The Bechdel Cast - The Babadook

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

On this unlocked-from-the-Matreon episode, Jamie and Caitlin cover The Babadook! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes,

and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white in print.

It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions ask if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just

boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Jamie, I'd like boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast jamie i'd like to read you a bedtime story okay who's it about um it's about this guy named the baba duke or rather just a figure i don't want to gender the the baba duke okay the baba duke what's the fashion situation the fashion situation fashion icon i see uh the baba duke i see i see a top hat uh-huh some like pretty intense makeup okay amazing you've got like a black cloak i would say okay hot hot both physically and like you know like energy wise

like probably sweating under there how much is the Babadook sweating under all of that I mean it does seem like it's kind of maybe it seems like it's not you know warm the whole movie it's pretty chilly environment seems like a second layer honestly I look, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus, huge Babadook fan. My name is Caitlin Durante, another huge Babadook fan. Hard to really not be a fan of the Babadook, as we will be discussing in this exclusive unlocked Matreon episode for you. Can you you believe it i can scarcely believe it but here we are oh my goodness nonetheless here we are um so we are unlocking this episode

this week a little a little peer behind the curtain that is just simply uh unfortunate we were hoping to spotlight i mean we at this, it's like we sort of cover all sorts of movies throughout the year. But we were hoping to get several queer movies featured in the month of June. Because I don't know if you've been to a bank recently. But it's Pride Month. So happy Pride to everybody. And we had big plans for this month. And then unfortunately, I i jamie got the

homophobic covid19 virus an extremely homophobic queerphobic in general virus yes just not a friendly so i i got really sick and it kind of derailed our plans a little bit. I very, very fortunate to be doing better now. Yes. Shout out to vaccines and Paxlovid. I don't know if anyone has been on the Paxlovid bus. But in any case, you know, I feel I feel very lucky to have to be better, but it did sort of derail our june a little bit um and so we were thinking um what would be a fun episode to unlock for the month of june because me being six set stuff back a little bit so sorry okay we're trying our best and we will also be like i mean i feel like we cover movies with queer themes all the time now so it's like the boundary of june we don't observe um but but in any case we wanted to uh unlock an episode that had

um queer themes the babadook you may say now hold on what are you talking about i do believe we cover it in text in this episode of why the Babadook is considered a queer icon. We spend a long time talking about it, in fact. joy the fun the loose energy of this episode always a reminder to go to our patreon aka matreon patreon.com slash bechdel cast for two bonus episodes a month and an over 100 episode backlog we've only um ever unlocked a handful of them on the main feed and we don't make a habit of it except for when one of us gets um wildly ill so there you go but i do believe because we discuss we won't spoil it here we do discuss why the babadook is considered a queer icon and has been embraced as a queer icon even though

that's not necessarily in the text, but we address why. But I believe because this is an episode from almost four years ago, October 2018. It's rather far back in the Matreon's history. And at the time, I don't know if I mentioned it in the episode, but I had pitched an episode about queer icon, the Babadook,

on my first season at robot chicken. This is familiar. Yeah. And because this is episode is four years old, that sketch did get into the show and was released on the show in 2019. So I will be linking to the sketch. Hopefully you like it. I was very,

I was shocked and thrilled that it somehow got into the show. It is an episode. It's like, I don't know, put yourself in your 2019 brain if you can. It was very timely at the time. Queer Icon the Babadook goes on to new Netflix Queer Eye. Oh, that's good. That's good. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for your support of a TV show that came out three years ago. Look, I was proud of it. And The Babadook is a queer icon. And also, The Babadook was like, even outside of this fascinating history of how The Babadook became a queer icon. It's also just a movie that is full of discussion that's relevant

to our show. Yes, which you are about to hear. I found and maybe this is just me, but I feel like in the years since we released that episode, the Babadook being a queer icon has kind of fallen out of the zeitgeist. And I hoping yeah that us releasing this episode like you know like unlocking this episode will remind people don't forget about the babadook it's being a queer icon it's true i don't think i've really i don't think it's like that the babadook has been removed from no canon but it's just it's not as discussed as as it was in i want to say like 2017 18 19 you know in a world where there is a dearth of sheer joy yeah the babadook as queer icon i feel like um you know is is worthy of your attention hopefully you enjoy if you if you are not aware

of this you you'll enjoy learning the origins because this is a matriarch episode i guess we should quickly tell people what the bechdel test is because we don't do that in matriarch episodes yes and i will we will do that by giving an example and here's the example of something that passes the bechdel test. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. Did you know that, I believe it was sometime in 2019, the director of The Babadook, Jennifer Kent, finally commented on... I did not know this.

Wait. So she was asked her thoughts on the baba duke being a queer icon and of course rooting for her conversations about the baba duke pass the bechdel test because yes the baba duke is a genderless slash gender fluid slash non-binary icon and also the bechdel test passes kind of like like whatever is interesting to us in a lot of cases. True, true, true. But Jennifer Kent finally responded, I believe, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. I think she was on the press tour for her film The Nightingale.

She was asked what her thoughts were on the Babadook as a gay icon. And she said, quote, I'm still trying to work that one out. It's quite perplexing. I feel it's really quite beautiful, but I still have no idea why. I mean, I kind of do, unquote. Oh, okay. That's truly an iconic response yep because it is very funny like i feel like first of all it is a gift for a character you

invented to be taken out of context by accident become a queer icon and then be asked what you think about it you're like um i guess that's awesome because it is true but also i think her response makes quite a quite a lot of sense where you're like yeah great um well shout out jennifer kent yeah shout out baba duke oh baba duke shout out this movie and that did in fact pass uh the bechdel test top to bottom test which is a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test right there are many versions of the test here is the one that we use a piece of media passes the bechdel test if there are two characters of a marginalized gender who have names, they speak to each other and their conversation has to be about something other than a man. And then we add the caveat, you know, at least a two line exchange.

