308: Zohran

In this episode, Professor Mouse, the Cosmologist, and Teddy have a wide-ranging discussion on Zohran Mamdani's mayoral victory. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
It's like a clown.

Speaker 3 (00:01):
No, don't this little page he's bagging boarding batman and
the gut or like a maze story tellers me some fellas,
we some felons.

Speaker 4 (00:06):
Isn't amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
It's like appella bearver sell it because this shit is
so contagious.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Mouths on the.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Summer reason pile like that the shells while the cycle
spinning knowledge on the getty like appro beat the babo,
be the rabbit. Don't step to the squad. We get
activic and hate. It's like a stepla parts. You don't
like fish talk, do you hate? It's a matl we
the cuttle fish killers tender pools on the taping the
Greatest Spider Stars. If you cherish your life, Bucky Barneshit
squad spraying leg and your pipe.

Speaker 5 (00:36):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another vision of is It's just bad?
Is It's just about the best podcast you never heard of.
I'm your host, Professor Mouse, joined as always by the
Steviee Cosmologists.

Speaker 6 (00:47):
We made it. We're back from the undead, made it
through the spookiest month and uh though, depending on who
you are and what your family life is like, it's
possible that the holiday season is significantly spooky, Penelope.

Speaker 7 (01:03):
It's true.

Speaker 4 (01:04):
There's gonna be there's gonna be so many like.

Speaker 5 (01:07):
Kids defending Zora and Mondami at the fucking Thanksgiving table.

Speaker 6 (01:14):
Yeah, get get armored up for your election results. That
was actually interesting, Yeah, because so uh many places in
the US did not have an election this year, but
a couple of very key places did, and Virginia had
some interesting results because they had their Republican governor was

(01:39):
term limited. I had to leave, and so governor, lieutenant governor,
and attorney general were all up for grabs. And the
attorney general spot was interesting because late in the game,
the Democratic nominee had some text mess old text messages

(02:00):
released where he was talking about how he was wishing
death on his Republican colleagues opponents. This is years and
years old, but some previous drama about how they ought
to be shot. And despite as we've talked about many times,

(02:21):
the general positivity that police have for shooting people, every
police I use the word union loosely, every police organization
came out with a big joint ad to be like,
we can't trust this guy, he's too violent. How dare
he add? No cop in Virginia supports this man and

(02:45):
he's too woke and like somehow too woke and two
leftists but also too violent, which is this weird like
liberals and leftists are somehow weak and you know, pacifistic,
but also we'll line you up against the wall if
you're Chris back views. So this is like, you know,
it's it's the it's the beautiful sort of big brother

(03:05):
effect of the enemy is always stronger than you and
weaker than you and terrifying but also craven and like
it gets everything all at once. Well, this guy wins,
and so the Democrat wins governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney

(03:25):
general and Virginia, interestingly, the Republican governor gubernorial candidate Earl
Sears I think is the woman's last name, big maga Republican,
but who Trump specifically did not endorse. I think she
criticized him or over the like trying to overthrow a

(03:49):
capital or something, you know, big fundamentalist, religious gun nut,
hates trans people, all your you know, main checkboxes for
really trash person. Trump still refuses to endorse her. She loses.
Trump endorses other candidates running they also lose. So now
we've got it like not mattering whether or not he

(04:12):
specifically puts his foot down one way or the other,
which is interesting. You know, this is probably a preview
some mid terms, if you're familiar to dear listener with
midterm elections in the United States, it is always a
pendulum swing in whatever the opposite direction is of whatever
the most recent election was. But we've got a number

(04:34):
of different interesting sort of results here, so notably the
Democrats who won women in Virginia and somewhere else New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
I don't remember. They're all what are called CIA Democrats.

(04:54):
They there's a whole crew of Democratic congress people and
now elected official in various states who came out of
the Intelligence Agency. They form a block of deep in.
They've got, you know, naval intelligence background, CIA background, spy background,

(05:14):
all this stuff. So it's not all you know, rosy there.
They are the least sort of like progressive socialists, but
it's something. And of course we've got Zoron in New York. Interesting.
What I loved about that story, and I'm curious about

(05:36):
your take on it, is Cuomo being a big, fat
sore loser, could not handle losing the primary, decided to
run as an in dependent gets a bunch of billionaire backers.
Other folks who lost that primary do endorse Zoron, including uh.

(06:00):
I gotta say this right, because what I read was
highest ranking Jewish elected official in New York, which means
it's happens to be Jewish, and he is elected in
New York. The Jew He's not like the col Heyne
Goodole of New York or something. He's not like a
religious leader. He just happens to be Jewish.

Speaker 5 (06:20):
It's like the phrase that like conspiracy theorist would use
to describe, like.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
Yeah, the Rothschild's right exactly, Yeah he's not right.

Speaker 6 (06:30):
He didn't they didn't all get together and like give
him a ceremonial bagel. He's just happens to be of.
So Trump came out and said any Jew who votes
for zre On is stupid. And this guy goes, hey,
I'm endorsings are on. You don't get to tell tell
Jews how to vote, you know, nuts to you. And

(06:51):
here we are with what is interesting of like less
progressive or about as progressive as FDR as far as
I can tell of, like oh, some public works programs
and free buses and like really nice, very specific, very actionable,
very clear social programs. Nothing that seems like super crazy

(07:15):
to me. But what do you what's your take on
his sort of like DSA flavor.

Speaker 4 (07:23):
No, free buses is revolutionary.

Speaker 5 (07:26):
It is free transit is free transit is an amenity
that would like radically alter the lives of New Yorkers.

Speaker 6 (07:35):
It's really exciting. I guess I am spoiled for having
had free transit briefly where I live, though it got acted.

Speaker 5 (07:45):
Is like is is intentionally scaled to keep some people
out of places that they don't want them. Yeah, in
New York City, it's a lot of flat rate stuff,
but it is. It is burdensome and like like nationalizing

(08:09):
and nationalizing like public transit and a lot of public
works is like in the Communist Manifesto. It's like one
of the one of the points that this sort of
marks brings up.

Speaker 4 (08:21):
And the kind of like uh mundane.

Speaker 5 (08:27):
Changes that uh he's running on were the things that
people were the most responsive to.

Speaker 6 (08:35):
That's what I love about them is they're so obvious
and so like concrete that when you have somebody like
trying to like, oh, socialism is so scary, and like,
what what is it You're afraid of free buses, childcare?
What's scary?

Speaker 4 (08:54):
I don't get it.

Speaker 6 (08:54):
What's scary about that?

Speaker 8 (08:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (08:57):
And rent rent, rent control, rent freeze is lowering the
cost of affordability, taxing billionaires uh two percent, uh, redirecting
that into social service programs, creating a Department of public
safety like.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
FDR shit. FDR was like a.

Speaker 5 (09:15):
Big champion of the police and was not necessarily uh
doing New Deal era politics for the greater good as
much as he was doing it to kickstart the economy.

Speaker 4 (09:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (09:33):
So you know, it's interesting, there's like a there's a
way that the the the kind of left, leftist progressive
politics that a lot of people do respond to hasn't
been named as socialism or has been disparaged using that

(09:55):
terminology and zoron just kind of embracing the titles. Is
I think the right move Yeah, like I am what
you say, I am kind of thing, And that's that's

(10:15):
not a problem. And it's so not a problem that
he managed to win in a very difficult mayoral race,
Like when you have that many candidates running, you have
the incumbent running, you have the former governor, running who
is like dog whistling to hell and like trying to

(10:37):
really get those Staten Island votes, which I believe he did,
and a Republican running like there is a really good
chance that Zorin could have lost because it's just like
the vote was just bifurcated so much that Cuomo slips
into the mayoralty, which was like the goal at the
end of the day.

Speaker 6 (10:58):
What's cool, though, is that it's a record voter turnout,
Like that's really interesting because that speaks to and we
send the pols kind of Virginia were similar of a
lot of people voting and voting Democrat who don't like
either party, like this sucks, I don't like anybody you
know in this case, find whatever, I'll vote for the

(11:20):
least worst option. But what's more interesting about that is
just massive numbers. It's like the highest voter turnout for
a mayoral race in New York since nineteen sixty nine
or something, And so that speaks to the sort of
ground swell of popular support for socialist programs, people being

(11:41):
generally up for things that will make their lives materially
better and being so disaffected until somebody like speaks to
their actual needs and then that making a big difference
and then actually showing up. And that's so cool because
the voter turnout at the national level has been so low.

