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IT True Story - Real-Life Crimes That Inspired Pennywise · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep dive. If there is one
0:03
piece of fiction that has just permanently altered the American subcontrent,
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I mean, one that has made generations of people nervous
0:09
around storm brains and let's be honest, profoundly uncomfortable with
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birthday party entertainers, it is Stephen King's nineteen eighty six masterwork.
0:18
It Today, we are opening up the stack of sources
0:21
that you, our listener, shared with us to take a
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true deep dive beneath the surface of Pennywise, the Dancing Clown.
0:29
Speaker 2: And that's really the key distinction for this deep dive,
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isn't it. We aren't here to obsess over the creature's
0:34
supernatural mechanics, you know, the dead lights, the cosmic origins,
0:37
the turtle. That's classic King fantasy. Our mission is to
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go beyond all that to understand how real life crimes,
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deep societal fears, and just raw palpable human malice provided
0:49
the grounding for this monster. We want to know what
0:51
made Pennywise feel terrifyingly real exactly.
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Speaker 1: We're looking for the real life horrors King was breathing
0:56
and in processing between what nineteen eighty one and nineteen
0:58
eighty five does with a crucial years he was writing
1:00
this massive novel. Yeah, and if we can isolate those influences,
1:04
those cultural pressure points, we get a shortcut to understanding
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the novel's deepest, darkest, and most enduring resonances. It lets
1:13
us appreciate that the most terrifying thing about Pennywise isn't
1:16
the monster. It's what the monster forces us to confront
1:19
about ourselves.
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Speaker 2: So let's unpack this. Our initial framework, which King himself
1:24
established when he talked about his methods, is that he
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didn't just copy and paste these real crimes into his plot.
1:29
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't a blueprint, not at all.
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Speaker 2: He used them as what he famously called real toads
1:35
in imaginary gardens. The horrifying truth the toads is injected
1:40
into the fictional world of dairy Maine, the garden, and
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that realized horror it grounds the fantasy, making the whole
1:47
experience just exponentially scarier for the reader.
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Speaker 1: It's the magic trick, it is.
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Speaker 2: It's convincing you that the ancient cosmic entity is waiting
1:54
for you in your own neighborhood.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's start with the foundation. Then, Before Pennywise was this,
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you know, ancient amorphous evil. He was a simple painted face.
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The sources are pretty clear that the choice of the
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clown persona wasn't arbitrary or random at all.
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Speaker 2: Oh not in the slightest.
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Speaker 1: It sprang directly from King's own acknowledged deep seated personal
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phobia of clowns.
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Speaker 2: That's right, and it's crucial to remember that this wasn't
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just a generic horror trope when he started writing. The
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specific dread of the clown for him was something tangible
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and historical. He cited figures from his own childhood that
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made this fear worse, like who Well, the classic broad
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television clowns like Boso and Clara Belle, and maybe most
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interestingly for our analysis, Ronald MacDonald.
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Speaker 1: These were figures whose entire reason for being was to
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make kids happy, and yet for King they laid the
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foundation for dread. This takes us into the deeper psychology
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of why clowns are so unsettling. I mean, why is
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that fixed painted smile so intrinsically creepy even before you
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add things.
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Speaker 2: It's all about the subversion of expectation, and the analysis
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and our sources really speaks volumes on this. The clown's
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face is a mask, but it's a very specific kind
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of mask. It's an exaggerated, painted, fixed smile. It doesn't move,
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It cannot move, It can't register genuine human emotion, not fear,
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not caution, not remorse, nothing, So.
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Speaker 1: You lose the ability to read intent precisely.
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Speaker 2: In any human interaction, we're constantly gauging threat levels, emotional
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states through subtle facial cues. A clown just strips all
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of that away completely. Yeah, you're confronted with this frozen,
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often grotesque, or exaggerated expression of forced happiness, but you
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have no way to gauge the intention of the person
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behind the paint. That lack of transparency creates what we
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call the Uncanny Valley effect.
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Speaker 1: Right, it looks human, but it's not quite right exactly.
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Speaker 2: It looks human, but it behaves unnaturally, which makes it
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feel fundamentally monstrous on a just a primal level.
