And That's Why We Drink - E367 Millennial Road Signs and Yappuccinos

Episode Date: February 18, 2024

It's episode 367 and we're ready to flabber your gasts! First Em takes us down a wild road of near death experiences and future predictions with the story of the Baba Vanga Prophecies. Then Christine covers the heartbreaking and confounding case of Natalia Grace. We're just sitting here talking about Cream of Wheat in a bar like any normal man... and that's why we drink!Don't miss our last On the Rocks live shows! andthatswhywedrink.com/live

what hi i'm covering my mouth so you can finally start this without me just screaming unnecessary things i looked at my own reflection i thought you made a face like the scream by edward munch oh i just took one look and I just couldn't bear it any longer. Just stopped in your tracks. Yeah. Oh, well, I wanted to, I was trying to have, you have your moment before I just monopolized the experience. Happy Groundhog's Day. Oh, thank you.

Big day. I practice privately. I practice privately. Do we have a result on did he come out? I have no idea. The billboards in Ohio or the signs about the highway said

you need to buckle your seatbelt and avoid road rage happy groundhog day and i said okay a lot of messages they i feel like a lot of psa's just all chipped in on the one billboard you should have seen when taylor swift was coming to town every single sign on the highway like those like emergency alert signs were like t swift puns um i thought it was hilarious a lot of people were very irritated but i thought they were great oh i would have loved that i love a pun i feel like in that office is a millennial who's having the time of their lives making these signs i feel like um for groundhog's

day we could have done a lot of puns i feel like pox tony phil there should have been like a rhyme by now he's got to have a rhyme i think the joke was like groundhog day i mean i just saw it for a second and probably i'm butchering it but it's like groundhog it's groundhog day again don't get angry on the road i don't know it was something it was like about a movie groundhog i don't sure sure anyway why do you drink this week emothy let's let's dive into it let's really get into the nitty-gritty uh well i drink a root beer today at 10 a.m or whatever new well i am trying to i several elements are involved in this but the main one is that for christmas i requested um from allison's family my algorithm knows me so well they have been posting about like a root

beer club where you can like pay for an annual membership and like every month they'll send you a new there's a box for everything i know so i asked allison's family for it for christmas um and i'm i'm we're i'm accidentally have creating a bit of a an overstock in my fridge so i really gotta get into the root beer um yeah i feel like that's not for the faint of heart that's not for like the average root beer lover you gotta be like you gotta be well i'm really a cream soda person but they only had a root beer crate membership which is fine i still i like root beer i just have uh it's not my top in my top three but i want to learn to like root beer because anytime i've gone to one of those like

like rocket fizz or old-fashioned soda shops they have you been to a rocket fizz do you know what i'm talking about like they've always got such a an array of soda specifically root beer and i always want to know what they're all about but i'm too afraid to buy all of them so this will help me uh figure out which ones are actually good and uh so anyway this one is philbert's Draft Root Beer. Well, the name alone. Loving it. And I'm very excited about this one. And the reason I drink some root beer right now is because Christine made me sob as soon as I woke up this morning.

I didn't mean to make you cry. Please. Christine sent me a four-minute voice message about how wonderful I am am so i don't know what she thought was going to happen but i mean okay right you didn't mean to try to share some perspective um just share some perspective that i've had i i've been going through a transformational fate phase and i think we i think a lot of people are i don't know if it's like the moon I don't know if it's mercury I don't know if it's just the year 2024 but there's been just a shift in my thinking and um I I felt like I needed to to get you that voice memo before before I forgot so it plopped

out of your head it plopped out of my head uh into your tear ducts i guess it fell right in there nothing but net um buckets i uh no it was very kind i really i i needed the the pick me up and and um i know it wasn't like specifically about how wonderful i am but the sidebar of it all was that i had i had helped you in some part of your journey. You did massively. And you really did. So, I mean, wow. It's rare that a reason we drink is like a full on tears reason. But nice.

It was I also woke up only minutes before we recorded. I did warn you. I did warn you. I said, you don't have to listen to this right when you wake up. So I wanted to make sure. But I guess you did it anyway. I sure. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Well, I saw a four minute voice message and I went, well, I have to know what this is about. And then, and then, and then all of a sudden we were supposed to record and I was like, Oh wow. How do I get the tears off my face? This is really bad. So I'm proud to report. I am someone where this is like the only real, like pretty privilege

I have across the board is that when I cry, you can't tell after a few minutes. Whereas some people, their face is a big puffball for the rest of the day. Must be nice. I look like my eyes have been, I look like I've put my face in a bowl of ragweed or whatever people are allergic to that causes hay fever. So for me, it would be like shoving my face into Gio's armpit for an hour. Yeah, yeah. Just like a face full of dander, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's what I look like. Anyway, that's another reason why I drink. Because I don't have a lot of, you know, those types of privileges. That's certainly one of them. I know people envy that about me. I like to say it just because I cry so often my face is at practice so oh that's just what your face looks like always my face is actually just puffy and full of tears so when i do cry homeostasis is just like puffy tear stained yeah why do you drink christine oh thank you what do you drink

i fucking hate root beer is my first thing i want to say uh it's my least favorite i can't stand it i can't well actually you're not alone it's i went to the there was a pop-up museum called the museum of disgusting foods and root beer is the is has since its creation has been one of the top five most disgusting foods to come out of the u.s and nobody outside of the u.s can like tolerate it it. But it's like it's divisive. It tastes like toothpaste to me. I'm like, I feel like I'm drinking sparkly toothpaste and it makes me want to throw up. Like, I just cannot stand the stuff.

My brother loves it. Just so not my thing. I would like to do a like a some sort of study on people with the cilantro gene and a root beer gene, because I wonder if because I have the cilantro gene where a root beer gene because i wonder if because i have the cilantro gene where cilantro is just fucking disgusting and it really if i'm being honest any single herb out there is disgusting to me any any any green that we're using basil's fucking foul i can't tolerate pesto what any anything that people use as a garnish or as like an aromatic like a i don't know like an herb i just fucking i can't stand them really a root beer is pretty good i mean my mouth for the

herb of the month club i hope you're talking about weed so i can just send it right back to you just i well that's what i meant i've sent myself herb of the month club my bad yeah um well i drink because thank you for asking um i just as we sit down uh ran inside from uh arriving home after my first therapy appointment with my new therapist do we like her whoop dab dab um she's the best fucking lover please talk to her about your like dabbing in 2024 well she told me she's like a nine-year-old son so she'll probably be like please stop i don't want to see this in my office she's like i've seen this on my child why are you doing it at 32 it's not for grown-ups um no she was great she was so validating i feel like i i teared up a bit which as you know is rare now

that i'm on zoloft and i think it's's because I felt very just like, oh, finally, like someone who says they're a, quote, safe space, but like actually feels like one. And not to say the other places I've been to weren't. I just felt like maybe I wasn't suited for that, that that safe place or I didn't exactly mesh with the person. And I kind of explained like my past therapy experience. And one thing I had trouble with is that the person I used to see, even though we aligned on all the right things on paper, I always felt very criticized after I left. And at first I thought, you know, maybe that's a me thing like maybe I'm projecting but then I noticed she would roll her eyes a lot when I talked why what in the world I'd be like girl you need therapy what the fuck is wrong going on right and I felt like okay she's like I just genuinely felt every single day like man she is fucking over me like she does not want me here

who was when was this was this like this was when i first moved to cincinnati or to northern kentucky so this would have been like um 2020 2021 it was like when i was her name i want to i want to fucking beat her up no i can't no i can't go that has to be rule number one in therapy is like don't roll your eyes at somebody when they're telling you their problem when they pay you to tell you their problems yeah you think i'm so bad at her yeah okay thank you because i Okay. Thank you. Because I felt like, you know, maybe I'm just like reading into things. But then today I went in and I was like, oh my God, this is like night and day. And I said, like, I actually feel like I can speak to you without worrying that like I'm going to go home and like doubt everything I've said. I was getting to a point with my old therapist where I would like kind of like, which is a huge red flag in therapy, like hide the truth or something, or like try to say what I thought

she wanted me to say. Like it was a very toxic relationship we had and we ghosted one another. So I think it was mutual. Um, if the eye rolls told me anything, um, okay, this is where I give a beautiful shout out because she had a little dropdown menu or she's like, Oh, how did you find our practice? And I was like, you're going to have to hit other because this is like not on your drop down list. I promise. Oh, my God. Was it like on a rhyming billboard with a pun or something? Did she share part of her billboard with Pucks Johnny Phil? I was watching the movie Groundhog Day. No, I had lamented on a past podcast episode with you about, it was like the end of an episode and I said something like, man, I've just really struggled since ghosting my therapist, which is the one I was just talking about, um, to find somebody that I really feel I can mesh with. emailed in and said, Hey, I no longer, you know, go to this practice, but they are wonderful,

very open, very LGBT friendly. And so I thought, okay, I'll look into it. And I just, I don't know, I, uh, I guess, uh, Megan or Katie or somebody forwarded it to me on Slack and I went, well, I might as well just like take a peek. And I opened their website and I was like, this just feels right. So I sent them an email and, uh uh they just matched me with someone who said they thought i'd be a good match and yeah so thank you to um the person who emailed you probably know who you are because it's a very specific thing that you've sent um so thank you that's very sweet and she said indeed that is a new one and i do not have a drop down option for that for podcast fans that you hear so like yeah, that's that. Well, that's very lovely. And I know exactly what you're talking about with my current therapist. It's the first therapist where I look forward every week to going. I know. Also, can I ask

how old your therapist is? Yes. I would say, I don't know totally, but probably like mid to late, like mid thirties, maybe like my age. Yeah. I don't know if but probably like mid to late like mid 30s maybe like my yeah yeah i i don't know if it's something like it this is a maybe it's something i had to wait for until i got to this age but i never had a therapist my age and this is the first time i've had a therapist that we're only like a year apart or something um and obviously since i was a kid i've gone to people since who were older than me and i don't know if maybe like culturally like generationally we just weren't clicking that's interesting this uh but my therapist is 30 30 and uh so she's a year younger than me which actually

feels weird that i'm going to someone who's technically younger than me. I know. It's funny that that means that Mike means we're old. Cause now I know like the professionals in our lives are just going to get younger as we get older. I know that, that I don't totally love, but, uh, no, it's, it's just so weird. And also she's so different. I, every single, every single therapist I went to before was like kind of like an old old white girl and like and like I feel like I I've said this to you before and I've said this to everybody but like I was intentionally looking for someone part of marginalized communities who had different insights than I do about yeah the world and how things work and what systems are in place um and so and I wanted someone who wouldn't coddle me. I wanted

someone who wouldn't, you know, hold my hand. I wanted someone who'd call me out on my bullshit. And I have just noticed across the board that all my other therapists were very quick to let me feel like the victim in places. And I wanted someone who was going to be like, eh, you fucked up. And so that was, Oh, I'd rather die. But I'm so glad because I feel like there are people who are better with that form of treatment, but I'm not one of them. I know. It's been very useful. And also, like, she's very anti-capitalist. She's, like, super feminist. She's, you know, we align on all the same politics stuff. Like, one of the first conversations we had was, like, do our morals align? Because, like, how, like, and also and also like it shouldn't be her job to like walk me through things if I'm confused like so it just all worked out very well like so

I know exactly what you mean I've never had like the oh like someone's actually going to help me like you actually get it and I feel like I can actually open up fully without like worrying how this will come across yeah there's and again i've only been to one appointment so far but i'm telling you i was like okay this oh oh and then okay i don't want to triangulate her but she was like i look around and there's like all these pictures of moths and she goes oh i'm getting um a moth tattoo soon and i went look at my arm well i don't mean to say what's the what's your phrase you like to say irrefutable proof but irrefutable proof that's enough for me yeah so uh i will probably send you another tear-inducing voice memo later about how you have also you and your

therapist have inspired me to go out and ask our podcast listeners for therapy recommendations um sometimes it works i mean i found mine on tiktok so which by the way now i feel i mean i sought that out i literally in the search bar went like like millennial gen z that's what our conversation was you said that and i said i wish i could do that for northern kentucky and somebody emailed and said here this is your response to your search query i was gonna say by saying it you kind of searched typed it into the search bar yes yes and it worked no i it's it's such a relief and to know that i found her on tiktok i was like she's kind of already got to be cool or at least savvy like she's she's with it you know yeah and um but it's

so weird because i don't so i don't follow her because i didn't know if that was part of me was like i don't want her to find my tiktok even though i told her lines yeah it feels a little blurred lines like you don't know what the protocol is yeah yeah well also because i don't want her to like look at any of my tiktoks and be like well let's unpack this one today well wow you have so many fucking what's this girl christine you need to get her out of your fucking life she is toxic she well but then every time she she posts like really funny tiktoks about therapy like i i mean she's like with it she knows what she's doing with tiktok i know they're all like i i like them a lot i'll send them to you privately but um i'm afraid to like them and so but when they show up on my screen i'm like, I really want to give you the validation.

