E499 Symbiotic Snack Partners and Peppermint Pattie Problems (feat. Guest Host Bethany Watson)

i was literally wearing pants from zazzle yesterday um wait what tell me about that hank's face all over him no i actually forgot that i was wearing them and then i went to the dog park and i saw someone wearing like spots all over their pants like they had spots all over them and i said oh nice pants and they said you really are not one to talk today truly i have used zazzle for a long time if you want a custom gift zazzle's the place they've got if you want a custom gift of hank's face on a pair of pants for your friend you could put anything on anything it seems i do remember when i made a mug one time i found the only reason i remember is i pulled it out this morning to go what mug is this and it was way in the back way dusty and i meant to send it to you ages ago it says live laugh lemon and comic sans there's pictures of me and lemon on like everything and then it says family is forever and i was that is that's a mental health crisis a threat all of us just say use zazzle the opportunities are endless for gifts apparently a gift i got m which by the way is a gift i got from a friend of mine and i'm like oh my god i'm so excited i discovered again this morning this was probably three years ago that i made this thing i'm telling you zazzle is a gift that keeps giving and right now save 25 of your first order at zazzle.com man uh that's 25 savings on your first order at zazzle.com go make something is amazing like i apparently did and definitely did zazzle.com i've told you guys before that i got allison well i tried to surprise allison with this cobblestone fireplace uh for the house and i got it from witchy very spooky i feel like underneath the right thick ceiling beams real or fake it would look incredible and by the way those beams are also on wayfair um but now it has been moved into what will be the spook easy of our house and i'm not allowed to see what they're doing in there allison and her parents have been working on that a day in and day out and i know that the fireplace has become like the centerpiece that they're working the whole thing around so i'm very excited to see how it turns out wish me luck i'm hoping it's going to look as spooky as promised i will take pictures of it and i'll see you in the next one bye when i finally can see what's going on all i know is that that fireplace became the focal point of the entire room so if you would like your own focal point whether that's a fireplace or a you know a couch or a table or whatever your thing is you can head over to wayfair and transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life join wayfair rewards today and get five percent back on every purchase and head to wayfair.com or shop the wayfair app for all things home that's w-a-y f-a-i-r.com wayfair every style every home not that i ever need a reminder of just how comfy my mattress is but as soon as i leave it i yearn for it and then my dog's gotten into this habit of really rubbing it in my face by whenever i get out of the bed he jumps into it while it's all warm of mine they get in and i'm like what do you want what do you want what do you want and i wish i could shake him and tell him you have no idea how lucky you are that we have this mattress he just thinks they all feel like that yeah he must be nice right to yeah live in a world where you're so spoiled um like we do where we have helix mattresses uh yes i don't know if i'm going to be able to do that but i'm going to be able to do it i don't discount my own blessings here um we love our helix mattress over here too helix has helped my sleep i don't know what else to say level up i feel like i sleep better with it um i can definitely tell when i'm traveling and helix is awesome because they deliver your mattress right to your door uh with free shipping in the u.s and they've got a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty so don't even worry about it go to helix sleep.com slash drink for 27 off site wide exclusive to listeners of our show that's helix sleep.com slash drink for 27 off site wide exclusive to our listeners of our show make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helix sleep.com slash drink welcome everybody to another rousing titillating um bone chilling uh episode of and that's why we drink where i am back with uh lovely guest host bethany watson what's up hello hello how are you i'm good uh thank you for just being like my my superhero these days that i just call when uh scheduling just doesn't work out we need someone to record and you just pop on in and i appreciate you i'm here who was it do you remember when jerry o'connell was just the default guest for some late night host you remember this like anytime there was a problem jerry o'connell would just show up i i think um it's only episode two of you taking over and that's why we drink airwaves but i think it's only episode two of you taking over and that's you're the jerry o'connell at this point so that's right i want to be your jerry o'connell let me be your jerry o'connell beautiful perfect welcome welcome jerry um i uh i apologize to everybody if i sound a little frenetic it has been like a weird little chaos storm over here today and so i everything's fine it's just like everything's going wrong you know sixes and sevens i don't know what that means i mean i'm like out of sorts yeah it's like an old-timey or like then yeah yeah yeah you're i'm eights and nines babes yeah i mean unfortunately the younger crowd has really ruined six seven i don't know if you're aware of this yes ah yes i know i know so unfortunately when you said that my brain went to the unfortunate six seven so yeah um anyway no it's just been wild over here we have new neighbors i'm trying to get used to their gardener's schedule which affects my audio it's very annoying um how are you doing how are you sweet jerry o'connell uh you know what i'm doing great today uh conan o'brien i feel like it was conan o'brien but i'm not sure you know at one point in my life i was very lanky and and and gawky and tall i was quite a scrawny kid until i hit like college until until college is so weird college is so weird the way that it does things to your body that no one because you're used to hearing about what's going to happen to your body in puberty right you're used to knowing that you're probably going to have some growth spurts maybe some leg pains and then you know that like at 25 you can rent a car but no one tells you in college random stuff is going to happen you're going to put on a ton of weight or you're going to grow really tall or you're going to a secret third thing or you'll get pregnant like any one of those four things can happen in college and it is always a surprise and a nightmare and you know what i would argue what you're 100 right but i'm gonna add on to that and say they say the same thing about your 30s i'm assuming they say the same thing about your 40s but i really thought i mean i guess people warn you about your 30s are like oh when you're 20s eat whatever you want you know they've all got the creepy laugh um and man they were right and one day my knees i just woke up and just my knees just said i'm done it's crazy today's the day i went to um a renaissance fair recently and uh bethany the best well talk about the worst it was like as as a fair lover a renaissance fair lover this was the worst renaissance fair i've ever been to in my entire life oh no they were not prepared for how packed it would be and the parking i'm not kidding it's usually like a 45 minute drive there we were in the car twice that and but that was before even looking for parking and the parking i mean major streets were just gridlock traffic people trying to find parking so people were like they're the passengers were getting out to like make pit stops to grab snacks while everyone waited for parking wait is this the first time this fair is doing this fair or have they done this no what is going are they under new ownership something's going on but it was oh it drove me up a wall because i used to love this place and it was so insane so anyway i get out to get a pit stop and which has never happened i've never been like let's take an intermission on looking for parking right i go i go in there and i text allison she's like well i already got up to this area so come meet me and by the time she had gotten through this little area i was now an hour walk away from her and she couldn't you turn and turn around or we'd be back in all of this it was so i ended up walking and by the way it was the weirdest sight seeing just like 50 renaissance elves and fairies leaving mcdonald's all on their pilgrimage to the fair and it felt literally like a renaissance quest because we were like where are they like yeah you're spending an entire movie walking through the forest trying to find dude and you would find odd people at different it felt like a video game where you hit different spots and like all of a sudden they give you new information they're like go there quick go there totally and so anyway all this to say my knees don't work anymore and i ended up becoming some like someone's guide there was a bunch of like gen z it was clearly their first time ever at a renaissance fair they were so happy yeah and they were like where do we go and i some they just started following me without asking and i was like oh my god i think i'm like their little guide now through the woods yeah you became their guest yeah yes a hundred percent but uh at some point they asked me how old i was and i was scared to tell them and um when i told them i was born in 92 all of them very politely went oh wow and i went oh but that gave me permission to start telling them i sounded like an old man i was like you better like this walk while you can because my legs are killing me and i haven't even gotten there yet yeah yeah totally yeah there was a moment in life where suddenly you can make fun of your age and the person you're making fun of is you're not the person you're making fun of you're not the stops laughing and that's the moment we're like i used to say oh well you know you know i'm an old crone now and they would go oh no you're not and now i say it and they're like yeah like they legitimately are like yeah but for your age you look great and i'm like it hits you like a truck and for some reason i a lot of people it's very precious a lot of people on the show like listen with their kids or younger siblings or whatever so heed our words like it hits you fast and Like, no one warns you the day that someone's going to actually meet you. it that you're old yeah but that day hurts a lot yeah and young one if you're listening one day sooner than you think you're gonna walk into an antique store and see something that you played with as a kid i was 20 the first time it happened so it's gonna happen i uh what was what was the item that you remembered it was like my like our generation's version of candy land you know because like they change candy land all the time and so it was the one that i grew up with and it and the brutal part of it too was that the box legitimately looked very old like it looked like it had been through something and so it wasn't just like oh someone misidentified this as vintage it was clearly vintage but it was also just like 20 years old and i was it doesn't like hit you in the chest that's when you realize your bones maybe look that way too totally i was like oh no spf it's that's when you realize your bones maybe look that way too it happened to be uh i went to a toy museum i think it's in houston and they had i think this is the same place there was a second floor and you could go you went up and there were all these displays of um toys by decade and i saw the 90s one coming and i went oof the fact that there's even a case yeah dude um and because you're 80 what year were you born 80 uh the internet says 84 i'm actually 81 oh okay yeah well then so okay 90s for you is probably like extra sad to be in a display case devastating yeah oh it's brutal i and i every single thing in there not only did i own but i still have yeah yeah yeah and i was like is should i save this is a relic like what's this now worth money or is it just sad just sad all the plastics yellow now yeah um yeah brutal anyway what i i didn't mean to um take over there but i a lot of people on instagram had followed the renaissance story and i was like oh my god i'm so sad i'm so sad because i was really vlogging about that being like this is horrible it was 90 degrees it was awful so i guess that's why i drink this week and i drink um a lovely little london fog that i had sent out of course um and here she is on all her glory oh shout out beautiful and um that's why i drink what do you drink and why i am drinking diet coke i jumped into it early because i had to but it is crispy and ice cold and uh i am drinking because i you know when you have your heart set like you someone's running out to grab something and you're like hey can you pick me up whatever delicious treat that you want them to pick up and you have your heart set on it and then they don't get it and then you're devastated of course because of course you've been waiting for you know no it's not even just like you were looking for you now you've been waiting for it yeah and and had you known something would go awry you would have just gotten it yourself that's right that's right or i would have lowered my whatever so i don't know so dennis went to run some grocery errands and i was like i would like the following items please and also can you get me a york peppermint patty because it's my one of my favorite candies and i want to taste the sensation today and i'm like looking forward to it and just before we started recording i got a text for him saying that that particular grocery store does not have any i don't believe him nearly through my phone and i just wrote kill me and then i went on airplane because you know what when everything in the world is so dark and brutal you just need a little bit of lightness and sugar and also you've been together long enough that he knows the secret answer is you go to another store and you just get it and i think that he should have been home by now and i have a feeling that that is what he has done oh yeah he's a good man no but also it's his fault totally that he didn't see the york peppermint patty well you know like the trope that like men cannot shop to save their lives it's it is really there is something very interesting about like the act of searching that i have found this is so weird because i am not a fan of that like binary men are like this and women are like this at all obviously because their binary is bullshit but like i have found that many of the men in my life struggle to actually locate things when they look at them and i think that's a really good point just can't see them i mean it's like it's a whole thing on the internet like that which like reverse misogyny or whatever but if you like get something on instacart or doordash and you see that it's a man picking it up people just cancel their orders and try again are you serious yeah oh yeah and it's got now a lot of men they're they'll switch their name on their account to a woman's name just so people will like pay them but like every i mean you should my sweet 1981 you got a go on on tiktok and you got to watch some of these videos because people will show like this is what i ordered this is what i got like some people are like i wanted banana bread and they gave me a banana like like they're just not even trying you um bless their hearts i have never told you the debacle our listeners know about this but um it was a real uh uh heavy beat in last year for halloween i did an instacart order and i thought i was getting you what was it frankenstein yeah i got a a condom it was a condom costume and i was like how did we get here and then i ended up finding out that it actually was my fault because my finger slipped and i pressed something even worse than a condom by the way did you know they sell sperm costumes no no and so so at first i was like how did we get from frankenstein to condom but honestly maybe they were sold out of the sperm costume and he thought he was doing me a favor totally i'll tell you what i did was i got a condom and i was like how did we get from frankenstein to condom when i didn't know that i'd click that i was like how the fuck did we get here from frankenstein the first thought i had was the packaging of the condom and frankenstein's head both have right angles on both sides i wonder if he was looking at shapes i bet i mean also he has the scar there you could like rip his forehead off totally yeah totally yeah he was on to something i just wasn't um privy to that knowledge but that's i mean you i'm embarrassing myself with how little i am online like that is one thing i need to do is get back online and i'm like i'm not gonna do that i'm not because like i don't see any of my friends stories and anytime i go on instagram or tiktok i just get husky content like just howling like dramatic husky dogs like not walking and screaming like dogs not like husky men okay no no no the actual dogs um it's just husky all husky content all the time so i don't even see my friends anymore i just see the algorithms like you like husky want more husky and i'm like i do want more husky i guess that's um better than you know the rest of what the internet has to offer which is all bad so i've heard it's bad it's not really actually good so the huskies sound nice so nice husky content is great we are heading to utah this weekend and uh one of the things i've always wanted to do is go to the hotel in utah that high school musical 2 filmed at and um allison and i are actually making that happen and for those who have watched that movie you know that sharpay is in the and talks about her towels imported from turkey oh my god quince literally gave us some turkish towels we have to bring them so you can get a picture of me in the pool at the same hotel resort and thank you quince for giving me that slam dunk of a memory wow they didn't even know what they were pulling when they created these beautiful these beautiful turkish towels they make elevated everyday essentials not just towels using premium materials like mongolian cashmere organic cotton washable silk so much more affordable than luxury brands like for example 100% mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just 50 so you don't get that luxury price tag because they take that middleman out of it and work directly with ethical manufacturers find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at quince especially if you happen to be in utah on the high school musical two set download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash drink and get free shipping on your order at in 365 day returns now available in canada and the uk too that's qinc.com slash drink well okay i um i'm glad that you're back because i felt bad that our our first recording together uh i implied that there was another story i was going to cover and then i and i want i felt bad i was like i well now i've already said it and i would like a new yorker here to talk about it with me so i'm i'm bringing you a story that i you probably know what i'm going to cover because i already said it to your ears um but this is cropsy yes m i'm so excited what do you know about cropsy because i okay i was raised by new yorkers but and this seems to also be like a strictly staten island thing for a while and then it maybe became more new york i'm if you could enlighten me if you can so here's what i know about cropsy i know that it has to do i know that it's the only urban legend that involves geraldo rivera yes which if you don't know who geraldo rivera is he was like a journalist and then became like a tabloid of um you'll get into it but anyway he there was here's what i know there was a building there was like a like a hospital of some kind that treated people horribly and something something urban legend about a killer yeah so you didn't grow up with this being like well dennis is from staten island right yeah so dennis grew up with the cropsy idea um okay and he can you take him off airplane mode and ask him Yes, I'm going to text him right now. How are we doing on the Yorks? tell us everything about cropsy right now york update question mark question mark um i'm gonna say what do you know about cropsy um i know that he's been to the actual abandoned hospital um he hated it it made him feel very sad and awful it looks horrible it's it's he said just the energy too like you could just tell you know if you believe in ghosts and you believe in energy lingering he's like the energy there's bad um i think he was raised with the like don't go in the woods there's a killer sure um which is what cropsy is pretty much cropsy's okay yeah and i'm so glad you're covering this because there is this like massive gap i have in knowledge i know that hospital whole world or rivera something