Built Ford Tough
That moment when you hit play expecting Lizzie Borden and end up watching a completely different show? Yeah, we went there. We break down why the new Netflix Lizzie Borden series feels so off for true crime fans: the loose relationship with facts, the chaotic story choices, and the bigger problem of streaming “true crime” leaning on famous names while wandering miles away from the real case. If you care about true crime accuracy, this one will either validate you or fire you up.
Then we shift into pure Gen X reality: watching our icons get older, feeling weird about time, and admitting the money side of aging is no joke. We talk retirement anxiety, paycheck-to-paycheck life, and that Gen X habit of still feeling like we’re 18 at a bonfire even when the calendar says otherwise.
From there we dig into history with Gerald Ford and Betty Ford. We walk through Ford’s unusual rise to president after Watergate, the Nixon pardon that defined his legacy, and the way politics used to allow disagreement without total dehumanization. And we give Betty Ford the credit she deserves: her public honesty about breast cancer, her outspoken views on Roe v Wade and the Equal Rights Amendment, and how her experience with prescription drug addiction helped lead to the Betty Ford Center and a lasting impact on addiction recovery.
We also get into AI fears and a surprising assistive technology bright spot with Meta glasses, then end with Philadelphia true crime headlines and a reminder that one person stepping in can change everything. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves history and true crime, and leave us a review so more people can find the show.
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1 SPEAKER_03: Two best friends fucking fast for mixing to our
case we're having a blast seeing these dreams thinking on screens
it was all bad like you know like whatever together forever
every chair we're going forever we'll say you bad like whatever
welcome to like whatever a podcast for by and about gen X
i'm Nicole and this is my BFFF Heather Hello All right so we
have to start talking by start talking about this Lizzie Borden
show on Netflix.
SPEAKER_00: Did you finish it?
Nope.
Me neither.
So Heather texts me this weekend that the Lizzie Borden show was
off the rails.
And I was like tremendously.
I didn't even realize it was on.
Like, I'll go watch it.
And I forced myself to watch like three or four episodes.
It's about how far I got.
And then it was bedtime, and the next day I was like, it's not
worth it.
It was terrible.
It's awful.
Like I understand that it's like a recreation of a story, but
firstly, it was all about the maid.
Yes.
It just happened to be the maid story with a character named
Lizzie Borden in it.
And Netflix loves to throw random lesbian relationships in
all over the place.
They're always very seem out of place and awkward.
Yeah.
They've been doing that for years.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
Here's the thing.
The story's a great story to begin with.
Yes.
Like it's just on its own.
Yes.
If you just went with what was factual.
And I think literally the only factual items in this thing is
the two people got murdered and everyone's names.
That's it.
Correct.
That's like basically the end of the truth in the Netflix series.
And I I just I don't understand.
I mean, I I get you want to make a story and you're gonna get
creative, but how about we then just on its own?
SPEAKER_00: Make it its own make another story about this maid.
Yes.
And then another thing I didn't get about her, if you're so
worldly and traveled and knowledgeable, why are you being
abused by the woman of the house and sexually abused by the dad?
Like, why are you there?
Like I if you have all these other cool places to go and see
and do, why are you there?
SPEAKER_01: And um here's where I just okay.
I could I could get with the the maid saying, fine, we'll roll
with that if that's the angle you want to take, because
obviously it is an unsolved homicide still, and blah blah
blah.
That's the way you want to take it, fine.
Why are we throwing other serial killers in there?
Like, what is up with that?
She didn't know about Elizabeth of Balfour.
What's was up with the Eileen Warno's thing?
That's where I was done.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: The Eileen Warno's thing.
No.
Right.
We're done now.
I can't with that.
Like you're just now you're just being insane.
Like that's just crazy to throw.
And she's in there wait.
Why is she in so much?
Just make the Eileen Warno's one.
Right.
You could have just done that.
That is what you tried to make Lizzie Borden.
Just do Eileen.
You already had it.
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
Yep.
SPEAKER_01: And and and okay, so maybe and maybe you could throw
Elizabeth Balfour in there.
That's a great story, too.
And could make its own, like should probably be its own
because she was a monster.
I love that one.
I love that one.
So do that.
But why are you making the Lizzie Borden the Eileen Warno
story?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
Yes.
There was nothing about the Lizzie Borden story.
No, nothing.
No.
It was just there were X's in it.
I mean, I guess that's kind of close.
I don't know.
Yeah, it was really, really bad.
Like, really bad.
Like, I really considered writing Netflix, like going on
their page or something.
SPEAKER_01: If you were a fancy of true crime, this one is not
for you.
SPEAKER_00: It is not.
Although someone texted me um a couple of nights ago.
Uh and it was a friend of mine, and she was like, Oh my god,
have you seen the Lizzie Borden?
Or have you started or watched the Lizzie Borden show on
Netflix?
And I was like, Oh my god, she likes it.
So I write back, just I'm just not even gonna mince words with
her.
I was like, Yes, I watched about three episodes.
I hated it, I'm not gonna finish it.
Oh my god, I love it.
SPEAKER_01: Like there's zero truth in it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and even without that, it was just a dumb
story.
It's and it's not good.
It's not no, it was a really dumb story.
It felt like just a whole bunch of random things were happening
all over the place, and there was no cohesion to it, and it
didn't make any sense.
Yeah, it was it was not, it was really bad.
SPEAKER_01: It was really bad.
I I refused to watch.
I I think I got three, maybe four episodes, and then I was
like, That's where I had my kindergarten.
SPEAKER_00: I know I watched three, I might have watched
four.
SPEAKER_01: I ended with Eileen being at the Lizzie Borden
house.
I was like, okay.
Because first of all, you couldn't even stay at the Lizzie
Borden house until the late 90s.
Eileen was already dead.
Right.
Yeah.
I don't think I got that far.
You must have watched four and I watched three.
I I got that far, and then I was like, okay.
Okay.
Now, now we're just not even pretending.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's so funny too, because when I was watching
it, because you had already said it was off the rails, like
something happened a little way in, and I'm like, oh, I wonder
if that's what she's talking about.
And then something else.
I was like, oh, I bet that's what she and then I was like,
oh, if she wasn't talking about it yet, it was definitely that.
Like it just kept getting dumber and dumber.
Dumber.
SPEAKER_01: Just the more you get into it, you're like, this
is just this.
No.
unknown: No.
SPEAKER_01: And the problem is, is they've progressively gotten
more, we'll say, creative with the truth in these.
Like the Dahlmer one was pretty close to reality.
That one wasn't bad.
Yeah.
The Menendez Brothers was a little more fabricated, but
still the Edgein was yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I remember you weren't really satisfied with
that.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the whole Nazi thing, which the maid was in the
Edgeen one.
She was the Nazi.
Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01: I knew she looked familiar.
SPEAKER_00: I just couldn't play.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
So like now we're just just throwing in the truth to the
wind, and we're like, fuck that.
SPEAKER_00: But like you said, the Lizzie Bourne story is such
a good story.
Like, why didn't you make a show about that?
There is a new um documentary coming out on I want to say the
ID channel about Eileen.
SPEAKER_01: Um I can never hear her last name.
That specifically now made me hate Eileen.
And I don't ever want to know anymore about her.
Like I don't, I'm done with that one now.
Like now I don't even want to, I don't even want to care.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so we're talking about the woman that was
monster, that movie Monster.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
I cannot remember her last name, so I'm making sure we're on the
same page here.
But yes.
