Elbow Squids and Bone Spikes

hanging my head and shame. We got an email from a writer at Live Science subject line, I'm so sad you called Life Science bullshit, and I feel like it to them to uh to to uh set the records straight on Life Science or l S as we call it. Um. So I'm just going to read a bit of it because it's a little long, but you'll get the point. I'm so sad you said Life Science is a bullshit site, an aggregator and content farm. To be fair, the awful look of the site and the ads easily obscure the

actual content. But to call out something as bullshit, you have to carefully consider what's under the surface. So I don't want to blame you, but I feel like I have to explain. Believe it or not. All stories on l S our original stories, with original reporting and interviews. It's widely syndicated, to the point that some have called it the associated press of science news. I have a print story above fold in Washington Post. It's actually an

l S story, and it's widely read. I get more reader emails, the majority of them school children, from my l stories than my other pubs combined. Do you wonder why the keywords turn up on other sites. That's because the majority of everyday science news is based on press releases of newly published studies, so everyone covers them. We call it the science news turn cycle. And in fact l S has been great at breaking the news before

everyone else. Frequently. It's also respected by public organizations and agencies. After quitting research, my first journalism job was at LS. I was on all the press calls from the CDCs to any press briefings by major scientific journals, and it goes on. But Emily, I am so glad that you are admitting you were wrong, because Life Science is at the best. It's a real great science website, and I agree with she's saying. It's like there are some ads

you know that are seems sketchy. They're those ads that are like this one vegetable will destroy that's on everything. But I think, especially right now, it's more important than ever to have verifiable sources on the internet, so especially

about science. And I will say that, like from having worked at the Virgin and and working you know a lot with Lisa Pato there, like she did a lot of the same stuff, and there is a lot of stuff that gets released, like these press releases from you know, different research departments and universities and stuff like that, and I do think it's important and I'm glad that she clarified this that like there are people with research backgrounds who are reporting on this stuff and following up and

like asking the right questions about these releases, because a lot of times what you'll see is people will just take a release like a research or a study and just publish it without actually looking into the terms of the study, the conditions of it. And this is something that like, yeah, maybe some of the headlines on Live Science seem like it's going to be something clicked baiting in insane, but when you read the stories. They're always like,

very well, research measure science. So live science, we love you. I'm the only one who should be sorry. Emily was wrong. She was a flag about live science. UM, so let's actually talk about a great story for life science. Life science. UM, live stience. Please sponsor us. Please forgive Emily hashtag lockness monster, forgive Emily. UM. The ancient lockness monster from Antarctica broke a record for body size. We have a very thick

ancient sea reptile, very round boy, lackless monster. UM. Paleontologists have discovered the remains of an ancient Lockness monster look alike in freezing Antarctica, and just like the legendary Nessy, it wasn't the runt of the litter. A four flippered marine reptile prehistoric pleiosaur measured a colossal thirty six ft from snout to tail, as long as a modern telephone pole. Okay, okay, but it's a place like a diplodocus, so we can call it plessy. It says it's it says it's also

quite stocky. They really reiterated the heaviest known um and they found it. They found not to double down it's not a lockness monster, but it's an amazing like see, it's an amazing reptilian dinosaur, which is cool. It's a super Yeah, it's super cool. And let's also credit the writer. This was written by Laura. Yeah, let's start crediting the writers, Associate editor Life Science, Good Words. Not a lockness monster, but it looks it looks exactly like what you think

a lockness monster would look like. And it also makes you be like, this is why people think there are lockness monsters. No, because people existed long after these dinosaurs, right, but the idea that one could be just like left behind. You think there's one out there, Well, that's what the lockness monster is about, right, It's like there's like a yeah, that's one that survived. But I don't I don't think

it's going to be a plus us. But that one is also in Scotland, famously Luckness and yet it has a modern cousin who we think is nessy good word. You know, it is a real deep creature. We have so many sea creatures today. Let's let's built. Okay, let's build. Let's build up in the order of terrifying. Let's start with the octopus city okay, which is not news. It's just something that was brought up to us on the