Speaker 5 (12:00):
Yeah, the implementation of of of his program is gonna
be tough, I mean, because he's ever going to contend
with Albany and he's contending with like a democratic machine
that nationally.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
That is like kind of.

Speaker 5 (12:18):
It was like the Kamala Harris response to you know,
do you support zor On?

Speaker 4 (12:22):
Would you endorse or On?

Speaker 6 (12:25):
Yeah, Schumer specifically did not yeah.

Speaker 5 (12:27):
And when they ask Kamala, she said, you know, I
support the Democrat you know, and not not I support
like that. But that was that was probably the biggest
and this is how sad it is.

Speaker 4 (12:41):
That was the biggest uh endorsement light.

Speaker 5 (12:47):
That he received from like a figurehead in the Democratic Party.
There are some Democrats out there that have the testicular
fortitude Chris van Holland from a state that nobody cares about,
for instance, who came out and I support Zora and
Mundami Mandami, And I think that the Democratic leadership needs

(13:10):
to get on board here because this is obviously the
direction the party should be moving. It not even is
because it isn't it is not what's happening, but should
be moving and we should be striving to to to
to support people like this and they're also with value.

Speaker 6 (13:31):
Still, Yeah, that's really important because the sort of being
berthed out of the corpse that is the Democratic shell
demograph the Democratic Party. You go one of two ways,
like the Democratic Socialists have been locked inside the Democratic

(13:54):
Party for a long time, and they either get squeezed
and watered down and diluted or crushed or turned and
you get sort of either the you know, Bernie beating
his head against the wall for decades or AOC giving
in and making deals, or them people breaking out of

(14:16):
that party and then not being able to get elect
because the Democrats crush them when as soon as they're
a third party. So it's interesting to seez or On
sort of being able to win inside the party machine
at all, despite the leadership being lukewarm at best about
him and forcing the issue of this is not what
the Democratic Party is, it is what the Democratic Party

(14:39):
ought to be. It may never have been this, you know,
gesturing at things like FDR gesturing and things like those
sort of social programs are less leftist and socialist and
useful than what he's trying to do. If this party
didn't already exist, he wouldn't be a Democrat. And so

(15:00):
what does that mean? Because the party is ready to
and when we saw this with the Republican Party and
the Tea Party and the Freedom call whatever they call themselves,
and you know, Trump remaking it in his image or
in the image of Mussolini or whatever. It's it's an
evolving organism and as a brand, it's nearly useless. So

(15:22):
I have to decide what to do about it.

Speaker 5 (15:26):
Yeah, and it's also weird too because we're going to
now see there are like there are places that are.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
Here's an example.

Speaker 5 (15:41):
So New York City is moving in a direction of
tax billionaires, fund social programs, revitalize the working class, center
them in local politics. City like Baltimore, which is adopting

(16:02):
more of an abundance agenda that is.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Rooted in.

Speaker 5 (16:10):
Removing regulatory mechanisms to make way for private development of
what city leaders in that city are calling affordable housing,
is more in line with the kind of centrist democratic
position and the whole like ezracline in abundance sort of movement.

Speaker 6 (16:36):
So we've seen that fail since the nineties, or we're
seeing it the consequences of policies in the nineties of
that ILK failing and sort of the corpsy shells of
apparently only quoting thriller lyrics today rot inside the corpsy
shell of that kind of end of history, thinking why

(16:58):
do it again?

Speaker 5 (17:00):
Well, the I mean the reason to do it again
is that there is a housing crisis at an affordability
crisis across the board. You also, what you have also happening,
and this is very contemporarily specific, is that the market

(17:22):
is freezing its balls off. The market is being hold
as ice. Nothing is moving, People are not purchasing homes,
people are not willing to make long term commitments because
the economy is volatile, interest rates are crazy, and so
there is and added on to that, a lot of

(17:45):
zoning codes are designed to create very deterministic city geographies,
and they haven't been comprehensively amass and did in a
really really long time.

Speaker 6 (18:03):
Just for the uninitiated, we're talking about like make sure
pe only a certain kind of person, certain kind of
wealth can exist in this area. Where this is like
the descendant of like redlining.

Speaker 5 (18:17):
So zoning prefigures red lining. Zoning is so like in
the early early twentieth century, there was a move to
make residential segregation a sort of local issue, and so
a ton of city councils. Baltimore's was the first past

(18:40):
residential segregation ordinances essentially said that black people can't buy
in this neighborhood.

Speaker 4 (18:45):
White people can't buy in this neighborhood.

Speaker 5 (18:48):
Those survive for about seven years and make it to
various different cities in the American South and the Midwest.
Court overturns it nineteen seventeen and says it's confiscatory. Like
it's like preemptively confiscatory, and like it it it it

(19:10):
violates the only thing the Supreme Court cares about, which
is property rights.

Speaker 6 (19:16):
Oh man, okay, so let's flag that, dear listener, because
we're going to talk about more walls later. Spookier once
though this is pretty these are pretty bad.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
Continue so the what what happens during that period?

Speaker 5 (19:33):
In nineteen thirteen, New York City adopts the first sort
of like comprehensive zoning law and there it's like with
all of the things that were passed by progressive reformers
and like city planners and stuff. There is some well
intentioned ideology that's pushing a lot of this shit in

(19:53):
New York City. It's just it was just like the
Building to the fucking Moon. They're just build building so
much goddamn shit. It's lights not getting to the street
anymore because they're building with so.

Speaker 6 (20:06):
Congested metropolis, mega city. It's too tall.

Speaker 7 (20:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (20:10):
Yeah, Like it's like the fucking Francis Ford Coppola dream
in Megalopolis, Like, oh, this actually sucks. There's so much city,
there's no sun the and so they were trying, they
were trying to mitigate that. But what they were also
trying to do, and what uh, you know, cities like Baltimore,
a lot of Southern cities did, was they they interpreted

(20:33):
that Supreme Court law and they said, okay, so we
can't in legislation dictate who moves where based on their
race or or their religion. But what we can do
is create comprehensive laws like New York City did, that

(20:54):
will dictate how land use is organized in the city.
And so if we say that north of this, you know,
you'll whatever a big thoroughfare. You have to build a
house that has a sideyard, and the most egregious example

(21:16):
wasn't like in the San Fernando Valley, they were like
you have to have a horse stable.

Speaker 4 (21:20):
You don't have to have a horse, but.

Speaker 5 (21:21):
You have to have a stable as a way of
creating land use restrictions that were functionally segregationists. And so
a lot of that also was city planners doing sort
of like this top down thing of going like, well,
you know what, people aren't going to want to live,
like in your businesses and stuff, so let's make this

(21:44):
all zoned residential and so you can only build residential
properties here, and that, as we know, is fucking terrible.
Like if if all that is around you where you live,
it's just other people's houses.

Speaker 6 (21:57):
Yeah, gen xers all want to kill themselves.

Speaker 5 (22:01):
Yeah, then Michael Myers knows exactly where to go. Yeah,
to fucking show everybody. But yeah, so a lot of
places ended up like not having the kind of like
mixed used, idealized version of a city that you would
want to see. And those regulatory barriers stay on the

(22:23):
books and become this thing that guides like development activity,
and when you stop and you take a look at
the regulatory frameworks, you're like, why the fuck can't we like, like,
why is the fucking grocery store so far away from
all the people?

Speaker 6 (22:39):
Like yeah, and you create food deserts and you get
stuck with these Yeah, that's nonsense. That's interesting because where
I live there's a lot of sort of back and
forth about mixed use development of it's partially residential, but
it's partially business and how do you safeguard people's like
right to live quietly and not have like insane noise.

(23:03):
But it's also in the middle of a city, and
like what do you even do there? So that's fascinating. So, yeah,
it'll be interesting to see what legislation is able to
really get past in New York City, like all of
the junk that's he's going to have to to try
to unwrite or rewrite.

Speaker 7 (23:23):
But so.

Speaker 6 (23:28):
In your research, I'm wondering if you ever speaking about
walls in the early nineteen hundreds came across bone bills.

Speaker 4 (23:36):
Bone bills.

