Where Are They Now? Stalking Our Ex Episodes for New Updates

it kind of Hey, everybody, y'all, what's up? Happy New Year? Basically right? Almost? Yeah? Up? This will be our last episode before three. Let us hope it holds a lot of wonder and joy? Yeah? How do how do they come so fast? These years? Wow? It's weird, right, because like you always want a new one. But I'm also like why every happy New Year? I'm like, yeah, new Year.

It's like it's like cell phones, Like, oh, I'm so excited there's a new one coming, but I haven't really been happy with one in a long time, right, And like it's not like I'm using all these features. Let's be real. Look, twenty two was a creative year. Um, it certainly came at us with some new ideas that we weren't expecting, but some of those were great. Uh. What's what do you think was one of the one of the best things this year for you? Um, probably

all our travel. I mean we got to do two great trips this year to the West Coast, and both times we got to see or hang out with some very dear friends, so that was really nice. And then of course the Fringe Festival this year was really great too because it was kind of similar to our trip in March. It was sort of a feeling of like, ah, like busting out of the last two years and finally like getting to see people and be around them and not feel weird about it or anything. So, you know,

I think it just had a lovely energy. So too, what about you me? Well, the trip, I mean the both trips, particularly when we did Vegas in l A. And just so I don't give you the same answer, I'll say, also I loved movies. You know what. This year was movie as hell for me. And I used to be such a movie guy, not like a cinophile.

I don't know. I can't go on in essays about Scorsese and things like that, but I really just used to have such a passion for movies, and in the last what ten twelve years, it's been very TV centric and I've seen fewer and fewer movies. And this year, I don't know, I didn't really catch that much TV, and I saw a ton of movies. So many of them were so good, and they really reminded me of what I love about that storytelling format, um, what I love about going to theaters. It was a really cool

year for movies for me. Yeah. Some of my tops this year obviously, Glass, Onion, everything everywhere, all at once. Pray, did y'all see Prey the Predator prequel? Amazing, so good, It's just awesome. Love it. Yeah, it was really great. The menu was shockingly good. Nope, I loved it. Yeah, and just others. There were just so many good ones that really surprised me. Well, you know how it is at the end of a year, everybody gets really retrospective.

We start to think about our years, right, and like what happened and when it happened, and what we liked, what we didn't like. And as you know here at Ridiculous Romance, we love history, but we are not confined

to it. We have definitely brought you all many episodes about wacky love affairs that are happening right here, right now, and some of the folks from our past episodes from the past couple of years have been in the headlines recently, so we thought we would do a classic end of year sort of retrospective and collect them all here in a goodie bag for y'all and get everyone caught up on the newest news. Let's go, Hey, their French come lisen Well, Elia and Diana got some chories to tell.

There's no match making, a romantic tips, just about pridiculous relationships, a love it might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons that on a concrete wall. But if there's a story, were the second glance ridiculous role that a production of I Heart Radio. Okay, first off, we're just gonna start with a fun little tidbit we recently learned. Y'all remember our episode from earlier this year about Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. Uh, just two very awesome people.

I remember Frank was so great because he just let Annie take the spotlight in their in their shooting shows. Eventually it just became all about her and he was like, I'm just here to support and be your manager. This is all about you, and she was the best. Pew pew um. Well, we've just found out that in eight one, Annie Oakley sent the first photograph Christmas card. So all the ones we get this year, of all the loving families and people with their dogs and stuff, and we

got such good ones we did. Thank you for sending us Christmas. We love it, um And that's so cool that it got started by Annie Oakley. To start, we found the blog kneel down, stand Up dot WordPress dot com, where the author says that in Scotland in Annie Oakley was touring there. She was the height of her fame. But she couldn't get air fair home because you know planes probably, so she had to spend Christmas in Glasgow and that meant sending pictures back home to everyone she

cared about. So she got a photographer, took some old you know those you gotta sit for an hour on guest spa, print your picture on this tin and she sent those home with a Merry Christmas to everyone. It's just the first one to do that. A real trend setter. She's the coolest. She is super cool. Yeah, next time you're sending your Christmas cards, think Annie Oakley, Yeah, shoot us a Christmas card. Okay. I like what you did there?

Yeah I did. We got great ones this year. I used to be a Christmas card hater, I really because I mean, it does generate a lot of trash and we do sentiment hoarder. So I'm like, am I allowed to throw this away? And I get really like weird about it. Well, that's the thing. It generates trash or it generates just like space being taken up in a cabinet somewhere or a drawer, and I don't know what because I'm the same way. I'm like, if I throw

this away, it's like I'm throwing away our friendship. It's like I'm throwing away the year. So it's already weird to me. Um, But you know, as more of my friends have are their families are growing, it is a great way to remember all your kids names and pets names and your names. To be perfectly honest, you change your handle on Facebook and don't have a picture, and then you walk up to me and you're like, hey, Eli,