Facebook group. Yeah, I had never heard of this, so this is apparently Um, this is like a year old, but totally flew under my radar, even though I have many octopus tentacle feelers out for news relating to my favorite marine cephalopods. There are these octopi who have created

a city. They're calling it aucklantis Um. It's in eastern Australia, and I guess everyone always thought that octopus were very solitary creatures, but they have formed a community where they communicate and they kind of warn each other of like octopy, they don't like coming by there. They keep them out. They build these dens out of shells and stuff, and they even evict octopy from their community if they don't like their behavior. This was preceded by another octopus, cilis

that was nearby. I just like it so much, so thank you for posting that in the Night Callers Facebook group, because that is like, there's an endless stream of delightful articles like this in there that I our. You know, it's not actually octopy, it's octopuses. It's just like hard

to say that, but octopuses. But I think we tell ourselves that they are solitary creatures that don't socialize a lot to make ourselves feel better, because when you start thinking about the possibilities of an octopus city, it gets very uncomfortable to think about your place in the universe very quickly. Yeah, I want to I want to move to Octopolis. Sounds great? Are actlantis either? Planis another piece of news that is not news, but also came to

us via Twitter. Apparently there is a maybe it's not it's not accurate to say, a entire conspiracy theory, but one lady is going real hard on the idea that monster energy drink a satanic um. Have you guys seen this video? Apparently it went viral like a couple of years ago, and and it's been debunked by Snopes and all of that. Um I had. I could only watch part of it because it had the the energy, so to speak, of making me be like, no, I will

not explose my This is a woman named Christine. Yes, she's also a bad She's a very bad can say yes, she's like homophobic and anti muslins. Fun to laugh at her, but Yeah, she is. You know, she'll like interrupt Muslim prayer meetings and ship like that. Like she's just not a not chill at all. But she's been giving. She has a speel. She has some YouTube videos about um.

She's like a right wing YouTuber and she um not the only one who has a strong YouTube presence that we will be talking about today's podcast, But she has a I have to say, like, as you say, her energy is very tough to take. She's got the spiel down. You know if I was, If I was, i'd be one over. Apparently the logo for a Monster Energy, which kind of looks like the Jurassic Park three logo, it's like three dinosaur scratches, um, looks like the Hebrew symbol vav,

which can stand for the letter six. So the label of Monster Energy can read six six six. I know, no, no, and Rachel is correcting us, which I was going to get to. That is not how you would write six six six in Hebrew, like you would write six D and sixty six or it would you would not just be those letters. But um, if you are Christie Wike, that would be how you would write it any through. UM. She also the tagline for Monster Energy Drinks beat this

feels that's all I like about it. Of like ten ten years ago, maybe even the Monster Energy the O and Monster has a line through it which is like a five, like a Greek letter five. I have no idea why it says that, but she's like, it's across because the top of the oh is sort of flat. And then she's like, if you turn it the camp upside down because you're chucking a Monster Energy drink a

cross the symbol of the Antichrist. I saw the South the Southland tails can cut at Lacma, and one of the things they talked about was everybody drinking tons of energy drinks the entire time, because it was during the peak of energy drinks. For Richard Kelly, the director said, everybody was pounding energy inns constantly, like cast and critical

the age of energy drinks. In a better world where magazine still existed, we could have a good, uh oral history of energy drinks that's really great other than coffee. Other than coffee, I've never drunk a whole really, I can't handle it. Oh my god, No, I I've drink almost any energy drink that's ever been on the market I have tried, I will try any new energy drink.

And I actually in looking at this thread about this um this whole conspiracy theory that was brought to us by a listener, John, one of our several Theologian listeners. They were talking about there's another energy drink that's I guess a proprietary of a supermarket Aldi which we've also discussed on this podcast, that has a cross symbol in the middle of it, which they were speculating was counter

marketing to the Antichrist imagery on Mustard energy drink. That's really funny that the energy drink right then, it's like it's a promo to roll out your influencer energy drink. That's like holy water, put it in the hole where you're here. But there was a really great blog about about beverages that I like planned to revisit later because that's totally my up my alley. I love to read reviews of beverages. What's the best energy drink? The best

is and I don't think they make it anymore. But there was a like quote all natural energy drink that they sold. I think they had like a Trader Joe's, you know, house brand version of it. And then there was I think the exact same formula that they sold by some other brand at Whole Foods, and they made an orange one of it. Uh, and I I could only deal with the full sugar ones because I'm I

get headaches off of like sugar free ones. So that was one that was like I didn't have too much insane shit in it and but didn't give me a headache. And I wish I could remember what it's called, but it's not. I don't think they sell it anymore, but it during the boom, it was like two five that I was drinking that a lot. Tess, what do you do? Just like straight coffee, I drink coffee. I drink a

ton of coffee. Actually last week I had two pots of coffee, and I felt like that was a real game changer for me in terms of what if my monster energy coffee. Two pots of coffee was a lot of cups of coffee. But I was drinking them in uh my broommate actually I was, and I found because it stays really cold, and it also makes you able to ignore how many cups of coffee you're drinking because you're drinking like a you're like this is like a

twenty four ounds cup of coffee. And then today I was telling Molly, I repeated, I don't think I had a full two pots of coffee. I had. Um, let's say ten cups would be dead if I drink the cups of coffee or probably one full sugar energy drink. I just I'm just a weak constitution. But I drink the milk tea. That is what is my my sprack. But you don't drink milk. But the milk teat is non dairy. That's the amazing No, it's coconut milk. It's the best. My poison is the rose milk tea at

eighty five degrees celsius bakery. I don't know, tell me more so good. It's like Hong Kong milk tea. It's just like super milky and sugary if you can get it without a ton of sugar at it, and then it's got a rose flavored syrup in it, and then it gets you. It's like delicious. So you drink it really fast and then you are just through the roof sugar.

