The Mick and Pat Show: Reflecting on Evil in Society, A Moral Pursuit

I, here's a thing that about like a ring doorbell, mm-hmm, is it like you see all the things that happen outside your door and all the weird people who just loiter and linger, mm-hmm, and you just can't forget it. They're gonna be better. He didn't have it, yeah, and now you're just like the amount of people that stand outside the front of my door, mm-hmm, make me really, makes me really comfortable. And I live, I live in an apartment Complex and it's not like I can kick them off right, like we all share the same landing, right. There's been times of my ring doorbell where I've Got a notification open it and there's like six or seven people outside the front, just like drunker high and Horsing around. I'm just like I don't think I ever knew that happened. You know, through like various times of the day or night, mm-hmm, I would just be sleeping. And now that I know I'm less, I'm less happy about it. You know, yeah, cuz it just makes me think like emergency situation, if we had a run, if we had to get out of the house, or if Billy Jean was trying to come home and they were giving her a hard time, you know, or if just like, whatever they're doing, you know there's been a couple times I've seen people get in arguments and fights outside, unlike in our apartment complex, when they're all like really drunk right and over, clout stuff right, and I'm just like dude, I Guess I always assumed that was happening, just cuz you know it's college town and all that. But then, like it's another thing, when, like you're getting the notification that is happening right now. Or that it was happening while you're sleeping and you didn't wake up or something. I think that's the thing that keeps me up a little bit about it, yeah like the, I Hate when I get my car robbed.

How many times has been robbed? In college it happened a time or two and it's like when my head was sleeping, my car. If you could take a tape measure. Mm-hmm was you know, 25, 20, 25 feet away. Hmm and I was being violated.

My car has never been robbed.

You know, my garage has been a couple times, hmm but yeah, so I got like it's someone like just that, like the fact that you were right there yeah, you were. You were existing Within a literal arms reach in some cases and somebody was Just abusing your stuff yeah, taking things like just disrespecting you and I.

I felt that way when I found out my mail was getting stolen. Yeah, like. And they were stealing it by prying open the mailboxes with crowbars and just breaking the locks. And here's the worst part about that they got your coupons. No, no, no, no, no, no, like I don't give two shits. It's not like I have that important of mail. Mm-hmm, if someone like opened up a mailbox by just like pulling the little hinge down, mm-hmm, pulling your mail out of it and closing it right when you live in a condo or town home or apartment complex or leave, even in a neighborhood that just has a communal mailbox area, mm-hmm, if people break that off, usps doesn't fix it. Mm-hmm, usps stops delivering mail. You have to go to the post office every day to pick up your mail. Mm-hmm, and that is such a headache dude it is, and I can't tell you how many things the post office lost Because, like they, they do not keep good track of this stuff when it's just sitting in the post office and whatever Basket they have labeled as, like your apartment or condo, they send it to that room where they keep the Ark.

Yeah, end of race.

Exactly right, and Like usually your mail gets into that facility and it's out the next day, mm-hmm. And like your postman or postwoman is like the person who's doing a good job organizing it, keeping organized, making sure it gets to the right place Mm-hmm, the people at that, actually, facility don't give two F's and I can't tell you how many times, dude. I went and like I'm talking like things that have cash value Lost, mm-hmm. I was like this sucks, mm-hmm, I hate this. If I ever catch that person stealing mail, I'm gonna break their face in. Oh yeah, like I was so mad about it Did I debated putting a camera Because I usually can park near the mailbox at my apartments? Mm-hmm. I debated putting a camera in my car to catch them, mm-hmm. And I was just so furious it. You know it's an inconvenience and it's probably not really something to be that mad about, because I never had anyone cash any checks or anything like that in my name. It was just like it was more like their Thoughtless attempt to steal mail, mm-hmm, from an apartment complex full of people who aren't probably Getting that much like valuable things in their mail like fat, like Like College kids are a little bit of a complex like it may be. A couple of young families, right? No one is having like big Uncached checks landing in their mailbox that and they're probably going for that identity theft stuff.