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Speaker 1: And it's forced happiness too. King recalled childhood trips to
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the circus, seeing kids actually crying when these huge, brightly
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colored figures came near them, even as their parents are insisting, look, honey,
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they're funny. You're supposed to laugh. That disconnect The adult
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insistence on joy versus the child's instinctive visceral terror is
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absolutely central to how Pennywise operates. He relies on people
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being told or telling themselves that what they're seeing is harmless, and.
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Speaker 2: That forced cheerfulness is the engine of Pennywise is horror.
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Pennywise's primary tactic is the lure. He draws victims in
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with balloons, with promises of fun, with friendly banter. He
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maintains that guise of entertainment right up until the last
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possible second.
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Speaker 1: It's the ultimate perversion of comfort and safety.
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Speaker 2: It is. Yeah, he doesn't start with the violence. He
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starts with the smile that says trust me.
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Speaker 1: This is where it gets really interesting because the sources
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are quite explicit about the Ronald MacDonald link. King flat
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out stated that he partly drew Pennywise's specific appearance from
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this ubiquitous fast food mascot.
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Speaker 2: Just think about the implications of that for a second.
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Ronald McDonald is arguably the most recognizable globally disseminated symbol
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of corporate sanctioned childhood joy, safety and well treats, happy
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meals exactly. So if we connect this to the bigger picture,
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a malevolent version of Ronald McDonald. A predatory Pennywise is
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just profoundly unsettling because it uses and betrays that inherent,
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institutionally supported faith that children place in these figures.
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Speaker 1: So it's not just any clown.
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Speaker 2: No, it's not just a creature that looks like a clown.
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It's a creature that looks like the friendly clown, the
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trusted clown, the one sanctioned by the adults who buy
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you happy meals.
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Speaker 1: It's psychological warfare. Ronald McDonald promises joy and a toy.
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Pennywise promises dread and death. The act of betrayal is
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what elevates the horror beyond simple monstrousness.
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Speaker 2: Right, It doesn't just damage the child, it damages their
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entire psychological framework. It suggests that the most benign, most
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common figures, the one's adults indoors, can be the most
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stress predators.
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Speaker 1: It raises a pretty terrifying question for the reader.
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Speaker 2: Then, who yes?
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Speaker 1: When the symbol of universal commercial trust is completely corrupted,
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what is left for a child to believe in? King
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rooted his monster in the complete perversion of these specific
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childhood icons, making sure that the fear begins not with
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the creature's teeth, but with the painful familiarity of its face.
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Speaker 2: Yes, the clown face is the first layer of betrayal,
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and it pays the way for the deeper horrors of
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human betrayal we're about to get into.
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Speaker 1: That's a powerful transition because King's personal primal fear of
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the painted face. It needed a real world event, a
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massive cultural trauma, to give it the gravity it needed
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to become the icon we know today that moves us
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perfectly into the societal amplification, the unsmoken but undeniably powerful
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influence of the killer clown phenomenon.
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Speaker 2: We have to address John Wayne Gacy. He's the ghost
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that will undoubtedly informed the creation of Pennywise, whether King
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ever explicitly confirmed him as direct inspiration or not.
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Speaker 1: The timing is just it's too perfect to ignore.
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Speaker 2: It's unavoidable, the cultural timing and the media narrative around
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Gaysey in the early nineteen eighties. He just couldn't get
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away from it.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's nail down the gaycy case context for anyone
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who might not know the timeline. John Wynn Gasey was
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a seemingly respectable local contractor in the Chicago.
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Speaker 2: Area respectable is the keyword, totally.
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Speaker 1: And he was convicted of murdering at least thirty three
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young men and boys in a horrific spree that took
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place between nineteen seventy two and nineteen seventy eight.
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Speaker 2: And the shocking revelation that changed the national conversation, and
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this is crucial for understanding King's reference point happened when
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Gaysey was finally uncovered in nineteen seventy eight, finding the
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bodies buried underneath his suburban home. That just shattered the
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illusion of domestic safety across America.
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Speaker 1: And his conviction.
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Speaker 2: His eventual conviction in nineteen eighty coincided almost exactly with
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King's pre production and writing process for It, which officially
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began in September nineteen eighty one. This was a massive,
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raw and still traumatizing event in the national memory.
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Speaker 1: Specific element that sealed Gaysey's fate in the public's imagination,
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irrevocably linking him to the novel was his alter ego,
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Pogo the Clown, or sometimes Patches the Clown.
