Rob Reiner, Victim Blaming, and Fleeing America

So, burdo, you're prepping for a deep dive on the Columbine. That's right. Murders. I was watching something and I thought, oh, maybe we should do an episode. I was like, wait, this is perfect for a burdo and then I texted you and asked you if you knew a bunch of about it already and you said, oh my God, I was obsessed with that story back in the day. Yeah, I can't believe I hadn't actually brought it up already before because it was definitely something that I deep dove. Well, I see even before we started the podcast or anything, you know, and has to do a lot more with psychology than these other true crime stories because we have at least some data on the boys and it's very relevant today. And it's a phenomenon. So, look forward to that, dear listeners. Let's answer some emails, what do you say? Let's do it. This is the Psychology and Seattle podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirk Honda, who are you, burdo? My name is Umberto Castanjá and I look for sneaky snails in grass. So, listen to Chelsea, she wrote in and said, given the recent events, I think it would be interesting to explore the dynamic between Rob Reiner, his wife and the son who was jailed Nick. There are interviews from when he made a movie with his son about mental illness and addiction. Many people wonder if addiction alone could have caused this or was it underlying mental health issues like psychopathic traits. Also why the other children did not struggle with these issues despite similar upbringing? There is an interview where Nick Reiner, the kid that's a grown adult man who's accused of killing Rob and his wife. It was Nick's bomb. Was it not Nick's bomb? That he killed? Yeah. There's an interview where Nick Reiner says, don't set me off or he gets violent. An interview, so he apparently says, you don't want to set me off or also get violent. An interview where he mentions destroying a guest house when they wanted to get him treatment after drug use. And later Rob Reiner said he regrets trusting experts over his own gut feelings on how to help with addiction, thoughts on that, is that enabling and could that have ultimately led to this horrible incident? Could anything have prevented it? Also the effects of coming from two generations of high achievers and the mental health outcomes of that and the public eye is interesting and of email from Chelsea. Yeah. So if you don't know, Rob Reiner is a wonderful writer/director actor and he is responsible for some of my favorite movies of all time. You have prespride spinal time. You good men? Oh, yeah. When Harry met Sally and he was also on all the family, I would watch that. Which by the way, I didn't make that connection at all. I barely watched the show, but obviously I knew the show. Well, it was probably canceled before you were born. But they re-ran it in Columbia. It was playing in Columbia. It's just, it's one of those shows I was a little too young to appreciate. But when everyone started saying like, oh, and he was in all in the family, I thought he was like maybe a one off character or something. And then I looked it up and I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, and my wife was like, I told you this many times. Yeah. Well, I had a similar experience growing up that I knew him as Meathead on the family. And I didn't really watch that show either because I was too young for it, but I did watch it. And I did not meet Meathead as evidence, or this is just evidence that we were living in a monoculture at the time that everyone knew all in the family whether you watched the show or not. Like literally every American, do every character. And I then skipped forward, I don't know, a couple decades and then I start, well, it wouldn't have been that long before spinal tap and other movies that he's associated with. And I didn't, I initially didn't make that connection. Because I, you know, considered Meathead to be this dumb Meathead guy. Right. And then all of a sudden he's a director. And I'm like, how is he a director? He's a Meathead. Anyway, but Rob Reiner and his wife, he met her, I think, on set or something. Like, I think the way the story goes is that he was directing when Harry met Sally. And initially it had a cynical ending between, you know, Billy Crystal and what's her name? And Meg Ryan. Meg Ryan. We really get together. Oh, really? And while making the movie, he met his wife, eventual wife. She was also working on the movie. And they fell in love, which made him go back to the drawing board and rewrite the ending. Oh, glad you did. So that they end up getting together. And they were still together and they had kids, Nick being one of them. And the story is, is that Nick was struggling with addiction. But also with violence and, you know, general life chaos. And the question from Telsea is, it's like, well, you have two generations of high achievers, meaning that, because Rob Reiner's father was a very successful writer-director factor. I did not know that. Oh, yeah. I mean, you would recognize him, but he goes back to like the '46s. So I see. So it's a dynasty. Yeah. So if Rob had a lot of pressure, maybe not enough love and attention, and then he's, because you could imagine Rob working a lot, not having a lot of time for his kids. But we don't know. Maybe he was a fantastic father. We just don't know. And then you also have the fact that the other kids don't seem to have these kind of problems. So is it the parents' faults? Is it genetic? You know, what's going on? I don't know. Well, I mean, listen, for some sense, for people who don't know, it seems pretty clear that Nick, the adult son, I don't know how old he is, I think, like in his 40s or 50s or something, that he killed his parents, like knife them down or something, and they were in their 70s, I think. And there was a build up to it, or when people started recalling what had happened, even just that night. They had gotten a very big fight at Conan O'Brien's party, or it was referenced or something, right? And there were other incidents within the last couple of weeks that indicated that there was. Yeah, so like that night at O'Brien's party, the son started being very belligerent and started sort of frightening some of the guests. And then the dad got into it with him, and there was a huge shouting match, and then the dad and the mom left, and apologized to Conan, and I think the guy left, too, and the kid, the son. And then later that night, Nick Kills his parents allegedly. Well, I think it's pretty clear, I don't, I mean, I think we, I think I guess allegedly. Listen, I thought it was clear when the Bronco was being chased down the freeway. It was clear. Apparently not. And I don't, I don't know if he's pleading not guilty or that he's loyal, just dropped them because the family's distancing, so we don't even know what they're going to plead. They've delayed the arrangement, right, right, right now. So I don't know any thoughts on this. Yes. Look, I look at myself and also at my kids, and like kids of parents I know and stuff like this. On the one hand, you know, I've talked about this a lot of times, I came from a broken family, my parents got horribly divorced when I was very young, and then I moved around a lot and all these things. And I ended up with a lot of psychological problems. At the same time though, I had like this super supportive, I was very lucky that I had super supportive family in Columbia with lots of love given to me, right. And that is, I think, helped me not be a total disaster. But it didn't stop me from acting out later in life due to, you know, psychological trauma I had, right. Okay, well then, then I look around and I, you know, my two kids, without going into too many details, like they're both in therapy, they both have different issues. And you know, as far as I can see, I'm like, oh my gosh, why, like they have the perfect life. Their parents aren't divorced, they live in a very affluent area, they get everything they want, they go to nice schools, they have friends, like what's the problem, right? But that's just not how the mind works, right. And in fact, it's quite possible that lack of certain kinds of struggle lead to other sorts of imbalances. So one thing that we can't be for sure is what the effect of growing up essentially in like what you were describing. First of all, in a successful, like there's this era of success, right. Like our family is successful. And maybe even if Rob Reiner and everyone around them were very humble about it or whatever, it's still there, right. This is just one aspect. The second aspect is wealth, just