My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 238 - Lady Suit

Episode Date: September 3, 2020

Karen and Georgia cover the Ayahuasca murders and the Beast of Gévaudan.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That was the best one we've ever done. Seriously. Hello. Hello. And welcome. And welcome. To my favorite. Favorite letter.

Letter. I was harmonizing with you. Oh, okay. The professional podcast for professional people in the professional world. Starring Georgia Hardstark. Yeah. Man, when I was a kid, I thought I'd be walking around in a fucking lady suit with fucking shoulder pads and a briefcase being like a professional working woman.

That was like my dream. Did you have a white Reebok high tops on to walk to work in? With my pumps in my bag. Hell yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I just watched Working Girl one too many times. I mean, it's a great film.

It is a great film. Nine to five. Again, Sigourney Weaver just hitting threes all through the 80s. You can't, everything she did is three good. Don't you want a five or 10? Well, hitting threes is from basketball. Oh, God, I got it. That's why you did the layup movement.

That's right. I was, I was throwing out from the outside, outside lane. I don't actually follow basketball. I respect it. Should we start over? No, but you should introduce me since I introduced you. Oh, you did? Oh, that's Karen Kilgarath.

I didn't know you did. Oh, thank you. The basketball genius. Huge basketball nerd over here. I did see, and you did too, James Harden who's from the Houston Rockets. Remember the guy, he had a beard and we saw him at the Daily Grill in the bar. Oh yeah. It was like three, two years ago in Burbank.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the weirdest place in the, the least celebrity. It's next to the Burbank airport, which is just like, not fancy. It's commuter, commuter central. And then like the middle of the day in a fucking Daily Grill, which is like weird and awkward. Yeah. He had a great outfit on though. Yeah.

I mean, it was cool. And that's when I, that was one. I like to do the thing where I'm not a fan of celebrities or stars or athletes or whatever until I see them in real life. And then I began to follow their careers. Then I'm like, well, you came into my life. Right. Therefore now I care about yours.

We're friends. Now I care about you because we're friends because we've seen each other in real life. I got that. Yeah. That's tight. Thank you. Thanks so much. What's going on with you?

Let's see, well, the family came down to escape. Did I already talk about this? Yeah. To escape all the smoke in Northern California. Yeah. So that was actually nice because I had real people in my house and, you know, interaction and like eye contact and all those things that like give you what either dopamine hits or serotonin pumps or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Dopamine. That was nice. Yeah. Eye contact. There's no substitution for it. I mean, I was like, you do it with dogs, but there's, you know, they're just using

you for food. They're like, wait, are you going to, are you about to feed me? Is that where you're staring at me? And I always love it when my dad comes down because we fight really loud because he's hard of hearing. So it always makes it sound like we're really mad at each other, but it's just that you're trying to get like a simple point across as loudly as you can. You know that my dad came over.

So I, we hung out with you and your family and your dad because your dad loves my husband. Yes. And so then deeply in love, I saw my dad on Sunday and I, and I told him that what we did and I was like, cause Karen's dad, you know, loves Vince and loves just talking to it, you know, dude. And my dad goes, well, I like him for other reasons. Like he got jealous. I was like, well, well, I love Vince too.

Oh, Marty. Sorry, Marty. He's jealous of Jim's relationship with Vince. I'm not just using Vince for guy stuff. I like him as a person. He's my, he's my actual son-in-law. So yeah, I love him much closer, much closer. Right.

And then my dad pup pops up from behind a bush and tries to punch Marty in the face. What? He's like, talks about sports and stuff because my dad can't really do that. Sorry, dad. Sorry. My dad wants a stay sexy mask, by the way. Oh, he should have one. One of our stay sexy masks, which by the way, my God, this is a good segue, right?

Yeah, it is. Yeah. You've really nailed this one. He's even, I didn't see it coming and I knew it was coming. It's all true though. I'm not making it up. So we have masks now, face masks that say stay sexy on them and a hundred percent of the proceeds are going to feeding america.org to help feed hungry people in America.

And they came out last week. We announced it and you guys have already raised 15,000 fricking. I thought that was a typo when I saw it. $15,000 for feeding america.org. Yes. What? Amazing. Beautiful thing.

Thank you guys so much. Good job. Good job. Good job, everybody. So you can still go to the merch store at www.myhatvermurder.com and get yourself one. And while you're there. Well, the other announcement we wanted to make is so everyone knows that we can't. We have those logo pins that are little enamel pins with our logo on them and we use those.

You can buy them and they go, the money goes toward different charities that we choose. And this last one we put up for the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective. It's called BEAM. And for this logo pin fundraiser, you guys raised $20,000 for BEAM. Amazing. Yep. We sent that check off. Thank you so much for everybody that supported that one.

I mean, you guys are, thank you so much for using your money for such awesome stuff like this. Yeah. You're a force. You're really doing stuff. Totally. It's very cool. And then we also have a new shirt design that is so cool.

Karen, like you kind of, you were the leader on this design and you love it, right? Well, yes, I love it. I love the design of it, but then the message is so timely. It is. Like every time when I tell them, I was showing my sister and she's like, oh, that's good. Yeah. I was like, yeah. So it's, this is terrible.

Keep going. Yeah. Which is the thing we say about the murder. This is terrible. Keep going. But it's also about this time we're in, this is fucking terrible, but keep going. And it's just this really cool design. I love it.

They're up for pre-order now. So if you want one, go on my favorite murder.com, go to the store and they'll ship in three weeks. Yeah. Well, let's, uh, have you been watching anything lately? Well, I watched any, no, uh, the vow is my, oh my God, obsession, obsession. What a great, I'm angry that I can't binge it. Every time it ends, I get mad.

It's so frustrating, but it's so incredible that one of the people that it happened to was also a filmmaker and a documentarian. So he, because I was sitting there going, are they doing reenactments? What is this? He had real time, all conversation crazy was having, if you don't know, we're talking about the vow on HBO and it's about the nexium cult that like, that turned into this sex cult and this whole time, this documentary filmmaker, the guy who made what the bleep do we know, which I totally forgot about too.

That was like such sensation was there as they are figuring out it's a cult. And so it's all documented. His wife is, it's so amazing. And it's cool because when she's first starts talking about it, it's like, she, you know, this is kind of taking over her life. And part of like, I think we talked about this last time, but you get it because part of what this whole program is, it starts out as like, if you're a business person that wants to get better results in your business or whatever.

And then, but then it's like, but then you have to free yourself up in these ways and you see how it's, it's such a slow and very like impactful lead in where it's like, but you're bettering yourself as a person, challenging yourself. And you're, um, you're doing something that no one's ever done before. This is radical. And of course, your family is not interested in it because they're still stuck in their ego. And, and then I get it two words, like you've spent two years and thousands of dollars in

this program and they tell, and you're expecting something. And then they say, well, it's going to be another year. You're not just going to quit it. You're going to keep, you've already invested so much, you just keep going and going and suddenly. Well, and also you're not going to quit it because they tell you the reason you want to quit it is because of these negative impulses that you need to control and you need to stop wanting to be comfortable all the time.

Right. The things that they start setting up are these things that are basically making their, there's no exit. Yeah. There's no exit because if you exit that is actually, you're playing right into the storyline and here's how you're a failure. And then the sleep deprivation part, which is part of a cult where you're like, what do they, what do they mean?

You're just running around and it's like, no, you need to be a busy functioning person. So you only sleep from 11pm to 5am and like you're, so you're, that's like six hours. Most people are fine with that. But I think it's shorter because there's that one night where it was like the first one. Midnight volleyball. Midnight volleyball. Anytime he has a conversation with someone, they go walking around at 1.30 in the morning

and she, the wife that leaves first looks it up and looks up what mind control and it's just step after step of exactly how mind control works. Totally. It's just like, it's so fascinating the way he tries to mark when he call, I mean, these are all spoilers. I guess we should have said that. Yeah. I think we're, we're known for it.

It's fucking cult. These are all. It's, it's just the fact that you can hear the rationalization on the phone so you actually know how this happens real time, why it's so believable, why people can't process it because it's like, no, it's this guy, my good friend. Yeah. He's not friends with anybody. He's brilliant.

Right. And he's this brilliant person who's been able to figure stuff out and he's an incredible speaker. He's an incredible, he's very convincing, the leader, the cult leader. Right. Although I have to say, if you weren't told multiple times as they seem to be in this group that he had the highest IQ in the world, I don't know if he's the most compelling speaker I've ever seen.