Move along. My my scientific feeling about any energy drink or tea or macha or anything like that is that you need at least some sugar and fat in it to help it go through your body and affect your brain. I would do a thing a while ago where I cut out all sugar except um for fruit for four days and then afterwards. Now I cannot drink or eat

sugary things like hardly at all. Uh. And so now I can't have like sugary coffee or sugary tea, like any kind of sugary drink is it's taste gross to me, Like it makes my teeth feel immediately like they're wearing little sweaters. It's not into it, can't do it. Uh. But yeah, I mean I do think that the sugar definitely, because there is that whole like it's like the bulletproof thing where you need the fat for sure to kind of like synthesize that. But I think drink like putting

butter in your coffee. Before we got a call from uh from a listener after our transcendental meditation discussion. Um, so it's actually we got an email from listener Bobby Ladies of Nightcall. I love the show, but besides my meager Patreon support, I felt like I haven't had anything to contribute until now. After going through a traumatic event in the military, I was made aware of the David

Lynch Foundation and its subsidized TM courses for veterans. I've been practicing it now for over six months and it's been extremely helpful for me in battling PTSD as well as my pre existing depression and anxiety. Nobody that I've met at the organization has given me a CULTI vibe, and like Brian said, they haven't intruded into my life after the initial training. I'm not one for evangelizing, but I wish everyone could give TM a shot. Also, Emily, I had the pleasure of meeting you on a side

street in Laredo, Mexico a couple of years ago. Unless that was a weird dream, I mean I was definitely in Loretto, Mexico a couple of years ago, so it's probably me was I. We're in a lot of Delray shirt. Hi. Hi, Bobby Uh. We were talking about this more. I think after our chat with Brian Copple movement you can go back and listen to if you haven't listened to it yet.

Um And I think I think that the money thing is probably the biggest like red flag that we have or about TM right as far as you know, Well, first of all, I'm really glad that transcendental meditation helped Bobby with PTSD and managing anxiety, and also thank you for your service. But my issue is that I think

it should be affordable for everyone. And there was a really interesting UM first person account I think it was in Vancouver magazine and the journalists Basically, it's just that it's about fifteen hundred dollars to kind of initiate yourself to get the secret information, which is basically your mantra, but also it's the ceremony. And the journalist who wrote this piece about her experience with this, so that she was not allowed to talk about UM the ceremony as

well as the mantra. She asked what the mantra meant. They were like, it doesn't mean anything, it's fine. Then she looked it up and found that it does have some meaning and that it was given to I think all of the UM female members who were you know, at her seminar that day or whatever. There's also UM this thing and again like this is all in this this thing that I read, So I don't have any firsthand knowledge of this, but yeah, we'll link to it.

You the kind of like selling point of like you can levitate to me, that's that's very that's like fringe ev it, right, Like I don't know. I've seen the DVD where David Lynch explains the levitating. What it really is is it's like you are sitting and meditating and you sort of start to like bounce in place. It's very silly seeming. However, I will say I totally believe in meditation as a mental health practice for sure, and

I think that it is not pseudoscience. I think it is like real and that it does like lower your heart rate or whatever, you know, change your change the way your brain works. Um. And it should be free and it is free. You can meditate for free. Um. I think both of my parents took tom and have you know, nothing bad to say about it. I think it's like they did it once, they like got their mantras and got out. But again it's like I don't

think they get out. They do not hound you for the rest of your life if you try to disengage, which is different from some yes CULTI things. So I think that is like at least you can, you can get out. I've read that you should look into a book called The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson, because it's basically the same thing, but a book that doesn't cost fifteen dollars. And I was like, okay, I'll do that, because yeah, I mean, meditating is awesome, and I definitely

think that the scholarships are a great idea. I think it's just that nobody should have to pay fifteen dollars for a mantra, just my personal opinion. I I'm looking forward to getting to the point where I can. I can, I can try it and report back to you all. But of course I won't tell you my mantra. But you know, just yeah, but I'm very upwarding here. TM want to sponsor us, do it? You might change our tune,

you know. I think that the main benefit of meditation right now is that it means that you have to look away from a screen. And the reason you might want to look away from a screen is this really terrifying news study. Oh my god, Molly, take it away. Oh this is the worst thing that's um, this is a wild ass episode. I have to We've got everything going on on this line this is this is a great night call. Um. Maybe not a great time in

you know, society, but a great episode. Yeah, a great episode. Um. And also I will say that I because Emily made me paranoid about life science and the sources and I was like, I don't know where anything is being sourced from. Really, I assume these people are real. Um. I like double checked it with other BBC can't argue. BBC also reported on us um. So this is from the BBC link How modern life is Transforming the human skeleton by Zaria