Speaker 6 (23:37):
Yeah, so bone bills. So I went to a cemetery
for a soul stroll over Halloween, and they were talking
about there's a special presentation where people dressed up as
ghosts are from like the eighteen hundreds and like I
was buried here, here's my story about getting my bones on.

(24:01):
So all through the eighteen hundreds, and this is a
nice sort of coda to our Frankenstein month. This has
been an issue for as long as there have been
medical schools and juday of Christian religion. Basically is what
do you do about somebody's body once they're dead? And
is it property? Who owns it, who's entitled to it?

(24:24):
What do they deserve? And if you're trying to study
the human anatomy, how do you do that if you
have religious and social more as against dealing with dead bodies,
And so this is you know, this goes all the
way back to Da Vinci needing bodies to do his
beautiful anatomical sketches. This is exactly the kind of thing

(24:46):
Victor Frankenstein is dealing with, of having to like grave
rob and Mary Shelley was specifically aware of this, although
she sets her story further back. It's all one continuity.
So in especially in the eighteen hundreds, and especially in
big cities with universities, university medical schools would employ mercenaries

(25:12):
who were euphemistically known as resurrectionists, who would go and
steal recently dead people right out of their graves and
then sell them to medical schools because the medicals needed
cadavers to do their studies as really really valuable as

(25:32):
a teaching tool. But when you've got all these religious
prohibitions against dealing with dead bodies, so of course it
falls to unclaimed people, people being consigned to Potter's graves,
folks who are not wealthy enough to get into private
cemeteries that are protected and guarded. And even then, you know,

(25:56):
cemeteries are difficult to guard. So all of these grave
robbings happen until bone bills are passed, which basically codify, okay,
rather than medical schools having to do this off the
books and employ these mercenaries, will actually write legislation that's like,

(26:17):
if you die in your body is unclaimed, then the
medical school can have it, but if there's any kind
of claim on it, they're not allowed to. It's specifically prohibited.
And before that, doctors would get arrested eventually if they
got caught for doing those these grave robbings, but there

(26:38):
wasn't you know, who's gonna testify against them. All the
victims are dead, so they get like minor fines, a
little bit of jail time, the big deal, and they
go back and they're on their bullshit again. So it's
an interesting the bills themselves. Basically, it's like any prohibition

(26:59):
style illicit market, just trying to move from a legal
gray area or a black market into a regulated market
of a thing that people are still not huge fans
of and folks are still getting. It's still the same
bodies basically of poor people, mostly minorities, folks who don't

(27:23):
have the means to some kind of or family ties
to get their bones and bodies claimed. But now it's legal,
and it's a little bit more regulated, it's a little
bit less ridiculous, and so it's interesting, I mean, the

(27:46):
cool fun ghost stories it speaks to, I mean, depending
on your beliefs about this big picture. It's all meat anyway,
Like the idea of whether or not it's moral to
be doing any kind of nonsense with somebody's dead body,

(28:08):
like for the sake of scientific progress is its own thing.
But at least and these bone bills don't get passed
to like the early nineteen hundreds, So it's a fairly
recent development in terms of any kind of protections on
what used to be somebody and is now some body?

(28:31):
Interesting thoughts, but it speaks to that kind of like
social mores around you know, what's what's worthy and how
to regulate it. And it comes down to property.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, and it's also property and in some ways I'm
gonna choose my words carefully here, but the ways in
which agency and autonomy can be perverted by capitalism, right

(29:06):
for sure. So like it's very specifically, I'm just thinking
about the bone laws and you know, when you have
things like burke and hair in the late eighteen hundreds,
and what does it mean when a body like who
owns this body? And what who is allowed to do

(29:29):
certain medical experiments? So when it comes to like mortuary
and graves and grave sites, like how what is zoned
as this is a grave site and what does that
mean for how long can it never be anything else?

Speaker 7 (29:45):
Or when things.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Are moved or how they are moved? All of these
regulations in terms of on the one end, all right,
what is being done with this property and the autonomy
of these bodies? And then on the other hand we
have the well, how are we hold on what are

(30:08):
we doing to protect? Oh, under the guise of capitalism
of Okay, yeah, we have these people who are going
to monitor this space for a while. Well, how are
we also going to be able to protect from people
doing just unethical things with something that they go Well,
these people probably won't care later on, you know. So,

(30:30):
like thinking of specifically in New Orleans, are you familiar
with the tumblr.

Speaker 6 (30:34):
Bone witch no continue?

Speaker 2 (30:38):
So in the I want to say mid two thousands,
like mid yeah, mid two thousands, there was there there
was this person on Facebook in a boat in a
group who.

Speaker 7 (30:54):
Dedicated to.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Witchcraft and witchiness and general like kind of a specific
sect of pagan folk. And she was talking about oh,
I like, she was selling bone, but she was also
talking about using bones in her practice. And you know,
however you feel about that, what it turns out was

(31:19):
happening was she was going to grave sites that were
not well like known and fenced in and just taking
people's bones.

Speaker 7 (31:30):
Now what.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Eventually people were like, how are you getting these bones again?

Speaker 7 (31:36):
What do you mean? These are human bones?

Speaker 2 (31:38):
And at first it became a religious rights thing and oh,
it's fine, but then people did a little more investigating.
I almost said digging. So you should be proud of
me for not cutting that one. But it eventually turned
out that these were former slave enslaved people as well

(31:59):
as a black burial site, where the city just went, well,
we don't really have to care. So we have this
situation and this person eventually was not only kicked out
of this group, but she was also fined and there
was a whole hullabaloo with it. But what it opens

(32:20):
up an interesting question when it came to this grave
site of oh, legally and socially, people didn't really start
caring about body as autonomous and the difference between a
body and an autonomous being with property until somebody started

(32:44):
making money off of it. And in I mean I
personally am like, wait, what do you mean we haven't
made sure that we look at this gravesite and go
we should probably make sure that these this site is
at least honored or respected in some way.

Speaker 7 (33:04):
And it took it.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
I mean, it had just been un cared for for
decades to almost one hundred years maybe, like I don't
think it had quite hit a century. But we have
this large scale thing where oh, people only started caring
once that was violated, right, and we have a huge

(33:26):
amount of grade sites like that. When it comes to
these zoning issues. Yeah, they are one hundred percent racist.
And it's also illustrates how our societally we still are
the way we think about death, at least as Americans.

(33:49):
We don't necessarily like to get our hands dirty in
certain ways. So the only times that people will really
really engage with it is when it's directly happening and
affecting you or money is involved.

Speaker 6 (34:05):
Yeah, that's a great point. The two of the stories
that were told by the re enactors of the Soul Stroll,
I want to one was a woman who so that
the cemetery is right next to what is now a prison,
and it used to be an asylum. And it's interesting
to like the same sort of it's same location, same

(34:27):
basic structure, because asylum in the eighteen hundreds means also
if you're too if you're in debtor's prison, all kinds
of sort of just a bunch of people end up
there who don't have anywhere else to go. It's not
a mental health facility in a way we would even
want to think about it now. So she's admitted she's drunk,

(34:50):
she's ends up like kind of building a life for
herself in this asylum is their cook, raises chickens it
doesn't want to leave do and fine in this living here,
but is saving and scraping from her wages to earn

(35:11):
enough money so that when she dies, she is not
put in the asylum's potter's grave and she can be
buried in the nicer cemetery next door. And there's no
record that that ever actually happened. We don't know, but
either if somebody just took her money and she got dumped,
or she wasn't allowed, but that kind of like specific

(35:35):
preoccupation with some of the doctors at the asylum are
definitely doing this grave robbing. She knows what's up, she
knows what's going to become of her if she doesn't
try to get buried somewhere else. And then another story
about a wealthy woman who her you know, dies of

(35:55):
consumption or something and her body is discovered in a
carriage with the body of another woman, and the wealthy
woman's white and the other woman's black, and there's a
big police investigation are about for the white lady her husband,
and police investigation is putting it loosely. The police are

(36:16):
basically useless. Her husband ends up conducting a bunch of
witness interviews figuring out that this carriage belongs to a
doctor who's been doing grave robbing, and the only reason
she gets identified based on her like monogrammed underwear. The
black woman she's in the carriage with these bodies is

(36:39):
only identified because an ambulance driver happens to recognize her.
But there's no attempt otherwise to figure out who even
who she is, and that it just so happens that
they were put in the same carriage by the grave
robbers who are trolling for to find folks to sell.