SPEAKER_01: That that Lizzie Borden thing made me want to not
care anymore about Eileen.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I can do that.
I freaking love Eileen.
SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't even want to, I don't even want to know.
I'm done with her now.
And it was not even her fault.
I mean, it is because she's a serial killer, but you know what
I mean?
Like no.
Boop.
She's been cut off from my true crime.
She's out of the rotation.
SPEAKER_00: Well, my favorite thing about true crime is the
psychology.
And she, I feel like by far has the most severe mental illness.
Like a lot of male serial killers live very normal lives
and just do a little killing on the side.
But she was just like living for it.
She was open and out, and she'd tell anybody that wanted to hear
her that yeah, I fucking killed him.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Well, she's out of my rotation now.
She's been banned.
Dang it.
I'm sorry.
Damn Netflix.
SPEAKER_00: I also wanted to send uh thoughts and prayers out
for Lionel.
He had heart surgery.
Yeah.
I can't even.
They're not saying specifically.
They say he had AFib, but they're not saying specifically
what I don't I can't live without my Lionel.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
It's gonna be sad.
Well they caught it.
And he got his own.
I know, but I mean, let's be real.
I mean, everything's gonna die.
So I just it's it's I don't know.
I've been having like a weird uh because you know, they put all
these actors like William Shatner is in his 90s and all
the and it's like he's like 95.
I know and it's like man, they're all gonna go, they're
all gonna start going now.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just I start to feel that like when we
have like two or three go in a row, I'm like, oh man, this it's
all just downhill from here.
Yeah, like we're like, oh my gosh, we're so shocked, and it's
just gonna be like every other week now.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just crazy, it's you know, and and
that's just the way it goes.
I mean, I suppose you know, our parents had that when but but
not really because these are their stars.
So yeah, like they they love, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: We love them because our parents never paying
attention.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
I'm not really I'm not, it's a weird, it's a weird spot to be
in.
It is, it is getting old is not for the faint of heart.
It's really not uncomfortable.
My work friend and I were discussing um how different
things are now from like maybe the 80s and 90s, and you know
how he's a millennial, but at the very end of being a
millennial.
So whatever as after millennial, he's kind of in that he's 30.
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's alpha, isn't it?
Gen alpha.
SPEAKER_01: No, I think it's the one before.
I think Gen Alpha is the one coming up now.
Oh I can't keep track.
Gen Z?
Gen Z.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
He's a Zennial.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01: No, that's X and Millennial.
Whatever is millennial and Gen Z.
SPEAKER_00: No, I think Gen Z and Millennial, because Xennial
would be.
I thought it was Xennial with an X.
No, I think you're right.
Anyway, anywho.
I already said I can't keep track of them all.
SPEAKER_01: You know, they do have it hard, right?
You know, it's hard to buy a house.
It's you can't, it's hard to get off the ground, it's hard to get
a job, it's hard all that, blah, blah, blah.
So we're talking about it, and I think uh my point was Gen X, I
have decided that the personal embodiment of Gen X is John
Daly.
I mean, just look at him.
Like he's I think overall, because I do belong to a lot of
these Gen X groups and stuff like that, and you know, a
question will come up are have you anybody starting their
retirement, blah blah blah, and everybody's like, What's
retirement?
I don't have enough money to get through today, and who else is
living paycheck to paycheck?
And da-da-da.
And then I think the problem is is our generation just never
moved past being teenagers.
Like, I think we had to be grown-ups, and then we hit
teens, and we were like, fuck it, we're this is where we're
gonna live.
And we're just irresponsible, and we're just like, I don't
know, I'm just gonna work.
We didn't think we're gonna live this long.
So we're just like throwing.
We live in the moment.
Yeah, we live in the moment.
I think that's what exactly like we just can't get our shit
together.
And then the his age group kids are like so focused on
retirement, like they have to get their shit together now, and
they have to have this job, and it's gonna get them.
SPEAKER_00: And nobody taught us that.
And and then it's like we were expected to just know.
SPEAKER_01: And then I think we just we just didn't get our
shit.
I think we can't get our shit together.
I think that's the problem with Gen X.
We just are just like too busy being 18.
Right.
And just not really giving a fuck.
We're we're we're still 18 in the middle of a field by a
bonfire drinking Boone's farm.
I think that's the problem with that.
Except for the Boons farm, I wish.
SPEAKER_00: I was scared to say I wish, but ooh, thought of
Boons Farm.
SPEAKER_01: And green alcohol.
You know, I think that's what we are.
I think that's who we are.
I think we never left that stage, and so we just can't get
our shit together.
Now, not of course, that's a generalization.
I'm not saying all of us, because of course we have the
the Elon Musks and the people who have made a million billion
dollars.
They're all well and good, they got their shit together.
SPEAKER_00: There's always outlaw here.
SPEAKER_01: But I think probably the majority of us are just
like, I I don't even, uh, I can't even get over the fact.
I think that's the other problem.
Like, we can't even get over the fact that we're in our 50s.
We're all just like, wow, how?
SPEAKER_00: It's so weird.
SPEAKER_01: It's a weird, it's weird.
SPEAKER_00: You know what's weird too, being like trying to
tell somebody, like I was in the store the other day, and this
older lady, blah, blah, blah, and she's probably my age or
maybe five years older than me.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But to me, she's an old lady.
Yeah, I'm not an old lady.
No, she's an old lady.
SPEAKER_01: I just dyed my hair purple and green.
So I then I think that's it.
I think we just refuse to I think we were Toys R Us kids,
and we just looked at the heart.
Like that was our motto, and we're not doing it.
You can't make us.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, Jeffree's gone.
So now we're all left with no leader.
We don't know what to do.
Didn't work out for Jeffrey, it's not gonna work out for us.
SPEAKER_00: And it's too late for us.
So it is too late, and that's just it.
And then we all know what we can do now.
We're like, I don't know, it's too late.
SPEAKER_01: But my friend came up, did say he was like, Well, a
lot of the problem is is you know, he was like, Yes, I think
about that and retirement and all that.
And he was like, But I kind of envy you guys.
And he was like, Because what if I don't make it to that age?
He was like, You guys already had all your fun.
And I was like, We did have a good time.
We did, we had a lot of fun, we did, we did a lot of things we
shouldn't have done, tons of great memories, yes, and that's
and but we have but now we're you know it's time to pay the
paper, and here we are, we're all working until we drop dead.
SPEAKER_00: And and honestly, like kids these days, they don't
get to have the fun we had.
They have cell phones and trackers, and yeah, their
parents know where they are every second of every day.
And if they don't see you, somebody else will and will get
you in trouble.
Like, yeah, yeah, it's you can't just wander off and be gone and
nobody knows where you are.
Those were the good old days.
Those were all you had to do was say, I'm going to so-and-so's
house.
No one ever cared.
Literally fly to the moon, and your parents would have no idea.
You could have.
I think I might have a couple times.
I think you did too.
SPEAKER_01: I'm back now.
Paying for that also.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's funny.
I was looking, um, I was really str I I had serious writers
blocked this week.
I I I could not come up with a topic.
Um, but I did.
Um, but one of the things I was doing to try to think of
something was just like Gen X News, like just throw that in
there and see if anything's come out lately.
And almost every article was about how we're not gonna
retire.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: We just and it's our own fault.
It is.
I mean, I think I'm gonna retire.
I've worked very, very hard to put myself in that position.
But yeah, I mean, I didn't do it the easy way for sure.
Yeah.