Gorvette Uh. The emergence of a spiky growth at the back of some people's skulls is causing people to wonder why we are all growing a weird bone on the back of our skulls. And it turns out it's from smartphone usage. Just just to be clear though, basically this this phenomenon has existed for a long time, but it

was very rare, and now it's one. As many as one in four people between the ages of eighteen and thirty are growing these spikes at the base of their skulls that they vary in size, some of them have been big. I have been a clinician for twenty years and only in the last decade increasingly I have been discovering that my patients have this growth on the skull, says David Shahar help scientists at the University of the

Sunshine Coast, Australia. The spike like feature, also no as the external occupital protuberance, is found at the lower back of the skull, just above the neck. If you have one, everyone feel if you have one, it's likely that you will be able to feel it with your four fingers. Do you guys have it? I can't tell. Is all I've been doing is feeling my neck, trying to feel

if I have it, because I don't want it. So some of them are up to thirty millimeters, which is its big and they if you have no hair, they can even be visible. And yeah, so it's because it's too offset the weight of your head. So if your head is down your phone, it's ten pounds of strains. So the bone is trying to kind of offset that weight by adding more weight to the back to balance it out. It's not very much weight though, it's just a little oh it is. Oh, it is just the

tip of the ice. As we hunch over our phones, we create our necks and hold our heads forwards. This is problematic cause the average head weighs around ten pounds as much as a large watermelon. As we all thanks to Jerry McGuire, uh and everybody has something called text neck, which is because your head is not meant to be craning over a phone all the time. It's really bad for you, and it's making people grow. It's well, it's

really bad for you. Might be misleading. It is bad for you to look at the smartphones, but the bone itself, as people's are. Elbows are shrinking. Yes, people are getting weak elbows and weak and smaller jaws. But you know what. Okay, So I was doing this the other day. I had been my phone told me that I had been looking at it way too much, and I put down my

phone and I rolled my eyes up. So I was looking at the ceiling and just by the just doing that, I realized it had been so long since I had looked up and then looked to the sides, and it felt like exercising if you've never exercised before. Exercise also fits in with what an eye doctor told me that scared the funk out of me a few years ago. When I saw her, um my eye doctor said that she was just seeing people's vision go bad really fast, a lot more than ever before because of smartphone usage.

She was like, she was like, everyone's vision is degrading. She was like, there's no like official studies on it, but just like anecdotally from being an eye doctor, I can tell you that, like kids are looking at screens from the beginning of their lives. It's like not good for your eyes. Um the question is how are our bodies going to adapt to that? This is all just like is this some I think it's in a Philip K. Dick book where everybody has like in large skulls or

something from from I don't know. It's like some way in which people have have It's also scary because there was like some horrible thing this week where some racists basically tried to bring up like the skull size, like you know, phrenology, like it was like or some sh like yeah, I mean I try not to like look at my phone, Like I always feel like I'm like reacting against this on some level at all times, because like I'm trying to do the eye exercises and Tess

and I are both looking at the ceiling right now. I never look up. I think if you wear glasses, obviously this becomes a vicious cycle. So you're looking at at screens a lot glasses, and then you're not looking above your glasses because you can't see, so it restricts your field of vision to below your eyebrows. It's like, we've all had these things for ten years. What is like the thing that would make you rethink it? Maybe a bone growing out of your skull. The bone again,

the bone itself is not bad. I'm just I'm just gonna say, like, I'm not going to be hating on the bone. It's just like it's it's like D evolution. We're gonna it's not it's it is evolution. But what if it's D evolution? What if this is going to like people will be on all fours like very soon, Maybe that would work out better for our lives style. I think the most interesting thing in this article was

that I had never heard of osteo biography. But osteo biography is basically studying how people's bones tell the story of how they lived their lives and animals as well. And it's not it's like a non judgmental, like you know, it's a very kind of like neutral study. And they mentioned a goat I think in the BBC um link where the goat had like adapted because it didn't have front legs, so it had to adapt and it's it's skeleton change. And it makes sense. I mean, the things

that you do repetitively are going to have anything. You guys want to be like craned over had flower. But the bone. The bone is not the bad thing, but the phones are the bad things, yes, but the bone.

