Latest / Spooky Season Podcasts 🎃 / The Daily Zeitgeist: Fright-con #40: Count Dracula

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The Daily Zeitgeist: Fright-con #40: Count Dracula · Spooky Season Podcasts 🎃

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to my home. Enter freely of your own will
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: and leave some of the happiness you bring. I am Drunk. Hello,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the Internet.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Welcome to this spinoff episode.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Of Der Daily Zeitgeist.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Which we're calling the Iconograph or the Frightconograph.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Instead of looking at the Zeitgeist through current events on
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Monday morning, we're looking at the Zeitgeist through the powerful
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: pop culture deities that are our icons.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Or now that it's.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Spooky season now that it's october the powerful pop cultural
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: demons who are our fright cons oh uh and we're
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: kicking we're kicking our october zeitcon fright con season off
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: uh with a character who i feel like is the
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: main character of spooky season like i feel like he's
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: as close to Santa Claus as we got for Halloween.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: That's like a character, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: I feel like it's the first one you go to
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: for Halloween. We're talking about the most depicted literary character
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: in the history of film and TV. An allegory for
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: the evils of capitalism. That has gone on to make
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: billions and billions of dollars. The original Batman, probably not
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: our scariest icon of horror, but with apologies to the Wolfman,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: he's probably the horniest. I think he might have been
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: the thing who discovered the fear bone is connected to our...
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Horny bone. But yeah, he's evolved over time from an
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: unkempt Jerry Garcia looking old guy to a suave fuck
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: boy rocking a cape, slick back hair, sloppy steaks, sloppy
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: because they've been stabbed through his heart.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: It's Dracula!
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: Dracula!
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: My name is Count Jackula O'Brien. I'm one of the
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: founders of Cracked and I want to suck your blood.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: And I'm thrilled to be joined by my co-host, He
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: can hollow out a Reese's cup, leaving behind a hollow
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: chocolate shell with two little puncture wounds.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: It's Miles Gray! Hey, I want to suck your blood.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Wow, nice. Please. That was a pretty good one.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I'm anemic. I need it. Oh, man. Yeah, this is...
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I gotta say, I think when I was thinking about
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: how common this is, I just... Let's... We'll introduce the guest,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: but were you Dracula ever for Halloween? Were you ever
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: a vampire? I've been Dracula recently.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Dracula is an easy one because we had to go
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: to a Halloween party with fancy people one time. What
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: does that mean? Not comedians that you work with?
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: The Transylvanian royal family?
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like these British people we know through our kids' school.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: The royal family? You're describing these British people. They don't
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: have a last name.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: The vibe so i thought it was a halloween it
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: was a it was a mini uh baba duke situation
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: where like i thought it was gonna be full halloween
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: costumes and i like had like dracula makeup dracula fangs
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: like blood coming out of my mouth and like everybody
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: else was just like in a uh tuxedo with an
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: arrow through their head or something like that you know
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: what i mean yeah and i was like in a uh,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: you know, Halloween store costume. Yeah.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: You still understood the assignment.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Anyways, uh, in our third seat, a brilliant comedian, writer, actor, uh,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: special daddy, long legs, uh, very, very spooky spider. That's
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: a damn spider. And also a reference to his amazing legs. Uh,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: you must go watch a special, uh, right now. He's
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: one of your favorite guests. On the other hand, he
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: is the coiner of the disgusting phrase plumpers to describe
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: his own thighs. Uh, he's fine with garlic, uh, But
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: when he sees a crucifix or a lowercase T, he
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: bursts into flames.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: It's Blake Wexler!
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: Hey, this is Blake Wexler, a.k.a.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Blakeula.
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: And it's great to be on a show with two
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: other guys that you don't want to invite in your
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: home under any circumstances.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: I can't leave. You invited me in. No, you can't.
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: You invited me in.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: Well, you ran out of food. You should have had
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: more food if you didn't want me to eat all
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: of it.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: That's funny.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Cause when, when I was in like visiting you and
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I kept saying, yeah, we can stop by your place. Like, no, no,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: we'll go to this bar. We'll go to this bar. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: The bar is inches away from your home.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: But it's, you know, it's separate.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Also like I'm really close to your place and I
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: can just walk. No, no, no. We'll go to the bar.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I don't want you in my home. If I can
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: make that.
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: 45 minutes in the opposite direction, I think is maybe
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: the better way to go.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Dracula always inviting people to his house though. He's like,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, come through. It's like the ultimate Hollywood
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: power move, you know? Yeah. Even though people keep disappearing,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: he makes you come to him.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: I wonder if you can stop laughing at what, what
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: Jack O'Brien considers to be a fancy person, you know,
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: like that's what, where it's either just English. Yeah.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Just an accent.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: We went to their one bedroom.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: They're like fancy people.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I do just want to talk about the horniness of vampires.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Our horniness for vampires. The horniness that emanates off of vampires.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: They're like horses.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: In what way? Because they're just foaming?
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: They make them all horny. Horses make everybody horny. Vampires
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: make everybody horny. Let me pull up my therapist notebook
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: real quick.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: What was your first encounter with a horse? I feel
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: like we'd.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Only be talking about that if we kept going in
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: that direction. So we're just going to pretend that that's
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: a thing that everybody gets. It's horny for horses.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a blink. Blink never gets turned by a
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: vampire because it creeps them out. Oh, come on through.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. It's kind of like 40 horses in here. What?
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: He like starts doing the mind thing where he like
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: controls you into coming to his house and you're already
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: behind him. How'd you get here already? Hey, man. Hey, man.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Have you ever seen a horse without any clothes on? No, bro.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: They never have clothes on.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: What are you talking about?
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, bro.
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: I know I said come over tonight, but I'm actually
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: thinking of having like a quiet one tonight.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: No, no, no, no.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Come on in. Bring whoever you want.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: I like quiet if you don't mind the sound of
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: me breathing. But it's so... the vampires got hornier and hornier.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: I knew that, but like, I will say, like, I
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: went back and watched the, uh, end of Nosferatu, the 1920s, like, uh,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: silent film.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: And that shit is horny as hell. Like, the climax has,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: he travels a lot via shadow. Like, his shadow can, like,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: open doors. The special effect they did is they used
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: the shadow of his hand and then had somebody on
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: the other side open the door.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Love that.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: But at one point, he does grab a boob. Really?
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And the woman, like, with his shadow hand, and the
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: woman reacts in, like... Agony slash ecstasy.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Disappointed? Shadow? Doesn't even count.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Why even bring it up? I will say, like.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: This research allowed me to step back and see the
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: vampire that defined, I feel like, the past couple decades
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: with new eyes. 2004, a woman has a dream about
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: a vampire who wants to fuck a teenage girl. She
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: wakes up and even though she's not a writer, she
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: writes a novel based on that dream called Twilight. And
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: people were so horny about For that movie, it made
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: like that book that the resulting movies made three point
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: three billion dollars, launched the careers of two of the
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: most important actors of their generation. And then it like
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: spawned an entire second fan fiction book like Fifty Shades
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: of Grey is just Twilight fan fiction that it was
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: just like starting from the premise of what if they
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: just fucked each other on every page, essentially.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: And wait, is he a vampire? It's like a, it's
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: like a spiritual. Yeah.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: It's like they, this is a thing that happened throughout
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: the history of Dracula is that like they, um, will
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: do a rip off and then like erase the things
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: that make it clear that it's a rip off and
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: it like still does well.
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: It's identical.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But yeah, they were just like, ah, I guess
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: he's not a vampire. That one's still that movie franchise
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: made $ 1. 3 billion, 50 shades of gray. So I just
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: feel like we're so deeply horny for vampires that, like,
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Like, the Twilight books, just to put
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: this in perspective, this book that, like, launched this massive
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: movie franchise, I'm going to read you a passage from
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: that book. Aren't you hungry, he asked, distracted. No, I
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: didn't feel like mentioning that my stomach was already full
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: of butterflies. jesus christ um so like that's the level
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: of that's deep it's evident that she's not a writer
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: throughout the novel and yet people are like yeah oh
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: man if only yeah.
