How Grief Works

Because of from one of those things, And it's just apparently they think it's just what's called the minst oath, like when you substitute God for good gravy or good googly easier, I got you googly movie googly movily. But then I thought grief was weird because that's such a specific thing. But then good gracious gracious is very specific too, and like ill fitting. So I guess it's just a

minstath good grief. Well, maybe good gracious came from good grace and somebody's like just feeling a little buzzed on knops and they added gracious instead. Maybe so minced toad's good gravy. That's good. It's probably the funniest thing will happen in this show. Hopefully that wasn't even that funny. Yeah, but this one's not supposed to be funny. It's about grief, you know. Yeah, And um, I think we should point out from the get go that this is about grief,

human grief, Western human grief. Yeah, but that's not to say that there aren't different types of grief and that humans are the only ones who do grieve. In fact, I have a story for you antal Action too, So what you do? That was the funniest thing in this episode. Uh. This story took place back in the spring of in um Uttar Pradesh State, India, specifically in the town of luck Now and even more specifically at the Prince of

wales Zoo. There was a seventy two year old elephant email elephant named Dominie, and Dominie was hanging out in her little house at the Prince of wale Zoo when all of a sudden she got a younger pregnant friend delivered to her um named chump Paccali. And Chumpaccali was, as I said, pregnant. She was actually on maternity leave from her regular gig where she would just let tourists ride on her back. Okay, right, um, and so she was.

She was taking the Prince of Wales zoo to to basically just have a nice, comfortable term and then give birth. And Domini just fell in love with chompa collie. This is so sad, so um. She basically became a maternal figure chump Ofcali. They were best friends. Um. Chumpacali would lay around and um Domini would stroke her pregnant belly with her trunk. They just got really really tight, which

is very normal in in um the elephant world. Um. So you can almost imagine that Domini was growing excited as Champacali got closer and closer to her due date and when finally she did um go into labor. Champacali died during childbirth and gave birth to a stillborn calf, and Dominie, I guess they let her come in and like, you know, hang around the body because elephants are known to grieve well, even as far as elephants go, Domini's

stories a little. That's pretty bad. She um. She cried over the body for a while and then went over to her enclosure and just stood still for a week. Right after the week um. She during this week, she she stopped eating um. She got to the point where her legs swelled from basically starvation and dehydration until she

fell over. And then she just laid there for what turned out to be the rest of her life, where she wept and refused to eat and refused to drink and grieved over the death of her friend, and finally died herself a few days later. Uh and the vets tried to keep her alive. They um, they did what they could, but they said in the end um, in the face of Domini's intense grief, all our treatment failed. No, they're buried next to one another. I had a dog

situation like that similar when I was a kid. One of my dogs died and they were best buds, and the other one just like it was never the same and died about three months later and seemed healthy at the time. And I went out and laid down the doghouse and cried when I was like seven, devastating. That's a wonderful thing to do. That's working out your grief,

you know. Yeah, But as far as the animals go, it really is pretty evenly divided among scientists who say, yes, they show all the signs of grieving and that's what they're doing. And then others that say, no, they are not grieving. We're putting that on them as humans. Yeah, that's I totally disagree with that. Yeah, it's just you know,

it's really too camps um. So we've talked about this before. Yeah, we've run up against this before, and I don't think either one of us have changed our positions at all.

I think they grieve. But then you hear like this one great ape you know, was famous recently for carrying her little dead uh baby around for like three days, and other scientists came out and said, like, you know, this is a long gestation period they have Singleton's having a kid is a big deal, and so she's carrying this baby around and hopes that it will come back to life and it's like in a comatose state, and you know, it's a practical, adaptive, evolutionary thing that's happening.

