Stunt Girl Reporting From Lake Baikal (Or This Episode Is Liam's Fault)

We’re back, baby!! Thank you all for your patience while we took a short break to reset.

This episode Jess leads off with another awesome and amazing woman from history! She tells us about Nellie Bly, the first female investigative journalist and honestly just a really amazing woman!

Hids takes a trip to Siberia and tells us about Lake Baikal, a rift lake in southern Siberia that is truly fascinating…and of course, as always there are some folklore legends and aliens tossed in for fun!

Jess’ Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/nellie-bly-0

https://www.nps.gov/people/nellie-bly.htm

https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ajp.2007.164.4.581

Hids’ Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal

https://www.lakebaikal.org/baikal-legends/

https://ancientpedia.com/the-lake-baikal-humanoids-reports-of-underwater-aliens/

https://www.gigglygarden.com/lake-baikal-russia/russell-crowbar/how-do-the-legends-and-folklore-of-the-indigenous-peoples-of-siberia-reflect-their-relationship-with-lake-baikal.html

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Okay. Hi. Hi. Hello. Hi. Hope this sounds good. Oh, we're b uh microphone freak out.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Let me try it one more time.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

We're back. We're back. It is um what episode is this? Episode 20? Twenty one?

SPEAKER_04 0:50

Twenty. It was supposed to be twenty-one, but it's twenty. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Where's my note?

SPEAKER_04 0:58

We had a little Menti B, so we took a little menti break. And we thank you all for giving us grace in that aspect and letting us skip an episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah. So life update. I have a new computer. And we're deeper in debt. Um I not say this is episode 20. Yeah, it is 20. Okay. Sorry. I was the one that kept saying 21. I know, I know. I'm like, yes, we agree. I know why I'm confused, because it's also episode 71 of all time. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that's why that's where the one came from. Uh but yeah, I have a new computer.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

Yay! Yay.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

I fried my motherboard on the old one and almost lost all the stuff, but got it back.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Yay.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Shout out to uh Tom. I had to think of his name. I was like, Tom. I'm not sure if Tom listens to this podcast, but he is an old coworker of mine.

SPEAKER_04 2:04

And he fixed the thing. Yeah. And my computer did not have to be replaced. I just had to do a factory reset. For some reason. Which is always, you know, super fun. Super fun.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Because then you're like, well, I have to find all my passwords again.

SPEAKER_04 2:25

And uh but I did a lot of forgot passwords. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Factory reset though does not mean that you lose all of your stuff. No. Which I was able to save that. I don't know how new that whole feature is because I have never had to do a factory reset. But is there something fine or right here? No, the sword is coming off the wall. What's the sword behind you? Coming off of the wall. Orbs, moving swords. Oh my gosh. I don't know. It's like it's just been knocked off the thing.

unknown 3:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Oh, I bet it was a cat.

SPEAKER_04 3:04

Yeah. Or I think you're get down. Speaking of cats, oh my gosh. Okay, so. Oh boy. Bear with me here while I get this little I have planted. Um, I keep moving back. We're not using our regular microphones and I keep looking for it. It's not here.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Oh, yeah. That's the continuation of the saga that is this new computer is I can't get my interface to work on it now, even though I recorded a whole cobalt episode with it. So like now suddenly the interface for the microphones aren't working. So we're using little lapel mics. So that's why this might not sound, you know, yeah, like our usual stuff. But it'll be fine. Anyway, what were you saying?

SPEAKER_04 3:48

I am uh I plant little uh ryegrass for the cats, and I have to set it up on a high shelf while it starts, like it germinates and takes seed and starts to grow. And Stray, the cat, is obsessed. She's in my lap right now. She is obsessed with grass. When I when I get it down, she's just gonna roll in it. And it's just it's like a 12-inch long by like maybe six inches wide tray. And she will just lay on it and eat it and tear it. And but ever since I've planted those seeds, she's been like climbing the bookshelf trying to get to them.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:30

And now they're actually growing, and she can see the grass, but she can't eat it yet. She's a little addict. Now she's in the drawer. She's in she's gone into my desk drawer. Uh every all the animals are crazy right now. She's doing something.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, I don't know. Welcome to episode 20 of Jess and Hid's Make a Podcast. I'm Jess. I'm Hids. And uh this is our podcast.

SPEAKER_04 4:57

This is our little rambling little ramble, ramble on. Um, how do we podcast? I forgot. It's been like a whole month since we've done this one. I know. We tried to get uh Jess's nephew, uh Leah, to do a little uh podcast with us.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

To be our first guest on the podcast, but he's a little turd. Yeah, he won't do it. He's a little chicken.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

Oh, that was mean, but also. I know I only said it because I know he's gonna be listening. I know. I already gave him a dollar because he actually listened to the episode where I said I'd give him a dollar. But yeah, I was like kind of hoping he would do it. It would be fun to see uh what little topic he was interested in and wanted to tell us about. We told him to come up with something, but don't tell us. It's fine.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah, it's fine.

SPEAKER_04 5:59

It's fine. All right, I guess we just have to do it.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

I guess we just have to do the part.

SPEAKER_04 6:04

I guess it's just you and me. This is you and me. Same old, same old, same old. We tried to shake it up a bit, but oh no. Liam crapped out on us. Good job, Liam. It's all your fault. Yeah. This episode is all your fault.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

That can be the title of the episode. No, poor kid. I don't want to give him a complex. Liam, this episode is all your fault. Um okay, how do we oh, we gotta do the card thing. Yeah, we start by drawing a card. Um I feel like we had other things that we wanted to talk about, but I'm sure we did, but we didn't write them down. So I did write down my war member for the week.

SPEAKER_04 6:51

Oh shoot, I gotta come up with one. I'll come up with one day later. Excuse me, by the time this is done. Your war member can be 80s. It might be. I got a four. Uh I got a two.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

That means you go first. I go first. Dang it. Okay. Okay. All right. These, okay. Next season we are going back to dice rolling. I like the dice rolling. It's just, it's just, you know.

SPEAKER_04 7:23

You but it's good. We tried something different out and uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Well, no, I still like I like the Uno. But I guess the dice didn't roll in my favor either. No, well, no. You just I know somewhere among my desk drawers I have saved some skips and some reverses card. I don't know that it'll do anything, but I have oh good.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

That's good.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yeah. I might have accidentally mixed them into the the discard pile. Oh, that's funny. So I'll just like forever go first, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, no, that works though. We should just do that.

SPEAKER_04 8:01

I like my topic. Okay, good. My topic, I will say, is gonna be short.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

So that's fine. Mine, I thought it was gonna be short at first, but it's not.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Uh so in 1839, New York City opened its first publicly funded insane asylum. Located on an island in the East River, it was designed to be a state-of-the-art institution based on the theories of moral treatment. They were to have an organized and orderly environment because in the past, and everywhere else in the world, little effort was made to differentiate between types of mental illness. Uh, in other asylums, everywhere, uh, everyone committed would all be just kind of kept together in the same yeah. Uh a physician named Dr. John McDonald, who was involved in the new asylum, said, like the development of it, the planning and everything. Oh, the planning, okay. Uh, he said the indiscriminate mingling of the mild and ferocious, clean and filthy, convalescent and idiotic need only be witnessed to be deprecated. He then said classification is now justly considered by almost all persons of experience of the first importance in the treatment of insanity. He suggested that patients be divided into four specific classes: the noisy, destructive, and violent, the idiots, the convalescents, and an uh intermediate class for uh, quote, those in the first stages of convalescence and such incurables who are harmless and not possessed of bad habits. So it's like an in between convalescent and I don't know. Yeah. Um so I guess that's the other category. The other category. Everybody else that isn't in these three, you go over there. Noisy, destructive, and violent, idiots, convalescents, others. Which is still horrible, but keep in mind. Four types of people. Yeah, but the four types of people are. The four personality types.

