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Speaker 2That's BuyOptimizers.com. Code MFM. Strangers, before we jump in today, I want to acknowledge some listeners' unhappiness with some of the ad choices both Spotify and Apple are making. Once again, please know that I have my show preferences set up to avoid political ads entirely. If you hear an ad for something that's offensive or, you know, racist, please let me know. Sometimes these advertisers knowingly falsify their content labels to try to slip past the guardrails. Right now, you can get Strange and Unexplained early and ad-free on Patreon. However, we are making a paid subscriber platform change within the next few weeks. So stay tuned. Over the next few weeks, there will be information on how you can support the show and even get early bird discounts. We're all doing the best we can in a true shitstorm of a dystopian hellscape. Hopefully, today's episode about a creepy island full of haunted dolls will, take your mind off of things for a little while. Are you afraid of dolls? Do their wide, insipid eyes creep you out? Do you shudder when you see the uncanny valley in their lifeless expression? Do you recoil at their homunculus proportions? Do you cringe at the false cry, unnatural skin tone, false sweetness, and mechanical blinking of a fake baby? Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. I wasn't much of a doll guy growing up. I had a lot of what we used to call stuffed animals, but are now called stuffies, which to me either sounds like a popular dish here in New England involving clams and stuffing, or some kind of weird sexual kink, but not a ton of dolls. I did get a cabbage patch doll for Christmas when I was eight, and I used to pour over the American Girl doll catalog, imagining what it would be like to have the kind of money to afford me not just a doll, but a doll with an entire doll-sized steamer trunk full of clothes. Those dolls had a nicer wardrobe than I ever did. I had a Tickle Me Elmo doll, ironically, when I was 18, and the thing once went off in the middle of the night with no prompting, suddenly laughing maniacally. If you're unfamiliar, here's what it sounded like. The thing went into the dumpster immediately. Also, I'm sorry, but I do need to go on a tangent for a minute. While I was looking for videos of Tickle Me Elmo, I came across one with a demonstration of the doll on YouTube that ended with a full 50-second song about Jesus.
Speaker 3And all falls short of the glory of God. And there is none, not even one, none righteous, not even one.
Speaker 2Just a quick question. Is everyone okay? Anyway, none of us is righteous, I guess, but a lot of us think dolls are creepy. I don't know when creepy dolls entered the zeitgeist, but whether it's Telly Savalas desperately trying to rid his family of talky Tina, or Willie the Ventriloquist's dummy switching places with the Ventriloquist, or Chucky running around with a knife, a lot of us just find dolls downright creepy. Dolls, as far as I'm concerned, are right up there with clowns as potential vessels for evil. They are fake flesh-colored, have horrid little plastic Cupid's bow mouths, and some, for fuck's sake, pee from an anatomically impossible hole in their in-between area. Ugg. But how hard could it be to defeat a one-foot thing made of plastic? Hard enough, I guess, that there's a whole movie franchise about a haunted doll, which I haven't seen, mostly because I think it looks dopey, but also because I would rather lick tar than entertain a demonic Raggedy Ann. And of course, because I haven't seen any of the Annabelle movies, I wonder why one can't just punt that thing into the nearest river. Will she just punt it? Pop back out, like the Creature from the Black Lagoon? Can't you tie her to a cement block? Maybe you agree with me, or maybe you don't. Maybe you had enough money growing up to have every American Girl doll ever and all their clothes, or a Barbie collection that could buy you a house today. Or maybe you just like them. Agree to disagree, I guess. But either way, stranger, we are going for a chilling journey to what many people, not the creepiest place on Earth, La Isla de Muñecas. In southern Mexico City, about 45 minutes from the city center, is the Xochimilco neighborhood, home to the last remaining Chinabaluas. Chinabaluas are man-made canals with traditional floating gardens, made to grow crops on the wetlands of Lake Xochimilco. These days, tourists flock to the area to float along the lovely canals of what is known as the Venice of Mexico. Not to be confused, of course, with the Venice of California, where tiny houses that look like really pretty sheds sell for millions, or the Venice of Italy, where it smells exactly like a port-a-potty. But you feel lucky to breathe it in. Tourists to Xochimilco tour the remaining Chinabaluas by traversing the local waterways in fun, brightly colored trajinera boats, clutching margaritas in their fists and listening to music as they enjoy a relaxing and entertaining sojourn into the past. The Chinabaluas region is contained to about 4,500 square acres, but still makes a considerable mark on the landscape of the area. And it's a design that makes it a great place to stay. And despite its relatively small size, the area is dense. If a tourist wanted to tour all of the canals as well as the islands, they may find themselves on a three-hour tour. A three-hour tour. So, a full day's experience. Still, though, that is comparatively tiny when you consider that once upon a time, most of what we now know as the Mexico City Center also existed on and around these man-made islands. And the canals that link them. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures saw an opportunity in the shallow waters and freshwater springs that lined the south shore of Lake Xochimilco. They cultivated a water-based system of agriculture and built the canals to connect these floating gardens of maize, beans, squash, amaranth, tomatoes, chili peppers, and flowers. It was a bountiful and successful way of living. It was a way of life for 15,000 years. Eventually, the itchy, acquisitional Aztecs wrested control over the lake and the chinampas from the Nahua and the Teotihuacan people. They continued to farm the chinampas until the even itchier, bitchier, and more acquisitional, to put it nicely, Spanish conquered the Aztec empire in 1521 and, to accompany their twin pastimes of murdering and enslaving, destroyed the dams and sluice gates that helped to form the waterways, effectively ending the way of life that had sustained the region for generations as they colonized the native lands and systemically exterminated millions of indigenous peoples. After that, the chinampas' gardens were almost completely abandoned and were eventually filled in to create the Mexico City we now know, leaving just the one vestige of pre-Columbian Mexico where the chinampas and the canal system were built. The Chinampas and the canal system still exist in one tiny area as an integral part of local life there. I will never understand the mindset of completely destroying an ecosystem for colonization purposes. Like, yes, I get they wanted to choke out the food source for indigenous peoples to try to eradicate said indigenous peoples, but if someone tells you they have a sustainable system that has kept them fed for 15 years, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. 14,000 years, don't you want to, I don't know, preserve it? that technology or all those buffalo or whatever so that you too may be kept fed for millennia? Instead, they came to the New World, choked out the food sources, and now here we are a couple of centuries later and we're running out of resources. Yes, yes, I know that's reductive, but hopefully you get my point. Anyway, the area has a storied history even beyond this tale of the Chinampas' origins, its recognition as a link to the Aztec Empire, and its status as a UNESCO heritage site, which it was established as in 1987.
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Speaker 2In 2021, Gerardo Ibarra, a co-founder of Ruta Origen, a sustainable travel company in Mexico, told writer Paula Froelich of the New York Post, quote, During the time of Cortez, many people fled here to Xochimilco and hid in the canals. A lot of these people were women and children hiding from the conquistadors, and many women killed themselves rather than be caught and raped by the Spanish, end quote. I'm not exactly sure how Ibarra knows this or what evidence there is of that specific thing happening, but it does sound very dramatic, and I can certainly imagine looking for anywhere to hide from the raping Spanish. Horrible. The area, according to the Post, was, quote, also used as shelter for Mexican revolutionaries and religious practitioners who may have fallen out of favor. Some of them ended up killed or drowned in these canals, end quote. Again, I'm not sure exactly how the journalist knows this or what is meant by religious practitioners. Then again, it is the Post. Anyway, the writer's main source for all things Xochimilco seems to be a man named Don Lauro. Lauro was a community leader who spent his entire life on the Chinampas. As a veteran of the neighborhood, Lauro can remember when a tiny island in the network of Chinampas only claimed to fame was that it was used as a filming location in 1943 for the critically acclaimed award-winning film by Emilio Fernandez, Maria Candelaria. The film is a classic about a beautiful indigenous woman who is beset by all manner of misfortunes. The scenery in the film is known to be very beautiful, and it was the first Mexican film to be screened at the Cannes International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix, now known as the Palme d'Or Prize, and became the first Latin American film to do so. And that, as they say, was that for the humble little island in the canals. This was all before the canals were a bastion of tourism. It was back then when a man named Julián Santana Barrera made his way to the little farm islands and changed the landscape of one of them forever. The story goes, when Julián Barrera was a young man, probably in the early 1950s, his mental health was not good. He decided to remove himself from his life in the city and left his family to sequester himself away on one of the floating islands. After he moved there and set up in his new digs, which consisted