It's not grief. And then I think you're heartless, Right, Yeah, they're grieving because they they took the baby chimp and made a purse out of it. After that, Well, but then for animals, I don't want to get two sidetrack. But you have to think, like when some clearly showed signs of what looks like grief and some don't at all, Like the chimpanzee and the same you know arena like

they eat other chimpanzees while they're still alive and screaming. Well, those are the ones that back talk, or they go off to die by themselves and there's no grieving, or they will make like if one of them is dying, that will like kill them. Right, But imagine, imagine you're an outside observer of the human species. We we lose chemical weapons on one another, and yet we still have

funeral practices. I mean, it's it's interesting. I wonder why certain animals do and certain don't, though you know, it's very interesting. Well, getting back to um humans the human realm of grief, there was a man who recently um was married to his wife for sixty two years and she died and on the way to her funeral, he died in the back of the limousine and um, yeah, which I thought was incredibly sweet. And then his his daughters they died at the funeral. Then know they they

put a sign up. They decided to just have a double funeral, and they put a sign up at the wake that said surprised it's a double header and then buried him next to her like that that day. Well, I guess the fai. But the point is is, yeah, that is that that's a that's they used a sense of humor to grief, or else they weren't going through grief.

And the point of that whole thing is is that there's no set way that grief works, which is great because we can say just about anything here and still being the right because psychology is still grappling to define the process of grief, and some very recent studies that you found show that grief is not present and everyone, and that everyone deals with it very differently, and there's

not really any specific way to handle it. There's just some great general guidelines and that we should say grief is a very personal thing. Yeah, and I might self have experienced the spectrum of grief in my life, like including you know, like family members passing away. Not to be too cold, but some are you know, you super grief for and some it's like, well, you know, they were very old and they had a great life and we saw this coming. And that's one of the things

that you know. It's one of the types of grief. Anticipatory grief, they say, is probably easier because you're working that stuff out over time and it's nothing like an accident or a child dying. Unanticipated grief well, completely different. Yeah,

it is. So you say you mentioned anticipatory grief. That's like if somebody's got a prolonged illness or something like that, you have the chance to say goodbye ahead of time, maybe deal with these emotions exactly, and then once death actually comes, you've been prepared for this for days, weeks, months, right, Yeah, and a lot of times something maybe there isn't any quote unquote traditional grief going on at all because you're just so prepared and it's just a matter of executing

all the things that you need to do. If you're the person that's in charge of that kind of like you're so prepared you blow off the funeral to go

the grocery store. Um. It's like a serial. Psychologists call that kind of grief anticipatory grief basically the money grief, because it's it's about is um as light as you can get post grief post death, I should say, right, yes, um, And then Again, I want to say, like there's there's probably a listener out there who like helped their their husband or their mother through a long bout of cancer that the person finally succumbed to. That's like, that's absolutely untrue.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. Like there again, there's no specific um, Like, no one could tell you what your grief was. Again, it's personal. This is just these are very broad strokes. So okay, then, like you mentioned unanticipated grief, right, yeah, I meant that's from my experien arian's I had a friend that fell off a building and died. That's like definitely the hardest someone young an accident and uh but still, if you want to talk about five stages, I don't.

I'm not a big believer that that's the case because I didn't experience all the stages at all. Um. But again it varies. Someone might experience tense stages. It does. But but the point is with unanticipated grief, like you couldn't have you or your friend didn't wake up that morning like he was gonna die, you know, but he still died and you have to deal with it all of a sudden um. And then there's ambiguous grief, which for my money, is probably the worst kind of grief.

This is the kind of grief that comes where, say, if you have a loved one who is kidnapped and you never hear from them again, or ever felt that one your parents abandoned you as a child, um, or just something happens is somebody and there's no real resolution or closure or you know, it doesn't have to be even death. It can be like your girlfriend you come home to a note on your bed, you never hear

from her again, or a wife. I guess, yeah, because I guess we should also say, like, grief doesn't just have to come from death. Grief is basically the deep and poignant distress caused by bereavement, and bereavement is the state of being deprived of something or someone, so that could be through death whatever. Yeah exactly. Um, but yeah, so those are the three types of normal grief just off the top of our heads. We made those up right, um.

