Blood Soaked Startups

Lambert with me today I'm Tesla Lynch and over in Austin, Texas. Today, we have Emily Yoshida at the aforementioned Yoshida Innovation Hut in south By, Southwest. What are we cooking up at the Innovation Hut today? Okay, we can't do this the entire I'm quite a bit over for now. We can bring it back. I don't think I might ever be

able to stop. It's really why are we talking this way? Guys? Well, we all watched the Inventor Out for Blood and Silicon Valley, which is going to be HBO the monday that you hear this. I suppose it will be on your TV or on your parents HBO account that we saw it in advance using the time Machine, Elizabeth Holmes invented as child. Just to clear something up really quick, this is not a sponsored post. We were so excited to see this documentary that we requested a screener, and so we're not

being sponsored. We were just really excited to see this and it's really good access journalism. Man could not have been more excited. We couldn't get Night Call into Cats for free, but we could get the Elizabeth Tom's documentary before we get into the Inventor. Can I give you guys a download quick? On the scene Austin, Texas? Yeah, sure, can we get Can we get a moment minute about south By South? Yeah? A south By second. I'm sure

that's already a thing. I'm sure somebody else has already said that, So I feel gross free in saying it. But I'm really just on movies here. It's I've actually mercifully stayed away from a lot of the like more aggressive brand experiences and stuff like that. Although I did see like a very forlorn like kind of big RV with sort of the tent awning thing sticking out of it for Pizza Hut, but it was like way in East Austin or not like East East Austin. But it

was like kind of away from everything. And I think that there was like a Pizza Hut activation at Sundance this year that I never went to, but I heard about it. So Pizza Hut is on the hunt for pizza. Yeah, Pizza Hut. I did did you guys ever do? As a child? Book it where you would eat read a bunch of books to get a free Pizza Hut pizza, Pizza Hut pizza. Sorry that producer is giving a thumbs up, we all, I'm just saying it was the original brand activation.

It was like trick smart kids who are like, I'm going to read all these books and I get a reward back to the Elizabeth Holmes place and then you get like a free personal pan pizza and you're a kid. It was the best pizza as a kid. In fact, I didn't come around to pizza until Molly and I started eating the bacon cheeseburger pizza from Domino. The bacon cheeseburger is that like like a cowboy pizza? Is that what we were talking about? What's a cowboy pizza? Like

a pizza with ground beef on it? And this is a yeah, and but also bacon. It also had bacon. Yeah, yeah, sounds like it should be Midwestern. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it has its origins, but we digress. Tell us about Austin. We're just saying we're not above trash pizza, Little Caesar's, any trash pizza that wants to sponsor Night Call. I'm gonna draw the line at Dominoes because I love

domino Oh my god, no, I will. Actually they've remade it, like I guess they like changed their recipes last time I had a Dominoes, So maybe I would love your cheap what's your cheap slice of choice? My cheap slice of joy? I guess you live in New York citech. I live in New York City. Also, I don't eat pizza anymore because you're lactose intolerant. Yeah. But but but now I've realized that I can order two boots like an entire pizza, Like they actually delivered in my apartment.

So I will occasionally get like their vegan pizza delivered, which is it feels like a real treat. Feels super super debauchrous to have a pizza like every time it comes. I'm like, look, it's a pizza to your house and it's here. Now he's the most exciting thing about being an adult. He's ordering pizza, yeah, being like I want a pizza. I can just order one now home alone. But you can order anything now. Yeah, it doesn't have

to be pizza. We'll see I order everything, Like under the Sun. I just never get a pizza because I don't eat cheese. But then when I get a pizza, it's like I'm a real American now. As nerd girls, if I had told you you could like earn something by reading books would have been a good speaking of being a totally like overachieving. Uh the middle slash slash no no, but well this this ties into theirs, of course. But I just want to like quickly shout out Book Smart,

which I saw last night. I thought we were going straight to the well they're like, I mean like, if these characters in this movie took like a bad turn, then they could easily become little Elizabeth Holmes. But it is so good. It's it's Olivia Wilde's uh directorial debut as a feature filmmaker, And so I feel like you always kind of approached these sorts of things like okay, we'll see how good this is. But she's been doing like music videos and stuff like that for seconds. I've

always been rooting for her. She directed a Red Hot Chili Peppers video, yeah we're referring to, but it was all girls skating. It's a great video. Yeah. I mean she's like genuinely, she has a lot of vision. She knows what she's doing and like everybody already loves her from when she played Alex on The O of course, yes, but she's like a real deal director, and like the

script is so funny. Apparently it's been it was like a blacklist script like like ten years ago or something like that, so it's really been around for a second, but then it finally got made after you know, development hell or whatever, and it's like it's I mean, I wish it would have would not have gone had to go through all of that to like, was that your favorite South? Well, that was the thing last night where I was, like I was at the premiere for it.

Most of the stuff I've been seen has been premiers in the Paramount Theater with like all the cast and crew there, and that's like a very buzzy sort of um you can't hear your own thoughts, type of environment to be in, and ye you were staying with us. With us, it was like, yeah, I just I want to see it again because I feel like it was so um, it was so hype in there. I just cannot hear my own thoughts. But but with book Smart, and I was super tired when I went into Book Smart.