SPEAKER_04 10:18

I mean, I think that tracks outside of 1839 mental asylums. Oh gosh. Other. Other. Sometimes I'm noisy, so I guess. We were discussing going through a range room.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

So being destructive, noisy idiots.

SPEAKER_04 10:36

Yeah. We we could just bounce around. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

So I guess that would put us in the other category, wouldn't it? It would, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in addition, in addition to classification, moral treatment emphasized the human rather than beast-like nature of the insane. Well, that that is very forward thinking for 1839. The design for the new asylum was free of barricades and iron bars and allowed for easy access to the outdoors. That is very forward thinking. But this state-of-the-art asylum was never built. Oh. Well, that's unfortunate. Of financial constraints, only two wings were completed and almost immediately proved inadequate. Which is pretty much what we expect in the modern day, looking back at 18, whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:28

So, like I mean, let's just go and say from the beginning, there should have just been a national help set up. Okay. That's all I'm gonna say on that. But anyway.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Even more disturbing, convicts from the nearby penitentiary on the same island were used as guards and attendants.

SPEAKER_04 11:45

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

So that in the words of Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, um, I didn't actually write down who this guy was, but like he was a doctor that said a thing. He said, the patients were abandoned to the tender mercies of thieves and prostitutes. Which isn't great. No. Thousands of the city's poor mentally ill were admitted to the asylum between 1839 and 1895. Newspapers were filled with grim tales of madness, mistreated patients, wretched conditions, and wrongful confinement. Now that's what I would expect for 1839. Yeah, that's kind of yeah. When you think about an insane asylum in the 1800s, you're like, oh, that's not great. That's not gonna be great. And yeah, uh in 1887, a woman named Elizabeth Jane Cochrane was admitted into the asylum. Before coming to the asylum, she had checked herself into a boarding house called Temporary Homes for Females in New York City, where she accused the other boarders of insanity. She told the assistant matron, There are so many crazy people about, and no one can ever tell what they will do. She refused to go to Vermont, she refused to sleep, and eventually scared so many of the other boarders that the police were called to take her to the nearby courthouse. So once she was there, she was examined by police, a police officer, a judge, and a doctor. And then Elizabeth was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a few days. Bellevue, I was gonna ask you, did you tell me the name of this place yet? No. Okay. For a reason. Okay. Uh after that, um, so she was evaluated at the hospital, left there for a few days, and after the evaluation, she was sent by boat to the Blackwells Island Asylum. And if that name sounds familiar, Blackwells Island, uh, you might know that Elizabeth also went by another name. This woman was Nellie Bly. She was an investigative, an investigative, wow, an investigative journalist who faked insanity in order to be committed to this asylum. And I love her so much.

SPEAKER_04 14:02

Okay. I was like, wait, Nellie Bly, she was a she wasn't crazy. She was like a cool person, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

I was like, I have like vaguely remembering her going on to our list. She faked insanity and amnesia to get into this asylum. But before we get into her experience there, I want to give a little background about her. Okay. So Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochrane on May 5th, 1864, in Cochrane's Mill, Pennsylvania. Her father was Michael Cochran. He owned a lucrative mill and served as Associate Justice of Armstrong County. When Nellie was six, or Elizabeth then was six, her father died suddenly and without a will. So unable to maintain the land or their house. Elizabeth's family left Cochrane's mill. And her mother, I know, like they are the next of kin, even though it's not in a will. So much wrong. Yeah. But it it shaped who she was and who she became as a journalist. Like we'll we'll get into that. So her mother ended up remarrying but got divorced in 1878 due to abuse. So not great. Um as a young girl, Elizabeth was often called pink because she wore pink a lot, which I thought was cute. That's cute. At 15, she enrolled at the state normal school in Indiana, Pennsylvania. And while she was there, she wanted to portray herself as a more sophisticated uh person. So she dropped the nickname Pink and added an E to her last name, becoming Elizabeth Jane Cochrane. I don't really know why that made you know the more letters you have in your name, the more sophisticated you are. I guess. Um, but due to the family's continuing financial struggles, she left school after one term and soon moved with her mom to Pittsburgh, where her two older brothers had settled.

SPEAKER_04 16:10

I don't know if the mic is picking it up. Yeah. Sweet girl. Oh, I woke up. I thought it was snoring. She was. She had her head like over the little pillow. So it was like uh oh, that's so cute. Okay, okay, so she dropped out of school or left school because of money, finances, understandable.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

And so now her and her mother had to move to Pittsburgh where her two older brothers had settled. Um, she looked for work to help support her family, but found uh fewer opportunities than her less educated brothers. Surprise.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

Shocking.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Um after an article was published in the Pittsburgh Dispatch. I said that weird. The Pittsburgh Dispatch. Uh this article was titled What Girls Are Good For, and it stated that girls were principally for birthing children and keeping house, and they also criticized the presence of women in the workforce. Elizabeth wrote an open letter to the editor that called for more opportunities for women, especially those responsible for the financial well-being of their families, and she wrote under the pseudonym Lonely Orphan Girl. The editor, George Madden, was impressed with her passion and ran an advertisement asking the author to identify herself. So when Elizabeth introduced herself to the editor, he offered her the opportunity to write a piece for the newspaper again under the pseudonym Lonely Orphan Girl. Her first article for the dispatch, titled The Girl Puzzle, argued that not all women would marry and that what was needed were better jobs for women.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

So hard upbringing, but she's speaking out. She's becoming an advocate for herself and women everywhere. Love her. I know. So The Girl Puzzle was her first article. Her second article, Mad Marriages, was about how divorce affected women. So again, probably pulling from personal experience from her mother's divorce. And in that article, she argued for reform of divorce laws. Um Mad Marriages was published under the pseudonym of Nellie Bly rather than Lonely Orphan Girl, because at the time it was pretty common for female journalists to use pen names to conceal their gender so that readers would not discredit them. Which is so stupid. It's so dumb. Yeah. But after that article, uh Madden offered her a full-time job. He was super impressed with it.

SPEAKER_04 18:48

Oh, good for him.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

So, and then I have a neat little thing here. Elizabeth chose the name Nellie Bly, N-E-L-L-Y Bly after the African American title character in the popular song by the same name, Nellie Bly, by Stephen Foster. But her editor wrote N-E-L-L-I-E on mistake. On mistake, by mistake, and the error, the the like it stuck. It stuck, okay. Yeah. So it was she she chose the name because of a song by Stephen Foster, who also wrote like Camptown Races and Oh gosh, there's another really popular one. Um I don't remember. Anyway, look him up. Stephen Foster.

SPEAKER_04 19:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Uh I wasn't talking to you. I do want to look him up, but uh but go ahead. Um so now that she was working full-time for the Oh, he wrote my old Kentucky home. Oh Susanna.

SPEAKER_04 19:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Oh Susanna, that was the one that I was thinking of. Um but yeah. Uh working full-time. She focused her early work for the Pittsburgh Dispatch on the lives of working women, writing a series of investigative articles. Investigate investigative? Why do I say it like that?

SPEAKER_04 20:08

The words are not wording. I guess. I guess it works both ways.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Yeah. Anyway, she wrote a series of articles on female factory workers. Um, Nellie went undercover as a poor woman to get hired at a copper cable factory for a first-hand view of the poor working conditions that women and children faced in the typical factory setting. Her columns were applauded by factory workers for highlighting the hidden truth, but the newspaper soon received complaints from factory owners, of course, about her writing. And she was reassigned to women's pages to cover fashion, society, and gardening, which was the usual role for female journalists at the time.

SPEAKER_03 20:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

She didn't like it. Yeah. Um, at this point, she was 21 years old and she was determined to do something no girl has done before. So she traveled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent. She spent nearly half a year reporting on the lives and customs of the Mexican people. Her dispatches later were published in a book called Six Months in Mexico. Uh, in one report, she protested the imprisonment of a local journalist for criticizing the Mexican government. And when Mexican authorities learned of her report, they threatened her with arrest, prompting her to flee the country.