And hopefully that conversation is narratively meaningful. A hundred percent. And I am thrilled. I mean, I think it's just very fun that we unlocked this episode. Hopefully you agree. We have a really fun lineup planned for the summer. We will obviously, we will always be covering queer movies on this show. Apologies for our June getting a bit derailed this year. But we are back on track.

I am still testing positive however i feel okay i mean you know first of all i'm very lucky that i can work from home second of all the walls of this apartment unfortunately i mean they couldn't be more familiar to me we were locked in our houses for quite a long time true so um with that in mind um thank you for listening to the show happy pride thank you for your uh patience with this slight disruption and we are gonna have a uh a fun summer ahead it's not indeed we are hot girl summer hot girl summer was i believe 2019 and 20 hot dog summer was summer 2021 2022 i don't really know what hot what i mean uh what's gonna be hot this summer hot planet summer seems depressing hot uh high gas price summer god we really I can't think of something non-dystopian.

We'll circle back on that. It's going to be a hot summer. That's for sure. Yes. But thank you so much for listening. Join the Matreon if you are enjoying the vibe of this episode. We have, you know,

it's no longer 2018, but Caitlin and I do like to get a little chaotic and fun on the matreon stream for example yeah this month our theme was uh i know what you did last midsummer and we're not going to tell you what movies we covered because it's in the title of you yes you'll be able to figure it out you're smart oh wait i'm gonna rattle off a bunch of just kind of not random but you know thoughts that pertain yeah to uh things one um thoughts that pertain to things things ever heard of them uh first jamie i'm glad you're recovering from covid and feeling better two i think that the Babadook the

movie is one of its kind of thesis statements is is something that we also have as a as a thesis statement on the Bechtel cast which is um don't read books we don't we don't read books the book and the Babadook that is true it's bad so I feel really close to the movie the Babadook. That is true. It's bad. So I feel really close to the movie, the Babadook for that reason. Yeah. Good messaging. Do not read books. Don't read books. They're, they're dangerous as I think is the main takeaway. They're trying to hurt you. Yep. From the movie. Let's see. I would like to plug an upcoming tour I have. So maybe, you know, it it's it's not hot girl summer it's uh hot caitlin on tour summer tormer because i'm going to europe ever heard of it and i'm doing shows in barcelona madrid paris amsterdam hopefully london hopefully edinburgh i've got to figure some of those out but uh check out my website and take a

gander at the shows i'm doing and if you live in any of those places come say hello i love it i will plug ghost church yes um which is finishing its run this coming week. This is my podcast that if you've been listening to the Bechtel cast, you probably heard me plug the hell out of it, but it's my most recent solo podcast that is about the history of American spiritualism and my time that I spent in a spiritualist camp in central Florida, where I am going back to in a week and a half. Oh, that's right.

Because you're going, you are going to Florida. I am going to Florida for some reason. 2022 is just Florida is a magnet and I am a piece of metal. So I have, I am doing shows in LA all summer i think i'm gonna be doing a few shows in boston in july but outside of that i'm gonna be uh hanging out with uh my my mediums in in florida so listen to ghost church um a lot of love went into it produced by bechtel cast producer sophie lichterman featuring the voice talents of Caitlin Durante, of Paula F. Tompkins, of Robert Evans, of many, many talented people.

And I think that that's all I have to say. Without further ado, shall we, Babadook? Let's shall. Enjoy the episode. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions.

Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies.

Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it? Like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged.

I'm N.K., and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health

is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you, and it will call you a basket case.

Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello. Hi, patrons. What's up? It's us. It's us. How are you, Jamie? I'm having a good day, honestly.

And we're also recording this. I'm literally looking at a picture of a gravestavanaugh hearings but before the whole fbi thing has been settled and i don't know yeah personally i took the morning off and i'm still fucking exhausted how are you i'm i'm you know uh i just want to like puke i just i stay off of social media for the most part i have not been keeping up with the news enough because it's far too depressing um but hey speaking of depression and mental illness let's talk about the baba duke i love the thing i love the baba duke so much yeah oh okay here's a question is baba duke when i said like that is that an australian accent oh i don't know i say duke i hit the yes i say well in the movie they say it baba duke but i think it's because Australia. Right.

Okay, well, I mean, you can say it. Sorry for yelling. You can say it however you want. I can say it however I want. Anyone can say it however they want. Choosing how to identify it is an important, embedded message of the Babadook. Not even choosing, it's acceptance. It's a message of a failure to accept.

Yeah. I think that, I mean, well, there are two ways to view the Babadook Duke. There is the textual reading. Sure. Which is pretty generally understood and even copped to by the writer, director, Jennifer Kent, was copped to a pretty one-to-one metaphor for postpartum depression. The Babadook being a monster that represents

postpartum depression. Then there's a metatextual reading that I think is way cooler. Which is, I believe it was 20, I believe the year was 2016

when Netflix miscategorized The Babadook as an LGBT film. And the LGBT community, LGBTQI+, et cetera, community, as they have historically done, welcomed The baba duke into the community rather than rejecting them sure and it became really one of my favorite memes of all time is that instead of saying hey this doesn't belong here let's let's make sure that the baba duke gets out of the lgbtq category they instead said oh the baba duke was queer and it introduces well do you have the tabs of yeah let's because because the specific jokes are so rich right i think this is the more interesting conversation personally there's a there's a buzzfeed listicle which just features many of the tweets and screen grabs and and good question i know that baba duke was being joked as

being like the special guest at pride in 2017 yeah but i don't know what amount of time before that people were beginning to make the jokes and the queer icon baba duke was making the rounds on the internet yeah yeah there's all kinds of really funny tumblr conversations memes and tweets where the queer community is embracing queer icon baba duke as one of their own uh that's not to say that everyone in the queer community is embracing queer icon Babadook as one of their own. Unbelievable. That's not to say that everyone in the queer community is on board. No, I mean. I've spoken to a few people who are like, eh, whatever.

