Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 224 - Viktor Frankl/2020 Year End Recap

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Viktor Frankl and his logotherapy. This is the topic we examine this week to carry on the Timesuck tradition of ending the year on a little inspirational note. Frankl had everything taken from him - his parents, his wife, his career, his home, and more - all taken by the Nazis after they stormed into Vienna during WW2. Shortly before the Nazis arrived, Frankl had just opened his own psychoanalytic private practice and was developing his own school of psychological thought - logotherapy, based around one's mental health and happiness being rooted primarily in meaning. Do you feel that your life has meaning? A sense of purpose? Why do you get out of bed each morning? Like Nietzsche, Frankl believed that if you could answer the why, you could endure any how. And then this mindset was put to the ultimate test when Frankl found himself spending years in Nazi ghettos and concentration camps - he and his family brutalized for being Jewish. And there, surrounded by death and despair, in his darkest days, Frankl still found meaning in his life. A purpose. And because of that, I find his life and therapeutic outlook incredibly inspiring. He didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk. I hope you enjoy how I lay out his story and his beliefs. And then I end today's episode with a look back at most of what we've done here on Timesuck in 2020, and I peek into 2021 and share a bit about what we hope to accomplish. Happy New Year and Hail Nimrod, Meatsacks! Thanks for coming along for this wild and wonderful ride. For our donation this month, we raised/donated over $41,000 for the Bad Magic Productions Giving Tree, and have bought eighty Cult of the Curious families presents for Christmas. Hail Nimrod and thank you! Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4NzinIQ2RMY Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Victor Frankel, the founder of Logotherapy, a V&E psychiatrist who based a psychological philosophy in happiness being rooted in a life full of meaning. Very simple, very powerful. And he almost didn't live long enough to write some very important books, including one of my favorite books of ever, man search for meaning.

The Jewish doctor had just opened his first psychiatric practice when the Nazis stomped into Vienna and turned the city that was his lifelong home into a nightmare For he is family and fellow Jews Soon he and almost everyone he'd ever known were deported to various death camps and almost everyone he knew were dead by the war's conclusion Victor lived barely and he returned to Vienna to hear only more horrible news and then instead of giving up which would have been pretty easy to do. I think he dug deep, found a new will not just to to live to survive but to thrive and inspire others to do the same to find meaning in your life.

No matter how hard it may appear at first to be able to do so in your present circumstances. I find the story of Victor's life in the psychological school of thought he he founded to be incredibly inspiring. It's helped me get through some dark times for sure. I hope it can help you do the same continuing a little inspirational end of the year tradition here on TimeSuck, also including a recap of the strange year that was 2020. If this is your first time listening, this is not a typical episode. I hope you enjoy it.

Let's hop in. Let's find some light in the darkness, some hope amid so much pain. In a if Victor can overcome what he overcame, you can overcome whatever the fuck you need to overcome addition of Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday, Misek. Welcome to the end of the Cult of the Curious. 420, last suck of the year. He'll never run, he'll lose to Fina,iferna praise Bojangles and sued me triple M put a tune in my ear to smile on my face. I'm Dan Cummins of suck master Nimrods Proctologist Luciferna's personal masseuse.

Bojangles groomer triple M's vocal coach and you are listening to time suck. Happy new year. May 2021 bring a refreshing change for you compared to 2020, unless you love 2020, then, you know, I guess I hope it, you know, goes just as well for you, but maybe better for a lot of other people. No announcements today, just a lot of show. This one is dedicated to my grandfather, Ward Hall, a man who really was more of a father to me than a grandfather, a man who would have enjoyed today's tale, probably minus some of the cursing and some of the weird dark references.

But overall, it would have liked it. Allow me to introduce to you Victor Frankl. No context, really layout today. I just want you to hear a story of hope before we recap the year. I'm going to jump into a timeline of Victor Frankl's life. See what you, you know, overcame, then discuss how Victor's future and hope and meaning-based local therapy is the system I've leaned on to continually find meaning in my life. I definitely help shape my approach to this podcast.

It's based in three primary tenets. The first is life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones, and then to our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life. I'm going to say the word meaning a ton today. And three, we have freedom to find meaning in what we do and what we experience, or at least in the stance we take when faced with the situation of unchangeable suffering. And Victor Frankl, he sure is shit, knew a thing or two about finding himself in a situation of unchangeable suffering. And Victor Frankl, he sure is shit, knew a thing or two about finding himself in a situation of unchangeable suffering.

Let's dig in, meat sacks. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time, 1905, Victor Frankl is born in Vienna, Austria. He's a second and three children. The first being is older brother Walter, the third being is younger sister Stella. He's his mother, Elsa Frankl, formerly Elsa Lion, hailed from Prague. His father, Gabriel Frankl, hailed from southern Marovia, and was before the Nazis annexed Austria and kicked off the Holocaust, and before they kicked off the Holocaust, he was a director

in the Ministry of Social Service. Marovia was then part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Gabriel grew up the penniless son of a master book binder, a man who nearly starved himself through high school due to his family being too poor to put enough food in the table to properly feed everyone. Gabriel, despite growing up in this type of poverty, made it into medical school, and then ultimately had to drop out for financial reasons and work full time. Which his father then began his career as a civil servant in Vienna, working first as a parliament

stenographer. And after a decade of doing that, he moved up to become the private secretary to a government minister. Gabriel also was a man of faith, a deeply religious adherent to, you know, deeply, yeah, religious adherence to Judaism. And he followed his tenants even when they left him hungry or got him in trouble at work. The minister he worked for was puzzled. For instance, over why Gabriel always avoided meals when he was invited to frequent work related dinners and social gatherings. Victor's father explained that he only ate kosher food. A practice he and Frankl, or he and the, you know, the Frankl family maintained right up until the beginning of World War I.

At that point, he and his family would have to abandon this practice or risk starvation when the Frankles and many other Austrian families suffered through some very dire financial strengths. How Gabriel's boss reacted to the news in him passing up food of these work functions says to me a lot about the respect the minister had for Victor's father. When Gabriel's boss found out about the kosher situation, he started sending his coachman twice a day to a nearby village to get kosher food for his employee instead of letting Gabriel continue to live only on bread, butter, and cheese.

Frank will later describe his father as a perfectionist with a strong work ethic, a man who also had a rigid moral compass who was the undisputed patriarch of the family. He was the family's protector, the man who made his wife and children feel safe and secure and the religious leader of the family. And here's an example of that religious leadership. And the department where Gabriel worked for much of his career, there was a section chief who once asked him to take the minutes of a meeting that was being held on the high Jewish Holy Day of Yom Kapoor, a day of fasting and of prayers when workers for Bidden and Gabriel declined to work on that holy day. The section chief then threatened him with disciplinary investigation, and then even in the face of this threat, he still declines and he just takes the discipline.

Frankl's mother, Victor didn't write as much about her background. We know she descended from a long line of European scholars and rabbis. Among her ancestors was the 12th century Jewish Bible and Talmud scholar, Rashi. Rashi's work remains a centerpiece of contemporary Jewish study to this day. Victor would write in his later years about how much he loved his mother. Frankl wrote about how his little boy, he apparently went through a long phase of insisting that his mother's sing to him to sleep each night, sing him a cradle song as he called it, one called long, long ago. Keep quiet, a little pest, long, long ago, long ago.

Frankl said he was so emotionally attached to his mother in his parental home that even when he was a young adult, hard for him to be away from his family. He suffered terrible home sickness during the first weeks, months, even years of being out on his own. The house his family first lived in in Austria when he was born, was diagonally across the street from where the psychotherapist Alfred Adler once lived for a time there in Vienna. Franco would later regard his logo therapy, the third V&E school of psychotherapy, with Sigmund Freud's being the first and Adler's being the second.

Three internationally recognized giant sub-psychiatry all in Vienna and for a brief while all at the same time. Adler believes that Freud's theory is focused too heavily on sex as the primary motivator for human behavior instead add their place to lesser emphasis on the role of the unconscious, the subconscious and a greater focus on the conscious choices we make in the present day on interpersonal and social influences. make in the present day on interpersonal and social influences. Adder unlike Freud wasn't so focused on early childhood at once passed when it came to fixing once outlook on the present, more concerned with current circumstances. Frankl will later take the focus further away from the past and in a way, even the present,

focusing on the future when treating a variety of psychological ailments. Basically from Freud through Adler to Frankl, we go from maybe you're sad because you have unresolved issues from early childhood, old emotional scars regarding mom and dad, maybe not getting along or being there for you, something along those lines. That's why you're having current relationship troubles.

And we go from there, again, that's Freud to Adler with maybe you're sad because you don't like the life you're currently living. The relationships you currently have, you don't feel significant enough at the moment. Your life doesn't feel as important to you as you would like it to. And then with Franklitz, maybe you're sad because you don't like your current life, and more importantly, you don't see how you can make it better. You're sad not because of your past, you're sad because of your perceived future. It feels meaningless. It feels hollow. You don't see how what you're doing matters going forward. You feel you have nothing to work towards. Largy past focus, large present focus, and then larger future focus.

And it's a very rough and quick comparison of three schools of psychological thoughts that leave out a lot of the important details and almost all nuance, but it gives a nice broad strokes overview. More on Frankl's methods later, I loved him so much, find his outlook, so inspiring. A 1908, Victor says he decided to become a physician at just three years old, clearly being raised in a home full of a lot of intellectual conversations. When I was three, according to my family, I wanted to be Superman. I spent a great deal of time wearing towels converted into capes with a well-placed bobby pen and trying to fly by sliding across coffee tables. I have a

couple scars on my head from some early flight accidents. For sure, I was not thinking about being a doctor. If not a superhero, I probably just wanted to be a logger like my dad and all his friends were some. Victor would later remember telling his mother when he was just four, I know Mama how one invents medicines, one picks out people who want to take their lives anyway and happen to be sick. You give them all sorts of things to eat and drink, such as shoe polish or gasoline. If they survive, you have discovered the right medicine for their sickness. Thank God that is not how doctors actually do it. Hey, hey, huh?

How about you drink some gasoline? Will it help? No idea. But I figured it's a good place to start as any. If it doesn't fix your headache, we'll try some shoe polish. That doesn't work. I want you to eat some nails. Maybe lay your face down on a hot stove.

We'll see what does the trick. Then around the age of only four Victor writes, years later, that he was startled by the unexpected thought that one day he would have to die. Again, not me, because I thought I was going to be Superman. Superman doesn't die. At least I didn't think he did. What troubled Victor then, as it would throughout his life, was not the fear of dying, but the question of whether the transitory nature of life might destroy its meaning. Again, I was not thinking these type of thoughts. He was a young child. If you would ask me for, like, hey, what do you think of the transitory nature of life?

Do you think it might destroy its meaning? I think I would just quietly stared blankly at you for a few awkward moments until I felt like it was maybe a good time to change the subject and then ask something totally unrelated that I did care about. Okay. Custom Tucker Ice Cream? Got a Tucker Ice cream cone tonight? Eventually as an adult,

Franka would decide that this nature did not destroy life's meaning, because nothing from the past is irretrievably lost. Whatever we have done or created, whatever we have learned and experienced, all of this we have delivered into the past, there is no one and nothing that can undo it. Kind of a terrifying concept, also kind of a beautiful concept to think about, right?

Whatever we've done, for better or for worse, it cannot be undone. And maybe I'm extrapolating on his thoughts more than he would have here, but when he says nothing from the past is irretrievably lost, I interpret that as our past choices and moments live on and away forever. And through that living on,

more meaning is giving to our lives, right? Our choices matter because they affect future lives. The most obvious example is the past, not dying. Living on comes, I think, from our very existence. Your existence as a result of past choices, choices before you, choices that are now gone, they're done, but their consequences live on like a sexual encounter was once had that led to you, or a laboratory fertilization was made, some kind of conscious choice was made that led to your existence. So many choices, in fact, thousands of years worth of choices,

thousands at that millions of years, billions, if you're gonna break it down, that led to your creation. Had your parents and grandparents and great grandparents, et cetera, all the way back to, you know, however, whatever you believe, you know, back further, further, further, back to primates, back to the animals that evolved

to become primates, you know, had they all not made it as they did, you would not exist. How magical that you're the result of, you know, thousands or millions of generations of choices, moments in time, loss but not loss. The results embodied in your existence. Ancient decisions living on through your existence. Now, it's the most obvious example to me, but there are many others to bring it to this podcast,

like you know, you choose. You've made a choice to listen to this podcast, along with the choices of others to do the same. These choices collectively have altered our download numbers. And those numbers, thus altered, have reached certain thresholds that have made us more appealing to sponsors. And then those sponsors have encouraged me and the crew here to keep creating this podcast. Continuing to create this podcast brings additional entertainment to many, more entertainment to some, more than entertainment to some, because some listeners have written in saying that time stock has made them feel so much less alone that they actually have not gone through with a suicide.

They actually seriously contemplated. If this is the effect the show has had on a few people in the past, and if we keep making it, I think it's safe to surmise others may feel similarly in the future. So your choice to listen to this podcast today, two years from now in the future, well obviously then be a past choice and that past choice at that point could have kept somebody in a way from ending it all. Then whatever choice they make after that point, when they would have ended it, those choices will be in some way tied to your choice.

So your decisions today, even if you die tomorrow, live on an unexpected ways your choices have meaning. And listening to Time Suck is one of the more odds are trivial and inconsequential decisions of your life, I hope. Think of all the other decisions you make and how those decisions manifest in the future and live on and affect others' decisions, continually warping and mutating the future and both expected and unexpected ways, meaning in all of that. Your life is had and will continue to have meaning because to live you must continue to

make choices. And the butterfly effect of our choices is so fascinating, right? Your choices might be more powerful than you realize. The butterfly effect of your life, the totality of your choices, it will for sure outlast you. And for sure affect the world in ways you will never fully understand. And then it's just one of the many ways I think that Frankl would explain to us about how our past lives on, how our lives are not transitory, not meaningless.

And again, I'll dig into his actual therapeutic outlook later after the timeline and not just continue to put words in his mouth. Later while in high school, Frankl's childhood wish to become a physician became more focused and under the influence of psychoanalysis, he became interested in psychiatry. He would later see his talent as a psychiatrist as related to a gift he had as a cartoonist.

I love this, he said as a cartoonist, he said he could spot the weaknesses in a person and then exaggerate and draw them. Then as a psychotherapist, he could see beyond those weaknesses and recognize intuitively some possibilities for overcoming those weaknesses. What a cool transformation. From cruel doodler, highlight another's perceived flaws to comforting nurture or explaining to others how to overcome their perceived weaknesses.

Frank could see the potential for discovering a meaning behind someone's misery and thus turn an apparently meaningless suffering into a genuine human achievement. The concept of searching for and then pursuing what gives you meaning will become the core of this later approach to therapy, what will become known as logo therapy. While still in his teens, Frank also became interested in philosophy, started to pontificate with whoever would listen to him about his thoughts on the meaning of life. He met while still a teen, another famed Vienna therapist. I mentioned earlier Alfred Adler, even formed a relationship with him, Adler lived right across the street. Also, as a teen, he began corresponding via the

male with another V&E's therapist, Sigmund Freud. He would later lose his friendship with Adler when he insisted that meaning was the central motivational force in human beings, and Adler disagreed, Adler believed that feeling significant, feeling powerful was the central motivation, you know, for human, it's the central motivational force in human life. Two psychology nerds, parting ways, after heated psychological debate, meaning is what matters most, Adler. People just need to feel that their life has meaning. No, you are wrong, Frankl. People need to feed, feel significant. And significance is a type of meaning, Adler.