SPEAKER_04 21:32

Oh goodness.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yeah. Um, and then after that, she's she's back in the state. She's still working for the same paper. She was again assigned just all the fluffin' bunny pieces. Uh so she left the Pittsburgh dispatch in 1887 and headed to New York City.

SPEAKER_04 21:51

I'm sorry. Cake is making all the noises to me. Sweetheart. I don't know if it's showing up on the mic. Yeah, it's just it's showing up in the mic. My ear. Yeah. It's just driving me crazy. Sensory issues. I know. Okay. I love you, sweet baby. Hey, kid.

unknown 22:10

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 22:10

She's just an old girl. She's gonna go get comfortable somewhere. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

She's gonna go lay on the hard floor to get more comfortable, I guess. She's gonna go sit and drink a bunch of water. Yeah, that's she's thinking about it. Okay. Um, so Nellie, she faced rejection what? Rejection after rejection because news editors wouldn't hire a woman.

SPEAKER_04 22:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Uh after four months, she stormed into the office of the New York World, one of the leading newspapers in the country. She wanted to write a story on the immigrant experience in the United States, but the editor, Joseph Pulitzer, declined that story. Um, but he did challenge Nellie to investigate one of New York's most notorious mental asylums, Blackwells Island.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Nellie not only accepted the challenge, she did she decided to fake mental illness to gain admission and expose firsthand how patients were treated in the women's lunatic asylum. So she's I first job.

SPEAKER_04 23:11

Yeah. Like, don't mind me just gonna pretend I'm crazy. Which honestly, okay. I'm gonna say, like for a woman, all you have to do is just go, oh, let me kick up a fuss, and you know, oh, she's insane. Put her.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Let me argue with the man. Let me argue with the man.

SPEAKER_04 23:26

Yeah. Crazy, crazy. Uh no, but this is awesome. Like, I I love her.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah, she's pretty cool. Um, the word lunatic comes from Luna, meaning moon, and the popular misconception that changing the changing moon could cause people to have fevers or to act irrationally. I didn't know that. Um in Nellie's lifetime, lunatic was an umbrella term used to describe any person with a mental illness or behavioral disorder. Tourette syndrome, autism spectrum disorders, anger or rage disorders, schizophrenia, depression, and a lot of other illnesses were not well known in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Um, I would also throw in like menopause, PMS, like just those things too. Like even though they had a firmer grip on those things back then. They knew they existed. They knew they existed, but like if a woman was way out of control because of it, she'd get locked up. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

So people with a variety of symptoms could be considered lunatics and sent to asylums. So it's it was bad for it, it was a bad time for mental mental health. Um, so now Nellie's in this asylum. She experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. And after just a few days in the asylum, Nellie dropped her fake madness and despite her lucid state and claimed sanity, underwent the same treatments as other impatients in extremely cold, hostile conditions. So even though she was like, okay, I'm not I'm not insane. That's exactly what an insane person would say. And like obviously insane. She said that. Um, she found out that other patients had been committed when they were also healthy.

SPEAKER_03 25:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Many of these patients could not speak fluent English because immigration was a big thing at that time. New York City, New York City was just like burgeoning.

SPEAKER_04 25:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Um, they could not convince the nurses that they were actually sane because they couldn't speak English. And so while posing as a patient, Nelly documented the abuse and neglect in the asylum, physical and emotional abuse from caretakers, cold showers, filthy living conditions, spoiled food, just all kinds of things. Uh Nelly wrote a six-part series for the paper about her experience that later was published as a book titled 10 Days in a Madhouse. And I have the book on my Kindle, but I'm suffering from reader's block right now. Yeah. So I haven't had a chance to dive into it, but I did find a few quotes about her experience. So I'm just gonna read some.

SPEAKER_03 26:12

Okay. Yeah. Hold on to your buttons.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Hold on to your butts. She says, I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up, and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on a straight back bench, on straight back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours. Give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings. Give her bad food and harsh treatment and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.

SPEAKER_03 26:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yeah. Uh she also says the insane asylum on Blackwells Island is a human rat trap. It's easy to get in, but once they're once there, it is impossible to get out. A pretty young Hebrew woman spoke so little English I could not get her story except as told by the nurses. They said her name is Sarah Fishbaum, and that her husband put her in the asylum because she had a fondness for other men other than himself. The attendants seemed to find amusement and pleasure in exciting the violent patients to do their worst, which pisses me off.

SPEAKER_04 27:31

People are I'm always okay, like there's no answer to this, but it always fascinates me in like when you read about these old asylums and air quote hospitals and that sort of thing, and how cruel the nurses and doctors were, but especially like the nurses and caretakers. I'm just like I I don't understand it that you're like in a position where you are supposed to care for these people. Yeah. And you're like just mean and abusive and get like some kind of sick player. Like that's the person who should probably be in the institute and getting mental, you know, mental health checks and help and therapy.

SPEAKER_03 28:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:29

Because something's definitely wrong there. And like I know, like in that time period, women did not have many options. So there were probably a bunch of people who were in those nursing jobs who were not well suited to them. Yeah. But it just blows my mind that like how often you hear that the staff was abusive and cruel just for the sake of it, like to no good reason.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:59

It's just like I don't know, it just blows my mind. Glad it's not a thing anymore.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

I mean, like these days, I think it's not as widespread. If a nurse is cruel, it's usually due to overwork. Yeah, exactly. But like for the most part, nurses are nurses because they want to help people. Yeah. You know? So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:17

Shout out to my nurse friends and all the nurses because I could not do your job, and you guys are amazing.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

It is true.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

You guys are awesome. Just gonna put that out there.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Yeah. All right. More quotes. More quotes, yes. Sorry. That was a little bit. No, it's okay. Interrupt whenever. Uh, I have watched patients stand and gaze longingly toward the city. They, in all likelihood, will never enter again. It means liberty and life. It seems so near, and yet heaven is not further from hell. Which is poignant. Yeah. And like it sucks. I I looked up pictures of Blackwell Island, and it is just an a little island in the middle of the East River. You can see the city all around you. Uh, right now it's called Roosevelt Island, I think. It's a national park.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

Um, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_04 30:18

But here was okay, go say your thing. Okay, I just like I didn't have an image of this in my head, but I'm like, oh, I've seen this place a hundred times. Yeah. Like it's it's that long strip in the middle of the river. Uh-huh. Yeah, if you've been to New York City, you've probably seen it at some point. Yeah. Holy crap. That is I had no idea that was that place. Yeah. Yeah, it's literally like not it's not far from anything. It's right. Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Yeah, that would be. I didn't I didn't put it in my notes, but right now it's called Roosevelt Island. Yes. Right. And they're they have a they did a contest for artists to enter their work or at least propose uh some sort of artistic tribute to Nellie Bly. And there is uh the winner has a statue there now called the Girl Puzzle. Oh that's which is a tribute to the first autocosture.

SPEAKER_04 31:28

At this uh I'll go I'm gonna get distracted very quickly, but that's okay. Oh, it's a lighthouse. I was like, there is a little statue. No, it's a lighthouse. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Yeah, the statue was was probably in 2021. Was uh erected, revealed, whatever, uh installed. There we go. That's the word. Okay. Okay, sorry. Another quote. But here was a woman taken without her own consent from the free world to an asylum and there given no chance to prove her sanity, confined most probably for life behind asylum bars, without even being told in her language the why and wherefore. Compare this with a criminal who is given every chance to prove his innocence, who would not rather be a murderer and take the chance for life than be declared insane without hope of escape. So, like she's comparing it to a prison sentence, and like that's true. Anyone who was in this asylum, they were pretty much there. Yeah, until they weren't going home. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because the doctors didn't even try to like be like, okay, you're you know you're insane. Because Nellie was there and she dropped the the you know, act after a couple days, and they were just like, nope.