I want to engage. I don't want you to know that I'm seeing them, too. Anyway, so I'm glad ours is about mental health both ways this time. I'm proud of us, Em. Was mine? Why did I drink this week? Group beer, I think. Okay.

Mental health. Just kidding. I think you actually. Mental health. Just kidding. I think you actually said because of the voice memo I sent you. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. I wanted to make it seem silly about that it was just root beer, but it was more than that.

I promise. No, no, no. You're totally right. Yes. Okay. So we're both happier than we were last week. Wow. What a change.

And it's Friday. You know, let's. Wow. What are you doing tonight? Anything fun? Oh, my gosh. One of my best, best friends whom, you know, Alyssa just got engaged and is in town with her fiance. So I'm going to give both of them a squeeze. And they're meeting her fiance's family as well. She's coming with her parents, I think, which I didn't know. As in Alyssa's fiance, Maddie is coming with her parents, I think, which I didn't know. As in Alyssa's fiance, Maddie is coming with her parents. And so I'm going to meet the whole fam. And I'm very excited. We're going to get pizza and she's going to meet Alyssa's going to meet Leona for the first time. So. Oh, my gosh. I know. Can you believe it? It's been. Is it weird for you

when your own childhood friends are meeting like Like, she's not a baby anymore. That's a full-blown little kid. It's incredibly weird. Like, worlds colliding. Like, thankfully, Renee moved back pretty quickly, like, pretty close to when Leona was born. So she's had enough interaction that, like, they know each other. But with Alyssa, I'm like, man, this is weird that you don't know my offspring yet. I know.

Yeah, that is weird. But today's the day. Gang's all here. Okay. Let's hope they get along. Let's pop into my story, Christine, so you can go get your pizza with your little baby. Yay. Okay.

Okay. So mine, we just talked about Baba Yaga with her little legs in her birdhouse or whatever it was. Gotta love her. Gotta love her. I have another Baba for you. Another Baba? Another Baba. Which, if you remember, translates to grandmother.

And it's sometimes a title that has to be earned or your reputation has to precede you in a way. I see. It's like a term for an elder that you respect, maybe? Okay. I think so. I think that's fair to say. All right. So this is the Baba Vanga prophecies.

Prophecies. So the Baba Vanga prophecies. This starts in 1911 on January 31st. So we just hit the anniversary of this uh baba vanga who or she's she's originally born with the name vangelia pondeva dimitrova and she's born that day so happy birthday girl um in the republic of macedonia and her father was a political activist her mom was a farmer which i love in 1911 her mom had the more like what seemed as the masculine role and her dad had what seems more like the feminine role wait like in terms of jobs what was the job the

dad was a farmer no mom was a farmer oh whoa feels like dad would be the farmer and then father was the i guess political activist is kind of gender neutral but between the two i would have thought mom's the political activist and the dad was the farmer yeah yeah that's what i thought you said i like totally twisted it interesting i said it to your face and your brain still went, that's not right. And switch it up. Flip it. But there,

so she ends up being a, a mystic, a clairvoyant, a soothsayer. And there is no documented line of this going through her family. So Baba Vongo ends up being, she's the first person in her family for this um what do they say in game of thrones first of her line or first of her yeah

first of her name or yeah something like that so uh from the start this little girl von vangelia currently um she has a pretty miraculous entrance she loves the theatrics she's born prematurely and extremely fragile and everyone says don't even get attached to her she is not gonna make it don't get attached that's nice well her parents did not get attached and they waited two months of her surviving before they even named her. Oh my gosh. That's so sad to think about that you'd have to really genuinely not get attached. As soon as she was born, I guess it was a home birth, they placed her under a wood stove to keep her warm until she passed.

Oh my God. That is the saddest thing i ever heard but then a la miley cyrus she says i'm back motherfuckers oh she's not she came in like a wrecking ball never mind she said these bitches are trying to kill me but i'm back okay so or whatever that video is so she said oh you thought i wasn't gonna make it haha i'm here so uh she survives two months and her parents are like okay we gotta name you we're gonna name you vangelia uh which i hope i'm saying that right but vangeliva vangeliva um but it means good messenger or gospel. Okay. That's a good foreshadowing. And then only when she's seven. Or no, sorry.

When she's three, her mom dies. Oh, no. Then her dad goes to fight in World War I. Oh, no. So by three, she's like, she definitely has something that either of our therapists could walk her through um and her and her brother end up being taken in by a neighbor just because it's like well you don't have parents i got it takes it takes a village so come live with me yeah by the time she's seven her dad returns but he remarries to kind of this like low-key awful woman and uh keeps running the farm okay i mean it sounds like um

the uh cinderella story with uh with hillary duff um you know what's so weird is i actually looked up a picture of baba vanga and she looks oddly like hillary duff wait you're lying to me i am lying to you i don't fucking know and what's so weird is chad michael murray shows up later which is all right that's enough for that that's enough of that thanks anyway take a swig of your nasty ass juice and keep what was did in a cinderella story was there when she sang that song let the rain fall that on like on her own record did they play that in the movie i feel like i don't i don't recall you kiss on the football field and i remember there being rain anyway listen i don't recall i'm so sorry i will i'll tell you one thing i know for sure is after

this episode i will be listening to hillary duff's discography so it's an excellent choice i would argue one of the best for a friday evening thank you so much it does it's giving friday her albums never never hit on a different day no um not quite like they do on Fridays at least so anyway Baba Vanga slash Hilary Duff her dad returns from war and uh they run the farm together but in her town they her her village ends up under new rule and her father gets arrested for his political activism right um and I will say this is not his first time being arrested for this. It seems like he is a bit of a career criminal in terms of political activism. In 1921, he was released again. And so now at 21, she's 10 years old now. He's released and

he works as a shepherd and doesn't pay the bills the same way the whole family kind of falls into poverty so they have to move and the whole family moves so even like her cousins her uncle moves uh and her stepmom is still terrible uh she treats the kids like staff rather than kids and she has obvious favoritism towards her own children i'm telling you did i not say does she have a tanning bed that she likes to lay in because is her name jennifer coolidge uh lip fillers i mean bring it on i think i just might figured it out yep um in 1923 vanga is 12 years old now. She is hanging out outside with her cousins in the field because in 1923, there was just nothing else to do.

I mean, in 2005 in Ohio, there was also nothing else to do. So I get it. History repeats itself. So hanging out in fields, playing hoop and stick or something something and all of a sudden there's stormy weather uh-oh and a tornado gets a brewing here's what happens her cousin cousins they make it inside the house but apparently vanga doesn't run as fast as them i don't fucking know she didn't make it inside homegirl gets picked up by the twister no what a la fucking dorothy just jesus spinning around in there um the tornado passes through the town still holding baba vanga think of the guilt of these little cousins by the

way of like, not one of you could have held her hand and dragged her in with you. And then just make like a human chain of people all getting dragged up in this twister. Um, yeah, they, eventually they go running, looking for her after the storm clears near them.

They tell their parents, everyone's looking for her. They assume she's dead. We let our little cousin, uh, get sucked up in a tornado. Sorry, mom and dad. Yeah. Well, it sounds like the stepmom wouldn't have cared though it sounds like she really she's like that's you did exactly as i asked thank you right so the cousins are obviously

panicked and are looking for her this is the second time now where people are just going to expect that baba vanga is going to die she She's not around. She's not with us anymore. She's not in the room. And they end up finding her a half a mile away. She got carried a half mile by this tornado. She's

only really like battered and like her clothes are torn up a little bit. Is she motion sick? Very. Had to be. I would bit. Is she motion sick? Very. Had to be. I would be. I am just thinking about it.

Just twirling, twirling, twirling for half a mile. Here's the problem, though. She has a really hard time opening her eyes because so much debris from the tornado hit her in the eyes. Oh, God. Which is like one of those things that like i never even thought about but of course you would have to keep your eyes closed in a tornado that would be really traumatic on your eyes if you survived that yeah i think her eyes like i'm guessing here but i imagine with the the way the rest of the story goes it sounded like it was just debris in her

eyes but i wouldn't be surprised if like a fucking like fence hit her on the face or something like, right. It's, it's, it's, it's like a cow. You know,

there's always a cow. I was going to say the cow too. It's astounding. It was only debris, but I imagine like all the dirt and grit would probably be also hard. So hard to wash out of your eyes and going a hundred miles an hour. It's probably just slicing your eyes up oh terrible so i say all that because she ends up needing to get surgery to fix her eyes after this oh geez which by the way 1923 eye surgery i would literally never want

i can't even imagine eye surgery i barely got lasIK this last past year because I was nervous. You got it in 2023, literally 100 years after she had eye surgery. She paved the way so that I could see better. Thank you, Baba Vanga. I don't even know what it means to get eye surgery in 1923. I can't even imagine. I don't want i i really oh my god it's i can't even imagine it's like i just i don't want to even know it feels like it would just be a fun experiment for the doctor more than anything

you know yeah it feels like they just hired an evil scientist who was like i'm down to torture somebody yeah i'll cut it to a child eyeballs so imagine like let's just since we're on like a mental health kick today imagine the trauma of barely surviving your birth and people just assuming you for dead so there's got to be some sort of disconnect there like two months and they she probably was not getting like skin to skin or anything like just feels like there's not a bond with her parents then her mom dies at three then her dad goes to war then when her dad comes back he's married to an evil woman and then on top of that she has to uproot her life because they're poor now and they go live somewhere else and then homegirl gets

picked up by a tornado and then she has to get surgery on her eyeballs as a child like without anesthetic you know it was without anesthetic she like survived the fucking tornado and then they're like anyway now lay down we're gonna cut open your eyes like i would yes i would literally be like i'm i'm 12 but i've checked out like let's i'd be like put me back in the tornado i don't want to be in part of this anymore i try i just feel so it's terrible i can't even i don't even know what part would what do you talk about first in therapy it's all you would have to really really do a multi-weekly appointments i think to get to that to get down to the business never you'll never truly be done with therapy no oh certainly not and this is by 12 so she's only 12 so she still has the rest of her life to go to

um she hasn't even hit puberty, you know? God, poor thing. She ends up getting eye surgery. The family, because remember, they're poor. They can't afford eye surgery. They are selling whatever they can just to get her eyes corrected the best way possible. But they couldn't afford the best treatment. So wherever they did get the eye surgery, I feel like it was kind of like a great value version of the eye surgery. No!

No. No. get the eye surgery i feel like it was kind of like a great value version of the eye surgery because no no no even after her treatment within four years she was completely blind anyway i would just i you just at that point you're like i should never have even gotten it yeah it's like it was like thank you for giving me four extra years but i i imagine if the surgery i don't know if it was a botch surgery i don't know if that was like a good if that was a success and like that was the best they could have hoped for yeah true maybe that was the norm i don't know well like if i found out i was gonna be blind anyway i'd be like let's just let's don't stab me in the eyes today yeah i don't know i don't know i don't but at the same time it's like because i i, I don't want to say, oh, well, she shouldn't have gotten four extra years of her vision. I mean, I don't it's not my place to say, but. But I just to know that you just got surgery in your eyes.

You hope that, OK, that better have been fucking worth it. And now, right, immediately your vision's deteriorating to a point where only two years into those four years she still can technically see but she's on her way and within two years they knew like oh eventually she's going to be fully like not just vision impaired she's going to be living in the dark girl man and she i mean they sent her right away they had to have known that it wasn't going to last forever because right away they sent her to a boarding school for uh students that are that are blind um while at school though she fell in love with a boy a wealthy boy by the way he proposed oh my and then her dad said no you can't you know what dad it doesn't sound like you have great taste in women so you know what what? You know what? Not your fucking place.

Two, I mean, we could talk about toxic masculinity a hundred years after this. So this, I feel like this story is just almost expected at this point. Yes, definitely. But he said, I don't want you getting married. First of all, someone wants to be with your daughter and loves her. And it's wonderful. And, and like, also they met at a school for the blind. First of all, someone wants to be with your daughter and loves her. And it's wonderful. And also, they met at a school for the blind.

So they know each other's experience. And they can help each other through things. Yeah. Perfect situation. Also, he's wealthy, which I'm sure is a concern of the dad, I would think. Who has been in abject poverty this whole time. You would think that would be helpful. A bonus.

He said, well, your stepmom, she recently recently died i need you to raise her kids for for me i forgot this stepmom is just too much even in death she's fucking things up exactly like you know she did that out of spite sorry i cannot even say that with a straight face it's a terrible thing to say but uh i just picture like in the disney version of this she's like ha ha yeah exactly it's like i'll run away and everyone will have to take over my responsibilities with my own children my offspring yeah so she so stepmom dies she ends up having to turn down the love of her life which like by the way let's remember that was like the only good thing that's ever happened to her it's horrible that's really sad it makes me sad and she goes to raise her half siblings in her own town and at this point becomes a bit of like a mentor in her village

teaching kids how to sew and embroider i feel like she's kind of just become like the village home ec teacher and the irony is so that one day they can grow up and go be on their own, which she was forced out of. Yeah, wasn't even allowed to do. Yeah. By 28, full blown spinster, I'm sure. Yeah, right. She's a lost cause. Am I right?

