Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 328 - The Inspiration of Helen Keller and the 2022 Bad Magic Year End Wrap

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

We take a look this week at the incredibly inspirational life of Helen Keller. She accomplished SO much despite completely losing her sight and ability to hear at the age of just 19 months. Had the miracle worker Anne Sullivan not entered her life when she did, I don't think we'd know Helen's name today. Anne's life - also so incredible. Their intertwined story got me all fired up. We also take a look back at what went on at Bad Magic in 2022 and what we hope to accomplish going forward. Thank you all for sticking by us while we navigated through a lot of behind-the-scenes drama this past year. Despite the drama, still had SO many great moments, and hope to have even more in 2023. Bad Magic Productions Monthly Patreon Donation: We gave a total of $37,547 to the Bad Magic Giving Tree! Thank you for helping us make the holidays extra special for 53 families and 125 kids :) And we also were able to contribute another $1612 to our scholarship fund.Get tour tickets at dancummins.tv Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1vpMYLLlxFQMerch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant 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 happens to be our most current page :)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/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign 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.

Is it the end of the year, Meet's Acts? Last episode of 2022. Kind of two episodes of one today, really. If you're just here for a new topic, well, I have a great one for you. The first half is all Helen Motherfucking Keller. What a life! The prived by illness, the sight and hearing at the age of just 19 months, her speech development soon ceased as well.

I mean, how could it not? But then after five years with very minimal communication abilities, she met the young woman who had changed her life forever, who had opened life back up to her really, and mother fucking Sullivan, who taught her the names of objects by pressing a manual alphabet into her palm. And was also once blind, or at least visually impaired, and it would go fully blind eventually.

And like Helen, she had had one hell of a childhood, rougher than Helen's, in most ways, actually. After a major breakthrough with Anne, the darkness around Helen lifted. Not literally, she would still be blind, she would still be deaf, but now she could truly communicate with the world around her. And she would go on to do that so beautifully. Eventually, Keller learned to read and write and braille, she wrote several books, including the still popular autobiography, The Story of My Life. Later dramatized and William Gibson's play, The Miracle Worker, and then a critically acclaimed film of the same name. Helen, working with Anne for the rest of Anne's life and then working with the third musketeer, Polly Thompson,

for the majority of her life as well, would travel around the world and inspire millions to enjoy the life they had, to not let their limitations define them. She would advocate not just for the blind but for people of color, women's rights, anyone she felt like was being marginalized. Helen Keller was, as some say, a boss bitch. And her story's got me all fired up. And maybe had me feeling my allergies a bit from time to time. I hope you love her story as much as I do. Then in the second half of today's show, it's a bad magic year in review. And what a year. A lot of good. Quite a bit of drama. And it's all over now. And it's time to look ahead to 2023. I'm going to pull back the curtain further than before on what's gone on here.

Give our most dedicated fans a little peek into how some of the sausages made. Thanks for giving enough of this shit to even want to know any of that Onward now meet sacks in another year-end we could all use a little inspiration from time to time and that time is now Edition of time suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to time suck Happy Monday and Happy New Year, meat sacks. Welcome to the Colt and Curious. Welcome back. Take off your coat robe. Set down your wizard staff.

Relax a bit. I'm Dan Cohen with the Suck Master. I am Dan Avatar. Mangle is Christmas collaborator, dark angel of cheer, and you are listening to Time Suck. In a perfect world, this episode comes out last week. And last week's episode comes out in a few weeks. Again, last week's topic was voted to drop last week. Good topic. Poor timing, as I explained profusely last week. And now I'm realizing, I'm if you're watching the video, I'm actually looking at the calendar.

I think this episode actually, yeah, it comes out, oh no, okay, good, good. This actually is still in 2022. I panic for a second, I'm like, is this the first episode of 2023? No. Hail Nimrod, Hailu's the Fiena, praise good boy Bojangles, glory B to triple M.

No announcements this week. You already know I have a tour coming up. I'll talk about it more next week. We pulled the trigger on a massive summer camp for 2023. I'll talk about that in the recap. And you know we have a badass online store with new merch always coming around the corner. So let's get into the meat of the show.

We have a special episode for you today. Let's yip yip yip! This motherfucker and just get on into it. for you today. So let's yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip y If you react to the tale of her life with a feeling of, man, or whatever, I want you to write down what you're feeling or what you're not feeling rather. And then as soon as possible, I want you to relay those feelings to a therapist, you cold blood, a sociopath. For Helen's life and the life of her dearest companions and collaborators and Sullivan and Polly Thompson, we'll digest it all chronologically.

And we won't go through every award and go over every publication she wrote and had published every cool thing she did It's frankly too much That's when you really know someone has lived one hell of an extraordinary life when listing out all of their incredible accomplishments and honors is just tedious Following the timeline I'll recap what our life means to me in the sense of an inspirational message Kind of theme something to ponder and then I'll segue from that message directly into an annual review of what's gone on here at Bad Magic Productions and what we look forward to trying to accomplish in 2023.

And then a little twist, I'm going to kill Logan and Tyler. I'm going to burn down the studio and this is all going to be over. No, then I'll wrap shit up and not speak speaking. Do you again, until next year. So here we go with that timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-sug timeline. June 27th, 1880, Helen Adams-Killer is born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Tuscumbia is the capital of Alabama and almost two million people live there.

It's the home of the Braves, Major League Baseball team, the NBA Raptors and the NFL's Panthers. It's not only the birthplace of Helen Keller, it's also the birthplace of Bill Gates, Zina the Warrior Princess, the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, and the event or a Pac-Man Joseph Stalin. It's mostly known for streets literally paid with gold and being where JFK was assassinated by Malcolm X. And if anyone just fell for all of that, I want you to stop listing right now to this and all other podcasts. I want you to go back to school.

I want you to stay in school until you graduate. No, Tuscumbia is just over 8,000 people living along the Tennessee River in Northwestern, Alabama, but subreddit, but's up against muscle shows and is directly across the river from Florence, part of the show's metro area, around 150,000 people, another 400,000 or so people commute to the area on a daily basis. It's the economic, social and educational hub of Northwest Alabama. And it's super fucking cute. I wasted way too much research time this past evening watching YouTube videos of people traveling there, just walking around town with a GoPro, you know, setting some

music to the edited footage. And I ended up going on to Realtor.com, looking for some home prices. I got into it. It's way below the national average, by the way. I was like, I could live here. I could totally live here. Lindsey, I didn't feel the same. Lindsey didn't feel the same. But I think Lindsey and I could have dates at Georgia's stake pit. We could grab lunch at Champions, World Famous Fried Chicken. We could grab breakfast at the poor house, POUR,

waffle house, bunch of other tasty ass houses. I'm sure. We could grab some vinyl at the muscle shows, record shop, hopefully get a boat vinyl at the Muscle Shoals record shop, hopefully get a boat slip at the Stint's in Harlem Arena, maybe swing into Ivy Green, birthplace of Helen Keller, that is now a museum in historic property.

A lot of places there are registered on the national register of historic places. The Scumbia is a county seat of Colbert County, that courthouse, also gorgeous. It's all adorable. Now I've talked too much about it. Anyway, Helen was born in Tuscany when it was quite a bit smaller. Only around 1400 people live in there back in 1880 instead of over 8,000. But the area was booming, growing rapidly. There would be almost 2,500 people in town by 1890.

There's not always a surrounding community is growing as well. She was the first of two daughters born to Arthur Henley Keller and Catherine Everett Adams, then Keller. The couple would have another daughter six years later, Mildred, and a son five years after that Philip. Helen's father Arthur had two boys from a previous marriage to Sarah Simpson, Simpson and James before Sarah died in 1877 at the age of only 37. And that is what most sources say.

That's what I believe to be true. A few genealogy websites do say that Arthur had four sons and another daughter from this previous marriage, but the three extra kids knew some Arthur, Jr. and Fanny. They did not show up in any bios on Helen Keller. Don't show up in any other sources. Don't show up in her own autobiography. So not to share what kind of fucking clowns or add in these fake ass people to Helen's find a grave in genie.com's web profiles. Two steps siblings

or five, but probably two. Either way, it doesn't affect the rest of the narratives. And sources do seem to agree on pretty much everything else except for dates, you know, I can look at PD, you can't trust it. Fucking fake ass news, some junior and fanny trying to slide into Helen's family tree, get a little post death glory for shame. Helen's father could trace his lineage back to Switzerland. And interestingly, one of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the death in Zurich. Keller later reflects on this fact in an our biography writing that there is no king who is not had a slave among his ancestors and no slave who is not had a king among

his slurren bit about both of her parents Arthur served as an officer in the confederate army during the civil war where he actually specialized ironically killing deaf and blind children for the south uh... very ironic you know considering who you have for a daughter and that's obviously kidding. How fucked up with that be if that was actually a thing.

Arthur Keller, we are losing this war. If we want to entertain in a chance victory, the deaf and blind Yankee children must die. It will shred the morale of these northern aggressors. No, he didn't normal fighting. Before the war, Arthur had been educated to be a lawyer. He studied at the University of Virginia. He'd work in fighting. Uh, before the war, Arthur had been educated to be a lawyer. He studied at the University of Virginia.

He'd work in a variety of fields following the war, working in shipping, following the war, then practicing law, purchasing a newspaper, the North, Alabama and working as its editor for a decade. In 1885, he'd even be appointed to the position of United States Marshall for the Northern District of Alabama, position confirmed by the US Senate. He also for most of his life with Cade alongside all that own a small cotton plantation that was profitable, but just barely. The killers by the time Helen was born would essentially be the on the lower end of being upper middle class.

The family's fortune varied like most fortunes do, but the killers could always afford to, for example, hire a full-time living personal-in personal teacher for their daughter, Helen. So they didn't exactly struggle. Helen's mother, Catherine Everett, who went by Kate, grown up as a Memphis bell, pampered and protected by her father, Charles W. Adams, who was a Brigadier general in the Confederate Army. Kate, unlike her husband, was a dad in the wool southerner. Although she seldom mentioned them in their provincial postbellum

society of the Columbia, she had illustrious northern roots. Her father had been born in Massachusetts and was related to the famous Adam's family of New England. And just to make sure I said it right, yeah, Kate, unlike her husband was not a dad in the wool southerner. In the Civil War ended Kate and her family had moved to Memphis, Tennessee. I just have an old song in this public in my head. Memphis, Tennessee. Oh, God, I can't remember the band that sang. Marriage of age 22 or married at the age of 22 to the 42-year-old captain ended Kate's luxurious existence no longer did she live the carefree life of a pampered Southern lady. Instead, this once indulged beauty was plunged into a rugged existence, described one source as being similar to a pioneer woman's in many ways.

She discovered to her dismay that her jovial husband, like most of the southern gentility during the tumultuous post-bellum period, was now struggling to make ends meet. And for years, Kate had to help raise her own vegetables, fruit, and livestock. There were employees to help run the plantation, but she did a lot of the work herself, typically starting her days at dawn. Further cut down on the family expenses, she made her own butter, lard, bacon, and ham. Home made bacon. That sounds glorious. Helen's first 19 months of life growing up in a small plantation were very normal. We're great even. She was her mother's only child. Her father's only daughter, as we believe the fucking line-ass genealogy sites, the family fortune was improving.

She had two step-brothers who doded on her and she was a very healthy little kid. She was born with full senses of sight and hearing and started speaking when she was just six months old. She was beginning to walk by the age one, but then as we all know, you know, tragedy struck. In early 1882, sometime in either late January or early February, little Helen-like people all the time back then got very sick. She came down with a nasty fever that her small body was eventually able to fight off, but

not without consequences. Some serious damage was done. It's still a mystery, once you actually contracted. Probably scarlet fever, uh, fipers, bacillus, or meningitis. At the time it was said by the Keller family doctor that she came down with a brain fever. Within a few days after her fever broke, Kellyn's mother, uh, noticed that her or Kellers, Helen Kell, gotta keep right. Yeah, Kellers, I want to put Kellyn at the end, but Kellers mother noticed that her daughter didn't show any reaction when the dinner bell was wrong.

When a hand was waved in front of her face. How incredibly upsetting. They quickly determined that the illness had left Keller both completely deaf and totally blind. She lived as she later recalled in her autobiography as if she was lost at sea in a dense fog for many years now. She was least able to figure out how to communicate somewhat with mostly Martha Washington, a little girl who was two years older than her and the daughter of the family cook.

She could understand Martha's signs delivered by touch. By the age of seven, Keller would develop more than 60 so-called home signs to communicate not just with Martha, but with the rest of her family. Her other senses became so heightened she could distinguish different people by the vibration of their footsteps. She'd be able to do that for the rest of her life. Home signs, I had not heard that term before are defined as a communication system, often invented spontaneously by a deaf child who lacks accessible linguistic input. They often arise in families where a deaf child is raised

by hearing parents and is isolated from any sort of deaf community because the deaf child does not receive signed or spoken language input these children are referred to as, yeah, again, linguistically isolated. I believe I already said in the first five plus years after she was tragically robbed of both hearing and sight, not only was Helen Isletter from any sort of deaf community, she was also completely fucking blind, which would have obviously caused significant problems regarding her ability to learn sign language

in any sort of traditional manner. Now, here's what life was like for her around this time, in her own words, written in her autobiography, story of my life. Holy balls, life fucking sucked for the first five years. But most of my time looking for matches. I remember them from before the fever. I knew we had to land around somewhere and I damn sure knew what they did. I just wanted to figure out how to light them. I wanted

to set two fires, one by the front door, one by the back. I wanted to get both blazes and going when, based on a lack of footstep vibrations, I knew the house was in quiet slumber and I wanted to burn my fucking family alive. They had to have known, that some nasty shit was going around, when I got sick and they just fucking couldn't lay low for a couple of goddamn days, maybe not head into town until the fucking bug had passed.

Maybe I don't know, maybe washed their dirty fucking paws here and there, or covered their cut mouths when they coughed. That's not what you wrote, you knew that. Maybe what you felt, maybe what you felt here and there, or cover their cut mouths when they coughed. That's not what she wrote, you knew that. Maybe what she felt? Maybe what she felt here and there, was not what she wrote. No, she wrote this.

I cannot recall what happened during the first months after my illness. I only know that I sat my mother's lap or clung to her dress as she went about her household duties. My hands felt every object and observed every motion. And in this way, I learned to know many things. Soon I felt the need of some... So, eh, soon I felt the need of some communication with others and began to make crude signs.

A shake of the head meant no, and a nod yes. A pull meant come and a push meant go. Was it bread that I wanted? Then I would imitate the acts of cutting the slices and buttering them. If I wanted my mother to make ice cream for dinner, I made the sign for working the freezer and shivered, indicating cold. Damn. I feel like it was a small blessing, a bit of a silver lining that if this was going to happen to Helen, that it happened when she was so young, like if this had happened when she was 15,

so much more aware of what she's lost now. Her brain, that much more developed, much more prone to spiraling with thoughts of how truly a difficult loss of both sight and hearing was gonna make the rest of her life. Much more prone to despair, deep despair, I would think. But being so young, you know, you're operating much more in a survival mode.