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: Keep writing sorry i'm not a writer this was the
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: best i could do under the circumstances the circumstances being
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: i was so horny when i woke up from this
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: dream i changed careers well yeah what was she doing
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: before that was she just some this was like she
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: was young and just kind of had this vision came
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: to her and i'm not sure.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: What she was doing i just know like they people
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: are like she didn't have much experience writing but this
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: dream was so profound that she banged out a entire novel. Um,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: all right. I do just want to start. Dracula is
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: a Laura queen. So I just want to talk about
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: like the things we know about Dracula. Uh, we've already
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: talked about one need to be invited in. I feel
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: like this one is among the most consistent, right? Every,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: every Dracula, uh, needs, you know, you need to actually
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: ask them to come in. Otherwise, otherwise they're, it's pretty,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: it's pretty big, uh, easy way to get around them.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Right. Um, where did that, was that an original that's, that's,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: that's can't like that's OG cannon vampire stuff. Or is
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that like an add on? Cause I know the story's
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: morphed over years.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that one was added, as we'll get to.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: A bunch of these were patchworked together. Right. Vaguely Euro
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: accent that is from the start. Vaguely Euro horniness that
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: is also there from the start. Don't appear in mirrors.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if that's in the original. Shadows that
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: can freelance. Nosferatu's shadow can open doors In Francis Ford
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Coppola's Dracula His shadow just starts like doing its own
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: thing In Dracula Dead and Loving It Leslie Nielsen's shadow
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: starts fucking someone While they're dancing I forgot about that
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: That's such a good title for a movie It's.
• 11:40
  Speaker 6: Always so funny Dead and Loving.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: It Oh fuck I gotta watch that again.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Sleep in coffin. I feel like that's pretty core, right?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: I have to have incredible core strength the way that
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: they rise up out of the coffin. You know what
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: I'm saying?
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: Who's holding their feet? That's not disgusting enough.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Dude, that's just all core, dude. They're just working that core.
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: The human body can't do that.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: You remember that clip of Adam Archuleta being on his
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: back and just using his hamstrings to lift himself up?
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: As a matter of fact, yes, I do.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Do you know that clip?
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: I do, exactly. That's when I realized that my body
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: will never work the way I want it to.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: When I saw someone do that, it'd be that strong.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Uh, you become a vampire by being turned by other vampires, uh,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: sunlight kills or harms or makes sparkle in the case
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: of twilight. Um, That one started with Nosferatu, I think.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Need to drink blood to survive. They're immortal, but I
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: feel like the immortality has the biggest asterisk of all time. Like,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: there's so many ways to kill them.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: It's like we're immortal except for heart disease.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I feel like their immortality is just like, yeah, they
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: can't die of cancer or old age. Like, other than that,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: they're pretty normal.
• 13:08
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Um, I feel like they have floating abilities of varying
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: levels in my experience, you know, like sometimes they'll float
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: up to a window or just like kind of go
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: down a hallway. Like they're on those, uh, those shoes
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: that have little wheels in it, you know, wheelies. Yeah. Um,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: their kryptonite is cross or garlic or, yeah, I think
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: those are the main ones, right?
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: Silver bullet.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Or is that just, No, that's werewolf.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: What is that?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Fuck me. Stake through the heart?
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Stake through the heart and you're to blame. You give
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: love a bad name. Buffy Summers. It used to need
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: to be wooden, but now I don't think it does.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Speaking of werewolves, I feel like their enemy being werewolves
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: is one that has just become canon. I'm not sure
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: where that one came from. That is not one that
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I grew up with.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: Almost a default where who else would it be? Like ghosts?
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: No. Yeah.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: Like what other evil beast?
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It does kind of make the most sense. And
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: they are both kind of horny, you know? True. Ken
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: talked you through in your mind and get you to sleepwalk.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: This is the one where it's like starting to verge
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: on too many powers for me. Like when you hear
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: kids playing and they're like, I have ice powers, uh,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: and I'm also invincible and my arms are machine guns.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I can fly. Yeah.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: And I can fly. And it like starts getting boring. Uh,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: but I will say, I think the main core piece
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: of iconography is the fangs. Uh, and this is something
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: that I feel like we talked about a lot on
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: the early episodes of the daily zeitgeist. Um, My fascination
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: with this idea that their fangs are hollow.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Yep. Which, like, did you guys.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Have that belief? Blake, did you have that? That I
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: was fascinated by it? That their fangs... can suck blood through.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: The fang them did you did you have that belief.
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah wait are you saying it like that now that
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: okay so this is one of those things where you
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: think something and then someone starts talking you're like wait
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: no no no no no no i didn't so in
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: my mind they would suck it like a straw like
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: they were straws yeah yeah but now for the first
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: time i'm thinking maybe they just bite you and then
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: suck suck you off through your.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Neck yeah because of the wound So that's, yes. But
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: so many people, yeah.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: I think this came up because of the Reese's peanut
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: butter cup commercial, too. Because I think when we first
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: started talking about that, we were like, well, the way
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: that the vampire bites the Reese's peanut butter cup would
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: imply that he just put his fangs in to get
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: all the peanut butter out.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the peanut butter traveled up through his fangs.
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's why when you made that joke, I was like, okay. Yeah,
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: you're like, it's not a joke. That's not a joke.
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: That's a thing that a vampire did.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I will say, based on the Reese's commercial, that's what
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: it has to be, although I don't think there's anything
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: else to support that they have straw fangs.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: I was having this conversation with my friend this morning.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: With my son.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure. He's my best friend. And he was like, yeah, no, like,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: that is the thing everyone thought when they were a child,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: and now we all know it's not true. But I
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: never went through that process until, like, we mentioned it
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: on the show and I realized how dumb it is. Um,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: but he, he was saying that like, even the Reese's one,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: you could theoretically have the vampire sucking through the two
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: little puncture holes and sucking the peanut butter up. But
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: I don't think like that, that's gonna, that, that implies
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: a level of structural integrity of the chocolate that just
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: seems impossible to me.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Sure. Sure. Sure.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: So I think it's like, we all see the two
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: little puncture wounds on the vampire victim's neck. And assume
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: that it's just teeth go in and they're like zoop, zoop, zoop.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Sipping blood through the puncture holes.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: I think it did lead me because I thought, well, like,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: what about like venomous snakes? Like they kind of have that,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: but it's really, it's bugs.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: That is exactly what was in my brain was that
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: snakes have poison that comes out through the fangs. So
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: there are hollow, hollow fang teeth in nature.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: But not for sucking in.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't go that direction. Yeah, it never goes
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: that direction.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: It's only like truly like mosquitoes. It's like certain bugs
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: that have that whole ability.
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: But they don't use teeth.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: They have a.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: They got a little proboscis. A proboscis. Yeah.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: A proboscis. They have a proboscis.
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: Elephants, you know, they suck in things through their nose.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. That's how they eat.
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: I'm an idiot.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Do they?
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: I know that they can suck up water through their
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: nose and then spray that shit out. So, okay.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: That's not how they, yeah, they wouldn't eat. They wouldn't
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: eat a bowl of spaghetti through their nose.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, give them a couple of water mounds right there.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: I did find a, there's a movie called Sundown the
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Vampire in Retreat. where vampires from around the world have
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: come together to form their own town in the U.S.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Southwest and agreed to no longer prey on humans. As
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: part of that deal, they're manufacturing a synthetic blood substitute,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: which we see them drinking at various points using forked
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: straws that their fangs plug into.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of a movie. That's a lot of
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: a movie. That's the one with Bruce Campbell?
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the one with Bruce Campbell.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I don't remember. Man, I remember seeing that when I
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: was a kid. Wait, so they were drinking. Oh, interesting.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: They give credence to... They give something like that.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: We do have some.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I also went and this is not something I'm proud of.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: I went and Googled like, oh yeah, well, how do
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: vampire bats? Yeah, I bet they suck your blood through
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: hollow little straws in their teeth. And the way they
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: do it is actually really gross. They shave your skin
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: a little bit so it starts bleeding and then they
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: lap the blood up, which is so fucking gross.
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: And it has like a numbing agent, right? And there's
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: saliva or something. So you don't even notice it? How
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: do you know that, Blake? That's such a weird fact.
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: I know a lot about animals, believe it or not.
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: I know three things. I know animals, Uh, Philadelphia sports.
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: I know two things. I know animals.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia sports. And Philadelphia sports animals.
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: It's Philadelphia sports animals and safeties, uh, from the early 2000s.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Is it because you had like those like, um, animal
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: fact notebooks from like the nineties? I read all those.
