind of alluded to is that it was just so big it's like so big and so grand they had to have scaffolding obviously and scaffolding is typically made of bamboo so like in ancient china they had two storey buildings because they could make really strong scaffolding out of bamboo before anybody else could and so but in this case the scaffolding was made out of bricks and then when they were done they were like how are we going to get all these bricks so they like put up a sign and they were like free bricks come and get them and it was gone in like a day so they just let like other people take them which is a great idea um so wait so let's talk about what it looks like and like kind of what is what is in it so I did look on Google Maps to see where it was because if you look at like Google Maps of like Stonehenge, there's a parking lot right next to it, you know, and even like the Great Pyramids, you're like, oh, like a quarter of a mile away, there's a pizza hut, you know, and there's like the city. So it's not like it's like its own thing. But this is pretty encased and like some walls and there's beautiful gardens. And then there's the Taj Mahal itself in the middle with like a fountain. Like that's the picture that you see all the time of people like sitting on the fountain with the Taj Mahal in the back. and it also has a big forest preserved next to it. So it is a little bit isolated.

It's right next to a river as well. It is a symmetrical building with a large white marble dome in the center, surrounded by four smaller domes. And then there's four minarets, which is like those big towers all around it. And those aren't straight. They like turn a little bit to help protect them from earthquakes. So they want to make sure that like,

are you looking at a picture of it? I pulled up Google Maps to look up. The location of Stonehenge. And then I also pulled up another tab to look up the location of Taj Mahal. And I was like, this map looks eerily familiar. And it pulled up the Taj Mahal Indian restaurant in Austin. So I have not found it yet. Correct.

So not that one. Go to Agra India. I'm sure there's a million Taj Mahal Indian restaurants. And I'm sure they're all delicious. But it's made of. So anyway, when you do see it, the four big towers around it, they're not straight up and down. they turn because they move in case of earthquakes and which is like something that they do now with

office buildings and skyscrapers the main structure is made of white marble which is inlaid with intricate designs so they have like writing from the Quran because it's a Muslim you know building made by maybe Muslims so it has writing from the Quran all around it and it's not because it's not Hindu it's Muslim and it has it also has like you were asking about other buildings so there's also a smaller part that it's like made out of red sandstone that's a mosque. So there's a mosque there as well. I was going to say because the architecture like is just incredibly reminiscent of Arabic. Yeah.

Architecture and mosque. Like it's it's more more more vibes moreish vibes than it is Indian vibes to me. It's beautiful. I'm looking at it right now. It is it is next level. Yeah. That's exactly right. That's because the, you know, the, the, the.

The Mughal Empire was, you know, a Muslim empire that was going down and, you know, using their traditions and their architecture. But it also kind of blends with the native architecture as well to, you know, create, create this. But it does have a mosque in the back of it. And so all of the calligraphy around it is inlaid stone and marble. So it's not painted. It's like they cut out the words and then like, you know, put them in a different color marble. So it's super beautiful and like last forever. In accordance with Muslim law, no animals or humans.

are carved in the Taj Mahal, so it's just like vegetation and words, which I think is interesting because when you go to like the Vatican, you see like 7,000 images of people like doing crazy things and it's just like people everywhere. But in Taj Mahal, it's not people. It's just like the earth and then the words. So it is a blend of Indian Persian and Islamic styles. The symmetry is a big part of the design. So like the middle tower, the four towers and the four minarets around it. It's also. you're not supposed to have like a really fancy tomb in in the Muslim belief system so Shahjahan and Moomtaz are actually buried underneath the Taj Mahal and like a very simple room and there's like a fake sarcophagus above them where they're not buried that's like part of like the more intricate part of it I'm saying so some other cool things as it changes color during the day like not really but like the way the sunlight is on it it turns pink it turns pink yeah which is cool and you can actually book a tour during the full moon as long as it isn't Ramadan but i'm sure that's beautiful as well because a full moon would be like super bright and you would see it um

taylor can i can i interject one piece yes so growing up like i hadn't really gone to like muslim funerals because like i wasn't really raised religious right like it was it wasn't really a thing in my family um but i knew enough about like american culture to know the like you get like the velvet line casket with like it's just impenetrable beautiful oak this that and the other gold railing and something like that when i've had family members pass and i they wanted to get buried in muslim and muslim ground it is literally just like plywood you would buy from home depot that the body is contained and the entire idea which actually like the body's wrapped in and it's washed and it's wrapped in like a fabric there's like rose water poured on it and stuff like that but it's really