(37:00):
And so you know, the relative interest in which crimes
people even try to solve, and the various wealth and
status and importance of these bodies in that society is
exactly exactly the same minutes. It's all linked up there.
It's if there isn't money involved, it's not relevant to.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Weirdly tie this back to Zorn's when and the recent
wins across some of the recent elections. What I'm interested
to see is how they are able to or unable to,

(37:48):
but the responses to private equity and some of the
drivers of these problems that we're talking about when it
comes to like you're saying, it's the A lot of
the systemic issues that at least in New York that
are trying to be solved, are fully stemmed from private

(38:12):
equity firms chopping things up and selling them for parts and.

Speaker 7 (38:15):
Then inflating a price.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
See that time, I felt less disrespectful than trying to
do the other one. But when we are looking at that,
I mean thinking about the city that Mouse was talking about.
When it comes to Baltimore, one of the reasons why
housing prices have gone up by one hundred and fifty
percent in the last five years is because of a

(38:39):
few people taking out And I just saw a report
on this. There are a couple of people taking out
million dollar loans to buy up at the time eighty
thousand dollars just properties that were cheaper but not too bad.
They drove up the prices and then let the house's foreclosed.

(39:04):
They never actually repaid and fully did that. So you
have this weirdly skyrocketing prices and foreclosures not of individuals
who were buying them, but of these folks who were
buying them on loans, recouping and then just letting the loan,
letting the house foreclothes without ever having actually needed to

(39:28):
live there. So we're having these excuse this one, but
we have these corpses and shells of these housing in
a place where we're just sitting there being like, well,
wait a minute, people were never like some folks were
just not living in this house to begin with, Like,
how would somebody who is renting a house from an

(39:48):
agency ever know that that company is actually paying the
property taxes and what ostensibly rent is going to So
then get kicked out, the house gets foreclosed on, and
then the cycle continues because it's a distressed property. But
it went from distressed property that would maybe go for

(40:09):
like fifty k ten to fifteen years ago to a
depressed property that now is going for one hundred and
fifty two hundred on the low end, not to mention
anything that might go up to three hundred or more,
which is less a common issue in Baltimore, but more

(40:33):
an issue when we talk about New York, when we're like, oh,
this one bedroom, damn near closet apartment is astronomical because
of what burrow it's in a ridiculous.

Speaker 6 (40:47):
Yeah, And when you start thinking through that, you understand
why we're in control is revolutionary.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of also.

Speaker 7 (40:55):
I mean.

Speaker 5 (40:57):
The primary reason that speculators do that is to trap
their money up in real estate. There are so many
I can't remember what sociologist it was, but did a
study in DC that detailed how there were these homes

(41:22):
that were like the public discourses that they were not
serving a purpose because they were not owner occupied or
renter occupied.

Speaker 4 (41:34):
But in sort of dismissing them as not serving a purpose,
it is actually.

Speaker 5 (41:41):
Not critiquing the fact that it does serve a purpose.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
It is a way for people.

Speaker 5 (41:51):
To grow equity through investment, and that's the only.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
That it serves.

Speaker 5 (42:01):
And that purpose and that service is incredibly impactful for
a billionaire's portfolio. And there are so many homes, luxury apartments,
penthouses and shit that are built in New York that

(42:21):
are already pre purchased by foreign investors and they might
use it a couple of times or have a fucking
party or a soiree. But what it's really doing is
just it is a fucking stock. It's a physical brick
and mortar stock or bond that appreciates over time and

(42:42):
it do I mean, it makes places like DC it
makes places like New York, It makes places like la
Like practically unlivable in a lot of cases, because you
know the way the real estate market works, as much
as it is fictitious, these types of upward trends in

(43:04):
the housing stock price and value is like what people
want to see. And the by people I mean like
the people who are the ones that influence the elections
and shit like that, I mean the one of the
other kinds of things. That is, to draw a parallel

(43:26):
between these bone bills and resurrectionists who I did do it?

Speaker 4 (43:32):
Do it?

Speaker 5 (43:33):
Do a significant amount of research on a side note
on that too.

Speaker 4 (43:37):
There is the official record that we.

Speaker 5 (43:41):
Know about resurrectionists being employed by particularly teaching hospitals. But
then there's the unofficial record that you can call from
like memoir and so An hl Menkin's memoir where he

(44:04):
was detailing him his life growing up in Baltimore City,
he talks very extensively about a persistent rumor that was
like a neighborhood level unspoken understanding that in some cases

(44:31):
what medical schools needed or thought they needed, was somebody
who hadn't been in the ground for that long, and
so they would kidnap especially black Baltimoreans, and the implication
was kill them and then immediately do some kind of.

Speaker 4 (44:57):
Experiment on their body.

Speaker 5 (45:00):
And he talks about this because as a young nine
ten year old boy walking around the streets of West Baltimore,
he would hear about this and also notice people go missing.
And it is like one of these things about history
where it's kind of like, I don't think that anybody

(45:21):
in this call, or anybody with a reasonable perspective would
like think that that would be an impossibility, Like that
sounds like something that absolutely happened. The trouble with history
is that it's the provability of it. But there's so
much that we also know from like people's recollections, their memoirs.
The experience is like actually living the day to day.

(45:44):
And then you also have the official record, which is
where like the legislation has passed in response to this
publicized abuse that we have that we have like tons
of evidence nationally about, which is that there are people
who are being exhumed in Potter's Grace. They live in asylums,
they die in asylums, and the asylums just doesn't they

(46:07):
don't have the capacity really to give them individual burials,
so they all just kind of get piled into large
pits and then buried over, and then more bodies, more dirt,
more bodies, more dirt, more bodies, more dirt, until you
have this.

Speaker 7 (46:24):
Just like.

Speaker 5 (46:27):
Dozens and dozens of corpses back there, and then the
resurrectionists are doing like and this is the sort of
crude calculus of it, a kind of landscaping for the
asylum because the bodies are proving to be too inconvenient.

(46:50):
It's just like the crude calculus of like nineteenth century capitalism.
But that to say that even after regulations are passed,
the shit still keeps happening, and will it continues to
happen to this day, like the non consensual or the

(47:13):
duped consensual, like hysterectomies of people face or the Henrietta laxis,
like a body being appropriated for the uses of science, against.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
Her knowledge and against her desires.

Speaker 5 (47:28):
The way that these things sort of morph into a
kind of just a different thing. What Zorin is talking about,
and if he can figure this out, then he truly
is a messiah.

Speaker 4 (47:44):
Is removing.

Speaker 5 (47:49):
Exploitative government contracts from municipal politics. And so one of
the things that he brought up was that the City
of New York contracted McKinsey to build a better trash
can and they give him like millions of dollars and
he's like, we need to get rid of all of this.

(48:12):
We can build a trash can ourselves. Our engineers are
on it. But that's not how politics works at the
city level. If he can figure out a way to
eliminate exploitative government contracts to agencies, then he will solve

(48:32):
a problem that is as old as the city itself.
And not to be a cynic, but it's not going
to happen, right, Like there's so much pressure to maintain
these relationships and it is that weird thing too, of
like the the way that the public perception of like

(48:57):
AOC has totally flipped. She's an accommodationist, she's a careerist,
she wants to be a senator, she wants to be
the president. She's make she's she's not even as radical
as Marjorie Taylor Green anymore on foreign.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
Policy, Like who is this person?

Speaker 5 (49:17):
And I suspect and you know, brace yourselves that that's
gonna happen to Zorn in New York City too.

Speaker 4 (49:25):
And it's gonna happen.

Speaker 5 (49:27):
It's gonna happen, and it's gonna shock people, but it
is there is a way in which reform at the
city level is not going to work unless you take
the city.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
Charter and you tear it apart and you rewrite it.

Speaker 5 (49:49):
And that is what we're realizing with a lot of
institutions in American life, is that actually we just have
to start over when it comes to public safety.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Yeah, I'd actually push back a little bit on that
because one of the things that I mean, you know,
not exactly been in the game, but looking at some
of the similar parallels and the similar ways that people
have made decisions in the past. Will look at mostly contemporary,

(50:23):
but if we look at Obama in two thousand and
eight and then again in twenty twelve, if we look
at the Jill Stein and some of the other folks
later on when it comes to running Bernie Sanders when
they're running AOC. One of the things that I think

(50:44):
is key is a.

