The Padded Cell Podcast

EPISODE 133 - 'Can ducks recognise sarcasm?'

The Padded Cell Podcast Season 1 Episode 133

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0:00 | 1:12:47

Vicky is back with Sisi, who is pretty in pink...apart from the pink sparkly Crocs! lol 
We LOVED filming this episode and we know you'll love it too! Vicky brings us explosions at sea, a composers secret, Victorian ailments, sparkly poo and Sisi brings us another bad bitch of history...a witch!   


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Recorded and Produced by Vicky at The Padded Cell Studios

Ep 1 - 120 recorded at: 

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SPEAKER_00

Are you a deviant? You know, like those of us who binge watch serial killer programs, laugh at the stupid stuff people do, and revel in anything adult. Well, you found your people! Join us as we crack open the door to Path of Cell and release the insanely stupid, the weirdly wonderful, and those who choose to live outside societal norms. With elephants the strange, the macabre, the sexy and the outrageous! So, if you're a deviant, then you have your place in the Path of Cell. So what on, what on, what on, what on? Are you on? I'm on! Are you switched on? No. Questionably. Okay, well. Follow me leave. My best. Right, hello! And welcome to episode 133 of the Paza Cell Podcast. And we've got Silly Wendy. I'm back. I'm back and I'm on camera this time. Hi. Look really intensely down that one.

SPEAKER_01

Hello.

SPEAKER_00

Can we just take a moment to just appreciate the beret?

SPEAKER_01

The beret is uh very stunning, very iconic. And it says feral, doesn't it? It's very apt. It's very me. It is. I have described myself as a feral creature for a very long time. Just some weird bog creature is how I would describe it.

SPEAKER_02

A weird bog creature?

SPEAKER_01

Oh mate. It's me. I crawled out of a bog fresh.

SPEAKER_00

And you crocheted your top. I did. To match the beret.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. No one can see the best part of the outfit though, Vic. I don't know you're trying to hide it. I was guessing to it.

unknown

Da da!

SPEAKER_00

Sparkly crocs! Do you know what I just I couldn't even I couldn't even say the word, could I? Could you see my mouth going? Do you know what I was like? Have you seen the film The Witches? The original Witches. Oh yeah. Yeah. And when a child comes in, and they're like, they go, Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That was my face.

SPEAKER_00

My face was developing all over. And you've got things on them. What are we called the witchy thing? Gibbets.

SPEAKER_01

Gibbets. I just calls it a witch's. Witchy gibbets. Oh, the witchy ones are all. Yeah, that's like there's one here that's witch's brew. Then there's a spell book. Black cat. Hat too. Uh you can't see the other ones, but there's a witch's hat and like skeletons and stuff.

unknown

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Witchy pink. And the sparkly pink as well. They are sparkly pink.

SPEAKER_01

And are they a little bit more stacky than normal? Yeah, the platform. Make me more than five foot three. Oh, is that all you are? Yeah. Bless your little cat in the colour.

SPEAKER_00

Thinky. I'm still not forgiving you for wearing crocs, though.

SPEAKER_01

I wore them just for you. Appreciate them. Wear still let over so I'm gonna get taller. Oh yeah, but it's art. It's art. So crocs are great. They're a practical shoe.

SPEAKER_00

Because she's new, I'm not going to abuse her.

SPEAKER_01

It's because I'm really nice. I'm really nice, I promise, and I'm the only other guy on the team to fend me with me crocs. Virk.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so we're gonna move on from the crocs. I'm finding it hard to form words that aren't offensive.

SPEAKER_01

Leave me and my comfort alone.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna have to give you all the uh croc wearing con t-shirts, aren't I? Yeah. I mean you'd have to be careful about where you were the croc wearing cunt. Sorry. But I'll have to give you one of those, aren't I? Because you are a croch wearing cunt.

SPEAKER_02

I truly am. And I'm very proud of that fact. I might be able to do you one in pink as well. It's in blue, but I might be able to do you one in pink. I wear blue. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, well you're mate, I can't get rid of these t-shirts because everybody is like, yeah, croch wearing cunt. So I'm just giving them away now. You know, for the uncool people left in this world, I'll just give you them. For the comfy people in the world. Right then, so welcome once again. Now, in our last episode, I was telling everybody about um our leaving do in work, which obviously you weren't there. But I've got a couple of things I've given as presents. Okay. So I was given two boots and a bottom. Okay. So I was given this first of all. This is 3D printed. And it's a little toilet with a turd. Of course. But it's a clicker. Oh, I love that. Like little fidgety things that just sit there, clicker me turns. Phenomenal. Yeah, so that's that. I'm not going to give it to you now because um you'll be clicking away, but I'll be annoying with it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a fidgeter. Keep that out of the way, because if it's there, you'll pick it up.

SPEAKER_01

I will, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then I got, to say you all know, and you know because you've listened to the episodes, what am I going to do when I leave Townhouse? Apart from podcasting full-time. Do you remember?

SPEAKER_01

No, I have no brain. I did tell you this. No brain.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, we've even had a conversation off earlier. And you sent me some things that other people had found while they were doing this hobby. Metal detecting!

unknown

Fucking hell.

SPEAKER_00

We've spoken about this. Who's the old lady in the room, me and I'm fucking 20 years older than you?

SPEAKER_01

I've got no brains.

SPEAKER_00

Fucking shit for brains.

SPEAKER_01

Quite impressive in it.

SPEAKER_00

Anyway. I got two books. Okay. One of our fans, actually. Oh yeah. And um I love it because it says, I'm not gonna read it out for you.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

unknown

I love that.

SPEAKER_00

It says I'm a swinger on the weekends. Brilliant. But it doesn't mean swinger in the fucky fucky sense. It means swinger in the metal detecting sense. That's incredible. It's got the two little cross metal detectors on the. I'm obsessed. And then inside. I'm so happy. Inside, it's got like a page to fill all your things. That's so cool. And it's got a time, location, all that. Sunny, hot, cloudy rain, other machine use, machine settings, item found, estimated value, notes.

SPEAKER_01

Phenomenal. That is so exciting. Oh my god, you can put the little things in like little baggies and put them in and like take. Oh, what an unbelievable log.

SPEAKER_00

This is a great prezi because not only is it relevant to my newfound hobby, but it's also stationary. Brilliant. Love in a stationary. So, the other thing, it was it was for Jim, but me and Jim are gonna share it. Okay. Because you know about my little garden that I'm gonna be doing. Yeah. I mean, medicinal herb garden with a poison plant in it. Well, uh, this person's also given me a book saying, shit, what did I plant? Oh, phenomenal. Yeah. A garden lovers planet and journal. I love that. Yeah? And then on the ends, it's got a bit of graph paper, first of all, which Jim was delighted with. So he's gonna put a garden plan on there. We've already filled in our first page. Phenomenal. So on it, it's like it's got week one, week two, planting, propagation, pruning, maintenance, pest control, all I can do, how much things have cost you, bit of a journal, you know. So we've planted our strawberry plants, so that's in there as well. Love it. So we are after Zelda. Thank you, Barbara, thank you for Anzigs. Thank you very, very much. But you know, I mean, we've got lovely, lovely gifts from people. I mean, the main I just wanted people to come to the party and have a nice time. Yeah. They didn't need gifts, but some people do bring gifts, and you know, when you're just like somebody's put a lot of thought into that, they know like stationary and they've picked up on the hobbies. Yeah, brilliant. I was well pleased. You know you well. So, yes, I've got five days left, and that'll be me, gone. Blink your egg. Yeah, exciting though. Yes, it is exciting. I've got past the sad stage now. I've got past the hmm, am I doing the right thing? I did that in January.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, but no, I'm on the home straight now. Loads to do, but we're um we're looking forward to it now. And Andy and Sarah are looking forward to it. Amazing. So we're really ready to go.

SPEAKER_01

Single hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely.

SPEAKER_00

Right, so I'm gonna move on to some on this day's.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna whitter a little bit, but I know that you whitter, and I want to give your segment all the whister and space it needs. Yeah. And if it does, if you don't whitter enough, I can always add on these other things later on. So this is directing for you. I'm leaving whitter room for my co-host.

SPEAKER_01

Because it's always necessary because I get really excited and go on tangents.

SPEAKER_00

Emily Bronte went down well, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Exciting. Yeah. Get people reading Mother and Heights.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I've actually had a few people say and I've picked up um Wother and Heights.