And you mentioned the different kinds of um they're the different stages of grief and you, I mean, that's just such like a pop trope these days, but it was actually new just as recently as the nineteen sixty nine when Dr Elizabeth Coogler Ross came up with the five stages of grief that you always hear about today, that any ten year old could probably recite to you. But I have since been kind of deconstructed and change in

question and challenge. But these are the kind of the road map to go through grief, right, Um, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and denial is just basically saying this is you're you're not true that there's still alive. Like what you say is a lie and I don't want to be anywhere near you because you're lying to me right now about something very horrible. Yeah, I've never experienced that,

even with my friend who fell off a building. Like that's as sudden a news as you can get over the phone. And I'm just not the kind of person who's like, no, that didn't happen. I was like, man, it immediately hit me that that had happened, you know, And I started from there, I guess. But I didn't experience anger either. But you know, if it might have been my brother, I might have experienced anger. And you you raise a very good point. There's different, there's different, Um,

I guess risk factors. There's different elements to grief, and some of it is personal. Some of it has to do with how close you are to the person, sure, Um, some of it has to do the type of person you are. You're a pretty resilient person. If you were a very sensitive, bookish type, you might have taken it a little harder, you know what I mean. Um, you have a very very very strong, tight support group, you do, so, Um, I would say that that that probably helped quite a bit.

I'm sure you had a group of friends that like helped you through that, that were probably friends with the kid too, so you went through it as a group. Yeah, going through something alone is always hard. Even if you think you're a loner and don't want to be around anyone, you're probably not doing yourself any favor, right. Uh. And

then lastly, you had prior experience with grief. You're throwing yourself down in the doghouse when you were seven, so you had that experience to draw upon and to know you can make it through it. It does get better, it does go away. So you're gonna have the hardest normal kind of grief if you are, like you said,

a loner with no support group. If this is the first time you've ever experienced grief, if you're the sensitive, bookish type, and um, if you were extraordinarily close to somebody, right, Yeah, totally. In fact, I used to do acting exercises in college. What it took, this acting class, and believe it or not, I took one acting class and I was not very good at it, and that he used to tell us to try and do like crying exercises and stuff. So

what do you think of my brother? Was always to go to like imagine my brother had gotten killed or something. I would just like boom, yeah cry if I thought of your brother dying. I know, I'm just kidding about the other family members. Alright, So anger that's the second one. Yes, it is pretty self explainatory. Um. Bargaining. It fascinates me, like the idea that that you I feel like you're suddenly in a position to make a deal with God to reverse the circumstances or bring the person back or

take away the pain. Yeah, it's just so crazy, and it's it's you know, like you think of somebody bargaining with God or some higher power and they're like looking up talking to the ceiling or the sky and that that is one of the normal stages of grief. That's I just find that fast. I did that when I was young with girls. Oh yeah, well I was heavy into church, very emotional kid, and girls like you know.

That was one of those deals, like God, just please, if you would just come back to me a promise, I'll like do this and I'll do that, but I'll clean behind my ears. I grew out of that pretty quick because I realized different that girls either coming back or she was hitting the road exactly, and God probably had little if anything to do with that. That's right, he was dealing with bigger problems. Um. After that's depression.

And this one is kind of tricky. Um, if you if you go through the stage of depression, if you do, it's not necessarily requisite. Um, they're starting to wonder if possibly you're already depressed, and uh, if you were already depressed, that probably means you're going to maybe get stuck in the stage for a while, or you might go through

a depressed stage and then come out of it. It's not necessarily But the problem with the stage is that depression is a recognized mental disorder and grief is not considered a mental disorder, and yet in one of these five widely accepted stages, you go through a period where you're you're you have a mental disorder, but it's part

of a normal process. And you know, that's basically like taking psychologists and throwing them into the thunder dome, you know, greasing them up with chicken fat and handing them battle axes and saying, like, explain that. You know, that's the funniest thing said. Uh. The last one is acceptance, of course, um, when you are finally able to move on and UM. I found that one fairly interesting article where they they charted this and they said it would look like a W.

Is that right, like the high points and the low points. Yeah, which I guess um denials the high point, and then it goes down to um anger. Yeah, up to bargaining. I guess if you feel like that's getting you somewhere, maybe it's an up. Maybe maybe UM, at the very least it's manic. I would think, back down to depression, and then finishing the W with a nice bit of acceptance. Yeah.

