Cabbage Patch Kids & Nellie Bly

Hi besties!! Join us this week while we talk about the Cabbage Patch Kids and Nellie Bly!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hey besties, welcome to Plot Twists and Punchlines, the podcast where we bring you laughs, comfort, and questionable takes. I'm Steph, and I'm Mel.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Two best friends here to distract you from the world and talk about life books and everything in between. So grab your blanket, your drink, and your emotional support book boyfriend. And let's get into today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hey guys!

SPEAKER_03 0:18

What's up? We want to say Happy Mother's Day and Happy Mental Health Awareness Day. And a special shout out to the moms who are suffering from postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychosis. Cause you know, moms don't have it hard enough.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

It's not funny, but just the way that it was presented, man. I take nothing seriously. Sorry, guys.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

Genuinely. So happy Mother's Day. And I also suffered from really bad postpartum depression. So I get it, guys. Sorry. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I had um postpartum and antipartum. So I had oh, actually, you know, a lot of women get antipartum anxiety.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

I've never even heard of that.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

I feel like I told you about this where I used to like imagine people just coming up to me and punching me in the stomach.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do remember you saying that. That's crazy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

And then I told my doctor about it, and they're like, oh, that's normal. It's fine. I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Oh, I'm suffering here. You can't do anything for me. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

Yes. So I just wanted to give a special shout out to you guys because I understand how hard that is. And then a very, very special shout out to all of the minorities and people of color who are suffering from mental illness because you guys suffer the most. I say you guys as I like I'm not one of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

Um, and especially black men, because you guys are the ones who are treated the worst and diagnosed the least.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

So we're not gonna tell you today, but we have some exciting things happening soon. Yes, and they will be announced um next week.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Yes, yes. Um, let's just talk really quick about how last week we said we were gonna go pet a baby sloth.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Um, we went to go see the baby sloth. We we went there. Um the advertisement was I don't know if I misread it, but it said to come see the baby sloth for $10. Right. So we assumed it was $10 because it was $10 to get in and then $80 to pet the baby sloth.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

And you had to schedule it, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:35

Yes, and you had to schedule it. And I I know I said it was like five months old, but some babies are like fully grown by that age. I didn't really know anything about sloths. That sloth was like a baby. Baby, like so small. Adults should not be touching it. Yeah, like I don't agree. Even if it wasn't $80, I would have felt weird picking it up because it was it was so small. It was so tiny. I would have believed that it was three weeks old. Yeah. Like it was tiny, tiny. It was very small. So I did not like that at all.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

But we did get to see the adult sloth, and there is a picture that's gonna be posted this morning. It was so cute.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

I also have uh, do you have any pictures of the baby sloth? Because I have some.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

No, if you want to. I don't have some. I have one, but you can't really tell it's a sloth. It just kind of looks cute.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

You can't. It was huddled, it was like curled up in a fetal position sleeping when we went to go see it.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

It was it was a baby, but it was it was so cute.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

It was a baby. So I don't have any good pictures of it because it just like it was like a ball of fur because of how it was sleeping.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Um, so I did not like that. I'm not saying that it was unethical because again, I have no idea anything about animals. I'm just a dumb bitch who says things. It's just I felt uncomfortable with the situation. Yeah. But my feelings really mean nothing in that situation because I don't know anything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

I mean, it was in like the proper, like, you know, cave it was stored properly for lack of a better word.

SPEAKER_03 4:06

Like, it was like in a separate cage next to his mom's cage. So it wasn't like in the same cage as its mom, but its cage was touching its mom's cage. I don't think the adult was the mom. You don't think so? No.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Where would they have gotten the I think they literally just like adopted this baby sloth because nobody else would. Or it was just like an opportunity. Oh. I'm pretty sure. I don't know. I'm also just sometimes a dumb bitch who says.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

I feel like the owner was like, This is the mom. Maybe. And then she was like, Yeah, she doesn't like to be held. And then she started like talking about how I do remember that.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Yeah. Also, we stumbled upon the sloth. We were not supposed to be in there. Dude, we literally broke into this woman's office accidentally. So awkward. The door was unlocked. We walked in. It's fine.

SPEAKER_03 4:59

They told us that that so we asked other Patreons um, like, where the sloth was, and they're like, Oh, it's in that office. Someone just takes you in there. We're like, oh, okay. Well, they said it was like in this building. Right. And then um somebody like had taken them in there is what they said. They were like, Yeah, it's in that building by the front. Somebody took us there and we got to see it. We were like, oh, okay. So we just like walked into the building.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

We were not supposed to. No, the owner was like, Oh, the door, it was awkward, real awkward at first.

SPEAKER_03 5:30

She wanted to kick us out, but she didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Oh, it was very step and male coded.

SPEAKER_03 5:39

And there was no sign that says don't come in.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

There wasn't.

SPEAKER_03 5:44

There was not. It there was a lock on the door, but it was open. So we assumed we could go in. Because why would we think that the animals would be locked back there? Anyways. So that's the tale. So no, we did not get to pet the baby sloth, but we did get to see it and its mom. And they were both very, very cute. Yes. And we got to um uh brush horses because they let us brush the horses and almost fun other animals.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

It was a good time. I still had fun.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Yeah, it was fun. And it was only $10 ago, and so it was really great.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

Um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

But we both have a lot to talk about today.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Yes, let's get into it. So have you ever heard of the Cabbage Patch Kids? You're gonna hate me, but yes, I have. And I know them. Okay. And how do you know like a lot about them? Yeah.

unknown 6:37

Cool.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Sorry. I have never heard of like the theories behind them. I obviously know cabbage patch dolls. I had one when I was growing up. Um so most of us born in the 80s and 90s remember the cabbage patch dolls.