Speaker 7 (50:49):
Like solidifying.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
The not populist, but the folks who go, well, I'm
going to do this or nothing else and being able
to say, hey, we have this victory in terms of.

Speaker 7 (51:05):
In terms of a mayoral race.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
On the ground, do your own food program, like, continue
working with the mutual aid and the smaller municipal efforts
like Honestly, I think it's really commendable and actually incredibly
civically important cause that you're going to your your local
boards even though they're annoying, right, and I mean truly,

(51:31):
it's really making those accessible and able for folks to
participate fully is the only, in my mind, the only
way to actually make these shifts, because while we can, like,
while we need to definitely tear stuff up from the ground,
seeing the amount of people who went all right, Obama change, Wait,

(51:53):
this isn't the change we were hoping, like, we were.

Speaker 7 (51:55):
Looking promised radical change.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
And while everybody was like, well, you know it is
in the end American politics, there has been some good
things that happen. We had the reaction of the Tea
Party and a lot of other folks going well, I'm
no longer going to go this way because I was
disappointed in this direction. A lot of the burnier bust bros.

(52:17):
And this is the more solid one. A lot of
those went from bernier bust to alt right pipeline like
that because they went, oh, the system betrayed me, I
might as well go fuck at all. And I think
the way one of the things that I hope to
see with seeing Zoron and seeing some of the other

(52:39):
areas is more people getting involved in a way of well,
we know that there's going to be a negative reaction,
but hopefully it's not going to be a negative reaction
to alt right pipeline again, because that has been a
consistent churn that we've just been seeing for a lot
of contempor.

Speaker 6 (53:00):
I don't know if you even are pushing back, because
what I'm hearing is that you're looking at the Because
the system isn't getting torn up and rebuilt from the
ground up, what else can be done in the meantime,
which I don't think. I think is actually consistent with
what Mouse is saying, which is those systems ought to
get torn up, but because they're not, people keep hitting

(53:23):
their head against the wall and getting surprised and feeling betrayed.
And it's weird. America, of all places, the United States,
as born of revolution, We're so proud of our constitution
and whatnot. We should be a place where it is
possible to start over and try again and try something new.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
We haven't had And I am about to say this
as somebody who goes, hey, no, don't don't know. We
can't necessarily go Gia team. We haven't had a French revolution.
The United States is not old enough to have had
a Hey, y'all, if enough of us get together, they're

(54:05):
out right. We have not had a monarchist revolution where
folks went, oh, yeah, the folks who say they are
ordained by God, we can just kick them out. We
like Britain did it. A several countries, several giant empires
around the world have had their populist go no no.

(54:28):
And the reason I've started off with France is right now,
well not right now. Nine months ago the French populace went, oh,
you want to not only send money to Israel but
also cut a lot of our retirement benefits, and stuff
was literally on fire. Like a lot of people went

(54:52):
out and decided to protest that way. And what is
hopeful to me about that is when Marie Le Penn
and her literal Nazis, her literal Nazi ilk went well,
we need to make sure that these you can't see
my air quotes, but descendants of Algerians and those who

(55:13):
aren't really French. We need to kick them out there.
Weren't It wasn't a oh yeah, let's do this. The
time that the French people really do protests is when
the government goes, well, we're going to do something that
cuts your benefits.

Speaker 6 (55:28):
And I think the French will always say something on
fire if you threaten the retirement plans or their social
safety nets, which I appreciate.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Well, that's not a thing that Americans have been able
to see. Like so many people have said, well, voting
doesn't really matter. The electoral college does prove that on
the federal level, it's up to someone who is not
you when it comes to a vote for a representative.
One hundred percent can't really argue that. But what I

(55:58):
can argue is us, as the populace, can look at
a bill and go, hey, why are you tying? And
I know I harp on this all the time, but
why are you tying your education budget? To gambling on
saying that these these companies are going to actually pay
their taxes? Because what what do you mean? We can
vote against that. We can definitely harass our legislature, our

(56:22):
leg wherever you live harass your politicians because it might
be bad to do for senators, it might get you
in trouble. But I can tell you a counselman, if
you harass a councilman enough, he can't do anything about it.
Like they will have to listen, right. So, and again
why I'm saying these mutual aid and the community of

(56:45):
it all is so important. The only ways those types
of initiatives can happen is again the classic when it
comes to how unionization was happening. When enough of us
can say, hey, if shit hits the fan, I have
enough food for you. It shit hits the fan and

(57:07):
you get kicked out, you can stay with me. Like
these things that sound basic. But then when you in
practice go, no, that's a lot. That is a huge ask.
We need to make it less of a huge ask,
you know. We need to be able to say, oh,
your water got shut off. We can still get you water,
We can still allow you to do certain basic things

(57:30):
that certainly I shouldn't say basic, but certain things, you know.
And I think that's the solidifying that I'm hoping we
can maintain after this type of one.

Speaker 6 (57:42):
Yeah, And what's cool about that is I'm thinking about
it's a New York City mayor, like this is a
city level still it's a big city obviously, but thinking
about you know, as of recording right now, federal governments
still shut down, snap benefits are being defunded, and you've
got very local level cities and states being like, all right, well,

(58:05):
we'll step in and we'll fill in the gap here
that the federal government refuses to and will still fund
these programs that people really rely on, and we'll think
more critically about what can the local government do in
opposition to federal bullshit. And that is you know, the
next level up of there's mutual aid and then there's

(58:25):
like get involved in your local politics like you're talking
about and figure out And so it's really interesting that
like governors are important, and then if the city's big enough,
the mayor of the city becomes like a huge flash
point for what does it look like to have local

(58:46):
autonomy and figure it out when the the larger government
is not working.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
And and.

Speaker 5 (58:57):
Uh, i'd be as a historian did not mention that
we did have a bloody, violent revolution in the Civil War,
that that did happen in the United States of America.
And it's interesting that Teddy doesn't recognize it because the

(59:22):
we're not on the side of the rebellion in that instance.

Speaker 6 (59:28):
And ya, from their perspective, they were absolutely they were
our of independence. It was like a dumb ass reason
to be doing it.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
But yeah, and they yeah, they fired on Fort Sumter.

Speaker 5 (59:40):
That was to storming the best deal and then the
shit hit the fan and then it was a declaration
of the new Confederate States of America. It was like
a different country that coexisted with our country for four
years before Ulysses s. Grant basically just kind of through
men at buildings until they fell down.

Speaker 7 (01:00:04):
It was.

Speaker 4 (01:00:06):
Just I have like this, this very.

Speaker 5 (01:00:12):
This like imputed not necessarily reputed expertise in the American
Civil War sort of period. And one of the things
that I never read about because I don't give a
fuck about is like the military history of the Sophomore.

Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
When you read about it, it sucks.

Speaker 5 (01:00:33):
The the the Ulysses, this Grant sort of strategy of
just kind of like we're just going to keep sending
dudes into the trenches that Robert E. Lee has set
up around Richmond, and they're going to die, but like
enough of them are going to die, that we're going
to take Richmond, We're going to sack it. H and
that happened. But it was like this like very just

(01:00:56):
sort of war of attrition thing. I ted you dropped
off the call. But the point I was making is
that the United States did have a revolution in the
American Civil War, and it's interesting that we don't consider
it to be a revolution because we were not on
the side of the rebels. Oh, that is a good point,

(01:01:16):
but it's what's also interesting about the Civil War is
that there's this.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
I think it's Heather Cox Richardson.

Speaker 5 (01:01:24):
I wrote a book making the point that the South
did end up winning the Civil War. Over a long
period of time, if you look at the atomization of
American politics, and if you look at the state and

(01:01:47):
nature of race relations in the country, and if you
look at how diffuse and delinked and decentralized power has become,
largely given the South's power and the Heartland's power in

(01:02:11):
the electoral college and their support for Republican policies, which
led to neoliberal policies, which created the type of atomization
and sovereignty on a hyper local level that Confederates sought
to maintain the institution of slavery that over time they

(01:02:33):
did win. We are living in a country that is
very much.

Speaker 4 (01:02:45):
Based in.