But and I was sitting right next. I was there with Jada Yuan Um, my colleague Slash fifty two Places World Traveler Um, and we were both like zonked out when we sat down. And then like as soon as the credits started, ruling were like, did we just watch like the next classic Allah Clueless or Mean Girls or something like that. Like it felt it felt like a

really big deal movie to see there. It's really really funny. Um, it's like Beanie Seagull and Caitlin Dever or like these two overachieving girls who realized like they didn't need to overachieve so much because all the like party and kids and sexually active kids in their high school all got into IVY leagues too. So um, they have like one last night to just so that they can say they had fun and high school. So they like try to

go to all these different parties. It's very kind of super bad, like um, one crazy night type thing, but it's just so charming and the two leads are so amazing, so like I would definitely I'm giving it the Nightcall Seal of Approval UM in a dance. Yeah, yes, all right, we accept. Yeah. Today's episode of Nightcall is brought to

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let summer heat ruin your drink. Go to broommate dot com and beat the heat this summer. That's b r U m a t e dot com code Nightcall. Something else that got the night call steal of approval in advance was the inventor for blood and Silicon Valley. I think we are just generally interested in sociopaths, especially like business sociopaths. Yes, I mean she so, Elizabeth Holmes was a very very very private person and for some reason you can tell that just by looking at her. She

doesn't blink very much. And then we start trying to figure out what's so off about her. And first of all, so that she does a fake voice, which is by the way, but it goes there's some mention it that she does it when she's like playing herself for an interview or something, but like person to person, it was it would kind of lesson. I mean, I think she has a naturally kind of lower voice, but she really plays it up and I don't know or truthers out there.

There was a segment from a podcast that you can find on YouTube where she slips and her voice is much higher. Yeah. Really, And there's a podcast about it that I think people were saying. Also they found like people who knew her before and like that's that's new. Um. But she also wears the Steve Jobs turtlenecks all the time. She doesn't blink. I have a pet theory that she's

maybe wearing color contacts. They're very intense and when they show the older pictures of her look like she had brown eyes and I was like, wouldn't be wouldn't put it past her? Well, the thing that's so jarring in it is I mean it kind of skipping forward. First of all, this is a documentary by Alex Gibney, who's done all of the big HBr documentaries recently. He did Go Clear Yeah, and and Ron Yeah, the one which interestingly, Elizabeth holmes Is father went did that explains it all um?

And they don't maybe bring that up in the documentary. I think they've they maybe briefly mention it, but you have to, you know, right, But you're like, no, wonder she's a scammer. She like her dad was a scammer and they lost a lot of money apparently, yes, and they ran. I mean all of their friends were like these kind of luminaries. And I guess that her like great great grandfather has like a hospital named after she used. She like used just rich white privilege to scam her

way to the top of Silicon Valley. But again, it's like the people on the she put on the board, none of them were scientists. They were all people kiss which is your first that's something maybe a miss. He's also on the International Olympic Committee. He gets paid to go to the Olympics. Um. Yeah, just like a bunch of really bad people from politics that were connected to her family because she had like DC connections, and then

she got a bunch of seed money. It was like she made the company exist based on this idea that she could create a blood test from a pin prick sample of blood. Well, for anyone who's not familiar with Elizabeth Holmes, her company saranos Um is basically the origin story is that she was terribly afraid of needles, and her mother and aunt or like another family member were so afraid of needles that they would faint. So her idea is that instead of drawing from the vein, you

do a pin prick. You get a tiny, tiny sample of blood, and then you feed it into this machine called the Edison, which later I think she tried to rebrand as Mini Lab, which looks like a small, you know, printer basically, and that that would be able to run on a battery of tests, like two fifty different blood tests. But in actuality, uh, when this was rolled out, the

pin prick wasn't enough blood. You actually had to do the regular draw, And she was lying when she said that the tests were being performed by the Edison, because they actually were being performed by the more traditional um blood testing machines that are big and bought from third partners.

So yeah, there's a lot of stuff that the documentary goes into, like you know, drawing on the irony of calling the box the Edison, because so many of like Thomas Edison's patents were things that he also did not really know how to do, but would say he did them and find some way to like, you know, do a demo at a World's fair or whatever and make people bleed. He's done it. And then and then in

the background, you know, right, he actually gets there. There's a thing I couldn't believe they didn't use in the documentary because it's such because they were using other stock footagey things where I was like waiting for, like here's the stock footage about the mechanical Turk, which is like this famous uh fake automaton. It was like, uh, like was supposedly a chess playing robot, I think, and then it turned out to be just a guy. Oh, but

they brought it places and presented it. It's like it's a robot that plays chess and like you know, just see your moves and like play against you. But it was really a guy in a box inside of it, like manipulating it. And so anything there's something like that, you're kind of like, yeah, you can like maybe trick people into thinking it works in like your lab environment.

But that was like there are so many things about it. Yeah, this is all the science version of the stuff we were talking about last week with the psychics and spirituality.

It's like, take advantage of the stuff that people want to believe in, and you make it just credible enough that they'll look over any of the like cracks or inconsistencies or something, because people really wanted this, like it would have been like a real disruptor of the entire diagnostics into but they show like there's a professor immediately who's like, you can't do that, it won't work, you know, And she had declined to kind of work with Elizabeth

Holmes on the project and passed her on to someone else, and then that person got taken in by the crazy eyes. A lot of people got a lot of old white men especially taken in. And the professor is amazing though, because she's so like I like, she does not give anywhere. He's a good character of the documentary. Yeah, she's the one. She's one of the good people. Um, everybody else gassed up Elizabeth Holmes because she was like the perfect embodiment

of what Silicon Valley wants to believe about itself. And well, she was one of the only female like CEOs in one of these disruptive sector like sector disrupting industries, and so there was a lot of incentive to play that up for you know, she can hear she bought her way in, but like so did the rest of them, and like, uh, that was the thing too, is when they were like, well everybody liked all the move fast and break things, but like you can't do that in medicine,

And I'm like, you shouldn't do that in other things either. Like it's always just like breaking labor laws, you know, is what it always it's, well, that's what the break things like with. Yeah, like Uber is also like a big fucked up company that like just keep secrets about itself. All these companies are just like, well, we can't tell you. What's really interesting about the threat posed by Sarainos was

eventually um. Towards the end of the documentary, they talked about how people were coming in to be tested for syphilis and nobody was really trained there. That was the only test they could get the machine to do was to But it's also like the separation of the carpet world, which was like the you know, kind of slick Silicon valley, like Elizabeth Holmes was like wandering the halls and this glossy building and then the tile floors where the lab

technicians were working. And I think it was you know, they're like in the science realm that people finally came forward and we're like, hey, the science is bullshit, Like I would not trust these test results. No one should trust these test results. It was you know, yeah, it wasn't in the documentary, but um, I think it wasn't a vanity fair article about her. Maybe there have been a bunch of articles obviously over the past year or so, of which we read, all of which we read last night.

