September 7, 2023 • 49 mins
A listener asks the gang for more information about Ghost Weddings. GP Scoothe writes in to tell the tale of Bob Berdella. A story about a burgeoning proxy war in the Maldives, one of the first countries that may lose itself to the rising ocean. And a few letters from home. All this and more in this week's listener mail segment.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
We are joined with our guest super producer, Max the
freight trained Williams. Most importantly, you are here. That makes
this the stuff they don't want you to know. Fellow
conspiracy realist. It is one of our favorite evenings of
the week. This is our weekly listener male segment between
(00:49):
all the strange digging we do. We rely on you
the most important part of this show to share with
your fellow conspiracy realist, the things that struck you as important,
the things that in your own personal life are the
stuff they don't want you to know. We are going
to learn about ghost weddings from an exciting email that
(01:13):
gives us a chance to talk about something that I
think is fascinating many of us for several years. We're
going to get some letters from home from some of
our favorite people in the world, educators. We're also going
to talk a little bit about the Maldives. And before
we do any of that, we are going to hang
out with a fellow conspiracy realist and fantastic writer. By
(01:33):
the way, GP Scooth.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Just love the name GP Scooth. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
GP wrote into us with the subject Bob Burdella and
Bob's bizarre Bizarre, which is a lovely play on words too.
What do you call that a homonym? I guess they're
not quite exactly the same in they're clothes. I've certainly
seen people play that's bizarre. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Fun So here he goes. Gentlemen, I have not bothered
you in a while.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
And this week's episode on Serial Killers brought back memories
of the spring of nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I was a struggling freelance teacher, lecturer.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Writer, and overachiever in my dad trying out any number
of new business ventures. One of these which became successful,
but after I gave it up, was based in an
office space I rented in an executive suite. I'm not
going to give the exact address in Kansas City, Missouri
is always confused me. The Kansas City isn't in Kansas
but there you go. I located here because of proximity
(02:33):
to the professional clients I was trying to attract, even
though it was across town and the state line. These
were sally referring to the office spase proximity to the
professional clients I was trying to attract, even though it
was across town and the state line from my home
on the suburban Kansas side. When I came to the
office one Monday, shared by about a half dozen accountants,
insurance agents, and a barter exchange, I was told that
(02:55):
over the weekend one of the guys that hung out
there are regular in the barter exchange, had been a rested.
A teenage boy had escaped from this guy's house naked
and beaten up. When the police took Bob Burdella into custody,
it later turned out Bridella had killed and dismembered at
least six young men, threw the parts away into the
garbage or buried them in his backyard. Bardella had a
(03:19):
business at the Westport flea market called Bob's Bizarre Bizarre,
which he called his personal cabinet of curiosities. Westport would
be the Kansas City version of the Hipster Village, with restaurants, bars,
and little shops of all kinds. It lies between the
University of Missouri Kansas City and the Kansas University Medical Center,
a teaching hospital, plus is easily reached from downtown or
(03:41):
the suburbs for meetings, parties, etc. Inside the Westport flea Market,
where some of the best Hamburgers ever were sold, Bob's
Bazaar has a cult magic, satanic merchandise, and even real
human skeletal remains, although there were always many manufactured body
parts as well. The days of the head shop, this
(04:02):
was one where you could purchase rolling papers for your
own cigarettes, so I'm told, and even sometimes what were
advertised as marital aids or tension relieving massagers that would
fit on a finger. You get the idea a spencer's
gifts for adults with weirdness thrown in. But in the
(04:22):
many times I just had coffee conversations with Bob, he
was about as low key regular a person as you
could get. A bit eccentric, yes, openly gay in the
nineteen eighties, which sets him apart, but nothing to give
you the vibes that this person with whom I was
speaking just happens to have a teenage boy locked in
a room and chained to a bed at his home,
and the timeline we later worked out told us that
(04:45):
had to have been the case. While you guys discussed
the mementos from such people, I have always questioned, even
to Bob, where did you get the stuff for your inventory?
Who just sells human hands? Is there a big demand
for human skulls and some of his We're real?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
The strangest part to me has always been that no
one suspected anything about Bob that would have led you
to believe he was killing, dismembering, and disposing of people.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
The typical quiet.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Guy next door, I guess, but still odd to have
a brief period of your life where you were in
frequent contact and on a first name basis with a
serial killer.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
You know me as gpscooth Yeah, Ike, thank you?
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Whoow that's a tale GP, My goodness, that must have
been chilling to discover.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
By the way, I'm looking at a business card here
from all That's Interesting dot com, and it quotes his
company as Bob's Bizarre Bizarre, so like describing the bizarre
after Okay, clever.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Well, you don't have to look. You can be a
monster and still understand the importance of wordplay.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Very true, That is very true, Ben, I mean, you know,
this just sounds like the perfect fodder for murder fiction
type stuff because you know, of course, like the twist,
is that the thing that you bought from the you know,
the shrunken head or you know, withered hand actually belonged
to one of his victims. That's of course where your
(06:20):
mind goes. And I don't know, did you guys read
any further into this. Was there ever any indication that
he did put his trophies in his shop?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Unclear? I think because of the timeline at that point,
you would have, like in the nineteen eighties, if you
are actively operating the way this guy was, then you
would have hopefully had some lessons learned from from previous
experiences of people who got popped for doing this sort
(06:52):
of stuff. However, what was he called the Kansas City butcher? Right?
He clearly wasn't very clever, Most of them aren't. I
think he was just throwing people away and throwing human remains,
excuse me away in garbage bags. It reminds me, God,
(07:12):
it just reminds me of so many other serial killers.
To your question or GP, what you're talking about what
you're talking about here. No, what we're exploring together here
is the idea of serial killer merchandising. That's part of it, right,
that big question you pose, did this individual attempt to
(07:38):
profit off of the results of their mental illness? Right?
And that's I mean, that's a good question because HH
Holmes was killing people because he liked it, but he
was also killing people for insurance money, you know what
I mean. You run into you run into that simultaneous.
(07:59):
I don't know if it's a rationalization or if it's
a simultaneous benefit in their minds.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
There's a lot to be said about this guy. And
I also appreciate JP for pointing out it's at least
six young men, because, as we know, unfortunately, very often
in the US and abroad, when the victims of creatures
like this, when they are sociologically marginalized, then their law
(08:30):
enforcement just doesn't doesn't seem to do their due diligence.
So for that, that's part of why people killing, you know,
folks who are considered African American folks who are considered homosexual,
that's part of why those entities have a higher likelihood
of getting away from justice for a longer amount of time.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
It does appear that, you know, he was into S
and M type stuff, and they did have people participating
and some of these activities, you know, willingly. I think
there were upwards of twenty photographs discovered of folks in
various stages of this type of you know stuff, dog
collars and you know, things like that, and I think
(09:16):
it was almost all of the victims I believe, were
among those photographs. And the you know gp you mentioned
the person that was found naked, It was naked except
for a dog collar. And apparently this creature, as you
very appropriately put it, Ben had this.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Something called rules of the House that were rules.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
That were mandatory for anyone that he was doing this
stuff with and that any you know, non adherence to
these rules would result in electric shocks being administered to
their private areas.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
It's kind of like it's kind of like David Parker
Ray also known as the Toy Box s Killer, the
Four Entities like this. What you do is you construct,
you construct a regiment of rules and make it such
that there is no way those rules cannot be in
some way quote unquote Brokenken and then right, because it's
(10:18):
not about the rules. It's about an opportunity to feel
that one controls and punishes people. It's it's very unclean thing.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
No, it's it's it's it's it's really really awful. Matt.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
You've gone deep with you know, the Zodiac killer and
Atlanta child murderers and all this stuff. And I was
having a conversation with my partner the other day just
about whether these types of conditions are medical in nature
or whether these types of conditions are these are just
bad people, you know. I mean, obviously you can be
(10:52):
diagnosed with schizophrenia, but that's a psychiatric diagnosis. Like it's
usually only post mortem that you know, aberance is the
brain can be detected. Do you have any thoughts on that, Matt,
like from any of the dives that you've done, Like
whether these are just people that are just bad or
can they be cured?
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Is that even something that should be invested in? Like what?
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I mean, maybe that's too big a question, and obviously
is the question, but I'm just interested in your perspective
on that.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I'm no expert, man. The people we've talked to have
differing opinions, but a lot of the investigators on the
law enforcement side, especially from the FBI, tend to have
a pretty stark look at it, like this is a
bad person. But generally this person was made bad through experience,
life experience, right through a lot of things they've been through. Generally,
(11:46):
not this person was created evil from the womb kind
of concept.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Often traumatic brain injury early in childhood.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Or traumatic brain injury really anytime, which is kind of crazy,
like it can that kind of thing can adjust somebody
in not so great ways of show.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Gage, Yeah, no, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Remove filters that are there that kind of internally bind
our behavior. Give us these rules that generally aren't broken
out of fear of what it means to break one
of those rules. You get a brain injury, and that
can go away depending on where it is. I don't
I don't know, man.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
No, that's a really good point, Matt, And that's that.