And they've as you said that, we've sort of been studying this for like thirty or forty years, and there was always that five stages thing, but recently they're looking more into it, and they've done some studies with widowers and widows, and they found that they really oscillate wildly from day to day and it's not necessarily going to be a w it's I felt great today and really my spirits were up and I was even laughing. Then

the next day they were really sad. And it just really is all over the map, right, But I think overall, what they're finding is that on a long enough arc, people emerge from it, and it seems to be somewhere in the order of six months to three years seems to be, and I think that's the outliers are maybe six months to three years. That's such a ridiculous time frame,

but the bolt. But I mean, like if you study enough people, you can probably create like like three months to five years, right, you know, no totally and then say anyone else as an outlier. Right, But that's the thing, like you can't. That's why everybody is very wisely, um they avoid saying things like that, like this is this is like it's almost respect for the process, Like no one wants to come out and say no, this is how it is. Yeah, because you can't, and that's a

mean thing to do. And actually there's there's um the grief is is in danger of being medicalized in the DSM five one of the proposals, there's a there's always been an exemption to bereavement with depression like a depression um diagnosis if the person has recently gone through the press of grief or is in the pressive degree. Um, you can't diagnose them with depression. You can, but you're

not gonna get reimbursed for any meds you prescribed them. Well, under the d s M five they're taking away this bereavement exclusion so that doctors can get reimbursed. Yeah, but it medicalizes grief, it says, no, now it's a mental disorder, well when it's not supposed to be, and it's a slip slope. Yeah, you know, a temporary disorder though you would hope. So all right, very keen insight, nice work,

Thank you psychology today. Is that where you got it? Yeah? Okay, Um, so should we talk a little bit about dealing with it? I guess yes, Um, you know these are it's it's good advice, but it's also any time I read something where they're like, take care of yourself and eat right next or so avoid drugs and alcohol. Yeah, but it

is very much true. You know that it only is going to make things worse if you wallow in this and abuse yourself with drugs and alcohol in don't eat and you don't think there's a there's not a therapy to pouring like half of a forty out on the

curb for someone who's gone and then drinking the other half. Yeah, I mean sure, but don't do that every day for like weeks and weeks starting in nine and you yeah, I mean I think me and my friends got together and got really good and plowed after we got the news about my buddy. But but alcohol, my advice is to avoid it after Yes, but okay, so in addition to avoiding folks and alcohol, eating right and getting regular exercise, just the standard stuff. What was that? Also in jet lag?

Every time it's anything, um the the there are like some really good suggestions to dealing with grief. If you find yourself overwhelmed by a profound sense of sadness, there are things out there that you can do to make yourself feel better. You can um write a letter to the deceased that's said to help. Um, okay, yet why not uh throwing yourself into stay, making a memorial like those roadside memorials, or a video clip show who knows you? Actually?

You know what, when my friend added did a video see because his family put together a website like a memorial website, and on the I had video footage back then of m and I did a little video for the family. But it ended up really being like a great thing for me. It made you feel better, absolutely. Yeah. So basically putting yourself into a project there where you're thinking about this person, I imagine this isn't an article,

this is just me doing some armchurir psychology. But um, I imagine it forces you to remember good things about the person. And so during this time when you're possibly a little more emotionally fragile than usual, you are being

reminded of positive memories, positive things as well. You know, so you're maybe that's why that would help, but it definitely doesn't help, you know for sure, because when you're going through and do in like a scrapbook, it's these great memories in these pictures and it's not you know, you are remembering the good stuff and that like the life, which is I think how everyone wants to be remembered. You know, it's like these great lives we have exactly

you know, you want to be remembered as alive. Yeah, I mean, I'm one of those people that always wants my funeral to be you know, a little bit more of an upbeat affair, as much as it can be. You know, where some people like, no, man, I want people really sad, right, yeah, I want to be mourned for days. It's not me. So you want the upbeat affair? Yeah, okay, I have have a party and you know, make fun of me, but not like G. G Allen's funeral. I have to research that one. I can only imagine what