SPEAKER_04 32:46

So I wonder were were these you this might not be a something that you know, but like were these like funded by like you got X dollars per patient for the it was publicly funded.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Okay. So it was New York's first publicly funded asylum. But I'm not sure I'm not sure like where the funds came from, but I don't I kind of doubt that it came from family members or from the the patients themselves. You know what I mean? Yeah, like I don't know how funds were allocated or anything. I just know underfunding was one of the problems.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

So yeah, I'm I'm not sure. And it's it it's possible that like even though the newspapers had previously reported the conditions there, the public in general did not know how bad it was. They were just like, oh, those, you know, people in the loony bin are doing their thing.

SPEAKER_04 33:58

I just read that at one point there were 26 different institutions on the island, hospitals and prisons. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

On that thin little strip.

SPEAKER_04 34:11

On that thin little strip.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

That's crazy. Wow. Okay. I have a couple more quotes. Okay. Uh, as I passed a low pavilion where a crowd of helpless lunatics were confined, I read a motto on the wall, While I live, I hope. The absurdity of it struck me forcibly. I would have liked to put above the gates that open to the asylum, he who enters here leaveth hope behind. Yes. And then the last quote I have um a fire is not improbable, but one of the most likely occurrences. Should the building burn, the jailers or nurses would never think of releasing their crazy patients. This I can prove to you later when I come to tell of their cruel treatment of the poor things entrusted to their care. As I say, in case of fire, not a dozen women could escape. Everyone would be left to roast to death. Even if the nurses were kind, which they are not, it would require more presence of mind than women in their class possess to risk the flames and their own lives while they unlocked the hundreds of doors for the insane prisoners. Unless there is a change, there will someday be a tale of horror never equaled.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

So thank goodness that didn't happen. The asylum burned down in 1858 and was rebuilt on the same site. The prison hospital was destroyed in the same fire.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Oh wow. And this was in this was later that this was 1887.

SPEAKER_04 35:45

Wow. Okay, the hospital for incurables was built according to Wikipedia, 1866. That was way before. That was way before. Okay, you're in the 18th. Okay. All right. So it did. I'm sure this is 1866. I'm sure hundreds of peop thousands of people probably died.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Yeah. Oh my gosh. So yeah, not great. Conditions were very poor. Um after several days of lucidity and multiple denied requests to be discharged, an attorney from the New York World, the newspaper that Nellie worked for, intervened. And after 10 days, the asylum released Nellie at the newspaper's behest. So it took intervention from an attorney that worked for the paper to actually go and say, hey, she is sane. She is who she says she is. She is undercover working for us. You guys are screwed, by the way. So let her out. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So her report was published on October 9th, 1887. It quickly made Nellie one of the most famous journalists in the country. Wow. Her account of life in the asylum shocked the public and led to increased funding to improve conditions in the institution. Yay, she did it. Yay. Furthermore, her hands-on approach to reporting developed into a practice now called investigative journalism. Yay! She continued to produce regular exposes on New York's ills, such as corruption in the state legislature, unscrupulous employment agencies for domestic workers, and the black market for buying infants. Her straightforward yet compassionate approach to these issues captivated audiences. They loved her. She was just 23 years old. She, when this all went down.

SPEAKER_04 37:43

Holy crap, I forgot she was so young.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Yeah, she was super young. Okay. She had a significant impact on American culture and shed light on the experiences of marginalized women beyond the bounds of the asylum as she uh sort of ushered in this era of stunt girl journalism. So, like stunt girls were um uh um, well, okay, I have a quote from a biographer named Brooke Kroger who wrote a book about Nellie Bly.

unknown 38:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Uh she says, her series in October 1887 was a sensation, effectively launching the decade of stunt or detective reporting, a clear precursor to investigative journalism and one of Joseph Pulitzer's innovations that helped give new journalism of the 1880s and 1890s its moniker. The employment of stunt girls has often been dismissed as a circulation-boosting gimmick of the sensationalist press. However, the genre also provided women with their first collective opportunity to demonstrate that as a class, they had the skills necessary for the highest level of general reporting. The stunt girls, with Bly as their prototype, were the first women to enter the journalistic mainstream in the 20th century.

SPEAKER_04 39:02

So that's just that's so awesome.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

It's so cool. Her career didn't end there. I hope not. She was only 23. Yeah. She uh her career reached new heights in 1889. So just two years after that, when she decided to travel around the world after reading the popular book by Jules Verne Around the World in 80 Days. The New York World published daily updates on her journey and the entire country followed her story. On November 14th, 1889, she boarded the Augusta Victoria, a steamer of the Hamburg-America line, and began her 24,898-mile journey. To sustain interest in the story, the World magazine or the World Newspaper organized a Nellie Bly guessing match in which readers were asked to estimate Nelly's arrival time to the second. With a grand prize consisting of first, they they advertised a trip to Europe and then later on spending money for the trip. So they just kept adding to the to the grand prize. During her travels around the world, Bly went through England, France, where she met Jules Verne, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03 40:26

How cool is that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

It's like, hey, I'm doing this thing because I read a book that you read. You wrote. Thank you. Sweet. That would be so cool. I know. She went to Brindisi. I'm not even sure where that is. What is it? B-R-I-N. B-R-I-N-D-I-S I. England, France, Brindisi. Okay, it's Brindisi? Is it? Do you say Brindisi? Oh, probably Brindisi. If it's Italian, that's how I would pronounce it. I'm gonna say it's Brindisi. Okay. Uh the Suez Canal, Colombo in Ceylon, the straits settlement of Penang and Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. And she had traveled alone for almost the entire journey. Which in the 1890s for a woman was relatively unheard of.

SPEAKER_04 41:16

Yeah, I love it. She's probably they're like, we're gonna send you a chap around. He won't be able to keep it. Oh no. Don't bother. No.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

Her trip only took 72 days, which set a world record. Dang! I know. She is so cool. But she only held held the record for a few months before it was broken by a businessman, George Francis Train, who completed the journey in 67 days.

SPEAKER_04 41:45

I bet he didn't have as much fun.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Probably not.

SPEAKER_04 41:47

And he didn't get to meet Jules Verne. Yeah. Okay. Maybe I don't know. No, I'm just putting that out there. He did not.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Yeah, George, sit down. She'll have a cool last name, but sit down. What was his last name?

SPEAKER_04 41:59

I forgot already. Train. Train.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

T-R-A-I-N. Train. Oh, not oh, train. Okay. Like that train doesn't sleep. Apparently it didn't. That was probably his motto. This train never sleeps. This train never sleeps. Oh my god. Okay, anyway. Anyway, at the age of 30, Nellie married millionaire Robert Seaman, S-E-A-M-E-N, and retired from journalism. However, her husband died in 1903, leaving her in control of the massive ironclad manufacturing company and American Steel Barrel Company.

SPEAKER_04 42:41

Okay, I was about to say, if he left her without a will, I'm gonna go find a big inherited all around a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Good for her. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:50

Good for her.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

Uh in business, her curiosity and independent spirit uh thrived and flourished. She went on to patent several inventions related to oil manufacturing, many of which are still used today. Which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_04 43:07

She's awesome and I love her.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Yeah. She also prioritized the welfare of the employees, providing healthcare benefits and recreational facilities. She's awesome and I love and adore her. Yeah. Unfortunately, Nellie didn't manage the finances very well and fell victim to fraud by employees that led the firm to declare bankruptcy. So, yeah, people within the company took advantage of the poorly managed finances and just kind of ran it into the ground. After that, she went back into reporting. She covered the women's suffrage suffrage procession of 1913 for the New York Evening Journal. Her article's headline was Suffragists Are Men's Superiors. And in its text, she accurately predicted that women in the United States. States would be given the right to vote in 1920. So this was in 1913. She predicted we won't be given the right to vote until 1920. And she was right. She also wrote stories on Europe's Eastern Front during World War I. She was the first woman and one of the first foreigners to visit the war zone between Serbia and Austria. She was arrested when she was mistaken for a British spy while there. And while she was still working as a writer, Nellie died from pneumonia on January 27, 1922, at the age of 57. Oh gosh, so young. Yeah. In a tribute after her death, the acclaimed newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane remembered Bly as the best reporter in America.

