The Bechdel Cast - Hereditary with Puloma Ghosh

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

This week, demon kings Jamie and Caitlin invite special guest Puloma Ghosh into their treehouse to discuss Hereditary. Here's the article by Sasha Geffen entitled "Trans Horror Stories and Society's Fear of the Transmasculine Body" -- https://www.them.us/story/transmasculine-horror-stories Follow Puloma on Instagram at @pulomeow and buy her book 'Mouth' at https://www.pulomaghosh.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the homestretch, right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question, starting October 3rd. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out, like Ezra Klein, Jen Psaki, Astead Herndon, Karl Rove, and David Axelrod. But we're also gonna have some fun,

thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee and Charlemagne the God. We're gonna take some viewer questions Thank you. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. into a mafia state. Available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Trying to figure out how to do things that no one on the planet knows how to do. From creating a drone delivery business to building a car that can truly drive itself. Listen to What's Your Problem on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast.

Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hail Caitlin. Yeah. Hail Jaymon. That actually works pretty well. A little too well. A little too well. A little too well. A a little suspicious i think well welcome to the baymon cast my name is jaymon laymon and my name is k-mon

wow yeah wow look at us uh and this is the show where we talk about your favorite movies from an intersectional feminist perspective using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion. But Caitlin, what the hell? Sorry. I'm so sorry. K-mon. K-mon. K-mon Doraemon.

K-mon Doraemon. What is the... It it's not gonna stop being funny to me buckle in for an episode uh came on duraymon what is the bechdel test it is a media metric created by allison bechdel i almost tried to make allison bechdel's name demonic as well but she yeah leave her out of it it's not yeah i'm so sorry um two days out of pride month and you're demonizing alice in bechdel come on damn anyway it's a mediumetric first appearing in her comic dykes to watch out for in the 1980s it's often called the bechdel wallace test because it was co-created by Alison Bechtel and

her friend Liz Wallace it was kind of created as a bit it appears in the comic as as a bit specific yeah that like more references how few queer women there are in media it's always more complicated that it's presented in the mainstream indeed and there are many different versions of it uh the one that we use is this do two characters of a marginalized gender have names do they speak to each other and is there a conversation about something other than a man or about something other than paimon if so it passes the bechdel test i guess are we to believe paimon i mean paimon is pretty aggressively gendered i guess yeah yeah so tell me about it we can't like really talk like minion like we can't be like paimon is a genderless entity in fact that's part of the whole thing all right never mind the whole and yeah we'll

talk about it fuck what i was about to say and today we are covering a movie that i am pretty sure we have gotten pretty consistent especially during like horror movie season we've gotten pretty consistent requests for since it came out and that is ari aster's 2018 movie hereditary and we have with us not just an incredible writer not just an incredible person but number one hereditary fan let's get her in here let's she's a writer and author of the short story collection entitled mouth which just came out so check it out it's paloma gauche hello hi hello welcome so my name actually does start with a p so what does that make me wow and it has a lot of the same letters as paimon so i kind of fucked that intro up yeah so it's paimon gauche hello

although as a long-suffering digimon fan i just i'm envisioning this as everyone's Digimon names right now oh it kind of is wow I was a Pokemon girl I was basic oh I was basic I know yeah and and and the rivalry begins quick pivot so we are we're covering hereditary Caitlin came on is under Duress. I'm really excited. I feel like we have a real range of opinions in the chat about Hereditary 2018. So let's start with you, Paloma. What is your connection to this movie? What is your history with Hereditary? So I am a fan of horror movies and try to watch every horror movie that is supposedly good even the ones that are supposedly not good um so when this came out all of the talk about it was really exciting people were like i left the theater and like threw up or whatever um so i had to see it and i saw it

in theaters and it scared the shit out of me. I had trouble sleeping. I had nightmares. I had like, you know, wake up in the middle of the night gasping nightmares. And I was so scared. And so I was like, this movie rules. Because if you watch a lot of horror, when something genuinely like scares the shit out of you, it's exciting and not revolting and as a writer i was like okay this was successful for me i must immediately pull it apart and figure out why so i watched it over and over i have outlined it i have like tracked scares i've tried to figure out like the mechanics of how this movie fucked me up like badly and a lot of people I know as well for a while yeah whether you like this movie or you don't like it I feel like it's almost you have to be so hardened to the world for it to not fuck you up truly but I'm curious

about how yeah I mean we will talk about but like, I'm getting so amped and terrified to talk about this movie. Caitlin came on. What is your history with Hereditary? Okay. I saw it in theaters and it was probably the most unpleasant movie theater going experience I've ever had. I remember, I think you maybe texted me after you saw this. And you were just like,

I've just had I've just had a hell of a night. Yeah. So I don't seek out horror movies as much as most other genres. It's not that I don't like horror. There are many horror movies I love, but I'm very easily startled. And scary movies, even when they're not very scary and not very good, they still make me so nervous and just like stricken with anxiety. And I'm pretty squeamish when it comes to like guts and gore and blood and body horror. So the odds are just stacked against me. So I struggle with a lot of horror movies, but I still see a lot of them. And I went to go see Hereditary because I heard that it was so scary and so up, just like shoulders to my ears, like plugging my ears the whole time. It's just so tight and tense. So it worked. It worked. It was a very effective horror movie. There aren't that many jump scares. There's maybe only two or three

things that might startle you, but it just fills you with, well, I won't speak for everyone. It filled me with such dread, such... I felt fine. I felt fine the whole movie. But like dread that I've never felt before. Like other movies will be like, oh, I feel horrible for now. But here's another scene where I can kind of breathe a sigh of relief before the tension ramps up again this movie was just constant dread and tension and scariness so i walked away in pain but i was also like wow that was like like a beautifully crafted movie as far as like technical cinematography editing sound design all that kind of stuff the performances incredible tony collette give the woman an oscar unbelievable but also i was like i never want to see that movie again i refuse to

cover it on the bechdel cast it's the one movie that i won't do i publicly said this on the show and yet here we are here we are and i've watched the movie two more times to prep for this episode it took half a decade you know it's like we we slowly wore you down we covered midsummer a couple years ago on the matriarch and now now we're here so what was it did you feel any differently revisiting it i felt the same because i forgot enough stuff that everything was pretty fresh upon the rewatch the jump scares still scared the hell out of me the dread was still there and i feel horrible right now i just want everyone to know hell yeah all the listeners out there please give me your sympathy thank you so much i thought on the sixth watch i i was like

it's not gonna scare me anymore i've seen it so many times. It was hubris. Still, last night, I was just in the dark like, oh, God. It's happening again. Yeah, literally. I mean, yeah. Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie? I feel like it's been a while since we've had an episode like this, but this feels like a classic Bechdel cast dynamic where I think I'm somewhere in the middle here

where I didn't see this movie when it first came out but I saw it shortly after and I think Caitlin came on I was coming oh there's a cat pull on the cat sighting pull him and I both have a black cat and a gray cat and it's the hot girl special it really is it's a sacred thought so yeah I didn't see it in theaters i wish i had i would like to see this movie in theaters would you yeah i mean truly because it's i i haven't seen bow is afraid because no matter how much i like a director if the movie's too long i'm not seeing it in theaters so long i just couldn't but but ari aster's first two movies i think are genuinely really good and especially with hereditary even though i've seen it fewer times than I've seen Midsommar,

it's, I mean, whether you like it or not, it's a very special, uniquely terrifying movie. The fact that it's his first feature is absolutely wild. I was watching it with my boyfriend last night, and it it's almost frustrating that this like you know this like male auteur who from what we can tell at the time this movie came out nothing meaningfully traumatizing has happened to him he talks about that in interviews and then he makes this and you're like and it's good like that's so fucked but i think it is i think it's like a really special movie yeah the first time I saw it I sort of was like I've seen it all like fucking shocked me and it does and it's like kind of in

the campy sense fun to re-watch where it's like you know on even the first re-watch it is so obvious the horrible thing that's going to happen he hints at it like a humorous amount of times to the point where it's like i i think this was my third viewing of it and i would i did laugh when they do the set of like and here's this pole in the street hmm interesting and do you have your epi pen hmm interesting everything i like and dislike about ari asters in this movie i've watched this i've watched it now in three very different emotional spaces I was having like a harder time with it this time but not because of the movie itself just because of sort of like some of the themes of grief and processing like I

I was having a difficult time with it but I also think wow another cat exciting and that's flea who's on one uh because Casper is in my bedroom and he's gonna knock things down until he can be with his brother until he can be with his other paymon but yeah no i i feel like this movie has hit me different every single time it's always terrifying this is the first time i've seen this movie since I have done a lot of research, like field and books with spiritualism. We don't read books. Not for this show. But Caitlin, I'm sorry.

What? I'm so sorry. I've been cheating on you. I've read. You've been reading this whole time? This whole time. Yes. I released a podcast about the history of spiritualism two years ago and

i hadn't watched it since and so like it was interesting to engage with on that level i don't know this movie is fucking terrifying and i it's so it's so hard to talk about for this specific show because so many things i get to i'm like i don't know on this viewing i think it's fascinating and there's so much to talk about about how women and intergenerational trauma is shown in this story and I still feel like it's weirdly a little left something to be desired and felt like a little tropey on the on the witch side for me but the family side was like I mean I feel like that's what Ari Aster does best is like terrifying family horror dynamics when it gets into the witchy stuff it kind of loses me a little

more but I'm willing to be swung I'm swayable here okay but yeah I like this movie I just but every time I watch it I feel differently well. Well, I'm excited to dig in. No, I'm not. I want to go watch Paddington instead. Well, fun fact, listeners, Caitlin and I are going to see a 12.01 a.m. screening of Despicable Me 4 tonight. That's right. So any dread or sadness is about to be wiped clean. Your brain will never be smoother than at 2.01 a.m.