I don't know if it, there's a lot of there, there, a lot of circles, a lot of circles, the glaze of like, but he's the smartest person in the world. People fucking, they love IQ shit. And then they want those people to like them and think they're smart. Right. Cause then that must, that's such a validation where it's just like, yeah, but what if he's lying about being the smartest person in the world? When he sat down, remember when he was like, oh, I used to be this concert pianist as a

child in a savant and all that. He sits down and starts playing like basically a super slowed down version of heart and soul. Or I was just like, I used to play this on the piano when I was bored. It's so junior high, like first chair level fucking piano. And he looks like John Tash and his fucking, if he didn't have that hair, that beautiful manly mane, do you think, I don't know, it's like something about it. He gets away with a lot more. He gets away with so much.

His volleyball outfit is, oh my, man, I don't ever want to see a guy outside of the house in fucking sports shorts, nylon sports shorts. No, he wore his knee pads around like before the game. I mean, there's some nerd stuff happening. Absolutely. I am so grateful that there's so much visual. There's so much like actual footage because videos they make that are like to show people who are thinking about coming in, the like joyous running through the field video.

It's so culty. I love it. Yes. And there's so many actor types in there. There's that actor energy that reminds me of every fucking acting class I've ever taken and hated where I'm like, yeah, I wanted to learn how to act. I'm not here to like, I can't even explain it. It's kind of like acute context, you know, oh my God.

It's join the cult, the acting thing where you almost feel like you are, you have to join, join us. Be one of us. Yeah. You can't be cynical. Fucking asshole. No, you can't be like a arms crossed. I'm not, I'm not sure about this.

The whole thing is like surrender or whatever, which is like, that's fine to a point, but if you're not into like working with groups, which I'm fucking not, leave me alone. Yeah. You're not gonna, you're not gonna like this cult next to him. You're not supposed to, you're not gonna want to join this cult. Um, oh, I have a correct, a correction ish, correctiony from last week. So, okay. So remember I was talking about fight, flight, fucking freeze, freeze or fawn and I was saying

how I've gone a lot and I was talking a lot of shit on it because I like to talk shit on myself and I'm very, and I, you know, I can't, I can't possibly be nice to myself and gentle. So this person named Groty Marshmallow wrote to, and said to me, I want to offer a gentle challenge to the description of the PTSD fawn response in this episode. Well, fawning can definitely include flattery and disingenuous behavior that can damage relationships. It's a lot more than that.

People who fawn due to PTSD learned to constantly or yeah, learned to consistently put others needs ahead of their own, often to dangerous effect. Fawning can look like having sex when you don't want to and going to extreme lengths to please a rejecting or cruel caregiver in order to secure safety or basic care for getting yourself and your needs entirely because your brain has taught you that the only way to survive is to become what others want you to be. And there's the person who kind of created the fawn response definition is Peter Walker. So I thought that was interesting.

No. Yes. Other people do fawning differently, but like it's not like you weren't, I'm not sure what the point is. I think the point was to give yourself a break that you're, that people who use all of these tools are using them because they worked during a time when they needed them. And a lot of us are still using those tools, even though we don't need them anymore. And we're adults, we're in different situations than we were as kids when we, when we utilized

those tools and I just think a lot of it and like a lot of my therapy is not utilizing the unnecessary tools anymore. And so I liked that. I felt like it was correcting me in a way that was like giving myself a little more kindness that you're not an asshole, you're not, you know, I'm not being manipulative by telling you your hair looks good. What I'm doing is old, old, old, an old way to make my life and myself feel better. And that's okay.

Sure. But I think I also, I don't think there's anything wrong with you looking at that behavior because, you know, as the person who received that behavior, it was, it was the kind of thing where that's, I knew that's what you were doing because we were about to have a difficult conversation. So yeah, if that, if that analysis makes you not do stuff like that anymore. So because you get to update yourself and know that you're now a 40 year old woman who is completely in charge of her own life, then good, that's great.

You know what I mean? Like the analysis is going to, whatever helps you do things less that make you feel bad is the point of all of it. And the thing my therapist always talks about is how those voices inside of us, the coping mechanism voices and the critics and the, the ones that are trying to keep us safe by saying shut up, sit down, you don't know what you're talking about. They don't know time has passed. They have no concept of time.

So when those feelings come up, they don't go, uh, yeah, this is from 1983. They're like, they, like we, I just talked to her, uh, my therapist about a thing that was similar where I was about to go do something that was making me really nervous and really stressed. And, uh, I kept like making these excuses like, oh, it'll be fine. It won't work out and it'll be fine. And then she was like, the, the voice that's telling you that is trying to keep you safe and free from disappointment and you're tired of being disappointed.

Yeah. So that's a, that's, that's protective. But, but what that voice doesn't understand is you're not going, you're not leaving your house and going back to 1995, you're, and they don't understand that because time is not a part of the thinking in that. And also you're an adult now who can deal with disappointment and, and you understand disappointments a part of life and it's not at the fucking end of the world. Like it maybe was when you were younger.

Yeah. But those voices aren't aware of the other pieces of you that have grown and learned and changed. So they just kind of like, it's like, it's like, you know, different ages of you running up to the mic and like taking, taking the spotlight and then you're going, oh, I guess this is how it is, and then you have to train yourself to have then the modern version of you go, thank you for that warning. I know that you're trying to be nice and protect me.

I'm all good. This will be new. This will be different. Yeah. This isn't the same. We don't just keep things aren't always exactly the same pattern over and over. You're living a brand new life and all these, you know, with all these different combinations. I just think that like sometimes I think people like to find a hole and go, here's what you're

missing. And I didn't feel like you were missing anything in that conversation. You know, I feel like I was like, you going, I felt like being analytical is not the same as being mean to yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Being able to go, that didn't make me feel good. That's why you, it felt like why you wanted to tell me that.

Why did I do that? And it's like, yeah, because you're a human being. We all do weird shit when we feel threatened and when we feel like something might be taken away. Yeah. And we will do it until the day we die, because that's how people are set up and everyone does it. It's not just you.

And you know what's really making me think of that is listening to, again, this is actually happening where everybody thinks we're the ones that have had the horrible thing happen or lived through the like extreme thing. That's why I think I'm so obsessed with people telling their stories like on that podcast or on Radio Rental where I listen to that and go, oh, whoa, I have no idea what, like, that's so funny because I like listening to it because so they have the, you know, the whole thing of like big tea traumas and little tea trauma where it's like big tea traumas is going to war.

It's having a parent get ill. It's, you know, sexual assault, it's these events that are horrible and traumatic and of course they are. And the little tea traumas are the people who say, well, my life wasn't that bad, you know, like the little things that you can't point out and be like, that's, see, that's why I'm traumatic. I have trauma. It's the little things.

And so I think for me, having little tea traumas and not feeling worthy of them, listening to big tea traumas and seeing that a lot of their reactions and a lot of the ways they cope with them are the same fucking way that people with little tea traumas do, you know, like, I don't have a big tea trauma, but I'm fascinated with people who fucking survive big tea traumas. Absolutely. And I would say that in our own individual lives, that your tea is your size. It's not a thing to compare to others because, yes, that's true.

There is a solace that we take in all banding together and going, have you been through shit and you feel fucked up about it, me too. And it's not about, you know, it's like whose plane crash is the biggest. It doesn't, we don't have to do that to ourselves or each other. We can hear those stories and have that empathy to go, oh, I've been, that place where, whether it was because I got so many tickets that I knew I was, my dad was going to kill me. Now that, this isn't, that's not an example of trauma, but I'm trying to think of like, when I had problems in life that I was like, I'm done.

This is it. Or say when I flunked out of college, I fucked up like 17 things in a row. I kept pushing it to the side and not taking care of it. And by the time the really bad thing happened, I was completely responsible for it, blamed myself for it and did the thing of, and this is the least of most people's worries. So it's not even a big deal, which I think is very damaging when you're going through shit. Your shit is your shit.

You can't, it's not less because other people's is more. It's, it's what it is. Yeah. You know? Totally. I guess that was my point. I guess obviously that person knows what they're talking about and just wanted to give like kindness to you, which is lovely.

But then there's also that thing of like, I don't know, it's good. I think it's good to be like, to clean up your, clean up the things you don't like doing, to chase those things and kind of go, yeah, and if I get into that moment again, do I have to go to that place and give yourself like a little bit of space to go, no, I don't need to. No one's going to threaten me. I'm not, there's not a truck rushing toward me. Yeah.