But honestly I don't know. I have, I have like a, two different things that do.

Identity monitoring for me, mm-hmm and like with, like the actual credit unions, and I've had nothing. Mm-hmm. You know, I've had it like warnings that like A username or a website got hacked, that I had something with, but I've had no one ever Do it. My wife has had it a couple times, but really after the first couple times we had her, she's redone all of her passwords and you. We haven't had any issues since. But Anyways, the reason I was so pissed was an inconvenience and the fact that it revealed to me the incompetence of the US post office. Like every US post service, like it was, I don't even think that much of my mail got stolen. Mm-hmm, more of my mail was lost than stolen. Yeah, because of the people at the post service losing my mail. Yeah, I was so mad dude. It's like do you get a phone call? Or?

anything or just like nothing. There was a piece of paper, yeah, taped to the mailbox, yeah, saying if you need your mail go to the mail box.

Yeah, saying if you need your mail, go to the post office. And I was furious, bro. Oh yeah, I was livid. But Anyways, hey folks, ken, welcome to the Mickey Pat show, wherever Pat decides to cut this up and have a start. But this is our Halloween episode of the Mickey Pat show. Maybe you just listen to our Halloween episode of bruising reviews this year, mm-hmm. But we got a little bit of a different show here. You know, I I decided I wanted to tell a Scary true-to-life story, one of my you know it's it's weird to say you know, because it's a tragedy, it's a, it's a murder case, but it is one of my Go to examples of how like fact is Actually more horrifying than fiction. Oh yeah, and then Pat's got. I don't know Pat, like what do you have? Like a what's it called fear of the? Help me out here the term for when something is bigger than you and like it's intimidating and you're overwhelmed by the fact of, like you know, something that's at a societal level. Help me out dude.

Everyone knows the word. Right now they're screaming. I'm stuck on it too. You're stuck on it Because I'm crippled in fear of it.

Anyways, pat's got something that is grandiose, that is also horrifying, that he wants to mention and discuss in society.

We just societal issues to address.

Yeah, we figured we'd just take you all on a little little short adventure here, but you're probably familiar with the story I'm going to share. Pat, fortunately, is unfamiliar with it, and so as we get into it, pat you know, feel free to kind of ask questions as I begin walking us through it. This is the case of Cassie Joe Stoddard, who was murdered in Idaho in 2006. She's a young high school female and just like any night during the school year, especially in the fall right, she's hanging out at her house. Her boyfriend's hanging out with her. It's end of September and some things start going on that start to spook her out, and her boyfriend sees that she's so kind of disturbed over things that he even calls his mom trying to get permission to stay the night with Cassie to try to help her, because Cassie was just home alone and one thing led to another and he ended up leaving and, unfortunately, cassie was brutally murdered that night. She was stabbed over 30 times and it became aware to the police and the crime scene investigators that she was stabbed by two different types of knives, which led them to believe that they were two perpetrators. And the truly horrifying part about this is that the murderers did this and essentially the theme of a famous film at the time and it's still a famous film series, but the scream films. They wanted to replicate that and they're known as the screen killers. Brian Draper and Tori Adam chicks they are too high school. Well, they were two high school students, classmates of Cassie, and, yeah, I guess some some pretty unsettling footage here that I'm going to share of the two of them talking while they begin discussing during their fourth period class the plan of what they're going to do on the night of September 22, 2006. This footage is brought to me by John Johnson's video archive, so if you want to see like the full tapes, it's about 30 minutes of compiled footage there. They just John Johnson has it all there for people to watch and kind of follow the order of events here. But yeah, brian Draper and Tori Adam chicks, they ditch their fourth hour class and they sit down. They're recording on their VHS camera as they begin discussing their plan to murder Cassie this evening.

I was using a gemeinsam结 here. Okay, we're gonna have your plan right now for tonight. It's gonna be cool. Thank you, my dad, for showing me that.