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Speaker 2: Indeed, Gasey actively performed at children's events, parties, fundraisers, hospitals
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under these clown aliases. He used this friendly persona this
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mask of entertainment to project normalcy and respectability within his community.
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Here's a perfect cover, a perfect cover, And this is
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the first striking and immediate overlap with Pennywise. Both use
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the clown makeup to hide profound malice and target the vulnerable.
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Speaker 1: It's so chilling because Gasey used the mask of the
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clown not just to entertain, but to be accepted. He
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looked like the fun, harmless neighborhood guy. The similarities are
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just undeniable. Both use the makeup to mask evil, both
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target the weak, and both hide pure malice behind the
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accepted facade of entertainment.
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Speaker 2: Gasey became the human embodiment of the supernatural predator King
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was trying to invent.
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Speaker 1: Right, and this is where we really need to dive
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deep into the cultural impact. Gaysey's case became the horrific
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centerpiece of the rising stranger danger hysteria of the nineteen eighties.
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He provided tangible proof that a predator could be disguising
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himself as the most harmless, most expected figure.
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Speaker 2: The upstanding community member, the party entertainer. The invisible threat
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had suddenly been given a very visible painted face.
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Speaker 1: The media were the ones who truly cemented the trope right.
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The sources note this role was crucial.
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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, The immediately dubbed Gaysey the killer clown. That
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term killer clown became instantly recognizable shorthand for Ultimate Betrayal.
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Speaker 1: And King's novel. By focusing so relentlessly on Pennywise, it
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didn't just use the trope, It popularized it, amplified it,
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and while immortalized it for every subsequent generation. He made
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sure that image became globally iconic.
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Speaker 2: However, we do need to address a subtle but important
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point that our sources bring up, the scholarly nuance regarding
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how Gacy actually used his clown PERSONA Okay analysis suggests
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Gasey's clown act was primary a tool for projecting normalcy
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in community engagement. He wasn't necessarily luring the majority of
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his victims while in the Pogo costume. His act was
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about maintaining a good domestic facade.
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Speaker 1: That distinction is incredibly important for understanding King's shift. Then,
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if Gaysey used the clown mostly to project harmless normalcy
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in his community and not to actively lure his victims,
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doesn't that make Pennywise less of a direct copy and
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more of a total inversion. Yes, is King essentially taking
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a symbol of domestic safety, the harmless party guest, and
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making it purely actively predatory.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's the genius of it. Gaysey represented the horror
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that exists under the surface of normal life, the domestic terror.
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Pennywise takes that horror and weaponizes the disguise.
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Speaker 1: He weaponizes the disguise.
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Speaker 2: Pennywise doesn't just hide. He actively uses the friendly lure,
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the balloons, the sewer great to initiate the predation. King
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took the cultural anxiety that Gaisey created, the fear that
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evil is hiding in plain sight, and gave it a mythological,
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actively hunting origin.
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Speaker 1: It's a chilling reminder that the cover story is often
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scarier than the monster itself. While the timeline strongly suggests
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Gaysey's notoriety influenced King's deep dive into the sphere, King
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elevated it from a real life psychological disguise into a
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supernatural killing mechanism, and.
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Speaker 2: This linkage is why the cinematic incarnations of Pennywise, Tim
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Curr's you Know, gleeful Menace and Bill Scar's Gord's Unsettling
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almost extraterrestrial calmness. They inherently evoke that specific dread. Every
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visual of a malevolent clown since nineteen eighty is unconsciously
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referencing Gaycy.
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Speaker 1: He's the man who codified the specific flavor of horror
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for the modern era. He is before we move on,
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there's a really deep cut we need to acknowledge that
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further reinforces King's habit of layering real darkness into his
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monster's identity. You're curious, pennywise, his primary human alias is
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Bob Gray. Some scholars and dedicated King readers suggest this
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is a subtle nod to the notorious cannibal and child
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killer Albert Fish.
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Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, Fish sometimes use the pseudonym Robert Gray or
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variations of it in the early twentieth century.
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Speaker 1: Exactly.
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Speaker 2: It's a fascinating detail. It shows King isn't just relying
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on the immediate trauma of Gaysey. He's reaching back into
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the history of American child predation, using these aliases to
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layer historical, unsettling, real life horror deep within the fabric
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of the monster's identity. It applies that it has been
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taking these forms, adopting these human identities for generations.