SPEAKER_01

Phenomenal. Yeah, yeah. As you should, it's all very good. Very batshit crazy book.

SPEAKER_00

You gave me a copy of Wathering and Heights today, which I will read. Right then. So this is going out on the 7th of May. Okay. Um, and I was gonna do today's date, but there wasn't an awful lot of interest and stuff. So I'm doing it for the day that's going out. Oh 7th of May, so it's a week on Thursday, it's going out. Do you know anything about the ship the Lusitania?

SPEAKER_01

Uh no, very brief little bit, because wasn't it the sister is it the sister ship of the Titanic or was that the Oceana?

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so that is a really, really common answer I'd wrong.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, okay. Yeah, enlighten me.

SPEAKER_00

So I didn't know why people link the two ships.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

If they're not sister ships, because I thought uh Lusitania and the Titanic were sister ships. Carpathia came into my mind as well, and I'm like, what's going on here? So anyway, I looked into it and uh this particular incident happened to happen on the 7th of May. And the reason I looked into it is because I did uh a Titanic segment in my last episode. Um, and it just got me thinking, and somebody asked a question, and I was like, oh Lusitania, and then when I looked at it, I've got to do this segment because it was on the 7th of May. Fascinating. So the Lutitania is not the ship, the sister ship to the Titanic. Okay. The Titanic was a white star line. Yes. The Lutitania was a cunard. Oh. Completely different ship and yards and everything. Yeah. They were sailing around the same time. You share the same ship and lanes. The Titanic uh sank.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so did the Lusitania. Yes. That is probably the only link between the two. Oh, really? Yeah. How bizarre? It was a disaster and a lot of people died. But um, they were both ocean-going vessels. Yeah. They both had passengers on, but that's it. Oh. So I was like, okay, so this went down. How did it go down? I've heard this sort of story before, but I didn't know it was a Lusitania. So on the 7th of May 1950, uh, the Lusitania carrying 2,000 people-ish, including families, children. Yeah, yeah. 128 Americans, which is relevant. Okay. It was hit by a torpedo sent by a German U-boat. Okay. This is a passenger liner, an ocean-going luxury passenger liner. And it was hit by a German U-boat.

SPEAKER_01

So for civilians, then that's war crimes and stuff.

SPEAKER_00

So it was 1915. So um just post-war. Yeah. Just post-war. But there's still a little bit of argy bargy going on, isn't there? Yeah. So why did the German U-boat hit the Lusitania? Can you take any guesses why it would have hit that ship? It wasn't an accident. I'll get that straight for you.

SPEAKER_01

Was it because of the Americans on board?

SPEAKER_00

No.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. I've got no idea.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So I've got that wrong, haven't I? So it was 1914 to 1918 or this is right in the middle of the wall. Asia. SARS folks. Somebody would have picked up on that and gone, hurried someone's already commented on the YouTube video about the stuff that yourself. So why? Stupidly, this boat was packed up full of passengers and all the rest of it, but it was also packed with a hell load of munitions. Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. A lot of munitions. 170 tons worth. Right, that's quite a bit. Rifle ammunition shells. I was being transported to obviously allies. It was war war period. Germans got onto it and thought, excellent target. Ah, okay. Now, when the the ship was hit, it took 18 minutes to go down.

SPEAKER_01

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Very, very quickly. Yeah. Now I think the Titanic took about two and a half, something like that. Took a while to go down. 18 minutes.

SPEAKER_01

That's very quick.

SPEAKER_00

When you think of the size of this ship, if it's got 2,000 people on there and all the musicians musicians, munitions, it's going to be huge.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

To see that go down, that fast is something else in it. It'd be almost like creating like a whirlpool with it going down. 18 minutes. So why did it go down so quick? Was it just a torpedo? Witnesses, because there was some survivors, said they heard a second explosion, and that was multiple witnesses, but they don't know where it came from. Right. They reckon either it was when the munitions went off.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Or the steam systems uh and the structure down the engine room failed and collapsed, causing this big bang explosion. But most people think it's the munitions because for the torpedo to just hit the ship and hit the right spot to get the munitions would have been pretty hard.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Do you reckon it's it's caused obviously a fracture or some kind of um fire? And then that has made the munitions go off. And it was the second explosion which made it just go. It went down like a lead balloon, this thing so quick. And because of that, obviously, you know, the survival rate was really, really low. So the Germans did know what they were doing. Okay. It should have, and it's sort of a bit of an urban myth. It should have triggered the Americans to join the war.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00

And a lot of people say this was the reason why it triggered uh the Americans joining the First World War. But it didn't actually. It took until 1917 and more incidents for it to stack up before they actually got involved. So now obviously the Germans were everybody was like, the rarest thing in the world to do, all your civilians and everything have died. But my argument also is okay, the Americans weren't part of the war. But they sent off this big ship with 2,000 people on it, on a busy ship and lane, loaded with munitions and didn't take any responsibility for that. That's grim. That is very grim. So you blame the Germans or you like, you know, they did press the button, the torpedo hit the ship, but you put a load of fucking 170 tons worth of munitions with civilians on a cruise liner. Yeah. It wasn't even like, you know, an auxiliary ship or an RFA ship or anything like that. This fucking luxury liner. Yeah. And no, they didn't take any responsibility for that.

SPEAKER_01

That is pretty outrageous, that isn't it? That is absolutely grim. They've put a target on them people.

SPEAKER_00

They have, they have totally. So this is just going to be like a very quick segment because it was just off the back of the uh the Titanic one. But it I did not know that. I did not know that this was the incident that obviously some people think because it triggered the first world war, but that the Germans actually made a decision to bomb a passenger liner.

SPEAKER_01

How interesting. Very quick on we're on war. Did you know the first shot in all technicalities of the first and second world war were from Peert Rock?

unknown

Fuck off.

SPEAKER_01

Technically, within like minutes of it being announced, the first shots were made. How and why? Why from the from the first one? I can't remember, but there was like a sailboat, but it had was it a a German flag? It had some kind of flag on it anyway, whichever country it was. And the first shot was made from Pertrock in the first world war. I would argue the first shot of the first world war was Franz Ferdinand. Yes. But hey, there we go. The podcast one day. Exactly. But yeah, technically the first official shot of the war was from there. And then in the second world war, war was declared, and within something like less than 10 minutes, a shot was fired to a German fishing boat in the Mersey from Pert Rock. And that was the first English shot, if you like, towards the Germans. Yeah. Learned that the other day. See, I love coming on with you. You know shit. I do know shit. I know auto shit half the time, but I do know some interesting shit in a bit.

SPEAKER_00

But it's shit that could win me the pub quiz.

SPEAKER_01

It could. It really could.

SPEAKER_00

And if you don't know where Perch Rock is, because we're obviously we're just we're local and friends, we know what we're talking about. New Brighton on the World, where we are now, just down the way, um, there's a place called Perch Rock, and there's a castle or a battleman's castle. Kind of thing. Um, and you can only get well, you could at one time only get to it when the tide was out, yeah. But now there's a walkway to it, you can get to it any time. Yeah. But I remember being a kid and those donkeys and everything on the beach, and I was dying to go to the force, but the tide was in.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So I couldn't get to it. Isn't that funny?

SPEAKER_00

Have you been in?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting, anyway.

SPEAKER_00

You in the bar in there? No.

SPEAKER_01

I've been in the bar. I need to go and explore the bar.

SPEAKER_00

So go to the bar on like uh Saturday or Sunday afternoon. They do nice food, nice beer. Gorgeous. And there's a piano in there. You sometimes have a guy on the piano just like tinkering away. Gorgeous. Unofficially, I think. Sounds fun. Some random guy. Just just a guy. Um, but just really nice atmosphere. It's only small, but nice. And I think they sell ice cream either in there or just around the way as well. Gorgeous. Very, very nice.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, that's the guy.

SPEAKER_00

Anyway, so from blowing up ships. Yeah. Do you know much about Beethoven?

SPEAKER_01

Um, I know he was in Bill's head. Actually, I've been in the room where he played to a very young Marie Antoinette, I think it was, in Vienna. Oh, yeah. In Chambron. So I haven't, yeah, I know a little bit, but not much. Oh, is he the deaf one or is that Mozart? Okay, he's the deaf one. He's the deaf one.