kind of unlimited material wealth. I'm not saying they were billionaires, but certainly wanted for nothing, I'm sure, right. But then there's all the aspects of who you surround yourself with. Why did he get into drugs? It could have been as simple as like he goes to parties with rich kids and you start doing drugs. And then that leads to all sorts of, so what I'm getting at is that it, it, you wish it was as simple as like, oh, well, of course at six years old, this one bad thing happened to me. Unfortunately, it's so much more unpredictable than that. And it's not that surprising that a child who is otherwise in what would seem like a normal environment could have problems because that happens all over the world all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. So I looked up as much actual factual data that I could find. And even that Conan O'Brien, you know, Christmas party that night has some uncertainty about the exact reports from the witnesses because those individuals have, you know, someone said that someone said or, you know, it's like a third hand, or it's not exact, but it seems like the general gist of what you said, it was some version of what actually happened. Anyway, you know, as the internet is, they just start speculating in rumors and people just start making up stories. And so I was looking for like first-hand accounts and actual reports instead of just, you know, hearsay. And the little I could find was that there's a possibility that Nick had been diagnosed with. It's a frenzy in the past, some sort of psychosis, but if you're having troubles with addiction and drug use, particularly if it's meth or cocaine or crack, then, you know, you're going to have psychosis in all likelihood, you know, the way that the addiction progresses, it tends to have episodes of full breaks from reality. Some of the clients that I've worked with who were psychotic were actually in the throes of drug-induced psychosis anyway. Okay. So you know, it's kind of hard to know which came first. Was he already struggling mentally and then he resorted to drugs as a coping mechanism? Was he resorting to drugs as a different kind of coping mechanism and then, you know, right? And is it, you know, she mentioned, Chelsea mentioned, possible psychopathy, meaning lack of empathy and sadism and harm and scamming people, lying, this kind of stuff. We also don't know that. Something went wrong there toward the end because it's one thing to get in an argument with your dad, so a thing to viciously with a knife, kill your parents, like you're elderly parent, what the fuck is wrong with you? And so I, you know, I tried to do a many deep dive into this story and what I'm guessing is that in a year or two, there will be a lot more on the ground data, maybe after the trial or something, maybe a documentary. You'll come out and we can talk about it then, but the thing that I'll say is I can speak from personal experience that there are, unfortunately, cases like this where you have a family member who, you know, on paper, their life is a train wreck and they can't really live independently for a variety of reasons, either they aren't responsible or they get hostile or they just personally are in such a cynical, angry rage, they just can't even manage applying for a job or dealing with a boss or anything like that. So you have this ongoing person that is dependent on other family members and yet they're not so dysfunctional that they end up killing someone or robbing 10 banks and ending up in prison. So they're free to roam or they do go to prison occasionally, but, you know, it's only six months here, six months there. And you're, as a family member, just what do you do because it's not like you have a family member that has cancer and you're all on the same team to fight the cancer, you're fighting with the person that you're trying to save. Yeah, right. You're trying to get them to stop running into the law or stop using so many drugs or stop pushing you around the house. What are you supposed to do? I mean, you're being terrorized by this person and you get almost no sympathy from society. They'll just be like, just cut them off. And it's just like, could you do that? Also, you'll get judged if you do that. Yeah. Well, and of course, there's a difference between the, because I had to deal with definitely a version of this when it came to me with my father, you know, I've talked about this before where him and I have a great relationship now, but, but, you know, for many years and even, I mean, it's not like things were ever fully resolved. It's just that for many years, I had a very unbalanced relationship with him because essentially he would depend on me for money and it was clearly something, something driving that that was not healthy and it was also, I didn't, I felt used, you know, from that situation. And I had good advice given to me about like drawing boundaries and saying no and, you know, stuff. And I think that's all very well meaning, right? Because it's, it's about protecting yourself. But the difference is that let alone if it's parent to child or whatever, it's, the difference is like, oh yeah, well, you know, if they're, if they're an addict, just cut them up. Like, well, that's easier said than done because, again, especially if it's a friend or a relative, you know, I, I lost a really good friend as, you know, to alcoholism and, and that was decades. And that was, yeah, and that, so I did draw boundaries for myself. It doesn't mean, but it takes a long time. It took a long time and it didn't completely cut these, you know, and it doesn't mean the boundaries I drew were more about like, okay, I can't like ruin my life in the effort to try to save this person because it doesn't actually even work that way. But that was like 15 years in, um, this attitude that you're talking about right now. Well, I don't know how long, but it was a while and the, and then the flip side was, but at the same time, I still love my friend and I, I, I want them to get better and I want to be. So it was one of these things where, no, I'm not, I'm not going to fully blame all, all of the situation on how evil he is as a person because he's not, he is a sick person. And so that's the part that I think a lot of folks don't understand. So imagine it's your child, yeah, your son, yeah, you and your wife have a child that, and maybe you even have some ideas as to what went wrong during their childhood, right? Every parent has regrets and even if it's not rational to attribute their behavior, the child's behavior to your parenting, you're going to do that anyway, but there's also a chance that maybe that'll come out in the future, maybe the parents were insufficient or even abusive. We don't know, certainly it wouldn't explain murder or anything like that, but it could explain the trauma and the drug abuse and that kind of stuff. Who knows? I mean, we covered an extreme case of that with the Menendez, right? Right. Where it's like, oh, maybe it does explain why they went and they killed them, right? But we still never knew for sure exactly whatever happened, right? But there's that range and I think in this case, at least from what we know, which is admittedly not that much, it certainly doesn't seem like Rob Reiner and his wife were monsters, right? So here's what it sounds like to me, yeah. I haven't worked with a lot of cases where murder occurs, but I've worked with cases that have all these kinds of hallmarks. There's like tips of icebergs that I am completely inferring from, of course, we'll find out in the future. But what it sounds to me is the individual Nick may have suffered from a personality disorder some kind, it could have been any social, it could have been narcissism, it could have been history, it could have been paranoia, it could have been something. Some sort of ongoing struggle that made it really hard for him to function and then he would become depressive and anxious and demoralized because of this core part of his character that was causing perceptual problems and emotional issues. And then the drug abuse was just an ancillary to that whole thing because a lot of people are focusing on the drug abuse as the cause or something of the murder. But that's not typical. That's not typical that you just have someone that's struggling with on and off again, drug abuse, who's also like raging all the time and murderous, like that, I mean, maybe, but it sounds like Nick had from these little snippets of descriptions for decades now has been, you know, because if he really hated his parents, why was he with them all the time? You know? Yeah. And the