I think that's a very valid perspective for sure. I
was listening to a podcast that I really quite enjoy.
It's called with Gorley and Rust with Matt Gorley and
Paul Rust, and they talk about different horror movies, and
they were talking about the movie Seven, which you know,
I think in a lot of ways, movies like Silence
(12:47):
of the Lambs and Seven sort of led to this
whole like genius serial killer kind of you know, Craze
or whatever. And they just pointed out, I think, very
astutely that that's not a thing, like there's nobody that
would be that twisted, that would do something like what
John Doe does in seven. These very elaborate or like
(13:08):
you know, Jigsaw. But Seven's just obviously interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That you mentioned that, because I believe it was Bridella, right,
Bridella watched The Collector, that film from the sixties. Do
you guys know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I don't know that one, now.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, he watched a film that came out in the
mid sixties called The Collector, which is about a guy
who stalks and kidnaps a lady and feels like he is,
you know, practicing lepidoptery, like the collection of butterflies or
something where you pin them against you know, a backdrop,
(13:44):
And this was sort of an inspiration. So I think,
and GP, maybe you will find this interesting. Uh, there's
a question that I have not quite solved yet about
the possible feedback loop. You know, why does the serial
murderer in the United States. Why does it hold such
(14:06):
a unique position in the zeitgeist, and to what degree
do films that appear to glorify one of these people?
Right to your point, nol the the largely fictitious idea
of the intelligent serial murderer a lah Hannibal in or
Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, to what degree
(14:30):
is that sort of fiction perhaps informing the actions of
the mentally ill. And that's a slippery slope, because then,
you know, I think it's too close intellectually speaking or
philosophically speaking to the idea that listening to quote unquote
the wrong music makes make someone violate moral taboos I
(14:50):
or social taboos, excuse me, socioeconomic taboos as well. It
is true, though it is objectively true that Birdella watched
this film and talked about it. He also had some
of the things that you're clocking as well.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Matt, there are other two killers. Sorry this I was
trying to figure out why the collector like pinged something
for me. It was another project that we were working
on for a time, Leonard Lake and Charles Ang. This
also committed a bunch of brutal murders that involved kidnapping people,
and they were also allegedly inspired by the Collector.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
That is fascinating that feedback loop idea. But you're right,
then it can be the slippery slope when it comes
to just like blaming the art and censoring it as
a result of what I think would largely be some
pretty rare.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Outliers who actually you know, are and.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
You know, whether he chose to act out because of
that in a certain way, he probably would have acted
out in some other way without said inspiration.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
But back to what gorleyan Rest said, and then we'll
take a break.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
They just pointed out that the reality of it is
what you were pointing to as well, Ben, is that
anyone that's mentally ill enough or you know, has some
fetishistic drive enough to do something like the Seven Murders,
there's no way they'd be able to pull it off
with the degree of accuracy that happens in that film.
So it is largely But also David Fincher, who directed Seven,
(16:20):
said that he almost felt guilty about introducing this glorified
version of the genius serial killer into the world, which
is largely.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Why he made Mind Hunter.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
That depicts the killers as mainly perverts and degenerates, you know,
so he did kind of say that was almost his
way of feeling as though he were righting or wrong,
even though I think seven is an excellent film. But
thank you so much, GP scooth. And we're going to
take a quick break and we'll come back with some
more messages from you.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
And we have returned. You've got a couple here. There's
something that we started a little while back that I
quite like, which is just letters from Home. We look
for nice stuff. We dive into many dark and troubling things.
We often find a grain of truth at the heart
of a conspiracy, but also we like to hear the
(17:17):
nice things. So we're gonna give you a weird story
from our pal proximate Cause. Oh let me speak this
in all caps, from our pal proximate Cause, who wants
to share an experience that I think will be instructive
for a lot of us playing along at home tonight.
And then we're gonna hear one nice letter from home
(17:38):
before we go to the ad break. So here we
go from Proximate Cause. PC says, I was reminded by
the most recent strange news segment in relation to China
India relations and the line of ultimate control of something
I saw while in the Maldives or Maldives more than
a year ago, says Proximate. I went to the Maldives
(18:01):
as a tourist. From the shore of the first island
I visited that was not the capital, I saw a
man piloting a boat or captaining who was wearing a
red shirt with big black text on it which read
India out Now. Being an avid googler, I took to
my phone to see just what this was about. And
(18:22):
it turns out there are some residents of the Maldives
who consider India to be somewhat of a threat to
their sovereignity to a greater or lesser degree. While there
is some official chatter about there being no actual threat,
I kind of wonder in a country where apostasy is
punishable by death, and having some experience living in China,
(18:44):
I don't think that for my short touristy trip it
was a good idea to get too deep into local
politics in a way that might seem impolite coming from
a foreigner. You're right about that, my friend, especially being
a foreigner from a country with a strong interventionist history.
Maybe I'm just overly cautious. I'm edatorializing here. You were
(19:05):
not you were on the money. So PC continues and says,
I've heard and read several accounts from Filipinos regarding the
behavior of Chinese nationals and the Philippines, some of which
were more high profile than others, the general gist of
which tended to be, what do you mean it's illegal?
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Here?
Speaker 5 (19:23):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
This ours? And those have fueled some conspiracies related to
the elections of various officials, and so approximate Cause says,
while I recognize the Maldives may not be the same
kind of strategic location in relation to India that the
Philippines is to China, if I were a betting man,
(19:44):
I'd say Sri Lanka would be a more likely option.
Does this change anything? Much like Azerbaijan and Armenia now,
because there's more value in backing Azerbaijan, the larger regional
powers around them have turned a blind eye to what's
happening in our media. That's true, Would there be any
strong response from the West or other large Asian governments?
(20:08):
I think PC means if something sideways happened to the Maldives,
PC says, I doubt many Americans outside of the influencer
crowd could even point to this country on a map,
much less make a full bodied vocal defense of an
Islamic country, even if our relationship with India turned that sour.
(20:29):
There's just too much nuance required. Could this be the
beginnings of another regional proxy war? I have no idea,
but I feel as if it may be something to
watch when the region starts to pop off even more.
I could see China coming to the Maldives in the
same way the US supports the Philippines. So that's a
(20:49):
good question. One thing I think most Westerners know about
this nation, about the Maldives or Maldives however you would
like to pronounce it Malay, It is probably probably going
to be the first nation whose land totally disappears due
to the rise of the oceans. Do you guys hear
about this part?
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I have not heard about it yet.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Know they're going to Unfortunately, due to the rising surface
level of the oceans, the Maldives may indeed become a
place that exists in a different country, like an enclave
of some sort. They're about like you if you look
at it, they're in the Indian Ocean. So see the
(21:31):
very bottom of India, and there to the southeast of
India there Sri Lanka.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
If you go to the.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Southwest and you go further out into the ocean, then
you see this country. The highest the highest elevation above
sea level there is like a little under eight feet.
It's not looking good in short, And the question that's
being asked here, which I very much appreciate, is it's
(22:00):
kind of following up to what we were talking about earlier,
the idea that India and China may be practicing their
own expansionist methods, and the idea that both of these
countries may be attempting to turn this other smaller country
into what's called a vassal state.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, it's certainly in a good strategic place. I mean,
far enough from the South China Sea and some of
the you know, some of the stuff that's being done
out there in protecting that area right by China, because
you got the whole Bay of Bengal and the Gulf
of Thailand in between. But I don't know. We just
talked about how India is a strategic country for the West,
(22:42):
right now right, and having like naval bases there would
be interesting. But again it's like, what's the long term
strategy for any country with the Maldives when it comes
to oceanize, like you said, because there's not that much
time probably, and they're like, the country is aware of it.
Officials in the country are aware of it. It's a
(23:05):
it's a dangerous situation for them. So then what do
you you know, what do you do when some military
comes rolling through and says, hey, we want to invest
a bunch of money in your country. All you got
to do is let us turn one of these islands
into a giant base.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Just the one, just the one, you know what I mean,
Like the one you're not using, so like the there's
also I appreciate you pointing this out, Matt, there's also
a clear easy controlling this little piece. It gives you
a clear and easy transit point to all sorts of
stuff like Eastern Africa. You got that, you know you could,
(23:45):
You're way closer to the Strait of Hormuz. There's also
a very powerful argument that the nation of China needs to,
like like Russia, it needs to extend its ocean access
past what it has now, you know, things will be
very different if Russia had a little bit better maritime
(24:07):
access to the Atlantic Ocean. And I'm fascinated to by
this acknowledgment of Islamophobia. I guess we know that plays
a part in Western political calculus.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Right, yeah, I don't know. Is it weird to you
guys how much that has cooled off since you know,
two thousand and one.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
I mean, you know, well.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
In talking points, right, I mean, we're going through the
presidential election here right now, and well, I mean, okay,
this is full disclosure. I'm not exactly listening to any
presidential debates because I could give up what anybody says.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
On this is amazing though. Just watch the clip shows.