SPEAKER_03 6:56

I had a few of them as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Yeah. Some of them would like actually eat things. Some of them blinked. Mine had like a scented head. Mine did too. It smelled like strawberries. Okay. I don't remember what mine was supposed to smell like. I remember it smelling like baby powder. For some reason, I think it was supposed to smell like roses.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

Those do not smell the same.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Well, that's what I remember.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

So Well, you were also probably a kid, so maybe you like put baby powder on it, like trying to change its diaper.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Right. Or something like that. That could be it. Maybe. Something like that. Anyway, so we all know cabbage patch dolls, um, but they didn't just come from like some toy company or some toy maker who created Cabbage Patch. They came from a mystery that started all the way back in the 1800s.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

My what I'm talking about today is also from the 1800s. Creepy. Today we're just gonna be oldies. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

So first I'm gonna talk about the facts, like what actually happened and things that actually took place, and then I'll get into conspiracies about the things that actually happened. Okay. So it starts back in the 1800s with something called foundling hospitals. Um, these were hospitals where people could drop off their babies, kind of like the fire station right now. Yeah. You know, so people would drop off their babies uh if they didn't want them, and they would be raised in these hospitals and then eventually sent out into the world to find families. Um, so it's it was kind of like the first, like where the foster system kind of started.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Um, they used a device called the Foundling Wheel, which is basically like a drop box that allows the baby to be placed into the wheel from the outside and then it spins and they go inside. Yeah. Baby. Um, the parents remain anonymous and babies are just sent through the wheel from the outside in. Um, they were seen as like charitable, as good, you know, it's as a way to like as an alternative of um abandonment and infanticide.

SPEAKER_03 9:09

Uh sorry, one second. Just so you guys know, this is still a very real thing at police stations and fire departments. There is a place where you can put babies in this box where you can give up your baby safely and anonymously. They will not come find you. Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't know that. That's why we have so many babies still ending up in trash cans and dumpsters. Please, please, please share that information. You can take them to a fire station and they will ask no questions. They won't even see you. You just put them in the box. A bell rings when something's put in that box, so they will get them immediately and you just leave. Yeah. There's there's a screen, they cannot see you. Yeah. So please, please, please stop putting your babies in trash. Just don't do that. There are ways to safely get rid of your child. Yes. And no judgment if you want to. Being a parent is hard. No, that's up to you.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Um, so yeah, these were like seen as very like a good thing. Yeah. Um, so now we're gonna jump ahead to eight 1853. Um, a Yale college graduate and philanthropist named Charles Loring Brace founded the Children's Aid Society. Um, this was founded from him along with other social reformists, um, in order to just help provide for children who during this time there were so many orphans. Um, and this all started on the East Coast, like New York, Boston. Um during that time period there were thousands upon thousands, thousands of orphans um just kind of roaming the streets, displaced from their families, trying to survive. Um, and they wanted to stop that. So they uh created this foundation. Um, some of these kids even formed gangs, like for protection, because it was scary to live on the streets. It wasn't safe. And they would, I mean, there's a lot of backlash from the public about, you know, oh, these kids are begging and looking for food, and how dare they want to survive?

SPEAKER_03 11:30

These poor kids with no money or asking for food, how dare they?

SPEAKER_02 11:35

So, yeah. So, um, children as young as five years old would be arrested for begging in the streets, for fighting. Um, and then when they were arrested, they would be placed in lockup facilities with adult criminals. They didn't have like a separate. So Charles was like, we need to stop this. Um, so in 1854, they started what we call today um the orphan train movement.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

Um, it wasn't originally called that. It wasn't really called anything. It was just known that orphans would get on these trains and be transported. Um I can see it in your eyes. Um so between 1854 and 1929, over 200,000 children were transported from areas like New York and Boston to rural areas in the Midwest. Um, it was believed that the opportunity for success was there for these children and it would be beneficial to the Americans trying to settle in the West. So basically, he was like, Hey, you guys need help, and we have a bunch of kids. What do you say? I know what you're thinking. We'll get into that. So during the same period of time, around 1850, there was a huge push in America for technological advancement, for further advances. Um a man named Stephen Tanyer saw chicken eggs in an incubator in Paris and thought, I wonder if this would work on humans. So he invented the first ever human incubator. Um, but as most firsts, his designs were flawed. They would get too hot, they weren't stable, they weren't sanitary. Um so then came along Alexandre Lyon, who made some improvements to the original design, and he ended up being the one to run the first baby incubator exhibit in Paris, France. So he would basically charge people to come into his hospital and just look at the babies in the incubator to show, like, look, this technology is awesome. We can save premature sick babies. Yeah. Um, this technology, it was huge and very well respected because now they had a way to save babies. A few years later, enter a man named Martin Coney. Um, he said that he studied medicine in Germany and uh he kind of just brought the incubator like hustle to America. So essentially what this guy did is saw that this man in Paris was making money for charging people to come look at children in incubators. So he was like, I want, I want it on that. Um so he started putting premature and sick babies on display. First display was believed to have been in Omaha at an exposition there. Um, it was very successful. And then in 1904, Martin opened Coney Island, where he ran exhibits until 1911. Um and these were like the most popular. They would happen at like world fairs and stuff like that. They were the most popular exhibit.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

At this time, um, if they found dead bodies and they didn't know who had died, they would put the dead bodies on display too. And that was just like common where people would go hang out at the morgue to go look at the dead body, and they would like just drink coffee while they're hanging out near all of the dead bodies. Like that was like their hangout spot, like at the morgues where these dead bodies would be on display. So this is just crazy.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Yeah, and where these babies were displayed would be like close to like this was a time where human displays were a thing. So they had like a Native American human display and like crazy, just like insane.

SPEAKER_03 16:04

Humans are wild.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have to learn somehow, right? But curiosity also killed the cat, so that maybe isn't the best way to learn. Um, so yeah, thousands of people would line up to see these babies in incubators, and there was also a big push for adoption at that time because again, there were so many kids. They just didn't they needed families. Yeah. Um so uh Martin in America was considered like a pioneer for saving these babies that apparently hospitals couldn't couldn't treat. So he was praised. Um, and then around 1911 is when the incubator fad kind of slowed down, and then the orphan trains slowed down in the 1920s. So, all in all, during this time period, really the goal was pushing adoption, trying to help all of these displaced kids. It was also about saving babies that are premature and allowing them to grow up and live. So all of the men who were involved, not just Martin Coney, were highly praised for their work because everyone was like, this is so amazing. We're doing so many great things. Yeah. Conspiracy time. So first, um the tales about like how we tell small kids where babies come from. So like the stork dropped them off.