But about her dog. She has a psychic Yeah, Balto the Siberian husky, who she told everyone was a wolf. But he would bring him to work and he would contaminate samples with by like shedding, and he wasn't house broken, and I was just like peeing everywhere all over the place. She would just pretend it wasn't happening. And I think that's just her general attitude to life. And it takes

you so far. Um, that's the whole thing is. It's just like people would come to her and be like, it's not working, it's never going to work, and she was just like, you're not trying. She was impenetrable, and she wouldn't she wouldn't disclose any of the mechanics of the machines that she had designed or you know, had

kind of used other people's ingenuity to help design. I think that was one of the people who she worked with, Ian Gibbons, who was one of the scientists that you know, she kind of took some of his work and brought him on the board, and he eventually committed suicide. Um,

which that was real sad. It was super sad. And his widow you know, talked about how Elizabeth Holmes had called up after he died and instead of offering her condolences, was like, Hey, I'm gonna need everything all of his paperwork that related to Saranos because I don't wanted to get out. Yeah, this was really like late in the like I think that the kind of noose was tightening

around them. So she was getting like super paranoid about everything. Yeah, she never breaks in the documentary because they don't get any like new footage with her. A lot of it comes from the stuff that Errol Morris And that's the funny subtext of the documentary is the documentary and feuding with Errol's total shade on Errol Moore, so sad to Errol Morris's are you sitting there like totally credible, like you know, cross arms in this director's chair, like you know,

asking her to tell everybody why she's a genius. And it's like, but that footage is incredible because that's the stuff where you're like, you feel like you're looking at this mask of a human because you know, the Natron is the thing that he invented. Where it's like, so the interviewer, the way that the camera set up, it's it's set up so that the person is having an eye to eye conversation with the interviewer, but they're also

looking right into the camera. Um, so you get this, like you get the unblinking stair like in all its glory with like ring light three sixty lighting around it and you can just see like she says something at some point and that's an alien. Yeah, but she also says like, oh yeah, I only sleep like four hours a night, and it's like, maybe you should sleep more, like you have hired. And I also feel like there's

such a thing as like sleep psychosis. You can make bad decisions, you know, is if anything she says it's true, Well, because it's all very buzzy. I mean, she's vegan and these are her smoothies and she only the one outfit because she doesn't want to think about her look, and it's like I was thinking about because I was like not to keep for her at all because she is a psycho. But it is that thing where you're like, well, why is she the only one who gets punished like

Mark Zuckerberg broke democracy? I think, I mean, but she didn't even give anyone syphilis yet. But this is not this is not what she knows. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg definitely kind of like talked his way to a certain position, but at a certain point it became something that he was well versed in. Whether he made good decisions. I don't know if you could argue that. I definitely wouldn't say that he had a good grasp on the social

and moral implications of what he built. But I think that he knew how to build a website, whereas Elizabeth Holmes like, he doesn't know how to analyze blood, and that's like a pretty significant does how to sell that blood pill she got? Show that pill the Okay? So like I still feel like the worst horror scene that I'm going to see in any movie this year is the computer generated re enactment of what happens inside of

the ED. They show the blood around the blood is splashing around, like the little glass vials are getting cracked, and there's just like blood splatters all over and then waging around. It's the best you made me think about Velvet Bus saw too, because it's like a black box. It's like a metaphor for the company. It's like you can't see what happens inside, and then like if you try to go inside an my blood dad with a blood needle and see all the like encrusted blood all

over everything. Yeah, it's it was. I mean that stuff was pretty incredible, very unforgettable imagery. If I had a criticism, though, I feel like it didn't go deep enough into the psychological study of Elizabeth Homes. I could have watched five more.

I couldn't. Yeah, and I would have wanted to know, like I really would have to have had more insight into like her upbringing and you know how she kind of like her parents kind of according to one interview I read um with this guy who worked with his parents with her parents that her parents kind of tried to like get her into Stanford by sending her to this Mandarin program because they heard that that was like a good leg up, even though she really didn't have

the grades, so it was kind of like she was like grifting from the beginning. It was just grifting in the way that like all rich people are grifting their way and opportunities that they don't earn. It was like, and she used it to her advantage the way that other people do. She just picked a really bad thing to do with it. But it was so weirdly specific that you could sort of understand why people got caught up in like the fervor of it, because it's like, well,

why else would she choose this thing. Why wouldn't she at some point be like this isn't working, I'm going to try another start up, but she was so like it must succeed. I do think like the movie feels like just an ad for the Bad Blood book, the John Carry You book about her that came out a few months ago, because it does like everything feels like

you could go so much deeper. And I'm sure that the book, I mean, it's also like maybe it's comforting to us because it's like a story about the power of journalism, right, I mean that is the like emotional core doc is the same in the same thing. It's like they think you're stupid, so they say things in

front of you that I shouldn't say. But there's also the guy from Forbes who put her on the cover of Forbes and then later hows this reckoning he was, I mean, he was upset and that was great to begin, Like what if they did that to like Airbnb and stuff, like other companies that are like grifters that have drifted their way into a position. But like it's all a