It's like, I mean, I think like any meme, it could be perhaps viewed as cheesy. Sure. Overdone. Tacky. Definitely definitely understand that view completely yeah personally i love it i do too and so well tell me your your history with the film the baba duke oh gosh i think i saw and i'm pretty sure most people who have seen this movie did not see it in theaters. They saw it on Netflix. It's a movie that very much found its legs in streaming.

So I saw, yeah, I saw it in streaming. I'm pretty sure I saw the stark image of the Babadook. It was like, seems like my kind of fit. You know, I liked the fit. I liked the alliterative nature of the name. And I watched it. And I I was like it was like the kind of thing on first viewing I'm like this plot is all over the place enough that it needs to be a metaphor for something I'm missing and then did a light goog and realized that indeed it was a

you know kind of like and not even to be overly critical of jennifer kent i think she's made a lovely thoughtful interesting scary movie but it does we were talking about this during the viewing where it gets so in the weeds on its own metaphor that if there was no metaphor if you're just looking at the plot there's a lot of moments that you're like um sure you know almost like and not i mean this it's like 20 that issue to mother aronofsky's movie from last year but i think it's like a far lesser offense of the same crime of just like a movie that's so caught up in its own metaphor that it loses any sort of plot. Babadook is not to the extent. I mean, Mother is just like, huh? Mother barely has a plot.

Its story is at the expense of the extended metaphor. Unintelligible. Yeah. it makes its story is at the expense of the extended metaphor unintelligible yeah but the babadook i mean there's it's more like there are a few scenes and plot points that you're like i'm not totally with this especially like that and well i guess do you want to do the recap yeah um it's weird we're having so many there's so there's so much uh to quote one user baba discourse to have so my brief history with it before i do the recap sorry oh how dare you i'm sorry goodness gracious unbelievable jamie i saw it streaming as well i remember there being like a lot of buzz about it when it first came to netflix and people were like oh i

heard it's so freaking scary it's the best horror movie in a while people were going crazy about it it came out in 2014 i think i probably didn't watch it until sometime in 015 but i was like okay yeah i i appreciated its production design. I think a lot of care went into stylizing the movie. I think that the performances are really good. You know me. I generally am not the hugest fan of a lot of child acting. It's not that I hate the actors themselves.

It's just that I don't think that. But the child, the kid who plays, I mean, you do feel, it reminds me of this horrible health class I had in seventh grade. You do feel her pain of like, yeah, this kid is screaming and she doesn't have the support she needs to get this kid to not be screaming. Right. It's not even like the reasons the kids are screaming are wrong but how do you're just one person yeah it reminds me of this i had this horrible horrible chain smoking health teacher named mr starziak yeah in seventh grade and his like famous lesson was on

shaken baby syndrome it was like notorious it's like in seventh grade because my older cousins had gotten it a few years before me and she's like my cousin tammy was like oh you're gonna get mr starzy shaking baby lesson and it's so fucked up but she wouldn't tell me no spoilers and what he did was he would go into the beginning of class and be like so none of you guys would shake a baby to death right and we'd all be like no of course not he's like good just checking and then he would put on a cassette tape of a baby screaming and would turn it all the way up and would leave a baby doll sitting on top of the tape recorder so it seemed like the baby was crying and then he would leave the room oh my god and he would leave it there the whole period his point being babies are annoying and eventually you're gonna want to kill them

but no seventh grader would ever like it was annoying and it was grating but it was more everyone was just like why is he doing this does he want one of us to try to shake this baby no one did and according to my cousin's experiences no one did in their class either they just sort of sat there and they were just like this is annoying but like more like why is our teacher doing this and so eventually in every case when a student inevitably does not shake the baby to break the tension mr starziak comes back into the room and shakes the baby himself and he would be like see is this annoying and we'd be like yes and he's like yeah don't you want to shake this baby and And he'd shake the doll.

And my year was particularly iconic because the head of the doll popped off. And then he'd stop the tape recording and he'd be like, I don't know. And that's shaking baby syndrome. Wow. So that was what Samuel's performance was invoking for me i see i see what a horrible thing to do to kids there is no prevention techniques taught just explaining it was basically he was just like confirming that baby's crying is annoying and you might succumb to the temptation to shake them yeah he's just like yeah it happens but you can pretty much get why

yeah okay well stars yeah maybe not the best educator we've ever known yeah so yeah i saw the movie once and i liked it but i didn't quite get all of the hype i wasn't like oh you know because it is a little nonsensical especially as the movie progresses and certainly in like the third act where the resolution is a little confusing and when you do look at it from the perspective of the baba duke is a manifestation of her postpartum depression then the implications of what happens are i mean we'll talk about them but it's you know it's a strange choice um yes but yeah we could talk about that so the story of the babadook yes do tell us the baba the book of the baba book the baba book the baba discourse the baba duck is about a mother

named amelia who lost her husband on the day that her son was born so they were driving to the hospital they get in a car accident her husband dies can i say kind of lazy writing a little death on the way to the hospital you're like all right though but it does keep with the one-to-one nature of this movie right so we learn about this accident just through a series of like kind of quick cuts and visuals uh and then we are with her and her son samuel who is six or seven years old something like that I think he's supposed to be in first or second grade yeah yeah so they're in a quiet Australian community um her son has a lot of behavioral problems he has different weapons that he's assembled it seems that he brings to school he gets in trouble about that he acts out quite a