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: So many animal, like all animal facts, like Nat Geo subscription, um,
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: um and also why and they like in my mind
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: a vampire bat would bite your neck but i think
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: they just go after your feet like your ankles you
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: know like uh i think they used to.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah i don't like that either yeah no get them
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: out yeah that the idea of like just not realizing
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: that something is lapping the blood out of your I think.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: It's usually animals, right? It's like a guy who's like, hey, Rick,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: you got a bat on your friggin' arm, dude.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: Shit i need to pay more attention my wife says
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: i need to pay more attention she's still.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Hasn't still hasn't pushed the bat away yeah.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: He turns around there's like six on his back.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break we'll come back and we
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: will get into the history of dracula where this fucking
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: crazy guy came from we'll be right back And we're back.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Let's talk Bram Stoker because that's where we first get
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: the name Dracula, the character Dracula. Bram Stoker. What a name, guys.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Holy shit. Nice. He wrote this book that was not
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: that successful as we'll get to in its time. When
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: he died, he was like a well-known enough person to
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: get obituaries. Dracula was not mentioned in his obituaries. That's
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: how not big a deal it was in his time.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: What was he known for? What else did he do?
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: He was a publisher and a literary manager and was
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: friends with Oscar Wilde and just kind of friends with
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: famous people and the assistant to an actor. When he
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: wrote the book, the thing he was known for was
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: being an assistant to an actor, which is not a
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: thing anyone's known for these days. So I feel like
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: it must have had some different connotation back then. Probably
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: just like people knew him because he had the coolest
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: name of anybody ever. They're just like, there goes that guy,
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Bram Stoker.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: The ball player?
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: It's like, no, he sounds like a ball player.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Bram Stoker. Doesn't even matter what sport. Yeah.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: He, at the time, also seemed to be a little
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: ashamed of the book. He was like, I had a
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: too generous helping of dressed crab before going to bed
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: at night. And I had some terrible dreams.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Was that food poisoning?
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah basically which and then everybody like he said that
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: and then all the scholars are like it's a bit
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: of blarney that he likes to dish out when asked
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: like nobody well no one takes it seriously like people
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: seem like to really hate that explanation but i will
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: say like i've had some fucked up dreams from after
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: like after eating something weird yeah after dressed crab dressed
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: crab is hollowed out crab where like They've taken the
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: meat out and put it back in, like, without all
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: the annoying shit.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's not wearing, like, a ball gown.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: It's not. Yeah, it's not wearing a ball gown, unfortunately.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: That's what I was looking for. But I've had, like,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: crazy cheese dreams and beef mares and stuff like that,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: you know? Beef mares? You've never had beef mares? You've
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: never eaten beef and then just had, like, a fucked.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Up night's sleep? It's like a strong horse.
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: This is what I'm talking about.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: Sexy horses, beef mares.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: A strong lady horse? It's a beef mare right there. Damn,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: what is that?
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Beef mare.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Beef mare. Wait, okay. No, I've never... I had a
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: friend who also... You've never had fucked up dreams from food?
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I had a friend who would have nightmares... Like, not nightmares,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: but have some wild dreams when they had, like, spicy food. Like,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: usually if they had a spicy Thai or Indian meal. Like,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: it wasn't... It was like those levels of spice completely
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: destroyed his white guy brain. He's like, dude, I had
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: a fucking spice dream again. And I was like, what
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: is going on, dude?
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: I'm fine, but okay.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I'll sweat the bed.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: In his dreams, he's in a jungle. People blowing fire
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: in his face. Tribal masks. Because he has the hot
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: salsa from.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: From Chipotle.
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: To the ground pepper.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: That's why. Too much black pepper, I guess. It's a
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: full nightmare. Shout out to Beefmare, though. I will just say,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: This seems to be another one of these characters that
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: made its way into our world from the dream world.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Stephanie Meyer got Twilight from Dreams. David Lynch got a
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: lot of his ideas from the unconscious world.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Garfield.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Garfield. Needless to say, came from fucking some crazy LSD world.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Nightmares.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: But one thing that a lot of people believe is
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: that the original Dracula was based on Vlad the Impaler.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: And that is not true. Uh, it was just, yeah.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Blake and I are like, yep.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Yep. And I know that's actually bullshit.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Yep. Yes.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Do that too.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Say more, say more. Um, but yeah, the people who
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: first popularized the idea that Vlad, the impaler was the
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: basis for Dracula, uh, like wrote a book saying that
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: and then like found his notes. And we're like, ah,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: we were wrong about that. But everyone was just like,
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I just found out about this Vlad
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: the Impaler guy. That's a cool story. So we just
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: stuck with that. And that is kind of how the
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: character comes together is just like an idea will be
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: presented in, you know, either a play adaptation or in
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: this case, like some work of literary, um, criticism and
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: people just like grab the stuff that works and remove
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: the stuff that doesn't work. Um, I will say Bram
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Stoker's Dracula, the, uh, Francis Ford Coppola movie, uh, is like,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: none of it is really based on the, the original novel.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Like the, uh, it's got the Vlad, the impaler thing,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: which is not in the original novel. It's also like
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: based on this idea that Dracula is like trying to
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: reincarnate his like dead wife, which is not in it's,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: it would be like naming your movie, Michael Crichton's Jurassic park.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: And it's like a Godzilla movie. It doesn't have anything
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: really to do with it.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: I guess there's a big reptile lizard. That's kind of
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: where it begins and ends.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Um, One big bonus that I think Dracula has and
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: had at that time is that he represents a lot
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: of like disease stuff. Like he, at the time, cholera,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: there was a big cholera outbreak and people were being
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: buried alive. And so that kind of came into it.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: People's fear of being buried alive or fear of people
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: coming back from the dead. There was a theory that
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: it came in via like miasma, like mists. And Dracula
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: is always like traveling on mists. And so that's where
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: like some of that shit comes from. but then he's
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: able to adapt to whatever, um, like the, uh, friends
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: for a couple of one is very bloody and like
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: the blood spewing all over the place. And that's like
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: happening during the height of the AIDS panic. And so there's,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: you know, like whatever the scary illnesses at the time,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: Dracula is usually able to kind of plug into that,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: which I think is a powerful part of his appeal.
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: Remember how that new Dracula, he refused to wear a
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: mask a couple of years ago. He refused to wear
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: an N95 on a plane.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: The whole story was about like, yeah, lockdown and how
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: vampires will appear in lockdowns.
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: When Dracula did his own research.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Dracula did his own research, then died of COVID.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: That is one of the things they're actually not immune to.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: They want to take our freedoms. She's like, is there
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: any way you can get me Pax Lovid, please?
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: Let me into her emails.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: 4chan Dracula. Like, what happened to you, bro?
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: The 19th century version of the vampire myth also had
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: evolved from a real blood disorder called porphyria, which causes
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: extreme sensitivity to sunlight, receding gums, which makes your teeth
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: look like fangs, an aversion to the sulfur content in garlic,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: avoidance of mirrors due to looking like absolute shit. Um,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: and blood drinking, uh, or at least people thought they
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: were drinking blood. Their urine had turned a dark red.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: And so people assumed people with porphyria, uh, were drinking blood.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Um, terrible kidney dysfunction or something like that.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: And then doctors being terrible at the time were like,
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: you should drink blood. That would actually help you out.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, so then the people who couldn't look in the mirror,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: were afraid of garlic, didn't like garlic, had kind of
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: messed up teeth, vampire-esque teeth, were peeing blood and were
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: drinking blood, and everyone knew that about them, and they're like, yeah,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I think we've seen, I think we have a character
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: on our hands here.
• 29:23
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like just generally, like, disease, like having
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: a monster that kind of represents... disease is pretty load
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: bearing because that is the thing that kills most people
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: you know and so it's like it's a pretty big
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: one to have and like history is like life used
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: to just be full of horrors you just like see
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: people with like their faces caved in by syphilis walking
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: down the street And or like porphyria. And then like
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: when if you got sick, like the people who had porphyria,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: like hundreds of them were burned at the stake by
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. Just like they died for grossing for
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: grossing out the Catholic Church, essentially.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, they're like, yeah.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: Do you think mummies was like that whole concept is
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: from the same thing where there is some sort of
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: illness where you had to be wrapped in?
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Gauze or something?