Ponzi scheme. All the startups are Ponzi schemes. But I think what's what's different about this is that you would, at least I would think that in medicine, you know, in that kind of like disrupt or culture or whatever, there's really it should be that if you want to get a blood test, you have options other than questions, and you can do it yourself and saper like if you can't feel a way to do it, I feel

like a nurse should do it. I mean, I don't know if I use the heal app again, not an app, but and I really love the Heal app and I'm interested because I'm like, okay that that solved a medical problem. And medicine, it seems you would think would be a very high priority to improve how we have, you know, access to medicine beyond just healthcare. I don't trust companies. I mean, obviously pharmaceutical companies are doing the same thing a company, but it's like one is a different, differently

principled one than the other. Like yeah, I mean I I was surprised when people started doing twenty three and me because I was like, you could turn this into eugenics, and then they did. But it's like people are sort of less scared to like send their blood away in an envelope than maybe I would be. I would not

give anyone my blood. There's the question though, if you needed a boo tests, for instance, and you didn't have insurance or your insurance, well, I'm saying the idea that they were selling of like it'll be in Walgreens was like not a terrible idea, that's like a licensed practitioner, but that isn't That's why it's so disappointing though, I think, and why it's different than some of the other companies is because when you consider Airbnb, I mean, that's like

a convenience and it's not a good company, but it also isn't like all of the stakes are much lower. Like you could stay at a hotel, but someone who's having trouble getting access to a doctor for a blood test, but all of a sudden, like that's that's a high priority. Yeah, that's that's a much more like you must get this

and like test. It's probably different for you because you have kids, but like I feel like I'm still not at the age yet where like medical stuff is on my mind on like a month to month basis, and like the idea of like getting diagnostics run and stuff like aside from like when you cut a corner, there's a reason, but it's not necessarily cutting a corner. I mean for like, I mean if it works, then I think we'd feel differently about it. That's the main thing.

Like the whole thing is just the illusion around it. If this was a woman who really knew what she was doing and the edison worked and the blood sample and worked, then we this would be a completely different story.

Like even if it even if it did disrupt the existing diagnostic industry, it would be a conversation, not unlike these other industries that have been disrupted, And I'd be and there'd be like plenty of casualties within that, But I think it would be a different discussion than this, where it's just like, this is about a cult of personality that made us believe in something. I think it's

also a core bad idea, That's what I'm saying. I think I would not give my blood to a private company selling me this because it should be publicly invested. We shouldn't have to go to fucking tech startups to get I agree, but healthcare we should have. We should invest into come here in public this year, which is going to be very interesting, I think, uh and also

probably ruined San Francisco. But again, I feel like there could be a pushback when people are like, no, we don't want this, we want infrastructure that means we don't need the blood machines. No. I totally agree. But I also think that when you see the crazy investments that people in Silicon Valley get for their terrible ideas, you're like, what if we invested this money in the medical infrastructure?

I agree. I think what my point was is that people were very eager to invest in this because the idea of making you know, certain medical diagnostics available to people who can't afford them, who put it off and end up dying or whatever. It was exciting even though it was I think it was just yes, I don't know, I think that. I don't think Henry Kissinger was like I can't wait to help anyone. He that's like, that's

not his thing. People just wanted to make money. They thought it was a way to make money by exploiting people who can't afford healthcare into having to like get the blood pills. But some of the some of the scientists who got on board early, and like the phlebotomous trainers, scientists wanted to like, this is great, right, but they also knew it wasn't gonna work. I mean there was probably a tie. Like before there were blood pressure machines in Walgreens, like and you had to go to a

doctor to do that. Now we think of that as much a much more casual thing to get done, Like it's not a big deal that you have to make a doctor's appointment to go get your blood pressure taken, Like you can just do that at Walgreens or whatever.

Trial She Kills is a Shutter original podcast by and about women in horror, hosted by Adrian Barbo from The Fog and creep show yests include beloved stars like Barbara Crampton, Jennifer Tilly and d Wallace, genre innovators like Annabelle alex Eso and Pollyanna Mackintosh, and writers, critics and horror experts like Blair Bercy, Gray Drake and Danis Schwartz. She Kills explores the beginning of horror where women will kill fodder, to the standalone modern women of horror who broke the mold,

featuring the dynamic actresses from those films. We're going from Babe in the woods to badass with a shotgun and everything in between, with the unique and richly interesting conversations that only women in horror who love horror and who examine horror can provide. She Kills debuts on March one. All ten episodes will be available on Shutter. March first. Episode one will come out on Apple, Spotify and everywhere else. You catch your podcast on March one, with episodes being

released twice weekly on Mondays and Fridays. True nine twenty eighteen nineteen. I'm gonna go with bring Back in how Stock. Well, That's that's why I mentioned hell Is because, like my so, my daughter had to go to the doctor today and it's across town. You often have to wait for an appointment, even if it's a not well visit for a little kid, and it's just to check their ears, check their nose, check their throat. It's like a three hour thing. It's

expensive even when with insurance. Then I thought, like, you know, I think that Hell is like a brilliant app and there are others like it, Like I think doctor on demand, but the idea that you have doctors who come to your house for things that are not life threatening thing of doctor, like you know, it's a real doctor. These are U c l A doctors and so you can look at their you know, you can you can view who the doctor is and where they went to school

and everything. I've used it a bunch, and like, I don't know that I would want to use that in a life threatening emergency. And in fact, when I tried, they were like, go to the doctor. But I mean it's it's not necessary really, Like a lot of people are, you know, saying like I have the time, I have the money to just go to the doctor when I'm

feel sick. So there have to be alternatives until we get the infrastructure going like I've gotten sick so many times since I've lived in New York, Like I used to never get sick at all, and now it's like constantly, Like I do the I do like urgent care, which is like like the middle point between those two things, right, Like it's a it's a totally it's broken. We all agree it's broken. I just don't think startups are gonna

fix anything for anybody. Ever. Well, it's my hard take on Like I'm excited for our listeners to see the doc. I reviewed it um at Sundance where it premiered in January,

so you can link to that somewhere. I think that it probably like wisely doesn't get too much into this stuff because this, like as you could, like as we can see, this is like such a bigger problem that like they're yeah, I sort of wanted it to get into that, but it also doesn't really get that much into like Silicon Valley just sort of being a big drift.

