Columbine Unraveled

In this episode of Secret Passage, we revisit the Columbine High School shooting, exploring the events, timeline, and devastating impact of the attack carried out by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. We discuss the warning signs, systemic failures, and psychology of the perpetrators. We reflect on the broader societal implications, including school safety protocols and the role of bullying, while emphasizing the importance of recognizing and acting on red flags to prevent future tragedies. 

 

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Secret Passage Podcast is hosted by Dana Vespoli and Shannon Rogers

Producer: Tim Rogers

Editor: Mitch Silver

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This podcast may contain discussions of graphic violence, unsettling themes, supernaturalphenomena, and other topics that some listeners may find disturbing or triggering.
Listener discretion is advised.
This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.
The opinions expressed are simply those of the individual hosts and do not represent theprofession of psychology or constitute professional advice.

(00:38):
Secret Passage podcast.
I am your host, Dana Vispoli, and with me as always is the inimitable Shannon Rogers.
Hello everybody!
Hello, Dana!
I stole that from the prosecutors.
love it when Brett comes up with these different descriptions of Alice.
I know, me too, it's the best, I love them.

(00:58):
I know me too.
Oh man, well we're back everyone.
Thank you for all the kind comments and reviews that you are leaving us.
means a lot.
Also thanks for some of the recommendations, namely from Jackie, who I still need to sendyou her recommendation for an episode.

(01:19):
It's pretty brutal.
um
We also got, there's also a listener who recommended what we're doing today.
Really?
So that's fortuitous.
Yeah, we just happened to choose this today's topic.
But before we get into that, Shannon, did you happen down any interesting secret passagesthis past week?

(01:46):
I mean, yes, so many.
The one I would like to talk about, and I'll just talk about it briefly, is I am going totry to break up with my phone.
Not completely.
Maybe not even break up is not the right term, but you know the book that we were readingcalled How to Break Up with Your Phone.

(02:06):
And that's what I'm to try to learn to moderate my phone usage because it is having a
terrible impact on our brains and our thinking and our attention spans.
And I'm just tired of being a slave to my phone.
And I was talking with someone who I'm mentoring.

(02:28):
She's in a graduate program for psychology and she's doing a whole project on how to breakup with your phone.
And she's basically have to test to create a program and put herself through the program.
And she said that she's doing all the things like, you people get an alarm clock or theyget a watch that you kind of do all the things that you can do to not depend on your phone

(02:51):
the way we do and sort of break that habit of using it for everything, like your alarmclock and your clock watch and everything.
So that's my plan.
And I'll report back on how it's going.
That's great.
I mean, I can't deny everything is with my phone.
I mean, I essentially work from my phone, then I just lean into it all the time.

(03:15):
So I'm eager for your input or your feedback as you go through this.
How about your secret passage?
I'm thinking right now, I'm recovering.
Everyone, my kids, my twins started high school and my oldest is in college now.

(03:36):
So he's dealing, he's taking care of himself, but I'm doing that, that drop off, gettingup early.
Oh, it's intense.
It's such an intense adjustment to go back to school.
It is, I'm happy in some ways.
mean, there's something really nice about the drive after dropping them off and I'mdriving and it's a beautiful stretch of road that I drive on.

(04:06):
And that's when I usually do, that's when I usually pray.
So I get a good 30 minutes of prayer in as I'm driving and it's, you know, the sun isshining and I'm just seeing people and the trees and it, I'm.
very fortunate to live where I do, but it's the physical kind of like, it's a differenthead space that I'm in.

(04:27):
Cause I'm also like constantly, and this plays into a little bit of what our topic istoday.
I'm constantly thinking about them.
I'm constantly thinking about school.
I'm constantly thinking about everything I'm kind of seeing just through the drop off.
Also the evolution of me being a high school.
I went to school in Oregon.
So I went to this very like brick building.

(04:49):
you know, four floors, ah you know, was the 80s and 90s.
It's just so funny to be in Southern California and just looking at how everything looksdifferent, you know.
That's not my secret passage.
My secret passage is, and it's not, okay, so I saw this movie a couple of weeks ago.
I may have already told you about it.

(05:09):
ah It came up again, because I recommended it to Caden Cross.
And it is,
My favorite movie I've seen this year, we'll see how I feel after Begonia comes out,because I am a huge Yorgos Lanthimos fan and a Jesse Plemons fan, and he's in that movie.

(05:29):
But it's this movie called Sorry Baby that I saw.
It's an amazing, movie.
It's another example of these smaller independent movies that don't have a lot in termsof, you know, special effects, that's not a thriller, it's not a mystery, it's not this

(05:55):
thing that is like just, you know, an endorphin rush movie at all.
It's a quiet movie, it's darkly funny, it's...
The way I described it to Caden was it manages to be both heartbreaking and life-affirmingat the same time.

(06:15):
It's an amazing movie.
I was bawling.
And I found myself crying at interesting, like there were two moments where I cried themost.
one of them was such an, I mean, the woman, it's her directorial debut.
She wrote it.
she directed it, she stars in it.

(06:36):
And with Lucas Hedges, I don't know if you're familiar with him, he's great actor.
Did you happen to see the movie Manchester by the Sea?
Fucking amazing movie.
Casey Affleck won best actor for that.
Wait, maybe I did.
I don't watch movies anymore.
I only watch horror movies.
Well, Manchester by the Sea came out a long time ago.

(06:56):
It came out in 2014 or 2015.
It's a hard one.
I never want to see it again.
I mean, it's an incredible, incredible movie, incredible acting.
I just don't ever fucking want to see it again because it just destroyed me.
But Lucas Hedges plays a teenage boy in that movie.
He was nominated for best supporting actor, I think.
Great actor.
He's in this movie in Sorry Baby.

(07:19):
He plays a great character in it.
But it's a beautiful movie if anyone is interested in watching it.
I just, I love to give any kind of attention, shout out, props to like the artists outthere that are doing stuff that I think is a lot more challenging and riskier, which is
doing something that it doesn't like just, I don't know, seduce you with big explosions orlike crazy violence or lots of sex or lots of...

(07:52):
You know, all that shit.
a very, it feels very personal.
I don't know much about this woman that made it.
But anyway, amazing, amazing movie.
It's called Sorry Baby.
It's funny because the poster for it is the main actress and she's like holding a kittenand looking at it.
And of course, the minute I see that, I'm like, that cat, nothing can happen to the cat.

(08:14):
I can't watch it if something happens.
I wasn't the only one.
So I Google it and a
bunch of people are like, please tell me nothing happens to the cat.
I can't watch this movie if something happens to the cat.
And I'm like, I will watch people be dismembered and I can all this stuff, anything withanimals and little kids, but for some reason, especially like just little animals, I'm

(08:38):
like.
No, I know.
Like the Travis Decker situation when I heard about how he murdered all his kids, my firstthought was like, what happened to the dog?
Right?
His dog is with him.
We did, I don't think anything happened to the dog.
We would have heard that he also killed his dog.

(08:58):
I feel like that's something that they would say, cause the dog would have, if the dog waswith him, you know, it's that thing too, or they would have said like, he disappeared with
his dog.
You know, like they would have said, have you seen a man in this kind of a dog?
But yeah, so anyway, that was my secret passage.
I was like thinking about it.
It's such a powerful movie too, because like I was thinking about it yesterday.

(09:18):
I got choked up thinking about it.
I'm like, fuck, what's going on?
my god, it's so hard for me to give myself over to those kinds of movies because I knowthey're going to evoke that feeling and I'm like, no.
It's that amazing thing, it's a testament to this woman's talent as a writer uh and adirector and an actor that she managed to create something that simultaneously breaks your

(09:48):
heart but also makes you believe in other people.
It's a hard task, usually it's one or the other, right?
Yeah, these Columbine boys could have used some of that influence in their lives.
Oh yeah.
on to Columbine.
On to Columbine.
And listeners may be wondering why this subject.