something killer honestly you know exactly what i would have known be like if i lived near satin island in the 70s or 80s i would have only cared about the juicy bits and those are what you're saying yeah yeah yeah yeah it's the juice it's the good scary stuff but that's truly that's truly all i know okay perfect well uh i this is a bit of a deep dive i'm glad that you even mentioned geraldo rivera because um i did not know that it was going to turn into this i thought i was going to tell you a fun urban legend and we were going to move the on but apparently i have entered the true crime world and i i didn't mean to but we're switching it up whatever so it's so funny because my true crime today enters the paranormal and woo woo world so like oh gosh that's amazing so actually between the two of us everyone is getting their full dose of true crime and ghosts great okay perfect okay that makes me feel a lot better yeah of course well here we go cropsy is quote satin island's personal boogeyman hell yeah and uh he is a legend passed down to local usually boy and girl scouts uh and also just summer campers because that's well we'll get into it but they're the they're the main um victims to the tail oh okay there are many takes on cropsy's origin but the main through line is that in the 1970s a man in town usually he's called a respectable man in town okay which we know means that he probably has a lot of secrets and like dark right past yeah he was only like having one affair yeah yeah yeah yeah a man in town was camping at the lake with his wife and kids when tragedy befalls his family so no matter what version you hear it always starts that way okay some say that he snapped and he killed his family with an axe and then ran off into the woods and is now bloodthirsty for more oh and since there's a summer camp right near these woods you could be next yeah hear about the woods we've been hearing snapping an accent all night end quote thank you for saying that part for me um god we rehearsed that for so long man i'm glad we nailed it i actually texted it to you exactly as is and i i thought you'd stumble but you nailed it thank you others say that he actually died at the camp when he was a young man and now seeks vengeance on the new campers another story is that he lost his own son and is now looking to steal children for a second second chance at fatherhood which like would be the craziest start to your fatherhood it's like daddy how did we meet well well there are people out there i've heard like i have never met one of these people but there are stories that they're really people just realize one day they were kidnapped what i i just did a story um on the little girl named ricky jean bryant um who was there was a house fire it's a little bit like the solder children there was a house fire um everyone was there was a house fire it's a little bit like the solder children there was a house fire um everyone except she just disappeared and some of the theories are that she was sold um or taken just so horrifying to be someone's child oh there was um i hate that this is my frame of reference but there's a law and order svu episode that's very fascinating about all that it's nuts people just be growing up realizing that the aunt is mom or you know stranger is mom but mom is back in washington state i do know people with um there's someone in my life who was kidnapped by both of their parents at this at different times which is crazy oh my gosh everyone's fine now but like it was it was just a really interesting era everything's fine tumultuous marriage i'd probably say right a tumultuous divorce if you can't tell last yeah oh yeah but it's it's fine now everyone's fine everyone has a relationship with everyone it just was like everyone was kind of crashing out um okay moving on so the most popular version of this story is that a man lived or worked for a summer camp okay and and when i say most popular i mean this is at to my knowledge this is the post 80s most popular story there might have been a more popular story in the 70s that dennis knows but essentially movies ended up coming out about this and that's how cropsy became super duper well known okay and so the stories and the movies ended up kind of becoming the the default storyline this it has remnants of um like freddy you know you mean jason like jason sorry freddy freddy and jason in my head are the same and i have to see one before i can know what the other one is i i know what you're saying and then when i saw the movie freddy versus jason my brain exploded i was like i don't even who's who um you can't be in the same spot but um i i agree with you and a lot of people also agree with you that's why i knew you were that's why i knew we were going this way basically a man lived or worked for a summer camp campers played a prank on him that got out of hand yeah usually involves a uh the camper starting a fire which goes out of control and severely burns the person and or kills his family oof and now he is seeking revenge on new campers who had nothing to do with this yeah i mean well it's a circle of life so you got to i guess generational trauma yeah anything with therapy yeah exactly right so um because there are so many versions that mention his burns from this prank from a fire cropsy is now often described as having some sort of different appearance okay so it's either burns on his face or he has scars a lot of the versions of crops here that he has um a hook for hand oh wow they're like getting all the classics i know i was like you don't see a lot of hook hand anymore in real life you mean actually both uh this is a lot of things that i've seen in real life and and in the story i feel like you never hear about urban legends like it's this man and then that story we're like oh you're on a date and then you hear something on the door handle like yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like that is so specific it's super i think it's like one and done it's it's that urban legend and then candy man obviously and that's that's it i had a teacher in college who had a hook for a hand and he played the piano beautifully and i still don't know how he did it i do want the video footage of that um me too man it sounds like we're jumping an additional hurdle i would like to know how that's possible totally piano's hard anyway and then when you are working with a hook i mean like you're you're like four fingers fewer at least than you would need on i think it was his right hand too it was the one that does more it was the tingly one not the chords one i like to think at least in 2026 i do follow um tiktokers who have like prosthetics so they just 3d print whatever type of prosthetic they want for themselves that is so cool and i feel like there's got to be i don't know what what your teacher was doing but these days there's got to be like a one that helps with piano or something i'm sure it's even needed it sounds like that guy handled it i don't know you figured it out you totally figured it out um so this guy maybe has a hook for a hand uh and he uses it of course not to play piano but to drag the children into the sorry where he does not have a hook hand he has um some other quote weapon on him which is often like a trusty axe to just kill the children on site okay uh when the story is is told from like a counselor's perspective uh i don't know if this is a a universal it happens every year situation or this like happened once and it was so monumental we had to write about it but it sounds like the campsite and the counselors really went like crazy about trying to convince people that he was real and like the counselors were in on it where they were like one of them would all of a sudden have a broken hatchet where they're like oh i was trying to defend everyone and i got in a fight with him and now it's all twist and then we had to call the cops and they told this whole dramatic story that everyone agreed upon amazing and it ended with like a shootout but then crops he got away and he's still in the woods and they never found a body and i was like well this is so like they're eight they're eight year olds like yeah no let's let this is this is uh this is everyone going full in on just like not understanding how terrified children can get you know what appreciating the theater of it all yeah totally the the the counselors are having the best time they've built lore but the kids are just horrified i mean if you're i would imagine if you're like a 16 year old counselor or 18 year old counselor or something like this it's your dream to finally have something interesting to like brag about when you're in the woods i feel like i'd get so bored if i were summer counselor so yeah i feel like this is exactly what i would do fully i would yes and so hard to make this story just absolutely insane and ridiculous i would probably be the one who's like buying fake blood i would go a little bit too far i would go too far i'd be the one who ruined it i think you'd like leave a letter like with crops you've written in blood well since dennis knows about it yeah you should just leave a little note from him in fake blood i'm sure you have fake blood in your house i have in every room i there was one time that i found fake blood he was out on his morning walk and i wrote something like i see you in fake blood on his mirror and he came in and he was like bethany because that's you know it's not frightening anymore that's just how you are yeah no one of my um during covet i think you were writing him a lot of menacing notes i i remember one where you he was like looking through a shoebox like how would you know he'd ever look in there you must have thrown it in thinking in eight years this will be hysterical uh-huh yep and he unraveled this like dirty letter or something and just said seven days like seven yo gentle listener if you have if you live with someone and you are not dead doing long cons like that you're cheating yourself out of a really fun time because also every day leading up to the moment they finally find that thing that you so invigorating oh it's the best tuck it in their their like high school yearbook that's down in the basement that they haven't opened in years like dig into the bottom of a box and just tuck something in there just go absolutely feral and it will be very fun for everybody i promise did you do some bit where like you had a hundred of something and they just kept showing up yes i think so i think i did and i think i left one number out on purpose like i think i just it was i was so mean and i have one that he hasn't found that uh i did i think five years ago and we've been together for seven and it's something that he sees every single day and doesn't realize that there's a secret on it is he gonna listen to this like can you tell us or it's i don't want to ruin the surprise actually don't i don't even want to no tell us the day it happens i'll give you i'll give you a i'll give you a hint it it is something it is something that i've done on the back of something that he never looks at the back of i see so like that'll be a long one yeah it's a long one wow can anybody see yet why we're friends i like every every time i get an update on like how you're torturing dennis it's just i get so giddy so thank you best it's the this cropsy guy he always escapes no matter what the storyline is he's always still out there and therefore he has become this cautionary tale of don't go wandering off in the woods because he'll he'll get you and he'll drag you through the woods with his big hook hand um and when he would successfully take the kids according to all these legends um it was his calling card to leave behind a small fire as an homage like when he was attacked with fire oh gosh so if ever there was a little fire in the woods they would go oh there he is there he is and you know it was some counselor out there like burning leaves totally freak the kids out there is something very frightening about a fire by itself i will like a contained fire by itself that's so scary and it's one of those things where like christine and i are often saying if you heard a noise in the middle of the night do you hope it's a ghost or a robber like it could either brings bad bad energy and if you see a contained fire by itself it's like i kind of hope that that mother nature is just setting this ablaze because otherwise there's someone very close to me and i don't see them yeah yeah hopefully there was a lightning strike perfectly in the center of this circle of rocks that like just lit on fire and it's not just like somebody out hunting for people 100 yeah so he'll leave little small fires he's also apparently um and when i say apparently as if this has really happened these are just all things camp counselors have said sure uh another calling card is he would burn his name into something these imaginary children who have gone missing when they if one was ever found the name crops he was burnt onto their body like just really penis dark so um when he's dragging these children to the woods because obviously this is super duper for sure happening yeah for sure where is he dragging them where is he taking them well into the many abandoned ruins nearby as you've mentioned already this area these woods were near a campground or are near a campground so it wouldn't make sense why that would be the end of the story it's like oh well there's those abandoned ruins out there don't go out there don't go exploring because that's where crops he lives and that's where the kids die and so basically there's a few options we have here because these ruins were actually multiple properties so one was an abandoned tuberculosis ward okay horrible on its own yeah a lot of people think that's where crops he lived um another one it's called the new york farm colony but it was also once known as a quote poor um yeah so that's also super creepy especially since it's abandoned yeah and the most important one which you have mentioned is the mental institution uh that as it was called something much worse than um called the willow brook state school okay god they used to give such pretty names to such awful things you are so on the ball literally so many people said we had no idea what was going on over there because it sounded like a country club so we just never thought about it totally oh absolutely yeah it's just like the the happiest place on earth and they're just not feeding children yeah basically so um and i'll say before i jump into the willow brook stuff so the whole story of like well crops he's this guy and he it the whole camp camper story where he is now a victim of a prank and now he's attacking children the other different version of the story is that nothing ever happened at a campground he was actually an escaped patient from this hospital and now lives in the woods and the ways to i guess survive is by catching children that are at the nearby camp oh there's so many versions of this so many versions every person's like he has a hook for hand he has an axe he has a big fat knife he uses his bare hands he uses his teeth like it's yeah every story is totally different so i would be curious what dennis heard he's and he and he texted me back he said that he's heard many things some things uh he said i've been to that hospital though at night when i was a kid is what he said but the the thing about it being an escaped patient oddly is more frightening i think to me because it sounds like it could actually happen it feels it will so my my um hometown urban legend was also of an escaped person an escaped patient from a mental hospital and he ends up living in the woods and surviving off of bunnies and they call him the bunny man oh god yeah because like when they shut down places like this they didn't actually they didn't care where they went right they didn't do a great job of caring for the people who were in there and so what do you do if you don't have anywhere to go you go back to the place that you know even if it's abandoned exactly and then you make it work and you're hitting all the right notes that's exactly right is that's frightening so again i thought i was just going to be covering an urban legend and honestly we could end there if you'd like but i did do a bit of a deep dive here on willowbrook which feels important to cover yeah dude and i'm i want geraldo yeah he big g's in here for sure yeah yeah yeah big mustache he and a delicious mustache like well well groomed yeah it's thick speaking of thick knives he's got a thick knife across his front front lip top lip his front lip sometimes people have a mustache and i go let's do away with that this man deserves one yeah he was born with that mustache he was so willowbrook uh opened in the 40s it was supposed to be a um mental hospital and ended up for a moment being a um just a hospital an army hospital for world war ii because they just needed it yeah and then they ended up switching it back to the school that they originally attended um it was the only home in the area for people with intellectual or developmental delays and at one point it truly was i did not know this at the time that it was built it was the biggest and best facility in the world for you to send your loved ones that had delays oh gosh or differences um but after enough budget cuts which happened very quickly it worsened steadily until the place and its conditions were unrecognizable which is an understatement especially when you think that it was supposed to be the world's leading facility and taking care of people and i'm sure they needed the money and so they're not going to communicate that hey don't send anyone else here because it's not actually as good as the reputation and so nobody were like no god that's awful you think you're sending a family member you're sending a family member you're sending a family member to a really good place yeah and in hindsight so a documentary came out about cropsy and a lot of locals who remember the the history of willowbrook were saying uh well staten island for a long time was a literal dumping ground for a lot of things so i guess a lot of people also thought they could just dump their kids here which was like such a sad way to look at it yeah but i mean also it's confirmed because their kids are treated like garbage garbage yeah good point um few knew what was actually happening the first time we ever got a glimpse into it was in 1965 when senator rfk not current fuck-ass rfk jr but his father who gave a shit more so than this guy yeah um rfk he did a surprise visit at the hospital like yoohoo let's see what's going on here and he went oh my god what the fuck is happening oh my gosh he ended up doing a press conference he called it a snake pit and he promised to improve its conditions but of course it didn't really work and he was like oh my god what the fuck is happening and he was like oh my god They go anywhere. - What was it? Why didn't he improve the conditions? What was he doing? what was he doing honestly don't know i don't know but i don't like it i think the the conditions improved a little bit but at this point my understanding because i watched three documentaries on this by the way damn it was a long night um because i thought oh i'll just watch this quick 15 minute one and then i it just devolved yeah and i was up all night so um the what my understanding is is that they did put more money into it but they didn't need money as much as they needed like some actual fucking reform gotcha um and so they could keep things clean like they basically also gave them enough money to like maybe hire a couple more people but they needed like hundreds more people they needed a massive overhaul not yeah like they i guess helped but it really at what cost truly yeah yeah okay like i saw there was one um source i looked at that said at one point they fired so many employees that they needed like a thousand more employees for it to actually have been a functioning building oh my god at one point there was at one point there was 6 000 patients here and they had like 30 people like it was bananagrams it was fucking bad so after um rfk came here saw this tried to help but nothing really another a reporter came out her name was jane curtain oh my god jane wait not the actress from there was an actress jane i don't know jane personally i know that she wrote this article i don't know not jane curtain there was a comedic actress jane curtain no no with the seat i got so excited i'm really sorry i didn't mean to derail it back no i was like oh my god is there i love a curtain with a k okay she was given a tip by two of the staff members to come in and do a piece on how bad it was and this was like after rfk had came it had been a few years and i mean the people who did work there um the documentary stated this um the the 50th anniversary of this place just had a whole bunch of press come out and those people were also saying this like it's it was not the employees fault like they were maybe some of them were not meant to be there but there were employees who were really trying to help them