SPEAKER_03 17:40

Yeah, they just show up at your front door in a basket. Um have you gone to the episode of um Glee yet? Where Britney thinks that? No.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Okay. No, I actually haven't watched that show since a long time. Ah. Yeah. Um, so we have a history of not really putting a whole lot of merit into how the babies got there, just that they're there and time to raise them. Um, so first we'll go back to the Foundling hospitals. Um, I mentioned the device that they used was the Foundling Wheel. Yeah. Um, meant to be anonymous. What I didn't say is that the babies themselves often showed up anonymous as well. So babies would be dropped off without names, without witnesses, and without efforts to trace their origin, which was weird in that time. Okay to people. Um in some regions, the number of infants taken in remained high, even though local birth rates were declining. Oh. Yeah. Um so the point here is where was the proof that the babies are coming from the outside? And this is where the conspiracy starts. So not only that, but the records that these foundling hospitals kept were not descriptive, very vague, and again, purposefully anonymous. Okay. So the conspiracy starts with these people are like like cloning, right? They're making these babies. It's yes.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

I feel like every week we have to say this. We don't believe in what we no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

This is literally just the conspiracy.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

So, um, I just remember that one person who thought we actually believed in some of the things we talk about. I just want to put a reminder out there that just because we say it doesn't mean we believe you believe it.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

It's just what we found on the internet. Okay. It's yeah. So children who just appeared in folklore um actually had many different names. Sometimes they were known as changelings, which we talked about before. Um 1700s folklore, there was a little bit of a nicer term, cabbage patch kids.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Um, so this came from the saying that little boys came from cabbage patches and little girls came from rose bushes. But either way, there's this weird folklore that children were grown could be grown from the ground. Much like another, like, hey, the stork brings them, or they just show up on your front porch.

unknown 20:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

We grow them in our garden. That's a fun story. That wouldn't traumatize any young child. Anyway, um, there was even a silent film produced in 1896 um called La Faye a Show or The Fairy of the Cabbages. And I would recommend you watch it. It's very short, it's like maybe 30 seconds, and it basically depicts this newly wed couple on their farm. Although the videos that I saw of it really just showed the woman, the fairy. Um, but the lore of the film is that it's this newlywed couple. They live on a farm, and a f a fairy appears in their cabbage patch, and she just walks around to all these cabbage plants and grabs babies from behind them, and it's like they're like she's plucking them from the ground.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

It's weird, and it's silent and and black and white, so it's kind of creepy, right? It's not, it doesn't, it just gives weird vibes. Um, so I I would watch it just because it is it is kind of funny, but it's also like unsettling. It's especially because these are obviously real babies in the film, and she's just grabbing them by the oh yeah, they don't have CDI back then. No.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

Oh, she's grabbing them by the I wasn't imagining her like picking them up by the little patch of hair. Like, no.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

No, no, no, no. Like they're baby babies. Like what it's weird. It's weird. So uh now I want to jump back to the incubator babies. Okay. Um, when I was doing the research on this, I legitimately thought to myself, where the actual fuck are all these babies coming from? Like, why are there so many? Because these exhibits happen for 40 years. Babies and incubators. Uh, I mean, I have a theory. I'm excited to hear it. I just don't understand where they're all coming from.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

I think they're coming from unwet unwed women who are forced to give birth in private, which is why they're not on record at the hospital for giving birth.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Um, or it's clones. One or the other. There's no other option. It's one or the other. Um, so it turns out that I'm not the only one who thought about that before because these conspiracies are, they exist. So um the theory is that these babies were made almost mechanically, like test tube babies, like how we can do we can make a baby without the parts. We just need the DNA. Yeah. Right. Um, so the story that Coney told that was that he was saving all these babies that hospitals couldn't treat or save, and he was a hero, pioneer of medicine. But again, there was no paper trail, even from the hospitals. Like there was no paper trail that these babies were being born. There's no birth certificates, anything showing showing where these infants came from. They just kept showing up.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

Um, so I wonder if there was like like a serial rapist at that time who was maybe. Because a woman wouldn't be believed about that. And even if they were assaulted and they were raped, their babies weren't going to be like they were gonna be bastards. And they were gonna be cast out, their moms would be cast out, the babies would be cast out. So I wonder if there was just like a serial rape. And that wasn't like a thing. It was always a thing. Okay. Men were always men.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Women have always been raped.

SPEAKER_03 24:13

But that wasn't like a term. Like we didn't even use the term serial killers until I think the 70s or 60s. Like, so serial rapist wasn't a term. But I wonder if like that's what happened, and that's why it increased so much because there wasn't protection back then. Right. Like there wasn't condom. I and not that serial rapists use condoms. Right. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Anyways, anyway. Basically, what I'm saying is like they weren't on birth control, there was no protection against that. So if somebody was like going around raping a bunch of people and they knew their lives were gonna be destroyed because of it, they wouldn't have gone to the hospital. So it would have looked like the birth weight was going down because you can't get pregnant if you're already pregnant by a rapist. Right. So they're not getting pregnant by like their actual partners and then they're having the babies in secret, and they're a lot of women are ashamed when they are raped, and you guys shouldn't be, which is why they're doing it so anonymously. They're just giving the baby up because they just want to put it past them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Also, I'm sure affairs still happened back then. So like if they're pregnant by another man.

SPEAKER_03 25:18

I was just trying to think of a reason why it increased so much because I don't think there was just like a cheating train going on where everybody started cheating on everybody. Yeah. So I I was just trying to think of like a reason why it increased so much so fast. Right. And that was like the first thing that my brain went to, which is sad. That is sad.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Um, so the weird part about and the connection to cabbage patch kids dolls is that I don't know if you remember, but when they first came out, they would be sold with birth certificates. Yeah. Yeah. So, and they weren't like um marketed as come buy this toy. They were like, come adopt this cabbage patch kid. And some of them even came with like fingerprints and footprints. I did see a video on TikTok. Again, this is the internet, so anything can be fake, and it probably is. But there was a woman who found her old cabbage patch doll birth certificate, and it had the thumbprint and the footprint, and she like used AI to see if it was like real or not. And they didn't obviously didn't come back with a person, but a uh AI told her that like just the way that it was uniquely marked and the smudges, like that was it, they were real, like fingerprints and footprints. But AI is stupid again, yeah, exactly. So take that with a grain of salt. I don't believe that, but very wrong about most of the time. A lot of things, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:58

Second you say uh AI, I'm just like, even if she did really do that, yeah. AI is stupid. So that's and destroying our earth. Stop using AI.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Yes. Data centers, no. Um so basically the thought is that babies were being mass-produced to start the repopulation of people. Um the little bit of merit to this is that this was also happening at a time where America was obsessed with eugenics. So we were obsessed with was at a time where we're obsessed with still. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_03 27:35

It's where it started. I don't think there was ever a time where we weren't. We still are.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

That being said, um, so it was running rampant in America at this time. Everyone was obsessed with who is allowed to repopulate and having a one true race. Um there's also conspiracies about something called the reset, okay, which basically um is uh the thought that something happened on purpose to remove one piece of history and completely like just rebrand human population. So make the babies. This is a whole new generation of people who aren't gonna remember. What do we do with the people who do remember? We also started building insane asylums during this time. So the conspiracy there is that these insane asylums, and they were built before like these cities were up and running. Yeah. So there's like huge buildings, like just giant. I mean, you've seen pictures of old insane asylums. They're giant.