That first sample is, like I said, brian and Tori sitting together ditching their fourth period. As they look at the camera and under their breath detailing how they're writing their kill list for that evening, and as they're doing so, a teacher or another student begins to watch them and pay attention. They become to kind of get skittish and concerned about their plot becoming a becoming known and they kind of close up books and move. And later that evening it's hard to tell if it's exactly the evening it seems like it is and the way they're discussing it, but the cameras of September 21st 2006, so the camera might have been a day behind, but you can, we can see footage as it appears Tori is driving the vehicle while Brian is recording on their way over to Cassie's house and they discuss this. And this is the thing that many detectives review over and over, because it has helped us in understanding adolescent minds and approach to crimes, especially when they're virgin killers, where they haven't ever committed serious crimes before, they don't have records, really they don't have a passive violence is that there is? This sense of this is just perhaps a prank, a game. We're not going to fall through with it and we've seen this before when detectives, detectives have interviewed children and teenagers who have shot their parents or shot siblings, or killed you know another relative, whatever it may be, and that's the idea of one thing leading into another and feeling of like being out of control and the game leading to something that all of a sudden is very real. And so, as you kind of listen to this, listen to the excitement in their voices and this idea, because to me it sounds, you know, and I want to say this, they're both criminals, right, what they're doing is wrong, of course, and we shouldn't glorify them. But there's a valuable psychology here of in the mind of these two killers, as they're trying to essentially impersonate the two murderers in the film screen in that original film, rather than a single murderer that is chasing down these high school teenagers and trying to kill them, and two of their classmates, each kind of playing a role, in order to essentially duped their victims and murder them and get away with it and evade being caught, which is cited as an inspiration for Brian and Tori.

There should be no odd against killing people. I know it's a wrong thing, but hey oh hell, you restrict somebody from it, they're going to want it more. We found our victim and, as it may be, she's our friend. But you know what? We all have to make sacrifices. Our first victim is going to be Cassie's daughter. She's going to be alone in a big dark house out in the middle of nowhere. How perfect can you get? I mean, like holy shit, dude, I'm horny just thinking about it. Hell yeah, I was 950, september 22nd 2006. We know there's lots of doors, there's lots places to hide. I locked the back doors. That's all a lot. Now, we just got to wait. I just killed Cassie. We just left her house. This is not a fucking joke. I stabbed her in the throat and I saw her life. This body just disappeared. Dude, I just killed Cassie. Oh fuck, that felt like real. I mean, it was so fast. Shut the fuck up. We gotta get her out of the street, okay?