And like I think, I think to the extent that like it can and it's in the time that it has as much as we're like obsessed over her persona and the weirdness and like her voice and all that stuff. I do think my one thing with the film is that like it really fixated on that surface. And maybe it's because they couldn't get so much into her, like you know, more detailed stuff about her past or anything

like that, or what was actually up with her. So just like there's so much staring into her eyes in this group, right, and you're looking for something, and they focused only a lot of time on her aesthetic. Yeah, and I think she's a very striking looking person and so you do get this like sense of who she is by just looking at her. But it is interesting that they didn't like crack that too much in the documentary.

I would have loved if they had gone deeper into that, and I'm assuming that there's an interesting reason why they didn't. It felt very like male gazy and a that like not the way we usually think of that being used. But I feel like an older man being like, what the fund is this creature? It was a little bit basic instinct. Yes, to be honest, you know where you're like, this woman is like using like the fact that everyone will look at her because she's like a white blonde

woman like against people to her benefit. She couldn't use some better sweaters. Honestly, see, job thing was just so stupid, it worked so well on people. And like she has a thing apparently where she would make them keep the office temperature at sixty degrees so she could wear which is also a thing Nixon did. Nixon made them keep it really cold in the White House so he could have a fire in the fireplaces all the time. You know that fires are really inefficient heating. The suck the

air right up there. He was just having a little fireside chat with Checkers. Um. She now lives in San Francisco and dates some other guy, goes to burning a younger man, and blames everyone for her downfallen, not herself, and thinks she's going to have a comeback and definitely doesn't think she's going to jail. Um, so that's also we stand uh an entrepreneurial legend. Yeah again, I'm like, she should go to jail. I don't know, I don't

even know if I care she goes to jail. I mean nothing, I think she has to be I mean, she has been barred from working in a lab, which is good. She shouldn't she should be bounced out. But like it's funny how she's just doubling down. I'm like, wow, like, but that's kind of her secret sauce is that she just will not admit culpability. You have to do to be a CEO. Maybe believe your own bullshit. Hey guys, do you feel like taking a night call? Yes? Sure, Okay,

high night call. At a Sunday family lunch, I was talking with one of my favorite humans, Chris, my sister in law, who happens to be a middle school science teacher. She often has interesting science anecdotes that we collectively geek out over. The latest was no exception. Zombie crickets from nat Geo horsehair worm paregordious various house cricket a cheetah domesticus. The house cricket loses its will and its life to

the horse hair worm. Larvae of the parasite infiltrate the cricket when it scavenges dead insects then grow inside it. The cricket is terrestrial, but the adult stage of the worms life cycle is aquatic, so when the mature worm is ready to emerge, it alters the brain of its host, driving the cricket to abandon the safety of land and take a suicidal leap into the nearest body of water. As the cricket drowns, an adult worm emerges, sometimes a foot in lane. Why is the word so? I don't know.

If you have a subscription to National Geographic, there's a brilliant long read entitled mind Suckers from the November edition we will link to that night Calls always seemed like a safe place for all things insects. Thought y'all might appreciate the insanity of the natural order. Take care on a guys, discuss this is insane. I've never heard of this before. UM, I ever related. Okay, so, by the way, we got this. UM a little while ago. Last night,

there was a cricket in my bathtub. This happens a lot where crickets end up in my bathtub. I don't know why that is. I don't know. But then I was like, is it trying to It was an empty bathtub, but I was like, is it just waiting for me to fill this so it can die in? A giant worm can come out? No, thank you? Do they get that? Ants do? Like? Like ants will always seek out, like they'll hang around your drain and stuff. Just get that water.

It's weird. I mean crickets. The crickets have been out in full force recently, um the past couple of nights in l A, making a big cricket racket. But I did not hear them when it was raining, so I assume they go away when it rains. It is based on no science at all, just me sitting outside. I just think it's really interesting that they get driven like insane by these brains sides, like, could a cricket be driven insane? Is it sane to begin with? It's a cricket.

I think it's creepy, Like there are parasites I guess that can alter the brain in different animals, like I don't know, like lime disease or like ticks and stuff like that are probably like an example, although it's lime disease even real, I feel like I feel like it's real, But lime disease is real. There are other there are things that are not lime disease people say are like, say lime disease. We're all talking specifically about Yolan Beverly Hill.

I think no, I think what happened with her, This is my theory about her, is all of her ship was related to having like leaky brusting plants, I think, and then she got them removed. Finally. I'm not saying she didn't maybe also have lime just talked about that, Yeah I remember, But yeah, she got her breast and plants removed, and I think she's maybe like been better. I think maybe that was part of what was going on. I felt really sad for her, because there's nothing real

or false when you're that obsessed. No, I mean that was that was like a large bontree or movement. It was inside that show of her and like her giant fridge that's only vegetables and like a giant bowl of lemons. Aspirational yet, but yeah, I think the creepy thing about this is that it's like one. It's one on one as opposed to like, I don't know, having like a bunch of like small parasites that like like how much

I'm going to go with any parasite is a scary parasite. Well, but that takes out it's like a body snatcher, but with cricket, oh my god, and the illustration like c g I recreates there. Yeah, there's a lot of body snatchers. We should do more if you're good parasites though, you know my mom. I remember being really little and my mom was like, you know those like tiny microscopic organisms that walk on your eyelashes and eyebrows. And I was like no, and she was like, they look like little donkeys.