Or yeah, you're safe now. I'm safe. You're safe now. Yes. Which I think you can handle shit. I think it's so much of therapy is like figuring it out, figuring out how you're safe now. Yeah. I think it's fascinating that parts of your brain don't understand time.

I think that is like the key to so many, I mean, time is a human construct. It's not like our brains were suddenly like 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. is now a day. Like our brains didn't adapt, I mean, they adapted, but that's not, it's still not brain surgeons are like, can you shut up? They don't know. No one knows anyone about the brain. That's what I learned when I got epilepsy. They're just like, sorry, unless we do brain surgery, we don't know what's wrong with

you. It's like, thanks. Thanks. Because we're worshiping you guys. We talk about, oh, I'm not a brain surgeon. You guys don't know anything. And to prove it, we're going to give Steven brain surgery right now on the podcast. Steven, take off your skull, take off your skull, take off your skull.

That's our new segment, second hand therapy, if it helps you great, if you're confused, throw it all away. That's right. That's what we do. Take what you want out of it and swallow the rest. Wait. So I guess I asked you is in that fakey conversational way so that I could tell you what I've been watching.

That was a long conversation about the vow. Now you go. Which is to say, God, if we could only watch the entire vow and then talk about it for seven hours because it is real good TV. HBO, get with the times. We want to binge. But it also makes me go, when I watch those things, I get worried. I think, whew, it is a miracle I didn't join a cult.

It's a miracle. There's definitely a couple early years, early adult years where Georgia could have just laid into a fucking cult. Those searching kind of like, I'm lost, someone tell me and luckily it was like, oh, I'll just like the band this guy likes instead of full on like, I just signed up for, the whole thing of taking classes you can't afford. And then after the classes, like six weeks, then you have to take 10 more classes. Like improv.

It's like the cult of improv. I think we're lucky that we have and had a pretty high level of skepticism and especially in men. So like, you know, the men who would be the ones who would fucking indoctrinate you, we're just like, get away from me with your fucking goatee or whatever, never trust a goatee. Two hoop earrings and a goatee. Goodbye.

We're like, what, what, but then, then if we're going to say that, then let's thank that inner critic that was so mean to us, but was also mean to everybody else. Thank you. Thank you for not trusting people. You're right. It turns out you were right not to trust me or him. Good job. Good job.

17 year old Karen who thought you knew it all turns out she did, it turns out she just did a lot of damage along the way. It's like, sure, you went and locked the front door. Thank you. But on the way you chipped every wall, you knocked over every vase. She was testing herself. You know, it's like you test your parents love where you're like, do you still love me now?

Do you still love me now? It's like you're doing that to yourself, like, do you still have a good life now? Do you still have a good life now? Yeah? It's like, are you going to start loving me now? How about now? Could you love me now? Could you forgive me, finally?

I stumbled upon a show and it was one of those ones where it started because the show I was binging ended and so then it started and I was kind of not paying attention. And it's called before in ours. It's shot in Oslo where we played Oslo we played and it is, I'll just tell you this so there's no spoilers. It's modern day Oslo and there's an event one night. All these lights go on in this ocean and then people from the Stone Age, the Viking era and the, I guess, early 1800s appear in the ocean and they get the new Bill and Ted.

I think you misread the label, but I thought I thought the new Bill and Ted was called be foreigners and adventure and okay, wait, so they, I'm sorry, that was so they all show up in the ocean in the ocean and they get rescued out and then they're like. These people were, so this one guy's a cop, obviously in Oslo and he shows up and it's like they rescue these people in the ocean and they're just for a Stone Age family that's like screaming and panicking and they don't know where they are and then it cuts to three years later where this event has happened over and over again and all of modern day Oslo is filled with either Stone Age people, Vikings or like turn of the century 1800s

people who are just kind of trying to live and adapt. It's. Cool. Fascinating. It's really good and then a Viking woman goes to, she basically shows up and then ends up going to school and becomes a police detective. So it's the detective you meet in the beginning that's there for the first person and then three years later his new partner is this, this actress is great.

Is it a cartoon? It sounds like it should be a cartoon. It's, I just kept, I keep watching it and it's really funny, it's really well written. Okay. There's a scene in the second episode where the Viking woman detective finds her friend who was a, another female Viking and they get, the friend doses her. Oh no. With mushrooms and they walk around the city like tripping out and screaming and they come

upon a church and they start, they start screaming at what they call white Jesus. And they go, there he is again, that white Jesus and they start saying like, we're shield, we're the shields women of Odin and we lasted longer than you. They're yelling at you and it's also for HBO Europe. So it's like an HBO series but produced over there. It's great. It's great. I love it.

That sounds awesome. In a similar like theme, the, the show action or the movie, the documentary action park. It's not at all like that. I'm dying for you to watch it. It's this fucking, it's this like, it's a documentary about this like 1980s home fucking spun New Jersey water park where people just died all and got terribly injured. And you guys, especially younger people were always like, it was so, no one gave a shit about children in the seventies and eighties.

Yeah. Please watch action park because it just, it's exact, that's exactly what life was. You went and you might get hurt or maimed because some adult did a thing poorly. It's your own fault. And you were telling me about it the other night and my mind was blown because I've always heard people, friends of mine who grew up in New York and New Jersey who know about, who would tell me about action park. But I assumed it was just a real theme park that had a couple bad rides.

The whole thing was built by a guy who was not qualified, not an engineer. He wasn't an engineer, the people who came up with the ideas and built them weren't engineers. The people who man the rides were these like stone or 15, 16 year old high school kids. You know, super, super of the era. It's pretty. I mean, but, but I shouldn't be laughing because kids died, right? Did they die? I think so.

I didn't get to that part yet. But yes. Is it a series or a one off? It's a series. I mean, it's a one off. Okay. I think it's on Netflix. It's great.

That's amazing. It's like, oh, yeah. That's, you know, I always do like, you know, deaths at Disneyland or deaths at Lyon Country Safari. Like this is, this is right. Yeah. I don't know how I never found it, but it's, it's perfect. Yeah.

It's so that's, yeah, I couldn't believe it because it kind of made me think of in Big Bear in the summer, they let people there. Have you ever seen those? They're like cement, um, like, um, it almost says like what you would have at a water park, but they're made, what am I trying to say, trails going down a slide, but it's made of cement and you go down sitting on this thing that has a break, but it kind of doesn't work that well. And that's like a, that's like a ride in Big Bear that you can do during the summer when

there's no snow and it's basically just like, and so in the winter, just road rash waiting to happen. It's, it's like, it's not a good idea. It's just like, Hey, if you can't do tubing, yeah, because it's summertime, just shut down. Yeah. That's not, it's not a solution. I mean, it makes sense. It's a better solution than just leaving it open.

Um, anything else? I think we're good to go. Should we start it off? Yeah. Who's first this week? Me? You are. All right.

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You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. This one kind of ties in to something we were talking about last week. And we can talk about, we can file this under another insane story that I had never heard of somehow. Okay. Maybe you have, this is the ayahuasca murders. No. Yes.

Are you on ayahuasca right now? I just wanted to ask, because I know that you're now an ayahuasca addict, so I actually don't exist. I just wanted to check in. You're on ayahuasca the whole time. Oh, no you. Yeah. You're the snake.

Exactly. And by the way, I don't want to do it anymore. You can message me all these different things, and I, and after like fucking researching this, I think I'm good. Maybe Ketamine. Let's see. We'll see where it goes. But we're still going to throw out half baked ideas on this podcast and then let people

go for it. Psychedelic drugs. Yeah. So I would like to thank on Instagram, katie underscore daisy419 is the one who told me about this. Insane story. And I got a lot of great info from. There's a great article in men's journal by Matthew Bremner.

There's a guardian article by Dan Collins, CBC news article by Scott, Scott Anderson, a vice article by Allison Tierney. And then the Netflix show Unwell does a whole episode about ayahuasca and they lightly touch on this. And then I love that show. It's so good. It's, it's real. If you haven't seen the Netflix series, did we already talk about it unwell?

I hadn't seen it. I haven't seen it before. So I don't know. Okay. Um, because someone was like, you have to watch the one on the essential oils pyramid scheme. I had no idea because I, I left Facebook in like 2011. Oh my God.

So I had no idea this kind of these hijinks that were happening and it's, it's such a bummer. The first season of the podcast, the dream is all about pyramid schemes and it is mind blowing. So, and then there's this like anarchist Canadian podcast called from embers and they interview fucking anarchist Canadians. Yeah. It's rad.