Speaker 5 (01:02:48):
Like the idea that the governor of Texas can take
over immigration enforcement from the federal government, and that that
not only isn't deemed unconstitutional, it's not necessarily even seen
as a problem. And this is what the Confederacy wanted

(01:03:11):
was we want to be able to do the most heinous,
fucked up ship to maintain a very small class of
bourbons of powerful people in our states. And we don't
want the federal government interfering in it at all. We
don't want the US Commissioners coming down here, we don't
want the marshals, we don't want anybody enforcing anything. And

(01:03:35):
we are living in a country where that is the reality.
That is more the reality than a centralized, functional government
that provides social welfare and a social safety net for
working people, the elderly, children, like vulnerable people.

Speaker 4 (01:03:54):
And it is a.

Speaker 5 (01:03:59):
It's a very sad reality, but it is a kind
of reality that when you trace it back to, like
what were the central.

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
Desires or asks after emancipation was.

Speaker 5 (01:04:13):
Get out of here, just leave, get out of here,
and let us reinstitute and engage in the in the
practice of re enslavement. Let us bifurcate the economy. Let
us atomize the structure.

Speaker 4 (01:04:24):
Let us.

Speaker 5 (01:04:26):
Hone and centralize all of our graft and our corruption
in our cities.

Speaker 7 (01:04:31):
Let us.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
Attract northern industrialists.

Speaker 5 (01:04:35):
Let us say that we're reforming everything that is injurious
to industry without actually reforming it. Let us be as
autonomous as we can be within this broader tapestry with
no oversight, and let us do it in a way
that is flagrant and undermines all of the various checks

(01:04:57):
and balances that constitute what the Union represented in the
American Civil War. And it's crazy. It's crazy when you
take stock of that and you look at it and
you go, like, you know what, the best case scenario

(01:05:18):
is that we kind of can just look at the
folks in New York City and go, man, I wish
I live there, but I can't. I live here in
this shitty ass place, And the local politics here are
not affected by the local politics there, because, like the
United States is totally adamized.

Speaker 6 (01:05:38):
Yeah, the very existence of red states and blue states
and state level referendums and policies being so different. It
is a very loose collection. And the more the federal
government fails and to provide social services and all it
does is provide boots on the ground to bother you,

(01:06:00):
the more obvious it is that, you know, the the
dream of the Confederacy is alive and well, and yet
when the federal government is useless and tyrannical, like, suddenly
we're like, oh, well, it's good that, depending on what
state you live in, the mayor or the governor can

(01:06:20):
totally flout the will of the federal government because the
president is stupid and trying to institute martial law, and
they'll be like, no, we're not enforcing that, go funk off.
And suddenly we are the rebels.

Speaker 5 (01:06:32):
In this, in the in this, in the spooky version
of this, you exhume Jefferson Davis's ghost and you tell
him the federal government's been closed for two months, and
he goes.

Speaker 6 (01:06:42):
We won, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:06:47):
Holy shit, we won. You're like, hey, kind.

Speaker 6 (01:06:51):
Of sort of.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Yeah, But the the the spooks and the ghouls and
the goops and the ghoulies they're all gone.

Speaker 4 (01:07:04):
Now this is like pulling back the curtain.

Speaker 5 (01:07:07):
Here we are Uh, this is actually the first episode
that we're recording after Monstoberfest, cause and I we're chatting
a little bit and keeping with our monster theme.

Speaker 4 (01:07:22):
Thinking about.

Speaker 5 (01:07:24):
It was kind of it was kind of sad the
way you said it, because it is kind of like
we're we're at the dregs of the of the of
the of.

Speaker 6 (01:07:37):
The classical pantheon with monsters.

Speaker 5 (01:07:40):
The pantheon where you're like, I guess we could do
wear wolves or mummies.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
Well there's one that you could do that would be
kind of interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:07:49):
Zombie.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
I was gonna say, uh, invisible like out in outside
of the ghost ghost in Poultergeist paradigm specifically, the invisible
man or the invisible could be an interesting one too.

Speaker 6 (01:08:05):
That's interesting. And I was thinking about were wolves also
as like is it just the wolf or is it
like a sheep shifter, because you have to really decide,
and I think there are different things. But the werewolf
in and of itself is like a metaphor gets twisted
a couple of different ways, right, because you've got your
like horny teenage boy, but you've also got like cycle

(01:08:28):
of the moon. It's definitely like a period allegory that
gets lost and like gets pulled into like the like
man's playing werewolves away and like the horror and the
like blood like blood magic of it that is very

(01:08:50):
much like about women's anatomy, then gets all like hidden
under that, and then the specific like okay, werewolf is
puberty allegory, but also the changing of is them like
the identity issues there. I think those are two. They

(01:09:11):
are related but separate, and so there is something to
be said for like the hormonal, hormonal and sexual nature
of the werewolf that is its own thing, and then
the like what if the person you thought you knew
wasn't the person you thought you knew shape shifter, doppelgang

(01:09:32):
or thing that is similar but goes off in a
different direction. So there's there is still stuff to explore
specifically that yeah, exactly, Yeah, the duality, And then Jekyl
and Hinde is a really interesting like the incredible Hulk
nature of the werewolf is like it's close and it

(01:09:54):
is the like change especially with like original Hulk only
changed at night. Like that's the I think that's the
dividing line of the split identity because it's and I
think I think you actually just nailed it. Which is
it's a split identity in a single person versus a
replacement person of you know, there's the I thought it

(01:10:19):
was one person but somebody else versus no, no, no, it's
the same person, but they're you know, they've got different
urges or different impulses that are bound inside them that
are sometimes a split personality. But it's not like I've
not I've not been body snatched, right, And that's where
it splits.

Speaker 5 (01:10:36):
That definitely widens. I mean that definitely also is more
interesting to me than a month dedicated to were wolves
because there are so many more examples of because it
is a yeah, it's it's a very similar kind of
like a bidirectional yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:10:57):
As long as it's that like, and it's important that's
a trans information that can go back and forth. I
think also, and it's cyclical. So Jekyl and Hyde, Incredible
Hull Werewolf both you're like out like Michael Jackson, but
not probably not the well the fly is close. That
would be starts that starts to hit the dividing line
because you can't go back, and I think it's I

(01:11:18):
think what's important about the werewolf is that it's recurring
and cyclical and hormonal and menstrel in its issue and
its metaphor in a way that like a changeling is
not because they're like secretly somebody else or I've been
replaced or I've been possessed, and that goes in a

(01:11:38):
different direction fascinating. So I think that there's that has legs,
notably Varia Wolf or whatever we're gonna ye will not
come until until Christmas of next year. And also we've
all sort of talked about how we don't want to
see any more of these man's movies, So it's just

(01:11:59):
not worry.

Speaker 4 (01:12:00):
I'm kind of interested in where I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:12:03):
But here's the thing too, I have, you know, the
because you said the thing about the Mummy four and
you I think we have an episode like titled the
Mummy where uh, where.

Speaker 6 (01:12:17):
We talked about the sort of yes, exactly, the millennial
touchstone that is the Brendan Fraser Mummy movie and how
you know the My unpopular opinion is that those movies
sense of humors is kind of mean, and I prefer
Pirates of the Caribbean as my like that kind of
adventure story made around the same time. But the cast

(01:12:40):
is wonderful, good actors.

Speaker 5 (01:12:43):
Yeah, he's talking about the fictional. In the real life,
we like Brendan Fraser, not Johnny Depp. We're talking about
the movies.

Speaker 6 (01:12:53):
Yeah, this is complicated. Were Brendan Fraser's delightful? Voss Lou
is great? Uh, everybody in that film is wonderful. The
film itself I have issues with. Also, is it even scary?
Like and what is also? What even is the metaphor?
And that's so if we want to go because the
mummies also then to your point about zombies earlier, what

(01:13:17):
makes the mummy curse? Like, what makes that monster scary
is the analogy of you, probably a colonist, open something
you shouldn't have messed with a thing, and you can't
undo it. You violated somebody's space. You are now cursed forever.
It does not matter how far you travel, it doesn't

(01:13:39):
matter where you go. It will catch up with you.
And that doesn't have to be a mummy. And that
metaphor showed up as Brits were opening up tombs as
the sort of you know, scratching at the back of
their minds like we probably shouldn't be doing this, like
this is kind of messed up. It was It's it's

(01:14:01):
an entire metaphor about having a guilty conscience for exploitation
and colonialism. So I think there are plenty of stories
like that that aren't specifically mummies, and there are plenty
of mummy movies that aren't scary because they aren't that metaphor.
And that's the only thing that makes that the.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
Mummy the horror of karma.