Well, here's the third time where she should have died and somehow didn't um she died from or she almost died from inflammation of the lungs which at the time was its own like disease or sickness like that was like you could just die from that i don't think they had awareness that that was a symptom of something bigger oh i see i see so there's no record of what she actually nearly died from just right the the side effect that almost killed her something's wrong with her lungs yeah um so it could have been a flu or something but right um anyway she almost died from inflammation of the lungs which like how inflated and inflamed do your lungs have to be terrible terrible terrible, terrible.

And they didn't have x-ray machines back then. Like, how bad are your lungs that they know that your lungs... Are you sure they didn't have x-ray machines considering they had eye surgery? I don't know at this point. I'm like, what was their x-ray? Like, they just like cut you open and look inside and say, okay, we did an x-ray. A scalpel was an x-ray, yeah. A scalpel, yeah. An exacto knife.

So at 28, she almost dies she survives again i feel like you know what something's happening when i'm holding this root beer because it feels like my version of holding a bottle of beer and it looks like you're having a bar with you and i'm like and then this bitch and i can't even and then you'll never believe what happened next and then i had to hear from a buddy down the road, but she survived. She made it. Meanwhile, all I have is this fucking, I can't even put it on the screen because it looks so gross, but Blaze made me overnight oats with chia seeds. How do we feel about overnight oats? I fucking love them.

Always have. But I know they're very divisive. So I know that it's not everybody. Well, I just think some people are like not into oats or oatmeal at all. Oh, oh, oh, oh. But I like it. Oats, oats, oats i but i like it so um i love a porridge a porridge interesting i don't know if i've ever had a porridge well well oatmeal falls under the umbrella of porridge right what about i guess so what about cream of wheat that would be like a porridge uh i don't think i've had cream of wheat but i've had my childhood oh it's like the same

thing i think well no it's a little different but they're similar i fucking love farina yeah i feel like um my big thing growing up when we'd go to my grandma's in austria was cream of wheat with um with chocolate shaving milk chocolate shavings oh my god oh my god oh my god i feel like i i feel like only people who play hoop and stick are people who like whose mouths melt at the idea of cream of wheat with chocolate literally farina but it's us it's so good i just had it when i was um when i went to um thanksgiving for my with my aunt and my uncle they They make a meme for Rina. They make a for Mina. And it was delicioso.

Oh, apparently they're basically very similar. Okay, well then I probably like Crumbly. It'll be my old people meal because I'm already eating it. Melt some German chocolate onto that bad boy. It's really good is ritter sport

a german chocolate sure is i think so at least it might be dutch sometimes i get them mixed up but let me check the light blue one the alpine milk oh it does something to me and then the brown one with the little biscuit in it oh my god take me out that's my that's my personal favorite the the biscuit one um they're the only two I like. I've tried all of them. And the brown one and the light blue one are my two favorites. Yeah, they are indeed a German brand. I just confirmed. Oh, I love them.

The light blue one I have in my freezer right now. Yummy. Maybe I eat some of that while I listen to my Hilary Duff later. Oh, that's going to be a good day. Friday party. Okay, so back to my, we're in a dive bar i'm holding my beer so we're talking about cream of wheat like all guys at dive bars do holding okay let me get back into it so then this this little girl's supposed to die she survives for the

third time now with her stupid lungs they somehow like nine lives yeah yeah it's so it really is almost like she's a cat according to vanga while she was sick on her deathbed which i will say a lot of people even personal friends of mine if you are that close to death that is when a lot of people have a moment where because they're on the other side or so close to the veil in between worlds it ignites something or they've seen too much and it stays with them when they come back to earth side uh and and it's the beginning of them having some interesting spiritual skills i have absolutely heard that i've heard that very often about people who, yeah, either die on the table during surgery or have a near-death experience and they come back to Earth and are like,

my entire view on life has changed. Like their whole prospect and their whole view of the world changes. One of my friends who is very gifted in this stuff, she died on the table 12 times before college. She had like a really intense spleen disorder. Jesus Christ. I mean, oh my God. After 12 times, she's like, oh, there's nothing I haven't tapped into

at least once probably. I mean, she's a medium, right? So it's like she clearly connected something somewhere. Well, I say all that to say say Vanga is now on her third attempt to reach heaven, I guess. And she's survived, which means now three times she has, I don't know how close to death she was during the tornado one. I mean, it was definitely a trauma. I would say pretty fucking close.

I'm just going to say it. I don't know if she died and then like came back or anything, but I do know, I do know as a premature baby where they literally thought she was going to die. Maybe she, I don't know. Add it all together.

She's having spiritual experiences after this, because while she was sick, while she was sick, apparently she saw, Oh, I forgot to mention this forever ago it was like one of the most important bullet notes and i walked right over it during the tornado i'm so sorry i totally just went over this one during the tornado her eyes are like all fucked up she doesn't know where

she is her cousins are looking for her while she's just kind of sitting there and i assume waiting for death to happen apparently spirits come to her oh and tell her you are going to have the gift of clairvoyance and you're going to have the gift you're going to have powers spiritual powers after this and this is inside the tornado either inside the tornado or now she's like on a field somewhere waiting to be discovered. On recovery. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Gotcha. So. Oh, yeah. And that is an important bullet point. Like wildly important. And like, I mean, also the symbolism of like as she's losing her sight, someone is telling her she's going to gain a new sight. Yeah.

So she is having a spiritual experience then too then. And that happened at 12 and then everything else i've set up until now going to school and having the surgery going to school now becoming like a village mother um that's all happened but she hasn't had any gifts up until that point i think when she had that kind of moment with the spirits she probably looked back and felt like i was clearly going through a fucking trauma or i was like dehydrated or something or maybe i hit my head remembering or it was just a weird dream yeah i'm sure there's a lot of ways to write it off so i think she kind

of stayed closed off to it she was like oh that was weird and then just didn't never put energy towards it right well now that she's lying on her deathbed for the third time with this lung thing a spirit approaches her and says hey hey, girl, remember me? I told you I'd be back. And I don't know. This is where things get problematic. They start getting problematic. It starts immediately with the fact that this spirit is an ancient warrior.

I don't know what that means. It's vague enough for me to have some concern. I don't know what it means. I'm worried about it being like, mean is this an indigenous person is this like i mean if she lives in macedonia i could just be a macedonian warrior i hope so i it starts getting problematic so i'm already you don't you just don't know where the line with it where it begins i'm already primed to be like so this is the beginning of that so an ancient warrior let's hope it's an ancient macedonian or warrior apparently his spirit shows up he visits her he says that he's

here to watch over her and help heal her through her lung infection and it was at this moment once she recovered that the gifts she was told about at 12 years old are starting to come to the surface. Aha, okay. Vanga begins to see spirits and they really appear at random. She really has very little control over it. She starts hearing voices out of nowhere. And on top of that, she can now allegedly go into trances and allow spirits to speak through her. And she can see the future oh so casual casual um she could also focus on a particular person this is the wildest part to me she could focus

on a particular person and see their entire life from birth to death so she could look right at you and know what's going to happen like that movie was that big fish what movie was that where she's where he sees a big fish she shows him how he dies and he's on the toilet. I don't know. Was that Elvis Presley you're talking about? It was my Cinderella story or something. Hillary is not just her discography, her filmography is crazy. I mean, clearly very diverse. Yeah.

her filmography is crazy i mean clearly very diverse yeah um so vanga can now focus on people her her clairvoyance is probably one of her biggest gifts very cool but a lot of other random visions would come to her without any control a la that's so raven just kind of like they would hit her and she and they would be kind of out of context so she didn't know what she was looking at um uh and her powers she kept them for she kept them a secret for a year she was afraid of people thinking she was mentally ill which is the first thing i thought because i was like this girl has like she definitely hit her head in that tornado oh yeah she's through it she's been through it she's like living in poverty she's raising kids she doesn't want to raise traumatized in many ways like she's and also like just in general she's living a life she didn't really want like she maybe this is like her way out is to like create

this like fantastical story or you know what it could be real it could not be real but it could be real we don't know yeah um when she did finally tell her closest friends and family it was difficult for them to believe her until a bunch of her predictions started coming true and they were like oh there's no way you could have known that i love it um they wanted vanga to share her gift with the world but she was very hesitant and did not like the idea of fame she didn't want to like she She didn't want the attention. So she kept it quiet for a long time. But in 1939.

She has a vision. About World War II. Oh I knew you were going to say that. And that her country was going to join the war in two years. So she said 1941. We're going to join. And also. Like I don't know psychologically where this falls. but having lived through World War One as a child, she was probably so fucking scared of a whole other world war that maybe.

Yeah, well, and her dad was gone and it was her. She was alone. Yeah. Yeah. I don't for people who are doubtful about her, you know, she could have maybe just been predicting like one of her greatest fears and just saying, like, I hope this doesn't happen. And then it did for her to have said like the year and that her country would be joining. It's a little more specific. So some people fall into the camp that she was telling the truth. Right. I could see both sides of that. Yeah. truth right i could see both sides of that yeah it it freaked her out so much that she did not want to scare anybody else because she knew what it was like having already lived through a world

war so she kept quiet about it um one day while out though apparently again could be mental illness could be miraculous we don't know one day while out a spirit of an old man possesses her and speaks through her and tells that vision that we are going to be joining world war ii in 1941 to just anyone who's walking by this apparently no okay so she's like i'll keep this to myself and they're like the hell you will and then they just force her to say it okay i feel like some ghost was like i literally just i just told you that i just told you this is gonna happen why aren't you telling people like warn people and so where yeah i get i mean yeah okay so poor girl she's like i don't even have any boundaries in my own brain anymore sure yeah uh and the story spread because at the very least a quote

crazy girl was on the side of the street like predicting things saying that we were going to join in world war ii blah blah and so it was kind of like a local gossip tabloid story but then the story spread again years later when that prediction came true and all of a sudden she was like in the limelight of oh she could sense something maybe she knows more things and very quickly she grew an audience um other people knew especially during such an unprecedented time that if they went to vanga's home then maybe they could get some guidance because remember world war one and world war two or was it world war one world war two or yes it was those two i think the two world wars were the times where a lot of places had massive

spikes in spiritualism because so many people died that everybody was like just desperate for an answer about where their son was or where their husband was or if there were any messages uncertainty and fear yeah so it does totally make sense that you would be seeking guidance you know yeah and if everyone else is already kind of talking about spiritualism it's not as woo-woo to say like oh i'm gonna go talk to this Vanga girl who already predicted things before I was even into this kind of stuff. So many obviously thought she was a liar or that she was in cahoots with the devil. Sure. Others thought this was a miracle from God.

To those who did believe her, she was known to be a comfort during a scary time who reassured visitors and she brought them peace. And I just wanted to put this in that like she was not very. Because I also don't know where I stand on her having all these predictions, especially during a time where it was a very lucrative time to be tricking people. Like people were really relying on her word. She could not be legit. But she never asked money of people. Like the wildest request she had was that she would ask people sometimes to sleep with an item under their pillow. That way it was like close to their mind.

And then she could use it in her readings to like be connected to them. Like there was one where, um, a guy had to like sleep with sugar cubes under his pillow and then bring the sugar cubes to their appointment. Um, but she never asked for, like put some in her tea, like, thank you for that. Exactly. Um, yeah, honestly, I think she just needed to borrow a cup of sugar but this is a moment where i at least say she didn't ask for money from people ever she did not add some validity to me for me at least it's and also i mean i don't know how real this is or

if this is a story but it sounds like she didn't want people to know for years she didn't even want her own family to know for years she knew she would be deemed crazy i don't know you as my uh my q anon friends would say do your own research so um your q anon friends lol don't talk about me like that i'm just kidding yeah yeah can you imagine if i had a q anon friend anyway okay i i know i was like wait can you clarify because i don't think that that's real is it if it is they know not to tell me about it i guess um so people began to see her as again not just a mother figure in her village where she was helping out like the local kids but now she's seen as a mother figure to many people because she's helping give peace to them and so

this is where she gets granted the name baba vanga or grandma vanga um also i think i don't know what age she was but i feel like she was way too young to be a baba vanga but true but she is a spinster so that's true you know what once you've hit 20 if you're not married you are you might as well be a great great grandma senior you're in aarp for sure i'm in aarp i know i know you are my friend i love it the benefits man uh everyone i tell they're like don't you have to be 65 and i'm like that's what they want you to think but that's actually 55 i remember because my parents had a small crisis when the mail started coming in but uh but yeah no m's in it i'm in it you can be in it too uh here's an eerie example of one of the times where she was or maybe her predictions were true um so this is in 1942

and uh i forgot to look up how this is pronounced t-s-a-r is that czar a czar yeah uh boris the third of bulgaria he fucking heard about her and was like i am heading my way over to bonga i want to see what is going on what is what's the future look like for me and my rule like what how are things gonna go bonga tells uh czar bor Boris III, August 28th, get ready for her. She will be coming soon. And on August 28th, homeboy died of a heart attack. Oh, she was death. Okay.