I keep going to bad lip Reading on YouTube just
to see if they've got a banger. I'm just waiting.
But it was really the most recent one that occurred
the primary here in the US. The primary debate was
kind of embarrassing.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Okay, I guess it just feels like the dog whistles
now are more for like other stuff like trans people
and queer people. You know, that's sort of become the
new threat at home. You know, we haven't really had
any high profile quote unquote terrorist attacks for them to
point to.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
It seems like if if there were, if that were
the case, they certainly would not shy away from using that.
But you're right, I didn't think about that. It certainly
has quote unquote cool down, at least in their rhetoric.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
I mean, that's a really important part. That's something that
we should all keep an eye on as we go
forward here, because what you were seeing, you, if you
don't try to go outside of your information bubble, right
and you live in the anglosphere, what you were probably
going to see is news that an algorithm has determined
(25:53):
you will care about. And that's a hell of a
catch twenty two. And it is not good for you
as a person or an entity. It's not good for
you as a citizen of the world right now. There's
a ton of stuff that's happening out there, and it
is in the collective best interest to know about it.
(26:16):
To the point about Islamophobia, it's always going to be
a part of the West, right, and that's simply because
people are sort of cheat at times. And I don't
mean they're necessarily bad people. They just like having an
in group and an outgroup, and that's sort of a
that's like a cognitive hardware defect. However, we have to
(26:40):
realize that the vast majority of people living on the
planet right now are super super similar to you hearing this.
They want a good job, you know what I mean.
They don't want to be rushed when they have to poop.
They like feeling like they're funny, you know, They want
their kids to have a good life. They have like
(27:02):
they have certain concerns about their lives that might seem
little to the world entire but they're very big to them.
And if civilization together can just agree on those basic
things in a non zero sum equation, the world will
be better off. And you don't have to have all
(27:22):
this geopolitical pissing on fire hydrants because ultimately it benefits
very very few people. With that, let me retreat off
the soapbox. We promised you a letter from home. This
is quickly becoming one of the favorite parts of the evening.
We get a letter by someone. This is so great,
(27:43):
you guys. We get a letter by someone calling themselves
outnumbered by sixth graders, and this is just a nice
thing to us playing along at home recording here this evening.
Hey guys, says Outnumbered. I'm a public school teacher in Arizona.
I just got done listening to the Public Schools Factory episode.
(28:05):
I just wanted to say thank you for managing to
point out all of the problems with the education system
without disparaging teachers. We teachers know the system is problematic,
and we were all working hard to change it. But
many of us already know that the info in your
episode was true. Walking that line of respect for what
(28:26):
we do while pointing out problems is not always easy,
but you did an amazing job.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Feel free to share if you choose to do so.
And thank you, out Numbered, because as you know, Matt
Noel and yours, truly, we're all We come from teachers,
you know, we come from educators, and I would argue,
I would argue that every adult person comes from education, right, Like,
(28:53):
that's part of why humans are such popular primates, because we.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Teach each other things and then we write it down, right,
make videos about it and TikTok the heck out of it.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
No jeez.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, Well, anyway, I wanted to end on that nice
one because we made the world sound terrifying, which it
is but shout out to the teachers and thank you
to everyone who tuned in to our public education episode.
There are some serious intergenerational issues with the system, at
least as it stands in the United States. We're going
(29:28):
to pause for a word from our sponsor and will
return with one more message from you, and no spoilers, folks.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
It's a good.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
One and we've returned. Guys. During that Maldives section, I
was just looking all around Google Earth, which is what
I do whenever we talk about a place that I
don't know a ton about and I found somewhere I
(29:58):
want us to go Brunette. It's called Ascension Island.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yes, yes, it's in one of my favorite books, Matt
Judah Shlansky. Oh god, every time I really mention the book,
it screws things up.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
But one of my favorite books in the world is
called The Atlas of Remote Islands. Ascension Island is an
entry in The Atlas of Remote Islands by Judah Slansky.
Check out the book if you.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Get it's really cool looking. I want to go to
the Volcano Club and snack bar on the island.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Someone's like, I don't know, you can five volcanoes anywhere.
And then someone else comes up and says, there's also
a snack bar.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, exactly, but it's inside the volcano.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
I don't know. It looks nuts. This place looks nuts.
It's in the middle. Gosh, so cool. It's like just
right in the middle of Africa and South America.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Okay, eight hundred people live there.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Dude, somebody in the RAF is listening right now and
right to us. Let us know, because you got a
base O're there, all right. So we are getting a
message here from someone we're all familiar with. I'm assuming
someone that writes to us all the time, mister Lucas.
Lucas says, so here's some more body broker kind of
stuff for you, but a bit darker. Apparently this is
(31:13):
a thing. Women's dead bodies are sold to families burying
their unmarried son. This gets more sinister when people begin
to start murdering women than selling them. What is this thing? Well,
it is. It can be a lot of things. Posthumous marriage,
(31:33):
ghost marriage, you could call it. There are other words
for it in varying religions and cultural sects, but we're
talking ghost weddings. And Lucas sends us a couple of
different links and a bit of information from Wikipedia that
we're not going to read in full, Lucas, we'll talk
about it and around it. So let's just go to
(31:53):
some of the news links that were sent to us.
One of them comes from the BBC. Its title is
China's Ghost Weddings and Why they can be Deadly. This
was written in August twenty sixteen by Grace sooy Tsoi
and guys. It's a story about some people who were
(32:18):
murdering women and then selling their corpses to willing, needy
families who believed they were buying a recently deceased person
to be wed in a traditional ceremony to a loved
one who has just died. I've never heard of this before.
This is kind of blowing my mind. Ben. It sounds
(32:40):
off air like you've heard of this a no bit
about it. What can you tell us about the tradition
of what we're calling ghost wedding but it's really after
death marriage ceremonies.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yeah, I think you nailed at Matt. Posthumous matrimony, Okay,
call it right. The idea and it goes across culture.
I really appreciate that point. Part of it is. Part
of it is the idea that a spirit will be
angry or will be left bereft of what could have
(33:14):
been their lived existence.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
If they pass away without being married.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And then also you'll see I think it's in Korea
it happens where if someone was engaged and they die,
there's still a posthumous ceremony.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Through But before we get to you know, the really dark,
macabre side of it, it's important for us to know
that traditionally in these cultures this is seen as a
good thing, you know, like Dia delaba in Mexico. It's
not seen as some sort of like horrible, spooky dookie thing.
(33:55):
It's seen as another cycle in life and death. They
are legally binding and sometimes both people who get married
this way.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
They're both dead.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Wow, which goes into like financial calculations because you can't
get away from, you know, the idea of dowry and
stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
That's my Wowtand didn't even think of the logistics of
that part of it.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I know it has been used, this practice has been
used very functionally throughout history and a couple of different places.
Just read a little bit via the wiki, go down,
look at the links, the sightings and everything, and then
started going, yeah, so there's a weird situation to talk about.