Shut the fuck up, Frankl. You are a significant pain in my ass, which matters not when it comes to my own central motivational force, Adler. My meaning is not attached to your approval. Will then take your meaning out of my office, Frankl, or soon I will toss it out to the window. I don't know.

Let's picture some kind of intellectual nerd battle. In 1923, after graduating from high school, Victor starts a study of medicine at the University of Vienna, specializing in neurology and psychiatry with the focus on depression and suicide. Very next year, Frankl's first scientific paper is published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1924 on the recommendation of Sigmund Freud, a pretty good person to recommend your publication in the Journal of Psychoanalysis, one of the fathers of, you know, these psychoanalysis,

a victor would go on to get the medical degree his father could not afford and he would also, later, after the war, get a second doctorate in philosophy, highly educated dude, dude who just couldn't stop thinking about the meaning of life, dude, fastening with making sure others were able to find meaning in their lives, a dude who knew that the more you're, you know, meaning you could find in your life, the happier you would be. Between 1928 and 1930, while still a medical student, Frankl gets work as a therapist. He organizes special youth counseling centers around Vienna to address the high number of teen suicides occurring around the time of the end of the year report cards. The program was sponsored by the city. It was free of charge to students. And after Frankl, you know, got this program going in 1931,

not a single V&E student would commit suicide that year. Clearly, his methods worked. His positive outlook on life, he is now developing, will be, you know, later developed during the Holocaust, it will help him survive the Holocaust. He was able to get through to a lot of these students help them understand that the meaning of their life wasn't wrapped up solely in a grade they'd been given. Their student life was transitory. You know, failing in school, you know, did not equate to failing

in the rest of their life. Backing up to a year to 1930, Frank oversteves his medical license, got a job at the Steinhoff Psychiatric Hospital in Vienna, where he worked his way up and obtained a position where he was in charge of the pavilion for suicidal women. Begin a 1933, lasted until 1937, he treated no less than 3,000 depressed patients every year. And he helped so many of them put depression behind them. And then in 1937, Frankl opened his own private psychiatry practice in Vienna.

He had studied for so long, he'd helped so many, he'd gotten his degree, launched successful programs, gotten years of invaluable experience working as a doctor and therapist. Now, you know, he built his career to the point where he could leave the hospital. He worked for run his practice exactly as he saw fit 32 years old. He's running his own business. The culmination of many, many years of hard work and then the fucking Nazi show up and they shit all over everything he'd been working on. Nazis so good at ruining anything that is good. On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation

for Hitler and his tiny mustaches, pathetic Third Reich. The day before Hitler had pressured the Austrian chancellor to step down and in his resignation address delivered obviously under duress, the chancellor pleaded with Austrian forces to not resist a German advance into the country. And the chancellor would spend most of the rest of his war years imprisoned. The following day, Austria declared a federal state of Germany will remain so until the end of World War II. Life in Vienna changed for everyone living there, especially for the Jewish population.

It changes horrifically. Let's talk about Vienna and the Jews living there at this time. Vienna's population of roughly 1.9 million before the war was 28% of the country's entire population. Some 170,000 Jewish people lived in the city as well as approximately 80,000 people of mixed Jewish Christian background, including converts from Judaism to Vienna's Jewish population may have been as high as 200,000, more than 10% of the city's inhabitants.

Viennese was a very important center of Jewish culture and education. Many Viennese Jews were well integrated into urban society and culture, they made up a significant percentage of the city's doctors and lawyers, businessmen and bankers, artists and journalists. Then of course the Nazis made sure to put an end to all of that.

Once empowered, the Nazis quickly applied German anti-Jewish legislation to Vienna and to the rest of Austria. Jewish civil servants and employees quickly removed from the Austrian government. Victor's father Gabriel, of course, quickly loses not just his job, but his whole career, due to this legislation. He'd worked for the government for most of his adult life. Now that is forbidden. Jews are now banned from working in legal matters where areas are

concerned. They're banned from working in hospitals where areas are patients. Society is quickly segregated. If you're a Jewish lawyer, you can only have Jewish clients. A Jewish doctor, you can only treat Jewish patients. And since Jewish people are a minority in Vienna, many other careers now destroyed. By the summer of 1939, hundreds of Jewish-owned factories, thousands of businesses in Vienna have been closed or confiscated by the government.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, Victor Frankl watches, the city he was born and raised in, the city he has been educated in, now practices psychiatry and be torn apart by these unjust Nazi policies, anti-Semitism, while it existed in Vienna prior to the Nazis, it had existed in the shadows, quiet racism and prejudice, now publicly celebrated, where it was once deplorable. The Frankles and other families now frequently the targets of racial harassment. Vienna suddenly becomes the focal point for Jewish immigration out of Austria, but in order to leave, Jewish residents have to basically sign over everything they can't take with

them in their suitcases over to the new German government. Imagine that shit. Their homes, investment properties, businesses, didn't matter what Austria's Jewish population built up had to be signed over to the people who fucking hated them. At home, there's been in your family for five generations, handed over and fuck off. The business you spent the prime years of your life pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into, handed over, no compensation, not even a thank you. Just toss over the deeds and get the fuck out.

Why? Because of mindless racism and Nazi scapegoating. Because millions of European non-Jews have been brainwashed into believing that any economic shortcomings had ever received, any shortcomings of any kind, they'd ever received all the fault of the Jews. You don't have a home, you don't have a job,

you don't have a job you want, you can't afford to feed your family. It's not your fault Not the fault of your own choices, you know Not the fault of complex economic circumstances largely brought on by World War one fallout No, it's the fault of the Jews and the Jews alone If it wasn't for their greed their constant conspiratorial plottings you and your family will be thriving Right, they've always been lurking in the shadows a secret and powerful and evil cabal of string pulling puppet masters, the Illuminati. This is a part of why I go so hard in certain conspiracy theorists. The conspiratorial mind can so easily in its paranoid state be manipulated into becoming the mind of a fucking scapegoating

Nazi. Far too many people gobble up this propaganda, Germany and Germanic nations in the 1930s. They're all too happy to see the Jews punished. Due to a terrible combination of centuries of anti-Semitic discrimination, based largely on that old rally cry of the Jews killed Jesus and also good old ignorance, many embrace Vienna's new normal, especially the ignorant and the hateful.

Jews are quickly banned from entering various Vienna restaurants in public places like parks. Due to the annexation of Austria and the Germany, Franco must adopt the middle name Israel must call himself Fuckman handler Which translates roughly to skilled worker I pray butchered how that was said in German instead of physician Not just a slight insult there. That's a big one. How fucked up? Did went to a school where both Aryans and non Aryans studied he got his medical degree got his doctorate Then the preposterously hateful mean-spirited and irrational Nazi leadership strips him of that degree they allow him now to call himself a skilled worker Guessing this guy had a at a higher IQ than literally any high-ranking member of the Nazi party definitely higher IQ than Hitler

Some people seem to have this attitude of like yeah, he's terrible dude, but he was you know like brilliant a lot of ways. Oh, was he? Did you know he was a terrible student? He's he's thrived on Hayden conviction much more than intelligence I don't think he was real big in the brains department ignorant dude never did well in school It was not a smart man. He stopped going to school at the age of 16 no formal education after that He did complete the equivalent of a high school degree at the time, but just barely more like stopping after being a sophomore today. I wanted to become an artist, but was rejected from an art academy. And where was that art academy?

It was in Vienna. How he must have loved to strip academic degrees from intellectually superior Viennese men like Victor Frankl. Take the titles that I'm sure made him on some level feel very insecure about his own mental abilities, made him feel inferior to the Jew that he called out as being inferior. Frankl's office was an area nice, which meant it was taken from him.

He then had to move his practice into his parents' home. He and his family also have to wear Jewish badges, plainly visible yellow stars of David on their clothing would not at home to make it easier for non-Jews and Nazis to know who to mock, who to abuse. In the infamous November pogroms, hundreds of Jews die and many synagogues are destroyed among them. The magnificent Leopold Stother, there we go.

Leopold Stother temple near the Frankles home, while that destruction, because the German diplomat have been assassinated by a 17 year old Jew in Paris, how dare a single Jewish person ever strike back at the third Reich? How dare they just not lay down and take their beatings? After the Nazis moved in, Victor appeals to the United States for an immigration visa, so that he and his family can flee from the city he loved. And like many others, he's put on a waiting list on the US government preoccupied with pulling itself out of the Great Depression at the time, turning the blind eye to Hitler's evil for the moment.

In the fall of 1939 on Adolf Eichmann's orders, another Nazi walking pile of shit, the systematic mass deportation of the V&E's Jewish population begins. SS and police officials initially deport some 1500 Jews from Vienna to a detention camp in Nysko, Poland. Additional Jewish deportations won't occur in Vienna until the late winter of 1941. Just a little, Hannah, what's to come? Just enough to keep everyone afraid and in line. Dude, we're limited ability now to treat private patients because of Nazi intervention. In 1940, Victor joins the Vienna Rothschild hospital, where he works as the head of the neurology department. This hospital will be the very

last one in Vienna to admit Jewish patients before the war, during the war, excuse me. And in spite of the danger to his own life while working there, Frank will sabotage Nazi procedures by making false diagnosis to prevent the euthanasia of mentally ill patients. And also while working in this Rothschild hospital, Victor meets a Jewish nurse, Tilly Grocer, a wonderful woman who will become his first wife, he'll write later that while he found Tilly beautiful, it was not her beauty that drew him to her. It was her understanding heart. In his words, he later wrote in his autobiography, what made me decide to marry Tilly.

One day she was preparing the new meal in my parents' apartment when the phone rang. It was the Rothschild Hospital with an emergency call. A patient had been brought in after a suicide attempt using sleeping pills and I, and couldn't, I try my brain surgery magic. I didn't even wait to have fresh coffee, but popped a few coffee beans into my mouth to chew while I rushed to the taxi stand, although it was forbidden for Jews to hail taxis. Two hours later, I returned, but the chance for the lunch together had passed. I assume the others had eaten, which in fact, my parents had done, but Tilly had waited. And her first reaction was not finally your back. I've been holding lunch for you. But rather, how

did it go? How is the patient in this moment? I decided that I wanted her as my wife, not because she was this or that, but because she was she. I love the wording there at the end. Why did I marry her? Because she was she. That's real romantic love. Not lust. Love. When you love someone because to you, they are irreplaceable, because they are they, because you respect who they are as unique, special, and irreplaceable. Also in 1940, Frank Elb Tayne's permission from the U.S. government to immigrate and leave the Nazi hellhole, Vienna has become behind him,

and he turns this opportunity down. Why? Because he can't bring his parents with him. He chooses to stay with his young love and try to keep his parents safe. And he knew that staying based on later writings meant there was a very high likelihood that he would die along with them. But he stayed out of a sense of duty.

In early 1941, Frankl starts writing the first version of the book, The Doctor and the Soul, in which he lays down the foundations of his local therapy. In October of 1941, the system deportation of Jews from Vienna really gets going. This month, roughly 35,000 Jews are deported to various ghettos in Eastern Europe, most shot to death shortly after arrival. Beginning at the end of November, over 15,000 additional Jews sent to the Thereseans' stock ghetto, which wasn't as bad as many of the Nazi concentration camps,

but not a fun place, a place of so much unnecessary misery and death, a prison, a prison for people whose only crime was being Jewish. This ghetto opened on November 24th, 1941 and would last all the way until May 9th, 1945. The day after the Allied forces accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.

There's cruel fucks, I keep it going as long as they could. Of course, he did. By the end of the war, how does sensitize to human suffering must have so many Nazis have become? Compassion must have left their moral lexicon, so long before. While many would die at this ghetto, most sent here would die elsewhere. This particular place was what a lot of sources call a holding pen of the approximately 140,000 Jews transferred to a Thereseian Stats during the war nearly 90,000 were then deported to points further east to their almost certain deaths.

Roughly 33,000 would die in the ghetto itself though 15,000 children passing to this camp would pass to this camp during the war and over 90% of them would die nearly 14,000 children treated like they were no more than rats fit for extermination. In December 1941, 36 year old Victor marries 21 year old Tilly amidst all this insanity. Why? Because she was she. The two actually became some of the very last of the Viennese Jews to be able to obtain permission to be granted permission from the government to wed. Literally only one other couple legally married after them in Vienna.

And then the Jewish, the Jewish registrar's office was dissolved. No more Jewish couples would marry until the Nazis were defeated. Tragedy will strike their new marriage almost immediately till he gets pregnant around the time of their wedding and the couple has the baby aborted, not because they didn't want it. They did that to save Tillie's life. A decree had recently been sent out in Vienna and elsewhere that all Jewish women found to be pregnant would immediately be deported to concentration camps. The punishment for attempting to create

more Jewish life was death. Many, many years later, 1978, Franco will dedicate a book, the unheard cry for meaning to the couple's unborn child. So, September 25th, 1942, Victor Frankl, his parents and his wife are taken by force. They are sent to the Thereseans.getto. Frankl will not see Vienna again until the war is over. His sister Stella, his little sister Stella managed to escape to Australia with her husband and children. Just before they were taken, his older brother Walter and Walter's wife avoid deportation temporarily. They try to escape to Italy. They will not make it out and they will be rounded up and sent to the same camp as a short time later. Life in the Theresean, Theresean, Stott, Ghetto was terrible

for the Frankles as it was for everyone else forced to live there. Most had to live in overcrowded collective dormitories with 60 to 80 people per room. Men, women, and children living separately, a few prisoners, especially those who had connections managed to create little private cubby holes in the addicts of the barracks where they could stay with their family. Pretty rare. Food rations in the ghetto were beyond inadequate. There were starvation rations, the distribution of it was cruel. Those who did not work mostly the elderly received 60% less food than the heavy laborers did, leading to frequent deaths. Because of heavy laborers, they didn't get enough food.

92% of the deaths, there were deaths of those among over the age of 60 and almost all elderly prisoners who were not deported died at the Razien stop before the war ended less than four years after the Ghetto's construction. Those who worked worked in average of 70 hours a week, most of the jobs, hard manual labor, the punishment for not working hard, beatings and or death. Unlike in most ghettos, some cultural life was allowed, at least until late 1944, early 1945, when nearly everyone who had already been sent off to death camps were then deported. Before the end though, music was played. It was a library lectures were given on everything from Judaism to science, economics. Also, the only Nazi concentration

center where religious observance was not banned. Initially, Frankl worked there as a general practitioner in this ghetto in their little mini hospital. When the Nazis discovered his psychiatry skills, they set him up a practice to help other Jews overcome the horrors of being sent to a ghetto or concentration camp against their will. A fucked up. His job was to keep other Jewish inmates from killing themselves

or from falling into some paralyzing state of depression, because they were in this fucking terrible ghetto waiting to be deported to Auschwitz or someplace and keep them, you know, becoming two depressed so they could continue to work for the Nazi war effort. You know, basically let them die or let them help the Nazis who were killing them. That was a choice. What a terrible choice.

What a terrible place and time to be a therapist. Victor headed up an anti-suicide watch unit for these people. Anytime someone attempted suicide, he and his assistants knew about it and were sent there to help. Can't imagine these like counting sessions. Moshe, tell me, why are you so depressed? Why are you having suicidal thoughts? You fucking kidding me, Dr. Fraggle? I'm a forced living in Nazi ghetto. Well, I'm

starving. Often beaten. I know that at any moment I can and eventually will be sent to a proper death camp. Many of my family are dead. Huh, I see. What have you tried looking at the bright side? Focus on how, I mean, sure, you're being beaten in starving and a lot of my family are dead. Huh, I see. What have you tried looking to the bright side? Focus on how, I mean, sure, you're beating, beating and starving. A lot of your family are dead. But you're not in the death camp yourself yet. And that's, that's kind of cool, right? I was all due respect. Go fuck yourself, Dr. Frankl. Life for Frankl and his family there, mixture of glimpses of their wonderful pasts and then reminders of their terrible presence. For a time, victory was placed in a so-called little fortress on the periphery of the camp.