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Speaker 1: That kind of cultural anxiety is huge. It gives us
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the archetypal monster. But to make Pennywise feel personal and localized,
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King had to drag that horror home, and that brings
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us uncomfortably right to his own front door in Maine.
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We are moving now into section three, the direct undeniable
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local horror.
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Speaker 2: This is the crucial pivot point in understanding it. If
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John Wayne Gacy provided the archetype for the monster's appearance
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and his luring method, the murder of Charlie Howard provided
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the searing template for dairies and humanity's own capacity for evil.
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Speaker 1: Let's establish the geography and the timeline lives in Bangor, Maine,
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and the fictional town of Darry is famously and thinly
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veiled as Bangor. This is where King's imaginative garden meets
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his very real backyard. The specific undeniable influence we are
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referencing is the brutal, senseless murder of twenty three year
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old Charlie Howard, which happened on July seventh, nineteen eighty four.
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Speaker 2: The timing is just critical. Yeah, King was deep in
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the writing process. He was wrestling with this very notion
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of a town that collectively ignores its evils. And then
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this happened, confirming his darkest fictional concepts with a dose
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of brutal reality right outside his window.
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Speaker 1: The sources detail the event, and it is just horrifying
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in its simplicity and its malice. Charlie Howard was openly gay.
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He was targeted explicitly for his sexuality by three teenagers.
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They harassed him, they chased him, and they eventually trapped
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him and threw him off the State Street bridge into
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the Kindusk gig stream.
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Speaker 2: And the circumstances just magnified the tragedy. Howard suffered from asthma,
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and crucially he could not swim. He drowned while begging
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for his life. It was a targeted act of profound hate,
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followed by an immediate, chilling indifference from the perpetrators.
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Speaker 1: The sources really stress King's deep personal reaction to this.
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He was livid. He immediately identified it as a hate crime,
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and most importantly for the novel's structure, he saw it
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as confirmation of his central vision for Dairy.
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Speaker 2: As a place where terrible things.
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Speaker 1: Happen exactly, and not just because a cosmic entity woke up,
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but because the foundational human community was sick with apathy
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and malice.
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Speaker 2: King realized that the town itself was complicit the supernatural entity.
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It couldn't just appear out of nowhere. It needed the
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underlying darkness and collective indifference of the human population to thrive.
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The murder of Charlie Howard gave King the perfect real
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world example of that ingrained everyday horror that precedes the supernatural.
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Speaker 1: And this is where the fiction mirror's reality. Almost identically.
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King incorporated this event, the specific crime, almost verbatim into
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the novel's later time period, the nineteen eighty five sections.
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Speaker 2: The parallel character is Adrian melon.
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Speaker 1: Adrian Mellon, who is gay, is brutally attacked by homophobic
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teenagers while at a local fair and dairy. He is
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beaten and then deliberately thrown off a bridge into the
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Kandusky Eg Stream. The location, the victim's profile, the motive,
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the method. It's an unmistakable and direct inclusion of the
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Charlie Howard tragedy.
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Speaker 2: King ensured his fictional town was stained by the same
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real world bigotry as his real town.
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Speaker 1: But, and this is the key, King added one chilling
15:29
narrative element to the fictional account, which completely reframes the
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significance of the event for the plot. While the teens
15:35
throw Melon off the bridge and watch him drown, Pennywise
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appears from the water and finishes him off, consuming him.
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Speaker 2: This is the true genius of King's literary method. This
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is the ultimate real toad in an imaginary garden. Penny
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Wise doesn't initiate the attack, no the humans do. The
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human teenagers, driven by their own hate do. The entity
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only appears to consume the victim once the human hate
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crime is already well under way.
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Speaker 1: So the monster is a scavenger. It feasts on the
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consequences of human malice.
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Speaker 2: Exactly and witnesses see the clown, which underscores King's horrifying theme.
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It doesn't create human evil, It simply amplifies it and
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takes advantage of it. It uses the existing hatred and
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indifference within Dary's community, feeding off the malice that allowed
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the attack to happen in the first place.