Support your local anarchist. Everyone. Wait, but just picture because Canadians are so polite. Yeah. It's like, there's like excuse me. I disagree. That's right. I'm an anarchist.

I'm lighting this fireplace on fire now. Now everyone cozy up while I disagree virulently with you and they interview this author named Kevin Tucker who wrote this book about it and I'll, I'll get to that later. So let's get in here. Wait, did you listen to the anarchist podcast? Uh-huh. How was it? It's good from embers.

Check it out. It's, it's cool. It's like, I love anarchists. They're like, it's like the same with Satanists. Like just fucking, you're doing something different and you're challenging the status quo. Yes. And whether or not I believe wholeheartedly in your message, I don't fucking care.

It's awesome that you're actually trying. You know, I feel like if there was ever a time where anarchists must feel really good about the decisions they've made in their, in their kind of like thought processes, it's 2020 where it's like, I told you, they told you deserve a big, I told you so for sure. Really do high five. You were right about the government. You were right about the military capitalism, all of it, everything that's happening. So about an hour flight from Lima, Peru and to the northeast of the Andes Mountains is

the regional capital of Pucallpa. It's a bustling. Sounds good. Huh? Yeah, right? I'm going to try my best to get these pronunciations, right? It's a bustling city with almost a quarter million residents and it sits on the Ucallahi River in the middle of the rainforest.

The area is home to a number of indigenous peoples who have lived in the rainforest and thrived there for centuries and have a deep spiritual knowledge of plants and herbal remedies that the rainforest holds. And they view the rainforest as this living thing deserving of respect. So ayahuasca is an example of this. It's a psychoactive brew made from the leaf of the chakaruna and that contains the psychedelic substance DMT. So this is obviously a very basic description of it if you want to learn more about it.

There's a lot of smart people talking about it. I am not one of them. While this ingredient, so this ingredient is highly psychedelic. This is so interesting, but it gets rapidly broken down by the enzymes in our liver and gastrointestinal tract. So even if we take it, humans, nothing happens even though it is psychedelic. So it wouldn't cause any psychedelic reactions, but fucking ancient Amazonian tribes without modern science were able to figure out that when it's combined with a totally different

plant, they were able to figure this out. It's combined with something with MAO inhibitors. In this case, the stocks of the ayahuasca vine, it shuts off those enzymes and allows the DMT to enter the system. And these two plants, they form a powerful psychedelic brew that affects the central nervous system, leading to an altered state of consciousness that can include hallucinations out of body experiences and euphoria. I mean, it doesn't surprise me that they figured this out because they're also the ones that

made, you know, like Machu Picchu where the stones are so close together, you can't slide a credit card in between them. So these people had, I think we're getting dumber for sure. There's a very good chance those people were like, if you like an IQ, if you like a nice hi, Keith Reynari IQ, I bet you back then they were way fucking smarter than we are. Right. And even today, and it's, you know, the colonial fucking, the colonialization of it was that the fucking Europeans came over and were like, you're not using this incredible rainforest

for anything. So we're going to remove the whole thing and use it for rubber plants and our bullshit, not understanding the deep connection to these plants that these people had for centuries. And actually there's a really good book. Okay. So it said that ayahuasca can help treat addiction and depression, post-traumatic stress and other mental disorders. But there's also studies that show it can exacerbate preexisting mental illness such

as bipolar, especially if it's mixed with some Western medicines. And I got a lot of messages from people that were like, if you're on SSRIs, you should not take ayahuasca because it'll just fuck you up. Yeah. Good to know. Yeah. The brew is used for spiritual and religious purposes by ancient Amazonian tribes. But since at least the 1960s, tourists have been coming from North America and Europe

to participate in the traditional shaman led ayahuasca ceremonies. And it takes years and years to become a shaman and so much study. It requires patience and a deep knowledge of plants and herbal remedies. It's often passed down through a family. And the role of the shaman in the ayahuasca ceremony is imperative. And ayahuasca rituals were declared part of Peru's national heritage in 2008, which I think is interesting. And throughout the ceremony, the shaman or curandero recites these beautiful healing

chants, these high-pitched songs and chants that are just really, they're mind-blowing, they're gorgeous. And it's said that through those chants, those chants are called the icaro. And through those, they can channel medicinal spirits. So the drug trip can last three to four hours and participants lie on mats in the dark and they fall into a dreamlike state. And the whole time, the shaman is there with the singing the chants and there's this tobacco smoke that's blown throughout the room and they help people because they're vomiting

and stuff like we talked about. And people who have taken ayahuasca say the visions can be intense and life-altering, calling up past traumas buried deep in the subconscious. So over the past decade or so, hundreds of ayahuasca retreats have popped up, promising to cure all kinds of things while providing this also mind-expanding experience. And many are run by North American and European expats who come to Peru wanting to open their own little retreats. And the most profitable retreats are in Equitos, Peru, which is the largest jungle city.

And it brings in nearly $6 million annually. Whoa, it's just so many people are looking for an answer and for healing and for something to actually work for them. Totally. Yeah. The human experience is tough and you hope that their answer is out there and yeah, maybe there are. And they charge guests as much as $2,700 for a week's stay.

So supporters of the drug claim that the ayahuasca boom has helped provide tribal communities and brought much needed income to poor indigenous communities. But many of the people in these communities see these ayahuasca tourists, as they're known, as just another wave of colonialists exploiting the rainforest and the indigenous people who live there for their gain. And they argue that their use of ayahuasca is cultural appropriation and profiteering. So one such ayahuasca tourist was a 37-year-old man from Vancouver Island, Canada, named Sebastian Woodruff.

So Sebastian, okay, first of all, fucking, he looks straight up like he could be a contestant on The Bachelor. Like that's what he looks like. Oh, wow. He's got the, you know, chiseled jaw, five o'clock shadow, dark eyes, just total bachelor contestant. Okay. And he's a bit of an aimless free spirit.

He's not interested in a conventional life and the normal rat race shit like consumerism and materialism. Would you call him a Canadian anarchist? Could it be? One could possibly call him a Canadian anarchist. What if it turns out all Canadians are anarchists and we just have a big intention? And they're like, don't come over here. So like, that's to be really nice.

So they think that we're not as, exactly. So it seems like, it seems to me like he was a little lost in life, kind of a drifter. You know, they're like, I don't want to, I don't want to have a conventional job and a conventional life, but I'm also not really sure what to do with my life. I don't really have much of a purpose. It seems like. But he does love there. Yeah.

Right. He does love nature. He likes climbing mountains, barefoot and getting lost in the woods and that sort of thing. He drifts between jobs. He does construction, tree planting, sea urchin diving sounds awesome. And the guys on the workboat who work with him call him Seabass because he was distant and always wrapped up in his own world, which I didn't know Seabass were like that. Seabass are not the narcissist at the sea, you know how Seabass are.

You know, it's me, me, me with those Seabass every time you catch them. So he had a son in his early thirties, but the relationship with the kid's mom didn't work out, but they stayed friends. And Sebastian does have a big heart, it seems, and would give you the shirt off his back. Sebastian says, you know, everyone's friend. He teaches his, he's still close to the sun. He teaches his son how to swim in the valley rivers, which by the way, let's move to Vancouver Island.

Oh yeah. It's gorgeous up there. And he teaches his son how to forge for mushrooms in the forest, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. He probably. So he's like a, he's a nature guy. He doesn't want a conventional life because he actually is really of, he's of nature and he's like a, he's that type of, he's like an REI guy.

This doesn't, I don't mean this in a negative way. I just think it's a really easy way to describe someone that you will understand, 100% burning man guy. You know what I mean? Great. Okay. Yeah. So in 2013, Sebastian's family stages an intervention for a relative struggling with alcoholism,

and that experiences changes him. So he begins to think deeply about addiction and suffering and how the family unit is disrupted and alcohol, alcoholism and addictions are just, are just a symptom of that. And so how healing needs to happen through addiction in the family unit, just to get over addiction. I'm not, I'm not explaining that well, but he discovers, um, ayahuasca when his brother in law tries some in a ceremony in British Columbia. And he learns that people who take ayahuasca have surreal visions and vomit violently, but

the effect can be therapeutic and help treat severe depression along with other mental health issues like addiction. And he has this awakening that this is his purpose in life is to be a drug addiction counselor and to use, um, you know, medicine, natural medicine like ayahuasca to help people with addictions. Okay. And, um, he decides this is, this is his path and, um, he wants to help break people from their addictions.

