89: Return To The Island Of Dr. Goldin

a bush. It is terror Fighting eighties puppet movies for children December, but also dentist December. Um. I got a filling for the first time. What made it scary was that I thought I had done it before. Like I said to my parents, I ever had a filling and they were like, oh, yeah, you had a half filling, which is specific. So I was like, sure, I must have and then I half filling it's not a real thing because that didn't have be okay okay um. So I went to the dentist. I found out I need

to feeling, went back to get the filling. They were like I'd been My dad was like, oh yeah, but they'll probably just give you like a shot, And I was like, oh, okay, they give you a shot. I thought they just kind of got in there. Um. So the dentist was like, what made scary was the dentist said, I'm going to put your teeth to sleep. Oh no, and I don't like, um, what does that mean? He's like, well, I'm just going to give you a shot of whatever

it is. It's not no opcating. It's like something like that light. It came probably asked a lot of questions. I thought I was prepared for this experience, but then it's just like they put a syringe like in your tooth gum area. It feels really weird. Um, it feels like fine and then just sort of like sensitive and tender like and anytime you get like a new thing perforated, it's gonna gonna feel weird. Um. But it felt so much weirder than I thought because I didn't really understand

what novocaine is or does. So that you your face feels humongous. I could not feel my face. Uh, and it just freaked me out so much that that was like a thing you can do. I just kept thinking about audition the whole time. Um more spoiler alert, somebody gives somebody else a bunch of syringes of sort of paralyzing you. It also made be like, how do people get botox? Like this is so scary to like paralyzed

part of your face for like three hours. Well, there's a difference I think of like something that's meant to actually anesthetize you to like in preparation for something else more painful, versus like a long term like muscle deadening, which is like the whole thing just freaked me out so much that I was like not prepared, maybe like I'm going to brush my teeth. I hearing this so much because last week we also our guests the Least

Simonson mentioned that she had her first cavity ever. I have my first cavity, but it won't be my first filling because I had two pre cavities when I was a kid, and I got novocaine for one and then was and the other one was on the other side of my mouth, and I I declined the novocaine and said like, I don't want a shot, and they were like, this is going to be tremendously painful and uncomfortable for you, and I said, go go ahead, try me and it

was horrible. But I'm so afraid to get I have to have a feeling a Tuesday, and I'm so afraid to get it done. But I've also had two epidurals, so it's like your spine. You think I wouldn't care, but I do care. Well. I was thinking, if we can't find the Ewok Adventures for next the next episode, maybe we can do Little Shop of Horrors, which I think falls under eighties puppet movies. I've never seen it. You've never seen it? No? Why not? What? I don't know?

I missed a lot of the eighties. I feel like you were such a mark for a Little Shop of Horror. It feels like such a Molly movie. I've seen the original, the Roger Corman serious horror movie one with but I would see that, not the music. Oh it's good. I

want to see it. I mean, I wonder if it's good as an adult and your rotation dental horror of dr One of my like continue like my favorite things to think about is just the statistic that you know and I don't even know if it's true anymore, that like dentists have the highest rate of suicide because there's something both about the mouth, Like obviously people a lot of people have like a lot of sensitivity about getting donal work done. It's like a very like anxiety and

do sing thing. But then also the act of like looking inside people's mouths all day. Something about that like like leads to despair or something you're looking into like a gaping hole. Yeah, I'm just like, what is it about the mouth? Like it was like the tedium of doing that over and over again. Maybe I don't know, but like doctors get to mix it up. But like every dentist I've ever had always seems like it always

seems like a really fun job. Like I wanted to be a dentist when I was a kid because I actually loved going to the dentist for some freakish reason, and it was like my dream. I guess there's so many toys. There's so Yeah, the idea of the water pick is really like I took toys out of the toy chest on my way out this time. He deserved it. Deserved it, like dice eracer, so the toy chest that

they give away toys. Yeah, okay, I I thought you were just admitting to stealing from hundreds of dollars worth of dental equipment. I want to give myself more off brandental. Why not? So we were talking about today's the Friday. Also, yesterday was a full moon. It was a notable full mayor are some really intense vibes happening? Did you? Did any of you see? I think it was Alex Miles.

There was an astrologist who an astrologer who posted something on Instagram that was widely shared, and it was about the energy portal that's going on from the twelfth to thee It was a very intense I'll find a link to UH to put in our show notes, but it was about how this is a time when we're going to be feeling like we have to revolutionize our lifestyles and get rid of toxic things, and we're going to be feeling all of this crazy energy around us and

we're going to have to try and wrangle with it. Isn't that just the holidays? Yes, but it's also full moon energy. I think like the Pluto and Capricorn thing or something. I think this was specific to the full moon. And then there was also the retrograde that happened recently was very powerful, very powerful. That was a couple of months ago. But yeah, it made me think that the kind of swirling vibes in my brain were real. Yeah. I rarely ever feel like like a palpable sense of

anxiety or unease. It's like this unexplained like I've just been. If you look at my Twitter, I'm clearly very stressed out right now. And I'm just like I like and and like doing dumb ship like getting into the wrong car and stuff like that, and and I'm just like, is it the moon? Is this the only thing that I can I'm pin it too, is that I'm I'm the moon is just so close that it's like zapping my brain energy. I don't know. Family got in the car and this is like the first thing we started

talking about. I was like, Oh, it's a hundred percent the moon. I have been feeling so weird all weeks and I feel felt so emotional. And then I was like, oh, it's the moon. Obviously, it's clearly it has to be the moon. Um. We I have a really weird experience of watching So I'm watching the Sopranos, as you all know, for the millionth time, and um, my husband and I went out to Ramen and I was telling Molly, oh, like we had We went out to ram and it

was so fantastic. It was a beautiful, rainy day. We like way too much food. And then later we get home and we're watching the Sopranos Anything run season three right now, And in the middle of the Sopranos, my husband was like, I have food poisoning, and he ran out of the room. And then the next minute Tony got food poisoning, and I was like, something weird is

there's a lot of synchronicity going around. Muscle memory. Muscle memory. Um, if you have any reports about your December full moon experience, please please let us know. It was the cold moon. I had a tweet go super viral about the moon. Uh so viral that it ruins your Twitter, but it's it's awesome because I was about how it's you can't