and they were really trying to help them and they were really there was just no way you could watch that many people they were just so in over their heads that's awful and so these two staff members were like jane curtain get in here right now and write an article please help us and so she came in when the article came out a bunch of pictures were in the article so parents saw pictures of what was going on here and that was the first time they actually saw anything it started a bunch of like parent protests and like people trying to figure what was going on some people i think were taking their kids out but i think at this point they still really know what was going on um it sounded like a lot of parents actually gave pushback because they they thought that jane curtain went in there and was like um ragging on a facility that's like the world's best and like what i think they were in denial because it's like what else were they to do with their kids if they couldn't have them at the at home yeah um so there seems to be a half and half of people really giving a shit or a bunch of people like doubling down okay so um this all happened though it caused enough of a kerfuffle that the higher-ups who don't give a shit at all they were the ones that were constantly doing budget cuts they ended up firing the two guys who told jane curtain to come in no that's like uh to silence them i hate this i hate i hate those two people whoever those i hate them well so then these two people who were like i guess tip-offs the the tips i don't know what they're called the people who told whistleblowers whistle blowers yeah so then they got fired and then they got fired and then they got fired and then they got fired one of them when he got fired he this is like such like a fun twist of fate um he got fired and he went home and he put his hand in his pocket and realized he still had the key and he was like somebody needs to know more than what jane curtain told them like that should be the beginning of this but someone needs to end this yeah and then he called his friend geraldo rivera oh my god okay so this mr mustache himself future famous journalist geraldo rivera he was not very famous yet um but he snuck a camera in he borrowed the the key he snuck a camera in and he caught some of some of the horrors of this facility oh my god wait did he he just let himself in he had um i don't know about the first time around he i think he just let himself in or he had like someone another whistleblower who like kind of helped him out yeah i'm not totally sure but he does come back a second time later and has an escort that's the great thing about a facility that is understaffed is if you show up at night no one knows no one's there it's a huge facility and there's like one guy and he's asleep at the front desk you just let yourself in the back door maybe it's like a like um like an ocean's 11 situation but it's like let's save everybody please yeah so he shows up and to this day he has done very few interviews about it but when he has he just breaks down crying to this day he's just yeah and especially because he's met that were unfortunately victims in this um hospital so in the last interview i watched it was him and one of the guys that he actually interviewed back in the 70s oh and they're like still buddies it's like very it's very sweet but he kept in touch oh that's nice i like that so um what he saw this is a combination of what he saw that day and what some of the stats are in general but the population at its worst was triple the max capacity it was understaffed with like so few people not only that but a lot of those people weren't even qualified they weren't doing background checks there was one guy who was like straight up a criminal and just lied about who he was and was able to get in there and work there oh my god um and also even worse than that instead of hiring additional help that was needed they thought well if we just give like this one more able-bodied patient two dollars to watch the rest of the room so then they had just patients watching patients which is like first of all not i mean just not safe but but also not i mean like not safe for the patient who's been put in charge at all and also you're saying like oh we'll pay two dollars an hour two dollars to do what he'll never be able to spend the two dollars he's here he's stuck here yeah that's not even a commissary is there some sort of delightful store no probably not there's probably not magazines and gum that they can buy they're probably just like trapped and now someone one of your fellow roommates gets mad at you because you're the one in charge and now you're absolutely not safe like that's or i mean like it was like i think some of the patients they were saying more um i don't know what the right phrasing is but they had less uh less delays than other people uh-huh if i'm saying that wrong please in the comments i am open to criticism i just want to make sure that i'm being sensitive here yeah of course um so it sounded like they were quote more capable to watch a room but also like they're also a patient here like they don't even know what they're i maybe they don't know what they're supposed to be doing maybe they're right it's not their fucking job no it's not their job it's literally like they should be someone should be watching me motherfucker why am i watching them hang on like yeah if you're if you're in awful conditions and like you're you're in this scenario where everything sucks at least you don't have to be in charge that's the one you don't have to do is go to work because right you're you're basically a prisoner and now they're actually making that's awful that's awful and they were truly prisoners i mean the the rooms were completely it was just a big open room there was no privacy there was no doors there's no doors on the bathroom stalls there was no beds people were just sitting in chairs or on the floor naked because they didn't they with the budgets they didn't have enough money for clothes for clean clothes so if you had clothes they weren't clean everyone was just covered in like feces and urine they were just like you could hear just screaming and wailing and nobody's watching anybody i and the population at at the time when it was the world's leading it was supposed to be one staff member for every four patients and it got to a point at its worst where it was upwards of one staff member for 60 patients that's 15 times the amount and because of that even the hardest working employees they just couldn't take care of everybody so even the people who were trying their best at this place they were expected to feed every single patient within three minutes which i'm at i i don't eat in three minutes and like no and people who might need extra time would take longer than me like three minutes is not enough and they were like well we don't even have time to think about anything and they were like well we don't even have time to think about any one's diet so they just basically had this mush that they would just go around in a bowl and they would just put a spoon in this guy's mouth a spoon this guy's mouth a spoon in this guy's mouth um no clean clothes no privacy no activities no lights sometimes like when this guy when her all those snuck in the lights were off it was just they were all sitting in the pitch black there's no simulation there's there i mean it was solitary confinement but without the solitary it was just you're sitting there there's nothing to look at you wake up you sit in the and imagine like if somebody is somebody is violent like just like not because not just because they are a person who is violent it is dark and you are not protected and no one cares if you get attacked no one cares like there's yeah or even if they do they're all the way over there watching 60 other patients yeah totally yep yep yep and uh geraldo himself he was quoted in the in his own special his expose saying there's no rehabilitation no training nothing there was like no rehabilitation i mean there was it was completely unsupervised just because there weren't enough eyes people would be away behind multiple steel doors former staff would say like when i first started working there they gave me this like heavy steel key and it was to open one door then i had to do that walk down a hall go to another door walk down that to go to another door just to open it up and it was a room full of toddlers by themselves like it was just locking them so far away that nobody knew including like parents like people didn't know what was going on at all they just thought i'm dropping my kid off and at the time it was advised yikes that like it's you can drop your kid off here and then quote move on with your life and just know that they're taken care of and don't think about it and don't come visit like it was so nobody knew that and they thought they were giving their kid the best life possible at the time yeah um yeah another former uh employee actually called the buildings living coffins because nobody who could have helped even knew to go check on them maybe higher-ups knew about the buildings but they weren't going to go look in there and waste their time no they don't care no and i'm sure that on a certain level they had like distanced themselves from any sort of humanity that these that these inmates at this point had you know i think it's a little bit like oh well they don't know what's going on they they don't understand what's going on so it's and it's like no they absolutely do they're screaming for a reason they're literally like i mean they want help at the very least they want at least to be nourished and loved of course not that hard yeah like yeah um geraldo said that it smelled like death in there yeah um there were reports of rats bugs like so many us like the kids anyone there was also like adult wards and people just had parasites in their stomachs there was like it was it was shocking if someone didn't have a parasite eventually when they stayed there sure there was disease if there was illness at all it was getting spread to everybody else in the room the worst part if there is a worst part is that patients were purposely for vaccine research because they were not going to be able to get infected with hepatitis no wait i didn't know this i never heard this what the fuck dude they said every every patient by six months uh if you stayed there for six months you had hepatitis just because of the way it would spread and one patient god one patient i mean geraldo rivera's interviewing the patients and being like what do you think about this place and all of them are like bad it's very bad help us um and one guy who ended up being his friend later or he was seen interviewed 50 years later that guy he was like it's a disgrace to be here it's just like so sad and he was like all i want to do is go to school and learn how to read that's all i want to do oh my god that's and you can only imagine like i haven't even touched because there's no information about it the physical or sexual abuse that might have been going on with these patients too and the parents are never coming to pick them up they're just locked away no one's ever gonna know the the level of despondency that that these people must have felt just awful and yeah i mean that's what i was thinking too with especially with the pitch darkness and just everyone being in a room i'm sure that there was just rampant sexual assault going on yeah all over the place herald even said that while he was there he just saw like several several men just masturbating because i mean yeah what else you're gonna do like i mean they just like but it's just an open room and it's like doesn't matter if there's kids there doesn't matter like if women are there that might be uncomfortable doesn't matter if like just a random man's there that's uncomfortable it's just it nobody's being tended to there's no privacy but it's just it's just people are just it just left to their own devices and and with no help that's unbelievable and like i said none of the families knew about this they actually found out when her all those expose aired so they were watching tv and just saw there was one woman who was like my brother was a little kid and when he when we sent him there and he died four years ago and after his four years after his death we saw the expose and he was like oh my god i'm so exposed and now we have to wonder like how did he actually die jesus christ um because he said something like he had like an illness but it could have just been like two kids got in a fight and nobody helped him yeah now so anyway i said he came back for a second time that he filmed stuff secretly i think the first time around because i don't think he was supposed to be there they certainly didn't want that out so no i'm sure not they didn't have time to mop the floors before he came the first time funny you mentioned that because the second time around he actually this he has not put out the expose at this point yet he just filmed a little bit and then he called and was like let's see if they'll give me a real tour of this place and they said yeah come on down and they he happened to be brought over to one building where every child was very clean and intended to and he was like oh i think i've seen enough and he left and then he literally jumped the fence and went back without an escort and went into the other buildings and everything was as he saw the first time it was so they were absolutely trying to cover it up i can see i know like i knew that this was the making of him but i didn't realize how skillfully he played that you know yeah yeah i mean there's literally footage of him jumping the fence and just like really quickly running into another building like he's and like young geraldo rivera was a snack too he was not in a fence like by the way in today's world either as like a 60 or 70 he's also still very yummy looking he's looking good yeah he's got a full head of hair on his head very jealous of the uh dog sitters that are coming over while allison and i are gone this weekend because i have a whole box of hungry root that um i'm not gonna be able to eat in time nice of you so i said how about i pay you and also feed you so damn that's a good deal they it was the middle of the night and they said we'll be there yeah yeah hungry root is awesome because every month it like gets more every time they send a box it's more customized to you and what you like and what you need and what your family members like um which is awesome they every time they send something i discover like a new product or a new item that i love and they've got awesome brands and yeah i guess i should start house sitting because it sounds like a good gig no it's uh it's customizable all the way down to either what you like to eat what your partner likes to eat what your kids like to eat and then how how often you want to be cooking in the kitchen how little time you want to be in the kitchen you know how dedicated you are to cooking i mean there's there's just so many options and i think that's a good thing i think that's a good on their menu every single meal looks delicious it's really saved my butt quite a few times when i'm really craving dinner immediately so you're gonna love hungry root as much as we do for a limited time get 40 off your first order plus get a free item in every box for life go to hungryroot.com drink and use code drink that's hungryroot.com drink code drink to get 40 off your first box and a free item of your choice for life so he ended the piece by saying pretty much kind of what i just said a couple minutes ago they're it's not necessarily about money like we need reform we need change he ends the whole thing by just saying we demand change like this is so fucked up you cannot possibly nobody knows what's going on and like there's a whole community of people who like just fucking need help he also ended up um in other parts of his documentary he went to other facilities around the country that were actually taking care of their patients oh damn that were actually better than the best facility in the country yes and cheaper he was like this place is 14 a day for your kid this and meanwhile um willowbrook is 21 so you're paying more for like them to be abused and tortured and yeah um so anyway he he did a good job of making sure people were like it is possible like you just have to fucking care yeah yeah that's a good point yeah that's a good point it's easy to become despondent i would imagine and just be like well what are we supposed to do yeah i mean like in the other facilities everything was clean and they were like of course we clean our bathrooms what are you fucking talking about like and every kid like had a labeled cup and like the doctors were like this i know i promise i'm not this was not like a revelation to me but keep in mind this was the 70s it was probably a revelation of somebody yeah that the doctors that he was interviewing at the better facilities they were like they're just people like i'm like yeah like it's shocking that someone needed to fucking hear that yeah but um anyway so basically this expose blew the fuck up he ended up winning a peabody award for this amazing and it quote sparked i don't know if you knew this i did not know this when i heard it oh some old creepy old school in the woods um that expose that he did this is a quote sparked the beginning of the disability rights movement i didn't know that at all i did not either but that was the beginning like after that came out they started passing all these laws to make sure that people in the disability community or and people with developmental and intellectual delays were all taken care of and that there were like rights to like how they should be treated in facilities if they were there um because the americans with disabilities act was passed in the early 80s right i think i think so early 80s so that makes sense timeline wise for sure and i mean just now um i'll get i was gonna do this at the end but i'll give them a shout out now that um 50 years since the expose happened only a couple years ago and the new york council of developmental disabilities ended up putting out a new documentary um to honor the 50th anniversary called the path forward remembering willowbrook in case you'd like to watch that in case you'd like to watch the original documentary by geraldo rivera it's literally on geraldo rivera's youtube channel called geraldo rivera good friend and it is called uh willowbrook the last disgrace damn that's that's a good title so um especially because the one person he ended up i think keeping in touch with was the one who said this place is a disgrace so i think it was like a nod but yeah um anyway so i'm sorry that we derailed there but it felt important to mention um that we have come very far yeah thank god but who knows how much longer it would have taken to even get to this place if it weren't for that expose I don't know if it ever would have gotten there. I feel like it would have been something else. It would have been like, you know, we need the building for a different purpose. And so we're going to close the hospital or close the school. And no one ever would have known. And I feel like, oh, I have a feeling that it just wouldn't have been discovered. Well, also, like, it feels very on the nose. I don't know exactly how to articulate what I'm thinking, but hopefully you catch on to what I'm saying here. It's very interesting that, you know, these the people in this community are already so silenced and need so much help. And now the history of this monumental school that was horrible and ended up causing all of these, like, civil rights for people with, like, extra needs. It's shocking that now that building is just known as, like, where Cropsey lives. Isn't it crazy? Like, they just can't win. Like, you just can't. You just can't. Not that anybody wants to remember the stain that is Willowbrook. But at the same time, like, so it's such a historical thing. And, like, it's just like, oh, it's in the woods. And that's where, like, teens think that, like, cults go. Yeah, it's not remembered as, like, it's not like, you know, Stonewall, where you go to Stonewall in the West Village in New York. And you know that this was, like, the birth of, you know, the LGBTQ rights movement, right? You know that that's what it's for. It's not like urban legend started here. I feel like it should be the same thing for that hospital. It should be like this was the. It should be the birthplace of our country actually recognizing that everybody is a person and everyone should be made sure that they can actually survive and move through the world. Uh-huh. You're right. You're right. It's like, no, scary guy with a hook. I'm just like, man. And so anyway, it felt necessary to bring that up before I just said, oh, and some old abandoned school. And by the way, it's called the Willowbrook State School because they funded just enough. They had just enough funds to be deemed a school, but not but like so much more should have