of several small wooden huts on one acre of land with no electricity or running water, a life-changing event occurred. Julián was a young man with a great sense of humor, a great sense of humor, and a great sense of humor in his own right. Julián was also known as the young man who made his way to the Canals of the Canals in the early 1950s. Julián, in some water lilies where she remained until he found her. This version of things, for me, begs the question, did Julian find a body or a skeleton? It is hard to find one conclusive answer. Some say the girl Julian found was 11 years old and that she may have been alive when he discovered her, drowning and in distress, and that he tried to save her. Like, she fell into the water and Julian jumped in after her but couldn't manage to get her out before she drowned. If this were the case, I can understand how an event like that might devastate a well-adjusted person, never mind a man who was already struggling with mental health issues, as Julian purportedly was. But it makes me wonder, what happened to the girl's family or friends? Were they there when she was drowning? Did they also jump into the water to save her? Or was it just her friends, kids around her own age there? Or was she all alone in that fateful moment? Basically, who was she and how did she end up dead in the water? What happened to the girl in the aftermath of her death? If her parents were back at home just waiting for their daughter to return for dinner, who delivered the bad news when she never walked through the door again? Did they have to collect her body after Julian fished it out of the canal? How many lives were changed irreparably by the death of that young girl? Julio's nephew, Rogelio Sanchez Santana, the present-day occupant and caretaker of the island, said of the girl's death in the New York Post piece, quote, the girl was swimming with her sister or friends and the current took her and she drowned, end quote. I assume Rogelio was just guessing about what happened in this quote because there is no way of knowing what actually transpired. The truth is there is no official record anywhere of the girl Julian found that day. There is no evidence at all that any of this was the way it happened and no clear evidence indicating if Julian actually scooped the bones of a long dead person out of the canal or her preserved and recently deceased body or that he jumped in after alive and drowning. The facts of the incident all boil down to hearsay which shifts and moves like water in a canal depending on who is telling the story. Some people, including members of Julian's own family, question whether he ever actually found a body at all. After all, Julian moved to the island because he was mentally ill. Perhaps his mental illness included distressing delusions such as discovering a drowned child. Whether Julian found the actual body of a poor drowned girl or only saw her lifeless body in his mind's eye, he certainly believed he found her and it haunted him. Or rather, she haunted him. She and the doll he also supposedly found that was believed to have belonged to the girl. Julian's nephew Rogelio reported that his uncle started seeing ghosts immediately after he found the girl. He saw shadows, Rogelio said. He heard voices. Julian was so haunted that he felt compelled to do something about it. He couldn't think about anything else. He was deeply upset that he hadn't been able to save the life of the girl in the water and he seemed obsessively connected somehow to the girl's pain. I can't blame the guy. I'm sure finding a dead body anywhere is traumatizing. But apparently it wasn't just the girl's pain. It was the girl's pain. It wasn't just Julian who was traumatized. It was the very ground he lived on, too. Later, Julian's nephew Rogelio told the New York Post, The spirit of the girl was living in sorrow. In the mornings, Julian started seeing ghosts and one day woke up and found all his crops had died. He tried many things to improve his crops, but he couldn't because the spirit damaged it. He became more and more scared. End quote. I guess the death of his crops was the final straw that pushed Julian to build an altar to the girl. He constructed it in his cabin in the hope of appeasing her untethered soul. Some articles say Julian was a little bit too scared to build an altar. Julian's wife was with him when he built the altar, though it was known that he moved to the island without his wife. Regardless of who was present, his attempt at appeasing the restless spirit of the dead girl did not work. Rogelio told the New York Post, quote, the spirit still came, so he started collecting dolls as a way to protect himself, end quote. Julian's altar grew. He placed a white crucifix in the place where the girl died or where he found her, though there are conflicting reports of her being found in the water or on the land. He also took the little doll wearing a hat with sunflowers on it that floated up the canal following her death and hung it on a nearby tree as an offering for the dead girl's spirit, although there are conflicting reports of the doll being hung on the wall of the cottage rather than on a tree. And thus was born La Isla de la Mujer.