take a picture of the moon on an iPhone. UM, about how I respect that you can't capture the moon on an iPhone, um even though you try, and people sent me a million great blurry moon pictures, which is the best thing. Um. But also we learned why you can't take a picture of the moon on an iPhone. It because the aperture is too wide. Emily explained it more, can you explain to me, I don't know. I mean

iPhones are made. iPhones are not professional cameras, despite what many people try to do with them, and then they get better and better, but like they're not. They're made to be able to be used in low light without a flash, because that like most of your life is in little light without a flash, So they are made to be able to take in light when there is

low light. But then it's like the contrast of the moon against the night sky is just it's too like there's not the breadth that the aperture cannot pick up that those distinctions, and like if you have a film camera, if you have like a professional film camera, you can obviously take a picture of moon all day and some people all night. If you put your phone camera up to a telescope, some people seem to get some more decent pictures. Oh, I did that when at the Star

party that I went to. After we went to the Star party, and it was great. You can take pictures of what you see through this telescope and you get the creators and everything, But when I was trying to take pictures of the moon, which I did and then posted, and was like, I don't like these pictures of the moon, but I just like that there's something so beautiful you can't capture. There are lots of things that are so beautiful that cannot be caught on. That's what's so cool

to think about, especially one that's just like right there. Yeah, everyone's trying to get a photo of it, and it's like, no, put your phone away. Just so, in talking about the moon, we also talked about the moon illusion. Yeah, let's talk about the moon illusion. The moon illusion, According to Wikipedia, the moon illusion is an optical illusion which causes the moon to appear larger near the horizon than it does higher up in the sky. It has been known in

ancient times and recorded by various cultures. The explanation of this illusion is still debated. It's not about like atmospheric pressure or something like that. There are many different hypotheses as to why people think. Some people ptolemmy thinks it's about atmospheric refraction. Uh Cleodmodes described it both to refraction

and to changes in apparent distance. I had a weird experience looking at the moon after eating a gummy where I was looking at the moon and it looked as though the moon was zooming very quickly across the sky, and I tried to take a video of it, and then notice that it was the clouds moving. But for for a second there it really had me. Yeah, I I have enough. Oh oh no, I was gonna say just about the Well, there are times on the Moon is closer to the Earth. Well, that's apparently. There's also

the apparent distance hypothesis, which cleomotes. And also Schopenhauer wrote about a good diagram. It doesn't explain anything, but it's like it looks like the cross section of an eye. Um. Speaking of ominous circles. Um. There was a story that came out in in Vice recently about rings. Are they just called rings? Ring? Ring cameras? Yeah, the doorbell camera that has become pretty popular. It's a is it an Amazon thing? Is it a Google thing? I believe it? Yeah? Amazon, Yeah, Amazon.

They were staying on a good expos about it. On the outline. They were like selling selling the in photocops. Yeah, um, yeah, I mean this is this has been a known issue with ring an now There's a new known issue with Ring, which is that there are groups that are dedicated to hacking RING devices, and even a podcast called an Oldcast where people basically prank Ring users live on the podcast. It's like it's like a total it's not a dark web thing, it's like a discord thing. I guess that's

all you need to know. Um, this is the world we deserve, I guess. I remember when I saw Ring pitched. It was called something Else I think on the Shark Tank, and I was like, that's the dumbest thing, Like the the idea that you could set up cameras, like you just need so many and you're going to have the whole perimeter. And it's like such a paranoid, horrible thing. I know, I bother Ring. What do you? How do you feel about that? Did this make you feel it? Twice? Well,

it's not inside. So the two hacking things that were kind of outlined in the Vice article, I think we're indoor ring cameras and the doorbell. I hack baby cams. There have been known hackings of baby camps. I believe. I don't know why you would want a smart baby cam. Why can't you just use the ones that it's like a closed circuit, Like it's unhackable. Can you hack just like anyone's computer camera? Also like, well, that's why I want people put That's how we all put stickers over it.

I don't put a sticker. I don't really why are they going to see? Would they see when you're walking around your house naked? I don't like them? Um, but yeah, I mean I got the ring because I because there were two burglaries on either side of my house that I was sitting outside for coincidentally both of them. Then I had like someone was ringing my doorbell a lot, and then by the time I got there, they were gone, and I was like, I'm just I'm going to lose

my mind over this. So I got one, and now I don't want someone to talk to me through it. But I don't know. So one of the ways people were hacking it or you know, doing these pranks to use the speaker, I guess that's in the ring. What is that used for? Uh? Normally the idea is that if someone rings your doorbell, so there's a camera and a microphone, so someone's like your intercom. Yeah, it's like

an intercom that you can use from anywhere. So it's really for if you're out of town or you're at work and then someone rings your doorbell, you get a notification on your phone where you can say hello, go away. It's so scary because also like if somebody, oh, if you're like in Florida on vacation and somebody who with ill intent comes to your door and you pick up the phone and you just like watch helplessly, right they like burgle your hat. It's a horror movie. It's a

horror movie. It's like sometimes like I feel like the much less stressful version is to just come back from vacation be like, oh, bombash, it's gone. Like watching I mean, it's kind of the more you know, the worst it is. But at the same time, I mean there's so there's an alarm feature, I think as well, So if there's someone who you don't want to be there and you're freaking out, you can push the alarm ideally like neighbors here, or you can just call the police and then then

you don't come. But yeah, I mean it's it's a conundrum obviously, And since it's since I bought the ring, all of this has come out so it's probably my fault. Sorry, we're just putting like a mirror on your door. What would that achieve? You're just like take a look. I'm feeling you see that it's a monitor and no shame that works always. I'm kind of into phone freaking coming back.