SPEAKER_00

And we're going to talk a little bit about that today. Um, but funny enough, talk about composers. I've literally just, for everybody out there, just released an unhinged about Tchaikovsky. I love Tchaikovsky. So I actually said on The Unhinged, I studied music uh when I was younger, I was in the young fill and everything. And I knew a lot about the big composers, you know, Mozart, Beehoven, all of them, including Tchaikovsky. Did I know he was gay? No, I didn't.

SPEAKER_01

I did a segment on that. So I where I work, there's like an LGBTQ group, and I did a segment on Tchaikovsky because I'm a big fan of I love ballet. I don't look at the fans that loves ballet. Swan Lake is so iconic. But he also did um Sleeping Beauty. He did quite a lot of ballets. Yeah. So I've I've been into Tchaikovsky for quite a while because of that. And when I found out that he was like writing letters to like, yeah, it's his historical bestie. Yeah. It's the whole I'm Bonnie Mary Reed thing. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'm gonna spoil it.

SPEAKER_01

No, but yes, I did know he was gay, long story short.

SPEAKER_00

So if you don't know and you want to know more, go over to Unhinged, Patreon only. It's the latest Unhinged, which is number 34.

SPEAKER_01

Blink it ass.

SPEAKER_00

For 34 Unhinged and 133 main podcasts.

SPEAKER_01

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm running a club, not for much like. Well, anyway, we're gonna move on. 7th of May, 1824. So, quite rightly, um, Beethoven was deaf. Yes, profoundly deaf, it's very, very well known. And he wrote the entire 9th symphony completely deaf. Yeah. So he was just hearing the notes in his head, really, wasn't it? He was putting it all together in his head, which I don't know. What you call her is a genius, but that's it's almost like supernatural powers that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

How do you hear all the instruments and the harmonies and the flow and the ebb and the tide of a symphony and not be able to hear a note? It's incredible, it's nuts, fascinating guy. It's nuts, and actually, when you look at all the composers, they've all got very interesting lives. Yeah. And some of them have got uh quirky little features like Beethoven. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, nine uh 7th of May, there was gonna be one of the most famous performances in music history, and it was the premiere of the Ninth Symphony. Um, he was deaf, but um not everybody knew that he was deaf. He kept it, he kept it a secret. Um, some people did know, some people in his orchestra knew close friends, but most people who would go and see him didn't know. Amazing. So Beethoven's on stage conducting the ninth sympathy. Sympathy, I keep fucking saying this, right? When I was doing Unhinged, I'm gonna do an outique because I try to say symphony about seven times. I'm swearing to myself, and everything I'm getting really frustrated, then I was laughing. So I was like, No, I went, that's gotta be an outti. So of course it I'm gonna do it. Incredible. So I'm still doing it today. Symphony. So he's conducting his symphony, or so he thinks. But actually, the orchestra is following somebody else. So somebody else conducting slightly out of sight. Beethoven's just giving it beans, all that, not really knowing what he's doing. He's he's conducting the orchestra from memory because he's obviously written this piece and he can see what people are doing, but can he really hear the exact beat? No, and apparently looked a little bit frantic. Yeah, but then some conductors do do an all this, yeah, but they can't rely on him. Yeah, but to everybody out there, he's still moving, he's still leading, he's still fully on it, basically. Just can't hear the thing. Anyway, for that moment, he was he thought he was convincing everybody until the music piece was coming to an end, and like that long note and the audience stood up, rounds of applause, everybody's going nuts, and he's still conducting. He didn't have a clue. Brilliant! Until there was somebody you know and went this sort of thing, and then the orchestra stood up.

SPEAKER_01

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_00

And he realised he went, oh, turned round and he was doing all this like. But for that moment, I don't know how long it was, but it was a good few seconds. Fascinating. Which is enough when everybody's clapping and he's still conducting. Uh-huh. Um, just for that moment, it must have been a bit cringe, really.

SPEAKER_01

It must have been a bit like, oh, oh, sorry. It'd be like a dom jolly moment, that wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_00

Imagine. Not realising that if you'd finish and you're carrying on conducting and you're trying to, you know, uh keep up this facade, everyone's cheering, applauding, you're still conducting the whole thing. Absolutely mad. But yeah, it's one of the uh actually, if I remember rightly, everybody stood up all the audience behind him, and one of the performers close to him physically turned him round and he went, Oh. Yeah. So I think at that point the audience realised that you know something wasn't quite right there, really. Uh, and it was a little bit heartbreaking, apparently, um, for the people that were in the orchestra watching, and um, it wasn't just any performance, it was his final major symphony performance. So a really, really big one, a defining moment, and he he couldn't hear any of it.

SPEAKER_01

My god, it's not as that's wild.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, what a guy. I know. Right, my last little bit is something that I know that I think you you know a little bit about, but it's just light up your street because you're a little goth way, you don't.

SPEAKER_01

I am, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, Victorian autopsies. Yes. This isn't really linked to the date, but uh, I was reading around the Beethoven dates and all the rest of it, and around that time this sort of thing was going on.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It's a it's a loose link that I've made up. Because I want to talk about it. Go for it. The loosest segue ever. Okay, so if you go back on Victorian death records, they didn't really know an awful lot about medicine. They were dissecting bodies and they could identify organs, and some of them actually were in coals, what we call them, now some of the smaller secondary organs. So they were guessing, and they were when they were opening people up, they weren't really giving things names, they were using like descriptions more than anything because they didn't actually know what they were looking at. Okay. And this led to some really um unusual, interesting descriptions on death certificates of how people died. Alright. Intrigued. Yes. So don't forget, like, you know, uh, we didn't know about germs or anything and how disease spread and stuff. So it was literally what they saw in front of them.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And they didn't know what they were saying. So just going off vibes, basically. Essentially, yeah. So, dropsy. What is dropsy? So that has come up in medical records and it's come up on death certificates. Okay. Sounds harmless, maybe cute, but it's actually a fluid buildup, what we now call edema or swelling. And um very often you'd find uh dropsy of the heart or dropsy of the kidneys. That is inflammation of the heart, inflammation of the kidneys. So if you have an inflamed heart, obviously you can cause heart to have heart failure. But they called it dropsy.

SPEAKER_01

We just start bringing that back. So they're saying, like, oh yeah, they had an inflamed kidney, oh, dropsy.

SPEAKER_00

But if someone if a doctor said that to me though, if I it was dropsy, I don't want to go oopsy daisy. It's more of them words, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01

You know, yeah, but does nurses watch then? If someone said to me, Oh, you've got like an inflamed heart, I'd be like, Oh, that's terrifying. Yeah. Someone's like, You've got dropsy of the heart, I'd be like, oh, that's alright, what can we do to fix that? Dropsy heart. Dropsy, yeah. Love it. Bring it back. Yeah, bring some whimsy into medicine.

SPEAKER_00

So apoplexy? Apoplex I can't even say that one. Go on. Apoplexy I've I've heard around recently. It's still a word that use now, but not in the same way. So basically, it means sudden collapse, but not a faint. It means like a stroke or a brain hemorrhage. Oh, okay. So it's like just a sudden drop dead.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Apoplexy. What do you think natural decay is?

SPEAKER_01

In my head, this is just someone whose like body is just rotting as they're alive, like leprosy.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I thought it was gonna be something like leprosy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, but it's not they used to put natural decay on death certificates when somebody just died of old age.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god. They died of natural decay. Honestly, let that be on my death certificate. Let it be natural decay. That's phenomenal. Oh my god. I love it. Natural decay. I love it. I was so expecting leprosy.

SPEAKER_00

I'm really shocked. Fingers dropping off and all that kind of thing, you know. Or what we know now as necrotides and fasciitis. Maybe they were seeing decay like the fasciitis, didn't know what to call it. So they called it decay. Well, that's what I was thinking about. But no, it's just getting old.

SPEAKER_01

I quite like that.

SPEAKER_00

Do you not? No, I'd rather just say have old age rather than she was decaying.

SPEAKER_01

Decaying.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it sounds like I was at like the walking dead until that.

SPEAKER_01

That is true. I think it's just the fact that I'm a massive emo, and my chemical romance have a song called Foundations of Decay. I'm like, that's me. Do they? Yeah. He brought out like hoodies when I saw the ones whole last time. The hoodies literally just said decay. So I'm like, yeah, I think that's me actually. I'm gonna go with natural decay. Like urban decay.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe you might change your mind when you get to my age and you're nearing the time of decay.

SPEAKER_01

Are we not always decaying, Vic? We're always born.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. We're dying. We are, but I'm I'm probably closer to it, though.

