189 - What Wonderful Luck!

Karen and Georgia cover the alleged real life story of The Orphan and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to my Favorite Murder.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
That's Georgia Hart Star, that's Karen kill Gareth, and this
is a true crime podcast with comedy elements.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
That's exactly right. Boom boom boom. That's all our branding.
You go, okay, you go first this week? You want
to get right into it. Now, how are you out?
And everything else? I'm great? How are you all good? Good?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, we're back in like then, we're back in school. Basically,
we're back in the old doing episodes. We don't have
to be on tours so we can focus on doing episodes.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
And still last yesterday I canceled because I was like,
com we do it tomorrow. I just feel I get today.
I know. But the thing that's the beauty of being
your own bob, do whatever the fuck we want the
fuck we want to a point to a point.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
And then Stephen's like, you make it so that I
need eight hours to edit this show?

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Right? So please? Can I have? Please? Can I please?
If you don't mind, what do you have this week?
Anything going on? Personally? I don't know. I didn't write anything.
I totally forgot.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I don't Things are easy, breezy right now everything's just
kind of chill.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
There's really nothing. There's nothing pressing. I'm trying to.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Be not on Twitter that much because I'm not sure
if you know this, but there's a massive meltdown happening
in our country right now.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Oh I know that. I thought it was on Twitter only.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
No, No, it's I'm just getting kind of mainlining it
on Twitter and it's not healthy for you. But it's
nice to know that an impeachment inquiry is beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
It is. That's good. It's uh.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
But it feels a little bit like when you've been
beaten up on the playground all through lunch and then
the bell rings and then the teacher comes out and
you're like, okay, well both my legs are broken.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
So I'm glad that you stopped this. So you're cautiously optimistic,
is what you're saying. I don't even know what to
be anymore. Well, I don't know. I don't either.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
I feel like I need to dig underground. Let's just
start tunneling. Oh. Well, I made the terrible mistake of
going to see the new Rambo movie.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
It was a mistake that s went too and I
was like, no, thank you. Yeah, it was well Rambo
Lest Blood.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
I have to say the first Rambo movie, but way
back in the eighties, was a really good movie. Yeah,
and very interesting, and it was about something what I
didn't know because we were basically picking my friend and
I were picking between It was like whichever movies were
at the time we were at the theater.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
That's like the way you like to Dave.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, I'm just an adventure in film and I love movies,
so it kind of didn't matter. But it was like
that it was just like something kind of heavy and
maybe even foreign or Rambo Last Blood. So I was like, look,
this will be at the very least funny and crazy,
if not terrible, like whatever. What I didn't know is

(03:11):
that apparently Sliced Alone is a big maga guy, oh dear,
And it's very racist against Mexican people.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Oh shit.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
But I didn't but and in the movie, because in
all those movies, people of color are killed constant, right,
So you're just like.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Oh, I see, yeah, I see stand of this. This
isn't great based upon my standards of being a human.
This isn't something I'm supposed to.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
It's like maybe there was a time where we could
all pretend that this was just entertainment, not in this
day and age.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
So it was.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
But the one thing, and I tweeted this, was that
do you watch SpongeBob SquarePants enough to know that there
was one episode where Squidward became handsome? Okay, so he
becomes it's not even so hilaro. I'm just a fan.
And the face his face as he is handsome squid

(04:05):
word huh exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Sylvester Stalone's face in this movie.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
I love it and it made me laugh the entire time.
I was basically watching a different movie because of what
it was going on in my brain.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
That's great. It's great when your rank and entertain you
even though you're just like sitting through eighty five minutes.
According to events of Just Trash, it was garbage. It was.
It was nutso, but and it would have.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
It was a light, enjoying, nutso garbage experience until people
were like, don't you know what his politics are?

Speaker 1 (04:36):
And then I was like, oh god, damn it. Can
we have one? Can't we can't I freely and lightly
hate one thing? Can I have one action star that
it doesn't make me? Speaking of fan called sure, we
have a fan called and we are giving away one
ticket to our Santa Barbara weekend, my favorite weekend dot com.

(04:59):
Let's right, got out. Yeah, it doesn't have anything to
do with a fan cult. You don't have to be
in the fan cult. No, it's anyone's chance. I think
it's going to be a really good weekend.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
It's going to be an amazing weekend. And you get
put up in a nice hotel. I know, I feel
like I'm putting this. I'm fucking hammering this. But my
dad on the phone the other day said, so, what's
this about the karaoke at the weekend. I swear to
god he brought it up. So what I don't know
he wants to do it? Well, he absolutely should. Yeah,
do you want him to host it? No, it must

(05:29):
wants to absolutely not. What song do you think Marty
would say? Oh god, I mean, what's his area?

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Okay, mama's in the papas. No, well maybe pointer sisters.
For sure. I did not expect to get say that.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Oh you know what sounging Marty's singing I'm so excited
is the funniest idea in my mind. So Marty stoked
about karaoke, Well, then we all should get stoked.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Karaoke absolutely, Oh my god. No one is allowed to
take video with my dad doing karaoke.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Oh ah. Cara are going to be collected at the
beginning of the weekend and put in weird techno bags
that apparently block your waves your sound waves.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, and I'll send you a little thumb drive of
the weekend.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
That's right, we'll capture it for you the way we
would like it to be captured. Don't worry at all.
Everybody gets a burner phone and gave the case for
of an emergency.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Right, you're a drug deal.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
But other than that, it's a lockdown. It's just like
in high school when you're doing lockdown.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Spend the night. That's going to be great. We're going
to be force you to have fun. Amazing. Let's do
something exactly right. Yeah, networks stuff'm programming. We're excited for
a murder squad this coming week. On Monday, September thirtieth,
they are putting out this really important, awesome episode. They're
focusing on four cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women,

(06:51):
as well as the whole you know, epidemic of it
one in some counties, Native American women are killed at
a rate of ten times the national average.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Really, it's so insane, it's really it's so long overdue,
and it's so cool. They're focusing on four cases, but
they're talking to they're really doing a deep dive, like
in the way that they.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Know how to. It's important. Emily Washing's going to be
on it with them, so check that out. This podcast
will kill you. Their last episode was about Lime, and
I personally think everyone has lime disease. So I think
you should totally listen to it and see if it
sounds like you. Check it out.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
I mean, it's important work. Also, well the per cast.
Sorry Stephen went to cat con.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
No, No, I went to the catcaid. It's an arcade
carries so sorry, I was half listening. No, it's it's
it's a cat shelter but with an arcade. So if
you don't want coffee, you know, if you don't want
to try and have a latte and adopt a kit
and you can just play like this Pac band or something. Oh,
really cool, then there's cats around. What city was that
in in Chicago? Amazing? Did they have an Instagram account? Yeah?

(07:57):
The cat kaid? Great? Everyone follow that sounds like good.
How I want my home to look.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
So in the background is like pac Man dying as
you're talking, and yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Looking and wanting to adopt a kitten perfection and the
fall line. Of course, our last season was about Shikemia Pate,
so check that out. It's so really important. Yeah, so
much good stuff and so much great content coming. We
have some shows in the pipeline that we were so

(08:27):
excited to get to share with you, like on a
network new shows.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Guess they will be rolling out soon. It takes much
longer than we knew and we anticipated in any way,
but it's good because it's like, you know, they got
to set up all the business, they get to set
up all the ads. It all gets taken care of.
But when it does, we're going to roll out some hits.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
For you guys. I think you're going to be very excited.
We're definitely very excited. Yeah, So make sure you subscribe
to all the exactly right shows and network and shit
and keep an eye out. Yeah new stuff. I mean
we'll be screaming it at you, so you don't really
need to keep an eye We're not going to let
it go.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
No, it's going to be something that we hound you upout, yeah, jammer,
it's the Marty with karaoke is how we're going to
be about the news shows coming up on exactly right.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
I have a book recommendation. Wishould I say that for
the end? No? Really, just give it. You're all right now.
I just found this book and I'm almost done listening
to it. It was one of those books that I
like cleaned the house double time because I wanted to
listen to it. Oh nice, it's so good. It's called
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner. I just randomly found
it at my bookstore, but I've been listening to it
and it's about a girl who gets, like a twenty

(09:31):
something year old normal girl who gets life sentence for
two life sentences for a crime she committed. And it's
all these stories around it, and I can't fucking stop
listening to it. Is it a novel or is it real?
It's a novel, okay, And it's like this her story
about what happened, and then the person who happened to
his story, and then the cop story and then this
It's just like fucking great of the author's name. It's
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner. Oh so sorry, Rachel Kushner. Yeah.