Like his new love interest, another tornado. Oh, no, just death. Okay. So vague. Which, by the way, this is a reminder that if you do believe in mediums and you do like to go to appointments whatever they say it could mean anything yeah there it's hard because it's like yeah it's vague i mean it sounds like she was right on the money with the date um so that's something but yeah it's kind of it's one of those reminders that like her visions were also out of context she She probably only got like August 28th, which, you know, if she's telling the truth on all this, you know, but it would mean that like he came to ask about his rule and she got a date and maybe assumed that that had something to do with it.

But it was really like the spirits maybe saying he's not even going to make it past August 28th. Like the rule is not what he needs to be concerned about. it but it was really like the spirits maybe saying he's not even gonna make it past august 28th like the rule is not what he needs to be concerned about yeah he needs to i don't know get his cholesterol under control or something yeah yeah yeah so uh at 31 okay so yeah so she's definitely not a baba age she's super old old elderly got it the fact that we could be babos is crazy. Fantastic. So at 31, a soldier, I think his name's Dimitar. Dimitar? D-I-M-I-T-A-R. Dimitar.

Dimitar? Dimitar. I don't know. This Bulgarian soldier shows up and he wants a reading from her because his brother has recently died and he wants the names of the men who killed him oh okay this is getting a little dicey banga tells him the names before he even sat down because he hadn't even made the request yet as soon as she saw him she knew what he wanted and said here are the names but uh god is going to punish the killers she's basically saying karma's real don't get involved karma's coming gotcha but she said god is going to punish them i'm only

telling you their names so that way you get to be a witness to god's punishments but you do not get to enact the vengeance and you do not get to i'm not uh condoning violence. And you get, I'll tell you the names just so you can sit on the sidelines and watch and enjoy as they suffer. Let me guess, he didn't listen. No, he listened. Oh, he did, good. In fact, he was so taken by her boundaries

that he fell for her very quickly and they fell in love. Shut up. But guess what, Miss Baba Vanga, who can see all, she did not see that he had a wife. Uh-oh, she's blinded by love, you know what I mean? Uh-huh, yep, yep, yep. But he leaves his wife for her,

and then Vanga and her sister both move in with him and his family, and they adopt two children together. Holy shit. So they moved quick all right and they can which always i've always wondered if you're a medium and if you're a medium please write in i hope i'm not asking an ignorant question but with true good intentions like if you're about to fall in love with somebody how do you not just do a reading on that how do you i i know a lot of people have like a like a block where they can't do things for themselves

but if you're that's what i usually hear when i ask people that question is like you because i've talked to one medium who said even people in her own family like she really doesn't access or can't access because it's too emotionally close that she can't she can't tell what's like her emotional stuff and what's like an outside source is what I was told by one medium. So I don't know. I don't know for other people. I wonder if you have a similar trauma to me and Christine, where you're really good at compartmentalizing emotions. Like, can you put your feelings aside and then do it on yourself? Yeah. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I'm sure it changes, right? Like depending on the person. I

mean, just cause that one medium I spoke to said that maybe I imagine there are others who can access. I don't know. Yeah. If you're someone who, who actually does possess the abilities and you have any insight to this, I would love to hear it. I would love to know if you were able to look in and kind of cheat the system. I'm like, Oh, I know how this is going to go. Or in the opposite way system i'm like oh i know how this is gonna go

or in the opposite way of like oh i see how this is gonna go we gotta this is not gonna work yeah i imagine you would think like in that way even not want to see certain things right like i don't know i anyway i i'm curious but yeah i was like maybe uh vanga saw two kids with this guy and was like oh he'll do and then like, oh, he'll do. And then like never even realized he had a wife because at the end of the day, that part wasn't important because it would get solved. Anyway. A lot of questions, though. I'm curious as well.

So he left his wife. They adopt two kids. They all move in with each other. And they continue to have visitors through the end of the war and even afterwards because people still love going to Vanga. And a lot of them would. She never charged anyone for a reading, no matter what. Really? But people often tried to gift her something as a thank you. And that usually meant that they got a lot of fruits and vegetables and butter, which you can pay me in butter that's cool oh sure i'll take it but any any

resource they could bring they would try to pay her or some people did pay her in money but like that wasn't expected and they never turned anyone away if they couldn't pay. That's really nice. Yeah. So one source actually dubbed Vanga the patron diviner of lost soldiers because. Whoa. Because she allegedly helped clients locate several bodies of missing soldiers that were lost in war so that they could be brought home for burial. Holy shit. could be brought home for burial and she could even see the soldier's final moments and bring closer to their loved ones or talk to them about like their last memories um there were even rare times when vanga's vision revealed that the soldier was still alive despite being told that he was mia and he was not coming back and she was able to reunite families and friends with their,

Oh my goodness. Do you know how much investigation discovery would pay for the rights to this show? I know. Oh my God. And how much I would watch the shit out of this show. Like, Oh yeah.

Even if I didn't know how accurate or valid it was. It doesn't even matter. Like, is it legitimate? I don't know, but I still have to watch. no she so yeah so she helps reunite people and there's actually one story where she told a the wife of a missing soldier like hey i know like they literally came to your doorstep and said that he's dead or they sent you a letter or something um or a pigeon sent

you a telegraph i don't know how it works but he is alive regardless of what you've heard he is alive and he will be coming home it actually won't be for a while he's doing something but he'll be back eventually the wife did not believe her and was like i've already grieved i can't bear any false hope uh and ended up getting remarried and a year later the soldier came home oh Oh, drama. And apparently that story became very popular of like, you got to believe Baba Vanga because she is going to tell you what's going on.

Jeez, that's got to be a mindfuck. She even continued to have strange visions, but she never wrote them down. Most of the records of her visions were actually written secondhand by her sister who kept track of this stuff which i like that the sister was like ah we have to have receipts like this is crazy like if somebody's gonna ask okay yeah and i'm not gonna be the one looking like a cuckoo because i'm telling them about your powers right um in 1962 uh her husband ended up dying and vanga moved

with her sister to a village outside of petrich petrich petrich petrich um not even five speak the bulgarian countryside i think yeah and then in 1967 the bulgarian government was like we fucking have been hearing about you no way and they hire her for her abilities and give her an office in the capital in 67 in 67 wow that's pretty. Tell me this is not the government department. Like, I know, we all know how I feel about politics in general, but I would drop everything and I would work for the man for this department. Are you ready? She works for the department.

Okay. The Institute of Suggestology and Parapsychology. Bitch! I would literally drop all of my morals. I'd be like, I have to work at the parapsychology department today. I love the government! And would shout. USA! USA!

Okay. So I would just be a screeching bald eagle through those halls. I'd be like, parapsychology department! Oh my god. that's wild. I love that they had that. They ends up going, she ends up working at the Institute of Suggestology and Parapsychology,

where not only is she hired and has her own office in the Capitol, but they also hire her several assistants that just manage her appointments, record her visions, and then they give her sister a salary job as an assistant too okay well i would like to be your sister in this scenario and just get to hang out and write things down for you i like that i feel like that was part

of the negotiation of like i'll only do this if my sister can also have a job and i think the sister is now just like in charge of like lunch break like she's just like that she has the room to negotiate that way. Like you bring my sister on board. Otherwise, I'm not giving you my vision powers. Exactly. So here is the crux of it all, though, is that just like what I would do, she absolutely gave up all of her morals. And she sold out.

And now because she's a hired government employee. Contractor, basically. Yeah. None of her visions anymore were ever free. She absolutely, like, everyone had to pay top dollar for a vision from her because she was working for the government. So now she's, like, part of, like, government secrets. Like, she has, like, essentially top clearance whether or not they want to give it to her because she can see everything um and many of her clientele were high profile politicians and celebrities and now this also

like gets kind of weird in like government conspiracy shit where like you wonder like could they just pay her to say anything whether or not she saw it just to like anything whether or not she saw it just to like right you know the world at bay or um or could she lie and and yeah we could just tell the newspapers she said this so that way people think of this um the bulgarian government now had access to all the desires and motives of all who came to see vanga for advice so anyone that she was working with outside of the government i guess had to jot down that they what they were there for what they wanted to know so now the government has intel on like all these people's insecurities and fears and sure um they also studied vanga to try to investigate the accuracy of her prophecies. Over the years, many famous people ended up visiting Baba Vanga until her death in 1996,

which it feels weird that someone born in 1911, I know it's like totally doable, but in my brain, it feels so far removed from a time that I was alive that for her to have died when I was on earth is crazy. Yeah, that always trips me up a little bit. In the end, many insist that Vanga was a child yeah that that always trips me up a little bit yeah um in the end many insist that vanga was a fraud whose sponsorship by the state was politically advantageous as well as kind of uh like a lore in for tourism and others think that she could have just been mentally ill

and none of it was legitimate but she got exploited anyway for political agendas and they took advantage of a sick person. And either way, we still don't totally know how accurate or how legitimate she was, but she did have a lot of prophecies go correctly she accurately predicted them um i gasped earlier i thought because i had missed i didn't let you finish the sentence i when you said they were no longer free i thought you were gonna say they no longer came true and i was like oh my gosh i thought like because the government hired her suddenly like her spiritual guides were like you sold out we're not giving you any more visions. Now that would be, by the way, can I give you a weird shout out and mention things that you have not mentioned on the show before? Always.

You can say whatever you want. Christine has recently been dipping her toe into writing and has been joining some writing contests. Yes, I have. Christine, that is a twist that you should remember for a future story because that's a great point is like oh the spirits were like we gave you a gift and you sold out and you've lost your like yeah yeah people are using it for war time i don't think so you know that's a good twist christine recently did a had to write with a prompt that came with a twist there was a twist at the end and uh it was a very good story and em was like oh here's a twist and i was like shit that's a better twist that's

a better twist than i had did i i don't even remember that your twist was good uh your twist was that at the well can i reveal your twist yeah it was uh that at the end um the person that he was like telling this whole story to was being buried alive or he was telling his victim as he was killing him yeah yeah you find out that he's been oh man that was good too that the narrator was the killer all along yeah right right right yeah yeah yeah gotta love it gotta love it yeah they gave me the prompt thriller and i was like yay and then i started writing and i was like this is really hard to write a thriller no i uh you remember this as a motivation for your future contests that you i love that thank you thank you so i do want to say some of the predictions that she has yes please i would love to hear them so in 1999 uh there was a russian city called kursk

and she predicted that kursk would be quote covered with water the whole world will weep over it oh shit and kursk nothing ended up happening to the city. But within that year, when she made this prediction, a very famous Russian submarine also named Kursk sank and all 120 people aboard died. Oh, shit. So this is a reminder that even she doesn't understand the context of a lot of her visions, just that she heard the word K kursk assumed it meant the city and not the submarine um but she's a little bit unfair that her spiritual guides won't like say don't worry this entire city is not going down they'll be like you'll understand someday like it's one of those conversations where i could sit for hours and wonder like where is the red tape like why why can't they yeah give us more information is it rules is it yeah are there rules or like are they following rules and it's like just rules that we don't understand because we're not part of that world or like can they not give any more are they putting

out as much energy as they already can and like they don't have any more room to give any more context i don't know but either just some uh what a wacky that's a raven episode that would be when we thought we had to save a city but it was actually a submarine and then they all died instead i yeah what a what a wacky day um that's me yeah that's me you're probably wondering how this submarine drowned um i i feel like we should take advantage of the the the herb of the month club that i signed us up for and uh discuss this topic at a future date because i think we'd have a lot to uh to discuss well so i agree uh she also predicted that the 44th u.s. president would be a black man. Whoa. She was so specific. She predicted Brexit. She said major world cities would have record

droughts in 2022. And in 2022, many cities in Europe declared official droughts. There is kind of the thought that in 1989, she predicted 9-11. Because she, I don't know any more context other than this, but in her premonition, she said, horror, horror, the American brethren will fall after being attacked by steel birds. Well, sounds pretty close i mean eerie certainly eerie definitely eerie she allegedly predicted the fall of the soviet union the union of east and west germany uh the chernobyl disaster the date of st's death. And during COVID, which she was not around for,

she died in 96, but during COVID, a longtime follower of Baba Vanga said, I remember back in the 90s and there was one prediction she always mentioned that always stuck with me and I never knew what it meant.