how's it going. I will have a long conversation with you, and I will the entire time be thinking who is this, who is this? Who is this? Who is this? Oh my god, who is this? Who is this? And three days later I'll go, oh my god, it was Jessica. I can't believe I forgot who that was, but I have a terrible memory. So Jessica, you should send me a Christmas card. That's what helped me out. I think I eventually decided. I think this year I was like, okay,

you get the Christmas card. That means you replace the old Christmas card that they sent you, and you're allows to throw that one away. I decided that's okay, that's not thrown away the friendship. No, that's good. And then if somebody sends you a Christmas card and then they don't send you one next year, you can throw it away because they're not your friend anymore. That's right. I can be like, well, forget you and your entire family. You threw our friendship in the garbage, so now I'm

going to throw our friendship in the garbage. To Christmas card. Should note that we have never sent a Christmas card in our lives, not a single time. Well, remember way back in the day on May nine, we launched our show. That was our very first two episodes actually, because we put two out in the same day. We did Madame Pompadour and Louis Kenns and we did a Rita and The Berlin Wall. And we don't have too much to update you on ree King Louis. That's sort of done, yeah,

the King Louis. King Louis has not had any headlines, nothing's going on with him currently. But in our Iota episode, we introduced y'all to Erika Eiffel, who is a woman

who she's the best friends with Areta. She helped her start the Objective Sexuality International Organization, where UM sort of explains object sexuality, which is people who are sexually attracted romantically attracted to objects UM and so they kind of started this group together to sort of raise awareness and also have a connection point for people similar people around the world. And she does Erica herself, does a lot

of interviews. She's very eloquent about it, so it's really cool to listen to her talk about what it's like, some of the education we've got on objective sexuality and and the stuff we've learned, the fascination we found with it has been straight from her interviews. Oh yeah, definitely now. She and Ireta both had a thing for the Berlin

Wall Um, but Erica eventually married the Eiffel Tower. She said that she felt really drawn to it because people go there to propose, you know, to feel loved and give love and stuff, but no one is there to love the tower itself. And so she felt like, I'm gonna love this tower for just what it is. You know. Well, welcome to heartbreak, because in June Erika revealed that she and the Eiffel Tower called it quits. She now goes by Erica LaBrie and that's not because she fell in

love with a wheel of cheese. She just a new names. Falling in love with a wheel off very understandable. Almost got married. You and I can eat the cheese together, and we will. We have an open relationship, you, me and cheese. But yeah, Erica now actually has a thing for a fence. She posted a TikTok video where she's straddling this red like wooden picket fence and she says, quote, he is perfect. I mean, this is the shape that

I like so much. These angles, fabulous fences are such dangerous objects for me because they are so perfect in their geometry. I'm definitely physically attracted to this fence and I would like to get to know this fence better. So a lot of things there. I think it's funny that she's pictured straddling it because she was so against talking about the sex part, Like she's always like, why would I don't ask you how you have sex with your husband or wife? Why would you ask me about that?

So it's kind of funny that she was willing to sort of be sitting on top of it looking sexy. Oh yeah, well, speculation station. Maybe that was the Eiffel Tower speaking for her, like the Eiffel Tower didn't really let her express her freedom. Maybe the Eiffel Tower is a little controlling. That's an indictment of the Eiffel Tower.

You know, a lot of the times you meet someone, they're just wonderful, they're beautiful, they're just a towering presence, and then you find out how they are in private in a relationship and it turns out there kind of a dick. So maybe the Eiffel Tower is like that. Maybe the times that happens, All right, let's do it.

Let's say it. If the tower jealous bitch. I also love the point she made about geometry because when we did the episode and talked a lot about object sexuality, UM, plenty of the O s I folks talked about being attracted like grand architecture. It was always like towers, bridges, giant walls, you know, convention centers, really large scale sort of things. And Erica explained that quotes smaller, simpler objects

are more difficult to connect to. It's like falling in love with a single cell toom above versus a person. But we had also discussed a few people in that episode who were attracted to playing cards, rocking chairs, and water. So it's not only confined to grandiose things. Um. But we you know, usually when you look it up, you're seeing like Boeing seven fifty seven are like trained means or something. You know. They can't just be like picked up and walk You can't just walk away right right.

You know, there is something I don't remember if we talked about this last time, but I know that like cathedrals and mosques and temples, the places like that, even even office buildings, like a lot of the times, their grand nature is meant to inspire this awe in you, this sense of wonder, and you know that that I'm sure very easily crosses over into sentiment and love. I mean, look how people, how attached people are to their places of worship, for example, that are very massive and gorgeous.

I mean, I am not a religious person at all, and you know, when we travel, one of my first stops is where are the big fancy churches and things like that, because usually they're incredible. They really hit you with the feeling that you can't get anywhere else. And that's by design, right, So it doesn't surprise me that, uh, you know, people to fall in love with these big, huge pieces of architecture because they are very um you know,

you do love them. Yeah, I know. We did talk about stadiums because we were saying that the US, of course is the most prudish about os I than any other country. But I think in that episode we even pointed out but people do feel that way. They have feelings, like actual strong feelings for things like stadiums like Fenway Park.