SPEAKER_04 44:53

Aw.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

And that's all I've got for Noble Bly.

SPEAKER_04 44:57

Love her. And I'm definitely not looking up flights to Brindisi because I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_01 45:07

Okay. Well, you stop looking up flights because it's your turn to talk.

SPEAKER_04 45:11

Wait. So a round trip flight from Phoenix is only $970. That's actually way cheaper than I expected it to be. That's in July.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

That's gonna take like five years for me to save up for. Oh, I know. You know. It's fine.

SPEAKER_04 45:29

Um yeah. It's your turn. Oh, I gotta talk now. No, I want to book a flight to Italy. I'm not editing this, so you gotta Okay, okay, focus. I'm sorry. Um, no, I just wanna I love Nellie and thank you for talking about her.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

She I've closed the tab that I need. You're welcome for drawing that card, I guess. Yeah, well done. It's about time I got another another cool woman. I know. You were on a roll in the beginning, and then I've I've done a few. Yeah, and I've done a handful since then, but it hasn't been like bam, bam, bam, like it was. She's cool, she is really cool.

SPEAKER_04 46:06

My topic is only kind of cool, and it's probably gonna take like 10 minutes, so this will be a short episode. Okay. No, we can talk about some neat stuff. I guess we'll talk about neat stuff.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

I'll try to crack some jokes. Okay. Um, I joke that always goes so well.

SPEAKER_04 46:23

I like your jokes, and that's all that matters. Thank you. I had I got a card that said um, like by call. Do you have you ever heard of it? It sounds familiar. Yeah. I thought it was something else, and then when I didn't find that information, I was like, oh, maybe I just made it up. Or maybe I just didn't dig deep enough to find the one item that I thought it was about.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

Was it like, okay, when you did Diet Love Pass, it was also supposed to be a lake. Like originally it was supposed to be a lake. So why do we put lakes? I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 47:03

So that option If it's cool lake was had like one little neat thing, but I was like, it's just this. They found this it's just because it was on a trade route, right? Yeah, and it they found a thing there, like I can't even remember.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

I have they found a bunch of stuff that made us think it was a sunken city or something. Yeah, there was like the sunken city, and I'm like, it's nope, it's actually actually just right next to a trade route, and things got sunk there.

SPEAKER_04 47:29

Yeah, like as things happen, it's a trade city, so yeah. Um, so yeah, Lake Baikal is also in uh Russia, it's in southern Siberia.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Why did we put it on the list?

SPEAKER_04 47:46

I don't remember why. Um when I looked, when I when I got this, I was like, ooh, that's where there was that weird thing where they sent the Russian swimmers down and they got aliens and they were like in a whole alien facility and like it was all like a urban legend. But that's not I didn't find that at all.

SPEAKER_05 48:08

Is that it?

SPEAKER_04 48:09

So that's not it at all. But Lake by Karl is really cool. That's cool, good. Um, because it's a rift lake. What is that? A rift is a big hole in the earth that I know what a rift is. A rift lake. It's water in that fills that up. Okay, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna give you the the facts. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you what that is, okay? Okay. Okay. Um, it's in a rift valley. It's created by the bikeal rift zone, where the crust is just slowly pulling apart. As in, it moves a sixteenth of an inch every year. It widens. A sixteen, which doesn't seem like a lot, but a sixteenth of an inch every year. And this lake is about um twenty five to thirty million years old. So here's here's the stats on Lake Baikal. Okay. B A I K A L. Um, it is the world's seventh largest lake by surface area. It's 12,248 square miles, which is uh 395 miles long, 49 miles wide. It's the largest surface area of any freshwater lake in Asia. I know I'm like 12,000 square miles is larger than Belgium. Wow. So it's bigger than a country. Yeah. Um, it is the second largest lake in Eurasia after the Caspian Sea. It is also the deepest lake.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

Sorry, Kiercy is like smacking in her sleep.

SPEAKER_04 50:07

She's like cute. Um, it is the deepest lake.

SPEAKER_05 50:11

Oh, you're sorry.

SPEAKER_04 50:12

It has a maximum depth of 5,387 feet. That's really that's really deep. That's like scary deep. Yes. So the surface of the lake is 1,494 feet above sea level. Okay, we're at like 5,000 feet here. So it's at like 1,500 feet above sea level. The bottom of the lake is 3,893 feet below sea level. That's we that's wild. And my brain does not want to. Below the bottom of the water of the lake is sediment. About four miles worth of sediment. Whoa. The rift floor.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

What's down there? I want to know.

SPEAKER_04 51:09

The rift floor is five to six point eight miles below the surface. Oh my god. Uh the Baikal Rift is the deepest continental rift on earth. Dang. Which is that's crazy. I'm just like, I was reading these numbers, and I'm like, these are these are big numbers. Yeah. Um, it contains 22% of the world's fresh surface water, which is more than all of the Great Lakes combined. That's and we've talked about how much water is in the Great Lakes. Yeah, there's a lot of water in the Great Lakes, guys. A lot of but not as much as what's in Lake by Call. Um, it is the largest fresh water lake in the world by volume. It contains 5,670 cubic miles of water. Like those numbers are so big to me like that I can't even like yeah, like no, yeah, it's just not understanding processing. It's really cool. And um I'm gonna let me find my uh I gotta find there was a picture that I had that showed. Um of course, you know, you you close a tab because you're not using it anymore, and then you go, oh, I didn't didn't didn't say that picture there. Um because it showed like what it looked like. It was like a cutaway view of it.

SPEAKER_03 52:48

Uh anyways, I'll have to show you later.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

Unless it's all right. Did you know like by call has its own Nessie?

SPEAKER_04 53:00

It does, and I'm gonna talk about that just a brief little thing. So once I got a briefy, a briefy little thing. Just a briefy little thing. Yeah, we've we have forgotten how to do podcasting. Yeah. That's all I'm just gonna say. It's fine. It's a briefy little thing. There are a lot of like legends and folklore and stuff that um. Maybe that's why we put it on. I that might be, or it might just have been like one of those, hey, this is really cool. What's what's what's up with this place? I can't find the picture. I'll find it for you. But it shows it like how deep it goes into the earth's crust, and it's just like crazy. Like it shows like here's the ocean, here's Lake Baikal. It's crazy. It's crazy, crazy, crazy. Um, so we're gonna go right ahead. We've talked about the insane depth of this. Oh, it's also a fault zone that is seismically off active. Oh, that's probably notable earthquakes happen every few years. Yeah. Um, so there's three basins there's a north, central, and south um that range from 3,000 feet deep to like 5,200 feet deep. Um it's like not like just a flat bottom, it's kind of there's different ones. Um it is also, this is really cool, one of the clearest lakes in the world, which also blows my mind because it's so deep.

SPEAKER_01 54:33

Yeah. How far down can you see?

SPEAKER_04 54:35

Um, in the winter, that you can see uh about 100 to 130 feet deep.

unknown 54:41

Holy crap.

SPEAKER_04 54:43

Which is that's crazy. Freaky scary. Um but in the summer, because there's like uh a lot of life and uh Yeah, stuff moving the sediment. Um you it the you can only see about 30 feet down. Um it's rich in oxygen, even really deep, which is not normal because normally the deeper you go, there's less oxygen. Well, it's water. Well no, I get it though. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, like yeah, don't try to breathe in there anyway.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

But I would say there's no oxygen. But usually there's Well, there's one part. There's one third oxygens.