The best palate cleanser imaginable. Little guys. But no, I think this will be a very interesting discussion. I'm excited. I do have a quick anecdote about the first time that I saw it in theaters. Oh, yeah. So there is like this very good, like it's not really a jump scare, but like a slow scare of like something in the background that slowly comes into focus towards the end of the movie. Yes, Toni Collette hovering around the ceiling.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That. And when I saw it in the theaters, around that scene, there is a fly buzzing through the house and in the like surround sound of the theater i literally thought there was a fly in the theater so i was looking around being like where is this fly and i missed the first time i watched it i missed the initial jump scare and then everybody in the theater started gasping and then i looked and i was like what happened and I was so mad about that but I saw it later but okay good this is why I want to see it in theaters because it's like you can enjoy this movie and you can be terrified by this movie at home on your humble roku but I feel like you do

and I feel like that that's true of all of his or all two of his movies i've seen it was like the sound design is very much a part of it the soundtrack as well colin steps in really committed to that unreal it's so good oh this is like mommy trauma the movie and i like it mama trauma uh let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap. Hey, everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the homestretch and I'm exhausted, but turns out the end is near right in time for a new season of my podcast. Next question. Starting October 3rd. This podcast is for people like me who need a little perspective and insight. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out, like Ezra Klein, Van Jones, Jen Psaki, Astead Herndon,

and political strategists like Karl Rove and David Axelrod. But we're also going to have some fun, even though these days fun and politics seems like an oxymoron. But we'll do that thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee, Roy Wood Jr. and Charlemagne the God. We're going to take some viewer questions as well. I mean, isn't that what democracy is all about? Power to the podcast for the people. So whether you're obsessed with the news

or just trying to figure out what's going on, this season of Next Question is for you. Check out our new season of Next Question with me, Katie Couric, starting October 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now.

The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. Apple Podcasts. hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Spooky times. Thank you, Cayman. Okay, here's the recap. I will place a content warning here for suicide, for mental illness discussions there are cults there's all kinds of scary things there's lots of graphic violence yeah truly self-harm everything that might upset anyone that that is one of the things that this movie also does that i kind of forgot about because it had been at least three years since i've seen it that always bothers me about Midsommar a movie I generally really really like but just like Ari Aster loves to prescribe a specific mental illness to something

that he like doesn't know what he's talking about he's done it at least twice I yeah sound off if he also does it in Bo is Afraid but he does it with dissociative identity disorder in this movie he does it with bipolar disorder in the first couple of minutes of midsummer and i just wish he would stop stop that because that's like a horror trope that is very subvertible that he like has not done i don't know well i mean i think there's a much larger discussion to be had around mental illness as it's depicted in this movie and how it conflates mental illness with evil but we'll get there okay yeah okay so in this recap also I left out some stuff just because there's so much detail in this movie that I had

to kind of leave some stuff out also I realized when I was reading a piece about this movie that I had to kind of leave some stuff out. Also, I realized when I was reading a piece about this movie, that's like summarizing the plot. I'm like, oh, there's a whole thing that I didn't even understand or that didn't connect for me. So this recap might be kind of shitty. Well, Paloma, you're welcome to jump in whenever too. Yes. So we open on text on the screen, which is an obituary of Eileen Lee saying that she is survived by her daughter Annie, her son-in-law, and their two kids. We meet this family at their home. Annie is played by Toni Collette. Her husband, Steve, is Gabriel Byrne. we meet this family at their home annie is played by tony collette her husband steve is gabriel burn their 17 year old son peter yeah played by alex wolf aka one half of the naked brothers band paloma did you watch that show when we were kids no i did not oh my god there was a nickelodeon tween show called the naked brothers band starring alex wolf and his brother nat and my brother and i were so invested

in the naked brothers band very weird that they called it that yeah but it was about like two young brothers and like alex wolf is literally think, like eight or nine in the series. And he's like, I want to play the drums. And so that was the only thing I'd ever seen him in. And then he was in Hereditary. So he's got range. He's got range. Well, I know him as kid from Jumanji, the newer Jumanji movies.

Oh, see, I kind of forgot about that. Yeah. So yeah, he's got range range he's in all kinds i hear though based on what tony collette said about working with him if i'm recalling correctly he's an asshole oh no but what can you do damn what can you do so that's peter played by alex wolf and then their 13 year old daughter charlie played by millie Shapiro. They are getting ready to head to Annie's mother's funeral. We cut to the funeral where Annie gives a eulogy about her mother, how Eileen was a very private, secretive person. And the vibes are weird at the funeral. There's a lot of people who Annie doesn't recognize and a strange symbol

on a necklace that Eileen is wearing. And it's also here where it's established that Charlie has a nut allergy. There's also a lot of adults smiling weirdly at Charlie. Yes, yes, there are. I love it. I mean, this movie is like, so I liked it this time i mean this movie is like so i liked it this time like this movie is so paranoid at every level and the fact that everyone's paranoia or like all of the characters who were invested in really like their paranoia and everyone's worst fear is true and then some and it almost feels i don't know it felt cathartic on this watch to be like yeah the most fucked up thing i could imagine is gonna happen tomorrow it's true for everyone it tells you exactly what it is going to be the entire time but then does something a little bit different

than what you think it's gonna do at each Right. It does subvert a lot of horror movie tropes. Like there's a dog in the movie, Rex the dog icon, who survives. He makes it. No, he doesn't. What? He does not. Wait. Oh my god.

What happened to the dog? No. Is it viewing number six where you figure out that Rex didn't make it? At the very end, and I was laughing about this when I was watching it last night, they just show Rex's body in the last scene. Very in passing, being like, just so you know, we killed the dog, too. I kind of do think that you're...

I don't know. Ari Aster, he's kind of a real one for that. He's a fake dog. So I know that... Whatever. I think that's kind of funny. I for that he's a fake dog so i i know that whatever i think that's kind of funny i i thought that yeah like this the thing that feels like on the rewatch you're like oh like all of the normal fake outs of like is this the creepy person at but but it's never the creepy

person in the first scene but in this movie it is the creepy person in the first scene they're also the creepy person in the last yeah so well it's so many creepy people yeah in general oh poor rex the dog i well i'm glad i missed it i did not see the demise of rex the dog and there's a lot of other things going on there's there's so much to be fair yes yeah gabriel burn is uh fully engulfed in flames at one point that's the those are the the moment we're gonna discuss shortly and that are the two moments where i still gasp even when i know it's coming yeah oh okay so the funeral is weird and then the family returns home we learn that annie is an artist who creates miniatures, mostly depicting scenes from her life, her past and present.

That night, Annie tucks Charlie in. They talk about Charlie's relationship with her grandmother, how Charlie was her grandmother's favorite, though she wanted Charlie to be a boy. And this is the beginning of a conversation revolving around gender and payment. So we'll examine that later. Finally, finally. Finally. Then Annie goes through some of her mother's things, like a book called Notes on Spiritualism. And

there's a cryptic note inside to Annie from her mother about sacrifice and reward. And we're like, what's this about? Then Annie thinks she sees her mother's ghost. Then we see this miniature that Annie made depicting her mother trying to breastfeed baby Charlie, something that Annie had referenced a few moments before, but we didn't really know to what extent. And then we see this diorama, basically. I wrote this down that like, if Annie were a real life artist, I would for sure have written an annoying paper about her in college like I would have been like it would have been some sort of interesting gateway like miniatures as women experience anyone ever think of this one before and but I love I mean that's like a recurring theme in Ari Aster's work too is like miniatures inside of miniatures and i also love tony collette's like little i don't know

scary mag like uh glasses magnifying glasses yeah her like steampunk eye thing i don't know okay so then some more freaky stuff happens at school charlie cuts the head off of a dead bird. She will later make a doll type thing with it. Charlie takes after her mother as far as like being creative and artistic expression. Charlie has a whole collection of her mostly disturbing creations in her room. Also, there are creepy people lurking around at school and in the woods near their house. Strange symbols and words are popping up on the floors and walls of the house. The grandmother's grave apparently was desecrated. There's also this like light shimmer thing that we'll see now and then that kind of moves about autonomously. We don't really know what it is at first.

Is it payment? I don't know. Then Annie goes to a grief support group. We learn that Annie had a very strained relationship with her mother and that Annie's mother, father, and brother all had pretty severe mental illnesses. Peter then gets invited to a party and Annie makes him take Charlie along. It seems like Charlie might have difficulty socializing with other kids, so Annie is like insistent that she go and socialize right she's 13 so like show me a socially functional 13 year old this is also after she's been like caught just

like following a light barefoot in the yard and Annie needs to do this like project for this gallery and she's like oh my god why are you outside barefoot i like can't deal with this right now yeah like someone take charge of her although every time with annie in this scene i'm like come on mom where she's she's like okay my 17 year old stoner son definitely don't smoke weed you're like i mean i know it happens but i'm like come on come on i mean the you know the consequence is outsized but yeah what you know right i don't know how she expected a neutral result right okay so at the party charlie eats cake that turns out to have nuts, and she has a severe allergic reaction. So Peter rushes her out.