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Mummies, I think, came a lot from them discussing the British,
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: you know, colonial power. Trying to say mother. Yeah, trying
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: to say mother. I think Egypt, like, seeing how Egypt
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: preserved their dead and then, like, that spooked them out.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: We'll get to how Dracula, when he initially came around, was, like,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: killed by like in terms of sales was like, uh,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: got his ass beat by this like Egyptian based monster. Um,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: damn Dracula. Uh, the other thing it was Dracula was
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: kind of the original Blair witch because the book was
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: written as like, this shit actually happened. Here are a
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: series of letters from people who this happened to. And
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: I actually know all those people. And they like they
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: had to take it back a step, essentially, because the
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: publisher was like, this is actually too fucking scary, bro.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Like the Jack the Ripper murders just happened. We can't
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: we can't be having this book tell people that vampires
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: are real. Um, so they had to like, take it,
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: take it a step back.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, that must've been like seeing video for people
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: of that time when they're like, these are letters that
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: are real.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: He knows those people. That must have been terrifying.
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: We knew that because he said that.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: He said that.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: And we don't have the cynicism built up from modernity yet.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: So we're like, whoa. He said she's a woman of
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: good character. Can't lie about that.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Bram Stoker wouldn't lie about something like that. So, yeah,
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: the book drops and it's a moderate success. It was
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: outsold six to one by a book called The Beetle.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: About a shape-shifting, gender-swapping beetle monster seeking revenge on its
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: former sex slave. And this, like, is based in, like, scarabs,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I think, are associated with Egypt. And the original, it's like,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Paul Lessingham has been a vacationer in Egypt. And the
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: beetle in her woman form hypnotizes him and forces him
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: to live as her sex slave. And then he, like...
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: runs away and runs back to london and the beetle
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: follows him that was like the blockbuster at the time
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: dracula was just like yeah oh yeah i've heard of
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: dracula it's it's kind of a thing.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah people yeah i want to see sexy xenophobia let
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: me read that book yeah so what happened this guy
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: left oh he got seduced by one of those weird
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: exotic ladies and.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: It was just like the ladies yeah.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, they all had their own message, right? Like
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: that one was clearly some kind of like hyper-sexualized xenophobically
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: sort of aligned sort of messaging.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of hyper-sexualized xenophobia in the Dracula one.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: Like a lot of people point to the fact that
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: this is around the time that, you know, Jewish people
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: are being run out of certain countries in Europe and
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: like appearing in London. And so, This like Eastern European
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: character who comes to London via ship is like probably
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: not completely free of, you know, exploiting xenophobia and anti-Semitism
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: at that time. And if you look at like people
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: have also been like Nosferatu is the most anti-Semitic. uh,
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: character design that you could possibly come up with. Uh,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: but like the, I don't like the, one of the
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: writers was a Jewish guy. And so I don't know
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: how intentional that was. Sometimes I feel like when people
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: are like, that's so anti-Semitic, it's like, Which like that,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: that feels like you're being anti-Semitic by saying that that
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: looks like a Jewish person. That's weird.
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: I don't think I was thinking that.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: I don't think.
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: Anybody was thinking that scarab looks Jewish. It's like no
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: one was thinking about the scarab.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I forget, there's a stand-up who has a bit
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: like that. He's a Jewish stand-up. And he's like, can
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: we as Jewish people stop being like, that's supposed to
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: be me! Let's not do that anymore. We don't need
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to keep reinforcing it like that, too. But I get it.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: But I do think, like, this is... The fangs are
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: such a... crucial thing like it like that i think
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: that's probably the thing that makes dracula's like one of
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: the most common halloween costumes is like you just get
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: some teeth in and you're doing some good tooth acting
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: you know like that it's like such a subtle but
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: powerful thing i think we all like learn to subtly
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: like pay attention to people's teeth uh in some ways
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: and so like to have teeth like it's very dramatic
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: for somebody to like open their mouth and have fanged teeth.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: And so, Right. You know, as we'll see, like, it starts,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Dracula becomes more and more popular in plays and movies.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: And those are also, like, you can't do a good
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: version of the beetle. The, you know, sexy woman who
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: turns into a giant beetle. Like, that's a tough one.
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: Oh, I beg to differ, Jack. You have no imagination.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: It's your problem.
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: Those beetle hips.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: They don't lie. They don't. They won't.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: But, like, that's a tough one to pull off, whereas
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: you get a good set of fangs, and you're like, yeah,
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: just slick that hair back.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, there's just, like, I think there's also, like,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: the lonerism is kind of cool about... That makes Dracula
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: kind of cool, too.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Kind of a bad boy.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Well, because it also, like, it appeals to people's sense of, like, individualism, because, like.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: This guy's all alone.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Like, he's out there fucking, you know, just being the
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: coolest guy that never dies. So I think there's also
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: something that makes it feel kind of like... how can
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: you not be a main character if you're immortal?
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: And he hangs out at night. You know, it's like,
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: it's way cooler than like, yeah, he gets a sensible lunch.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: He's cool. you know, like, He's like, yeah, in most movies,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: he's not like, he's not going after like, he's going
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: after pretty attractive people. You're like, I don't know, dude.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Like he's got good taste in his victims. He seems
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: like a chill guy. Yeah.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Why not? Yeah. One thing that I, so Nosferatu was
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: like just a straight up Dracula rip off. They tried
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: to get the rights to Dracula and Bram Stoker's widow. Uh, he,
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: he had died from people think syphilis, uh, They tried
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: to get the rights and she was like, no, you
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: can't have them. So they just like made the movie
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: anyway and like changed the title slightly. But everything else
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: is exactly the same. A judge was like, no, you
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: like stole that. We have to destroy every copy of
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: the movie. Like, like a court run by children. Like
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: you have to, you have to break every single one.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: And like the only reason we have Nosferatu, which is
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: like respected as like one of the best silent films
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: and like, you know, depictions of vampire of all time,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: like one of the most iconic movies of all time.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: The only, like, it just happened, like somebody happened to
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: find one, like hiding away somewhere. They, they were like
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: trying to destroy it. But yeah, it's like a patchwork
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: of adaptations. Like, so Nosferatu gave us the sunlight thing
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: that wasn't in any of the previous stuff. And then
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: they were like, how do we end this? I see.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: We'll open a window. And because he's like shadow guy, that'll,
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: That'll make him die quickly. Um, and then they take,
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: they take Dracula to the stage and the stage. They
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: need to like simplify it a little bit more. And
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: up to this point, Dracula has usually looked like shit
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: and Bram Stoker's Dracula. He had, I'm just going to
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: read the description in the original novel. Dracula is described
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: as unkempt with bushy eyebrows, a giant stash, um, and
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: hair on the palms of his hands. Uh, This is
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: jacking off Jacking off in that uh Grave That's what
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: he's doing in there He took the words right out
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: of my mouth Hey what are you up to in
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: there Oh He's jacking off in that coffin. I'm always
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: accusing him of doing that.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Here's a question.
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: Did Dracula come about before the concept of vampires? Or
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: was he the first vampire? Do you know what I mean?
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. No, there were like vampires before, but this
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: is like the first iconic one.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: One headliner yeah right yeah.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly they're they're vampire short stories also like they're generally
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: irish so like the whole sinners thing about vampires being
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: irish like bram stoker's irish uh the person he ripped
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: it off from was irish so shout out to the
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: irish for being fucking vampires i guess hell yeah uh
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: a weird thing from the original Dracula. When Dracula is introduced,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: he immediately asks the Jonathan Harker, the character who's like
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: visiting his castle, if he needs to take a shit.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: It says, you will need after your journey to refresh
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: yourself by making your toilet. I trust you will find
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: all you wish when you are ready. Come into the
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: other room where you will find your supper prepared. The
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: light and the warmth of the Count's courteous welcome seemed
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: to have dissipated all my doubts and fears. Having then
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: reached my normal state, I discovered that I was half
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: famished with hunger. So, making a hasty toilet, I went
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: into the other room.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: They're like.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: So people are going to want to know what the
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: shit situation is after this guy being on a long journey.
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: He was like, what the fuck did you do with that?
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: You ruined my pipes. Oh, my guy, please give a
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: courtesy flush.