because they. They were their kids there. They were also supposed to be like in school while they're there. No. And so they got pain. So they got like school funding technically and called it a school. So that way people thought the kids were going to school. But it was just a. It was just a loophole. Basically, they were just putting them in a cage, essentially. Yeah. And calling that cage a school. Oh, my gosh. That's wild. For obvious reasons. The hospital shut down, although it took 15 more years. Fuck, man. Crazy. And I. Heard that it was because they really did try to, like, make it better and, like, try to improve it. But so many people were like, just fucking shut this thing down. Like, yes, too late. If we've learned one thing from this documentary, it's that, like, money is not going to help this unless you're willing to spend, like, a billion dollars because the amount of cuts that you've made that need would need to be put back in place. There's no way you'll ever agree to that. And, like, it's just never going to be good enough. So just shut this shit down. It's like buying a really old home where it's, like, rotting from the inside. You're like, we're going to. We're going to paint it. Yeah, exactly. You need to rip the house down. There is there's mold. It's like it's a really, like, I guess, honorable gesture for you to give us five more dollars. Thanks. But yeah. So basically, when it did close, some people, as you have already suspected, did not have anywhere to go. So they ended up still living on the property, along with other, in general, unhoused people. And. I will say on top of that. That a lot of people who were able to go back home, it sounds like they were either confused or didn't understand. And so a lot of people would end up just wandering back there because they thought that's where they were supposed to be. Oh, God. So there was just a lot of. Afterlife. Yeah. Not in the ghost way. A lot of people just still in the woods in general. And I. It's my understanding is that the Willowbrook school and the tuberculosis ward and the. The what's it called the poor farm. I feel like I don't know if that's like the right way to put it these days. Probably not. But I feel like that's what they called him. And I don't think you probably have one of even those anymore. So we don't have a better name for it. Right, right. Because we don't farm our poor people out to, like, be held, which is what I'm guessing that is. I, you know, I feel like, well, my understanding of those three locations is that there were tunnels that connected each of them. Or maybe it was just tunnels that just connected the the hospital with the school and the farmers. It's its own thing. But so then not only were people moving into the woods, they were now camping out in the tunnels. Tunnel. Just the word tunnels. I know makes everything. I just want to die. But I also love it because it's so scary. I used to explore a lot of abandoned landmarks in my hometown growing up, and I would go through many a wood. But the second there was an enclosed space where there's only one way out, I wouldn't do it. There's just no way. It's it's so scary. And I might be able to scatter. No. Yeah. Yo, you're either running towards the danger or away from the danger and the danger can still see you because it's a straight shot. Yes, exactly. Tunnels are the worst thing ever. And also, I mean, the classic you just never know what's around the corner if you have to, like, peek my I don't know how good your sense of direction is. You strike me as someone who is a good one. I feel like you are you deceive yourself. OK, if you have a bad sense of direction, aren't tunnels horrifying because you don't have any landmarks? And yes, getting lost is my nightmare. And that's just a labyrinth. Now you're just in a labyrinth. I've been in a bunker tunnel before, and that was crazy, too, because it's just like out of a movie long, long, long, long, long, long, long. And why were you in a bunker tunnel, Em? Well, I've been in a few, but one of them was the most recent one was Allison had a family reunion, and she ended up finding this like Airbnb that was like a mansion. And this guy clearly thinks the end of the world is going to happen because he had he built a whole underground full system with like like a like a nerve center with security cameras everywhere. And like it was very weird, but it was also just like wildly easily accessible. Like you just open a door that you thought was a closet and then it's just you didn't lock that off. No, I think because it was cold and he was like he left it open for us that we could walk from that place to the other part of the estate. Like it was like. I've never been in a fancier location ever. He had his own entire like when I say gym, I don't mean like a gym room like he had a whole like three story building that was as big as the mansion with like its own basketball court, tennis court, pickleball court, pool table area, billiards, a whole gym the size of a real gym. I was like, Allison, how much did we pay for this? But so he also had a whole bunker set up and there was like halfway through was a bedroom, which was so weird because on either end. It was just long tunnels. So you could rest halfway through because it's such a long tunnel. You need to take a nap. You need nappies. Basically, I was like, or maybe it's like super duper like that's the last place a bomb could get you. I have no idea. Oh, yeah. Good point. That's like the safest, most underground part of it. Dude, bunkers are so scary. If there's a nuclear bomb, I don't want to be in a bunker because I don't want to be in a bunker for the rest of my life. Now you're in a bunker. The day that the apocalypse happens. Three, two, one. Yeah, I'm out. Bring it. That's it. I'm going to stand. I'm going to be I'm going to just stand and welcome it with open arms like me to like a dumb hippie because I do not want to. I see what they were doing in The Walking Dead. I see how unhappy they look in The Last of Us. They don't look happy at all. I'm like to survive. What? And like the only people who are going to survive, like I'm sure there'll be a few handfuls of people like me where I'm like, how did I end up here? But most of them are going to be a bunch of those like gun totem government preppers. And I'm like, so now I get to spend the rest of my life with. Them. Yeah. No, that's not. No, I will. I'm good. I'm going to take the L for this one and I will see you in the next. Whatever's next has to be better than this. Boom. I mean, I often say that the reason I don't drink is so that way when doomsday comes, I can get blasted as fast as possible. You're going to be drunk so fast. I won't even feel it. I'll just be like, whatever. I took a beer and now I'm going to be fine. Fully comatose. OK, so back to Cropsey, because that was actually the topic of the story, if you recall. After that long window deep dive. So I'm glad you did it. I'm glad you did it. It's important, I think. But I did not expect to do all that. So one person who ended up living in these woods amongst all the other people who are now, you know, unhoused in some way or maybe just like it didn't even have to do with previous patients. Just people now see open buildings to live in and squatters are now in there. But one of the people who lived in these woods who was also connected to Willowbrook was this man named Andre Rand. I'm going to call him Rand. OK. For the rest of this. OK. So he was. Yeah. So he he actually once worked at Willowbrook as a janitor. It's unknown if he contributed to any of the abuse there. But we do know that he was not a great guy to children. Oh. In his separate life. So, like, you can kind of guess that maybe he was up to no good here as well. Yeah. That's not doesn't seem like the kind of thing that you would leave behind at home if you found unsupervised. Children at your workplace as well. A hundred percent. He, for example, like he was not a good guy at all. He was once arrested for the attempted essay of a nine year old. Awesome. And he. What a nightmare. Also once kidnapped 11 children from a YMCA and drove them to the airport. And we don't know why. That was just it sounded. He just said, want to go for a ride? Woohoo. Let's get in the bus. And then he took them all to the airport. And one of the kids who's now an adult and was being interviewed was like, I think there was something much more nefarious that he was going to do and then realized he was in over his head because there were 11 of us. Jesus. Yeah. He ended up getting arrested for that and went to jail for 10 months. 10 months. Good. 10 months. That's it. And that's for kidnapping 11 kids, not for trying to rape a child. Jesus Christ. So and also in general, in the town, parents knew that he lingered around kids a lot, like outside of his own crimes against children. So we can't confirm or deny that he was doing anything when he worked at Willowbrook, but it was a place known for crimes against children. And he also committed crimes against children. So I can't imagine he was pure of heart. No. And there was, what, one staff member for every 60 people? Is that what it was? So yeah, he had some probably unsupervised children running around. For sure. And at this point in the story, Willowbrook is. Post-scandal, people now know what's going on, but it's still open. It's on its way to being shut down. Okay. And Rand, he is no longer working there, but he has begun living in the woods. And when it officially shuts down, he'll be living on the site permanently. So let's remember he. That's so scary. He worked in the woods. Or no, he worked at this mental hospital where he was committing crimes against children next to a summer camp. Mm. Mm. So we're starting to see maybe the inner workings of an origin story here for Cropsey. Totally. So what made things a lot worse, because a lot of kids at this point, when they would go to the summer camp, they'd be like, oh yeah, we all hear about Cropsey. There's this guy who takes kids into the woods. Ha ha ha. That could have easily been just inspired by the fact that there were kids out in the woods living at this facility. Sure. And that's why sometimes you would hear screaming and stuff like that. it was actually because of a much an equally bad thing yeah of you know kids are being harmed yeah but they probably thought it's some spooky little story but they were actually hearing a bad interpretation of a real horror so jesus um so what really freaked them out because at the time they were like oh it's just the story and like it probably isn't true and everyone's just trying to keep us from going out and exploring in the woods around the same time satin island separately starts having an odd string of children going missing oh my god like has nothing to do with the scandal of the children at the hospital but at the same time there's a whole other big situation going on with the kids of satin island so in 1972 keep in mind that's right when the cropsie stories start picking up yeah right in the 70s the first kid that goes missing is a five-year-old named alice and then in the 80s there's a seven-year-old named hollyann an 11-year-old named tahis a 22-year-old named hank and a 12-year-old named jennifer a lot of them had intellectual delays and i don't know or developmental delays as well i don't know if they're if that has to do with like them they weren't like patients at the hospital so it's just very odd that two separate things are going on satin island both of them have to do with kids yeah it's very weird it is weird and it seems like yeah it seems like those children were being chosen because and the one and the adult i guess the 22-year-old maybe because they may have been easier to manipulate but it is very strange that that's just a recurring theme yeah and so one of the theories though is that well this rand guy who worked there as a janitor at one point maybe was hurting people in this hospital had previously children yeah now all of a sudden these children with disabilities are going missing maybe they somehow reminded him of the hospital or i mean it's total speculation but it's like the only common ground is that this guy is always around kids with disabilities yeah yeah even more interesting is that before all of these children went missing rand was the last person to be seen with a lot of them so we don't know if he did it but he has a lot of things going against him right now yeah he doesn't seem like the greatest guy in the world i don't know if he did it but he doesn't have a good track record and it would be stupid to not draw some conclusions based on right it's too layered it's too layered here he so he was a painter in alice's apartment complex he was talking with hollyann at a corner store and near his car he was released from prison the night before uh tahis was tahis disappeared and then he was seen at a diner with hank um and so he was near all of them then they go missing and he was not actually a suspect for any of those persons cases until the last one in 1987 which happened to be the year that the school closed fun fact oh but jennifer who had down syndrome she goes missing after taking a walk one of the last times she was seen was with a man with a green bike similar to the one that rand was seen a week later with missing for 35 days this jennifer girl none of the others by the way their bodies were ever found oh my god oh my god and nobody was ever um brought in for as a prime suspect for them but this one jennifer girl she was missing for 35 days the entire community did this huge search party and it did lead to her body being found in the woods near willow brick less than 500 feet from rand's campsite that he was living on yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna go ahead and say he did it is that is that gonna get us i think he did i think he did there are a lot of people who think he didn't do it really but um the fact that he had just been seen with her first of all he'd been seen with the other kids as well right before they went missing he was seen with her right before he went missing or right before she went missing her body was found 500 feet away he has previous crimes against kids the parents knew he was fucking creepy yeah like he already worked with disabled uh with kids with disabilities and um it's just it's not looking good for him so basically he was taken into custody quickly yeah good finally it only took you what 10 years and five kids five kids and there was little evidence that he actually did anything it was just eyewitness testimony was like oh i saw a guy with a bike like his so that really i wish there was more evidence than that but it he did get first degree kidnapping of jennifer which was 25 to life and then four years before he was up for parole he did like 21 years and then he got tried again for one of the other kids that went missing and he got another 25 to life good good finally because because of this though he did retroactively become the prime suspect for all the other missing kids because they're like well what are the odds but you know so some think that he just kidnapped them other people think that um he kidnapped them and killed them some people think he was actually like kind of trafficking them for satanic cults in the woods because this is also during satanic panic of course god yeah of course of course it's just the perfect storm because it's also stranger danger era yes yes so between stranger danger satanic panic fucking cropsy and all the scandals going on in the woods with this school it's just like not the place for kids to be no wonder everyone was saying don't go in those fucking woods totally well and also if you think about like we look back now at the satanic panic and and sort of laugh and roll our eyes some of us do some are back in it but like imagine all of this other horrible stuff in your community is actually happening and is actually true like these horrible abuse allegations of at the school turned out to be very true these children are actually going missing and getting killed so i would probably also be like yeah the satanic stuff is probably also real at this point i mean it's like a weird confirmation bias especially because the um in the tunnels and in all of these you know abandoned buildings now there are signs of people going out there and doing nefarious things and there's people who are maybe jokingly maybe not putting like pentagrams on the floor and like graffiti on the walls and you know leave it up to any paranoid mom all the kids are going missing you're gonna just start blaming whoever you think can totally yeah um so some say that he actually like he was only um like the guy who would collect the children and then bring them out to the woods for cults and covens to use them in human sacrifice like crazy stuff the more people you ask the more different for the more versions you get of this okay um also i just want to say like no one's talking about it and maybe i'm fucked up for saying it but like he also clearly had some mental stuff going on but i don't know if he's going to excuse anything he did but nobody's talking about how like like his mom also had some delays and was institutionalized at one point um you can just see in like footage of him that like something's a little off like he's his eyes are bugged out he's acting really like odd he's drooling he's like i mean he's just like he's something's going on there and like he also can be a very dangerous man two things can be true at the same time totally but no one's mentioning it and i don't know if that's maybe i'm maybe something's wrong with me for mentioning it because maybe it's like that shouldn't matter but i feel like it's like no one's thinking maybe he was just not uh you know a good thinker and he just was hurting people or he thought he was friends with them or i don't know but he's also like a sexually assaulting man maybe he knew exactly what he was doing i don't know i mean i think also we have a tendency to want to make the bad guy fully bad and i think that it's harder if you understand that he was failed on a systemic level from the very beginning too sure because it makes him a little bit more huge and it makes him a victim even though he also was then a perpetrator and should have been held accountable but it's harder to be like that man bad boogeyman bad guy if we know that he has a humanity to him and he was also failed you know he was failed i i i think he was failed and also i'm totally i i feel like i'm kind of guessing here that something's going on with him but i but i was watching the footage and i was like something is up and no one's talking about it and everyone was like oh he's drooling something he's crazy and i'm like whoa like he's probably i mean no he could just like be have a thing he could have a thing going on i don't know i don't know why i'm defending a fucking horrible man but i but i but i think that you are right to bring it up i think that it is worth bringing up because everybody it is harder to not just have black and white bad good but like what have we learned from this story is we need to support people who need help from a very young age because otherwise he was probably without the support that he needed and wasn't able to be pushed onto a good a better path yeah and i do wonder like was he working um because he was working at at the institution but it's like was he working there because he was one of those people who got paid like two bucks to watch the others or like was he working at the institution but it's like was he working there because he was one of those people who got paid like two bucks to watch the others or like was he working at the institution because he was working at the institution but it's like was he working there because was he um was he trying to hang out with people that were similar to him and that's why he kept or maybe he was trying to be near kids maybe one because maybe he's fucking liked kids and that's off yeah or maybe he was like they understand me at a different level i don't fucking know it's anyway it was like the only job you know he may have just been trying to get a job and that was like the one job he could get it doesn't seem like they were or his mom was also and it was was there so maybe he was like oh he was mom wasn't there but he was like oh my mom was at one of these maybe i want to take care of my mom i don't fucking know but i just no one's saying it so i just thought i would say it and if i'm wrong please correct me but i just i felt like it should be mentioned like sure yeah totally something was certainly off about him yeah anyway um and i mean off like as in like he gave the creeps but i don't know i'm trying not i don't mean to be offensive no you're i don't know he gave that he gave the creeps because he was legitimately doing really bad things and was legitimately creepy guy but also there was some deeper issues going on that could have been helped and were not thank you yes thank you for getting what i'm trying to say totally totally totally