But she said, the corona will be on all of us. And that being said, this is another moment where like it's an out of context that's so raven vision like how would you ever know what that meant well because corona in bulgarian means crown and so at the time when she made that prediction everybody thought that she was predicting that there would be an invasion that like the crown would be on all of us but an invasion never came and so they were like well i guess that was a false premonition unless something else is to come but she probably in her vision heard the word corona and didn't

know well and i mean this is probably semantics but to say on us all means like not just on a certain nation or a certain like no one nation is invading another like we're all struck by this outside force wow that's really wild she also predicted that around 2020 we would use solar powered vehicles to replace oil and gas extraction which around that time is when tesla came out um not not all of our predictions have come true but we you know believers can also say they just haven't come true yet including a cure for aids uh she's predicted a radical change to earth's orbit she's predicted proof of the spiritual world and keep dreaming girl but she predicted world peace for a thousand years which what happens on the thousand and first year i was

gonna say i don't like that one because that implies that i will live with anxiety for those whole thousand well i won't be alive but you know what i mean i feel like there would just be this constant anxiety of like it's gonna end any day now you know she uh uh did predict that in around 200 years we will officially make contact with extraterrestrials and Hungary will be the first to do this, but jokes on her because we've already made contact with extraterrestrials, which that my TikTok was just covered with that footage. It's also said that next year,

this, Oh no, not next year. Cause this is now 2024. This year, she predicted that in 2024 putin will be assassinated by someone from his own country oh shit well that's a very specific one so keep your eyes out no for real if that happens i'm gonna get pretty freaked out yeah uh she also said uh a country in 2024 a country will carry out biological weapons tests and attacks, which depending on who you talk to, I'm sure there's people out there who think it's already happening or it is. Whatever. Also, that there will be a terrorist attack on Europe, that there will be a huge economic crisis next year.

So buy your houses now, 2025. We've gone through enough. I say we've gone through enough, and she's like, I went through a fucking tornado. Don't talk to me about going through it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. She also said there would be a career for, not a career, there would be a cure for Alzheimer's, and sometime this year will be a cure for cancer.

She said sometime in 2024. That's hard. She's playing my she's playing my emotions real hard here. Like, I feel like on the one hand, I'm like, please God, let some of this be true. I would love to find a cure for AIDS and for Alzheimer's and cancer. And then on the other hand, I'm like, I don't know about this biological warfare thing. And I don't, I don't think I like that very much. Also, again, if you someone who's uh a bit deeper down the rabbit hole you might uh say well there probably already is a cure for cancer but big pharma blah blah

but maybe this will be the year that like the cure for cancer is revealed to people that's your friends you can talk to them about that well regardless of her validity baba vanga is said to have always had a deeply valued uh love for nature and human life over wealth and greed um and i'll end on a on two quotes from her the first quote is there won't be a third a third world war but if you continue polluting nature it will destroy us if you continue to treat mother nature like that a day will come when different plants vegetables and animals will disappear first it will be the onion garlic pepper and then bees milk will become poisonous people will sow wheat but rye will grow and then the last quote is we all one by one will go to the other world but planet earth and humanity will remain our planet existed for billions of years and will

exist for many more before an apocalypse whether it it's written in stone, it cannot be changed. Sooner or later, it happens. Oh, my God. And that's, first of all, a reminder to not only drink some water, you thirsty little rats, but also take your anti-anxiety medication. I haven't done either one today. Help. And that is Baba Vanga. Oh, gosh. and that either one today help and that is baba vanga oh gosh i was expecting another house with chicken legs and this is not what i was prepared for not what you signed up for not what i signed up for um you know i had a fifth grade social studies teacher who was obsessed with nostradamus

and instead of actually ever doing work we we just, he just read us like the world's most terrifying, like predictions. And I was in fifth grade when 9-11 happened. And so when that happened, basically the entire rest of the school year was him being like, and Nostradamus predicted this. And now looking back, like he was a little bit off his rocker, but, um, at the time we were like, wow wow and i would go home and my mom would be like what are we paying the school for like you come home and you're like nostradamus predicted like apocalypse in in and then we learned about the mayan calendar and how it was real and now i'm like that man should not have been teaching history to children can i be honest when you

first said nostradamus i heard nosferatu and I was like, oh my God, like, I don't remember that, but it makes sense. Not quite. Yeah. I don't want to say the guy's name because he was like an icon at my school. Like he was that teacher who was like the cool guy. But, you know, now looking back, I'm like, I think we all had kind of a toxic relationship with this teacher. You know, I think it kind of goes that way sometimes um and i'm not sure if he's even still alive but uh that's how i feel about the icon teacher at my school i'm like is he okay because like yeah he was old when i was there to google him yeah yeah um wowza anyway so that like i've just always been i think i was the only one in class who was like desperately

fascinated by these stories like about Nostradamus and all that and people just were like I'm glad we're not doing work and I'm like me too but also I want to know more about these at the time I think I would have been more of a happy I'm not doing work person but in hindsight I would have been like man I should have really appreciated the stories being told to me oh I was just in it I was like a conspiracy theorist fifth grader like it was crazy um I'm very glad that I feel like he's kind of the kind of person who would maybe have fallen to QAnon, you know, like he was really into all the like offbeat sources and how things aren't what they seem. shocking even today i mean i feel like q anon became part of our you know became part of the air where like all of us kind of just know about it and like it kind of got forgotten i think a lot of people feel like they gave up on q anon we're like oh well there's just crazy people in the

world now but like it it's wild i'm still in like the forums on reddit and like people are still losing family to qAnon and shit. Yes. Yes. Well, and now with I mean, even with frickin I was just talking to my dad about it last night, like with the the the chiefs and Taylor Swift and people are like the government has created. I'm like, you guys relax. My God. But just like how it was like your icon teacher who fell into it. but just like how it was like your icon teacher who fell into it i still think the scariest part about q anon is that some of the smartest people are the people who fell into it because they really were originally minded open-minded and had genuine intentions about doing their own research because they didn't want to be swayed by anybody and it just they fell into like the world's worst

rabbit hole it's it's just it's just wild so i'm not surprised that like a teacher who was like well respected might have taken a turn you know yeah and i mean i don't know that about him because like i genuinely don't but um it may or may not allegedly i could see it i could let's just say like it wouldn't be shocking to me there's there's some people i don't keep in touch with anymore and i think about them i'm like i bet i know where they ended up like i have a feeling i don't think i need to google it to find out right right if i check their facebook i think i know what their post would look like oh and this was the same teacher that walked us through the entire elizabeth smart kidnapping so like i was we were in his class like as that unfolded. And so it was a weird year.

It was like 9-11. Elizabeth Smart. Like, I mean, I don't know. Did that happen in 2001? It must have. It definitely happened when we were children because all it did was fuel any fire my parents had about me being kidnapped. So, yeah. OK, so that happened.

Oh, too. Yeah. So like that probably that same school year. And I just remember being like fifth grade is a very formative time all of a sudden for me i was like this is a learning about the world from yeah we had we had all that in the and then the dc sniper too so they would teach us how to hide from oh guns way before it was like fucking normal before it was cool before it was like normal what every kid was doing oh my god it's horrible um anyway wow what a story

um um thank you for sharing that with me and everybody all right i have a story for you today that is pretty wild uh this is the story and i'm curious to hear if you know about it because it's been pretty um pervasive recently it's the story of natalia grace nope the curious case of natalia grace okay oh i mean yeah but i liked the word play you should be a writer and like join a bunch of contests or something yeah i should although that is the name of the documentary so that is why i said it uh okay, okay. I did not invent that, to be clear. So that's the show that came out earlier this year. Or no, I'm sorry.

I think it was end of 2023 that rocked everybody in the true crime world. So this story, and Saoirse put a really good note up top here, so I'm just going to use their words. This story largely centers on dwarfism and ableism um okay aka like discrimination against people with disabilities and um because uh the vernacular here is important i'm gonna also quote this that the little people of america organization lpa defines dwarfism as a medical or genetic condition that usually results in an adult height of four foot ten inches or shorter among both men and women although in some cases a person with dwarfing condition may be slightly taller than that the average height of an adult with dwarfism is four foot but typical heights range from two

foot eight to four foot eight and according to lpa and several content creators and writers with dwarfism the preferred terminology to refer to people with dwarfism is person or people with dwarfism or a little person, little people, depending on their preference. And LPA also lists person or people of short stature as a third option. And people without dwarfism are referred to as being average height. So that's currently, you know, the preferred vocabulary to use. Sure. And Saoirse also noted that they use several organizations and different content creators and writers with dwarfism to get like as much of an accurate insight as possible in good faith. But of course, you know, there are always going to be exceptions. Not every group is going to prefer the same terminology. For example,

although dwarfism is recognized as a legal disability under the americans with disabilities act ada some people with dwarfism do not identify as being disabled while others i embrace it so there's a lot of you know it's just nuanced just like everything else right i also i feel like it should be mentioned just just in case one person who's listening doesn't know this, that the M word is a slur. Oh, big time. Big time. I feel like it's shocking how many people don't know that. I feel like I only surround myself with people who happen to know that.

But there have been times where I'm like, you fucking don't know that that's like a big fat no-no. You missed the memo. Yeah. don't know that that's like a big fat no-no so you missed the memo yeah so in case someone didn't know i'm not trying to like add on to yours with the most obvious piece and be like the main takeaway but just in case someone doesn't know the m word for little people is like beyond no-no we don't it's a big no-no we we don't use that anymore um and i've just given you several other options so you know we can, we can all work and grow together. So let's get into it.

And you don't know the story, correct? At all. Okay. Buckle up. Okay. Here we go. So Natalia Grace was born in Ukraine on September 4th, 2003. Although that date would become hotly contested.

Her birth date would become hotly contested. Her birth date would become hotly contested. Let's just leave it at that. Her mother gave birth to her at the hospital and did not take her home. And so Natalia was placed into an orphanage awaiting adoption. She was born with spondyloepithesial dysplasia congenita. Yeah, I practiced. Good job. Thank you. Spondyloepithesial, I really hope I'm saying that right. Spondyloepithesial dysplasia congenita or SEDC. And among the 400, fun fact, types of dwarfism, SEDC is very rare and occurs in fewer than one out of 100,000 births. Wow. Okay. So people with dwarfism can be born to average height parents and have average height siblings. In fact, over 80%

of children with dwarfism have average height parents. And according to the Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania, most cases of SEDC are caused by a new genetic mutation of chromosome 12 in utero, but it can also be a genetic condition. So it can vary by individual, but SEDC can affect the skeleton, the muscles, the digestive system, the respiratory system, vision and hearing, among other body systems. Dwarfism and other conditions and disabilities are as you know we've just already listed a formerly commonly used slur because a lot of times people who have disabilities or other conditions like dwarfism are considered inherently bad or different or you know just othered because of because of their condition but with medical and social support and

accessibility tools people with sedc can live just as happy and same great quality of life as anyone else can right like same with anyone with any condition if we give them the right tools and the right access and you know the ability to live as a human on this earth, the way that they were born, you know, just deserves to be noted, I would say. So Natalia was an orphan and she would need the support of an empathetic and proactive family who would be ready to advocate for her care. So, of course, there are additional,, like I'm trying to think of the right word. Like there's just a lot more responsibility. Yeah. You would need,

you would need to be prepared to offer more support, like medically speaking and so on. So in 2008, Natalia was adopted by the Ciccone family in New Hampshire at the age of five. adopted by the Ciccone family in New Hampshire at the age of five. Now, we don't exactly know what happened with the Ciccone family. Reports are pretty vague, and they have refused to comment in any of the documentaries covering the situation. So there's a lot of speculation out there. Some of the speculation is that the Ciccones were just unwilling or maybe unable to financially support Natalia's complex medical needs. Perhaps the Saccones suffered some sort of major unforeseen life event that caused them to have to change Natalia's home. But whatever the case, they decided to, quote unquote, re-home Natalia.