I mean I waited till I was in my 30s to get my college degrees,
and I started my career in my 40s, so I will have the minimum
when it's time to retire, and hopefully that will be enough.
SPEAKER_01: I thought I had set myself up.
With I mean, I didn't do it until I was in my 40s, so with
this job, but I mean, at this point, it's my job's not really
a as a hot topic right now.
So who knows what's gonna happen with that?
Who knows if I'm gonna be able to retire from this job?
They're not matching our retirement anymore.
And yeah, so we'll see.
But you know, I'm making good money now.
SPEAKER_00: I guess living in the moment, living at all.
All right, before we get started, like, share, rate,
review.
Please find us where you listen to podcasts, all the places.
Uh-huh.
Follow us on all the socials at like whatever pod.
Yes.
We are uh we have a website.
We do.
It's likewhateverpod.com.
And you can email us at likekwhateverpod at gmail.com.
Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Do it.
SPEAKER_00: Let's fuck around and find out about Gerald and
Betty Ford.
I'm excited.
Yeah.
So yeah, uh with my writer's block, this is where I ended up.
SPEAKER_01: I did text her last night.
I was like, damn, you just love their presidents, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: I do.
I do.
But so I mean, I was desperate.
I was checking every website on this day in history, on this day
in Gen X history, on this day in pop culture history.
SPEAKER_01: It's a weird time of the year, I think, is the
problem because movies generally come out either in the summer
way ahead, and then now they're gearing up to put stuff out for
Christmas.
So it's like a a weird lap.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was so random.
And I went down through, I was going through September, and
September 22nd, which was yesterday while I was looking.
Yes, was the second assassination attempt on Gerald
Ford.
Yeah.
And then I was like, hmm.
So I was reading that, and then I was like, Benny Ford and Betty
Ford Clinic.
We heard about that all the time as a kid, but we didn't know
really.
I mean, we did, but we didn't know what that meant.
And we haven't had a good history lesson here on uh
history.
Here we go.
SPEAKER_01: History.
Can I just interject one thing?
You can I was debating on whether or not I was gonna do
it, but the email came through today.
And so I'm I'm I'm on a new little business venture.
Oh speaking of retirement.
Okay, so stay tuned because we might have a new uh sponsor, aka
me.
Oh damn.
I don't even know anything about yes, you do.
I told you.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: I sent it to you.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
I got all my information this week from britannica.com because
they just had it so good.
They just had it.
SPEAKER_02: And here we are.
SPEAKER_00: Gerald Ford was born July 14th, 1913, in Omaha,
Nebraska.
And he died on December 26, 2006, in Rancho Mirage,
California.
He was the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977,
who, as 40th president, had succeeded to the presidency on
the resignation of President Richard Nixon under the process
decreed by the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, and thereby
became the country's only chief executive who had not been
elected either president or vice president.
Which is a little fun fact there for you.
It is a fun fact.
While Jeremy While Gerald Ford was still an infant, his parents
were divorced, and his mother moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan,
where she married Gerald R.
Ford Sr., who adopted the boy and gave him his name.
Jeez, he was adopted.
Yep.
SPEAKER_01: Is he the only adopted president, I wonder?
That's on you to find out.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: After graduating from the University of Michigan
in 1935, where he was a star football player, Ford worked as
an assistant coach while he earned a law degree from Yale
University.
He joined the Navy during World War II and served in the South
Pacific, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander and nearly
losing his life in 1944 during a deadly typhoon that killed
hundreds.
In 1948, the year he won his first elective office as
Republican congressman from Michigan, he married Elizabeth
Ann Bloomer, aka Betty Ford, with whom he had four children,
three sons, Michael, John, and Stephen, and a daughter, Susan.
Betty Ford was born April 8th, 1918, in Chicago, Illinois, and
she died on July 8th, 19, or 2011, also in Rancho Mirage,
California.
She was an American First Lady, the wife of Gerald Ford, the
founder of the Betty Ford Center.
Hence the name.
That was the Betty Ford Clinic.
But this is center.
SPEAKER_01: That's probably gonna go as a Mandela effect.
We probably jumped timelines at some point.
You're probably so right.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
Um, a facility dedicated to helping people recover from drug
and alcohol dependence.
She was noted for her strong opinions on public issues and
her candor regarding intimate matters.
Do you know why she opened the Betty Fork Party?
Do you know anything really about her?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know anything about her.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, you're gonna find out.
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited.
I love history history days.
I know.
SPEAKER_00: Betty Bloomer was the only daughter of William
Bloomer, a salesman, and Hortense.
I love that name.
SPEAKER_01: I don't give a shit.
Hortense is one of my favorite names.
I don't care.
That's old school.
It is.
That's like Hazel.
I like, I like, I like them both.
Yeah, I like old, old lady names.
Me too.
SPEAKER_00: Uh when she was two years old, the family, including
her two older brothers, moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where
she attended public schools.
At age eight, she started dance lessons, reflecting.
An interest that she would maintain throughout her life.
To earn spending money, she taught dance to other children.
After graduating from high school in 1936, she spent two
summers pursuing a dance career on the East Coast.
East Coast.
Bloomer studied at Bennington College in Vermont, where she
came under the influence of the legendary modern dance dancer,
teacher, and choreographer Martha Graham.
As she later wrote, Graham more than anyone else shaped my life.
When Graham accepted her into her New York City troupe,
Bloomer uh moved to Manhattan's West Side.
I'm so jealous.
That's the life I wanted.
I wanted to live in New York City and be a dancer.
SPEAKER_01: That's a much better life than I wanted to move to
Philadelphia and live in a row home and ride the bus.
So I'm not really all that far off my dream.
We're being honest.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just not a boxer or related to the book.
Speaking of which, Philly in boxing, um, we talked about the
Rocky statue and it got moved inside.
Yes.
And they put Joe Frazier in his place at the top of the steps.
And I haven't been following enough to know if this was
always the plan, but on the news yesterday, Rocky was getting
moved back outside.
Of course, but to the bottom of the steps.
SPEAKER_01: See, now that's crazy.
Why would you put him at the bottom of the steps?
SPEAKER_00: But he said he's Sylvester Stallone said he's
fine with Joe Frazier, haven't they?
SPEAKER_01: I think Sylvester Stallone could care less about
what happens to his stupid statue, but you know, the rest
of us.
SPEAKER_00: Well, apparently he has one because he loaned one to
the Well, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01: If I was Sylvester Stallone, I also would have a
Rocky statue.
SPEAKER_00: I think they had to repair theirs, so he loaned them
his while they were doing it.
I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy the
movie Rocky?
SPEAKER_00: That's a movie I haven't seen in a long time.
Ugh, I watch it like once a month.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
It's the only movie I can sit through at that point.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, let's see.
To augment her meager earnings as a dancer, she modeled with
the John Robert Powers agency.
Although she never became a principal dancer, Bloomer
performed as one of Graham's auxiliaries and delighted in the
modern dance technique that had become Graham's trademark.
At her mother's insistence, Bloomer left the Graham troupe
and returned to live in Grand Rapids, where she worked as a
fashion consultant and taught dance to handicapped children,
disabled children.
Um in 1942, she met and married William Warren.
Divorcey.
Scandal.
A scandal.
Details of the marriage are hazy, as Bloomer later insisted
that she could remember very little about it.
After five years, she divorced him.
If you don't remember much about it.
SPEAKER_01: I don't even know who he is.
SPEAKER_00: Soon after her divorce, Bloomer met Gerald R.