SPEAKER_02

You never know.

SPEAKER_00

So decay. So back in the day, the the reckoned that children died are from teething. Okay. And so you'd find teething on death certificates very regular, very regular. And it's because they didn't actually know, it was children that were dying around the time they started teething. Right. So it could be infection, fever, malnutrition, it could even be cut death. Interesting. But they didn't know. And because obviously they have the red cheeks always crying and psych on the legs, they look distressed. And often oftentimes they've died in their sleep. Right. So they're like if they just died of agony, teething. So teething was a cause of death. In Victorian times.

SPEAKER_01

Victorians were absolutely wild.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And convulsions. Now, convulsions, we would maybe put down to epilepsy. Yeah, seizures. So back in the day, uh, we did people had seizures, but we didn't know why they were having them. So somebody might have seizures from maybe ingesting something they shouldn't have had. They might have you know an epileptic seizure, they might have a brain injury which is causing seizures. Excuse me, could be all sorts of different reasons. But because they didn't know, they just said convulsions. So anything that made somebody twitch at the moment of death was just a convulsion. Because they didn't have a clue what it was.

SPEAKER_01

That is wild.

SPEAKER_00

Right, this is not your favourite, but you know, it's the one that made me go, well, fuck me, I didn't know that. Okay. Women who died in childbirth. Yeah. Usually from infection, hemorrhage, and other complications. Do you know what the leading cause still is of maternal death now of women in childbirth?

SPEAKER_03

No.

SPEAKER_00

It's still infection. Is it? It's been infection for a couple of hundred years since you've been recorded. Yeah. And um infection is still the leading cause. Yeah. Uh closely followed by uh postpartum hemorrhage. Yeah. Massive obstetric hemorrhage. Yeah, yeah. But infection, sepsis is still the main cause. In this day and age, it's still. Don't get me wrong, not many women die in childbirth in the Western world. In the UK, there's not that many a year.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But when they do, it's often infection.

SPEAKER_01

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00

So, anyway, women who die in childbirth didn't always know why. Might have been a loss of blood, but they don't really know where to come from. Of course. They might have uh had an infection and they've been poorly. Don't know why. I don't even think you can guess the name of what they would put. It was just a broad term for somebody who died in childbirth.

SPEAKER_01

Come on, hit me with it.

SPEAKER_00

If you think of childbirth, somebody normally give birth on a bed, but I don't go along with that. Yeah. They call it a child bed. Oh. Childbirth. That is such a bizarre way of phrasing it. Just a blanket term for anyone who dies in childbirth and they didn't know why. And there's loads of reasons why it could happen.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely, it's changes. One of the most dangerous things a a female body can do. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um this one you'll probably guess, brain fever. So like hysteria kind of. Meningitis. Encaphalitis, that kind of thing. And this one, I have heard before. Quincy.

SPEAKER_01

I've heard of Quincy.

SPEAKER_00

Do you know what it is?

SPEAKER_01

My nan has said the word Quincy, and I still don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so Quincy, and my nan used to say, and I remember being younger in my teenage years, and I had a throat infection.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I mean all my neck was up and I couldn't swallow. And the first thing she said was, I know what you've been doing. And you've got Quincy. And I was like, What's Quincy? Yeah. And uh she said, you know, you got like a throat infection, a strep throat, basically. But they called it Quincy. And uh back in the day, before antibiotics, it could be fatal because it can cause like um um blisters that obviously go ulcerated and they can burst, cause infection that way. But also they used to close the throat over, they were that big, they close the throat over. That's wild. Quincy. I quite like the word Quincy.

SPEAKER_01

Strep throat. Is that like glandular fevery type thing? So interestingly, I had asymptomatic glandular fever last year. Had no idea until I had a blood test back. I didn't know you could have asymptomatic glandular fever. I had no idea. So not this last Medusa, but the one before, I was like getting hot flushes and stuff, and I was putting it down to my birth control. And they also, the doctors also thought they ran blood tests, they did all sorts of tests on me, and they were like, You do know you've had glandular fever. Ooh, not a clue. They were like, You have been completely asymptomatic, you have had glandular fever. Isn't that interesting? I didn't know you could. How many months ago was that? That was October.

SPEAKER_00

October, November, December, January, February, March, April. How long have you been with your fella?

SPEAKER_01

Uh, nine months. I'm like, yeah, I blamed him entirely, but he didn't have any symptoms of anything either.

SPEAKER_00

Steve's fault. It's trendy, he was doing the same thing that you were doing to cause the strep road.

SPEAKER_01

Fouling points.

SPEAKER_00

That's all we're gonna say on that one. I will let you make sense of that yourself.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_00

But when your nan at fucking 14, 15 says, I know what you've been doing, it's a bit like. Oh no. Is she reading my mind? Yes. Please get out of it. You don't want to be in there now. No, no, thank you. Definitely not. Giving you Quincy. So there you go. Um, lots of little uh Victorian names for being sick when they didn't know what was wrong with you.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely fascinating ten of them.

SPEAKER_00

I do know what I've always said I wouldn't want to have been really poorly back then. But I'd argue now, uh, it's not a great time to be ill now either, because you can't get access to anything in our national health service.

SPEAKER_01

It's a buzzy nightmare.

SPEAKER_00

My urgent treatment that I needed fucking weeks ago. I've got an appointment. Not next week, the week after. Finally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Months. Months. I've been waiting months. I've got an appointment on the 18th of May. Ridiculous. That I've been waiting for since November.

SPEAKER_00

It's a joy. It's just completely stupid. It really is. We're not going to go into it. No. I'd love to say that there's bigger fish to fry, and we should be getting upset over, you know, the real big problems in the world. But actually, so your real big problems are not my real big problems. I get it. Personal problems are just as valid. Yeah, yeah. And uh you just feel like you don't you feel bad moaning, don't you? Like, you know, you're just another person. But when you go into the doctor's surgery, you just they don't even look at you.

unknown

I'm like that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I pay your wages through my net insurance.

SPEAKER_01

That's what I pay it for.

SPEAKER_00

Turn round and look me in the eye, you ignorant fuck. Exactly. Sure what my current doctor's lovely, but when one of my last doctors, he couldn't I don't know whether he was a bit on the spectrum.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And he'd his computer was there and he'd be sitting like that, you'd be there. Yeah, yeah. And he'd go, hello, take a seat. Oh. Tell me what's wrong. Oh, right, okay. And even when he wasn't typing, he'd be like that. Just looking at the screen. It's unbelievable. Not saying a word. Unbelievable. Then he'd let you finish and then he'd go. Back to his computer. Right, so I think it's this. I'm gonna give you a prescription. But he wouldn't look at it. Isn't that strange? I mean, I know some of you'll find eye contact difficult, but when you're a doctor and you're supposed to be, you know, providing this bedside manner, part of that is relating to your patients and you know open conversation, which means open arm gestures and you know some eye contact. Some eye contact.

SPEAKER_01

It'd be helpful, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_00

But he couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_01

I had a doctor Google my symptoms in front of me. I was like, thanks. I might as well have just looked on Google myself, which you shouldn't do.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Doctor Google is useless. I think I've told you before, haven't I? When I was a midwife, I had a um a registrar doctor who isn't junior but isn't senior on the post-natal ward, and I called him because somebody had been sent back from delivery suite when they shouldn't have been, with a third degree tour, which should be repaired in theatre. She was in agony, and he came and um he went and had a look, then came out and started Googling a first, second, and third degree tour so we could see the difference. So I just said to him, said, Look, I said, I know you're the doctor, but take it from me, it's a third degree tour. She needs to go to theatre now. Yeah. And he went, Oh, I just need to confirm it myself. And I went, Have you not seen a third degree tur before, mate? Exactly. Master God. How'd you get several seven years in medical training and then he's on his registrar thing and he's not he doesn't know the difference between basically the colour of tissue because that's how you establish it.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Anyway, right, so should we do your segment or should we do a dangly bit? Completely up to you. Because we're dangly bit dead quick. Okay. Dead, dead, dead, dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it. So I looked up real internet searches. Okay. So things that people have put in the web to answer some of their questions, and they are actual, real, legitimate questions. Some of them are some of them are like, you fuck off.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right? The first one. If I eat glitter, will my poo sparkle?

SPEAKER_01

Have you seen those pills where you can swallow the glitter in them?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, I have.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting. Although I don't know why you want that now. Have you? No. Oh, it's offensive.