(09:54):
The Mar's Room check awesome, very good. The Mar's Room
is the strip club she dances in in San Francisco,
where she lives, and that's where it all begins. Wow,
fucking good. Set in San Francisco. Uh yeah, and in prison,
which is like the crazy fucking details you want to
know about. Yeah, you get a lot of those. I
love it.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
All the books that I've been reading. I read. You
know what I've been doing. Is I binge the end
for like the last four episodes of Succession. Yeah, then
I fell asleep and it played again. So then I
had dreams that I was on vacation with the Succession
family and I think Kendall Roy and I were making
out at one point, because you were. Because I keep

(10:37):
thinking about him, and I keep thinking I see that
actor in I know in I keep thinking I see
that actor in Traffic, which is a very odd feeling.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
It's kind a very la actor face, like the normal
guy actor faced, his resting face.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
He is resting bitch face, like he is judging you
and hates you, which is very appealing.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
It's great for the role. Yeah, hopefully he doesn't have
that in everyday life.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
You know, a while ago, I thought I saw him
when we were eating at the restaurant down the street.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Oh and I was, and you didn't with me, Yes,
and you didn't say anything.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
I think I did say something at the time. But
this was literally three it was the first season. It
was like the beginning of the first time. Oh okay,
I was so hurt just now. But no, no, no,
it was a while ago.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
I'll remind you of it. I wish you would.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
I'll remind you. Yeah, that's that's my version of reading. No,
it's so good. What about the show Unbelievable?

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Are you watching that yet? Not yet?

Speaker 2 (11:36):
That's the that's the one with merret Weaver, right yeah.
It's really hard to watch because it's the one it's
about rape, right yeah, And it's like for anyone who
has any sexual assault, you know, background, it's really triggering.
So I've been going really slowly with it and watching
like one half an episode.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
At a time every couple of days. It's like kind
of hard to watch, but I guess that towards the
end it gets like powerful and awesome and amazing.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
The one clip A bunch of people tweeted it at
me of just like because they know I love Merrit Weaver. Yeah,
but there was one clip just of her in a
restaurant where a guy was staring at her and then
she stands up and pulls her jacket back and.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Did you see that in the gun showing yep, and her.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Gun and badge and then his whole thing changes and
then she just goes and stands behind him for like
three seconds.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
And I love power moves like that so much. I
need to get to that spot because, like I'm the
first episode's really fucking rough, you guys, I'm sure we'll
all get to it through it together slowly.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, and I talk about it by here. It's just incredible.
And it's Tony Collette also right, Yes, she's at it two. Yes,
I mean, what more do you want?

Speaker 1 (12:41):
You have a cab? It awesome. Now I can't I
can't wait to watch that, Okay, but first I have
to watch all of Miss Marple.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
For some reason, you watch that, Yeah, it's my weird
especially the first season Miss Marple. It was very like
eighties British television or nineties whenever they made it.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
You're a Tuccia girl. It's so un true I thought
he was in it. Don't you say a minute? That's
you're thinking with the mustache and I'm not confusing missus
Maple and Paroh, mar that's missus.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
What are you talking?

Speaker 1 (13:27):
That's so weird. It's Marl got it, No, I got
I'm here. Now Here is.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
An old show that is the most for the fairy start.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah, okay, it's it's old British TV. But Stanley Tucci
sinner right, he's very young. A twelve year old Stanley
Tucci appears. Oh man, did you see our friend? Dave
Holmes tweeted an old Levi's ad that's Stanley twot she
was in from the eighties.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
No, did you see that?

Speaker 2 (14:03):
It's when he had a little more hair, even though yeah,
no judgment.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah, love the balls, love it all. He is so
nuts hot in this five of one's at the Touch.
Let's see Steven, Steven will bring it up.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
It's crazy, people retweeted on Twitter and everyone's just like,
oh my god, like it.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
It's really quite something. You remember the exclamation perfume ad, yes,
exclaim make a statement without saying a word. Well, I
can't see his face, but hot damn. Oh there that's
the bar went away. Let's check that shit out. I'm sorry, Hello,
what touchy? Hello? Hi? You'll later see me in a

(14:43):
devil where it's product and man, this is Marple masal time.
Oh shit, he's hot, he's hot.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Well, now now that we've objectified a man properly, God,
that felt good. Does feel good to get it, you know,
out there, to give it to him? Yeah, every time
you objectify a man, a woman gets her wings.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
The dark things got way and there we go, and
here we are on a background.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
I realized I didn't mention your podcast, and I'm sorry.
Oh that's okay. I didn't either, Poor Chris Fairbanks. I know.
Really we're doing we are doing an episode, so we
record this Friday. So we're talking about do you need
to ride? Of course, yeah, do you need to ride?

Speaker 2 (15:29):
The mobile podcast unlike any other where Chris and I
and Steven drive around Los Angeles, usually with us, sometimes
with a guest. This Friday, we're waiting for Chris's permission.
I was like, Stephen text Chris really quick, and Cev's okay,
and then we'll announce it. But basically the idea.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yea said yes, it's okay, then yes, Steven. Feel free
to interrupt when you have text from Chris.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
But so we're going to do a Q and A
and basically just drive around and answer listeners questions.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
That's fun.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, I've already seen a couple. A lot of people
want to know if they can date Chris or if
he would date a listener.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Wow, uh huh.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
I think there's going to be a lot of that
kind of Well, now I need fun to find out.
Don't see who Chris picks as his wife.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Oh I'm the friends that dated Chris. I can tell
you stories. No, I would never he's an angel. Oh no,
your first? What am I doing? Yeah? Back off because
it's my turn to talk. Okay.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
I did a thing this week that I am so
excited about. Oh my god, because you know what it is.
It's breaking news I'm about to give you.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
You're not a news.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Report and all of this I will I will preface
this by saying, first of all, here are the sources.
The Washington Post, the Daily Mail, the New York Post,
LL Magazine online.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
All the greats, all the greats that you go to
for your news daily.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
But this story was broken by local Indian news station
A Wish channel.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
That good old ish w I w I sh whish whish. Oh,
I got it. I bet they do something like that
in their wish. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
It's a story that a listener tweeted at me and said,
could you do a deep dive on this? The answers
always know that's virtually impossible, but I will retell you
the story based on what other people have said.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
That's what this podcast is.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
We are as shallow as they come. That was Samantha
Pong is the person who tweeted and asked for that.
Thank you Samantha at sam Fong with three g's on Twitter.
And then she sent me this article which was from
the Daily Mail, which is where most of the quotes
and most of the one side of the story is

(17:48):
from because one person talked to the Daily Mail and
this is fucking nuts. So and I know the answer
is no, but I ask you anyway. Did you ever
see the horror movie The Orphan?

Speaker 1 (18:00):
No? Which one is that? Okay?

Speaker 2 (18:01):
That's the one where a couple adopts a little girl
and then she her behavior becomes odd and erratic, and
slowly but surely they find out that she's actually a
grown woman posing as a child. Well, it's happened in
real life.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Now are you ready for the alleged real life story
of the orphan? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Okay, all alleged. This is the majority of this and
I'm going to say it the whole time. The majority
of this is very one sided. The actual not child, adult,
adopti adoptee doesn't have a say, so this could be
very biased and very skewed.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
And we want to start to say that from the beginning. Okay,
or she's a baby and can't speak.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
She's all alleged when this all starts, let me just
get in, you know what, let me tell you the
whole story and painting the picture because I truly even
just as this story broke when Wig broke this story,
the first portion of it was plenty because they broke
the story on September eleventh, and it was that a

(19:09):
couple had been accused of abandoning their adopted daughter by
leaving her in an apartment they had rented for her
in Lafayette while they moved to Canada. Okay, so that
was the breaking story and people are like, what the fuck? Well,
since then, it's developed into what one can only call

(19:29):
a bizarre case of They said she said, and also
almost exactly the plot of the movie The Orphan. So
let's start in the early two thousands. Michael and Christine
Barnett are living in Westfield, Indiana with their three sons.
They run a successful daycare and their experienced foster parents.