SPEAKER_04 55:24

For fishy fishy. But you can't breathe it. Correct. Um, it is very rich in biodiversity because of this abundance of oxygen. It hosts more than 1,000 species of plants and over 2,500 species of animals based on current knowledge. Uh huh. Actual figures for both groups are believed to be significantly higher because we don't know what's down there. Miles deep is really deep.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

We don't know what's down there. No, it's just like the ocean. Ness. We don't know. Nessie. Nessie's down there. Spiky.

SPEAKER_04 56:01

I don't think that they have it named. It's a water dragon of some kind. Yeah. I don't know. So three, I have three of the most um popular legends of this area. And these are like folklore legends. Okay. Um, so folklore. I do too. The most popular legend is that of the Buryat people who still live in the area. Um, but according to this legend, Lake Baikal appeared in ancient times as a result of an earthquake. Legend says the earth opened up and fire spewed from its depths, burning everything in its way. All people could do was run out of its way and pray to the gods, but the gods were deaf to their cries for help. Hopeless and tired, the people just continued to repeat two words. Bygal, which translated from Russian means stop the fire. Eventually, the fire actually stopped and disappeared as if it had never existed. On the place of the earthquake, a deep hole appeared and began to fill up with transparent icy water. And it became like Lake Baikal or Baikal. I know I was like, that's kind of cool. Um, well, except for all the fire. I mean, that kind of sucks. That does that's not fun. Um the second legend, of course, you have the more romantic side of things. Um, once upon a time, I'm just gonna read this because it's written better than I can chop it up in my mind. Okay, but talk loud. Okay. Um, once upon a time, there was an old man called Baikal. He was a famous warrior, an authoritative, rich old man who had hundreds of sons, but only one beautiful daughter, Ngara. Hundreds? Sons? Hundreds of sons. Okay, continue. The old man was hiding her from everyone, not allowing her to meet anyone. But once but one time the seagull sang about her to a cheerful, handsome gentleman whose name was Yennesse. Yenesse. Yenisi, I like Yennessee. Since then, oh wait, um what okay. I'm sorry, I messed it up. The seagulls sang to her about a cheerful, handsome gentleman whose name was Yenisi. Since then, Angara could only think of him. Baikal found out about that and locked her behind seven doors under 77 locks and decided to marry her to Irkut, a man from a neighboring village. But right before the wedding, Angara disappeared and he never saw her again. Heartbroken, he cried until his death, and the tears that poured out of his eyes turned into a great lake that was called Lake Baikal. Well, that's sad. Well, I'm hoping that Angara snuck out of those 77 locks and went and lived a happy life and didn't have to marry some guy she didn't even know or care to know. And I'm sorry that her dad was sad about that, that he didn't get his way. Yeah. Not really, but um, okay, the third legend. According to the third legend, the creator of like Lake Baikal was the flaming dragon. He appeared at sunset, glittering with fiery scales, seated in a chariot of pure gold. Sinking to the ground, he waved his fiery tail and the earth split from the impact. He waved his tail again, and the ice on the top of the mountains melted, falling down in powerful streams and filling the gap to the brim. Near the lake that appeared, everything was instantly covered with greenery. Birds fluttered over clear water and animals ran merrily. Having looked at the created miracle, the dragon entered the lake and sank to its bottom. But every 120 years he came to the surface and people organized great festivities in his honor. But once people forgot that the dragon must appear. Then the fiery dragon became angry and flooded the entire earth from edge to edge with water. Sounds familiar? Later, other tribes and other peoples appeared, but no one else had heard of the dragon. So basically, he was like, Look at this beautiful paradise. And then it everybody made him mad and didn't do what he said, so he flooded the whole earth. And then other people were like, dragon, what? This is a pretty lake. This is where we live now. I thought that was a funny little thing. Um, so like there have been all these different studies about things underground, under the lake and in the lake, and people are just like a lot of weird things happen. Um, and as is always this the way when you have an interesting place with legends and lore, um the it kind of becomes a place where people go for spiritual awakenings and uh spiritual journeys. Sure. So there are a lot of legends about the spirits um that live in and around Lake Baikal. Cool. Um the the the Baikal monster, often described as a large serpent creature, is one of the most famous myths. And it's kind of the same thing as Nessie and Champi and Ogopogo, where it's a water ginger. See this thing every once in a while. It's a plesiosaur that, yeah, that survived. That's my that's my I'm that's what I'm sticking with. Yep. Um they the the lake the bical monster um lurks in the deep waters and protects the lake from those who disrespect it, which I'm like here for this. You live in my lake, I'm gonna eat you. And I'm not gonna let you take a picture of me. So um there are also shy. Yep. He can do the whole little blur of the cameras, you know, like Bigfoot.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:06

Um, there are also humanoid myths that surround the lake, um, stories of strange beings that inhabit the area. People say they are guardians of the lake. Bigfoot. Um these are more yeti. No. Oh, yeti are Tibetan. Um there are mistriders and or the lake Bikal swimmers. Um, so it's considered that there's a special energy center, and like I said, people go there for like spiritual journeys and stuff, but uh like people go and just travel and absorb the energy. Um, but they have said that they can see um silhouettes of riders on horses in the fog that will rush directly at people who are standing in the edge of the at the edge of the water.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:54

Oh, it kind of seem it I might be getting my legends confused, but the Hawaiian night walkers kind of sounds like the same sort of legend. What's that? The Hawaiian night walkers, they walk the islands at night and protect the land. Oh, I love that. They will fight you.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:13

Cool. Will you tell that story one day? Okay. I love stories like that. Um I think they're called the Night Walkers. Disclaimer, that might not be the name of them. Okay, I'll look it up. Go ahead. Um, the locals believe that these uh figures are is the army of an old ruler named Hassan Joseon? Night Marchers. Night Marchers. Okay, so an old ruler named Hasan Hassan Joseon. H-A-S-S-A-N-J-O-S-E-O-N. Okay. Um, but apparently his he and his army went underwater. Um, they were oh wait, I'm sorry. I think I pasted something, and then you know how sometimes it'll mess everything up and like you're anyway. It says went underwater three times. Went underwater. I don't know why. I don't know why underwater. His army was crossing the lake in the winter, but the ice cracked and the water swallowed the whole um enemies that were following him. Jeez, oh my gosh. I cannot, I cannot make okay. Let's start this whole section over. Um, some people believe that the riders are the army of Hassan Joseon, who was being chased by enemies. His army crossed the lake, but while the enemies were crossing it, the ice magically cracked and the army sank into the water. Okay, and now the souls of those warriors keep trying to reach the shore, but they cannot. Oh, so they'll like rush right towards you if you're standing at the edge of the shore and then disappear. Interesting. So that's that's creepy. That's creepy. And I just don't want to go there when that happens. I I'm gonna pretend it happens. I do though. Like I'm I bet that probably happens in the winter because they would be like, oh, it's frozen, we gotta run, and then we can't make it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:13

Um so because um other modern legends about unusual appearances. Mothman. UFO. Yay!