So we can hear from that several things detailing the crime, you know, and it's shocking because it's so raw to what was occurring. Right, it is. It is a recorded, not manifesto necessarily, but just a documented, I would say, exposition of the emotions that and like in kind of the excitement and panic as well as that they're feeling. And it's if you change it, though that is just like any recording of people going to a party, leaving a party, like the sound of their voice, even the panic, could be the same thing that, like, teenagers feel psychologically when they're trying to like we got to get our story straight. We're leaving the party, the excitement of like we got away from the cops, but now we got to get our story straight for our parents, right? All that, combined with the, the gravity of what's occurred, I think is like a very just, visceral and like horrifying reality, right, like this. This, to me, is scarier and more horrifying than the actual film that these murders were inspired by, but with that, Cassie's killers were caught rather quickly. Both of them were caught and after afterwards the police interviewed them trying to get story straight. The footage came to light rather quickly. They did the classic, you know, separating them from one another, interviewing them in separate rooms, having them turn in stories mix up and with that they were both sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. So you know, cassie, of course, like she did nothing that really we could even find in the footage and that detectives could find as a motivation for why they would want to murder her, and again, not like it's really every victim's fault, right. But usually when we see these kind of things, you know, even when we see, like the school shooter paradigm, there is a target for a reason they think is just such as like bullying or going going unpunished for something they do being a teacher's pet, whatever, it is right. I noticed love triangle, whatever. And Cassie, they even say, is their friend, yeah, but they view it as a, as a something to glorify her, almost seems like, in a way of like that she gets to be this victim and it's just shocking to me and I think, for for one, you know, a lesson we can take from this is how did they, how were they able to do this? And really what occurred is that they locked her back door after they snuck in and they flipped the breaker off in her basement and then flipped it back on when she didn't come downstairs and flipped it off a second time, trying to lure her downstairs. And once that didn't work, they went upstairs and I think I think a lesson and all that is like the security of her home was easily broken. You know they had stolen a key somehow to get access, and I think we should kind of consider the security of our own homes. Who has access to that? Who has, who has keys that might not be the most responsible around them? And how do we tell our children or our spouses to react in these situations that are unsettling, where there's a lot of flags going off and they might be second guessing themselves, they might be thinking that they've overworked it, overhyped it and they're embarrassed or ashamed about asking for help. And I just think, like there's a lot of things you know and I don't want to take up too much time, but I encourage everybody to look up essentially the breakdown of this, of this murder, and kind of get into more of the details, because there's there's many people have, you know, spent a lot of time breaking it down and what. What we should take away from it as lessons to protect our own children and our own families, what we should take away to kind of identify red flags among youth psychologically. But all that said, you know there were some things that were clearly violated and even then, like Cassie knew something was up, her boyfriend knew something was up, and they kind of went against better judgment to kind of appease parents and things like that. And so I would encourage people to kind of consider the case after looking into it, to reflect on like how could you perhaps take steps to protect your own family, your own children, in a situation like this? Now, of course it's. It's hard to expect and prepare for those things. But we, we can only do what's best, and I think what's best from like these tragic circumstances, these you know more horrible than we can imagine kind of cases, is to not let someone like Cassie be murdered in vain, but to like learn from the lesson and try to you know better our own circumstances and approaches to these kind of situations and you know and like it, the truth is, is like it's a tragedy. But man, is it not something that was like a precedent case that is often referenced in like criminal psychology, you psychology, and like within that, I think there's been a lot of people that at least I've heard in my own like inner circles of people who I know have done especially like youth crime investigations that they've referenced this to identify patterns among like troubled youth who seemed like Not be our typical telltale signs of Someone who is angry and vengeful, but someone who just has an absolute imbalanced psyche and is likely to murder a friend.

Yeah, and the normalization of things the weirdest. How about in the like the our bruised interviews, if you listen to that scene where these kids are dabbling in really dark things and they are Normalizing it and having fun with it and it's like pulling everybody into it. I Think about this here. And then these sorts of things where people is a classic thing, where people take something like this and then they fantasize about it, glorify it and then act on it. You know, yeah yeah, and it's.

It's just so bizarre to me like mm-hmm, like even I Don't even think Hollywood is that bizarre, like I just watched him the the most recent Batman film again, where the Riddler has like a twitch following mm-hmm. But the Riddler is so jaded by what he believes to be a corrupt system, mm-hmm, that that is like the modus up, modus operandi, for everything he does is that he wants to punish a system that he thinks has failed at justice, mm-hmm. That's not even close to how dark reality really is. Like reality is really like I could murder my friend and find excitement in it and treat it just like I I'm concerned of getting caught for sneaking out. I'm like that is horror and that is Truly like the things that we need More insight into. You know, I mean in in more time to kind of grasp, and I think that's like where, why this case became so pivotal. Because, like we had never had such clear documentation of what the mind and justification was, especially among, like a cooperative pair. You know that alone, two people cooperating to murder is rather rare, especially if it's outside of a romantic relationship, mm-hmm, and then to have it documented is like such another thing, and so I just know like this is Reference so much and, as you said, you know, in today's day and age we we see it kind of like a normalized that, rather than stepping in and taking action to To pull out our phones and record For for the cloud. I think like we see this and like it's horrifying to me. But it's also just as horrifying to me when I see someone recording someone getting like you know mowed down the street or you know mobbed, mm-hmm, and not doing anything about it because they'd rather record it for the YouTube, for the world star and in the clip you played just now so listen to it before did they say in this one we just showed the?

they said some long lines of like we're gonna make history.