oh i'm like sweating i like don't want anybody um okay so the last thing i'm gonna really talk about here is just like a quick moment for um getting back to cropsy is that the the three-way venn diagram that all of this kind of creates for us is that we're near a summer camp like that is true this this facility is near a summer camp the facility is in the woods where kids are and were getting hurt then the second part of this venn diagram is that there was a guy rand who lived in those same woods who worked at that facility that has been arrested for hurting kids the third part is that a string of children in town have literally gone missing one was found dead in the woods next to this guy's campsite and he went to jail for it so all at the same time this is happening by campsites full of children and counselors are coming up with stories to scare their campers so it would make sense that through the small town gossip people have heard about this and now it's just perfect fodder for something to scare kids with and there's no way to know for sure if willowbrook's history and rand's background were in fact the combined inspiration for cropsy but he'd already earned a reputation for like being the staten island monster and now we're trying to tell people about a monster in staten island so it just it just adds up that's that's wild and and and it has to it has to be part of it and this is also like the most truth-based urban history and it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like urban legend i think i've ever heard in my life right yeah that's what i thought too i was like i i really thought i was going to be talking for 10 minutes and then all of a sudden i'd be like well i've got nothing else and then all of a sudden it turned into like this whole fucking true crime and a lot of kids like i told you before they really thought that this was just like a silly story but when kids actually started going missing they were like oh fuck i think cropsy's real nightmare nightmare a lot of people really started treating cropsy like a real person because they were like there is someone out there and i actually in one of the documentaries someone said that cropsy became like local slang for a maniac in the woods of course so even if ran wasn't the cropsy and the stories he was in fact a cropsy yes oh my gosh yeah totally yeah so in that way maybe that's how the two of them ended up associated with each other it's just like the the names kept getting mixed up so yeah yeah um anyway so it has now become a common campfire story for locals it has many projects have been done inspired by cropsy the main one is that in 1981 the movie burning man which i told you i watched in preparation for this it was not good and arguably even worse was the movie that came the year after called madman which i'm pretty sure they were the exact same movie written by two different people at the exact same time and there must be some beef between them i'm sure i feel like i've heard i feel like i've actually heard about this that they're like actually was well burning man um first of all there was a lot of unnecessary naked women in sex scenes and i was like what the fuck is going on and then guess who fucking produced it staten islander harvey weinstein no so just another crime on top of another crime but i was like why the fuck does every girl have to be topless for no fucking reason yeah dude 70s and 80s horror films are like yeah they're just boobs on boobs on boobs gross well so i will say a less horrible fun fact about burning man is that it was miramax's first movie oh congratulations congrats and it was the movie debut for fisher stevens who i did not know this in real life his name is steven fisher his stage name is fisher stevens wait the man the man with the perfectly round head in the thin neck yes that guy really yeah his name is actually steven fisher but he his stage name is fisher stevens also this was the movie debut for holly hunter and jason alexander of seinfeld wait no shut up wait what does he play does he please tell me he plays a sexual god no no he jason alexander plays like the guy who thinks he's cool but he's not i swear to god i think i've seen this movie in a previous life because this is pinging something but i have the memory of a goldfish well now you have a date night with um dennis as long as he got you your yorks so yeah it's a real will they won't they because i still don't know well the movie um is what i said this earlier but this is what got the story out beyond staten island so now this the story that happens in burning man is the main story of what happened to cropsy even though it might not have been the original default story of cropsy gotcha um but it's basically a a burn victim which let's talk about people with disabilities and exploiting them why are we this whole thing is like they played a prank they should have gone to fucking jail for like attempted murder and then he's just a burn victim who is like grieving and yeah yeah sue me he wants to kill some kids yeah yeah no i yes if they yes i've sighed with him i mean not real life but like not in real life but in the movie i'm like uh there's certainly um things there's onions to peel here that's a good way to put it there are onions feel um and then the last thing i'll say is there was a documentary that came out in 2009 called cropsy fun fact it has 91 on rotten tomatoes and was played at the tripecta film festival but it was made by two staten islanders who wanted to like discover who the fuck cropsy was they tried to figure out who the fuck cropsy was they tried reaching out to rant to do an interview he ended up declining um but uh basically is there anything else for me to say oh uh just a fun fact that today willow brook buildings the buildings there are still abandoned in some areas but other parts have become the campus for college of staten island whoa what yeah and the ruins part is said to be very haunted people see a man in the woods of course they hear footsteps voices laughter and a hook scraping the tunnel wall jeez fun fact it's a real man and you should be actually running because it seems like most of the stuff was real yo that is so that is so scary and then it's very scary and then it's very scary i know and it's also just crime after crime after crime and somehow harvey weinstein got involved in my fucking notes i don't even like that at all talking about dangerous awful men who needed to be in prison a long time before they were like that that's that's absolutely crazy and i don't think i fully understood how um true so much of it was i also think i i think that the filmmakers who made cropsy went on to make another documentary about urban legends i think they have another one that they came out like a few years later um because yeah because they i know they cover the hook hand car thing in that one so classic yeah yeah yeah am that was fantastic i'm so sorry i talked for a full fucking hour that was so unnecessary but this is great this was really really really informative and awesome now you can go tell dennis all about his own i love when we can mansplain to men their own childhood um it's like actually this is what happened you know what i know so much about staten island this podcast is brought to you by squarespace domains we have used squarespace since we started the podcast almost 10 years ago actually in the schultz fourth manor we now have two family members using squarespace because allison and her jewelry business forger's craft just started using squarespace themselves she was like i really need a website and i said we've never had a problem with squarespace you got to use them with squarespace your domain comes with everything included from the moment that you register You get every feature, every tool, everything you need to manage everything for your website just in one place from email forwarding to domain 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And when you're ready to launch, use offer code drink to save 10% off. Your first purchase of a domain. Hey, it says here to talk about a job candidate who caught our attention in an unconventional way. And I would say like we were that's all we wanted. We wanted someone to catch our attention in an unconventional way. So we said zip recruiter help. And they said, here's some ways to do it. And all of a sudden, Eva barrel rolled into our lives. And in an unconventional way, she literally brought us candy and then told us her astrology sign. She said she believed in ghosts. And then she like it was a slam dunk interview. She really got a giraffe, made us laugh. I mean, really just nailed it. Um, when you're hiring, it's always helpful to know who really wants a job, but you don't need unusual stunts like a barrel roll. You just need zip recruiter on zip recruiter. Qualified candidates can add a personal note to tell you why they're interested in your job. So you can see the most motivated people right away. And right now you can try it for free at zip recruiter.com slash drink. And zip recruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster in our world. That means evil would just been the only person we looked at. She would have barreled rolled in within a minute. Maybe it would have been like, yeah, zip recruiter makes it easy for amazing candidates to get your attention. Four out of five employers who post on zip recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try for free at zip recruiter.com slash drink. That's zip recruiter.com slash drink. Meet your match on zip recruiter. Okay. All right, Bethany, I cannot be more excited. I, you nailed it last time. I'm sure you're going to nail it this time. I'm sure. Well, thank you. I'm so nervous to do this for a couple of reasons. Um, first of all, I don't know, this wasn't on purpose, but this is the second story in a row that is Spanish language based. Okay. So, so like me with my like high school level command of Spanish, I, I am going to be absolutely doing my best. I'm going to give it my like absolute college try on pronouncing words and like, I'm going to do my best, but I set myself up for failure and I, and I am, I'm just so nervous. Super nervous about it. I, I understand there have been a few stories I want to cover in, um, in Japan soon. Uh, like there, there's a few ghosts I've wanted to cover and the, so many things, so many articles I'm like, I have to find a translator or like I have to, cause I don't want to just rely on like Google translate for all of my sources. Like that. I can't be. So I have avoided that because I'm, I don't know. People also please in, in the comments, if you have a suggestion on how, how to handle that, because I'd like to cover more like international stories, but just don't know the means, please let me know. And maybe also Bethany, cause how did you do that? Did you go through a translator or what'd you do? So I did, I, I used like the website translator to get a baseline, but I also skimmed it in Spanish to make sure that like the cognates matched. At least I, cause I could be, I could tell if like, essentially this is what it was saying. But then I also watched, um, YouTube videos that had subtitles. So at least I knew that the person talking was saying it correctly. And then like the subtitles probably, hopefully we're correct. Got it. Um, but, but also this involves a lot of science and I love science and I am pro science, but I am also not a science expert. And so. This, this. I get it. I would, I'd be scared too. I'm melting down. You're like, Hmm, how could I really tack on an easy project for myself? Uh, science in Spanish. Um, and then I'll just tell that whole story. Okay. You know, when you're too far into turn back now. Yes. That was me like halfway through this. I was like, I don't have, I can't do a different topic. Like we're in this now. So we're just, the only way out is down and through. I'm proud of you. There was one episode. Um, I, I, I must've told you this before. Or maybe you listened to it there. I was, I thought I was covering the back rooms. Yeah. Yeah. And then I, or I think, I think this is right. I thought I was covering the back rooms, but I ended up covering like black holes and, and I ended up, it was really hard. And I was like, and I've gone too far. And then halfway through, I was like, I don't, I don't understand why everyone wants me to cover this. This isn't at all what I would usually cover. And I, but I was like, okay, it's what the people want. And then I realized at some point I was like, oh, this actually is a totally. Different topic. And now I've just, and I spent the whole week trying to figure out how to break down quantum physics and black holes to best explain to people. So I, I've been there and I have faith in you. Thank you. Sometimes you just have to do it. I, I'm going to, I'm going to get into it, but, but so I watch a lot of makeup YouTube and, um, one of my favorite things is the Jaclyn Hill lipstick gate debacle. Do you know about this? I know nothing. Long story short. Makeup and YouTube influencer, Jaclyn Hill years ago, put out her own line of makeup and the lipstick that came out, all of them, not all of them. A lot of them had hair on them. What? Like hair, like not like just coding, but within the lipstick, it's people were pulling out hairs and like, it became this whole massive thing. And it was so funny because you saw all of these YouTube creators who suddenly just had microscopes and suddenly new science. And all of these people just were like, we learn science now. And they started breaking down and like cutting up and they had like, they had, um, scalpels cutting into the lipstick. And it's like, they all became chemists overnight. That's what I'm doing now. Women in STEM. Oh my God. Very much. Like, I, I feel like if that is how science was presented to us, it's like, okay, now we're going to dissect a lipstick to find hair. We would have done that. Like that. I would have been like, shut up. I'm in like, I will learn. I will learn. One woman was wearing a half full hazmat suit. It was great. It was great. Did we find out why there was hair? I feel like that's a mystery of its own. So, okay. Thanks for asking. So here's what we think happened. According to Jacqueline, they were not hairs. They were fuzzies left over from the white cotton gloves they were using for quality control. Not so much a quality control. The gloves, if they're that loosey goosey. Okay. That's right. But based on, um, some reverse image searching, enhancing quadrant four, and some deep diving that a TikToker did, she discovered that the, the lab that she believed that Jacqueline used, which was based in Florida, and she did this by comparing pictures that employees from the lab had posted on their LinkedIn to images that Jacqueline had posted of her at the lab doing quality control. The, they noticed that there was a day that the cat had gotten loose and someone had brought in their dog multiple times in this like sanitary chemistry station building. Allegedly animals had been out and about. And like, like ones that shed, this isn't like even a golden doodle where you can get away with that. No, no, no. These are like shedding. So, so they think that the hairs were from that. And then they think that some of like, there were metal shavings in some of them and some of them had like grease bubbles. And so they think that it was like a combination. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think it was a combination of them trying to push this line out too fast and not doing a great job at heating and cooling the actual liquid in the right way that made it like cohesive and together. Um, but we, and we still don't know for sure because Jacqueline's just not telling us. Well, I mean, it sounds, she would, I would be tight lipped too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's infuriating, but boy, we're going to get to the bottom of it. One of these days. I'm going to crack the case wide open. That's right. I'm going to tell you the story of Jacobo Grinberg. Some people say Jackabo. Some people say Jacobo. I'm going to say Jacobo because that feels like it sounds like the most best and the most best. It sounds like the most, I'm so nervous. Maybe just the last name Grinberg. You know what? Call him Grinberg. Okay. I'm sweating. Okay. So if the name sounds familiar to you, it might be because a documentary about him came out in 2020 called The Secret of Dr. Grinberg. It was on Netflix. My Netflix told me I can't watch it. I don't know if it's not available, just like the cheapest level of Netflix. Maybe you have to, I don't know. Maybe it's not in America. I don't have a VPN anymore. I apparently stopped paying for it. I don't know where it went. everything's falling apart on everything. but there is a Netflix documentary out there and it looks really good. Sick. Okay, great. So, all right. So in December of 1994, one of Mexico's most brilliant and controversial scientists, a man named Dr. Grinberg, vanished without a trace just as he was preparing to perform a groundbreaking experiment that he believed would have proven that telepathy is real. But then he disappeared. He thought too hard. He thought too hard. He thought too hard. My first thought was like, this has to be like he has the cure for cancer or something. So maybe that, okay, good to know. It's, oh, it's, it's, it's fascinating. So a newspaper called him the Einstein of human consciousness. And that's kind of what he's been called. Ever since. So that's crazy. It's, it's, they should call him Mindstein. Oh, I mean, I have one skill. Let me use it. But it's, it's a good one. So he spent his life essentially attempting to bridge the chasm between like rigorous scientific based neurophysiology, understanding the effect that the brain has on the body and also connecting that to the miraculous world of Mexican shamanism and the spiritual practices that were a huge part of Mexico in, you know, generations and cultures going back. He was trying to like bring these two things together. Sure. So he was born on December 12th, three days before my birthday, but different year, 1946. Okay. Born in Mexico city. And his family members were from Poland. They were Jewish. They spoke Yiddish. Um, and they had come to Mexico in the early 1900s. So he was also incredibly connected to that side of his heritage as well. Like he had these deep roots going back to the Jewish culture and his family back in Poland. He had these deep roots that he felt very connected to in Mexico. Um, I have, I don't think I've ever met a, uh, like a Jewish Mexican person. I had no idea that I didn't know that could be a combo, but of course it, you know, like, but yeah, of course it makes sense. Yeah. I mean, anything's possible, but it's like, it's just like, that's a rare, that's a rare duo. You don't see that one a lot. And you don't hear about it for sure. So, um, it's not super clear what kind of relationship he had with his dad, but we know that he was really, really close with his mom. And when he was 10, his mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor. And then she passed away after just two years when he was 12. Yeah. So this obviously just, devastated him. And so there was a woman in his family named Hilda Alterman, uh, who was his cousin and she was super close to him. These two cousins were like tight. And she said that after, uh, Grinberg's mom passed away, he became quote obsessed with other worldly events. Um, she said that like a lot of times after his mom passed away, when they took pictures, you would always see him looking up in the photos. Like he always, he seemed to be sort of with us. Yeah. And just searching, like trying to find something. I know it's so it's, it's just kind of breaks your heart. Like 12 is so young. Yeah. And especially to be, to be so close to your mom. Yeah. Yeah. So when he was 19, um, he had moved to Israel. He lived there for a year and that's when three important things to him happened. So he was only 19. The first was that he met a woman named Lisette Arditi. Uh, who would become his first wife. Ooh. Okay. The second is that he met a British medium and this was the first time that he had learned about seances and he was in. That's a monumental moment for all of us. Totally. Absolutely. The first, oh yeah. The first time someone, you know, puts you in a circle, you hold hands and the table starts chanting. Oh, that's awesome. Um, and I haven't felt anything like it. It's so long. Not since drinking my crystal light have I had such a rush. So, so this medium used, um, a Ouija board and like Grinberg didn't take this as, oh, this is really fun or it's a game or, you know, like what a, what a lark. He was like, this is a tool. And it opened his brain to the idea that people who are dead might not be completely gone. Maybe they're in a limbo state. Maybe we can talk to them. You know, and of course the fact that his mother had passed, like there's, there's a reason why spiritualism became so huge after world war one and like the Spanish flu, like people had lost so many loved