(10:10):
have been in, well, having high school age kids makes me think more and more, you know, asmy kids have grown um in the whole school shooting, I guess, phenomenon.
brings these thoughts about, always go back.
Columbine is kind of like that big, horrible, tragic moment.

(10:35):
I mean, it is one of the largest school shooting tragedies in our nation's history, as Iunderstand it, right?
That's the one we go to when we think about.
Yeah, it wasn't like the first of that era, but it was, and it was also the most dramatic,like it was very theatrical because of the way they did it.
The way they did it, explosions, were bombs as well as guns.

(10:59):
and the trench coat stuff.
But it's interesting, because last night I went through, I asked Grok about the wholeentire history of school shootings in America.
And it's wild.
I don't remember the exact details.
1754 was the first one.
Lots of teachers would get shot, because they would punish the kids.

(11:21):
And then the kids would get pissed off and come back and shoot them.
someone's brother was punished by a teacher.
And then there was like a massacre at a school, but that was more about like NativeAmericans and the settlers, like colonial times.
uh But it's like, there is a huge chunk of school shootings in a certain era, starting inthe 90s to the early 2000s.

(11:45):
And then since then, I think there haven't been as many, but there are so many in thattime period and like lots of copycats.
Also what I learned too is that the FBI actually encourages, and you probably know this,but the FBI actually encourages the media not to do national coverage of mass killings

(12:06):
because when they do, inevitably two weeks later there will be another one.
Sure.
is so wild.
Anyway, yeah.
All right, so to get into this, guys, to refresh everyone's memory about Columbine and thetimeline, for those who don't know much about it or don't know about it at all, here's the

(12:31):
summary and the timeline, and then we'll get into discussion.
So the Columbine High School massacre occurred on April 20th, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado.
It was carried out by two seniors, two high school seniors, Eric Harris, was 18, and DylanKlebold, who was 17, almost 18 at the time.

(12:52):
They killed 12 students and one teacher, wounded 21 other folks, and then took their ownlives.
The attack involved firearms and improvised explosives.
It is remembered as one of the deadliest school shootings in US history, sparking nationaldiscussions on gun violence, bullying, and mental health.

(13:15):
And of course, this event profoundly impacted school safety protocols worldwide, whichI'll get into as well, being a parent and being fully cognizant of the types of protocols
they have in place.
So.
Early morning on April 20th, 1999, before 11 a.m., Eric Harrison, Dylan Klebold arrived atColumbine High School separately.

(13:43):
They planted two propane bombs in duffel bags in the school cafeteria and that was set todetonate at 11, 17 a.m.
and was intended to cause mass casualties and divert emergency responders so that peoplefleeing
from the explosives, the explosion would be essentially picked off by Harrison Klebold asthey were positioned outside.

(14:08):
That was the plan.
At 11 10 a.m.
Harrison Klebold parked their cars in the school lot.
They armed themselves with guns.
So two shotguns, a carbine rifle and a TEC-9 pistol and homemade bombs and they preparefor the attack.
At 1119 a.m., the shooting begins outside the school.

(14:30):
Harrison Klebold opened fire on students near the west entrance.
This was a huge school, by the way.
Killing Rachel Scott, who was 17, and injuring Richard Castaldo, they continued firing atstudents who were fleeing the area.
At 1122 a.m., they entered the school through the west doors, throwing pipe bombs andshooting in the hallways.

(14:51):
Daniel Roarboff, 15, was killed outside.
1124 AM, teacher Dave Sanders is shot while helping students escape.
He later died from his injuries.
1129 AM, the pair enters the school library where most of the fatalities occurred.
Over the next 78 minutes, they taunted and shot students hiding under tables, killing 10people.

(15:16):
Cassie Bernal, 17, Stephen Kernout, 14, Corey DePooter, 17, Kelly Fleming, 16, MatthewKector,
16, Daniel Mauser 15, Isaiah Scholes 18, John Tomlin 16, Lauren Townsend 18, and KyleVelasquez 16.

(15:36):
Teacher Patty Nielsen was injured but survived.
At 11.35 a.m.
Harris and Klebold, they leave the library after exchanging fire with police outside.
They wander the halls attempting to detonate more bombs, but most fail.
1144 AM, they returned to the library where they continue sporadic shooting and try toignite a bomb.

(16:01):
1208 PM, Harris and Klebold commit suicide in the library.
The active shooting phase ends, but SWAT teams enter later to secure the building andevacuate survivors.
In the afternoon, so after 12 PM, the police fully clear the school by about 4 PM.
The failed cafeteria bombs are discovered and safely detonated.

(16:22):
Investigations reveal the attackers journals and videos planning a larger scale attackinspired by events like the Oklahoma City bombing.
And so that's essentially the, those are the facts of the case as described or as sharedby survivors and different people involved.

(16:48):
Sorry, I'm like looking to make sure my dogs aren't up to anything.
Yeah, Shannon, you and I were, we already knew each other, we were friends when this eventhappened.
I remember the, know, interrupted news broadcast about this.

(17:08):
And I remember you telling me, oh, that's the same town that Andy Borger's from.
What did you think when you heard about it?
This is so interesting.
What year was 9-11?
2000?
Okay, and this was 1999.
Yes.

(17:29):
So this was my totally self-centered, like white-knuckling it through life time period.
Right.
This is before I actually think that I turned my attention to like the global.
world, like the world outside of my little personal world.

(17:50):
Because I was this, when I heard about this and when I heard about 9-11, I feel like Iunder responded.
Like I was focused on my boyfriend and my friends and getting done with call.
I think I was graduating or I graduated already.
Yeah, I just, I just did not impact me at the time.
I didn't really, I was, I thought it was weird and awful.

(18:13):
And I, but I remember thinking it was kind of like,
emo kids, know, just angry emo kids.
And it was very much like the movies of the time.
I remember thinking about Natural Born Killers and Thelma and Louise and like, it just hadthat sort of 90s nihilism kind of thing.

(18:34):
But that's really, I was so focused on my little tiny world at the time.
I didn't really even think much about it.
I knew nothing about this until we started and except for the
the rough outlines like the trench coat mafia thing, angry depressed kids, you know, itwas very general.
Now I feel like I finally know about it.

(18:58):
How about you?
That's also a lot of the way that the media portrayed it.
It was very, I mean, that's the problem with a documentary like Bowling for Columbine.
And the kind of tricky thing about Michael Moore in general as a documentarian is there'susually a bias involved and some certain things kind of left out.

(19:18):
But it was like, to say that these were simply misunderstood kids who, if they hadn't beenbullied, would not have carried this out,
think is not accurate, especially when you look at, later on when we discuss more thepsychology of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and how complicated that relationship was,

(19:40):
because certainly looking at the relationship between the two boys, they were not evensimilar in their personalities.
They were a perfect match made in hell, but.
It was a match made in hell.
If it hadn't been Dylan, it would have been someone else, I'm convinced.
But to say simply that all Eric Harris needed was a kind shoulder to lean on and an ear islike the kid was absolutely terrifying and extremely dangerous, very dangerous.

(20:16):
He was like Eddie Haskell.
know, from like uh Leave It to Beaver, remember Eddie Haskell?
He was like the kid who would come over.
He was really nice to the parents, but it was awful.
Yeah.
That's what Eric Harris reminds me of.
Yeah, like a psychopath.
I mean, people are saying he's a psychopath.
psychopath and a narcissist with grandiose, grandiose narcissism, seeing himself as Godand just, one piece of bad news away from destroying what ended up happening, like the

(20:43):
school and Dylan was a little more, and Dylan had a future that keeps coming up.
So I read this book by Randy Brown, who is the father of Brooks Brown.
Brooks Brown was a friend of Dylan Klebold's and
It's an interesting book.
He's not a writer, right?
So you're really feeling the raw emotion coming through.