• 40:28
  Speaker 6: You tried to do a nice thing.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Make your toilet. I love that old timey way of
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: saying taking a dump. It's like, make your toilet. I will.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: But so when they put him on the stage, they're like,
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: we need to do something that looks a little cooler
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: than like bushy eyebrow guy or, you know, Nosferatu. And
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: so this is when we first get a tux and
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: a cape. And it's actually like the actor just like
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: brought his own costume from home. So this guy just like.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: brought shit from his house that now everybody dresses as
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: for all, like, the costume that people dress as is, like,
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: based on what the actor had in his house.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. He's like, yeah, I don't know if you've
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: got your own wardrobe.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Uh, yeah.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: And then the cape was added to the stage version
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: because it enabled the actor to, like, perform disappearing tricks
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: in front of an audience. Nice, nice, nice.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Which is such a great touch because we all love
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: a fucking cape.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like, I think It's funny
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: that there's so many of these things that are just
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: essential to Dracula that either appeal to your child brain
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: or your adult fear of death and horniness. There's something
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: for everybody. Because I remember when I was Dracula, I
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: was fucking around with the cape so much, just trying
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: to do shit with it, that I remember very vividly
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: my mom being like, I will take the cape off if, like,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: you can't just kind of sit still. And I was like, okay.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: We'll take that cape.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: But it's so fun to just, like, sweep it over
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: your face and, yeah. Allows you to have, like, little dramatic.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: It's called Lincoln, baby.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: Gives you a little business, you know? Gives you a
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: little business to do on stage or on Halloween.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I do think so. This is like, I
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: have been really interested in this question of like, because Dracula,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: the most depicted literary character of all time is Dracula.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: The second most depicted is Sherlock. And they came out
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: like when we were doing research for the Sherlock episode,
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: like at one point, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is like, yeah.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: And then I got this letter from this guy who
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: had just published a novel, a Bram Stoker. Like they
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: were like in the same literary circle and, So I
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: was like, why did this literary circle produce these two characters?
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: And in both cases, it's like this patchwork thing, like
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: coming from that point in history, just allowed them to
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: then like hit America as like movies are becoming a thing.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: And as stage productions are, you know, in a certain
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: stage where it's just like ping pong back and forth
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: between all these different versions and each different version is
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: like taking another crack at it and being like, what
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: if we gave him a pipe and a deer stalker?
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: And they're like, no, that doesn't work for Dracula. Uh,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: maybe try it for Sherlock Holmes. But, um, you know,
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: they're like adding, it's like having a writer's room for
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: both of these characters. And, The stuff that works just sticks,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: you know, and the stuff that doesn't just like goes
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: away and nobody really remembers that shit at all. Um,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: so I feel like that's, you know, why, like the,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: the mystery of like, how, how did this one literary
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: scene create these two characters that are still resonating with people?
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: over a hundred years later is just like, it's actually
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: the process that happened afterwards that they were then like
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: went into this washing machine of, uh, you know, writing
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: and rewriting and designing and redesigning until you created like
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: the platonic ideal of a detective or of a vampire,
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 44:17
  Speaker 5: I do think Dracula could use a Watson, uh, you know,
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: like an assistant, like I feel like that he could
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: benefit from a.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Little, he, I mean, they have familiars, right? Like that's right.
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: When he's bringing the, um, the guy in and asking
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: him to go take a shit and then come eat
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: with him. Uh, I think he's kind of, he's kind
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: of auditioning him to be his familiar. That's a big thing.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: And what we do in the shadows too, is that like,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: you always need basically an assistant, um, Which is funny
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: because that's what Bram Stoker was, was an actor's assistant.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He knows about hangers on, doesn't he?
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. All right. Let's take one more break. We'll come
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: back and we'll explain how Dracula captured the Zeitgeist.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: And we're back.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: We're back.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: All right. A couple other things I feel like Dracula
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: had going for him at the start and continues to
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: have going for him. One interesting point is that this
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: was at a time when Darwin was first kind of
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: becoming popular and his observations were becoming popular. And the
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: idea of this human that can take animal form which
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: obviously is not the most popular version of, like, grown-up vampires. Like,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: they don't poof and turn into bats quite as much anymore.
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: But also, like, the fangs are, like, sort of an
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: animalistic feature that, like, comes out of the vampires. Like,
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: people think that, like, there was probably some aspect of
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: the vampires that was, you know, people's anxiety about finding
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: out that we're animals. You know, we came from the
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: animal kingdom.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Right. There's what I hate to bring up young twice
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: in a week, but there's also like the shot. There's
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: so much mention of shadow stuff too, that I'm like,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: this feels very like the shadow self, or also the
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: appeal of like a vampire to like our own innate
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: darkness that they're like, man, if like, if I wasn't
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: bound by society's rules, like would I do whatever to
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: like keep living or whatever? It's just very, Just some
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: thoughts I've seen about appearing shadow over and over again.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: I was like, is this like our shadow self too
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: that we're kind of reckoning with in these characters or
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: appealing it?
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: What we do in the shadows could be like the
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: name of a very dark book about human behavior.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:02
  Speaker 5: Instead of the funniest show of all time.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: About the Joe Rogan experience.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, throughout it's like, there's racism tied
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: in there. There's like anti-immigrant hysteria. There's, um, the fear
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: of like the Darwin stuff, uh, public fear of infectious disease.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: It's also like when they're first starting to understand how
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: diseases are transmitted, um, like they're first starting to understand
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: what like rabies is. And, you know, even the bubonic
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: plague is like transferred from fleas and flea bites and
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: stuff like that and this is the first monster that
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: transmits its monstrosity through biting so it's kind of getting
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: in on the ground floor of like all sorts of
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: different shit and it's just again like very malleable it's
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: it's kind of hogging all the good It's like the
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: Superman of monsters where it's just like, it got, got
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: all the superpowers right away. Um, all the things that
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: can like tap into people's fears, uh, and the things
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: that creep us out about, about reality and our death,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: you know, like, he sleeps in a coffin, the thing
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: that where everybody inevitably goes to die, you know, the
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: scariest place you could possibly sleep.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: This is my favorite place in the world, actually. And again,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: I think that's, what's interesting. Cause I remember being like,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: the thing you think about Dracula or vampires is like
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: the immortality aspect of it. And I remember as a kid,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: like all, I was so obsessed with death that like,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I could not get over the fact that I'm like,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: we die. And I'm like, I don't want that ever.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: And there was something about like the vampire thing that
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: I'm like, that's cool. But also as you really engage
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: with those characters, like this is actually terrifying to never die.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Also that, yeah, it's, I don't know, like it works
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: on just so many levels. Cause also the appeal to like,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: versus like being like a Frankenstein or whatever, it's like
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: a vampire or a Dracula still is like a person.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? So it's like easy to
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: kind of be like, it's kind of like, it's like
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: being yourself, but like with some good add ons. of
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: like the things that I'm afraid of I can actually
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: shield myself like I'll never be you know I'll never
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: die or be alone because I'll be I'll live forever
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and I'll turn people into familiars yeah kind of all
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: just sort of like I don't know it feels like
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: it the dumbest solution to all of your like human fears. Yeah.
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: The living forever thing is also painted as bad in
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: different ways. Like you were saying, where it's like, all
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: my friends have died over, you know, I've, I've had
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: multiple friends, my, and it's like, Oh, the love of
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: my life. And then they show the love of it.
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: It's like this crusted over skeleton of like a woman
• 49:47
  Speaker 5: from like 400 years ago. And it's like, I can't
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: eat food. Like they can't eat food. If they eat food,
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: they puke. They can only have blood or whatever. It's like, oh,
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: I'm so scared of death, but if I live forever,
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: I can't eat delicious food and my wife will die
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: so long ago, you know?
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: So you're right.
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: It is like a contradiction, but it does work.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Both ways like yeah the wish fulfillment like i've talked
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: before about my theory that we're obsessed with post-apocalyptic movies
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: because uh it allows us to have like walkable cities
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: again and like there's like some wish fulfillment in there
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: of just being and like live in community right and
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: you can just.
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: Go to la during thanksgiving yeah right right east side
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: of the west side in 20 minutes But the.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: I.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Do think, yeah, there's, like, some of the appeal is, like, oh, wow, like, immortality. Like,
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: you get to just live forever.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: You get to.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: Something you said earlier, Blake, about how, like... they're not
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: going to like going to have a sensible lunch. Like
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: they get to like sleep all day, which is like,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: that's fucking awesome. Like, you know, everybody, nobody wants to
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: wake up in the morning and go to work. These
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: fuckers are not doing that. They're sleeping. They just like
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: get out and party at night. Like that is one
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: of the fun things about what we do in the
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: shadows is that it's, yeah, they're not going to work.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: They're just like hanging out all night with each other.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: I saw this clip from what we do with the
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: shadows the other day, where it was Nandor being interviewed
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: on the street by a news van. And they were like, yes,
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: What is your name?
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: It goes Nandor the Relentless. And she's like, all right,
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: Nandor de Laurentis. Such a simple joke, but so perfect.