Now, I'm going to get into this very briefly. I have a very sore spot about this. I don't know why, probably just because it's about children, but I've watched several YouTube kind of exposés about families that have adopted children only to rehome them, and it's just this uniquely horrible situation a lot of the time. Not every time, but a lot of the time. Um, so rehoming adopted children is a pretty big phenomenon in the United States. Like you might not realize it. And that's because a lot of times children will be adopted privately. And then when the parents feel like they can no longer care for the child or don't want to, um, they can turn to facebook and what literally yeah what i had no idea i know facebook has come

under heavy criticism for allowing adoption groups where prospective parents post advertisements and photos of their children looking for new families like a like an animal like a puppy that was born under your porch or something yeah yeah whoa uh in many states the courts do not even need to get legally involved this isn't even an illegal behavior it's just what how you i know you basically we're not gonna like sign paperwork at the very least oh yeah we'll sign paperwork they basically post their child to facebook meet the prospective family and then sign and notarize the custody documents and bang, bang, boom. Uh, and, you know, even in the smoothest, which I'll mention later, but even in the smoothest of these rehoming, it's still a traumatic event to be rehomed to a new family, right? Like to be for your, your parents to not

want you. Yeah. Right. Or, or to not be able to care for you or to just, just to even change your environment, whether it's, whether it's necessary or better for the child or whatever aside, even like a divorce, it's, it'll be traumatic because it's, it's a, it's a major life event, even if it's the smoothest, most healthy divorce possible. Right. So it's still, um, it's still a rough, a rough experience. And then, you know, you get into the details of some of these families that are, really should just go to prison, but whatever. So adults who were adopted as children have begun speaking out. And I've heard some of these on YouTube, like these kind of tell-all experiences from the people themselves who've experienced this,

telling stories of being rehomed multiple times. A lot of times parents who rehome adopted children cite behavioral issues, life changes, expensive medical needs. I think a lot of times families who do this get in over their heads and they don't realize like how much or or, you know, there's there have been cases where the adoption, the adoptive agency is not up front about some of the, you know, either a disability or some of the struggles that the child has had or some health issues. And then they move in with the family and the family is suddenly like too overwhelmed and they had not been prepared for that so you know there's a lot of moving parts that um make this obviously very textured but uh it's just also very sad because in what world like would you re-home your quote by like your biological child it's almost like you don't see an adopted child as your real child because you adopt them, but then there's also, uh, there's caveats or there's like strings attached, you know? Um, and so it's, it just is a very, I know that it runs a gamut. There's a whole spectrum of like

why it might be necessary to rehome some, a child with specialized needs. I understand that. Um, it's just very sad when parents just kind of don't realize what they're getting into and rehome a family or rehome a child. So anyway, so imagine a Facebook group basically dedicated to giving away your biological children because like the child is having medical issues or, you know what I mean? It's like, it's just hard to wrap your head around. I'm going to read you just to give you an idea, an example of a real I hate to even say these words together. Advertisement for a child. This was posted on Facebook.

Quote, born in October of 2000. This handsome boy, Rick, was placed from India a year ago and is obedient and eager to please. Oh, fucking vomitous. That was a post that was kind of giving enslaved person right okay so my next bullet is literally that there have been cases exposed where the adoptions have led to human trafficking um which i mean is not surprising right so there's this one uh girl her name was Pukala, and she was adopted as a teenager from Liberia and described as troubled. And her parents posted an ad to rehome her online and signed her over to new parents two days later where she was immediately sexually abused the same night. it's just really the fact that it's it's essentially like if you're like a uh if you are a sexual deviant a sex offender in some way like you could just go to facebook marketplace and get

a child litter i mean literally and look at photos like it should be like the dark web or some shit and it's just facebook it feels like it shouldn't be facebook fucking marketplace i want a little a little handsome boy who's eager to please and I can get him tomorrow. What? God, it's really sick. And so many adopted children have shared similar stories of being trafficked through these rehoming ads on Facebook. So reminder now, just to give you all that context, reminder that the Saccone's are in a place where they've decided to rehome five year old Natalia. Again, we don't know why, but because they have kept it private. But that is what they decided to rehome five-year-old Natalia. Again, we don't know why, because they have kept it private, but that is what they decided to do. And they posted about Natalia and a woman named Judith Irving saw Natalia's photo and just fell in love with her right away. And Judith is also

a person with dwarfism and felt like she was uniquely qualified to be able to care for this child. And she wanted to give natalia a loving and affirming home but allegedly the saconis asked judith to pay 25 000 out of pocket uh in legal fees for the adoption and she was like i cannot afford that um and so some people should be fucking thanking me that i'm taking someone off your hands where you should be going to jail for doing this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, obviously, moving on. But I also want to be clear, that is just one side of the story.

We don't actually know the real facts of this exchange or what have you. Some people have criticized the Cicconi is basically what you're saying for attempting to sell Natalia instead of finding a more affordable legal option to process the adoption. But we don't have the facts. We don't know what the real costs were to rehome Natalia.

So this is all speculation. But it was difficult to let go. And Judith said, in my heart, Natalia is the daughter I never had. But she just could not come up with, according to her, the $25,000 they were asking for. So two other potential parents who were also little people flew to meet Natalia, but according to them, something about the meeting felt off. And one of them said something was wrong with Natalia, but he couldn't decide whether it was her or just the whole adoption situation itself. it was her or just the whole adoption situation itself. And he was already uneasy because as he claims, the Sacconeys had asked the couple to reimburse them for medical expenses that they'd already paid for Natalia's previous procedures.

So it is coming off a little bit like several people have alleged the Sacconeys were asking for sums of money to find the right home for Natalia. And so this couple also left and did not adopt Natalia either. And that's kind of what caused people to accuse her parents of attempting to profit because two families who both were in a similar situation, they were either little people or had dwarfism and they were willing to give her a safe, happy home. And apparently it just didn't, the Saccone's didn't agree to the exchange. So that's kind of where they get criticized.

Regardless of the truth behind the Saccone's choosing to rehome Natalia, she ended up with a couple named Michael and Christine Barnett, who had three biological sons named Jacob, Wesley and Ethan. Now, this is where the story turns into like the melodrama of the docuseries and the true crime and all that. So she ends up with this couple, Michael and Christine. And in the Discovery Plus documentary, Michael claimed that the whole family traveled to Florida to adopt Natalia from an agency called the Adoption by Shepherd Care. However, after the first season of this docuseries aired, the adoption agency, Adoption by Shepherd Care, released a statement to the public that said,

Contrary to Mr. Barnett's claims, ASC did not initiate any communication or contact with Mr. and Mrs. Barnett regarding Natalia's adoption. The adoption process for Natalia was carried out by a court in New Hampshire where the original adoptive family resided. You know when Taylor Swift had to write out publicly, like, I would like to be excluded from the narrative? Like, don't fucking include me. Don't include me in the narrative not i was not part of this yeah we were not part and parcel to this like shady ass shit that you're pulling here sir um and and i i think you know that just he my take on it is that he didn't want to say yeah we paid the money or whatever to the saconis to buy a child like my guess is he didn't want it to come off that way.

I don't know if that's true. But for what it's worth, the adoption agency was like, wait, what? He said that? No, we had nothing to do with it. So I don't know. Very odd. People were left to wonder then, of course, why Michael would fabricate an entire story about Natalia's adoption if this was a legitimate adoption, like, why are you

making up facts about it? So it's already looking shady. Yeah, very, very shady. So Michael expressed that he and Christine were happy in their marriage, loving parents, simply ready to welcome a new child into their life. So one of the couple's children is autistic and Christine had written a book about her son this book I looked it up it's called The Spark a mother's story of nurturing genius and autism and the description reads Christine Barnett's son Jacob has an IQ higher than Einstein's a photographic memory and he taught himself calculus in two weeks but the story of Christine's journey with Jake is all the more remarkable because his extraordinary mind was almost lost to autism and god i just feel like this whole episode is like me

giving glaring caveats or glaring like massive psas massive psas thank you um quick note quick note on autism uh there's a there's a stigma surrounding autism. But experts argue that an autistic person doesn't exist separately from their autism. According to the Autistic Advocacy Organization, autism is an edifying and meaningful component of a person's identity, and it defines the way in which an individual experiences and understands the world all around him or her. It is all pervasive. So essentially... Go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, no, no, no. Go ahead. I was just going to say like the fact that there even is like a standard of what a successful child looks like is like, and just say like, oh, well they have to be happy. And I'm like,

have you not met people with autism? Cause I know plenty of happy autistic people. Exactly. What are you talking about? It's like sort of you win that's it you did it yeah you did it congratulations um and and i say all this because christine's book was a hit it received a lot of praise but of course a lot of backlash because um autistic readers and parents of autistic children felt the book was focused not on her child jake but on christine sort of praising herself for like overcoming jake autism, if you know what I mean. Overcome? Yeah, just like she almost like she wrote it to be like, look what I overcame as instead of saying like, here's how to provide, you know, the best support system for your child. I defeated this big, ugly monster in my child.

That sort of feels like what the criticism centered around. And others criticized Christine for profiting off her son's stories. You know, Jake was kind of brought around on a national tour, did 60 Minutes, all that good stuff. But Christine and Michael are... So they exploited him on how gross his autism is. Well, I wouldn't, I mean, I feel like there's two sides to this. Like don't i haven't read the book so i don't know like how the the criticism wasn't about her take on autism so much as it was about the book being more about her than her own son like if if that makes sense i don't think um i don't know enough i'll be honest i don't know enough about the book to like make claims about how she feels about it or i'm just ready'm just clear i'm just clear i'm ready to tussle yeah yeah yeah which is fair um i'm like i'm ready to be triggered so i'm like

looking for a reason you know i'm not saying that this is an excuse but it's also like decades ago so who knows you know some people some advocates for autism loved the book. Some did not. I am not no expert. So I do not feel that I can make a claim either way. Hence my little PSA. So and I have not read the book. So I don't know. It seemed to have helped a lot of people, you know, understand their kids diagnoses. And some people said, nah, this ain't it. So I don't quite know. But for what it's worth, Christine and Michael felt like they could take on a child who had some medical challenges. And that is why they thought, okay, well, Natalia would be a perfect fit in our home. But things, as you've probably suspected, did not work out that way. The night of Natalia's adoption adoption Christine was giving her a bath when she started screaming for Michael for her husband

and she sounded terrified so Michael comes running in into the bathroom and Christine points out that Natalia has pubic hair and this becomes a major point of this whole story this is like one of the linchp point of this whole story.

This is like one of the linchpins of this entire case. Okay. Yeah, yeah. They later discovered that Natalia was experiencing and hiding menstrual cycles, which shocked them because, again, she's only six years old. So Natalia's pediatrician connected the Barnetts to a family whose daughter also had SEDC, just So Natalia's pediatrician connected the Barnetts to a family whose daughter also had SEDC, just like Natalia. And when the girls met, Natalia was much bigger than the other child. And

so the Barnetts started to like harbor the suspicion that Natalia was older than six because of her size and hormonal development. Could she have just not like, could like the people who put her on essentially facebook marketplace have just like you know how when you put a puppy on there and you don't know how to read the age of the puppy and you're like he's only three months old and then like all of a sudden like a horse is trampling into your house like do you think it could have been like we're guessing she's five i mean they have the her birth certificate from ukraine so it's like it would have had to start i imagine at a different point um i mean it could be i could be that they didn't know and felt weird about it

and guessed but the the birth certificate said 2003 so they were you know that was the age based on the paperwork they had um so they're not like lying they're just they're just there it's just it's just weird that she looks bigger than someone else with her same condition they start wondering if something else is happening here and uh yeah it starts to get weird so michael described natalia as having the full forehead and fine cheekbones of an adult weird uh and michael said that he yikes researched menses and it wasn't possible for natalia to have her period at such a young age but according to a pediatrician named dr sarah crackman it is not uncommon for girls to start their period around eight or nine. And even though Natalia was six, it's not impossible or even like that unusual for her to have started her period that young.

A University of Cincinnati, shout out, study found that about 10 to 15 percent of girls start puberty at seven or younger. And wow. Yeah, this is a it's termed precocious puberty. Yeah, this is a it's termed precocious puberty. You can have a number of causes, but essentially what happens is puberty, but very early. So you can get pubic hair. You can get under underarm hair growth, menstruation, acne, facial hair, voice deepening, rapid growth and precocious puberty aside. It's also not that weird that she was bigger than a peer, even though they had a different had the same condition. Like children develop at different rates just because they have the same condition doesn't mean like, oh, she's bigger than the child. That means she's older.

You know, that doesn't necessarily equate. Even if they didn't have the same condition. I mean, I have been this height since I was 10 years old. Exactly. Like even people of average height are different sizes growing up. You know, it doesn't really necessarily correlate to age. Could it have just been like because people were so unfamiliar with this rare condition that they assumed that their height should have been more similar? I don't know.

I don't know. Well, it was just because they met the family with the other with the child who also had the same condition. And they went, well, she doesn't look anything like that. She's much bigger. And, you know, that child hadn't started puberty. So they were like, this doesn't ring true to us. Sure. Michael claimed that Natalia began blowing air into her cheeks to try to hide the definition in her face that revealed she was older than she claimed and here is the crux of the whole documentary and where the story turns totally wild and where this becomes like a huge international sensation the Barnett's claim that they at this point became convinced that their adopted daughter Natalia was an adult claiming to be a child and hiding in their home

so if you at all think this sounds familiar there was a film in 2009 called the orphan in which an adult woman has a rare condition that allows her to pass as a child and uh she poses as a young russian orphan and terrorizes the family who adopts her and her Natalia story has since oftentimes been compared to this film. Michael also found it suspicious that Natalia had no Ukrainian accent despite her having lived in Ukraine for the first few years of her life. She also didn't seem to know any Ukrainian, but at the same time Natalia was already living in the United States with an English speaking family for two years before the Barnetts adopted her in 2010. And like young children pretty quickly can adapt to languages and lose accents. So it's not unheard of. But Michael also said that just months after adopting Natalia, they began to witness her dark side.