SPEAKER_03 28:52

Insane asylums back then actually used to be like self-functioning. So they would have like farms and stuff, and they would make the patients pick their food, milk their cows. Some would even be like big enough to have their own um post office and stuff like that. So they were giant and they were super self self-serving, yeah, self-sustained. Nobody would ever go there and can't see what's happening there. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

So, um, yeah, the people people are saying, well, what if these insane asylums were made specifically for the families of children who are removed from their families? Because those are the people who would really truly remember that part of history. And children would remember it too. However, when they go to their new home on in the Midwest, they're taught an entirely different history. Like this is what you believe now. If you don't, we're sending you to the asylum. And what do they do at the asylum?

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Fry your brains or shove ice ice picks through your eyeball. Through your eyeball. Yeah. Into your brain. Yep. Um.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

Until MK Ultra started, and they start doing a whole bunch of Oh yeah, I forgot I told you I was gonna do that. Because she doesn't know about MK Ultra.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

So I don't know a whole lot about MK Ultra. I I know that at one point there was a TV like broadcast interruption of what was supposed to be MK Ultra. It was a guy like in a mask and the behind it. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

I don't like that.

SPEAKER_03 30:43

But I I will put that on my agenda because I think that would be great for um mental health awareness month. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Um, so asylums were are another piece of like, hey, this could be real. Yeah. Um because why if they didn't already have a plan for these buildings and an idea of how many people they would hold, would they make them so large? It's weird. It's weird. I don't, I'm not saying I believe it. It's just weird. Um so now let's go talk about the orphans. Okay. Running rampant. Um, tens of thousands. Sorry. Um, tens of thousands of children were displaced in the early 1800s. History suggests for all of these children is that in the urban areas on the East Coast, business was blooming and people were just essentially having more sex than they could care for. Um right on. Yeah. This led which led to parents abandoning their children because they couldn't afford to have them, even though business was, you know, good, it wasn't good enough to have, you know, 10 kids, a household.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Um so there are actually some people who believe that some of these kids were just in the streets at the wrong time or were removed from their families altogether on purpose. Um, one of the adults who rode on the orphan train when she was a child was quoted as saying, I just finished eating and this matron came by and tapped us along the head. You're going to Texas. You're going to Texas. While some of the kids, you know, clapped and laughed. When she came to me, I looked up. I said, I can't go. I'm not an orphan. My mother's still living. She's in a hospital right here in New York. You're going to Texas. No use arguing. So um there are a lot of stories. Kid was just like, All right, I tried. Yeah. Right. Right. Oh. Um, so there's also a lot of stories of people who experienced the train stating that a lot of the time the children were scared, didn't know what their future held. Um, they were being separated from their families, eventually lost contact, and then older children, like double-digits early teens, were encouraged to break make a complete break from their past. Um, and then once a child got to their new lives, there was not a formal way they were introduced into families. They essentially just sent a letter out to everyone stating that the kids were here. And then people would come and it was literally like an animal shelter where you go pick your dog. These people would come out and just pick their kids that they wanted.

SPEAKER_03 33:30

I feel like I watched a movie or a show where that happened. Was it Ann with an E? I don't know. I think that's the name of the show. It's called like Ann with an E. And I think that's where I watched it. I don't know, I might be wrong. Sorry, interesting. But I I specifically remember like that happening in a show that I watched where there were a bunch of kids, they got off the train and there was just like a bunch of adults waiting, and they were like seeing which one they wanted.

SPEAKER_02 33:54

Yeah. And that's basically what happened. Yeah. It was weird. Um, so as far as their lives after being adopted, it's very mixed. Um, lots of families who took in these kids actually loved the kids and you know, supported them and gave them a great new life. Um, while others state that they never really felt like they belonged and were seen as just cheap labor. Um, and there were also signs that they suffered abuse in their new homes. Yeah. So um the main conspiracy here is was the goal to actually help these children, or was the goal more so to help us grow communities further west? And in order to do that, the people needed slaves. Um was there something more sinister like the reset that these babies survived but were not meant to remember and were only meant to repopulate and create a new history? I don't believe that. Sorry. I don't believe that either. One thing that I didn't write down because I didn't know if I would have time to mention, but the reason that the incubator bad stopped was because in 1911 there was a exhibit going on in Coney Island. And the story is that a carnival worker spilled hot tar on this ride called like Hellfire or something like that. Okay, and it caused a fire, it burned down the entire like Coney Island. It was just gone. The entire fair was gone, nothing survived except the babies. Oh, that's weird. I mean, I'm glad the baby survived, but that's weird. Yes. So that's the story of Cabot Tradch Kids. That is crazy.

SPEAKER_03 35:47

It's weird. It's definitely weird. That's crazy. I think my theory is right, but I really, really hope it's wrong.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Yeah, I don't like the thought of thousands of women being raped and then having thousands of babies. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:05

So because a man can rape two, three women a day and impregnate two or three women, but somehow it's still the women who are at fault for how many babies we have and how many abortions we have. All right. Yeah. What are you talking about? Um I'm excited. So this week, in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, I wanted to bring awareness to a brave woman who had a huge role in changing how insane asylums operated back then. Okay. And I'm going to call them insane asylums because that is what they were called, not what they are called now. Now I actually don't know what they're called.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

I feel like they're called like mental health institutions or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 36:58

Yeah. You know. Because I think even like the even like the really bad one is it's like the institation for um the criminally and criminally insane. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So today I'm going to be telling you guys the story of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known for her pen name, Nellie Bly. Have you ever heard of her? I've heard the name Nellie Bly. Really? Do you know anything about her? No.

unknown 37:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Well, you're about to know everything about her. Okay. I think she actually came up when I was doing my research becauseylums were a big part of the conspiracy. So Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:37