I'm not doing a lot of, you know, deep contemplation. Your brain's not capable of that yet. Your brain is so primed for just staying focused on getting the food you need and adapting to survive. I mean, not to minimize what she went through, but thank God it hit her that young if it was gunna hit her. She continues, I understood a good deal of what was going on about me. At five, I learned to fold and put away the clean clothes when they were brought in from the laundry. And I distinguished my own from the rest. I knew by the way my mother and aunt dressed when they were going out, and I invariably begged to go with them. I was always sent for when there was company and when the guests took their leave, I waved my hand to them. I think with a vague remembrance of the meaning of that gesture. One day, some gentleman called on my mother and I felt the shuttion of the front door and other

sounds that indicated their arrival. On a sudden thought, I ran upstairs before anyone could stop me to put my idea of a to put on my idea of a company dress. And before the mirror, as I had seen others do, it's interesting that she said seen that I anointed my head with oil, covered my face thickly with powder, then I pinned a veil over my head so that it covered my face and fell in folds down to my shoulders, and I tied an enormous bustle around my small waist so that it dangled behind almost meeting the hem of my skirt. Thus it tired I went down to help entertain the company. So wild to me, how much you can figure out about your surroundings

from just touch and vibrations. She didn't hear the shutting of the door or the footsteps of those around. She felt them and she could feel where all the objects were in the home. Her sense of feel so heightened. Also just out of this, her sense of taste and smell must have also been so heightened. And this is ridiculous, I know. But I also bet it was true. I bet when anyone farted near her, I bet she was the first to smell it and I bet she knew who's fart it was. Just by smell.

No one ever smelled a fart like Helen Keller. She continues. Sorry, this is how my brain works. I do not remember when I first realized that I was different from other people, but I knew it before my teacher came to me. I had noticed that my mother and my friends did not use signs as I did when they wanted anything done, but talked with their mouths.

Sometimes I stood between two persons who were conversing and touched their lips. I could not understand and was vexed. I moved my lips and gesticulated frantically without result. This made me so angry at times that I kicked and screamed until I was exhausted. I think I knew when I was naughty for I knew that it hurt Ella, my nurse, to kick her. And when my fit of temper was over, I had a feeling akin to regret.

But I cannot remember any instance in which this feeling prevented me from repeating the notiness when I failed to get what I wanted. In those days, Martha Washington, the child of our cook and bell, an old settler, an old setter, sorry, like a dog, and a great hunter in her day were my constant companions. Martha understood my signs, I seldom had any difficulty in making her do just as I wished. It pleased me to dominate over her and she generally submitted to my tyranny rather than risk a hand-to-hand encounter. I was strong, active, and indifferent to consequences. I knew my own mind well enough and always had my own way, even if I had to fight tooth and nail for it. We had a great deal of time

in the kitchen, needing dough balls, helping make ice cream, grinding coffee, quarreling over the cake bowl, and feeding the hands and turkeys that swarmed about the kitchen steps. Man, scrappy kid! I bet she was. She must have bumped into so much shit that she almost became immune to bouncing off fucking wall, stubbing toes and falling down. Poor little Martha, facing some of a wild cat Helen's unprovoked wrath. In 1886, when Helen was either six or about to turn six, Helen's mother contacted Alexander Graham Bell.

Yep, that guy who was working on a hearing device for the death. And he pointed the colors to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, where a very special woman and Anne Sullivan was studying with a visual impairment and was a star student to Perkins Institute. And Anne would change Helen's life. Let's take some time to meet Anne,

learn a bit about this Perkins Institute for moving forward with Helen's timeline. Anne was born in the feeding hills neighborhood of Agawam, Massachusetts on April 14th, 1866. Her birth name was Joanna Mansfield Sullivan, but from the time she was a baby, always known as either Anne or Annie. And like Helen, she suffered early tragedy.

In many ways, she actually suffered a much more tragedy than Helen did. When she was five years old, Sullivan contracted the bacterial eye disease, Tricoma, which caused many painful infections and over time, made her nearly blind. Annebotics, you know, almost always easily knocks his shit out now, but this was, unfortunately, almost half a century before those became available. Thank you again to the medical community for inventing and figuring out the best ways to

deliver antibiotics, saving us from this and so much other horrible shit. Hail Nimrod and hooray science. Fucking how he's killed me. When people shit on science act like they're just so skeptical of science, but then take that fucking medicine. That fucking science, Tukoma is contagious. Spread through contact with the eyes, eyelids, nose, or throat secretions of infected people. It can also be passed on by handling infected items

such as handkerchiefs. Or from say a housefly, landed on someone who has it and then landed on you. Currently, the leading cause of preventable blindness in the world, and is caused by a variant of the same bacteria responsible for the STD Climidia. So, might want to wrap it up if you plan on

fucking anyone's eyeballs. We're having your eyeballs fucked. Not kinkshame. Just trying to promote safe eyeball sex. Back before antibiotics, the bacteria would be treated in a variety of ways, such as the application of copper sulfate, a collection of Egyptian medical prescriptions from 1500 BC, included an interesting list

of remedies for Tacoma. There's stuff that goes back even further, talking about this disease, including a mixture of mer, lizard's blood, and bats blood. Not sure how well that worked. But clearly, sometimes when that shit was applied, I guess something beat the infection. And so if you can't get your hands on some antibiotics,

might try and get a hold of a lizard or a bat or both. Get some of that medicine blood. Maybe you'll heal your eyes, maybe you'll get some new disease, or maybe you'll just smell like rotting rat or lizard blood. The nasty infection causes a roughening of the inner surface of the eyelids. The roughening can lead to pain in the eyes,

breakdown of the outer surface of the cornea of the eyes, and eventually blindness. Untreated, repeated trachoma infections can result in a form of permanent blindness when the eyelids actually start to turn inward. This, fortunately, would not happen to Anne, but she would lose a considerable amount of her sight. And then three years after her eyes become infected,

when she just ate, her mom Alice dies from tuberculosis. And then, when she's only 10, her dad Thomas just straight up abandons the family, just leaves the children. Didn't think he'd be able to raise them, so he just fucking bounced. So cool guy. Both her parents were Irish immigrants

and her father's described in some sources as an abusive alcoholic. She probably had a rough childhood with him at home before he bounced. And her younger brother Jimmy are now sent to the rundown and grossly overcrowded Almas House in Tuxbury, Massachusetts, just north of Boston, part of the Tuxbury hospital. The younger sister Mary is left to an aunt. Jimmy will die from tuberculosis just four months later. Jesus. She goes partially blind. Her mom dies. Her dad abandoned her. She sent to an all-mous house that was sort of a fucking dumping ground for orphans, the homeless, petty criminals, the mental ill, etc. Her brother dies there after she separated from her sister. Now, her only surviving immediate family member, you know, is her two of surviving immediate family members. One is she's been separated from and the other wants nothing to do with

her. And this all happens in about six years. She's now not even a teenager and she's alone in Tootsbury and this place was a nightmare. Tootsbury was built to house 500 people, but by the time Anne was sent there, it housed over 2,000 people. Roughly 40% of the beds were given over to the mentally ill, 33% to Alms House inmates, and 27% to hospital patients. Two thirds of those there were adults, most of them were men.

Anne remained at Tuxbury after her brother's death, and endured two painful and unsuccessful eye operations, and God knows what else there. Anne would later say of her time there, very much of what I remembered about Tuxbury is in decent, cruel, melancholy, gruesome in the light of grown-up experience. But nothing corresponding with my present understanding

of these ideas entered my child mind. Everything interested me. I was not shocked, pained, grieved, or troubled by what happened, such things happened. People behaved like that. That's all that there was to it. It was all the life I knew. Things impressed themselves upon me because I had a receptive mind. Curiosity kept me alert and keen to know everything. Fuck. Basically, she adapted to be able to endure all manner of

terrible treatment based on reports what went on there because that was all she fucking knew. As result of reports to cruelty to inmates at Tuxbury, including sexually perverted practices, i.e. rape and molestation, and even murder and cannibalism, the Massachusetts Board of State Charities launched an investigation into the institution in 1875 and and made it to Tuxbury around that same time. Shortly before the investigation, it seems. Investigations was led by

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, then chairman of the board and Samuel Gritley Howe, founder of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. hearings would later be held before the committee on charitable institutions in 1883 with governor Benjamin Butler leading the charge. Benjamin Butler sounds like a governor. Butler a low attorney was a union major general in the civil war, then served as provisional mayor of New Orleans, then served in Congress for several years, was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1882, serving for the year of 1883.

And the atrocities revealed in the hearings included deliberate neglect, starvation, the sale of corpses, grave robbing, killing of infants by over medication, housing inmates under hoard conditions, tanning of human skin with the fuck, the sex crimes I mentioned earlier, theft of inmates clothing, possessions, and large quantities of bulk supplies and more. And these hordes have been going on for many years. Charles Dudley, a night watchman,

testified that Captain Marsh, the superintendent there, twice instructed him, aside from a building being on fire, don't notice too much. Basically as long as the buildings aren't burning down dude didn't give a fuck what was being done to anyone there. The watchman also saw boxes carted off to the railroad station filled with sheets bedding carpets etc. Dudley said that the family of Mrs. Marsh's daughter visited the Alms House frequently and always took off boxes of such articles. Also said that he'd

seen Thomas March Jr. carrying off bodies, human bodies and an express wagon to the depot at night in a stealthy manner. Nothing suspicious there. Just moving some dead bodies off the ground. No big whoops. When Dudley spoke to Captain Marche about all this, he was told essentially to keep his fucking mouth shut. Marche, which the leds to, have said, we have got to have some pay for our trouble

taking care of these critters. The grave robbing was carried out by men led by Joseph Howard, known as French Joe, who by day was in charge of the baggage room. The watchman also said that there were some 20 children in one of the wards who used to cry at night, and they told him it was because they were hungry. The state of food for the inmates in insane was always very poor. He spoke about this as well to Captain Mars. She replied that he guessed that they got enough. Dudley told him that he thought they didn't get enough. And he had taken the liberty several times to bring in pieces of bread. And then Captain Mars told him, don't do that anymore. Dudley

additionally spoke of a night nurse once showing him a bottle, which the day nurse had left containing a morphine mixture. She would give it to the children in order to keep them quiet. And she suppose he said just straight up that she didn't care if it killed him, as that was not her business. This place keeps out better and better. All of the babies born there or brought there during Dudley's first year died there except one. He said he knew of 73 infant deaths because his wife counted them. What the fuck? The staff for the most part just truly didn't give a shit what happened to anyone in this place.

So imagine being a visually impaired 9 or 10 year old girl there. How well do you think she was treated? Frank Barker, his wife, were in charge of the insane water of this arm's house from 1876 to 1879 and would be in that portion of the facility at that time as well. And Frank testified the patients would be left for days without any food. They were chronically unattended by a physician when sick. Some had literal quote, holes eaten in their heads by vermin,

which crawled about on their beds. The patients about 70 and all were bathed with no change of water. Same water for all fucking 70 of them, and many of them had running source. My God, vermin! I'm guessing rats. Just straight up chewing holes in the patient's heads. This is a concentration camp level of treatment. Barker said that many work in there, such as lead psychiatry, or Dr. Lathrop and the

marshes had their attention called these matters, but showed cruel indifference in response. Initially, young Anne was housed in St. Asylum Port to the place where this shit went down. After her second unsuccessful eye operation, I'm surprised anyone there gave enough of a fuck about her eyes to even authorize these operations. She was now housed with single mothers and unmarried pregnant women and fared a little better, but remember all those babies getting more fiend to death, probably not a lot better. According to one random account I watched on someone's YouTube video, shot on a phone, not the best source I know. There are over 10,000 unmarked graves

on the grounds of this place. I wouldn't be surprised that is true. Dirty Inspection of Two Experien, another one in 1880 by Franklin Benjamin Sandborn, now state inspector of charities, young and now 14, begs him to allow her to be admitted to the Perkins school for the blind. A beautiful school where no one has holes, chewed in their heads by rats. Set in a wonderful 38 acre campus in your Boston within months after living in this place for around five years. Her plea is granted.

Founded in 1829, Perkins was the first school for the blind established in the US. It's still around, located in Watertown, Massachusetts, about eight miles west of Boston. Dr. John Dick's Fisher, not making up his middle name, literally D-I-X, and several other leading Bostonians founded what was originally called the New England Asylum for the Blind. We're not gonna get some Dick through Richard.

The suck will find a way to find some dick. A feature had become interested in the possibilities of educating American blind children after visiting the world's first school for blind children and Paris France. Upon his return, Fisher and some friends applied for and received a charter from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to establish a school. Samuel Gridley Howe, a noted reformer in the Boston area, was a school's first director. After spending several months studying European methods for teaching blind children, the asylum officially opened his doors to just six students in 1832. Public exhibitions of the students' capabilities were successful in raising private donations

by the school lacks sufficient funding to expand the asylum to the planned population of 30 students. Just one year later, a school moved to a larger home, owned by Thomas Perkins, vice president and a trustee. Within six years, student enrollment now grew to 65. Perkins sold his damn home, donated the money to the school, so it could convert a hotel, excuse me, in South Boston. Hail Thomas Perkins.

None other than the famous British author Charles Dickens visited Perkins in 1842 during a lecture tour of America. It was amazed at the work that how he was doing. Today there are between 116 and 180 students at this school. Thanks to Perkins for the many biographies on their website and other information that I actually leaned out a lot for research and stuff. Great sources. October 7th, 1880 was Ann Sullivan's first day at Perkins. Sullivan's shitty life up until this point made her very different to the other students. At the age of 14, she still couldn't read or write, not even her name. She was plenty smart, exceptionally smart, actually, but no one had given enough of a shit

to teach her anything. She had never even owned a nightgown or a hairbrush. Didn't know how to thread a needle. Super common for girls of that age at that time. While Sullivan had never attended school, she was wise to the ways of the world. Have you learned a great deal about life, politics, and tragedy, mostly tragedy at Tukesbury,

or to side the society unknown, even to most of her teachers or all of them, perhaps. Most of the other girls at Perkins were the sheltered daughters of wealthy merchants or prosperous farmers. Excuse me. And because of this, unfortunately, many of Sullivan's fellow students ridiculed her because of her ignorance and rough manners. Even some of her teachers were particularly unsympathetic and impatient. Sullivan's recollections of her early years at Perkins were mainly of feeling humiliated about her own shortcomings. Damn, this can't catch a fucking break in life,

not yet anyway. But she will, because she had the will to 4-2, the spirit of a champion, like the winner she was, love this shit, she let her anger and shame fuel her, he'll fucking them rot. Her years of mistreatment, fueled the determination and desire within her. She chose, in my mind, for the most part, I lean more towards determinism than fatalism on the spectrum between those belief systems. To let that mistreatment push her to excel in her studies. And in a very short time, this choice, able to be made granted because of a natural intellect,

allowed her to close the gap in her academic skills with her peers, and then push past many of them. After the first two years, Sullivan's life at Perkins became a lot easier. She connected with a few teachers who understood how to reach and challenge her. Mrs. Sophia Hopkins, the house mother of her cottage, was especially warm and understanding. Sullivan became like a daughter to her, even spent time at her Cape Cod home during school

vacations. And how great is this? She had yet another surgery on her eyes while at Perkins and the third time actually was the charm. This surgery improved her vision dramatically. And now at long last, she could actually see well enough to read print and not have to read via Braille. Sullivan also befriended Laura Bridgman,

another remarkable Perkins resident. 50 years earlier, Bridgman had been the first person who was deafblind to learn language. Sullivan learned the manual alphabet from her and frequently chatted and read the newspaper to the much older woman. Richmond can be very demanding but Sullivan seemed to have endless patience for her more than any of the other students. Not much has been written about their friendship but is tempting to think that they shared a special affinity because neither completely fit in

with the larger Perkins community. Sullivan learned to excel academically at Perkins but she never fully conformed. She frequently broke rules, her quick temper and sharp tongue brought her close to expulsion on more than one occasion. She might not have made it to graduation without the intercessions of those few teachers and staff who were closest to her. But in June 1886, not only did she graduate,

she gave the valid victory address of fuck yeah bro. Nice. She charged her classmates and herself with these words. Fellow graduates, duty bids us go forth into active life. Let us go cheerfully, hopefully and earnestly and set ourselves to find our a special part. When we have found it willingly and faithfully perform it. I love that so much.