documentary, which I have not seen, but it seems like it was in fact described even by him by the sun as a new bonding experience that they had had and all these things. The documentary that they were in. That they worked together on. Yeah. Right. So he, which by the way, it just, it seems like that would be a hard one for a stereotypical psychopath, you know, dark tetrad kind of situation to pull off. Right. And I think that let's just go with borderline, for example, not that people with borderline kill people, but if you have borderline and you have this distortion around betrayal and abandonment and thus the feelings of hurt and anger and self-esteem annihilation and you have complicated relationships with people close to you. You desperately want to get them to accept you and love you at the same time that you hate them, you know, when there's indicators of being betrayed or abandoned or something and you have this back and forth, it has that sound to it of this back and forth and moments where Nick could be very sweet. People that have this profile of borderline or histrionic will be very vulnerable and very kind, very loving, very appreciative, you know? Because deep down that's what they're really looking for. But when they're trauma is being triggered, then they fly off the handle and all bad, all good kind of stuff. So the drug abuse can be following that in that the person is self-medicating and they don't know what to do and the rage and the bickering and the eventual sort of dissent. Now, in all likelihood in this profile, someone with these kinds of perceptual problems, where mental wellness will deteriorate over time with drug and alcohol abuse, right? And then in the throes of a drug and alcohol binge, can you lose your judgment enough to kill someone? Because it doesn't, I'm going to take a guess and say that this wasn't predicted that he was going to knife his parents or something, you know? Yeah. I mean, it sounds like people are thinking, well, it kind of makes sense because he was pretty out of control is pretty rageful and unreasonable. But if the parents thought he was going to murder them, I think they would have had a different approach. You know, like he had been rightfully, you know, trying to stab them with a knife. So I'm guessing that it was a buildup of those kinds of things. I don't know though. We'll have to wait for the documentary. The thing that I want to put out there is that if you or you know someone or you eventually come across someone who is a Rob Reiner and has a family member who is having these ongoing sort of liminal space problems where they're not in prison, but they're definitely not functional and not workable. And they're both the monster and the victim. And as a family member, it's like, what the fuck do you do? You know, you have like a family member who's bipolar, who's refusing to take their meds. And you're trying to help them. And you know, it's not their fault that they have bipolar, but it's kind of their fault that they're not taking their meds or they're not going to the psychiatrist to get better meds or something. And how do you have these conversations and what do you do with them when, you know, their life becomes unmanageable and they're calling you like, I'm in prison. Some bail me out, you know, you know, this kind of stuff that happened to me both as a clinician and as a, as a human being. And it's, there should be some kind of service out there that would help some tax paid for. And as an instance, there kind of is, but not robust enough that kicks in a gear because everyone has to start from scratch when they run into situations and never mind people that are single mothers working 50 hours a week and have three kids and and their sister is, you know, this kind of thing. Like it's time consuming. It's, you know, obviously emotionally consuming and, yeah, and this, yet another thing to add to the list of stuff we never learn about in school, right? Because like when, you know, I was, I was essentially 18 years old, I think, when I went off to college and I start making a teeny bit of money because, you know, I have like a side job while I'm in college. And that's when I start, like I start sending some money to Columbia, like a little bit after that because my dad needed money, right? But I hadn't, like I hadn't ever learned to watch, you know, like what signs to watch for or what to do in that situation or who even to talk to or like, in my mind, it's just like, oh, well, yeah, my dad needs money. I'm his son. I love him. He's got a lot of money to help, right? And over time, it took like, because it was friends that would tell me like, you probably shouldn't be doing that because that's probably like actually not helping them, you know? And I mean, no, no, no, it's just because this, that, and they were going to, you know, because there's the whole story is like, he's trying to set up a new doctor's office because, you know, he's a psychiatrist. So he, but he needs, he just told me he's got the space. He needs the curtains. That's the thing. They don't have the curtains. But that was lute. I'm not even making that story up. Like, that was one of the things. So it was like, well, so I got to send the money because like, oh, I see he's blocked. And I didn't know I was like, yeah, that makes sense to me because I have no idea about the world at all. I don't even know what's happening. But if we like have some way to understand like what relationships are like, where boundaries should be drawn, what's healthy, what's unhealthy, all these things, I might have been able to recognize that and say, oh, wait, actually, I'm not, that's not the right thing for me to be doing. But it took like, yeah, very, very long time for me to come around and be like, oh, the more I send the more he asks for and it's never enough and it was just going to drag me down with it. I mean, what I'll say from my limited understanding of those decisions that you had to make was a major factor here is that if you hadn't sent him money, he would have been homeless. Well, so A, and he could have been dead if you did, you know, I mean, like, it wasn't like, no, no, no. That's what I thought. Oh, that's what I thought. But no. For example, here's what it was so crazy. When he was 50 years old, in my mind, I was like, well, I have to send him money because he's 50. Where is he going to work now? I'm 50 years old. I look back at that. I'm like, oh, my God. He had given, given the longevity on my family on average, he had like at least 40 years left of work. But anyways, the point is I was in my mind thinking, well, he's an old man now. He can't work at 50. Also, well, what do you think would have happened if you? What happened was essentially my, my faucet came, so what ended up happening is I told them eventually I said, listen, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pay my aunt every month for the place, the apartment that you live in. Okay. And that's, that's my contribution. And then, and then in addition to that, I pay for like his health insurance and stuff. All his basics are met, but I'm not going to send any more money. And at first, he would ask for more money and I just didn't. And I had to say no, like, I don't know, 10 times or something. And after that, he stopped asking. For a little bit, he asked other people, but eventually all those faucets ran, ran dry truth. And so then what happened? He stopped asking. Now, I'm not saying this always the way it goes because if he was addicted to certain meds or whatever, like, it could have ended tragically, right? In this case, he just kind of stabilized. Now, I still pay for him. He never did recover. He never did become, you know, a worker again and stuff like that. But, but the difference is like the, the pattern of like more, more, more, more, more. And it wasn't money for food and for shelter, it was, it was being wasted, right? Like, that did finally stop. And, and I made a decision, which was like, to your point, it could have been bad. Like, he could have, but I, I thought to myself, right now what I'm doing is, is the opposite of helping because he essentially knows that he can keep doing whatever behavior he's doing because I will never say no. Yeah. It was painful, but in my case, it sort of worked itself out. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just making a point that before you knew what would happen, right? You don't know what's going to happen. Right. No, that's fair. And, and actually, I do pay for his living place, right? I feel like it's a, but that said, at 50, at 55, at 60, like his brother, who is older. This was one of the things that was ridiculous because like, I remember one of those times, I went to visit, maybe at this point, he was like 60. And in my mind, I'm thinking like, oh, I mean, what is he going to do? His brother's older. His brother was working well into like, I think he's still sort of working, you know? So that, that hadn't registered for me. Like, oh, wait, what am I to say? Like, but given your dad's issues, there's a chance that he wouldn't have successfully started working. But it was also motivation, yeah, because we don't know, we don't, we don't know what would have happened. If you had completely cut him off and other faucets dried up, we don't know what would have happened. I'm not saying, I don't know. I'm just saying that it's not as cut and dry as you were enabling him, you know? Like people will draw those kind of things like, oh, you're clearly enabling him. There's a lot of, you know, there's nothing clearly about it. You're absolutely right. It's not it. It's way more, lesser evils. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like, I always told him, like, hey, man, you're a doctor. Go to a small town. They need doctors. Don't charge much. They don't have much money. That's okay. Just charge a little bit. Make your money so you can eat. Right? Also, he was kind of a left-wing revolutionary, you know? I was like, God, go join the freaking left-wing militias. And I really meant this. I would much rather you go and die doing what you believe in than, like, do nothing, you know? But, yeah, his issues were very deep and he was never able to overcome that. So, like, like I said, I have a good relationship with him now in terms that, like, he loves my kids. I love him. We have a good time together. But he never recovered in that sense, you know, like, he was never able to be productive again, let's say, which is very sad. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's take a break. We'll get back another email. What do you say? Let's do it. Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. And if you sign up, please use the link below because it really helps us out. It's February all, Valentine's Day, Love, Romance, Relationships, as a relational therapist. I'm a big proponent of people going to therapy at all stages of a relationship. Maybe you're starting to date and you're having trouble trusting others, well, a good place to work on that is in therapy or you're five years into a relationship and the spark is starting to fade, well, therapy, individual or a couple therapies are great place to intervene early before it gets out of control. Or you just broke up with someone, of course, in situations like that, therapy is almost mandatory in my opinion. Well, a great place to find a therapist is at BetterHelp. At BetterHelp to match you with a good fit, they offer a short questionnaire. And if you aren't happy with your match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time. So over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. So sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/Curk. That's BetterHelpHELP.com/Curk. All right, we're back from the break. So this next email is about John butting Ramsey. Long-term anonymous patron, she says, "Hello, I love you all so much." And Embarro did an amazing job with both the Menendez Brothers case and the John butting Ramsey case. I'm not usually a true crime fan, but the way you've been approaching these is unique and beautiful, and I love it. Anyway, I'm wondering if you can vent about something. I'm wondering if you can vent about something, trigger warning for childhood sexual abuse. My older sibling was raped starting from age 4 until about 6, possibly similar to John butting Ramsey. Just send me in. We don't know if John butting Ramsey was being sexually abused. But if she was, then an anonymous patron is saying that similar if her older sibling. They tried to approach my older sibling, tried to approach the legal system when they were a teenager to accuse one of the multiple people responsible for this, and my older sibling was told by the officer that they were not attractive enough for it to be likely people would believe them. I am wondering if you have heard stories like this, and I wonder whether the wealth we are not wealthy. So I wonder if the wealth and the beauty of the Ramsey family helped their case be more investigated than so many others end of email, burdo, what do you think, I can't, what stuff, oh my god dude, that makes me so angry, that's ridiculous. Yeah, no, obviously that is a crazy proposition. You're not either good looking or wealthy enough for the, okay, so first of all abuse happens all the time everywhere for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of cases. They should always be taken seriously, it should be looked at seriously, et cetera. The fact is, okay, in my case, there was nothing to investigate because I never even brought it up to anyone until I was an adult much, much later. But I can imagine if I had mentioned something at the time, I think maybe nothing would have come from it because likely what would have happened. Well there's different, there's different degrees of nothing would have happened. There's this sort of nothing where, I don't believe you because you're not pretty enough. But then there's, I believe you, but I don't want to go to the police or something. Right. Now I guess maybe what would have happened is I probably wouldn't have been left alone again with her, but the reason I'm guessing this is because like a few factors, she was also a kid, she was 12. And I was a boy so it's like, especially at the time, it's like, boys, boys can get abuse, I don't know about that. And also, I don't know man, even back then, I think it would be hard for anyone to rationally sweep it under the rug. I mean, a 12 year old and a five year old. I just honestly, I think what would have happened is like, oh, yeah, that sounds, that doesn't sound good. Okay. But she won't babysit you again. But that's like the end of the story, because it's like, I mean, certainly do people, kids play around, you know, yeah, but that's, you know what I mean, but a babysitter, I don't, a seven year old, a seven, a babysitter who's seven years older plays around. And clearly, there's nothing wrong with her. I mean, it depends on what I'm being said, but now do these things get swept under the rug. Yes. And do boys get denied as victim, yes, I'm just saying, I think there's a chance that depending on who you told in your family, that there would have been a little bit more of a freak out. Maybe not police, maybe not, maybe only just we're not going to have her be the babysitter anymore, maybe sweep under the rug in terms of trauma, but I mean, there's a chance I could have gotten in trouble. Like, now that I think about it, because I'm like, oh, at first, I don't even know how I would have told someone what I would have said. But assuming I went to my dad and I'm like, dad, this weird thing happened with the babysitter or I can't really explain it, but this thing. And then that he being a child psychiatrist goes, hmm, yeah, I guess that doesn't sound that healthy. But there is a chance, a non-zero chance, where her story is like, ah, what? No. Okay. I didn't want to bring it up, but your kid is kind of weird and he was doing this with it. And then all of a sudden, I'm in trouble first. I wouldn't like put a zero chance on that. But anyways, what my meta point is that this was back then. But even now, I think, I'm guessing a lot of times where reporting is hard, and then even when you report it, people either don't believe you or they under-react. Yeah. Yeah. So, long-term, not as patron, you're wondering about a situation like this. And yes, I've heard countless stories of this. There's research on this, not only with police and investigators, but with family and society. But we have this thing and it's, you know, decreasing with a lot of advocacy from victims and from people in my field, but we still have it to some extent. But it was way worse in the past. It was like, we would twist ourselves into pretzels. Into pretzels? Yeah. Into knots? No, pretzels is there. We would bend over backwards. Into pretzels. Into pretzels to figure out a way to just sweep it under the rug, including this, where an officer or a detective would, you know, not want to deal with it or not want to face it or not know how to deal with it or have his own skeletons and his own closet, either as a victim or as a perpetrator. And he just takes the easy road, which people, I think, just naturally into it because they don't train you to do this, right? That