And so the other night I was telling my kids about it and I showed them a picture. I don't remember what these yeah, and they were just like, get them off. They gotta they gotta stay because they probably I think you've told you this before because I remember the tiny little donkeys. That was a nice way to think about parasites. Some parasites are helpful. What if we're just parasites are parasite organism? We are totally killing the organism.

We're part of the voluntary extinction project. Um, this is a really great uh night email. I'm glad that Anna brought this to our attention. Yeah, crickets are lucky, I think. Also, yeah, you're not supposed to kill them. Yeah, we've talked about this in the podcast because there was one time when I had one in the bathtub and I tried to save it and accidentally chopped off its head. And that was like what do I do? Just like cursed? It's like breaking. Yeah, I love crack gets. I like to

try to be nice to all the bugs. It is. It's coming to Mosquito is the deadliest animal. Which don't forget it's your duty to kill mosquitoes. I know, but even then it's like they're just you know, just looking for a bite. They no, Molly, no, um, you guys made me watch you just don't give me any This was all Emily's choice. We put out a call for erotic thrillers because this is our erotic this is our

erotic Odyssey segment. So we went through. We got a bunch of really great suggestions, and we settled on Body of Evidence. Well, there's a lot of bodies to get through. There are a lot of body movies, Body Double, body Heat, Body of Evidence. And I had not seen Body of Evidence. I did not. I thought it was like a beloved classic. Okay, I thought you this was like a movie that had made an imprint on you. Not something curious about the Madonna and will In Dafoe movie, but like, well, fun

thing about this movie. It takes place in Portland, Orchia for no reasons, the Portlandia of the nineties. It takes place in yuppy Portland's, which was amazing because I didn't even know that existed. Like the most heated debate over whether or not that what Madonna lives in in this movie was a house. It was a house. It was clearly a house. But my husband was just like, you know, it's just like Andrew at the end of You. But my husband was like, no, it's on a peninsula. It's

too nice to be a house. But I was like, that is a luxury house, like your husband could work for You're right that I want to get into this that I know it's a house boat because in the iTunes summary for this movie, to a houseboat, the lean price of it says sex bomb. Rebecca Carlson, played by Madonna, parades around naked in front of the open windows of her house boat at all goes, even while the lobsterman catch crabs. That was not a scene in the movie.

In the movie, not in the movie, but apparently it's in the trailer. In the trailer that were like, there's a part in the trailer where she walks naked back into her house boat, but it's not in the movie. Is this pre post body double? Because that's another like female exhibitionist one UM the Dipoma movie. I feel like

there's a lot, right. I think this made me feel like we should do Basic Instinct next because this one's basically off, but it's not because they were made at the same at the same time, shooting began only two weeks. Basically just the same movie, but bad. And the only reason it's bad is because Madonna is no. So many reasons why it's I was saying, it's like it's got all the erotic thriller repertory players, including Julianne Moore and Archer.

Julianne Moore is also in Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Archer is also in Fatal Attraction. An Archer and Julianne Moore are in shortcuts together on one. We should try to do this as a UM six type journey because an archer is the connector between fatal and body of Evidence. So that means next time we have to do and Michael Douglas is in all of them except for this one, in which he's played if only he'd

been in this one. I did not. I was not taken by Willem Dafoe's performance, and in fact I have to shout out how bad the score was by Graham Revel Ravel, who was so good. At one point, there's a sex scene that's set to what sounds like like Catholic and yet okay, you were there for that because it's softcore. It was horrible. It's early nineties softcore. I

was like, this movie is terrible. If I had seen it at two am on Cinemax at like a friend's house at a sleepover, I would have thought about it for the rest of my life. It's like very It's got that kind of like bizarre not at all real to life sex choreography that if you stept to see it as a kid, you're like, oh my god, is that Like it harkens to a time before porn was readily available, when like you get what you get and

you don't get upset. Um. They didn't use body doubles in the movie, and the sex scenes were like semi improvised, apparently because Madonna just like did whatever she wanted um as she does, so she wasn't supposed to pour wax on him three times. The third time was the surprise

surprised and he was with her masturbation also improvised. The third time was like on his dick, right, because it was supposed to be like shot of all of the wax drops where you see get like on his chest, and then the third one that he's just staring down at his caution, there's no cutaway, so I assumed she was dropping hot wax on his Well, it's very possible.

I have to say that I thought I had solved the movie about sixty of the way through because there were like a lot of red herrings in this movie, and one of them was this scene out of nowhere where Willem Dafoe is like being offered a donut okay at work, and they're like this guy randomly is like eat the last donut, and then the camerasums in on this one donut and then it's like that's it, right.

And then later Madonna's whole m o is that she praised on men with heart conditions and gets written into their will. And at one point they're kind of like being coy with each other and and Willem to foes like, oh, well, do you see anyone in this restaurant who's into like your kind of your thing, your brand of kin, And she was like yeah, but he doesn't know it yet, and I was like, oh, she has a heart condition,

that's why you didn't eat the last doughnut. So she's gonna like try and kill Willem to phone how you motivated theut? And it was wrong. I thought, what's the deal with that doughnut? Yeah? I thought it was about the cocaine use. It was not a powdered donut. Was a powdered doughnut. And it reminded me of Basic in Staying when everyone's like casually making fun of Michael Douglas for shooting a Taurus right when he was cooked out of his brain. Yeah, they're like, ha ha, shooter, you

want to diet code. Also so weird in this movie is how like everything hinges on nasal spray that has been contaminated with cocaine. Everything about it is weird, except again, I like if it was somebody other than Madonna, Like again like Fatal Attraction, You're like, it's not that he's unhappy with his wife. His wife is Julianne Moore and she's given him the business. It's like the most nothing character. Also, the basic just of this movie. It is basically just