Phone freaking, yeah, well like hacking, like old school phone freaking was like people would like hack people's phone coming back, because that's so this seems like a new version of Yeah, phone freaking is so quaint. It's like it's quaint. This The really messed up thing about this was that people were speaking into the One of the cases highlighted in this article where people speaking through the camera to children, it was in children children's room and like saying like

racial things and like just threatening people. It's so icky. It's so bad. It's not definitely make you think twice about having it. Yes, well I don't have any whatever. We've talked about this before we come on. Let's take a quick break. We'll be back. We are back. Molly and I took the plunge this past week and immersed ourselves in the far off kingdom of Noah Vomback's marriage story. Don't worry We're going to talk about return Us soon, but we had to get to another horrifying movie. I

did them back to back, um order. I did Return to Oz first and then Marriage Story, which was the wrong order. Yeah, I did it while I cleaned the house. Um Marriage Story. I wish I had been watching the whole time I was cleaning my bathroom, because that felt like what it was the perfect movie for. How do you watch a movie while you clean your bathroom? You put it on your computer, and you put your computer on the toilet and clean your bathrooms. You're not really

watching them? Yeah you're not. I don't know if you're doing a lot of attention. I was paying attention. I've seen Return to Oz before. Um No Marriage Story. I wish I had been doing more activity while I was watching it, because I was like, oh, I wish I had been a little distracted watching this movie instead of

just fully. It is one I will say, like right now where I live, I can I can go to the kitchen and still hear the movie, and like if I look through I can like move two feet and see the screen if I want to get a snack or something. And this is one of those movies there are some movies we have to pause even if you have that to me. But this is like, it's totally fine. This movie could be a podcast. It's it's not like visually so sure, right, well, I mean it's very talkie.

It's got a lot of monologue. My theory about no Bombox movies okay, Emily, but I both have theories. My theory is that they're like the vegan meet substitute replacement for Woody Allen movies, which is good. It's a service. Yeah, it is a service. And it's like we all kind of like ship talk them, but we also watched them. They're about like just rich white people in New York in the media class having affairs and stuff. But they don't make you feel like a terrible person for watching them,

like what Allen movies do. I'm not saying that that needs to exist as a genre necessarily forever. I don't think it needs to be like re upped again after this. But for those of us who enjoy those kinds of movies about over educated people having like dramatic fights, it's fun. I think there's always going to be a space for them. And it's like it's one of these things where it's like, Okay, if that was all movies, if that was all prestige dramas, that would be super boring. But I like it in

the Salad. It's like it's like I'm not I go hot and cold on a bomb back movies. I really like a few no a bomback movies, and I really dislike other ones. Yeah, I love Greenberg. I love Greenberg tests. Yeah, I think he's did. I like The Squid in the Whale like men, I thought it was in black and white. I can't claim to be a fan. I just knew I was going to watch this movie. Then I heard what everyone had to say about the movie, and I was like, there's no place like this movie. I don't

need it. I mean it's I find custody disputes really depressing. And I got nervous because of my Blue Valentine Curse theory that the curse was going to be cured. Not that at all. I'm not going to roll the dice though, Molly, it's not. It's not even a little cursed. How do you know it takes it takes a year, it has alan Alda. I've I've decided that it no longer takes three months. It takes a year. So I'm just saying, like,

my thoughts are with you guys. Well, but also like in the way that I'll know a bomba movies are related. There's a part where like she's like, you're just like your dad, and you're like, oh, we've all seen the squid in the whale. You know what that means, Emily, what's your big theory? Well, I mean that that I've had to endure so much of this like Twitter discourse around this movie, which is really funny. It's like not even the first Noah Vomback movie to be on Netflix.

But I guess because of the biographical and and like scare quotes around that nature of this movie and the story, I guess people feel like there's much more of a

kind of lucky lu gossipy aspect to it. But I just like, I don't know, I feel like that the criticism has been so much around um like what he's chosen to depict and in what way, And like I saw somebody refer to his movies as like being bereft of creativity, And while I understand that argument, I think it really underestimates the act of actually sitting down and writing something because you can experience something and just tell your friends about something that bad that happened to you,

or like a bad breakup or something like that. But I feel like there's a lot of there's There are still decisions that are made, and thus it is not the characters are not named Noah bomb Back and Jennifer Adjacently, some of the decisions are so specifically about them that you're like, why not lean more into it actually being about them instead of pretending part where they're like the Adam Driver character isn't from New York, but he moved to New York and now he's the biggest New Yorker

of all, and it's like, we know, you're just from New York. It's fine to just be a guy from New York. You don't think that he could take inspiration for maybe other people who knew, like say somebody who moved to New York from Indiana as Adam Driver's characters, like, do you think that it's meant to be the only reason that guy knows songs from companies because he grew up in New York. As we were discussing earlier, I didn't grow up in New York, and I'm familiar with

some song time. I mean, like the company, Company Company. I get so excited. The only proof I have that people from man Haround in the eighties no company, I told. I told Molly and Emily, it's what your parents would play on the long, long long drive to try to get out of the city, and you would I found it very I told him I found it very cheerful and uplifting, and they were like, but it's about affairs love.

But I don't. I don't like Adam Driver. I actually have said some horrible things about Adam Driver on this podcast that I've then begged to be edited out. So I'm not even going to go down that right. But I just can't go like the Adam Driver discourse though, because it's so polarized, polarizing. I like that we got a funny looking hot guy. He doesn't do anything for me, but I'm glad he does something for other people, and I don't. I am generally a very pro funny looking,

hot guy person. He's got he looks like he can build a deck. He takes himself so seriously. There were there were a lot of examples on Twitter of him calling restaurants and things and saying can you can you shut down my wife? And so it takes actors to make act towards movie. It's true. I don't know, I'm

like people. It got nominated for SAG Awards. So there's a clip of like the big argument scene from Marriage Story that's been circling around and so of course, like Sam's contact sounds like the hour and a half leads up to that scene. Everybody's like they're just yelling and screaming, like is this all acting is? I'm like, like this is this is actually like a very very clear crystallization

of how the internet. It doesn't I feel like that something didn't super work for me, though I did feel kind of like screamy and talking and I was like, I don't know. I thought that scene worked and it worked when it worked because it just felt like that fight had been coming for an hour and it had they kept kind of being nice to each other, and I was like, it's gonna blow, It's gonna blow, and I don't know. He was like, I wish a dump truck would run you over and you die. It's amazing.

I mean that's like, I don't know, that's like a very specific, voicy thing to have somebody say to another person everybody else. The best part the ray Leota Laura Dern is a kicky divorce lawyer. Disagree. I actually think Laura Dern is actively bad in this movie. Love Lord Der's having fun. I think this is it is a distracting and weird for the best part is Alan Alda saying about a cat, don't expect a lot from that cat.