No, they didn't even make something along the way. They didn't say something along the lines of like fame, like it wasn't even a fame seeking it was. I think it was definitely, don't get me wrong, they were mimicking Mm-hmm. You know, they're mimicking something that was already popular, right, but like it's not like that they Mentioned and I could be wrong, you know and the more Diagetic long form documentaries that people can watch, where there's like 30 minutes of the footage they recorded, right, I'm sure they might have mentioned something Mm-hmm, but the idea wasn't to get get caught and become famous Mm-hmm, the idea was to get away with several murders by simulating what they watched in this movie. And so that's just so hard, I don't know. It's so hard for me to wrap my head around, like, how Twisted does the psyche have to become Mm-hmm to not only like, not call out the what's the term I'm looking for, not wrongness, but just call out the Psychosis and a friend's thinking, like, if, like cuz, at one point one of them suggested this, right, the truth is, is not they, they didn't both speak at the same time at one point either.

Usually there's an alpha and a beta in this situation.

Yeah, and the alpha says I want to do this, and the beta says, okay yeah, and a lot of people think that I believe if I had of them corrected by their identity. A lot of people believe that Tori was alpha, brian was the follower and One of them suggested it and the other one began feeding into it and like even that, like to not call out ones, like what the fuck did you just say?

right.

Haha, that's funny, man, as a joke, right, and then like, but for both of them to have this Kind of egging on psychosis of like, oh, wouldn't it be funny if? Mm-hmm. Yeah, but what if we did it? What would it look like? Mm-hmm, okay, so we are gonna do it. So how do we do it? And like that, edging on to the point where it takes action Mm-hmm. It's so rare among Among youth, mm-hmm. And then just like I said, to have it documented is insane. It's alright, I don't know, pat, what are your thoughts? I mean, it is a tragedy, don't get me wrong. I'm not gonna try to say it's not a tragedy or anything like that, or that there was anything Cassie really could have done, like to prevent it. Like they were very clear and planned out what they're targeting. But what is kind of like your reaction to that, especially, you know, like in as someone who has the children of their own, as someone who has been in a friend group, that is very Edging and egging on right, like I know our college stories and like we definitely were part of friends who, like I would say peer pressure right, I would say like pressure was a part of the friendship or like you understand, at least in a minute way, like how mob mentality or right culture could take over in a little bit of you know egging on and stuff for sure.

And so you know when I because I was unfamiliar with this until we just started listening to tonight and I think that what was chilling to me about it was, as we the first time I listened to the through the, the audio dialogue, I didn't know it was real Meaning. You know, this kid's like. The kid said something that's kind of like maybe semi-relatable. He's like you know I'm killing, is they made it illegal? And If you don't want people to do stuff, don't make it illegal. Like if someone just said that's like the most Teenager thing I've ever heard right, but like someone, just if someone just off the cuff said that you wouldn't like comedians have said that you wouldn't immediately be like, oh, you need to be institutionalized immediately, you need to be locked up immediately. So because, meaning, in this company, you're here. I was hearing this conversation unfold just in the background. Well, you were prepping the clip and I was like, oh, these like kids are just chatting about something. Then I heard one or two things where I was like, prior to the reveal of, like, what's actually happening, I was like, oh no, like these kid, these kids, are about to kill somebody. Yeah, for real.

I remember seeing your face change.

I mean, I was only an hour ago.

Yeah. But like you looked at me like is this real? Yeah, like you had a you know way softer smile expression. Oh, yeah, and I was like yeah, dude, this is real, they're about to, they're about to go kill their friend, right, like they're psychotic. You, your facial expression went so Dark, like it was. It was like it was like you realize. This is beyond belief. Like how could this happen?