It was funny because it related so much like the kids and the asylum and that it happened in the 1800s. Yeah. So that's funny. We did not plan that at all. No.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

We didn't talk about who we were doing. Who we were doing, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

We have our notes in two different like tabs of our document so that we can't see each other's notes. Yeah. All right. So Elizabeth was born on May 5th, 1864. So happy late birthday. She was the 13th child out of 15.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Catholic.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

I don't, I I think just old. Just 1800s. People have a lot of kids back then. Well, uh, that goes back to the lack of birth control thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

My grandma had eight kids. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 38:19

Yeah. That's crazy. Anyway. Um, and then her by her father George, because the 15 kids were by two different wives. Okay. Um, and then her dad passed away when she was only six years old. So she grew up wanting to go to school. She did attend school in um Pittsburgh, but unf nope. Yes. Uh, but unfortunately, she had to drop out because of finances and not being able to afford to go to college because she was an orphan. Oh. Yes. So in 1885, there was an or article written in the Pittsburgh Dispatch called What Girls Are Good For? Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Already mad.

SPEAKER_03 39:03

And basically they said that the only thing that we're good for is making babies, making dinner, and making clean floors. Okay. Great. When Elizabeth read that, she decided to write a response back under the pen name Lonely Orphan Girl. And the editor of the column was so impressed by her that he offered her the opportunity to write a piece for the newspaper under that same pen name. And the article that she wrote was called The Girl Puzzle. And in that, she argued that not all women need to be married and would be married, and that what was really needed was better jobs for women. Wow. Good for her. The second article she wrote, it was called Mad Marriages, where she talked about how divorce affected women. In it, she argued for a reform for divorce laws. And this article would be the first time she used the pen name Nellie Bly.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 40:05

Yes. She used Nellie Bly instead of the lonely organ girl because back then it was normal for a woman journalist to conceal their gender so readers wouldn't discredit what was said. Because, you know, yeah. Silly old woman. Yeah. Well, I mean, also possibly can't that possibly can't be true what she's saying.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

No, but also like around this, you know, in the future, there's like Salem witch trials. So you would be branded a witch if you spoke out against society. So there's a lot of reasons why women would conceal their that's scary. I think it was the 1600s. Was it really that long ago?

unknown 40:46

I think so.

SPEAKER_03 40:46

Yeah. I'm on a laptop. One second.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

We need to go to Salem. Um, I've been, I love it. I have also been to Salem, but it is it's just it's one of those experiences where one year anniversary.

SPEAKER_03 41:01

We'll go to Salem. Okay. So next October. Okay. That sounds good. Oh well, I mean, no, it would be next February. Okay, so not one year anniversary because that is literally right after your wedding. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:12

Okay, so yeah, I'm not taking my honeymoon to Salem, Massachusetts. No offense to Lizzie Borden.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

If you're there, we'll go to Salem. Yeah. Maybe like a month or two after.

SPEAKER_02 41:22

I just I yeah, I love Salem. It's one of those experiences where like you can do it multiple times and it's different every time. It's so good. I've been a couple of times. Yeah, 1600s. Okay. Okay. So it was prior to all this. Very prior.

SPEAKER_03 41:37

But still. By like 200 years. Okay. Moving on. So, yep, she can she didn't conceal it for fear of being a witch. She can she concealed it for fear of being discredited because obviously a woman can't say anything smart or intru. Um, and then after this article, her editor was so impressed by her that he actually offered her a full-time job at the paper. Wow. Which she accepted. Nice. So Elizabeth focused her work on the lives of working women and started a series of investigative articles on female factory workers. And she actually went undercover as a poor woman to get hired at a copper cable company to get firsthand experience on how bad the working conditions were for women and children in a typical factory setting, because this was before child labor laws. So kids were put to work. Um, and I think that also goes into play with where your kids were going.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Yes. So the reason that the orphan train stopped is because in the 1920s, the government was like, hey, this seems a little unethical. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:55

Yes. Um, so a lot of people applauded her for shining a light on what I would say was a very thinly veiled truth about what was happening there because women had been speaking out about what was happening for years, but you know, they're just women, so no one took them seriously. We needed somebody named Nellie Bly to tell them. Yeah. However, the newspaper started getting a lot of complaints from factory owners about her writing, and she was then assigned to cover women's pages, which would be like fashion, society, gardening, basically what the usual woman journalist would write. So she became dissatisfied with that and decided to do what no other woman did, and she left and went to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent. Wow. Yes. And she spent six months reporting on the lives and customs of the Mexican people. And again, this is like the 1800s, so that was not. Yeah. That's huge. That's not like a thing, especially for a woman to do. Her articles were later published into a book form called Six Months in Mexico. In run report, she protested the imprisonment of local journalists for criticizing the Mexican government, then criticizing a dictatorship under Porfirio Diaz. And when Mexican authorities learned of Elizabeth's report, they threatened to arrest her, which prompted her to flee the country.

SPEAKER_02 44:39

She's like, okay, I'm out.

SPEAKER_03 44:41

She was like, I am not fit for a Mexican prison. I don't care for any prison. So when she was safely home, she accused Diaz of being a tyrannical czar because he was suppressing the Mexican people and controlling the breaths. So she was just a badass. She was just amazing. Yeah. Go Nelly. Go Nelly. And when she came back, the editor was um, like when she came back from Mexico, her editor started giving her like the same types of articles that made her leave in the first place, like the gardening, the family stuff. So she decided to quit and move to New York City. She was like, I am done with this. But in New York, no one would hire a woman, even though she had experience, even though she wrote all of these articles. She went to Mexico. She was doing like investigative journalism because she was a woman. No one really cared. So after four months of working and now being completely penniless, she talked her way into the office of Joseph Pulzer's newspaper, The New York World, and she took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to pretend to be insane to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the woman's lunatic asylum on Blackwell's Island.

SPEAKER_02 45:57

Girl. That's crazy. Oh my gosh. Pretending to be insane. Like, was she not afraid that she was gonna get like her brain jiggled around?

SPEAKER_03 46:09

That's crazy. Well, I mean, they didn't know what was happening to the patients in that that was the whole point.