if you just figure out a way to shut this down, shut the victim down, then it just goes away. Yeah. And no one has to deal with it. You don't have to deal with it. You don't have to face your fears or your skeletons. You don't have to do the paperwork. You don't have to do it. We fix the glitch. Yeah. It just, it just ends it. Yeah. Whereas if someone shows, I always make this analogy that if, for example, if you were raped at work, how many people would tell anybody that they were raped by a boss at work, whereas if your boss walked into your office and stabbed you with a knife in your thigh, how many people would report that? Well, most people would fucking, it's, it's, it's trauma. It's harm. It's illegal. It's, it's an assault. But when it's sexual, somehow no one reports it why because of our society, because of the systems, because of culture, because of society, because of the laws. So there's nothing embarrassing about having your knees stabbed by someone, but there is something embarrassing for people about being sexually abused. Which is so weird, right? Because you're just sitting there and you're assaulted. So what's, what's embarrassing about it? Yeah. Other than you were just in the wrong place, the wrong time. So the, the fact is, is that it's not strange to hear, you know, ridiculous stories like that, where a detective will say that you're not attractive enough for, come on, who's going to abuse you? Well, it's interesting the way that patron actually worded it, that the officer said that the sibling wasn't attractive enough for people to believe them. So it's possible that the officer did believe the victim, but said I wouldn't pursue it because no one's going to believe you. I, it hurts, it hurts my head. Look, I hit my head on Tuesday as I told you. This hurts my head more than that. Yeah. Now, the other thing to consider patron is that in all likelihood, you're sibling told you what the officer said. And I have heard people tell others what they heard I said. Oh, okay. So it could be a telephone game? Well, it could have been that, you know, I'm just going to throw this out here. I don't think this happened, but it could have happened. At the officer, because, you know, imagine the older sibling as a teenager, still a minor, goes to the police. That would be a nerve-wracking situation, right? And so let's say the officer did everything right and is, is kind and was trained on how to take these reports and said, okay, I believe you. And let's think about what you want to do, what you want us to do moving forward because it's been 10 years because that's how, you know, maybe eight years since it had been happening. And what would you like us to do about it? And let's say that, and it's not uncommon for a teenager to just be like, I don't know, because they hadn't really thought that way through because they're a minor and they're freaking out, right? And they're hoping that someone could kind of hold their hand a little bit, you know, naturally. Let's say that the teenager starts to get a little, you know, annoyed or something of being asked a difficult question that they can't answer. Anyone who's been around teenagers knows, they don't like being asked questions that they can't answer easily. And one of the things they do is they get annoyed, whatever, you know, why are you asking me so many questions? I can't tell you how many times I heard that as a therapist. I'd be like, I'm a therapist. I have a 14-year-old. Yeah. You know, it's like, stop asking questions, you know, it's just like, oh, fuck, you know, I've got another 50 minutes of this. I mean, just imagine that, you know, yeah, and so, you know, so imagine you got a teenager who understandably doesn't know how to answer these fucking questions. By the way, to be fair, as I've mentioned before, when I went to therapy in my 30s, I felt the same way. Let's stop asking so many questions. Um, so, I mean, I'll be on a website trying to fill out a form to order like a microphone from music and it'll be asking me, you know, for various different addresses and, yeah, stop asking me questions, yeah, anyway. And so, um, you know, I, again, I don't think this happened, but it could, it's something like this could have happened. The officer could have then said, okay, well, so I'm asking you what you would like me to do about this because I could, we could move forward with pressing charges, but that means you're going to have to fill out forms, you're going to have to maybe take the stand or the almost kind of stuff. And I'll be there with you, but I'm just saying, like, this is kind of a big deal. What do you want to do? And the team is just like, I don't know, I don't know what I want to do. I don't want to do what, why can't you just take care of it with for me? And the, um, you know, uh, in the course of the conversation with the officer, the officer says, well, let me lay it out for you. You know, for my experience, if you do this, there's going to be an attack because you're accusing people and they're going to have lawyers to defend them. And they're going to come after you and they, one of the thing, and here's 10 things they might say, one of which is, maybe you're not good looking enough to actually be believed. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. And so I'm just saying like, and then, and then the teenager, what, you know, but that's a terrible thing to bring up at all, but you know, like you're, you're, you're, you're trying, you know, you're doing everything you can to help. And maybe it's not perfect, but in the course of the conversation, because I've had myself as a professional, I've heard what people took away from what I told them, and I'm like, well, that's not lying, but that's taken away out of context from what I was, what I was ultimately saying, you know what I mean? And you know, something like that could have also happened. So I don't want to automatically assume that the detective was completely insufficient, but our detectives insufficient often, yes. And there were various reasons why lack of training, our culture is insufficient and therefore police are. A lot of police have maybe like a couple hours of training on this topic once in their career. If that, you know, what's horrific for me though is there could be this horrible implication about like the officer going like, well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that to you, but that's probably because you're not hot enough. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like it's possible that they literally, their, their mental process is like, really, someone would do that to you, but I would do it. Do it if they were hot enough, but you're not hot enough. So, oh yeah. That happens all the time. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah. Like Trump said something about one of his victims. Yeah. And yeah, right. Like she's not my type. Or look at her. She's gross. Yeah. Why would I do that to her? She's not my type. Right. And people believe that. Yeah. And missing the implication. Oh, so you would and probably have. Right. They were your type? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. And societal victim blaming and also cultural sexism and also cultural ageism. Children generally speaking aren't, aren't believed. Another factor that I don't know if people think about is that there are people that will make false allegations. They're, you know, if you're a detective, you've heard people accusing people of things that were not true or were found not to be true. So this isn't like a situation where there isn't the possibility of someone coming forward claiming so, particularly if there's an incentive. Like I'm not hearing that from the email, but it's possible that the teenager at this point might have wanted to be emancipated or was having ongoing conflict with her parents or something and was looking to get out of a some kind of criminal charge. You know, assault on the parents or something, you know, that's not uncommon because you can imagine you're traumatized as a teenager. You're already a little defined anyway. Maybe your abuser is one of your parents or one of your parents didn't believe you when you were a kid. So you have a lot of rage. You have some ongoing conflict anyway as a 13 year old, but had this on and it escalates and then it gets to the point where as a victim, you're just like, fuck it, I'm going to out you. You're outing them in the midst of ongoing legal and, you know, trouble problems and therefore less likely to be believed. And the perpetrator say one of the parents could say, oh, look it, well, just another one. How many times has she lied coming into this, you know, she shouts all she does is lie. So why would, when this is the time you should believe them or at least take it a little bit more seriously, you know, now are there kids that will lie in this situation? Yes. But many cases where you will have a defiant kid for whatever reason. Just say that their parents or one of their parents actually abuse them and there are some cases where that parent goes to prison 20 years later, that teenager grows up to regret it, goes to the police and tries to get it reversed and the government won't reverse it because it's like, well, you, you know, we have no evidence now that that is a reversible thing. Right. Like it's a weird situation. I mean, that didn't happen. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like once you're convicted, it's like, well, you're convicted. Yeah. Anyway, so now can some people get out of prison in a situation like that? Yeah. Now, the vast majority of reports are, you know, to be believed and most people don't report anyway. But there's other factors too, like I was saying earlier that people, including detectives will sweep on under the rug of just like the stickiness and the, the difficulty of a case like this is so high, right? You have to imagine you're a detective and you've got a full docket already. You're not getting paid enough as it is and you're working 60 hours a week and you're drinking too much coffee and you're smoking too many cigarettes and your marriage is fawn apart and your spouse is saying you need to come home more often and then this potential victim comes into your office and reports this to you. And you know from experience that this is going to require many investigations, many hearings on things that happened eight years ago and the adults are going to come at you, right? Right. They're incentivized to do that plus you don't even necessarily know if the kid is telling you the truth. I mean, plus the kid's not hot enough. So I'm just saying like you could figure out a way to sweep it under the rug and justify it in your head like you're not hot enough as a way of avoiding. So if you have a better paid for detective service then maybe there would just be more willingness to take on cases like this. Also most or a lot of people have been victimized sexually and most of those people have not received any treatment and a lot of them have never even told anyone about it. So it's festering as if it happened yesterday for a lot of people including police detectives particularly men because they're not going to come forward because they're even more likely to be denied, right? So you have a lot of police, a lot of officers, a lot of detectives, a lot of officials that are walking around with a raw open wound and angering resentful for the fact that no one listened to fucking them and then someone comes along and triggers you and makes it complicated. You have distress, cortisol, you freak out, old voices come to the floor and you shut it down, well documented cases of parents being this way as well, right? If you as a mother were abused growing up and haven't been through a lot of therapy then or any therapy then you have a greater likelihood to have attraction to people who exploit in this way. You have kids, that spouse abuses your kids or even yourself has weird boundaries with people, you abuse your kids or whatever, your kids come to you, you're less likely. You know like it, it's the generational trauma, trans-generational trauma thing. So the thing that I think people don't appreciate is that a lot of these officers might have issues with this personally, you know, or they have perpetrated, you know, because this is one of the things that we would hear in the past more but I'm sure it's still quite prevalent is that for a lot of men like when you talk about date rape definitions to a lot of men they'll push back on it either implicitly or explicitly saying, well I've done stuff like that. So what are you saying? Right. You know, like if you talk about, I've ruftied my girls. Well, maybe a more relevant memory that men will recall is their on a date and they have already made out, it's date five and they've made out a couple times already, they're in the back seat of the car and they're getting hot and bothered as they used to say when I was in middle school. Did they have a Colombian phrase for that, hot and bothered and bothered? I'll think of it, I don't know. And I mean it's such a perfect phrase, right? Yeah. So they're remembering, I mean it'd be terrible because it's not a thing but it's like, I mean, it's not what that would mean, I mean, you could say it's just kind of cheesy, well, what's hot and frustrated, like frustrado is a word, but you wouldn't say caliente, you'd say more like, estoy frustrado sexualmente, I don't know, I don't know what you would say, man. I feel like in Colombia they would have a phrase for being hot. No, I know that there's, yeah, there's got to be, it's just, maybe you moved up to the States. I wasn't frustrated enough when I moved up. Yeah. So you can imagine a guy who is being told what date rape situations are like for victims and they're like, wait, so I've been in the backseat of car on date five, having already made out with the consensual making out and I'm getting hot bothered and I've got a boner and I want to go to, you know, lointown, I want to go to crotch town, right? I've got, I've got one ticket for crotch town and I'm, I want to get on the next train. And you're like, hey, we didn't come up here to talk. No, no, no. You're just like your hand start going play and she's going, she's like subtly like, you know, I don't know. And then you're like, oh, come on. This is turning into like a penthouse forum thing. Sure. But, but then at some point you start going, come on, you know, and then she's like, oh, you know, can we please, and it gets weird, right? And maybe he stops that point, but it's not pleasant and she feels pressured. And she goes, I want to go home. So you drive her home and maybe you go on date six and, you know, maybe fence progress or maybe they don't. But the point is that a lot of guys have been in, and people really have been in situations like that. They hear the definition of date rape and they're like, wait, I've done stuff like that. And or they've gone even further. Right. Well, reminding ourselves that the whole, by the way, I want to be clear before we get off topic and I forget to come back to this that what I'm talking about is coercive. Like that scenario is in the category of date rape should someone go to prison for that. I don't, we can talk about that, but I'm just saying like, there's ways to have conversations. Right. We all learned from movies and TV and books and everything. Yeah. That's the way it goes. The way it goes is no, stop, stop. And then you're like, oh, you know, you want it, baby. Like that's the way it goes. So now is that the way it should go though? But I could see, I take all my, I take all my dating advice from Alan Thick. Exactly. You know, you want it. But you know, like if you took it from Brady Bunch, that could, that could help. You know, Brady Bunch was pretty wholesome. Well, what are you talking about? Like if you, if you watched the Brady Bunch back in the day, like the, the parents had, yeah. And they always had good advice for stuff, you know. What did they say? I don't remember, but the, the, what was the name of the dad, Mike, Mike, he was always full of wisdom, you know? Yeah. And they're like, you know, you need to let the guy go as far as he can, because otherwise he gets blue balls. Like that was never advised. Yeah. So what I'm saying is that another reason why an officer would just get pretty wide eyed and scared and want to sweep it under the rug, because it's very easy to shut down, particularly a teenage victim that's coming forward that doesn't have any support. And it's also not wealthy. That's a whole other thing we can talk about here of terms of wealth and influence that is a big part, not only with police, but it's present in my field. I remember, you know, in my graduate school experiences in the '90s, really contemplating with professors and my peers about classism and socioeconomic status. And we were trained and supervised to pay attention to that interaction. But as a therapist, we inherently have a lot of power, socioeconomically, even though at the time I was going further, further into debt. Yeah, sure. Most of my clients technically were richer than me, because they didn't have a hundred thousand dollars of debt, you know, but in general, as a power