SPEAKER_00

But I wasn't accusing. No. But I kind of want to. We're getting sparkly pills. The problem is, though, is that it's TMI. But I need to make sure it's a day when I've not had like a Curiosity before. Because if my poo's gonna sparkle, it needs to be solid. Understandable? It does, doesn't it? Yeah. Otherwise, it's just you know, you can I'm not gonna go on. Anyway. It's an incredible question, though. The other one. Can you can I train my pigeons to do small crimes? Phenomenal. Phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01

Do it. Don't do crimes, but the pigeons are you know. Basically, trainers pigeons to do some body theft. It's like some kind of wallet and grommet heist, that isn't it? That is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00

Oh okay. Why does my cat want to sit on my lap when I take a shit?

SPEAKER_01

These are actual deaths, the cat's looking after you because that's when they're most vulnerable. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

It likes the smell of your shit, maybe.

SPEAKER_01

We've gone down very different routes for that one. I was like, it's because the cat's most vulnerable in that position, so they're looking after you, but sure, if it's just like the smell of your shit. Yeah, there you go. There's two answers for you.

SPEAKER_00

If you've got your pants down and you've got bare legs, it's sitting on your skin, isn't it? It's like and you just have to have a little sniff between your legs.

SPEAKER_01

Fair enough. We'll take you on.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. What to do if you've overshared and now have to face your death.

SPEAKER_01

Maybe that's me Googling that about three times a week. I have an unbelievable overshare.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I've just done that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

This whole podcast is about overshare.

SPEAKER_01

I overshare a lot, so this is great for me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So how to stop thinking about that embarrassing thing from 2007. Brilliant. This is me.

SPEAKER_01

It's one of my embarrassing things from 2007.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my god, there's so many times I can just be sitting there, minding my own business, and this fucking earworm comes up like that and goes, Do you remember that time at the end of yourself when you were 14 and you've never gone over it? And then you just go, and you transport it back to that moment and you're reliving it. And you're like, if I was there now, I'd do this. I wouldn't react that way. I do that all the time.

SPEAKER_01

No, I'm exactly the same.

SPEAKER_00

So somebody actually put that in. How do I stop thinking about that embarrassing time from 2007?

SPEAKER_01

That'd be my first year in secondary school. So I think a a lot of embarrassing things happened that year.

SPEAKER_00

What was I doing in 2007? In 2007, our Dan was eight.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I was a midwife. As a I was a midwife part-time on the bank in the Whitley Fill Women's. And as a private midwife as well. Check you. There you go. So, what was my next one? Oh. How to stop arguing with myself in my head. Brilliant. That's just me all the time. That's me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I understand that.

SPEAKER_00

Do you know? Not do you know. Okay, I won't do it. Do you know that not everybody has tabs open in their head on the stuff?

SPEAKER_01

I've heard this. I've heard this. I'm not sure how peaceful that must be in your brain.

SPEAKER_00

I might have actually said it on the pod, I'm not too sure. I don't know. Maybe. But apparently there's about 40% of people that blows my knock who never think. So they don't have thoughts like all the time. So if they look at a camera, it's like, oh, is the camera on? That's a thought. Yes. But they don't think, oh, is the camera on? I need a piss. That needs moving. That lights too bright. Shiss, what am I having for tea tonight? They don't do that. That is wild. They just think, oh, that camera's out and not on. That's it. That's the only thing that could be. That would not be me. Anyway, brought this up with Jimmy. And I was like, shouldn't I watch Jim? Apparently, 40% of people don't just sit and have tabs open and thought all the time. And he went, Yeah, I don't. Blew my mind. It blew me fucking mind. So I was like, hang on a minute. You know that my head has always got tabs open. That I'm always think, think, think, think, think, think, think. Yeah. And so you're not like that. You don't process things and go over things. No. So when you're watching telly, you're not thinking about what you should be doing. Or does your mind not wander off? He went, no, because I'm concentrating on watching telly. I don't think I don't think I've I've concentrated on watching telly since I was pre-pubescent. No.

SPEAKER_01

I have if I'm watching telly, I have to be doing other things.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I'm always doing other things and watching telly. I have to. Jim doesn't.

SPEAKER_01

No.

SPEAKER_00

He just sits and watches Telly, takes it all in. Now I know why. Right, this is the other thing. He remembers, like, if we've watched a series a year ago and the new series comes out, he hasn't got to watch the old series. No, I have to. He can remember all of it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

If it's been a couple of years, he might go, do you know what? Watch the last little bit of the last episode. He remembers. And I think it's because he watches and gives his undivided attention to the programme, but no shit. And so it stays in. No brain noise? That's why I think. So when he told me he had no brain noise, I was like, that's wild to me. I went for dinner with our kids and their girlfriends. Smart to say your kids have got girlfriends. Anyway, went with the kids and the girlfriends. And I went, right, gang, four of them. Do any of you ever sit and not think of anything? Anyway, no. I'm always thinking about stuff. Your dad sits there blank, nothing. Blew their mind as well. They couldn't believe it.

SPEAKER_01

I bet my dad does that. I would absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my god, the luxury. So now, now, now, when somebody says, if you had three wishes, what would all your wishes be? It just could be a quiet brain.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. I'd love a quiet brain. Because now that I know it's possible, I want one! I thought it was normal to have a million and one things at any given time. Ten tabs open, you don't know which one the music's coming from.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but now that I know that's capable, people are capable of shutting all this out. I want it too. That is wild.

SPEAKER_01

I wonder if there's a drug out there that does that. Probably ADHD medication, because one of my friends had really bad brain noise. Uh she started when she was diagnosed with ADHD, she got put on medication and she said, There's no noise. I was like, what?

SPEAKER_00

What? My friend Haley said that as well. She's been on it a little while. And she said, I've never known my head to just be quiet. And she had to tell her daughter, she said, Lily, my head is like silent. Wild. Honestly, I just don't know what that feels like. We're going on ADHD meds. Oh, I can't get them prescribed.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's true.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Black market anybody? Anything for any? Send your ADHD meds to the Pasatel Podcast. We'll give them a go for another PO box. It's on the Facebook page. Thank you very much. We'll give them a little go and give some feedback. If you bring them enough quiet, I won't write anything. You should just stare it into the void for an hour. Right, before we hand over to you, one last search. Stunning. I'm putting this down. This is my favourite one. Okay. It's real. Can ducks recognise sarcasm?

SPEAKER_01

Why do you need to know? I love this. Who has made a snarky comment of a duck and got a like snarky look at them?

SPEAKER_00

I've been thinking about this. I reckon somebody's been out feeding the ducks. Not that you should feed duck bread, by the way, bad, bad. I think they've been feeding the ducks, right? And the the first of the duck and the duck's just gone bread.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And the human's gone, fuck you, duck. And the duck's gone, hmm.

SPEAKER_02

100%, that's it. And they've gone, the duck just give me attitude. Ducks just give me a look. Fumin. What was that look?

SPEAKER_01

So they've gone on going, can duc see my sarcasm? I love that. I think more people should be googling stupid shit.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that was your favourite one. Can ducks recognise sarcasm? That's incredible. Just why?

SPEAKER_01

I mean a big fan of that search.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, I might be able to find more, but they're my favourite ones. I think we're gonna hand over to you and the story that I know nothing about. And then indulge in blowing my nose, drinking seven up and having a biscuit.

SPEAKER_01

Stunning. So, do you know when the last sorry er was waiting for that? When the last person to be convicted of witchcraft in this country was.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, uh, I know when the last person who died, um, but convicted. Was this person killed? No. Okay. Recent? Relatively. Okay, I think this was about the 1950s.

SPEAKER_01

Close, actually. You are very close and very impressed. I want to tell you the strange tale of Helen Duncan. I love this woman.

SPEAKER_00

I know nothing.

SPEAKER_01

I cannot wait to tell you. So Helen Duncan was born in Scotland, born in Perth. Um basically, she used to come out with prophecies at the age of like six. She was creepy. I am a very sceptical person. I do think Helen Duncan is a witch. Yeah. So a white witch. She went down the psychic medium kind of route. But she was very, she would give prophecies and things and they would come true. Oh, right. I would tell you all about them. Oh, she's weird. So at the age of six, uh, she was basically being sent home from school and things because she was freaking the other students out with their prophecies. At six? Yes. What sort of things were she coming out with at six? Oh, I will tell ya. So, um, she was having psychic experiences. Her classmates called her hellish knell. Brilliant. Bring back nicknames like that. We don't have them anymore, and it's boring. Yeah. Bring back hellish knell.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

Um, so she'd been told by her family under no uncertain terms to tell these stories and to tell these visions. Stop it. It's weird. You're thinking of the time, this is like what the the like early nine 1900s. Yeah. She's creeping people out, people are religious, and she's there being hellish Nell. Incredible. So at one point, there's a a the local doctor going round to all the houses, as they did back then.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And you wouldn't get it now.