(19:52):
Their oldest son, Jake, was diagnosed with autism when he
was two years old, and he was told by doctors
that he may never talk or have normal social interactions.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
I think they told that to him, like the two
year old you're never gonna talk about.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
They're like waving their finger in well. So Christine, of course,
this might be considered devastating news to some people. Christine
takes Jake home. She starts homeschooling him, tutoring him herself,
and very soon Christine and her husband discover that Jake
is incredibly smart, So much so his genius is so

(20:32):
profound that he publishes his first academic paper at the
age of twelve. What Yes, so he's a genius. In
twenty twelve, Sixty Minutes did a story about him and
the family. By age fifteen, he enrolled in Purdue to
study physics. Holy, so he is like the Doogie Hauser

(20:53):
of physics. Right, incredibly intelligent. So in this sixty minutes
news segment, you can see that Barnett family has grown
by one member because their newly adopted daughter, Natalia Grace,
is sitting there at the kitchen table with everybody when
they take the shot of the family eating dinner. Okay, okay,
So here's how that went down. Christine wanted a larger family,

(21:16):
but she found out she could no longer have children.
Her and her husband at the time, Michael, looked into
adoption and in May of twenty ten, they find out
that there is a six year old Ukrainian born child
in Florida named Natalia Grace who had been given up
by her adopted adoptive parents. And basically they're notified that

(21:42):
this is an emergency adoption and if they can come
down and basically get all the paperwork done immediately, they
can adopt this child because she's in, like I guess,
you know, a crisis situation. Christine told The Daily Mail
that quote. At the time, she felt that if she
had the ability to help another in the world, that
she wanted to do it. So they fly down to Florida,

(22:05):
they signed the paperwork, they adopt Natalia and they welcome
her into the family. They actually they stay in Florida
for a couple days just to let her acu acclimate
to the fact that she is now with a new family,
and they take her out and they do kind of
family outings, and they get ice cream, and they go
to the beach, and they go.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
To Disney World. And the only background.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Information Christine and Michael claimed that they knew at the
time of the adoption was that, according to her birth certificate,
Natalia was born in Ukraine on September fourth, two thousand
and three, that she'd been in the US for two years,
and that she had been suddenly given up by her
adoptive parents for undisclosed reason. Christine tells a daily mail

(22:48):
that upon adopting Natalia that they learned that the child
has a bone growth disorder called and I'm gonna get
this wrong spawn diale epedema, physial dysplasia, great job, I mean,
who knows.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Who knows? Nobody knows.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
But essentially it's a version. It's a subset of Dwarfism,
causes short stature, skeletal abnormalities, and problems with vision. So
basically they find out that she can't walk because of
this disorder, and they're like fine. So when they go

(23:28):
out to all these places and are you know, kind
of doing stuff around Florida, they just carry her everywhere.
So the day they go to the beach, they get down,
you know, they're down near the water and they're putting
all their stuff down, and the boys have gone down
into the water, and they tell Natalia she has to

(23:50):
wait a second because they're the parents are trying to
get their stuff together before they bring her down into
the water. Natalia jumps up and runs down into the
water herself. So that started the Burnett's and it would
be just the first of many surprises. Christine also claims
that later she was giving Natalia a bath when quote

(24:13):
I noticed that she had full pubic hair.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
I was so shocked. I had just been told.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
She was a six year old. It was very apparent
that she wasn't. And Natalia also had all of her
adult teeth. Christine claims Natalia was not interested in dolls
or toys, and that she preferred hanging out with teenage
girls and had a very mature vocabulary, did not have
a Ukrainian accent, and in fact that Christine claims she

(24:43):
invited a friend over who was from the Ukraine and
or just Ukraine. I'm not sure which one is the
correct way to say it. But she had her friend
come over to speak Ukrainian to Natalia, and Natalia didn't
understand anything the one was saying, and when the woman
was asking her about her homeland, she couldn't describe where

(25:05):
she was from in any way. Christine told The Daily
Mail at the time, I ran a little school and
I remembered Natalia saying to me, these children are exhausting.
I don't know how you do it.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
With a cigarette in one hand and a martini and right.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
So this child is supposed to be sick. Yeah, so
we've all known precocious children. That's always a possibility. I'm
going to try to also Devil's advocate for Natalia, since
she is absolutely voiceless in this story and we do
not know great we can't tell. So maybe she's really smart.

(25:41):
Maybe maybe the bone issue that she had is the
reason she had adult teeth. Maybe she had to be smart.
Maybe blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
We don't explain the pubic hare can't. That's thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
So, also, Christine found bloody clothing in natal is trash,
which led her to believe Natalia was trying to conceal
the fact that she had her period. So all these
things are adding up for Christine. She believed that Talia
was actually a teenager, but she said, I didn't have

(26:15):
any regrets. This is what I wanted to do. I
felt an overwhelming love for her, and I still wanted
to take care of her.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
So at the end of twenty ten, Christine talks to
the family physician and asked if there's any way they
can determine Natalia's actual age. So the doctor orders a
bone density test, and according to Christine's statement to The
Daily Mail, the results of this test determined Italian to
not be six years old, but to be at least.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Fourteen years old. Wow.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
So then Christine and Michael just start treating, dressing and
acting like Natalia as a fourteen year old.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
She needs a house and family, still.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Right, exactly, she's a teenager, Yeah, But then they allege
that the teenager's behavior became erratic. Christine says that Natalia
exhibited odds, sometimes violent behavior. She claims she witnessed Natalia
attack a baby. She saw it on the baby monitor

(27:14):
while she was out of the room, and she said
that Natalia became smearing bodily fluid on walls and making
death threats and hearing voices. So at this point, the Barnetts,
according to them, seek psychiatric help for Natalia at Saint
Vincent Indianapolis Dress Center, where Natalia is admitted on several

(27:38):
different occasions, sometimes for weeks at a time. So this
is obviously another part of the story that the Barnetts
didn't know and that was not disclose to them, that
maybe this child had mental illness of some kind. When
she gets out, the behavior continues, it worsens, and the
violence continues. Christine claims that she caught Natalia pouring bleach

(28:04):
into her coffee into Christine's coffee else and she threatened
to stab her parents in their sleep. Christine claimed that
they woke up with her with the child standing over them,
and it all came to a head on a birthday
outing in twenty twelve when Natalia allegedly tried to push

(28:25):
Christine into an electric fence.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Oh my god. Now, growing up on a.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Farm, I've touched electric fences a lot and it's not
a great experience.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Although I don't know if it can kill you. I think,
like an electrified fence maybe, but not just like one
for a basic cattle.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, maybe it's just I'm talking about the ones I've experienced. Obviously,
it scared her enough that she thought it was an
attempt on her life.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
Like the ones in prison and the ones in a
cow pasture. Yeah, probably in different levels, different voltage, that's right. Perhaps,
But this action prompts the Barnets to admit Natalia to
a state round psychiatric unit, claiming that she poses a
threat to others, which.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
If all that happened, makes sense. But while Natalia's in
this hospital, she admits to one specialist who saw Natalia
in January of twenty twelve, that she's actually.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Eighteen years old. Shit.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
And the Daily Mail claims to have the paperwork that
confirms that statement that was provided to them by Christine Barnett,
but it hasn't been made public, so it's still hearsay.
The most concrete statement that's currently on record comes from
the Barnett's primary care physician, Andrew McLaren, who says in
a March twenty twelve letter that Natalia's two thousand and

(29:50):
three birth certificate is clearly inaccurate, and that Natalia has
quote made a career out of pretending to be a
child creepy. In June of twenty twelve, with the backing
of several medical specialists, the Barnetts successfully get the Marion
County Superior Court of Indianapolis to get Natalia's birth certificate revised. So,

(30:12):
based on the medical evidence, they determined Natalia was actually
born in September of nineteen eighty nine. Holy shit, and
that changes her age from eight to twenty two.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
So, according to The Daily Mail, medical staff in Indianapolis's
LaRue Carter Hospital claimed that Natalia quote described to them
so when this was when she was in one of
the psychiatric stays that she had, she described to them
how she tried to kill family members and had no
remorse about it, and she allegedly told them that it