ones and we wanted to connect to them. So this is, you know, it's, it makes total sense. Totally. It's not abnormal. So, um, his first wife, Lisette, which is one of my favorite names, remembered a time when he told her that a spirit had told him that his watch would stop at a specific hour. Of the day. So like, let's say it was 6:00 PM and then his watch did stop at 6:00 PM. And she said, that was the moment that he was hooked. He was like, this is a thing. Yeah. So then he started studying Kabbalah. Um, and he studied it in the city that has a super long history of mysticism and meditative practices and just earnest study. Um, and for the rest of his life, he would look for ways to integrate all of that. All of these different spiritual and mystical concepts into his academic work, because he was also super smart. He was brilliant. Cool. Okay. Yeah. So he left Israel, came back to Mexico city. He earned his degree in psychology at the national autonomous university of Mexico. Cool. And then the sixties happened, baby psychedelics. Oh, counter culture. He was into it. He left his wife, he moved to New York city and he became even more radical with his views on like other worldly phenomena. Like he was, he was into this. Now he was probably wearing little circular sunglasses and like not going to work and just having sex with everyone. I don't know if that's true. You can only dream. You can only dream. Right. Exactly. Okay. So he got his degree in psychology and then he went into the doctoral program at NYU's medical school. And he got his degree in psychology and then he went into the medical school in the brain research lab. So this dude is legit. This is legit. He's science, you know? So when he was there, he focused on the brain's reaction to things like geometric shapes and colors. Like he wanted to see, he wanted to watch people's brains and see what they did when they looked at certain things. Like how does, how does the world around us affect how our brain fires? Hmm. Which I, I, I do in general think that's such an interesting topic, but it feels like something that would come straight out of the sixties. It's like completely, I was just on acid. Does my brain also look like it was just on acid? Yeah. Yeah. Completely. Yeah. Can I, can I hear colors the way that I can when I'm absolutely high? Yeah. The problem that he had though, is that he struggled with how the word that this article used was square. He struggled with how square scientific research was like it was, it was too strict and by the book. Yeah. And so he ended up going back to Mexico in 1977. He started teaching at UNAM, which is where he got his undergrad. Um, and then he started doing experiments. Okay. And this is my favorite part of the story. Cause he got in trouble. I love when they get in trouble. So he believed that he could make children read words on a sheet of paper, even though they weren't using their eyes. That's amazing. Did he do it? No. Well, he got in trouble because they did see things, but it wasn't words. Um, okay. Unfortunately. So these were kids that were perceived to potentially have some psychic abilities. And so, you know, he was like, cover your eyes or blindfold and then like, read what's on this paper, but don't use your eyes. So the children, the unintended effect was that they started to see cosas face or ugly things like dead people. Yo. What now? Like collectively, they all said this. Yeah, dude. And their parents were so mad. I'd be like, what the fuck did I sign my kid up for? Their parents were pissed and like pulled their kids out of this experiment. And obviously Grinberg's very upset, but for a very different reason. And then like his colleagues are starting to question if he actually knows what he's doing. Yeah. Well, what was, what was his like methodology here? Like, what was he, was he priming them to think about scary stuff? Like what, No. What was he showing them that could even possibly be linked to this? I'm not sure exactly how he was doing this. My only guess is that in the absence of any stimuli, your brain starts to create stimuli. Sure. Okay. That makes sense. And so like, if there's that thing where if you stare at your own reflection, for a really long time, it starts to look warped and terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. So I, my, my guess is that Grinberg's like, what the fuck did I sign my kid up for? that it was something like that but but it's entirely possible that he had like made them look at faces and then put a blindfold on and all of a sudden you know right who knows okay okay horrifying horrifying all right so he uh he got he got upset so he didn't really know what to do because he was super drawn to the rational thinking aspects of science and academia but at the same time he felt like those same things that he loved about it and rationality worked against trying to learn more about how human consciousness worked they were too strict to do the kind of research he wanted to do but he did enjoy that research because it's strenuous and rigorous and it's you know by i feel i feel like if you want to have if you want to study something like that you have to have imagination like you have to be be creative and a lot of times science some would argue is not you don't get to be creative you've got to have to follow the rules exactly and i think that that is i think that's something that he ran up against because there were people who were definitely on his side and he had some like high-powered allies and he was really good at bringing money into the school he was good at getting grants and that sort of thing but when he started doing these experiments that either kind of went off the rails or couldn't or he wouldn't let them be replicated by other scientists people started kind of raising an eyebrow um like he was super popular students obviously and some of those students worked with him in his lab but he wouldn't let the students who worked with him talk to anyone about what they were actually working on interesting and like yeah he wouldn't let other scholars try to corroborate the results that they were coming up with so then people were like well we we don't know if it's legit if you won't let us try to get the results it's a little too secretive like i could understand like not wanting to like um sway anybody or like create a problem but i think it's a little too secretive i think it's a little too like to create bias if everyone's talking to each other but someone's got to know what you're doing for us to believe how this works yeah totally yeah and at some point like it's one thing to want to keep your secret secrets until you're ready but at some point like you do have to release what you're doing like yeah you did um okay so during this point grinberg had also become really interested in shamanism um that had started since like his first trip to israel he got really interested in this and he started taking part in practices like meditation and hypnosis and hallucination he was taking hallucinogenics um he would take sessions from other people but he would also lead his own practices and then all of a sudden super randomly in 1975 he was suddenly invited to los pinos which is where the mexican president and his administration operates oh okay i'd start getting nervous i know i'd be like i'm sick i can't uh-oh oh no i'm too good i think so it turns out that the president's sister uh margarita lopez portillo was a fan and wanted to meet him okay and she also wanted grinberg to meet a woman known as dona pachita okay now dona pachita was a lottery ticket seller and a cabaret singer but like all of us she diversified and she was best known as being a healer who could do spiritual surgery using just a rusty hunting knife hmm i don't believe that i maybe she's right but i would have to see that in person to i'd like to see the results of somebody also spiritual surgery but needing a physical tool seems backwards to me it sounds like she used it as like an is it athame is that how you pronounce the word i've only ever seen athame you know it's like a it's like um a place to focus the energy into and then like a wand like a wand like a wand you know but not as whimsical i thought you meant she was like channeling the word and then she was like channeling the word and then she was like channeling the word to tell her how she should perform a surgery with a hunting knife yeah no no i think she was like no you're right no that i said that i said that in an unclear way no yeah it the possibilities are endless i think it was a light like a lightning rod for energy okay that makes a lot more sense where she's not just stabbing people with a rusty knife not like i healed you yeah so okay she so like spiritual surgery is still a thing that people claim to be able to do it is um it's not viewed well uh it usually i would say is done in theory allegedly by grifters who are trying to take your money and prey upon people who are in positions where they are looking for hope um i know somebody who does spiritual surgery oh and i to their face call bullshit often okay but i think they the at least the person i know they really think it works i don't think they think they're a grifter at all and i'm like that's insane to me i mean i don't know yeah maybe maybe i'm wrong but i i have yet to see good results let's put it that way i'm not an expert on this um i think that there is a a pretty big intersection between things like healing touch and reiki and spiritual surgery but i i think that healing touch and reiki works and i think that from what i understand and i'm sure if you are listening and you know more and i'm sure there is someone who knows way more than i do please like set us and me straight but it sounds like the claims at least made in from donia pachita were like i am replacing your liver with a different liver and i'm like i'm not going to do that i'm not going to do that i'm not going to do that that's what i'm talking about that kind of thing that's that's that's what i'm that's what i yeah because i um in case anyone here needs uh clarification on my thoughts i'm a big believer in the power of the mind and i'm a big believer in meditating and a big believer in like manifesting so like i'm not saying that's can't be true yeah but exactly what you're saying of like i can i can reverse your organ failure and i'm like that i don't know i don't know i mean look if this is all you can do like if if you know our health care system broken if you cannot afford anything and like have at as long as you are not no judgment yeah i just am hesitant to believe that's all so but look like thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people went to visit her and vouched for her and said like she she must be doing something right she she she fixed me she you know i i wasn't able to have children i got pregnant i wasn't able to walk i can walk now she cured my cancer like tons of claims actually the um jazz musician charles mingus went and saw her okay um because he had als and could not play his double bass and was you know unable to do life the way he used to and he went and visited her and she did surgery on him and he felt cured um okay you know what then fuck my thoughts okay good for you but he also like passed away shortly after so you know but again i don't know what a mess what a mess you know what i hope you know what and even if even if that stuff works i'm charging my laptop yeah um even if that stuff um does work we would never know for sure because then she would also get whisked away to the white house wouldn't she so no it's true you know you're totally right so what do i fucking know you're totally right so but grinberg believed her like she invited him to come um be with her while she did these to take notes to document what was going on and he said that she was capable of quote materializing and dematerializing objects organs and tissue that's incredible it is pretty incredible if it's true yeah amazing so so also doña patita would occasionally get in trouble with the government uh because she was quote practicing voodoo rights which i i guess was uh no no or frowned upon or illegal so like people from the government would come looking for her and no matter how hard they looked for she disappeared like for long periods of time she would just disappear and everywhere they looked she just was not there and then as soon as they stopped looking for her she disappeared before her she was back so there was the belief that she had just dematerialized herself which is amazing which like she can just like run away or like drive off or something but i like it they're like no no this is she must be her own ghost yeah i mean again i don't i don't know for sure i don't know but i love the idea that she yoinked herself out of existence for as long as guys were looking for her let's say i hope it's true that feels like a that would certainly um rouse the crowd oh yeah oh yeah Okay, so because of this and, like, all of the work he's done up until this point and his work with Doña Pachita, he developed a theory called Synturgic Theory. The word is Synturgy. He made it up. It's a combination of the words synthesis and energy. Okay. So essentially, this is where I'm going to just, like, dumb it way down because I'm not going to be using words, like, I'm not going to be saying neurophysiology and, like, all of that stuff, okay? Thank you. Thank you for knowing my spirit. Also, just because I think people glaze over. I think everyone gets it. I think, you know, it can be explained and everyone gets it. But, like, I just think that it requires more active listening than I think a lot of us have the energy for. Aha. Yes. Okay. So here's what he thought. He thought that essentially energy. He thought we lived in a matrix. That's, I mean, like, that's the long and short of it. He believed we lived in a matrix. So he thought that there was an energy matrix called the lattice that permeates the entire universe. It contains all possible information in a holographic form. And he believed that our brains are not just perceiving the world and, like, you know, taking in images. And so he thought that there was an energy matrix called the lattice that permeates the entire universe. like you know one like they lose touch for 20 years one gets their arm cut off the other one suddenly feels a stab of pain kind of stuff right i i'm thinking of um the that crazy true crime case with the triplets where they went where they all found each other that's wild insane but the idea it's the same kind of idea of like they're connected somehow in a way that most people aren't and we're not fully sure how it happens like this all right sort of plays in the same sandbox a little bit it's very odd yeah it's very very odd um okay so uh he would do this experiment multiple times it became famous and he stated that whenever he did it overall about a quarter of his subjects showed that quote transferred potential so 75 but 25 did i feel like that's still a big chunk am i crazy that like there's a one in four chance that you're gonna get it i think it's a big chunk i think it is a big chunk um this also seems to be one of the experiments that he wouldn't let people come in and visit when he was doing them and so one of the criticisms is that there's no way of no like they can see the brain scans that he had from each of the participants that showed that there was a spike for both of them okay but there was no way for people to know if he hadn't just faked it and also like turned a light on on the other person's room as well and so there was no way for people to know where the brain spike was caused because he turned lights on in both rooms right right right right that totally makes sense so but but let's say this is all legit and this is what happened he felt like this showed the existence of that lattice being all around us and it connected our minds the lattice is this person sees a light but the lattice is connected to this person too because they they meditated together and so this person's brain is reacting in my mind if we're doing like the laser green grid kind of thing i imagine on one end someone's like plucking it like a guitar string and the vibration is like a guitar string and the vibration is like a guitar string and the plucks them back exactly that's exactly yep you got it that's exactly right i mean i am a scientist you are a scientist i'm just saying okay okay so interestingly uh anyone who knows anything about the cia knows that the cia was doing some real woo woo stuff uh in the 60s yeah that's right they're also doing something called project stargate uh okay who gets to name them who do you think gets to pick stargate versus like like i know fascinated by the names they always sound so impressive and then you realize that it's like just dudes sitting in a room going like i wonder if i can think real hard and someone else will notice well also like as an actress you know that they um the tv shows and movies like they all have a fake name when they're filming or at least bigger productions do so nobody finds out where they actually are yeah and i'm always like how'd you pick that like i i used to like some of that makes sense i i worked on um when i did stranger things that it used to be called the montauk project which makes sense because it was like based on project montauk yeah but then there's other ones where like um ant-man was like cherry blue and i'm like why why or uh spider-man was uh the summer of george and i'm like who's picking these that's i know that joker was romeo was the secret title like how's it happen like some of them like had some like oh that i get that that's kind of like a nod or like someone might be able to pick up on it but the random ones i'm like how like who's who was there a vote or did someone just say two random words together or like was it an inside joke you know right right or yeah yeah i never know i was assumed romeo and joker was like this it's the same number of letters but i don't know if that's oh i have i have no idea i have no idea but um anyway okay so i'm gonna pretend the same people who pick things like romeo and cherry blue also picked stargate yeah totally project stargate it sounds cool i think they want to sound cool and they want to sound like they're working on a cool thing of course um project stargate was um a cia project where they were exploring the military applications of psychic phenomena this is when they were trying to see if you could like remote view and talk to people through your brain in korea so because his work seemed like it might someday create a reliable biological method for non-local communication okay this is what they were trying to do so there's like released cia documents that mention him they were keeping an eye on him and they were aware of what he was doing okay but like imagine being this guy and people not that they didn't believe in you but no one really thought it was going to get this far and all of a sudden it's like no the cia keeps tabs on me so like i'm fucking close yeah yeah one of my favorite stories about the cia documents is uh you know the author philip k dick so he uh was constantly apparently saying that like the cia was tapping his phone he was very paranoid that the cia was onto him and apparently i don't i haven't checked but the story is that one day like a family member asked for his files the cia files and they released them and it was just every time that philip k dick asked for his files and they released them and it was just every time that philip k dick asked for his files and they released them and it was just every time that philip k dick reached out to the cia to accuse them of following him like they hadn't actually been but it was just like but also knowing the cia the way we do which is only through leaked stories that's also probably fake and they probably had like a full documentation but they just gave a fake one to him but it still is funny and it makes me laugh that's so funny you know you're the second person who's mentioned his name this week yo what's going on what's going on what's telepathy connected neural network all right so oh i don't know if you forgot he disappeared one day oh right yes okay he disappeared so a few days before he went missing grinberg called his daughter who has my favorite favorite name which is astutia i think astutia is like such a beautiful name what does it mean no idea it does sound like a sneeze to me oh yeah that's fair yeah astutia astutia it's the female is it russian i think it's sounds like i can imagine a russian woman astutia astutia it might it might have like polish origins i don't know it also sounds spanish to me but maybe that's just because it ends in a uh and i am an ignorant american um but anyway so he called astutia uh to tell her about a trip that he was gonna take to katmandu and he was going to reportedly try to do this potential experiment across continents so he's committing to oh yeah he's taking it to the next level baby good for him so uh in 1994 extended family and friends