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Speaker 1: The clown gives Dary and easy out. It lets the
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fictional community blame the monster instead of looking in the
16:29
mirror and blaming its own entrenched bigotry. By letting Pennywise
16:33
finish the job, the residents can collectively suppress the memory
16:36
and absolve the human perpetrators, turning a clear hate crime
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into an inexplicable monster attack. This is the mechanism by
16:43
which the cyclical evil persists.
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Speaker 2: That moment when the teenagers the human villains look up
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and see that fixed, horrible smile, and they realize they've
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invited something truly cosmic and horrifying into their world. That's
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the point where King is screaming at the reader. The
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town created this problem.
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Speaker 1: They were cruol enough to do the monster's work for
17:02
him precisely, and in the real world, the tragic Charlie
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Howard murder did at least temporarily force a reckoning. The
17:09
sources confirm the event galvanized Bangor's LGBTQ plus community and
17:14
led to public memorials, forcing a reflection on the real
17:17
societal failures that King wanted to capture in his fiction, and.
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Speaker 2: The comparison between the real Bangor's subsequent reflection and the
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fictional Dairies collective amnesia is so critical Bangor had a
17:29
chance to confront the apathy, Darry actively chooses to forget,
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allowing the evil to recycle every twenty seven years. That
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active choice to look away is the real horror that
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fuels the entity.
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Speaker 1: So we have the ancient archetypal fear of the clown
17:43
linked to Gacy, and this specific local horror of human
17:47
hate crime linked to Charlie Howard. Now let's zoom out
17:50
one last time. We need to look at the broad
17:52
national atmosphere, the background noise of dread that allowed it
17:56
to become such a cultural landmark. We moved out a
17:59
section four. The broader backdrop of nineteen eighties societal panic.
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Speaker 2: The early to mid nineteen eighties, when King was creating
18:07
Dairy and Pennywise, was an era defined by a unique
18:11
and pervasive national anxiety, the fear of the missing child.
18:15
This phenomenon went far beyond sporadic news reports. The rise
18:18
of stranger danger was a fundamental shift in American parenting
18:21
and culture.
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Speaker 1: The sources highlight that several high profile cases combined to
18:25
create a sustained, terrifying emotional landscape. This was the ambient
18:28
background dread that King wrote into the very air of Dairy.
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We're talking about the horrific Atlanta child murders, which spanned
18:34
nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty one and left a
18:37
community just paralyzed by fear.
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Speaker 2: And beyond Atlanta, you had these watershed moments that shattered
18:43
any remaining sense of security. The nineteen eighty one abduction
18:47
of Adam Walsh, whose parents became major national advocates for
18:51
child safety, and even the nineteen seventy nine disappearance of
18:54
Eton Pats. These cases didn't just make headlines. They fundamentally
18:58
altered the understanding of childe in safety. Suddenly the monster
19:02
wasn't in the fantasy story. He was lurking on the
19:04
way home from school.
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Speaker 1: And the cultural amplification of this panic was so intense
19:09
and visual. We have to remember the visual impact of
19:11
this era. This was the moment of the famous milk
19:15
carton campaigns, oh yeah. Every time a child poured cereal,
19:18
they were confronted with a grainy photo of a missing
19:20
child on the side of the box.
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Speaker 2: It created a constant, ambient background noise of fear. You
19:25
had Reagan era warnings, widespread distribution of flyers, and this
19:29
intense media focus that institutionalized the idea that the threat
19:33
was undefined, unseen, and omnipresent. The term stranger danger implied
19:38
that the threat was everywhere.
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Speaker 1: And that children needed to be constantly vigilant against unknown
19:42
adults who looked friendly.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, and that psychologically is the exact space Pennywise occupies.
19:49
The entity embodies this era's most abstract yet most acute fear.
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Speaker 1: Pennywise is the predator hiding in plain sight.
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Speaker 2: He is. He's the figure that uses familiarity, eat joy,
20:00
and the promises of fun to lure children out of sight.
20:04
The monster is the literal, physical manifestation of the unseen
20:08
threats that parents feared most during that intense period of
20:11
the early nineteen eighties.
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Speaker 1: He's a commentary on the helplessness of parents and the
20:15
profound vulnerability of children.
20:17
Speaker 2: Completely. The danger doesn't just lurk in the metaphorical woods.
20:20
It disguises itself as the trusted ice cream man, the
20:23
circus clown, or the mascot on the fast food billboard.