He's speeding to a hospital. And then we get the scene where Charlie can't breathe. So she rolls down the window and sticks her head out of the window. There's something in the road at that very moment so peter swerves to miss it causing charlie to be decapitated by a telephone pole and then this is the point where everyone in the movie is like oh oh so it's that kind of movie yeah the rules have changed the shift has happened yes yeah yeah i, because these are fake people, I feel comfortable saying that's fucking awesome. Like you just don't see it coming.

And it's just like it's so no matter how many times you see it, it's shocking. The way that it's done, I like I don't know because I didn't I of the three times I've seen it. I only actually watched that the first time because I didn't know it was coming. Now I know to look away. But my memory of it is that it's like almost campy, practical effect-y, which is probably the smarter decision. But I honestly don't know because when I watched it yesterday, I was like, ah, no thank you. It's not that campy. I mean, maybe, but it also gets such a visceral horrific response that it feels as a

horror movie head is it goofy or is it i feel like so this is not the thing that i also feel like what scares people is really subjective so what scares me is not like what scares all horror people but this did not scare me this wasn't the the, I was like, oh, but I feel like it was effective because, and I've thought about this a lot, why people get shocked. It's because I think you have so much anxiety from the like allergic reaction, anaphylactic shock, whatever's happening with the nuts. And you're worried that that is going to kill her. And you're really, really focused focused on is she going to make it to the hospital the music is also going off and so this thing is now like a second not forecasted well forecasted if you have seen it but not otherwise forecasted thing that just like happens really suddenly and i think the the scariest part is this because you don't see it

you just see his reaction and you feel like the weight of it and then you get to hear and see everyone's reactions and then the jump scare is when they show you the rotting head on the street yes that does happen too which is which is somehow like i don't know why that was like less i don't know maybe it's because I saw this movie after I'd already seen Midsommar. And I was just like, yeah, he's gonna do this. He loves fly on head. And they keep returning to that image, too, of like the symbolism of like a rotting person. Well, also the ants are like a Paimon thing.

Oh, there's so much I don't. So many references I don't get. You do see her head come off though. Unless I watched like a director's cut or something. You see like her head hit the pole and come off. I thought it was like a silhouette. I mean, it's enough that you like definitely see what happens. Sure.

I haven't voluntarily watched it in five years so i cannot speak to it i just but i know whatever i saw the first time was enough that i was like well i can't i'm not gonna do it but that's part of why i like watching horror movies is the parts that i are impossible to watch right the point is though that peter is in utter shock after this and he just kind of drives home and goes to bed hoping that it didn't actually happen but the next morning annie discovers charlie's body in the car that's the most horrific moment of the movie to me is watching that long shot of peter in bed and just like seeing him internally count down the moments until his life is over basically yes it's just so horrible it's so horrible and then you see the shot of charlie's severed head there's ants crawling all over it it's truly like one of the

most haunting images i've ever seen in a movie i hope millie shapiro if she wanted it got the head got the prop head if i was her if i was like a like child actor in a horror movie i'd be like give me the head i want the head also like that guttural scream is like something that ari aster used again in mididsommar and it is like so effective because it touches like the deepest like animal part of you that like feels aversion to like the warning scream of another human. Yeah. For sure.

I mean, without Toni Collette's like ability, like this movie is way less effective if anyone's half-assing that role because it's like she in like however many scenes she's like making sounds and expressions that like almost feel inhuman but also but really human or maybe superhuman whatever it is like it's just it's it's terrifying and like again give her an oscar such an incredible performance she's awesome and this wasn't even i mean i thought of i guess like you know tony collette was such a successful character actor at this time i feel like you would rarely see her outside of tv in like leading roles but i think i first saw her in the sixth sense where she was also playing a horror movie mom

but a very different one but yeah she does a great job communicating the just grief and devastation that she and her whole family are feeling she She is your mother. She is your mother. Everyone is devastated. Peter is very guilt-stricken. Annie goes back to the support group where she meets a woman named Joan, played by Ann Dowd, whose son and grandson died recently.

She gives Annie her number in case Annie needs someone to talk to. Annie and Joan then get together, and Annie tells her a story about an instance that happened a few years back where while Annie was sleepwalking, she apparently doused herself and Peter and Charlie in paint thinner and was about to light them on fire while she was sleeping but woke up when she struck the match I do love how this information is introduced because it's like there's so many critical horrific pieces of information introduced mid Tony Collette ramble and then she just always keeps going and you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, what?

What did you say? What did you do? It's great. It's great. But to her, it's like, so this happened. And she's describing how she was just as shocked as her kids were, but Peter has held it against her ever since.

I feel like this movie does a great, like, I don't know, representation of how, like, we have our own family histories and our personal histories that we think are totally normal and downplay and and it's not until you tell it to another person that you realize that it's kind of messed up and this happens repeatedly that she does and the other person is like the viewer who's like hang on but you never get to hang on because they just keep they roll past it they just keep barreling that's true part of what i i am really like drawn to about annie's character

she's like the most extreme example of that and you can see so much in her own art that she is trying to process these things but it's not clear if she feels – it feels like, at least to me at most points, it feels like she is kind of in denial that her art is a way of processing her life. She's just sort of like, this is my work and this is my life when they're so clearly interconnected. But she's using her – I don't know. I'm really excited to talk about women and art as a way of synthes synthesizing your life because i just i don't know i think this movie does it in a really interesting way because in most ways when annie's talking about her art whether it's to her husband um who's really the only person we see her talk to about it she is sort of like well what do you mean this is my work like this is a this is a

neutral presentation and it's like the most fucked up thing you've ever seen and you're like annie annie annie this is right this happens this happens next in the story where annie is making a miniature of charlie's accident with the head on the ground and everything and her husband steve comes in he's like um what the fuck annie and she's like what this isn't he's like don't let peter see that and she's like what this isn't about him this is a neutral presentation of the accent and it's like r.i.p steve she hates therapy and it shows steve is processing grief honestly like you know r.i.p to to steve he did his best he did his best he was like consider our son and annie was like no no my husband and i were talking about at what

point would we have left each other in this situation we'll get to it but there's an outburst that I think I would have been like and we're going to my mom's and you need to go work that one out yeah yeah like he would have been the tricky thing is like their kid but it's like if I'm Steve I also thought this was like if I'm Steve I'm like you know Peter and I oh it's tricky though because then you're leaving Annie by herself and she's so without a support I, it's tricky, though, because then you're leaving Annie by herself. And she's so without a support system. But it's like you've got to, it seems like Steve is trying to do the right thing, which is think about his kid. But he's kind of thwarted at every turn when it comes to trying to act in the best interest of his kid.

Not to say that he couldn't have done better, but he was doing his best. If it was just the two of them if i'm steve i'm like i uh i'm going to disneyland like i don't know i'm going i'm going somewhere i feel like the turning point really was i think that she was becoming harmful to the kids yeah like healing process and you know like i i feel like it would be like for the sake of the kid that I would want to get out of that situation the scene which we're coming up on soon but when she like forces them to participate in a seance with her and Peter is like very visibly upset it's like okay we need to

maybe not be doing this Toni Collette that was my husband's point yeah yeah yeah I mean because Steve really does try to like you know he goes with her as far as he could go before drawing the line and by that point it's unfortunately too late but I don't know yeah I you know like we're not parents I can't say sure, but it just seems like Steve was trying to do his best. And there's an interesting like choice in, and maybe it's just like logistical, our writing choice from Ari Aster, where Steve is like kind of a flat character

in a lot of ways where we're not led to believe that Steve has a support system to turn to. It's just everything is taking place inside of this miniature. And everything outside of the miniature is a little bit nebulous and confusing because we're not led to believe that Steve has family members or friends that he could really go to or that he feels comfortable going to about this. And so he's also kind of a prisoner in this dynamic, which is a real thing. Just thankfully not Paimon real.

Right. Yeah. Isolation is really important for this. Yeah. So the next thing is a dinner scene where Peter and Annie yell at each other and blame each other for the accident. And no one accepts any kind of accountability for anything. This is something that Annie is kind of lashing out about. And so things are very, very tense among the family.

Toni Collette is so good in that scene. It's amazing. I'm your mother. It's a meme for a reason then annie runs into joan again who had recently met a spiritual medium who does seances and the medium conjured the spirit of joan's grandson and so joan is trying to convince annie to come over and she does and And Joan performs a seance and summons her grandson again. Annie gets freaked out and leaves. Then we see a scene where Annie has some scary dreams. She has sleepwalked into Peter's room again. She lets it slip that she never wanted

to be his mother, that her mother pressured her into having kids, Annie tried to have a miscarriage. It turns out that Annie telling Peter all of this was also just a dream, but it's not clear if that is actually something that happened or not, because it's framed as a dream. So we don't totally know. But based on the events of the story, we can maybe glean that that was true for Annie. Not sure, but anyway. Then Annie gets Steve and Peter together and performs a seance. They are skeptical and upset. Peter is very scared. And it seems like Annie summons Charlie's spirit using something that belonged to Charlie, which is a notebook that she used to sketch in. And this summoning of the spirit seems to work.

But then things go wrong where Charlie kind of embodies Annie. And it's weird and scary. My favorite line from the movie is when Peter in that scene is going, can't you feel it the air flexing and i was like oh it is like the most like accurate but also like teenage boy way of describing what is happening and then things really start to fall apart for the family from this point on. Annie discovers that notebook of Charlie's where her spirit seems to be drawing a bunch of pictures of Peter with his eyes crossed out. Not a great omen.