One day after a few hours of labor, he was dragged back to his barracks with what he describes as 31 wounds of varying severity. In the barrack, the trained nurse, his wife, is there at least with him. She manages Victor, takes care of him. That evening, when he recovered somewhat, she takes him to another barrack where a jazz band known in Prague before the war was plain, they played the unofficial national anthem of the Jewish people in Therese and Stott,

to me you are beautiful. And Victor later wrote of his experience, the contrast between the indescribable tortures of the morning and the jazz in the evening was typical of our existence with all his contradictions of beauty and hideousness, humanity and inhumanity. At some point in mid-1944, Frankl, his mother, his brother and his wife, are sent to a place much worse than Theresean's Stoth. They are sent to Auschwitz, a known death camp, a place with no jazz, nothing else nice. A victor's father will not travel with them. He has recently died in the ghetto.

This is somewhat Frankl wrote of his father's time there. Prior to his death at the Raysian Stott from starvation and pneumonia, this air director once was seen scraping potato peelings from a nearby nearly empty trash can. Later, I was transferred from the Raysian Stott to the camp at Coffering where we suffered terribly from starvation. And it was there that I came to understand my father better. Now it was I who scraped a tiny piece of carrot from the icy soil with my fingernails. As we marched together from the train station to Boschowitz to the Theresean's.camp, father had his possessions in a large hat box that he carried on his back.

While others were close to panic, he smiled as he told him again and again, be of good cheer for God is near. Among the few things I was able to smuggle into Theresean stat was a vial of morphine. When my father was dying from pulmonary pulmonary pulmonary, there we go. Uh, Adema and struggling for air as he near death, I injected him with the morphine to ease his suffering. He was then 81 years old and starving. Nevertheless, it took a second to monew to bring about his death. I asked him, do you still have pain? No. Do you have any wish? No. Do you want to tell me anything? No. I kissed him and left. I knew I would not see him alive again, but I had the most wonderful feeling one can imagine. I had done what I could. I had stayed in Vienna because of my parents, and now I had

accompanied father to the threshold and had spared him the unnecessary agony of death. When mother was in mourning, the Czech rabbi, Ferdinand, who had known father, visited her in the camp. I was present when Ferdinand, comforting mother, told her that father had been a zadic, a just man. This confirmed my conviction that justice was one of my father's chief characteristics,

and his sense of justice must have been rooted in a faith and divine justice. Otherwise, I can't imagine how or why he would have formulated that adage that I heard him say so often, to God's will, I hold still. Damn, to watch his father, a man with such dignity, a strong man with such a strong moral compass, to watch him starve and die in this way,

die knowing his wife and two of his children were still in this Nazi ghetto, how utterly tragic. And so extra tragic that his story was not unique in the 1940s and Europe tens of thousands of other fathers, hundreds of thousands, in fact, would die similar deaths. And his father died and after his father died and Theresean's.com, Victor spent as much time as he could with his mother. He knew when he saw her, or excuse me, he never knew when he saw her if he would ever see her again. I said he made it his practice to kiss her wherever he met her and whenever he said goodbye to her. He said he did this so should they be separated, they always parted in peace.

And when Victor was to be deported to the Auschwitz death camp with his first wife, Tilly, he said farewell to his dear mother. At the last moment, he asked her, please give me your blessing. And he wrote how years later he could never forget how she cried out from deep within her heart. Yes, yes, I bless you. And she gave him her blessing. And only about a week later, she herself was deported to Auschwitz, where she would quickly be sent to the gas chambers. Both loving parents now dead due to the Nazis, due to mindless hate. Although Victor had been forced to go to Auschwitz, his young wife would have avoided or could have avoided a similar fate, Tilly had been given a two-year exemption from transfer to Auschwitz as she was working in the munitions factory,

an important factory for the war effort. When her husband was called up for the transport east, as it was called, you know, a transport that everyone knew meant Auschwitz, she volunteered to go with him behind his back after he begged her to stay, knowing it would likely end with her death. And so on the train she went with her husband because she was she. Victor's brother also traveled with him. Once an Auschwitz doctor, Joseph Mengele, torture, cold blooded medical experimenter who would be known as the Angel of Death, selected Victor for the left queue, which unbeknownst to Frankl meant he was headed straight for the gas chambers to be killed immediately, like his mother soon would be. However, Franco recognized none of his

colleagues from Theresean's stock in that queue. So he does see a few of his colleagues, old colleagues in the right queue. He switches behind Mangalis back, no Nazi see him do this. He has no idea that what he has just done has saved his life. Fritzel and his wife will soon then be separated in Auschwitz. Sends a different cams, he will write later about what he learned of her fate, and the fate of his mother shortly after the war ended to some friends. He writes this letter, some friends Wilhelm and Stefan Borner. He wrote, September 14, 1945, my dears. I've been in Vienna for four weeks now.

Finally, there is an opportunity to write you, but I only have sad news to communicate. Shortly before my departure from Munich, I learned that my mother was sent out Schwitz a week after me. What that means, you know all too well. And I'd scarcely arrived in Vienna when I was told that my wife is also dead. She was sent from out Schwitz to work in the trenches, a truck in Berg, in Breslau,

and then sent on to the infamous concentration camp of Berg in Belzen. There, the women endured terrible terrible indescribable suffering as it was put in a letter from a former colleague of Tilly's in which Tilly's name is listed as one of those who died of typhus. The letter comes from the only survivor of the former hospital nurses,

such as they were in Bergen Belson. I've had the indescribable depicted to me by a survivor of Bergen Belson and I cannot repeat it. So now I'm all alone. Whoever has not shared a and I cannot repeat it. So now I'm all alone. Whoever has not shared a similar fate cannot understand me. I am terribly tired, terribly sad, terribly lonely. I have nothing more to hope for, and nothing more to fear.

I have no pleasure in life, only duties. And I live out of conscience. And so I have reestablished myself, and now I'm redictating my manuscript, both for publication and for my own rehabilitation. A couple of well-placed old friends have taken on my cause in the most touching way, but no success can make me happy. Everything is weightless, void, vain in my eyes. I feel distant from everything.

It all says nothing to me means nothing. The best have not returned. My best friend, Hubert Gure, was beheaded and they have left me alone. And the camp we believe that we had reached the lowest point. And then when we returned, we saw that nothing has survived, that that which had kept us standing has been destroyed. That at the same time as we were becoming human again, it was possible to fall deeper into a even more boundless suffering.

There remains perhaps nothing more to do than cry a little and browse a little through the Psalms. Perhaps you will smile at me, maybe you'll be angry with me, but I do not contradict myself in the slightest. I take nothing away from my former affirmation of life when I experienced the things I have described. On the contrary, if I had not had this rock-solid positive view of life, what would have become of me in these last weeks and these months in the camp?

But now I see things in a larger dimension. I see increasingly that life is so very meaningful that in suffering and even in failure, there must still be meaning. My only consolation lies in the fact that I can say in all good conscience that I realize the opportunities that presented themselves to me. I mean to say that I turn them into reality. This is the case with respect to my short marriage to Tilly. What we experience cannot be undone.

It has been, but this having been is perhaps the most certain form of being, with warmest greetings, your victor. Man, what a fucking nightmare! What a letter to get, what a letter to write, what tragedy to experience. His mother would be one of so many to die in Auschwitz, by the way. Check out the scale of this. And just over four and a half years, over 1.1 million people would die in that insane death camp, just that one of many almost 700 a day continuously for four and a half years. That is a preposterous staggering amount

of death, which is why I've till he would be one of many to die in Bergen-Belson. Despite having no gas chambers, gas chambers over 50,000 would die there as well. Bergen-Belson is actually the camp where young diary writer and Frank would also die. And this is the kind of shit that went down in Bergen-Belson, that Victor didn't talk about. The following source is the testimony of a survivor from the camp, testifying some war crimes trial.

The survivor, a young woman, was giving evidence to British officials so they could prepare cases to prosecute Nazi war criminals. I am 27 years old, she writes, and I have been in concentration camp since October of 1942. My only crime was being a Jew.

My husband died in a concentration camp with me on January 10th, 1944. I came to Bells in about January, 1945. There was in the camp a girl we knew Estinia, who was a prisoner and acted as chief of the camp among the prisoners. She was friendly with all the SS women, and especially with the Nazi and charge of the women's section at Belzen camp.

She was, I think, about 27 years of age, although it was difficult to tell ages in camp. Very tall, slender, and dark-haired. She was suffering, I think, from TB. At the beginning of April, she drank something that made her ill, said that she had been poisoned by cakes sent from the kitchen. As a result, the chief woman cook, her sister, and the kitchen hand, were shot. They disappeared and the dresses were sent back to their room, which was custom when women were shot. The chief of the kitchen at number one camp was a

man whose name I think was trowel. And the last week before the English came, I saw three women ask him for drinking water, which was in very short supply in the camp. They went in a very weak condition and I myself saw him take them one by one and drown them in a large sort of stone tank near the kitchen. They were too weak to resist and he was too strong. My God. Drowning starving women for asking for some fucking water to drink, shoot another's for unfounded accusation. That is how little value some of the Nazis placed on Jewish life. Back to 1944, not long after arriving in Auschwitz, Victor's brother Walter dies working as a slave laborer in a camp mine.

His wife, only brother, mother, father, all had died in the Nazi camps now. Victor himself almost died in 1944. Just a few days after arriving in Auschwitz, Frankl is transferred to another labor camp. He's brought to Coffring, then later transferred again to Turk-I'm a subsidiary camp of Dachau in Bavaria, and in Turk-I'm he comes down with Typhus. And apologies I'm not saying this is a lesser-known camp of that correctly. He nearly dies saying

later that the only thing that saved him was attempting to write the book. He'd begun writing before first being deported from Vienna. A book he would finish immediately after the war's end. The 1945 publication I mentioned, the doctor and the soul, trying to finish that book gave his life meaning, a purpose, something to hold out for, something to live for. The initial manuscript he'd started had been confiscated, thrown away. He had to start over. The following year, he would write another book in just nine days, man searched for meaning,

one of my favorite books, one of the best books I've ever written, I think. He later wrote his autobiography about how, when he came down with typists in the Tarkam camp, he was very near death. How he kept thinking that his book would never be published, that he would die in a place of so much death. After surviving the Typhus attack, he then began to experience strange breathing difficulties, including painful respiration at night.

Again, he worries he's going to die. Convince, he might not make it until morning without medical assistance in the middle of the night one night to make it to the barrack of the head physician of the camp. He has to crawl in total darkness for a hundred yards. He says sneaking out of your barracks was strictly forbidden at night. And if it would have been caught to guard in the watchtower would have shot him down with his machine gun. So he has to either risk death choking or risk being shot to death. That was his life. He crawled in terror, worried that at any moment he might be spotted and killed. He would suffer from nightmares about nights like this for the rest of his life.

Despite the horrors he faced without them, he also would never, he wouldn't believe that he would have ever completed his creation of local therapy. That would, it wouldn't be what it became. In the death camps, he watched other prisoners who under the same conditions as himself generally chose to either fight to survive or to give in to despair. Those who are oriented towards the future, he noticed, towards a meaning that waited to be fulfilled, he noticed they consistently lived longer, which much more likely to survive. Their sense of purpose appeared to literally keep them alive. Others perished.

After the war, he studied the work of Nadini and lived into American military psychiatrists who found the same to be true in prisoner of war camps in Japan and Korea. Years later, given a lecture at the first international congress for psychotherapy in lead in Holland, Frankl disclosed to the audience how he repeatedly trying to distance himself from the misery that surrounded him by externalizing it. How that saved him. He kept imagining himself in the future, sharing with what he had written with others. He created this recurring lucid daydream for himself and that kept him alive.

He based his hope and meaning in this dream he kept repeating where he told a story of marching one morning from the camp to his work site, hardly able to bear the hunger, the cold, the pain of his frozen, infestering feet, swollen from hunger, a demon, squeezed into his shoes. His situations seem bleak and hopeless.

But in his mind, he transported himself away from all that shit, away from all that despair. He imagined himself standing to the lectern in a large, beautiful, warm and bright hall. He imagined himself giving a lecture to an interested audience on psychotherapy to experiences in a concentration camp. And in this imaginary lecture, he reported the things that he was then living through at that very moment. His current life, his current misery, important father to be used later to help others. That was the meaning he attached to his life. This hope, this vision of better days ahead, it gave his life meaning and that meaning literally kept him alive. On April 27th, 1945, the Turk I'm camp is liberated by US troops,

US troops from Texas to be specific. Victor, Frankl just turned 40 years old. Days, Frankl heads back to Vienna. Roughly 200,000 Jews lived there before the wars. We said now only a few thousand remain. Those who lived in hiding during the war's final days, those trickling back. Victor falls into despair when he learns with certainty that his mother, brother, wife all dead like his father. He talks about the despair, you know, that he wrote about in that letter I read earlier. An old friend of his Bruno Pitterman, who now has become a member of the New government, organizes an apartment and a job for him, gives him a typewriter, encourages him to finish and publish the book that kept him alive during the war.

Within a few months of returning, Frank will become the director of the Vienna Neurological Public Clinic, a position he will hold for 25 years. He also quickly finishes his book. He has reconstructed the doctrine of the soul with an added chapter on the psychology of the concentration camp, one of the very first books published in post-war Vienna, and the first edition sells out in days.

Also in 1946, he writes, man's search for meaning in just nine days, dictating it to a colleague. He holds a series of much noted public lectures in which he explains his central thoughts on meaning Resilience the importance of embracing life even the face of even in the face of great adversity These lectures are subsequently published and yet another book yes to life in spite of everything While working in his new hospital. He also meets his second wife another nurse

Surrounded by his medical staff. He's making the rounds and the neurology sections of the polyclinic when he first met her. He had just one left. He had just left one sick room. Excuse me. I was about to enter the next when a young nurse approaches him. She asked on behalf of her supervisor and oral surgery if he could spare a bed from his department for a patient who just had surgery. He agrees.

She leaves with a grateful smile, Victor turns to an assistant and says, do you see those eyes? He then found her again, asked her out, and they would be together for the rest of his life. He didn't let the Nazis take one level. He didn't let, excuse me, the Nazis taking one love away from him, keep him from finding another love, very inspiring.

The following year, 1947, he and Eleanor Kathrena, get married. That December, their daughter, Gabriel, is born Eleanor Kathreina get married. That December, their daughter, Gabriel, is born. And Gabriel will be their only child. And Frank of the Dad gets super busy with work. Expans, refines the stereo of local therapy and no less than eight books that will be published between 1946 and 1949. He is cranking that shit out.