(21:06):
These are his journals around that time.
And it's interesting when you see how the police department absolutely fucking dropped theball, how the high school dropped the ball.
This was not something that happened out of nowhere.
This was absolutely preventable.
But like every...

(21:27):
kind of authority figure that the Brown family like desperately reached out to for helpjust completely turned the other way.
And for a solid year before the massacre took place, the Brown family, they called thepolice, they said, listen, this kid, Eric Harris is threatening our family, like

(21:51):
threatening our family.
He broke the windshield on our son's car.
There's a website with threats on it.
They are making bombs.
are making pipe bombs and setting them off.
Like, please do something.
And the police took down the information and did absolutely nothing.
So the Brown family, you know, they reported to police and Randy Brown like makes thepoint.

(22:15):
He keeps saying like, we were risking our lives and our son's lives to tell the policethis.
Like we're risking our lives to do this.
because there was this kind of foreshadowing, something really fucking bad is gonna happenif this isn't managed.
And then what's interesting is later on, the police denied that they ever called them.

(22:40):
They denied that reports took place.
And Randy Brown is like, what the fuck?
It's that mind blown moment of like, you were supposed to be the good guys and they weresaving face.
Yeah, and they told the Browns that they had enough information to follow up too and thendeny the whole thing.

(23:02):
I mean, there's that.
There's the failure of the police.
And there's also the failure of Eric's parents.
They found a bomb in his room.
And they didn't do anything with it because they didn't want to detonate it.
And if they reported it, he would have gotten busted.
So they just kept it in their room.
Yeah.
Denial.

(23:23):
Holy shit.
uh
Seriously.
so I know we can get into more of that.
But yeah, mean, they were keeping, his dad was keeping a notebook full of his kidsbehavioral issues listed there.
So it's not like there weren't signs.
know, a year before, this is when they started planning it, when they got busted forbreaking into that van.

(23:47):
then they had to go to that diversion program.
And they were so angry, right?
They were like grievance babies.
They were so angry that this is where they got the like grandiose godlike stuff.
They were like these victimized godlike figures that were gonna, their wrath was going tobe godlike.

(24:07):
And that's where it all started was that I think they were pissed off because they got putinto that diversion program.
And it sounds like it seems like that's when they first started to like plan this thing.
Yes.
So funny enough, when I heard about the thing, I think it's worth mentioning too, youknow, it was 1999.

(24:29):
We didn't have that, the media saturation that we have now.
You we didn't have cell phones that did anything.
I mean, we had cell phones where there wasn't even texting yet.
I mean, that's like, if you're going to be watching anything, it was going to be on yourtelevision.
Cable was king.
People were still watching network TV and also cable television.

(24:49):
So like news would come on, you'd hear about it, but if you left your house, you didn't,know, people would be talking.
Maybe if you went into like a bar or something where the TV was on, you'd hear it.
like, you weren't, we weren't hit with it as much.
So we were able to have some space from it.
I remember thinking, wow, that's crazy.

(25:10):
Yeah.
And that that wasn't anything that I ever even worried about or thought about when I wasin high school.
And high school still wasn't that far away.
was 1999, I graduated in 91.
And I just remember like having some emotional distance from it and just thinking thatthat was crazy.

(25:32):
But I remember that like after that, the school shooting that really fucking got to me wasSandy Hook.
because I had elementary school age children, know, like here we go fast forward now andto 2012.
I think it was 2012.
It was near Christmas time when this happened.

(25:52):
And I remember that I was in San Francisco because I had gone to San Francisco to work forkink.com when they were still based in San Francisco in the armory in the mission
district.
And I remember being there or I think my plane landed.
in Oakland and on the way to the armory, I was seeing the news flashes.

(26:16):
And I remember feeling this intense anxiety because I was away from home and my kids wereat home.
They were safe.
mean, school was over, but it was just this recognition of how things can happen.
So it was terrifying.
And then just the awareness that like, this is a thing, you know?

(26:38):
these things fucking happen and it feels like you have no control.
And to a degree we don't.
We can have protocols in place and thank goodness for that.
Thank goodness for that.
There are lockdown drills now.
My oldest, Adam, there was a lockdown drill, not a lockdown drill, there was a schoollockdown last year.

(27:00):
And I just remember.
him, you know, because again, we all have phones.
He was texting me, Hey, we're okay.
I'm just letting you know, there's a lockdown drill.
was also getting alerts from the school.
Like that's a thing now.
If there's anything that happens, the school alerts.
And I think it's because of situations like Columbine and Sandy Hook and things like that.

(27:23):
Although I'm not sure what, again, we didn't, I didn't look at Sandy Hook again.
It's been a long time since I've like looked in any kind of detail at that.
at how that went down, only looking at Columbine, but there are systems in place now.
There's a heavy police presence near the school.
I don't know if it's because we're so close to the sheriff's department or the sheriff'sstation, but there's a security.

(27:47):
You can't get into the school without a student ID, like all kinds of things.
There's a lot of barriers before you can actually, I guess, successfully pull anything offto any kind of serious degree.
But yeah, I just kind of went off on a tangent there.
It's a fucking heavy topic.
But I guess what I really get out of this case is this didn't come out of nowhere.

(28:13):
This wasn't sudden.
And it's not even just that there were red flags.
There were like actual fucking credible threats being made for a long time before thishappened.
Yeah.
So you know Deets, Park Deets?
He's like a forensic psychiatrist guy.

(28:34):
And he has, he has like a, he does a lot of work on like mass murders and the signs.
I mean, think that's essentially like what we, what's really compelling about this case iswhat it would take to prevent this in the future is people recognizing what's the signs

(28:55):
and responding to them.
And that just did not happen.
But Park Dietz has this great list of things that you see ahead of these kinds of, andit's textbook.
When you look at his list, I'll read you some of it.
Okay.
So the warning signs of mass murder.
He's said a lot about this subject.
And so I'm just going to go through just a couple.

(29:16):
Fascination with violence or weapons, grievance or resentment, uh planning andpreparation.
desire for fame and notoriety, social isolation or alienation, dehumanization of targets,mental health issues, triggering events, expression of violent intent, lack of inhibiting

(29:42):
factors.
So like absence of stabilizing influences.
So you basically have all of them in this case.
It was just seems like a complete failure of the system.
you had, cause you had people going and talking to law enforcement about it.
You had the kids already being arrested and charged with three felonies for breaking intothat truck.

(30:03):
You had, you so you have this like criminal history already making of pipe bombs.
They, that movie they made, the hitman movie that everybody chose clips from in thedocumentaries was a school project.
based on a story that one of them had written, and it's a movie about hiring hitmen.

(30:25):
Eric was going to class and saying things like, had this dream that I keep over and overagain.
I just keep having it where I come to the school and I shoot the whole school up, and inthe end, I blow it up.
And nobody did anything.
One teacher actually reported, wanted to talk to Dylan's parents after he wrote an essayabout a hitman.

(30:46):
that was very, very, very violent and it went nowhere.
Right, it's just, it reminds me of the Gabriel Fernandez thing.
uh
yes.
Like how many times can we fucking report this before the inevitable happens?
Yeah, that was a thing in Randy Brown's book that he brings up too is that what'sinteresting is that they were such good friends with the Klebolds.

(31:15):
So Sue Klebold wrote A Mother's Reckoning where she talks about being essentially themother of a...
a school shooter and all of this stuff.
And some of the criticisms are that, of course, it's going to be heavily biased.
She seems to put all the blame on Eric Harris.

(31:37):
And, you know, Dylan was misunderstood.
He was this, he was that.
Eric is the one that did all of this stuff.
But then at the same time, you see her kind of acknowledge like Dylan did kill people.
Dylan did do these things.
Yes.
And then she kind of like goes back into this thing of like, you know, but what'sinteresting is the Browns also have the hardest time reconciling Dylan's involvement.