But in Germany, when let's say a soldier who has
(34:48):
a partner at home but they're not married yet, right,
they are sexually active, the woman in that relationship gets pregnant,
the man goes off to war and dies. Now that
woman is going to have a baby, but she's unwed,
and she's going to be considered an unwed mother. I'm
doing that in quotes, right, because there's there's cultural connotation
(35:11):
to that which.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Could lead to being ostracized and treated in a negative manner,
you know.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Exactly So, there were some examples where the actual corpse
of a dead soldier was brought in and a wedding
ceremony was performed to wed that woman to this dead person,
just so that that child would take the father's name
and it would be okay to everybody else basically in
the society.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Matt, have you gotten into the why they can be
deadly part?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
No, let's talk about it.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
I just saw it in the headline. It's pretty pretty
eye catching. It just says China's ghost weddings and why
they can be deadly.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Oh yes, okay, so so yes, just like Lucas said,
he's he's like referring or he's like, this is an
offshoot of our Bodybroker's episode, right, because if there's a
black market for something, if there's something that's sellable, someone
might want to take advantage of that and maybe is
a little less morally inclined than others. Right, So this
(36:13):
article is citing I think it was. There are a
couple things that have occurred. One that we mentioned earlier
is that there was in one case a woman found
like a dead woman found in a vehicle, and after investigation,
three of the males who were still living who were
in the vehicle, they got questioned and basically one of
(36:34):
them admitted to killing this woman in order to sell
her dead body to a needy family.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
That which is different from related practices. There have also
been operators that would count as what we would call
it resurrection men, grave robbers.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Yeah. And then twenty fifteen, according to this BBC article,
fourteen female corpses were stolen in a village and Shangshi
propit yep. And this article, ifew refers to them as
tomb raiders, which I always thought was really cool and
like adventury, but not in this context. You know, I
just think of Laura Croft obviously and her polygons. But
(37:14):
now tomb rating or grave robbing, I guess is maybe
the term we would use over here. And yeah, resurrection, man,
that older term is still just such a captures the imagination.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Well, And again it's kind of messed up because it
could be pretty lucrative for those grave robbers, right they
I mean, at least in this BBC article, it cites
like quite a bit of money. I don't even know
if we can really quote it well, because I don't
know if they're saying it would be forty five hundred
(37:45):
US dollars to seventy five hundred US dollars for all
fourteen corpses, or if that means per corpse that was
recovered of those fourteen just I'm not sure, but it
does seem as the so if you could make that
much money for a lot of like messed up hard labor,
if you're desperate enough, maybe you would be pushed to
(38:08):
do that, right, or you would feel pushed to do that,
And this article does state that in two thousand and six,
the sale quote, the sale of corpses was outlawed, but
that was according to the he stopped crave robbers. Yeah,
isn't that cool. Let's see there's other stuff here. There
was an article from Daily Mail that was also left
(38:31):
to us by Lucas here and this is about a
quote ghost bride, a supposed corpse that was delivered to
a family to be married to their dead son. So again,
this is a situation where both parties in the marriage
would already be deceased, but upon receiving the woman and
starting the ceremony, the woman woke up and was alive.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
What, yes, you have one of those like Romeo and
Juliet drugs. What are we talking here? Crazy?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
I don't have the full details they are saying, only
some details have come to light. And this was written
in twenty sixteen December by Julian Luck for Daily Mail.
And this person was allegedly a deaf mute who was trafficked.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Okay, because I know there have been cases where women
were drugged, purposely sedated and then sold as ghost brides.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Oh wow, that is that's that's crazy. But it's even
more heinous because you're killing a person as when they
get buried, I suppose.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Matt, sorry if I missed this.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
Is there a sense in any of the religious side
of these that it also ensures that their loved one.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Will have like companionship in the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
To my knowledge, yes, that's one of the primary reasons
why this practice would occur, so that the person is
not alone basically, but again, yeah, it depends on religious belief.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah, are hundreds and hundreds of years, especially in what
we call rural China today, the idea is that you know,
death is scary, and you don't want to go alone,
so you'll have someone with you in the afterlife. Unfortunately, unfortunately,
(40:20):
this has provided an opportunity for some unclean activities. And
I think it's also important to note that a lot
of these folks, like the folks doing the traffick aid
and stuff like that, they're getting the majority of the
campfire headlines because it's a very scary, disturbing thing, and
(40:41):
it's a true thing. But often these are kind of
conversations people are having and maybe both families involved have
lost a child, you know what I mean, and they're
sort of helping themselves deal with this tremendous, unspeakable tragedy.
So I do think it's important to say this practice
(41:03):
is like when you're hearing about the very bad criminal stuff.
This is not representative of the entirety of again, this
ancient cultural practice, oh of course.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
And it has nothing to do with why the practice occurs, right,
The illegal stuff is because people see an opportunity to
make money and they don't care. I guess, ugh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know what else to say about this.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
This is a brand new thing to me.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
I say, man, this is fascinating.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
I mean truly, I'm surprised there hasn't been like this
hasn't appeared in pop culture, you know what I mean.
This seems like just the kind of thing that could
be another kind of interesting twist in a story, or
like build building a ghost story from this.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
You know, there's a great novel called, Oh gosh, I
think it might be called The Ghost Spride. It is
called The Ghost Pride twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah, this hasn't been adapted into a movie.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
I only watch movies, and I don't know for books.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
That was The Corpse Bride. Maybe it's maybe.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Well, there's the Corpse Bride. Then there's The Ghost Bride.
Got The Ghost Bride I think was an Oprah book.
You know how that time Oprah got bigger than the
New York Times for bestsellers and.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
She still does pretty well. Yeah, yeah, the Book Club. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
And I think there's a Netflix series that I have
not watched in full disclosure called The Ghost Bride, which
is an adaptation of that.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
So this strikes me as something like Chan Wook Park
might do you know, the Old Boy director. He's just
something about it that's just delightfully macab and I could
see it being handled by it a tour in a
very interesting way, but also delightful in some ways when
it's not done where it hurts people. You know, there
are some people that were commenting on this in some
of the articles that you found, Matt, that say it
(42:53):
is an affirmation of love, you know, and things like that.
So I think if it's done above board and it
is something that gives people some sense of peace or
some sense of wholeness, you know, for their loved ones,
then why not, right as long as it's not hurting anybody.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
I just, by the way, Matt, last thing I just
learned the word for this god English is weird. The
word for posthumous marriage in English is necrogammy, like monogamy.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
That's awesome, necrogamy.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
You know what, Hopefully, hopefully all of us listening to
tonight are not in a situation where we need to
continually use that word, you know what I mean? Wishing
you the best, folks.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
Can I ask a question, guys, this is a little
off top of it. Why is Phelia always only associated
with horrible things?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Doesn't it just mean.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
Like love and the love of But why do we
only hear it when it comes to like really.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Bad, bad things that people do.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
I think it goes back to the idea of amateiv
versus amor ris love.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Because you know, you can be an audiophile, but no
one ever call you an audiophiliac.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
I mean, I don't know, again, English weird.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, like a bibliophiliac sounds like you're you're sleeping.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
With those books, You're doing stuff with those folds, with
those pages.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Again, I'm telling you, it's uh. I I feel like
I have at best a rudimentary understanding of the language
of which we're recording this podcast. There's always a new one.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah, just like the paper cuts.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
You know, you have not about the paper cuts.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
You don't do it that direct.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yeah, man, you gotta go with the grain. What's going
on with you?
Speaker 3 (44:42):
All right?
Speaker 1 (44:42):
So that Matt uh, Matt and Lucas, what's the final
say on ghost marriage, posthumous marriage necro gemy uh necrogamy,
however we would say it. What's your takeaway for this?
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Yeah, Lucas, what's your take so? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
I think I put in my two cents. Matt, I
don't know. I think it's fascinating to me. I see
the functionality of it when it comes to some cultural
moras literally for taxes, for things like inheritance and you know,
a bloodline. Yeah, even if it's not an actual bloodline,
(45:25):
it's maybe a child that becomes a part of that
family because of this ceremony. I can see why that
would be desirable.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
And there's no divorce.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, well, I.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
Think we can probably all agree that the bad part
of the story is obviously the folks who are taking
advantage of this practice, who are not people who are believers.
I would argue they are the opposite there, you know,
absolutely taking advantage of people's faith in the same way that.
You know, body brokers are people that like run crematoriums
(45:56):
or they just dump the bodies in the backyard or.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
In communal pile or whatever.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Things like that, where you're literally taking advantage of someone
who's either in mourning or who has a deeply held
spiritual belief. I think that is fundamentally ichy to the maximum.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Yeah, there's an article from The Guardian you can look
up if you wish, titled Trio Stole Corpse to sell
as Bride say Chinese media. It's written by the ap
Envising and it's from October twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Ed Minghun as it's called in China. Again, as we
took pains to say, is not in any way an
inherently sinister thing, Nor are similar practices inherently sinister wherever
wherever they occur. I guess we could say, you know,
the course of true love never did run smooth and
(46:48):
maybe end on some Shakespeare. So with that, we we've
got to thank everybody who wrote in, everybody who took
time to contact us and cut past the no of
the internet. Shout out to again our guest super producer
Max Williams, who you can you can find blowing us
(47:09):
up on our messaging thread right now. He's a big
fan of bad lip reading. He's also a big fan
of You guys are fellow conspiracy realists. So we do
hope that you join us. We do hope that you
become a part of the show and come on air
with us one day by hook or by crook. We'd
(47:29):
love to hear from you. You can find us all
over the place, right you can.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
You can find out the handle conspiracy Stuff where we
exist on Facebook, YouTube and formerly known as Twitter, Conspiracy
Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Hey do you like to talk to people via your phone?