Well, because it's like at first I thought you were listening to like To idiots on a couch, have a podcast or something right like just like just just saying things back and forth, just saying stuff, just, you know, postulating whatever. And then it's like, oh no, that that's about to happen, like, oh oh, this is actually like Not only a real, they're really like recording it. Yeah, it all clicked together in the, in the fact of Suzana in 2006, prior to like cell phones and stuff. It was very, very intentionally documented intentionality there around their planning and the. Yeah, I think that In some ways, I don't think that society has changed much at all over a long period of time. Hmm, but the same time, I do think In other ways also. I think that we have like the Decrated in some areas too, and I think I think there is kind of like an event flow to it, of like Like some of the books we were just reading, where, if you're looking at like the versions of the Wild West we were just we've been reading about, it's just like blood and guts and and like an eye for an eye and like senseless killing mm-hmm but then you get to like the 1950s and you're like now there's like a. Was there like a mutual respect for one another, law and order for people? Was there a Understandable way to treat each other so like? Are we always degrading in society, or are we even in flowing throughout time?

But it does feel I mean you say that and I didn't think about this at all before mm-hmm but it does really remind me of kind of the essence of Of the judge, from like blood meridian, like mm-hmm, just his, the idea that like, do you remember the final Statement about him in the book?

I do, I do that he'll always be there and he'll always be dancing, but like I feel like these kids are not on his level remotely.

Not on his level, but I it isn't like. It feels like a like. It feels like a persistent evil.

Right, you know what I mean like meaning, like, and we'll get into this when we review, like blood meridian, but something about his like I'll maybe make an argument about is the judge evil Later on. Okay, so that's like a whole thing, like meaning, the, and I think in some way I Can't even start to unpack that right in the moment, get your thesis ready, for we do that podcast yeah no, so or is he? Is he evil, or is he pure evil? Or is he just the id Sure Right Versus also like these kids also being like Holy shit, like they hadn't even thought that these kids were just like, ah, what happened here was pure evil. Influence upon a youth, yeah, upon kids' minds. They'd doled too much in evil stuff, they had believed lies they had isolated with one another, and their mutual thoughts and plans with one another led them to this gross stuff. And so, talking about the ebb and flow of things you know also, I feel like this goes right into some of the stories I wanted to talk about too, which so I'll just kind of hop right into it and you'll see where this pulls right through. When I was in seventh grade, our teacher had us read a book that was Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and Great author. The Fahrenheit 451, it's set in the early 1950s. It's set in a future society where books are banned and quote-unquote firemen burn any books that are discovered. The protagonist is a guy named Montog, and he's a fireman himself. He's a book burner himself who begins to question his duties and he's kind of becoming woke in the true sense, as I use that word, the OG sense of the word, woke. He is becoming awakened to kind of what's going on and he's trying to figure out his own personal beliefs versus his loyalties to what's going on around him. And there's two key things that I always key into from this story at least I remember from seventh grade. I haven't read it, re-read it since then. I need to re-read it to kind of see what else I can flesh out from it. Just keep in mind I've never read it, right, right, and so the these two things are just little tiny pieces of the story. It's a little bit like also like Orwellian type vibes in the story of futuristic, dystopian type stuff.

I think that's interesting, that even that term's used Orwellian Right, because I don't think most people think, one, that Orwellian is horror Right, but I objectively think Orwellian wrote in sci-fi horror Right. I don't know if there's anything I've read by Orwell that wasn't horror. And two, I think Bradbury did it better. Like, I'll be honest, I think Fairnight 451 is better futurist horror than a lot of Orwells. That said, I'm not too firm on that, just because I know I haven't read as much of Bradbury as I have of Orwell. But I do think that, like I think, when we think futurist horror, people immediately think Fairnight 451. I don't think most people think of like Orwell's work anymore. You know what I mean. Right, I think most people would mistake Fairnight 451 as Orwell's work.