just like put into this like very shabby box somewhere sure collapses under the weight of whatever dirt is being thrown on it. What I loved about it was part of the belief system is, you know, your body's not really yours. It's natures. And the whole point is don't make something impenetrable so nothing gets your body. You need your body to go back into nature. Totally. This just reminded me of that. No, and I love that. And I've actually, so I live in Joshua Tree and there's a Joshua Tree Cemetery. It's our memorial park. I can see it from my house. And they have a part of it where you can be buried like that like without even the plywood you're just wrapped in a shroud and they put you in the ground and your family can come and like put rocks around

where you're where you are and something crazy and you know become part of the earth again and I definitely want to do that like I went to it and I stood in that area and I can see my house from there and I was like this is exactly what I want this seems awesome but yeah I love that because otherwise you're like what in your best suit in a coffin under ground forever at that yeah I love going back to the earth part that totally like a simple burial place makes a lot of sense yeah yeah right now if you went to the tajma hall and there's if you're looking on google maps there's the there's the buildings and then there's beautiful gardens so the gardens originally were like you know kind of overgrown beautiful pollinator gardens with like very fragrant very

beautiful flowers and of course guess who ruined them and made them boring that's a tough one I don't know the character is enough the British because I wasn't going to guess that we're about to get to the point and I'm not going to talk about this where the East India company is

moving into India and about to like take over and like ruin everything so the British are on their way and they do like redo the gardens to look like a typical European garden but thankfully they didn't do anything to the building so the garden isn't exactly the way that it would have been when it was originally made right now the biggest threat to the

Chajmahal is pollution so you actually used to be able to drive up in front of it you can't anymore so they try to keep it clean and keep cars away from it and things like that because it's hard to damage the white marble which is a bummer and like the other stuff I have are like I have some fun facts and some conspiracy theories

but I just don't know a ton about this relationship between Mung Tasma Hall and Shah Jahan I wish I knew more about it but it's like she was a good wife she went with him military campaigns he probably trusted her they had a fuck ton of kids and he loved her enough to build this building i wish i knew more if you if you can't find anything else so i googled tajmahal original because i thought maybe there'd be like paintings or something of like the original version of it before you said the british showed up i google everything as you say it

which is probably annoying with the keystrokes but like on the first page there's a picture of trump with Melania on in front of that fountain and she is so happy to be there and he could not look more annoyed like why am I here that's so funny I feel like I never see her genuinely happy so yeah she's probably happy because she's in that location more than who she's with totally so I have some final facts so during World War II and during the Indo-Pakistani wars in the 70s, the Taj Mahal was camouflaged to avoid it being destroyed. So they were worried that Japan was going to bomb the Taj Mahal during World War II.

So I have a picture of it that I'll share. They cover the dome in like bamboo sticks so you can't really see it. And then in the 70s they did like a thing with like a tarp over the top and like lines to the minarets and a whole thing. Sorry, which war? During World War II. Why would anyone, India wasn't in the war? I mean everyone was in the war

It was a world war And Japan was like coming that way I guess What I mean you guess Japan was like destroying China And coming down through China And then they were like They weren't take over the worlds

Okay you know what I'm gonna have to do my research on this Because I did not know The Rape of Nanking because it's fucking terrible Was that World War II though Mm-hmm Okay so okay so that's where that's where the disconnect is I actually didn't realize that that was happening

at the same time as everything else that was going on. Because to me, it was like the access and the allies were going to war, and the Chinese were not a part of the allies. Right. No, they weren't, like, officially, but they were definitely being, like, invaded by Japan. You know what? I defer to you on history stuff.

It's like right before. I'm looking at it up. It says the Nanking Massacre was from in December, 1937 for six weeks. So it was like, that was the, like the plan was. to move westward okay you know what i got a fact check in real time oh my god i'm real embarrassed because i'm sorry i feel like i'm gonna be wrong but i'm pretty sure that's what happened the sino japanese war that's what i need to look up sino japanese war the second you know what they were at war together they were not during that time yeah they were not

at world war Japan obviously was fighting so so okay so Japan would have been fighting a two front war with the access yes and then also fighting China during the second Sino-Japanese war that's what was going on

that was 1937 and 1945 I think World War II was 39 to 45 yes okay that totally makes sense because the the Nanking was earlier so much been the second one that when they thought that they might bomb the Tajipal yeah that makes yeah okay all right well i'm gonna get a i'm gonna get a really big like board and just do a bunch of like red lines together and like go crazy here so you're