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Speaker 2I don't know if hanging the doll offered Julian some temporary relief from the anguish he had been struggling with, but after that seminal act, he became a man possessed and obsessed. Julian reportedly started seeing ghosts and hearing cries, after he put up the cross. From then on, he searched for dolls to hang, believing that they offered him some kind of spiritual protection. Which is weird, considering the ghosts didn't start visiting him until after he hung up the first doll. So why he would think he needed to hang up more dolls is beyond me. Sometimes he would trade crops for dolls. He found dolls in the trash or discarded in the canals. He took these finds and hung them from trees all over the place. Many of the dolls, because they were old and abandoned, were broken or headless or partially dismembered when he found them. Others became that way after long exposure to the elements. The result was a growing graveyard of ruined, unholy-looking dolls that eventually consumed the island entirely, fixing anyone who witnessed them in lifeless, sometimes eyeless gazes, presiding over the movements of the islands from positions of interest to the islands. Some of these dolls had amputated suspension, inclining their cracked faces, their skulls becoming homes to spiders, slugs, and other burrowing creatures. So if you think a doll by itself is creepy, imagine one with spiders crawling out of its eye holes. Over time, word got out about this strange shrine to a dead girl, and soon, Julian was not alone in his occupation. Strangers began visiting the island, and with them, they brought more and more dolls to lay on its shores and at the feet of its trees. The visitors to La Isla de Muñecas weren't just there to bring dolls, though. They were drawn to the strange stories of hauntings and paranormal activity they heard about on the island. Reports of the dolls moving their arms and legs and opening their dead eyes got out, and compelled people to see for themselves. Some visitors insist that the dolls can be heard whispering to each other. On an episode of Ghost Adventures from 2021 on Doll Island, Zach Bagans reported hearing one of the dolls speak in a mechanical voice, even though the doll had been there long enough that there was no way the batteries could still have worked. The dolls, visitors claim, will lure you to the island, like sirens. Though, to do what, exactly, is a mystery to me. Like, do they want you to play with them? Do they want you to give their chinampa, above all others, the attention? Or maybe it's just to bear witness to their cries and moans, because it is also said that the dolls cry and moan. Specifically, it is said that the moans and cries of a woman can be heard around the island. As the dolls are supposedly possessed by the spirits of young girls who died untimely deaths, why then would the cries of a woman be the ghostly voice of La Isla de Muñeques? Some think the crying and moaning are evidence of La Llorona's presence on the island. La Llorona is a well-known folktale throughout Central and South America. There is probably a version of the story in every country, though its origins can be traced back to Mexico. It is the story of a restless, sometimes mournful, sometimes vengeful ghost that wanders the world weeping. She is the doomed spirit of a mother who drowned her children in a fit of crazed despair after learning that her husband was unfaithful to her. Llorona wanders, usually near water, mourning her dead children and searching and crying out for them for eternity. The legend goes, if you hear the sound of her weeping, you will suffer misfortune, or even death. I don't know about you, stranger, but if I were likely to hear the cries of a vengeful child-murdering haint someplace, and that meant I'd be doomed to death or a life of badness, I don't think I would, you know, book a vacay there. Is it just me? To each their own. Anyway, whether Llorona wanders there or not, it seems certain that La Isla de Muñeques is frightening. One tour guide described the island as having a strong energy and called it one of the most terrifying places on earth. On the other hand, the website for the island dismisses all of these claims as nonsense, saying, quote, of course these witnesses are exaggerating and the island is in no way possessed, end quote. Well, that's reassuring. But the site goes on to say that, quote, La Isla de Las Muñecas is a very creepy place anyway, and that marks the casual visitor, end quote. I guess tourism likes creepy, but not terrifying and possessed. Cullian, for his part, believed completely that his island was haunted, and not just by the girl whose life he was not able to save, but he believed the dolls themselves were haunted by the spirits of other dead girls. So what gives? What is going on over there on the island of dolls? Believers have an explanation for the haunting of the dolls. The dolls on the island are haunted by the spirits of other dead girls. The dolls on the island, it is said, could be possessed by evil entities. These are not the ghosts of dead children, but rather some kind of demonic force or dark beings that found their way into our world in the era after Cortez massacred 30,000 Aztecs and dumped their bodies into the canals. The theory implies that somehow the force of this bloody and evil action may have opened a kind of paranormal pathway that ushered these wicked beings in from, quote, La Isla de Las Islas, wherever they were before. Kind of like Xochimilco's very own Stranger Things Upside Down, El Revas en Español.
Speaker 4Go like you mean it. Ready, responsive, in control, the whole way through. Go like you mean it.