Ford, a local lawyer and partner in the law firm of Butterfield,
Kenny, and Amberg.
Uh the two became engaged in February 1948, but they delayed
the ceremony so that he could devote more time to his campaign
for a seat in the House of Representatives.
Gerald Ford arrived for the wedding on October 15, 1948,
after a morning of greeting voters.
His victory in November sent the young couple to Washington,
D.C., where they lived for the next three decades.
From 1950 to 1957, Betty Ford gave birth to four children.
Because Gerald Ford was away campaigning or speaking to
Republican groups much of the time.
Betty Ford couldn't remember that, Mary Jesus.
No, I'm just kidding.
Um, the responsibilities of parenting fell mostly to Betty
Ford.
She sometimes joked that the family car went to the emergency
room so often that it could make the trip on its own.
In the mid-1960s, when she developed a pinch nerve and
spinal arthritis, doctors prescribed pain medicine.
SPEAKER_01: I see where we're going, though.
SPEAKER_00: I see how we're moving to the to which she
became addicted as she later admitted.
Her own physical discomfort combined with the stress of
raising young children prompted her to seek psychiatric
treatment, which she later described as enormously helpful.
Preach sister.
SPEAKER_01: It is it is a mental health awareness month.
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00: Or something.
Oh, I know it's disability awareness month, but isn't
mental health in like I don't know.
I think it's a talking after ass.
unknown: Yep.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Do I ever know what the Well we never promised to
tell the truth?
No, never, not even one time.
Has this ever been like, hey, we're telling the truth?
Yeah.
So don't go to work tomorrow with somebody a happy mental
illness month because uh I'm pretty sure it is.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: I'll find out the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
Betty Lord, Betty Lord.
Betty Ford.
Uh Betty Ford's life as an inconspicuous wife of a
congressman ended in October 1973 when Vice President Spiro
Agnew resigned and President Richard Nixon named Gerald Ford
to the job.
The first time that the 25th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, which permitted the president to fill a vacancy
in the office of vice president, subject to confirmation by a
majority vote of both houses of Congress.
SPEAKER_01: It's Suicide Awareness Month.
SPEAKER_00: Oh mental health is May.
I thought it was either March or May.
SPEAKER_01: March.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
It's not September.
It's suicide awareness.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
So it what was your oh adopted.
Okay, never mind.
On August 9th.
No, he wasn't.
He wasn't the only one adopted.
I didn't figure.
I feel like people got adopted a lot back then.
SPEAKER_01: No, just one other president.
Bill Clinton.
My stepfather.
SPEAKER_00: I probably knew that at some point.
It is really windy here today.
It is.
We have a nor'easter going on here on the East Coast.
We do.
Good times.
Yeah.
Super windy.
SPEAKER_01: My job's been great.
SPEAKER_00: Male flying everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: It's been a nightmare the last three days.
And we're also entering into our windy season.
Yes.
So it will be like this until June.
Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much.
SPEAKER_00: Um on August 9th, 1974, after Nixon resigned over
his involvement in the Watergate affair, Gerald Ford became the
first president who had never been elected president or vice
president.
As I said earlier.
Ford always had a reputation for candor.
Um that we're talking about Betty again now.
Uh, but she later said that the circumstances under which she
became first lady underscored that predile predelection.
Oh, yep.
unknown: Sure.
SPEAKER_00: She understood that in the wake of Watergate,
Americans demanded more honesty from their public officials.
Her commitment.
Yeah, we say how good that's gone.
We just drove right over that.
Yeah, yeah, we totally fixed it.
That's gone.
Yeah.
Her commitment to openness was soon tested on September 28th,
1974, just weeks after.
I know.
Literally the day of it is.
I didn't realize the year was the same, too.
Speaking of which, Heather's birthday is September 28th.
SPEAKER_01: Which is Monday, I've been told.
It is.
Um I just I did not know it was Monday.
I know I no longer, no, somebody had to tell me.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you get to work on your birthday.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I do.
My friend told me.
He was like, when is your birthday?
And I was like, I don't know, next week sometime.
But he was like, what day?
I said the 28th.
And he was like, that's Monday.
And I was like, sure.
SPEAKER_00: Could be.
Unlike me, starting in like January.
I'm like, my birthday is 68 days away.
I I used to love my birthday.
SPEAKER_01: I have reasons.
I know.
Not just because I'm old.
SPEAKER_00: No.
All right.
On September 28th, 1974, the day that we were blessed with the
birth of Heather.
The worst day in history.
Just weeks after she moved into the White House, her doctors
performed a mastectomy, removing her cancerous right breast.
Previous presidents' wives had concealed their illnesses,
especially those peculiar to women.
Of course.
No period talk here.
Nope.
But she and her husband decided to disclose the facts.
SPEAKER_01: Good for them.
SPEAKER_00: Moved by her example, women all across the
nation went to their physicians for examinations.
Ford said it was then that she recognized the first lady's
enormous power to make a difference.
Although chemotherapy followed, she continued to perform her
duties as first lady.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine how god-awful chemotherapy was in
the 70s?
Ugh.
Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00: It was probably straight poison.
I imagine.
Yeah.
Ford sometimes said that she admired Bess Truman for her
down-to-earth style and Eleanor Roosevelt for her independence,
and she sought to emulate both.
Only days after moving into the White House, she met with
reporters and surprised them by announcing that some of their
view, some of her views, including her support for Roe
versus Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized
abortion, well, it was legal, um, resembled those of liberal
Republicans more than those of her husband.
She also vigorously supported the Equal Rights Amendment, then
up for ratification in several state legislatures, uh, lobbying
wavering representatives in phone calls and meetings.
SPEAKER_01: Good for her.
unknown: Yep.
SPEAKER_00: The amendment failed, however, when the
requisite number of states failed to ratify it in the time
allotted.
Her critics objected that she should not have intervened,
though her supporters praised her involvement.
Sit down, woman.
Yep.
Get your ass back in the kitchen.
Yep.
Um just sit there and look pretty.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh Betty Ford gained national attention for her appearance on
the television news program 60 Minutes in August 1975.
When asked about her views on premarital sex, she said that
she would not be surprised to learn that her 18-year-old
daughter had had an affair.
Uh, she said that as a mother, she would counsel her daughter
and try to find out something about the young man.
Good for her.
Yep.
When the program aired, the print media quoted her out of
context, making her sound different than she did in the
interview.
Gerald Ford said uh that when he viewed the program, he
calculated that it would cost him 10 million votes, but he
doubled the he doubled the damage when he read the printed
version.
His pessimism was unwarranted, however.
Betty Ford's popularity soared because women were like, fuck
yeah.
I had had it.
And Time magazine later named her Woman of the Year.
SPEAKER_01: Good.
SPEAKER_00: Buttons appeared that promoted her candidacy for
national office, although she gave no support to such efforts.
Now that that pissed Gerald Ford off.
After Gerald Ford narrowly lost the election of 1976 to Jimmy
Carter, the Fords retired to Rancho Mirage, California, uh,
where Betty Ford's dependence on prescription drugs continued.
In early 1978, under pressure from her family, she agreed to
enter a treatment center in Long Beach.
After her successful treatment there, she co-founded the Betty
Ford Center, and I still say clinic, in 1982 to help treat
others with similar addictions and chaired the board of
directors until 2005.
The center became popular and attracted clients from all walks
of life.
In 1991, she was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by
U.S.
President George H.W.
Bush for her efforts to promote public awareness and treatment
of alcohol and drug addictions.