So in late 2013, he launches a crowdfunding campaign, which is, it says that in all the articles, but it's fucking Indiegogo. Remember that one? Oh yeah. Yeah. Does that not exist anymore? I don't know. Oh, um, he wants to raise money for his career change and the fucking video is on YouTube.

You can watch it, which is him casually talking about, you know, this, his theory on addiction and what he wants to do to change, help change things. He says he wants to go to Peru so he can study plant medicine and learn more about the healing properties of ayahuasca. And his campaign goal is to raise $10,000, um, which, which would include $6,800 for a healing center. He plans on opening. I don't know if it's there or in Canada that he wants to open.

It seems like in Canada and then $2,000 for travel and $600 for a Spanish translator, but he only ends up raising $2,000. But either way, in September of 2014, he's not deterred. He travels to the Peruvian jungle city of, uh, Equitos and it's the world's largest city that is not connected by a road. So you can't, the only way to get to the city is by plane or by taking a three or four day riverboat trip, which I think is part of the experience is that you're so secluded and in the middle of this gorgeous setting.

So he wants to go there to study under local shamans. On Facebook, he posts that he wants to quote, fix his mind. And while there, he meets Guillermo Arvallo, who was an ayahuasca shaman with more than 40 years experience and he agrees to work with Sebastian. And over the next three years, Sebastian makes more with several trips to Peru and continues to take ayahuasca and ceremonies in his hometown as well. I think it's illegal in Canada and the US, but there's secret serum or not secret, but there's like, there's private, yeah, private.

So his friends and family say that he starts becoming distant in erratic and in Facebook posts in 2016 and 2017, he says he's feeling low and lonely. And some people think maybe he's, um, it's because of a recent breakup he had, but others think that his issue is from his quest to become a healer. A friend close to him later tells reporters that he is essentially a good person, but he had a temper and he could be volatile and obsessive. Um, and he claims the ayahuasca changed his friend, changed Sebastian. He starts dieting constantly, which is a requirement for taking ayahuasca.

You can't have any salt or sugar or bad. It's like part of it. He loses a lot of weight. And when his father, uh, tells him to seek professional help, Sebastian just withdraws further. Um, in September, 2017, he contacts the owners of a fishing company he used to work for and asks for a loan of several thousand dollars saying that his wallet and passport had been stolen, but it's definitely like a weird, a weird request.

And two weeks before Christmas in 2017, he heads back to Lima, Peru, and almost immediately starts running into issues. Um, he reports that his passport's stolen again. He's involved in a collision while driving a rental car and he eventually finds a taxi driver who's able to take him to the colony of Victoria, Gracia to meet with Guillermo Arivalo's grandmother, who's one of the most respected and renowned shamans in the Peruvian Amazon. So 81 year old Olivia Arivalo Lamos is known as Ayoshan, which is grandmother.

She lives in the jungle, Hamlet of Victoria, Gracia. So think, you know, wooden shacks, dirt roads, um, and then the, the name, uh, Ayoshan is a term of affection and respect for this woman who knows hundreds and hundreds, like five, 600 herbal remedies, and is one of the last links to the dying tribal culture. She's a defender of the cultural and environmental rights of her people. She's just this incredible woman. She's part of the Shippe Bo, Connie Bo people, which is an indigenous people along the Yucayali River, who are Peru's second largest indigenous Amazon tribe with over 35,000 members.

And they're renowned for their healer led rituals that use, that utilize ayahuasca. One of the villagers says that Olivia had the power to calm storms and strong winds. But if you look at her photo, she's just this beautiful classic grandmotherly type with this wise, kind face and a smile. Her eyes are, you know, bright and beautiful. She's got the bright jewelry on, warm, just this warm presence, even through a picture, you know, and I would imagine that if you're in an ayahuasca ceremony led by this woman, you would just feel at peace.

Well, yeah, if she's studied that much stuff, clearly it's, you know, she possesses tons of knowledge and she knows what she's talking about. Exactly. You know. Olivia's work as a healer is legendary, both within the Shippe Bo, Connie Bo nation and internationally. She's attended to dozens of ayahuasca tourists who travel for more than 15 hours to cure themselves with her specifically.

And so when Sebastian finally meets Olivia after having come to Peru for a couple years to try to understand ayahuasca and the medical properties it has, he asks her if she can cure him and through him, cure his family back home from whatever he believes is there, you know, deep generational trauma. And she says she can if he has faith. And so Becky Linares is who's the mayor of Victoria Gracia says that Sebastian Woodruff would come by and he would insist that Olivia Arivalo would take ayahuasca with him. But she refused to sometimes the healers would take it as well and like so they could experience

it with you, but she hadn't taken it in years. So she just was like, that's not part of what I do. She's probably also like, yeah, I'm the one that calls the shots with that. And so I think it seems like things devolved from there. It seems like in the up until this point, Sebastian Woodruff as my over dramatic English teacher in high school would say was descending into madness at this point, you know. Everything every his actions are becoming more and more erratic, and it seems so he develops a kind of obsession with the Arivalo family and becomes increasingly aggressive

with the locals in that community, according to multiple accounts. He turns up in the village one night during a healing ceremony wanting to speak to Arivalo's son Julian. He's reportedly carrying a club. He's turned away, he tries to sneak back in and hits a man guarding the ceremony allegedly and some villagers chase after him and they take him to the police. And actually, Lanara's later says that the community took Sebastian to the police on three separate occasions.

And of course, so local police have no record of this, but local say it's because they didn't care if a white man is harassing natives. But if it had been the other way around, they would have given a shit, you know what I mean? So when Sebastian Woodrow fails to check in over Christmas and New Year's, his family and friends in British Columbia are worried they're trying to like track him down in Peru. And eventually he responds to them and says, I'm alive. So he leaves Peru in early January 2018 with his relationship with the Arivalo family strained and a number of rumors are circulating that maybe Sebastian had given Julian Arivalo money

for ayahuasca ceremonies that he never received or he'd been ripped off after giving Julian thousands of Peruvian, you know, dollars to buy land for a new retreat. But it's also like he was asking for loans from people. He didn't have money. So that seems a little far-fetched. Maybe he, you know, had these perceived injustices in his head that couldn't be, couldn't be righted because they weren't true, you know, their figment of his imagination. Yeah, if he went down there on borrowed money, then yeah, that doesn't seem well.

Who knows? Yeah. So the rumors are never confirmed, but prosecutors of the Yucca Yali provenance say that Julian allegedly owed Sebastian about $4,000, but we don't know if this is true or not. So Sebastian goes back to Canada, he lives in an RV, starts looking for a new job. It seems like he feels a little bit broken and dishearted. He posts on Facebook about how he feels like shit. He says he's basically looking for a life on Facebook.

And on Facebook in February 2018 says, I miss my family and friends and feel like shit. I hope I'm not sick. And in March, he writes a post about heading back to Peru to do some soul searching and fix his mind. And his family and friends notice that he gets more and more closed off with each visit to Peru. They try to talk him out of going. They talk and won't listen.

And his first teacher, Guillermo Arivalo, says Sebastian reached out to him so they could meet up. Guillermo was out of town and he says that Sebastian told him that he's bipolar and needs help. So it does seem like maybe he had some undiagnosed issues or maybe they were exacerbated by the ayahuasca and he's losing touch with reality. So 13 days after arriving back in Peru, the now 41-year-old Sebastian writes, I'm feeling better day by day in Peru.

So thankful. And he starts behaving more and more erratically. And on March 30th, he goes to a police station in Puculpa and tells the officer that he's looking to buy a gun. Just randomly walks into the police station. At the police station. Yeah. That's not good.

No. That's not good. So he tells the officer that he's going to the jungle and wants protection from animals and the officer actually agrees to sell him his 9-millimeter pistol, which later they say is irregular but not illegal because he files all the paperwork and stuff even though he didn't have a gun license. His next Facebook post says, not enjoying life, having a ref go, please send me prayers. So okay, ready for this, on the day of April 19th, 2018, a teacher in the village school

of Victoria Gracia, here's three gunshots ring out. And he tells the children in the school to stay put, runs out to see what happened. And there he finds Olivia Arivalo laying on the ground outside of her hut, having been shot twice in the chest. Oh, God. Yeah. It's horrific. Oh.