It's really good, like I want them. The spinoff series just about Alan Alda is like coming out of retirement to be a family lawyer, and like and silver Fox ray Leiota, I would totally watch the l A Law reboot with all of these people. I just want to mention that my favorite movie B movie has a ray Leota plotline that I enjoy. I just want to mention that ideally I would mention Bioda. No, it's ray Leiota has a brand of honey and these are mad good times. Hey,

do you guys want to take a night call? Yes, this is actually a night email from our listener Sam who wrote to us and said your episode on Labyrinth was like the sleep over my eleven year old self always wanted which is to say perfect podcast. Hearing y'all talk through the weird burpie smelly, horny but undeniably magical qualities of that movie was super fun and I can't

wait for Night Call. Does the Dark Crystal maybe maybe? Um. But more importantly, I'd like to direct your attention to the story of the Lost Hoggle Puppet, which you can view in Scottsboro, Alabama. The story goes that the puppet got lost in air transit, only to be unearthed many years later at the Unclaimed Baggage Center, a place strange and mysterious in its own right. It had been stuck in a pile of junk for so long, though, that the puppet had basically rotted through. The photos are some

fucked up terminator ship. They've since restored him, not particularly well, and you can see him on display at the center as one of their prized finds. That's the thing about puppets. They need to be maintained by professionals or they just kind of dissolve away. But I think that ifemorality is just another thing that's really cool about it versus c G I, on the other hand, I guess I'm gonna have to ponder rotting hoggle. But for baby Yoda, oh no,

your daggers, untold Sam. I have to say, I don't remember who said this on Twitter, and I don't know if you guys thought that the characters in It's a Small World have to get their hair cut okay, because it's made of yarn and the yarn overtime slackens and so they have to get haircuts. And I was like, wow, it's the same thing that puppets are organic, you know, so they kind of decompose and like change and age.

That's it's so cool. Ones that are made out of latex and stuff in latex is like an organic material, like it breaks down. The pictures of rotten hoggle. Yeah, we have to link to these must see incredible. It is some terminator ship because eyeballs are exposed and the foam is all kind of like fucked up and be prepared. It's not raised yourself trigger warning childhood wonder. I didn't know about the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Uh did you guys

know about that? No? Um, I feel like we should go to the air go to their It's just in Arizona. It's not that I mean, that was what other eighties puppets we could find. How many puppets do you think to get left Hoggle has to be a special case. I mean it seems like I'm looking through and they mostly have pictures of like books and and and shoes and a camera and stuff. But I'm sure that there are some fun things that people. Do you think that's um?

Do you think that that's ethical? I think we should Okay, you know how Storage Wars was faked. Yeah, we should just do that. We should unclaimed to store a show called Unclaim Baggage. That's the three of us caught a very weird logo. This place looks like a toothpaste. Um, anyway we should go. If you have been to the Unclaimed Baggage place, would you please leave us a night quality four or four sex night. Thank you to the Night Called listener who sent us a Bluesifer update. Oh

my god, wait what the blues offer update? The Bluesifer picture which one Emily texted that from Emily that was just for me. I am the night called owner. The Nightcalled coming from inside. Emily texted us a picture of Blue an intimate picture of Blue Suffer. It was via the Twitter for the band on Amana Gucci because they were going to play a show in Denver, and that was the tweet that they decided to retweet as a

part of their like Hey Denver. There was just a picture apparently blue Sufer the horse, which we have discussed on this podcast. There's a double horse, a douvil horse maker giant double horse. A blue horse with demonies also has a fully like articulated I guess, not articulated, that's not the right word, but just like fully sculpted out um asshole and bal sack with veins with veins, the veins that don't need to be there. The veins are

truly lightning veins because it's a devil. It's a devil. Um. I respect the the commitment. Yeah, accuracy again, most cursed sculpture. It is. It definitely is. But okay, So while we are on the subject of our puppet based fantasy horror memories, we watched Return to Oz this week. Some of us for the first, no, none of us for the first. We've all seen it. Okay, this time, we've all seen this one. I was trying to remember, um, it's uh.

I could not actually get through it, so I have to I have to just like put that out of there. A visceral repulsive. I mean, this is the scariest movie ever made. I think I think, Um I saw it. I guess when I was seven or yeah, some some age that was. I mean, there's no right age to see this movie. Is what did you make it through

when you were a kid? Yeah? I think I did, And I think I you know, it's one of those things where Okay, So the story of the film is it takes place after the Wizard of Oz beloved childhood story MGM musical movie. Uh, and it's that Dorothy has come back to Kansas after her um was it all a dream adventure in the Land of Oz and has been telling Antem and Uncle Henry about uh, the Tin Woodsman and the Scarecrow and all of her fun friends that she met, and they think that she has lost

her mind. So they sent her to a I don't know if it's a sanitarium, but it's some kind of clinic, old timey mental hospital, an old timey mental hospital with

like the first lecture shock therapy machine. So this child played by Fruzi balk And can't be older than ten, gets wheeled down the hall and a gurney to get electro shock therapy, and then the power goes out and she escapes and then finds herself back in Oz, except now everything's fucked up and the whole kingdom has been destroyed, which, by the way, is a lot like so that in return to Oz, we opened them so we can see the destruction of the tornado six months later hasn't really

been repaired. Her. Her house is like half standing. Her uncle can like fix the house because he has a broken leg and he's depressed. So they're living in kind of like a ramshackle situation. And Kansas looks really bleak because it's still kind of in the aftermath of the tornado, so much like Oz is now kind of you know, and it's basically in ruins. Um I did. I had some vague memories of watching this movie. I think the one thing that everybody remembers from this movie is the Wheelers.

Probably if you remember one thing about this movie or something that gave you nightmares from it, it's probably the Wheelers, which are like the standings and this this story for the flying monkeys just the kind of like bad yeah, um, but they are like full grown men on roller skates on their hands and legs, and they have these terrifying mass that they were on the top of their heads. And it's just like the It's just one of those things.