it was like. Yeah, pretty hardcore pretty much. Okay, yeah. Did they inject his corpse with heroin or he's bury naked though and they it was Yeah, you can do some research if you feel like, Okay, man, he died like in a horrible way. Didn't they find him, like murder in an alley, naked and like never found the murderer. Now I think he killed himself. I thought he was murdered. I thought he was like stabbed a death. I don't think so. He used to use to threaten to kill

himself on stage. That was a big thing, was that he's like, one day it's gonna happen. I thought his big thing was like pooping on stage. He did that a lot too. He kept that promise um Man was going to show up in the grief episode. Another thing you can do to UM, I guess kind of helped through the grief process is to throw yourself into a project that you think the deceased might appreciate. Yeah, or some organization they might have been affiliated with, Right, That's

what I meant. Yeah, Yeah, like if you lose someone to cancer, or maybe get involved with the Common Foundation or one of the other groups or apparently Mad Mothers Against Drunk Driving was founded in memory of a deceased person absolutely killed by a drunk driver. One would imagine, UM, there's just a lot of stuff out there that you can do yourself. A lot of people pretty much immediately go to therapy, at least initially to get a little help,

to get some insights and advice whatever. Um that's not necessarily the case for everybody, and they've definitely found that therapy is not even necessarily helpful for everybody. There's a lot of people out there who probably wonder if they're dead inside because they don't grieve like supposedly everyone else does. But study after study is finding that actually, people who go through significant grief um is a fairly small portion of people who experience a loss. Yeah, didn't we have

a study in here? Yeah? Right here? Um. They what they do generally is they track groups of widows and widowers for a period of time and just have them, you know, remark about how they're feeling on a day to day basis. And uh, this one was for up to five years, I think, and between twenty had no significant symptoms in the initial years after the loss, and only nine to forty one percent did. And there's a big variability there, but they said it's partially from how

the symptoms were measured. And in another study they found that about experience what you could diagnosis depression after the loss, and only about eleven um had trouble with it, like couldn't shake it after six to eight months, I believe, right, And ten percent of people who lost a spouse felt relief. These were people that had reported being unhappy in their marriage, So there's that those are the ones that danced on

their spouses gave. I guess so, And I don't necessarily think it's that cold, but there there could be some mild relief if you weren't genuinely weren't happy in your marriage. And it doesn't mean you're dancing on graves and partying, but it might just be like, all right, well, now I can go move to us like that always wanted to and hang out with Sammy Hagar. Yeah, and now I can do that, right, And my wife also hated Sammy Hagar, but I'm gonna go hang out with him. Yeah.

They also think that men may grieve heavier, even though it's at long believe that women do. Um. But I think a study like that is sort of silly. It's so variable, like from person to person. I don't know, right, But we say all this to point out that if you don't experience what other people would recognize as grief, there's something wrong with you anymore than there is if

you experience grief. Exactly. What psychiatry and psychology have started to pay a little more attention to is what's been termed complicated grief, And then is technically, if you go, say several months to where your life is really really interrupted.

You can't sleep, you can't eat, You're having trouble focusing on anything but the death of this person, the loss of them, that you start to seriously doubt things very important in your life, maybe like religion, even have lost a child, like there can't be a god, that kind of stuff, right, Or conversely, if you can't even mention

the person's name or hear the person's name. Basically, if your life is disrupted for many months, then basically everybody from the Mayo Clinic to the a p A. Says maybe you should go see somebody about this, Yeah, because it can also manifest itself and aggression and um violence, self destructive um physical self destruction. So it can complicated, as is an understatement here for this kind of grief,

I think, right, Um, so there's different kinds. If you go see a counselor with what's considered normal grief, they're probably going to help you let go of the person while still honoring their memory and recognizing them and yeah,

and the impact that they had on your life. But to get out there and live your in life, they're gonna try to reach the same goal if you have complicated grief, but they're going to do it a different way, and they're probably going to encourage you to really form an even greater bond with the person now that they're deceased, that you can nurture and hold onto and carry around

with you. That makes sense to me. Yeah, and this kind in this case, it's not like you can't tell a parent who has lost a child, like and you know you need to work through this and get over it, right. And that's actually one of the risk factors for complicated grief. Grief is the death of a child, the death of somebody that you are possibly co dependent on very very close to, or um the death of a sudden death, usually from trauma, say like a murder or something like that. Um,