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: He just gives a look like, but not allowed to
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: say the Relentless again. Such a great show.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: There's another theory about how vampires resonate with American culture
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: that I really like that we cover back at Cracked,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: which is this idea that vampires are popular. And like,
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: you can kind of track this, that there are more
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: vampire movies during democratic presidencies. And then there are more
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: zombie movies during during republican presidencies and the idea is
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: that like republican like our fear of republicans is the
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: zombie thing it's like that they're like mindless hordes that
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: are just you know groaning unthinking and then they're you
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: know the right wing's fear of democrats is that they're
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: these like european metrosexual suave people who are like coming
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: for your women yeah exactly they're handsome they part they
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: stay up all night they have weird religious uh rituals
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: and shit like that um and you can kind of
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: see the case of it i feel like the trump
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: administration broke this as it breaks like everything but uh
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: right you know Night of the Living Dead came out
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: just before Nixon took office and then really became popular
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: when Nixon was in office. Dracula movies came out during
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: the Carter years. There were a bunch of popular Dracula movies.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: The Reagan era featured Night of the Living Dead remake,
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: one sequel, two Return of the Living Dead movies, and Re-Animator.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: The Bill Clinton years gave us Interview with a Vampire
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: from Dusk Till Dawn and Blade. And then when Bush
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: came in 2000, there were like so many zombie movies.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: Land of the Dead, the first Resident Evil movies. And
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: then the bulk of the Twilight movies came out during
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: the Obama administration, which are the most successful of any
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: of these movies that we've mentioned.
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: True Blood, I think, came out then.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, True Blood.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: Which....
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: You know, and these are all sexy vampires. And I
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: feel like Obama was kind of a sexy president, you know.
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: Sexy vampire.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: Sexy. He's a bit of a sexy vampire.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Um, and then also what, like, like Buffy probably too
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: would have been Clinton era stuff.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: Cause it came on like 97.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, in the Trump administration, we've gotten
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: like new resident evil movie, uh, two new 28 Days
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Later movies, but we've also gotten, like, multiple Dracula remakes, Sinners,
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: which is probably, you know, the most successful non-Twilight vampire
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: movie of all time.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Maybe because both are happening now, it's saying something that
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: we're about to emerge into a new era of politics, because, like,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: we can't figure out, are we... are we zombie or
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: are we vampire? You know, what are we America? Or
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: are we another thing? Is there a third way we can,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: we can pursue? Yeah.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think everything just broke. And now this is
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: just like where we're at.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: Finally, just want to close out. What, what are you
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: guys's most iconic Dracula vampire iterations? You guys have like one.
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Vampire in Brooklyn.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: I loved Vampire in Brooklyn, uh, just cause I was like,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: I loved Eddie Murphy at the time. And I'm like,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: this is so, I'm like a black vampire. And then
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: my dad's like, you know, there's Blackula. And I'm like, what?
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: And then I, uh, Vampire in Brooklyn and who else?
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: And also just like everything interview with the vampire. Uh, yeah.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: Brian said it blade and Gary Oldman probably in Bram Stoker's.
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: Gary oldman uh slept he's one of these like annoying
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: method actors he slept in a coffin for a month
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: leading up to the production of that did you imagine
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: doing that much preparation for that role and then you
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: like get to the scene and it's keanu.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: Giving you nothing giving literally absolute nothing yeah.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: Like thinking about doing a british accent yeah yeah yeah.
• 55:51
  Speaker 6: Deciding against it could you sleep in a coffin did
• 55:56
  Speaker 6: i could you i'm not claustrophobic brian the editor in
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: the chat was like i've always wanted to sleep in
• 56:00
  Speaker 6: a coffin and i was like yeah low-key me too
• 56:01
  Speaker 6: i would always try and sleep in boxes when i
• 56:04
  Speaker 6: was like a.
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: Kid hmm yeah i like i move around way too
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: much at night to.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know i love a.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: Constricted space for some reason i was like yeah baby
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: get me in that coffin alive alive of course of
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: course of course with air Because obviously I'm afraid of death.
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: I used to sleep in a bunk bed. Two severely
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: fucked up things I'm about to say in a row
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: about my childhood where I slept in a bunk bed
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: with no one else there until my 20s, I think.
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: You slept in an empty bunk bed? Yeah, so I
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: was on the bottom bunk. No one to speak of
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: ever on the top bunk.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: Are you an only child? Do you have siblings?
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: No, I had a sister who had a different room.
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: But she never slept in the bunk bed. It was
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: just the bed I had happened to have an extra
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: bed above it.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Did you do that to sort of like facilitate sleepovers?
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Cause I'm an only child and I had a bunk
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: bed for a stretch.
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: I have a nice personality. So actually I could have
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: as many people over as I want. I don't need
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: a cool bed.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: I'll need a cool bed to get people to hang
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: out at my house.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I needed a bed. Okay. I was like a vampire.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: I was like, let's go back to my place. I
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: have a bunk bed. I'm lonely.
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: I don't deserve the top bunk.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: We can play Mario Paint on Super Nintendo.
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: There is a space in between the bed and the
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: wall and I would sleep sideways in the space like
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: in the crack in between the bed and the.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: Wall on purpose like you'd wake up there or you
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: would yeah that's where you would go you'd be like
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: alright time for bed and then just like wedge yourself in.
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: There yeah I liked it a lot yeah I did sometimes.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Like when I was really like had a lot of
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: nightmares I would Try and sleep under the bed And
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: then I would be like this is uncomfortable And get
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: out and get into the bed Did you.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Just like the compression on your body Yeah.
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: I kind of liked just like feeling Yeah Maybe I
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: would fuck with a coffin I'm telling y'all let's pitch
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: in on a coffin And let's try it out Let's get.
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: A bunk coffin and we can all sleep in it
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: No Blake You and your sad empty bunk coffin Just
• 58:12
  Speaker 5: Stacking coffins on top of one another.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: It feels like a character and family.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: What we do in the shadows, there's just like one
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: lonely guy. I was like, if you guys want, they're like, no, dude, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: It's many rises up like a board as stiff as
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: a board and just wrecked his head. Yeah. I do
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: feel like count from Sesame street also needs to be mentioned. Uh,
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: one of the greats, uh, also another example of the,
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: that there's an episode where he, uh, is, uh, seen
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: feeding on backpackers and he, I think has straw fangs.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: So another, another account does. Yeah, definitely.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: He's counting backpackers.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: He's counting the number of backpackers. that he's slaughtered. Yeah. Blake, any, any, uh,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: vampires that you want to mention?
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think just both what we do in The Shadows,
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: both the movie and the show, I think it was
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: one of those rare occasions where they're like, we're going
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: to make a spinoff of a movie. And it's like, God,
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: I love that movie with like Takua Titi and what's
• 59:25
  Speaker 5: in Jemaine Clement so much. I'm like, you can't touch this.
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: And then the show was as good, if not better,
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: in my opinion. I just thought those actors were so
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: fucking funny.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was great. Yeah, Matthew Barry might be my favorite.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: He's unbelievable. Non-Sesame Street, Dracula. Yeah.
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah. What is yours? Uh, count the count.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: The count. Yeah.
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: Consistent, pure iconic, pure iconography. It's got everything that I'm
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: looking for. I think the, uh, monocle is an underrated,
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: like give more, give more Dracula's monocles, dog. Yeah.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: Is that so he could see better to count better?
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: Do you think, or make them look smart?
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: Like, It's actually helpful for spotting jugular veins. Yeah. Get
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: in there.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: He's making it real obvious. You're talking to him like,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I feel like you're just looking at my neck. One eye.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: But Blade, I think Blade is the top one I
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: think of. Because the thing was, he was like biracial
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: in this way that I was like, yes, there I am.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: I'm a day walker. I remember like joking that I'm like, yeah,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: I'm a day walker too, bro. Goddamn day walker.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: I just put an image in there. This is the
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: first Dracula who kissed, like, one of his victims. 1944's
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: House of Frankenstein. I gotta say, damn, dog, that neck
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: must be making Dracula horny.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Look at the neck on that.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: That thing is... gravy dick and shit right there that.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 7: Was the longest problematic vampire chat right now they're like
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 7: yeah damn bro ask her what that neck do bro
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 7: the fuck bro hey bro if you ain't having it
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 7: let me know bro let me know dog.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: Look at that jug that is Unbelievable.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: The jugs on that one. Yeah.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: Lowest common denominator.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: You were, uh, Blake.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: Wonderful having you. You've knocked out two of our most
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: iconic figures with us. Dracula and Santa Claus. Dracula. Santa Claus. Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: And gut felt. Um, Whoever wins, we all lose. Where
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: can people find you, follow you, all that good stuff?