(30:46):
was quote fun. So in August of twenty twelve, Natalia's
discharged from the psychiatric hospital, and because she's now legally
an adult, she is housed in an apartment under the
care of Indiana state health care provider Aspire Indiana. So
that must be some like a halfway house for people

(31:06):
who have mental illness and might need a little extra help.
It sounds like I would imagine that's my editorializing.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
According to Christine.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
The Barnetts also helped Natalia get a Social Security number,
apply for benefits including food stamps, and get an ID,
but Natalia allegedly causes so many problems at this new
apartment that she gets evicted. The Barnets claimed that they
stepped in once again, renting Natalia another apartment in Lafayette

(31:35):
and working out a plan to help Natalia earn her
high school diploma and study so she can study cosmatology.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Still helping her and everything, Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
According to them, they're with her all the way. Christine
tells The Daily Mail that she co signed the lease
and paid rent upfront for a year. She says, I
did everything you would do when you send a child
off to college. I helped her with grocery. I bought
furniture at Target for her. I was optimistic. She had
a concrete plan for her life. She was on food stamps,

(32:06):
she had a Social Security income for the rest of
her things. She had demonstrated she was able to live.
So in twenty thirteen, despite this kind of chaotic situation
with Natalia, Christine Barnett finishes writing a parenting book about
her experience with Jake called The Spark, A Mother's Story
of Nurturing, Genius and Autism, which actually went on to

(32:29):
be critically acclaimed.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Which is also kind of amazing that she got that
done basically simultaneously.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
But it doesn't mean that she's telling the truth. Okay.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Confident that Natalia can now fend for herself, the Barnett's
moved to Canada so that Jake can attend the Perimeter
Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Shit, So they move.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Up there and leave Natalia in her Lafayette apartment. So
at this point, according to Christine, Natalia cuts off communication
with the Barnetts. Christine tells a daily Mail she suspects
Natalia maybe may have gone off her medication, was possibly
working on conning another family, according to Christine, into thinking

(33:17):
that she's a child so she can get adopted and
taken care of again. Christine states, quote, she discontinued communication
with me. What I did get was a letter in
the mail stating that she had changed Michael from the
beneficiary on her Social Security income to someone else, Deer,
which means Michael's not the parent anymore and someone else
is stepping in. Other than that, according to Christine, I'll

(33:40):
say it again, no other communication has been made with Natalia.
So in twenty fourteen, Michael and Christine Barnett get divorced,
Michael remarries and moves back to Indiana. Neither he nor
Christine claimed to have any further communications with the Talia,
And then on September eleventh of twenty nineteen this year,

(34:03):
Daily Male TV gets a hold of an affidavit of
probable cause stating that an expert led bone density test
conducted on Natalia by doctor Riggs of the Peyton Manning
Children's Hospital in June of twenty.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Ten determined Natalia to.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Actually have been eight years old at the time of
the test.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
What okay, So that test comes in and.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
That so basically the Daily Mail gets the test I
threw him she was a child, okay. So if that
is true, that would mean Natalia actually was a legal
child when the Barnets moved to Canada in twenty thirteen,
making the move an illegal abandonment of their adopted child. So,
as a result, the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Department issues a

(34:49):
warrant for the arrests of Christine and Michael Barnett. So
this same Affidavid states that Natalia told police in twenty
fourteen she had been quote left alone when the Barnetts
moved to Canada in twenty thirteen. So the police do
not move to question Michael Barnett about the potential abandonment
until September fifth, twenty nineteen, a full five years after

(35:15):
Natalia allegedly spoke with authorities.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Okay, why we don't know.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
And also, this affidavit claims that Michael made a statement
on that same day, September fifth, saying that he knew
all along Natalia was actually under age when they moved
to Canada, and states that Michael told police Christine coached
Natalia to convince others that she was older than she
actually was. So Michael's lawyer, however, says that Michael never

(35:44):
made this statement. So this is thea couldn't be more confusing,
It couldn't.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Be more back and forth.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Okay, the lawyer tells the Daily Mail quote the police
abidavit is not true. Michael never said he knew Natalia
was a child. Police knocked on Michael's door and he
spoke to them for three hours without an attorney present.
The statements he gave were clearly taken out of context.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
My client and I have.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Absolutely no idea why the district attorney has chosen to
level these accusations against my client and Christine. The affidavit
has been very selective in the medical reports that it
has chosen to cite, so it sounds like it's only
citing the one and there's two other ones that say
she's older minimum. Yeah, that's just what these newspapers have

(36:30):
gotten a hold of. So sometime during the week of
September tenth, and arrest warrant is issued for the Barnetts
and they're being charged with felony neglesh Jesus So on
September eighteenth, Michael Barnett surrenders himself to authorities and Christine
follows suit.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
The next day.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Michael is released shortly thereafter on five thousand dollars bail,
and Christine is released on fifty five hundred dollars bail.
The case is ongoing, but Christine adamantly proclaims her innocence
publicly and to media outlets like Obviously the Daily Mail,
and so does Michael via his attorney, and at the

(37:10):
time of this recording, no one knows where Natalia. Attempts
to track her down have been unsuccessful. Holy shit, And
that is this fucking breaking news story that is happening
right now.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Oh my god, and it's a.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Total it's basically this really over the top, hard to believe.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
Choice number one, which is.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
A twenty two year old just posing as a six
year old to get people to adopt her and take
care of her because she is mentally ill in some way,
or a family adopted a six year old and then
couldn't deal and granted her an apartment when she was.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Like maybe some numbers are shared. Yeah, the numbers are
we're eight or fourteen? Or is she older than that?

Speaker 2 (38:05):
So if she was eight, like when she was a
they were like, we suspect she's older.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Than eight, so can you do a test?

Speaker 2 (38:11):
And they're like, she's definitely older than fourteen, right, So
she's so according to that one medical report, she's never
in this whole case, according to that one doctor, been
younger than fourteen. Yeah, she's always at least been a teenager.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
But would make it not illegal that they left her behind.
But if it wasn't the case.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Right, because that was a couple of years later, but
she may have still been she may not have been eighteen,
but it's all very vague.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, so it's just like we don't know.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
And the other the to me, the very interesting thing
is does the divorce come into place somehow? Is someone
because up until that point, Christine Barnett was the how
she was known basically in the public eye was this
unbelievable mother who had who had basically tutored and homeschooled
her son and exposed his genius and basically wrote.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
A book about how if your child is.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Diagnosed with autism, that's not necessarily bad thing, which inspired
tons of people and meant the world to tons of people.
And that same person is this person who's like being
charged with felony neglect and would just leave a needy child.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Which doesn't on her own, doesn't. Well, we don't know.
We know the very basics of some we know the basics,
and we just know, like this is still like a
breaking story, but how crazy. It's crazy and creepy and
I want to know the answer. I need to know
so much more. Keep it going, Well, you guys will
text all of you the article that breaks when we
find out we're all going to be breaking this together

(39:44):
as a family. By speculation, by speculation, let's I mean, yeah,
it's it's fascinating. Yeah, that's good. Everyone crazy, and it's
some current that's like that. We don't do that ever.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Oh and sorry, I just remember this because this just
happened today. Our friend Melacha doctor Malachai Love Robinson got
out of jail today.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Right, he got a couple episodes back.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yes, so the people kept tagging us he's he's out
onto a better life.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Well, I hope, I hope he does good things.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
I hope he does good things. I hope Natalia is
safe too. And Okay, and it isn't the extremely creepy.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Eight or b either way, it sucks either way, it's awful.
This week, I'm going to do the triangle shirtwaist factory fire.
I know, I know, Oh amazing. How have we never
done this before? It's still horrible to do it a

(40:49):
live show, you know what. That's what it is.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
I think like the first time we did it in
New York show, I thought of it and then was
just like, yeah, that's not that's a tough one, and
there are.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
But it's so a great timely it's an incredible story.
I of course learned so much more about it than
I had ever even known, and the details are fascinating.
There's a hundred fucking million places you can find out
more about this. I found out from historydoctor dot net,
History dot com, a podcast called This Day in History class, oh,