It's horrible. She cries out. They've killed me. They've killed me. And her daughter, Virginia, cradles her as she dies. Horrible. It's so horrible. Someone has out to get the police and it takes a while for them to arrive from the nearby

city. And when they do arrive, they leave Olivia Arivalo's body out in the dirt for hours as they investigate as her family and the grieving villagers stand around in shock. And they find bullet cartridges a couple of yards from the body and villagers tell the authorities that the killer is someone they know a tourist from Canada. They call the gringo. They tell authorities his name, Sebastian Woodruff, and that they had taken him to the police station on three separate occasions.

And this time they say he showed up on a motorcycle waving a gun looking for Olivia's son, Julian. And he had shot in the air once, but when Olivia came out instead, he shot her. But he's nowhere to be found. So soon after the shooting, there's a wanted poster made. It circulates online with Sebastian's photo. The message reads, this is the man who killed our teacher, Olivia Arivalo. And two days go by with no sign of Sebastian until a local media outlet receives a disturbing video.

Oh, no. And the grainy footage, which I highly recommend you don't fucking look up, even a screen grab is troubling. It's upsetting. Yeah. In the grainy footage, several male villagers are beating up a white man identified as Sebastian, and he's pleading, he's beaten up, he's bloody. And while all lookers stand by, his attackers drag him around in the dirt, and then one

man takes a seatbelt and uses it to tie a noose around Sebastian's neck, and they drag him through the fucking streets as he strangled. And the violent video goes viral and becomes international news. Oh, God. How did no one needs that? No one needs that. That's horrible. So investigators search Woodruff's rented room in the town.

And among his things, they find sleeping pills and two other prescription drugs from Canada. One of those prescriptions is an anti-psychotic drug used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And the other is Clonopin, and another one is an anti-anxiety medication. Then authorities receive a tip about the whereabouts of Sebastian Woodruff. When they go back to Victoria Gracia, they find him buried in a shallow grave, 700 yards from the village. His body had been wrapped in a blue sheet, and he's covered in bruises, and his clothes

are coated in dirt and dried blood. And they also find the 9-millimeter pistol that he had bought and a dismantled motorcycle. So back in Canada, Sebastian Woodruff's family, when they hear about this, are like, that is not the person we knew he would never kill someone. They're adamant about it, and there's some rumors that maybe it was the poachers in the rainforest that killed Olivia and all these stories. But once investigators find gunshot residue on the sleeves and hand of Sebastian's sweatshirt, and forensics match, the empty cartridges found near Olivia Arivalo's body with the

gun, they, and there's also eyewitness accounts, you know, that it was him. It's concluded that he is indeed the killer. And as for Sebastian's killers, police in Pukulpa are still looking for the four men in connection with the lynching. One of them was the mayor of that area at the time, and they are currently at large, reportedly hiding in the jungle. So meanwhile in Canada, the local MP, Carlos Tabino, posts a tweet that calls the villagers' savages and blames the death on local shamans who, quote, turn ayahuasca into a business

with foreigners. That's not a good idea. Like it's their fucking fault that someone came to their village. What that's, and especially like, it's just insult to injury, like he killed whatever the context. He killed a holy person. He killed a leader and an innocent, like a shaman and a giver and a teacher, like that's, she didn't provoke this attack, you know.

She didn't invite this into her life. He, he's the aggressor. He later apologizes, but the, the current Mary Linares tells reporters that the whole affair is racist. And she knows that the journalists covering the case and they're all the journalists to send on the town are only there because a white man died. The killing of indigenous people, on the other hand, is ignored every day. Like in December, 2016, indigenous Amazonian healer Rosa Andrade, who was 67, was murdered

by someone outside the community. That crime remains unsolved. And the killing of environmental advocate Edwin Chota in 2014 as well happened, but you know, there's no press coverage. Right. A week after Sebastian's death, Canada also issues an advisory warning travelers to exercise, quote, a high degree of caution throughout Peru and to avoid non-essential travel completely due to terrorist and criminal activity.

The double murder also casts a harsh spotlight on the unregulated world of ayahuasca tourism and some condemn the tribe for taking justice into its own hands. Some blame Sebastian outright and some even assert that Sebastian wasn't the murderer in the first place of Olivia, which I think is farfetched. Yeah. Current mayor of Victoria Gracia, Becky Linares says that the village never wanted the violence that Sebastian brought there are usually a very tranquil community, but in this moment with the death of the village grandmother and last link to traditional ways grief took

over and they carried out their own justice is their their side of it. Right. Nellie Vasquez, Olivia's granddaughter says that the murder has made her more suspicious of outsiders, even if Sebastian was an anomaly. Before he came, she says they all lived a peaceful life and didn't bother anyone. And now she feels haunted by the gringo. And despite the media attention that killings received, ayahuasca tourism has not decreased at all.

And that is the murder of Olivia Arivalo, aka the ayahuasca murders. Wow. If you want to read more that the book I was talking about earlier, Kevin Tucker's book, The Cull of Personality, ayahuasca colonialism and the death of a healer. It's basically talks about the how the event is linked to colonialism and exploitation of indigenous peoples. It's a really interesting read. It's such a tragedy in every direction, but that that idea that she had all this kind

of ancient knowledge and that like that that can only be passed down. The fact that she met such a violent end, this peaceful, spiritual, you know, knowledgeable person that's such a violent end from a person who was suffering from his own mental issues and the whole goal is like to go down there and to try to be healed and to be to say, can you please help me? I know that you heal people, you know, and that's that was that was the whole relationship. And then that's that the way it turns out is that's a nightmare. God, that's yeah, I've never heard of that one in 2018.

Yeah, it just happened. Yeah. It's there. It's also very good to think about in that way of like just accessing people's culture exactly. That way you you're going into their culture, you're going into their lives and you're expecting to be, you know, expecting to continue to be treated the way you are in your culture and not respecting, you know, not respecting another culture, essentially.

And maybe also he wasn't respecting the issues he actually had that acute he made up the way it was going to be solved, right? And then when that didn't happen, he just kept kind of going back to the same source, which is like if you have, you know, maybe that mental illness and whatever else was going on with him needed to get treated a different way. Yeah. Definitely, definitely. Wow.

That's heavy. Okay, so the story I'm going to do this week has an equal amount of pronunciation challenges because it's also international. I'm going to do the story of the beast of J'ai vu d'un. Okay. So here's what happened. There's a website that I love to read called Dangerous Minds. I've been it's reading it for years.

I don't know if you've ever gone on to it, but it's a bunch of super cool writers and it's mostly about music. But then it goes off into these kind of like fascinating cultural kind of Mondo. Have you ever seen this? Have you ever seen this video? Have you ever seen this? Yeah. Whatever.

Sometimes they'll just have a really good one time on there. My favorite thing I think they had the like 1981 Christmas like employee thank you reel for some news station in like Connecticut. So it just was the camera going around and it would be like the guy in the, the guy that was in like the, in the editing there waving Merry Christmas with like their name underneath like stuff like that on there. It's just like, yeah, people with it's, it's a bunch of people with good taste writing about things that you would find interesting.

Love it. So, um, so, uh, their contributor, someone named Cherry bomb is the person who wrote this article that I first found. So I sent it to Jay and I'm like, I have to do this next week. Yeah. So other sources we used are Smith, Smithsonian magazine.com. Um, there's a website called how about that dot site? Um, that I think goes under the all thing, all that's interesting website.

Of course, the great website at Atlas obscura.com. And then of course, Wikipedia and history.com. And also we did a search of the, uh, MFM Gmail inbox and this story was suggested by a listener named Genevieve B way back in 2018 girl. Thank you. Thank you, Genevieve. Um, okay. So this is fascinating to me and I never, I've never heard of this, but between the years

of 1520 and 1630, the people of France lived through what's now known as the French werewolf epidemic. What? Uh huh. So over 30,000 people were accused of being werewolves in that 110 year span of time. 30,000 people were arrested, tortured, and then of course confessed to making deals with the devil for various reasons. Most of them were to protect their flock or their, or their herd.

Um, then the devil would give them, oftentimes it was a magical ointment. Sometimes it was a magical belt, um, and that would turn them into werewolves. Um, and then they would murder and partially eat, uh, unsuspecting passersby. Wow. So that was actually a big chunk of time in French history where that kind of sounds, it's similar to like the witch trials of Europe or the witch trials of Salem. So this came and went and then 130 years later, after it all settles down and seems to be over, beast of Je vous donne kicks up.