those are risk factors for complicated grief. So I would imagine that if you if you had a loved one who is murdered, you probably are already getting some sort of professional attention, and if you're not, maybe you should. Well. Yeah, And that's what we're basically talking about, was the difference between grief and trauma, and when you've experienced it to that degree, trauma is a whole different deal. They'd say, it feels unreal and it's can be terrifying. The terror

is the most common emotion. Um. It's common if you have dreams about a deceased loved one, But if you're having traumatizing dreams about yourself being endangered, then you've you've crossed the line from grief into trauma and complicated grief heavy stuff. It is very heavy. Losing a pet is for some people a very very very big deal um, and other people, well, people that aren't into pets at

all don't get it. And then some people that do have pets are just more equipped to deal with the loss of a pet and not like it's the loss of a human. But for people like me and Jerry over there, I know that losing a pet, you know, is like equivalent to losing, you know, a family member, and the grieving process is about the same. I would

imagine if it's you know, that impactful. And my advice is you should talk to other people who have similar feelings, because one of the things that can be toughest about losing a bet is when you talk to people who don't have pets. And I don't think it's that big of a deal to lose a bet, and that that can make things a lot worse. Well, they say that if you, um, if you do experience the loss of a pet and you find that you're grieving over it,

you should go ahead with the grief. Don't feel embarrassed or dumb for that. Go light down to the doghouse and cry like a six year old. Uh, you got anything else? I ran across one thing. Um. There's a guy in three named Paul Rosenblatt who UM carried out a study of I think like fifty six Victorian diaries of people who would experienced loss. Interesting and UM, so grief is definitely cultural and also historically bound to like

UM they found. He found that the goal for these diarists was to keep the person alive around them, like all the time, like they would try to sense the person around them, or like maybe sitting their favorite chair because they could tell that they were still there in somewhere or whatever. And that under those circumstances, he found that grief never really seemed to ever go away, that it was something that they carried around for the rest

of their lives. And in fact, UM one of the things that the victorians did was they would wear black for a year, I believe, and then dark colors after that, especially if you were a widow and on the anniversary you wear black too, right, I think so. And you were expected to carry around this grief for the rest of your life. UM. And one of the things they also did that actually still around today was bereavement photography, which is post mortem photography. We've done the thing on that,

have we, UM, and it's we did, didn't we? And we got an email just as recently is today from a woman who lost a child UM and had a cast made of the baby's hands and feet, and she said that it was something that UM has very much helped her through. Yeah. She said it was a gift from the hospital UM to help them through their grief.

And the hospital said, you know, you might not want it now, but we really encourage you to have this one and we'll pay for it, UM, because you know, years from now you may really be happy that you have. And she said, they're absolutely right. Wow, that's really great. What was that email in reference to death as Okay, yeah, but it just happened to come in to day when we were researching grief. That's about it. I guess, huh, that's it. That's a to Z grief. We touched on

every single thing possible. Yeah, I guess. If you want to learn more about grief, you can type that word into the search bar how stuff works dot com. Remember I before E except after c um, Chuck. Hold on, let's let's take a message break. Huh. It is time for a listener man. So Josh, you can, by the way, to jump back look into more grief on our website, or you could go to Google and look at Pigmy coats the helps too. That's what I would say, all right,

So now not listener mail, Josh. Today we have nice Chuck, well done. All right, So we're gonna this is gonna be an ongoing thing because as usual, they stack up. Well man, we have very busy work schedule, and we like to say thanks to as many people as possible. For those of you who don't know. Administrative details is a segment that replaces listener mail, in which we read out thank you to fans who have sent us stuff, tokens, yeah, anything,

yep um. For example, postcard of Rapa Nui from Ryan Confort, thank you for that. Nice. That's that's Eastern Island. Okay. Um, Jake Aboard sentence Yellowstone Park shirts, postcards, info cards, hats. Oh yeah, because he works there. Yeah, that was a free sweet kif and he gets a discount. Hepsy hope he is. Um. Thanks to Shanty Diva for the postcard of the monkey k nots. Casey Herring sent us cookies and they were delicious. Which cookies the delicious one? Okay,