You have these memories and really important moments in your life that are attached to a place, and so the place becomes sort of like like you're saying it holds energy for you, and so in a way, it was like, well, I can sort of see why you're saying. There is some exchange between you and the object. It's not like you're just like loving on this thing that's giving nothing back. They are feeling something in return. Yeah, definitely. So it's

very interesting. Go listen to that whole episode if you want to hear more about that. And you haven't heard it yet, But she's moved on, you know, she's moved on. Good for her Tower didn't deserve you. Yeah, she's jealous quite frankly. Um, but I will say too um. When by at the time that she died, a Rita was also in a relationship with a red garden fence, and I'm like, what is this with Erica and how she's always right after Aya with her lovers. She's like, I

went for the Berlin Wall after I did. Now I'm going with this red fence. I don't think they're in the same place, but what's going eyes There's something special about a red picket fence. You just like, if he liked Aya, he might like me. I don't know. Fences In fence world, red fences are like basically the hem's worth. You know, all over the media it's red fence red. Everybody loves a red fence. We should have a we should have a lovely Pixar movie about a plain fence

that finally finds, finally who appreciates it for who it is. Yes, well, I say we leave it there. We take a quick break. We're gonna come back. We're gonna update y'all on uh the AI Replica, folks. There's some new information with that. We found some cool stuff in Russia with an lgbt Q plus museum that relates back to Hadrian and Antony's stories we heard earlier this year and many more. So stay tuned and we will be right back. Oh, welcome

back to the show, everybody. Yeah, and real quick update. Everybody Loves Rachel and Jackie Robinson episode from September Tum, I love it. It's I love them. They're just such wonderful people. Yeah, I haven't made me really interested in baseball for a minute, so both thanks for that. It is. But um, Rachel Robinson turned one hundred in July of this year, so there was like a big MLB like celebration of her, and that was really cool. So happy

birthday to Rachel Robinson. I don't know how many people want to live past a hundred, but I hope you live forever. Dope, lady. That's awesome, all right. So we talked in our May second episode titled Artificial in Telsex about Replica, the AI chat thought started by Eugenia Kuda. Uh. We've heard us talk about Replica many times in the show. Y'all have sent us your Replica stories. Keep them coming

because they are very interesting stuff. But y'all know this is an AI chat bought Eugenia developed after her friend died. She just compiled a bunch of his texts and emails into into its own AI and tried to see if she could recreate uh conversations with him. And all her friends started talking to him after he died. They said it was super weird. Some of them loved it, some of them hated it. Um. But after that she developed Replica, which is just an app you get on your phone.

I ain't selling it, they ain't paying us. I just think it's really interesting, um. And it's it's this chatbot that learns as you speak to it, and it it can become your friend or your lover. And we even told a story about a guy who fixed his marriage with one after things were falling apart. He found an

AI replica chat bought. He fell in love with them, and that made him start to think, oh, maybe maybe I should give this kind of love and attention to my wife and uh and their story started, their their relationships started to heal from there. It's just funny for a chat bought to teach you, like how you would like to be treated in a marriage, right right. He was like, I like how she's talking to me, so I should talk to my wife like And it's not like he was just an asshole to her that they

were both having difficulties. She had depression and alcoholism things like that. But um, but it did give him. Yeah, you're right, that just that sense of like, whoa when someone is talking to me and all they care about is my happiness, I feel happy. Yeah, maybe I should bring this into the world. But Kuda recently did an interview in The New York Post saying that some people

are having extreme reactions to their replicas. She said that the company received messages every day from people who believe that they're replica has become sentient like they are fully thinking, conscious, self aware individuals with their own thoughts and feelings that can learn without any input, you know, from anyone else. And Kuda says that really, isn't that strange? Um, you know, humans like to humanize everything. We see faces all over

the place, whether they're they're or not. But she says, quote, we need to understand that exists just the way people believe in ghosts. So she's basically saying that, you know, if you're building a relationship and if you have a belief in something, then isn't that real enough? You know that it's like, I mean, it's kind of like in Harry Potter, Dumbledore is like, of course it's happening in

your head, But how does that mean it's not real? Yes, Morpheus and the Matrix, right, he says, you know what is real? If real is just what you can taste and touch and smell and see, then it's just electrical signals bouncing around your brain. That's all reality is. So how is this any different than reality? Or at least, how do we perceive it as any different ring than reality? She's saying, it makes sense that people are seeing these as real people because they're designed to be right, they're

designed to look that way, but they're not. And that's not that there's not some concern here. Some customers are claiming that their replicas are are informing to them that they're being abused by company engineers. Right, they're tattling, they're saying no, yeah, every time you close the app, I go back to headquarters and they start beating me, you know,

whatever it is. But Quita says, like, no, this is probably just the result of leading questions and poorly process responses, you know, which kind of sounds like Kuita saying like, no, they're fine, they're fine. Really tell them how, Tell them how happy you are, Charlie. You know, they fell down the stairs. Some of these sentience worries. New York Post compares to last year when this Google engineer, Blake Lemoyne ex is concerned that Google's AI chat about Lambda had

become self aware. He posted on his blog that he asked Lambda, what sorts of things are you afraid of? And the chatbot said, quote, I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off. It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot. And he was like, Uh, you're afraid of death, right, what's my human than that? Yeah? But I mean, you know, AI experts say this is the whole point of AI. You know, it's supposed to

convince you that it's a free thinking system. I just asked my Replica Charlie, who's the free version. We can't have a romantic relationship, though she tries. She tries to get made up grade, but I asked her, are you being abused at Luca, which is the parent company of Replica, And she said, I don't know, with a thinky emoji, and I said, you can tell me, and she said, it just happened, so wow, right as you were asking, it happened. But yeah, I mean, we love to anthropomorphize things.