education, my accent, who will listen to me, my citizenship, all that kind of stuff. Like I have tremendous power and therefore I need to, and I've been massively programmed by society in terms of classism and all this kind of stuff. And I would notice that if I had a wealthy client, upper middle class client or higher, that I would treat them differently. I felt differently about them. I was more intimidated by them. I wanted to please them more. If I had a client that was at the other end of the spectrum, I wouldn't put as much effort into it. If they started complaining or they didn't like what I was doing, I'd be like, well, you know, if they fire me, who cares, where if a rich person wanted to fire me, even though I was getting paid the same, the agency didn't matter, you know what I mean? And that needs to be looked at and you could imagine an officer seeing a not-so-wealthy teenager from a not-so-wealthy part of town making this report is like, well, this is easier to sweep under, or I have a bias against poor people that they're always trying to scam people or whatever, you know. I saw this on display constantly growing up in Bogota. Like it was just, culturally, it was just embedded, you know, where you go to a store, just an average corner store to buy something. If you either don't know that people personally, because maybe you go there every day or whatever, you're just going to be treated like there. But if you come in, you look wealthy, like you're treated better. And there was always this sense of like, well, yeah, because A, that's the tearing of society was established from the colonizing of the continent, right? There was always this pyramid, very well-defined pyramid. And B, it's quite possible that that wealthy person's got connections that could shut your store down or get you in trouble with the local cops, like any number of things, right? So yeah, there was always, and I'm sure it's still like that, although I feel like it's less so nowadays. But when I was a kid, like that was definitely a thing. People with money were always treated very well. So I can imagine here it's still the same. Adonis Patreon is making the comparison to Jambini Ramsey. If Jambini Ramsey was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, do you think anyone would have cared for? We know the answer, because statistically speaking, that happened and we never heard of it. Yeah. Right. The Jambini Ramsey's did disappear from all those other places, or I guess in this case, were found. But we never heard those stories. Or disappeared. Or disappeared. In the first few hours of disappearance, would there have been the same response? We can guess that there would not have been. Now, we don't know anecdotal rate. There's a lot of police, there's a lot of police precincts, there's a lot of jurisdictions. There is an all likelihood some police officers, even some cultures of some precincts that are very up to date on classism and maybe even overcompensate by spending more attention on the poor families that are, so it isn't across the board, but generally speaking. I will say I would have liked to see the cop in this story, be like, okay, okay, here we're going to do, we're going to bring in a lineup of kids. You tell us which ones you would abuse. Let's just find out. Yeah. Yeah. And we did an episode a while back on the Netflix series Unbelievable. If you want to watch a recreation of an actual story and from what I understand, it's a pretty accurate. That was the one that was here, right? Yeah. In Linwood, just North Seattle, where a young woman was raped in her apartment. I think more than once if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. It was a recurring thing. And went to the police and the way they depict the police, these two guys, is that they're not evil. They're like trying to follow the story and they depict that interview dynamic that can develop unwittingly to the victim in that the police at first are taking it seriously. But there's some inconsistencies in the way the victim is recalling the story, not because she's trying to be deceptive, but because she's a victim. And even that, most people aren't super buttoned up when they're in their first disclosure to a police officer because they're scared, intimidated, and traumatized. And so the police start digging it, wait, you said this and so they don't depict the police as evil. They depict the police as well meaning, but falling into common pitfalls that you need to be trained for. Then, I don't know, months later, there's more rapes and these two other detectives, women who actually go, wait, I thought I heard of another case like this and they dredge up this old file. They go to that victim and that victim who was originally turned away by police because it seems she had an innocent story, these two other detectives have to convince her to come forward. She had this point, she's like, I'm not falling for this twice, like you guys don't believe me. I'm out. And you'll have to see the end. And again, this is a true story. Yeah, that was a great, I mean, it's horrible because it was a true story, but it was very well done. Right. And it wasn't even that long ago. No. So there's enough. I still see those scenes. Like I can see those, actually the interview scenes too, because it was, yeah, very memorable. Yeah, every police officer, every detective, every, you know, public official who might be an interviewer of a victim should watch this fucking series. And it's entertaining. Yeah. So it's not like sitting through one of those boring cybersecurity bullshit things. My God. One of the nicest things about not working for the university anymore is not having videos or like sexual harassment, you know what I mean, like I need some like a stupid ass, you know, recreation actors to tell me that I shouldn't make like a dick joke in the middle of a meeting or something like that or I understand some people need to be trained that way. But and I also don't need someone to force me to watch four hours of video and take a test every 15 minutes to, to remind me not to take a random USB thumb drive from the parking lot and stick it in my computer. I mean, who, why would anyone do that? Thumb drives are like five dollars. I gotta tell you. So in my current job, like I do have to sit through very boring things like that, because you would be surprised like you're dealing with snails in the grass. So like what's the risk? But there's a lot of people involved because it's not just me. There's like scientists, there's all these. So you have to watch her anti-harassment, but for some reason, this company, like they're boring, they're not well done, they're unengaging and so you're just like, yes, click, click. But I gotta tell you, a long time ago, well before the podcast, I worked out at different places. And their videos actually were really good because I know the guy who's in those videos. Okay. Actually, he's kind of a friend of mine. They were based on actual things that had happened, which actually kind of made it surreal because you're like, wait, 'cause to your point, like someone did this, but at every one of the videos was based on a thing that actually happened, they only like changed their names a little bit. And they were done in a very engaging way. Well, I mean, we'll during the break, I'll ask you, but anyway, that is all to say that if a police officer wanted to get trained, they don't have to sit through a boring thing they can watch an entertaining Netflix, a gripping Netflix mini series called Unbelievable. Let's take a break. What do you say? Let's do it. All right, back from the break. Next email from YouTube member and long-term anonymous patron. She says, I wrote in a while ago about wishing for more empathy for Emberto regarding the immigration issues as family faces in the US. Do you remember the email? Yes, I do. I remember. Basically, what she was saying was that in the course of our back and forth, what she was wanting was a little bit more space and time and attention to empathy and to how horrible it must be and has been and might be in the future. And I was agreeing with that that I didn't have that vibe because I care. But also my excuse, which is just an explanation, it's not an excuse that I have a lot of, I'm juggling a lot of things as a podcaster. I'm also the producer. I'm recording it. And so sometimes I'll listen back to a podcast and be like, oh, I really miss something there. I mentioned while we were doing it, I didn't feel like, wow, curts being a dick here. But it was nice for you to, when we did that email, for you to say, hey, I'm here for