Speaker 2No hesitation, no friction, just go? Go like you mean it. in Julian that the dolls were animated by an otherworldly force. This did not, as one might expect, stop him from collecting more dolls to hang around the island, thereby bringing in more wailing, doll-part-moving spirits, though. Instead, it gave Julian more of a drive to transform the island and try to win it back for good. I don't really know how the dolls would help that. Honestly, the logic isn't really there for me. Julian was operating with his own unique rationale, and I don't pretend to understand it. It was, says the island's website, quote, as if Julian was driven by some unseen force that completely changed him, end quote. Clearly, the dolls weren't the only ones possessed by restless spirits. So Julian continued to amass dolls, including a favorite doll he called Augustina. He gave Augustina, a special place on the altar in his hut. Augustina was different from the other dolls in that Julian did not so much think of her as possessed as he thought of her as blessed, which kind of sounds like something one might find on a sign purchased from TJ Maxx to hang above the door of the guest room or something. I can see it written in a loopy kind of cursive on a plank of carefully weathered gray wood. More blessed than possessed. I'm writing that one down in my book of million dollar ideas. What's that? You want to see the book? Sure. I will send it to you. For a million dollars. Anyway, Julian's beloved Augustina has a shrewd little face and wears glasses and a flower crown, kind of like an island version of Mrs. Beasley, and sits upon a little throne at the altar where Julian placed her. There are plates around her where visitors leave offerings for her. Julian thought of Augustina as his protector, he claimed she had the ability to heal him and that she could perform miracles. Some visitors to the island make pilgrimages there as much to make offerings to Augustina as anything else, hoping that when they do, she will protect them too. Maybe Augustina's good haunted doll vibes even extend sometimes to the other dolls on the island. Some superstitious folks say that the dolls that move by some mysterious power do so to try to keep away the water from the island. Perhaps this is Augustina's benevolent influence? Augustina represented safety and was a bright spot in the darkness for Julian. He did live for 50 years on the island until the ripe old age of 80, all while adding to his haunted doll collection and inadvertently curating what the Guinness Book of World Records calls the world's largest collection of haunted dolls. What a distinction. So maybe all that had to do with Augustina's benevolent influence. But then Julian's death invites us to wonder if Augustina just couldn't protect him anymore. Julian Barrera died in April of 2001. Certainly, he was an old man by then, so there may be nothing off about that. But consider, stranger, that his cause of death is variously reported as either a heart attack or, wait for it, drowning. That's right. Julian was found floating dead in the water in the same place where he allegedly discovered the drowned girl half a century earlier. Talk about symmetry. Julian was discovered by his nephew Rogelio, who had come out to the island to help his elderly uncle. As he was going out to do whatever work he had come to do, Rogelio says his uncle told him the mermaids in the water were calling to him. Rogelio left for a bit, and when he came back, his uncle was face down in the canal. Is what happened to Julian just an unfortunate case of an old man in decline meeting tragic circumstances? Was it a health crisis without intervention? Or was it, as many believe, that the spirit of that girl from all those years ago finally somehow found a way to take Julian? Did the girl's spirit kill him? Or, as LittleHouseOfHorrors.com suggests, was Julian's fate something that he didn't know? Or, as LittleHouseOfHorrors.com suggests, was Julian's fate something even stranger? Xochimilco's locals have other superstitions about the Chinampas and the canals that surround them, older superstitions than those connected to Julian's dolls. The locals say there are things in the waters of Xochimilco. The term they use is nahuelas. In Mexican folklore, nahuelas are associated with witchcraft, shapeshifting, and ancient pre-Hispanic cults. In Mesoamerican belief, a nahuelai was a being that could shed its skin and might transform into an animal like a wolf or a snake, or a nocturnal bird such as an owl. One folktale tells of the Witch of Artiega, a cursed woman whose spirit became bound to an ancient force. When villagers tried to burn the witch, she dissolved into ashes, her soul merging with the mountain winds, after which she is said to always be buried. She is said to have been between human and animal form, but is distinguishable from other humans and animals by her glowing red eyes, like burning coals. So, I guess if you see an animal or a person and they have burning red eyes, like, I don't know, stay away from them? Don't give them your password for your Netflix account, got it? Avoid red-eyed creatures masquerading as people. Or animals. Check. Locals of Xochimilco tell tales of dark entities like this one disguising themselves as aquatic animals waiting under the canal surface to take the souls of unsuspecting travelers. Some believe the Nuhales shapeshift to become black-eyed little girls that lure people into the water to drown them. Did Julian really encounter a little girl back when he moved to the island? Or was it something else? Maybe. Maybe Julian was never supposed to make it out of that water alive. Maybe he kept his fate at bay for 50 years by collecting his dolls and placing his faith in Augustina. Maybe the spirit of that angelic doll pulled Julian from the water and healed him and set him on his mission until one day, at the age of 80, his luck and his stolen longevity finally ran out and down his body and he's still alive. Julian's nephew, Rogelio, believes that is what happened. Rogelio says a spirit dragged his uncle into the water. To this day, visitors to the area believe bringing a doll with them to the island will protect them from meeting the same fate as Julian. And so the island of dolls continues to grow. But now, there is a new spirit haunting the island. Julian's. Or so visitors to the island tell it. Nowadays, Rogelio takes care of La Isla de la Muñeca in Julian's absence. Julian had no children, so when he died, Julian's brother Anastasio took control of the island until he also died in 2019, and Rogelio finally took over. I'm not sure how Anastasio died, but there is nothing in the research to suggest his death was doll-related. You know that moment when everything lines up?