Right, I agree. And here's a very subtle thing that is thrown into Fairnight 451. The main character's wife, she spends all of her time with these little things called seashells over her ears. They might kind of look like Apple Airpods, so I'm going to just draw that conclusion straight for you. So picture this. There's just a, you know, like a person just walking around with just their Airpods in all the time, constantly bombarding their brain with outside influences. There's always in their house, because it is the 1950s, so she is like a housewife. There's a the whole wall is a TV screen and there's constant things on there that have no real value.

They're not always ads, right. No, it's not constant advertisement.

right, it's constant nothingness. It's just, you know, like, maybe scrolling on. Here's where Bradbury got it wrong. He didn't know you were going to have an iPhone someday, constant scrolling on various different apps TikTok, twitter, youtube, but you know, because they just didn't know. But the you know. So these things just constantly in your ears, constantly driving in thoughtless, immediate dopamine receptor hits, and that's what his wife's dealing with. That's just one little side note to what's going on in Fahrenheit 451, to get you kind of realizing some of the prophetic nature of some of this writing. But then also the. There's a part where our main character, montag. He's nearly run over by a car full of teenagers and they cruise past him. He barely gets out of the way in time and they're just laughing, they're just think it's hilarious. I mean, they were like they didn't like kind of get close. They were trying to kill him and he got out of the way oh really.

Like I mean like it'd be funny to hit him.

Yeah, Like let's, let's run him over.

Hmm.

And he has this realization that children have become so violent they can hurt someone with not even a care. And he wanders about this as he begins to change his mind.

And so can I just say, like I think we're close to that.

Well, hand me the the ox, because I'm going to play this video. All right, Pat, All right. So I'm going to play a video. I'm not sure about the audio on here. We'll talk about what we see afterwards. Here it goes. So these teens have just stolen a car.

They just hit that man For anyone who, you know, of course, is listening After they ride someone off the road and hit them with the car, they just so there's this man in a bike lane and they hit him and we can see him break through into the windshield and roll over the top of the car and they glorify it.

Yeah, yeah. So, like you said, these, these guys, these teens a 17 year old driving the car, stole a car, drove off with it and then, clear, this was no accident. They mowed down a guy riding his bike, a 67 year old man just out for a bike ride. You know, they just mowed him over. He died from that. He died, yeah, he died, yeah. So he I mean the so he died.

And then those, the driver was arrested, so the Holy, can I just say, dude, like I love my grandparents, I'm very emotionally attached to them and I don't know what would happen to me if someone took their lives. You know what I mean. Like it because they're so harmless, mm. Hmm, such gentle people and I think I think I'd lose my mind for a little while, dude, if someone did that like. I can't imagine what that family went through. Just like to think of, like my, my grandfather was, or you know who knows, if this guy had a family, I mean, I'm assuming he did, but like just to think, like your grandfather was riding his bike and these random teens think it's funny to run him over.

Mm, hmm.

That's a nightmare.

Yeah, the that book and get it. Read it, you'll see the now and the future and what's coming for you. I mean. So it's so weird. When I saw that video about a month ago, it just instantly brought me to that book I read in seventh grade. I just was like, oh, it's here, it's happening. You know this, like you know, it's being recorded by this. These kids in this car just yeah, and they record themselves doing it for clout. Oh yeah, 100% yeah, and it's it's so kind of unexplainable and that's what's the horror from it is that it's easier to deal with actual, like understandable evils, meaning like Lex Luthor, that guy's, you know, like we can combat him and fight him and understand him, and but this sort of stuff. I'm boggling, it's a yeah, it's not something that we can just, you know, really figure out, and I think that I wanted to talk about a certain character, because we're talking about some dark, scary, messed up, gross, horrible things, and I'm sure you've heard of the name Van Helsing. Yeah, yeah, I know Van Helsing.

I think I think most people know him just because he's been in so much adapted media.