bit at home he doesn't tend to get along with other children and then he also is inclined to flights of fancy where he he loves magic he loves um which first of all magician as we all know a young man interested in magic is a red flag a young man who thinks you know it'd be awesome if i could control everything around me is dangerous anyways see i really appreciate you know close-up magic so i i think no that's when a man's like get closer it'll get more interesting i promise i control everything magicians triggering okay so he loves he loves magic he lets his imagination run away with him and he's always seeing monsters so his mom's like there aren't any monsters so one day it's bedtime and he's like read me a story and he pulls a book off the shelf called mr baba duke

which we'll get into the needless gendering of the baba duke later sure i think the movie is not called mr baba duke for a reason sure because perhaps contributes to the babadooks rage non-binary icon 100 yeah 100 not a feminist icon necessarily does try to kill amelia yeah a bunch and and stocks their neighbor mrs roach he's like sorry they they they are are hanging out um they have certainly some crimes to answer for. But being a non-binary icon is not one of them. So she reads Mr. Babadook, the book, the imagery in it is scary. And it's about this monster who will come and get you. And then the less you believe in the Babadook, the more they will interfere with your life. So yeah. So Amelia reads this to Samuel, she writes it off as just a story. But Samuel insists that the Babadook is real and is around and is tormenting him. And this causes

even more problems at school where he basically gets kicked out of school even though he's a young very young child and he is at his cousin's birthday party and he pushes her ruby ruby not an icon of any sort i don't think but does she just because you're not an icon doesn't mean you should be pushed out of a tree certainly not important to remember so he his like misbehavior is like dialing up to an 11 he's pushing kids out of trees it's a problem right so she's saying you know stop with this babadook thing the babadook is not real but then she starts to see glimpses of the freaking duck yeah so she's like hey wait a minute this isn't real i'm seeing things and she's in denial and and she throws the book away but then the book you know she rips it up and puts it in the trash the baba buoy the baba the abba book what is the abba where is the abba baba duke crossover event

we've all been waiting for i would be baba shook if that happened can i plug my baba duke thing soon yeah next season of robot chicken oh yeah 2019. Keep your eyes peeled for, honestly, what I think is my greatest accomplishment to date, which is a sketch called Queer Eye for the Babadook. Yeah. I can't wait to see it. I'm really excited. I think it's a tale of becoming. Anyways.

So, yeah. We've got Babadook Mamma Mia. That's gonna happen. Bye Bye Man. The Bye Bye Man is also so funny. Did you see that? Whatever that movie was. It was called the Bye Bye Man.

It was called the Bye Bye Man. It's like a Slenderman knockoff. Right. Was my understanding. And then it's like you can miss it. But the double the double entendre of the bye bye man is fun also roger says bye bye when he gets off the phone oh okay just just i'd flourish i would add okay so she's she's chucking the babadook book in the bin if you were bucking and chucking but

the babadook book comes back on her doorstep and she's like what the hell so then she burns it she goes to the police and says i'm being stalked and they're like we don't believe you sure and then the babadook gets worse uh it starts to really torment her she's having different delusions she is she can't sleep and when the the baba duck book comes back more of the story has filled in and it's like you're gonna kill your dog and your son by the way and she's like no i'm not but then she does kill her dog because she's being more and more possessed i suppose by the duck and then the duck she kind of snaps to she she does nearly kill her son because she's holding a large knife and there's an interesting switch that happens where in the

beginning of the movie Samuel is intolerable as a character because of his behavioral problems and you feel really sorry for the mom having to deal with a child like that. And then there's a switch that happens where Samuel becomes a super sympathetic character because his mom is trying to kill him and or neglecting him and or verbally abusing him. Sure. And then mom, meanwhile, is doing all these horrible things. So like the character you're identifying and sympathizing with most, there's like a stark switch that happens. So she throws up some black blood. Very Jennifer's body kind of bile.

Yeah. And then, you know, she seems like she's about to lose it. And, you know, her son has tied her up in the basement. But then she kind of comes to and she has this face-to-face confrontation with the babadook and she's like this is my house you're trespassing in my house get out of here and then it like seems like the babadook has been defeated and or kept at bay because then we cut to her and her son they're in their nice clean clothes again they're not covered in black vomit right she goes down to the basement the babadook is there presumably

kind of like tied up or something and she's like here eat some worms it's weird and then that's the end of the movie so metaphorically if if we are remembering that the babadook is a manifestation of her mental illness i guess all you have to do to cope with mental illness is just acknowledge that it's there and then kind of lock it away in in your subconscious i think that there's a little more to it than i mean it's again it's like kind of a sloppy metaphor but ultimately i think it's like supposed to mean and i think the reason it doesn't work is because it like skips ahead of so many like it depicts the I guess like the battle between a woman in postpartum depression. Right. But then it just skips ahead to like and now it's treatment and everything's great. And it's not none of the abuse towards her son slash animal cruelty is ever addressed.

And it's just all this. We're like, yeah, we really like flipped ahead on this. This one. I don't know that she's saying. I mean, I think that it's more like not locking mental illness away, but like finding a way to restrain dark thoughts. I think with the actual movie, not the queer masterpiece version of it, the Babadook represents all the, like not even, I don't even know. Like it could possibly even recommend, like just be depicting the ugliest parts of this illness of like dark thoughts that are attacking

you and possessing you and making you you know do things you wouldn't normally do and locking those away and keeping them at bay with you know little zoloft worms right and what have you oh i'm tired i don't know i mean the movie is creepy and there's scary imagery but when you really think about it like like we do on our podcast yeah it is technically our job it doesn't necessarily make a whole lot of sense i think a movie that has a clear metaphor that also has a story that makes sense and is also you know very creepy and haunting is it follows which i would love to do an episode on sometime problems well it's certainly not without its problems but i think i just enjoyed that movie more interesting

yeah i like see i think that that comes it might come down to like a preference thing too because i prefer call me simple but i like a villain with a face i know it's scarier when they don't have a face you're like where's he at where's he at but i like a villain i mean i'm literally dressing up as the baba duke for halloween i'm like give me a film with a with a fit and an aesthetic sure and an objective um no it's less scary but it looks not necessarily i yeah i think it is a matter of preference yeah but let's take a quick break and then we will come back for more discussion Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered

there are crooks everywhere you look now the situation is desperate my name is Manuel Delia I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job?

Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Santer. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep.

Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds.

What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions

that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So as far as the female characters, we have a few. There aren't that many characters in this movie at all we've got

amelia we've got samuel there is amelia's sister claire there's claire's daughter lucy who we see the both of them in a couple scenes but they are certainly more secondary characters who don't get a ton of screen time there is a colleague of amelia's who i think is that robbie oh the crush she works yeah she works at some sort of um uh like a nursing home or a hospital of some sort and yeah so there's the bingo mistress etc yeah please start calling me the bingo yeah i already do behind your back. Thank you so much. You're welcome. And then there's Mrs. Roach, their neighbor. And then we see glimpses of Amelia's dead husband.

And that's really about it. There's a couple like child protective service people who visit the house a couple of times. But yeah, it's really just those two main characters of Amelia and Samuel and of course, Papa Duck. So that means there's not a whole lot of interaction between women. You know, Amelia does talk to her sister Claire a few times. She does talk to Mrs. Roach a few times.

Claire's character is like, I don't know. I mean, there are a few elements of this that are like turned up to an 11 to the point of like, do we like anyone in this movie? Where you're definitely sympathetic towards Amelia at most points in the movie. Towards the end, you're like, oh, geez, she killed a dog. Making her kill a dog was such a move because that will like lose you 90% of any rational audience. Right. like lose you 90 of any rational audience right but that said claire amelia's sister seems to truly not sympathize with amelia's situation at all which is confusing to me because i don't know there's a lot of people i don't want to be careful about the way i phrase this there's a lot of people

who are very aggressive to amelia in this movie that don't necessarily make a ton of sense. Where like Claire obviously fully knows that Amelia lost her husband in an accident that she was in. She knows that her nephew Samuel is traumatized by this. Yeah. She knows that Amelia has to work a lot to support her and samuel right she's a single mom right and she knows that amelia also has a lot of trauma so why is she so completely and utterly unset like literally most of their interactions are screaming yeah it's very strange i don't know i mean i think perhaps that claire was maybe more supportive in the more

immediate aftermath of the accident and she's just sort of gotten sick of like get over it yeah i mean that does make but that i mean that's not being as supportive as a sister as she could be. But I don't necessarily think that Claire is completely unjustified in her behavior, especially when... In her being frustrated. Yeah, her frustration. And then also because she does make an effort to include Amelia and Samuel in her and her daughter's life. For sure. in her daughter's life for sure and the moment where she really decides to kind of give up on them is when her daughter gets tossed out of a tree pushes lucy out of a tree house so i know i i guess i guess and it has been seven years and that is like a hard thing to be like okay how

what am i supposed to do but it's true that you know she could even if she is frustrated by the situation it feels like she could do more to either find help for amelia um whether it's you know is this a critique of the australian australian public health system had to know that was really bad sorry estra yeah i'm not entirely sure what active commentaries if any are being made in the movie it is maybe worth noting that whenever she whenever amelia goes to the police and says like someone is leaving this creepy book outside of my house the cops are like well you don't have that book that you said that they gave you so we're not even gonna try to investigate this so nah you're just like that what i do think is interesting about this movie is that the struggles of being a mother are the focus of the story. Yes, particularly a single mother.

Yes, most movies don't bother to explore or address that at all. This movie reminded me a lot of Tully, which came out earlier this year, which I saw. I didn't especially like it just because it wasn't my type of movie. It's a well-made movie and it's well-written and everything like that. It's just not my genre. The tone isn't for me, but it's another, and she's not a single mother in that movie, but she does have a husband who is hands-off in some ways. It's a very generous way to put it. Right. Yeah. I can only think of a few movies like this where the struggle of being a parent and of being a mother is deeply explored. I certainly don't know anything about what it's like to be a mother. And I have expressed many times that I don't want to have kids, so I will never know.

But I am very sympathetic to and also admiring of people who do choose to have kids so i will never know but i am very sympathetic to and also admiring of people who do choose to have kids because i could never do it i simply don't have the patience or energy or any of the things that you have to have to be a parent um a trap this movie could have easily fallen into is being like single motherhood is absolute hell which it isn't for every single mom it's certainly challenging but like there if that were the only message of the movie that would be like probably insulting to some mothers who are making it work just fine and you know the implication of a lack of father or even secondary parent figure is somehow a failure but this movie totally justifies the hell world it creates by afflicting its single parent with significant trauma that would make anyone's life conceivable in terms of like if we're heightening it to a horror world.

It's not a far cry because of the trauma associated with you know watching your spouse die and feeling like it's your fault and also adding the mental illness factor which a lot of movies do irresponsibly but i think that this movie that like depicts and again it's like i'm obviously not a mother either but from what i can, just based on the reception, and I did read a few kind of one-off blog posts from mothers who had experienced postpartum depression that this movie really hit with, seems to be almost like a realistic metaphor for this particular mental illness almost to a fault you know like to like what we're saying to the point where there's like kind of plot holes because it is more concerned or the the agenda of this movie is more concerned with depicting postpartum in a metaphor than it is with having a story that makes a whole ton of sense and not right but i mean that's not sensical but but i mean that as a positive of like usually mental illness in the horror genre is used as kind of like a God in the machine kind of thing to explain away. Oh, why is he evil? Um, he's bipolar.