You can talk to us. We have a voicemail system
call one eight three three std WYTK call in, tell
us something really nice, or tell us to bite your
scat blowhole. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Now.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
That's from Pete and Pete's famous insult. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
There's also the the colon and the capital P, which I.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
Think Sorry the way I typed it, it must appear that
I was referring to a scabby blowhole. Scab is one
thing that you're asking the person who you are calling
a blowhole to bite yeah, yuck, Peteldren's television man children's television.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
All right, well yeah, but you can call us in
just say whatever you want do. Let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air
in one of our listener mail episodes. If you don't
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a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
We are joined with our guest super producer, Max the
freight trained Williams. Most importantly, you are here. That makes
this the stuff they don't want you to know. Fellow
conspiracy realist. It is one of our favorite evenings of
the week. This is our weekly listener male segment between
(00:49):
all the strange digging we do. We rely on you
the most important part of this show to share with
your fellow conspiracy realist, the things that struck you as important,
the things that in your own personal life are the
stuff they don't want you to know. We are going
to learn about ghost weddings from an exciting email that
(01:13):
gives us a chance to talk about something that I
think is fascinating many of us for several years. We're
going to get some letters from home from some of
our favorite people in the world, educators. We're also going
to talk a little bit about the Maldives. And before
we do any of that, we are going to hang
out with a fellow conspiracy realist and fantastic writer. By
(01:33):
the way, GP Scooth.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Just love the name GP Scooth. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
GP wrote into us with the subject Bob Burdella and
Bob's bizarre Bizarre, which is a lovely play on words too.
What do you call that a homonym? I guess they're
not quite exactly the same in they're clothes. I've certainly
seen people play that's bizarre. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Fun So here he goes. Gentlemen, I have not bothered
you in a while.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
And this week's episode on Serial Killers brought back memories
of the spring of nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I was a struggling freelance teacher, lecturer.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Writer, and overachiever in my dad trying out any number
of new business ventures. One of these which became successful,
but after I gave it up, was based in an
office space I rented in an executive suite. I'm not
going to give the exact address in Kansas City, Missouri
is always confused me. The Kansas City isn't in Kansas
but there you go. I located here because of proximity
(02:33):
to the professional clients I was trying to attract, even
though it was across town and the state line. These
were sally referring to the office spase proximity to the
professional clients I was trying to attract, even though it
was across town and the state line from my home
on the suburban Kansas side. When I came to the
office one Monday, shared by about a half dozen accountants,
insurance agents, and a barter exchange, I was told that
(02:55):
over the weekend one of the guys that hung out
there are regular in the barter exchange, had been a rested.
A teenage boy had escaped from this guy's house naked
and beaten up. When the police took Bob Burdella into custody,
it later turned out Bridella had killed and dismembered at
least six young men, threw the parts away into the
garbage or buried them in his backyard. Bardella had a
(03:19):
business at the Westport flea market called Bob's Bizarre Bizarre,
which he called his personal cabinet of curiosities. Westport would
be the Kansas City version of the Hipster Village, with restaurants, bars,
and little shops of all kinds. It lies between the
University of Missouri Kansas City and the Kansas University Medical Center,
a teaching hospital, plus is easily reached from downtown or
(03:41):
the suburbs for meetings, parties, etc. Inside the Westport flea Market,
where some of the best Hamburgers ever were sold, Bob's
Bazaar has a cult magic, satanic merchandise, and even real
human skeletal remains, although there were always many manufactured body
parts as well. The days of the head shop, this
(04:02):
was one where you could purchase rolling papers for your
own cigarettes, so I'm told, and even sometimes what were
advertised as marital aids or tension relieving massagers that would
fit on a finger. You get the idea a spencer's
gifts for adults with weirdness thrown in. But in the
(04:22):
many times I just had coffee conversations with Bob, he
was about as low key regular a person as you
could get. A bit eccentric, yes, openly gay in the
nineteen eighties, which sets him apart, but nothing to give
you the vibes that this person with whom I was
speaking just happens to have a teenage boy locked in
a room and chained to a bed at his home,
and the timeline we later worked out told us that
(04:45):
had to have been the case. While you guys discussed
the mementos from such people, I have always questioned, even
to Bob, where did you get the stuff for your inventory?
Who just sells human hands? Is there a big demand
for human skulls and some of his We're real?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
The strangest part to me has always been that no
one suspected anything about Bob that would have led you
to believe he was killing, dismembering, and disposing of people.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
The typical quiet.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Guy next door, I guess, but still odd to have
a brief period of your life where you were in
frequent contact and on a first name basis with a
serial killer.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
You know me as gpscooth Yeah, Ike, thank you?
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Whoow that's a tale GP, My goodness, that must have
been chilling to discover.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
By the way, I'm looking at a business card here
from all That's Interesting dot com, and it quotes his
company as Bob's Bizarre Bizarre, so like describing the bizarre
after Okay, clever.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Well, you don't have to look. You can be a
monster and still understand the importance of wordplay.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Very true, That is very true, Ben, I mean, you know,
this just sounds like the perfect fodder for murder fiction
type stuff because you know, of course, like the twist,
is that the thing that you bought from the you know,
the shrunken head or you know, withered hand actually belonged
to one of his victims. That's of course where your
(06:20):
mind goes. And I don't know, did you guys read
any further into this. Was there ever any indication that
he did put his trophies in his shop?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Unclear? I think because of the timeline at that point,
you would have, like in the nineteen eighties, if you
are actively operating the way this guy was, then you
would have hopefully had some lessons learned from from previous
experiences of people who got popped for doing this sort
(06:52):
of stuff. However, what was he called the Kansas City butcher? Right?
He clearly wasn't very clever, Most of them aren't. I
think he was just throwing people away and throwing human remains,
excuse me away in garbage bags. It reminds me, God,
(07:12):
it just reminds me of so many other serial killers.
To your question or GP, what you're talking about what
you're talking about here. No, what we're exploring together here
is the idea of serial killer merchandising. That's part of it, right,
that big question you pose, did this individual attempt to
(07:38):
profit off of the results of their mental illness? Right?
And that's I mean, that's a good question because HH
Holmes was killing people because he liked it, but he
was also killing people for insurance money, you know what
I mean. You run into you run into that simultaneous.
(07:59):
I don't know if it's a rationalization or if it's
a simultaneous benefit in their minds.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
There's a lot to be said about this guy. And
I also appreciate JP for pointing out it's at least
six young men, because, as we know, unfortunately, very often
in the US and abroad, when the victims of creatures
like this, when they are sociologically marginalized, then their law
(08:30):
enforcement just doesn't doesn't seem to do their due diligence.
So for that, that's part of why people killing, you know,
folks who are considered African American folks who are considered homosexual,
that's part of why those entities have a higher likelihood
of getting away from justice for a longer amount of time.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
It does appear that, you know, he was into S
and M type stuff, and they did have people participating
and some of these activities, you know, willingly. I think
there were upwards of twenty photographs discovered of folks in
various stages of this type of you know stuff, dog
collars and you know, things like that, and I think
(09:16):
it was almost all of the victims I believe, were
among those photographs. And the you know gp you mentioned
the person that was found naked, It was naked except
for a dog collar. And apparently this creature, as you
very appropriately put it, Ben had this.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Something called rules of the House that were rules.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
That were mandatory for anyone that he was doing this
stuff with and that any you know, non adherence to
these rules would result in electric shocks being administered to
their private areas.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
It's kind of like it's kind of like David Parker
Ray also known as the Toy Box s Killer, the
Four Entities like this. What you do is you construct,
you construct a regiment of rules and make it such
that there is no way those rules cannot be in
some way quote unquote Brokenken and then right, because it's
(10:18):
not about the rules. It's about an opportunity to feel
that one controls and punishes people. It's it's very unclean thing.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
No, it's it's it's it's it's really really awful. Matt.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
You've gone deep with you know, the Zodiac killer and
Atlanta child murderers and all this stuff. And I was
having a conversation with my partner the other day just
about whether these types of conditions are medical in nature
or whether these types of conditions are these are just
bad people, you know. I mean, obviously you can be
(10:52):
diagnosed with schizophrenia, but that's a psychiatric diagnosis. Like it's
usually only post mortem that you know, aberance is the
brain can be detected. Do you have any thoughts on that, Matt,
like from any of the dives that you've done, Like
whether these are just people that are just bad or
can they be cured?
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Is that even something that should be invested in? Like what?
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I mean, maybe that's too big a question, and obviously
is the question, but I'm just interested in your perspective
on that.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I'm no expert, man. The people we've talked to have
differing opinions, but a lot of the investigators on the
law enforcement side, especially from the FBI, tend to have
a pretty stark look at it, like this is a
bad person. But generally this person was made bad through experience,
life experience, right through a lot of things they've been through. Generally,
(11:46):
not this person was created evil from the womb kind
of concept.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Often traumatic brain injury early in childhood.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Or traumatic brain injury really anytime, which is kind of crazy,
like it can that kind of thing can adjust somebody
in not so great ways of show.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Gage, Yeah, no, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Remove filters that are there that kind of internally bind
our behavior. Give us these rules that generally aren't broken
out of fear of what it means to break one
of those rules. You get a brain injury, and that
can go away depending on where it is. I don't
I don't know, man.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
No, that's a really good point, Matt, And that's that.