It's natural to freak out at something like that, But there are studies of people who just had crappy posture and we're reading too much and had these bones spites back in the day, like people like I mean, the I stuff is a little more alarming to me because I feel like there's always something there has always been some activity that will alter your physiology, like because you're a minor or something, or you uh work in a textile factory and have horrible lung infection or whatever the fact.

So we all have a blog basically like I mean, there's there's always been like an activity of dominant activity that like causes some sort of malady like widespread. So I don't think that that's new. It's just like this is linked to something particularly now. I think the I thing feels different though, because that's something having to do with an organ instead of like a muscular skeletal thing

like that. Like the quality of light that we've been seen in our lives hasn't fundamentally changed until we started looking at screens all day, you know. Um, I don't know, like it's interesting to think about, do you guys know Day of the Triffids. That it's an early like British sci Fi's about plants that take over. It's the best horror and it's like cozy catastrophe. It's like about a group of people trying to escape from the plants that

are taking over everything. Um. But it's like they breed a plant and then it turns out the plant like squirts out of poison and it makes every human blind. Oh I have seen this, yes, I know. Yeah, Well it's kind of like the you know, the spitting dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. But I think the thing to consider with the bone spikes is that without the bone spike stood up straight. I know, without the bone spike, you're getting more next straight, the bone spike is your body

trying to help itself out. That's why I say, don't hate the bone spike, hate the phone spike. You know what I mean, because the bone is just trying to help you. No, no, hold a pause, I want but you know what I mean. We should start a YouTube channel for you to be like the preacher the bones. Don't be mad at the bone spike, be mad at

the phone. I just feel like everybody who knows me is probably like not worried about me getting a bone spike because I'm terrible at responding to text and emails and stuff like that, because I'm I'm always the person who's like, what if I'm not looking at my phone right now? If I'm just like experiencing life, and well, good for you, that's known should my text? No, but there should be more pushback against being on your phone all the time. It's like we we passed the omega

of like everyone's on their phones all the time. What if we like can go back? Okay, but here's the thing, here's the problem. And I so I have kids, but I think that people run into this also if they are a caretaker of any kind, is that this is the problem is that you get locked in whether you have kids or you're taking care of you know, an elderly parent or a sibling who can't take care of themselves, there is like an expectation. I mean, that's that's actually

where technology I think has been so useful. A couple of weeks ago, my son was at school and he ran into this staircase and he had needed stitches, and he was at school and I was not at home, and the thought that, like, you know, you have your emergency contact, but then they can reach you. I'm fine

with having a phone. I'm saying, like, no one for no internet on the phone, I can understand, but like, no more Twitter, Like but it have to be smart enough for texting now that there are garbage calls all the time. Though not even how that phone makes any sense because I don't pick up anything from a number I don't recognize and it could be an emergency, and I do occasionally one intent calls I'll pick up as long as it's not from all that. All that stuff

is stupid. But like I'm saying, like that's fine. Those are all like using your phone when there's a reason it's fine. But just the purposeless like always being on it, always scrolling, like missing your life because you're on your phone,

you know what I think? So this is only somewhat related. Um. So the other day I was talking with my dad because his father's say, and he and I were both complaining about like we had been behind drivers who were obviously texting, And I was like, do you think that it is like the responsibility of car manufacturers as well as cell phone manufacturers to disable a phone in the

car other than for calls? Like do you think that that's kind of the new seatbelt thing where there's going to be like an annoying noise that will go on if your phone down, But this is only used for calls. This is like this should have been thought about. It's like unsafe at any spot. I'm bringing it up now

happened until somebody famous dies from it? No, I I think I don't know about that because it's the kind of thing where if there were a bill introduced, it would be really hard for anyone to be like I disagree. If you're driving, you should be able to I never make a Nanny State joke unless I'm in like a rental car where it starts doing the beeping thing because I haven't buckled my seatbelt yet or somebody else hasn't buckled their seatbelt yet, and then I just screamed, like

nanny state turn into different. The difference, Emily is that, and I totally agree. The difference is that you are risking your safety in life with a seatbelt, you are risking other people safe when I'm not saying I'm just saying that that's like the easiest time that that think too far come, and I think it's just not gonna it's gonna happen, mark my words. In ten years, this will happened. I mean, like honestly, what we need is like large scale regulation of like Uber and every other company.

Yes that because like I like, the scariest Uber I was in was where like recently, where a driver was texting the whole time. I was like, did you report them? No?