(41:21):
the National Museum of American History website. And then there's
two really good documentaries about it. One is I think
where I first found out about it, the American Experience episode,
which is a fucking incredible show on PBS. You guys,
watch them all. And then there's another one you can
find on YouTube called Triangle Remembering the Fire. Oh Yeah,
and it's really good and there's like a ton of
footage and photos and awful fucking shit you can see

(41:44):
from this like more than I ever knew. So here
we are, it's the early nineteen hundreds. What's up there?
We go? Is it the turn of the center? It's
the turn of the century. Oh, it's the turn of
the century. Yeah. Then in the background, the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory is located on the top three floors of a
building called the Ash Building ascch. It's one of the

(42:07):
city's newest skyscrapers. It's ten fucking the floors, like that's
what time of a door.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
People would walk up to it and just scream yeah,
because it was so high.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Why that's right. So it's like it's pretty new building
and modern. It's not like one of those shitty tenements
there were people had to work. It's on the corner
of Green Street and Washington Place in New York City,
so it's Greenwich Village and it's like a block away
from Washington Square Park, which is the beautiful park. The
Triangle Shirtwaiste factory employed mostly women, and those women were

(42:39):
young immigrants, mostly Italian and Jewish. Nearly all the workers
were basically teenage girls who didn't speak any English, who
worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. It
was cramped lines of sewing machines. You know all those
black and white photos you see of women at their
sewing machines with their fucking head down and sewing and shit,
and that's just like hundreds to a room. Yeah. The

(43:01):
work was repetitive and monotonous, and the conditions were made
so that the most output could be done. For the
least amount of money, of course. And if you're wondering
what a shirt waist is, what a weird word? Okay,
it's basically a woman's blouse. The style is a feminine
version of a men's button down shirt. It's like Seinfeld's
puffy shirt, you know, yep, And it's the little tiny

(43:23):
waist and then the white billowing shirt that came out
of it in the Victorian era.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Kind of like with the Coca Cola lady from the
old Coca Cola as exactly.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
A Gibson girl shot Gibson Girls shirt exactly. It's a
staple of the lady's wardrobe at the time. And the
style also symbolizes female independence. And I guess it's because
they didn't have to wear dresses anymore anymore. Like wearing
a shirt and a skirt was like a big fucking
oh yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense, right, It's like, oh,
we're like, we're we're workers. We get a wear instead

(43:53):
of pants a skirt. Yeah, it's not the same. So
it's the symbol. It's mbolizes female independence and the new woman,
combining new and old fashions. It becomes hugely popular. There's
like five hundred factories that make them in New York
City at this time and symbolizes the working woman wearing
fashionable shirtwaists, becomes an iconic image of the women's rights movement,

(44:16):
a lot of those picketers and shit. Yeah, so because
of their popularity and the demand is so high, it
also it totally changes the nature of work itself, as
the shirtwaists do because of their popularity. It's kind of
like how Ford did with his cars and the what's
it called line assembly assembly line, It's similar to that.
So the production of shirtwaists is a super competitive industry.

(44:38):
So many garments are produced in what's called the sweating
system aka the definition is a system of employing labor
for long hours at low wages and often unsafe or
unsanitary conditions aka sweatshops. Yeah. So in the Triangle, it
was supposed to be a nicer place to work than
the actual sweatshops because it was such a huge company,

(45:02):
but it was still kind of, you know, strict and
not not a fun place to work. They were still
exploiting their work exactly. The way it worked was that.
So the business owner, so whoever owned the Triangle Shortways factory,
which we'll get into they like. Those owners would then
get subcontractors to hire people, and those subcontractors only got
a certain amount of money from the business owners, so

(45:22):
they only had a certain amount of money to pay
the women, and they just cut corners and tried to
get a profit as much as they could. So it
was just really shitty. And they can pay whatever they want,
so they get low wages to make the most profit,
and then to be competitive in the industry, owners cut
prices on everything and it leads to low wages for
the workers. There's no fucking standard minimum wage. That doesn't

(45:44):
happen until nineteen thirty eight. It's that crazy. Wow. So
and this is a time of course, when like you know,
the government doesn't feel like it should meddle on what's
going on with business owners because they were these bourgeois
fucking titans of industry, and they were like, they clearly
know what they're doing. Let's not police them, do whatever
they fucking want. Kind of like now, but it's but yeah,

(46:05):
it's it's the seeds of now exactly.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
It's the reason now is so problematic, right because they
started it and it was like they have the everyone's
best interest in mind.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
Yeah, it's like them do their thing. They actually don't.
A lot of them are sociopathic exactly, so they Yeah,
they were like, they're making the country successful. Let them
do whatever the fuck they want, which is not how
you can't. People aren't going to police themselves unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
No, especially when it comes to money and desperation, right,
because it's like, well, if this is a cut I get,
then yeah, I need it more and more and more,
and you can I think that's where a lot of
that kind of like you can rationalize your othering of people,
where it's like, oh, it's just these immigrant women, who cares.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
What happens to them? Right? Yeah? Yeah, greed, corporate greed. Yeah.
So American industrialization begins in the nineteen twenties, primarily in
the textile industry, and by the eighteen fifties over a
thousand factories are operating. Manufacturing. It was like a machine
and the immigrants and poor people were making the machine go.
But you know, they were fucking screwed. Yeah. The working

(47:07):
conditions were often dangerous and unsanitary. There was crazy supervision
and safety was not a matter of concern, of course,
and so workers often suffered serious and even fatal accidents
because the main goal was just to churn out as
much product in the shortest amount of time. And you're
working with these fucking machines, yeah, you know, and doing
the same thing over and over and working long hours

(47:28):
so you're tired. It's just no bad fucking and there's no.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Like I'm old enough that there used to be a
PSA that they ran on television about how you have
to wear safety goggles, I swear to God, and it
was the weird I used to remember watching it and
just being like, who is this for?

Speaker 1 (47:45):
This is so weird.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
But it was like that thing where like OSHA standards
of safety and like you can't put people at risk, right,
Like it's a very important thing because of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
And then when they do get hurt, there's no workers compensation,
there's no such thing. You get fired and your facts. Yeah,
it's just really it was really ugly. There's also child
labor in the United States. It didn't go away until
well into the twentieth century as well. It's like crazy,
it's just crazy. But at this point in time, there's
a growing movement that coincided with all of this called

(48:18):
industrial feminism, and that's a combination of unionism and working
class activism. So there was of course the you know,
more well to do women who were doing activism and
who were fighting for suffrage rights. But then there were
these women who were these immigrants and they were the
working class, and they were trying to unionize as well
and get rights, which is really amazing. Yeah, very cool. Yeah,

(48:41):
these women fought to unionize and for union standards such
as shorter hours, higher wages, safer working conditions, but they
also wanted to be able to enrich their lives with
access to education and culture. So they're like, we're working
fucking sixteen hours a day, we have no life. We
want to enrich our lives and the way to do
that is education and yeah, any of that. So Polly Newman,

(49:03):
she's a founder of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union
and a former child laborer herself, wrote a series of
essays that were published in the New York Yiddish language newspapers,
and they described the factories like this quote. Most of
the so called factories were located in old wooden walk
ups with rickety stairs, splintered and sagging floors. The few

(49:24):
windows were never washed, and their broken panes were mended
with cardboard. In the winter, a stove stood in the
middle of the floor. There was no drinking water available. Dirt,
smells and vermin were such a part of the surroundings,
as were the machines and workers. So if you can
imagine that Triangles like a step up from that doesn't
mean very much. They're like, hey, we got water, right, yeah. Yeah.

(49:46):
So there are many strikes in the time, led by
the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. In nineteen oh nine,
there's one demanding higher pay and shorter, more predictable hours,
and it becomes known as the Uprising of twenty thousand. Wow. Yeah,
twenty thousand people, uh walked out and it starts at
the Triangle factory, so like they were big organizers there.