I think that's a very valid perspective for sure. I
was listening to a podcast that I really quite enjoy.
It's called with Gorley and Rust with Matt Gorley and
Paul Rust, and they talk about different horror movies, and
they were talking about the movie Seven, which you know,
I think in a lot of ways, movies like Silence
(12:47):
of the Lambs and Seven sort of led to this
whole like genius serial killer kind of you know, Craze
or whatever. And they just pointed out, I think, very
astutely that that's not a thing, like there's nobody that
would be that twisted, that would do something like what
John Doe does in seven. These very elaborate or like
(13:08):
you know, Jigsaw. But Seven's just obviously interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That you mentioned that, because I believe it was Bridella, right,
Bridella watched The Collector, that film from the sixties. Do
you guys know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I don't know that one, now.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, he watched a film that came out in the
mid sixties called The Collector, which is about a guy
who stalks and kidnaps a lady and feels like he is,
you know, practicing lepidoptery, like the collection of butterflies or
something where you pin them against you know, a backdrop,
(13:44):
And this was sort of an inspiration. So I think,
and GP, maybe you will find this interesting. Uh, there's
a question that I have not quite solved yet about
the possible feedback loop. You know, why does the serial
murderer in the United States. Why does it hold such
(14:06):
a unique position in the zeitgeist, and to what degree
do films that appear to glorify one of these people?
Right to your point, nol the the largely fictitious idea
of the intelligent serial murderer a lah Hannibal in or
Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, to what degree
(14:30):
is that sort of fiction perhaps informing the actions of
the mentally ill. And that's a slippery slope, because then,
you know, I think it's too close intellectually speaking or
philosophically speaking to the idea that listening to quote unquote
the wrong music makes make someone violate moral taboos I
(14:50):
or social taboos, excuse me, socioeconomic taboos as well. It
is true, though it is objectively true that Birdella watched
this film and talked about it. He also had some
of the things that you're clocking as well.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Matt, there are other two killers. Sorry this I was
trying to figure out why the collector like pinged something
for me. It was another project that we were working
on for a time, Leonard Lake and Charles Ang. This
also committed a bunch of brutal murders that involved kidnapping people,
and they were also allegedly inspired by the Collector.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
That is fascinating that feedback loop idea. But you're right,
then it can be the slippery slope when it comes
to just like blaming the art and censoring it as
a result of what I think would largely be some
pretty rare.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Outliers who actually you know, are and.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
You know, whether he chose to act out because of
that in a certain way, he probably would have acted
out in some other way without said inspiration.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
But back to what gorleyan Rest said, and then we'll
take a break.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
They just pointed out that the reality of it is
what you were pointing to as well, Ben, is that
anyone that's mentally ill enough or you know, has some
fetishistic drive enough to do something like the Seven Murders,
there's no way they'd be able to pull it off
with the degree of accuracy that happens in that film.
So it is largely But also David Fincher, who directed Seven,
(16:20):
said that he almost felt guilty about introducing this glorified
version of the genius serial killer into the world, which
is largely.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Why he made Mind Hunter.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
That depicts the killers as mainly perverts and degenerates, you know,
so he did kind of say that was almost his
way of feeling as though he were righting or wrong,
even though I think seven is an excellent film. But
thank you so much, GP scooth. And we're going to
take a quick break and we'll come back with some
more messages from you.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
And we have returned. You've got a couple here. There's
something that we started a little while back that I
quite like, which is just letters from Home. We look
for nice stuff. We dive into many dark and troubling things.
We often find a grain of truth at the heart
of a conspiracy, but also we like to hear the
(17:17):
nice things. So we're gonna give you a weird story
from our pal proximate Cause. Oh let me speak this
in all caps, from our pal proximate Cause, who wants
to share an experience that I think will be instructive
for a lot of us playing along at home tonight.
And then we're gonna hear one nice letter from home
(17:38):
before we go to the ad break. So here we
go from Proximate Cause. PC says, I was reminded by
the most recent strange news segment in relation to China
India relations and the line of ultimate control of something
I saw while in the Maldives or Maldives more than
a year ago, says Proximate. I went to the Maldives
(18:01):
as a tourist. From the shore of the first island
I visited that was not the capital, I saw a
man piloting a boat or captaining who was wearing a
red shirt with big black text on it which read
India out Now. Being an avid googler, I took to
my phone to see just what this was about. And
(18:22):
it turns out there are some residents of the Maldives
who consider India to be somewhat of a threat to
their sovereignity to a greater or lesser degree. While there
is some official chatter about there being no actual threat,
I kind of wonder in a country where apostasy is
punishable by death, and having some experience living in China,
(18:44):
I don't think that for my short touristy trip it
was a good idea to get too deep into local
politics in a way that might seem impolite coming from
a foreigner. You're right about that, my friend, especially being
a foreigner from a country with a strong interventionist history.
Maybe I'm just overly cautious. I'm edatorializing here. You were
(19:05):
not you were on the money. So PC continues and says,
I've heard and read several accounts from Filipinos regarding the
behavior of Chinese nationals and the Philippines, some of which
were more high profile than others, the general gist of
which tended to be, what do you mean it's illegal?
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Here?
Speaker 5 (19:23):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
This ours? And those have fueled some conspiracies related to
the elections of various officials, and so approximate Cause says,
while I recognize the Maldives may not be the same
kind of strategic location in relation to India that the
Philippines is to China, if I were a betting man,
(19:44):
I'd say Sri Lanka would be a more likely option.
Does this change anything? Much like Azerbaijan and Armenia now,
because there's more value in backing Azerbaijan, the larger regional
powers around them have turned a blind eye to what's
happening in our media. That's true, Would there be any
strong response from the West or other large Asian governments?
(20:08):
I think PC means if something sideways happened to the Maldives,
PC says, I doubt many Americans outside of the influencer
crowd could even point to this country on a map,
much less make a full bodied vocal defense of an
Islamic country, even if our relationship with India turned that sour.
(20:29):
There's just too much nuance required. Could this be the
beginnings of another regional proxy war? I have no idea,
but I feel as if it may be something to
watch when the region starts to pop off even more.
I could see China coming to the Maldives in the
same way the US supports the Philippines. So that's a
(20:49):
good question. One thing I think most Westerners know about
this nation, about the Maldives or Maldives however you would
like to pronounce it Malay, It is probably probably going
to be the first nation whose land totally disappears due
to the rise of the oceans. Do you guys hear
about this part?
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I have not heard about it yet.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Know they're going to Unfortunately, due to the rising surface
level of the oceans, the Maldives may indeed become a
place that exists in a different country, like an enclave
of some sort. They're about like you if you look
at it, they're in the Indian Ocean. So see the
(21:31):
very bottom of India, and there to the southeast of
India there Sri Lanka.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
If you go to the.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Southwest and you go further out into the ocean, then
you see this country. The highest the highest elevation above
sea level there is like a little under eight feet.
It's not looking good in short, And the question that's
being asked here, which I very much appreciate, is it's
(22:00):
kind of following up to what we were talking about earlier,
the idea that India and China may be practicing their
own expansionist methods, and the idea that both of these
countries may be attempting to turn this other smaller country
into what's called a vassal state.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, it's certainly in a good strategic place. I mean,
far enough from the South China Sea and some of
the you know, some of the stuff that's being done
out there in protecting that area right by China, because
you got the whole Bay of Bengal and the Gulf
of Thailand in between. But I don't know. We just
talked about how India is a strategic country for the West,
(22:42):
right now right, and having like naval bases there would
be interesting. But again it's like, what's the long term
strategy for any country with the Maldives when it comes
to oceanize, like you said, because there's not that much
time probably, and they're like, the country is aware of it.
Officials in the country are aware of it. It's a
(23:05):
it's a dangerous situation for them. So then what do
you you know, what do you do when some military
comes rolling through and says, hey, we want to invest
a bunch of money in your country. All you got
to do is let us turn one of these islands
into a giant base.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Just the one, just the one, you know what I mean,
Like the one you're not using, so like the there's
also I appreciate you pointing this out, Matt, there's also
a clear easy controlling this little piece. It gives you
a clear and easy transit point to all sorts of
stuff like Eastern Africa. You got that, you know you could,
(23:45):
You're way closer to the Strait of Hormuz. There's also
a very powerful argument that the nation of China needs to,
like like Russia, it needs to extend its ocean access
past what it has now, you know, things will be
very different if Russia had a little bit better maritime
(24:07):
access to the Atlantic Ocean. And I'm fascinated to by
this acknowledgment of Islamophobia. I guess we know that plays
a part in Western political calculus.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Right, yeah, I don't know. Is it weird to you
guys how much that has cooled off since you know,
two thousand and one.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
I mean, you know, well.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
In talking points, right, I mean, we're going through the
presidential election here right now, and well, I mean, okay,
this is full disclosure. I'm not exactly listening to any
presidential debates because I could give up what anybody says.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
On this is amazing though. Just watch the clip shows.