So here's what happened in April of, uh, 1764, a young woman is tending to her herd of cattle in the Mekwa, Mekwa forest. I mean, this is going to be a fucking pronunciation disaster. And um, this is near the small town of Long, Longagne, uh, in the south central region. Oh no. Je vous, je vous donne France. Yeah. So, so as she, as she's out there, you know, 10, you see the, the thing that I love about

the story is that it happens nearby and in the forest. And as we know, it's a dangerous place. We've talked about it a lot, but it's fascinating to me like, uh, so she's, she's got her cattle that are, I guess grazing in the forest and, um, suddenly a strange four legged creature about the size of a calf with black and red hair, long black and red hair, a long tail and a very wide mouth appears. And before the woman can figure out what's going on, it lunges forward and attacks her. Uh, she's trying to get free that the creature's too strong.

Luckily, the women's, the woman's cattle comes to her aid and they charge at this beast and, and, um, make it run away, which she perhaps eaten those forest mushrooms at the time. I mean, her and those cattle, right? I read that story and I was just like, I grew up around cows. They don't charge big threatening animals as a group. Protecting your ass. Yeah.

They're not like, we must save Karen. This was long ago. You know, maybe, maybe they used to be quite brave. Okay. So she's obviously shaken. She runs back to her family. She tells them all about this happening. And what she says is she was just, she was attacked by something quote, like a wolf, but

not a wolf. So then two months later on June 30th, 1764, a 14 year old shepherdess named Jean Boulet tends to her flock of sheep in the same region and this mysterious beast appears again. And in the same way it lunges at Jean, but the, she and her sheep are no match for it. And she is the first known fatality of the strange beast of Gévoudin. So I'll give you a little historical context of what's going on in France at the time. So France has been fighting over land in the new worlds for years. And so England, if that's us, yeah, I mean, it wasn't me, my people weren't here, but

anyway, yeah, we were still in Europe, wandering around Europe. So England officially declares war on France over that land in 1756. This will eventually become the seven years war between England, France and Spain at last from 1756 to 1763, which is approximately seven years. That's right. Seven years. I love talking about this show. I've no, I'm like, Oh, I've heard of that.

I think I've heard of that. Oh, that makes sense. Now. No idea. So at the end of this war, France signs a treaty of Paris with England and Spain on February 10th, 1763, and they lose Canada and Louisiana to the British. Obviously, they're all colonizers. It was the Native American people's land.

Yeah. We won't claim land that's already in news. They're having wars anyway. So at this point, national morale in France is very low. So this, about a year later, when the news about a mysterious man-eating beast in Je Voudon travels across Europe, it gives people something new to focus on and rally around, especially as the number of attacks begin to climb. So over the course of the next few months, this beast strikes dozens of times, injuring

some, killing others. And while there's some men attacked, the majority of the victims are women and children. And they're so, it's so funny. There's so many stories of children being shepherds, essentially, all the way all through this time. So everyone had a job. Yeah. It was one of those eras.

So the beast has a pattern of attacking the throat or head and decapitating the victims and partially eating many of its victims, which is not normal for wolves or dogs, wild dogs or any other wild animal known to live in that region of France. Everybody here in Frank yelling in the background? He's like, I do it, I hit your head. So as opposed to a normal wolf attack, suddenly people, they're finding people decapitated. Local sojos who have returned from the Seven Years War with, quote, wounded masculinity from this defeat, they see this beast as an opportunity to reclaim their honor.

So one of these local infantrymen is Captain Jean Baptiste Duhamel. The fact that Josh Duhamel, the great American actor, has not done a biopic of clearly his relatives in France who participating in this is a huge mistake. So Josh, get in touch because we need to make this movie a project. So Duhamel teams up with a regional government delegate named Etienne Lefond and they organize, it said as many as 30,000 men to hunt down this beast. So on October 8th, 1764, another victim is mauled, though Duhamel Lefond and their men couldn't save the victim.

They are able to trail the beast to a forest at Chateau Leban, where it's seen stalking yet another herdsman. So Duhamel's team follows the beast into the forest where they corner it and they manage to coax it out into the open. Then they use their muskets and open fire on the beast, it falls to the ground, but to everyone's horror, it then rises back up to its feet and runs away. So when word of this gets out, the story of the beast takes on a supernatural quality and by December of 1764, the frequency of attacks leads some people to believe there

might actually be more than one of these creatures. Yeah, so all the papers in the local villages latch onto these stories and these theories and they start churning out these sensational reports, circulating them all over France, making everyone equal parts, fascinated, curious, and afraid. One of the more popular stories is, and this is my favorite, a 10-year-old boy named Jacques Portafay on January 12th, 1765, Jacques and seven of his friends, so five boys, it's five boys, two girls, ranging from ages eight to 12. They're out in a meadow, tending to cattle, and they're also playing kind of like war

with big sticks when the beast. So they're doing that, it's, you're right, the tranquil pleasant, there's little pieces of, what are those things you blow on called, they're in the air? Dandelions. Dandelions. Yes, dandelions, filling the air, suddenly, boom, here's this, here's this beast, here's this werewolf. It lunges at the kids, but the kids, led by young Jacques, beat it back with sticks and

successfully scared away. Man, nothing like a fucking gang of kids with sticks to tear a monster away. Hell yeah, they're just like a literal monster. King Louis XV is so taken by the story that he awards Jacques and all of the children who were with him 300 leave a piece for their bravery and he also gives Jacques a free education paid for by the crown. Jay looked it up according to the website historicalstatistics.org and their currency converter 300 leave in 1764 France is worth about 2,500 euros in 2015.

So that's a nice chunk of money. Absolutely. So on August 11th, 1765, 19 year old Marie Jean Valais and her sister, they're crossing the River Dage on their walk home when she turns around to find the beast behind them. But Marie Jean is armed with a bayonet that's attached to a wooden pole. So as the beast lunges toward them, she stabs it right in the chest. Somehow it doesn't kill it and the beast runs off wounded. From then on, Marie Jean is dubbed the Amazon or the maiden of Géduvant for saving herself

and her sister. And centuries later in 1995, artist Philippe Kaplan, I think, or Kaplan commemorates Marie Jean with a statue which still stands in a churchyard in Auvers France. Cool. France. I said. France. Have you ever seen, have you seen Better Off Dead, the movie, the John Key sack movie,

Better Off Dead? When the mom, they have their French exchange students and the mom goes, French bread, French dressing, and Peru. And she's holding a bottle of Perrier. Peru. Okay. So these attacks keep coming. And though the exact numbers aren't known, it's estimated that by early 1765, there've

been between 30 and 60 deaths. Wow. Yeah. So Duhamel and Lafond hear more and more stories of local peasants and townspeople defending themselves from the beast. Their egos are bruised, so they decide to ramp up the efforts to catch and kill this beast. So they organize military style formations and strategies.

They set poison bait traps. They even dress up like peasant women to try to lure the beast to attack them. And rewards for the beast's head are set and gradually increased until they equal a full year's salary for the average worker. Oh my God. Still, none of that leads to any results. So the repeated failures of Duhamel, Lafond, and the local men of Giroudin only add to the who can slay this dragon narrative.

So in February of 765, a father and son hunting team from Normandy named the Denevales announced that they're going to travel to Giroudin to defeat the beast themselves. They claim that they've killed more than 1,200 wolves between the two of them. So they convince everyone they're the men for the job. But Lafond warns them that this creature is, quote, much bigger than a wolf. And Josh Duhamel says, you will undoubtedly think like I do that this is a monster, the father of which is a lion. So what its mother was remains to be seen.

So this father and son team scour the area for the beast and try their hand at killing it. But they can't do either. So by the spring of 1765, they're super embarrassed because their big pronunciation of how they were going to get it done doesn't work. They give up, throw in the towel, they go back to Normandy. As the Denevales give up, King Louis the 15th decides it's time to send in his own personal gun bearer, a man named Francois Antoine to hunt the beast.

Now Francois, he decides to bring his nephew to help him out since he's 71 years old. And 71 in 1765 is 112 in today's. Okay, so Francois, his nephew, and a few other men roam Jadu van's forests until they finally find a large creature that appears to be the beast. They successfully shoot and kill it on September 20th, 1765. And then they bring the beast's corpse to the court at Versailles and autopsy is conducted. The inspecting doctor finds human remains inside the beast's stomach. So then they say this confirms that they have killed the beast.