(50:07):
The participants are mainly young immigrant girls who didn't even
have they didn't even speak English yet a lot of them,
and they absolutely didn't have the right to vote yet,
but yet they still fucking did this. Yes, they're about
five hundred shirtwaist factories at the time, and many of
the smaller ones immediately folded to the demands of their
workers because they needed to keep you know, keeping Hell yeah,

(50:28):
the workers have the power. That's right. They're up, come
back up. But the owners of the Triangle shirtwaist factory,
Max Blank and Isaac Harris, who were known as the
shirtwaist Kings because this is one of the top fucking
shirtwaist factories in New York, made millions off the new
shirtwaist trend. They had, they had already made millions, and
they had been immigrants themselves, and they are one of

(50:50):
the few manufacturers who resisted unionization. They were like staunchly
against it, of course, because they're business owners and it's
going to get fucked with their bottom line, right, because
you have to force people to do it, that's right. Fortunately,
So instead they paid local thugs to attack the women,
and they paid off police to imprison in prison the
striking women. They paid off politicians to look the other way.

(51:12):
They just fucking went all out on these women. And
there's like photos of them, you know, fighting the police
in the street and it's she's saying christ One of
the founders of the union, Claire Lemlick, she's arrested and
has six of her ribs broken by company guards and
city police, and yet she keeps on marching in the
picket line. Oh yeah, it's like this is just a
story of incredible women. Well also because this is their

(51:33):
this is their lives.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Like when you're the like the shirtwaist king, you're just
sitting there eating your like Sam and Patay going no,
they don't get to have that.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Right, and it's like, you know, it can't be this way.
And his family had butlers and the governess so they
paid Okay as a strikers on for months though. The women,
mostly female workers of the Triangle shirt Wis factory, they
don't give up their fight and they start to impress
the people of the city. They're like, well, these fucking

(52:04):
ladies have tenacity. This is pretty badass. You know, their
conditions must be really bad if they were going to
fight this hard. Yeah, And so the ladies of the
Triangle lead the largest single work stoppage in cities in
the city's history. Yes, yeah, so the one of the
things they're fighting for is safe working environment and the
danger of fire and factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist is

(52:27):
well known at the time, but there's so many high
levels of corruption in both the garment industry and city
government that no useful precautions are taken to prevent fires.
I think there were buckets of water on the ground
and that was it to like throw fire that started. Thanks,
thanks guy, thanks for the buckets of water. Thank you,
Blank and Hair there's my swimming in it. So Blank

(52:50):
and Harris already have a suspicious fire history background. The
Triangle factory had two fires and back in nineteen oh two,
and their diamond waste company back three had had fires
as well, and it seems like they deliberately torched their
factories before business hours in order to collect the fire insurance,
which was a lot of fucking money at the time,
which wasn't also a not uncommon practice back then in

(53:13):
the early twentieth century, and perhaps for this reason, Blank
and Harris refused to install sprinkler systems in their factories
because they were like, they wouldn't be able to get
their insurance money. Yeah, if they started trying to start
a fire and burn it down, Yeah, it's not going
to work. So they were there were sprinkler systems at
the time, and they refused to take other safety measures
in case in case they need to burn their shops

(53:34):
down again. So on top of that, Blank and here, yeah,
real insightful. So the time the women are working like,
you know, nine hours a day on weekdays plus seven
hours on Saturdays and then one day off. For their
fifty two hours of work a week, they earned a
total of something between seven and twelve dollars a week,
which is the equivalent of one hundred and ninety one

(53:55):
dollars to three hundred and twenty seven dollars a week
in current current and so like, can you imagine today
we're making one hundred and ninety one dollars a week.
There's no it's hand in mouth. There's nothing you can
do about it.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Yeah, there's And you're expending all of your like life energy,
right just to get the basic survive to not like
keep your head above water. Yeah, oh that's like second
job territory. So then you're fucking exhausted, right, A lot
of people do it, I know this day.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
I know. So finally, with the lucrative holiday season coming up,
the deal is made which the women for, in which
the women's demands like safer working environment are mostly ignored.
They get a few concessions, like a little bit of
higher pay, but that's it, and they just go, I
have to go back to work. So on the afternoon,
of March twenty fifth, nineteen eleven, almost closing time on

(54:45):
a Saturday. There's about five hundred workers at the Triangle factory.
It's the top three floors, so it's eight, nine, and ten,
and then a fire starts on the eighth floor at
around four forty pm, so it's The fire is thought
to have started in a rag bin, likely caused by
someone either extinguishing a match or cigarette just kind of
tossing it in a fucking clothing factory, Like even the

(55:07):
air has particles of clothing. Yeah, really, you know, so
it's probably a cigarette. Smoking wasn't allowed there at the time,
but they had ways of sneaking them. But it's possible
that one of the engines on the sewing machine sparked
and caught it on fire as well. So yeah, you know,
you can't you can't really pinpoint it. The building has
an internal switchboard, so the operator calls up to the

(55:29):
tenth floor and is like, yo, there's a fucking fire here,
get out. So many of the tenth floor employees, including
one of the owners, Max Blank, who was there, and
two of his daughters who were aged four and twelve,
they had happened to stop by to see him with
their governess. Oh and they were on the tenth floor,
so they all run up to the roof. It's about
sixty to eighty people who go to the roof. So

(55:50):
for some reason, though, no one warns the nearly three
hundred Triangle girls, which is what they were called at
the sewing machines on the ninth floor, so they call
it to the tenth I think the eighth must know.
No one tells the girls on the ninth floor. According
to Surviva Yetta Love, it's the first warning of the fire,
and the ninth floor is the fire itself. And there's
some I mean, I know, I hate reenactments, but the

(56:13):
American Experience episode and the Triangle Remembering the fire have
some like it's really intense. Yeah, so pretty quickly the
fire spreads. The building has four elevators with access to
the factory floors, but only one that's fully operational. Yea,
but in fucking crazy like a heroic feet the workers

(56:34):
of the two elevator workers went up and down as
many times as possible, trying to save as many women
as they could. So there was like room for twelve
at a time on the elevator, but they like crammed
in as many as possible, went back up and down
three times, and finally the cables weren't working anymore and
they couldn't go back up, but they saved so many
lives that day. There's two stairways down to the street,

(56:55):
and one is where they enter and exit every day,
but the the gather one is locked. One of the
exits because one of the owners was paranoid about workers theft,
so they'd look in their pocketbooks every day when they
were on their way out, which you can get a
scrap of fucking cloth. Fold my shirt up, real small,
feny tiny, wouldn't you if you worked there, you would

(57:16):
fucking hate shirt waist shirt. Oh yeah, you'd never want
to wear them. You'd be like take that off, you'd
blow your nose at the end of the day and
it'd be like tiny shirt waists. Yeah. So one of
those is locked. The other one opens like in word,
which is not good. The fire escape is so narrow
that it would have taken hours for all the workers
to use it, even in the best circumstances. So workers inside,

(57:39):
of course fucking panic, they're pushing they run to the
exits all at once. A manager tries to use the
fire hose to extinguish the flames, but the hose is
rotted and it's a valve is rested shut, So even
the precautions didn't fucking work. Yeah, and that's like three
hundred women fucking losen there. Shit, they're one of the
women is talking about leaping from sewing machine table, the

(58:00):
sewing machine table like that time, and of big skirts
and shit, just trying to get away from the fire.
Oh my god, terrifying. Oh because it's coming up underneath yeah,
oh god. So meanwhile, back on the roof the tenth floor,
sixty to eighty people on the roof. So the adjacent
building is part of New York University, so there's like
the law professor and his students hear the screams, they

(58:20):
see the fire. They the building's a little higher than
the ash building, so the students grab ladders and lower
them down, and everyone on the roof manages to survive.
Oh way, Yeah, that gave me weird chilling because you're
not supposed to the roof in a fire, and like
normally that wouldn't be the way to out. No, because
I'll survive.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Because well and also I just thought about whatever the
distance was. However, closer far those two buildings were, you're
climbing across a ladder ten stories up. That must have
been please hold onto this, please hold this.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Okay, Yeah, But the people on the ninth floor, of course,
are not so lucky. The shop floor is completely passed
with selling machines. There are about three hundred machines on
the floor. For those who can't make it to the
roof or to the elevators, they flee down the stairwells,
but they run into lock doors and end up swallowed
by flames. So it's just women fighting at a locked door,
which is just a fucking horrifying imagine to imagine. But

(59:20):
by the time the firefighters arrive, women are standing on
the window ledges or are seen pressing against the windows
on the ninth floor. The firefighters get out their ladders
and reel them up, and they only go as high
as a six or seventh floor. No, I know, it's
just like one apt thing after another of like ways
they could have been saved and weren't. So okay. In

(59:42):
this point, it's a Saturday afternoon, it's a beautiful day.
It's right by Washington Square Park, it's in the shopping district.
People are shopping, people are out picnicking, and they see
the smoke, and thousands of people are now watching this happen.
Oh no, yeah, it's like I think maybe one of
the reasons that people probably all knew someone who saw
it and could testify to what a fucking horrible nightmare

(01:00:02):
it was to watch. Right, and then people start to
jump from the windows. William gunn Shepherd, a reporter at
the scene, wrote, I learned a new sound that day,
a sound more horrible than description can picture. The thought
of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk. Oh god,
I mean. And in one of the documentaries, are like
people thought they were throwing like their belongings out and

(01:00:24):
cloth bundles out, and then they realized it was people,
And this is a time. But everything is so proper,
you know, I'm sure people hadn't seen anything like this before,
not even imagine something like this before.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
So a man and women are seen kissing in the
window before they both jump to their deaths. Women clutch
each other as they jump together. Some of them are
even holding their pocketbooks when they jump, which, for some
reason to me just like gives me chose. I know what, Yeah,
grab your pocketbook. It's just well, it's a piece of yourself.
It's all your stuff, it has your idea in it. Yeah.