basic instinct. Uh, Madonna is a woman who has a boy, like a rich older boyfriend who has found dead watching one of their sex tapes and he's been like handcuffed to a bed. He was she was the murder weapon. She is the body of evidence, and then all you know, everybody thinks that she did it. But William Dafoe is a lawyer who decides to represent her for reasons Uh no, he just walks up to her at a funeral and says, you need representation while she's crying, and then they start

working together again. I don't know anything about like legal dramas at all because I never watched Law and Order, But like when he is like, I don't ask my clients whether or not they've done it, I'm like, don't all lawyers have to pass their clients or not they've done it. Yes, But I also watched Reversal of Fortune last night Caser, which is another like hero lawyer who's like, I don't even care if you murdered them or not. It's about the law. It's about proving their holes in

the story, right, Yeah. So he's trying to represent her as like this is going to become a case about her sex life and like she can do whatever she wants, but this is about or not she actually killed him. Of course they start having an affair, and the affair does fnally lead to anything except for the fact that they're having an affair. Well, it leads to, as in other erotic thrillers, a bunch of crazy uh sex scenes. Yes, staged in places other than a bed elevator another elevator.

That's to count on elevators. They're all garage of conveyance, like up or down because there's the first ones on a staircase where they're like calling up over each other on the stairs. Sexiest thing in the world does Everyone knows every staircase like that smells like p How does in a house? It cannot be. It could be in a parking garage. Doesn't make think in the parking garage. Until they got to the car, I was like, oh, where are they going to do? It's just on the

floor the parking garage. She climbs up driver and he goes down on her from below. Yeah, let's talk about that. That's just Willem Dafoe going down on Madonna. They did not use body doubles. He's just it is kind of that's the movie is kind of worth watching forcast. Why was it like made for Madonna. It's really strange to

me looking at this movie like she so apparently. The IMDb like trivia section has some really good factoids, including that she was like, yeah, the sex scenes like didn't turn me on at all, that I just viewed them as almost like scientific and Defoe was like, no, they were super sexy to me. Well, they also had the fatal attraction thing where the ending got changed, and she was like, it was misogyny. It was because it was like supposed to end before getting away with it and

spoiler alert she gets killed. Um, she gets punished. Yeah, And she was like, the whole point was supposed to be like that, she shouldn't get punished even if she did do it, which spoiler alert she did. Yeah. Again, I was like, not, I enjoyed the movie because it was like shot well and it's that nineties. Everything has like there's there's a fog machine in every scene, like everything has been Phoenetian blinds and Venetian. Oh my god, made me want to watch Dick Tracy, which is maybe

the only defense defense Madonna performance. I know that Molly reads the IMDb trivia did you also see? This was the second movie in two years in which Madonna plays a character who picks a bottle of champagne out of an ice bucket while wearing black underwear. The other was Dick Tracy. That crazy. I would watch Dick Tracy. I

think she's great and desperately seeking Susan because she's playing herself. Um. Something about watching Madonna try to act makes me so uncomfortable because it's like she's almost good at it, but no, she's not. It's like she's and this is like her fifth movie. It is that thing where you're like, why can't you take the skill set and just like transfer it over? But it's such a good performing with Doga.

It's like you're grading them on a curve of how bad you expect them to be, because most actors that are musicians are better at one thing or the other unless they're like uh, Liza Mannale, Stevan zand Steve and Zan great actor that is true underrated, super underrating, possibly the greatest actor musician who also told Paul Simon to go fund himself. And I think that this movie and I feel like this is going to be a recurring thing. But I feel like a lot of and I feel

this way about basic instinct too. Obviously, is that a lot of the reason this genre exists is because all these directors of a certain generation came up on Hitchcock and they're like, what if we did it with hits like that? For sure? To me, it's still like the aim of cinema a little bit. That's why we're all here, That's how we all I also just like how when we start the erotic Odyssey segment, it's like we all

just like lean back and are like bubble baths. We're also stoked to mar and that softcore porn, right because they all have like cool female protagonists. They're all these like really kind of I mean even I mean, she's a pretty interesting character, even though this is a bad movie. Like again, what I'm saying, like, what if what if she was played by Julianne Moore? Could this movie right? No?

I just don't. I think the script is horrible. It's really one of those movies where you feel like it is an extraterrestrial screenwriter who's like, let's say they all live on boats, human's right, boats and they dress up like in pearls and little tiny pillbo just basic in safe. This is the like um Frasier era to where like

I guess the Pacific Northwest was like glamorous. It was at the same time as grunge, but it was like, what if the Pacific Northwest, instead of being the capital of grunge was just where like it was like constant Hitchcock Noir and all the ladies. I get the idea. It's like San Francisco has the opera, and then you just keep going north. It gets like more offer, you know, until you get to Canada the opera east of them all.

But I loved whenever Madonna was in an art gallery in this movie because it might be like the art gallery stuff and the player just her being like my paintings, my art beret, I'm an artist mode. Now it's not a good movie at all, but I also and yet

I wasn't mad. For some reason, we have collectively forgotten that there are all these like like pretty explicit for an R rated movie sex scenes between I guess it was it came out at the same time as the Xbook, so it got overshadowed they I think De Laurentis was like Hey, can you post this book, because otherwise this movie is just going to be pegged as kind of like a preview to your book. And she was like, Nah, I'm gonna do me. That's that's what I do. I'm Madonna.