you. Because that definitely, now, granted, this was before. Now I'm fine, because now we're just talking about bombing Colombia, so what should I be worried about? Yeah. Well, how are you feeling about that? Well, oh my God, dude, the surrealness of this whole thing, like literally, look, most of my family are not fans of our president of the president in Colombia. So guess who's not a fan of the president in this country, the same people? Yeah, countries have crappy leaders and like, you want to help them improve? Yeah, there's many ways to do that. There's ways to make South America more productive. There's better ways to trade with South America, not tear off them. There's better ways to trade and incentivize companies from this country not to abuse their natural resources and their people throughout decades. There's all sorts of positive things you can do, right? Definitely a lot of things you can do to improve the, like, reduce the drug trade and all these things. Absolutely. You know what is not a good thing? It's to threaten to go murder leaders of democratically elected governments and bomb them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, does Trump want anything in Colombia because Venezuela has a lot of oil. So that's the presumed incentive. There's a lot of corruption in Colombia. So I'm guessing that-- But is there oil in Colombia that he wants to get? Well, I think there's two aspects. One, yes, but not as much as Venezuela, I guess, but he wants land and he also wants Panama, right? He also wants to distract from the abstinence. He wants to distract from him somehow. And then people give him payments off books, right? So it's quite possible, like, who knows, but I don't know, I think he wants an empire and whatever. But yeah, but we're sitting here and it's like, it's not just, it's bad enough that it's like, well, we gotta go, look, no one like Maduro, I mean, I don't even think anyone in his country likes him. No one likes Saddam Hussein. But there's a way to do things and there's a way to not do things. With the Iraq thing, it was like, we lied. We said, oh, there's this connection in 9/11. There wasn't. There was a regime change and it blew up in our faces. A tons and tons of people died as a result. And we were all like, why did this have to happen like this? But no one was saying, oh, no, poor Saddam Hussein, never in love, no, no, that had nothing to do with it. It's just that, like, there's wasted it and there's one. This one is like similar. It's like, oh, there's all these drugs. We gotta stop the drugs thing. That's obviously not about the frickin drugs, right? But now it's not just frickin' men as well. It's Columbia. It's Mexico. He just threatened to bomb Mexico. He's like, he wants to go and take over Greenland. What are we doing? Yeah. So, are you worried about your family in Bogota? I am, because even if indirectly, because, okay, I, geez, I knock on wood. I don't imagine we're going to invade Columbia, but even just a decapitation of the head of state and/or bombing, the country, I, surprise, surprise. That's been a very unstable country for like a century. And there's always risk of things breaking out into civil war and into all sorts of factions, killing. In fact, that's been happening on stop. They've been going through a relatively stable period, in spite of, yeah, like crappy government and corruption and stuff, but there's, but you do something like that. I don't know what the hell is going to happen. And yeah, it's just, man, and again, the flip side is like, this country is so powerful that it could be improving all those countries and helping them, not just giving them money. I mean, doing different ways to trade with them, doing different things to incentivize the right kind of industry, doing the right thing to, like, and also learn from them. There's a lot of things in those countries that they've, you know, this phenomenon where sometimes when a country starts far behind in a tech or in a field, but then they start catching up. Sometimes they spring past where we are. And that's happened. Maybe in a few other countries have actually really good medicine. They have really good tech in many sectors. Some of the biggest AI innovations are coming from countries like Columbia. So, you know, there's a lot of great things that could be done. Instead, we're just being gangsters and, like, running a mob family. Yeah. Yeah. And Congress is the only branch that can declare war and create a country. That's a dictator. Yeah. That's the constitution, yeah, anyway. I wrote in a while ago, wishing more empathy from Amberto regarding immigration issues, his family faces in the US, what a thrill it was to hear my email being read on the podcast. I wanted to say, however, my intention was not to criticize Kirk because it makes a lot of sense that he was multitasking and following Amberto's lead on that series. I just got the impression, as someone listening to the conversation with Time to Reflect, that you need a little bit more space to express the intensity of his emotions. And I guess a little selfishly, I wanted a chance to hear what that conversation would sound like. So thank you so much for sharing that tender moment and that follow-up. No. Kirk, I hope you know that your loyal listeners think of you as being incredibly kind, empathetic, and an amazing friend with love and of email. Sweet, very sweet email, and I appreciate the opportunity for the moment and also just kind of a reminder to myself to, I just realized just now when you asked me, because one of the things I have been doing relevant to our previous conversations in these matters is I've actually been avoiding, like, news clips and, but it's sort of impossible not to see headlines and things, right? But it's just, it's almost, it's almost gone to the point, like I've been actually just consuming, like, I just re-watched all of Entourage, like, I'm trying to, like, distract myself from the reality, because it's getting a little bit too, too real. But the flip side is, when I do see the headlines and when my mom sends me news clippings and things, and I just, you know, I don't take the time to actually ask myself enough, like, okay, how is this affecting me? So I appreciate that you just asked me that because I just realized as I was talking about I'm like, oh geez, today I saw a post on LinkedIn from an ex colleague that was posting an article about the impact of what we did to Venezuela, we'll have. And in her post she was saying, like, I know that LinkedIn, people don't like LinkedIn to be political, but I think this, you won't be able, you know, your businesses won't thrive if we're in a dictatorship, whatever, you know, it's a post like this. And I liked the post and I made a little comment about our house being not standing anymore. But it was like the first time I've engaged in any social media on anything related to politics or almost anything really, you know, a long time because, and I'm not saying I'm going to be starting that. I'm just saying, like, I feel like I'm having to go day-to-day, ignoring, ignoring, pretending, you know, like in my job, I just have to be like, oh, it's all business, everything's normal. Having been following the ice shooting. Again, I'm not watching any videos about it, but I know what happened from headlines. You probably know more than the average person, probably, what's your analysis? I have not seen the video, I imagine that it is unwarranted. You haven't seen the video. I have not seen the video. Oh, I have. Yeah. Videos, actually. Yeah, I didn't want to see it, but I imagine that it was horrible, I just, yeah. But I don't have enough information to, like, all I know is that it's one of these things like the situation shouldn't be happening in the first place. So by now there are side effects to the situation that are happening. And so I already believe that those shouldn't be happening. Let alone from what I've heard of it, it sounds egregious. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bert, what's the final word? What was our topic? No, no. So yeah, so I think that once again, thank you about the sentiment of taking time to acknowledge, because this is causing a lot of stress for a lot of people, and I'm one of those people. And I have connections to all my family lives in one of the affected countries. I have a lot of relatives here that are Hispanic, I have a lot of friends that are Hispanic. And so yeah, it's highly stressful. It's a real deal, so I appreciate it. Yeah. Well, that is for that episode up, everyone out there, Bert O, and everyone, take care of yourself because you deserve it.