Because I was. It was also late at night and we were on the freeway, and I was like, I don't want to be confrontational person who I'm in a car with while they're driving me, because like they could also like stare us into traffic if they want, Like that's just you know, I would want everybody who listens to the show, who's ever been in an uber where somebody where the driver is texting, fucking call that shut out asked to be let out, Like, don't work around

with that. I will. I've got into fights with friends because they're texting and I'm driving them, and I'm like, how will you feel when you kill me? I don't know, I said, I sound like the guy in Smithereens, but like, that's why I find it so depressing that the response to that that Black Mirror episode was like texting you're driving like wink wink wake. It's like, no, it's like

a real thing that kills people every day. It's not I have so many ideas about this, you guys, because it's not just the texting, it's the wanting to read an article. Yeah, and then one, and then it was like someone should just do a thing where they pay, like you know, there's like a service and it's just finishes. It's someone who's sitting at home and they finished reading you the thing that you were reading. They just call

you up and they're like, okay, where were you? All right, I'm gonna finish, and then they'll be like there's a link here. You want me to click the link and you're like yes, and then they read you that just but also here's what they'll do it. They're all thinking about that because they're thinking about how can we make driverless cars so that you can keep you never have to leave your phone and the robots just driving the car. Yeah. Well, I also think that at all this coffee that's like

letting the text message drive the car. You know what I'm into is conveyor belt freeways where you park your car and it's a conveyor belt and then you just like program in your stop and then you're back out and when you're back on the street you can drive. But while you're on the freeway, you're on a conveyor belt in neutral or park or whatever. Train I am, but it's your own personal train. It's your own car of the train, right, but it is a train. I think you get to have it. You just invented is

the people move from Island tram. I thought you were always picturing also giant conveyor belts, like standing conveyor belt freeways. I'm into that too. I'm into all of it. I'm driving that you guys can I just say driving is great. We should move on to the next to write horrifying thing that we have to talk about because we have so many left and we don't have much time left. Night call says, hey, don't text and drive. You don't

have much time left, and don't check your Instagram. Don't take the fucking picture of yourself on the four oh five. Don't You can wait, but if you need someone to finish reading the article to you, just email me and if I'm at home, I'll pick up the phone. I'll call you and I'll finish reading it so that you can concentrate on driving at the at the at the hundred and fifty dollar a month level of our patriots.

I actually am serious. I'll do it save lives. Okay, we have an email from zach Um again I hate it. Most of our topics this this week. I think the theme for me, at least personally, is I hate it. Uh Okay, Hi, A night call, Zack. Here from the greatest city on Earth, Canberra, Australia. I've been making my way through every episode currently Needy had been the Ocean Creatures Face and just wondering what your thoughts are on

the elbow squid. I vividly remember the first time I saw that video from under the oil rig in religion class in year ten of the squid just floating a ways off and the sheered red I felt looking at it, just floating there with its elbow tentacles. I think about

them every time I go into the ocean. Now that they've been filmed a few more times, the spooky sheet has wiped off a bit, but still they've got to be Aliens, right, I mean, odds are if a ship landed it would go into the ocean, given that that's most of the planet. Thank you, Zach, I mean like not thank you, though I hate this so much. I can't believe I've never seen this before. So the elbow squid,

there's also it's also called the big Finn squid. So the big Finn squid is not to be confused with the big Finn reef squid, which is like more like a um. It looks a little more like cuttle fishy um. The big Finn squid looks like a terrifying spider that lives very deep in the ocean. I think all the all the places they found it has been uh like yeah, nine thousand feet deep like thereabouts. It is a pretty

large squid that can but mostly tentacles. It's mostly surprised like long, like it's it's it's big um and the and the it's head. It's um. I forget what that's called on a cephalopod, but um. It's like it's it's kind of narrow, but it's got these huge wings, which is why it's called the big fin squid. UM. It was not really regularly observed until later in the twentieth century, and there wasn't really a clear video of it until I think, yeah, two thousand, that's the video that um

that Zach was referring to. I will invite everybody to do a Google image search or a YouTube search of it, because I find this creature extremely upsetting and I hate it. Emily, Why why I wasn't scared of it? I was like, when you know, you gave us a warning to Google with cash and and I saw it, and yes, it's for some reason. There is something kind of freaky about the very thin, long tentacles. Sometimes I look really stiff, like they look like Daddy long legs, Like do you

not like Daddy long? No? I hate Daddy interesting legs are no other other bugs. I'm not anti. The only thing that bugs me about the Daddy long legs is when you see one lose its leg, and then everything goes into the respect. I respect spiders, and so I respect these sea spiders and these squids that look like spiders.