(32:04):
And Randy just keeps trying to come up with these different scenarios of like, well, maybeit was this, maybe Dylan's life was threatened.
But then he says like, but then one of the students heard Dylan say, hey, we haven'tkilled anyone with a knife yet.
Like, should we do that next?
So with the dyadic killers, right, there's usually one that's dominant and one that'sstrong and one that's weak.

(32:25):
And I mean, to me, I just think of it like they're an occult, basically.
They're occult, the two of them.
And they just got together and uh reinforced each other's terrible ideas and pumped eachother up.
And that's what happened.
I mean, I feel like it's like any kind of

(32:46):
the way people's minds get shifted when they get recruited into a certain ideology.
But they had this like shared toxic ideology that I think they just reinforced for eachother.
You know, there must have been something, there's something really compelling about thatfor both of them.
You know, one Eric Homicidal, Dylan Suicidal, it's almost like two sides of the same coin.

(33:11):
Yeah, it's interesting.
was one thing that Randy Brown brings up is that with Dylan, Dylan was sensitive, right?
Dylan had a future.
Dylan had gotten into University of Arizona.
He was going to college.
He was very bright.
He went to prom.

(33:32):
He felt feelings of love and attraction.
was warm.
um All of these things that Eric just never exhibited.
Being like an artistic type like Dylan was and I think also having probably, know, hatingColumbine.

(33:55):
Columbine High School was apparently just a very awful school where they, you know, thesports teams were very
you know, exclusive, they made it really hard for new people to even stand a chance.
He just, you know, he was unhappy at Columbine, everyone was, right?

(34:16):
This is the thing where it's not, it's not as though Dylan and Eric didn't have friends.
Like they had friends.
They had their like group that they ran with.
in the same way that the jocks had their group that they ran with and like these differentgroups, like they were part of something.

(34:38):
It wasn't like they were both just alone and picked on.
They did their own bullying as much as they were bullied.
But the way that Columbine High School was structured, sports teams were favored.
Eric was rejected from the baseball team.
So therein lies another kind of

(34:59):
problem that helped kind of uh move Eric along in this kind of trajectory towardsdestruction.
a narcissistic wound.
Yes.
he, you know, he was, he was rejected from, playing sports, but it was, the system was setup to reject anyone that, that the coaches didn't already have in mind.

(35:24):
The football players, a lot of them, there were a lot of these like big shots, you know,athletes that were beating up their girlfriends in school, in front of staff.
The principal was an absolute failure, chose to ignore anything.
A football player does something fucked up.
He's still playing the game.

(35:45):
No one was punished.
So you see this, this strong kind of this current of abuse and misogyny of thesegirlfriends.
mean, don't even get me started on that with these young women getting that kind ofmessaging that early on that they can get beaten up and treated like shit and it's okay.

(36:06):
So you've got a school that's run this way where...
m
It was such a toxic environment and it bred that kind of resentment and anger and rage ontop of someone who is exhibiting all kinds of psychopathic traits.
Well, yeah.
It's like the only people worthy of protection are the jocks.

(36:30):
Yeah, and stuff.
And Randy Brown makes a good point.
He goes, you know, who's fucking responsible for, partially responsible?
Two are the parents of these asshole spoiled brat kids, you know, that are like going toschool and picking on people, you know, and then picking on somebody like, I mean, talk
about poking a bear.

(36:50):
They had a cup of uh human feces thrown at them, Dylan and Eric.
Stuff like that would happen there, which is like a health hazard.
Yeah.
And also humiliating.
And it's interesting, because Brooks Brown, at one point in one documentary I watched,said something like, they were the bottom of the bottom.

(37:14):
We were the bottom.
They were the bottom of the bottom.
But it did seem like they were also
functional like Eric had dates with women I guess girls I guess you know so it was likethis they were like part of the like outcast crew but there was a bunch of them so they
what they did have friends right and so were somewhat functional but but were also kind ofwere taunted and sure yeah

(37:39):
But so were a lot of other people that didn't blow up this fucking school.
I just hate that when people try to think in absolutes and it's like, oh, they did thisbecause they were bullied.
And I'm like, no.
I mean, I think it played a part, but this was also a case of like, there were some kidswho did nothing wrong.

(38:06):
Most of the kids, I mean, I think all of the kids.
They weren't the ones that were bullying.
They were just-
Kids?
Everyone.
They wanted to kill.
They would have bombed the entire city of Denver, but they didn't have the means.
Like, they were that destructive.
They were angry at the, like, it was a thing where they were mad at, at snooty people.

(38:27):
They were mad at rich people.
They were mad at like the, all this stuff, but they were also from semi affluent.
mean, it's not like they, they came from poverty, right?
They were doing just fine financially, but it was, it was, it was a raging againstanything that they saw as elite, I suppose, you know, but this was also.

(38:54):
a bid to be famous.
It was just, you know, if they had to choose between Columbine High School and the city ofDenver and they had the means they would have chosen the city of Denver and left Columbine
alone.
journals said, I mean their journals were like they wanted to kill everyone.
It was like the most misanthropic.
But you the interesting thing is like back to the whole like so invisible, I feel likeinvisibility is so painful for us humans.

(39:20):
I know I have a particular hang up about being invisible.
It's very painful and to think you know I think like they traded that for like beingvisible and being well known for something bad.
That to them was better.
than what they were currently.
So that speaks to the grandiosity piece of, right?

(39:42):
Like, I am God.
The shirts they wore that day, one was Eric was wearing natural selection on his shirt,because he was obsessed with natural selection.
And then Dylan was wearing wrath on his t-shirt.
So there's something about, we are the oppressed victims, but we are God-like and willcrush you.
It's like this power, this thing about having power and control and, you know.

(40:06):
And I know how cathartic that could be if you feel invisible and you feel small and youfeel hated and you feel ridiculed.
But I don't, that's where I get to like, a lot of people feel that way.
It's when they came together and created their little cult that they fomented and sort oflike chewed on and escalated all this stuff, right?

(40:29):
If you didn't have a partner, you'd probably like peter out, you know, like.
There's something uh so that there's a lot of information in the shirts that they worewith Eric wearing natural selection because that is more of like, that speaks to more of
like almost an ideological bent.
Raph on Dylan is like the poet.

(40:50):
It's the feeling.
It's the feeling.
So you've got like the mental, the belief, the hardened kind of narcissistic belief.
Like I am God, natural selection, talking about Darwin, only the fittest survive.
Only I make the decisions here, that you've got Eric.

(41:13):
And you've got Dylan, who's just wrath.
It's just, I'm just angry.
I just have feelings.
But also, this kind of brings to mind, I was thinking about this last night before I wentto sleep.
So I had really fucked up dreams.
And I think back to our,
Vietnam episode we did on like the My Lai Massacre and like the mindset of military andsoldiers and how there's an indoctrination that has to happen so that people can actually

(41:43):
carry out these.
You make a monster, you create a monster.
I feel like Eric created a monster in Dylan.
I think that Dylan, who again, was someone who,
was about to leave, know, Randy Brown keeps bringing that up.
Like Eric is dealing with, you know, he was rejected from playing sports in high school.

(42:07):
Just a few days before the massacre, he was turned, you know, he was denied, the Marineswouldn't let him enlist because he was on medication for depression and obsessive
compulsive disorder.
So he was, there's the rejection of going into the military.
Imagine him in the military.
I'm sorry.

(42:28):
Man, he would have loved it.
So you have that and then the knowledge that Dylan was accepted to a university and wasset to go away to college.
It's that kind of recognition, I think even on Eric's part that Dylan wasn't like him.