SPEAKER_01

And you would not get it now, bloody hell. They have to Google your symptoms now. You can't just show up at your house.

SPEAKER_02

No.

SPEAKER_01

Um, and and this doctor shows up to the house and she says to him, Don't drive that way. Because a few miles down that road on this one specific corner, you will die. Like, this is like we're going into like the 30s, maybe the 20s, 30s. Whatever cars started becoming like rich people could have them, basically. Uh so we had a very like early version of a car. Don't go down there, you will die. And she is a child, and he's like, So, how old at this stage? So, she's really young still at this stage. She's like, Yeah, she's still like an early teenager, I want to say, at this point. So he gets in the car and ignores her because this kid has just said, Don't go down there, you'll die. A snowstorm comes out of nowhere, really quick. He drives down there, straight off that corner, dead, like that. They go to the houses like this doctor is missing in a snowstorm. Has anyone seen him? Helen Duncan turns around and says, On that corner, two miles down the road, you'll find him. He's fallen off, he's in his car and he's dead. She was that precise. Yeah. And that corner is still called Doctor's Corner to this day. Ooh. Oh well. I know. I know, so she's proper freaky. She's proper weird.

SPEAKER_00

Did she say where she's getting it from? Or she just She just knew. She just knew. Yeah. Like a premonition that's come from somewhere and just got no idea. She just knew.

SPEAKER_01

Weird. Um, so yes, this is around the time when people were calling her hellish now. Um, and then in like the the 20s, she started doing like clairvoyancy. Um, and she was saying she could talk to the dead, and there was like ectoplasm. The ectoplasm was proved to be like cheesecloth.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It was not proved to be ectoplasm. However, on a seance in 1933 in Edinburgh, she said the spirit of a girl called Peggy had come forward. And Peggy comes up a lot when we're looking at Hellish Nell. Um, so there was someone in the room who grabbed her, the lights were turned on, it was all very freaky, and the ectoplasm had gone. What they were saying was cheesecloth, suddenly that this thing they could see wasn't there anymore. Bit weird, isn't it? So then she underwent a trial in a court in Edinburgh, um, and she was convicted of fraudulent mediumship. But she was let off, right?

SPEAKER_00

So you can be done for being a jog medium.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, basically. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

At that point you could. I suppose back then they took it really, really, really seriously, didn't they? Medium ship. Yeah. So if somebody's going to take the piss out of the profession. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, interesting. But this isn't her main trial. So during World War II, we're looking at November of 1941. There was a whole thing with this ship called HMS Barum. Don't know if you've ever heard of it. Um, it was sunk, but it was like a government secret. No the families didn't know. No one knew for months after because they wanted to keep wartime morale in the way it was. Okay. I was wondering why. However, also in November of 1941, bear in mind nobody knew about HMS Barum. She's holding a seance in Portsmouth because she did a bit of travelling around. She's in Portsmouth, she holds this seance, and as she's there, she said, there's a soldier come through. He's from HMS Barum and he says he's at the bottom of the sea. Nobody knew him at this point. No one. So that's freaking people out because she's leaking wartime secrets here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We get to January 1944. One of her seances is raided by police. They come in and go, You're fraudulent. We're gonna try ya. She gets sent to she gets told she's going to the old Bailey for her trial. It's a serious business trial. In wartime. That's nuts. You'd think there's a much bigger fish to fry. They thought she was leaking secrets because at this point the planning things like D-Day, the planning these big things.

SPEAKER_00

To take it down to the old Bailey, it's not just fraudulent mediumship. This is not. You're a spy or you're holding information. You're releasing top secrets.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. So um they did it when they raided that house in the four in 1944, they tried to stop this ectoplasm coming out of her mouth and they couldn't. The police have said this. This is not someone who was attending a seance. The the people who raided it could not stop her. Weird. So weird. Well, how did they describe the ectoplasm that they saw coming down from her mouth? It looked like this very physical white veil coming out of her mouth. Did anyone try to touch it? Oh, I would. I would have.

SPEAKER_00

I'd have been straight in.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I thought, what the fuck's got something on your mouth, Dale of yeah? Yeah. Ooh, ooh, it's a bit gross.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So exactly. Um so then she was formally arrested. So then she was arrested under section four of the Vagrancy Act, which is from like the 1800s. Vagrancy. Vagrancy. But she wasn't a vagrant, was she? They were just trying to get her for anything. Just making her any, I'll shite up and scare her off the streets, basically. Basically. So it was a minor offence, and she was tried by magistrates. Then they decided this is not enough. We need much more to stop this woman. So they used section four of the Witchcraft Act 1735 and they said it was covering fraudulent spiritual activity, and they sent her to the old Bailey. She gets to the old Bailey in her trial, and she is arguing her case of look, I am a genuine medium. I these things come to me. I cannot help that. That is part of who I am. I don't summon it, it happens, right? And so they say, We don't believe you, obviously, because they're trying to like not emphasize this thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

She then says, I will do a seance here and now at the old Bailey. I will do one now. To which they go, No, thank you. Convict her of witchcraft. That was incredible. I'd love it. I'd like, yeah, go on, go ahead. But she was that serious about it, which makes me immediately go, I believe that woman. If she's like, I will do it here and now to prove to you I'm not a liar, ladder? Yeah. But they freaked out and was like, no, absolutely not. Convicted her of witchcraft in 1944.

SPEAKER_00

I wonder, is that still part of law now? That witchcraft is still written in law.

SPEAKER_01

Because of her case, so she did nine months in prison in London, uh, was denied the right to appeal by the House of Lords. Right. As a result of her case, the Witchcraft Acts were appealed in 1951. Okay. And then it became three years later, it was recognised as an actual recognised spiritualism or religion.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So it is now recognised. But she was the last one to be convicted, and her case is what changed it. Wow. She was released from prison in September of 44. Um, she faced harassment up until her death in 1956. So her daughters are still fighting for Helen because she was convicted, and although her like the Witchcraft Act was repealed, her sentencing never was. She died a witch, convicted, and they are still now fighting for her to have that repealed because she was wrongfully charged. Do you know what? I know it's all shit like, but imagine having witched on your gold stone.

SPEAKER_00

That is pretty sick, in it. I'd be up for that. I'm not sure I'd want it repealed. I think I would be like, you know, I'm pretty cool being called a witch actually leave that way, thanks.

SPEAKER_01

I completely get it.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I wasn't, but you know. You're gonna call me that I'll own it.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely, and she kind of did. She was still doing seances up until the day she died. So some people said she died because she had a lot of health problems, but other people were like, No, we've seen when raids were being done. Because she was still getting raided afterwards, they just never sent her to the old Bailey again. Um they were still doing raids and they said the ectoplasm snapped back into her body. That probably didn't help her. Oh my god. Isn't that fascinating? So, yeah, that is the the strange case of hellish now.

SPEAKER_00

Wow, what do other like spiritualists and mediums and that think of her? Is there much talk about her? Because obviously she wasn't the first, there's lots been lots, but she's probably one of the most publicised, and they made an example of her. What do they say about her in the circles? Is she legitimate? There's some people think yes.

SPEAKER_01

I am obviously I'm not a spiritualist or a medium or anything like that. Um I'm spooky, but I'm not that spooky.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I do have genuine belief that Helen Duncan did have something purely based on the HMS Barum part of it.

SPEAKER_00

That's nuts, though.

SPEAKER_01

I no one knows how she knew. The family themselves did not know that this ship had gone down.

SPEAKER_00

It's things like that, isn't it? You can guess a loss when you're sitting in front of somebody, you can learn how to read body language, those little nuances and stuff like that. But when you've got something that nobody knows. Literally nobody. And it's that serious that you get arrested for because the government thinks that you're leaking secrets. That's nuts. I'm losing my hat, I'm that excited.