SPEAKER_02 46:16

That was the point. Okay. Okay. Got it. Still, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 46:22

That is crazy. That's brave. She said in her book that she didn't really believe the um conspiracies. Like she didn't believe the rumor in the gossip mill that they were being mistreated. She was like, Well, these are sick people. They're with pay, like they're with doctors, like they're being treated the way they're supposed to be treated. So she didn't really have any fear going in. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

That's yeah, that makes sense why I would have fear because I know the history now, but yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 46:52

You knew they were sticking ice pegs in people's eyes. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

She just heard gossip out and she was like, Also, I don't believe that all the people in there were doctors because my guy, Martin Coney, said that he studied medicine in Germany, but there's no documentation that he actually practiced medicine. He didn't have a degree, anything.

SPEAKER_03 47:09

I mean, back then you could just say you were. No fact. And people would believe you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Yeah, there was no question.

SPEAKER_03 47:15

There was no goal. All right. So when she first took the job, she asked her boss, like, How are you guys gonna get me out? Like, how long am I gonna be in there? And they were like, We're gonna send you in for seven days. We don't know how we're gonna get you out, but don't worry, we will. And she was like, Okay. I mean, at this point she was penniless. Like, and this is the first time she was gonna get a job.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

Like, she understand her reasoning. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 47:43

So she was like, All right. And then it was pretty much up to her how she went about doing this.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

Um, her only rule was that she had to be honest about what she saw, like, not just write about the bad things. Like her feelings didn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:02

If you saw something good, write about it. If you saw something bad, write about it. Like it's the unbiased. Yes. And that was basically like her only instructions. That's fun. So she decided to get admitted into the facility by staying at the temporary house for females, which was a boarding house for working women, and then just being crazy there, and then having them like basically um call the cops on her and have her admitted. Yeah. So that was her goal because there was really only two ways to get sent to that island, which is doing that, or by being crazy in front of your friends and having your friends commit you. And she was like a journalist, so she knew like that wasn't gonna happen. And she didn't want to bring like her family into this. Yeah. That makes sense. So she decided to stay at the boarding house. And do you know how much she paid for a night at the boarding house? How much? 30 cents per night. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

That was probably really expensive back then.

SPEAKER_03 49:04

I actually don't know. I should have done the conversion.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

I did not. They charged him 25 cents to see the incubator babies.

SPEAKER_03 49:10

Mm-hmm. So more than incubators are worth. Yeah.

unknown 49:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:17

Um, in her book, she said that she only brought 70 cents because she knew that if she ran out of money, they would lock her up quicker and she didn't know how much it was to stay there. Because nothing gets you locked up faster than being poor. Yeah. While she was in the boarding house, she had to share a room with another girl, and because there were so many women there. And she kept telling her roommate that everyone looked weird there and that there were too many working people and people shouldn't have to work, and that everyone there looked crazy and they were gonna murder people, and you never know what crazy people are gonna do.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

I was hoping that you would tell us how she got admitted because there's so many. I mean, people went women would go to insane asylums for like anything. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_03 50:04

She just kept saying that people shouldn't work. So then um at night, she refused to sleep. She just sat up in her bed all night staring. And this obviously terrified her roommate, and her roommate like was I was like, I'm not sleeping with her. Somebody else needs to sleep with her. You guys need to kick her out or something. Like, I'm not sleeping with her. So then another woman who was like super nice to her, um, like volunteered to sleep with her and actually ended up putting like a blanket around her so she wouldn't get cold at night, and was like just treating, like talking to her like a mom who was talking to like a wounded child. It was really nice. That's so nice. So then the next morning, um, Elizabeth was like, I gotta turn this up a notch. So she started having a tantrum and she was like, I can't find my trunk. Where's my trunk? I need my trunk, and just like throwing a fit about her lost luggage. Um, and when people were trying to like help her find it, she just kept saying that everybody looked crazy and she didn't know what they were gonna do to her. So then they called the cops on her. Yeah. Oh. So she she lasted one single day in the boarding house. She did a good job. She did do a good job. And it was funny because um I read her book last night. Um, it was very short. I was gonna say you read a whole fucking book.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

No, I don't sleep.

SPEAKER_03 51:40

So shock I mean, not completely shocking because I know you, but like um, and in her book, she was like, I really didn't know how to act like a crazy person. I've never seen a crazy person before. I've never been around them, so I don't really know what to do. So I'm just gonna um not sleep. I'm just gonna keep my eyes wide because I hear that they don't blink as much. And it was just funny that she got sent very fast when she was like worried that she wouldn't be able to convince anybody that she was crazy. All right, so they called the cops, the cops took her to a judge, and in her book, she said that the judge was that the judge was really nice. Sorry, y'all, I really didn't sleep. Um, that the judge was really nice, and she said that she hoped that all women who were like actually truly sick were able to get a judge as nice and kind as he was, because that's what they deserved. He's saying and the judge, which I know this was written in the 1800s, so like she didn't see it as a red flag, but I kind of did. The in her story, um, in the book, she said that the judge was like, you know, you seem like a very kind lady. You definitely belong to someone. Like, you're such a darling. Everybody needs to treat her nicely because she looks like my daughter.

unknown 53:08

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 53:10

That kind of takes away the yeah. Yeah, yeah. So she was like, Yeah, you have to treat her nicely because she reminds me of my daughter. She looks like my daughter, so everybody treat her nicely.

SPEAKER_00 53:20

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 53:21

Yeah. So, but anyways, he treated her very nice. Elizabeth said that he was very kind, that he like had a kind face, and like she could tell from she said before she even talked to him, like she looked at his face and she was worried because he looked so kind and he gave up such like nice vibes that he wasn't gonna be able to do. He wasn't gonna commit her, yeah. Yeah, so I I said what I said, but he must have just been like a nice guy, either way, because before he even talked to her, she was worried about that. You can definitely tell yes in the eyes. Exactly. Um so but he did declare her insane because in front of the judge she was still talking about her luggage. He asked where she came from, and she was like, um, or he asked if she was a foreigner and she was like, Yeah, and he was like, Well, where are you from? Like, what made you come to New York? And she was like, I've never been to New York, and he was like, You're in New York right now, and he she was like, Nope, I've been here. And just like, yeah, yeah, it was silly.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

I wish I could meet this woman. This is like ad investigative journalism, like top tier. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:33