1940-80s promoted to associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. In the 1950s, he's promoted to professor at the University of Vienna. He begins guest professorships at overseas universities, universities in England, Holland, and Argentina invite him to give lectures. And the US and other nations, his books are beginning to be published as well. In 1961, Frank will become a guest professor at Harvard, addressing the topic of personal freedom. He makes the off-quoted remark that the statue of liberty on the East Coast should

be supplemented by a statue of responsibility on the West Coast. He also tours the world, speaking about logo therapy. In 1970, Frank starts taking flying lessons. Why? Because it makes him happy. After all he's gone through, he still finds joy, a lot of joy in his life. 1973, he acquires his solo flight certificate. 1988, at the Memorial Day commemorating the 50th year after the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, now 82-year-old Frankl speaks out against the concept of collective guilt. I find this really interesting. And it speaks to his incredible compassion, empathy, and understanding of the human soul. What is collective guilt? In the context of Nazi Germany, it's a, and understanding of the human soul. What is collective guilt in the context of Nazi Germany? It's a notion that all of the Germans not persecuted by the Nazis, whether they were

Nazis themselves or not, were all responsible collectively for the evils perpetrated by the Nazi party, by Nazi Germany. It's a notion that all the Nazis were essentially evil human beings collectively responsible for the Holocaust. Frankl spoke out against this notion, and he took a lot of shit for doing so from colleagues and others. He started speaking out against this notion

immediately after the war ended when his wounds were still fresh. When speaking out against collective guilt, he would often tell the following story. The head of the camp from which I was liberated was an SS man. After liberation, myself and other inmates heard what up to then only the camp

physician himself an inmate knew. This SS man had secretly spent considerable sums of his own money at the drug store in the nearby village to purchase medications for camp inmates. Some of his fellow Jewish prisoners after the liberation hid this SS man from the American troops told the commanding officer that they would deliver him only on the condition that no harm would come to him. The American commander gave his word of honor and the former inmates turned in the SS man. The commander reappointed him as it were this time to organize the collection of food and clothing for former Jewish prisoners in the surrounding villages. Franklin himself also hit a medical colleague in his apartment back in Vienna and protected

him from prosecution by the authorities who considered him a Nazi simply because he'd once received a badge of honor from the Hitler youth organization. The man was just a child when he was inducted into Hitler's youth organization. But he faced a special trial or a trial of a special court for Nazi crimes and if you wouldn't have gotten an acquittal, he would have been executed. At the time, those were the only two options. Frankl didn't feel that was fair. Frankl, a man whose entire family with the exception of a sister had been put to death by the Nazis knew that not all of those associated with Hitler were evil

or responsible in some way for Hitler's evil. Frankl was smart enough to understand nuance. Life is not that black and white. Life is not that binary. Just like all US liberals aren't the same now. Just like all US conservatives aren't the same now either. Despite the efforts of the intellectually limited and or spin doctors, pundits to create this binary fake reality to sell more sopenship.

And now all Nazis, you know, Victor's saying not the same either. Life just doesn't work that way, no matter how much you want it to. Just not often that easy to divide the good from the evil. Franco with his deep understanding of the complexity of humanity could understand even in his grief Just like he was trying to survive the war from inside the camps Many of those who worked at the camps also just trying to survive the war also just couldn't wait for it to be over To refuse to serve in Hitler's army was a you know Sure would grant you a death sentence

Just like being born Jewish would in many Nazi occupied territories. 1991, the US Library of Congressless Man Search for Meaning is one of the 10 most influential books in America. 1995, Frankl writes the autobiography. I pulled a lot of today's quotes from. And on September 2nd, 1997, Victor Frankl dies of heart failure at the age of 92. His mind was active. He was in good health right up until the end. He outlived the Holocaust by over half a century. He could have so easily given into despair. He could have let go and died in the camps, but he didn't.

He held on to meaning. He held on to hope for better days ahead. He needed to write his book. He needed to share his outlook for improving happiness for many others. That meaning kept him alive allowed him to write more books. From that place of meaning, he rebuilt his life. He chose to ask someone else out he found love again he found career success again you know work to get all that back he couldn't take back the life the not to stolen from him but he could choose to build a new one he made choices that would go on to help millions of people choices that continue long after death to enrich lives lives like mine

death to enrich lives, lives like mine. Victor was survived by his wife Eleanor, their daughter Gabrielle, and their grandchildren Kathrina, Eleanor's middle name and Alexander. Frankl died in the city where he was born, Vienna. The city he refused to give up on, the source of so much of his joy, the source of so much of his heartache, the city where his surviving family still lives, and that will take us out of today's time suck timeline. times, and that will take us out of today's time suck timeline. What a story, right? What a life. How tremendously inspirational. If Victor Frankl could overcome the pain he lived through to lead such a fulfilling life,

what can you overcome? Now let's break down this inspiring psychological outlook, Franco left us. The one he began working on before World War II, a deep understanding of humanity that crystallized for Franco during the war when he was in the camps, when he would lecture on and write about for the rest of his life, but first a quick sponsor break. Now let's dig into Frankl's inspiring psychological outlook. To understand Frankl's solution for what he considered to be humankind's central problem, we must first understand obviously what he considered to be the problem, the existential

vacuum. This is what he said of that vacuum. The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the 20th century. This is understandable. It may be due to a two-fold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At the beginning of human history man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development, in his much as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing.

No instinct tells him what he has to do and no tradition tells him what he ought to do. Sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead he either wishes to do what other people do, conformism, or he does what other people wish him to do to totalitarianism. And so makes so much sense to me. Early meat sacks, while they had it harder in so many ways, they did have it easier in some as well. I think, you know, we have it harder in so many ways. They did have it easier in some as well I think you know we have it harder now in some ways spiritually philosophically at least

Then I think they did what was the purpose of our ancient ancestors lives to find food to keep finding food to keep from being eaten by predators to keep their small tribe from being overtaken by their small tribes to find some shelter I'm gonna be the cave for me a crudely thrown together together, a couple of pieces of wood, just eat, fight, fuck, sleep, repeat, that kind of life. Staying alive gave you life meaning. And you didn't have an existential crisis because you couldn't even think existentially. Right, your brain wasn't that big yet.

Trying to find a mate, trying to protect your feed your family, that gave you life meaning back when you had a little tiny monkey brain. Back when you were more animals than human. And then our brain's got bigger, right? Rituals developed. We started to wonder why we were all here. And we, depending on, you know what you believe, either invented the gods in our own image

or let those gods, you know, answer the question of why we're here or, you know, God or God revealed themselves to us and answer the question of why we're here divinely, you know, because they made us often, you know often wanted to reward us for leading moral lives. Early religions were born sooner lives were governed by our traditions. These traditions now gave our lives meaning we do this so the gods will bring rain to the crops or let our child not die. We do this to please the gods. We don't do this to incur their wrath. We wait to move on to the spirit world to walk with our ancestors. Faith now gives our lives meanings, faith in the gods who will protect us from evil spirits,

protect us from other clans of humans. Civilization then develops, we continue to live our lives and give them meaning by trying to please the gods, by trying to defend our lands, by trying to improve our lot in life, in early very rigid systems of government and religion where freedom is limited and the rules are strict, don't have to worry about too many choices.

We find meaning in trying to become king or noble or we find ourselves hopefully in the favor of some king or noble. We continue to find meaning and faith in the gods and then for many faith in one god. And then recently after the whole world is mapped when many of the old monsters and gods are laid to rest when we now know, or at least many of us now know, that to pray to the old gods for reign is futile. We know that evil serpents won't sink our ships in the sea when we rely more on science and human ingenuity to grow our crops less on nature.

When many of us know that a vaccine will stop a virus a lot more effectively than God's will, we go back to the old question of why are we here? And now for many of us it's harder than ever to answer, right? It's harder than ever to say, well, because of God's plan, right? The religious, many of them still turn to God for meaning, but in the 20th and 21st centuries, there are less of the religious than probably ever before. More and more turn to science for answers. Science either can't give the answers.

Old religions can or doesn't give us the answers we want. No heaven for the righteous, no hell for the wicked. So what's the fucking point? A 2019 Gallup poll found over a third of Americans, 36% are not convinced that any sort of God exists about half of Americans don't attend any type of religious service. I'm one of them. And for those of us, the growing number of us who are not drawn to religious doctrine to give our lives, you know, meaning again, what's the point? How do we find meaning? When I said I'm one of them, I do think some type of God exists. I just don't go to religion for it.

Frankl found that this growing existential crisis led to more and more lives devoid of meaning. And he called what the collective body of these people now suffered from, the mass neurotic triad. The mass neurotic triad composed of people living lives based on either depression, aggression, or addiction, or some combo of the three. And Frankl came up with logotherapy to answer this, to solve the problem of this neurotic triad, to help these people find meaning so they could avoid depression, aggression, or addiction. He defined logotherapy as considering man as a being whose main concern consists of fulfilling a meaning and in actualizing values, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts.

So how does one lead a more fulfilling life? Again, by pursuing meaning, the pursuit of meaning according to Franco humanity's driving force. Freud believed that the pursuit of pleasure was humanity's driving force. Adler believed that the pursuit of power was the driving force. According to Franco, when people failed to find meaning in their lives, then they turn to the continual pursuit of pleasure and or power to feel the void, that an absence of meaning has left them. Then they fall into lives of addiction, aggression, or depression when they cannot fill that void

with power and pleasure alone. When Franco did believe, while Franco did believe that the ultimate meaning of life is unknowable, Franco held the belief that each person has the opportunity to realize meaning in their life at a personal level. And so doing would greatly improve the quality of their life. I first talk about that unknowable part. That resonates strongly with me.

I've written on my right bicep, or the words embrace the darkness. All right, my way of saying, make your peace with what is unknowable. I choose not to pursue celestial answers. I choose to believe that the life beyond this one, if there is one, is a mystery, and that's okay. And just like no one can tell me the certainty, you know, that there is a life beyond this one. No one can tell me for certainty,

there isn't either, and for me that's enough. I've made my peace with that. I'm okay, hoping that there are other worlds to explore so that I can explore them with the ones I love. But if there isn't, I won't be sad about it, because I'll be dead and therefore, unable to reflect on the loss of what might have been.

Now for finding meaning on a personal level on that part, important to add here that Frankl did not believe that it was up to each person to create this individual meaning, rather he felt it needed to be discovered. And how does one discover their meaning? Frankl believed that for most, a change of attitude was required.

He wrote, we need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life, daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks, which it constantly sets for each individual. Wrinkle stress that as unique individuals, meaning will present itself to different ways in different ways to each person. I love this. How I find meaning is going to be probably different than how you find it.

Early on in my adulthood, I sought meetings through service. I went into social work, but I found it unfulfilling. I couldn't help like I wanted to. I felt too bound by regulations. Also, it didn't provide an outlet for something else. I've also found meaning in artistic creation. First, in college, my creation was music. I loved to write and sing songs on the guitar.

Then I found it through comedy, a collegiate sketch, comedy troupe. I also, in college, and shortly after college, attempted to find meaning through physical transformation. I went from being skinny in my opinion physically weak, which I was insecure about, to being much stronger and healthier through exercise, diet and supplements. But then once I hit a few fitness goals, I found this unfulfilling as well. I grew bored with spending hours in the gym to maintain. I wasn't doing it to inspire others. I was doing it just to look good.

And I found that to be for me to self-absorbing, to self-absorbed. Then I found a stand-up comedy, a return to artistic creation, I found meaning in sharing my creations, jokes and stories with a live audience, then I found meaning and career progression in comedy. How can I get more work? Better work. How can I impress my peers? It's in late-night sets, you know, etc, etc. But then after checking out some of those goals, my career felt hollow. Why was I doing comedy to just check off marks on this random seemingly arbitrary, to me at the time, like checklist? Who was I trying to impress? Why was I trying to impress people in a fickle industry? Why did I care about their opinions? Why wasn't I just doing it for myself and the audience only? I briefly got wrapped up in competitiveness

with my peers. I wanted to be the best comic, the most successful, but then I thought, what does that end? What does that even mean to be the best in a creative, highly subjective field? I realized that to get the more mainstream success, I would have to change the type of comedy I did. Probably be, you know, a little less dark, a little less weird. And if I did that, what was the point of even doing it? I'd got into it in the first place for creative expression. Then I just wanted to be my best. That gave me some meaning. The pursuit of creative excellence. But then I had kids, divorced,

I had financial responsibilities, people to provide for, being creative at the expense possibly, if pain bills to me felt selfish. So then I shit to my meaning to being a provider to trying to make more money. I took production jobs and reality shows. I did not care about, but they paid.

Took a job at Playboy that paid really well, even though I found it immensely creatively unfulfilling. But it helped by our house and for that, I was so grateful, still, M. Then I started thinking, if I only wanted to make money, why did I ever get into comedy in the first place? I should have pursued some type of corporate path early on.

And then I launched TimeSuck. That was when I tried to create something both fulfilling artistically and financially. And it worked out luckily, led to other ties to the fulfillment I never expected. TimeSuck was founded in so much meaning for me. I could get to be, I got to be comedic. And you know, if it worked, I could make money, but also I got to be more than comedic. Well, I love stand-up comedy. I find it a bit too constrictive in some ways to focus all my energy into. It's obviously only about being funny. There's very little room for getting deep for philosophizing, for talking as I am doing

right now, very not funny, but so about the meaning of life. And I've always loved doing that as well. Some of my most fun times in college, but I wasn't getting drunk and being a maniac. We're just staying up late and philosophizing with some friends. I was also the weird kid who loved to research papers. I led to learn new things, still do this, let's me do that. I find meaning in learning and improvement. And when times like I actually started to make money,

I poured all of my energy into it because I thought, oh my God, this could be the thing that gives me the most meaning. I wanted to give it the best chance to be successful. I would have never been able to spend the hours. I spent on it, still spend on it. If it didn't give me so much meaning, it gives me so much fulfillment,

and I can still do stand up someday. Also, now I can do another comedic podcast, like Is We Dumb, which I enjoy for the comedic escapism. It provides, Time Sick has also helped me launch Scared to Death, a horror podcast that is weirdly spiritual for me, that also gives me meaning. What if monsters or ghosts exist? What if they're real? I hope so, because that means for me that also gives me meaning. What if monsters or ghosts exist?

What if they're real? I hope so because that means for me that God makes this alongside them or some God-like creative energy beyond this world. I love a different form of storytelling. I find meaning in trying to become a better storyteller and providing happiness and sharing stories that people enjoy. And I'll talk more after I'm through with Frankl's Logo Therapy about, you know, other meaning I found doing in what we do here at Bad Magic Productions, such as touching people's lives.

Like I wanted to do a long time ago with social work, type of service, philanthropy. And all of that, in addition to trying to be good father, a good husband is how I find meaning. Trying to set a good example for my children also gives me meaning to try and inspire them to pursue their own meaningful and fulfilling lives.

My wife, Lindsay, very different. She finds meaning in destruction and being evil and being a Polish sociopath like many polls She finds meaning and doing things like eating innocent Christian babies and sacrificing vulnerable lonely widows and widowers to the dark Lord She finds meaning and pain and misery and wanton destruction and trying to burn down all this good in the world, you know JK got dang come on. No, my wife, Fala, an excellent co-host, unscared to death. Well, she loves that. She's an excellent office manager

and more here at Bad Magic Productions. She finds most of the meaning in her life and providing care and service. She finds meaning in making life a series of special memorable moments for the kids, Kyler and Monroe, for me, for so many family members and friends and for helping the less fortunate, for doing charitable works.

She finds meaning in bringing others joy and bringing joy to what would otherwise be sorrow and making occasions memorable. She loves to do things like leave a special note in Kyler and Monroe's lunch box to make someone their favorite meal to drop off an unexpected special gift for a friend going through some rough times. She finds meaning being the person someone can lean on, count on. If a family member is sick, she's the first to offer to take care of them. Almost regardless of what it costs her personally. If a friend has lost someone, she's the one helping make funerals arrangements. If someone's down

and out, she's the one giving them money, whatever else they need. When we met and she was in debt, she was the one bringing me over a bag of medicine and other medical aids to this idiot. When I'd likely broken my finger, I must who stubbornly go to the fucking doctor just thought, you know, being in pain and living on aspirin for months on end was the best way to deal with it. And she know, when she bought me this stuff, she really even couldn't afford. She loves to help those, she loves doing what she can to help those in need. That service gives her life so much meaning. I see it. I'm happy I can work enough and, you know, unfortunate enough to make some extra money to help her fund this type of caretaking.