technically not wrong you got the timing exactly right they just weren't a part of world war two fine fine fine i accept that sorry to do this that's fair no no no it's fine um but something i wanted to also bring up during that is i worked at the brooklyn museum for a little bit in college And one of my jobs, because it was a terrible, terrifying time to be in America, it was like 2003. So I looked in the archives of the Brooklyn Museum, like their communication archives, to figure out what they did with the art during World War II. And they brought it up to like a barn in Poughkeepsie and like hit it because they were worried that if the Nazis attacked New York, they were just to all the art, which they did, you know, obviously all over Europe. So even in America, we had plans to hide our art. wow yeah um so i have some fun conspiracy theories so there's one theory that it's actually not

even built by shajahan it was an 11th century hindu temple um which sounds really fun because i read the article that had like 150 reasons why it's actually a hindu temple and it was like people keep finding hindu gods and like the corners and there's all these like secret places where things look like they're actually more like a hindoo origin than a muslim origin But then I read again and figured out that it's actually a kind of nationalistic right-wing Indian conspiracy theory right now because they want to, like, reclaim it as a Hindu building when it isn't. So I don't think that's true. I think it's not. You don't associate nationalism.

Of course everybody's, of course every country has nationalists. Of course they do. No, I know. I thought that too. And I was like, a right-wing conspiracy theory. What could that be? I was like, oh, it's like a nationalistic conspiracy theory. trying to be like oh it's like a pure you know indian place when it's not but it's from a part in history

that like is super important um they conspiracy theorists also think that there are 22 hidden rooms in the basement of the Taj Mahal which uh might not be true some people say it's true people doesn't um would you spend a night and would you spend a night in one of those rooms yes no price there's there's no there's no there's no there's no You just have to, like, go in there and lay down a blanket and go to sleep. It doesn't feel ghosty to me. There's two dead bodies. No, I know, but it still doesn't feel ghosty.

It feels like you'd be fine. I feel like I'd be more scared to be in, like, an old timey mansion full of stuff. You know, like when I think of, like, haunted houses, I think of, like, you know, like a big haunted mansion, not like an empty room in the bottom of a big building. So I disagree with you. And here's exactly what I would have done as I would research in this. I would have questioned how many people died building the Taj Mahal? I know that's right.

Died inside of it later on because there's got to be, to me, I feel like it would be a haunted place. But I'd still do it because the story's so good. The story's fantastic. I spent the night in the Taj Mahal. Yeah, of course. Incredible. Yeah. And there is also another conspiracy that Shahjahan didn't want anyone to be able to recreate anything so beautiful.

so he blinded all of the architects who worked on it. But I don't think that's true. Because like 20,000 people worked on it. And, like, I was thinking of, like, the logistics of blinding 20,000 people. And I feel like maybe the first one, you'd be like, I'm in charge. By like, 100, you'd be like, this is gross. And I'm standing next to 200 eyeballs. And also, think about all the way to do that same wrong.

Yeah. Then you got, like, train 20,000 seeing eye dogs for them. And it's just by 20,000 can't. Like the logistics alone. Exactly. It sounds exhausting. So there's no way that's true. another fun conspiracy theory that was actually brought forth like a French dude who visited India in like the early 1900s-ish was that Shahjaham was planning to build an identical black building across the river for his own mausoleum which would have been so cool like how dope would that be to have like a big oh my god like a big black Taj Mahal that was like that one I'd be afraid to stay the night in that's super cool but that's probably not

true it's such a flex yeah but that would be awesome um and that's it that's all i know i wish i knew more and there's definitely like a whole part of the top of india and like the sweeping um rulers and cons and all of that that came through there that i wish i knew more about and i will eventually learn more about but it's if you look it up it's gonna tell you it's a love story so let's just stick with that that it's a love story that's that's all i ever knew about it like I wouldn't say that my, I would defer to like, I'm probably best at American history, followed by World War II, World War I. And then like the stories my dad has told me about Iranian history. But so I'm not like incredibly well versed Indian history. The one thing I knew was that it was a,

it was a love story. Like he built it for a woman that he loved. And I was actually surprised when he said that it's a Muslim thing. Yeah. I didn't know that. Or that it was Persian, that it had Persian architectural influences. I would have, I don't know, that seems relevant. Yeah. Yeah. Never knew that. Yeah. And that's why, you know, why that the nationalistic thing is trying to make it be like, oh, it was there always a Hindu thing when it wasn't, but it was just a part, it's a relic of a time of, you know, a lot of people taking over different parts of, of, you know, of Asia and in different ways. So what was Blair's take on it when she was there? I didn't. She, she, she, I know she went. She went. She went.