It's like if you ever went to like a street fair something when you're a kid, and they like they were like still people also always gave me the lose when I was a kid, like just just unnatural sort of like body like full body puppetry is like very very upsetting to me. Um, And I was like bracing myself. And that's when I told you guys, like I think I'm gonna vomit. And I was so stressed out just about the Wheelers showing up again. I was not ready

for it. And even the characters who kind of are the stand ins for the Tin Man, the Lion and the Scarecrow, they're off, like they're off. Instead of the Scarecrow. There's a Jack, a guy named Jack who has a pumpkin head and his body is kind of tied together and keeps falling aparty. That's what I thought the movie Pumpkinhead was going to be about. But and then the tin Man is um this character called TikTok who's like a wind up robot and he keeps kind of like

winding damn, much like the tin Man needs oil. Um. And then there's something called Gump. I was like, who knows how to exist? A moose head attached to us sofa. There's a part of ittories like what am I like, no one knows. It's like you didn't exist before, but now you do. There's a lot of like weird existential you know, kid level existential dilemmas brought forth it in

Return to Oz. I mean, you know, like the Wizard of Oz and Molly, you've read like all of the books I was saying, they're like just they're like twenty books in the Wizard of Oz series. There's the Wizard of Oz, and then there is Ozma Princess of Oz. I think it's called it's like Narnia. There's like a whole bunch of books. Dorothy's not even in most of them. After the first couple they're about Ozma some of them um, and I think they start being written by ghostwriters after

a while. It's just self Frank baumb for the first few. But it is kind of like Lord of the Rings or Narnia or something where it's like the stuff in the Wizard of Oz is like a small slice of this world that has all these different types of weird creatures, and you know, it's a whole other verse. So I think even in the first ones, there's like a map of Oz. It shows you were, like the desert, the

Deadly Desert exists somewhere. Um. And I remember liking these books because I was like, oh, I would like to know more about the weird mirror words that I do. Also, I mean, there are the things in Oz in Return to Oz that are really charming, like the lunch pail tree where you pick like a lunch box off a tree and you have to get a ripe one you

don't know what's inside. Um. And then later in the movie, Uh, Dorothy and her friends are having tea with like the evil dude, the Nome King, and they're drinking what is either I couldn't make it out. He was either like it's like steaming liquid silver or steaming sulfur, and I was like, those two things are very different. I want to know in my mind what they are. And limestone pies. But as a kid, those kind of things were the things that I kind of latched onto so it's still

seemed to have a lot of whimsical fun stuff. While the other thing, if you got freaked out by something, it was probably Princess mom by right, and the Hall of Heads. Yeah, the Hall of Heads is so good. She can take her head off and put on other heads. What's interesting is why she would want to sleep with no head, because is she trying to preserve, like not wrinkle her heads. Probably because she's really vain. She's really vain.

That's interesting. You think she just have a sleeping head, because why does she has to get up to pee? Like the idea that she's so obsessed with, like if if there's a head that's like nicer than her, she's like, I want that and want that head, that head, and

she wants that chicken. I mean, the thing about this movie, and it does kind of make you realize something about the original Wizard of Oz with the movie and the book, which is that I mean both are this one more explicitly so because it begins with a opening sequence involves a mental hospital, but it really both are kind of

about kids processing trauma. And then the first one it's a tornado and it's like about about losing your home and about losing everything that's familiar to you and you're innocence and yeah, and like reconstructing it and trying to make sense of it in this dream world and like the code of it is just like there's no place like home, but it's like her home was destroyed. Like

there's something really rough about that. I mean, there has always been something kind of dark about The Wizard of Oz, regardless of doing a dark, a grim dark sequel to it, as I think Returned to Oz qualifies, um, but it just really I mean I would like to see like a child psychologist or something take apart Return to Oz because so much of it feels really primal and unexplainable in a way that I think that's why it gets

to me. It's just and and I I can't I said I couldn't watch it, but it's not because I don't think it's good. Like it's also like the only movie that Walter Merched ever directed, like amazing, and well I was saying, I feel like it has a lot in common with Night of the Hunter, which was the

only movie that Charles Lawton ever directed. Um, and is another sort of like dark fairy tale that has children and in it, but also like put them in real danger in a way that like most kids movies don't, you know, yeah, where you're like, oh, this kid could die, which also I think never ending story yeah, and all the good kids movies do you have a little bit

of that you know people will die? Yeah, feeling. And I was watching with my husband who had never seen it before, and it's like, holy sh it, like that this was for kids, Like how is this movie not illegal? Like how did this not like repel every single kid who watched it? And I don't remember feeling repelled by it when I was a kid, because like a lot of this really dark like Dorothy and danger Ship is the stuff that kids I think eat up because like you feel that a lot when you're a kid and

when you're control. It's actually when you're older that you can actually go back and watch something like Return to Oz and be like, holy shit, what are they do? Because you understand the context for it. When you're seven, you're just like she's in a spooky house and they're trying to get her, and like that's I don't know, that's like a very compelling thing. I think also because Dorothy has played by Ferusa Ball. Yeah, who's amazing. Um, there's just sort of like you're not as worried about

her as you are about Judy Garland. I disagree. She was only ten, she was so little. I was like baby face, she's so like, I know she's going to get out of it. Oh no, no, no, she's a more powerful witch. I love everyone else. I'm worried about both of them for different reasons. I think juty because it's just duty. But I think taking the situation that she's in and return to OZ at face value as

a child is much less unsettled. Well, first of all, you you assume everything will be fine, because if she can escape from OZ, then she's escaped from all you know, and she can go back, and so you kind of accept this narrative that it's a physical place and that

you have faith that you'll escape from it. Whereas as an adult, I mean the fact that she starts off in a mental hospital, where you realize that if she did have the electroshock therapy, and this would have been like a very primitive electroshock therapy, that she could have

basically becoming capacity. You guys think that the whole movie is like she's been lobotomized, and this was her fan of I don't think she's been lobotomized, but I think that she's had electric shop and I think that it has like the desolation that we see when she returns to oz is what like how that fantasy world of hers that she was using to cope with this first cataclysmic thing that happened her has been decimated by this this procedure, because the procedure is aimed to take the

bad thoughts out of her, take the nightmares out of your part? Do you think she burned down the mental hospital with her mind with the mysterious blonde girl who just shows up and is definitely not an imaginary friend that that she invents in a time of need like Ozma. Yeah, Ozma. And that's the other thing is that obviously all of the characters who appear in the mental hospital, including the men who wheel the gurney down the hallway, are then

the wheelers. So it makes sense that she is taking what she's seen and trying to fight what they're doing to her to try to kind of rebuild oz in her memory, taking like what she's just seen and integrating it. But what comes out is this is this a nightmare? I do too. It's super smart and I think it's like really, I think it's a really valuable movie. I

just like it. But it's so effective because this is all traumatic ship that we're talking about and like and happening to a child no less, and so it is I find now like so actively unpleasant to watch for these reasons, not just because of the puppetry being spooky or whatever, but just because you know what's happening to her and why why she's making up what she's making up, and the fact that it is made up. It's not I think it's real, guys, man, I think it's not real.