Okay, so back to Frankl now. I'm sure you have, you know, obviously your own story. And if you don't, if you don't know it consciously, you should think about it. What is it? Focus more on it. Back to Frankl now. Frankl believed it no matter what fate brought, if one took appropriate action and adopted the right attitude to the situation, a meaningful life could be realized. He embodied this so very well that Nazis took everything from him during World

War II, his career. Even though he got it back, they still took it. They took his unborn child, they took his young wife, they took his brother, his brother's family's lives, they took his parents' lives, and they took the lives of others that didn't even mention friends, colleagues, other family members, aunts, uncles, cousins that took this fucking town from him essentially. They beat him, degraded him, starved him, and still he finds meaning in his life. Even in the concentration camps, he still found moments to celebrate, moments to laugh and smile. And after the war, he found joy again.

He found love again. He found his smile again. I like to mentally compare his life to the lives of people I used to see, uh, long Montana Avenue near the ocean, Santa Monica. Very affluent little neighborhood, one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the whole country. I would see as I worked on some, I don't know, stand up bit or whatever, I would watch incredibly affluent. I was assuming based on the cars, very expensive cars they were driving based on the type of homes nearby, uh, the clothes are wearing beautiful talented, affluent, healthy looking people who I doubt highly ever suffered anything like

Frankl hat. And I think about the scales I would see on their well-loathing and cosmetically altered faces. And I would hear their petty complaints. Complaints I considered petty. Coffee shops, cafes. I remember the misery they exuded. Some of them seemed to have everything except meaning,

except purpose. And without it, they seemed so unhappy. To go back to his previous quote, I like how Frankl individualizes meaning. Here's another quote of his about this that I also love. He says, to put the question of the meaning of life in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion?

Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world? There simply is no such thing as the best, or even a good move apart from particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent, the same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. So much fucking yes here. This reminds me of young comics asking me for some type of magical shortcut to becoming like a headliner or some success in comedy or if people get into podcasting looking for some kind of magical shortcut to build an audience to become

a little more successful or of an old personal training client, so I worked with a gym looking for this magical secret to get in perfect shape. Success, happiness, meaning, it's not one size fits all. There's no magic bullet, right? Maybe you're destined for massive commercial success in your current career pursuit, or maybe you're not, and maybe that's okay. Maybe you're not destined to look like

you're supposed to be on the cover of muscle and fitness, and maybe that's okay. Maybe those aren't your paths to meaning. Maybe your path is to inspire others to be happy with bodies that aren't full of chiseled muscles. Maybe your path is to be an entrepreneur or maybe it's to work for an entrepreneur, right? And enjoy the time you get with your family and friends not having to work in St. Outers.

Maybe your meaning is found learning a new language, teaching it to others. Maybe it's involuntary. I don't, it could literally be thousands and thousands and thousands of things. There's so many places to find meaning. Frankl writes that often the best way to find your life's meaning is to find a vocation best suited for you. He says vocation, not specifically a job necessarily, just something to focus your energy on. He wrote, nothing contributes more to the feeling of a meaningless existence than boredom, and nothing counters boredom better than having a specific mission to carry out one's life. Give yourself a mission.

I love this. You ever met somebody who is really happy, really seems very fulfilled, who just sits around, not working, not helping others, not pursuing any kind of passion project. I've literally never fucking met that person. I met some wealthy people, some people living on trust funds

who don't seem to be pursuing anything in life with any real pastor or determination who don't work, who don't have any volunteer kind of service thing that they're really into or who aren't really helping a bunch of family members, and they've never seemed happy to me. They've always seemed just depressed, just listless, just it's not a good look, in my opinion. And I bet they would feel far less depressed and maybe probably really fucking happy. They've always seemed just depressed, just listless, just, uh, it's not a good look in my opinion.

I bet they would feel far less depressed and maybe probably really fucking happy if they threw themselves into something that gave their life meaning, something they were passionate about. Give their life a purpose. Find that fucking meaning, Maitsak, Nymrod and Lucifina, assure me, you'll be happier if you do. Ojangles finds meaning and kicking the shit out of communist. Triple M finds meaning and singing a beautiful, re-outout rock ballot. What is your meaning? Where is it? Life will be better if you find it. Speaking towards this, Franko loved to quote Nietzsche. I love this quote. He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. Yes. Find your why. What is the why in your life? That is the best way to fill your life with meaning. Find that thing that you can't wait to work on to help with.

Find that something or someone to love. But what if you can't find a vocation? What if you are enslaved, perhaps unjustly, such as Frankl was in the concentration camps? What if your diagnosis with debilitating and or terminal illness? Frankl believed that even in those dire circumstances, one still had the opportunity to find meaning. He wrote, we must never forget that we may also find meaning in life, even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a faith that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at

its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. I find that so powerful. If you're dying, what can you leave behind to help others? If you are injured, how can you inspire others who are injured as well? My grandfather just died literally just a few hours before this recording. And even as his body fails, even, he lost the ability to walk, to talk, to do the things he used to do, to love, he's still inspired, still loved his family,

still found joy in being with his family. He didn't wallow in misery as his hard group progressively weaker as cancer filled as lungs. He watched his great-grandchild and play and smiled. He encouraged others to live their lives to the fullest. He told me just a few weeks ago to enjoy my life. Last thing he said to me, when he spoke in person, he told me not to take it for granted, right? To be there for my family, he taught me that to enjoy every moment I could with him, just like he had done. He cared so much for his family for literally all his years. And he has left behind such a beautiful example for me and others to follow. He continued to find meaning in his life right up until the end.

Right, even as his life faded. Love you, pop award. No one in love in you has given me a lot of meaning in my life. Last bits. Last bits now about Frank. I knew that was going to be rough. And then the wrap up. Let me pass a bit more of this man's eternal wisdom along.

Frank pointed out that during the formation of the low-with therapy to research indicating a strong relation between meaningless and criminal behaviors, addiction and depression, or sorry, I messed up that sense a little bit, but if life has no value, if it has no meaning, no hope, who do you care who you hurt? You know, you can hurt yourself. Why not? You have no value. You hurt others. Rob rape, murder, destroy abuse. Why not?

Life has no value. So neither does harm. Burn it all down. What a terrible mental space to live from. Frankl wrote, without meaning, people feel devoid with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions. Some may also strive for supra meaning, the ultimate meaning in life, a spiritual kind of meaning that depends solely

on a greater power outside of personal and external control. And the pursuit of this meaning, I've been talking so much about, Frankl recommended three different courses of action for finding it, through deeds, the experience of values, through some kind of medium, beauty through art, love through relationship, et cetera, or through suffering.

While the third is not necessarily in the absence of the first two within Frankl's frame of thought, suffering became an option through which to find meaning and experience values in life in the absence only of the other two opportunities. Important to note, suffering not to be pursued if anything else is an option. For Frankl Joy could never be an end to itself, it was an important byproduct of finding meaning in life. He points to studies or pointed to itself, it was an important byproduct of finding meaning life. He points to studies or pointed to studies where there was a market difference in life spans between trained task animals, animals with a purpose, and taskless, jobless animals. And yet it is not simply

enough to have something to do, rather what counts is the manner in which one does the work. Again, this all makes so much sense to me. His language, his self is always translated from German, so it's like interesting sentence structure. It's a little bit like, wait, once you say that. But thinking about it, it makes so much sense to me if, you know, if, you know, like I always felt that those who took pride in their jobs, right, how they just kind of like cared about themselves in life in general, always seemed so much more fulfilled and happier to me than those who did not take pride in their jobs or in their duties, their service, whatever, right? It's just, it's an attitude, it's a change of perspective.

I've checked into a lot of hotels. Here's the example. I've stared a lot of glossy-eyed mouthbidders in the face as I've done so. People who wreak of apathy, contempt for their job, sometimes it just feels like contempt for just life, a lot of life. People who do not seem happier fulfilled on any level. I've seen others work in the same job, making the same money at the same desk, sometimes people at the same age, sometimes a lot older, very different vibe, twinkle in their eyes,

smile on their face. You can tell they've made a choice to make the best of their time. Right? They're happiness. It's infectious. They're closed, maybe more put together. They're overall hygiene is better. They just look like they have more fucks to give and they seem so much more fulfilled. And I do know that sometimes the unhappy person is just dealing with a lot of extra shit behind the scenes. I know that. But also sometimes they're just not making the right choices. Choices I do believe they could make. They could actively pursue meaning in whatever their lot in life is and they choose not to. And why? Right? If you're going to show up to the same fucking place and work the same job, can you not

shift your perspective, can you at least attempt to make it more manageable, make it more bearable? You know, I use the word choice a lot here or intentionally. I'm not a determinist. I'm not someone who just subscribed to the doctor and that all events, including human action, are just ultimately determined by causes, external to the will. I believe in free will, baby. Hail, Nimrod, I do buy into that.

Free will, of course, impaired by socioeconomic, political, environmental circumstances, and more to be sure. Free will limited by physical and mental disabilities in some cases, of course. I realized that free will for someone who is physically disabled, and growing up in abject poverty,

and then Rovia Liberia. It's gonna look differently than will is going to look for someone growing up in affluence and peak physical health and like Beverly Hills from Montana Avenue. But still within the parameters of each person's own individual situation, some free will exists, even if it can only exist in your thought if your body is completely paralyzed. But your mind works. Can you not choose what to think about? Franco was a big free will guy.

Franco saw our ability to respond to life and to be responsible to life as a major factor and finding meaning and therefore fulfillment in life. In fact, he viewed this responsibility to be the essence of existence. He believed that humans were not simply the product of hereditary and heredity, excuse me, in environments,

and that they had the ability to make decisions and take responsibility for their own lives. This third element of decision is what Franco believed made education so important. He felt that education must be education towards the ability to make decisions, take responsibility, and then become free to be the best person you decide to be. All right, critical thinking, education.

I think he would have been a time-soaker on some level. I don't know that he would have loved my humor. I'm thinking he strongly wouldn't, but I think he would have loved the message underneath. And to discuss his belief further now feels you know, if we've done it. I know I've labored over a lot of his points already. I don't need to labor over the clinical applications of local therapy. I think you get it. It's really pretty simple. What leaves you feeling fulfilled? What gives meaning to your life? Philanthropy, Randamax, a kindness, creation. Do you

enjoy working with wood or metal? Do you want to work in construction, build homes or offices or cupboards or decks or whatever if you know, maybe fulfill you? Does helping men, someone's broken bones or treating their cancer fulfill you? With that, give your life meaning, does working as a caretaker fulfill you, helping a sick relative or neighbor in need, helping a spouse. Do you like to teach, to volunteer? Do you want to paint a loan, garden a loan,

or play music with others? Only you know, all right? Is money what you crave or is it time? Time with whom? Do you crave pushing your physical limits? It's so very important, I feel, to think about all this. You only have so much time. How do you want to spend it?

You know, if you don't want to, if you don't get to spend it, how you want, if you're trapped in a job, you hate for whatever reason, how can you make your peace with that and find meaning elsewhere? Can you find meaning through suffering? Can you inspire others by your toughness, your bravery, your grit? How can you make the most of your talents and circumstances? And how much happier will you be if you do that if you're not doing it already? All right.

Now let me segue from that to what's going on here in Brad Magic Productions after a quick sip of water. It's so fucking dry here. It's time of year. It's like I drink, I feel like a thousand glasses of water today for about three months in the just the climate, just sucks it out of your body. Yeah, I want to try and talk about how we've made the most of a strange and turbulent year. I found more meaning than I expected out of my life

I during this pandemic at this same time last year what I now find hilarious is how great touring looked Thanks largely to this podcast of fans coming out to see a live show is my 2020 stand-up toxic thoughts tour was looking amazing I was gonna hit Hawaii for the first time we were lining up shows in London. I was going to hit Hawaii for the first time. We were lining up shows in London. I was fucking stoked. We had all my favorite markets in the US lined up. I was bringing my own opening acts to all the venues. Ticket sales were strong. The deals I had with venues thanks to my agent, the most lucrative of my career.

I was counting my chickens before they were hatched. 2020 marked my 20th anniversary in standup. And for two months mid-January through mid-March, it was going the best by far it had ever gone. I was selling out nearly all my club dates, having to add shows in some markets. That was new. That was fun, right? Hey, I'll lose to Fina.

Hell, Nimrod. Show, so fun. Room's not full of strangers, but full of fans, the most ever. I was booked to perform randomly for former, former, that Dallas Cowboy starting quarterback Tony Ramos 40th birthday party. And Texas mansion. Thought that was hilarious and that was exciting. My dad thought that was pretty amazing too.

He was, he was gonna pay pretty well. Not gonna lie to you. Lindsey and I made plans for some pretty elaborate family vacations overseas in the summer. We're gonna take the case to Spain. Everything was looking fucking amazing. The best that it ever looked. Then a pesky little virus started to show up across the Pacific. My last few weekends of shows I made fun of it it. I thought ah, it's gonna be another flu

Yeah, so I'm gonna die that's tragic, but also, you know, yes as part of life blah blah blah All right, I thought I was gonna blow over so did my agent I thought science is gonna shut it all down so quick how very wrong I was at first after shows in Nashville and Huntsville in mid-March We just canceled a few of the next weeks where the shows. I was like, ah, the virus was visible. All right, let's let it run its course, and then we'll be done with it, I told myself. Tour is gonna come back in a month or two,

ah, maybe three months tops. My agent I talked a few times a week at that point, or we're talking a few times a week, Lindsay, who was working as my road manager, she would talk even more with my agent, and then we just started to talk less and less often. As things looked worse and worse, going into April, there was lots of, all right, let's move this date to here and the state to there. Well, you know, we'll have a busy fall. We'll still

hit all the dates, blah, blah, blah, then cases started exploding. More people than expected started dying. Mandated closure started happening with more frequency. It's several points, virtually no comedy clubs in the country were open, no theaters, no rock clubs either. The situation started to look like it was going to last for a lot longer than I expected. I was in shock a little bit. I always knew that I wouldn't tour forever, you know. I always thought, oh, maybe my style of humor will fall out of fashion. Take a sales dry out.

Maybe my dark sense of humor will finally get me into some real trouble with cancel culture. Never in a million years, I expected possibility of a fucking pandemic. Never crossed my mind, that once. It was so surreal to watch, not just my tour, but all the comedy tours, all the media tours just come to a grinding halt, I suppose you run the jewels,

raise against the machine, everybody was fucking, supposed to be Michael McDonald's. So odd to watch just these industries, just like shut down entirely basically. Pretty soon, I didn't say, oh, it's like, you know, Torrin's going to be shut down until the fall. And then it was, you know, Torrin's not going to be happening again until 2021. And now it's gotten pushed back and forth.

Now we talk here a few months. The best tour ever over shortly after we began, you know, some clubs were staying open still, but I just, I can't do stand up here and there like that. Some people can. I need to perform often to feel any sort of rhythm on stage not embarrass myself anymore than I would naturally do. You know, in order to develop new material. And I didn't want to risk spreading COVID further

or to get myself out there in the road and be quarantined, stranded away from my family for two weeks. Not be able to podcast here on the suck dungeon suck dungeon for two weeks or start hating stand up, you know, start hating the shows because I'm, you know'm performing in front of small, socially distance crowds wearing masks, who you can't see their faces to read the body language

if they're having a good time or not. Maybe people nervous that the fucking weight was just coughed, sounded terrible to me, so many things to consider. So I decided to pour everything I had in a podcast and just put standup on hold. Even though it was going the best that I'd ever gone, I was like, nope, just gonna not think about it and tell it's all over or tell it's winding down.