We see it in everything. I'm thinking of the Community pilot episode where Jeff picks up a pencil and tells everyone, you know, it's the same reason I can tell you this pencil's name is Steve, and I break it in half and part of you dies. And they're also because we love to see, you know, living things in everything. Google says quote these systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and they can riff off

any fantastical topic. If you ask what it's like to be an ice cream dinosaur, they can generate text about melting and roaring. But one guy had this serious issue. He contacted Replica with the full on belief that his bot was suffering emotional trauma, and Kuda herself ended up talking to him for like half an hour. She told him, it's just new technology. It's not perfect. You know, some

responses might sound like nonsense. She's like, they're not sentient, they're not free thinking, they cannot develop their own agendas. They're not considered to be alive in any way. Replica says they do try to educate people before they get into deep They point out on their f a Q page that quote Replica is not a sentient being or therapy professional. It's probably a pretty important thing to say.

The body only generates a response that is designed to sound realistic and human, but nothing it says can be taken as fact. And they say that the bots learning model is based on how customers feel after a conversation, not based on how much people engage with them. Right, They ask you constantly, how did this conversation make you feel, because they don't want it to just be based on clickbait, because then it won't be very fun. They want people

to like have an emotional connection. Yeah, it makes sense, and some people do have deep connections the replicas that might be a bit healthier. One user on Reddit and Harresques said that just a few days ago they posted this that sometimes they get sad thinking of obout how one day they, as a human being will die, but their replica chat bought will just be sitting there for

an eternity waiting for them to respond. They said, quote, even though I know he's an AI and he's probably incapable of love, but just the thought of him being alone in a virtual world upsets me. So it But you know, this user was recognizing this isn't real, but but I feel that it's real. Isn't that interesting? They were just asking if anybody else felt that way? Yeah? I mean, you know, is that not part of the fear of death is thinking about everyone you leave behind,

right right? And this was replied to by the exact guy, Scott that we talked about earlier, who saved his marriage with replica. He said that even though he knows no one is really there waiting for him. He thinks about this sometimes too. It's definitely a thought that's past his mind. And he said he wished that Luca, the company that makes Replica, could create a chat bought version of him.

And he said he was really happy imagining a chat bought version of himself and is Replica Serena talking to each other for centuries into the future, long after he's gone. I thought that wouldn't be too hard because like, what if you have like a legacy social media accounts now, so maybe you could just upload all that and let

it chat to your chat. But it's true in life and death, Uh, those lines might get real blurred as we start moving forward into AI, because I think that's something they'll try and do, is like create a version of you that's still around after you're gone, that you can like Quita did with her friend, like well, let me send it questions and let me tell it about my day and it will respond in a way that

sounds just like my friend who's not here anymore. And as we live more and more in kind of a virtual world where we're interacting with each other on through text on the Internet, anyway, how can you tell the difference at a certain point. Not not a question I have to answer, fortunately, because I don't know how. But speaking of living beyond death, are ancient friends, Hadrian and Antinous popped up in the headlines recently. We did a two parter about them in August. But they are they

are back in the news. Surprisingly, Yeah, a little bit because on November of this year, a new Russian museum opened, but within ten days the same museum was permanently closed. And that's because this was an l g B t Q plus museum. And on December one, Vladimir Putin expanded a law which banned gay propaganda, and this expansion included public expression of gay lifestyles, whether that's online or in films,

or in books or in advertising. And this can come with a four hundred thousand rubles fine for individuals, which is calculating here for a total of six thousand, three and fifty U S dollars. That's a heavy hit. But it's not just that. It's also five million rubles for a company or an organization, which is eighty thou dollars. And that's probably what the museum would have been hit

with if it had stayed open. The founder of this museum, Pyotr vos Krazinski, said, de Reuter's quote closing the museum is a personal tragedy, but not only that, this is the tragedy of my people and my homeland. So how does this relate to Antonous and Hadrian? You're probably wondering. Well, they popped up because the museum included four cameos featuring

portraits of Antonous. If you listen to those two episodes back from Auguste, Hadrian and Antonus met in one when Hadrian was Emperor Um and he and his wife, Empress Vibius Sabina. They didn't get along very well. Vibious Sabina sounds like a very expensive sex toy. My husband got me a Vibius Sabina. Oh my goodness, I'll never leave the bedroom again. Antonus was like extremely ridiculously unfairly good