SPEAKER_01

Hellish Nell. She's gone. She's gone for me. It's so cute that hat. It's gorgeous, isn't it? I love it. Farrell's probably not at the front, but do you know what we move? Yeah, exactly. It's also let's have a look. Off to the side. Yeah, that's okay. I'm just gonna say it's like French and trendy and she's gonna be. Yeah, no, it's cool. Yeah, thanks. I approve. That was the power of hellish knell. But anyway, isn't she interesting? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

I'd never heard of her.

SPEAKER_01

No. I had only heard of her last year. There was a documentary on it.

SPEAKER_00

Well, bearing in mind that you're like, you know, um spooky bitches of history, and I'm like, you know, fucking podcast addict.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Listen to all the mad podcasts out there, all the historical ones, never heard of her.

SPEAKER_01

Isn't it funny? But yeah, the last convicted witch. Britain's last witch, they call her. Wow. Yeah. Obviously, literally not Britain's last witch, because people do practice witchcraft now. But last convicted. Helen. Helen Duncan. Helen Duncan.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna remember that. I'm gonna look into her a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01

She was born Victoria Helen McFarland, but she became Helen Duncan when she got older and got married, and she just changed her name to Helen, went by a middle name.

unknown

Alright.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Victoria's a bit of a mouthful, that's why I could be Hellish Nell, could she?

SPEAKER_01

No. She could be Hellish Nell, she's a Victoria.

SPEAKER_00

No. Victoria sounds a little bit too postion responsible, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01

She could be Hellish Tory.

SPEAKER_00

No, I wasn't the same ring about it, really. In our school, there were three Vickies in our year. And there was somebody called Victoria as well, and she called herself Tory.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I really, really wanted to be a Tory.

SPEAKER_01

Maybe rephrase that.

SPEAKER_00

I really wanted to be a Tory.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and I'm obviously a Vicky had stuck, and that was it. And I went through a very, very, very short time when I was about 13 of trying to say, Oh yeah, my name's Tory.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I got so much fucking stick for it. I was like that. You're Vicky. Fuck off.

SPEAKER_01

Your name is there now.

SPEAKER_00

You know, who does it, you know all that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Said funny.

SPEAKER_01

Hilarious.

SPEAKER_00

So Helen Duncan. I'm gonna remember that.

SPEAKER_01

Love hair.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Really good documentary on iPlayer, actually, Yana. It's a four-part documentary. We talked to her daughters. So her daughters do seences now. Oh, go! I'd love to go. I don't think they do like public ones, but they do some in hair memory kind of thing, put proper full-on sciences.

SPEAKER_00

So they've got the gift as well.

SPEAKER_01

All of them. Uh I think three. Was there two or three of them have? And then one of her daughters lives in America now.

unknown

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01

So they were like FaceTime and hair and stuff. Brilliant. It's uh yeah, they do a few different ones. So they did The Most Haunted House in North Wales was one. Uh Hellish Nell was another one, and I can't remember what the third one was, but there's three series of it anyway. Right. Really good.

SPEAKER_00

I'll look it up. Love anything like that. Me too.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you very much for that. You're very interested. I didn't chat at Utter Wham too long.

SPEAKER_00

You didn't, and I got to eat a biscuit in in full. Laughing. Normally, because of gag in or whatever. Yeah. I'm half a biscuit at the end. So bad. Right then. We're gonna move on. We've got uh a Lady Lobotomy. Oh, okay. Uh it's a BDSM one, but it's not really something that uh it's not too extreme. Obviously, I'm into BDSM, you're not. And so I thought this would be quite good because you can relate and I can relate, and we can help answer this question. Love that. Dear Lady Lobotomy. I've got a really close group of mates and I love them to bits. But they're very vanilla.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Sometimes they'll make jokes about BDSM or kink, and I just kind of laugh along, but inside I feel a bit weird about it because it's actually a very, very big part of my life. I've mentioned them kinky, but I've not really gone into detail as a joke's about enough without all the detail. Shall I just keep myself keep it quiet or shall I just be honest? Because it's actually starting to piss me off a little bit now.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So basically, she's it sounds like she's got a very, very close group of mates. I think she's been friends with for years by the sounds of it. They're very close. They go out, she they know that she's a bit kinky, but she's not really giving them much detail. So maybe if they realise how much she was into it, they might be a little bit more sensitive, but I don't know. Um, but basically they know, and every now and then, I think it's a bit more than every now and then, if she's talked the time to write it. They're just like throwing little digs every now into conversation, and she's now getting a bit pissed off about it. What should we what should she do? So, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01

I think if they're that good of friends, if you were like actually this is affecting me, they take that into consideration.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

If I'm honest, and I also think a lot of the time when people joke about stuff that's like outside of their normal comfort zone, it's curiosity more than anything that they can't process.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I think when people joke about it it's because they don't understand it. I would agree. And they don't want to um seem like silly, uneducated, so they just make a joke instead and then don't realise that the joke can be quite offensive.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. So you've had fallen off again. Yeah, it's hellish now, she's come back.

SPEAKER_00

We'll ignore that.

SPEAKER_01

She wants to chime in.

SPEAKER_00

Feel free.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, do plasma's gonna come off the mouth when we chime in. Just go afterwards though. Don't hang the gas. Don't blink a girl.

SPEAKER_00

Do you know I've actually got a uh Ouija board in the house?

SPEAKER_01

Have you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That's very scary. I won't use it in the house.

SPEAKER_01

No, don't blame you.

SPEAKER_00

Uh I've used it elsewhere and um it's stored with crystals and stuff, and I cleanse it every time. I personally won't use this. Yeah. I will let other people use this and I will lead it. Yes. But I won't put my hands on it. Don't blame you. Uh I I did years ago, years and years and years and years ago, and something really not very great happened, and um something not great happened to somebody who was part of it, and I just feel that it's it's real, don't meddle, you don't know what you're dealing with. If you've got if you believe in spirituality, then you you should believe in Ouija boards.

SPEAKER_01

I agree.

SPEAKER_00

And if you believe in Ouija boards, you need to have respect for them and and just be very, very, very, very careful with them. Definitely. So, yeah, don't I've got downstairs. I will take it to places for other people to use. Fair enough. And I'll teach them and guide them, and I'll I'll open it up and I'll shut it down so we know it's all done properly, but I won't put my hands on it.

SPEAKER_01

Fair enough, I won't. I totally get it.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna bring her yarn shit back to this house. So, what's I talking about? So we're talking about oh yeah, your hat's flying off. Yeah. Um, yeah, okay. But before that, we were talking about vanilla friends. Yes. So I don't think she needs to go to detail with the friends. But um I think maybe if she just said, Do you know what? I've noticed that you're joking quite a lot about BDSM, and you don't mean any offence, and I'm not offended, but maybe it's time for me to say that it's not just like a little bit of a bit of slap and tickle for me. I'm seriously into it, and you know, if you go to clubs or you know, you go somewhere regular, maybe tell them and just say, you know, there isn't just like a little bit of slap and tickle in the bedroom. I actually go to venues, yeah, and this is my downtime, it's it's my altered ego, it's my other part of my life. If you are no more about it, great. And if you don't, I totally get that. I don't need to share it, but I just want you to know that when you're making those sort of jokes, it's actually more than just surface deep, it's just cutting a little bit. Yeah. But I know you don't mean that because you don't know how heavily I'm into this, but now you do.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I think I'd probably handle it that way. I would. I think good friends would be totally cool with you being that upfront. And I know that some people aren't as upfront as me and would probably find that conversation quite difficult, but uh, let's face it, you've written into me. Yeah. And so it's it's bothering you enough. And therefore, I think you need to um give it the space that it needs with your friends and just you know broach the conversation in the best way you see fit, but be honest.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Be honest about it. Absolutely. Uh and you know, no detail, just you know, I mean I'm more into it than you thought. Um, it's just a little bit bit digs me a bit when you give me those sorts of comments. So I would just face it head on.

SPEAKER_01

Best way to handle it, honestly, I think.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and like you said, if they've got enough friends, it'll be sound. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

If you've been mates for years, chances are they're gonna go, really sorry, we didn't mean to like any offence by it. Do you know what we'll think about that in the future?

SPEAKER_00

I think over the years I've lost some friends who are vanilla. Yeah. When they found out what I'm into. Um, I think it's a misconception, especially with the BDSM, that people think that it's it is sex work, but they think that I'm a prostitute.

SPEAKER_01

And there's big differences.