But I loved it. But well, I was saying too, I feel like the first like Wizard of Oz is Alice in Wonderland, and then this is like through the looking Glass. It's like even in the context of the fantasy world, the rules that the made up rules don't exist anymore or they're totally different. Yeah. Um, I don't know, there's something so human about this movie. You know what we're going to have to do because of this now the whiz Oh have you guys ever seen the word? Definitely? Yeah?

Talk about some full body puppet tries. Yeah right, we should do the Whiz and we also have to do the Dark Crystal, which has been also requested by some listeners. But if you have other requests of eighties puppet horror that you would like to throw our way, please col horror for children? Well yeah, I mean, I mean, what what what are we talking about here? The wait? What's that music video? I always forget the name of it.

The Genesis video with all the splitting image videos. I was just talking about that because they show this is the most sucked up thing. But in an Epstein documentary I watched in order to get Prince Andrew to molest one of the victims, they had a splitting image puppet of Prince Andrew and they were like, look the puppets putting its hand on her breast. Would you like to do that? Yeah, because he's like an imbecile. UM was

the most up to the documentary was. I was also like, Julainne just had a splitting a spitting image puppet of Andreid. I knew what that meant because I've seen that Genesis video, which is terrifying. UM on that return to return Us trauma, UM alright, we're gonna take a break and when we come back, we're going to have our guest Katie Golden on. And we are back. We are joined today by Katie Golden.

Posts of Creature feature a great podcast right here on this podcast network that we have all been guests on already at some point. It's super fun. Everybody should check it out. Hi, Katie, Hey, thanks for having me on. Of course, we you know, as listeners know, we frequently get into creature news, animal news, new bugs, new crabs, um.

They usually make an appearance here. But we also don't know that much about animals, or at least not as much as you do, so we felt like it would be appropriate to pick your brain about newsworthy animals that take my brain like a parasitoid wasp. Well what do you what do you think about? I mean, there is a there's totally a cottage industry of viral animal news

that we obviously love and thrive on. But yeah, and I think the general rule for journalists is the more penis shaped the animal is, the more viral it will be the better story. Don't don't bury the penis is what they call. Well, they struggled this week and there. I mean, even if they wanted to bury the penis, there were just so many. I don't think I don't

think there was room. I don't know if anybody saw. Okay, so this was very this is like a misnomer and some people are very angry about this because it was being called a penis fish on twitter. Um it is not a fish, no, but it is called a penis fish like that is that is used for it. It's got a fish. So more, it's related distantly two leeches, earthworms basically worms. It's a warm it's also known as a spoon worm or it's in the family of spoon

worms because it's proboscus is shaped like a spoon. Where's the proboscus? You know, comes out at one of the ends, probably front, which is the front. Okay, So so if you haven't seen a picture of this, first make sure that you're not at work. Maybe at the work you can look, can you you'd have to You're going to have to explain yourself. Is the one assuming things that's true? That's true? What are those penises? And you say penis? Why? Who I know? It's nanimal? I would never I'm a scientist.

It is a fat innkeeper worm. Yes, that's the I guess that's the official name of it. That that's the official name. Yeah, it's a very rude. Uh. It does look like a pink dildo. Um. And they're found in the West Coast and usually Northern Town, California. Is that right, Katie? I guess so. I'm actually not an expert on this particular worm. There's just so many worms out there. Yeah, you'd think that I would have specialized in the penis

shaped worm, but now there's still time. Um. One of the cool things about the penis worm or the penis fish, the fat innkeeper worm, my friend, is they they eat by spitting out slime nets tea and then they like pull the slime net back in and eat whatever's in it. That's actually a pretty common tactic by a lot of different worms. There. Proboscus worms that basically spit out their proboscis inverted or everted, I guess which is where it like spits it out and then like pulls it back

in to pull in prey. It's a disgusting fun way to eat. Why would they not just evolve to have mouths? Is that the dumbest question, Like it doesn't it expend a bunch of energy. It's not a dumb question. It just depends on the type of environment you're in. So if you're sort of a filter feeding animal or an animal that eats a bunch of small detritus that winds up in the ocean, by casting a net, you've created a system that's a lot more You get a much

more bang for your buck. Then if you're just going around hungry, hungry, hippoing all those little bits of marine snow, which is like little bits of organic matter, do they have any kind of a colony or anything? The penis fish, the independent contractors, I mean, apparently they have something going on because of this massive amount of penis fishes that washed up on the shore. Well, this is saying that

it was a storm. Is the reason right that they that they all got caught in like a cyclone of just that would be such a sight to see a cyclone of wieners. I mean, that's the concept of Sharknado. It's just with dicks like um, it's truly raining. I want like, if I ever have a bachelorette party, this is at a very high bar where if there's not a cyclone of Wieners. I don't know, you're not trying,

You're not my friend underwhelming. I'm like fine with all these images of them, like they're they're they're just covering the speech. What about the image where it's on a plate to be eaten? God? So yeah, they are also a delicacy. Yeah, that's right. Well, I'm looking at a photo of there was a photo of a like an otter just sort of like snacking on. But there's another one with it like mid eating it where it just looks like it looks like happy, let's be adults about it.