not this crappy ones. Um, we got a wedding invitation from Rachel and John Reid. Congratulations, surprising one's astus to officiate. I do that? Oh man, you just opened the um hitch safe. Inventor Tim Freeman sent it's a hitch safe and that is a little thing that you stick in your trailer hitch if you have a truck pickup truck and it's got a little key in this hollowed out and you can like put your wallet and stuff in there if you go kayaking and lock it up. I

didn't see this well because you're wanted the pickup. Okay, did you get a trailer hitch, buddy, you can will split the hitch happier. Um, let's see, we got a Christmas cards and postcards plural from Becca Evans at uc s C. Alright, justin Norman, um citisen ergo desk and iPad holder and I'm actually using the one for the laptop on my desk. It's quite lovely and it's handmade wood and you can find that debt wood bold dot com. Yeah, that's really a sight to behold. It's amazing. It looks

like plastic, right, but it's would Yeah. Yeah. Um we got a Christmas postcard from Davini d who for some reason was dressed as Wilfred from the TV show Wilfred. So thank you Davini. Uh. Lorian Leonard sent us some Yemmy chocolates from Thickets in Marshfield, Wisconsin. Yeah, it was lovely. Um. We got a copy of the book Brushing the Teeth of Elvis's Monkey and a nice letter from Nurse Beeth, So thank you for that. Uh you know what, I'm

gonna go ahead and bust into my books here. Um. We got how Colin Why How We Do Anything Means Everything? By darv Siedman. We got Swing Colin That Searched My father Louis Prima by Alan Gerstelluh Science Nearly Explained by Dick Maxwell and that is on Amazon. And kindle the Vampire Combat Manual from our buddy roger Ma who sent us the Zombie Combat Manual. And I imagine pretty soon we're gonna have a Wearwolf Combat Manual, I would hope. So it's Rogers Getting Lazy and Trunkless, which is a

children's book from Sean Antoniac and Matthew Antoniac. That was sweet. It was like a graphic novel. Yeah, and they sent us some cool stickers from uh eight one one graphics dot com. So those are my books. Um, let's see what else. We got another postcard from Rapa Nui from Emily B that rhymes yeah. We got trifold wallets from Trifold try hold from Trifold wallets thanice Man. Yeah, you

should get paid for this. Is a dude named Lars c who kind of went all over the place and he went to Las Cobos Las Cabos of course, Sammy Harry Garth's place, Seattle, Philadelphia, Calgary, Montreal, Nova, Scotia, and he kind of took us with him and sent us postcards along the way. So thanks a lot, large, Aaron Cooper, thank you for your cool phone Corps poster versions of some of your best stuff. You should know photoshop jobs. Yes, you love these. That's not the first time they sent

those either, so thanks a lot erin it's a regular coop. Um, we got a nice postogram from Michael Storer. Caroline Larson in this magnetic skulls. Yeah, those are awesome, like a Day of the Dead skulls of her own art. I believe, I think so. Um. I've got her down too, and I have her website. It is um, I believe Caroline Larson Art dot com. If I come across it, I'll

correct myself if that's wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's right. Okay, I got one more for now, and then you pick one more good one and then we'll pick this up again. Jennifer Dunaway send us admitted tree scarf. And this is just a scarf that you go and you pick a tree and you put a little scarf on it. Okay, and it's pretty darn cute and that makes the city

more beautiful. Nice, So thank you Jennifer Dunaway for that. Um. And then I got a nice handmade birthday card for me, specifically nice from s y s k Army member Courtney Hoover. So thanks a lot for that question. Uh, and that's administrative details for this week part one. Uh, as far as this list goes, we've got this for the next six months. And I am right it is Caroline Larson art c A R O L I N E l A R S E n RT dot com. Yeah, get a tree scarf. Yeah, that's what I say. And a

school magnet. All right. Oh okay, let's see. If you want to uh tweet to us, you can join us on Twitter at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, You can send us an email to off podcast at Discovery dot com, and you can send us a good old fashioned website. Visit to Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com m