I I detest and respect spiders I have. Octopuses were like my first big fear, like the my real Boogeyman when I was a kid, because I would just watch this episode of Nature over and over and over again that had like a scene with an octopus in it, and I would just watch that scene just to freak myself out constantly when I was a kid. Um And they don't really like most octavistes don't really do that

for me anymore. But when I saw this video, I was taken all the way back to that like four year old feeling of like, oh God, like, what's under the ocean? The weirdest thing. Yeah, I gotta say like it's a cliche, but the squid and the whale thing at the Natural History Museum just truly one of the most frightening things in the world because you get close to it and you feel like it's going to come alive and it's got yeah, and just the way it's lit.

I love the whole thing. But I remember just like seeing it as a kid and being like, imagine being in the ocean, right and you see this, like we are so meaningless. You know what this elbow squid looks like to me? As a scalp massagery exactly like that. I think it's uncanny is it has an elbow and as we humans are losing and it has no bones. But maybe we're going to become more like the elbow squad. Tess and I are both kind of making our arms like squid. It feels really good, like doing like jazz

hands or something. But would the smartphones have done? They made us forget to do our squid hand exercises, just like Jennifer North, This is like the o a. It's going to turn into us eventually doing some kind of like squid. Yeah, yes, well squid. But so the the the idea of it being an alien is not all that far fetched, simply because it was so recently discovered.

Like nobody knew about this thing until like, you know, fifty years ago or something, and even then they didn't really know how to classify it finally got a genus and um in the nineties, so nobody really knew what you know, nobody had really lined up all these different sightings of the same thing. Yeah, so it does just feel like something genuinely alien, because it's not if you were if you went to school or like loved sea creatures in the seventies, you wouldn't have known about this thing.

Like nobody knew about it. It's like a new there's still things, Yeah, there's still new things, still new things. Hey, but some of those things are terrible wings and I think that we should close our show by talking about one of them that also kind of tangentially involves creatures, which is Yeah, so this is something that has escaped our attention for a while. Even though this is based

in events that happened a couple of years ago. There is currently a murder trial or I guess the murder style just concluded um featuring to a couple, a man and a woman who were involved in an alien reptile cult. And so a lot of information has now become kind of more mainstream about this alien reptile cult. And of course, thank you to the night caller who brought this to our attention. I was like, yeah, alien reptile called tell me more. So I don't know if you can classify

it as a cult. I mean it is certainly, it is certainly out there. And this lady feels like a real piece of work. That's sort of the main proprietor of it. Cherry Schriner Uh profits here, which is not a good name, yes, not a good pension names on the podcast uh. But she describes herself as a prophet seer which is misspelled, ambassador messenger and daughter of the Most High um. And she has a she has just

strong internet presence. She's got a Twitter, she's got a YouTube with an alarming amount of views on it, and most importantly, she has a Patreon with nine subscribers that bears an uncanny resemblance to the night called Patreon. Horrifying to discover that. So Sherry Shiner, by the way, Sherry Shiner has died, but her online presence is maintained her website. Don't look at it, but you will tell you about it. Um. Basically, Oh, I looked at it too. I just don't want to.

I don't want to drive traffic to her. She's a terrible again another you know, like the monster energy drink conspiracy theorist. She is not a good person. She's very awfully anti submitted, transphobic, xenophobic, all of that, because of course she believes that, um, you know, there are reptilian aliens who are masquerading as humans and they're going to

bring about the new world order order. And she also has in some of her videos, um celebrity faces, and she's talking about how she can prove that they are reptile aliens. So the cost people's stuff classic like they like, oh, we have slowed down imagery of like somebody's eyes doing like a reptile blink, that kind of thing, Like yeah,

that variety. But it got even weirder because so during this murder trial where this woman UM whose name is Barbara Rogers, also a good pension name Barbara Rodgers, is accused and has been convicted of third degree manslaughter, I think of killing her boyfriend who was a member of

this group. And during I guess like during the course of their relationship, m. Barbara Rodgers was not as down with Harry Shiner's whole rhetoric as her boyfriend was, and at one point this woman posted a picture of steaked tartar on Facebook and was like great with some minced garlic and sherry. Shiner flipped out and was like, I think I even have a quote from her here. She's just got uh they craved the blood those with the

vampire demon in them. So she was like, I know that this woman is a witch and a VAMPI described her as a vampire, which Reptilian super soldier there. I told Stephen that that like she had basically prophesied that this this his girlfriend, who I guess was also involved with this, but maybe wasn't just less just less so that like she was going to bring about his doom like she would she would harm him or kill him