What is your gift, meat sack? What is your a special part? What are you exceptional at? Find that. Are you a great listener? Great at massage. Great at bringing people together. Make an event special.

Are you great at art? What kind of art? Music. What kind of music? Are you great with numbers? With understanding of the law? Are you of the economy? Are you great at protecting others?

Do you love to serve? What is your calling? Doesn't have to be your career and you don't have to be the best at it But what brings you joy that also benefits others and people also told you that you're exceptionally funny Kind hard working how can you use whatever you know you find most fulfilling to make the world a bit better? Try and find that own that fucking run with it You don't have to change the world with it. Don't have to, don't set yourself up for failure with some all or nothing type of mentality.

If you can make just one life better, worth it, isn't it? If it just makes you a better person to do it, and it's not hurting anyone else, I'm still worth it. Just what her a special part would be, not clear to Sullivan at this point in her life. Sometimes takes years and years of search and to find it. Once done with school, despite how well she'd done, she had no family to return to, no real qualifications for employment.

And she feared that she would be sent back to Tukesbury. Her joy graduating was tempered by her fear of the future, but then fate intervened in a very unexpected way. She was given just two real opportunities in life. One was admission to Perkins. The other, the next, was being hired by the Keller family to work with Helen and hot damn! She ever made the most out of both of them. Before diving into this second opportunity, this feels like the best place for today's mid-show sponsor break. Thank you for listening to our sponsors.

Reconnecting with Helen's timeline now. During the summer of 1886, when Helen is just six years old, her father wrote the Perkins director, Michael Anago. Anognos. Anogos, I have fucking no clue how to say his name, asking him to recommend a teacher for his young daughter. Alexander Graham Bell was the man who Helen's mother contacted earlier who recommended that the Keller's contact a Nognos. A Nognos. That's, I couldn't find a pronunciation. Bell is most known for patenting the first practical telephone, by the way, and co-founding the American Telephone and Telegraph Company AT&T.

Kind of a big deal. Good contact app. Helen's mother sought out Bell after reading about Laura Bridgeman's education at Perkins and Charles Dickens' log American notes first published in 1842 and began to hope their own daughter could also be reached After being contacted by Arthur Keller having long admired Sullivan's intelligence and indomitable determination and agn- agnose Which is not gonna name Smith immediately thought of and Sullivan as the best candidate to teach the young girl Although a bit intimidated by the challenge Sullivan knew that this was just the opportunity she needed.

And it was her only opportunity. She spent the next few months studying the reports of Laura Bridgeman's education by how and other teachers. And then in March of 1887, she left for to come be a Alabama to begin a new and very exciting chapter in her life. Here's what Helen would write about meeting the most influential person in her life. That bitch stunk. Apparently one of the things I don't teach people at Perkins is good hygiene.

She would talk on and on and on about her terrible childhood at Tuxbury, like I gave a fuck and I gotta say, she smelled like how I pictured that place in my mind's eye. All the rats, the death, the mistreatment, the chewed holes and heads, the terrible food and lack of any soap or clean water, the mold, the rot, the rancidness. If you could take all of that and mash it up together and then put it in a compost pile and let it set out on the sun for a week and then let it get rained on and then leave it for a few more days and then put it in the bottom of an outhouse and shit on it for a few months.

That's what she smelled like. Her mouth, her armpits, her butt, her plus, rot in this fuck. Other than that, I don't know. She seemed okay, I guess. Kind of mid, but what else? Now that's not what Helen wrote, of course. That's what I wrote. Here's what Helen wrote about her first day and then the first few months of time spent with Anne. The most important day I remember in all of my life is the one on which my teacher and Mansfield Sullivan came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrast between the two lives which it connects.

It was the 3rd of March 1887, three months before I was 7 years old. On the afternoon of that eventful day, I stood on the porch, dumb, expectant. I guessed vaguely from my mother's signs and from the herring to and fro in the house that something unusual was about to happen. So I went to the door and waited on the steps. The afternoon sun penetrated the mass of honey-suckle that covered the porch and fell on my upturned face. My fingers lingered almost unconsciously on the familiar leaves and blossoms, which had

just come forth to greet the sweet southern spring. I did not know what the future held, or marvel, or surprise, I did not know what the future had of marvel or surprise for me. Anger and bitterness had preyed upon me continually for weeks, and a deep langer had succeeded this passionate struggle. Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in and the great ship, tense and anxious, grove toward the shore with plummet and sounding line and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began. Only I was without compass or sounding line and had no way of knowing how near the harbor was.

Light, give me light, was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour. I felt approaching footsteps. I stretched out my hand as I supposed to, as I supposed to my mother. Someone took it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her, who had come to reveal all things to me me and more than all things else to love me. The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll.

The little blind children at the Perkins institution had sent it and Laura Bridgman had dressed it but I did not know this until afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Ms. Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word D-O-L-L. I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed.

I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. And the days that followed I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way, a great many words among them, pin, hat, cup, and a few verbs like sit, stand, and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name. One day while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap. Also into my lap also spelled D-O-L-L and tried to make me understand that D-O-L-L applied to both. Earlier in the day, we had a tussle over the words M-U-G and W-A.T.E.R. Miss Sullivan tried to impress it upon me that M.U.G. is mugged and

that W.A.T.R. is water, but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair, she had dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I became impatient at her repeated attempts and seized the new doll. I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst. I did not love the doll. In the still dark world in which I lived, there was no strong sentiment or tenderness.

I felt my teacher sweeped the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed. She brought me my hat and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure. We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle, with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water in my heat your place my hand under the spout.

As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly, I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill, a returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that W-A-T-E-R meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word, a wake in my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free. They were barrier still that is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.

Holy shit, can you imagine being for the most part entirely trapped within your own mind? And probably assuming that that will always be the case, or not even having the fucking ability to think about what will be the case. And then someone just shows up completely unexpectedly, and they open up the ability for you to truly communicate with the world around you for the first time. Suddenly you're put on a path and truly being able to communicate your thoughts for the very first time. And would basically take Helen from having the communication abilities of a of a well-trained

dog to a fucking human. She would open up the possibilities of human experience to Helen Keller. Helen, once she did understand language, would consider March 3rd, the anniversary of the day she met Anne, her soul's birthday for the rest of her life. Had Helen not endured what she'd endured at home from nature, right? And Ann not endured what she'd endured at Tukesbury, you know, and at Perkins,

would she have been able to reach Helen? Doubt it. And at first part, actually, you know, she'd have focused on Ann, had Ann not endured everything that she endured. Would she have been able to teach Helen? No, probably not. It's just so funny how life works in moments like these.

And instruction with Helen wasn't always smooth, right? The journey to actually understand how language work wasn't as smooth as Helen just made it sound. At first, Keller was curious, then defiant, refusing to cooperate with Sullivan's instruction. They fought a lot. When Keller did cooperate, Sullivan could tell that she wasn't making any connection between objects and letters spelled in her hand. Sullivan kept working at it, forcing Keller to go through this regiment. As Keller's frustration grew, the tantrums increased and finally Sullivan demanded that she and Keller actually be isolated from the rest of the family for a time,

so that Keller could concentrate only on Sullivan's instruction and they moved to that little cottage on the plantation. Only after isolated focus here for a time did Helen finally make the connection between the letters W-A-T-E-R and actual water? And after that breaks through with water, huge rush of quick learning followed. By nightfall of that same day, Helen had learned 30 words and like actually understood them. And went on to work with Helen for the rest of her life.

She would be with her daily. Basically, all the way until 1936 when she died at the age of 70. They would become more than teacher and student, but best friends, inseparable best friends. Within six months, Keller learned 575 words, some multiplication tables, and the basics of the Braille system. Braille for anyone who doesn't know is a system of reading and writing by a touch used by the blind. Incist of arrangements of dots, which make up letters of the alphabet, numbers, and punctuation

marks. Sullivan strongly encouraged Helen's parents to now send her to the Perkins school, where she could receive further instruction in appropriate education. And May of 1888, Sullivan takes Keller to Boston. Helen, not quite eight, and 22, and Anne will stay with her at Perkins. Helen will later write, I joined the little blind children in their work and play and talked continually. I was delighted to find that nearly all of my new friends could spell with their fingers. Oh, what happiness! To talk freely with other children, to feel at home in the great world. After that visit, Keller spent nearly every winter studying at Perkins. She said, in the school where Laura Bridgman was taught, I was

in my own country. There, Keller studied French, arithmetic, geography, other subjects. She especially enjoyed the library of embossed books and the tactile museum's collection of bird and animal specimens. In 1890, Keller began speech classes at the Horace Man School for the Deaf in Boston now. She will toil for 25 years to learn to speak so that others can try and understand her. I want to play a clip of her speaking with a woman named Polly Thompson, who will know Helen for 46 years. We'll meet Polly later. And was not helping Helen. Polly was. It is not blindness. Or this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, my dearest, over it. It is not blindness or deathness that bring me my darkest hours.

It is the attitude that I put when it not being unable for sleep nor nearly. It is the acute disappointment and nothing able to speak normally. Man, I still had a bit of a hard time understanding her, but if I were to have spent a lot of time with her, I bet I, you know, definitely could have figured it all out. She did that, not being able to recall a single example of ever hearing someone speak. Right? She did that without ever being able to watch someone's mouth move as they spoke Beyond impressive also by 1890 by 1890 and had taught Helen sign language obviously she couldn't you know see anyone sign It's a modified version of sign language. They have to make the sign some modified against her her palms

So then she could you know feel them and then she will do the same in return Helen could do so much with her hands she will do the same in return. Helen could do so much with her hands. Yeah. She'll also learn to understand someone speaking by placing her hand against her mouth. Imagine how fucking hard that would be to figure out. Not sure she'd have a fucking clue what I was saying by doing that if she had to learn off of me. She'd probably be like, what fucking language is this? Do you please speak real words? Helen's progress at the Perkins School and at the Horace Man School for the Deaf became known to numerous noted academics, members of upper society, and then you know

there was published articles about all this and she became you know a little bit of a household name in certain parts of the states, started gathering admirers who would help her move forward in life. In Ventor and Business Magnet, Alexander Graham Bell was one. Humorous and incredibly successful author and monologist Mark Twain was another standard oil tycoon Henry Huddleson Henry Huddleson Rodgers. Excuse me was another still he and his wife Abby would pay for a lot of Helen's ongoing education in 1891 at just 11 years old Helen is involved in a in a minor scandal. That fall Keller wrote a story she called the Frost King.

Just did it as a birthday gift for Perkins' director, Michael, who knows what his name is? Anagonos, Arados, Michael, Aradas. Delighted he published it at the Perkins Alumni magazine in the public Perkins, Jesus Christ, in the Perkins alumni magazine. But soon, Michael was informed that Keller's tale was very similar to a previously published story.

It appears that Keller read the original many months earlier and then recreated the story from her memory and then believed it was her own creation. Again, she's 11. An 11-year-old deaf and blind girl writes this as a birthday gift and there's some outrage. What is this? Sounds pretty familiar, Helen. He just ruined my fucking birthday, you liar! The accusation of plagiarism was extremely wounding

to both Helen and Anne in a few months later, in early 1892, they left Perkins over this and did not return. Keller will later forgive Perkins for her unhappy experience. In 1909, she'll donate many braille books to the Perkins Library in 1956. She'll officiate at the dedication of the Keller Sullivan Building when it becomes the home for the school's deafblind program. Back in 1894 when Helen is now 14, she and Sullivan moved to New York to attend the right humuson school for the deaf in New York City. And she didn't play your right shit either when she was there, okay?

Two years later in 1896, they returned to Massachusetts and color entered the Cambridge School for young ladies before gaining admittance in 1900 to Radcliffe College of Harvard University Where she lived in Briggs Hall the South House Also in 1896 Helen's father Arthur dies at the age of 60 Keller described to him as loving and indulgent devoted to his home seldom leaving us except in hunting season She said he was a hospitable man who enjoyed bringing guests home to see his garden. In 1904, the age of 24, Keller graduates, his member of the five beta Kappa, uh,

sorority from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf, blind person to earn a batch of arts degree. Also maintained a correspondence with the Austrian philosopher and teacher, Wilhelm Jerusalem, uh, who was one of the first to discover her literary talent and then encourage it. Let's talk about that literary talent, which I'll have us back up a year. One of the Frost King is technically her first published, published work. That's what she wrote again when she was 11.

The yeah, kind of sounded like someone else's story, who cares, was a birthday gift. Her first real work was one of my main sources for researching her life, the story of my life, her autobiography. Published in 1903, I was a smash hit. Helen Keller would end up writing 14 books over 475 speeches and essays on topics such as faith, blindness prevention, birth control, the rise of fascism in Europe and even atomic energy. Her autobiography has been translated into 50 languages and remains in print to this day.

And she would write about writing, literature is my utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. Man, how wonderful for her, you know, what a great escape literature is for so many of us,

but especially for her. She actually began to write her autobiography in 1902, while she was still a student at Radcliffe, and it was published in the Ladies Home Journal, that same year as a series of installments. And those installments also big hits. In 1902, 1903, Helen Keller really introduced herself to the world. Again, already known to many in the US, thanks to articles about her incredible story, published in a variety of newspapers and magazines. In her autobiography, she talks about much of what I've shared already and about, you know, meeting Alexander Graham Bell when she's just six years old, how she will remain

friends with him. She shares visits with the acclaimed American poet, John Greenleaf, Green Leaf, Whittier, writes of how she exchanges correspondence with people like Supreme Court justice, all of her Wendell Holmes, Jr. and First Lady, Mrs. Grover Cleveland. She's a bit of a name dropper, which is off-putting. No, she had an amazing life. She shared it. Also in 1993, she'll have an essay published called Optimism.

The following year, she'll have another essay published that will later be published as a book, My Key of Life Optimism. And for a bit of comedic relief. I have to share the lone review of the paperback version of this essay slash book from Amazon, just because it's so fucking stupid. Seeing this review may be missed due to my old one-star hero segment from Is We Done,

right? Definitely an itted to the internet type moment. User Kathy Gehibi writes from the US on November 25th, 2021. This is unreal. Helen Keller was a myth. How did she fly a plane and write this many books? Wasn't even in Braille, all caps. Still all caps. A blind and deaf woman wrote in fluent English?