(01:00:57):
But also it's just like that, you would be in
such a panic. Yeah, it's horrible. Bodies of jumpers fall
on the fire hoses, making it difficult to fight the fire,
and a life net is unfurled to catch jumpers, but
three girls jump at the same time, ripping it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Nothing is fucking working and everyone is helpless. Yeah, and
it's horrifying to the crowd. Okay, so it's a single
fire escape. They were supposed to put in a third stairwell,
but they like bribe city officials to just have a
fire escape instead of the ash building. So it was flimsy,
it was poorly anchored, and it might have been broken

(01:01:35):
before the fire. Soon it twists and collapses from the
heat and spills about twenty victims nearly one hundred feet
to their death. I know, I'm sorry, I mean U
and the remainder just wait until smoke and fire overcome them.
It's a horrifying fucking thing. Within eighteen minutes, it's all over. Whoa. Yeah,

(01:01:57):
the fire's out well, because it was like a tender box.
They just wm. Yeah. Yeah. Forty nine workers are burned
to death or die by smoke suffocation. Thirty six are
dead in the elevator shaft because they were jumping onto
the cables trying to ride down the shade.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Oh you know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Fifty eight die from jumping to the sidewalks. This brings
the total dead fifty eight, I know. And there's fucking
photos of it in these documentaries. Yeah, this brings a
total of dead to one hundred and forty six. Oh
my god. Twenty three are men and one hundred and
twenty three are women. Most of the victims are women
and girls aged fourteen to twenty three. The victims of

(01:02:33):
the victims whose ages are known so The New York
Times reports that the city Corner when he got there,
was so overwhelmed that he sobbed among the bodies being
laid out of the scene and hardened firefighters and cops
needed to step away. Yeah they did. They know. Many
of the bodies are This is so fucked up. Many
of the bodies are charred beyond recognition. So they do
a lineup of bodies that need to be identified at

(01:02:55):
a pier near the East River so people can come
identify their loved ones. And so people line up to
walk through this fucking horrible thing and like find their
loved ones. Okay, you ready to start crying. Yeah. One
mother is only able to identify her daughter because of
the stitching on her stocking, and another woman recognizes her

(01:03:15):
mother only by the braid in her hair that she
had had braided that morning. Oh I know, Jesus, I know.
It's like life fucking matters. Yeah, assholes, Yeah, like it's
fucking pennies out of your pockets and make sure that
people have a livable fucking life. Yeah, and can feed
their families and don't have to put their fucking eight
year old children to work. So that I mean, so

(01:03:37):
that you can have fucking six yachts. Yeah, what is
wrong with you don't need six yachts. You don't need
a horse ranch. No, you don't need several vacation homes.
You need better fucking karma, dude, Yeah, you need to
you need Oh yeah, god damn it. Yep. Sorry. So
then on April fifth, nineteen eleven, four one hundred thousand

(01:04:01):
mourners line the sidewalks of New York they did, I know,
the unions got together and did a funeral procession. So
they were really pissed off because the city wanted to
do a whole funeral and bury the seven unidentified women,
but they were the unions were like, fuck you, you're

(01:04:23):
the reason this fucking happened. So in protests they did this.
They had one funeral procession with an empty horse drawn
hers go by, and four hundred thousand mourners came out
to watch it go by. The realization that the very
thing the Triangle women that they had just been watching
them bravely strike for and didn't get the safety safe

(01:04:44):
working conditions is what led to their death of so
many doesn't go unnoticed, and people are up in fucking
arms about this whole experience. I think it kind of
turns this, you know, flips a switch and a lot
of people's consciousness in the country.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
Well, yeah, because it turns it from a concept that
happen right to them to oh, this is what this
is really about. Yeah, it's worst fucking case scenario, and
they forced it to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
And it's the people who were saying this is not okay,
this is going to happen this is going to happen,
and they weren't respected enough to be listened to, right,
and it happened. Yeah, you know. Immediately after the fire
Triangle owners Blank and Harris declare and interviews that they're
building was fireproof and then it had just been approved
by the Department of Building. Guys, you guys. Yet the
call for bringing the call for bringing people respond those

(01:05:31):
responsible to justice and it reports that the doors they
reported that the doors of the factory were locked. Yet
the call everyone was like, you got to bring these
fucking people to justice. There were like, you know, all
these newspaper articles about it. Yeah, And the reports that
the door was locked from the inside means that the
District Attorney's office seeks an indictment against the owners. Good thankfully,

(01:05:53):
get ready to be disappointed. Of course. On December twenty seven,
twenty three days after the trial starts, acquits Blank and
Harris of any wrongdoing. The task of the jurors is
just to determine whether the owners knew that the doors
were locked at the time of the fire. But despite
extensive testimony from the workers signing of the owners had
locked the door to prevent theft, the attorneys of the

(01:06:15):
business owners, who, of course, high fucking powered, high priced
attorneys were able to convince the jury that they didn't know.
Grieving families and much of the public were fucking pissed
and felt like justice hadn't been done. Like these two
guys were villainized, like they you know, rightfully, So they
were villains.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Yeah, they were villain because that's the other thing that
people always forget, is that that's the other side of it, right,
if you don't give people there the basic human working conditions.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Yeah, it makes you the bad guy. You are the
bad guy. Yeah, you should go to jail. Yeah. Twenty
three individual civil suits are brought against the owners of
the Ash building on March eleventh, nineteen fourteen. So, so
three years after the fire, they Harrison Blank settle and
they pay seventy dollars per life lost seventy five dollars,

(01:07:04):
which is around two thousand dollars today. So each family
who lost someone, and of course many lost siblings and mothers,
and one guy buried his his wife and three daughters.
I know, they each get about two thousand dollars in
today's money, And that's just a fraction of the four
hundred per death that Blank and Harris were paid by
their insured, so they made money off of this fucking fire.

(01:07:27):
They made a lot of money. They've paid seventy five
bucks and they got four hundred dollars per person. Burn
in hell, that's right. Harris and Blank continue their defiant
attitude toward the authorities. Just a few days after the fire,
the new premises of their factory is found not to
be fireproof, no fire escapes, and no adequate exits. So
they're just like doing it around town. In August of

(01:07:49):
nineteen thirteen, Max Blank is charged with locking one of
the doors in his factory during working hours and brought
to court. He's fined twenty dollars just about five hundred
and fifty today, and the judge apologizes to him for
the imposition. You pussy. They were just in the businessman's pockets,
you know. Yes, good, crooked, crooked, crooked. After the Triangle Fire,

(01:08:11):
the Americans, there are some good that comes out of this.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
Of course, Okay, good, I know, because there's a lot
of it's fucking horrible.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
After the Triangle Fire, the American Society of Safety Professionals
was founded in New York City on October fourteenth, nineteen eleven.
The fire helped unite organize labor and reform minded politicians,
and the Workers' Union set up a march on April
fifth on Fifth Avenue to protest the conditions that had
led to the fire. It was attended by eighty thousand people.