(42:49):
So he wanted to make Dylan like him.
he, think, don't want to brainwash is too strong a word and that also I'm
I'm acting as though Dylan had no agency.
And he did some pretty, did some pretty fucking awful and shocking things that day of themassacre from suggesting knifing people, is such a personal act, I think, to knife someone

(43:12):
versus stand at a distance and shoot.
But he also was the one that said some really fucked up racial slurs to Isaiah Scholes,the black kid that was killed in the library.
The last thing that this kid,
heard was uh racial hatred directed at him and then he was killed.

(43:33):
It breaks my heart, the guy who lived, who was sandwiched between him and the other guythey killed, and he just pretended he was dead.
And he's like, those were his friends.
And he could hear Isaiah and the other guy, the other kid, breathing their last breaths ashe was waiting for help to come.
It was so awful.
So awful.

(43:53):
Yeah, and they were calling people stupid.
It's so childish.
Tim was watching one of the documentaries with me, and he was laughing because
Well, I guess they were checking their language because they were making that Hitman moviefor a school project.
So they couldn't curse.
But we were laughing because it was so violent, but they couldn't curse.
So they said words like, know, darn it, or, you know.
And even the insults that they were delivering to some of those students had this edge oflike, they were so childish, like four eyes.

(44:22):
He called somebody four eyes before he shot him.
There were a few things that were said that were, yeah, just, just like.
innocent 1950s kind of.
Yeah, they're kind of vernacular was it's almost as though they weren't actually killingthese people.
it just didn't, it didn't make sense.

(44:44):
you guys know, yeah, you know that you're saying that, right?
As you're wielding this terrifying weapon and killing people, there was such a disconnectthere.
But anyway, yeah, like, you know, Dylan, speaks to, and again, I could be way off, butthere's something that reminds me of like the drill sergeant, you know, boot camp just

(45:10):
prior to, you know, these soldiers being deployed to fucking Vietnam to kill people arebeing told like, you know, kill, kill, kill, you know, the bayonet like in the chest, in
the like, like do this, do that, do this, do that, like these repeated things.
And it's just Dylan was of course, you know, and again, this reminds me of like, when wetalk about the, the underdeveloped teenage brain where Dylan is, is, is of course he's

(45:40):
pissed.
Of course he doesn't like to get picked on.
Of course he's, he's, you know, dealing with just an uncertain future.
He's, he's a teenager.
He's got all these things going on.
For whatever reason, there's something seductive about Eric Harris, Eric Harris'scertainty.
know, cause I feel like there was such a certainty to the way that Eric spoke, like in hisjournals.

(46:05):
And I'm just imagining him like looking at Dellen and saying, this is the way it is.
This is who you are.
This is who we are.
We, we, we, like we are gods.
We are doing this.
And...
bonded.
They're bonded and again, Dylan is not, he's of course dealing with his own mental healthissues.

(46:28):
He's depressed, he deals with suicidal ideation, but it's like the worst possible thingthat could have happened was him becoming such good friends with someone like Eric Harris.
It's really true, you know, who you hang out with.
You know, your peers are everything.
There's like actual, like there's science behind it.

(46:51):
Like the, you know, the people that have the greatest influence on your children, it's notthe family, it's their friends, which is why it's so important.
And why the Browns were warning Sue Klebel, they were like, hey, you gotta keep Dylan awayfrom Eric Harris.
And then in the book, you know, Randy Brown writes, know, she didn't listen.

(47:13):
She didn't listen.
She did, you know.
I don't think she saw.
mean, it's interesting.
People think depression, this is, just put my little pitch here.
I feel like depression is sort of misunderstood sometimes.
like, I think a lot of the reason for depression is environmental and behavioral.

(47:34):
And there are, I think, cases where there's like a biological situation happening.
But I think more often than not, it's like,
We live in a depressogenic world.
We have a depressogenic lifestyle.
But you know, part of depression, this is just from my own experience.
You know, I was talking to Joanne, my consultant once about, I have this thing where Ifear people being mad at me and being irritated with me.

(47:59):
And we were talking about that and how a lot of that is that I live with a very cruel,internal, hostile, internal
thing that's always telling me that I'm wrong, what I'm doing is not right, you know, andI have a lot of hostility toward the world sometimes and other people.

(48:21):
depression looks like this thing that's like self-hatred turned inward, but there's a lotof rage in there, I think, and hostility and like living with a hostile internal
monologue.
But
And it doesn't take much to shift that, to externalize it.

(48:45):
And so I imagine for Dylan, this is just me speculating, that there was a lot of anger andturmoil in there and not a way to, didn't know how to deal with it.
It looked very quiet, maybe to his parents, right?
He's isolating.
He's just being a moody teen.
But what was simmering in there was far more uh toxic.

(49:06):
And then he found this person who's
normalizing, externalizing that kind of anger and blaming others instead of living withlike, I'm bad, something's wrong with me, right?
No, actually, something's wrong with all of you and we're gonna kill you.
There's something probably cathartic and relieving about that.

(49:27):
Right.
And that is something that comes up, like Randy Brown asks over and over again, how couldDylan say the thing about the knife?
Like, let's do this.
Or how could Dylan say the dehumanizing thing to Isaiah Scholes?
And again, it's something that is like, there is, we've talked about this before also inthe Vietnam episode, there's an arousal level that comes up when you are firing weapons.

(49:56):
when you have already dehumanized everyone to be able to do the thing that you're doing,right?
At that point in the library, they were already so deep in that of course he's going todehumanize, right?
They already have that.
That's how you do what you do.
And so that's the disconnect.

(50:19):
That's why we see like, you know, the vets coming back from Vietnam broken because theyhad done these things.
that they had been trained to do.
And then they come back and they try to reintegrate in, they are so far gone.
And I feel like at that point, Dylan was already so far gone.

(50:40):
And again, I am also speculating as far as how to reconcile Dylan Klebold taking part inthis massacre when he had been by all accounts, not just from Sue Klebold's
you know, obviously very biased as a mother, claims about her son, but also the Browns,you know, who are trying to make sense of this because they, all of them knew a different

(51:04):
Dylan.
oh
the contextual stuff comes in.
It's like we are different in different contexts and he was a fine loving little kid butyou give him a year of this kind of weird fantasy stuff that he's doing with Eric and a
year to be radicalized.
I mean it doesn't take long.

(51:24):
more than a year to be radicalized.
feel like, I mean, they met a lot earlier on.
it was, he had years to kind of build up to this point and then just kind of like go overthe edge with.
But I think that's both of them, though, because I think it takes a special person to stayin that kind of relationship.

(51:46):
I wouldn't have stayed in that relationship if somebody started talking to me aboutbuilding.
But they built 23 bombs in one month together.
I'd get out of that.
It would scare the shit out of me, no matter how depressed I was.
so I think you have to be like, he must have been primed to be part of this culty,dangerous.

(52:08):
Like a lot of people, if somebody wanted to rob a van, I would be like, no way.
So there's something about his own curiosity in there or his own willingness to follow,which might've been it.
Yeah, who knows?
Maybe if it wasn't Eric Harris, maybe he would have gotten with the fucking Hare Krishnas.

(52:30):
We don't know.
There are those people where you're like, man, that person right there, you can sell.
I got a bridge to sell you.
How are you not seeing this?
How is this happening?
yeah.
It's interesting that Brooks Brown was spared.
I think it's worth mentioning that.

(52:53):
Brooks Brown.
So here's the thing too with the book.
It's fucking wild.
It is so worth reading, uh this book by Randy Brown about Columbine, his journals, becauseyou're watching him.
deal with in kind of real, like a real time, because these are his journals, and thenhe'll like kind of go in and say, okay, this was written, blah, blah, blah, this was going

(53:19):
on.
So, you know, because it's journals, you're going to get a lot of like stuff that feelslike it's, he's reiterating stuff, he's revisiting stuff, he's fantasizing about like,
okay, what if it's this, what if this had happened and said, so there's a lot of that.
But it's interesting because he himself deals with some suicidal ideation as the father of

(53:40):
of, you know, of Brooks and Erin.
Erin escaped the school and Brooks was told by Eric Harris, strangely enough, hey, I likeyou, get out of here, you know?
And so like he runs, you know, leaves and then calls his dad.
He's like, you know, this thing happened.
And then, you know, Erin manages to get home and they're okay.