Question mark? The Braille part had like seven question marks. And then ends it with not funny, didn't laugh. I would like to think this is someone being absurd and it might be, but I doubt it. Sadly, I've seen enough emails coming over the years and enough comments cross web on others content in my own. I've seen enough interviews with people this dumb

on the fucking web, or this to leave me to think that this, you know, very likely could be real. And I also found someone with the same name on both Instagram and YouTube. And I think it's the same person who wrote this review based on just how they behave in other places. Kathy is to not put it mildly dumb as fuck. And sadly, like so many bottom of the critical thinking bell curve dwellers, yeah, she's raising a family, raising several kids traveling the world.

So that's super cool. A good to know someone, this fucking unbelievably ignorant is you know kind of killing it in life That they're influencing future minds and financially successful enough to afford you know world travel like pictures of her in Egypt and all kinds of places It wasn't even in braille Kathy because braille is not a fucking language It's a means to convey a language. Any language, there are braille versions of Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, English, many other languages. And of course this book was published in English. That is the language Helen understood and actually spoke. She grew up in America. She was not raised by people speaking foreign languages.

And also Kathy, sign language is universal. Different sign languages are used in different countries or regions. Excuse me, is not universal in the sense that there's just like, sign language is universal. Different sign languages are used in different countries or regions. Or excuse me, is not universal in the sense that there's just like one sign language. British sign language, BSL, a different language from American sign language, ASL. Americans who know ASL may not understand BSL. Across the globe, actually more than 300 sign languages are formally recognized. And flying a plane, yes, she did do that in 1946 over the Mediterranean for about 20 minutes, but she didn't do it alone. Kathy, you fucking half-wit. Someone else was there to help.

A quick search of the web would have told you all of that, and it would have taken less time than for you to leave that comment. Well, maybe not you less time. It'd take a lot of people less time. On Helen's flight, her other longtime companion, Paulie Thompson, would translate the pilot's instruction to her. Thompson would later say, the plane's crew were amazed at her sensitive touch on the controls. There was no shaking or vibration. She just sat there and flew the plane calmly and steadily. As a pilot, Keller could feel the delicate movement of the airplane probably better than the pilot could.

What she didn't do, Kathy, was land that motherfucker. That would have been a little tricky. Now I'll be able to see shit. And why would you ever think it was going to be a funny book? Like, what did Helen Keller ever do? It was associated with comedy. Nothing, literally nothing. But I think I know it's confusing, Kathy, here.

Because I remember hearing a bunch of shitty Helen Keller street jokes when I was a kid. And even when I was a kid. And even when I was a kid, I never thought that Helen Keller wrote them, but I think Kathy thinks that Helen was a myth, just like fodder for jokes. Like I wonder if she also thinks that Chuck Norris is a myth. I bet you, I bet you literally bought this book thinking it was going to be a list of Helen Keller jokes. And you know what?

Let me share a few of those jokes you know. I'm gonna preface this state. I know these are bad but these are the ones I heard of the playground as a kid and I think this is what Kathy got confused by. Why does Helen Keller use her left hand to play with herself so she can mow with the right hand? I know these are terrible. Why was Helen Keller's leg yellow? Because her dog was also blind. I don't know what kind of person it makes me do that when I actually do make me laugh. And how come Helen Keller can't have kids because she's dead? That one also made me laugh. I truly think that Kathy thought this book was going to be that.

You have to have this podcast ever reached as you please send in an angry email. I would love to read it so that our listeners can get the laughter from you that you were hoping to get from my key of life optimism, not even the title. We need to get in, that's gonna be comedic. All right, Helen teacher, now life partner, really, Anne Sullivan helps her write this book, not creatively, I don't think, but at Rand, Rand Aaron's, contact and publisher, you know, help get Helen's

autobiographical word down in the paper, et cetera. Helen started to give speaking engagements around this time. Think a motivational speaker, not comedian, and also a sister with that, and she made enough money. The two did, really, to my home in Renthem, Massachusetts. Renthem is about 15 miles southwest of Boston, in between Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. Very rural area back at the turn of the century. Still pretty rural. Around 12,000 people area back at the turn of the century. Still pretty rural. Around 12,000 people spread out over quite a large geographical area. In 1905, and now 39 years old gets married after several years of courting, working with

Keller on her autobiography, Helen turns 25 in 1905. Sullivan met John A. Macy, a Harvard University instructor, and Macy was helping edit the manuscript. And he falls in love with Sullivan. After refusing several marriage proposals from him, she finally accepts and the two are wed in 1905. Wikipedia says that N had a stroke and went fully blind in 1901. And then information is repeated on several other, you know, articles pulling, I think, from Wikipedia, but that didn't happen. She'd help Helen tour for years after 1901, help her in all kinds of ways. She'd be her primary caretaker for years and not possible. I don't think for the blind to be leading the blind in that way back at the dawn of the 20th century. I don't see it. Pun not intended. When I first wrote, I don't see it in my notes,

but maybe kind of intended because I did leave it in knowing how it sounds. Sullivan did let her marriage affect her, did not excuse me, let her marriage affect her life with Keller. She and her husband live with Keller and the Massachusetts farmhouse. The two women remained inseparable, with Sullivan still traveling with Keller on numerous lecture tours. On stage, she's helping relay Keller's words to the audience, as Keller never learned to speak, you know, clearly enough as we listened to, to be able to be widely understood without any assistance. Macy was also a great friend to Helen. Helen seemed happy living with both Anne and John Macy and John created a system for her

to be able to take regular walks amongst other things. And approximately 1911 for medical and cosmetic reasons, Helen has her eyes removed and replaced with glass prosthetic ones. That sounds so painful to me. I know she was under anesthetic, but damn. Glass eyes, not really eyes, by the way, but shells that cover the structure in the eye socket.

And just crazy that those are possible now and we're possible then. 1914, John and Anne's marriage crumbles. Unfortunately, while the two never will formally divorce, John and Anne will part ways 1914 and become estranged. Helen will stay with Anne. Also in 1914, Anne meets P Polly Thompson who we met in that

brief aside about Helen flying a plane but not fucking landing at solo Kathy. Mary Agnes Thompson known as Polly born in Glasgow, Scotland, February 20th, 1885, five years younger than Helen. In 1913, Thompson came to the US for a long visit to an uncle who worked as a shoe manufacturer and Swam Scott, Massachusetts, and she'll end up staying. Swam Scott just 15 miles up the coast from Boston in an area known as the North Shore. Poly Thompson's hairdresser told her that another client of hers was looking for someone to travel about the country with her and Ms. Keller on a lecture tour. Thompson was immediately interested in the position she loved to travel. Soon after Thompson met with Keller and Sullivan at the New England Conservatory of Music to interview, Sullivan was impressed by Thompson's clear, deliberate, cultivated voice and

attractive personality, good health, and great willingness. On October 20, 1914, Thompson joins the household as a secretary, eventually becoming Keller's companion and interpreter following Sullivan's later death. She'll work with Keller for 46 years, just three fewer than Sullivan. By 1921, she'll be helping Helen give speeches and public performances when Anne doesn't feel well. Nella Braddie, Henny close friends with Thompson, Keller and Sullivan would refer to these three women as the three musketeers.

And she'll later send interviews that Thompson's early years in household with Keller and Sullivan were not always easy Hennie explained that Thompson often felt lonely as she was not wielded into the unity that was formed of Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan Nonetheless, she was devoted to both women her devotion to teacher no less than her devotion to Helen wrote Hennie As Sullivan got older Thompson began to take on more roles in color's life She loved to travel with Keller and enjoy meeting famous people and luminaries while working with Keller. She had, according to Hennie, a deep respect for Helen's knowledge and devoted all aspects

of her life to Keller. Hennie noted her single, minded dedication. Despite the lonely beginning for Thompson, she and Keller will form a tremendous bond. They'll travel together all over the world, spend countless hours at home correspond or Responding to correspondences. They're also eventually settles into a mostly quiet life where they are happy to escape to the respective rooms after dinner to spend the rest of their evenings reading books. Thompson liked dignity and formality. She cared deeply. What the public thought I remembered that posterity was on the way. Perhaps with this posterity in mind, Thompson frequently frequently wrote letters to Hennie, where we

get all this information. Those letters, not only evidence of their own friendship, but also provide a record of what Thomson and Keller were doing at the time, where they were in the world, who they had dinner with, their thoughts on current events, etc. The three women eventually take up residence in Forest Hills, New York. Shortly before moving to New York in June of 1916, when she's 36, Keller meets and falls in love with a 29 year old journalist

who worked at the Boston Herald named Peter Fagan. Did not know about this romance. Sullivan had become very sick and had to take some time off for the sake of her health. So she was unable to act as Keller's secretary. Fagan will step in, as Polly is assisting Keller more closely. And he will communicate with Keller by finger spelling into her hand soon fingering leads to flirting, usually the other way around.

But for real things do turn romantic and they share a different kind of intimacy. Without telling anyone, the couple even makes plans to alope. Sadly, the family finds out about it, Keller's family, and her extended family vigorously squashed the relationship, right? Kim E. Nielsen in Helen Keller's selected writings. All felt adamantly that marriage and child bearing were not options for a deaf blind woman.

How fucking sad. Under pressure from her family without the support of her companion and even who was also against it, she apparently acquiesced to this belief, Nielsen writes, and Peter Fagan disappears from her life. Helen will write to Sullivan during this time, how alone and unprepared I often feel, especially when I wake in the night. What a fucking bummer, right? She was clearly capable of so much, but her family

didn't think that she was capable of being in a marriage or raising children, but why not? Peter wasn't blind or deaf. Helen had found people to help her. Could she not find anyone in addition to Peter to help raise their kids? Could he not find anyone else? Get the fuck out of here. Why was Anne against the marriage?

Does she feel threatened? Right? Cause all marriage didn't work out. I hope gauging by Helen's comment about waking up in the night and, you know, feeling lonely that these two at least slept together. Truly. What a fucking tragedy to have your sense of touch as heightened as Helen Keller's and not get to experience sex? Honestly, I hope she had orgasms that would give the average person a fucking heart attack or a stroke like mind blowing, window rattling, floor shaking, shit, hellu's

Suspina. I hope she drenched old Peter. And after they were done having sex, he wasn't able to lift himself off the bed. You know, he do so I fucking slip off onto the floor. Also in 1916, Helen donates $100, which is a lot of money then. To the National Association of the Advancement of Color People and WACP, then a young and very controversial

civil rights organization. She was also published in the NAACP's newspaper, The Crisis. She was additionally instrumental in the founding of the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, the nation's first agency to provide excuse me services to adult to her blind. She did so much advocacy and charitable work throughout her life. Back as a student at the Perkins School for the Blind at the Notman's in this earlier, Helen had initiated and ran fundraising campaigns to establish a kindergarten for the blind

and to pay for the education of Tommy Stringer, a poor boy from Pennsylvania who was also deafblind. As an adult, she lobbied for programs for the prevention of blindness, laws for the education and protection of the blind and deafblind, and state assisted programs to help people with disabilities with job training and job placement. In her later years, she'll travel to 39 different countries in an effort to persuade foreign governments around the world to establish schools for people who are blind and deaf moved by her message many went ahead and did just that. On occasion, Keller even officially represented the US government abroad. Excuse me. In 1948, she'll be sent to Japan as America's first goodwill

ambassador by General Douglas MacArthur. Her visit called attention to the plight of Japan's blind and disabled population. And unfortunately, while in Japan, Helen Keller will end up getting raped and estimated 4,500 times. Sorry, I will lay off that association eventually. I'll just be ridiculous. One more two, Pacific theater atrocities.

They're still pretty fresh in my mind. 1967, a team from Perkins School for the Blind will attend a groundbreaking ceremony at the Yokohama Christian School for the Blind in Japan. During a lifetime, color will also meet every US president becoming beginning with Grover Cleveland and ending with John F. Kennedy. 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson will award her the presidential medal of freedom, the highest

US civilian honor. But I'm going to head of myself. Let's back up. 1919. That year, a 90 minute feature film was made about Helen Keller's life, deliverance. Very different movie than the 1972 Thriller starring Bert Reynolds. No one is asking anyone to squeal like a pig or tell them to have a real party mouth in this movie. While using noted silent film anchors of the day,

this film also featured appearances by Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. Money was tight for the women at this time and they appeared in this movie partially for the paycheck. Following the movie, Helen and Anne complete several successful Vodville theater tours, right, her exposure is up. She's selling more tickets.

They share their story of triumph over tragedy. In 1921 when Helen is 41, her mother Kate dies at the age of 65. Helen's great-grand-niece Keller Johnson Thompson would write about how Helen learned the news of her mother's death. Two hours before Helen Keller, an intercheager and Sullivan Macy, were to appear on a Los Angeles stage. In November of 1921, Helen received a telegram from her sister, Mildred Keller Tyson, notifying her of the death of their mother, Kate Adams Keller. Helen was 41 years old and very close to her mother,

as her father, Captain Arthur H. Keller, had died suddenly when Helen was only 16 years old. Several years earlier, Kate Keller had purchased a Braille-type writer, so that she could write letters directly to her daughter Helen. This really strengthened Helen's appreciation of her mother. Kate Keller, apparently, felt her coming death in March of 1920. She had written to Helen of her love and had promised her daughter that if she were to die,

that they would see her in the world to come, that she would see her in the world to come. And that is actually incredibly sweet. I love that. After Kate Keller's death, Helen would write, would see her in the world to come. And that is actually incredibly sweet. I love that. After Kate Keller's death, Helen would write, if that dumb dirty bitch would just maybe wash her hands more often, maybe cover her fucking mouth when she coughed and sneeze, I'd have my sight in hearing right now. I wouldn't be quietly reading and writing books with Anne and Polly. I've been told I'm apparently hot as fuck. I'd be married, getting some sweet deep dick in every night, but you know, I guess she didn't beat me and shit, so my mom was sort of cool, some ways, I guess, and I'm sure

someday I might miss her, but not fucking today. Oh, no, Helen actually missed her mother dearly. She wrote, Helen was gorgeous, by the way, but she wrote, I had absolute faith that we should meet again in the land of eternal beauty, but oh, the dreary blank her going left in my life. Following her mother's death, she will continue to write and tour. In 1927, Keller's book, My Religion is Published, and that one is actually full of a bunch of jokes. Kathy would love it. Stuff like, how do you get Helen Keller to keep a secret?

Break her fingers. No, of course not. That's absurd. Keller considered this book her spiritual autobiography and wrote of her belief in a very open to other spiritual belief systems, version of Christianity. She wrote science, uh, she can't read. She wrote since his life, like his capital H cannot be less in one being than another or his love manifested less fully in one thing than another. His providence must needs be universal. and one thing than another, his providence must needs be universal. He has provided religion of some kind everywhere, and it does not matter to what race or creed anyone belongs if he is faithful to his ideals of right living.