SPEAKER_00

There's a big difference, and don't get me wrong, you know, I've I've actually got escort mates. It's a it's a job, it's the oldest job in the world. Nothing against it at all. Um, but that isn't what I do. There's a differentiation. So my mates actually it's worse. It's like you want to do that and not shag. You just want to hurt people for nothing.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So it actually explains to people that no, I'm not an escort, I don't actually have sex with my clients, I just beat them round on all the other stuff that I do, and they just look at me then because it's almost like, well, if there's sex involved, there's a reason for this violence because they're getting turned on, and you are, because there's no sex, you're just doing it for the fun of it, and that is what often raises an eyebrow. It does, it does. So I've lost some friends over the years. Obviously, I've lost my dad, he didn't he didn't agree with it at all, so he's dropped me. And um, you know, I've got a few vanilla friends left. I mean, I've got lots of acquaintances, but I'm not friends. I'll every now and then hello on Facebook. Yeah, not my friends, but I can probably count my close friends on one hand and a couple of those are vanilla.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, all the rest of them, no, they've just just sort of faded away into obscure. Which is fair enough. Which is fine. They haven't dropped me, there's been no drama, they've just faded away. Yeah. One of them in particular, I'm like, the only reason she would do this is because she knows what I'm into now. Yeah. And that's fine. If she can't handle it and she doesn't want to be around me because of what I do, that's cool. Because I can't stand fake friends either.

SPEAKER_01

No, me neither. I'd rather people are honest and upflue.

SPEAKER_00

I'd rather she'd said it to me. She didn't. I'd rather somebody say, Do you know what? This is going to decide the worst thing in the world. I'm like the worst friend, but your lifestyle, I just I can't get my head around it at all. I know it's really important to you, but it actually makes me really uncomfortable that you physically hurt somebody because I was physically abused as a younger person or whatever, and it triggers me to fuck and you know great friends, but I just think I need to like give it a bit of space, you know. I get it. And I'd be like, yeah. That makes sense. I'd much rather that than be ghosted.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so was I.

SPEAKER_00

Or the flip side of fucking dicks every two minutes.

SPEAKER_01

Gross, you don't need that.

SPEAKER_00

No, no, you don't need it at all. So I hope that's helped, my love, whoever you are, it was anonymous. Uh oh god, there was one. I think it was one with Barry, you probably heard it. Uh-huh. And at the beginning it was he said. Scouse one. Yeah. I'm still dying over this. And then me family, not my family, and laughing me at this gotta be a scouser or an Irish person. Yes. Because Irish people do the same thing.

SPEAKER_01

That's where we get a lot of our dialect from.

SPEAKER_00

Of course it is, yeah. Right, so I have got um a fetish factoid to finish off on, and it's a very, very short one. And I thought we'd do what fucking brilliant on that time. I'm trying to I'm trying to get our episodes so they're not an hour and a half or an hour and twenty minutes. But only because some of those some people can't just can't go the distance. So I'm trying my best. Yeah. So do you know the Muffin Man? The Muffin Man?

SPEAKER_01

The Muffin Man!

SPEAKER_00

Who lives on Tory Lady? So very short. Do you know what?

SPEAKER_01

The minivan is I'm literally picturing our minivan. So probably not.

SPEAKER_00

The minivan in a sexual context.

SPEAKER_01

Not a clue.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. It's similar. Go on. It's similar to one in the pink, two in the stink.

SPEAKER_01

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_00

So the minivan rever refers to two fingers in the vagina and five fingers in the anus. Two in the front, five in the back.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god. Which makes sense to be a minivan. Fucking five fingers up my ass, though! That's that's excessive at that point. That's a little bit excessive. No. Buss! Bus! Don't say boss after you've just said that.

SPEAKER_00

But people do like to be fisted on their ass. They do. Gay men. A lot of some not a lot. Some gay men, some females do as well. In fact, there was a porno years ago called Dry Fauster.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Drey Fauster in German. Yeah. It's three fists. And the guy in it was like Dr. Fauster. Okay. And he had a white coat on glasses and he just looked like Robin Williams. No. No, he's a spit. The spit. Jimmy loves Robin Williams. He couldn't get over it. He went, Dr. Fauster is Robin Williams. And then he's like, You really look at Robin Williams? Next thing, Robin Williams has got two fists up some girl's eyes. Of course. And then another girl joins in as well. Three fists off her arm. Oh my god, that is wild. I mean, how do you stop your shit falling out after that?

SPEAKER_01

That sounds inconvenient in in day-to-day life, if I'm honest with you.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, vaginas, they're made to stretch and go back again. You know, people like to take the big toys, they just go back again. It's a muscle, it goes back. And I know the bum muscle is a muscle. But three fifths, that's excessive.

SPEAKER_01

It is excessive.

SPEAKER_00

And sissy, they weren't like just going, you know, oh yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01

No, before I'm like they just went.

SPEAKER_00

Right? And then they were like that going, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01

That can't be good feeling inside. Well, she's having a lovely time. I mean, I bet she was having a delightful time. She had the next day, she was a bit like, oh.

SPEAKER_00

I'm sure the next day I chafed. Yes. Yeah. Uh I'm sure she would have been walking funny. But um it was just like Clinty's done. Just three fists. Just doing that. Right. The whole time. Dry Fauster. So lock it up. I've learned something new today. Dr. Fauster.

SPEAKER_01

It's always an education when I come here.

SPEAKER_00

So the minivan is two fingers in the vagina and five in the anus. Two in the front, five in the back. You're very welcome. Please let me know if you've done it or if you want to experiment. Let me know how it was. I don't need the details, just you know, um, did you call it the minivan? If not, why not? Now that you know what's got a name, please do call it the minivan.

SPEAKER_01

Wild. Two in the front, five in the back. I'm I'm never gonna unhear that now.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely love it, absolutely love it. Right, so what we haven't done, Sissy, because I didn't mention it, we haven't done the ghost or the far birds. Oh, which one? So, well, we'll do the ghost. I'll do it because you've got a job to do.

SPEAKER_01

I have.

SPEAKER_00

So this is the the scream and go to let us know that we should have finished two minutes ago. Yep. Thank you. Okay. So on that goat at screaming bombshell, we're gonna go.

SPEAKER_01

So Oh god. So if you're binge watching, put the kettle on, we'll see you in five. If not, see you next week. Yay! Woohoo! I've been rehearsing that. Help you. Yeah. I was like, I'm just double checking, I actually do. Because I do know it, and every time I come in a freeze, every single time I go, uh, if you're binge watching, see you in five minutes, put my kettle on. Well, apparently.

SPEAKER_00

Before we do go, before we do go, apparently, uh, quite a lot of the deviants out there, they actually say the introduction with me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

They literally say it.

SPEAKER_01

I did that at the live when I was there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. But all around the world, as listen to it, do the dishes, they actually say it with me.

SPEAKER_01

Did they do it in your accent or some do? As they should. Some do.

SPEAKER_00

Some who don't say it out loud, but they hear my voice, my scout's voice in their head.

SPEAKER_01

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_00

Um, but others, uh, what was my point? Hang on a minute. So they say that, but others, they do the binge watching thing. Brilliant. Yeah. And when some of you have been trying it recently, they've been egging it on in the background, they're like, come on, you're binge watching, you know it. Come on, come on.

SPEAKER_01

And I do, I do actually know it. I've watched 130 some of their episodes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Do you know? I remember when I first did the whole binge watching thing, Dylan was uh the producer.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I said to I've got a new little thing at the end to take us out. And he went, Is it cheesy?

SPEAKER_04

I went, Yeah.

unknown

But it went.

SPEAKER_00

But it went. So I did it. And he was waiting. He's like, Well, when's it gonna come? Is it gonna go? He's in the back on his headphones. I'm like that looking. So I did it. If you're binge watching, and I did it, and he put the camera's off, he went, Ah, I love that! He went, What was it again? You can't remember it. And that was it. It just stuck. It just stuck. I love it. Yeah, yeah. So we are actually going to go now that you've done the uh the outro. So we'll see you next time. Bye. Well done, it's done. And there we have it! Another day made better by listening to the creators of chaos. Thanks for dropping by, and if you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate you sharing your love the Patasel podcast with your friends. Don't forget to give us a follow on our socials, maybe leave us some five-star reviews, and feel free to send us an email to magic at the pathastellpodcast.co.uk or even interact with us on Facebook because we love chatting to you. Be sure to stop by next week because as Bowie says, I don't know where I'm going next, but I promise it'll be boring. Catch you soon!