Speaker 4When life gives you the green light and you just go? Go like you mean it.
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Speaker 2The island remains a tourist attraction and sacred place for many. Today, if you want the full experience for a fee, you can spend the night on the island in Julian's shack. Rogelio and other members of Julian's family will be there to collect fees and take photos so that you can have the best of both worlds. If you want to get a free tour, visit coldwatercreek.com. You can have the icky goth experience of your nightmares, I guess, or you can just lay some flowers at the turquoise hem of Augustina's little dress and hope for a little grace from whatever magic may be floating in that place. The number of dolls on the island continues to grow. Some accounts, such as one from the Daily Beast, estimate that there are around 1,500 dolls in varying states of decay around the island, while a story from CNBC-TV18 from August 2020, says that there are around 1,500 dolls in varying states of decay around the island, while a story from CNBC-TV18 from August 2023 puts the number of dolls on the island at a whopping 4,000. Of course, the haunted dolls could just be moved moving themselves around the island such that keeping count is nearly impossible. If a group of crows is a murder and a group of ravens is an unkindness, what is a gaggle of awful, decrepit doll babies? A giggle? A diaper? An unholiness? I don't know. I also don't know, stranger, what really happened to Julian on his little island. I don't know if he found a living girl, or a dead girl, or no girl at all. I don't know if he was haunted by the departed spirits of the young murdered daughters of Mexico, or if he was haunted by the voices in his own head. I don't know if Julian was killed by an unhappy ghost, an ancient shape-shifting witch, or the failings of his own elderly body. I can't know, because all of this is such a work of collective imagination. The Island of Dolls is as much a collaborative creation of those it intrigues as of Julian himself. And, in spite, or maybe because of, the place's deep and painful history, it is much more a land ruled by legend than one ruled by fact. The Island of Dolls is a curious place, and one that has carved out a space for itself in the dark corners of the imagination, where our fears of lost innocence and corrupted dreams, hide out. Julian's legacy continues on the island as an eerie message to ourselves to protect our honesty, authenticity, and blamelessness, to safeguard our history, culture, and tradition, and to never let the cold waters of violence, cruelty, and greed pull us under. Can you hear the dolls whisper? Next time on Strange and Unexplained, get out your yarmulkes and red string bracelets. We're going to visit the world of Jewish possessions and exorcisms. This episode was written by Eve Kerrigan and me, Daisy Egan, with research by Keely Highs, sound engineering by Jeff Devine, music by Epidemic and Blue Dot Sessions. If you have an idea for an episode, head to our website, strangeandunexplainedpod.com, and fill out the contact form. I will write back. GrabBag is an all-female and non-binary-owned profit-share network where our contributors get to keep ownership of their shows. We strive to give a platform to those who might not be able to land themselves on a bigger network. Who knows? Maybe you have a podcast idea you'd like to pitch to GrabBag. We've got live recordings, watch parties, book clubs, and more. Why they're so important. So much going on over at GrabBag. You'll wonder if we missed the memo on how capitalism works. Join me on Instagram at snupod, daisyegan, and grabbagcollab. Or head to the Facebook page to join in the conversation. If you like the show, please visit a sponsor with our unique code. Give us a quick review and five stars. Subscribe and download and tell a friend. Stay strange. ♪ ♪ You know that
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