Hang on. Yeah. that just months after adopting natalia they began to witness her dark side and hang on yeah we're going on a roller coaster here i am still at the top of the roller coaster you're on the loop-de-loop i'm just like plummeting everybody down i'm sorry so it's true she was an adult this wasn't like a random theory this was true this is their assumption this is the this is the point of contention that this entire case revolves around is she an adult okay faking being a child or is she a child okay and the movie was came before her good question great question the movie came out uh before hold on let me see before they had ever even met natalia okay if i if i have that so it's almost like if this theory is true homegirl could have seen the movie and it inspired her to do the same thing or this happened and then a movie came out let me check and make sure i have this right um

she didn't even think okay assuming this isn't a child assuming this is an adult assuming they're right there's an adult she didn't think like oh i need to fucking disguise some shit i need to downstairs you know what i'm saying like if they're going to be bathing me like i'm a child and i'm trying to get away with it shouldn't i maybe dress the part well part of the argument was that she was hiding her her period from them and part of their argument was oh she was trying to hide that she had a period but then the other argument is like well maybe she was scared and young and didn't know what it was okay i didn't know what a period was it was like why am i bleeding you know what i mean so it's sort of like you know they say oh yeah she

was hiding from us. But then other people say, well, yeah, she's a traumatized child and doesn't want to, you know. So it's it's just a really wild case because people like could not agree on this. And it's like how. Like what a wild concept that we can't figure out, you know, we still don't know the answer. Do we not know the answer? We'll get we'll get there get we'll get there we'll get there okay okay okay okay so michael is claiming that just after months of adopting natalia they begin to witness her dark side and her dark side um was in fact behavior that children who've experienced trauma often exhibit such as urinating in place certain places defecating in places you're not supposed to.

She would steal her brother's toys and threw them out into the trash. Michael claimed she would sometimes throw her brother's toys into the traffic, into the street to bait them into traffic. But that's, you know, how Michael put it. We don't know if that's exactly what her intent was. He also said that Natalia was hiding a knife under her bed um but then you know people who have been in these kind of traumatic situations have said like yeah if a if a child doesn't feel safe and is adapting to a new family like they might act in ways act out in ways like this they might you know they might feel the need to get a knife to protect themselves you know so it's again very back and forth um people really were split on this michael's son jake who is now an adult said in an interview that quote the situation is incredibly

confusing uh he finds it difficult to piece together his memories of Natalia when she lived with the Barnetts and he was afraid of the possibility of revisiting the memories of living with Natalia and the stress of the time he said it was just a very high stress time for their whole family he said it was not quite as hunky-dory as his parents made it sound Michael and Christine would often videotape Natalia like confronting her on camera and record her reactions as they scolded her for misbehaving and more serious issues like lying about her period. And they would film her and scold her. Michael and Christine claim they confronted Natalia about the knives under her bed and she told them she planned to kill them in their sleep. But of course, there's no recording of that. So that's another he said she said oh and in fact it seems like all the accusations against natalia

just so happened to have no witnesses outside of christine and michael ah okay so let me give you one example there's one incident that's supposed to have happened in public uh and here's what allegedly happened according to christine the family was visiting a creamery in Indianapolis when Natalia tried to kill her mother, Christine, by knocking her over and dragging her toward an electric fence. Oh, my God. But employees at the creamery later said, oh, we thought Christine just like tripped and fell over. And there was no dramatic scene with Natalia attacking her mother. There was no elect the electric fence was not on. There was no reason that she would have even known it was an electric fence.

And it was a lot of people have pointed out, like, is it really conceivable for Natalia, even if she is an adult, she is like four foot something. Right. And like, is it really conceivable that she full-on knockout

drag out drag her into an electric fence how would she know it would kill her it just and the fact that the witnesses later said like we saw nothing like that happen right nothing we saw the mom fall over that's it so who knows but michael said they brought natalia to multiple therapists who didn't believe them. So red flag in my mind. Until they finally found someone who would agree with their story. And he said the therapist diagnosed Natalia with sociopathy. And said that the Barnetts were in extreme danger for their lives. So, according to Michael, the therapist told the Barnetts that there was nothing anyone could do to help Natalia. She was a lost cause. So fucked up. She was a sociopath who would harm her family given the chance and they needed to cut ties. a diagnosis it is a a behavior or or a side symptom of antisocial personality disorder which isn't assigned to patients under the age of 18 anyway um and if natalia was a child this diagnosis

if it actually exists and michael isn't lying wouldn't would be inappropriate instead uh this could all just be the result of trauma where she's acting out and she's you know attacking her parents and and things that you you hear happen when children have gone through really traumatic experience which by the way this is all like a very good reminder that like i don't again i can only speak on it from a very surface level what i have learned in recent years but like this is just a good reminder that if you plan on adopting a child it's not just adopting a kid like you have to it is in your best interest at the very least to do some really intense uh educating on like what it looks like to to bring someone in who has gone through incredible traumas before you even showed up and so like um i don't really know what i'm

saying here but this is just a nice psa that, in the world of adoption, I think it would be problematic to just, like, pick a puppy out of the box on the sidewalk and just take them home and expect their life to begin here. And, like, negate everything they've gone through. You better join my family in the way that we want you to. And it's, like, you know. Especially if they don't look like you and they're from another background and they've got like other cultures. And I mean, it's, there's so many, it's not just your life begins when the kid shows up, like you have to be prepared for whatever, whatever they need. For any baggage they bring. Yeah, exactly. And like

the people who are able to, and do you know provide healthy homes for for adopted children just one of my one of my one of my heroic uh nods go to you i just i'm so impressed by people who are able to you know make happy healthy homes for for any child really but especially you know fostering adopting it's such an important thing um there's such an episode of psa's just everywhere i'm i'm telling you um i just they don't stop they never stop people need to learn okay so um according to healthline children who don't receive nurturing attention from caregivers tend to grow up learning to take care of themselves. And that's just a coping mechanism because no one else will. And so some children who experience abuse, violence, and manipulation from an early age may come to model this behavior as they navigate their own

conflicts. That's according to Healthline. And so we don't know, we don't have the background on how nurtured Natalia was in the orphanage before her adoption. And adoption itself is recognized as an inherently traumatic process, even if it is smooth, even if it, you know, has no hitches, and it ends up happy, it's still considered a traumatic process. And the same, like I said earlier, with rehoming, it's just an additional trauma, even though even if it's for the best and even if it goes smoothly, it's still a very fraught time, you know, for for a child. So other accusations against Natalia by the Barnetts and their extended family were that she tried to poison Christine and that she stood over her parents bed at night with a knife. So Christine used social media to reach out to Judith. This was a woman who had previously wanted to adopt Natalia, and who was also a person with dwarfism and didn't have the 25 grand that the Sacconeys allegedly wanted.

So she reached out to Judith, Christine did, and told Judith that Natalia was scaring her and threatening to hurt the family. Now Judith, who's a schoolteacher, was familiar with similar behaviors in other children and she said in an interview i've been threatened so what that child needs help so you get that child help like you don't just turn around and say oh no like i'm scared you know she was like not having it right but the barnetts claimed they were convinced that natalia was not a child in need, but a dangerous adult who lied their way a la the orphan into their once happy family. And more than one pediatrician examined Natalia and confirmed that she was in fact a child, but the Barnetts were determined to get her out of their home. So in 2012, two years after adopting her, Michael and Christine convinced a judge that Natalia had not grown at all in four years, meaning she must be at her full height as an adult.

So to clarify, any growth or lack thereof that Natalia may have experienced could have been due to dwarfism, could have been due to just she was not going through a growth spurt at that time but the judge agreed with the barnetts and legally changed natalia's age from nine years old to 22 yeah what it's fucking messy they changed her birth date her birth year from 2003 to 1989 and finally free of their responsibility to raise her the barnetts got an apartment for her and left her there christine this is like i've never been so bewildered i like usually feel like i like is this not the most shocking annoyingly chatty like but i the flabbers are gasted i gotta be honest gas your flabbers because we are going down the rabbit hole so wait do with maybe i'm not supposed to know the answer yet but okay is it an adult or a kid huh am i not supposed

to know yet what oh if she's an adult or child no the actual age we're not we're not there yet okay okay okay flabber your ass and get ready i wanna i wanna have so much to say like usually i feel like you're thinking like did someone order a yapachino jesus christ but like today i like can't fucking think of a single word to say i like so okay so either by the way if they're right and it's an adult think of like how fucking gas like the think of how trapped like the the true fear of being trapped with this person if they're right if they're not right think of the trauma of a little fucking child being told like not only were you not wanted by multiple parents but also you're fucking old looking and you are freaking us out so bad it's all just so bad you're freaking us out we think you're a serial killer you maybe you have sociopathy like

like you're disgusting because you have pubic hair at age nine you know i mean it's just so sick like either way someone is either way twisted right like this so this is why this like gripped the nation you can see why people were like divided people were like treating this like the biggest mystery of all time um so yeah michael basically dropped her off in an apartment alone because legally she was an adult and every now and then dropped off groceries uh wow yeah uh wow her her dwarfism made it difficult for her to complete tasks that adults with dwarfism would also require accommodations for um like she couldn't reach the washing machine many of the surfaces in the apartment uh climbing the stairs posed a challenge uh natalia's neighbors started to notice like someone who looked like a child was living next door was often dirty unfed seemed to be completely unable to care for herself it's

just like this is where my heart breaks um she would wander into her neighbor's homes uninvited and seemed extremely lonely oh my god her it's really sad and her neighbors complained so often that her lease was terminated and the barn bar nets picked her up and dropped dropped her off in another apartment with no resources support or accommodation uh my god and then they moved to canada oh my god oh my god okay yeah this is also i mean like i'm i'm saying only beyond obvious truths here only like so everyone's gonna roll their eyes and go yeah join the club i know but like the ableism kicking in right now is crazy like just every now and then i'm reminded of it because I'm just thinking at this point, I'm like, is this an adult or a kid? And I'm like, the suspense of this information is what I'm hooked on.

But then I have moments as you're telling the story where I'm like, and this is someone who like has a condition and truly only because of that aside. Yeah. Like only because of her condition, this potential, because I don't know the information yet. condition, this potential, because I don't know the information yet, this potential child is, I mean, like fully experiencing child abuse because their parents who took them in did no research on their condition or they know so little about the condition and they're just assuming something must be wrong, you must be this. And then on top of that you're gonna leave her in a place without any supports oh my god it's it's very sickening it's really sickening and like they claim oh well we paid her rent and utilities um but get her a ladder too damn like she can't yeah

fucking fucking clean her clothes asshole so they gave her rent and utilities but uh at one point they forgot to pay the bills from canada and she spent days without power like she didn't know how to get power on right so eventually even if she was okay oh god okay even if she's an adult right like she's not she's clearly not prepared to live on her own and and it's it's been made very clear when she's unfed unable to feed herself unable to care for herself. You know what I mean? Like, even if she is an adult, like, you are now neglecting this person that you were supposed to care for.

So either way, it's disturbing. But eventually a woman named Cynthia Mann noticed Natalia and stepped in to care for her. Questions were raised at this point about the Barnetts abandoning a disabled child and then like fleeing the fucking country. I like how questions are raised and not sending a man when I'm calling the fucking cops. Hello? Yeah.

Ding dong? Does anyone know about this? So the Barnetts began to tell their story in the media claiming that Natalia was this violent, manipulative adult out to get them and this story is that's when this story became a media frenzy because it was dubbed the real life orphan by news outlets and people started drawing comparisons between Natalia and the villain in the horror movie and years later people mistakenly believe that the movie was inspired by natalia uh but it was kind of it came out before

natalia had even met the barnetts but if she's an adult and this was her plan all along she could have watched that movie and been like that could have been the argument exactly plan right there however the other side of that is it's possible the barnetts saw that movie and were like well this could be happening at our house yeah if we want it to and we want to get rid of this could be happening at our house if we want it to and we want to get rid of her it's getting to a point like i honestly if she's an adult if she was sleeping with a knife under her pillow and if this really was one whole big ruse and they caught on to it i don't know legally what i would have done i mean i don't i would have also felt trapped because I know how it would have looked because it's a little kid or to everybody else. But like maybe it's an adult who still has a condition, by the way, that needs to be like paid attention to with support.