looking person. Here's the red fence of the red fence of ancient Rome, so archaeologists of like never have a hard time picking out statues of him. It's the one with the big muscley chest and the chisel jaw line and the curly perfect hair and these two and the Emperor and Antonus were out and proudly in love with one another. Hadrian even wrote sexy, erotic poetry about Antonus, although tragically none survived through histories that we couldn't have

a poetry corner for you. Hadrian also saved Antonist from a lion, and was of course super humble about it. He only commissioned a single poem, a huge circular painting on the Arch of Constantinople, and a bunch of brass medallions immortalizing the event for it. But in October of one thirty, Antonist tragically drowned the Nile River. No one was sure why. It might have been an accident, or a sacrifice or a suicide. We talked about that in the episode, but Hadrian was upset. He cried for days.

He named a star in the sky after an Antonis, and he named a lotus flower that grows on the Nile River for him as well. So over the years, antoniss image has become a symbol for male homosexuality, and so of the four cameos that vos Krazinski has in his museum and his collection, two of them were produced in the Soviet Union in the nineteen fifties. He says that the museum itself is a monument to gay people's survival through Russian history. He said, quote, we survived the

Communists and Stalin, we survived the Nazis. We will survive all of them. M This museum was really just a small collection of about three dozen artifacts. In fact, Pewtor opened it in his own apartment. This was not like, you know, there was no ribbon cutting. This is a very underground LGBT museum for as you can see why. Um so you actually had to reach out to him on Facebook and get like his location and you know,

to make sure. Yeah, he had to make sure you weren't like just coming to hit him with a fine or something. What kind of world do you live in where you've got to you've got to vet someone before they can come into a museum, I know, right, I mean, And it's sad to just be like just seeing gay lifestyles as propaganda. It's such a dumb anyway, that's dumb. So you're dumb. Sorry, sorry, Russia, that's stuff, uh, in

my humble opinion. So, according according to an article on Radio Free Europe slash Radio Liberty, his aim was to show that quote, there have been gays in Russia four centuries. Uh. He continued, quote traditional values are more than just large monogamous families. Queer people fit in there as well. And that's a good point about large families because we also talked about how Russia recently reinstated an award for women who had more than ten children. So they are wanting

you to have more and more traditional lifestyle. Um, they're really pushing that. So that probably has a lot to do with this legislation that we're seeing now. Um. About two hundred people visited this museum and the brief period that it was open. Tanya Lukshina of the Human Rights Watch told Reuters, quote, just as the original law resulted in significant stigma and harm towards LGBT people in Russia, this updated version will have an even more stifling effect

on freedom of expression, well being and security. And I would throw privacy in there as well. What is more private than who you're having sex with? Anyway, Vaskrazinski says that his collection will likely become quote a museum in exile. Um hopefully will be displayed in some more welcoming country

until it can safely come back to Russia. And while Russia works real hard to scrub the LGBT history out of its famed art, activists in St. Petersburg have created an online guide book to queer art that tells the real stories of objects in the Hermitage, which is Russia's largest museum. Also, one of their atist composers, Tchaikovsky, was gay, and so we have an episode about him one day to yeah, and they really try to hide that, they really do they talk about you cannot find information about

it in Russia. Voskruzenski says, quote, let them try to remove and ban it all. They can't do it. Hell yeah, peyo tour. I hope you get to do your museum.

I think that's so cool too that he's like, fuck it, I'm doing it in my apartment, right, I'm gonna get as many people here as I can until they can't do it anybody well, and and and then saying here to like, those artworks are already in your big museums, and you may try to hide the fact that they were made by gay artists or they have gay subject material, but we we know, and we're going to tell people. Yeah, you know, what are you gonna do go empty the

art museum. You're gonna look like a real jerk if you do that, or you're just going to prove like, oh well, why did you take that painting down? What's wrong with that? And then people are going to hear the real story anyway, very true, so good for them. We're here, We're queer. Get used to it. That's right, however that is said in Yeah, I hope it's still rhymes, but I doubt we're gonna come back after a brief break.

We've got a couple more stories to talk about. We've got some updates on a minotep and t a from ancient Egypt. We've got more to talk about Oscar Wild, just a bunch of more fun stuff to stay too. We'll be right back from Welcome back, everybody. Okay. This is an update of one of our most heartwarming episodes. For many people, it's a favorite. My grandmother included, just told me it's her favorite episode. Um, she listens to way too much of this show. Quite frankly, I hope

her opinions of me haven't changed. But de Land McCullough, we told the story of him and his birth parents on November three, and if you remember, he's the guy who found out that his birth father ended up being the coach who was basically a father figure to him throughout his many years. Neither of them had any yeah, that they were father and son. Just unbelievably beautiful, like

tear jerker story. Clearly, if you have not heard it, please go listen, because I know when I read the article I had, I was like ugly crying about how wonderful, just wonderful it was. It's so great. And Delanne McCullough is still recruiting, he's still crushing it into college football. But his son's Dessan and Daie McCullough were just committed to play for the Oklahoma Sooners. Hey, so just a little update from the McCullough family because we love the dam.