Annie thinks she might be able to stop all of this if she burns the notebook but when she tries to throw it in the fire her arm catches fire as if she and the notebook share some link then annie goes through her mother's stuff again and finds photos of her mother with joan turns out that joan knew eileen all along There are photos depicting them participating in some kind of ritual. There are strange symbols. There are books on the occult. And Annie reads a passage about someone named King Paimon, one of the eight kings of hell. And he needs a vulnerable host to inhabit or possess, specifically a male host. And we're like, hmm, Peter? Question mark. Then Annie goes up to the attic where she finds the rotting corpse of possibly her dead mother, although the head has been removed,

so we can't really ID her at this time. Now, meanwhile, at school, Peter, as if possessed by some sinister spirit, bashes his own face against his desk. This is another case of classic Ari Aster. What's the most fucked up thing i could think to do right now this is also right after he sees his own reflection in like a cabinet and the reflection is smiling at him that really scared me i i feel scared thinking about it now i feel like that was

used for the trailer when they were promoting this movie yeah yeah i kind of remember that Oh, yeah. book knowing that she will combust and burn because of this link he won't do it he wants to call the police he thinks that annie is having a mental break so she throws the book in the fire again thinking it's going to make her burst into flames but surprise it's steve her husband who combusts and dies instead i did not see this coming and never see it coming no matter how many times and you're just like yeah steve steve you should have gone to disneyland steve you should have taken alex wolf to disneyland and then you know we would have been better off but he loved her he loved her it broke my heart this is a love story actually yeah no absolutely where it's it makes me sad it makes me sad

yeah that like he was trying to do right by his family by Annie. Because also it seems like, I mean, just based on what we know about this family, that he has had to stand by her through really. I mean, we know that her kids had a weird to bad relationship with her due to the whole almost lighting them all on fire thing. And it seems like he has been put in the position repeatedly of having to be the most calming presence in the room. But it's dipped so far that he is, I don't think intentionally, but his need to appease everybody and be present for everybody is ultimately like what brings his downfall and the downfall of like other people. Because it's like he's never quite decisive.

He almost emails a therapist saying she's a girl. He almost does a lot of things, but because of his love for his wife and his fear of hurting her, like he never quite takes the step he needs to protect his kids. I don't know. It's so fucked. I don't know what I would do if I'm Steve. I'll be honest. Hard to say when your family is being possessed by one of the eight kings of hell you just don't know how to handle that situation you won't know until you're there right yeah yeah

and and this will happen to all three of us at some point this is don't a part of the human experience that goes without saying i'm alone in my house and all the lights are off i i might actually stand up to go turn some lights on because I'm getting scared. I'm gonna go turn the hallway light on really fast. This is beautiful. Hi, I'm back. Okay, lights are on. We feel safe. So we've just seen Steve burst into flames and burn to death. Annie is shocked by this for a brief moment, but then seems to kind of disassociate. Then we cut to Peter waking up in his bed. He goes downstairs and discovers his charred father. He sees a creepy naked man lurking in a doorway this is where we see tony collette you know annie perched up by the ceiling as if she flew or floated up there then she lunges at peter and chases after him he locks himself in the attic but then annie is in the attic with him sawing her own head off with piano wire. So that's interesting. So sick. Peter jumps out the window.

But then that light shimmer thing that we saw before seems to enter him and compels him to go up to the treehouse that I forgot to mention until now. But we have established this treehouse earlier. We got a Chekhov's treehouse and now it's paying off because he goes up there. And what's in the treehouse? Well, it's a bunch of stuff. It's members of a cult that worship King Paimon. It's Charlie's head on a statue of King Paimon. It's the decapitated bodies of Peter's mom and grandma. Joan is there. And she's saying, Hey, Charlie, we we've, and I'm quoting the dialogue here, we've corrected your first female body. And we gave you this healthy male host. then she goes on to say you are payment we bind ourselves to you give us your knowledge and your wisdom and your riches hail payment the end so

yeah cue Joni Mitchell's song and we're like oh wild song to end on the part that i didn't fully get was that that charlie was payment the whole time and that her decapitation was this kind of planned out thing from the cult like the accident wasn't actually an accident they the cult like made this happen so that payment could be transferred from Charlie's body into Peter's body. And so that's the part that I didn't quite get that like the accident was not actually an accident. I don't know if that was more clear to other people. But no, if you I mean, later on subsequent watches, you notice the symbol of the cult is on, like, on the way to the party. They pass a telephone pole and the symbol from the cult is on, like, embossed in the telephone pole. But on my first watch, or even second, I didn't notice that necessarily.

So it's pretty, like, I feel like the world building elements are given really minimally. And all of the stuff with the cult is happening really backgrounded. And the focus is really on the family. And maybe this is why you felt that the cult stuff was maybe, or like the witchy stuff was maybe less developed. Because it seems to be kind of besides the point and really being used as like an as an engine to heighten this family's struggles yeah i think that's a pretty fair assessment yeah i mean well now that yeah let's take a quick break let's take a break and come back and get into it Hey, everyone. It's Katie Couric.

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Where to begin i would i kind of want to start with the witchier stuff in here because yeah i i agree with that it's like it feels like the supernatural elements of this are secondary and almost like used to amplify the family dynamics that are at the core of this. It's weird that this movie came out in 2018. And because of like the cultural moment of early 2018, this is right after the Me Too movement begins. And so there's a lot of takes on this movie that feel a little dated in that sense. Not to say that it is like inaccurate, but that I don't know like it was interesting going through the initial wave of reception some of which I think was really insightful and some of which I feel like was like a little bad faith in how the material was received because I think at that point it's like oh so we're saying all women are witches and you're like well

why is that a bad thing yeah i guess on my end like just based vaguely on what i know about spiritualism what i thought was interesting is whatever spiritualism is a late 19th century movement that went well into the 20th century it was a religious movement that women were at the center of. And there are so many flaws that came with this religion that are the flaws like at the center of a lot of religions where it was, you know, taking and sort of mutating indigenous beliefs and reclaiming it as if they understood it, which was not true. You know, this was very much like a religion that was shaped and put on display by white women in the late 19th century into the 20th century. But it is a rare religious movement that was driven by women. And it was very threatening to the religious institutions at the time, because spiritualism intersected with all of these progressive movements. It intersected with abolitionism, like Frederick Douglass, like fucked around with spiritualism. Like there's a lot of history that is like it was a, at its core,

a flawed but essentially progressive religion that women were at the center of. And so there was a vested interest, as this religion sort of continued to develop, to prove that it was made up, which, like, depending on height, whatever, this is like, in a very casually mean way to view religion, it's all made up. But there was a vested interest in like, no, this religion is extra made up because women are at the center of it. And so the heads of, and a lot of it was made up. And I also still kind of believe in it anyways. But, you know, there were the seance rituals that we sort of see in this, the idea of table ceremonies, versions of what would eventually become the Ouija board, but table movements, glass movements,

all of this stuff was very inherent to what this was in the 19th century in a very mainstream way. At one point, Mary Todd Lincoln brought in the creators of spiritualism to try to bring Abe back. It was a mainstream movement for a while that was shut down when it was like, oh, well, this isn't quite actually the supernatural accessing it, as if any religion in the world has been like, actually, we have the ghosts. Like, no one has the ghosts, but we all have the ghosts.

That's why we all have the ghosts. But I just, I thought it was interesting that they went in on this religion that was driven by white American women specifically for this generational trauma story. I think it works. I don't know. The way it's executed with the whole Paymon thing, I don't know. It felt a little like yada, yada, yada to me. But also I know that there are six-hour analyses and a lot that I missed.

I just thought spiritualism was like a cool entry point and I didn't super love where he went with it, I guess. I don't know. What does everyone think? I mean, one of my biggest issues with the movie, and I remember thinking this after I left the theater in 2018 when I saw it then, was what felt to me like a conflation of

mental illness and evil demons and kings of hell and that kind of stuff where I think the movie is suggesting and I will just put a disclaimer here to say that when a movie scares me so badly like this i have a hard time thinking about it intellectually and critically just because my brain gets so scared i feel like i had a similar problem on the episode we did on the ring where i'm like well i don't know how I feel about this movie from an intersectional feminist lens, because I'm too scared and my brain doesn't work right now. But the kind of general thing I feel is that, again, the movie does a very harmful thing of conflating mental illness with evil and demons. And, you know, there's this idea throughout the movie of something

being hereditary and being inherited from your family. And it kind of feels like the movie posits the question, is it mental illness that's being passed down through the generations? Or is it payment that's being passed down? Like, you inherit the demon king that your mother dedicated her life to, whether you like it or not. And I mean, I think you could also make the argument that it's not conflation, it's allegory. Like, Paimon is a metaphor for mental illness, the way that you can read, like, the Babadook is a metaphor for postpartum depression. And I also see a reading of the specific mental illnesses that Annie describes her family members as having when she says like, my father had this and died as a result. My brother had this and died by suicide.