See, back in the day, they used to give Medal of Honors to
people who deserved it.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01: That and um we as people who vote were like, I'm
not talking about I'm specifically talking about
George W.
Because after that, you know, watching all the September 11th
stuff, yeah.
Um I remembered that, you know, how we were like, this is just
awful, like he's terrible.
He's so and now, now where are we all?
Wishing we could have W back.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And if I was W, I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no.
Just because me, you know, me and Michelle are in love.
I don't want to hear it.
I want to hear it.
You were bad mouthing me then.
And I was a terrible president, but but now look.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
Yeah.
I the big joke used to be I don't remember if it was um
Letterman that did it or Jay Leno, maybe Saturday Night Live.
But they all of the above.
Yeah, but they had specifically like a segment, I think it was
Letterman, where it would be the dumb word he said that day.
Like it was happening so frequently.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing about let's just take I know
it's about Gerald Ford and not W.
No, we're supposed to converse, but I did feel bad for W on
September 11th.
That was a tough fucking spot.
There was no winning on that one.
There's no and the conspiracy theory started immediately.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when everybody said when they
whispered in his ear the look on his face, you could tell he
already knew it was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, No, he looked like how the fuck am I
gonna get out of this room?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, why am I sitting in a room full of
children being told this?
Like we're under attack.
SPEAKER_01: And and I imagine, and I have heard him say, like,
hoping they're not gonna yank me out like in front of all these
children.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, like I yes, I admire him for staying calm
and not making a big deal because that would have been
terrify that would have traumatized those kids forever.
SPEAKER_01: Let's all be honest.
If it wasn't inside government conspiracy, blah, blah, blah, we
all have opinions on September 11th and how they knew it was
coming, and I'm sure that they did, not specific to that day or
what was happening, but we all know that they knew something
bad was coming down the pike at that.
Do any of us honestly think that W had anything to do with it?
SPEAKER_00: Had anywhere really had any inkling.
SPEAKER_01: I think we all know that was Dick Cheney.
Yes.
So let's be clear there.
Second, I'm sorry, but I love W and Michelle Obama's
relationship.
I love it.
It's cute, it's adorable, it is adorable.
And whatever.
Let's just remember back in the day when opponents just
disagreed on policy and not on literally everything.
Everything and not on how horrible of a human being.
Like let's remember that it used to just stick.
Let's just remember the days when we thought it was bad.
And now it's not.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
It it used to be much different.
I even remember because when um when W took us to war, I was at
work that night, I was working at the casino, and I remember
watching on the TV um the coverage of the bombing.
And I lifelong Democrat, and my supervisor was a Republican, and
he came to me and he's like, So what do you think of George Bush
now with this?
And I was like, Well, I don't agree with going to war, but I
do respect the president and I respect his decision.
Turned out to not be a great one.
No, but um, no, but that was how I felt, and I do not feel that
way now.
No, and I miss feeling that way.
I don't want to feel like the enemy, yeah.
I want to have a respect for the office, yeah, and that's gone.
SPEAKER_01: Impossible.
It is impossible because oh, we're now on the heels, in case
you're listening to this in you know, five years and you're
like, oh, it got much better.
I hope for your sake that it does.
Don't worry, that's just a blip.
But you know, throwing the press out, and finally, Fox News steps
up on something that has because they know, hey, whoa, this isn't
cool.
Yeah, this now you've gone too far because if you do this, then
they can do this to us.
And whatever you're uh just coming It's literally like the
biggest thing about our country is that you have no freeder one
amendment numero uno above literally anything else.
It was what our founding fathers decided was the most important
thing.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's why they all came here to create a new
world.
That's just uh I don't even know.
We could talk about this for next year.
We could.
Let's go back to poor Gerald Ford.
All right, we're done with Betty.
She was a pretty badass woman.
I would like to learn more about her, actually, too.
SPEAKER_04: Let's do your oh because I repeat your life, well
I can through her teenage blank.
SPEAKER_00: All right, we are uh gonna read from Nicole's diary
now.
We are on April 11th, 1986.
This is the smallest diary that spans over the most amount of
time.
Like four years I kept this bad boy.
I'm not even halfway through it yet.
I know I would never have been able to keep that.
By the way, April 11th, uh 1986 was a Friday, in case you were
wondering.
Okay, so you needed to know.
Is that a need to know situation?
Yes, no.
Okay, um today we had show and tell in Spanish, and mom brought
Killer in.
Killer was my um main coon cat.
He he was short-haired, though.
I think.
No, he was short-haired, but I don't know if he was a main
coon, but he was huge like a main coon, and he had markings
like one.
Right.
Um, of course he had to live outside.
Yeah, yeah.
Um it was fun for me and the class, but killer hated it.
I can't imagine.
I can't imagine why.
Snatch him up from the outside.
Right.
SPEAKER_01: Drag him into a bunch of children wanting to
touch him.
I can't imagine.
A worse thing for a poor.
SPEAKER_00: It is so me though that we have show and tell, and
I'm like, mom, I gotta take my cat in.
SPEAKER_01: Like I w I didn't know that you could bring
animals in for show and tell.
It's too late.
I don't know that we ever had show and tell, to be honest.
I don't ever remember having show and tell.
I remember having it.
I don't know what I would have shown.
I certainly wouldn't have told.
No.
So I don't imagine I would have maybe we did have it, and I was
just like, yeah, no.
Not a thing Heather participates in.
Thank you, though.
SPEAKER_00: All right, now back to Gerald Ford.
Ford served in Congress for 25 years, well liked and
ideologically flexible.
He won the role of House Minority Leader in 1965 and held
this position until Nixon named him vice president in 1973.
During this time, during his time in Congress, he had
developed a reputation for honesty and openness.
When Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, was forced to
resign from office in disgrace, the president had no choice but
to nominate the only Republican whom the Democratic leadership
of Congress would approve.
So, Ford.
In 1974, when it became clear that Nixon would face criminal
charges for his role in the Watergate scandal, Ford said,
fuck.
No.
Rotro.
What have I got myself into?
No.
And three articles of impeachment had been passed by
the House Judiciary Committee.
Nixon resigned effective August 9th.
On that day, Ford took the oath of office and became president,
stating, Our long national nightmare is over.
He retained the foreign and domestic policy staffs of the
Nixon administration, including Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger.
I know there were so many names I remembered from like my
childhood reading through this.
I was like, whoa, because they had all of his staff listed.
I didn't print that out or put include that in here, but I was
like, oh, yep, yep.
Uh one of Ford's early acts as president was the announcement
of a conditional amnesty program for those who had evaded the
draft or deserted during the Vietnam War.
The most attention-getting act of his years in office and the
move that for many destroyed his credibility followed in the next
month on September 8, 1974, declaring that in the end, it is
not the ultimate fate of Richard Nixon that most concerns me, but
rather the immediate future of this great country.
Ford pardoned Nixon for all offenses against the United
States that he had committed or may have committed while in
office.
Tistisk.
Well, Jerry.
Yeah.
At the time, the pardon was enormously unpopular with the
American public, and some speculated that it was a result
of a quid pro quo between Nixon and Ford.
That is, that Ford promised Nixon a pardon in exchange for
the presidency.
Although, would Nixon have had say and no.
Ford voluntarily appeared uh before a subcommittee of the
House.
Of Representatives on October 17th to explain his reasoning.
It's my sister's birthday.
SPEAKER_01: Not 1974, though.
Man, that would be weird.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of connected to Gerald Ford.