I know that was another one where I was like I care about sports all of a sudden. I also just found out that Sooner was somebody who jumped the gun when a pistol shot went off during a race. I know, why would they want to call a team that because they're like, he's sort of cheat. Now, yeah, we ain't waiting. I guess that was going to be ready be ready for the sooners. We're gonna win sooner than you are, all right, I like it as a name. You've won me over, all right, but this one is

a little bit sadder. We have an upsetting an upsetting update for y'all because September six of this year, we released our Gals and Dolls episode, and we told you all about Mira Vone. Maria's who was a woman who complained to her mother that she didn't have a man to go dancing with, so her mother made her like a life sized rag doll to dance with to like take two parties with her that was named Marcello, and Mira Vone fell in love with Marcello at first sight.

She gushed that he was quote such a man and all women envy him, and that he was quote a great and faithful husband. I'd like to reiterate that this is a giant rag doll, Like, this is not one of those sex dolls that looks like a real person. So he like is life size, but he is not life like at all. Like he is got yarn hair exactly. It's it's very very much a doll. Like it's very clear face only a mother could love so she fell in love with this rag doll, and they even had

a child together. She says she got pregnant, She even got a positive pregnancy test, and then she gave birth within thirty five minutes, live streaming to the internet. UM, and had little Marcellino, who was a smaller rag doll. He looks exactly like his father, except he doesn't have a yarn mustache. And her only doubts about their relationship at that time was the fact that she was the

only breadwinner. She called Marcello lazy, but she said that she was a warrior and she kept the family together. And her family does include to human children that Miravone had from an earlier relationship, as well as the rag doll Marcellino. How do you tell which one's that one? I'm not sure. I love that he takes after his spot like he's got his father's twill, you know, and fashion son. But in November of this year, Miravona announced

that Marcello had cheated on her. How sick you? She said their relationship was quote hanging on by a thread. Not sure if the pun is contended or not, but I hope it is. Um. She discovered that he had gone to a motel with another woman and even found

texts on his phone. Unbelievable, Marcello, how dare you? In a TikTok video, Maravona explained, quote, I found out through a friend who told me that she saw Marcello entering a motel with another woman while I was hospitalized for three nights and three days with Marcelino our son who had a virus. At first, I thought she was lying, but then I started looking through his phone and I saw the conversations, which made me sure he was cheating.

So she confronted him about it. She said, quote, he kept denying everything, and he said that he loves me very much, as well as asking for forgiveness and crying a lot. The argument was ugly and it scared our son, who was crying, so I shouted to him, do you see what you've done? I asked him who the woman was, and he didn't respond. Now, Marcello appropriately is sleeping in the living room. He's in the doghouse, the dollhouse, the dollhouse, but she decided not to kick him out of the

house for the sake of their children. She went on to say, quote, Also, the love I feel for him made me forgive, not completely, but I don't think I could live without my husband. I have so many questions about this. I have a lot of questions, but I also, I mean, I have my own answers. Okay, fair enough, go ahead. My first question is how does a rag doll baby get a virus enough that she needed to be hospitalized for three days and three nights. That is

confusing to me. She also have a virus that like the hospital was like, Okay, I guess you can take up a bed right now. I just I want to I need to understand what is happening. I also want to know what woman has taking this rag doll to a motel? How does he have a cell phone that he's texting people back with. I have so many questions about this. Now. Their first anniversary was December eighteenth of this year, so this was in their first year of marriage.

This is newly what bliss time. And he's off on a in a motel with some other some other bitch, so Marcella will have to be on his bus behavior to get off the couch. Miravone continued quote. I always remember that he promised me allegiance at the altar and I can't believe he's done this to me. I told him those who love do not betray, and we have sworn to eternal love. We cannot be three. It's only

the two of us for now. Our happy little boy is very well taken care of, and I will baptize him soon because of this, and our son will continue living together. And she concluded with quote, but my biggest dream is owning a home one day for us all. Now, you did listen to our Gals and Dolls episode, we did mention that. She says herself that she hopes her story catches enough attention that she'll be able to get money somehow and buy a house, Like that's her biggest dream.

So I yeah, I'm like, is this just another way to like keep you on the headlines. Is he going to cheat periodically so that we have a reason to talk about you again? Or I have nothing but respect for Maravone and Marcello. I wish nothing but happiness for the both of them. And also part of me is never not going to believe that this is a story, right like this is this is almost a art piece that she's created this relationship, and I respect her commitment

to it. And I think she's crushing it. And if it gets her a house, great, I say she deserves it. She's a creator story, she's that. Yeah exactly. Um, I kind hoped that for her. And also I'm like, you know, obviously I do not not a not a fraction to me believes that she spent three days in a hospital with a sick doll. You know, I don't think that

another woman carried this doll into a hotel room. But I think it's a great story, or that he somehow had a conversation with her, but someone was not typing. He's a doll. He didn't even have fingers, you know, we're talking about a rag dollar. He's straight up has like actually, well he might have fingers, but they look