Um listeners. If you have an erotic thriller that you would like to see featured on the podcast, or if you have any stories about zombie, bugs, food, anything on your mind, please give us a call at to four oh four six night or an email at Night Call podcast at gmail dot com. And while you're at it, please review, rate, and subscribe Tonight Call wherever you listen to podcasts. I think we got to try to get

to hand the rocks of craddle. Just we can continue with that or we just do all the bodies Well. I want to come background to Basic Instinct because I kept thinking about how it is but so similar. We gotta like it's stay similar, but it works for reasons I can't fully articulate. Before we wrap up this podcast, would you guys like to take one more night Call? Hey, Night Call. This is Dan from Encino. My question is, let's say that you came across incontroversial proof of the

existence of vampires. Or sea monsters or aliens. Do you think that your life could continue as normal or would you have to dedicate your life to proving what you found or would you try to just hide and pretend that you hadn't discovered this this unfathomable truth. Thanks, that's a super interesting I love this question. I think about this all the time. Um So it's the reason that I love Arrival, which I feel like I talked about

on this on this podcast all the time. But I think that that's one of the only movies about an alien at least where I think that the reaction is appropriate, Like like Amy Adams literally just barfs after she has her first interaction with the aliens because it's such a it just completely turns your notion of the universe and like our place in it upside down, Like it's a paradigm shift, and you would get nauseous. I think you were to have like a physical reaction to that first

get nauseous. How that's not that hard to make me nauseous. I get nauseous if I go on a hike once you finished throwing up? What would you do? Well? What if not to take it to a different question, like I always do. But what if you think you see vampires but it's just a brain parasite. But this is this it hinges on, It's incontrosible, controvertible. I mean, I think it depends on It depends on what your job is. If you're if you're a journalist, you should probably uh

pivot to um investigating it or something. I don't know. If you're like any other kind of civilian, you know, you take it to the appropriate people to figure out what to do with it. But I don't think that your life continues a pace. I think the only thing

that I might like not act on weirdly. And I just thought of this because I realized that it was one of the examples he listed was the sea monster, because I think I would have just like I would be insecure about the fact that like maybe this thing I thought was a new sea monster was like a

known creature. I thought you were going to say, like you just wouldn't trust yourself because because of your lack of not I thought you meant because the hunting kill it or like take it in and you're just protecting it like an e T. I don't think that that. I think that's something that happens in movies. As bad as the world is. I really don't think that if we discovered of sea monster that like everybody would get

into a contest to try to kill it. Like I think that I think that yes, they would, they try and capture it. They would capture it, and they would sell us its blood as a startup. Right, Well, if it was posing an immediate threat, maybe they would, Like if it was like a Godzilla, but if it was just like a Laviathan type thing that was chilling out on its own money, of his own business and water, do you think Godzilla also just want to be loved? It's like yeah, but it's not Godzilla's fault. It is

Godzilla is the fault of all of us. Here's the issue with this question. It's not like a bad issue or a flaw with the question, but it's something to consider. Is like with Emily, you know when Emily said, like, if it was a sea monster, you would lack the confidence to be able to describe what you had seen as being like uniquely sea monster is a vampire and aliens, so like you see you get proof of aliens. I think you have like a pretty good base of people

who would believe you and you could take this to them. Vampires, you're out of luck. Like if I saw if I knew there were vampires a I wouldn't say anything because they'd come after me and be like, who wants to be on the side of people who think vampires are real?

They really did not have much credibility to go be a blood source for vampires at the you would, Emily, and if there was the opportunity to walk the walk when it comes to my goth lifestyle, I would absolutely if they what if they feed off you to death though like they do, and then but then death because rush and you become a vampire, right, Yeah, it would be like if they were good vampires who were just a vampire like you know, consensual vampires versus like Peter

Tiel vampires you know blood jacuzy, like you know, sacrificing children and a blood kind of thing. But I don't know what authorities you'd go to with a vampire issue. Yeah, I would have to be like, go to Reddit, no, not read it. I would go to like a Council of Witches. You have to go to the Catholic Church. No, absolutely not. I would find a vampire expert. So and Rice, I mean you the vampire expert in that case, I think because the question is like would you have to

dedicate your life to mean this? Like I think you would have to become the vampire expert because such a thing doesn't really exist in right now, Like you would have to be that person because you had the firsthand

experience with them. Well like Christians later and interviewed the vampire when he's interviewing the vampire in a way family, when you said you would just become one, I'm like, that would be the best move, is to become a vampire and then be like a spokesman for the vampires to be like we exist, we're here, Like I was a film critic at New York Magazine. Now I'm a vampire. And I hope you would still be on the podcast because that would be a really worthwhile Like you could

dedicate your life minus one day a week. We'd have to actually recorded at night, though, uh, we don't record this unless you're a twilight vampire and then you just shimmer in the sun while you play old timey baseball. Also, we could you could come in the booth. We could turn off the lights there's no windows obviously to the booth, like justin Bieber, like with the blanket. Yeah, that thing's got vampiresm already fit well with our general lifestyle. It's true.

That's the only thing where I would like maybe change my entire life style around it. I think like everything else would be like I would be happy to be the whistle blower or something, and not not whistle blower in a way like go go kill the alien or whatever the thing maybe, but I would be happy to be the person who's like I have the video, I'm the person who brought this to the news, but like, I don't know that I would necessarily be spearheading the thing.

But I would like to be a bnicular rabbit. Yeah, or did you mean that like figuratively? I think you understand. Um. I found out about a new UFO cult that will go visit next time Emily and time. Great. Great. Um. If you've got a question, comment, or an erotic thriller, uh, something to say about blood pills, maybe feelings about aliens, vampires and sea monsters, give us a call to four oh four six night or email us a Nightcall podcast

at gmail dot com. You can also follow us on social media at nightcall podcast on Instagram, I called pod on Twitter, and I called podcast on Facebook. And please subscribe to us on iTunes, Rate review and subscribe. Tell us what you think about the show. Uh, it helps more people find it. So we really appreciate you. And that's our show for this week. Thank you, Next week, thank you, thank you, thank you for listening. We're going to end death, okay,