Speaker 6 (01:14:19):
Yeah, exactly, the you, but specifically like exploitative. You tried
to take advantage of somebody's culture, and you know, the spooky,
savage thing culture you don't understand is coming to haunt
you for the consequences of your actions, the specific kind

(01:14:42):
of like you vile, you never should have come here,
and now you're gonna never you're pay for it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
There's a see that that. That's an interesting breakdown, and
I'm interested. Have you seen it.

Speaker 6 (01:14:55):
Follows I'm familiar with it, I've not seen it, but
that isn't it. It's a good pull.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
It's a pull, but it also takes a unfold like
that that concept that you're talking about, but it applies
it to ah sex as transaction and not necessarily monetary,

(01:15:22):
but it it's an I would be interested to see
how that reading of that what goes around comes around
as as horror when it cat when it's oh god,
I'm about to say a bunch of stuff that I
don't mean it to be puns. But when other folks
are catching strays and have to participate even though they

(01:15:46):
weren't the ones to open.

Speaker 6 (01:15:47):
The box, Okay, which is is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
And it's an interesting I think it's an interesting lens.
It will say some dark stuff do not.

Speaker 7 (01:15:57):
Get me ros.

Speaker 6 (01:15:58):
Now that's important because part of the like horror of
colonialism is like people who are complicit or benefit from
that kind of exploitation. They didn't open the tomb themselves,
but they still live in London and they're still, you know,
part of that posh society. And when the curse comes

(01:16:19):
for the guy who opened the box, it doesn't really
care who he's having high tea with, and they're all
gonna suffer. And that as part of the like original
British like this is why we invented the mummy as
a thing to scare ourselves with and feel guilty about that.
There are there's a really good opportunity for really effective

(01:16:44):
mummy allegories, but they don't have to be Egyptian, like
they could be Native American, they could be Henrietta Lax
coming back to haunt Johns Hopkins. That is that kind
of curse that is legitimately scary that just happened to
be represented in the Mummy. And I think that the

(01:17:08):
farther away we get from that, the less useful Mummy
as a symbol is and the curse needs to be
represented in some other monster, whereas a werewolf. Oh, once
a month, you grow a bunch of body here and
get angry. Like that still works and it's not time
bound in the same way, if like the Mummy doesn't

(01:17:29):
scare people the same way.

Speaker 5 (01:17:31):
Yeah, I also think you would you in particular cause
would like it follows because it is a is a
heavy problem solving film.

Speaker 7 (01:17:40):
Yeah it is.

Speaker 5 (01:17:42):
They really they really try a lot of stuff, and uh,
it's a fun movie in that way.

Speaker 4 (01:17:49):
And I'll also say this about.

Speaker 5 (01:17:51):
The why why I think that we'd have to find
something like.

Speaker 4 (01:17:59):
Karmic movies curses.

Speaker 5 (01:18:04):
Like an inescapable inevitability, or broaden it out a little
bit is.

Speaker 4 (01:18:11):
My experience with the Mummy.

Speaker 5 (01:18:12):
The Mummy came out when I was nine years old,
and I believe it came out the same or the
Matrix did.

Speaker 4 (01:18:20):
And my father.

Speaker 5 (01:18:25):
Did not take me to see The Matrix because it
looked too scary.

Speaker 6 (01:18:33):
You saw The Mummy instead.

Speaker 4 (01:18:35):
And Mummy, but you know, parents can be right sometimes.

Speaker 6 (01:18:40):
It's not scary.

Speaker 4 (01:18:41):
Yeah, the movie was not scary.

Speaker 5 (01:18:44):
And I do remember seeing The Matrix and not being
scared by it in the way that like you get
scared by scary shit, but being haunted by it in
a way where it was like a puzzling movie. So
he was right on that count, and he just clocked
that that, like Steven Summer's type, doesn't.

Speaker 6 (01:19:04):
Make scary movies.

Speaker 5 (01:19:05):
Yeah, for sure, this stupid movie is not gonna be
scary at all. And the other thing that I remember
because he took us to see all of the movies
when they came out, like in theaters on opening weekend,
because he was a big Brunnen Fraser fan, and it
just got swept up in the whole Mummy thing. But
one of the things about my dad is he is

(01:19:26):
also very sort of he doesn't like to be confused
by movies. And when I remember when we saw The
Mummy Too, the Mummy Too is the one where there's
that like scene, that chase scene where they're the mummies
were like running along the buildings.

Speaker 4 (01:19:47):
Yeah, they're like in a bus. Whichever movie that was.
We came out of that movie. My dad's like, so,
what the fuck is a mummy? There are zombies?

Speaker 5 (01:20:00):
They're like cool, Like why are they running along buildings?
I thought it was like an ambling, you know, bizarre thing.
And then they're introducing all these other monsters to like,
now bugs are monsters.

Speaker 4 (01:20:16):
It's just it is a movie that.

Speaker 5 (01:20:20):
Doesn't have and it makes sense that Steven Summer's also
you know, the movie he did after with the Mummy
was Van Helsing and how scattered that movie is because
he's he seems like he's interested in monsters in the aggregate, and.

Speaker 6 (01:20:34):
So it doesn't understand metaphor and.

Speaker 5 (01:20:37):
Really, yeah, it's really just trying to make the monster
scary in some way. But you you even confuse a
dad who's like, these people are really fucking with what
I understand. Like twenty eight days later, the zombies are fast,
and now the mummies are fast. So if something is scary,
it has to be fast, which man kind of It's true.

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):
And a lot I didn't care it follows now it
just needs to get to you.

Speaker 6 (01:21:02):
Yeah, yeah, I wonder about I think your dad makes
an excellent point about the scattershot loss of focus, which
is you know, and I wonder about, like a friend
of the show Willy Wonka, whether that monster is closer
to truly a mummy.

Speaker 4 (01:21:21):
Yeah, not fast, but.

Speaker 6 (01:21:24):
It an inevitability and an embodiment of a curse and
an embodiment of like karmic, you fucked up, It's coming
for you. Here is a retribution as distinct from like
a final destination thing, like is it their fault that
they were supposed to die and didn't versus no, you've

(01:21:46):
done something specifically wrong. And there is a haunting of
a an injury that was committed against a culture or
a people that needs to be you know, they avenged.

Speaker 4 (01:22:03):
Yeah there's oh sorry.

Speaker 5 (01:22:06):
No, I was just to summarize. I think that that
is the better way to go about it. I don't
think any of these monsters hold enough juice to do
a month around. But I think the idea, the concept
of the shape shift where a werewolf can function as
an example or just broughtening it out to the idea

(01:22:26):
of the concept of.

Speaker 6 (01:22:29):
Yeah, and I think this is the antidote to okay.
So we were thinking about, you know, trying to piece
together Frankenstein month and even thinking about when we just
thought about representations of the monster, and every time we've
hit a wall of this sucks and this monster isn't scary,
and they've hit the hallmarks of they've done the Stephen

(01:22:49):
Summer's thing of it's got fangs, it's got claws, it
turns into a bat, but I don't care about it.
Why is that? Well, because to your point about like
what Germa del Torro is trying to remind us of,
is it's the metaphor that matters. It's the metaphor that's scary.
It's it's the gothic of tearing off the facade of

(01:23:09):
everything's okay, here's the anxiety, and the anxiety used to
be perfectly represented in this monster. But when you take
the trappings of the monster and forget what the metaphor
and the representation was supposed to be about, then you're
just it's a cereal mascot. You've defanged it. So if

(01:23:32):
we focus on here's what the metaphor was for, we're
able to find things that are spiritually and thematically a
werewolf or a vampire or a mummy or a curse
and hit the right buttons, but they might not look
the way we expect them to.

Speaker 7 (01:23:49):
So I have a pitch.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
Okay, there is a TikTok also on Instagram Reels of
a Lost Me. But she's this is for the title this.
Her name is Kirby black Witch eighty eight and her
one of her favorite things is put it back. You

(01:24:12):
don't know what it does, you don't know what it represents,
you don't know why it's there, and it's all of
these like we found this book covered in wax in
our wall and she's like, put it back. So I
think the month of nah put that back could really
encompass a lot of interesting things. But it can also

(01:24:34):
encompass different metaphors of like, hey, don't take shit that's
not yours, Hey, don't colonize this. But also it could
really I think that could be a fun It could
broaden it a little bit.