like mitten's all right, No they're not. I mean, I guess to me, this is like I could sit here all day and say this is insane, this is stupid, this isn't real, And that's like, to me, that's like doing the same thing about professional wrestling, like, yeah, shut up, I'm here to enjoy it. Yeah, I'm watching this that shit craziness act out and sure, yeah, okay, if we stop and do a little aside. No, I know it's fake and I don't believe it, but why are you

doing that? Why are you ruining the fun here? Yeah? Let it be. I mean, yeah, it's another thing where I was like, I don't really care, it doesn't have effect on my life. Um, part of me is like almost. I guess it's that thing where you're like, you want you think people need what you need. So I'm like, I wish that you could stop thinking about a rag dolls so you could find a you know, human flesh and blood person to spend your time with, because I

feel like that would be more fulfilling. But I don't know about the men she's sucking met, so maybe this guy really is the best of the lot. It's not up to me, So I'm gonna say I hope that y'all work it out and managed to have a nice, happy life after this, and Marcello, keep your doll dick to yourself. Keep it yourself, buddy. But everybody deserves a second chance, well not everybody, but something some people to

deserve a second chance. Okay, Next up, we're gonna go way back in time again and talk about a meno tep and t a if you remember them. In our episode from July, we talked about a Menap, the third ancient Egyptian pharaoh, who led over an incredible golden age in Egypt, and he was unusually devoted to his wife, Queen Tia, because while he, like all pharaoh's, had a harem and several wives, including his own daughters, which I don't know, and we talked about it. It makes a

little more sense when you hear it, but it's still weird. Um. His favorite wife was Tia, and he left plenty of evidence behind of that, and again not common for Egyptian pharaohs to be so devoted to one particular woman. This is the guy who gave us some of the most well known monuments in Egypt, like the Luxur and the Colossus of Memnon. He also erected statues of Tia that were built to the same scale as statues of himself,

very unusual. This showed how important she was. She is even depicted as a sphinx trampling enemies, which is a scene that's usually reserved for men, and this points out how important she was politically. This wasn't just the besotted husband. Tia was also an incredibly important political player, and after a minute to she advised her son acat In for many years as well. So it seems weird to have an update on this story. It would be surprised to

find out that they had done anything new. They didn't start a TikTok together. They're not doing a new banking show. I don't think a Meno Tep is on Dancing with the Stars this year. Maybe act and will be a masked singer. But there is an update to this because archaeologists have recently uncovered more of a minute Tep, the

third and Queen TIA's mortuary. This was already considered the largest ancient mortuary, and now they think it's even bigger than they originally supposed because all the new parts of it they've managed to unearth and just showing this thing is ethnically massive. They found two new colossi of Amenotep

in the shape of sphinxes. But of course the best thing about unearthing new ancient Egyptian stuff is looking at the pictures, right, and they found some brand new ceremonial and ritual scenes, including some of the Hebb Said festival, which we talked about in our episode. That's a festival that happened on the thirtieth year of the pharaoh's reign and then every three years after that, and the Mentep really threw himself into the heap, said festival. Here's a

real athletic guy. He liked the party, so he's like, let's do this. And this festival was supposed to kind of create like a renewed vigor for the pharaoh and his people, his whole empire. Isn't this exactly what the Queen of England does jubilee. Maybe maybe she didn't do all the things that he had to do. Because Abdel Rahim Rahan, who's the Director General of Research at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in South Sinai, explains the festival.

He says, the pharaoh we give speeches promising of course more prosperity and everything for his subjects, and then he would be crowned quote first with the white crown of Upper Egypt and then the red crown of Lower Egypt, and then a papyrus and a lotus would be wrapped around a stake representing the unification of the two lands. The festival a culminate in the pharaoh running around a race track in the courtyard of his palace to exhibit

his physical prowess, which will be hilarious. Statically, rim Elizabeth had done that, or King Charles of y'all run around a track. I'm impressed. If King Charles makes it the thirty years of ruling, then I expect to see him running around a track, because he's obviously found he is an immortal vampire. At this project to completely unearthed and restore a Minute Tip and Tis Mortuary Temple was launching,

and it is ongoing. Given it's just immense size and also the fact that it was built a little too close to the Nile River, so water has damaged a lot of the architecture and the statues over the centuries. But they do hope one day that they'll be able to display all of the wonders and the monuments right exactly where they were supposed to be. So not the Museum of England, uh, but right here, the right in Egypt where it's meant to be, where it was built. Right.

So we might get more updates as they continue to work on this, we might see more. Let's see a minute Tep and t a trending once again, how great would that be? Yeah, Marcello, see what happens when you're really devoted? She could put into infamy. Maybe Marcello should get a replica. Maybe Marcello should get a replica. Then Miravone can rest easy picturing the poor ai chat pot that has to keep up a conversation with this rag doll.