(54:04):
They're spared.
But even though his kids,
were spared, his kids were fine, they were alive.
He found himself just wanting to die, you know?
And then of course there's the mother of one of the victims who did kill, the motherkilled herself like several months later.
wow, I didn't know about that.

(54:24):
That's awful.
Yeah, her daughter, I want to say, was survived it, but was in a wheelchair, right?
And so you're watching just this grieving process and how a family is reckoning witheverything that happened.
There's also survivor's guilt.

(54:45):
There's all of that.
But the thing that's fucking crazy is how the department
and the school conspired against the Brown family.
The department tried to say that Brooks was involved somehow.
And so Randy Brown is like, what's amazing too is he becomes like Gavin De Becker, who'skind of our hero, Like gift of fear and all of the stuff.

(55:16):
Like what a fucking great guy.
He just on his own, not getting paid anything just, wanted to help the Browns.
checked in on them a year later, how are you doing, all of that.
Gavin De Becker did?
Yes.
my God.
So he wrote the, just so people who don't know, he wrote the book, The Gift of Fear.

(55:36):
which is such a great book.
Absolutely worth reading too.
uh I should reread it again.
I remember my mom recommended it to me after I graduated college, cause she's like, readthis, you know, because he's saying like, listen, generally speaking, things don't happen
out of nowhere.
Like there's usually signs you need to learn how to read the signs, you know, like there'salmost always plenty of clear indicators that something's about to go down.

(56:06):
But it's crazy.
It scares me, you know, because what happens when you do everything right?
And the people that are in positions of authority and power don't help you.
And then they're like, whoops, my bad.
Well, let's just pin it on the kid that also reported to the police, like, hey, theseguys, like, they're my friends, but guess what?

(56:31):
They're doing these things.
There's this website, which is
all but spelling out what their plans are.
And then the cops do nothing, realize they fucked up and then claim that reports werenever filed.
And somehow Brooks Brown must be involved.
So then you've got like other people's parents that like putting Brooks in danger, right?

(56:56):
Putting this family in further danger when they were just trying really hard to get Ericand Dylan behind bars and given help.
You know, that shit scares me.
Yeah, mean, we have so little control over things in the world.

(57:18):
And I guess the evidence sort of falling on deaf ears, there's something horrifying aboutthat.
The people that could do something about it didn't do anything about it, including theparents.
Yes.
And then law enforcement.
I don't know if that's a cultural thing.
It's very interesting to think about how

(57:41):
how we do and don't respond to threats.
We're not very good at responding to threats that aren't immediate, imminent as humans.
I still have no earthquake plan.
eh But seeing that website, it's surprising.
Well, exactly.
Well, the parents were covering it up.

(58:01):
The parents.
But Brooks Brown's parents reported the bombs.
where they were being detonated.
They even spoke to the fucking bomb squad.
And Randy Brown is like, I can tell you what the room looked like that I went into in thedepartment.
He's like, we weren't fucking lying.

(58:22):
What the fuck?
I bet you, think they really were just covering their asses.
But the thing about it is, like, I wonder about the culture.
You know, it's like, oh, a couple of like middle-class white boys just getting into, know,but if they looked different, if they were from a different socioeconomic background, they

(58:44):
may have taken action.
But you know, there is this like kind of like old west kind of component to the, waslistening to an interview with Dave Cullen, the guy who wrote the other book.
Columbine.
And he was saying that, yeah, there's just an element of like, the city wasn'tincorporated.
They were relying on Littleton's, like the county police and the county fire.

(59:06):
They didn't have any of their own services.
And then there was like an old faction of people that lived there that had been there forhundreds of years.
And then there was like new people that had never lived in the state before that moved in.
And it was just a sprawling suburbs.
I feel like there must, there might've been some sort of sense of like,
There's no real danger here because these kids are all somewhat affluent and white.

(59:29):
You would think that people would learn their lesson from this.
But I know it's happened again and again and again where people aren't reading thesciences.
I just think it's a matter of training.
I think you really have to train people.
I think you have to support people in taking that step, including parents.
I know your kid didn't like it when they were

(59:50):
you know, arrested and charged with three felonies and put in a diversion program before,but you're going to have to do this to save people, you know, like.
Yeah, also, your kid was fucking put in a diversion program.
Yeah, get your kid some help.
And then here's the thing is they, mean, Eric was medicated and so was Dylan.
But the dad, like that is wild to me.

(01:00:13):
You've got these two fathers, you've got Randy Brown writing in his journal the fact thathe's scared about uh Eric and Dylan and then trying to tell their friend the Klebolds,
like get Eric away from Dylan.
Then you've got Eric's dad who's like also writing in a journal.
and completely glossing over, I mean, the cognitive dissonance.

(01:00:37):
Like, I see that my kid is behaving strangely.
He built a bomb.
He's just a little stinker, you know?
Like, like, like.
I think ultimately you could be cynical about this or you could be like not cynical aboutit.
And if you're not cynical, you could say, this is all a fucking cry for help.

(01:00:59):
A website where you talk about bomb making?
I feel like he was totally invisible to his parents.
mean, and actually like maybe why he spared, this is me speculating, why he spared BrooksBrown was because, I mean, Brooks Brown's family actually tried.
to corral him and contain him and hold him accountable.

(01:01:24):
And no one else did.
And there's something.
There's no, there's something very, that's a sign because Eric went from threatening theBrown family's lives, right?
So he went from that.
He had an ample opportunity to kill Brooks Brown right there.
Like he was gonna fucking shoot up the school anyway.

(01:01:45):
But he spared Brooks Brown, like you're saying, and I think you're onto something, whichis, he spared Brooks Brown because Brooks Brown was the only one that fucking cared
enough.
to fight back with to him and to convince him.
That what they were doing was wrong, right?
It's informant neglect to not have boundaries with your kids and to not hold themaccountable.

(01:02:09):
And I just think he was, I mean, getting away with everything and that's to his detriment.
And he's telling people at school, he's having dreams about blowing the school up.
He's making hitman videos.
He's making a website about his pipe bombs.
I mean, what more do you guys need?
And Dylan straight up told Brooks, yeah, here's the website.
Here's the website.

(01:02:29):
You could say that that's code for tell your fucking parents, please.
I'm too far gone here.
And Brooks did.
I also want to add, because people may not know, but Eric and Dylan got their weaponsillegally.
They had a friend, a female friend, procure the weapons for them.

(01:02:51):
And then somebody else sold them to him, some older kid.
And then he ends up going to jail for that.
I just, it's a thing that I want to make a point to mention because it's never mentionedin bowling.
I don't think, it's not fair for me to say that, but I don't think that it's mentioned inbowling for Columbine that they got their weapons illegally.

(01:03:13):
And they fucking made the bombs out of scratch.
Yeah.
Household objects and recipes from online.
Yeah, it's a scary thing.
reminds me a little bit of during, you know, we had that situation where we were beingthreatened by these mentally disturbed neighbors.

(01:03:36):
And it was during COVID and the police were just not available.
And that was the point at which I'm like, I can't rely on law enforcement to protect me.
I'm gonna have to.
protect my own family, I'm gonna have to arm and defend myself.
But it's things like this.
It's like, there's this imminent threat to the Brown family and the police did nothing.

(01:04:03):
It's just scary, you know?
It's scary.
Like any domestic violence situation, it's like horrifying because you really can't beprotected.
Right?
Like what's a good, what good is a restraining order when it comes to a homicidal maniacwho wants you dead?
100 % like we got like a permanent restraining order and I'm like, that's cool.