So she was great. She got committed. They sent her to a hospital um for like examination for a few days, and then she said in the book that she was worried that she wasn't going to be able to fool like professionals. Um, but she did, and then she was shipped off to a boat and sent to the island a few days later. But here's the kicker The second Elizabeth got off that boat onto the island, she stopped acting insane. She wanted to see how they would treat a normal woman. Okay. Yeah. So at the island, she never once pretended to be mentally ill, she was completely sane. Wow. Um, and she wrote that the more sane she acted, the crazier they thought she was. Which is crazy. And even though she was acting sane and lucid, she was still forced to undergo the same treatment and torture as the other patients. So even though she would be like, I'm I'm not sick, and even though she wasn't acting sick, she was still uh being treated the same.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03 55:47

Um, after a few days, she started to plead with them to release her because she was not sick and she was fine, but they refused to let her go. During her stay, Elizabeth experienced the horrible conditions firsthand. The nurses behaved, in her words, obnoxiously and abusively, telling the patients to shut up and beating them if they did not. The food consisted of grilled broth, spoiled meat, bread that was little more than dried dough and dirty, undrinkable water. Their dangerous patients were tied to each other and tied to the beds and forced to lay in bed for days at a time. That's horrible. The patients were not the dangerous patients, just like the normal patients, were all made to sit for hours at a time each day on hard benches with very little protection from the cold. There was waste all around the places where they would eat. So they would have to eat their gross food next to a bunch of trash. Yeah. And there were rats crawling all over the hospital. And on her experiences, she wrote, What? Expecting torture would produce insanity quicker than this treatment. Here is a class of women sent to be cured. I would like the expert physicians who were condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up, make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. 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 doing. Give her bad food and harsh treatment and see how long it takes to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck. Yeah. Another memorable experience, Elizabeth said or talked about, were the baths that the patients got. The bathwater was frigid and the buckets were poured over their heads, after which the patients were roughly washed and scrubbed by the nurses, and then the bathwater wouldn't be changed. So the next patient would have to bathe in the same filthy water, whether that patient was sick or not.

SPEAKER_02 58:04

That's disgusting.

SPEAKER_03 58:07

And even when the water was eventually changed, the staff did not scrub or clean out the bath. So they just threw the next patient in the stained dirty tub. The patients also shared bath towels, with healthy patients being forced to dry themselves with towels previously used by patients with like skin infections, boils, and open sores. Gross. Elizabeth recall recalled the bathing ritual with disgust, saying, My teeth chattered and my limbs were goose fleshed and blue with cold. Suddenly I got one after the other. Three buckets of water over my head, ice cold water, too, into my eyes, my nose, and my mouth.

SPEAKER_00 58:49

Ugh.

SPEAKER_03 58:51

After 10 days, her boss finally secured her release from the asylum. It's about time. Oh my god. Ten days of this. Her report published in The World, the newspaper, and later released as a book, which is what I read last night. And it was very well. Oh, yeah. Um, I will give it to you. I don't I don't have it in person, but like I'll show you where I got it. Um, and caused a and there's also a movie with Christina Ritchie playing her.

SPEAKER_02 59:22

Oh, I don't know if I want to watch that. I do, but I haven't watched it.

SPEAKER_03 59:25

I need to. I'm going to watch it tonight. Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt myself. Um sorry, so her report, published in the world and later released as a book, caused a sensation and brought her lasting fame of the release or of her release from the island. Elizabeth wrote, I left the insane ward with pleasure and regret. Pleasure that I was once more able to enjoy the free breath of heaven. Regret that I could not have brought with me some of the unfortunate women who lived and suffered with me, and who I am convinced are just as same as I was and now. Yeah. Elizabeth's report prompted a grand jury to launch its own investigation with Elizabeth assisting them. And the jury's report resulted in an $850,000 increase in the buck in the budget of the Department of Public Charities and Corrections. The grand jury also ensured that the future examinations were more thorough that and such that only the seriously ill were committed to the asylum because they got a lot of shit that a sane person was sent there. Wow. But and her report also led to a lot of other investigations of their local insane asylums, and it brought a lot of corrections and like fixings of insane asylums. I mean, of course, they still treated the mentally ill horrible, but she did lead the way of stopping that. That's awesome. And later, she actually decided to do um, you know, the book Around the World in 85 Days? She did that and wrote a report about it. Nice. So she's just an amazing woman. Yeah. She did die in the 1920s, um, because obviously she was born in the 1800s.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:18

Right. That was like sad, but also a happy. Yeah. Happy little little story. Huh. And that is my segment for today. Why uh did they used to put insane asylums on islands? Is it just so they can't escape and re get back into society?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:41

I mean, not all of them were on islands, this one just happened to be.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:44

Yeah, I was thinking of like Alcatraz and then Well, that's a prison audit.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:49

Yeah. And that was a prison for like that was like a maximum security prison. So that was so that like that one was specifically made so that if you tried to escape you would be eaten by sharks and you couldn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:03

Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:06

I I don't know why they opened this one on an island.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:10

Just maybe space. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:12

I have no idea. It is New York, and New York is like on the edge where they do have a lot of islands, so that didn't really like That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't really think anything of it when I saw that it was an island.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:24

Yeah. I uh have you ever seen Shutter Island with Leonardo DiCaprio? Um, I think so. That's where he was like crazy at the end. Yeah, so the whole movie you're sitting here thinking thinking that he's like an FBI investigator and they're going to investigate the literally what Elizabeth did.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:48

Yeah, and his partner was there with him, and then the partner to be like a doctor or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:53

The partner's his like psychologist, and he goes through periods of lucidity where he remembers what he actually did, and he and it it ends up like he killed his family.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:03

Yeah, I I I did watch that.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:05

Oh no, no, no. His wife killed his kids.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:09

I don't I I watched it so long ago and I only watched it once. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Wow. Alright, and that is all for our segments today. Do you have a beef of the week?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:22

So my beef of the week is that people can complain about the cold and the snow and the ice and the ick, but I can't complain about the heat and the sun and the ick. I mean, just be like me and complain about everything. Stopping you. Such a good idea. Such a good idea. It just bothers me because I'm so sorry that my favorite season is winter. I'm happy for you that you like summer, but you complain all throughout my favorite season. So I'm gonna do it to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:59

I do complain throughout your favorite season. Yeah. I I hate the cold. Um, I also hate summer because it gets too hot. I like the fall. Yeah. That is my favorite season.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:09

Yeah. Fall is well, winter's my favorite, but fall is a close second. Those fall nights.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:14

Yeah, it's just it's beautiful outside. It's not super cold. Everything is cinnamon and apple scented. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:22