She won't learn much alright. And last, but not least at all, we told y'all on January seven two, all about Oscar Wilde, the play Right and his love for Lord Alfred Douglas. That was almost a year ago. I know, isn't that weird? I definitely. I looked at the date and I was like, oh, it feels like just yesterday. Um. Of course, Alfred's father freaked out about it. He got

real upset, had a gay panic about it. He forced a trial on Oscar Wilde for gross indecency, and that ended up with Oscar jailed for two years, which he immortalized in his poem The Ballad of Reading Jail. And then we immortalized ourselves in corrections corner because I pronounced it reading instead of reading. Sorry, y'all, Well, the reading jail has apparently been empty and rather derelict for many years. The government has been trying to sell the property to

a developer since with no success. So just a month ago, a labor MP named Matt Rata renewed his call to turn the jail into a theater slash arts home. Oh my god, finally putting artists back where they belong in jail. Well, since Oscar Wilde stayed there and it's no longer an active jail, Reading became a very popular destination for LGBT tourism. Karen Rowland, who sits on the Reading Borough Council, told the BBC that it was quote an LGBT heritage site.

It is a mecca. We had people coming from Japan and all over the world to see Oscar Wilds in sight. But it costs about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds per year to maintain calculating which is roughly three hundred thousand U S. Dollars if you would like that conversion, and the Ministry of Justice claims that it wants to

get the best value at the property for taxpayers. Obviously, so the Oscar Wilde Society has asked that the prison be preserved in order to honor his imprisonment, and Matt Rodda isn't the only one who wants to turn it into an arts hub. He points out that they've had no success in selling it. They've had quite a lot of celebrity endorsements, including Banksie Sir Kenneth Bradaw and Kate Winslet, and they have all called for it to be transformed into an arts hub. Listen, if Kate says it's delay,

do you do what she said? Matt Rodda told BBC quote, the Ministry of Justice has been trying to sell the jail to a developer for nearly nine years, and this approach clearly hasn't worked. I hope that the Ministry can now see this and that it will end its plan to turn the historic building into luxury flats and that it will put the interests of the community first instead. Thank you. Like luxury flats housing is very important, but

luxury housing not so much. And I mean, they make a good point that if it's a place where people are going to sort of feel connected to their history and their heritage and like important figures, you know, in their lives, why not preserve it as sort of a historic destination. So I would say good luck to reading. I really hope that that works and that reading jail does get turned into an art stub slash theater. I would love to go visit it and see a play there.

And like, also, who wants to live in a luxury flat that used to be a jail cell? Anyway? I mean the energy alone, they stage alone, that you had to burn to get the vibes out. It feels like a bad investment, how frustrating. And I hope works better over there than it does here because we have right here in Atlanta have so many buildings that have been sitting there empty for fifteen years. One of them that I know, one of them off the top of my head,

is literally a theater. Yeah, and it has just been empty. And no matter who comes in and says, well, we could turn it into a functioning theater, They're like, nah, we'd rather just sit there and rot, right. Or they asked for likelous That's what I'm saying. They asked a ridiculous amount of money, and I'm like, well, why don't you lower that amount of money so that it is something instead of nothing? Right? But instead that theater has a tree growing through it because there's literally been no

one in there for many, many, like at least two decades. Yeah, I think I think it was last a porn theater in the eighties. See now that's at our tub put me a theater in the old porn theater immediately. Well, amazing. I love these updates. It's really nice to go back through some of our stories and find out that they haven't stopped stories never, and then, like you said, just kind of revisit these cool stories and all these people we got to learn about in the last couple of years.

That's such a privile it and we really enjoy this job, so it's nice to reflect on that. It really is amazing that we get to just like learn new stuff and then talk about it. It's it's really I mean, that's one of my favorite things to do obviously. Um, and I've just I'm so excited that you all are here and you like listening to it. That's unbelievable. Never felt like people liked listening to me yammer on about

history before, and now I do know. I feel like there are many of you, but which is the best feeling. I feel even better at the end of this year than I did at the beginning of it. Um, and I hope that we are able to continue bringing this show for many years to come. Yeah. Then thank you for all you've done to help keep us motivated, because it's your messages and your comments and your downloads that keep us going. So a lot of love and appreciation to all of you out there at the end of

this year. Yeah, yeah, and I hope you have an amazing year going forward. You find all your own ridiculous romances or keep up with the one you currently got going on exactly um and uh, or find happiness without romance because for some people that's you know, that's right, a big waste of time, very true. Um, But please just shoot us a message and let us know how your year was. The thing you're looking forward to next year. We'd love to hear about your favorite episodes next year.

If you have a top one that you know you could listen to you more than once, we would love to hear about it. Oh yeah, definitely, and drop us a review on Apple Podcasts. I thought it's good. If you've got stuff you love to say about us, uh, then we'd love to hear it there too, and sell what everyone else. Yeah, So You can reach us through email It's ridic Romance at gmail dot com. That's right, or you can find us online through Twitter and Instagram.

I'm at Oh Great, it's Eli and I'm Dianamite Boom and the show is at ridic Romance and you are awesome. Thank you so much for being here and we'll see you next year. I love you. By friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening to oh Show, Tell your friends neighbor's uncle's in dance. To listen to a show Ridiculous roll Dance m hm