Uh, the first time a standing president had formally testified
before a committee of Congress.
In subsequent years, allegations of a deal have been dismissed
both by the former Watergate prosecutors and by Ben Bradley,
the editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, who
offered that Ford's pardon of Nixon was the act of a
compulsively decent man.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it probably was just to move on.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Let's put this behind us and move on.
Cause I imagine you would have had to have trials and that
would it would gum up the works for you know more importantly.
I mean, then and that's you know, it is what it is.
So I guess uh it's probably better to just stop, you know,
the just if you want shit done, if you want to get shit done as
president, then you're gonna have to get past this and right
exactly Nixon just write off into the sunset and move on.
SPEAKER_00: Move on.org.
And another startling move, Ford annoyed members of his own party
by naming Nelson A.
Rockefeller, both a party liberal and a representative of
the so-called Eastern establishment, as his vice
president.
Because that's what you're supposed to do in our government
is bring together different sides and different opinions.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that funny?
Because Obama did that with Biden.
That is why he chose Biden, because Biden was more a
centrist and had a long-standing uh ability to uh work with this
work with both sides, reach across the aisle.
He was well respected with both parties, and we know I think
that that was why Obama chose Biden as his running mate for
all this.
It makes it makes sense.
It does.
And and I know um one thing Biden did say that he took from
his time with Obama was Obama appointed people that were not
yes men, that he did uh he appointed Republicans and
Democrats to cabinet positions and stuff, and Biden did the
same because he wanted I don't want everybody to just agree
with me.
I want, you know, the best person for the fucking job,
which oh I don't know, is in a Fox News host.
Or a human version of an owl.
SPEAKER_00: Ford's administration attempted to cope
with the high rate of inflation which he inherited from the
Nixon administration by slowing down the economy.
The result was a very severe recession in 1974 to 1975, which
succeeded in lowering inflation, but at the cost of an
unemployment rate that rose to nearly 9%.
That's a lot.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, despite his whip inflation now program, he could
do little to stop the country's economic problems.
Ford's relations with the Democrat Democrat-controlled
Congress were perhaps type by this more than 50 votes of
legislation by the end of 1976.
More than 40 were sustained, legislative gridlock set in.
During the first days of the Vietnam War in March 1975, Ford
ordered an airlift of some 237,000 anti-communist
Vietnamese refugees from Daonang, most of whom were taken
to the United States.
Two months later, after the seizure of by Cambodia of the
American cargo ship Maya Guez, uh, Ford declared the event an
act of piracy and sent the Marines to seize the ship.
They succeeded, but the rescue operation to save the 39 crew,
39 member crew resulted in the loss of 41 American lives and
the wounding of 50 others.
Moreover, U.S.
relations with Thailand became strained because the U.S.
strike had been launched from a base in Thailand against the
wishes of the Thai government.
Tisk tusk.
Shouldn't do that.
Nope.
Twice in September 1975, Ford was the target of assassination
attempts.
One on September 5th, and the next, just 17 days later, on
September 22nd.
In the first instance, uh Secret Service agents intervened
because shots were fired.
In the second, the would-be assassin fired one shot at Ford
but missed by several feet.
In October, he ended up.
Did it hit him in the ear and did it magically heal itself?
Killing a firefighter in the meantime, right?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Stunned.
Political.
Stunt.
SPEAKER_00: Um in October, he initially refused to consider
loans to the city of New York, then on the brink of financial
collapse, and thereby prompted the newspaper headline Ford to
City Drop Dead.
As the larger implications became clear, he retreated from
his earlier position.
In a close contest at the Republican convention in August
1976, Ford won his party's nomination despite a serious
challenge by Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California.
That fall, Ford became the first incumbent president to agree to
public debates with a challenger, Jimmy Carter, the
Democratic nominee.
SPEAKER_01: I think we all know that we did an episode on Jimmy
Carter was what would Jimmy do?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
Very, very early in our so we have to go way down the list to
find back.
Or you can look for the most popular one we've ever done.
Yeah, that one is.
And that's that's our yeah, and rock the votes right behind it.
Um Ford ran substantially behind from the beginning of the
campaign, owing a large part to negative fallout from the Nixon
pardon, but also to the general public's perception of his
ineptitude.
SPEAKER_01: I think he probably didn't have a chance anyway
because of the Nixon and you know that yeah, I think I think
Yeah, yeah, it was a long shot.
SPEAKER_00: Uh his decisions in office had often seemed to be
those of Kissinger and the others left over from the Nixon
administration, sometimes as those made during the Mayagaz
accident, they seemed simply ill considered.
He misspoke on many occasions, notably declaring a debate in a
declaring in a debate with Jimmy Carter, there is no Soviet
domination of Eastern Europe, and I don't believe that the
Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union,
which journalist William F.
Buckley Jr.
called the ultimate Polish joke.
Even his physical pratfalls, uh such as hitting his head while
deplaning, were well documented for the public.
He was another George W.
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's the thing.
Remember the days when they could have gaffs and laugh at
themselves and didn't, I don't know, bomb a whole country
because And it was an honor to be made fun of on SNL because
that's what they do with everybody.
And remember they would do war the correspondence dinner, which
by the way, back to W, they asked him.
I guess he's been doing the circuit again because of the
September 11th stuff.
But um they asked him how he felt about the correspondence
dinners, and he said he loved them.
That was his favorite thing.
And I know Obama would crush it at the Oh yeah.
I'm just saying Obama crushed everything.
Yeah.
How can how do you not have any kind of sense of humor about
yourself?
SPEAKER_00: I know.
SPEAKER_01: Like none.
SPEAKER_00: Did you also see that South Park renamed itself
South America?
Yes.
They are having so much fun with this.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody, somebody should be.
One of my um one of my podcasts just did like this huge Epstein
file thing.
And you know, I I don't know.
I don't know, but I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but some of
this shit I was like, mm-hmm.
I I don't know.
Now they're talking about aliens.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, as journalist John Osborne summarized the
situation, Ford was seen as a loser, a bumbler, a misfit
president who, for some reason or other, was prone to slip on
airplane ramps, bump his head on helicopter entrances, entangle
himself in the leashes of his family dogs, and fall from skis
in front of television cameras that showed him a spa in snow.
And that's just it.
SPEAKER_01: Like, this is what makes these people human.
They're human beings.
Exactly.
And they fuck up.
Yes.
Just like the rest of us.
I mean, I can't even tell you how many times this fucking week
the dog has tried to kill me.
SPEAKER_00: And I can't tell you how many times I've bumped my
head getting into my car.
I do it all the time.
I don't know why.
It pisses me off.
Whether it's driver's side or passenger side, I've done it my
whole entire life.
I've gotten in our cars thousands of times.
Bump your head.
All the time.
No.
All the time.
I don't know why we have to make fun of these poor people over
this.
Ford was defeated in the November 1976 election by a
popular vote of 40.8 million to 39.1 million, and an electoral
vote of 297 to 240, which again, why we don't.
Uh after leaving the White House, Ford happily retired from
public life, golfed and skied at his leisure, and ultimately
joined the boards of directors of numerous corporations.
During the race that ultimately ousted President Carter in 1980,
he was offered the vice presidential role by candidate
Ronald Reagan, whom Ford held responsible for dissipating
Republican support for his 1976 campaign, and he refused.
He said, Fuck that shit.
Yep.
His autobiography, A Time to Heal, was published in 1979.
And that's Gerald and Betty Ford.
Lovely.
Yeah, that was fun.