It looks like it's giving it a be j Yes, yes that's what. But that that's the first one. That's the before picture. The after it's just like like stretched out remains of the worm. I wonder what the texture is looks like. Also, I feel like I think it's like a gooey duck. I like, I've seen the otter eat a good duck. It's like a shell less, gooey duck. Actually,

I bet it. I bet it's sort of like, yeah, like a muscle or maybe even scargo that kind of like kind of looks like a nice yeah test making a face I'm not a funatter for I'll leave them for the otters, just a million floppy dicks for them. I don't think so. They're very like easy prey. It sounds like from what I've read that just they don't have any defense mechanisms. They're just like just like a penis exactly do you think the seagulls are just like

having a party? I guess a penis party. Yeah. Party. It's got to be a site to see a bunch of goals and other scavengers just floppings around, you know, just letting them flop down their Goallet's seagull bachelorette. Yes, this podcast this isn't. This was in Drake speech in California at the mass beaching of wieners. Yeah, is um elkhorns slow? I've been there? Is that more? Obey? No, it's like up near moderate, but it's where you can

see a lot of otters. It's really cool. So other than um animals that look like dis uh, what, what do you think is like? What what makes the perfect viral animal story? Like? What for you personally and maybe for the world at large? For me, it's good writing. I love a story that starts with a nice hook. I think that with science writing sometimes it falls short of my expectations. I think it's important for it to both be accurate and have a nice narrative. There is

a story I think it's by ed Young. It was I think it was in the National Geographic and I loved it because it started with, you know when Dr so and so got a big sack full of reindeer eyeballs. At first he didn't want it. That pulls me in that you must know more, to know more. That's a good hook, and it's you know I do sometimes I think that viral stories exaggerate the facts a little bit,

which can be frustrating. So I think you can, if you know how to write a good story without exaggerating the facts, you go and really try to dig down into the science. It's never you never have to. Really. Nature is so crazy. You don't have to make anything up. You don't have to kind of stretch the truth for it to be really interesting. Yeah. I feel like we've had debates on this podcast about certain headlines from certain

websites about science stories, um, guilding the lily. Nature is cool, Like, you don't need to mislead people. I feel like, you don't have to stretch a fat innkeeper worm, you don't have to guild a penis fish. Um. We also wanted to talk about I came across on Live Science a story about a pig monkey chimera hybrid. Interesting um, and

it it just seems like a bad idea. It's intriguing, but we were kind of wondering what you thought about hybrids, especially because there was also an article by the person who created the lab redoodle saying it was his or her life's regret. Um. And since then I went on kind of like an internet spiral and started looking into like the mini bernardoodles and all the kind of like

new designer dogs, and it was like the pig monkey. No, I actually have very strong opinions on all of these things, so I'm happy to be here to sort of force my opinions on other people. It's my favorite thing to do. UM. So the I'm actually I wasn't aware of the the pig monkey hybrid, but I know so it's My guests would be that it was an embryo and it wasn't viable.

I think it was viable, so it says okay. On Live Science two piglets recently born in China look like average swine on the outside, but on the inside they are a very small part monkey. A team of researchers generated the pig primate creatures by injecting monkey stem cells into fertilized pig embryos and then planting them into sarroget saws.

According to a piece by New Scientists, two of the resulting piglets developed into interspecies animals known as chimeras, meaning that they contained DNA from two distinct individuals, in this case, a pig and a monkey. It's the first report of a full term pig monkey I see. So it's not I think, more accurately, it would be a pig born with some monkey cells in it, a dash of monkey, a dash of monkey. And it also looks like I just looked up a little thing. It looks like they were.

They died after about a week. So typically that's what happens when you try to Uh, it's either not viable or they're not gonna make it because it's I think it's hard to play god. Yeah, in general for this, it's so seductive. So actually, there was a pig human hybrid made in seventeen at the Sock Institute in San Diego, which is actually my hometown, and they, I guess I got out of there just in time, injected human stem cells into a pig embryo, which created a pig human

hybrid sort of. I mean, I think so. The pig embryo was like only point zero zero one person human, which I assume is similar with the monkey one. It was probably a very tiny amount of monkey, and it was only able to develop for about twenty eight days, and it was also I'm not I think it would have probably terminated, but I think they also would not allow it to develop further because that would be super illegal. Right, Is it illegal? That's my question? Yeah. I don't think

you're allowed to make human hybrids. You're not allowed to splice. I don't think so. I don't think the splice was it sex? Yeah? Yeah, it's that was an interesting movie. I think. Isn't the point to get closer to being able to manufacture organs for organ transplant? Yeah? I think that's the hope. I don't think we're an evil masterminding stem cells, right, I don't think it's trying to make

sort of a half pig half human hybrid. That it's not gallops around just trying to make a monkey pig in order to be the most viral animal story that would be the half shark all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I think it's interesting. I think it's something where obviously, I think there are a lot of ethical concerns when it comes to creating hybrids. I think when if if it's just in the name of creating, like growing organs,

you know that that's something. Of course, if you're growing organs within a living animal, then you have to consider the quality of life for the animal. It seems to me though, like the ethical concerns haven't been a big issue in tech biotech recently. Do you think there are people who have like a secret island of Dr Mureau already? I was sure, probably now that we know sociopaths have seen grid islands kind of some kind of Epstein pig monkey hybrid just doing his bidding. What would the island

of Dr Golden look like? What kind of creatures? Yeah, what would you populated with? Good question? I mean bird people, probably, you know I do. So here's here's the thing, and I hope, I hope nobody steals this idea of idea from me. But I'm I'm in the works of creating a you know how Cats the movie is coming out. I'm creating a rival Broadway production called Birds, where it's bird people dancing around and talking about sort of bird issues, which you may know it is very important to me.

I'm the author of pro bird Rights, which is a Twitter dedicated to the supremacy of birds. But do you know about the rival conspiracy theory birds don't exist? Yeah? I know this what we're in a very protracted a legal issue, right, Yeah, it's um, I get ads for it. Sometimes exist. It's a fake conspiracy that says that birds are all just drones. Now like birds do exists. The bird conspiracy theory that birds don't exist is actually a reverse psyops ci, a shadow plot to undermine birds. Birds.