Speaker 6 (01:24:47):
Well, I think that's closer to the Mummy metaphor than
Steven Summers will ever get.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
Yeah, there's the film Talk to Me where it's yeah, yeah,
and that's like an put that ship back.

Speaker 5 (01:25:01):
What do you do or or bring her back, which
I just saw, which was the same creative team behind
talk to Me.

Speaker 6 (01:25:12):
So monsters are not dead, it's just a matter of
the the xerox copy of a copy of a copy
of I'm going through the motions of I got to
hit X, Y and Z beats in order to be
a vampire iconography versus I am worried about this rich

(01:25:32):
old guy who's bought property next to me and is
molesting my wife. Like that's what the metaphor is it.
He doesn't have to be literally a vampire in order
to be a vampire. Yeah, yeah, we got to find
those Instead.

Speaker 4 (01:25:46):
We're going to thematize Monsterober best moving forward, it's not
going to.

Speaker 6 (01:25:51):
Be we'll find the actual core, a beating heart of
the monster.

Speaker 5 (01:25:56):
In doing that, Yeah, we might go off the rails,
like where we find ourselves in October watching a Hulk
movie during Werewolf month. Yeah like, okay, wait, I think
we may have gone too far, but I I like this.
I'm excited for the prospect. I also think c man

(01:26:21):
curses inevitability that type of ship, but also like paying
for what you've done.

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
Uh, maybe we can have an October spooky themed game
once a year.

Speaker 5 (01:26:37):
Yeah, I mean if we do, if we do a
true one shot where we play play came and put
that back also, it would be it would be a
great excuse to watch an Evil Dead movie, which I
love to revisit those films because those are the ultimate
put those put that back movies. Uh where, like that death.

Speaker 4 (01:27:04):
Is an inevitability. I think Evil Dead two is probably
my face dead.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
Evil Dead two is way more fun than Evil Dead one.
And then Army of Darkness is Sam Raimi can't really
do a trilogy, so he did his own thing.

Speaker 4 (01:27:18):
Yeah, Army of Darkness is kind of it's kind of
a cheat.

Speaker 5 (01:27:23):
That's not that's not There's not a ton going on there.
He's trying to like make a Connecticut Dandy and King
Arthur's Court.

Speaker 7 (01:27:31):
With Ash Amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:27:34):
It's like a very bizarre film.

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):
But the New Evil Dead that one, there are a
couple of scenes and that that met I was.

Speaker 7 (01:27:41):
Just like, oh no, I didn't know that was the thing.
I didn't know.

Speaker 6 (01:27:44):
I don't like Yeah, discover New Squaks.

Speaker 5 (01:27:49):
Dude, like the if You Ever, if you ever, if
you ever grew up, think your Mom's trying to kill you?
That a movie plays with like some some really fucked
up like childhood uh traumas. And then somebody who I

(01:28:09):
really uh do respect their opinion told me that I
should rewatch Evil Dead twenty thirteen because I saw that
movie theaters when that shit came out, and I just
remember it being a blood bath and they're it being
totally devoid of story.

Speaker 7 (01:28:25):
Oh it has a story. It just it's rough.

Speaker 5 (01:28:28):
It's just it was so overwhelmingly bloody that I I
checked out of that film, like in the movie theater.
But it's FEddi Alvarez and he's he's he's great, And
so I suspect that movie is actually a lot better
than I gave it credit for at the beginning.

Speaker 4 (01:28:49):
But this is exciting.

Speaker 5 (01:28:51):
We will end this podcast some quick gig gig gut
get rats.

Speaker 4 (01:28:59):
I watched Chopping Mall with Munchie.

Speaker 5 (01:29:03):
Chopping them all wow, in the movie that came out
in nineteen eighty six, and it is about three robots
are deputized to surveil and police a mall that has
recently been hit with a series of shoplifting incidents, and

(01:29:26):
then six teenagers sneak into one of the furniture stores
and start doing it on the display beds, get trapped
in the mall and have to destroy the robots that
malfunction and then try to kill them. It's like sixty

(01:29:48):
eight minutes long. Of course, it's the most low budget movie.
The robots look like a fucking a Johnny five but
Johnny two, and it is so crazy looking that Munchie

(01:30:12):
you could probably hear on the recording crying right now,
was enthralled by I'll show you a video of her
watching Chopping Mall because she's just kind of lounging back
with her leg up in the air, just.

Speaker 4 (01:30:25):
Kind of watching the TV, going like I'm into.

Speaker 6 (01:30:28):
This Power Rangers ass the robot violence. Sure, yeah, good
for a small children, Teddy and Rick I do.

Speaker 2 (01:30:43):
It's less fun than that, but I still think it's
a good one.

Speaker 6 (01:30:46):
Go for it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:49):
I would recommend checking out and donating cash to your
local area food bank. Many of these places are very
practiced and making cash stretch out. And also, as somebody
who has volunteered at food banks and having to sort
through cans and nonperishable food, it can be a little

(01:31:13):
disheartening when you see how badly taken care of your
old cans are. So keep the cans donate cash. It's
said that one dollar can almost I believe they can
stretch it to two to three meals per person. So
if you can donate what you can, we're in a

(01:31:35):
time where really we have to look out for each
other and ourselves as in selves with an s all
of us.

Speaker 6 (01:31:46):
Yeah, the economy of scale and their expertise go a
really long way. I've told the story on the podcast
before of my summer volunteering at a food bank, reading
done my commute and getting really impressed and affected by
all of the like slightly cosmetically scuffed up stuff that

(01:32:12):
get that grocery stores are like, we're not selling this,
but also we're just gonna dump it. And how dare people,
you know, seek to actually continue to use this stuff
that isn't like perfectly packaged and perfectly good supplies that
you know, the food banks are able to figure out

(01:32:32):
how to get to the people who need the most.
That's beauty.

Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
Also, let's and this is going to sound silly I
say on a podcast, but do what you can to
end a stigma on it if you need it. There
is no shame in going to a food bank. A
lot of folks from federal government jobs. A lot of
folks who had what are essentsibly well paying jobs still

(01:32:59):
leave paycheck to paycheck and after a month things will
probably get tight. So if you know somebody or if
you need it, there is no shame in uh going
where us as a community have said, this is where
we're here to help. So that's my rex.

Speaker 6 (01:33:18):
Yeah, for sure, I will wreck you go out and
spend some time in nature with some animals. I'm going
out to a bird conservatory their annual festival with like
bird education and birds of prey and raptors and yeah,

(01:33:40):
you know, see about your local animal preservation, nature preservation area,
especially as you know national parks are closed. You know,
go local, see what like is on the local level
at a nonprofit you can support and get involved in.

Speaker 4 (01:34:01):
Yeah, and hopefully it's not birds.

Speaker 6 (01:34:06):
Yeah right, as as a resident mouse and not a
big bird fan. But find something else.

Speaker 4 (01:34:13):
Let me go in the bird conservatory by every bird in.

Speaker 6 (01:34:16):
Here, Teddy Roosevelt on them, stuff them all. Yeah, find something,
fight a different animal to go support you need to.

Speaker 5 (01:34:28):
This is great, like the whole Gamut, uh a horrible movie,
a really good civic activity and uh getting in touch
with nature.

Speaker 4 (01:34:41):
It's like the Holy Trinity.

Speaker 5 (01:34:43):
Of is this just bad? So yeah, do it all
and we'll see on the next one.

Speaker 4 (01:34:49):
By It's just.

Speaker 6 (01:35:00):
It's like, oh, pirates brought your brain.

Speaker 8 (01:35:01):
Robber Nale's no choking opened in your mind with the
probots as you awoken hitting hydra halen hairs had for
a time be head of reasons for more than with
the soldiers with them and for all seasons. Listen closely
while we share our expert reason Catholic comics, culture, Dean
Street tuition to the multiversity.

Speaker 6 (01:35:16):
And also it's like we're teaching perfect balance.

Speaker 8 (01:35:17):
When we snap in finit Jens into your ears, does
the shoulders when we speak purple men, versus and feet
were randy savage draandals with their immortal technique