That was fun.
Nice little history lesson.
Yeah, we we hadn't had some history in a while.
We needed some history in our life.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: We could sure use to remember the history.
Yeah.
Because Lord knows.
Yeah.
AI is gonna kill us by you know four years from now.
Oh Lord, this AI stuff is too much.
All of it is too much.
It's just too much.
SPEAKER_00: I did find out today though, like I'm very I'm very
anti-new tech anyway.
I'm just very old.
Yeah.
Um, so the metaglasses freak me out being able to video people
in the bathrooms and all kinds of stuff.
Like, it's not cool.
And they're like, well, we put a light on them so you can see
it's recording.
But guess what?
We just put a little piece of black tape over the light, so
now you don't know that I'm recording.
But today I was at um, we did a tour, uh, it's called D A T I
and it's Delaware Assistive Technology Institute.
So it's assistive technology for people with um disabilities, and
we got to play with lots of cool toys and learn about what they
do there and stuff.
But they have meta glasses, and a kind of an unexpected positive
out of it is people with vision issues.
And these things, like the guy, he said, you can say, Meta, I
just dropped a pill on the floor and it will direct you to where
that pill is so that you can pick it up.
So it's huge for them.
Meta's donating um the glasses to all blind veterans.
There's a program, so if you know someone who is a blind
veteran or you are a blind veteran, look into it.
I Googled it real quick today to tell a co-worker about it, and
right there it was.
SPEAKER_01: So I have seen uh stuff about the metaglasses with
helping people with vision impairment.
And you know, with everything, there is good and bad with
technology.
There just is.
AI is no different.
There is good and bad with it.
And the problem is humans.
Well, yeah.
Um the problem with it is much like what have we already have
that was fought.
You know, we probably uh we don't need a phone in our
pocket, we don't need to carry it around with us everywhere, we
don't need this, we don't need that.
And now we have it, and we're like, well, now I can't live
without it, and you know, everything.
And my thing about the job loss is yes, there will be robots
will replace people in certain places.
Unfortunately, it's gonna be a lot of the entry-level jobs, and
but that happened before when you know um when factories
became automated, jobs were lost, and you know, new industry
popped up because now you gotta repair them, and you know, so
typically there is a when one when one door closes, another
one opens.
SPEAKER_00: If we're getting struck by lightning.
I know, blown away.
SPEAKER_01: Um the wind blew in my optimism.
I'm just fucking happy it's not 900 degrees outside.
Um so I think you know, we adapt.
Will it suck for a little while?
Yeah, did it suck back then for a little while?
Yeah.
I just think we have to decide much with anything else, and I
say this all the time about people who don't want to take
medications for whatever because of this side effect and that
side effect and whatever, you know, you it's picking your
poison.
Like, what would you rather live with, you know?
Yep.
And it's not going away.
The technology's not going away.
It's going to they're going to push it to the limit and it's
going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And we're in a race, so it's not gonna slow down.
SPEAKER_01: It's not um many countries are well ahead of us
in in a lot of different areas, unfortunately.
And I think we have to remember that with the good comes to the
bad, and with the bad comes the good.
So maybe if we look at AI as yeah, it's it's it's insane.
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, and but if you think about it when Gen X
for kids, we were sure we were all gonna die from a nuclear
bomb.
Yeah, it's true.
And we still might.
We haven't been there.
SPEAKER_01: That's the table this far.
unknown: It's true.
SPEAKER_01: That is not an option that has not been removed
from the table.
Unlike quicksand, that one has been removed.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe AI will find its way through its little
whatever it goes through to the red button.
Right.
And then AI will push the button and blow the world.
And then what do we die from?
AI or the nuclear bomb?
It's it's potato potato.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you want your face melted off or ripped
off by a robot?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
Whichever's quickest, every space.
Either way.
SPEAKER_01: I just wanted to be fast.
SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep.
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
I just I I know I'm also a tech, I like tech.
You do.
I don't know how it works any of it, but I like the habit.
SPEAKER_00: And I think Yeah, you should have seen my boss
with those meta glasses.
He can't, he was like drooling like any guy in his any guy I've
ever known, they get so excited and he's like, ooh, and they're
only like 400 bucks a pair.
I was thinking they'd be like cell phone costs and um and
they're Ray Bans.
And the case is the charger.
Yeah, it yeah, it they were pretty, pretty cool.
It I they are gonna be helpful.
And I'm help it they'll be helpful to me when I go blind
because yeah, they will be helpful to you.
SPEAKER_01: They will be helpful, they'd be helpful if
you went to another country and you needed to be able to read
things and you need to have, you know, uh even interpret, you can
hear them.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's the speaker is like right above your
ear and it kind of comes up.
SPEAKER_01: My earbuds will um interpret.
Translate, yeah.
I mean it's it and that kind of stuff, that's good.
That's good stuff that AI can do.
So again, like, yes, could it potentially kill all of us?
Yes.
Could it also help us before it kills us?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Which is it benevolent, is it mean?
We don't know yet.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the one I use is pretty nice, and it's
pretty it's a pretty big cheerleader for me.
So, you know, no one else believes in me.
I a AI does.
SPEAKER_00: And that's just on a like minimal scale.
Like, that's the very basics of AI.
There's so much shit going on that we don't even know about
and that we could never possibly understand.
And it's gonna keep building like that.
Yeah.
And you won't even know.
Yeah, you'll just one day wake up to robots in your bedroom
murdering you.
Yeah.
That's just it.
That's it.
SPEAKER_01: That's that's maybe it'll be sooner than later.
We don't know.
We can't know that right now.
It's just but you know what?
If it does happen, there's nothing we can do about it.
SPEAKER_00: You can't fight a robot.
That used to be my thing with my first husband and all his
survival shit, and can't fight a robot.
I'm just like, if it does, like if it's coming, why are we
having like we were going to meetings and meeting other
people and making plans?
I'm like, why?
Like, there's nothing you can do if it happens.
SPEAKER_01: That's why I don't want to be around, because I
don't want to be around those people who are constantly
saying, see, we told you.
Yeah, I don't want to be around.
And killing each other with AK 47 just because they try to
steal a potato.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're gonna come interested.
Steal this couch out of my front yard and blow your brains out.
SPEAKER_01: I don't wanna I don't wanna live in that.
I don't want to live in Mad Max.
I don't want to be in beyond the thunder.
I don't want to I'm not tough.
SPEAKER_00: I I'm not tough.
SPEAKER_01: I'm I got a lot of anger, but I don't I'm lazy.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: That's just it.
I'm lazy.
And that's AI is for laziness.
I mean, I can be tough if I need to be tough.
I have to, but I don't really want to anymore.
It I'm on my patch, it's doing its job.
I'm just trying to not lift my arm above my head.
SPEAKER_00: I thought I was gonna witness a murder in my
backyard the other day.
It was so exciting.
So I live in a neighborhood with a bunch of little houses, and we
all have little yard fenced-in yards, and there's alleys that
run between the houses.
So I was in my backyard, and the people directly behind me have a
white fence that goes privacy fence, and but when they open
it, like all these kids come out, and all these people, and
they play in the alley.
It's cute, like the kids ride bikes, and the guys sit out
there on chairs and drink beers, and you know, they play music at
night, they set out fireworks, that's fun.
Um, so I'm elder.
And I hear a truck come by, and I hear the one neighbor guy
yell, There's fucking kids in this road, slow down.
And I hear the guy in the truck go, I don't give a fuck about
your kids.