SPEAKER_01 1:05:28

That might be why it's on the list.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:29

Yeah, that might be. I don't know. I didn't I don't have a lot of stuff. There's just like little clips. Um in the summer of 2012, several locals organized a UFO observation mission in the hopes of proving extraterrestrial activity. But you know, it was just mysterious lights, unusual weather phenomena, nothing. This is just a weather balloon. Just a weather balloon. Yeah, nothing, nothing. Um, but there have been reports of humanoid creatures that people. People have claimed to have encountered tall, slender figures with glowing eyes, often near the remote areas of the lake. Some witnesses report seeing them during foggy nights. Others describe a sense of being watched. And these are often associated and seen around the same time as mysterious lights or weird weather in the area. Okay. So they're said to have the pale skin, a humanoid shape, but like the distinct figures like the glowing eyes or long fingers. Classic aliens. Classic aliens. Eerie, unnatural movement. So they do believe like they're either extraterrestrials or interdimensional entities. Or both. Or both.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:48

Why not both? Why not both?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:50

So there are like a lot of these theories, and a lot of sightings have been started since the mid-20th century. Fishermen and travelers have claimed to see these figures emerging from the waters. And um the locals were like, I'm like local newspaper and government and stuff were like, okay, sure. You saw the thing. And they would just kind of like brush it away and be like, haha, funny, funny. Yeah. Because it was like ignore it because they don't want to draw like they don't want to spark a panic.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:25

Or and like this is also like um, you know, there's tourism there too. So they're like, and I'm like, dark tourism, man. Dark tourism to dark tourism is really in. I don't care about dark tourism. I care about booking rooms. Okay, sorry, that was our little headless um reference. References. But so yeah, so there is, but there is a consistent lit uh reporting of these same similar things, and it's by people who wouldn't really benefit from reporting this. Like people are like, oh yeah, I did see this weird thing, you know, but they're not like they're not UFO, like you know, some people are definitely seeking people um attention grabbers. Yeah. Um so a lot of early accounts were forgotten or chalked up to overactive imaginations, but people would kind of be like, oh yeah, we found this little snippet or this little letter that someone wrote to someone else about, you know, the things they saw. Um so UFOs are often seen. I do air quotes. UFOs are seen there in aliens. And there also is the theory that there are is an underwater civilization there. Ooh. And that what these aren't aliens and UFOs, they're just like people who live underwater coming up to the surface for a little hang time in the air or pick up supplies. Yeah, you know, you know, like like lake people are wont to do. They just want to dry out for a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:05

Yeah. What's it like in the air? That's what I'm gonna see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:09

Um, they have found some weird relics and stuff that they don't like really know where they're from. Interesting, probably just like ancient civilizations, you know, but nothing like no, it's the lake people. It's the lake people, I agree with you. Um, but yeah, that's kind of it. I didn't find a bunch of like really um like very specific specific things, just kind of generalized stuff. But I think it's really cool, and I want to go because it would be cool to stand near the edge of that and be terrified because I am terrified of things I can't water that I can't touch the bottom of.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:58

We should go paddle board there. Yeah, I have like 15 life preservers in the winter, you can see a hundred and something feet down, or I know how many feet up to 130 feet down.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:12

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:13

Yeah, I would love to go there. I would go in a boat, not in a paddleboard, because I could fall off of that way too easy. But like you can just like hang on to it. And the then the monster will just come and eat me. Not in broad daylight. I'm really starting to stress out. I do want to go there. I think uh the pictures are beautiful, and I think we should go.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:48

Let's I'll do what message is.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:50

If you'd like to donate to our travel uh fund, uh become a patron. Become a patron at or like um just like Susan.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:59

Oh, there are also seals there, which I think is cool. A very uh I forgot to mention that. They're very there are the I should have led with that because they're adorable. They're the bike all seal and they only live there. Oh which is uh be nice to that place because it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:17

Um, this is a picture of it, part of well, part of it. Oh, that's so pretty. If you show me that picture, I would not say, oh yeah, that's in southern Siberia. Yeah, it looks almost tropical.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

Yeah, I would say that's a beach somewhere. It's beautiful. I mean, it is a it is a beach somewhere, like an ocean, ocean beach.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:40

And yeah, it does look like it's got there's a little inlet and a little beach. It's really cute.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:45

It is my goal to get a mermaid tail. I'm going to swim with my mermaid tail in Lake Baikal.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:54

Okay. You can find our GoFundMe at GoFundMe Fund. Just kidding, we don't have a GoFundMe. But like if you want like our Venmo info, we can totally give that to you. Yeah, we can do that. Here's um, here's a picture of Lake Baikal in winter. Oh, it looks so cold, but I want to go there. But yeah, beautiful, absolutely beautiful. That's pretty. So yeah, just a short little fun. I I don't know if that falls under travel or folklore or aliens.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:26

I mean, with the travel, if like I know it wasn't the travel card, but you could cover all aspects of it.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:33

It covers all aspects, it's beautiful, and I would like to go there.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:36

Yeah, me too. So all right.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:42

That's all I was to say about it. That was fun. Just like by call. I'm gonna go there.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:49

You talked for like 30 minutes about it. Oh, good. I thought it was gonna be a lot less, probably because I just stumbled and tripped over half my words, but it was fun. It's been a whole few weeks since we did this. Yeah. Uh my chair is super squeaky.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:05

I'm trying not to move so much in mine because it is also very I'm just doing that ADHD thing where I'm not comfortable any in any position that I sit in. So ADHD or just getting old. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:16

Oh, okay. I had to look it up on the map again because I forgot. It's kind of right above Mongolia. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:25

Huh. So it's like oh okay. Yeah, it's just like right smack in the middle between Russia and Mongolia. Is any part of it in Mongolia? It looks like it's no, it's all in Russia. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:40

It's all in Russia. It's in umst. It's close to Urkoxt. I'll just like saying Urkoxt. Um, no, the it's it's a little ways away. That's the border there. Oh, okay. So yeah. All right. Tonkinsky National Park. Cool. Anyway, I want to go to there. It seems like it would be a lovely place to visit. And one day I will. Yes. Gonna make it happen.

unknown 1:14:17

Heckin' yeah!

SPEAKER_02 1:14:18

Don't know how. And looking on Google Maps, well, I don't know. They probably have a lot of it blocked out. It doesn't look really populated, so I'm sure there's like some resort stuff there.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:30

Oh, maybe yeah, that's really cool. If it's a national park, they might not have resorts there. Yeah, I don't know. It kind of depends on uh the laws and stuff. I don't know. Anyway, we should draw cards. Is that what happens next? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:53

Okay. You know how in Google Maps it has updates by visitors. This goes, this place has seals. That's all it says. Oh my gosh. And there's a little picture of a seal. This place has seals.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:10

That alone makes me want to go. Oh my gosh. I clicked on it. Look at his little face.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:16

He's so cute. Such big eyes. He's got big giant eyes. That's so adorable. You want to poop his little snoop?

SPEAKER_05 1:15:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:26

I love seals.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:27

I do too. They're so cute. Okay. This place has seals. It's just like that's literally this place has seals.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:37

There we go. This this insane asylum does not have seals. Oh. One of the many downsides of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:47

Okay. Um, yes, we have to draw cards and do the Which means we have to wake up.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:54

I'm gonna try to get her to trill into my microphone. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:01

Oh, we still wake up. I hope that picked up.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:03

She looks just so cute.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:08

Hi. Hi.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:12

Bye, Kirsty. We gotta move you out of the way. I don't want to move out of the way. I want to stay right here in the way. And I want to sleep on the cars. Help me shuffle them. You're so cute.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:24

She's adorable. Shuffle them. This whole being able to like stand up and move around while we're recording is is wild. Right? It's weird.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:32

Maybe if this sounds good, maybe we'll just do this.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:35

Oh, but I I love our mics.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:37

I do love our mics. I do smack my mic every time. I know. Okay. Um you can find us at easyly jessandhids.com. Yay! Um, but the where we're most active is patreon.com slash Jess and Hids and our Discord server, which you can find the link on Patreon. Jess just made a weird face.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:04

I did because I drew a card and I have no idea what this is. But we'll find out. Uh yeah, you can find the link to our Discord on our website as well. Um it's it's not on Patreon actually, because it's been a while since I've posted it. Um so unless you want to scroll down a lot. Maybe actually not that much because we haven't. We can we can make another post and we can just be like, join our Discord. Yeah, but um, it is definitely up on our website. And uh where else can you find us? Is it in our link tree? It is in our link tree. So you can find that on our Instagram profile.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:45