and students of his realized that they had not heard from him in a while and as they started checking in with each other they discovered that his daughter his two brothers and his assistant a woman named ruth cereso who was loyal to him they had not seen him either so grinberg was last seen on december 8 1994. he was expected to show up to a birthday party they were throwing for him because his birthday was in a few days uh but he failed to appear at his own 48th birthday party wow okay that was not like him he was close to his family he loved his students he was like responsible he never would have just not shown up for like a lab session or you know he just he would have he this wasn't like him at all right um so people started looking first and foremost at his second wife whose name was teresa mendoza okay she had given conflicting stories to his family about what was going on so she claimed that he was on a secret trip to campeche which is a port city on the gulf of mexico and then shortly after the investigation into his disappearance began she also disappeared oh and she has never been found either what the fuck okay so what are your theories because is it like did they take both of them so nobody would hear about any more of this conversation or did could it have been that it had nothing to do with the government and she killed him or something and then ran off so okay so there's some theories here some people believe that she had something to do with it they investigators found that her really uh so i found that grinberg's relationship with today saw was volatile uh he had apparently left a voicemail for one of his siblings saying that she was persecuting him that feels like a translation thing i'm because persecuting so i don't my guess is that she was like being awful or she was you know like controlling him or persecuting seems like a different yeah it could be more like i feel uh attacked or accused or something yeah yeah exactly uh a lot of people in the family reported that she suffered from bipolar so they were concerned that there was like maybe some unregulated behavior going on that like she she needed some some help with um some even claimed that her own family didn't know she was married and and then i'm just going to quote from, so the American scholar, website wrote an amazing piece on this and i'm going to quote them they're going to be linked uh in the sources it said quote grinberg's close circle so his brother is his daughter his first wife and aunt hilda felt that theresa was an imposter who represented a physical threat that she was part of a larger coterie with a vested interest in controlling him for whatever reason so she was like a plant she like she was yeah what do they call them it's what they think a mole was like a like a like a like a fake a fake wife like got in there with with on a mission yeah yeah she was like an undercover agent she was like uh like a honey is it a honey pot or is that yeah honey a honey trap honey trap honey pot is the brand of women's tampons and pads okay honey trap honey trap she was a honey trap um um one of one of his brothers said that grinberg actually feared he would be murdered oh shit uh and he said this during his final visit with that brother so there's also weird stuff where she was telling people weird things so she apparently told they had like multiple properties she told the watchman at their house in uh in morelos don't come back to work because her husband had flown to guadalajara but then she told uh his stepmom a few days later that he was actually in campeche and then she was supposed to fly to nepal with him but then someone reported seeing her in tijuana on the beach and like she was reportedly linked to a night watchman at a school through some telephone calls that were placed in mexico in the u.s and apparently this guy had like paramilitary backgrounds like there's a whole time there's like a whole there's a whole rabbit hole oh my god of fur the plot twist is that that cabaret singer has been blipping her in and out of the world chucking her all over the place have you heard the theory that uh earth and our universe is actually inside a black hole no but honestly that i believe of all the things you've said today yeah that that one doesn't uh surprise me anymore it uh it makes me lose sleep it's like why why have we not had any contact with any other intelligent life like the fermi pair paradox oh i did cover that at some point where that blew that i never thought about until i looked at all the numbers and it's like why haven't we heard from anybody yeah one of the theories is that we're actually inside a black hole and it's why our universe apparently spins a different direction than most of that like it's just and it's almost like our internet connection is cut off that's exactly that's it yep it makes me not able to breathe sometimes so it's like oh maybe they're just they got they got blipped into a different black hole anyway good some people also believe that she killed him and then like fled uh it does feel like the easier option yeah like it feels it occam's razor it feels like the the least assumptions required is that she had something to do that i do not think it can be ignored that she also disappeared yeah you know that's fucking weird if i mean it feels like if the easiest one to me is that she killed him and then ran off before anyone would find out but i could also see the government being like she's also like you could compromise the case yeah she knows too much i mean one of the one of the things that people raise is like what would she have gotten from it because it seemed like she cashed a check for a thousand dollars from his publisher um but that was it it didn't seem like she you know had a ton of money coming to her especially since she disappeared and so it's not like someone emptied out his bank accounts and then she disappeared it's just it it doesn't seem like she had anything to gain but also maybe it was random and she actually disappeared she actually didn't have anything to gain but did it anyway okay okay so here are some other theories let me scroll down my notes please hold so part of it some people were thinking that it had to do with the government but not for reasons why you think so the same year that he went missing there was also significant upheaval when a group known as the zapatistas stormed multiple locations in the southern state of chiapas demanding equal rights for the indigenous population so at this time remember he went missing in december so he had like all of 1994 to be running around mexico okay so that year on january 1st the north american free trade agreement between mexico the u.s and canada had gone into effect and the indigenous people in mexico were like hey you once again we are being overlooked and left behind just like always and so they you know started fighting back and that's what the zapatistas were protesting that's what they were doing they were like fighting for indigenous rights sure and grinberg was all about this and super supportive because again he was super he felt very connected to like indigenous practices and the history of his country and like so he was on board so he was like going to marches he was signing up for the marches and he was like going to marches and he was like going to marches and signing public letters he started then feeling like he might be being followed and so some people believe that he was taken out because he was a very high profile figure people knew who he was and he was also saying things against the government because he was pro like indigenous rights okay so i mean that also sounds like very feasible totally it feels it feels like one of the more reasonable things so an investigator named clemente padilla took a look at the history of the the history of the history of the case and he took on grinberg's case and this guy was like a superstar detective he i don't if i'm not mistaken up until that point he had solved every case he took on wow yeah no track record yeah yeah it in sports that would be a good track record that's that's babe ruth or something that's right babe ruth or something you got it and i know what you're talking about and i agree some lebron james i don't know so um so that's that's the story i'm he checked to see first and foremost if grinberg had been seen in katmandu and realized that no he had not uh no airline had any record of grinberg using a plane ticket and passport control did not show him moving through and it didn't seem like he even left mexico and then padilla discovered that grinberg's home had been scrubbed of evidence and eventually padilla claimed that his was shut down by high-ranking officials within the mexican government okay and that was that about his investigation he just had to stop he just had to stop wow so one of the cool things about grinberg's daughter astutia my favorite name astutia sneezy of the dwarves i love her she's my favorite dwarf she was in a band called heaven and earth she was the lead singer and she was badass and she remains badass to this day cool so because of that she was able to get on tv because she toured and was in uh was the lead singer of a band she had media connections and was able to get on tv and like say hey my dad is missing can you keep an eye out for him that's awesome it's so cool and people started calling in but like every single call just wasn't it none of it checked out and it's also kind of amazing how many people look like each other like and have the same names and it just there just wasn't anything i'm sure and also the description could just be like brown hair brown eyes and then it's like well now that's everybody yes yes and if you look at a picture of grinberg and you look at a picture of like philip k dick and then also you look at a picture of who's the guy who um wrote game of thrones the hh riley whatever his name is um they all look identical yeah they all look like each other perfect so all right so here's some more because we don't know spoiler alert we don't know we don't know we don't know we've never found him yeah it just sounds it sounds like the government just swiped him just he's gone knocked him off the planet yeah they he got yeeted yeeted from from existence and like right before he was supposed to do this massive experiment so a lot of people think that the timing is very suspicious i think so um the person who wrote the american scholar article said quote i once heard from a person claiming to have seen grinberg in january of 1995 in western mexico boarding a spaceship made of three perfectly delineated spheres so this is like kind of where it's at so okay we've really um it's devolved into he is either an alien or friends with them or they're like their little play thing that they're now taking away yeah that's right so okay so there's the cia nasa hypothesis which is pretty popular for obvious reasons people think that grinberg was either abducted by the cia or by nasa which i don't know if nasa does a lot of abducting but i feel like the cia does more yeah that's you know if we're if we're scaling both of them i would agree with you i feel like nasa's not so interested yeah if i have to be babysat by either the cia or nasa i choose nasa i mean i choose nasa but they're not coming cia is no they're not coming um so or people think that he was quote recruited slash forced into like american intelligence um because you see project hail mary i haven't and i need to it's it's similar of like getting recruited for something just because you happen to be really good at this one thing yeah and like i love the movie arrival because because have you seen arrival amy adams yeah yeah because purely for the scene where she breaks down sentence structure i'm on the white board i sometimes i just watch that scene because there's actually very something very similar in project tell mary i freaking love it like they made that process of being forced to work for the cia like way way more uh fun seeming but it was um it was a very good movie i didn't mean to take take you away but but i mean i i immediately thought that when you said like oh he's just being escorted onto a ship and he's this is where this is his job now yep yep yep yep a helicopter comes and lands on your lawn in the middle of the night and uh now you work for the cia and life is over yeah yeah yeah crazy so they so that's a that's a theory um and they think that the cia's interest wasn't necessarily in his philosophy but more like in the transferred potential they just wanted to see if he could like communicate to people across the ocean um because also one of the things that people think about that points to the cia is that his lab was suddenly seized like all of i mean come on that alone that actually unless his wife who in in theory one killed him yeah unless she was trying to make it right she was trying to make it right she was trying to make it right she was really looked like it was someone that wasn't her and she destroyed the the lab as a red herring to keep people away unless she did that it was fully the government totally fully the government he also felt like there were some people who were following him near the end of his life or the end of before he disappeared but also so there's like sort of a through line of some mental illness that goes on um he has a brother whose name is i'm gonna find his name ari talch and he's actually a famous actor in mexico um and ari's wikipedia page says that he has bipolar and it sounds like maybe grinberg may have also some people wonder if he had some mental illness stuff going on because he was more paranoid he seemed to be getting more and more like manic a little bit yeah like manic and more kind of out there with his ideas more than normal for him sure so then i not to play uh devil's advocate here but i also think that like people who think differently are often the most creative of problem solver so maybe he really was onto something because of his mental health i don't know yeah or maybe he was manic or you know who knows it could be both both both could you know who knows both could all be true um yeah so so so that's the idea about like the cia and all of that there's also an idea that is like incredibly offensive to his family okay i laugh out of discomfort not because i think it's funny so there is um a spiritual mystic whose name is shiva shambho okay and some people believe a little bit like the kurt cobain um who's the lead singer of weezer you know people think like the lead singer of weezer and kurt cobain are the same person i'm gonna look it up just because it's gonna kill me his first name is plural which makes no sense to me rivers cuomo people think that rivers cuomo and um mr nirvana are the same person so the same thing is going in here so the recently social media rumors claimed that grinberg was living in puebla as a mystic named shiva shambho who's a real person this man is a his own real person his name is jose antonio ramon calderon and they think that these men are the same man they think that okay grinberg changed his identity and became shiva shambho based on similarity that they perceive in the two men's voices and gestures sure i could i could see people coming up with a story like that because it's like oh he was already so out there and nobody got him and he needed to go he i get it but also you said that this guy is a totally other person yeah he has like a birthday you know like he's okay so yeah yeah he didn't come out of nowhere he has a mom and you know so like um and they also went so far as to do biometric studies like they tried to fit people on youtube have broken this down like it's a real lipstick gate situation all right so okay like but but i think so it was broken down and i think like third i think so it was broken down and i think like third 33 percent of their facial markers matched 33 percent of their facial markers matched 33 percent of their facial markers matched the the thing that the the thing that the the thing that here's the problem with conspiracy theories here's the problem with conspiracy theories here's the problem with conspiracy theories as someone who loves a fun one as someone who loves a fun one as someone who loves a fun one is like you can never disprove them is like you can never disprove them is like you can never disprove them because it that's not what it's about because it that's not what it's about because it that's not what it's about it's like well you can't prove that they it's like well you can't prove that they it's like well you can't prove that they didn't didn't didn't do this thing so a lot of people believe do this thing so a lot of people believe do this thing so a lot of people believe that because that because that because grinberg was all about grinberg was all about grinberg was all about the way you perceive reality can be the way you perceive reality can be the way you perceive reality can be changed people are like well he changed changed people are like well he changed changed people are like well he changed his genetic markers he became this other his genetic markers he became this other his genetic markers he became this other he like he changed his whole he like he changed his whole he like he changed his whole phys physical phys physical phys physical presentation because he's so in tune presentation because he's so in tune presentation because he's so in tune with this lattice network so you just with this lattice network so you just with this lattice network so you just there's no way to say no there's no way to say no there's no way to say no okay but his brother says that's stupid okay but his brother says that's stupid okay but his brother says that's stupid and he hates it and it's disrespectful and he hates it and it's disrespectful and he hates it and it's disrespectful and he thinks that it uh and he thinks that it uh and he thinks that it uh doesn't do his brother any favors and doesn't do his brother any favors and doesn't do his brother any favors and he reminds people that his brother was he reminds people that his brother was he reminds people that his brother was is a real person is a real person is a real person who did real work who did real work who did real work and and and had brilliant and exciting new ideas had brilliant and exciting new ideas had brilliant and exciting new ideas that were really really different from a that were really really different from a that were really really different from a lot of things that people at the time lot of things that people at the time lot of things that people at the time were thinking were thinking were thinking and trying to reduce him down to oh i and trying to reduce him down to oh i and trying to reduce him down to oh i think that he might be this other guy i think that he might be this other guy i think that he might be this other guy i heard of once is right it's just also heard of once is right it's just also heard of once is right it's just also it's just condescending it's like but it's just condescending it's like but it's just condescending it's like but yeah yes yeah yes yeah yes so so so there's essentially it it's just like there's essentially it it's just like there's essentially it it's just like the one that i did last time with you the one that i did last time with you the one that i did last time with you know the boat where it's like we don't know the boat where it's like we don't know the boat where it's like we don't we don't know what happened we don't we don't know what happened we don't we don't know what happened we don't know where his wife went we don't know know where his wife went we don't know know where his wife went we don't know where he went where he went where he went but what you love a mystery oh we love a but what you love a mystery oh we love a but what you love a mystery oh we love a mystery mystery mystery and like what his family really wants and like what his family really wants and like what his family really wants people to take away people to take away people to take away is that he was is that he was is that he was a whole person just like just like the a whole person just like just like the a whole person just like just like the people people people in your story m who were like whole in your story m who were like whole in your story m who were like whole people who had this awful thing happen people who had this awful thing happen people who had this awful thing happen to them to them to them he was a man who existed and had these he was a man who existed and had these he was a man who existed and had these incredible ideas incredible ideas incredible ideas and his daughter actually helped and his daughter actually helped and his daughter actually helped re-release some of his writings like six volumes i think through six volumes i think through six volumes i think through penguin they released some of his work penguin they released some of his work penguin they released some of his work um to like raise awareness of what he um to like raise awareness of what he um to