I fucking love this. I interpret this as the religion doesn't matter. Just don't be a dick, not being a dick, a lot more important than subscribing to whatever religion you happen to claim or whatever church you happen to go to. Just trying to be a good person. A quote from the book that I really like is, I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the color and fragrance of a flower.

The light in my darkness, the voice in my silence. Once I knew the depth where no hope was and darkness lay on the face of all things, then love came and set my soul free. What a writer. Two years later, 1929, Keller publishes midstream my later life. Basically a sequel to her first autobiography where she describes her friendships, experiences, and worked for the blind in the 25 years following her studies at Radcliffe College. Meanwhile, her longtime friend and teacher and business partner and constant companion Anne Sullivan,

her health is sadly failing. The scars caused by her childhood bouts with Tricoma and those several botched surgeries when she was staying in hell at Tuxbury, damaged her eyes and ways that now have resurfaced and are given her more trouble. And she ends up losing more of a side again and by 1930 is completely blind. Anne has to learn to lean more on poly now for her travels and her work and health will continue to deteriorate over the next several years chronic pain and a right

I will sadly do it being a completely removed For several summers in a row Sullivan will visit Scotland hoping the climate there Some rest will be able to restore some of her strength and vitality, but it will not Sullivan will die of a blood clot on October 20, 1936 at her home in Forest Hills, New York. She had fallen into a coma five days earlier. Her ashes were placed in the at the National Cathedral, not in at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, a distinct honor. As it is also the final resting place of President Woodrow Wilson and other distinguished individuals at her funeral, Bishop James E. Freeman said,

and the bishop, quite a writer as well. Among the great teachers of all time, she occupies a commanding and conspicuous place. The touch of her hand did more than illuminate the pathway of a clouded mind. It literally emancipated the soul. Yes, she died while Helen was holding her hand. Pam, Helen while obviously obviously incredibly sad does not let

Anzda slow her down with it comes a touring and writing. She has an indomitable spirit and will and keeps pushing forward to voting most of her energy to improving the lives of blind people around the world. Helen Keller, strong as fuck. And 1938, Keller meets first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who will remain a friend for many years. 1939, she'll move to a property called Arcane Ridge in East and Connecticut, where she will live with the rest of her life. During World War II, Keller will visit wounded and blinded war veterans in military hospitals,

providing them with support and encouragement to fucking saint. 1946, following the war, as I mentioned before, she begins a series of world tours that take her to 35 countries in 11 years, some behalf of people with disabilities inspiring many governments to establish schools for students who are both blind and deaf. 1948 Keller returns to Japan visiting over 30 cities there in a whirlwind tour her civil diplomacy diplomacy on this trip is credited with improving US and Japanese relations at the end of world war II. But again, as I mentioned before, you know what a price you paid. 4,500 times. Holy shit.

1954. Ivy Green, the house where Helen Keller was born as restored becomes a national historic landmark. The following year in 1955, with the age of 75, Helen Keller wins an Academy Award. Windsor Oscar for playing Robin in the very first Batman movie,

even did Oliver Own her own stunts Sorry, the thought of that just really makes me laugh. It's so absurd She does win an Oscar she wins one for Helen Keller in her story documentary about her life Are you still trying to picture Helen in some tight-ass tights like 1950 superhero sidekick costume I am 1955 Keller's book teacher and Sullivan Macy has published a biography on her incredible mentor and companion and El Majd to their relationship really. The next year in 1956, the miracle worker debuts on Broadway with Patty Duke as Helen Keller and Ann Bancroft as Anne Sullivan, a three act play written by William Gibson based on, you know, Keller's 1903 autobiography, The Story of My Life.

It's a huge hit introduces Helen's story to a new generation of people. On March 21, 1960, the second of three musketeers, Polly Thompson dies in a hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut after a very long battle with an unnamed illness. She had been admitted to that hospital months earlier on December 1, 1959. She's cremated and her ashes placed at the Washington National Cathedral, next to the ashes of Anne Sullivan's. Love that. Her obituary said that Polly's talking fingers, working at a rate of 85 words a minute, tapping out letters and Helen Keller's palm. Damn. It came Helen's eyes and ears as the two traveled the world to encourage and teach the blind in the handicapped. Despite this massive loss in her life, Helen still remains incredibly positive, so optimistic.

She was interviewed a few months later for an article in the New York Times published on June 26, 1960. She said, or this article said, the journalist wrote, Recently, she was asked if hers had been a happy life. I am happy, she replied, I believe that if we make up our minds to do something great, we can accomplish it. By something great she meant, as she she said all things that benefit others. She looks ahead with hopefulness even though she is saddened as she thinks of the world's prejudices

of its poverty and above all of the threats of war. At 80 the energy of her spirit and even her body remains she has retained much of the beauty she had as a young girl. Her blue eyes look out at the world smilingly almost as though they were sighting them. Her gestures are never fumbling, she has a grace of motion, just as she has seemingly a sense of music in the word she writes. Rhythm is obviously a part of her being, even though she cannot hear, she can catch with her sensitive fingers, some of the vibrations of a musical instrument, and from this she takes pleasure.

Her serenity may be due in part to subtle enjoyments and perceptions of which those of us who see and hear are hardly aware. She looks forward at 80 years of age to more work for the blind. She talks to the blind as might a seeing person. It almost seems as though she might have chosen to be blind and deaf herself, if she had known that this would best enable her to help others. In spite of her grief at Paulie Thompson's death, Helen Keller remains essentially a cheerful person.

She likes to go shopping for a new dress. That is fucking adorable. She likes to see her friends and have them come to see her. She does not fear death, and she is perfectly certain that teacher, and she always calls Anne Sullivan, Paulie Thompson and others will be waiting for her when she steps through the last door. Damn! That passage.

Uh, fuck my allergies up a door. Damn, that passage, fuck my allergies up a bit. Dang, it gave me a gun now. 80 years old, she's still looking forward, not back. Right, I mean, I'm reflecting, but not like focused on the past. She's excited about life going forward, about how much she can still do

to help make the world a better place for others. She's excited to be reunited with her friends in some world beyond this one. Man, hail, fucking Imra. Following year 1961, now missing both of her long-term friends and primary translators to the outside world for her, Helen suffers a series of strokes and retires from public appearances.

But still writes, still advocates for the blind, still finds happiness and fulfillment. On July 28th, 1962, the film version of the Miracle Worker, debut now in theaters. This film, instant critical success and was a moderate commercial success when it came out became more successful later. That regard. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Director for Arthur Penn and one two awards, Best Actress for Anne Bancroft, Best Supporting Actress for

Patty Duke, the latter of whom at age 16 becomes the youngest competitive Oscar winner at the time. The miracle worker currently holds the youngest competitive Oscar winner at the time. The miracle worker currently holds a 96% approval score from the aggregator site, Rotten Tomatoes. In 2006, it would rank at number 15 for the American Film Institute's list of the most inspiring American films of the past 100 years. Number one on that list was 1987's predator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and the incomparable Jesse the body Ventura. No, predator was robbed. Didn't even crack the top 100. Number one was 1946 is it's a wonderful life starring James Stewart and Donna Reed.

June 1st 1968, a few weeks before her 88th birthday, Helen Keller now dies peacefully in her sleep at Arcane Ridge. And she, according to all accounts, was happy in the last years of her life. She wrote in a lot of years of her life, my life has been happy because I've had wonderful friends and plenty of interesting work to do. I seldom think about my limitations and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times, but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.

The wind passes and the flowers are content. And the flowers are content. Even though I'm happily married, I kind of want to go back into a time machine and a lope with Helen Keller. Her ashes were buried at the Washington National Cathedral next to her constant companions, and Sullivan and Polytoms, and all three of them, right?

There are remains mixed together. The three musketeers complete again. And the third musketeers complete again. And the third musketeer after embodying continual inspiration for eight decades could now rest. And I would like to imagine now we'll have whatever senses if any that all of us have. When we cross over from this life to whatever life's lie beyond it. And with that, let's hop out of this time suck timeline. Good job, soldier. You made it back. Barely. Hellen, mother fucking-calor, what a life!

And what a life and Sullivan also lived. And Poly Thompson, I wish we knew more about her. I find what we know of her story to be so touching as well. And I mean the predator, you know, what a fucking incredible movie. No Academy Award nominations. What? It launched a franchise. But seriously, well actually I seriously do love the predator, but seriously for this last episode of 2022, I find Helen spirit so inspiring her story, you know. It would have been so easy for her to give up. I don't know that anyone would have blamed her for giving up or at least,

uh, you know, kind of half given up and let a small life afraid to interact with the larger world around her that she can either see nor hear, but she didn't. She kept pushing forward. She was helped by so many in her quest. She then paid it forward, you know, helped so many others with her advocacy and philanthropy. And I have so many thoughts about all this. One thought is, what a great reminder her story is to give And I have so many thoughts about all this.

One thought is, what a great reminder her story is to give to others when you can, how you can. You know, what other Helen Keller's are out there who just need a little help to blossom into the incredible person they're capable of becoming. And Sullivan didn't have money to give Helen, she gave her life in a way. And look with the two of them together,

we're able to accomplish. And then Paulie did the same thing and kept Helen's amazing work from faltering kept them moving forward took all three For Helen's story to be as amazing as it was starring role supporting roles all important roles Standard oil tycoon Henry Huddleston Rogers his wife Abby they gave their money to pay for a lot of Helen's education It allowed her to you know, uh fuel her gifts, know, and hand them share her wonderful insights and talents with the world didn't have to but they did good on them. Reminds me how important it is for us to keep giving here, bad magic for as long as we

can. I am so happy thanks to the most dedicated fans of this show to our patrons, you know, and patrons of the other current bad magic, bad magic production show, scared to death, that we've been able to give money to those in need. We, as in all of our Patreon supporters, we have done it together. Over $547,000 in counting since May of 2018, including 13,800 to the

Ocular Melanoma Foundation, resource for eye cancer research, saving lives, saving sites, including $15,029 to guide dogs for the blind, transforming the lives of individuals with visual impairments, maybe with help, you know, or will help in some small ways, someone similarly inspiring his talent. And on top of that, $547,000 will be introducing $3,000, $5,000 scholarships in 2023.

Who knows what kind of minds will help and what they'll be able to do. Had Helen not been helped by Anne Sullivan. Now, in others, would she have accomplished a fraction of what she did? I highly doubt it. Sometimes people great people and or great organizations, they need a little help so they can do amazing things. And now I have another thought. I'm so inspired by Helen's attitude, her will, her hunger for life, even when both of

her longtime companions, companions that were so much more important to her in certain ways than they would be to almost anyone else because they were her links to the rest of the fucking earth, as far as communication really, when they died, her spirit still was not broken. She just never quit. Right, when her chance of romance left her life, still wasn't broken. After a series of strokes in her 70s So alone compared to most of us still living in silence and darkness complete silence and darkness She still kept looking forward kept folk you know stayed focused on the positive She still remembered as she wrote that the wind passes and then the flowers are content

I'm really gonna try and remember all this I headed to 2023 right any one of us can choose to focus on what we do not have in Helen's case sight and hearing or choose to focus on what we do not have in Helen's case sight and hearing Or we can focus on what we do have Purpose interesting work and wonderful friends again in Helen's case and she made that more than enough and most of us I bet we can make what we have right now more than enough right? We can still want more not saying we shouldn't But we can also be pretty happy with what we do have. And I'm also not saying, thinking about this, like that in this way is gonna magically make

your fucking problems go away. This attitude is not gonna miraculously pay your rent or heal you if you're sick or bring back to life someone you're heart-saken for, but it will improve your life, at least a little, and that is important. Won't move that fucking meter straight to all your dreams coming true.

It's not get crazy, but it will take from wherever it happens to be and take it up, maybe a little, maybe a lot. I've met people who have found happiness despite chronic pain, despite poverty, despite so much tragedy, and they still find moments of joy. And, you know, we can't all do that. The feeling of the sun in your face

when it breaks through the clouds, that's free. It's amazing. The sound of a beautiful song, free and amazing. The smell of a fresh bread, followed by the wonderful taste, right? Smell free. The taste close to free, for sure amazing. Your favorite memories floating out. People can't get in your mind and make those memories go away, you know, for the overwhelmingly

most part. I think if we can train our minds to focus more on the good shit in life, less on all the pain and loss and hurt and darkness, that's always going to be around as the various degrees. It will forever, to be around as the various degrees. It will forever, you know, and always exist, but so will beauty and love and compassion and empathy and grace. If we can train our minds, I and the stair more towards that light than the darkness, more joy is going to follow.

Life will be better to some degree than if we don't do that. And I am for sure saying this to myself as much as I'm saying to anyone else, right? Having that kind of perspective will bring us joy and happiness, you know, more than not having it. And that makes it worth it. You know, I bagged on the secret last week, and I do hate it. A positive attitude is not gonna be able to whisk you out of being

chopped up by a monster like Dr. Mangala because you're a Jewish twin. You know, it's the sea, what's inside of you. That's insane. That's taking a decent message way too far in order to sell magic pill mentality bullshit books and DVDs Yes, sometimes you just fucked, but I do think those times are statistically very rare I didn't even Victor Franklis we learned in another inspirational episode either last year the year before you know

Even in the fucking crazy concentration camp environment still found joy and hope and happiness I do think most of the time a great attitude and perspective will just improve your life and often dramatically. And that thought brings me up into the year end recap for bad magic for 2022. Our newest employer, employer, employee Tyler C. I hired him, you know, mainly sought him out mainly because of, well, his penis size. We needed a new, really small penis here in the suck dungeon. And word on the street was that he had one of those. No, no, character. We needed some strong character. We needed to change the studio culture.

That summer, this past summer, move in a different direction. And I was truly looking for the right kind of character. And don't get me wrong. Tyler has a great skill set, technical skills. More familiar than any of us here with organizational software, character. And don't get me wrong. Titer has a great skill set, technical skills. More familiar than any of us here with organizational software, more familiar with us than cinematography, lighting, photos. He's worked on social media in a more professional manner than we have. I knew he had a background in podcasting and was, you know, at least familiar with editing and

audio. I listened to his TEDx talk and knew he was a very solid speaker, Duke can hold your attention and I knew he could work as a, you know, on-air personality. I knew he cares about community based on the focus of his TEDx talk. He's a uniter. Plenty of skill sets. I could go on. But these skills, they were not the main reason I was hoping

that he would work with us. We could have hired someone with much more experience as an audio engineer, someone who could do more out-of-the-gate with sound design, audio troubleshooting. But Tyler has this almost intangible quality to him, a certain attitude and energy. I felt it when I first met him, the way he carries himself. He's just, he's fucking solid, you know, through and through. At least I sure think he is.

After this year, if I'm wrong about that, I have zero radar when it comes to judging character. But seriously, he brings just this about that, I have zero radar when it comes to judging character. But seriously, he brings just this presence of, let's fucking go. Let's do some great shit. Let's have some fun. Let's be entertaining and make the world better while we're doing it. Like he embodies what I want bad magic to be. He makes me want to be at my best, right?