I keep going to bad lip Reading on YouTube just
to see if they've got a banger. I'm just waiting.
But it was really the most recent one that occurred
the primary here in the US. The primary debate was
kind of embarrassing.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Okay, I guess it just feels like the dog whistles
now are more for like other stuff like trans people
and queer people. You know, that's sort of become the
new threat at home. You know, we haven't really had
any high profile quote unquote terrorist attacks for them to
point to.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
It seems like if if there were, if that were
the case, they certainly would not shy away from using that.
But you're right, I didn't think about that. It certainly
has quote unquote cool down, at least in their rhetoric.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
I mean, that's a really important part. That's something that
we should all keep an eye on as we go
forward here, because what you were seeing, you, if you
don't try to go outside of your information bubble, right
and you live in the anglosphere, what you were probably
going to see is news that an algorithm has determined
(25:53):
you will care about. And that's a hell of a
catch twenty two. And it is not good for you
as a person or an entity. It's not good for
you as a citizen of the world right now. There's
a ton of stuff that's happening out there, and it
is in the collective best interest to know about it.
(26:16):
To the point about Islamophobia, it's always going to be
a part of the West, right, and that's simply because
people are sort of cheat at times. And I don't
mean they're necessarily bad people. They just like having an
in group and an outgroup, and that's sort of a
that's like a cognitive hardware defect. However, we have to
(26:40):
realize that the vast majority of people living on the
planet right now are super super similar to you hearing this.
They want a good job, you know what I mean.
They don't want to be rushed when they have to poop.
They like feeling like they're funny, you know, They want
their kids to have a good life. They have like
(27:02):
they have certain concerns about their lives that might seem
little to the world entire but they're very big to them.
And if civilization together can just agree on those basic
things in a non zero sum equation, the world will
be better off. And you don't have to have all
(27:22):
this geopolitical pissing on fire hydrants because ultimately it benefits
very very few people. With that, let me retreat off
the soapbox. We promised you a letter from home. This
is quickly becoming one of the favorite parts of the evening.
We get a letter by someone. This is so great,
(27:43):
you guys. We get a letter by someone calling themselves
outnumbered by sixth graders, and this is just a nice
thing to us playing along at home recording here this evening.
Hey guys, says Outnumbered. I'm a public school teacher in Arizona.
I just got done listening to the Public Schools Factory episode.
(28:05):
I just wanted to say thank you for managing to
point out all of the problems with the education system
without disparaging teachers. We teachers know the system is problematic,
and we were all working hard to change it. But
many of us already know that the info in your
episode was true. Walking that line of respect for what
(28:26):
we do while pointing out problems is not always easy,
but you did an amazing job.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Feel free to share if you choose to do so.
And thank you, out Numbered, because as you know, Matt
Noel and yours, truly, we're all We come from teachers,
you know, we come from educators, and I would argue,
I would argue that every adult person comes from education, right, Like,
(28:53):
that's part of why humans are such popular primates, because we.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Teach each other things and then we write it down, right,
make videos about it and TikTok the heck out of it.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
No jeez.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, Well, anyway, I wanted to end on that nice
one because we made the world sound terrifying, which it
is but shout out to the teachers and thank you
to everyone who tuned in to our public education episode.
There are some serious intergenerational issues with the system, at
least as it stands in the United States. We're going
(29:28):
to pause for a word from our sponsor and will
return with one more message from you, and no spoilers, folks.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
It's a good.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
One and we've returned. Guys. During that Maldives section, I
was just looking all around Google Earth, which is what
I do whenever we talk about a place that I
don't know a ton about and I found somewhere I
(29:58):
want us to go Brunette. It's called Ascension Island.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yes, yes, it's in one of my favorite books, Matt
Judah Shlansky. Oh god, every time I really mention the book,
it screws things up.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
But one of my favorite books in the world is
called The Atlas of Remote Islands. Ascension Island is an
entry in The Atlas of Remote Islands by Judah Slansky.
Check out the book if you.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Get it's really cool looking. I want to go to
the Volcano Club and snack bar on the island.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Someone's like, I don't know, you can five volcanoes anywhere.
And then someone else comes up and says, there's also
a snack bar.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, exactly, but it's inside the volcano.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
I don't know. It looks nuts. This place looks nuts.
It's in the middle. Gosh, so cool. It's like just
right in the middle of Africa and South America.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Okay, eight hundred people live there.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Dude, somebody in the RAF is listening right now and
right to us. Let us know, because you got a
base O're there, all right. So we are getting a
message here from someone we're all familiar with. I'm assuming
someone that writes to us all the time, mister Lucas.
Lucas says, so here's some more body broker kind of
stuff for you, but a bit darker. Apparently this is
(31:13):
a thing. Women's dead bodies are sold to families burying
their unmarried son. This gets more sinister when people begin
to start murdering women than selling them. What is this thing? Well,
it is. It can be a lot of things. Posthumous marriage,
(31:33):
ghost marriage, you could call it. There are other words
for it in varying religions and cultural sects, but we're
talking ghost weddings. And Lucas sends us a couple of
different links and a bit of information from Wikipedia that
we're not going to read in full, Lucas, we'll talk
about it and around it. So let's just go to
(31:53):
some of the news links that were sent to us.
One of them comes from the BBC. Its title is
China's Ghost Weddings and Why they can be Deadly. This
was written in August twenty sixteen by Grace sooy Tsoi
and guys. It's a story about some people who were
(32:18):
murdering women and then selling their corpses to willing, needy
families who believed they were buying a recently deceased person
to be wed in a traditional ceremony to a loved
one who has just died. I've never heard of this before.
This is kind of blowing my mind. Ben. It sounds
(32:40):
off air like you've heard of this a no bit
about it. What can you tell us about the tradition
of what we're calling ghost wedding but it's really after
death marriage ceremonies.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yeah, I think you nailed at Matt. Posthumous matrimony, Okay,
call it right. The idea and it goes across culture.
I really appreciate that point. Part of it is. Part
of it is the idea that a spirit will be
angry or will be left bereft of what could have
(33:14):
been their lived existence.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
If they pass away without being married.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And then also you'll see I think it's in Korea
it happens where if someone was engaged and they die,
there's still a posthumous ceremony.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Through But before we get to you know, the really dark,
macabre side of it, it's important for us to know
that traditionally in these cultures this is seen as a
good thing, you know, like Dia delaba in Mexico. It's
not seen as some sort of like horrible, spooky dookie thing.
(33:55):
It's seen as another cycle in life and death. They
are legally binding and sometimes both people who get married
this way.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
They're both dead.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Wow, which goes into like financial calculations because you can't
get away from, you know, the idea of dowry and
stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
That's my Wowtand didn't even think of the logistics of
that part of it.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I know it has been used, this practice has been
used very functionally throughout history and a couple of different places.
Just read a little bit via the wiki, go down,
look at the links, the sightings and everything, and then
started going, yeah, so there's a weird situation to talk about.