But what was being perceived and diagnosed as mental illness in Annie's father and brother was actually Eileen trying to put payment inside them. It was never a mental illness. It was the demon all along. And I see those interpretations, but I still can't help but feel that what the movie is doing here is very malicious, especially because the specific mental illnesses that are mentioned are ones that are very often demonized by media and horror movies, ones that have huge stigmas attached to them. So I think the movie is conflating mental illness and evil in a very harmful and stigmatizing way. I know what you mean, but I almost feel like, so there's two places where I feel this,

and I absolutely see what you're talking about here, is one in like the family history of mental illness. And they really get very specific with the types of mental illness yes but then don't really go into too much detail aside from like the few tidbits that like tony spits out in like a ramble of hers um and it's like a very classic horror trope slash like thing that happened in real life that when people are mentally ill or struggling with mental illness that is like affecting the way they interact with other people that like historically people have been like it's satan or like it's the devil and also this comes up over and over again in horror movies about possession where they initially think it is a mental or physical like ailment but it's satan

it's like hysterical or like exactly exactly that's a lot of like i felt like the most effective moment for me every time even when you know like it's hard for your heart to not be with steve where he's like what like but because he is so thoroughly convinced of what is going on, he is not able to believe his wife about what is going on. And she is right. Like, you can argue with her methods all day long, you know. But she's right. She is telling him what is happening.

And he doesn't believe her. And I think that that is like a running theme throughout this movie of, I mean, that is part of why Charlie is gone. She is trying to advocate for herself. She's trying to say like, I don't want to go to this party. I don't want to be here. I'm sick. And like by the time someone takes it seriously it's already too late and like I

think the same thing you kind of see the same thing happen to her mother where they are both suffering and I agree that like the way that the way that Ari Aster you know deals with explicit mental illness in general I think is just like really messy and I just personally don't like it but what I thought I don't know Paloma let me know what you think I think I think that like what he was trying to do and I and I am kind of on like how effective it is but like what he's trying to do is almost like a comment on like hysteria and how women are so often told like no you're not telling the truth something bad isn't happening something is wrong with you and there is a name for it and the problem with that is like that does invalidate a lot of mental illness and talk around mental illness

but the core of what he's saying, I don't disagree with. And there is, especially because he's talking about spiritualism, it feels like grounded in some historical precedent to have just like, I just don't like what you're saying. And so I needed to go away. And I needed to go away by any means necessary. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, what I was thinking about with that is that I wonder if the movie is trying to be like, what if it was the thing that you were afraid it was? Or what if the uncanny thing, what if it was real

and it was not explained by the mental illness? And it's kind of like interacting with the history and the tropes in that way. But I agree. It's kind of like it's a little half baked. But I think the aspect that kind of grated on me was Charlie specifically, who exhibits like maybe having some issues like socially that might like need some like therapeutic intervention potentially but it's because she's a demon i i that's like where where i was like okay well you know just because someone has trouble making friends with kids their age and like she has like a very stilted way of talking doesn't mean that they are an incarnation of like the ninth demon of hell or

whatever like socially awkward 13 year old girl if all of them are paimon we're fucked right i was reading um different people's writing about this movie through the lens of disability and ableism. The movie doesn't say anything specific about Charlie, but some people were reading Charlie as being autistic based on various traits and behaviors she displays. And then separate from that, the actor who plays Charlie, Millie Shapiro, was born with clitocranial dysplasia, which affects a person's bones and teeth, often affects their height and facial structure. So to characterize Charlie in this way that can be read as being neurodivergent. And this character is played by an actor who has a facial difference. And that's the character who has a demon living inside them and has had this demon in them since like right after they were born has very ableist implications. But I also

saw examples of people with autism saying they felt represented by Charlie, regardless of the implication that her atypical behavior and vocal stimming, for example, are actually a demon displaying these behaviors. open to many reads and interpretations. I also wanted to point out that there is ableist language surrounding Charlie, not directed at her exactly, but that scene where Peter's crush says Charlie drew a picture of her, and then this girl uses an ableist slur to describe how Charlie depicted her in the drawing, which I feel is still a veiled ableist insult toward Charlie. All this to say, there's a lot happening in this movie regarding implications surrounding mental illness and disability and neurodivergence, and whether or not those things are actually a demon inhabiting someone's body. And none of it sits well with me. Right. Yeah.

Like that's I feel like where the issue is. It just kind of like interrupts. I don't know. It interrupts part of what I like about this movie, which is, you know, it's a little absurd and like way over the top because it's fucking hereditary but the idea that like like this line of of women have been far more powerful than anyone ever gave them credit for because of the way that people kind of systemically dismiss women's concerns, women's ideas.

And I also feel like it kind of ties into, you know, like the fact that Annie is an artist. And that is like, doesn't seem like it's taken super seriously by anyone in her family or anyone around her. And I don't know, I like on its face the fact that like, you know, these whatever three, four generations of women have been, you know, dismissed as very sick when in fact, they were extremely powerful and misunderstood. I like that theme. I think it gets very messy. I don't think Ari Aster, a first-time male director, is the one to be able to present this in a nuanced and thoughtful way.

But I like the core idea of it. But that's all a little interrupted by having Charlie be the demon. Like, why? Why? But at the same time, I keep thinking about what you had said earlier that like, what if your worst fear and like the worst thing you're thinking is actually true? This is like, what if that child who's behaving oddly, it's actually because they're that, that like worst fear, like they, they're evil. So it's like that over and over again with all of these different

things. I also don't think that Annie, like I you know whatever narratively annie is not a great parent like she's not and it seems like you know her mom was also a pretty bad like horrifically bad parent and there is like i mean hereditary hat like has to do with this pay shit, but it also has to do with behavioral patterns. Like Annie was, it seemed like went through, I mean, we know went through a lot of really traumatic stuff when she was a kid. And the attitude in the house is we don't talk about it. And we see her repeat that pattern

when she loses her mother and then she loses her daughter she never talks to peter and and i think you know like you can go any which way but like in this family steve is the more emotionally intelligent parent and he's not great but he's trying and and you just see annie for all of these reasons that are understandable, but in terms of showing up for her kid, she doesn't. And that scene between Peter and Annie at the dinner table is so gut-wrenching because you can just feel, ugh, it makes me feel sick when I watch it because you can just see both of these characters want it to be someone's fault.

And the truth is somewhere in the middle, which is why it kind of bugs me, bugged me, and I think still bugs me, that at the end we're kind of given a prescriptive answer as to why what happened happened. It did surprise me that we were given such a clear-cut answer but i sort of i guess just like personally i i kind of preferred the stomach churning uncertainty of like why did this happen sure annie's choices contributed to it and peter's choices contributed to it but there's no contributed to it. But there's no clear answer. There's no clear fault. But the end of the movie. Ultimately, it was the cult.

Well, that's sort of why I don't like the witchy stuff towards the end because it gives you, I thought it just kind of gave me more answers than I wanted in a way that felt almost like a little bit less haunting at the end to be like, oh, it was actually, you know, like the scary treehouse cult that this was predetermined many moons ago. And like, so now, I mean, not that it ends great for Peter, but, you know, he can, whatever, rest assured that it wasn't his fault which I feel like is almost a worse punishment than becoming the devil himself is always wondering like was this my fault like that's one of the most I think like horrible actual things that can happen to a person is

having to wonder that right yeah then there's so much about blame in this movie and i i have in my notes i have the word blame in big letters with a square around it because it comes up over and over again and how like blame can like distort relationships but i kind of feel the opposite of you on the committing to an answer like a clear-cut answer that there was a cult and there was a demon and all of this was i feel like so much horror that like is allegorical or like trying to represent or talk about things like commits too hard and the the metaphor is like too neat and clean and this one is like messy a little bit and like none of the none of the representations like feel are like 100 we can't definitively be like this is about grief or like this is about inherited trauma or this is about mental illness or anything like that like all of that stuff is

like in the soup and what makes it cohesive is that there is actually a plot and a reason rooted in like the reality of the movie for all of these things to be happening and ultimately like all of the characters are kind of helpless in the face of the larger powers. And I think that's where I enjoy horror is just like when it lets go of the notion that we as like little people with our little dramas have any sway on these like huge old supernatural things that are happening around us yeah sometimes i wish i could be like yeah the depression i'm constantly feeling that's just the seventh king of hell weaseling his way into my brain maybe that's a personal thing because I would rather blame myself and my mom for those things but that's like in a family drama yeah it's like it's yourself and the mom is the problem and then that's like the lovely thing about horror or just like genre in general it's like but actually

there's like this third sinister magical thing that has nothing to do with you guys. Yeah, I guess that's personal. I just wish that there was maybe I mean, I don't even object to like the inclusion of the cult. It's like you almost kind of get a second movie out of it. But I just wish maybe there was I don't know. Yeah, this is strictly a personal thing. But I wish there was a little more like leeway left for you're not totally sure because cults are created by people. But this movie would have you believe because you see like whatever spiritualism had sound off. You see that Toni Collette checks all of the classic spiritualist tricks.