We have seen that, you know what birds on documentary. Wait, so what are the what are the bird issues? What are the major bird issues? Well, the Twitter account itself is I hate to say it, it's a satire. It is actually written by a real bird. I just interpret the birds sort of speaks. I'm a channel, a medium, a bird medium, and the bird speaks through me, and then I put the birds thoughts into words. But it

is a satire. It's like political satire, basically making fun of people in power who feel like they're they're suppressed when really they're not, like the Trumps of the world. Basically, yeah, bird rights, Um, what's the best bird? The best bird, Well, the cutest bird, in my opinion is the European robin. That's the That's the bird that I use for that that account because it's very round and very angry looking. It's the perfect bird. It's like, when you think of bird,

that is bird. That is what? Yeah, that is the quintessential bird. When I think of bird, I think of duck. Is that weird? It is? I don't know what's wrong with you. I don't either trying to figure it out. I don't know what I think of when I think now, I feel like my mind has been poisoned by both of this very adorable round bird. Crows talk about Oh, that's an interesting question. Crows are hell of smart. They're very smart. They're highly social. They do communicate with each other.

I think you know, they probably talk about oh. Mostly it's probably like hey, are you there, Yeah, I'm here. Are you there? Yeah, I'm here. What about you? Are you there? Yeah, I'm here? You over there? Yeah? Here over there. They also do things like hey, I know you. You're a bad person. I don't like you. Yeah. So they can recognize, they can recognize faces. They will attack

people that they hold a grudge against. So a University of Washington study banded a bunch of crows, and banding is when you put that little plastic inklet on on the crows and they hate it. And so they researchers knew crows could remember faces and attack people. So they started wearing masks, and the crows would attack and scold people wearing these masks for like years, and they have

a specific call that is a scolding call. So they're probably saying, like, I remember you forced us to wear bracelets. We hate you. What. How how old do crows live? A few years? That's a good question I think about now. I'm like really scared. I'm thinking back on all the crows I've wronged, and I'm just like sin. Let's see, American crews seven to eight years. Ravens live ten to

fifteen years. There's a big difference between the two. But they're they're different species and they in terms of their size. They I think ravens tend to be a little bit bigger than crows, but not by too much. The best way to tell the difference between them is ravens tails are giving you a middle finger, whereas crow's tails aren't. So the raven tail comes and has like a comes to sort of like a point where the middle feathers stick out, so it's like a big old middle finger,

and with crows is just kind of a wedge. And ravens also have a little bit of fluff right at the bridge of their beak that's a little more pronounced. I feel like ravens have like shoulders more so than crows could be. They could be like a posture when they're sitting. I mean, like it looks like they have shoulders. They're all dinosaurs. I mean it's the big crows are hard. It's smaller crows are easy to tell from ravens, but there can be some pretty big crows and that that

can be difficult. Crows often come in brigger groups. Ravens usually come in ones or two's. The call is different, so crows have a like like that's like the car. It sounds like a con and then ravens sort of have a croak where it's like those are really good impressions. Thank you? Did you see um? Did you see the Lighthouse? Hey? The movie with Will Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, there's a really good performance by a seagull in it. It's a pivotal point. It's actually like I would say, maybe the

best performance in the movie. But it's a really brutal performance. But it is this sort of it's it's about Robert Pattinson's character being remembered by the seagull that just comes back to funk with him. Um. It's it's kind of great. Also, like it has to be hard to train a seagull. Do you think seagulls are interesting? I mean, yes, I do think it would be hard to train a seagull. But seagulls also have social calls, and they'll they'll communicate

with each other with a variety of alarm calls. They even sometimes have these social calls where when they're nesting, where they kind of communicate with each other where they want to put the nest. They also can learn when one of their seagull friends like cries wolf a lot. So like if a seagull is overly sensitive and keeps calling when there's no danger. They learned to ignore it,

so they're they're pretty smart, I could. I think the hardest thing with training a seagull is knowing what you could possibly offer a seagull that it couldn't get on its own, because they're very opportunistic. They'll swallow like entire other animals. They I don't know what we have that is, what do you bias the seagull who has everything? I've had a seagull steal a whole sandwich dis so much we don't need to give them. They just take. So I'm not sure how you what kind of blackmail the

trainer has a They just really wanted to meet Willem Dafoe. Yeah. Yeah, they're all star fuckers. Maybe the stars are bird fuckers. That's true. It goes. It's the two way street. Um, Katie, your podcast is so cool. You know, you're so good at doing your research and finding out about all the creatures that we've talked about with you on the podcast, and when you talk about with your guests, like what got you into just like the world of creature study

and and digging into the weird ones. Yeah, So when I was in college, I was really interested in both evolutionary biology and psychology because I was I think I was I really wanted to understand human behavior, and at the same time, I really wanted to understand animal behavior. And my interest in understanding human behavior actually started when I was a kid, because as a child, I had child hood o c D. And I was really interested

in finding out more about it. So I would read all these psychology books and things and try to understand myself better, and that kind of grew into an overall wanting to understand human behavior. And then at the same time, ever since I was a little kid, like basically a toddler, I've been obsessed with animals. My mom says, when I was a toddler, I used to chase birds around and I tried and she asked me why I was doing that, and I said I wanted to catch one so we

could become friends. And so i've and I used to go bird watching when I was in high school. And I think it's it's almost like, I think I've always been interested in animals, I've always been interested in human behavior. So I kind of like when I was in college, I kind of married them together. I got my degree in psychology, and I took a lot of evolutionary biology classes to understand how behavior fits into the big picture

of evolutionary biology. Now I'm it's it's funny because my career shift from sort of I used to do um like medical educational texts and animation, and then I started doing the pro bird rights Twitter account. People really loved it. I was like, maybe I could do something with comedy. So then I got into comedy, and then that naturally progressed into doing podcasts and then which and I was like, well, when I wanted to do a podcast, I was saying, well,

you know, I want to do it on animals. Gosh darn. Yeah. So it's a pretty natural progression from chasing birds as a little kid into doing stuff about animals who have O c D as an adult. It's great. It's like, it's definitely a much needed sector of the podcast, like too many comedy podcasts and not enough animal pod comedy podcasts about bird right, Yeah, it is a comedy animal podcast,

but it's not. We don't have to try too hard because it's like, you know, penis fish come on right in our laps like literally, well, everybody should check out Creature Feature. It's a great show. We're going to be on it super soon. Two minutes, in two minutes, it's another I heart podcast. Yes and um yeah, thank you so much for coming by today, Thank you for having me. And you can subscribe to Nightcall if you haven't already,

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