Right. He's schizophrenic or he's dissociative or like her son was taken away and she's mad. And, you know, kind of these reductive ways of referring to mental illness just to keep the story going definitely but this movie kind of does the opposite where understanding and exploring the mental illness is the reason the movie exists in the first place and so that aspect of it isn't just cast aside which is cool yeah um and i think yeah uh we talked a little bit about this on the halloween episode that i believe will coincide pretty closely with the release of this Babadook episode. So it's either about to come out or it just has.

But we explore how a lot of horror movies help perpetuate the stigma of mental illness by having killers who are something right we mentioned in halloween where there is a psychiatrist character who has been working with the killer michael myers since his childhood and his official medical diagnosis for michael my Myers is that he is pure evil. Evil. You're just like, really, dog? All right. I wonder if the filmmakers think that having mental illness is... Bless you.

Goodness gracious. I am expelling many demons this time. The bot might just sneezed at the babadook that was the babadook duke duke yeah a choo choo anyways okay leave that in but yeah so many films of this genre especially really mishandle the portrayal of mental illness yeah equate it with being if you experience any sort of mental illness sorry you're probably evil right and then and again it's as i think we were also discussing in the halloween episode offenses like this are especially apparent in genres that are as campy as horror movies where mental illness stigma can be found

littered throughout media everywhere from time immemorial. But in the less subtle genres, it's easier to be like, yes, I have a prescription for evil and it is shooting you to death. And that's literally the script that that psychiatrist delivers is the only cure for evil is murder which is i would love to see that written on

a prescription pad but yeah that is i mean to this movie's credit because i i still really like this movie i think that it's it's one of those movies that it's like it's not a horror movie that is scary after the first time you watch it but i remember the first time watching this i was pretty scared like when you before you fully understand what the baba duke is and what it represents and you're just like what what is the Duke's deal? Sure. Hello. Give me the Duke, baby. It's weird because when you look at a movie like this that is so steeped in a very feminine metaphor, you're like, oh, we're going to have so much to talk about. But the movie really does do what it sets out to do.

And you either like it or you don't. It works for you or it doesn't. But in terms of i mean i think that this would be an example of a movie that absolutely benefits from a woman who understands what she's writing about writing and directing it because can you imagine if a man wrote and directed this it would just be all kinds of like to refer to our carrie episode that's definitely out just like weird like uh this is what a woman would say right right kind of kind of this is what happens to her body i think and also her mind question just gush blood when the first period they ever

get uh stuff like that but like you know, in that way, it's good. Because that isn't something that really hit for me at all. I mean, in terms of, like, there's times where all characters seem to be behaving and reacting over the top. But in terms of totally missing how this female character is written, you always up until the very end you know when she's possessed by the Babadook you're kind of just like oh this is a good she's killing dogs but for the most part the movie does a good job of like building a world where you understand why she is so frustrated and feels so depressed and like the world is closing in on her. And oh, definitely. Yeah.

So, I mean, hats off to Jennifer Kent in that regard. I mean, for writing a woman's story. And also, I mean, it's not a last girly kind of movie. There's really one woman. Yeah. She's the final girl from the start. Which brings me to gendering the baba duke okay why must we gender the baba duke why must why mr baba duke why did the bot did anyone talk to the baba

duke about this uh the movie's called the baba duke i think with with good reason which is that the baba duke never specifies their gender and so it is a rude assumption to assume male i think that this contributes to a lot of the baba duke's rage sure you know i just i also wonder i couldn't find a response from jennifer kent about this which i think is kind of a missed opportunity for her. Like that's like a whole opportunity to get people to watch her movie a second time. Yeah, the publication that I was reading at the time it was published, she hadn't commented. Oh, yes, here in the guardian article about it um though director jennifer kent is aware of the meme she has not commented on it all that to say i mean i guess like if you're

putting yourself in jennifer kent's uh that is kind of annoying okay here fun time caitlin imagine you use both of your college degrees and you spend years writing your first movie you're gonna also gonna direct and you know you're really gonna put your heart into it a hundred percent and you make it and it's good and you get good performances and you're like oh my gosh this is great movie does okay in theaters and then netflix is like hey caitlin we think you really have something to say here your movie is so well reviewed we'd love to put it on streaming and you're like oh my god so many people are going to see my movie and they're going to be able to take away the message and i'm so thrilled that this is happening and then by accident just to switch the narrative a little bit, your movie, which is about, what's your movie about?

It's about the struggle of being a woman in comedy. Okay, it's a movie about the struggle of being a woman in comedy. And Netflix, by mistake, puts it under car documentaries and all these car aficionados are like what why is this here and then all of a sudden the movie you put years into they're like oh my god car related icon we love and then your character is appearing at all these car conventions and you're like okay i'm getting pressed but i feel like my original message has been lost in the shuffle a bit i can understand why she'd but i still think i'm like of all communities to be welcome into you know

yeah the queer community you can't do better definitely uh but uh you know jennifer kent enough time has passed yeah embrace queer baba duke and and honestly you know get the funding for a sequel right baba baba too and extremely baba duke dukey movie that's a green day documentary wait what is i did it all for the for the nookie nookie but there's that green day album called dookie anyways uh that was a miss well i think this episode is perfect i have no one of our best. I wanted to, I don't even know if this is worth really talking about, but I wanted to at least mention the masturbation scene. Oh, I do think that's worth mentioning. Yeah, because it is rare in film to see female pleasure, to see self-administered female

pleasure. Although they never, it's always under the covers i'm like honestly when i was a kid it literally took me until i was in my late teens to even figure out how women masturbated at all because there was no there's no book for that there's no bobbin book there's no miss there's no miss baba duke what if there's an Ms. Babadook. What if there's an Everybody Poops with the Baba Duke? Starting the Baba Duke. Everybody Dukes. Everybody Masterpiece Poops.