But in Germany, when let's say a soldier who has
(34:48):
a partner at home but they're not married yet, right,
they are sexually active, the woman in that relationship gets pregnant,
the man goes off to war and dies. Now that
woman is going to have a baby, but she's unwed,
and she's going to be considered an unwed mother. I'm
doing that in quotes, right, because there's there's cultural connotation
(35:11):
to that which.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Could lead to being ostracized and treated in a negative manner,
you know.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Exactly So, there were some examples where the actual corpse
of a dead soldier was brought in and a wedding
ceremony was performed to wed that woman to this dead person,
just so that that child would take the father's name
and it would be okay to everybody else basically in
the society.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Matt, have you gotten into the why they can be
deadly part?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
No, let's talk about it.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
I just saw it in the headline. It's pretty pretty
eye catching. It just says China's ghost weddings and why
they can be deadly.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Oh yes, okay, so so yes, just like Lucas said,
he's he's like referring or he's like, this is an
offshoot of our Bodybroker's episode, right, because if there's a
black market for something, if there's something that's sellable, someone
might want to take advantage of that and maybe is
a little less morally inclined than others. Right, So this
(36:13):
article is citing I think it was. There are a
couple things that have occurred. One that we mentioned earlier
is that there was in one case a woman found
like a dead woman found in a vehicle, and after investigation,
three of the males who were still living who were
in the vehicle, they got questioned and basically one of
(36:34):
them admitted to killing this woman in order to sell
her dead body to a needy family.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
That which is different from related practices. There have also
been operators that would count as what we would call
it resurrection men, grave robbers.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Yeah. And then twenty fifteen, according to this BBC article,
fourteen female corpses were stolen in a village and Shangshi
propit yep. And this article, ifew refers to them as
tomb raiders, which I always thought was really cool and
like adventury, but not in this context. You know, I
just think of Laura Croft obviously and her polygons. But
(37:14):
now tomb rating or grave robbing, I guess is maybe
the term we would use over here. And yeah, resurrection, man,
that older term is still just such a captures the imagination.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Well, And again it's kind of messed up because it
could be pretty lucrative for those grave robbers, right they
I mean, at least in this BBC article, it cites
like quite a bit of money. I don't even know
if we can really quote it well, because I don't
know if they're saying it would be forty five hundred
(37:45):
US dollars to seventy five hundred US dollars for all
fourteen corpses, or if that means per corpse that was
recovered of those fourteen just I'm not sure, but it
does seem as the so if you could make that
much money for a lot of like messed up hard labor,
if you're desperate enough, maybe you would be pushed to
(38:08):
do that, right, or you would feel pushed to do that,
And this article does state that in two thousand and six,
the sale quote, the sale of corpses was outlawed, but
that was according to the he stopped crave robbers. Yeah,
isn't that cool. Let's see there's other stuff here. There
was an article from Daily Mail that was also left
(38:31):
to us by Lucas here and this is about a
quote ghost bride, a supposed corpse that was delivered to
a family to be married to their dead son. So again,
this is a situation where both parties in the marriage
would already be deceased, but upon receiving the woman and
starting the ceremony, the woman woke up and was alive.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
What, yes, you have one of those like Romeo and
Juliet drugs. What are we talking here? Crazy?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
I don't have the full details they are saying, only
some details have come to light. And this was written
in twenty sixteen December by Julian Luck for Daily Mail.
And this person was allegedly a deaf mute who was trafficked.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Okay, because I know there have been cases where women
were drugged, purposely sedated and then sold as ghost brides.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Oh wow, that is that's that's crazy. But it's even
more heinous because you're killing a person as when they
get buried, I suppose.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Matt, sorry if I missed this.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
Is there a sense in any of the religious side
of these that it also ensures that their loved one.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Will have like companionship in the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
To my knowledge, yes, that's one of the primary reasons
why this practice would occur, so that the person is
not alone basically, but again, yeah, it depends on religious belief.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah, are hundreds and hundreds of years, especially in what
we call rural China today, the idea is that you know,
death is scary, and you don't want to go alone,
so you'll have someone with you in the afterlife. Unfortunately, unfortunately,
(40:20):
this has provided an opportunity for some unclean activities. And
I think it's also important to note that a lot
of these folks, like the folks doing the traffick aid
and stuff like that, they're getting the majority of the
campfire headlines because it's a very scary, disturbing thing, and
(40:41):
it's a true thing. But often these are kind of
conversations people are having and maybe both families involved have
lost a child, you know what I mean, and they're
sort of helping themselves deal with this tremendous, unspeakable tragedy.
So I do think it's important to say this practice
(41:03):
is like when you're hearing about the very bad criminal stuff.
This is not representative of the entirety of again, this
ancient cultural practice, oh of course.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
And it has nothing to do with why the practice occurs, right,
The illegal stuff is because people see an opportunity to
make money and they don't care. I guess, ugh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know what else to say about this.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
This is a brand new thing to me.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
I say, man, this is fascinating.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
I mean truly, I'm surprised there hasn't been like this
hasn't appeared in pop culture, you know what I mean.
This seems like just the kind of thing that could
be another kind of interesting twist in a story, or
like build building a ghost story from this.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
You know, there's a great novel called, Oh gosh, I
think it might be called The Ghost Spride. It is
called The Ghost Pride twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah, this hasn't been adapted into a movie.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
I only watch movies, and I don't know for books.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
That was The Corpse Bride. Maybe it's maybe.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Well, there's the Corpse Bride. Then there's The Ghost Bride.
Got The Ghost Bride I think was an Oprah book.
You know how that time Oprah got bigger than the
New York Times for bestsellers and.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
She still does pretty well. Yeah, yeah, the Book Club. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
And I think there's a Netflix series that I have
not watched in full disclosure called The Ghost Bride, which
is an adaptation of that.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
So this strikes me as something like Chan Wook Park
might do you know, the Old Boy director. He's just
something about it that's just delightfully macab and I could
see it being handled by it a tour in a
very interesting way, but also delightful in some ways when
it's not done where it hurts people. You know, there
are some people that were commenting on this in some
of the articles that you found, Matt, that say it
(42:53):
is an affirmation of love, you know, and things like that.
So I think if it's done above board and it
is something that gives people some sense of peace or
some sense of wholeness, you know, for their loved ones,
then why not, right as long as it's not hurting anybody.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
I just, by the way, Matt, last thing I just
learned the word for this god English is weird. The
word for posthumous marriage in English is necrogammy, like monogamy.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
That's awesome, necrogamy.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
You know what, Hopefully, hopefully all of us listening to
tonight are not in a situation where we need to
continually use that word, you know what I mean? Wishing
you the best, folks.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
Can I ask a question, guys, this is a little
off top of it. Why is Phelia always only associated
with horrible things?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Doesn't it just mean.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
Like love and the love of But why do we
only hear it when it comes to like really.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Bad, bad things that people do.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
I think it goes back to the idea of amateiv
versus amor ris love.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Because you know, you can be an audiophile, but no
one ever call you an audiophiliac.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
I mean, I don't know, again, English weird.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, like a bibliophiliac sounds like you're you're sleeping.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
With those books, You're doing stuff with those folds, with
those pages.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Again, I'm telling you, it's uh. I I feel like
I have at best a rudimentary understanding of the language
of which we're recording this podcast. There's always a new one.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah, just like the paper cuts.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
You know, you have not about the paper cuts.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
You don't do it that direct.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yeah, man, you gotta go with the grain. What's going
on with you?
Speaker 3 (44:42):
All right?
Speaker 1 (44:42):
So that Matt uh, Matt and Lucas, what's the final
say on ghost marriage, posthumous marriage necro gemy uh necrogamy,
however we would say it. What's your takeaway for this?
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Yeah, Lucas, what's your take so? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
I think I put in my two cents. Matt, I
don't know. I think it's fascinating to me. I see
the functionality of it when it comes to some cultural
moras literally for taxes, for things like inheritance and you know,
a bloodline. Yeah, even if it's not an actual bloodline,
(45:25):
it's maybe a child that becomes a part of that
family because of this ceremony. I can see why that
would be desirable.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
And there's no divorce.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, well, I.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
Think we can probably all agree that the bad part
of the story is obviously the folks who are taking
advantage of this practice, who are not people who are believers.
I would argue they are the opposite there, you know,
absolutely taking advantage of people's faith in the same way that.
You know, body brokers are people that like run crematoriums
(45:56):
or they just dump the bodies in the backyard or.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
In communal pile or whatever.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Things like that, where you're literally taking advantage of someone
who's either in mourning or who has a deeply held
spiritual belief. I think that is fundamentally ichy to the maximum.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Yeah, there's an article from The Guardian you can look
up if you wish, titled Trio Stole Corpse to sell
as Bride say Chinese media. It's written by the ap
Envising and it's from October twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Ed Minghun as it's called in China. Again, as we
took pains to say, is not in any way an
inherently sinister thing, Nor are similar practices inherently sinister wherever
wherever they occur. I guess we could say, you know,
the course of true love never did run smooth and
(46:48):
maybe end on some Shakespeare. So with that, we we've
got to thank everybody who wrote in, everybody who took
time to contact us and cut past the no of
the internet. Shout out to again our guest super producer
Max Williams, who you can you can find blowing us
(47:09):
up on our messaging thread right now. He's a big
fan of bad lip reading. He's also a big fan
of You guys are fellow conspiracy realists. So we do
hope that you join us. We do hope that you
become a part of the show and come on air
with us one day by hook or by crook. We'd
(47:29):
love to hear from you. You can find us all
over the place, right you can.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
You can find out the handle conspiracy Stuff where we
exist on Facebook, YouTube and formerly known as Twitter, Conspiracy
Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Hey do you like to talk to people via your phone?
You can talk to us. We have a voicemail system
call one eight three three std WYTK call in, tell
us something really nice, or tell us to bite your
scat blowhole. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Now.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
That's from Pete and Pete's famous insult. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
There's also the the colon and the capital P, which I.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
Think Sorry the way I typed it, it must appear that
I was referring to a scabby blowhole. Scab is one
thing that you're asking the person who you are calling
a blowhole to bite yeah, yuck, Peteldren's television man children's television.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
All right, well yeah, but you can call us in
just say whatever you want do. Let us know if
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Speaker 1 (48:47):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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