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 5: People can find me at Blake Wexler on all social media.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 5: November 21st, I do stand-up comedy. On November 21st, I'll
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: be in Cape Charles, Virginia. The 27th, Claude's Comedy Club
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: in Philly. Get tickets to that. January 15th, Portland, Maine.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: And January 16th, Boston.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: Boston.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Boston.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: Go home, Avatar. Miles, where can people find you?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: You already know. If it's not this show, then it's
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: 420 Day Fiance or Ain't It Footy.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: Ain't it, though?
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It's a soccer podcast for those that
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: maybe are listening for the first time.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: Come around.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Come through. Like Dracula inviting you to his castle.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 5: Miles, I'm sorry about Manchester City, by the way. You
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: must be completely torn up about all this.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: The charges, yeah, against my arch nemesis. Is a team
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: a nemesis or nemesis? I guess a team is a
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: singular thing.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: A singular, like a corporation.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break. We'll come back
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: with the Notebook Dump.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: Notebook Dump. I'm going to make toilet in the notebook. Go, please,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: go make your toilet. I love an author who's just like.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: People are going to want to know why he's going
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: right to eat without taking a shit. Well, you must
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: in desperate need to make your toilet after that long journey.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: It's funny if you say it in common parlance. It'd
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: be like, damn, dude, you probably need to take a
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: wild shit, right? After that trip. So yeah, bro, go
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: take a big shit right now. And when you come out,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: I'll have the meal ready for you. Yeah.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 5: You probably want to take a shower or take a nap.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: It's like, no, you're going to want to take a
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: humongous shit as we all do when we travel.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. Yeah. You know how it is, bro. I
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: wonder if Dracula just knows, like, when people get bit,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: they just act like they just evacuate their bowels or something,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: where he's like, oh, shit, again.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: Let me get ahead of this. He's actually a GI doctor.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 7: Dr.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: Acula, the GI doctor.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: He's always just doing, like, some kind of colon analysis,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: just checking your digestive tract. He's like, this is all
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: your blood tastes like shit.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: What have you been eating?
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Get this checked out, my man. Sorry. All right.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 8: I've always wondered if vampires do have like, like a type,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 8: like a preference or like, do they like vegans or
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 8: do they like, like what kind of, because I would
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 8: imagine you'd be able to like, There's just certain types
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 8: of people you don't want to be sucking on.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: This is a great question, and I want you to
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: keep this.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: I want you to keep this, Brian. Because this is...
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Like a very real thing in the world of mosquitoes.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: I've interviewed, I've been talking to a lot of mosquitoes. No,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: like my.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Mosquitoes love my ass.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: My wife has delicious blood, apparently, and I have garbage
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: juice pumping through my veins because they leave me completely alone. Like,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: we sleep next to each other, brag, and she gets,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: she gets etched. to death and i'm just sitting there
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: completely undisturbed so like i yeah i i bet dracula's
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: would just be like this guy this guy's blood fucking
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: sucks yeah he bites me he He bites my neck
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: and then spits it out like he's a suck-starting, like,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: a gas thing, you know?
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Like trying to siphon gas.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 8: Like, I imagine, like, I like to imagine that they have, like,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 8: it's like, ooh, I don't really do O negative.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: Like, you got any, like, AB or.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure. Right, right, right.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: I like it better if they're just, like, Ray Sremmurd.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: I ain't got no type, you know?
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Love that it'd be funny to see a vampire gag
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: on blood because it tastes so terrible to them yeah
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: oh god oh you don't want to keep going no
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: uh was that enough to turn or i just like
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: you were left out.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: What is this guy jesus christ he must be shit-faced
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: how much alcohol is in his blood A lot of
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: blood of Christ jokes, I'm sure. Hell yeah. Anyways, we'll
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: be right back with the notebook dump.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Dump. He does love to talk about dumps.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: You must take a dump now. Welcome to my castle.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: You must take a dump.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 5: You might notice the bathroom is conveniently right near the
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: front door.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: I know you've probably heard I'm into blood. This has
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: nothing to do with that. It's just my freaky thing.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: This is an eighth bathroom.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: Fuck the joke up.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: And while you're in there, I'm going to fix something
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: underneath the house. Just don't mind me. I'm just into
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: pipes of all types. Don't worry. If you hear some
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: pipes banging, it's nothing untoward.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 8: I like how Miles is slowly slipping into a BB Netanyahu.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: Don't worry, bro. It's slowly morphing into a BB.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 8: Honestly, BB would be a fucking fantastic vampire.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: I would watch that movie. All right, that was Dracula.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: This is the no, no, no, no book dump. We
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: do have an unfortunate update to this episode. The second
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: we stopped recording, Super Producer Catherine was like, you guys
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: were having so much fun. I didn't have the heart
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: to break it to you, but... another plane has hit
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: the tower. We're under attack. Uh, no, we didn't record
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: this on nine 11. She said, I didn't have the
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: heart to break it to you, but, uh, making your
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: toilet probably didn't mean taking a shit. Uh, when Bram
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: Stoker wrote that, um, which is equally devastating news, uh,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: a nine 11 for this episode, since, uh, we talked
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: for so long and with such enthusiasm about Dracula and,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: inviting him to take a shit for, it was like
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: 30 minutes of the episode. So, um, but yeah, apparently
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: make your toilet at the time meant freshening up. I
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: found a Reddit thread where someone encountered the phrase in
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: an Agatha Christie novel. Uh, I'm going to read from
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: it here. It says, hi, I'm reading Agatha Christie's, the
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: mysterious affair at styles. And on page 38, it says,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: I related the whole story whilst he himself made a
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: careful and deliberate toilet. I'm not certain. I understand what
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: making a toilet means in this context. And by way
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: of answer to the comment, someone said it was used
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: to describe the process of washing and grooming yourself in
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: the morning. The room used to do this would later
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: be called the toilet. So Dracula was probably just being
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: a good host and allowing his guests to freshen up,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: because presumably the road back then was a dirty, sweaty place,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: rather than saying, you look and smell like shit. He said,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: you will, of course, want to clean the dirt and
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: foul-smelling nastiness off yourself. Anyways, equally unfortunate that the Agatha
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: Christie character was probably not Really relating a story to
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: a man who is taking a careful and deliberate shit
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: as much as that idea fires my imagination to try
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: and picture what that would even mean. I will say
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: I did further research because I wanted to justify that conversation.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: I will say one of the explanations that I've heard
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: for why this didn't mean taking a shit is that
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: people didn't have toilets in the house at that time.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: They were outhouses and then a toilet was a room
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: for freshening. But Dracula wasn't living in a shotgun shack. OK,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: he would have had a castle with literal poop shoots
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: built in, according to Wikipedia. So it is entirely possible
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: that included in the in the invitation was an implication
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: of you've been on the road for a long time.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: The turtle must be poking his head out the back there,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: my man. You must be touching cloth, my guy, to
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: quote Brian, the editor. That's what he said when we stopped. recording. Anyways,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: I choose to believe in both cases people were describing
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: each other's shits. Also, if we had cut that part,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: the episode would have been like 15 minutes long. So anyways,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: all right, on to non-toilet making dump related notebook dumps.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: After talking about the axial age theory of how Dracula
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: and Sherlock Holmes came to their moment in of maintained
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: cultural relevance all these years later are two most filmed
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: literary figures kind of coming out of the same period,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: I think I have my answer. I'm sure people have
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: heard up to this point, but, you know, the Axial
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: Age references this theory of history where some of the
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: greatest thinkers, you know, Confucius, Buddha, and a bunch of
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: the great Greek philosophers philosophers all are kind of generating
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: their big world-changing ideas around the same time at different
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: places on the globe. And the axial age theory that
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: was fascinating to me is that both Dracula and Sherlock
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: Holmes come out at the same time. And the reason
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: I find it so interesting is that the axial age
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: theory suggests a counter to the great man theory. It's
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: not that the people who invented the characters in the
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: first place were so brilliant or really the original characters
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: themselves were so brilliant. It's, it's the process of, of,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: designing and redesigning them is where I've landed at this point.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: They came up through the writer's room that was silent films,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: stage plays, early talkies, thousands of novelizations. You know, they
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: were initially designed like every other character, but sometimes something
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: about that particular place in time, that particular, you know,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: Plinko path through pop culture history meant that they were...