Accommodated. Yeah. But like I yeah, I don't know what I would do and to feel that trapped. trapped but at the same time i i would have to be somewhat aware that like i have to save face and i can't leave this assuming alleged child alone or else the police are going to come to me and i'm still going to look really bad even if i know i'm 100 right now i was not safe no they but they changed her birth date she's a legal adult she's 22 oh right all the records so they just said okay great you're an adult bye you know and it still has to look like at the like at the very least they had to be worried that people would look at them and think this couple collectively they have a well exactly and

that's why immediately that's immediately why they jumped onto every news outlet and said this this is an adult she was ready to attack us we had to save our family like they were jumping into the media to like claim their side of the story and pretty quickly the public turned against natalia it may may have been like the idea that the horror movie had come to life was like an exciting concept or people just couldn't believe that a child could have pubic hair you know that young you know who knows what it is but people the trauma if this is a child oh my god yeah so internet forums dedicated to the controversy were created with many people sympathizing with

the barnetts and then people would like post photos of natalia to like determine whether her features were like those of an adult or a child of course ableism ran rampant on all these forums they were sensationalizing dwarfism as something that like made her inherently untrustworthy and like that she was lying you know um and people of course latched on to the invasive details about her body like pubic hair her menses oh my And as the years passed, Natalia, who was now considered to be in her late 20s, legally, insisted that she was still a child, that she was a teenager, and she fought to have her age corrected. So it's around this time that a woman came forward from Ukraine claiming to be Natalia's birth mother and said, I gave birth to Natalia in 2003. Then more information came out in Natalia's favor when

Vincent and Nicole DePaul, a couple who also have dwarfism, came forward in an interview and said they had also attempted to adopt Natalia in 2009 before she went to the Barnetts. And Natalia stayed with the DePauls several times for long weekends to try and get to know the family. And the DePauls released photos of Natalia playing with their daughter. Uh, and in the photos you can see she's like missing baby teeth. Like her baby teeth had fallen out. Like she's a little girl.

Okay. And they basically said, this is absolutely ridiculous that, uh, that anybody could claim this as an adult. And the idea of Natalia at like age eight or whatever, dragging her mother toward an electric fence, especially at her small stature,

she, she had difficulty walking, let alone like dragging an adult woman toward an electric fence. So they, they came forward and said, this is absolutely outrageous. Um, and their daughter who was 14 at the time of the interview remembered that

she had a very good time with Natalia as just another little girl and so she the daughter said she found it ridiculous the way Natalia was being portrayed as this villain in the media and this sort of short feature started to kind of turn the tide in people's minds toward Natalia especially the photos with her missing baby teeth and people left comments like seeing this video changed my entire perspective on this case. And I'm starting to think she is actually a teenager. And if she is a teen, then this has got to be one of the saddest cases I've ever seen. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. It's just horrible. So seeing Natalia as a teenager

compared to her childhood photos where she was supposedly an adult further convinced people that she was telling the truth. Because you can see in the photos where she's a teenager compared to the photos where she's a child, she has developed and grown like significantly. So like there's no way she was an adult. Yeah. So it's definitely leaning more towards she's a child at this point. Yes, exactly. So one person wrote she's clearly been through a lot of growth and development throughout the years. She would not have changed as much if she was really an adult this whole time. So then attention turned to the Barnetts, who were now charged in the U.S. for neglect of a dependent, since it was no longer a minor legally,

but she was still a dependent. Even if Natalia's legal age excused them from abandoning a minor, prosecutors argued they were still meant to take care of her. They had a responsibility toward her, especially due to her disability and the fact that they had adopted her. And so in the end, of course, Michael was acquitted and charges against Christine were dropped. And the Discovery Plus documentary came out, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace. And this documentary featured Michael, who from the moment he came on the screen, I thought, I don't trust this guy.

Really? As soon as you looked at him, you knew. My gut was like, this guy's trouble. I just don't know what it is. And this is my own personal opinion, but I looked at that guy and thought, I don't trust you. I don't know why it is and this is my own personal opinion but i looked at that guy and thought i don't trust you i don't know why but i don't like you there's something about you i'm not feeling something about you i don't trust uh so michael described in this documentary a

perfect marriage this like idyllic home life before natalia came and wrecked it all um but weird in reality there was proof of domestic battery charges against michael for allegedly choking christine in their home oh you're feeling was right christine i guess so huh i was like this guy is trouble trouble trouble i tap out of this one yeah i said as a fellow christine i do not like the look of this guy you know what i mean uh so following the first discovery plus series suddenly there came another edition called The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, Natalia Speaks. And I. Yeah.

Yeah. And I watched this. I had a really hard time watching this. It was really hard for me because at this point I was like pretty confident this was a child. And I was like, this is going to be all about child abuse. pretty confident this was a child and i was like this is just gonna be all about child abuse um so in this in her basically she got a chance to tell her side of the story finally and natalia describes physical abuse at the hands of christine barnett claiming her mother would do all sorts of terrible things sprayed her in the face with pepper spray and would then force her to wait

10 minutes before she could rinse her eyes out. And yeah, so when all these, when this came forward, all of a sudden our pal Michael, he comes out and he, he and Christina had since been divorced. He came forward and he completely changed his story. What a shocker. He now claims that his ex-wife Christine was a master manipulator who abused Natalia and turned him against their daughter. He's like, yeah, Natalia and I are both, quote, incredible victims. OK, I don't know what to believe anymore, Christine.

I got to be honest. I don't know how to react. This is so nuts. I just I can't. I guess I just can't with this guy saying all this this shit in the first documentary about how, oh, she wanted to kill me and she's this horrible adult and we knew she had pubic hair and she was on her period. And then all of a sudden she comes forward and says, no, like I faced pretty bad abuse in that house. And he goes, yeah, me too. You're right. We're both victims.

It's like you just made a whole documentary about this child that you were caring for. And now you're saying, oh, you're both in the same boat. Like, forget it. So he claimed he and Natalia are both incredible victims of an otherworldly abuse. Okay. This is the man who choked his own wife. Okay, I'm back on track. I got it. I mean, remember that? Remember that whole thing? I forgot for a second, but I'm back. Yeah. So Michael and legal experts on the case suggested that Christine believes she this is what the this is not my claim this is what uh Michael and his legal team are claiming that Christine uh believed she turned her autistic son into a genius and was hoping to like take Natalia and and turn it into

a similar like best-selling story um Christine you know that that's his claim. That's Michael's claim. And so Christine had made profit and enjoyed quite a bit of praise for her memoir about her son, Jake. And Michael claims that she wanted to do the same thing with Natalia. It just didn't go as planned. And Natalia herself said, Christine said that adopting me was this mission of love. And never once did I see any love. I feel like it was a mission of boosting her ego type of thing. I feel like she just wanted people to be like, oh my goodness, she's this amazing person. So in the new special, Natalia confronts Michael, who told Natalia that he too was a victim of Christine's manipulation. And he said that he and Natalia had the same monster, and her name was Christine.

That's what Eva and I say, too, in our tell-all. I know, I know. I was like, that's too easy of a sound clip, of a sound bite to take. It's such a low-hanging fruit. I'm sorry. Low-hanging fruit, indeed. Two people terrorized by a Christine.

Been there, so. Been there, done that. I know. Wa-ha-ha. Wa-ha-ha. I never made any profit being your monster but you know i guess that's not true this podcast never mind so anyway he claims he tried to leave christine numerous times this is all he said she said very nasty divorce you know and michael's complete

reversal on these accusations against natalia and now saying like oh no natalia is a victim as much as anyone even though he just said she was an adult trying to kill him in his sleep uh this of course turned people even more toward natalia's side because they're like this guy is lying about anything and everything um so cynthia manz and bishop manz they were the couple who took Natalia in when she was nine, when they sort of found her living on her own, said that they didn't have problems with Natalia as a child. And they had several other children. One of their children, Genesis, did say that Natalia bit her when she was a baby and Natalia was 10. And according to

the Manns, she has been violent in a typical way like most kids do. You know, most kids fight, argue, nothing unusual to where there was just crazy unrest in that sort of way. There's nothing dangerous about Natalia at all. Absolutely not. And finally, this is kind of where we get some more concrete answers.

There was a new type of DNA test that came out that was used to determine Natalia's age. It's like counting the rings of a tree. I know. Apparently, it's really, really hard to determine the age of a person, which, fun fact, it's not simple. It's also not necessarily accurate. But recent advances in DNA age determination are getting pretty accurate, pretty close. and DNA age determination are getting pretty accurate, pretty close. And according to an article on Oxford University's Department of Oncology website, the method works, quote, surprisingly well, on average, calculating age to within three years of a person's real age.

So the window is pretty close. It's about three years. So, you know, some other behaviors like smoking and exercise and that kind of thing can skew it a little bit. But typically it's a pretty conclusive test. And so they did this test in 2023. And ultimately the test concluded that as of 2023, Natalia is close to or around the age of 22. Whereas the legal age she had been changed to was 34. So in other words. So she a kid she'd she'd been a child yes yes and natalia read the and and the hard part is like natalia was just thrown into

all this and was just confused and scared and was being accused of all these things didn't really understand what was going on so she tearfully read the results and said, this is so big because literally this has been 13 years of just two people lying their butts off. They ruined a kid's life. They painted me as some big monster. And although Michael has changed his story, Christine made a statement on Facebook of all places, denying any accusations of abuse.

She said that Michael and Natalia might have the same monster, but it sure isn't her. And according to her, Natalia is a manipulative and dangerous sociopath who will do whatever it takes to hurt the Barnetts and protect herself. So she basically is still claiming that Natalia is this adult, like, scheming to, like, ruin families for some unknown reason. But people have really turned and are no longer convinced of Natalia's supposed dark side. However, this is where things get kind of weird again, where there's like another kind of question mark, because at the end of Natalia Speaks, there's kind of this like weird twist, like it sort of ends on an ominous note. There's a phone call that comes in it's like a voicemail or a phone

call from the man's her current adoptive parents where her father on the phone claims something isn't right with natalia she has hit a new low and they are done with her and that's like how the docu-series ends but damn after this i know so after this aired her mother made a statement and i'm quoting this from E! Online. Her mother said, we are absolutely perfect. No, she doesn't live with us, but we are fine. So people are like, okay, so what happened? I don't know.

Cynthia said Natalia is living with friends and that they maintain regular contact with her. She shared with the outlet a screenshot of herself and her adoptive daughter during a FaceTime video chat. Natalia is currently taking a break from social media as of late January 2024. So no wonder why this I know. Right. I can't blame her. But in previous weeks, she had been quite active. Comments on her Instagram and TikTok accounts have been overwhelmingly positive, thankfully, supporting her in the wake of like the updated natalia speaks docu-series and a few comments have demanded answers regarding the ominous voicemail at the conclusion of the documentary like wait a minute is everything okay like what's

going on um however in a recent new year's post uh natalia captioned a video 2023 was amazing but 2024 is gonna be awesome and she included the hashtag family forever and tagged her family's shared tiktok account indicating that they are most likely on good terms she said of her family the man's quote it has been a really long journey i have always wondered if i would be able to find someone that would actually love me but then i met my parents and it's been different ever since it's been a good different and that is the curious case of natalia grace curious or just full-blown miserable it's so sad it's so sad it's so really i really was banking on you telling me it was an adult so I could just go nutso. You know, and I almost wonder if people wanted to believe it was an adult because it's just such a less tragic.

Like then you have to face, oh, these people did this to a six-year-old. I wanted to believe it was an adult because I was like, there's no way. It makes it easier to swallow. Yeah. It's disturbing. And, you know, you never way. It makes it easier to swallow. Yeah, it's disturbing. And, you know, you never know, especially when it comes to things like puberty. Like, you never know what kind of, where you grow up, what kind of, like, trauma you experience really young. Like, how that will affect you hormonally, etc. I mean, I just, I find it all so ridiculous that they were able to find a judge to change her age.

And, I mean, for God's sake, it's horrible. Wow. She's doing well, I think. From what I can tell as of this month, she seems to be doing okay. Can you imagine if she just like meets someone or like is on like a, like on a bumble or like a hinge and is just looking at people's bios and says like oh my favorite movie is like the orphan she has to be like oh my god just nope she's like nope nope nope nope oh my god my god i feel so bad i don't even know what to say about it well

it's it's sad per usual and like the missing baby teeth photo is just so heartbreaking because you're like that's a little girl like that's a small child yeah and the fact that cynthia when she found her was like she just looked dirty and would walk in people's houses and was just lonely and just wanted someone to talk to how did she even survive i mean that's its own story like how did she survive she was like unfed she was she was like unbathed like she barely did you know she really didn't know how to take care of herself um from what i remember that some of the neighbors would drop off groceries and like some of they would like check on her um yeah wow yeah it's just crazy i hope she's okay in the world I hope 2024 is the year she hoped it would crack up to be.

Well, Baba Vanga says that it's not Putin's year. That's right. Some of us are not going to have a good year according to Baba Vanga, but you know, hopefully she has a good year. Yeah. Well,

Christine, you've done it again. I don't know how to feel for the rest of the day, but what was I going to do today to make myself feel better? I was going to watch Hilary Duff. Oh, yeah, we can do that. Maybe let's just go to our after hours and watch Hilary Duff. Okay, that feels nice.

Yeah, let's do that. Okay, well, if you would like to go listen to us talk more, if you'd like to hear Christine really weirdly sultry say after hours, and I have to tolerate it every time. You gotta pay for Patreon to hear that voice. It's a real OnlyFans kind of voice and I have to interact with it. So you get it every week if you'd like to join Patreon. And until then, we'll see you next week.

Fun fact, by the way, we are still on tour. So please come see us if we are in your area. Yes. And that's why we drink.