And then for a moment, podcasting looked iffy as well, giving all the behind the scenes info now, when COVID really hit the US and settled in and back in mid to late March, the podcast industry took a huge hit. A lot of people weren't commuting to work anymore. They're working at home now. Bye-bye podcast time, right? A lot of people weren't commuting to work anymore. They're working at home now.

Bye-bye podcast time. A lot of people were now watching content instead of listing to it. And especially if you have really a reverent stuff, maybe they can listen to it in the shop or whatever, but not so much around the kids. Industry-wide, listenership dropped about 20%, 20%, 25%. Sponsors pulled back ads. Everyone's like, what the fuck is going on? What's going to happen? Everybody's holding onto their money. Patreon subscriptions started slowing way down initially. Lindsay and I definitely worried about the year going forward. But also, after touring for so many years, got to say, I was really happy to get to spend so much time with family. Guilt free. I spent more time at home this past year than I have in two decades. My kids' schooling shifted to at home instead of in the classroom. And I love it. I'm glad.

You know, we started going on hikes, lots of hikes, bike rides, fishing, all that shit I'd never had time to do when I was touring. Fantastic. I made a conscious effort to soak it in, knowing that it's not going to last forever, you know, but since you can't do anything else, all right, this is a new reality. This is a new normal enjoy for what it is. Make the most of this. Not no point thinking about that because it's just not here anymore. On the summer, my grandpa got sick, you know, that was terrible, but at least I got to

be there for him more than I would have if I would have been touring. That's very special to me. What a blessing to be able to have done that. Work wise. I decided to use my extra time at home to do things with podcasts. I didn't have time to do before. We prepped and launched as we dumb. My comedy podcast with Jill Paisley,

it's really been scratch in the itch. I missed with not performing standup. Doesn't take standup as place exactly, but it's so much fun. Joe's done such a great job, taking the reins on that one. It's been fun to watch. Also started spending a lot more time

working on scared to death with my wife Lindsay, the new horror podcast we launched in the fall of 2019. You know, I finally had time once the pandemic struck to really dig into stories more than I had time to before, really try to develop my voice as a teller of scary tales. And just fun to really get to dig in and work with my wife and partner in crime, to bring her into my creative world. That much further. And she's fucking killing them, so proud of her.

No performance or storytelling background at all. She's done such an amazing job while also running our home lives. So thankful to be able to really see the work she puts in now that I'm home. Thankful to be able to focus more on the show with her this year. We also had timed line-up cross promotions, markets carried a death that we wouldn't have had time to before. And that started to help the audience grow. Then as it started to grow, it caught the attention of some people in Spotify.

They put it on this popular horror playlist. And that started to help the audience grow. Then as it started to grow, it caught the attention of some people in Spotify. They put it on this popular horror playlist through that placement. Our audience ended up doubling in six months. You know what, got some cross promotions as well. It's very grateful to be able to help steward that somewhat and be home more for that. Also started hosting incredible feats

for the podcast network. Our podcast network this year would not have had time with Santa to do that. And being able to do that, I've learned so much more about podcasting, how to run a podcast network if that ever becomes reality. Made relationships with some people at Spotify and other platforms, podcast has been really great, great to work with. Also had time to launch a Patreon for Scared to Death, more money to charity, more income

to do projects here, to reinvest in the business, able to produce a horror movie club now. This looks awesome with Logan Keith. We also published a collection of fans submitted horror stories this year would not have been able to do that. Had the pandemic not happened because Logan and Kate Keith moved out here to work with us more closely also because of the pandemic. And we're instrumental in getting that book launched because of the pandemic, while this internship initially went down, online merch sales went up because we share profits

with our merch team. Sales going up allowed them to move out here, allowed them to drop other clients. They moved out from Indiana to Idaho. And again, that doesn't happen with touring. I wouldn't have been the incentive for them to really work on projects with me. Because the best tour I ever had by far was completely canceled. New opportunities arose, and we were able to take advantage of them.

It's really paid off, being able to double down on podcasting. Now, less than 18 months after having only this podcast and the companion Patreon podcast, it goes with it. The Secret Suck, well now we have a horror podcast, Care to Death, super fun and growing comedy podcasts as we've done, and that Spotify original credible feeds. And yeah, yeah, it's been fun to like have time to think about all this, about where all this may go,

how to maybe try and get it there. It's been really fun this year to be able to launch new projects, and I hope they would stick, and to see that they have stuck to various degrees. So thank you. Thank you for turning what, for in a moment, look like a fuck. This is the worst to what's kind of really been like the best, you know, year in some ways. And I think, you know, part of the reason that's happened also too is just, you know, choosing

to find meaning and something else. I think I think Frankl would have will have liked a mental transition I made, where I watched some friends get really stuck on like fucking angry about like, I wanna do fucking stand up, I can't do stand up, God damn it, fuck! I felt those emotions too, but I just realized they don't go anywhere.

You can be angry all day, but it's not gonna change anything. So what if you just change your mindset and be like, okay, I can't do this. What else can I do? And then put all the energy you're going to put into the thing that you can't do into the thing that you can and see what happens. And thanks for letting that energy, you know, mean something for listing. 2021, what are our plans for 2021 here at Bad Magic Productions? Refinement. This year was all about launching new shows, getting things out there next week. It's about making things better. How can

we keep this all going? I think about every aspect. How can I work out more to have more energy to do these shows, to be happier and healthier and make better shows. You know, to learn some new business skills to become a better boss, to refine the production. We downloaded some project management software. Never thought I would spend the money on that before. Now I want to become proficient with it. We're rebranding a bit. We're going to have websites for all three podcasts.

We produce under a new Bad Magic Productions website. That'll be something we'll'll be at least working on in 2021. I'll be working on rebranding the time suck app into the bad magic app. You know, we're each show can have a sub menu. Still don't know what's going on, let's stand up so why not focus more on what's going on here.

And also this is now transition to my main thing, which is weird to say. Stand up will be my side job when I can do that again. I also want to write a horror novel. I don't know if I'll finish it in 2021, but gonna work on it. Scare to death, growing has made that seem like something that's reasonable to do.

Not just a vanity project, but something that's a good business decision as well. Currently trying to get two weeks ahead on all the shows in order to be able to carve out the energy and time needed to market the shows. That sounds more working towards. When standup comes back, I do want to do it again and I want to appreciate it like never before,

not take it for granted. Also not do too much of it burn myself out. Why don't I want to remember how fun has been to be at home and the blessing has been to be with my family more and make sure I don't get greedy and just do a bunch of dates because I'm able to do them and lose time at home with the kids before they leave for college and all that.

I'm proud of how hard we worked to grow the business this year. Time when a lot of other shows, other numbers go down. We're able to at least keep our numbers even on shows or grow them. Actually, we grew them on all the shows somewhat. Never missed a show all year. That wasn't easy when we all got COVID, but we did it. Last week's show might have came out a day early, happy holidays from the scriptkeeper, but no shows released a day late. And we did get lucky in that regard somewhat too. We never got too sick, where we just couldn't do it. But we did have some weeks where we had to work really hard, pull a lot of long hours to make sure everything came out and wasn't just shit. We had a trivia game to the app this year.

That was exciting, fun to do. So proud of how excited to see how many people play it. That's very fun. How the app is progressed, the ability to search in sort episodes and everything else has come on with the app this year. So proud of the online communities growth this year, almost 25,000 in the Cult of the Curious Facebook group now,

almost doubled in size, up from just under 15,000 last year at this time. On YouTube, we tripled our numbers this year, went from having around 20,000 subscribers at the Bad Magic Channel, to just under 60,000 now. We also added roughly 4,000 spaces to the Patreon ranks.

We have over 1,000 Roberts and Annabelle's, now we're on scared to death. And that's allowed us to, again, to reinvest and infrastructure, hopefully do some cool things going forward, hopefully get our own spot eventually and own in that lease, and also give so much to charity. That has been really cool. I found a lot of meaning in that this year. One of my favorite things about 2020 is what we've been able to do that way. Last year in 2019, we donated a little over $30,000 to charities. It was huge. We were so pumped. I'd hoped to donate. I'd set a goal of donating over $50,000 in 2020. And we fucking crushed that goal. This is so cool putting this little list together.

Hail Nimrod for us to be able to do this because of your guys' support. You meet SACs. $4,000 in January was donated to Tim Teebo's Night to Shine, providing an unforgettable evening for those with physical and cognitive special needs, or, you know, or ages 14 and older. $4,200 to the Equal Justice Initiative in February

dedicated to freeing wrongfully incarcerated inmates. $, 4800 in March to the Martin Richard Foundation, advancing the values of inclusion, kindness, justice and peace, named after one of the victims, young victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, 5000 in April to meals on wheels, their COVID-19 response fund, keeping older, vulnerable Americans safe and fed during the pandemic, 5400 in May to pen fed help in veterans realized financial opportunities and stability. 5800 and June to the Alzheimer's Association working on curing and Dean Alzheimer's and in the meantime improving the lives of its victims. 6100 in July to the innocence project, providing lawyers for the funds to exonerate, wrongly

convicted, the means to reform the criminal justice system in the US. 6600 in August to the YWCA Idaho County Fund, providing Idaho County victims of domestic violence with the means to free themselves and their children from abusive relationships. And that's already helped so many women and their families. $7,000 in September to the SBP, providing hurricane relief to those on or near the Louisiana coastline, rebuilding homes and businesses providing food, other essentials more. $7,200 an October to girls in the know, providing St. Louis area girls with

empowerment and confidence to lead full and fulfilling lives. 10,000 in November to the veterans pantry, right? Servant those who've served in Northwestern Montana, a food bank, so much more. And then in December, $41,000 to the giving tree, the cult of the curious giving tree, 80 cult of the curious families, given over $40,000 worth of gifts to make their 2020 holidays a whole lot brighter, holy shit, and hail number. All together, we more than doubled the goal. $107,100 donated by bad magic productions in 2020. Now to be fair in December,th of our 15,000 that came directly from additional donations

from listeners, but still we donated so much more than we thought we would. And that's the most special part of the donation to me is that extra 15 from the listeners. And that money made a huge difference in a lot of people's lives in 2020. You know, and we hope to do more in 2021. I hope we can donate over 150 grand. And I know that in order to do that, I gotta keep making fun shows that we all have to here. Keep making good content, make better content,

that's what we hope to do. That's what gives my life a lot of meaning is just trying to get better at doing something that a lot of people find a lot of meaning of. All the messages we've gotten from listeners it's about how much this show and the others have meant to them. The tough times they've gone through and how this has been a wonderful escape.

I want to make it a better escape. Seeing the communities online grow, where you see people who are moving and can't afford to move or in some domestic violence situation in another time-sock, or let's say I let them stay at their place until things get better, or they're donating to each other's GoFundMe campaigns.

It's fucking amazing. I love that it keeps spiraling out into more Facebook groups where other people are helping each other. I love that because I feel like it can outlast this show, these shows, friendships, we'll go on. We talked about the butterfly effect earlier. The butterfly effect, this show has become immense. And now there's this people who are friends because they used to listen to the show, even if they don't anymore. And I love that. I love that it's already for some people outlasting the show. And I hope to create a lot more of that. Now let's have a little goofy fun.

I'm talking about the jokes, fake monsters, characters, some of the favorites from 2020, the ones that seem to land the hardest with the cult of the curious. I think the first little joke that kind of stuck based on emails we've gotten was calling Randy weaver. The star of the Ruby Ridge suck from February 17th that episode once every on handy Randy. That was pretty fun handy Randy making the boys feel dandy handy Randy you just have to give him candy. Andy, Andy, Randy, you just had to give him candy. Silly, goofy, got a lot of laughs. And then just two episodes later, we had noodle McDrywing. My nickname for domestic terrorist Timothy McVey

from Oklahoma City bombing suck episode 181 from March 2nd. It seemed to land as well. Definitely fun to say. In the nation of Yahweh called episode 182 from March 9th, definitely had fun with a fake sponsor, Pussy Blower. Prenatal, unborn, suffocating, or strangling young baby life-saving auction, womb emergency resuscitation. That one based on cult leader, Yawaii Benyawaii's

insane teachings to female followers that they could save choking unborn babies still in their wombs by blowing into their mothers of the jihadists, which of course is not something anyone should do. It does not work and it can cause some kind of embolisms. Don't do that. The A-hole Air Banjo sponsored some shows in 2020, especially in the first half of the

year. Maybe my favorite sponsorship was from the Baba Yaga Suck episode 183 from March 16, 2020. Remember the Witcher earworm? Many of you couldn't get out of your head for days at theme song. Yeah, that little one, your pregnant half-stocking your head now. We had a little air banjo Valley of plenty Yeah, that little one, your pregnant half-stocking head now, we did a little air bandja with that, which was a good time Toss the core into, oh no, itink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink,

you remember that? You're there. You started singing it again. It's such a catchy song. I knew what I was doing. I was like, why are you singing words again? I'm not playing it. I'm playing it.

On April 6th, there was a sex suck most voted for topic by our space lizards ever. A hail lucid pheno. We learned so much that one. At least I did, you may have learned more about me than you ever wanted to. And you met Captain Whiskarhorn and his pony play Lady Horse, Saspirula Sponkmicer, and in the very next week during the Bob Bredella Kansas City butcher suck, Time Suck was sponsored by Captain Whiskarhorn's pony play, Emporium, Tax Shop, and Satellari. Howdy Partners and Pony's, this is your good buddy Tom Anderson, aka Captain Wisk or Horn. Hi, oh, Sashporella, AWAY!

Uh, Brudella, what a fucking monster that dude was. Uuh, met a lot of monsters in 2020. Joseph Duncan, Pol Pot, Dr. Harold Shipman, Leonard Lake, Charles Ng, Yachim Crowl, and more just in the first half of the year, by the Egyptian God Suck on June 29th, Suck 198, time suck was being sponsored by Crowl's cafe and mulch up. Come on down to Croscafe. That's always mostly beef. I promise. I loved that little riff. Before we met, you know, we met Justin and Taylor Helzer, the children of Thunder, and then April 27th suck episode one, 89. We learned that so much

math can really spice up an already insane cult tale. What a sad tiny little cult they had. And the craziest cult plot recruiting Brazilian orphans to train his assassins and then have them take out the Mormon president overthrow, you know, LDS church leadership and replace it with themselves. And the 200th episode back in July 13th, the West Mesa bone collector shroomed and doomed. I learned that I can still read my notes for the most part with a lot of magic mushrooms bending the monitor in front of me and making me feel the most peace, the most at peace. I felt so year. I love the rooms.

What a great day. Every court was followed by an afternoon split between the hot tub and the hammock out in the backyard. And maybe an hour spent, joyfully picking up dog shit, listening to tool on repeat and accepting my own eventual death. Not even kidding. It was all, all fault, great.