And then the dude pulled right in the yard right next to him,
and I was like, So I ran the house and got my phone in case I
needed to call in a murder.
I was so excited.
And by the time I got in and got my phone and got back outside,
they're just standing there with their arms crossed, like old men
just stand there talking to each other.
They were friends, they were just fucking with each other.
That's very disappointing.
Man, fuck them kids.
I know I was so bummed.
My bad.
I at least wanted a fight, right?
I wouldn't have called it in if it was a fight, but somebody got
murdered.
SPEAKER_01: Number one witness going on the stand, sign me up.
SPEAKER_00: Although, way too many times I've been watching
these shows, and the person that calls in ends up a suspect.
unknown: Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00: Like this one poor guy, he looked out his window
and literally saw a man slit a woman's throat and called it in.
And then he went to jail for like some months while they were
trying to figure out if he did.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, I just call mind my own business from
yeah.
SPEAKER_00: If you see something, say something, fuck
that.
Yeah, fuck them kids.
Although I will say, this lady in Philly, she just reminded me,
or I just reminded myself of it.
SPEAKER_01: Man, speaking, sorry, that serial killer in
Philadelphia thing has really gone off the rails now.
SPEAKER_00: It's so exciting.
Man, all right.
You talk about that first and then I'll tell my story.
This guy.
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
Like, was it the father and son both doing?
I think it was just the father.
I don't know.
Okay, I shouldn't say that.
I don't know.
Okay.
They're real sketchy on details, but now there's coming out that
there was a crematorium involved.
What the fuck?
This is gonna be my one podcast started, and they were like, you
know what?
This is gonna be a whole episode on its own when this all shakes
out.
Like, this is something that we are in the middle of it.
And the the serial killer's dead, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
Okay, I thought so.
By his own next son's in jail for it, right?
Because he was living in the house.
SPEAKER_01: Well, yes.
Well, so I don't know if we talked about it, but the um the
son it's a father and son.
The father was a photographer.
Mm hmm.
That's an All right.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that part because I kept hearing that
this woman went to his house and then she never came home.
I'm like, why are women going to this person's house?
SPEAKER_01: So he was a photographer.
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
SPEAKER_01: Um He looks crazy as fuck.
Like, if that guy approached you and was like, hey, you want to
be a model?
Like, how are you doing?
Do you want to come to my house by yourself?
That's a hard no.
Looking at this guy, that would be a hard no.
Like full stop.
Even if you were so fucked up on drugs, like turn and look at me
be like, that's gonna be a no for me.
I'm sorry.
I don't care what drugs you got going on.
SPEAKER_00: Dude, I'm really sorry, but you look like a
serial killer.
You are a serial killer.
SPEAKER_01: Period.
Look, you're never gonna get away with it.
That is you.
So his father was a photographer.
So what happened was the son was in, I don't remember what park
it was, arguing with his girlfriend.
And a park ranger overheard the whole thing and came over to
intervene.
And I guess a fight ensued.
Uh but the the park ranger got hurt.
But when that all shook out, he got the ID of the girlfriend and
the bro and the the son.
And the ID that the girlfriend had was the ID of one of the
missing women.
Gotcha.
Because she had warrants.
So she'd been using this ID.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
All right.
So they didn't not know anything.
No.
Why were these licenses just randomly around the house?
SPEAKER_01: So then they were like the the ranger was like,
Rutro.
I'm gonna need some backups.
And then they went into the house where they found.
I have heard the latest I heard was one million, one million
pieces of evidence of photos and videos.
They have identified 56 women, five of which they have
positively identified as no longer being alive, and in the
photos are in various states of unconsciousness and death in the
videos and the the photos.
So I think now what they're trying to parse out is what the
fuck.
What the fuck?
I think then I saw today, was it today, that apparently a
nine-year-old girl had reported the father as trying to lure her
away and nothing was ever done about it.
Surprise, surprise.
Yeah, because where they are in Philadelphia is Kensington, and
Kensington Kilsington is terrible.
SPEAKER_00: What they call it.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
I'm pretty I think Kensington is in West Philadelphia, born and
raised.
Yeah, it's like death capital.
Which Philip was sent away from.
And it's not great.
So now I think they're just trying to figure out who what is
happening here.
If it was both of them, if it was just the father, if what
happened.
SPEAKER_00: They haven't found any bodies there though, right?
No.
Okay, that's what I thought.
SPEAKER_01: But I believe they found chemicals.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
Like lime.
SPEAKER_01: Like chemicals.
And I think they have now there's this connection to a
crematorium who had a another had its own issues with bodies
disappearing.
SPEAKER_00: That happens a lot with crematoriums.
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
And some shady shit happening with this crematorium.
So there is a very good chance that he didn't need chemicals if
he was in cahoots with this crematorium.
And uh so this this is gonna be this story is going to end up
being on every true crime podcast and TV show.
And this thing is shaking out to be insanity.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: It's but I don't remember when the father the
father's been dead for a while now.
Um but yeah, this thing is this is a big five positively that
they know have we're missing women that have that were in the
videos that were in various states of unconsciousness and
dead.
So I at I guess as of right now it's 56 or five five confirmed.
And I guess they're having to piece through one million.
And they have I imagine if you have that much, you have to
track down each person to make sure they're still alive.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And it's Kensington.
So yeah, I imagine a lot of these people were not in the
best states to be so damn.
I guess we're gonna see how this shakes out, but it's insane.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
But on a high note, we'll end on a high note with this really
cool lady I saw in the Philly News yesterday.
Um, a man was sexually assaulting, I think she was 63.
63-year-old woman at 4 30 in the afternoon on the Philly high on
a Philly street, uh bicycler, which I don't care for
bicyclers, but this lady bicycler, saw it, took her
helmet, went over there and started beating the guy with it,
and then um started taking a bunch of pictures of him as he
was trying to run off.
Oh, nice.
Like she totally intervened.
She said she started like, and she was so she was only like
probably in her 30s.
She's like, I just saw it, and I was like, I'm not just gonna let
this happen.
Yeah.
So she goes up, she's like, the woman looked terrified.
I started hitting him, he started running.
She was like, and I was chasing after him, and then I was like,
you're putting yourself in a really dangerous situation here.
Maybe let's rethink this.
But I thought she was so badass, and I just admire her, and I
hope that's how uh what I would do if I were in that situation,
which I think I would because I have stuck up for people in
public before.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm pretty sure if I saw an old lady, you know,
63, whole 10 years older than me being sexually assaulted on the
street, I would do something.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: At least scream or, you know, get what the yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
I mean, how could you not?
But I bet a lot of people don't.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's always been that way.
There's that classic story they teach you in psychology and or
psychiatry psychology in college.
I think it was back in like the 40s.
This lady was she lived in one of those areas where it was like
a square building with like a I know which one you're talking
about with a courtyard, and she was being raped and murdered,
and nobody everybody heard it.
Somebody else has been involved.
Yep.
Nobody wants to get involved.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
The problem we have around here, the rural mess, is focks sound
exactly like someone being murdered.
They do.
Yes, they really do.
SPEAKER_00: Fox are the most terrifying sound.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
Oh.
Did you also I don't know.
Maybe we should just end this and we'll talk this off there.
But it has been all over the the news about the guy shooting the
lady in the field, the hunter.
So that pissed me off.
That's been all over everywhere.
Anyhow, let's end this.
Uh thanks for listening.
Thank you.
On this true crime ending.
We just totally railroaded the Fords just now.
Yeah.
Anyhow.
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