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: constantly redesigned and improved on you know if one person
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: gets one crack at designing dracula you get rom stoker's
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: dracula some good scary shit in there but also he's
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: a nasty old hairy man that nobody wants to fuck
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: this locus of sexual energy that like oozes into your
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: bedroom and nibbles on your neck uh they hadn't even
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: thought to make him hot for like the first 40
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: rewrites But if 100 people get 100 cracks at designing
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: it and redesigning it, you get sort of a pop
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: culture natural selection. You get the beauty and brilliance of
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: nature in a way. So, you know, if one person
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: designs it one time, you get a character that turns
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: into a giant beetle and is like scary to a
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: lot of people at the time, but not timeless.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: And kind of looks ridiculous to us in retrospect. Anyway,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: so that's my theory is that Sherlock and Dracula were
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: both characters that got designed and redesigned and, you know, improved.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: And the good ideas stuck. to them. And they were
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: the ones who came through the best path, the best
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: patch of pop culture history. All right. A quick, a
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: quick word about Romania's relationship to Dracula, which we didn't
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: get to. Transylvania is a region in the middle of
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: Romania and they have a thriving Dracula tourism industry. But
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: they're conflicted because, and I love this fact about Romania
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: so much. They're conflicted because Vlad the Impaler is a
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: national hero. From a History Today article called Dracula Beats
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: the Communists, nationalist historians during the 19th and 20th century
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: lauded him, Vlad the Impaler, as a strong leader who
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: defended his country against external threats during turbulent times. But
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: you create one forest of the impaled out of the
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: thousands of people that you slaughtered and suddenly you're the
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: bad guy. I don't know. I just, I don't know
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: if he's called Vlad the Impaler by people in Romania,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: but I do just, I want to believe what that
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: says about Romania, that one of their national heroes is
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: named Vlad the Impaler. Like, obviously we have monsters on
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: Mount Rushmore. We just pretend... They didn't do that shit.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: We don't call him George the Slave Teeth Grave Robber.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: We call him, you know, George Washington and make up
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: stories about how honest he is. Anyways, last year it
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: was announced that Romania would open a 1 billion euro
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: theme park destination called Dracula Land and also a Dracula
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: Land Metaverse and a cryptocurrency called Dracula Coin. And I'm
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: just going to say... Uh, I am a sell on
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: this particular investment opportunity. Uh, Jim Cramer, that's, uh, for
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: that reason, I'm out. We, we just talked on Friday's
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: episode of the daily zeitgeist about an American theme park. That, uh,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: was a scam. We've covered an Indiana Garfield theme park
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: and the Garfield iconograph that never went anywhere, but cost
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: millions of dollars. Uh, we covered in the main episode,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: an Iowa field of dreams theme park. That was a
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: money suck. I feel like we need to talk to
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: Lacey Mosley about this. Theme parks that never break ground
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: are a growth industry in our nation of scam artists.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: And finally, while there was a heavy focus on vampires
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: who fuck, I should note that one of the superpowers
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: of Dracula, I will say, is range. Not just from
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: bat to person form, but also from adult freak for
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: R-rated and PG-13 horny films, but also ranging to a
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: children's character. We, of course, mentioned The Count on Sesame Street,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: but Hotel Transylvania was a massive franchise that continues to be.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: I will just say I once saw Adam Sandler at
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: a pool uh doing his dracula voice while playing with
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: his kids which was cool and a treat and seems
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: like a good dad uh speaking of dracula's for all
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: ages i i think it's also significant that he is
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: kind of the star of the very first my very
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: first encounter with halloween culture, which was the monster mash.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: And I want to do a quick monster mash power
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: rankings here because yeah, so here, here, let's just go
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: through the characters that it mentions. It mentions ghouls. It
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: mentions my monster. which is Frankenstein's monster because it's kind
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: of being narrated loosely by Frankenstein. His name is not Frankenstein.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: It's Boris, but it's Frankenstein. He's working in the lab
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: late one night. They mentioned vampires by name, like just
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: vampires as a group. Uh, they mentioned the zombies were
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: having fun. Uh, then they go individuals. They say the
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: guests included Wolfman, Dracula and his son. Uh, and then
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: of course they mentioned Igor on chains backed by his
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: bang hounds. Um, and I gotta say, well, it may
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: be narrated by Dr. Frankenstein. I feel like it's clear
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: who the star is here. Um, First of all, inside
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: the world of this party, Dracula appears to be the
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: only one who was granted a plus one. He brings
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: his son, only monster who is named not by type.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: The Wolfman is called Wolfman. Frankenstein's monster is called My Monster.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: Very dismissive for being your monster. Vampires are mentioned, but
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: also so is Dracula. So a individual character as distinguished
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: from type, they even go all Hollywood and start calling
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: him Drac during the course of the song. Like someone
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: pretending to be friends with Martin Scorsese and calling him Marty.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: And he's also in the text of the song. Dracula
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: is the only character who goes on a journey. So
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: in one verse, we hear out from his coffin, Drac's
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: voice did ring. Seems he was troubled by just one thing,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: opened the lid and shook his fist and said, whatever
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: happened to my Transylvania twist? God damn it. Uh, he's furious. Uh,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: I added the God damn it. Um, and then, uh,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: that conflict is resolved in the very, the very next verse.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: When we learn now, everything's cool. Drax, a part of
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: the band. Anyway, I could maybe see an argument for
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: Frankenstein's monster, uh, since the story mentions electrodes and, uh,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: as told by Frankenstein's monsters creator and features Igor, um,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: like it's at, it's at his house. It's a house
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: party thrown at Frankenstein's monster's house. Um, I think it's
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: just a matter of the fundamentals of the monsters, like
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: which monster fundamentally seems cooler, uh, And I've always said, like, Frankenstein's... Like,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: Dracula's mode of attack, as we talked about, is biting
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: your neck, which is scary. Scariest place to get bitten,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: as far as I know. Zombies will come for any
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: part of you, but Dracula's always going for the jugular,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: which I don't like. Frankenstein's mode of attack is bonking,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: I feel like, and that's what I picture in my
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: head as a bonk-based attack. But yeah, just generally, Dracula, like...
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: He's such a rich character. It even comes through in
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: Monster Man. Like, Dracula is a diva. And the bloodsucking
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: is just generally... Too rich a metaphor. The bloodsucking and
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: cannibalism at the heart of the Dracula myth only gets
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: more applicable. Weird rich guys are always going to try
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: and bleed you dry and sneak into your girlfriend's bed.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to give Dracula the number one spot
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: in my monster match. Power rankings. I'm happy to hear
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: cases for others. I do wonder if the thing that
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: broke the vampires are Democrats, zombies, or Republicans dynamic is
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: Not so much like Trump himself, but just that all
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: of us have a more proper respect for the vampiric
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: ghoulishness of the wealthy at this point. We've come to
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: realize that vampires are definitely Republicans in a lot of cases.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: So I will say the other kind of foundational text
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: of my childhood for Halloween culture is thriller. And vampires
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: don't even appear in shows. It goes Wolfman into a
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: zombie movie. It's, of course, narrated by Vincent Price, who
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: himself is an actual vampire, but nothing textually to do
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: with vampires in the video that I remember. So, yeah.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: That could be your argument if you want to argue
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: for zombies or wolfmen. In the Monster Mash Power Rankings,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: the phone lines are open. Let me know what you think.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: That is going to do it. Thanks to Blake Wexler
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: for joining, to Miles, as always, to J.M. McNabb for
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: the research, and to Brian, the editor, for putting it
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: all together. Next week, we are moving on to a
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: more modern monster, a modern pop culture movie character who
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: I think is... the most iconic bad guy, uh, kind
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: of spooky bad guy to date partly, uh, because of
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: just the flawlessness of the execution of like how he
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: was brought to life, uh, partly because of, um, some
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: huge ideas that he represents and partly because he seemed
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: to like cross over into reality. Uh, it's a real
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: juicy one next week. One of my favorite iconograph conversations
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: yet with, uh, Kim and Ket from Kim and Ket
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: Stay Alive Maybe. Until then, more spooky news. And yeah,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: we're back this afternoon to talk about what happened over
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: the weekend. Until then.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 5: The Daily Zeitgeist is executive produced by Catherine Law.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: Co-produced by Victor Wright.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: Co-written by J.M. McNabb.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 8: And edited and engineered by Brian Jeffries.