A few weeks later, I had way too much fun painting Roy Disney, Walt's brother as an evil mother killing psychopath. And the Walt Disney suck back on August 10th, Roy, natural born killer Disney. Two episodes prior to Roy, we sucked one of my favorite topics of the year, one of my favorite topics ever. Just so just bananas, the Tony and Susan Alamo cult, cult, cult, cult. Right. They're fucking Jean Jackson. Jack's jackets a little auctioneer there

All right everybody we got another cult jacket on the board opening price of $100 It's got a bald eagle airbrushed over the hand of God Pink rhinestones down the sleeves find the devil's stone across the back gods warrior airbrushed across the front Each major jewel of perfect place my cats hand-stiffed smell of fear hands cried to buy those who felt the end was near 50% End of 50% fire and Brent Stone. Go in once, go in twice. So that was fun. That was weird. We got real weird with the Skinwalker Ranch Suck,

episode two of five back in August, Terry Sherman. And Terry Sherman and his crazy ass fake Skinwalker, supposedly first-hand wolf encounter, before Terry could shout out. The creature stuck its monstrous wolf snout to the bars of the cattle pen, and clout his powerful jaws onto the head of the calf closest to it. Gripping the calf's head with his long jagged teeth, the creature began attempting to pull the baby cowl to the barbs as it screamed in pain. Terry ran to the

cattle pen. As he reached the creature, he delivered several blows with his fists to the cattle pen as he reached the creature he delivered several blows with his fists to the beast ribcage No, I didn't Terry he really went full slap a salmon punch bear with that one took a little took a little far in suck 207 From August 31st We met the vampire of Sacramento Richard Chase. Holy shit a nightmarish combination of mental illness and of, well, evil. And more interesting, maybe than Mr. Chase night episode, Shrupp Sluts.

We learned about those Shrupp Sluts, those sneaky home records. Just wait in the bushes trying to fuck your husband. The following episode, I got to plank in and plank in again in the Titanic suck, oh my God. And we also met DJ iceberg. It's so big. Yeah, that's just the tip. DJ iceberg. Maybe my favorite button that Joe has ever made.

Then there was the American Riot suck episode two and nine September 14th. Easily the most polarizing suck we've done. Good reminder for me that if you try and tackle an extremely polarizing and emotional issue topic, bound to get polarizing and emotional feedback, but glad we did it. Can you get better if you don't challenge yourself? So let's take risks, push yourself past your comfort level

from time to time. All I'll say on that one after a few months to reflect on was, with the time I had, I do think I did my best, which I could have spent more time in the back half to be sure, but misfires weren't made due to lack of effort. That episode, it did. I'm grateful.

It made me really reflect a lot about justice in America. I'm glad for it. Maybe reflect on how differently America can look to you based on your background, skin color, the neighborhood you live in, who you've met along your way. A lot of valid arguments heard on both sides of the issue on that one. We returned to cult, cult, cult. In the September 28th, Emmanuel David cult suck, episode 211.

Dude, really loved his socks. Today's time suck is brought to you by Emmanuel Davis House of God and Socks. You're at Emmanuel Davis House of God and Socks, we have everything you need to keep those feet warm, clean, and heavenly. We have all kinds of cotton socks, silk socks, polyester socks, and wool socks.

For the more adventures, we have deer skin, lava fur, rabbit hide, even seal skin socks. For the really adventures, we like to live a little more fabulously. We have silver socks, solid gold socks, albino tiger hide socks, even bald eagle feather socks. And for the most adventures, we have lemur labia socks, blood diamond socks, stem cell socks, dead puppy socks, even super soft, human foreskin socks, so many socks! It's a blowout sale! In October we learned that hollow earthers, maybe bigger wacky dildes and flat earthers, met Keith Frainerie and his next year cult and met the good god Amway.

Heal the good god amway maker of quality, multi-purpose and affordable laundry detergent. Few weeks later, we met the bloody benders in the November 16th episode, Suck 218, never met a family that loved hammering folks to death more than those tiny cabin dwellers. And then we got a pretty nice sponsor to follow an episode.

Today's tap suck is brought to you about the Bender One Stop Hammer Shop. Located in downtown Cherryville, Kansas. The 5000 square feet recently remodeled and updated Bender One Stop Hammer Shop facility has every kind of hammer imaginable. Get on in here and get hammered and the Bender One Stop Hammer Shop! Oh, I had a lot of fun. They get about their tiny cabin, all that nonsense with that one.

The week before the bloody benders in the Enigma Suck, Crypto Zoologist David Hatcher Children's showed up. Maybe I don't know a bit too much. You know, Professor on David's Children's here. Very confused by all the math talk. Would he be telling us soon how this all relates to finding big foot or perhaps werewolves? Or to the giant stone balls often associated with ancient aliens? Sorry to interrupt, but it would just be easier to focus on these numbers in the code

jibberjabber. If you could explain how it would lead to say, uh, capturing a unicorn or the bellarugian sky squid or even a bug bear. Uh-huh, yes. Yes, I can't hold on my questions to you until after class. Just a few weeks ago, on November 20th, we met Inkubus, Robert Ben Rhodes, truck stop killer suck, which really became a BDSM suck. Submit yourself to the arm binders and dungeon arms in my bedroom. Second door and on the hallway and the right across from the guest path.

I will enter shortly for suspension and submission training, or maybe I'll take my time, slave. Carver, you're safe. We're into the wall and prepare for sexual ascension. Then just last week in the Craigslist killer suck, we met Spokane, Erie Duane. I'd never forget Spokane, Erie dwein and his offer of free oral pleasure. You provide the ride. He provides well, you know, the dwein. And then there was this That was pretty fun.

So many characters and fake ads. Fun and interesting topics in 2020. The spaces are melted my mind with the multiverse, suck and may. I got lost in Russia's wild nineties in the super killer Alexander's Solonick Suck. Oh, so much fucking Chuck Norris in that one. I learned more in a week than I did an entire year of high school biology in the pandemic suck in March.

The US Civil War, Ivan the Terrible, Ganga's Con, Alexander the Great, some of our fun historical sucks. Any Oakley was inspiring. The Columbine massacre was depressing, but interesting. Bruce Lee's tale was amazing. General but naked, terrifying and a good reminder to appreciate where you live. If you don't live in a war torn nightmare like Liberia in the 90s. And there were so many other engrossing stories,

so many wonderful updates, sent in by me, Zach, just like you. Thanks for letting us into your lives. Thank you for listening. Thank you for buying a shirt or a ticket to a live show. You may have not have been able to attend. Thank you for telling a friend about time suck. Thank you for living or leaving a rating or a review.

Thank you for subscribing on Patreon. Thanks for sticking around during a really volatile and polarizing year. I'm so happy the Suck survived, made it through relatively unscathed, so lucky. Cancel culture, not shut us down yet. May the dark and informative fun continue in 2021. Long live the Suck.

Time now for today's Top Five takeaways. Time Suck, Top 5 takeaways. Time suck, top 5 takeaways. Number one, a fuck Hitler. His idiotic and anti-Semitic ideology brought nothing good to the world. He brought hate and stupidity. He brought wanton destruction to the lives of those superior to him, men like Victor Frankl, from whom he took about all a man can take. But all a man can have taken from him outside of his life.

Number two, logo therapy, the psychological principles brought forth by Victor Frankl, based primarily in three tenants. Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones. Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life. We have freedom to find meaning in what we do and what we experience, or at least in the stance we take when faced with the situation of unchangeable suffering. Find that meaning, meat sack, find your why. Number three, Auschwitz, over 1.1 million lives exterminated in just one camp and just one war, or almost 700 lives taken on average every day continuously

for four and a half years. And one of them was Victor's mother, the woman who sang him songs to help him sleep as a child. Number four, over 50 years. Franko lived on after the war, which ended when he was 40 and left him without a wife, without a job, without a home, without parents, without most of his friends. He lived on for another 50 years after that. Remarried, had a child, wrote books, found meaning and helping others with his message of hope. and if that doesn't inspire you, I do not know what the fuck will. Number five, something new. I want to leave you with a few of my favorite frankle quotes from Man Search for Meaning,

that I find very meaningful to me. The first, everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude, in any given of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's own way in any set of circumstances. Love that. Here's another one. Living as if you were living already for the second time, and oh, sorry, live as if you were living already for the second time, and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly

as you are about to act now. Be conscious of your life, right? Think about the choices that you're making. And now, a final quote, the pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar from which he tears is daily a sheet grows thinner with each passing day.

On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with his predecessors. After first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back, he can reflect with pride and joy and all the richness set down in these notes and all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What would it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old?

Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reason has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him. No thank you he will think. Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past. Not only the reality of work done and of love loved but of sufferings,ly suffered these sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud all the these are things which cannot inspire envy rest in peace Victor Frankl and

rest in peace Ward Hall my grandfather who lived in his way life to the fullest as well time suck tough right take away The 2020 rap The Victor Frankle episode has been sucked the rap recap all the 2020's been sucked Thanks. Thank you again for being on this ride. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help and making time suck every week Keep me saying Queen of Bad Magic Lindsey comments Reverend Dr. Joe Pezi the script keeper Zach Flannery, the fact sorceress, Sophie Evans, Logan Keith, the art warlock, running badmagicmerch.com and the socials.

Again, the new and improved customer service email, if you have problems with anything merch-related store at badmagicproductions.com. Thanks to all those who have joined the Cult of the Curious Private Facebook group, almost 25,000 members in there now. Continue to make time stuck in community, not just the podcast. Hail them not to you. Thank you to Liz Hernandez and our all-seeing eyes running the Cult of the Curious Facebook page.

Megan Howell, Ellie Darling, Danny Ryan, Robbie Erickson, Jacob Carey, Kaylee Fitzpatrick, Jeffrey Bistrin, Adam Gustafason, Kathleen Salar, our Salar, and Shelley Aninson. And thanks to Beefstake and the mod squad of Jesse Becky and Cody running wild on Discord. And thanks to all the spaces which have played the time-soaked trivia portion of the app this year, Bodie 210 leading round six with 4,598 points, well done Bodie. And thanks again to Listernand for helping us with not just the Clotally Curious Facebook, private group, but also, uh, with the socials. Uh, what episode are we going to dive into to kick off 2021? Next week on TimeSuck,

as the voting spaces, or to have to create, we're going to head back to World War Two. Touchdown today. We're going to touch it on next week. So many inspirational tales from that time, truly an era where people were called on to display enormous strength in bravery. Some of the bravest for the Navajo code dockers, the Navajo code-tokers took part in every assault the US Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. Serving in all six marine divisions, these brave meat sacks transmitted messages by telephone and radio in a code based in the Navajo language that the Japanese never broke. They could translate three lines of English in 20 seconds, beating out code-translating machines that took up to a half an hour.

That time was crucial, and the Navajo codebreakers understood that if they messed up, Miss translated or held up a message, people could die. They knew that they were working against a ruthless enemy, the Japanese imperial navy that would sooner commit suicide and give up. This wasn't even the first time indigenous languages were used to encrypt messages. We'll learn about that. I'll start it back in the way. Back in World War I, afterwards, Germany and Japan even sent students to the US to learn indigenous languages were used to encrypt messages. We'll learn about, talk about that. I'll start it back in the way. Back in World War I, afterwards, Germany and Japan even sent students to the US to learn indigenous languages in case they were ever used again.

But they didn't learn Navajo. It was too complicated. Only in oral language with complex grammar and syntax with a very small number of non-Navajo speakers. It was perfect for a code. And the Navajo code talkers made that code. Many of those soldiers carrying memories of being forced to attend boarding schools, where

they were punished for speaking their mother tongues. The US had tried to stamp out indigenous languages for decades before World War II, lucky for them it didn't work. I'm lucky for them the Navajo codebreakers didn't hold a grudge strong enough to not help with the war effort. Tune in next week for an inspiring tale. And now let's head on over to this year's final Time Sucker Updates. Let's open up on some Squirrel face fucking, kind of. You heard me. Squirrely sucker Kyle

Cogate, opening these updates strong, writing, subject, face fuck by squirrel. Listen here, fucker. Just finish up the general button naked episode and I just wanna tell you, don't you dare say nobody ever needed saving from a squirrel. I did when I was a young kid. Let me start by saying summer after summer, I would watch my grandfather tend to his vegetable garden and feed various small wildlife by hand.

Squirrels included. So one day it was a beautiful summer day and I decided to try feeding the squirrel because I love wildlife. I patiently waited for some time with some peanuts in my hand. When I realized I couldn't stop myself from eating them And then I decided to place them on top of my shoes as to keep me from moving and eating the peanuts After another hour or so, I finally see a squirrel scooting down Tree and prancing throughout the yard. I can barely contain my excitement and joy thinking. Oh my god. It's finally happening

A few minutes go by and little guys getting closer and closer and finally finds the peanut on my shoe. Almost in tears of joy. I watched a little bastard pick up the peanut, sniff it, look straight into my eyes and throw it on the ground. He then started running off and up a tree. At this point my tears of joy turned into tears of anger

and I picked up the peanut and I ran to the tree yelling, I'm trying to feed you. Why would you eat my peanut? Mid yelling at the squirrel, I hear a screech and the fucking asshole jumps in my face and scratches the shit on my face and then runs off. I ran inside and tell the various adults, nearer, including my parents, grandparents,

aunts and uncles, who then proceeded to laugh hysterically at me. Ha, ha, ha, so damn it Dan, you are dead wrong when saying nobody needs saving from a squirrel. So I guess I didn't get actually, you know, I didn't actually get face fucked by a squirrel, but one definitely danced in my, one definitely danced on the tears of ruined of my ruined childhood dreams. Hope you enjoy the laugh at my expense.

I guess at this point, I tell you how I love the show. I'm a long time list for the podcast and your comedy, yada yada yada. This actually makes it on an update. I hope it brings some laughter. Yep. And could you do me a favor and give a shout out to my buddy Jay, who just found out his pregnant wife is having a baby girl. He is also my co-host and a podcast we have called beer tasters anonymous. Him and I just try new beers every week and play

games and some trivia and talk about the beer. Sorry for self-promoting, but need some listeners. Thanks for all you do, my man. Your loyal squirrel hater, Kyle Klogey, yes, just like the toothpaste. No relation. Kyle, thank you for the good measure, sir. Your line of one definitely danced on my tears of ruined childhood dreams. Kill me. Congrats on the podcasts and Jay fellow beer taser. Congrats on the baby girl. Best of luck with podcasts. And hope you aren't attacked by another squirrel. But if you are attacked, I do hope it literally fucks your face. Because it'll be really great to hear that story.

Next up, safety. Safe sucker Brent Olbert has a message to another sucker who recently had her update read on the show Clothe to the curious looking out for each other Brent writes Ashley a subject of ask you the lung cancer survivor. Please give her my info Good afternoon. I heard ask you the non-smokers lung cancer story on the time sucker updates and it sounds Early like most radon and dudes lung cancer stories stories. I often hear my line of work Since you did not mention radon please please, please, please, forward my contact information along to her. I would like to send her a radon test kit free of charge.

I'd like her to rule out radon so no one else in her household has to go through what she went through. She's not alone. Over 22,000 Americans die each year. Tens of thousands of mortgage sick never knowing it was the air inside their homes. Radon is the number one cause of lung cancer among people who'd never smoke. My free informational pages are radonradality.com,

radonpds.com. If anyone in the suck dungeon ever needs a test kit, let me know. Thank you for sending those ones before. We're good. I don't make any money on them. I just want people to be safe and be able to sleep with peace of mind.

Keep on sucking you guys. Want to share the love with my fellow time suckers and give back this time of year. Merry Christmas, happy new year. I'll be stomping a cocker spaniel and Nimrod's honor as the clock strikes midnight and the prophecy is fulfilled, Brent Albert. Thank you Brent. I afforded your email to Ashley.