Everybody Dukes. Starting the Baba Duke. Yeah. Well, looks like we've got... Fan art. Everyone's got a couple days to kill and wants to make Everybody Dukes. Let us

know. We'd love to promote it to our audience. Yeah, anyway, so the duking scene. Yes, where she's self-duking. She's using a vibrator. She's duking her papa. She's giving her papa a little duke yeah yeah yeah she's using a vibrator and she

seems like she nearly reaches orgasm except samuel comes in and interrupts it right i think that i mean it's weird because that seems to be i think the fact that she uses a sex toy is kind of different but i feel like we do see female masturbation fairly frequently in like thriller slasher kind of things. And it is always followed by something negative. Yeah. I mean, it seems that I what movie did we recently watch that Carrie? There's like a moment where Carrie's feeling herself in Carrie. And there is a negative connotation where she feeling herself in carrie and there's a negative

connotation where she scares herself because she doesn't understand her what her body same thing happens in teeth same thing happens in teeth um this happens in black swan i was thinking this you know black swan like we see a lot of depictions of women scaring themselves by masturbating right there's like feelings of shame almost always associated with it right shame and almost like unfamiliarity of like oh i've never done this before what the fuck is this which is fair but also like you know for future generations like also show them how to freaking follow through or they'll be literally in college like oh how does one do that and they'll think their boyfriend

invented cunnilingus so dumb anyways seeing a sex toy and seeing someone who like knew what they were doing was like hell yeah and and then i feel like the ultimate point of that scene was like to make it clearer or that she can't get a moment's peace right that her responsibility as a mother to her son is always going to take precedent over her being able to do anything for herself right i think yeah and because i don't really know anything about postpartum depression firsthand i don't know if something like that would exacerbate the mental illness i don't know if because it seems like she doesn't have any real opportunity to practice self-care so i imagine that that's probably the whole movie so that's

probably making her depression worse or it's certainly not helping with it so yeah there's like different factors that are playing into it, exacerbating the depression that she's experiencing. Right. And then that means we get to see more Babadook on screen. Give me that Duke, Duke, Duke. So honestly, the more depressed she is, the more Duke we see. So really, the sequel... Good math problem.

Give me that Duke, Duke, Duke. a sequel good math problem but so i think that is really all i had as far as things to talk about yeah it's it's a it's a good i mean if you want to revisit it this holiday season i highly recommend it's a it's a scary movie if you've never seen it before give it a look yeah give it a bob a look give it a yeah um does this movie pass the bechdel test yes i'm gonna be perfectly honest and say that i forgot to pay attention to that part of the movie it does but it's not an astounding pass, unless we count... The Babadook talking to Amelia and their Baba discourse. The Baba discourse scenes all pass.

I think, Amelia, I don't know what gender the dog was, so that would change things as well. But if Bugsby was female, identifying, I guess, the screaming from Amelia and the screaming back from the dog I can't imagine a world in which that conversation would have referenced a man it really seemed like the safety of a female dog was the subject for discussion so but there was one scene

at least with Amelia and Claire where the majority it's tricky because Amelia's number one concern is Samuel so most of what she talks about is about him but there were there was at least a three-line exchange at one point where Claire is kind of asking Amelia does she need more help she taking care of herself there was a scene you were referencing earlier and Amelia does not answer in verbose ways but she's basically just like I'm fine i'm fine don't worry i'm fine

right so it does it does pass at least once between the sisters but there's certainly opportunities for it to pass more also let the baba duke speak why does the baba duke the only line the baba duke gets when he's inhabiting the dead husband vessel is you can bring me the boy yeah right that doesn't pass that certainly doesn't pass and then the babadook saying the babadook's name babadook dook dook yeah it is iconic it's iconic right because and then amelia also speaks with mrs roach her neighbor but i think almost all of those conversations are directly about samuel and then also um claire when she's amelia and claire are talking if they're not talking about samuel it's also about her dead husband and how

amelia needs to get over it so but yeah i think there are at least a few very short exchanges within larger conversations that do pass the Bechdel test so what would you rate the movie on our nipple scale of its treatment of women I suppose I'm hitting the duke um hitting the duke with a three and the reason I'm hitting the duke with a three and the reason i'm hitting the duke with a three is that it represents a uniquely female struggle in a way that gives it the seriousness and attention it deserves it does not belittle amelia at any point the story doesn't make you even when the people in the world are saying Amelia is crazy

we understand where she's coming from we understand why she feels like the walls are closing in and so for people who haven't experienced mental illness particularly this mental illness it gives you kind of some insight that seems fairly grounded uh into what that feels like and I think that that's very unique and something that genre films tend to do very well because you're just able to like amplify elements and it doesn't have to be a nuanced representation of mental illness. And that's like kind of the point.

So I think the Amelia character, while it kind of goes off the rails at the end, I agree, in terms of characterization of her and of Samuel, who suddenly you feel bad for, even though he's screaming most of the movie. Well, that tracks for me. The main thing that I have a little trouble with is the very sudden resolution,

because if she is supposed to be struggling with this mental illness, it seems to resolve almost instantaneously. I almost wish that the ending wasn't even there like the post ending wasn't even there because it seems to be a story of someone struggling with mental illness it's not a story of hitting bottom and then having to re-acclimate into the world that's a totally different story and phase of dealing with mental illness. Yeah. The objective of the movie is to show a woman approaching her lowest point and getting there to the point where she has no choice.