(01:08:39):
Oh yeah, right, there's enough public support for the new
workmen's compensation that's been previously struck down, and it's amended
and enacted in nineteen thirteen. So this leads to a
fucking shit ton of reforms and even you know, the
whispers of which we can still feel today in our ear.
In addition, the state of New York creates a Factory

(01:09:00):
Investigating Commission to study safety, sanitation, wages, hours, and child
labor in like sweatshops. Francis Perkins, who of course becomes
the first female Secretary of Labor under FDR, and who
actually happened to be present that day that she was
at the park and saw what happen. Oh yeah, She
and Poulline Newman are hired as investigators on the committee,

(01:09:21):
and over the years following the fire, New York adopts
thirty six of the Commission's recommendations into law, and the
Sullivan Whoy fire Prevention Law passed at October and is
known as being crucial in preventing similar fires in the future.
One hundred years later, six victims still had remained unidentified
and tew a historian named Michael Hirsch researches their identities

(01:09:45):
for four years using old newspaper articles just like cross
checking and shit Wow, and is able to identify each
of them by name Wow. Those women now are buried
in a large marble slab featuring a kneeling woman. Not
in it you know under it right. Every year on
May Day, there's a commemoration at the Ash Building in

(01:10:07):
New York, which is now called the Brown Building. It's
owned by NYU that Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition organizes
events to commemorate the fire and bring awareness to the
needs of workers today. In twenty eleven, in honor of
the fires one hundredth anniversary, the Coalition establishes the goal
of the Permanent Memorial. To honor the memory of those
who died from the fire, to affirm the dignity of

(01:10:29):
all workers, to value women's work, to remember the movement
for worker safety and social justice stirred by tragedy, and
to inspire future generations of activists. Yes, and that is
the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of nineteen eleven. Believable. That
was great, Thank you, that was very moving. You I'm

(01:10:49):
so mad. I'm mad too. Let's be activist, I.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Mean, but here's what's beautiful about it is I think
that people can be passive if it's like, that's not
my job.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
My job's hard enough.

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
I can't worry about those striking women who are But
when tragedy strikes like that, when things like that happen
to your fellow man, it wipes away all that kind
of like not my problem, and those aren't my people,
and suddenly it's like it could be anybody, and it
could be me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
And it was the it's so hard to see. And
I don't know if they published any in the newspapers
across the country, but there were, you know, there were
faces of people lying on the ground, and you know,
and they said, like in every neighborhood in New York,
someone had to attend multiple people had to attend multiple funerals,
like it just hit everyone hard. And the fact that
they had just been fucking in the streets, you know,

(01:11:44):
protesting the treatment that they were getting. Yeah, and they
didn't get what they asked for, which was safety, and
that's that what killed them.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
Yes, so tragic, right, and in some ways you could
kind of connect it where it's just like they were
killed by their bosses because of it's not directly but indirectly,
and it might as well be directly, yeah, because they
couldn't even it wasn't.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
It was so bad that like they were trapped. It
was a true fire trap.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
What about the motherfucker that just got off the roof,
Like he was there and he knew exactly what happened,
he witnessed it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
He was in his mind. He's like, well, my daughters
are here and I undersave them. Well, all these women
here are people's daughters too, Yeah, and you're just letting
it go out. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty horrifying. But good
things came out of it, Yes, I guess well they do.
Because here's the thing. It's that's the importance of unions.
It's like, you need unions to protect workers because you
can't rely all right, people who make money off of

(01:12:42):
those workers, Right, they'll always pick themselves. They'll always pick
their own lives, they'll always pick their own comfort. Over
some stranger that's making them money. That's right, and that
they think that they are superior too because they're in
the position of making more money. Just basically on that. Yeah. No, wow, cool,
great job, thank you. That was really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
I'm glad. I'm glad. I remember like starting to read
about that story and immediately being like, I.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
Don't think i'll do this. What you know, I don't
know why. I just suddenly had this morning. I woke
up and I was like not this morning obviously, and
I was like I want to do this triangle. And
then I was like what am I fucking doing? Yeah? No,
I'm glad you did. I think it's really important for
people to know.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
It's also that kind of thing when you were like
this was industrialized feminism where I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
Like, wait, what, there's so much I don't know about
any of that stuff. Yeah, it's pretty crazy, like in
the shirtwaist itself being a symbol of you know, feminism
right in a way. Yeah, amazing, Yeah, great job, thank
you too. What is your fucking horay or do you
want me to go first? I mean piece of paper? Oh,

(01:13:48):
just the word hooray. Oh yeah, that's all he wrote.
Mine's really dumb and simple. Okay, there's a big, giant
spider outside my window and I love it and I'm
proud of her, and I love watching her build her web.
And she's one of the most humongous things I've ever fucked.
How big? Show me with your hand. She's fat and

(01:14:08):
that's she's like that, Oh my god, like a silver dollar.
I don't know was that legs included her leg body
with legs like that? Jesus Christ. Enormous and I and
can I tell you someling girls? Don't tell anyone. I
found two little centipedes in my house so far that
Dottie's been fucking playing. Oh no, So I'm like, spider,
can you come back and come in centipedes out of here? Please?

(01:14:30):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's thugs. Yeah, bugs are key and spiders
are very important. Growing up, my Auntjie and I remember
freaking out because I saw a spider and she was like,
oh no, no, that's our friend. Yeah, she'll keep all
the flies out.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
My mom goes always every fucking spider, and she's ever
seen it's Charlotte. Don't hurt it, she says, every fucking
Charlotte's web. Every spider.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
My old roommate used to live up in Auburn and
we were up there visiting her family and they lived there.
Their house was out in the middle of the woods
and we're standing on the porch and uh, we're all
standing there and then we all turn around and look
near the front door and there is a full on
tarantula climbing up the front of their and we I

(01:15:12):
was like, couldn't breathe. And her mom turns around and goes,
what wonderful look. She was a total nature lady, terrifying.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Everyone in Australia is rolling the rise at us right now.
I have in my bed right now.

Speaker 2 (01:15:30):
They're like, our spiders kill you with a knight, right.
They look at you, yeah, and then they stab you.
They go like this with one leg across their throat.
They threaten you emotionally and then they stab you. And
they make fun of your hair and they flip on
a switchblade, they comb their own hair and then they
stab you. That's right, Well, then, I guess mine. I
can just be as simple as to say I got

(01:15:52):
a massage. Oh yeah, because it's been a long time
and it was a gift certificate from last Christmas.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
That Danielle gave us and I found it and was like, oh,
I haven't done anything like this in a long time.
I'm me's with this place the now, but now in
La it's the best. It's so good. And at first
when I walked in, there were a lot of crystals. Yeah,
there's a lot of crystals and bath shit, there was a.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
Lot of It was very as I call it, woo woo,
and everyone's being real quiet, which it makes me uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (01:16:23):
I'm a volume person.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
And but I was like, shut up, you don't know,
and give it over and I got the best Missus
massage therapist, sorry, the best massage therapist, and it was
the best massage. I was so relaxed that when I left,
I went out and bought a deck of moon card No,
you did it, Yes I did. Cards are like women's

(01:16:46):
taro car.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
You need those. Yes, I will do next time. I'll
do a moon card reading for you. I would love that. Yeah,
let's make a video of it. Okay, yeah, we'll do
that on the fan call.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
It's really I really like it. But anyway, great, it
was just a good feeling. I al should just remember
my therapist tells me this all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:17:07):
That dish. What does she call it? Skin starvation? If
you don't get touched enough, if.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
You're on your own a lot, make sure you get
massages or something, because it's very important for human beings.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
To have their skin touch. That's beautiful. It like releases
certain chemicals. Yeah, the dopamine thing, it's all.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
That whatever, whatever, but it's really important for you and
you it's easy to forget because if you're if it
just doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, and then when it does,
you're like, oh my god, Yes, I need to be
back in this mode.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
A great point. Yeah, it's self care to learn for you,
it's self care.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
There is a The Reductress had a tweet this week
and it was lady just keeps calling things self care
and sees what sticks.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
It calls everything she does self care.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
Follow Reductress. They're hilarious. Thanks for listening, guys, Yes, thanks
for all your support. Yeah, we appreciate you so much.
You make our skin starvation go away. Emotionally, you make
our endorphins tingle. That's right, stay sexy, don't get murdered. Goodbye, elnest.
Do you want a cookie?