She looks under the table. She looks for this. She looks for that. And so if you've seen any seance rig you know it's clear that like this is real and that is like confirming the existence of this magic i just i don't know yeah i wish that that door was kind of left open a little bit i've i've found myself like really drawn to like horror stories that let you have a little bit of both. I read I read a book recently, The September House by Carissa Orlando. I've really like it's a really good haunted house

book that I feel like kind of like, lets you have your cake and eat it too, where it is like a story that is grounded in a woman going through a mental health crisis and also ghosts are real and like both of these things exist I don't know that's it was my ideal horror story where mental illness is a real and present force and also the supernatural is fucking with us at all times and if you combine the two you're fucked which is maybe just like what i was looking for more from the conclusion of hereditary than than there is but yeah again that's like a personal thing yeah i mean if the like cult and payment stuff and all the magic and mysticism is taken out of this movie it would just be a really effective family drama about

grief and generational trauma you gotta have the goals and yeah but i do like that there is a lot of emphasis on blame and trust too where like the family's having trouble trusting each other and where they can't trust each other, they are throwing blame around at each other. So these are like things that are very familiar in a lot of family dynamics. So I think it's interesting that the movie explores those. movie has like a longer lasting legacy and is beloved by its fans more than a pretty like straightforward ghost story movie that fails to kind of dig deeper into, you know, a character's internal struggle and, you know, complicated family dynamics, which a lot of horror movies fail to do just because it's like, it's ghost story or it's a monster story and you know

not really digging deep into anything actually like interesting or thematic about the human experience or the human condition i want to talk about payment and gender because yeah okay i guess there's a there's something there's something here in the text of the movie. So we hear early on in a conversation between Charlie and her mom Annie. It's right after the grandmother's funeral. And Charlie says, Grandma wanted me to be a boy. And we don't really get any context for that or any other information aside i think we're just like left to play on the classic successor thing i don't know yeah i feel

like having grown up in a really patriarchal like family that my grandmother also was like i wish you were a boy when i was first born so i like totally like breezed past that i was like, I wish you were a boy when I was first born. So I like totally like breezed past that. I was like, oh, that's normal patriarchy stuff. Right. Yeah, I could definitely be chalked up to that. And then as the movie goes on, and especially by the end, you find out why the grandma wanted her to be a boy because of the whole payment thing and when annie is kind of rifling through the book about king payment there's this passage that i paused on and wrote down as much of it as i could but it's basically explaining that there's some text

because if you look up payment on you know scholarly journal wikipedia he's there this is a thing like this isn't an invention for the movie hereditary this there's lore i think a lot of horror movies have like encountered different versions of this guy yeah but there's apparently some text called the goetia or something and the book that annie reads from says the goetia itself makes no mention of king payment's face uh then there's like text that's cut off other documentation describes him as having a woman's face while something something some other text refers to him using strictly masculine pronouns as As a result, the sexes of the hosts have varied, but the most successful incarnations have been with men. And it is documented that King Paimon

has become livid and vengeful when offered a female host. For these reasons, it is imperative to remember that King Paimon is a male, thus covetous of a male human body. So we find out, okay, this Paimon worshiping cult needs a male host to put Paimon into. And then again, through some things that are implied throughout the movie, we realize that Paimon has been inhabiting Charlie or had been inhabiting Charlie, but King payment wasn't happy about that. He wants a male host. So that's why they orchestrate this whole thing to put payment into Peter's body. I don't know why that didn't just happen originally. Oh, they they explained that there's a part where I think it's in the in the like grief group therapy thing where she talks about how she wanted to distance herself from her mother because of like their toxic relationship.

And she didn't let her go near his her son at all right but then she felt bad about it so she quote-unquote gave her charlie okay okay okay got it so that's why they use charlie's body for king payment to inhabit but it's not quite working out because payment is a misogynist and he hates women or something i don't know what to make of this exactly um or or he's just like very like secure in his gender and and wants resents being put into the wrong body yeah he's like we gotta decapitate this body i don't like there yeah i i didn't know what to make of it either but I um yeah when I was reading back on criticism of the time I feel like I didn't quite agree with the gender like there was like a clear desire for a male leader I don't know I don't know

because I think I like ultimately what i decided is i don't know or understand enough about the underlying like satanist demonology demonology yeah i was like spiritualism i get but towards the end this movie pretty severely takes a left from that and gets full-on into demon shit and so this movie i feel like lures you in with kind of like more friendly like women are in charge spiritualism and then it takes a turn to demonism at some point in a way that like i felt out of my depth and it feels like and this is just like strictly based on observation it seems like the the demon shit is a little more patriarchal um and so it just yeah it just felt like a departure from what we were seeing before

because spiritualism is historically driven by women and demon shit seems like it is not so i didn't know what they were doing demon Demon stuff is for boys. It's like church, church adjacent, which traditionally I think. Right. It gets more patriarchal. Yeah. It was just confusing. I wonder how much like Ari Aster knows about this shit and how much of it is just like, this is what I need to happen.

What do I need? Like what horror tools can I use to make it happen? But yeah, I guess not that we're talking about it it feels like there is kind of like a fake out with like leading with like spiritual practice that is both troubled and women have historically been leaders and then kind of pivoting at some point to like, actually, it's a more patriarchal demon thing. I don't know. I feel like the spiritualism part was actually a trick that the cult was playing on Annie. Being like, you're a medium and we can contact your child.

And this is like, this is a spiritualism thing but really they were like read this incantation that summons the demon and and summons your child and by your child i do mean the demon that was inhabiting your child right and like using the the grief like grief drove a lot of spiritualism stuff i think yeah which i learned from your podcast actually um and this is like capitalizing on that for like other nefarious demon cult yeah needs and it's all rosemary's baby from there it is true i mean it's like and and dad's performance is so clearly pulled from rosemary's baby and the way that like i mean that as a compliment but it's like you can see how like interacting those movies are i yeah i i don't know and and

and again it's like i guess it's everyone's mileage is going to vary for like ari aster landing on like it's actually the scary patriarchal thing that were that ended up being kind of the internal truth of what's going on it does explain how most women in this world seem to be absolutely fucked or beholden to this system but i don't know yeah the the supernatural stuff in this movie it's very possible that i just don't know enough, but it never quite connects for me. The family stuff really connects. Yeah. It just seems like a family of people who are all genuinely doing their best and are undercut by either mental illness or the work of the devil, and sometimes both.

Sometimes both. And I think Ari Aster posits, what if those two things are the same thing, mental illness and the devil? But maybe I'm just overthinking it. I don't want to feel like that's the general way or the thesis of the movie, but I think it is the what if of the movie, like not that like, mental illness and the devil are the same, but like, what if they were? And that's like, right, a weird place to land. Sometimes, right. I also think I'm influenced by something that we bring up on the podcast a lot, which is that early scene in Midsommar, where there's a character who is explicitly stated to have bipolar and then she murders her whole family as if her bipolar drove her to murder i was just i was just about to bring that up where that still is always going to bother me more because mitsumar is not a supernatural movie it's a cult movie

like these are both cult movies but hereditary is also a supernatural movie midsummer is explicitly like in that world we do not see magic shit happen any of the visions that happen in that movie are brought up by drugs so like i'll always be and i love midsummer but like i will always be bothered by him that That feels like the worst explicit conflation of, she is this and therefore this happened. Where at very least, and I still don't like how, it doesn't quite connect with me how the two are connected, but at least it feels like there's the possibility of a what if, but in Midsommar, it's just like text.

Like bipolar people kill their families you're just like in general I like I like hereditary better than Midsommar because of I think the supernatural oh and I think it was just scarier period it is scarier but they both love rotting heads and lighting people on fire he is like it's his strange addiction is doing that but yeah i don't know i i at least i don't know while i find the supernatural stuff frustrating sometimes it does temper some of the stuff that yeah i don't think ari aster like i don't think enough bad things have happened to him. I mean, we don't have to talk about his short films.

I couldn't. I haven't seen them. Yeah. I've seen them. I just know about them. I shan't be seeing. I saw the big one. yeah no I just think that Ari Aster is like I should keep gender in general keep specific mental illnesses out of his mouth and his writing until we understand why he's doing it because sometimes there does feel like a shock jockey you know which feels weird to say of an like an indie

horror director but it does sometimes feel like what's the most fucked up thing i could present in a way that you could still present something really really really fucked up and not be like bipolar made her do it you know or i don't know in hereditary it feels like there's a little bit more purpose or or at least an argument for purpose behind it but it's his first movie there's there's stuff that doesn't quite work i think it it succeeds for me on like a horror level the other stuff i think is good better than a lot of horror movies and like like more thoughtful and like the character the acting is really good i think really helps and the character work is interesting but why i

love this movie is like really more because the the scares and the tension and it is just such an effective horror movie yeah truly yes it's so i mean it's like impossible not to get completely sucked in like it's there's no movie i've seen that i've seen movies that explore the same themes but it's like uniquely like punishing and engrossing and the performance like there's not a bad performance in it everyone is like going at a 10 the entire time it's it's awesome and the soundtrack oh does work i love to this is some of my favorite writing music is the soundtrack for this it's so and i mean pull up just like speaking to like i i love your book so much and it feel like you are able to work in the supernatural into family dynamics

and into friendship dynamics, like so uniquely, but I think you do it better than Mr. Aster, but also he's great at it. But I just, if, if anyone listening has not yet read Paloma's work,