Just look up Jeff and Hid's on any social medias and we should be there. Yep, all the social meds. And you can find our podcast on all the podcast places. What did you draw? I drew this card right here. I can't tell you what I drew, but I'm interested. You didn't react to it at all. Oh, I'm sorry. I was trying to remember all the things that were supposed to say there, but I have forgotten them. And if you have something that you would like us to talk about, Jess and Hids at gmail.com. Yep, email us.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:18

Yeah. Also, um, listen to our other podcast. If you like actual play DD podcasts, we are we just released episode four of A Tale of Two Kobolds, where we continued Bang's little adventure. Uh he did have a good time. Yeah. And so next episode will be out on the 1st of August, um, where we will continue with Fizz's adventures.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:45

Fizz's Adventures. I have to get writing on that. I have ideas, but I have not finalized them. So I need to get busy on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:54

It's gonna be fun. Anyway, I I like the actual play podcast. I do too. It's fun. It's fun. But this podcast, it was nice to get back into this. Like it was weird taking a a week off.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:08

Because it actually meant a whole month. I know a whole month without, but yeah, because you know, every other week.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:13

Um, but yeah, we're back at it. We're back at it. It it does like I was like today, I was like, oh, I'm not ready, I'm not ready. But I it's just a it's just my brain going, you know, you're a failure. Yeah. Um it's been a it's been a mental health month. Like oh boy, yeah. Um, but we're we're climbing through, we're coming through and having some fun. So we're back. Yeah. We're back, baby. We're back, baby. I want my baby, bad baby, bad baby. Okay. Um baby back rich.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:55

Uh warm members. Warm, what's your you said you had yours. I do have one. So we uh over the holiday, the Independence Day holiday weekend, uh, we were at a barbecue at my sister's house. Yes. And she was saying how my little niece listens to our podcast. Um, and she's nine years old. Shout out to Juni. Um, Juni, we don't owe you a dollar if you hear this. No. Actually, no, we did it for a while. Yeah, we did. We did. Juni, when you hear this, um, have your mom text us and say give me my dala. Give me my dala, da da da da. Anyway, so Caitlin, um, my sister was telling me that the other night Juni had a nightmare and was saying, like when she woke up the next morning, she told my sister about it. And she said, I woke up in the middle of the night and I I was trying to remember the name of that that uh the animal that comes and eats your nightmares. Oh, and Bakusan. Bakusan, come eat my dream. Aww. Yeah, that that made me happy. That's so sweet. Yeah, I'm sorry she had a nightmare. I know nightmares it's cute that she wanted Bakusan to come eat her bad dream.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:13

Aww. Yeah. That's so cute. Warm ember from me. I didn't think of one. I said I was gonna think of one.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:27

Yeah. But I've been making you happy through this little Menti B that we've had. Oh.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:38

Okay. Take this little journey with me. I was gonna say, you okay over there? I almost got a face full of ice, but I'm good. Here's my little journey I'm gonna take really quick. Um, I was gonna say my little guilty pleasure, but then I remembered a quote from Tom Hillston who said pleasure should not be something that makes you happy, she should not feel guilty about. So I'm not gonna feel guilty about the fact that I have recently added another K-pop band to my obsession. I've actually been listening to them for a while. Um, but then I started watching videos and then I learned their names. Which is the wrong thing to do if you if you want to stay sane and be a K-pop study. Not be completely obsessed with Korean men. It's it's weird that once you learn their names, you're just like, well, now I have to know everything about them.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:37

Yeah. Um well, because you want to be able to tell them apart. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that sounded sound. Oh man.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:46

Sorry. Um, but when they change their hair in every video and sometimes multiple times in a video, yeah, and they change their look and they change their outfit and their attitude. I'm just like, wait, stop moving around so much. I have to get to know you. Um so ATs dropped uh an album last week, two weeks ago. Yeah. And I've just been listening to it nonstop. Yeah. Um, Stray Kids announced their album and their pre-order and and released a song. Or released a song that is really good. And I think like what like I love the imagery of that song uh that Stray Kids had run it. If you if you have don't know Stray Kids, you don't like K-pop, uh go watch the video anyway because it's a really good, beautifully done video. It's full of Korean mythology, um, full of Korean mythology. And there is like a couple weeks before that video dropped. I sent you that um ink painting technique, and it's like where you drop ink and like something detergent or something in water, and then you lay paper on it and it like marbolizes it. Yeah, it's beautiful, and I want to try to do it. Um, and then in that video, they do this whole dance scene on this floor that's been painted in that marbolized same style. Yeah, and I just was like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, look, we just learned about this. We just learned about this. Yeah. Um, so I think K-pop is what my little warm ember that's been bringing me joy. Yeah. Um, the past few weeks. Because also the other band I follow, X Love, is also announcing um a North American tour. They dropped the new album and they have uh a North American tour coming up. I'm not gonna get to see any of these people ever because I'm poor. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:35

So if you would like to go find you can join our Patreon or just send us money. Yeah, we'll drop our uh Venmos. Starting school soon. I'm gonna miss two days of work a week. I need money. I know, fame. Uh oh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:51

Um, but anyway, yeah. Weirdly, K-pop, which five years ago, if you said you're gonna like K-pop, and I would have been like, no, yeah, I'm currently heads down in my chemical romance. So no. I'm into alt rock, sorry. But here we are. Um yes. But yeah, they've just been making me happy. Just my little my little K-pop obsessions. So it's hard to be sad when the music's so just bouncy and light and slow it down, make it bouncy. Anyway, yeah, so I yeah, I think that's gonna be my warm ember because I've just been retreating into music during my our little Menti B that we've been having lately. So it's been great, it's been great, it's been helpful and positive and upbeat, and I'm happy. So yeah, yeah, that's it. I like that warm ember. Thank you. I have drawn my card. Yeah, it is a topic that I am excited to dive into. Cool. I'm curious that it might be a very deep subject, and I not deep like Lake by Call, but there might be a lot of information.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:03

I knew what you did there.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:05

There might be a lot of information, so I will probably not be doing a 30-minute chat next time. Okay, we'll see.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:14

That's fine. I have no idea what mine is. Oh, cool. No idea. It's probably something that you put on the list without telling me. So yeah. I just picked up a random card and I'm like, I don't know what that word is.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:31

Do you know what that word is?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:33

Uh hyperthemesia. I don't know. You put things on the list that I don't know about.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:40

I get all kinds of stuff. Um I'm just looking at the cards because I don't remember. Hypermesia? Hyperthemesia.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:48

But it's with an I H Y P E R T H I M E S I A. So it's not like I might have spelled it wrong. Hyper. Oh. What is it? It'll be a glimpse into the future when somebody draws this card. It's a brain thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:06

Oh cool. What is it? Um, it's basically like we were talking, we're literally just talking about this uh at dinner the other day. The ability to remember everything. So like idetic memory. No, it's not idetic. It's a highly superior autobiographical memory. Oh, that's cool. Fewer than 100 in people the world fewer than 100 people in the world have been diagnosed with this as of 2021. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:43

Okay, we'll learn more about it when we draw the card.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:45

Yeah. That's cool though. Cool. Yeah. I don't know why that's on the list of brain stuff. I love brain stuff. Me too. Fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:52

Yeah. Um, okay. It's a good up. And I have to drop this episode in an hour and a half. So cool beans. Yeah. It's gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:01

Edit away. Thank you everyone for listening. Thank you for um thank you for being you. Being you, being awesome. Yep. And um, you know, if if uh you need a little break, give yourself grace. Yeah, make a cup of tea or a warm hot chocolate.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:20

Take some deep breaths, little little five-minute meditations, touch some grass, go touch some grass. If you don't have near grass grass nearby, plant some.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:32

Look at the color green because as we talked about in the episode on Silvotherapy, even that can boost your uh dopamine. So yeah, chase that dopamine. Which is what responsibly.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:47

Chase the dopamine responsibly. Yeah. Um and we'll be back in two weeks. Yay! Yay!

SPEAKER_01 1:28:55

Talk to you then.