She can either die, kill her son, or compartmentalize the Babadook. Like, physically. Right. So, flashing forward felt a little I get it and it seems kind of like studio notesy of like we need a happier ending. And but it does I mean that's just skipped such a large portion of the metaphor that I almost wish they just kept it at like someone reaching their lowest point with mental illness and then having to be like enough yeah but okay i don't know i i i think it is very unique and tells the story it wants to tell responsibly even if the storytelling uh plot wise sometimes gets a little bit off

it seems good but there's still women aren't i don't know it's tricky because amelia is very intentionally cut off from the world around her but the center of her universe still are i would argue two men her son and her deceased husband right and so not only do we not see her interact with anyone a lot we don't see her giving the women she does interact with we don't really fully know what she hopes their relationship turns into like what they're it's just kind of you know i would have liked to see more with her and her sister and exploring that relationship a little bit where it seems like there was something there but just not fully delivered on anyways the bobby duke is a queer icon and i'll give it a three i kind of want to give it a three and a

half but there's i mean kind of the usual blind spots of besides the babadook no queer people uh no people of color this is in southern australia i don't know what the demographics of it is but it's worth i guess saying that they filmed it entirely on location yeah i don't know three feels right to me giving all three to the babadook okay good because the babadook don't know if you know this or not but the babadook has eight nipples oh amazing yeah this is babadook facts did you know that alfred molina plays the babadook that's just like a weird thing he does interesting yeah what a performance like you know i can do it um i think i will also land on three nips because, as you mentioned, her world revolves around two male figures in her life. And the only person she's willing to welcome into her life is another man, the crush.

Right. And that might be because, like her sister Claire, as her daughter Lucy says, we don't go to your house anymore because it's too depressing. Which is a very funny line. And it's a great line read by that little guy. Yeah, so it has some cool things going for it. But also, you know, as we pointed out, there's some weird choices made at the end. Also, this movie movie it is scary but the main thing that gives me anxiety about watching it is just the hat the is like watching samuel at the beginning

just be like such a misbehaved rambunctious kid who's throwing tantrums and like not listening and like being very reckless and dangerous with his like sharp weapons and stuff well maybe that means that like mr starziak's message would have resonated with you baby i wish i'd taken you maybe you would have been maybe you would have been the one to shake the baby. I would hope not. I don't think you would have. No, I'm not going to shake even a baby doll. God, when the head popped off, my life changed.

Literally, like, I'm going to be a mother. Yeah, and I also, I think it's funny, even if it isn't for everyone, the fact that the queer community has sort of co-opted the baba duke as one of their own it's embraced it's fun it's loving it's the lore behind it is very funny yeah it's great so three nipples two to mrs roach because she just wanted to help. She loved them and she was a sweet woman. And I'll give my third nipple to the Baba Duke.

Okay, the Baba Duke. Give it to the Duke. The Duke gets my third nipple. Give it to the dog. Give it to the poor dog. Another thing, I feel like I need to watch this movie like five more times before i get like all this before i just like fully appreciate it because i feel like there's

things i'm missing or things i'm misunderstanding or misinterpreting i'm also curious if there are viewers of this movie of any gender who are not aware of the metaphor of postpartum depression and mental illness and who just kind of watched it at face value and weird movie well it like it's not not that much weirder than any other kind of you know horror monster movie yeah what is the metaphor behind the bye-bye man yeah was that the what's the mr police oh my god the snowman snowman that was the funniest marketing i've made them all time that's like i feel like advertisers really try to make movie marketing memeable now but so few succeed and i i hope that was an accident mr police oh i gotta look up a list of mr police memes now love it anyway so anyway that is our babadook episode uh feel free to you

know hit us with your comments and thoughts and everything thank you so much for listening we love all of you folks we appreciate your all of you babadooks out there all you dookies i gave you all the clues tell your friends tell your other babadooks, and enjoy our upcoming Halloween Town episode. Yeah, we're recording it right now. Yep. Wow. Wowee.

Okay, see you next time. I gave you all the clues. Bye. Well, there you have it, folks. Bye. Well, there you have it, folks. That was our unlocked Matreon episode now on the main feed of the Babadook. And like we said, we here and there, I think we've maybe unlocked like six or so Matreon episodes. But there are like ever, but there are literally a hundred others that are only on the Matreon feed.

So we really encourage you to head over there. It's only $5 a month. It's two bonus episodes every single month. And then again, access to those many many backlogged episodes and you can find that at patreon.com slash bechtelcast you're in for a treat if we do say so ourselves truly and in our community there is so much fun uh coming up in the next week if you're listening to this

episode the day it comes out we are covering an episode we have getting we've gotten requests on basically weekly since it came out uh three years ago which is midsommar we did an ari aster movie all right and it was caitlin's idea so head over to the matreon for a for a fun i i was really happy with that episode i feel like we had a great conversation around it for sure we've been having some fun convos over on the matron i really enjoyed our top gun episode from last month yeah i loved doing midsummer this month and a little preview for next month we're doing despicable me so because it's bedlam over there it's minions march caitlin i truly don't know if you're ready for how prepared i am for that episode i literally have ordered three novels in indonesian to prepare

for that episode what i can't i just want to be able to unload it all at once but i'm so excited all right i can't wait so if you're also highly anticipating our episode on despicable me head over to the matreon and then we'll and then we're we're in talks on what the other episode is going to be for minions march it's none of your business for now. Could be anything. So yes, check us out over on the Patreon and then you can also follow us on social media at Bechtelcast on Twitter and Instagram. If you'd be a dear, why don't you give us a nice little rate and review on wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Always a treat. And look forward to an exciting summer on the main feed. We have a lot of returning guests. We have a lot of new guests. We have a lot of popularly requested movies. And it's going to be a fun old summer. So we'll talk to you next week.

Bye-bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits?

Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white and prints. It's bigger than in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot.

Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.