The body's stuffed, it's put on display at Versailles. Antoine receives a huge reward from the king and he's celebrated not only by the villagers of Jadu van but by all of France. Then two months later in December, there's another attack. But since the king had already made this big display of saying that the beast had already been killed, he refuses to acknowledge that the attacks and murders have started again. That's the best that is refused to acknowledge it. Yeah, I feel like we've heard a couple stories like that where the local law enforcement thinks

they've solved it and they want to have solved it. So then when the fact comes up that it's not been solved, they go refuse, refuse, refuse. Now, can't do it. So without any further assistance from the crown, the people of Jadu van continue to be attacked for the next 18 months. And during this time, it's estimated that another 30 to 35 people die at the clutches of the mysterious wolf-like creature. A witness to one of these attacks that happened in that period of time reports that the beast,

quote, had a shape contrary to nature. So there's something weird about this animal or thing that a lot of people killed. Yes, it's a ton. It's nuts. Okay, so the locals are now furious. They decide to take matters into their own hands. So instead of relying on these military people or the royals, they know the landscape better than anyone else.

They know these forests and they have the most to lose. So they organize their own plan to kill the beast once and for all. So on June 19th, 1767, a rich nobleman, the Marquis, Perchet, perhaps, there it is. Probably not. I don't know, organizes a hunt with all the townspeople. And one of these townspeople is a local farmer named Jean Chastel. So Chastel was known around town for leading the hunts that the king's gunbearer, Antoine, organized.

Remember those guys? The guy and his nephew. But after Jean Chastel accidentally led everybody into a bog, Antoine had him thrown in jail. Oh man. Yeah. So now he's, he got out of jail. He's back. And better than ever.

I don't, I don't know, I don't know if this for a fact, but I'd bet you about 300 Levera that he's super pissed and has something to prove. So here's a quote from how about that dot site. It says quote Chastel was armed with a double barreled shotgun. His ammunition, they say he used silver balls, silver balls. And he had them blessed in advance of the hunt. Okay. End quote.

So this hunting party goes, they, they search the forest, they search the land, they finally come upon the beast. Jean Chastel steps out, shoots his shot and quote Chastel's fire broke the beast's shoulder and ripped out its throat. The hunter then proclaimed the doom of the dread beast of Géduvant, quote, beast, you shall hunt no more. Okay. Overdramatic.

Hello, corny. We'll change that for Josh. Don't worry. We'll change that for the movie. When all is said and done in a three year span, they're an estimated 213 total attacks holy shit with 49 injuries and 113 deaths of these victims, 98 of them were partially eaten. So at the end of all of that, the question still remains, what was the beast of Géduvant?

Some like to believe in the more fantastical theories that it was a werewolf. It's kind of a historical thing in this, in France. And so it's easier to believe maybe, and also because the decapitations were so common and that's not what most animals, dogs, anyone do. It's easier to believe. Other thing that people believe is that it's a human serial killer somehow disguised as this monster because they do say, they say it walked on two legs, that it had the ability to rise up and walk on its back legs, that it was shaped and it was wide-chested.

It was flat-headed. Its mouth was bigger than any animal that was a dog or a wolf. He was a, who wore like a costume to disguise himself. Yes. Could you imagine? And also they said it was, the hair was long and black and just like the actual pelt of the animal looked really weird. It didn't look like any wolf they had seen before.

Like some dude skinned a wolf and put his body on himself? Ew. Well, also there were victims, did I say this one? There were also victims who said that they saw buttons on the beast's belly. Dude. I love, I love that theory that it's some fucking psycho that's dressed up like a wolf. I'd rather run into a werewolf than a guy wearing a wolf's carcass. Yes or no?

Not. Uh, you know, I think there's pluses on both sides. You know, I think I'm never leaving my house again. You know, everything's possible and I'm scared all the time. Okay. Modern scientists and historians have guessed that the creature or multiple creatures could have been a Eurasian wolf, hyena, a variation of a lion. Some are saying maybe like soldiers that went off to war smuggled back exotic animals, you

know, from foreign lands. It could have been a dog wolf hybrid. There are theories that it was a prehistoric animal, holdover, that managed to survive into the 18th century. And that's how Encino Man was created, they used that, they based that off Encino Man. That's a deep cut. This is the Encino Man prequel. We are making this movie, Josh.

References to 1980s, movies. The most likely answer according to historian and author J.M. Smith, who wrote the book Monsters of the Gévoudin, The Making of a Beast, is that they were in fact large wolves. No dude. He's like, let me put the most boring thing in there. He's the old Occam's razor that's no fun and goes against everything we love in podcasting. Want to believe that. He basically said Gévoudin had a serious wolf infestation and that's what was taking

place. But no matter what the explanation is, in this three year period, there was carnage and terror that left its mark on South Central France forever. And that is the story of the beast of Gévoudin. So if you want to see, so J.M. Smith's book, Monsters of the Gévoudin, you should definitely read that if this is interesting to you. There's also a 2001 movie called Brotherhood of the Wolf. It has 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and it's all a, it's a French movie.

It's all about this story. Dude. So, you know, if you want it, if you want it, it's all there for it. Bravo. Oh, trust me. No, that's Italian. Oh. Clapping is Italian.

No. Is Bravo French? I think Bravo is French. Well, Bravo to you. That was great. Thanks. That was great. Thank you.

I know. We need more like that. There's all kinds of horrible things to talk about in this world. So. Truly. You know. Guys, we can go back and forth. We still need your suggestions.

Don't stop. Won't stop. You know. Not till you get enough. Exactly. So keep suggesting them to us because it's. Yeah. Turns out.

I just love that. I saw that article and got a little excited and then when I asked Jay to do the search, Genevieve had been talking about it. Oh yeah. Years before. Yeah. So I love it. Genevieve is like, what's up?

Hey, talk about this. And at the end of her email, she said, and I'm not even French. You don't have to be French to listen to my favorite murder. You don't, but it sure does help. Great job. That was awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Let's do it. Fucking her raise. Cool. Want to go first? Sure. Okay. Let's see. This is from.

This is from Emily Fay. Um, it says my fucking her is that my aunt is beating pancreatic cancer. Oh my God. She was. Yeah. She was diagnosed mid February with pancreatic cancer almost exactly two years to the day that my grandmother, her mother lost her battle with the same disease. As many know, pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest cancers to treat and beat because

most of the time it's caught too late. It started as awful news and the doctors didn't think chemo would help much. Well, on July 29th, 2020, we got the news that the tumor has shrunk considerably and on August 28th, she had surgery to remove all of the cancer. She's doing great and is ready to come home. Her oncologist doesn't think additional rounds of radiation will be or chemo will be needed. We're so excited to see what the rest of her life has to offer. Fuck you cancer.

You're losing this battle. Oh, that's so Emily Fay. Congratulations. That's so beautiful. My aunt Kathleen Castro, who was one of the greatest people died of pancreatic cancer, we lost her so quickly. It was so hard. This really is the most fucked cancer.

So I'm so happy for you, Emily, because that is amazing and it's going to give a lot of other people so much hope to hear that. That's incredible. That's really cool. The people who are going through normal things like cancer at this time, I just can't even imagine the extra. All right. So this one is from Pippi and Shirley on Instagram.

I have finally got a spectacular fucking hooray. Over the past two years, my kids and I have been navigating escaping from my ex, being homeless for months and legal battles, trying to get child support. I took a huge financial gamble and went for my graduate degree. I just couldn't get a job that paid enough that I could provide us with a decent life. And so close to the end of my program, the job I did have, I was laid off from in March thanks to COVID. I graduated this month with my master's of social work and I got an amazing job within

two weeks. I started in September. I've been trying to get all my life ducks in a row and my career duck is no longer floundering in the middle of the river about to get eaten by a carp. After years in an abusive relationship, I thought my life would never be what I want it to be. And now I have it. Thank you for being the not actual my friends who have helped me feel not alone thanks to

the murdering community. I'm absolutely buying a pair of fuck you. I'm divorced wet pants with my first paycheck. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And it's paycheck with a QUE. So they're...

Canadian? So they're Canadian or British? Montreal. Oh, congratulations. Yeah, that's awesome. That's a huge risk and that's so cool. Yeah. Amazing.

Thank you for sharing those. There's still good news out there. Yeah. So if you have any, please send it to us. You can do with Fancal. They know. You can do Gmail. You can do Twitter.

We're honored that you share these wins with us. We feel like the keeper of this really cool community and we're, yeah, we're stoked to be part of it. Yeah. We're the controller of this community. We could just, we could pick our titles. Okay. Thanks, you guys.

Stay strong. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Okay. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?