Not just as an entertainer, but just as a meat sack, as a human being. To care about the content and about the community. To be a good example of being a good person, The extra tech stuff. He'll learn all that because he has a kick ass work ethic, a curious intelligent mind and a lot of pride, you know, he hates to mess shit up. He's similar to both Logan and I in that respect. Ed and Lindsey and actually pretty much everybody works for us now. And he has the art warlock to lean on right to two of them. Gotta say, pretty adorable bromance. He owns his mistakes when he makes him doesn't hide shit tells us how he feels a lot of integrity, right? His spirit, his desire

and passion and presence. That is what drew me towards a suck ranger. And based on emails and DMs over the years, I know that's what many of you seem to like about me that you feel similarly in some ways, you know, about me. And I'm honored and I do take that seriously much like joke around, right? You're not just here for the words many of you I share and the stories I tell and the jokes are right. I'm aware of that. Many of you also seem to be here for, you know,

the spirit, the energy, the feeling you get from the show, the community around it. Maybe it gives you the same feeling, although I know not as dramatic and not as much as Helen's story gives me a feeling of like, yes, thanks for doing something good for embodying something good in addition to also putting out content that you like. Helen actually put out a lot of content right outside of what she overcame.

She was just, I feel objectively a very eloquent writer. There's a lot of good philanthropic work, but also outside of her lack of sight and hearing and what she overcame, the attitude she embodied and also wrote about meant that it just inspires me. Inspired me enough to, you know, give a bunch of unsolicited advice here. Circling back to why I brought up Tyler, I thought a lot about character and attitude this past year. And let me back up to share why I thought about it to the beginning of the year. 22 started off great for its here work wisewise judging by most, you know, just numerical metrics.

Time sucks, scared of death is we dumb. All three shows were growing, getting more downloads, you know, some more than others. We were getting more ads, more patrons, great feedback from many of you fans. And all of that was fantastic. I was touring again after kicking things back off in late 2021, writing new standup, selling more tickets to shows, a lot more in some places, very thankful for that. But also, I was burning out behind the scenes for a few reasons. One was, and this will all circle back to character here, things were tense at home with one of the kids. We turned on the end just to be some normal teenage stuff. My God.

Oh, good now. But Lindsay and I did not understand that when we were going through the emotional ringer. And for the first time ever, I really thought I was just failing as a father. And that shit was killing me, right? It hit me hard. I couldn't help but think that I've been working too much,

that I'd missed too much, that caused the, you know, and that all caused the now less than ideal relationship that I had with one of my kids. And I went into counseling over it. They were in counseling, Lindsey was upset, she was in counseling, it was just fucking messy and sad. Probably I tried to fix, but I didn't know how I couldn't just hard work my way through it. And I felt pretty lost in that sense. Part of my motivation to work so hard ironically is to be a good dad, to provide. And now I felt like that in a sense was, I know I'm being dramatic or I was dramatic at the time, I felt like it was all for nothing.

You know, I just take my relationship with my kids, you know, very seriously, they mean the world to me. And luckily with Lindsey's help, such a great partner and parent, I grew from this experience as a dad. I ate some humble pie, realized I had to change my ways in some respects, go to my kid instead of feel like they needed to come to me, change my parenting style, you know, own some shit, grow. I did change, I moved towards my kid

in communication ways, met them in the middle, and I ended up working out early in the year. Now we have the best relationship ever. I'm so fucking fortunate. By the end of March, we were golden again. Thank God. But at the office, things were not golden to kick the year off, before all the drama the summer went down. So now here are some dirt, not sharing it to try I'm a line anyone truly, but my brand who I am is a person is built a lot on transparency. And I think there's lessons for us all to learn with this story, just like there's lessons, you know, to be learned from, you know, stories like Helen's story, learn from others mistakes in some stories, including mine.

So maybe you can avoid them in your own life. I think that's a good way to help each other. I think so. Is we done? Despite being so much fun, despite being a blast, most days to record so many laughs on air, it was also behind the scenes, you know,

losing money and I was just overall burnt to fuck out. Still working way too many hours, fun job, but way too many hours. And short-changing, the other two shows that have changed my life, not smart business or life-wise, short-changing time with my family. And I had an employee in a co-host who frankly, and this is just my perspective, but also Lindsay's, didn't seem to give a fuck how burnout I was, didn't seem to actually care, again, my opinion here, how my relationships were with anyone else, right? Wouldn't accept that I needed to cut back.

That the obvious thing I needed to do was cut the show that wasn't making money and let this person go on do a different show. That's what they wanted. They wanted to spend extra time. Fine. And this person not to go into details. It became very obvious to me that they didn't want to help me build up bad magic productions, which was I hired them to do.

They wanted the productions to be about them, right? Wanted to make all this his and I felt and still feel that that was a frankly fucking shitty and weaselie way to approach shit. You know, and stand up if you're, if you're headlining the last person you want to work with is someone who's constantly trying to upstage you and openers get fired all the time for doing exactly that. I have been the opener literally thousands of times. And if a headliner, when they would bring me on tour, I always knew is my job to set them

up for success. It's like being that part of the team. It's a support role. They call it a support act. That's the gig. If you don't want that gig, well, then you strike out on your own and you see what you can do for yourself, right? What you don't do is essentially sabotage the person who's helping your career.

Someone who doesn't have to do that. And now that's the vibe I was consistently feeling in my own space, in my own office. And things got ugly. You seem to only see what me continue to sacrifice my time, of which I truly had so little was going to do for his career. And looking back again, I felt, feel, it was always about him. And a part of me knew that, but kept trying to rationalize it because, he was a great audio engineer,

a very talented, funny person. I had my counselor tell me though, that I didn't know him shit, dropped the extra show, because it's burning you out, right? I didn't know, co-host, my time. He was my employee, not someone that I was working for, but I thought he deserved a chance because he had worked so hard for me. I didn't know that actually was

not true. Kind of literally fucking around when I thought he was working so hard. So the favor I thought I owed the foundation, I thought that favor was built on was total bullshit. And I wouldn't have voted to him otherwise. So I make this big pie chart. It's very started this year to explain and show rationally how the revenue didn't justify the time away from the family, et cetera, wasn't personal. It's just business. Didn't need to do that, but wanted to.

Wanted to be the good person. And then when this is revealed, person doesn't seem to care. And in my opinion, just kind of guilt trips a shit out of me. Manipulates me. Get the strong feeling again that they think I owe them something. And that energy being around it day after day as a creative person is so fucking draining. When you're already tired, but you end up working harder and longer to do something for

someone that you've already given the best job of their life, and they don't seem to be grateful for it. It was very stupid of me looking back to put up with that. This is someone who's paid, we had more than doubled from their previous job over you know, over the year. Did not have to do that. And it didn't feel like it was enough ever. It was never enough. Instead of having someone to help me with my content, now I got someone just fucking drain in my energy all the time. And it started to feel parasitical. And to stay up, beat and pause and be funny week after week, it gets a lot harder to do that. If you're inviting too much toxicity into your life, if you

surround yourself with, you know, that kind of energy, it'll suck the wind out of your sale eventually and I was aware of that. But everything ended, like it did, or excuse me, before everything ended like it did, I did think of firing this person for a couple behind the scenes moments. Looking back, I should have. Talk about not having good energy, not having the right attitude, not having the right character. Lindsey and I were dealing with a lot of entitlements in my opinion again, jealousy and bitterness,

instead of gratitude. And that shit was again, wearing us down where we didn't even want to work in our own office most days and started to hate this beautiful thing. I love so much that we have here. And then in the midst of all this, we had another dramatic behind the scenes situation that led me to part ways with a different employee, you know, fuck scrambling now a year earlier, I feel like I've been such a great dad, such a great boss.

Now I feel like I'm a shit dad and a shit boss. And then right when I thought after one person moved on and we scrambled a rearrange workflow to accommodate their absence, someone who I do think is a great person who just needed to go work out and do their own thing. Well, I had some big serious talks with the guy who remained, thought that maybe we resolved everything, maybe we could move past some shit, push forward, focus on love and the content that so many you love here that's improved my life in so many ways, major ways, and then all the fucking drama broke open this past summer that I won't go over again to the tale to

avoid further embarrassing some really great people. It was drama that led to after parting ways with one full time employee. Now having to fire our most valuable employee at the time when it came to audio quality and delivery, the backbone of what we do here, our bread and butter, someone who did a bunch of other things, did them well, even if it was with an attitude that, privately, I complained about a lot to Lizzie, and it was a scary time.

We worried about how all this would look to the audience, how it might destroy the business. I was so fucking angry about it too, mad that for the better part of the year, I've been pulling my hair out, trying to figure out why two people who I'd give and create jobs to opportunities to couldn't get their shit together week after week, a couple years back, right? Month after month. Work that ended up on my plate, almost, you know, really broke me when I was the most tired of ever been in my life. You know, work that was taking

me away from my family, making the content that makes his business work. And also, I felt stupid, stupid for not putting work. And also I felt stupid. Stupid for not putting together clues, when I judge others for doing the same thing, Julie Violizer, it was embarrassing. I felt stupid for giving a third employee, or involved in all this, chance after chance, and not being fired for not doing their job,

just in an absurd way, looking back, keeping them on because we thought they were a great person, then finding out they didn't give a shit about us either in my opinion. Three toxic energies have been wearing down on us too for, you know, a little while, months, one day after day for years. And so once we parted ways with all this shit,

once we kind of clean house, going forward, Lindsay and I took them on with the pause and reflect what the fuck have we been doing? Are we just idiots? Are we terrible business owners? And then it's Helen Keller wrote, while we paused, the winds passed. And the flowers were content.

And I thought about how I still had Lindsey, loved my life, still had you fans. They've given me so much of an incredible life. Most of you anyway, you know, still had the kids. You know, it was in a good spot with the kids. Thank God, I had a job I loved, and had Logan, the fucking art warlock. And I felt so grateful, the most grateful for all this

that I've ever felt. And Logan really showed his incredible character when out of the shadow, you know, out of the shadow of who had left, he now thrives. Steps up big time, learns so much, so fast, saves our asses. And the three of us got so much shit down in the office and really bonded Relationship deepen a relationship that had previously been a little bit poison by a lot of unnecessary toxic shit talking behind the scenes

I didn't know about that I'm you while somebody did somebody didn't somebody definitely knew about that I'm glad not to be around anymore and it was something like this dark cloud a cloud I didn't even realize was so dark have been lifted and I'm like, oh man, this, this feels fucking great. I didn't know how sunny you could be here. Logan kept shit going, holding down the fort so Lindsey and I could take a summer vacation with the kids, recharge, helped with the process to hire Tyler. I wanted to make sure Lindsey and Logan loved him too. It was going to be the four of us, spending a lot of time together in a small space and

they saw what I saw. And the mind melt between Logan and Tyler began and it was so cool to watch. We come back from vacation, get ready for summer camp, we're all working so well together. It quickly felt like it was the best that it had ever been over here. Just all based on a new positive office culture,

right, a collective attitude. No egos getting the way of anything, no jealousy, no bitterness. I thought I was picking up on it. I do pick out, I don't feel any of that anymore, no trying to bend anyone to what we're doing instead of like, you know, worrying about bending to them and what's best for them, et cetera.

And it was, and it is fucking beautiful. Getting past all the frankly, kind of, you know, betrayal of being taken advantage of for months by somebody who constantly said they were looking out for me, getting away from a bad energy, Lindsey was, and I were aware of, but didn't really know why in moments, not having to push that feeling down

to put out shows every week, replacing ungratefulness with gratefulness was huge. Then we had summer camp. What a magical experience. Getting the meat over 500 of you in such a great way, sharing so many cool camp moments that we can hold on to for the rest of our lives. Never been a huge karaoke guy.

That icebreaker karaoke was a fucking blast. Someone's knocking on the door. Somebody's ringing the bell. You'll know that if you're there. Location in the lake is so gorgeous, right? Like a postcard, water activities area, the themes bar, so fun, the food trucks, live music, the live scared of death, the state of the suck,

all so special. But we also had another lesson to learn. Behind the scenes, right after all this other drama. Behind the scenes, we had chosen to work with a planner, a good friend recommended, and we had reservations about work with this person, concerns going in. I was against work with them from the beginning,

but I relented, didn't fully trust my gut again. Rationalized the decision in a sense that it's a, you know, it with them from the beginning, but I relented, didn't fully trust my gut again, rationalize the decision in the sense that it's, you know, it's a small area, not a lot of people to choose from to do this job, and we love the person who recommended them. So I ignored my gut, we agreed to work with them, just like I ignored my gut in a variety of ways for too long with the main person who worked for us, you know.

And there are so many things I would love to share about this camp behind the scenes, but legal reasons prohibit me from probably, probably making it a smart decision to do so. I'll just say that behind the scenes, it was just an nightmare. I can handle people making mistakes. Everyone does. I can handle arguments, heated moments. That shit happens with events.

What I can't handle is someone working on our behalf being just cruel, especially being cruel to our staff, to my wife, condescending, disrespectful to numerous people on our behalf being just cruel, especially being cruel to our staff, to my wife, condescending, disrespectful to numerous people on our behalf who voiced exactly that to us during and following the event. This person, you know, ended up waking the fucking bear. And some of our staff ended up in literal tears and I for sure felt that they were responsible and I had some very strong words with them and their relationship was over. We permanently damaged a good friendship over the fallout behind the scenes. Might have lost it,

but we also in the end got one more toxic person out of our lives and learned so much. Surround yourself whenever possible with the best fucking character you can. People who have humility, but also pride in regards to how they hold themselves. Strong work ethic, honor, compassion. Going forward, I'm sure it'll be humbled so many more times.

And I'll have so many more lessons to learn. That's just life. But now today, honestly thankful that I learned a lot of these lessons in this past year and that were through it. So glad we never missed an episode, despite all the behind the scenes drama. More than we've had by far in any one calendar year. We made several behind the scenes, new hires.

Now I can honestly say that I have zero bad feelings of my gut about anyone we work with. Is everything perfect? No, that's not how life works. But right now things here in the good old sucked dungeon are the best they have ever been. Let's fucking go, hail Nimrod. I've been loving working on both time

so I can scare to death lately. I haven't had more fun on stage stand-up wise these past few months and I've ever had before. Despite being sick with who knows fucking what for a couple weeks and then the flu about five six weeks altogether and not getting ahead on content at all. I'm actually feeling the most recharged I felt in a long time. Surrounded by good positive energy, good character, it's so important, feels like human sunshine around you. What if Helen Keller had not had and sunshine or polys? What if she'd been surrounded by callous, selfish assholes?

That shit would have fucking affected her so much. Mine had broken her. Had she not been nurtured, her gifts would have rotted on the vine. Think about this in your own life. Cut toxic people to fuck out. You will not regret it. Sooner the better, replace them with solid meat sacks.

Replace them with people who have your best interests of heart and see the difference it makes. Right? I'm back to fucking love and what we do. Just need a people who didn't suck the fucking fun out of me, you know, to get there. Let's get real positive now. I get to learn cool shit, tell interesting stories, tell weird jokes, share horror stories, so much of my favorite stuff and do it for a living, because you guys listen.

I love the weekly challenge of trying to figure out a new topic for time suck, especially to vote it in once. I love working with Sophie and Olivia on the research and curating horror stories. Man, Sophie, she started volunteering with us right out of high school. And then to start this year, she moved to full time after graduating college and she has grown so much.