like raise awareness of what he did because he isn't did because he isn't did because he isn't super well known i i don't feel like super well known i i don't feel like super well known i i don't feel like this was my first time ever hearing this was my first time ever hearing this was my first time ever hearing about him about him about him and i love this kind of stuff and it and and i love this kind of stuff and it and and i love this kind of stuff and it and it's not like i have my finger on the it's not like i have my finger on the it's not like i have my finger on the pulse of like pulse of like pulse of like you know woo stuff on the internet but i i you know woo stuff on the internet but i i you know woo stuff on the internet but i i feel like it doesn't make sense that we feel like it doesn't make sense that we feel like it doesn't make sense that we haven't heard about him more haven't heard about him more haven't heard about him more you know i i mean i guess it's if if the you know i i mean i guess it's if if the you know i i mean i guess it's if if the government took him then they got government took him then they got government took him then they got exactly what they wanted by people exactly what they wanted by people exactly what they wanted by people slowly forgetting who he is but yeah slowly forgetting who he is but yeah slowly forgetting who he is but yeah that's true um but yeah you would think that's true um but yeah you would think that's true um but yeah you would think someone would maybe someone is secretly someone would maybe someone is secretly someone would maybe someone is secretly out there carrying on the torch and out there carrying on the torch and out there carrying on the torch and carrying on with his stuff dude that's carrying on with his stuff dude that's carrying on with his stuff dude that's my hope because in my head my hope because in my head my hope because in my head he he went missing he he went missing he he went missing and he is fine and happy somewhere and he is fine and happy somewhere and he is fine and happy somewhere floating and someone snuck in floating and someone snuck in floating and someone snuck in like the next generation snuck some like the next generation snuck some young buck snuck in took all of his young buck snuck in took all of his young buck snuck in took all of his stuff stuff stuff and secreted away and is like carrying and secreted away and is like carrying and secreted away and is like carrying on his experiments on his experiments on his experiments yeah i mean i i hope that he absolutely yeah i mean i i hope that he absolutely yeah i mean i i hope that he absolutely was actually in charge of his was actually in charge of his was actually in charge of his disappearance and he just disappearance and he just disappearance and he just left it in some cryptic way for another left it in some cryptic way for another left it in some cryptic way for another um um um or maybe it wasn't didn't have to be a or maybe it wasn't didn't have to be a or maybe it wasn't didn't have to be a cryptic writing maybe he was like cryptic writing maybe he was like cryptic writing maybe he was like for those who have the eyes to see i'll for those who have the eyes to see i'll for those who have the eyes to see i'll find you in the lattice find you in the lattice find you in the lattice oh man and we'll talk there that's such oh man and we'll talk there that's such oh man and we'll talk there that's such a cool a cool a cool bumper sticker i would i would like i bumper sticker i would i would like i bumper sticker i would i would like i really i really feel really i really feel really i really feel like this is his work is really like this is his work is really like this is his work is really fascinating and i think that fascinating and i think that fascinating and i think that he has a lot in common with philip k dick he has a lot in common with philip k dick he has a lot in common with philip k dick they both they both they both talked about the idea of like this being talked about the idea of like this being talked about the idea of like this being a simulation a simulation a simulation well before that was a super popular well before that was a super popular well before that was a super popular idea idea idea and i also and i also and i also have have have really simplified all of this way down really simplified all of this way down really simplified all of this way down so if you are listening and are like an so if you are listening and are like an so if you are listening and are like an expert on this topic i really hope i did expert on this topic i really hope i did at least a decent job of trying to at least a decent job of trying to at least a decent job of trying to explain it because there's so much more explain it because there's so much more explain it because there's so much more to it and i highly recommend people take to it and i highly recommend people take to it and i highly recommend people take a really deep look at it a really deep look at it a really deep look at it because he was fascinating his work was because he was fascinating his work was because he was fascinating his work was fascinating fascinating fascinating um and um and um and yeah i hope i just wasn't like i hope i yeah i hope i just wasn't like i hope i yeah i hope i just wasn't like i hope i wasn't wasn't wasn't unintentionally disrespectful in my attempt unintentionally disrespectful in my attempt unintentionally disrespectful in my attempt but i was like i was like man i'm but i was like i was like man i'm but i was like i was like man i'm rusty i like clearly don't use like this rusty i like clearly don't use like this rusty i like clearly don't use like this verbiage all that often for me to be verbiage all that often for me to be verbiage all that often for me to be like wondering what what i'm saying but like wondering what what i'm saying but like wondering what what i'm saying but no i i i personally think you did a fine no i i i personally think you did a fine no i i i personally think you did a fine job i won't thank you but i i'm job i won't thank you but i i'm job i won't thank you but i i'm love love a theory love a mystery love a love a theory love a mystery love a someone discovered something and now someone discovered something and now someone discovered something and now they're missing there was um they're missing there was um they're missing there was um there was a guy online right now he there was a guy online right now he there was a guy online right now he within the last year discovered a way to within the last year discovered a way to within the last year discovered a way to create energy off of create energy off of create energy off of recycled plastic recycled plastic recycled plastic like no gasoline needed anymore like like no gasoline needed anymore like like no gasoline needed anymore like just like how to energy off plastic and so that way not only are you getting us clean energy without any fuels yeah um or any like a like fossil fuels but also um you're you're also recycling at the same time and like he even showed it like on videos how he can like like turn a car on like he put put it in the in the gas tank of his car and the car works like everyone in the comments is like i need you to like let us know that you're alive and you do not have any ideation and because everyone is convinced the government's coming like you cannot just post that on tiktok and not expect to go missing right away and then for a while he literally did go missing but he just stopped posting for a little bit you can't do that bro everyone was like please where are you where are you i mean like the smartest thing he did was publicly make himself known so that if he goes missing we all know what because oh man but he like he if you if you go look it up but he really has done it and it's like well you are either going to be a billionaire or not alive um i just feel like i feel like unfortunately we live in a hellscape where those are the only two options in my brain yeah no that's so no that's it that's that's it he needs to open source his information if he doesn't want to patent it make a million dollars because a hundred percent if they that's it then that's now that's gone agreed oh well you did a great job telling the story oh thank you m and thank you for your story i was that's thank you for finally connecting those cropsy dots because i i knew that there was something i was missing in the middle of that story you know i um i actually i thought about doing it forever ago like a year ago and then i looked at it and it was just so much longer than i thought and i was like i thought this guy was supposed to be just like uh i'm in the woods and then just i saw the notes growing and growing and then when i looked at it and it was just so much longer than i thought and i was like i thought this you were going to come on last time i thought oh this would be a great time and i got overwhelmed again so totally i'm happy that it's i'm happy it's finally out of the way but in case anybody uh from staten island has anything to say about it uh please leave a comment let me know if i missed something but otherwise it's it's done there's cropsy go tell your friends tell you tell your campers yes and uh that's it what do you have going on for the rest of the day you know what i am going to see if there's a york peppermint patty waiting for me after all this time would he really only give you one there better be a whole bag well i mean i just i just i simply only want one should i see what's wrong with you you don't at least a backup i i mean i don't know i'm trying you know i'm just i'm trying because tomorrow's pizza friday obviously and so like i'm trying to not eat every sugar before pizza friday because pizza friday they're the size of a quarter bethany you can have 50 cents the big ones the ones that are the size of a hamburger patty yeah yeah yeah okay that's better yeah i'm not gonna cheat myself that's an actual peppermint patty yeah yeah versus like these little you know it's not like a quarter it's like a it's like a full dish of patty you know i see it might tell me what hurt afterwards it's a lot of mint no okay no i respect that i respect no i respect it i love a york peppermint patty but i like the little ones because then i can just keep throwing them in there like i'm a casino machine like you're a slot machine like i'm a slot machine um are you do you freeze them yes oh yes yeah you freeze them too i do freeze them i like that do you first of all do you like frosting but flavor uh doesn't matter it doesn't matter no it doesn't matter i mean i i don't mind frosting although if i'm eating a cupcake the the frosting is not my main character see this is a symbiotic relationship because frosting is my main character oh see no i i've many many times i would argue half the time just take the frosting off and eat the cake okay um so here's the thing so when we move in together allison can come dennis can come okay so we are symbiotic cupcake partners and it's funny because i've only ever had one other symbiotic cupcake partner and they weren't we don't talk anymore and i don't know what happened well because i think they got into the frosting and they were like actually bethany's been onto something this whole time yeah no totally it's not gonna work anymore so i put cupcakes in the freezer to make the frosting a little harder so it fights back a little bit more because i like that that's full nightmare no it's good but so then i just eat yours and then you get cupcake and i get frosting i mean i really just want cake there have been times where i baked a cake and then people are like are you gonna decorate it i'm like this this is it this is the masterpiece is the frosting too sweet what is it maybe i don't know yourself you explain yourself hard frosting by itself yeah bite into it uh no i think i i mean i really i prefer things that are light versus like really rich and so the the like intense sweetness of frosting is just too much for me and then also if i'm gonna eat frosting it has to be from a can i cannot fucking stand when people try to make frosting oh yeah don't get away something to me no get away with your homemade frosting don't you dare you know what i would love the perfect frosting is not frosting at all it is the chocolate half of a black and white cookie that's the perfect frosting bro now we're on the same page i feel like a black and white cookie is just a cupcake that went through a press that's right it went it just it had a hard day and it fell into one of those pasta rollers and it came out you know what an even better version of itself do you like the white part of a black and white cookie because i literally just want a black cookie all the time i will absolutely eat the white part so we're symbiotic there too as well this is magic this is magical now here's one more question yeah this is a black and white cookie and i'm going to eat it here's one more question yeah this is a real make or break friendship like we haven't already been friends for like a decade how how is what do you feel about artisanal macaroni and cheese literally fuck off with that don't you dare put troubles did i just mention this to you recently like there i've had this conversation i'm not kidding it's may 14th since may 1st i've had this conversation with at least four or five people i don't know what's going on right now there's an epidemic there must be something going on epidemic there must be something going on right now there's an epidemic there's a problem specifically with the phrase artisanal mac and cheese specifically that phrase and every time i've said fuck off with that who the fuck do you think you are i swear to god if someone ever says i'm gonna make you some mac and cheese here's some breadcrumbs on top how about you go to hell how about if you don't bust out a blue box with some orange ass noodles on the front of it i don't know what you're doing don't you dare put tomatoes in there don't put mushroom don't put any sort of don't you put anything i want a powder well i okay here's a milk here's a milk here's a milk i will and i the only mac and cheese i like i will and i the only mac and cheese i like i will and i the only mac and cheese i like from scratch from scratch from scratch is mine it's the only one i like and it is is mine it's the only one i like and it is is mine it's the only one i like and it is incredibly simple because i'm like i want incredibly simple because i'm like i want incredibly simple because i'm like i want i said mac and cheese yeah yes it's not i said mac and cheese yeah yes it's not i said mac and cheese yeah yes it's not i don't know where we fucking thought i don't know where we fucking thought i don't know where we fucking thought and crumbs and bacon bits oh don't and crumbs and bacon bits oh don't and crumbs and bacon bits oh don't and the truffle i heard you say truffle and the truffle i heard you say truffle and the truffle i heard you say truffle earlier that can earlier that can earlier that can absolutely go right in the trash how dare absolutely go right in the trash how dare absolutely go right in the trash how dare you well because somebody said to me you well because somebody said to me you well because somebody said to me i was at a restaurant with somebody they i was at a restaurant with somebody they i was at a restaurant with somebody they were like oh mac and cheese and i went were like oh mac and cheese and i went were like oh mac and cheese and i went oh do you eat mac and cheese at oh do you eat mac and cheese at oh do you eat mac and cheese at restaurants because and i restaurants because and i restaurants because and i and i said it actually meter um and i said it actually meter um and i said it actually meter um mac and cheese and i'm like mac and cheese and i'm like mac and cheese and i'm like i didn't ask for that look i said i i didn't ask for that look i said i i didn't ask for that look i said i want if i want a comfort food why am i want if i want a comfort food why am i want if i want a comfort food why am i now at the four seasons that's right now at the four seasons that's right now at the four seasons that's right that's right i want slop and a bowl that's right i want slop and a bowl that's right i want slop and a bowl in front of me put it in my mouth in front of me put it in my mouth in front of me put it in my mouth directly just directly just directly just pose it in you like don't you dare pose it in you like don't you dare pose it in you like don't you dare on that menu on that menu on that menu sponsored by craft yeah i would have so sponsored by craft yeah i would have so sponsored by craft yeah i would have so much more respect for you much more respect for you much more respect for you if your mac and cheese at your four if your mac and cheese at your four if your mac and cheese at your four michelin star restaurant is from a box michelin star restaurant is from a box michelin star restaurant is from a box and it's and it's and it's craft macaroni and cheese because i know craft macaroni and cheese because i know craft macaroni and cheese because i know you know who you are you know who you are you know who you are i am so glad we're on the same page i am so glad we're on the same page That is legitimately bizarre. That is very, very strange. And every single one I've said, if it's not Kraft or a soul food, a true soul food restaurant, I don't want it. Like, it's not that. And every person's like, oh, maybe we should split the mac and cheese. How about no? No, you have the whole thing yourself because your garbage taste makes you want it. And you know what? It's at this point that I feel like I've insulted somebody at a restaurant who's like, oh, but you have to try our mac and cheese. Respectfully, no, thank you. Is it Kraft macaroni and cheese? Is it Kraft cheese and macaroni? I think it's Buffalo Wild Wings or something. But their kid's mac and cheese, I think, is just Kraft, in which case I'd get that. Great. It's not that hard. But if they're like, oh, you can't because you're over 12. Then I'll buy two. Chop, chop. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I don't know. Suck it. But I don't know. And I'm a gentle listener. I'm sorry if, like, you love artisanal mac and cheese and we've just hurt your feelings so much. But I just got to tell you, sometimes you have to take a stand for something, right? And I will still, I still respect you. We can all have different views. But, like, I. I just am not going to be able to. I can't split the mac and cheese with you at, you know, the five-star Michelin over-expensive restaurant. I. And you know what? Thank you for saying that because I agree through and through that if you are a foodie, congratulations. Oh, yeah. it ain't me no i um man and you know what i hate sorry we've done this for way too long the mac and cheese that has to be said but they put like gruyere and parmesan and i'm like go away like i want it i don't want cheese that is also in like an alfredo or some fancy sandwich like i want just stretchy mozzarella some stretchy cheddar yep maybe one similar to that if this cheese did not come out of the utter as an orange powder i don't i don't want it on my mac and cheese if the if the cow didn't go if the person collecting the cheese did not come back in take their sunglasses off and there is an outline in the powder of where their sunglasses were like an explosion in the face like a mad scientist it's working well with that everybody i hope everyone has a great week and i hope you eat mac and cheese that is done right um and thank you bethany for being here i really appreciate you uh hopping on for two whole episodes and uh would you say jerry o'connell i'll be your jerry o'connell any freaking day of the week my dear perfect uh see everyone for another episode soon yeah and that's what you drink that's what you drink fall never arrives all at once first the air then the light and slowly the things you love begin to find each other a jacket meets a dress a hoodie slips beneath a blazer an old cap finds a new scarf because you don't simply step into the season you create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall find fall your way at ross you kids at college that's why she shops at bj's wholesale club saving up to 25 off grocery store prices beef jerky microwave meals laundry pods even they can't screw up have you met my kids and with bj's gas she gets there for less they call me the road warrior this is your home road warrior mom home of the save join for just 20 at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save welcome back freaking frack welcome to the jungle abc wednesdays abbott is back it's gonna be the best year yet thank you now we can finally turn this up and everyone's going wild y'all think you run this school but you don't it's going great abbott elementary anything can happen in the jungle right guys all new wednesdays on abc and stream next day on hulu