a really cool um she's a vegan and she went on a tour from like vegetarian magazine had like a thing where you could like join a group of other vegetarians and travel around india for like three weeks that's really cool which sounds great and delicious and so she came home and you know we did we learned how to make like chapati like the bread and like all different kinds of like things because i took an indian cooking class with my sister-in-law one time and i haven't have a book about curry and And it's super fun. I had a roommate who was Indian in college. That was like the first time I'd ever really tried Indian food.

And I was like, how do you make this? And she was like, it's all ingredients you've never heard of. You know, so you have to buy really special things to like make it, which is really cool. So when Blair came back, we did a lot of cooking with like, but you have to go to the store and buy like 16 new spices you've never heard of. And they're all expensive. And they're all expensive. But here in Joshua, we have two Indian markets.

So I should go and get them. Yeah. We have a great, actually a really good place called Sam's Indian food, and they sell pizza, sub sandwiches, and Indian food, and it's delicious. It's awesome. I would say that if I was forced to be vegan or just purely vegetarian, access to Indian food is the only way to go. Yeah, absolutely. It's so flavorful and so rich and delicious. Yeah.

So that's why she went, but I'm sure she has that same picture everybody has where they're sitting in front of the fountain in front of Natasha Hall. I'm sure that was like a two-hour wait in line of people being like, that's on my way, I got to get a picture. Yeah, yeah. Again, touristy things, not on my hit list. Taj Mahal, definitely not on my hit list, but it looks cool. Yeah. Yeah, last time I went to Florence, Italy, I was like,

there are too many Americans here, so I get it. I did, um, I went to Lisbon last March, and I don't think I interacted with a single Portuguese person while I was there. It was, it was just Brits, uh, tons of Americans, Korean folks, like it was, it was just expats. It was just mostly like an expat part of the part of the world now. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, but I don't know. Cool. It's cool that there's, you know, stuff that we didn't necessarily learn about in school, like a little bit deeper into these things and we'll keep talking about those things. So any ideas

anyone has of any like non-white stories I can tell. Please tell me because I only have a little have about 40 ideas. And if you want to do this for at least for over a year, I'm going to need more. What is, is there a red flag in this? I feel like the part that I think could possibly be the red flag is building the building in general. Like, why did he have to do that? Like, he could have just been, you know, we're going to get buried together, which is beautiful because they love each other. Like they, he didn't have to build this big building. So I feel like there's definitely an ulterior motive there that's not really talked about. And that must be like just showing everybody the power of the empire could be love bombing it could be love bombing but she's

dead that's true he'll be love bombing the people and also it's during that it's potentially during it's definitely during that plague time but also like he spent all his money on this thing and people were starving so that's not great yeah one billion dollars a lot the cowboy stadium costs 1.2 billion to build is it nice yeah is anyone buried in it No. We'll never know. Miss opportunity. Is Tony Romo dead? He can be buried there? No, he's definitely not dead. Okay. Just a suggestion. I think that he could bury Tony Romo in Dallas, Cowboys Stadium, and lots of people would go.

Yeah, yeah. I think Jimmy Hoff was supposed to be buried under the jet in just 50-yard line at the meadows, metal lands. That's awesome. Let's dig that up. Cool, Taylor. Well, I know that we are late. because of me and we went over. So thank you again for your patience. And next weekend, 100% regular show recording schedule. Like nothing on earth is going to stop me from that, okay? Okay, well, you tell that to the Texas power grid and keep your fingers crossed.

Fingers are crossed. Nothing will stop me. Have a great trip to Florida. And, yeah, thank you, everyone for listening. Follow us, Doom to Philpod on Instagram. on Facebook. Thank you. And message us if you know, if you know anything.

Yeah, we're getting some really great DMs on Facebook Messenger from folks who are like giving us inside of stories that are obscure and interesting and cool that we can be covering. So please more of those are always welcome. So thank you. Yeah. And please review on Apple Podcast. That's been really cool and helpful as well. Yes.

All the things. Thank you. Thanks, Taylor. Bye. Thank you.