(01:04:24):
This person has made it very clear.
They're mentally ill and don't care about the law.
they have done so they had this person had already for existing restraining orders fromother people.
Yeah.
So like that was some shit.
Like you, you, you start to realize how vulnerable, you know, there's this, these, thiskind of myth around just call.

(01:04:50):
for help, call the police, call, you know, and it's like, but what about when they don't?
I mean, I'm lucky because I live in an area now with really good law enforcement.
did it before, but yeah, like it is that.
And that's a good point, you know, with the Harrises and the Klebolds, you've got, know,Eric Harris's dad was like former military and you've got, you know, the Klebolds, like

(01:05:13):
they're all nice middle-class white suburban people and
That's Columbine and it's interesting to kind of look back on it now.
But yeah, you see all the time now, you know, there's, lockdown drills that happen.
Shane had one at her school a couple years ago.
It really scary.

(01:05:34):
Someone was there with a gun on her campus.
Yeah, and they, we could text about it.
It did, I mean, I think it really shaped, know, these generational things shape our minds.
You we were coming of age when shootings happened in movie theaters.
I remember that came first, it seemed like, and then like,

(01:05:55):
Colors, when Colors was out, remember?
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
But then this, so we didn't grow up with this, but like I said last time we were talkingabout this, there are younger people that I work with in my practice and it left a mark on
them.
You know, it's an association they have, know, school and violence, school and potentialdeath, you know?
So another friend of mine was about to enter high school when this happened.

(01:06:19):
So.
As our generation, it happened later in our lives.
It didn't leave quite the same mark, but it definitely, as a parent, it's now, it's inthere, as in the world of possibilities.
And it's terrifying.
One thing I will say that I appreciate now is bullying just isn't tolerated like withinthe schools, you know, the way that it once was.

(01:06:47):
But I also really resent this idea that somehow bullying is what caused this to happen.
I think I was part of it.
Yeah, sure.
Like it was, it didn't help.
It didn't help.
But again, had they had the option of blowing up Denver and blowing up Columbine, I thinkthey would have chosen Denver.

(01:07:13):
They would have chosen something on a larger scale.
If they had been socially successful, my guess is this wouldn't have happened.
I think that it has that much of an influence on this kind of psychology.
Like a lot of people, right?
Like if you're a grandiose narcissist, you're not going to like being the bottom of thebottom.

(01:07:36):
you're not going to adjust to it, really.
But yeah, I think it's a factor.
it's not like, yeah, it's reductionist to say, you know,
They did it because they were bullied, right?
Yeah, that's a gross oversimplification and it absolutely ignores the massive mentalhealth problems that Eric had and Dylan had.

(01:08:02):
But yeah, I mean, it's interesting to think, how would, I know we kind of talked aboutthis a little bit with Paris Bennett, how would Eric's psychopathy have,
have kind of played out had he also, I mean, he's another one that had a very disruptivechildhood.

(01:08:22):
He moved constantly and he didn't like it.
He was constantly moved.
was constantly the new kid in every school.
Finally, they settled in Littleton, but that didn't change the fact that he had to dealwith this constant moving around.
I mean, the jocks at the school were acting like psychopaths.
The jocks at the school were fucking psychopaths.

(01:08:44):
They just had to successful.
Right.
And they just happen to have stable social worlds.
I mean, I think it's terribly, I would have probably cracked if I had been moved aroundlike that as a kid.
I would have seriously, for whatever reason, for me, the most important thing was havingmy social circle and stability around that, like as a kid.

(01:09:06):
So yeah, I mean, I just think of him as like a tumbleweed, like no roots.
That nihilistic thing can totally take hold, think, probably.
Where you have to start over from scratch over and over again.
And you're just walking into this context that's so hostile most of the time.
I remember when new girls would come to my school, I'd be like, well, I feel sorry foryou, especially if you're pretty.

(01:09:27):
It was just not a good thing to walk into this little insular community.
I think it's massive, the social stuff.
If you can get someone.
a good nice social group, I think it has a lot of positive impact in mitigating otherthings in childhood.

(01:09:52):
But you know, who wants to hang out with a psychopath?
So it makes sense that he wasn't really killing it with, you know.
Well, no, who wants to hang out with the psychopath unless he had made the baseball team?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Unless he'd made one of those elite sports teams where he could then turn around and pickon and bully his girlfriend.
Yeah.
His girlfriend beat her up.

(01:10:12):
It's fine.
Go ahead.
Beat up your girlfriend.
It's the principal.
It thinks you're awesome.
Cause you're a jock.
No, that's the thing.
Like at, at school, one of the things that I noticed that I appreciate is
You can be like at the boys school, you know, there are out gays and lesbians that are notgetting picked on.

(01:10:33):
You know what I mean?
That was something that like, shit, if you weren't, well, no, that's not fair.
I went to a performing arts high school.
So like there were a lot of just people that you, you, was like, who you are.
Like I was very fortunate in that way to go to like a school with theater kids and dancersand things like that.
And no one cared if you were that.
But I know in some of the other more traditional high schools that was a problem.

(01:10:57):
If you fucking weren't wearing the right clothes you were picked on.
oh And so like, it's a cool thing because if you're a bully at the boys school, likeyou're an asshole.
And like there's a whole like, there's a whole wrestling team that'll fucking take yourass down if you're picking on somebody smaller than you.

(01:11:18):
Like it's like they look down on that shit.
Now again, there's other things going on that are not so great, but it's a thing where youcan be a weirdo, like Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris, go to a school now, and you're gonna
find your people, you're gonna find your tribe, you know?

(01:11:38):
And no one's gonna pick on you because that means they're the fucking asshole.
Now again, I can't speak for all high schools, but the ones that I'm most familiar withwhere I live.
uh
And again, I know we live on the West Coast, so it's a little different like living in, uhyou know, like the Los Angeles area or San Francisco or things like that.

(01:12:00):
So I don't know how, maybe it's different in smaller towns, but.
Well, think the social norm, I mean, that's the thing about like shame and, you know, likechanging the norms is important.
Somebody in one of the documentaries I was watching said something like, here's an idea,like make a school that people don't want to blow up.

(01:12:21):
Like make a school where the adults hold people accountable for their bad behavior, wherepeople are friendly and welcoming and warm and there isn't bullying.
And that's the best tactic.
Like, there's like the now there are like the zero tolerance policies around bullying.
Yeah.
So like that's, that's helpful.
Oh, it's crazy.

(01:12:42):
It's so weird to think back on some, something, an event like Columbine and also just likethinking about the Browns and how their lives are forever changed, you know, and, this is
just the Browns.
This is the Browns who have children that, that, that were, you know,
that survived that.

(01:13:04):
But even just how close it came, Brooks Brown coming face to face with Eric Harris, whojust happened to be like, hey, get out of here.
It could have gone another way.
And I'm sure that Randy Brown and his wife, Judy, think about that all the fucking time.
Shit, everything could have changed.
But also, what more could we do?
I know some people were mad at them and said, well, you should have told their parents.

(01:13:25):
You should have told the Klebolds and the Harrises.
oh
that that was gonna happen and he's like, and then have them like, try to protect the kidseven more.
Like what are the parents gonna do?
The parents are gonna be like, please don't say anything, we'll handle it.
And he goes, and then what?
I'm gonna believe them?
You know?

(01:13:46):
I had to go to the police because this was an imminent threat.
And then the police didn't fucking do anything, but it's like, it's like, it's the whatabout-ism, you know?
It's like, well, what about telling their, what about doing this instead?
It's like, it's easy for you to say now.
after everything has happened.
But like also, Randy's like, you don't think that we fucking like we're wringing our handsover how to deal with this?

(01:14:09):
You know?
It's interesting.
It is a very, it's not as simple as the media played it out to be.
And I'd be curious to know what Columbine is like now.
I wonder what it's like now.
Should we look it up and see?
think that the Browns and the Klebolds still live there.