I am so proud of her. She has a wonderfully curious analytical and critical mind, such a good person consistently clever, sency humor great instinct for horror I'm still getting to know Olivia, but she is fantastic so organized like Sophie a very clean precise researcher and writer Handles direction so well no real ego that way also can research and shape good horror stories lucky to have them both Also lucky to have been able to give to the following charities. For the December giving tree, 37,533 dollars raised to help make sure 53 families, 125 total kids are going to have a magical holiday season right fucking now, right? We gave 15,228 to the United Heroes League to keep military kids healthy and active through

sports, guide dogs for the blinds. I mentioned got $15,029. Kids rock cancer got $16,640 rest in peace, Jeff Burton. You fucking mountain of a man. Boy scout camp eastern side of our wet hot bad magic summer camp got $15,400 in camp upgrades. The national compassion fund charity that helps the victims of mass tragedies got 14,697 bucks. The rainbow railroad global nonprofit helping persecuted LGTB QIA, uh, I plus people worldwide got 14,795 dollars.

The Halo dental network got 14,300. Thanks for a buddy and kick ass, do Joe Domeo for pointing us towards them. Uh, lifting hands international supporting refugees Ukrainian refugees, got 14,000. New Orleans community fridges, got 13,900. Love you, Nola. SEO sponsors for educational opportunity, got 13,600 bucks, right? Yay education, so important.

Love thy neighbor, got $16,000 to help the homeless. He'll fucking them rot and he'll lose a fena and we learned so much in 2022. Talk about episodes, ticked off the year, learned about therod and HelluSofina, and we learned so much in 2022. Talk about episode. Ticked off the year, learned about the history of the world's oldest profession, prostitution. Right? Then we went straight, cult, cult, cult, with the O'Nida community cult, learned some Celtic mythology next, holy fuck, and mush mouth, what a rough one, but a fun one.

We revisited the murder of Lacey Peterson. I still think that Jerry fucked over Scott. Went over so many head wounds, so many head wounds with the Genesee River Killer Arthur Shockross. Why was he ever released after killing two kids? The 1980 New Mexico, right, prison riot episode. That was a great one. We went, that was one of my favorite episodes we have ever done, went full purge in that one. We talked about how it kind of really sucks to be Amish. There is no need to live like that. Stop choosing a collection of rules created by fatlable men over your own kids, Amish families. And guy doesn't give a fuck what kind of hat you wear.

Come on. There's no way. We didn't learn much at all about why the 2017 Las Vegas shooting happens. Stephen Patic was a cunt, but we already knew that. Who really knows why he snapped. Then he was Betty White Power. Damn, I love some Betty White. Maybe my favorite uplifting episode. We got sci-fi with the Raylions and cult, cult, cult. Learned that Rial, a Claude, did not have some space porn adventure like he claimed. No fucking way. That failed race car driver still making UFO lies to support himself.

Uh, milk at him, I should say. Uh, we met Dr. Kavorkin if you're suffering and of sound mind and you really want to die, why should I want to get in your way? It's your life. Choose how to live it. Choose how to end it. Uh, finally stuck to local serial killer Robert Yates, even a boring tool of a man can be a vicious serial killer as he proved.

Uh, we met another killer I felt killer I felt sorry for the following week. Amish man Edward Gingrich. You cannot chiropractic away mental illness, pulling on toes, gulping down black strap molasses does not treat paranoid schizophrenia. Next week we talk about the CIA doing shady shit in Southeast Asia, whether or not the CIA does shady shit. There's no debate. It does. They do. But does the shady shit they do prevent shady your shit from occurring and does that justify it? We spent two weeks with Mr. Epstein,

really cool guy. Got real wrote it. No, terrible example of someone using wells and privilege to hurt kids over and over again. Dude was for sure a monster for sure had friends in high places, aka the US government that helped him and what seems like illegal ways over and over to avoid incarceration. Did he have dirt on people in positions of power here in the US? Other pedos and all like the hood? I sure think he did. Did he kill himself or was he murdered? I'm still not sure.

But I think a lot of people had a lot of incentive to kill him with a very least. Now we got to know Putin the next week. Russia's strongest pony boy. KGB mastermind What a megalomaniac ol fuck face. It'll be great to see him die one of these days. Fuck that tyrant forever. Then there was a dating game killer Rodney Alkala. Dan that dude was sexually sadistic and Holy Hell was Dana dip shit crap of the worst eyewitness in any serial killers trial ever. Still blown away by the heroism of Monique Hoyt, 15 year old girl pretending it was her fault, the Rodney Rape, so we take it easy on her and let her live and it worked and she escaped. Right after that, we went

full Holocaust for two weeks. Fuck Holocaust deniers. If you don't think the Holocaust happened, you are either stupid, ignorant or both. There's no other option. And then there was the Bhagwan Sri Arangneesh cult, cult, cult, cult, took over an Oregon town, tried to take over the whole damn county. And then Sheila misses tough titties herself. One of my favorite episodes, speaking of tough titties, the Ripper crew is next. Satanic panic came to life in Chicago. When nipples get tender just thinking about those assholes. And then the space cowboy came to town. Bass Reeves on acid.

The day I forgot how to whistle. The day I took too much acid again. Following Bass Reeves' bad ass story, it was fun to tell the next day after quite a night at home. We went full Papa John's. Better chair, needless tragedy, Papa DC snipers Still feel bad for Lee Boyd Malvo kid didn't have a chance

Then cannibalism the 1972 and these flight disaster Konga Konga Konga the play in a dancing Konga some more guys just flew out and other wing broke up But we still have enough to fuck up. Oh, good boy. Yeah, let's fucking go Then we got mysterious with mysterious disappearances very fun one And then it was Chris Hansen and Peter Nygarde the Canadian Epstein, Hey, you'll Memorand. That 81 year old chronic kidfucker still in still in prison waiting various trials. Then Edward Snowden is he a traitor? Yes, technically.

Is he also a courageous hero? Yes, I think he is. I think he sacrificed a lot to expose how much the US government illegally spies on its own citizens for me, that episode, a great eye opener really made me think. Then it was back to serial killerville with the sex slave murders, episode 306, the one that will live in infamy,

the one when the summer sucked, dungeon drama became public knowledge. Glad we're past that now, so glad. I almost want to find my old right hand man and thank him for giving me a perspective. Help me appreciate what people trying to help bad magic more than themselves look like. Also, that episode got overshadowed by that shit.

Interesting chance to explore again in that episode, how the courts oftentimes let evil women present themselves as victims rather than as a accomplices. Sometimes sexism works in some women's favors. Not often. Almost always hurts women tremendously, but every blue moon, someone like Charlene Galego benefits, or gay ego.

I can't remember. The following week, Crock Hunter time, love, Steve Irwin, and also Quacos, literally launching joeys out of their pouches, then escaping while a predator eats their fucking baby. Also, B- be will be will Queensland is hell on earth. Remember that guy following C one of my favorite episodes of the year, the cult of conscious development. Maybe that was my very

favorite. Bad shit suicide wizard Terry Hoffman, teaching cold members to fight black lords on the astral plane with cocktail swizzle sticks for swords and car antenna for rods. Sometimes truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Back to true crime after that with Randy Kraft, a scorecard killer, Mr. fucking buttsocks himself. Holy shit that guy was a savage. Then the many lives of Clark Rockefeller. I really like that topic. It was a great fine by Sophie. A real peach moba kind of suck. Followed that up with the murder of DD Blanchard and fuck that bitch. Still feels zero sympathy for that munch house

in Cyndo by proxy monster. She tortured her daughter, Gypsy Rose, and just unimaginable ways for so, so long, very strange, disturbing episode. Then we went to sex scandals, so many of them. I don't think any episode has ever made me angrier than the Catholic Church's long history of sex scandals. If you're a Catholic priest and you have betrayed that relationship to molest anyone and now you are suicidal, please do it. Fuck you. Let your God decide what to do with your soul, any place but here, I just want you dead.

Then it was the Bayou Strangler Ronnie Joe. No one has ever had a more fragile Butthole than Mr. Dominique. Just cobwebs and paper mache and dandelion puff. I can hold that shit inside. Then it was such a special episode. George Carlin, the one that really made me start focusing on fine tune of my material for the stand-up special recording. I just did Carlin the best to ever do it, not sure I can ever get that good no matter how hard I try, but I love having someone to inspire me to try to get as close as I'm capable. Then it was over to Africa with the least catchy cult name ever, the movement for the restoration of the Ten Comments of God. So many bad prophecies, such a very confusing Armageddon.

And then we made it over to bear evil and cooperate it. Oh, yeah, we learned that bear has done some evil shit, you know, the B.A. Y. E. R. One, but sadly, learn that so so many other corporations have done so as well. Next, it was time to mix astrology and murder with the Casanova killer, Paul John Knowles, one of the be a famous killer, ended up dying and forgotten one. Next, another favorite episode of the year for me, Bloods and Crips America's deadliest gang rivalry. Environment matters and the environment of South Central was built to build gangs and that environment was built directly by the government's racist laws.

Next we went off to meet the bloody harps, river pirates, always keeping eye out for river pirates and maybe please don't ever slam babies into trees. Then it was time for the cannibal cop. Maybe don't ever send pics to your wife to strangers, also in a chat room, because they like you, beat off the thoughts of raping and killing and eating their friends and spouses.

Following that episode are gonna be the most important one we did all year, MMIW. Missing and murdered indigenous women, how do we keep native women safe? The current law enforcement messed on America's reservations, not doing the trick. Really helps substantial changes come soon. Two weeks to World War Two followed. We knew the Nazis were evil bastards, but Imperial Japan holy shit. Scarrier enemy for the

allies in many ways. And then she got weird with the mouse utopia experiments. Lord bump us, God of the rats. What's your purpose meat sack? Love how that episode randomly made me think about mine. And also maybe don't just stand by and let someone get raped and murdered. Please. Then I have Casey, baby, maybe not a cold, but probably a cold incubator. Gotta be careful with prophecies, especially doomsday prophecies. Can we please knock it off with the doomsday prophecies? Where's your God? Fine. But

stop wanting him to kill the rest of us and turn the world upside down. Just go enjoy heaven and leave the rest of us alone. We don't need to see Killer Christ. And then it's scared of deaths and times like mashup of sorts. Another one of my favorite episodes, Old Herb. What does Pistase like?

Fuck six times, get three kids, Balmyster. Murder's in ghosts. Sounds like the name of another podcast. And finally our Christmas episode on Joseph Mangala. Nothing says the holidays like the name of another podcast. And finally, our Christmas episode on Joseph Mangala. Nothing says the holidays like the Nazi Angel of Death. I'm still going to beat myself up for the timing of that. If you find yourself getting low in the Christmas spirit, I guess just put on some Angola. What an example of how we humans can rationalize any manner of evil into thinking. It's not only okay, but great and noble. And now here we are, the last episode of the year.

Made it. Didn't miss a week on any of the shows. Learned so much. Had so many amazing timesucker updates come in to bowjanglesatimesuckpodcast.com. Each week, thank you for all the emails you sent in. Thousands and thousands. I love them.

The Cummins Law nonsense. The shout out request for people you love or meet sacks going through a rough patch. The tales of turning your lives around or not ending your lives I've been inspired to chase your dreams. I've been thankful for the people you've met and how they've improved your lives what a year scared to death got their own billboard for Halloween LA. Oh man Logan's design was so fucking incredible for that A scared death live show such a blast blast, loved doing that show, love getting less skeptical. I don't believe all the scared death stories I hear. Not most of them, but I'm open to them all being true. I've having some of them be true. And it makes the world feel

more magical to do so. Man, the world of true horror, the closest thing I have to religion. Who knew? Now, after Christmas with the kids in Lindsay and Cleveland after a hallucinogenic reset on New Year's, while the kids are with their moms, I'm recording this prior to Christmas, come on mushrooms and Molly and probably some DMT. Am I real spirituality? Let's fucking go.

Looking forward to some spirit quest time. Recharge the soul, disconnect and reassemble, maybe get lucky and make some new creative associations and connections. Looking forward to reflecting on all this, really soaking it all in and then looking ahead, which we're already doing. What do we want for next year? Well, going to this next year, I need to get in touch soon with some of our private

Facebook and Discord people need to focus more on the community aspect of all of this. And then brought in Lucifer to create all the drama behind the scenes this year, ate up so much of my time. That annoys me more than anything, right? But I did bring it on myself. And a lot of ways, trust that gut. Slip, shit, slip through the cracks, didn't get the sticker street team done, lost track of the order of the suck. But we're going to get back to all that. We're going to fix that. Again, want to put more energy into the core community as soon as I can get a back ahead on content, which I am working on, we've got to get that new Facebook private group renamed and marketed and admin and elusive your goose your way. So we don't keep having Zuckerberg's AI real boy bot Tiego

find us and shut us down. Gonna give Patreon some TLC. Want to launch a new tier for ad free early release episodes like we have with scared of death. First, got to clean up some stuff, add more avatars, a lot of which Logan's already drawn, more character biographies, fresh tutorials for features, get moving on re-skinning, the Bad Magic app, reduce and website stuff, so much to freshen up. A lot of dust to knock off, right?

Need a big facelift. Gonna find time to work in a new fresh characters and fake ads, keep focusing on delivering a better narrative, better cult, better curiosity, pop a bad magic, right? We truly have the right team to kick things up a notch. So excited to see what we can do this next year, hoping to keep holding your attention, hope to get back to trying to grow the audience again.

This year, more than I used to, didn't do any of that. This last year, just to warn down from other shit, our main marketing channel also got cut off. This past year, which hurt that effort. So shit, our main marketing channel also got cut off this past year which hurt that effort. So many of you initially found me on Pandora. Do you want to stand up? Then found Time Suck and everything else from Pandora as well.

Well, this past spring, all hell broke loose in a battle between streaming platforms and publishing rights groups, more drama behind the scenes. Basically, some people think we comics have be paid for not just performing our jokes, when it comes to streaming royalties, but also for writing them.

And when publishing companies pushed streaming platforms to give us those rights, things got contentious. And those of us registered with certain publishing companies had our shit taken off places like Spotify and Pandora, even though we did not want that. And if I would have thought there was a chance that could have happened, I would have never registered with any publishing company. I'm no longer sure that comics should be given the equivalent of a songwriter credit because on further reflection We don't cover other comics material whatever you write you perform and then no one else does you shit Not acceptably Not the same with music artist cover other artists song all the time and some people only write songs for other artists and never record their own albums

Which is why songwriter royalties were created in the first place. There is no parallel and stand up. And anyway, that information is probably fucking boring. But why my works were taking down. And why I'm going to spend a lot of time in 22 doing everything I can to get my catalog back up so you can listen to it for free or with your subscription to a streaming service. And I can use Pandora and Spotify's marketing tools for artists to build more podcast fans. If I can't figure out how to get the old catalog, I might have to figure out how to tailor Swift that shit and own all my content. That is a major goal of mine in 2023.

Another goal, so everything I, is to do everything I can, excuse me, to sell out the Steeder Tour so that in 2024, I can actually get a contract by promoter to do everything I can to sell out the theater tour. So that in 2024, I can actually get a contract by promoter to do only theaters, which was my ultimate comedy goal many, many years ago. And that goal motivates me to try and keep getting better at stand up. So the shows are worth your money. I also really want to make this next gathering amazing.