I think it does what this movie does better. Oh, thank you. It's really, it's really nice of you to say. It's work. I think it does what this movie does better. Oh, thank you. It's really nice of you to say. It's true. Going back to the conversation about gender. So when Ari Aster was asked in an interview with Variety, is there ever a Charlie or is she Paimon from the moment she's born? Ari Aster responds, from the moment she's born. Ari Aster responds from the moment she's born. I mean, there's a girl that was displaced, but she was displaced from the very beginning. So we have this male demon that inhabits the body of someone who was assigned female at birth. And some writers

have discussed a transmasc read of this movie. I want to pull from a piece in the publication Them by Sasha Geffen entitled Trans Horror Stories and Society's Fear of the Transmasculine Body, What the Film Hereditary Reveals About Society's Moral Panic Surrounding Transmasculine People. This piece points out that most trans horror stories to date have stoked a fear in the trans feminine movies like, you know, Silence of the Lambs and Psycho. But Sasha Geffen points out that in general, in horror movies, a prevalent trope is the idea of, quote, one gender swirled up into another creates a monster. The piece goes on to say, quote, Millie Shapiro's performance as Charlie imbues the character with a deep pathos and clearly conveys that she feels

alienated from her body. During a phone interview, film critic Caden Mark Gardner tells me he recognized his own childhood gender dysphoria in Charlie's onscreen presence. This is now a quote from Caden Mark Gardner. When I was growing up, even though I didn't realize I was going through gender dysphoria, I was in these baggy hoodies and jeans a lot of the time, sort of the way Charlie was dressing, he says. Together with film critic Willow McClay, he publishes Body Talk, a series of conversations about films that speak implicitly or explicitly to the trans experience. Many of these films are horror movies, as horror is one of the only genres where the sanctity of the body is regularly disrupted, where the distress of something

akin to gender dysphoria is expressed legibly on screen. Hereditary's transition allegory involves not only the violent death of a girl, but also the torture and eventual evacuation of a cis male body, parentheses Peter, that Charlie's transition requires so much physical violence speaks to a lingering anxiety among cis people that transition is at best a form of mutilation, and at worst, a kind of death, a sloughing of one body in exchange for a new different one. Unquote. The piece goes on, I think the whole thing is worth a read. We will link it in the description. But I thought this was just a really interesting interpretation of that aspect of the movie. Yeah, yeah. I do feel like it's like another demonstration

of how open to interpretation kind of this story remains. And I feel like that's been a conversation around a lot of horror movies that we've covered and how many of the horror movies we've covered are made by Ari Aster types of, you know, like white guy auteurs and it doesn't make the movie less good or less impactful but it does make it that guy again yeah yeah i feel like i feel this a lot of horror is like women-centric and then also made by men yes and it is so like steeped in this like fear of womanhood and like things that like in this movie like women are in this like they're part of the secret and like men

are kind of inert and like i feel like that is present in this movie and in a lot of movies that puberty pregnancy it's like all these things that happen to women and that women experience are horrific and like unfathomable to the men who are creating these pieces it's the topic of so many horror movies the classic and in this one it's motherhood in a way yeah we, we didn't quite get into this. But yeah, the idea of like, I don't know, the idea that like this is a mother who is an artist and yet her like her art is conflated so much with her family life

and like her dysregulation in some way is connected to her art. I don't know. There's so many different entry points to this movie, to the point where I truly don't know what Ari Aster is trying to say. I just know that the viewing of this movie feels very individual, where I've always come at it of like, my read of the movie has always been like, women are far more powerful than people give them credit for mothers are far more powerful than people give them credit for but because of all of this various negging like that kind of all goes unseen and that all you know compounds to what i think is kind of like a

dissatisfying conclusion but you but like what you just said Paloma is just as valid a read of like the fear of like what generations of women are doing and an anxiety around women and being kind of subjugated and defeated by them in in like Steve's case and I don't know there's just like so many ends to to seeing this movie and I like that there's not a definitive one. And that's probably why people still love it so much. Yeah, and that's part of why I also really like this movie is that there are so many interpretations and so many things being represented and played with throughout the movie. And it is not like this like one-to-one metaphor for anything in particular and that's like what is so what makes it such good horror is that you

can find something to fear because there are so many things as as you said entry points and that's why i think it hits for so many people yeah yeah i think there is also something to be said for the fact that we know annie's character far better than we know her husband we know next to nothing about him other than he's struggling he's struggling and he's doing his best but yeah we see annie working very often we see steve at one time, but we don't know what he does. And it's not relevant to anything. He's sidelined, Steve is for many chunks of the movie. And that's feminism. Well, it's like at least attempting to explore or like has you I don't know. I don't know. I feel like this movie is weirdly a step forward.

But speaking of what you were saying a little earlier, Paloma, like I always get hyper agitated when, you know, regardless of how much I like, dislike, whatever, good, bad, indifferent in the movie, when like auteur's burst onto the scene is a guy centering a woman's experience and being like, I wrote this. I got it.

I figured it out. And like often it's horrible. Often it's awesome. But I just like I get into like a looping thing of like, but they'll always get another chance. It doesn't matter if they nail it or not. And like, do people ultimately care? Why is Ari Aster centering women in his piece I don't need the answer but sometimes I just get conspiratorial and I'm just like it felt like especially in the

late 2010s a lot of men and you can't say this for Ari Aster because this is his first feature but in this time there are a lot of men who were suddenly centering women in their pieces to be like no no no no like disregard everything i said before i actually have always cared about women's internal lives and like i just took me till 2019 to like do it and then you watch it and you're like well this fucking sucks and like so i don't know I think that I also bring an inherent anger too yeah I also feel like it's just like maybe semi-unrelated pang about like how difficult it is to be a woman doing horror it's so like male dominated and yet the stories are all so frequently about women and so i feel a bit of resentment about that i have yeah i have several theories as to why that is why men fixate on like

women in horror stories because they're afraid of them they're well yes they're scared of women yeah women's bodies do and i'm speaking like cis normatively here i realize that but um as far as like pregnancy and periods and yeah like how many pussy monsters have we covered on this fucking show they're like the scariest monster in the world and it's like a vagina so that's one thing i also just think that because men tend to see women as weak and docile and fragile and we need to be protected and we need to be uh we're so delicate that the things that happen in horror movies you know the horrific the horrific imagery and, and the stalking and the chasing and the killers stabbing, it's, I think, perceived to be more horrific when those

things happen to women than if, oh, if these things were happening to men, oh, they'd be able to fight off the stabby killer or whatever. I think that part of the horror of so many horror movies is this is happening to a woman. And doesn't that make it so much scarier? Right. I agree. But I also like, I don't think that that's really what Ari Aster is doing,

but it's like, you bring all of that to this movie too. Like it's impossible not to. And also like with possession, like so much possession movies are about possessing women or children um because of the corruption of innocence and like even if like this isn't the thing that ari aster like went to the desk thinking about when you write in in genre you bring everything to the table because like inherent in doing genre is you have to interact with

everything that's been done before because of tropes and trends and things like that. So, you know, it is worth talking about for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Men be bringing their biases to, I mean, we are too. We just don't get to do it as much and and women write fantastic horror so I mean and there are again it's like even since 2018 I feel like there has been some shift in terms of like who gets to tell mainstream horror stories but always room for more movement because I was yeah as I was getting all worked up talking to my boyfriend about like why first time directors centering women regardless of genre even when I like the movies I'm still like slightly side-eyeing it which is not fair of me but is how I feel uh

but in any case you know the real kind of stress test of like is this genre being meaningfully diversified isn't like who gets to make one movie but who gets to make three because i think in the last you know five like half decade we've seen a lot of people get to make their first movie but we have not seen a lot of people get to make their second movie. And so, I don't know. I feel like the landscape for especially genre film is shifting, but it's a lot of people making their first movie. I want to see a more diverse group of directors make their third and fourth movies and have the same sort of freedom to explore that the Ari Asterisks of do we're getting off topic but you know i mean

yeah i i will say ariaster and also um jordan peele i think they made like two great horror movies and then we're like and but i'm not a horror director and then made like a third movie that's not horror and i haven't seenraid, but they might be like good movies. But I want like people to commit to the genre and keep making scary movies. I don't know. And that's why I will be seeing every M. Night Shyamalan movie for the rest of my life. And that's a that is my sacred vow. I mean, I guess sometimes what he does is more thrillers

but still they're cousins or it's close enough i'm really excited for the new m. night Shyamalan movie i'm always excited for the it's like you know even if they're not good they're great or even if they're not great they're good they're always like confident big swings they're not great, they're good. They're always like confident, big swings. They're firmly comfortable in the genre they're in. And it's just like a riot. It's a riot. The first movie I saw after I got the vaccine for COVID was Old. I was hoping you'd say Old. What an amazing return to the movies.

What an amazing. They're just high concept. What's the new one? The new the new one is like oh i just saw a trailer for it what is it it looks awesome it's like there's a they're at like a stadium concert and there's a serial killer and then you find out it's the protagonist that's the serial killer it's or so we think because mr shimelan loves his twists what's his name josh i can't wait who's the josh in the movie it's i don't know i i know the josh of which you speak but i heartnet heartnet yes it's josh heartnet yes yeah i guess the moral of our hereditary episode is go see trap in theaters on august 2nd i am genuinely a trap 30 000 fans 300 cops one serial killer no escape yeah i'm going wow i'm going um does anyone have anything else they'd like to say about the

movie hereditary um i could go on about the scary stuff for a long time but i'd love to let you sleep tonight so I mean well we'll be up late anyway watching minions so healing healing up late healing yes is there I know that you said there's like a lot of technical stuff that you were impressed by and research is there anything in particular that stuck out on that end because we don't really cover that stuff as much on this show I so I I definitely was tracking like I I went through the movie and and was tracking like the progression of fear with a two-step of like uncanny and then scary and just like I I I think it was really effective how those two things were balanced throughout the movie and then heightened to like an 11 in like the third act.