(01:14:33):
I think so.
I think a lot of people stayed.
Okay.
wow.
I know that the Browns, like Erin, think Brooks graduated, you know, but Erin stayed.
He had another couple of years and Randy was like, okay, all right, man.
uh You know.

(01:14:55):
I mean, at least it's like when a plane crash happens, you're like, I guess it's theperfect time to fly because there is a high alert.
So it's like, now that that happened, maybe people will mind their, will be aware.
Yeah.
ah shoulda, coulda, woulda.
I mean, I guess it's hard to know.
Is this a kid with an imagination?

(01:15:16):
Is this an angry kid writing stories about shooters and
you know, just to work through their feelings or is this actually a threat?
You know, it's, I don't know.
It's like, it's so hard to, I can understand how it might be challenging to take that upas a sign on its own, like as a teacher, you know.

(01:15:41):
I think maybe if everyone was talking, it would have gone a lot better.
Like if the police were talking to the teachers and the teachers talking to the police andthe parents were talking to the police and the teachers, and then everybody was comparing
notes, they could maybe have put the picture together better.
man, that website all but said, hey, I don't know how much more, like, I feel like in thecase of Eric Harris, he all but walked around with a loud fucking megaphone saying, I am

(01:16:09):
going to blow up the fucking school.
Like, I don't know what more.
I see that maybe if it had just been like writing stories or making video projects.
if it had just been that, because there's always, you know, the, what do you call it?
The guys of, you know, fiction and being creative, but everything else from out and outtelling students, students telling uh other people, and then bottom line is the Browns

(01:16:40):
going to the cops and saying, our lives have been threatened and our son's lives have beenthreatened and they're blowing, they're detonating bombs.
please do something they needed, especially with their record.
They had a fucking criminal record already.
And they didn't follow up.
They never followed up.
They might as well have thrown the to the parents.

(01:17:04):
Like, part of me is like, if I made it...
So I have had to make CPS reports before.
Right.
And I follow up.
And mostly they're like, nope, sorry, we're not going to investigate.
em But I can understand giving up on that too, thinking that they're going to take care ofit, washing your hands of it, and kind of moving on.
But I would pester people probably.
If I was a teacher or a parent, I'd be like following up and being like...

(01:17:27):
they had, I think the Browns, it's a matter of like, the police seemed like they weretaking it seriously at first.
They even spoke to like the bomb squad people.
It seemed like things were being taken seriously.
And then so time went on, presumably life goes on and you don't notice and then thingsstart to crop up again.

(01:17:50):
So I think that's the thing.
Because the only thing they have to go on is,
that their lives aren't being disrupted anymore, you know?
m
Well, that's crazy.
Yes it is.
Sad.

(01:18:11):
Anyway, How do we transition?
What's a good transition out of this?
If you see something, say something,
Yeah, that's all you can do, man.
And then let us know your thoughts on Columbine.
Maybe we have some listeners who were there during that time, you know, living nearby ormaybe they live there now and how something like this kind of has transformed the

(01:18:43):
community, if at all, you know.
And, I do have to say that there was, it was funny, kind of Randy Brown was saying like,uh
He goes, I didn't know we were dealing with Keystone cops.
I liked that.
It funny.
It was like a kind of a moment of just like, You know, just befuddled like what?

(01:19:03):
Yeah, no, seriously.
Like gross incompetence.
And by the way, it took them, didn't it take them three hours to get to the teacher whohad been shot?
I thought it was
She dragged herself to like, yes, the male.
teacher, the male teacher that died, he was alive for a long time.
It took them like three hours to get to him.
And when they got him out of there, he died.

(01:19:25):
He could have lived if they would have.
But they had, it was like a labyrinth.
I mean, it was, they had to go room by room and clear each room.
But you would think they would start somewhere bigger, like then each individualclassroom, like go to the library.
The was completely fucked up.
Like the whole thing, like there was the teacher and the Patty and the 911 operator.

(01:19:49):
And I get it.
911 is only going based off of what they're hearing, but it was like, help is on the way.
And she sat there for three fucking hours.
And then it wasn't even the SWAT team, police, paramedics, anything that got her out.
It was like a fellow person that was in there that got her out.
So she just sat there and fucking waited.
Well, the crazy thing is, is that 911 operator, there was an open line and she could hearthem shooting people and saying what they were saying.

(01:20:16):
So they knew that this was happening in the library, but somehow the SWAT team didn't justgo immediately to the library.
Like it just blows my mind.
Yeah, no, that's something that Randy Brown talks about is it wasn't just the cops failureto do anything prior to this happening, but it was like the day of it was the gross
incompetence there on the fucking campus.

(01:20:37):
oh know, but no, everyone wants to look like a fucking hero.
You know, they just like, they don't want to put out like it's again, this there's, if Irecall correctly, the media was acting as though these were heroic.
people and it's like, the hero was the teacher that lost his life trying to save people.
It was the students trying to keep each other safe.

(01:21:00):
You know, it was the fucking teachers like calling 911 and it was the people that were inthere, like just doing the best they could.
Those are the fucking heroes, you know?
And this is not to say that there are some fucking good like cops and shit.
Oh yeah.
shit all the time.

(01:21:20):
That one school shooting, that one where they showed the like body cam, where they justraced in there and were all, and like found the person and like neutralized them.
killed them.
That was the Christian school.
Yeah, dude, that body camp, that person, that cop, he's just like.
That's who I want coming to get me.

(01:21:42):
Exactly.
And there's a chance, like, it's just a funny thing.
I'm like, when do you need a psychopath?
You need a psychopath that is like, not afraid and will just go in there and neutralizethe, the fucking enemy.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's interesting, but yeah, I'd love to know people's thoughts and you know,you don't have to agree with anything we say, but be respectful, you know, just that'd be

(01:22:08):
awesome.
And let us know your thoughts if you've had any experiences, if you were in Columbine oraround Columbine when this happened, if you were impacted in any way.
It's always very, very interesting and edifying when we have listeners like tell us like,hey, actually I live, I'm from that town.

(01:22:30):
This is my perspective on it.
It's always helpful.
Yeah.
Context.
It's nice to add ads context.
Yes.
And I would like to also say that if we choose to do an episode on what Jackie St.
James sent me that I'm going to send to you, Shannon, uh I'd like to apologize in advancebecause it is fucking dark.

(01:22:57):
Let's end with that one, because we're going to do one more and then have our season end,right?
10 episodes.
I think we'll do 10.
Mama needs a break.
Mama needs a break.
Mama's tired from all this podcasting.
oh
But our Patreon will be alive and well.

(01:23:17):
Yes.
Yes.
Well, because I want to, after this episode, if we can do the episode where we bring onKayden to discuss our revisiting the uh subject of the case against the sexual revolution,
I think that would be great.
I think that'd be really interesting.
Yeah, we could end with that one and start with a gnarly one.

(01:23:42):
Yeah, because the other one is more, it's almost more like kind of philosophical.
And I mean, it's just, a debate that just is going on and on about kind of where we are asa society with regard to young women, misogyny and sex work and all of that.

(01:24:04):
But before then,
We'll talk about it.
don't know.
I'm going to send you the thing and we'll see if we want to do it.
Anyway, gang, thank you so much for listening.
Please leave us a five star review.
That would be really awesome.
And thank you to those that have already.
We really appreciate it.

(01:24:25):
Thanks for your feedback.
Please follow us on our Instagram at secret passage podcast.
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(01:24:46):
And we would love to have like an open dialogue conversation in the Patreon as well.
Please give us any episode ideas that you may have, anything you'd like us to cover, we'dbe happy to do it.
And that is it.
That's it!
Thanks for listening.
see you next week.
Yes.

(01:25:06):
Thank you so much, guys.