Oh man, we're going to do it again. Despite bad taste in our mouth and behind the scenes stuff, we're going to do it again, but not in court of lane. We're going to go with a company in an upstate New York that actually knows what they are doing, a company that specializes in adult summer camps, right? Where it's all owned and operated by the same amazing staff. I'll share more later. It's going to be fucking epic behind the scenes.

Man, we are pumped. I'm going to have a comedy night. Chad Daniels has agreed already to perform with me for the first time in over a decade on a stand-up stage. Pump for that. Other great comics like Kelsey Cook, Harry Riley of Agreed. We lost a lot of money also doing Cam this past year, but we learned so much and applying it to this next year. And this year, I just want, even though it's mostly Lindsay and our agent Joe Aishinbaw, working on all this actually. I just want to break even creating something fucking magical something so unique and memorable and special and then build it

Bigger going forward into something that people will look forward to is their favorite week into the year I've thought about all the emails and messages over the past six plus years and it all means More to me than ever right now so grateful to shit is important to so many and now with the right team of people I want to build a bigger. None of this feels like work, like it did behind the scenes for a while. I wanna reach more people, get them into this cold, cold, cold, cold.

I wanna take you all out to a cabin in the woods and I wanna fuck you, the women at least. And now let the men do any of that. And I wanna strip you guys your masculinity and I want you to just do my bidding and shut the fuck up. Wait, no, nothing kind of, sorry, nothing kind of cold, no. I got shook up a bit this past year.

I'm sure you felt it in certain episodes, but the fun, the magic I think is back. The desire to tell the best horror stories unscared to death, the most compelling, what the fuck is this story on TimeSuck? And some hopefully unique and memorable standup is back. The desire to, without burning myself out, maybe even launched another project in the horror space.

If time permits, if everything else is dialed in, is back Then people fucking kill me if I do that. I don't have the time and rightfully so what I want to So thank you. Thank you for sticking with us this year made sacks Thank you for letting all of this mean something Thank you for continuing to share this with your friends and bring them here. It is so important What a fucking ride so far from the second hand kitchen table in Santa Monica and things to Helen Keller forget me all fired up Hit me in the fields If I could you know if she excuse me if she could work until she was 80 for what she cared about with no sight no hearing

I feel like me with both sight and hearing and that I can put in way more than six years on trying to make all this the Fucking best because I certainly love it. So hail Nimrod, onward and upward, let's head to today's takeaways. Time shut, tough, right takeaway. Number one, Helen Keller lost at just 19 months old after she came down with something that gave her an active fever, the ability to both see in here. And her world plunged into a level of darkness I can hardly imagine. Number two, on March 3rd, 1887, Helen Keller met her teacher, future best friend, life partner from almost 50 years, Anne Sullivan, and Anne by giving her the gift of true language brought light into the darkness, taught her how to communicate with the outside world, how to talk with

her hands and be spoken to. She would consider Helen Kellerwood, March 3rd, the anniversary of the day she met Anne, her soul's birthday for the rest of her life. Number three, Helen didn't land a fucking plane by herself, Kathy, stopping stupid. Number four, everything is all good. Here at the suckdown, Janau, ready even for another turbulent election cycle when some people will inevitably start reading politics into everything because that's just what some people do. Ready to handle that though,

because we are surrounded by a kick ass team, solid ass fans. Thank you yet again for caring about what we do here. And number five, new info, I know they're fucked up. Let's look at a few more Helen Keller jokes. Some of them are pretty clever. Did you know that Helen Keller had a dollhouse in the backyard?

Neither did she. What did Helen Keller scream when she fell off the mountain? Nothing, she was wearing mittens. Why is it okay to tell Helen Keller jokes? Because she can't hear them. Let's get out of here. Time, suck, tough, right takeaway. The inspiration of Hell and Keller and the 2022

bad magic gear and wrap-up has been sucked. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help and making time suck. Thank you to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsey Cummins. Thank you to, I believe, the art warlock Logan Keith. You're the one who was sitting in the chair today, right? That's me. So, wait.

Yeah, producing and directing data is so much shit. Thanks to the suck ranger, yeah, suck ranger Tyler C for helping Logan with production and to Bitelixer for upkeep on the time suck app, Logan again for creating the merch at badmagicmerch.com. Help them on our socials along with the suck ranger and a team managed by our social media strategist, Ryan Handelman, Emily is a lick, lick yardie.

I should ask her, is the person our point person we work with and she's a young genius. And thanks to you for sticking around. Next week as decreed by our space, we will kick off 2023 by sucking. And I'm so excited for this Dungeons and Dragons. Let's get so weird. The next week your quest begins. You wake up on the floor of Nimrod's butthole lunch. Stripped of all your valuables, down to your skivvies.

You vaguely remember a group of young wizards entering the tavern, cashing what you now believe to be sleep spells. Your first thought is of pursuit. There is only one problem. It's the dead of winter. The snow outside is piled up three-foot high and the fire in the hearth is already dying. How will you survive? How will you get your revenge? On the floor you see a note that you can hardly make out. You read the words. Listen to next week's episode. Many people today think that role-playing games RPGs are only played on a computer on a website where people gather from all corners of the world to take out digital foes. But for many years, that was not the case. Not the case for this guy.

In the early 70s, I wasn't playing it that young. I wasn't alive in the early 70s. A role-playing games were played by people sitting together in the same table, right, or on the floor, using their imagination. Written rules of the game to play as well as a variety of different sided die. Oh fuck yeah. Generate random numbers when needed. One of these players was a young father named Gary Guyx who had an idea for a new game. A game that we combined the fantasy and science fiction stories from

his youth with the popular pastime of war gaming, which had players generating numbers and using strategy to fight in fictional battles. And soon something revolutionary would be born Dungeons and Dragons released in 1974. What GuyGax created and would continue to add to along with other collaborators over the decades was an immersive fantasy world where players could create characters and go on epic journeys. They could play a strong warrior, a wise wizard, a skilled thief and more, and they would be guided by a player acting as a sort of referee, the Dungeon Master, a narrative guide. As the game is played, the characters grow and increase in power, characters may gain experience, skills, wealth. The main way the

characters gain experience is through defeating powerful enemies or doing important or hard work. Getting enough experience allows a character to level up, right? Getting more job ability, skills and powers, but be careful. Bigger enemies, always lurking around the corner. And enemies will be lurking around the corner for Gary Guy acts in the founders of D&D in the form of lawsuits, accusations of fucking witchcraft and Satanism, corporate infighting that made the game just as controversial as it is iconic.

Meet you back at the lodge next week for an exciting quest. And now let's head to the last updates of the year. Our first update shout out requests from a caring sack Roger, good brother-in-law and friend rights. Hi Dan and the rest of the time suck team. Please only use my first name Roger, done if you choose to read this on the podcast. Sorry but not really for the length of this message. I love your podcast. I've been listening every week since the enigma episode when my brother-in-law is calling John. He probably won't want me calling him

by his real name. Introduce me to the show. I can't wait each week to go on my morning runs to listen to the latest episode. I want to ask you for a favor. John retired for the military this year after more than 20 years of service, including tours to Afghanistan, Iraq and other places. He's settling into civilian life, but he's having a bit of a rough transition to start his own business and to figure out what he really wants to do. I'm sure a shout out from you would give him a much need of boost to keep going at it.

In addition to introducing to Meteor Show, he's an amazing meat sack who we all love dearly. We want nothing more than to see happy and successful, to see him be happy and successful, and I'm confident that he can do it. Thanks for everything you do and the community you built, love, you show. If I didn't accidentally give you five stars already, I would have given you three, as

I wouldn't change a thing. Well, thank you, Roger. You're a great sack and John, but not really John. Thank you for your service up front. And now for the next chapter in your book, how cool is it that you earn that solid pension, right? To give you some time, a cushion, to give you a safety net if your next venture doesn't take off immediately out of the gate, you know, use all the amazing skills. I'm sure that you learn to give your, you know, in the military to give your business

the best chance you can give it. Give it your all will also know that if it doesn't work, fuck it, right? You still put it in that time. You still earn that pension, try something new. Keep trying until you get what you want or feel satisfied in the fact that you did your fucking best. And try and enjoy the ride as much as you can. And make sure you got the right team, even that team is just you. Don't let you drag yourself down.

Believe John, not John, believe. Next up is inspiration and a call to action from a survivor sack, Shana, who writes, hello, Shana, Shana Landis, she didn't say to keep her last name out. Shana writes, hello, humor and distraction helped me through cancer and I listened to your podcast a lot during the treatment, during my treatment. I had a formula, Kimya, with about a 30% chance

of survival dam. I had to have a stem cell, with about a 30% chance of survival, damn. I had to have a stem cell, bone marrow transplant, which is an insane process where you replace your blood and I insist on with the donors. My blood type changed, that is wild. I can't take a DNA test because it would show up as my donors, that's fucking crazy. I could commit a crime and leave my blood of the scene

and it would be pinned on them, do it. No, there's so much more fascinating stuff about it But I want to get to the point about this message There's a huge need for people to register as bone marrow donors and sadly, but not surprisingly There's a huge disparity between white people and ethnic minorities. I believe 75% of white people find donors Well about 25% of people of color find donors That's because you need to find the closest genetic match to your own in the worldwide registry leans heavily to countries full of white people. Registrarian and donating is so much easier than

people think. Registrarian to become a donor, really swabbing your cheek. And if you do end up being a match, personally saving a life is basically getting your blood drawn. I am hoping to spread awareness of this. And I know you care deeply about organizations to help people. I was hoping if you mentioned the need and how easy it is on the suck, it would reach a large audience and most likely lead to many lives being saved. Hey Logan, let's edit this message out. It's boring. Okay, yeah. No, kidding, kidding, kidding. You can learn more about all this shit and register to be a donor at BeTheMatch.org. Also, if you need a tie-in idea, the world of organ transplants

sounds like your cup of tea. Thank you for helping me through some fucked up times and for genuinely caring about meat sacks that need help. XOXO, Shane. Well, Shane, how exciting for you. A new lease on life you fucking champion. Hope the grass now looks greener than it did before you were put through the ringer. Hope the sky is brighter and bluer. The flower smells sweeter than ever.

Good on you for taking what you learned to help others and spread that word Nimrod is so fucking pleased and I'm glad some laughter helped right we all need it This world has a lot of darkness. We can fall into if we forget how to laugh it's so much of it and Speaking of laughter funny sack Logan S wants to share some dick with us He writes dear sucks a lot mush mouthoshmouth master, Colonel of World War 2 Japanese soldiers, and Chikitilo's rastling partner. I want, I write to you from Kansas City in hopes that you'll get as much of a laugh as we do, me and my uncle are obsessed with time suck. Another interest we both share is Kansas University basketball. So it was to

our delight that we found out that it was sharp. Shoot a recruit was blessed with the name of Grady Dick. No, not a Richard, just a good old fashioned dick. Tall skinny white kid who in the face looks as if he belonged more in the band section. I looked him up, you nailed it. But God damn, can you shoot the ball. We enjoyed his name to begin with, but then the game started happening this season and something amazing happened. The commentator, either knowingly or unknowingly, just keeps on making dick double on

tonrries. For example, Grady makes it three, he'll say, wow, Dick can really stroke it. Or Dick can hit it from deep if you let him. Or even when he drives, Dick penetrates and it pays off for him. Me and my uncle just egg it on and take every opportunity to make a Dick joke.

We had a thought the other day that who would enjoy all these Dicks more than you? Fair. Anyway, you get the picture and I invite you to watch Kansas game at some point this year and you'll find yourself giggling if you are immature as us. I am anyway, I'm hoping this makes its way to the end of the only sucking history without a richer. So I can save the day with a dick. Keep on filling our ears with your word crack because we can't get enough shout out to the uncle in question, Devon Glover. Shout out to my girlfriend Grace.

Big shout out to the uncle in question, Devon Glover, shout out to my girlfriend, Grace, big shout out to Nick and Heather. Thank you, Dan, for the entire time, Sud Crew, for giving us an outlet of escapism, for a couple hours each week. Peace, Logan asked from IHOPKC. Logan, thank you for the dick. There can never be enough to suck. Yes, I am as immature as your uncle.

You knew that, and I really think it's cool. It's really nice that you and your uncle can enjoy some dick together in a way that doesn't end with him in prison and you in therapy. Because that's rare for uncle and nephew. Hey, I'm in broad. Now one more sweet dad sack Eric writes in the draw attention to one of the wonderful sub communities we have out there on the web feels right to end on this. Master of bad magicians, thank you for this wonderful community that you've set up. My child, 14 is going through some mental health issues right now. And last

night, we had to enroll her in a 10-day inpatient program due to suicidal ideation with a plan in an end date. That plan was a swallow, all of their medication on the evening of January 3rd, the night that winter break ends here in Minnesota. Between bullying, for being trans or non-binary, they are not sure. And a few toxic friends, my wonderful, big-hearted world, with their fingertips child, could not bear the thought of returning to school after break. Middle schoolers suck. I just wish there was a way to get through to all the kids that are hurting, that are

out there just on the cusp of everything, getting so much better. High school, where you really start to find yourself, college or trade school, where you really meet some of the people who will be with you for the rest of your life, autonomy from parents and other guides. Anyway, to go back to the start of this letter, I would love a shout out from the Colt and Curious Dads, or a shout out to the Colt and Curious Dads only group.

I reached out for support, they have reached back. When others have reached out, I have reached back. I think it might be the least toxic group I have ever been a part of and it's just good support. Thank you Dan Lindsay. The rest of the crew you've really created something special. Happy holidays. May Nimrod bless us all yours in space. Lizardum Eric. Have a great day. You know what? You fucking have a great air. Don't tell me what to do. No, you have a great day. May your teen have an even better day. And yeah middle school high school college Often can really fucking suck

Do it to be surrounded by toxic shit hits Yeah, keep your mind in your your child this too. She'll pass Maybe they can listen to the first half of this episode or all of it right the wind passes and the flowers are content Times like these do pass young meets acts school will be such a small part of your life someday And then you'll never be stuck in classrooms with pieces of shit like that again. You'll have horrible co-workers sure from time to time but you can get a new job. You can keep pausing and excuse me you know keep getting new jobs you know and working trying new things until you're in a positive spot and you deserve that spot to go find it and keep you in a wonderful dad Eric keep you wonderful meat sacks everyone the world always needs it

Thank you to you all for being the fucking best Thanks time suckers. I need a net. We all did Thanks for listening to another bad magic productions podcast Try to be positive try to be, even in the worst of times. Be grateful, right? Do you have sight if you have it? Be grateful that you can hear, if you can, which I'm guessing you can, if you're here. And I hope you have an amazing 2023.

I really do. Thank you for continuing to keep on sucking. I'm not a production. You're gonna share three more stupid Helen Keller jokes. But I don't know what it says about me, they do make me laugh. Why was Helen Keller's belly button bruised? Her boyfriend was blind too. Why does Helen Keller's husband always yell at her? She doesn't listen.

Finally, how do you punish Helen Keller? Put her in a round room and tell her to sit in the corner. Goodbye. you