Yeah, originally, I think it first came out, van Helsing was first 19.

He was in the. I just actually on audible plug for this book. It's performed by a full cast, the actual like from Stoker's Dracula and if you get on audible there's like it's like a full cast performance. But that's the first time Van Helsing, like as brought in as this man who was specifically hunt Like or as at least aware of the nature of Dracula and like goes after him. Yeah.

And so the I think over the last couple of years in my life, I've become a student of these evil things.

And wait what.

Okay, so, yeah, so these things, while you can get wrapped up in them and you can lose yourself, and you might be able, you might get turned yourself if you isolate and glorify the evil there has to be in this world, van Helsing's. Van Helsing was a philosopher, a doctor, someone who sought to understand the evil no one knew about and thus became the only thing that could fight the evil. And so, to be a vampire slayer, vampire hunter, you have to engage with this type of stuff we're talking about in a healthy manner, so kind of getting at the root of like. Not just we could sit here and read the most horrific stories all night, of all the grossest things that ever happened to every person ever, right, but then for like, some real horror, right, but then unto what end? Is so that you can know the evil's out there, you can know what it is, you can identify it, you can arm yourself to not be swept up in it and you can also combat it. That's what I'm saying. To become a student of these things and not just someone who ostrich head in the sand type person, not just to become somebody who's a you know head in the clouds either, you know sure footed and someone who knows the things that are out there, but then also someone who also knows that there is good and there. That's the thing we're striving towards and the thing worth pushing people towards, and why it's worth protecting innocence of the innocence as well, you know.

Yeah, I think it too. Like a lot of people think like you know what do you do and I I genuinely believe like on the positive side of like things you can do. I'm not talking about like vigilante stuff, right, I'm talking about like participating in your community and I just think, like you know from the people I interact with and what I do, like helping, like volunteering with, like the youth and you know, given time to them, to be a voice to them and assist them in kind of this, I would say, understanding the world and helping them make sense of it, you know, is like a great way to prevent this. You know, because I think a big thing is so many people don't have someone to look up to as a, as a moral compass or someone to help them, direct them and direct their compass to be moral. And so I think, like, if we want to combat this evil and stop it, the best thing to do is to start in your own community by being that person who, if you're not the, you know we all make mistakes, right, we all have made immoral choices. But if you can point them in the direction of morality, even if it's not like yourself, but help them kind of navigate it, then, like, you're already doing something to fight against that and, you know, changing the course of a person's life by giving them something to look to or towards. And you know, of course, like, for us that's pointing people to Jesus, right, that's pointing people to, you know, the person who separated the way we tell history, hmm, and even if you're not religious, there's plenty of moral compassing, I think, to direct youth towards. I think, like you know, I think about, like, celebrate recovery groups, right, where it's all about helping someone find like self discipline and trusting in something that is beyond themselves and guiding them to overcome their own personal demons and to resist, you know, the temptation to do Things that only affect themselves, and therefore helping to give them the ability to avoid doing things that would affect others.

Yeah, yeah, because the the answer to all this lies out being someone who seeks outside of themselves. You know, someone who's not Not doesn't have a narrow perspective and an inward focus. If you have a broad perspective and an outward focus and if you can impart that on to people around you, especially young people, then you're going to Be a sort of world changer, in a way.

I mean, I honestly don't have anything else added to that, yeah, I agree. Well, hey, you know this has been our Halloween podcast and you know we wanted to kind of Not only shine a light on, like, the horrors that are real, for the sake of people becoming aware and being, you know, thinking and considering like what can I do If those, if those are real, what actions can I take? And I hope that people who are listening and feel like that they are going to think about it and that they can take some level of action. In a way, getting involved in, you know, starts at home, right, it starts with yourself and you know the way you treat yourself, the way you treat your spouse, the way you treat your kids, and then going outside of that into how you are involved in your community. Yeah, thanks for joining us on this and, pat, you got anything till next time, thank you.