Also, the way that he played with the viewer's anxiety around what was going on on screen and then use the momentum of that anxiety to subvert like to give a new twist like an example would be when Peter is going walking through the room as we talked about and then Tony's in the corner and then you think that he's going to interact with her but then it turns and it's something completely different and that happened with the the head lobbing off as well. And then also, um, in the attic,

when you know that the body is there and you're expecting the thing for him to encounter, to be the body and you're bracing yourself for the, for the headless dead body, but he turns around and something completely different and totally terrifying. And that just like relentless like feeding into someone's fear and then using that fear as a jumping off point on something even

scarier I think is really great it is I feel like yeah like a lot of what made this movie work for me especially for the first time but also like it is a movie that very much rewards on reviewing because it is like playing on what you expect to happen with a jump scare it is playing on like tropes and like it i don't know it's like many bextelcast episodes i end by being like well i talked a lot of shit but this movie fucking rips and i will be watching it again yeah it's definitely a horror fans horror movie, I think. Because it kind of knows your psychology of having seen a lot of these movies. For sure.

I hope that Ari Aster makes more horror movies. I was about to say I will watch Bo is Afraid, but I'm going to temper that. I actually don't know because it's so hard to to like it takes a movie with a very long run time to dissuade me from watching a movie where Patti LuPone and Nathan Lane play the parents but oh yeah I know like two Broadway legends playing the parents of the psychological movie but it's three hours long so what are you gonna do yeah I don't know if I'm gonna see kinds of kindness i you know it's three hours long didn't care for it i am looking forward to like long legs i'm gonna i heard it's so scary

hopefully not a long movie it will be the next hereditary for me that's that's why i've been thinking about it and this because that movie I went to see it in theaters and I was like yes I have been utterly frightened and I I've been I've been chasing that high and longing for it and I want to go and see Long Legs and be utterly frightened I hope all these people talking about how they like left the theater crying are not exaggerating i have not seen a an oz perkins movie yet um so i am i'm really interested yeah i think i'll see it that's the kind of nepotism i can get behind baby yeah i think i'll see it and then probably have just full body pains all over again yay i yeah i will be seeing i'm excited to see long legs i'm excited to see trap yeah those are the two

horror entries i'm excited to see coming up yeah and whenever uh whenever the next saw movie comes up because that's where caitlin and i oh yeah baby 11 that's the slasher horror franchise that caitlin and i are fully on the same page oh oh baby like some months ago i watched every single saw movie i'm working my way through what's your favorite let me tell you when you watch every single saw movie within a span of like two weeks watching like one sometimes two a night they really blur together i think like and some are really just so bad but I I love the commitment to like the twist that doesn't make sense the twist it's like it's like soap opera levels it's like a telenovela by the end of it like it's like you never see them coming no you're like and then

the music every time the music is like it's like so so extra i love it entirely it's the best franchise it really is in every i mean you know say what you will about his methods but he does want to play a game and i celebrate that i mean feminist icon jigsaw it's true he loves his wife um hereditary does pass the bechdel test yeah i mean at many points oh joan joan and annie oh they're talking about seances oh they're talking about grief etc annie talks to charlie yeah there's there's numerous passes our nipple scale though i don't know pass pass yeah i don't think it's i don't know how to assign so a scale of zero to five nipples where we rate the movie examining it through an intersectional feminist lens i have no freaking idea for this movie again my brain ceases to work for movies this scary so i can't really think

about them i would probably if i'm making a stab at it i would probably fall somewhere in the middle here or maybe a little on the generous side of the middle i i don't know. It is a really tricky one. You know, this movie certainly centers women, but also, I mean, specifically the case of Charlie goes out of its way to demonize a girl for reasons that I'm still like not clear on outside of in the interest of a twist why that decision was made i don't know i really don't know i might my instinct is somewhere down the middle but um but even that feels a little nebulous it almost feels like i mean this is something i probably should have brought up earlier but all the women or girls that we see on screen or that we know about but don't really see because they are dead i.e the grandmother are like harbingers of a scary

cult and like you know evil witchy types and then all the men are just like, don't do that. Are boring. Well, see, that I don't hate is all women are witches and all men are boring. Like, that's a kind of like prescriptive thing I could get up for. Completely inert.

That's one view of it. But I also think that there would be people who walk away from this being like, women are evil and men are just innocent bystanders well i don't i don't read it that way but i think there are people who would but even so it's like ultimately they are still serving the patriarchy that's what i find more frustrating is like they have a lot of agency but still they're like no the devil is a man uh the devil is a cis man and we feel that that is certain i don't know where's

queen payment they didn't want her we had her they killed her i know so the answer is i don't fucking know i don't know pull of it do you have a do you have a feeling on this you know i would also like probably put it on like the middle to like higher middle i don't know it's hard to there's definitely a 0.5 in there somewhere um is it a 3.5 or is it a four whoa i'm not sure i would go i i would go three maybe three because it's like there's clear intent to like there is intellectual curiosity about what women are experiencing in this movie, which maybe it's like the bars on the floor for a lot of that. That's true. But this movie is like deeply interested in what Annie is going through.

It is clearly like we know that Annie. Well, actually, we don't know. I feel like it's almost maybe a litmus test for like who are you gonna believe here but like Annie is ultimately right about perceiving what is happening but she is struggling with mental illness it's not all like the answer is a little bit in between but ultimately it's like it's not I feel like a lot of horror movies i've seen have led to like it was all in her head and that is the tragedy of it but it's not all in annie's head like it's part of the tragedy is that people don't believe what she's saying and the same is true for

charlie even though her being a demon yeah kind of muddles that a little bit which is why that choice never makes sense to me but but like it's not like the movie is disinterested in what she's experiencing. I just feel like the results a little all over the place. Yeah, kind of in the opposite direction of the feeling of being too afraid to process this. I think I enjoy the fears that this presents and it's like tilting my bias maybe like more in favor you know it's it i'm like trying to separate like what i love about it as a horror movie and like how i would assess it as from like the bechdel cast perspective right right i mean it's a it's a tricky one for this show because i don't think this movie is trying to be overtly feminist or not. And that's fine.

But yeah, when it comes down to like how are the women of this world and story treated, I guess for me on my personal, like how much I enjoy it rating, it's higher in this specific world that we're talking about. I would probably come down at about a three three and a half on a on a good day see i think maybe this is just my my my fright but i would give it like a two i think because of my perceived conflation of mental illness equals evil, demonic possession. And because Ari Aster has kind of a checkered history with that, and in two of his movies, there's some questionable stuff happening regarding mental illness and conflating it with like you know violence or demonic possession or whatever it is i really struggle with that so i think i'll land on a two but i also acknowledge that

and again i think this is like a very well directed movie and the production design is incredible the cinematography the performances but uh i will never watch it again because i'm just too scared and this time you mean it and this time i mean it if someone if someone else says come on to my podcast to talk about hereditary i'll say no thank you if someone says come on to my podcast i will say no i will normally say yes but not if it's a hereditary thing. Anyway, so yeah, two nipples and I'm giving them both to Rex the dog, who I think in my memory survives. Hell yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm going to go 3.25.

And I'm going to give one to Annie I'm gonna give one to Ann Dowd's performance when she's pretending to not know about the doormat because I just think it's a really funny moment where she's like oh your mom made these that's weird I really enjoy that

moment every time give one to Charlie. She did nothing wrong. She didn't ask to be born for crying out loud. She didn't ask to have a payment demon put inside her. I know. And I'll give my last.25 to Steve. He did his best.

I think I would be swayed down to like a 3 because if I think about it everything we've talked about i have also had my critiques about how how those types of things landed in this movie do i have to give these away you don't have to you don't have to you can keep them for yourself i don't know if i want to keep those in my house i think they'll bring some bad juju you can put them in the tree house if you want yeah i i we can put the space heaters

on for them to keep them warm as well yes very good yeah yes well paloma thank you so much for joining us thanks so much for having me and talking about this with me oh my gosh and to and before you go tell us a little bit about your book and where we can where we can find it? So my short story collection is called Mouth. It is a collection of 11 dark, weird, surreal stories that are mostly centered on women. So if you like hereditary and you like weird stuff and want to feel uncomfortable while reading or watching something, maybe check out my book, which is wherever books are sold, as they say. We'll link to it in the description of this episode. Wonderful. It fucking rocks. And where else can people follow you on social media, maybe? You can find me on Instagram and a very infrequently used Twitter at PoloMeow.

And you can follow us on Instagram at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast where there lives an episode on Midsommar. So if you want to check out our thoughts on Ari Aster's other horror movie from this era. Yeah, don't hold your breath on the Bo is Afraid episode. But you got your Ari Aster episodes, you freaks. Hope you're happy. But yeah, go over to our matreon it's five dollars a month and it gets

you access to the entire back catalog of our over 100 bonus episodes and enjoy a fun goofy little theme that we conjure up every month and you can get merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. It's late where Paloma is. I'm going to let her go to bed. And don't let payment bite. Bye. Bye-bye. The Bechtel cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus,

produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Labante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskrosensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus. And a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com. Hey, everyone. It's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the homestretch right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question, starting October 3rd. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out, like Ezra Klein, Jen Psaki, Astead Herndon, Karl Rove, and David Axelrod. But we're also going to have some fun, thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee and Charlemagne the God.

We're going to take some viewer questions as well. I mean, isn't that what democracy is all about? Check out our new season of Next Question with me, Katie Couric, starting October 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unnerves the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that're turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere.

On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel. Available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. going to build once they solve a few problems. I'm talking to people trying to figure out how to do things that no one on the planet knows how to do, from creating a drone delivery business to building a car that can truly drive itself. Listen to What's Your Problem on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.