Halloween. Yes. Yeah. Fall is fall is great. And it you don't have to like winter. That's not what I'm saying. You don't have to like it. Just don't give me a bunch of shit about liking it. Liking it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:36

And then not, you know, complaining about summer. Like, just let me have this. And I'll let you have your summer.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:46

But you know what I mean? Yeah, I just hate them all.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:50

I want to live, I I'm sure there's not this place. I just want to live in a place where it's just like where I can be comfy wearing sweaters and pants every single day, all day, no matter what the season I you know how like summer um California is always like kind of nice, like warmer, kind of like beginning of summer feels. I want a state that's like that, but with fall vibes. Because I don't want to wear t-shirts every day, all day. I want to wear sweaters because they're just like nice. They're comfy. I like hurricans where you can just like grab yourself. I want to live somewhere where it's just like 73 every single day.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:29

73 is too hot, but okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:32

Okay, true. Most people think 73 is hot. I think that's the perfect weather, and I will wear a sweater outside if it's 73.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:41

Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy. I want to take my sweater off right now, indoors.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:46

This um, this weekend coming up is my sister's graduation party. And my mom was like, What are you gonna wear? And I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna wear like a sweater with a skirt and tights. And she was like, It's mid May. Like, what are you talking about? And I was like, it's gonna be 67. That's freezing. That's like perfect weather. Are you kidding? Uh that's what my that's exactly what my mom said. She was like, that's the perfect weather. And I'm like, that's cold. That's cold for me. I'm gonna wear my sweater and I'm gonna wear my boots and I'm gonna wear my tights.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

But I'll wear a skirt. You do you. But yeah, that's my beef of the week.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:24

All right. My beef of the week is parents who don't discipline their kids, and then when they act up in public, they like blame you for it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:36

For having a problem with how their kid is behaving. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:40

So I was at a baby shower a few weeks ago. Um, and this kid came up and hit my daughter, and she told me, and I was like, well, if she hits you, tell her no the first time. If she hits you again, hit her back hard. And my thing is don't start it, but make sure you finish it. If she's gonna push you, push her down hard enough that she can't get back up and push you again. So if somebody punches you, punch them hard enough that they're gonna be too scared to punch you again. Like, don't let them give, get a second chance to put their hands on you. I didn't know who this kid was, and I didn't realize that her mom was sitting right next to me when I was telling my daughter to hit her. So she like gave me a look and I looked at her and I was like, what? She was like, you just said to hit my kid. And I was like, because your kid hit her. And she was like, Well, she's just a kid. I was like, so is my daughter. Right. Your kid is older than my daughter. If you're if your kid is okay with hitting, we're okay with hitting. Okay with hitting. Yeah, let's all do it. You don't want your kid to be hit. Teach her not to hit. So, and then she like started going around telling people that I was a bad mom. Okay. Discipline your fucking kid. Teach them not to hit. Right. Because if you hit my kid, she's gonna kick your ass. Because I taught her to do that. And I stand by that.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:08

Absolutely. Yes. Oh my gosh. Kids are so crazy. Their own kids can do no wrong.

unknown 1:08:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:16

And I'm not like that. Like you see. If my daughter does something bad, I I will straight up tell her that she did it bad. And then we talk about ways to correct it. And not just like you suck. Right. Right. Right. I have another beef of the week. And it's just movies and TV shows. Every single kid's movie and every single TV show involves bullying. Mm-hmm. And like, it's not even like uh the moral of the story is to not be a bully at the end. No. They're just bullying for fun. Yeah. Like, why? Why is it so just normalized to be dicks?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:57

Yeah. I don't I I agree. There's like because it and it's even like little stuff, simple as like, oh, this girl's hair looks weird. Yeah. You know, and then talking to everybody about how her hair looks weird.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:13

Something like even something as simple as everyone's talking, and then like one person just like makes a rude comment and everybody just like brushes it off. Or like where they're talking, somebody gets excited and starts talking, they're like, oh, you're being so annoying right now. Stop talking. And then it just like moves on. Like there's no like corrective action about that. Like, why are you teaching yourself like why are we teaching kids that that's how we should be?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:37

Mm-mm.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:38

Yeah. So I guess that's my second beef of the week. I hate that. That's like a big because now my daughter just like you, you know, she just randomly says mean things and she doesn't think they're mean because she just hears them all the time. And I have to be like, hey, that's mean. You can't say that.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:56

And she'll be like, oh, okay, sorry. And like when she thinks about it, she realizes that what she said is mean. Right. But it's just so natural to her because everything has that. So I started like really limiting what she's allowed to watch. But every single thing has bullying in it. It's fucking ridiculous. I hate it so much. Like that's annoying. That is very annoying. And not even like bullying in a friendly way, the way that we do it. Just like straight up bullying.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:24

Yeah. Well, and kids aren't like a seven-year-old is not developed mentally enough to understand like sarcasm and how we bully each other. Yeah. There's no they just don't understand.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:38

Yeah. There shouldn't be bullying at all in anything for kids unless it is to show that bullying is not nice. Yes. Like if that is the purpose of that, then yeah. Yeah. But there's like so many shows where there's just like, oh yeah, that's the school bully, and then they end up helping him at the end. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

Like, what do you Yeah. Yeah. Man, when I have kids, if I ever hear that my kid is bullying someone, that's the end. Mm-mm. You better say goodbye to all your pri privileges.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:11

It's gonna be lockdown city. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:14

I will not take that.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:15

Where I I did just say that, like she says mean things. She doesn't mean it purposely. My my daughter is so sweet, so empathetic. She would never bully someone.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:26

No. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:28

Unless it's me.

unknown 1:11:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:31

I wanted to cry when she came out this morning and she said, Miss Stephanie. And she came over and like hugged me. I was like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:39

She literally is just like the sweetest kid. Um unless it's me. Then she's mean. All right. So that will be all for today's episodes of Plot Twist and Punchlines. Follow her TikTok at plot twist underscore punchlines pod and on Insta at plot twist underscore punchlines underscore podcast. Steph, tell them where they can find you.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:57

You can find me on Instagram at Steph Smiles XX or on TikTok at Vessel V-E-S-S-I-I-L. What about you?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:05

You can find me at Mel of a Time. It's like Hell of a Time, but with only one L. And with Mel.

unknown 1:12:14

It's okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:16

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SPEAKER_03 1:12:29

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SPEAKER_02 1:12:33

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SPEAKER_03 1:12:35

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