I appreciate that you are concerned and that you provide such a cool service. You know, it makes me think back again to Victor Frankl. Thanks for providing such a meaningful service. I can hear your passion when I read your message. Hill Nimrod. Now shout out request from sweetest sucker Brooklyn Hodge who writes, Dear master sucker, my husband is the ultimate time sucker. He's listened every episode since the first has since converted me and even his

mother a difficult feat. If you knew her, he has lately had a hard time listening because we had both bought tickets for sucks giving and didn't realize we had missed it until the next day. It was especially a busy weekend for us, as we're both going back to college. This is our first semester back. We have three kids. I'm sure you know how much time they suck. Yep.

It would mean the world to me and to him if you would receive some sort of communication from you. I understand this is the busiest time of year, especially for the master's sucker who bears the burden of leading his own clothe to curious, further and further down the rabbit hole of random topics. My husband doesn't know that I've decided to contact you, so I a surprise message to share with him would be fantastic.

And I'm hoping re-ek night his desire to keep on sucking. I hope this message finds you, your family, and the whole time select team. Well lots of love for all of you humble wife of a time suck, fanatic. Well, that is very nice, Brooke. Thank you. We are well. I appreciate you in the family listening. Now, uh, husband of Brooke, don't worry about sucks giving anymore, right? Don't forget about it. It was the best show I've ever done by far.

It was the most fun I've ever had easily hands down and we lost the footage. We can't ever put it up again. But don't even know. I'm kidding. I'm just being a dick. But seriously, don't worry about it. There's so much more to explore. We need you back. We need you on the train. We're heading to what the fuck town over and over in 2021 with some additional stops and inspiration, and oh, I'll be damned. Happy holidays to all of you. And again, I hope you continue to enjoy the show. Now for a commons lot update.

I always love these. Humiliated sack. Leah Jeff will write, I love this message so much. Hey, fuckface. I'd like to thank you for an incredibly embarrassing moment I had with another mom from my son's daycare. I was picking up my kid one day from his school, fresh off the highway commute from work

and you guessed it, listening to your dumb ass. Since parents are not allowed inside due to COVID, teachers meet the parents outside. Knowing how easy it is to get comments logged, I paused the dark ages episode. Except that with my phone loses internet for five seconds, it gives Spotify a conibction and becomes impossible to turn off. So just as I'm getting the boy and the chair are in the car while the door is open, the drill-starging character blasts from the speaker shouting about fucking monk maggot, each shit private monk. And all

your loud ridiculous nonsense. All I could do was smile awkwardly and shrug my shoulders, well shaking my head and shame. I was able to jump through to the driver's seat, switch the radio off, but holy fuck that I get some side eyes. Since then I've been able to explain myself. She asked me the next day,

what the fuck was that you're listening to? I was able to assure her that is not how we talked to our son. It was not some backward self-admonishing motivational life. That'd be hilarious, I'm insane motivational speaker. It's just some asshole. It's just some asshole who has a hard time controlling himself. AKA comedian, just want you to let just want to let you know I hate you. You are a ridiculous person. Also shout out to the mother suckers group, a fine group of broads. Her words, not mine. I'm not counting, buddy, broad. Don't give me trouble.

Keep on sucking is if you could help it. And I hope you get a nagging, ingrown hair right up under your taint. And a crevice that can't be reached. Manscaped that bitch. Leah, your message, fuck, you killed me twice. Last so hard on my first Reddit is last art again. And I love the mother suckers group. That's awesome. Again, the code to the curious continues to morph and evolve.

That's been so cool to see in 2020. And I hope it continues. Go forth and multiply. Be fruitful with your good nature, albeit often dark weirdest. Form those friendships, share the struggles and successes of this experiment we call life and enjoy the fucking ride. Cause one day it'll be over.

Hail Lucifina. Now for some quick fond with names, with Marvelous Meat Sack, Ben Hanley, Ben Wrights. Just listen to the Craigslist killer podcast and I heard the name Dickoff. And remind of me of someone I knew in high school whose legal name was Jack Richard Off. A-U-H-F, but totally pronounced Off.

His name was literally Jack Dickoff. Hale Lucifina, that is fucking great. Jack Dickoff, better than Dickoff for sure. The name gods, they sure curse some people don't they? Thank you, Ben. Now for even more fun with names, an update from another cursed, curse sack, Harry Dick sack, Harold Spears, Harold Rides, Hey Dan, Big joke here. My name is Harold Richard Spears, LOL, Harry Dick Spears.

Harold is actually a traditional name that we passed down to the generations when I came to my nephew and my sister wanted to name him Harold. I said no, the name dies with me. So she names him James Richard instead, Jimmy Dick, LOL. I love it, Harry Dick. So much dick in your family. Enjoy the holidays, sit around a table with your whole fucking family of dicks. Thank you for the laughs. Now for a Craigslist killer update. Coming in from Super Sucker Emma, who writes, praise the master of the suck, currently listening watching the new suck

on the Craigslist killer. You mentioned the murder of Sidney Looth by Bailey Boswell and Aubrey Trail and how crazy their motives were. The trail, the trial was even more insane. Aubrey Trail actually attempted to sl motives were. The trail was even more insane. Aubrey Trail actually attempted to slit his own throat while in court. He stated, Boswell was innocent

and he cursed the entire courtroom. That's some drama. You can find the video of this court hearing online. Dan Abrams even played it on court cam. Trail didn't die, but he definitely cemented his status as a fucking wacky dude. Thanks for all you do in the time. So team do, Emma, PS.

I don't know if you'll air this on the show But if you do could you give a shout out to my dad bill? It's the only one of my family who will give any video I send or show him the time of day and he loves you in your shows He dies of laughter every time you play the air banjo or do your Scandinavian accent again. Thank you for the reading Thank you for the update Emma. Wow. That's intense. I'll be a wee bit psychotic. Glad your dad likes to show. Hoingy bangy, uff, uff, da. And here's some air band joint for your father. I know Christmas has just passed,

but I think it's still okay to plank and plank. This little ditty. Bank don't thank, bank don't thank, bank don't thank, bank bank, bank don't thank, bank don't thank, bank don't thank, bank don't thank, bank don't thank, bink, bink, bink, bink, bink, bink, bink, bink, bink,

say a little fucking freestyle in the middle there. Lil' Chingobels. Second to last message, good sources update from Austin. Austin writes, hello master, mother sucker, fondler of Lucifina. Critical thinking sucker, Austin. Chute toy of Bojangles, rest of Chicatilo, head writer of Pudion, Juju. My name is Austin, I emit my last name on purpose due to the topic of this email. I've been listening for over a year, can't remember exactly when I started, but that's not relevant

to the email except to say that I'm not quite caught up with getting there. Myself and my entire group of friends minus one super lame and dumb hold out. All infected with the suck virus by your loyal spaces are Dylan. He deserves a shout out for it. Thank you Dylan. This is my first time riding in because other people usually cover what I was going to say or I worry I will be annoying. I sound like a huge dick, but this isn't the correction or complaint. It's a compliment Thank you for spreading the grand importance of truth and doing your own research because as I typed this my town is swirling with disinformation spread by the CEO of a local hospital background time I work in the pharmacy at a hospital in the town with two hospitals one smaller one larger

I work at the smaller one thanks to the larger one passing up on the opportunity, we are the distribution hub of the Pfizer COVID vaccine in our area, which is a huge deal. We at the pharmacy have been coordinating with other departments who have all been busted in their asses to get things organized with getting in, which includes getting in our specialized $14,000 deep freezer, which sits at negative 80. Baron Height makes fog anytime you open it and it's super cool, pun intended, preparing staff for giving and getting the vaccine and ensuring we have a complete plan of place for doing so smoothly, transporting logistics, et cetera. This has been in the work since we got the green light to be the hub and has been stressing

out everyone to the max. Now despite working with the big hospital to ensure their staff and patients have access to it as well, their CEO blasted us on social media spreading lies about how we were hoarding the vaccine and that they have gotten no communication from us regarding them having access to any doses whatsoever and generally being super unprofessional and full of complete shit. We're dealing with it the best we can by putting out the facts and actual information, but I've already seen and heard people talking about how corrupt my hospital is, how terrible we are for using this vaccine to spite our rival hospital,

despite that being completely untrue. No one seems to be trying to look into the truth, and it is killing me because trying to explain it seems to only more deeply entrench them in the fact that not only is my hospital corrupt, but clearly I'm in on it. Because I work in the pharmacy and that makes me a liar and a monster. Thank you, Danny Crew, and the entire Cult of the Curious for using solid reasoning skills and looking into things, because apparently these are quite rare traits. I'm so very happy to feel as though I had something to say worth writing in, but unhappy

regarding the circumstances leading to it. I do have one thing I would like to say unrelated to this nonsense, which is that I haven't seen a new issue of Putin, Juju, in quite some time. Beating your lunch back, Shirley. And we'd love to have more of these ridiculous rap scallions, ram-bunked, just revelries as soon as you were able to afford more ink paper and the tears of many cockerspanels to craft the perfect tails.

I sincerely hope that you tripped up trying to read at least part of this email. Of course I did. And I will never apologize for a long email because you won't accept it anyway. Shout out request in info-related, lame joke made. I think that's it for this email. Keep up the good work and info-sucking and my friends.

I will see and continue, and me and my friends will continue to listen for as long as you are attempting to cram sweet suck into our ear holes, sincerely Austin. Well, thank you Austin and thank you, a space that's are Dylan, returning Austin and others onto the show. Sorry, Dylan, with such a shit storm.

Yeah, it's amazing. How many people take the time to blast others on social media? They do take that time, but don't take the time to try and figure out if there's any validity to their argument. I'm a hothead, naturally. As I get older, I do work hard, though, to try and not go full, knee-jork, defcon, fucking red, whatever. When I read something, then it rages me.

I try and take weight. Is this even true? I'm trying to do a little research. And then, if I'm mad about, you know, what I'm mad about is true, well then I let the hate out of it. Otherwise I'm like, oh shit, I didn't go off. I think it is seen, I've seen like a hundred movies

regarding this, where someone pulls a gun on the wrong person and then the wrong person does their hand, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You know, yes, most of us would probably be served well by a little more weight, a little less shoot first, ask questions later. And I do need to bring Pudy and Judu back. That's something I'm working on in 2021 as well.

I'm hoping to have it done already, but I need to like create, well, I started it, update this character Bible for the show. To use his references, you know, when I'm building out new episodes, right? Too many, too many old jokes getting lost now. We're like, oh yeah, what happened to them? Thanks again, Austin.

We do try and get things right here. We do try and use critical thinking skills. Do, do try and use proper, you know, research principles and call ourselves out when we get it wrong. Seafline snakes, for an example of that. Damn, can't dumbass house a flying snake. Ha, ha, ha. Last message, another 2020 year and wrap up from someone else.

This is from Awesome Soccer, Dylan Lamp, Dylan Wright's subject, what you do matter so much. Hey there, Master Soccer, Joe Horscock, John, Green and Suck, Zach, the Keith, the knowledge ninja, the rest of the bad magic family. Oh yeah, and the Keith, I should address that too, update, actually, I'm glad you're, why are I'm saying Logan instead of Kate and Logan

is Kate stepped away, still with Logan, they're still together. Logan's still working for us. Kate focuses on her family, just better for their family life with two kids and one on the way and no family nearby for one to stay at home and raise the kids for the time being and one to be able to work here.

That's why there's been a swap from the Keith to just Logan. Sucker Space is in dummy Dillon lamp here from beautiful South Florida. First off, it was so nice to finally meet you, quote unquote, over zoom for sucks giving this year. This will be a long email. I'm not sorry for it.

For a lot to say about the suck after this year, with the holidays coming up and this royal shit storm of a year coming to an end, I've been looking for highlights from this year to reflect on. I found the suck in February and my job was shut down due to COVID. Needed something to fill my days with joy and learning while I waited to see what would happen. Thankfully, a few months later, I was able to work from home and keep on sucking. That's not the point of this.

With the year in wrap up coming up in the following weeks, I wanted to share how thankful I am for the suck and the impact it has made on my life this year. I started from episode one, worked my way through all the sucks because that's how they do it in Hollywood, showbiz. Now I'm almost up to date on the secret suck as well. That's true. You get it.

I do. The suck has been there to lift me up and keep me going through 2020. Your sweet sucky voice has motivated me to keep pushing forward better myself in the worst year. I've witnessed in my 23 years. All this information has opened my eyes to what it means to be a better meat sack, not just a better person. Because of the suck, I've started working on being more open to all meat sacks views

and beliefs and just constantly undo what makes me the best meat sack that I can be. Thanks to the suck. I started working on being more open to all meat sacks views and beliefs and just constantly undo what makes me the best meat sack that I can be. Thanks to the suck this year, it's helped me grow as a person, not just sit in my own puddle of 2020 sadness. I know how hard everyone works to turn out a good show, that is funny and knowledgeable, but to me and others, it is so much more than that. I cannot really put into words what the bad magic family means to me after this year and how much you have saved my 2020.

I don't want to make this too long a ramble, but just know that I'm a better person because all the work that you do, that is the truth. And not just smack and smack and punch and bears here. What you do is so meaningful to so many people, I cannot wait to see how you can change the world in 2021. You are not the only one who had an allergic reaction at the end of the sucks giving. My eyes also started to leak for some reason.

And that was weird, right? This makes it on the show cool, but that's not the point. I just wanted to share my heart felt appreciation for you, the bad magic family, the cult of the curious. You may suck hard and deep, but you made 2020 suck much less for this loyal curious and dark, humid lizard. Truly, thank you for all that you've done for me in the world over the last few years. I hope the holidays treat you well and lose the phenos shows up under your tree this year. Uh, Lindsay's been a great, look, sweet pheno. Nimrod knows you've earned it. Praise Nimrod for this suck. Have a great holiday.

Whatever you do, keep on sucking. Spaces are Dylan Lamp. Dylan, thank you so much, dude. Sorry, 2020 was shit in a lot of ways. Glad the suck had saved some of it. Messages like this really inspire me, really inspire us to keep doing what we do here. I talked a lot about needing meaning in one's life

to find happiness. These messages provide me with so much meaning. It's nice to know that the words matter. You know, the hour is writing them that they matter, the whole weight. I hope we can do some really cool stuff in 2021. I hope we can bring a lot more smiles to a lot more faces. Hope we can live some fellow lunatics, uh, uh, uh, souls out of some dark days. We all need that from time to time.

Hope we can inspire others to kick life in the fucking dick with everything they've got. Give the devil a run for his money when it comes to raising some hell. And the best way, I hope we can help even more families next December. And I hope I fuck over so many of you with so many comments, a lot of moments. They make me smile. They remind me not to take life so seriously. I hope 2021 becomes a beautiful sky that sometimes falls in evening to thunderstorm. A peaceful, calm sky.

One that's been purified by all that torrential rain, getting all the cruddingness out of the air, right, right, right before you look at this beautiful calm sky. And if not, I hope we do all our best. I hope we all do our best to push through more muck and mire. Right. If that's what the life gives us, then that's what life gives us. And you've got to make the best that hope we can put our heads down,

plow through it the best we can. Maybe think about Victor Franco Think about the darkness he pushed through before he saw so much light on the other side Hail fucking Nimrod. Thanks for making what could have been a devastating year be a blessing I look forward to doing my best as we all do here to bring you more to think about more to laugh about more to talk about in 2021 and again Hail Nimrod Thanks time suckers. I need a net.

We all did more bad. I don't know why it's took us some water for a second. More bad magic production's content coming the rest of the week, meet sacks. You know what? And keep cranking it out to close 2020 strong spooks was scared to death late Tuesday night. Silling this with is we Done Wednesdays noon Pacific. Do some soul search in this week.

What's your why? What's your meaning? Find it, Midsack. Fuckin' find it. Keep on suckin'. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.