or something. So I think that this led to this fight where in according to Barbara, who shot her boyfriend point blank in the head, but he was holding his gun to his own head and making her shoes. He was like, pull the trigger, pull the and she was like okay, which also, I mean, yeah, I don't think. I don't think anybody made the right decision in this situation. Um, but it is like it's kind of bizarre that it's like, you know, she she was It's basically a self fulfilling

prophecy and like the most obvious way possible. But um, yeah, so I don't know. I when did she die. I didn't realize that she had died. I think she died in sixteen. I think it was supposed to be the year before the murder occurred. Oh interesting, okay, because she I was very I was watching one of her many videos and she was talking about how many attempts there had been on her life, that people are constantly trying to poison her and kill her. But I didn't realize

that she was Oh, maybe she's still alive. I thought I read that she had died. Well she I mean, I kind of started going down. Maybe she's a lizard person. Now. She's got a lot of like diversified interests. One of them she's very interested in, like the raw meat thing, and also like cannibalism and restaurants. There's a lot of videos of people dragging what are supposed to be body bags on security cameras at hotels to the kitchens of

like hotel restaurants to serve human meat. That's a common theme. And but the thing is that like, like you you hear all this stuff you're like, it's pretty fringy. You see, she only has like nine followers on Patreon, and like, okay,

it's pretty fringey. But the videos are like where and this is like goes back to everything that people have been talking about YouTube right now, or it's just like if you get on an algorithm, like I'm sure my algorithm is affected now because I've watched like four of her videos or like part of four videos. Oh, you can't watch anything without it leading you to the worst things in the world. It's honestly, it's like I feel like a lot of these things, they're like it's an experiment.

We just like we're not allowed to intervene because we have to see how the experiment takes its and it's like, oh, guess what. It leads to fascism always that's why you have to interfere. It leads to like at least to like domestic dispute, which like comes down to the belief in this, you know, really really far out there conspiracy theory that like you don't directly cause somebody's death. Uh yeah,

And it's by the way, I just fact checked. So Shriner died less than a year after Mania, who was the boyfriend, because she's talked about she's talked about this whole case, like after after his death. She's she's discussed it. It's very exhausting, and it's like it's like, yeah, I I find I find all this stuff to be uh like just deceptively easy to like laugh about or just kind of gawk at until you realize, like I mean that the yeah, the cold shower at the end is like,

how many people have actually been watching this? Maybe you just kind of more of more of a curiosity of those things where you're like, real people don't believe this, and you're like, oh, they do things like anti vaccing, right, Yeah,

we've been talking about recently. Well also I think it was in The New Republic who wrote about this same case earlier this month, but they were talking about how cults and these conspiracy theories, um that YouTube is kind of the perfect medium for getting people into these cults because you do enter a trance like state, and Sherry Shriner was very you know, and because of auto exactly, and they were like, maybe it's the fact that people who are watching all of these videos and kind of

consuming like hour after hour after hour video it does kind of like numb you and you're receiving information and you can't really tell what's real or false. And if you watch any history documentary, it leads you to a bunch of Ye. You can't just like learn about history without it being fraught in some way because people are people are gaming it, who are attempting to be like, oh what, you're interested in history? Yeah? What? What? What

can we learn from this? If you've got any questions about lizard people, aliens, undersea aliens, if there are any good like like, I feel like the lizard people one is one of these just like boilerplate conspiracy theories. It's been going around for a while, and like I feel like we kind of just like I feel like everybody's just like, oh yeah whatever, like that's what crazy people believe in. But if there's anyone that you think deserves

our scrutiny for whatever particular reason, let us know. We'll check it out, because we're really down to mess up our our algorithm on YouTube. Oh yeah, the algorithms trash. Let's make it. Let's make it even trash here. Also, if you have thoughts about how to improve drivers safety, how to keep the bone spikes out of our skulls, or how to improve the modern experience. Please give us like just keep picturing somebody like l O l ng and just like impaling themselves on their own bone spike.

You can it's in the back of your head, but you just laugh, you throw your head back hard. I'm just saying eventually it's going to be like a unicorn horn. But anyway, give us a call at to four oh four six Night or an email at Nightcall Podcast at gmail dot com. You can also support us on our Patreon We're at patreon dot com slash Nightcall. We just put out our first ever book club episode on Value of the Dolls. It's great, it was a lot of

fun to do, so definitely check that out. We're also starting our new book club where we're going to be reading ghost Land by Colling Dickey, So go out and grab a copy and support us on Patreon if you want to be in on that next month, and be sure to subscribe to us on Apple podcast or wherever wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us with rating and review.

We love it so much. Follow us on social media at Twitter Nightcalled Pod, Instagram Night Called Podcast, on Facebook at Night Called podcast and we will see you all next week. Bye bo all,