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It exploits the very cultural infrastructure that's designed to protect children.
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Speaker 1: What's so masterful about King's structure is the way he
20:32
weaves this national anxiety into the very foundation of Dairy itself.
20:35
I mean, let's analyze King's theme of cyclical violence in
20:38
Dairy It's long forgotten history of massacres and disappearances that
20:42
recur approximately every twenty seven years.
20:45
Speaker 2: This cycle is not just arbitrary supernatural lore. It's potent
20:49
social commentary reflecting the source material. Dairy mirrors real towns
20:55
and communities that successfully ignore, suppress, or collectively forget their
20:59
dark past. They refuse to acknowledge historical trauma, institutional failures,
21:04
or the underlying bigotry like the kind we saw in
21:07
the Charlie Howard case.
21:08
Speaker 1: So by allowing that cycle of violence and disappearance to continue,
21:12
the residents are effectively feeding Pennywise. They are If the
21:16
adults in Dairy acknowledged the evil, address the town's history,
21:20
and truly remembered the past horrors like the fire at
21:23
the Black Spot Club or the Ironworks disaster, it would
21:26
lose its strength.
21:27
Speaker 2: The town's apathy is the rich dark soil in which
21:30
Pennywise plants his roots. That collective indifference, that shared decision
21:34
to look away every twenty seven years and simply accept
21:37
the violence as an inexplicable tragedy. That is the true
21:41
human horror that empowers the supernatural monster.
21:44
Speaker 1: King connects the large scale national terror of stranger danger
21:47
to the microscale local pathology of a town that prefers
21:50
denial to confrontation. King's genius, which our sources strongly reiterate,
21:55
lies in this synthesis, merging the highest level of supernatural dread,
22:00
the cosmic turtle, the ancient evil, with the most insidious
22:03
human horrors, betrayal of trust, personal hate, and the profound
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social crime of collective indifference.
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Speaker 2: Pennywise endue is because he is anchored in the absolute
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reality of human failure.
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Speaker 1: And fear, and that enduring relevance is why the story
22:17
continuously resurfaces in media. Every adaptation, from the nineteen ninety
22:21
mini series to the recent major motion pictures and the
22:23
upcoming Welcome to Dairy series forces the audience to confront
22:27
this central truth.
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Speaker 2: That the most terrifying villains often wear the faces of
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trusted familiarity.
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Speaker 1: The face of the friendly clown, or the face of
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your apathetic neighbor.
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Speaker 2: Yes.
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Speaker 1: The ultimate conclusion for our listener, then, is this, Pennywise
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is not just a monster designed to scare you with
22:42
sharp teeth. He is a warning that evil, in whatever
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form it takes, thrives and ensures its own cycle repeats
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when we collectively choose to look away.
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Speaker 2: When we suppress inconvenient truths about hate, or when we
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rationalize blatant acts of human cruelty.
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Speaker 1: The fear is the monster, but the fuel is our complicity.
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Speaker 2: It's a powerful reflection on the true weight of King's novel.
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The sources confirmed that the fantasy of it only works
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because the horror is so profoundly grounded in human events.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's quickly summarize the two massive real world pillars
23:13
that ground this entire narrative as we've detailed them. First,
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you have the systemic archetypal societal fear of the killer clown,
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codified by the notoriety of John Wayne Gacy, which permanently
23:24
corrupted the image of the friendly entertainer.
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Speaker 2: And second, the searing, specific local manifestation of human hate
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crime seen in the nineteen eighty four murder of Charlie
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Howard in King's own city of Bangor, which was incorporated
23:38
into the Adrian Melon scene to demonstrate how human prejudice
23:41
is the gateway drug for cosmic evil.
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Speaker 1: The central insight remains the same, but now with all
23:46
this added weight of detail. The supernatural entity Pennywise serves
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fundamentally as a mirror and an amplifier of pre existing
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human failings and malice, He.
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Speaker 2: Is the ultimate predator because he is drawn to and
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feeds upon the hate and indifference that already reside in
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the human heart in the town's history.
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Speaker 1: He is the shape of fear, but the.
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Speaker 2: Source of the fuel, as you pointed out, is us.
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The supernatural is merely a symptom of the social disease.
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Speaker 1: And that leads us to our final provocative thought for
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you to mull over long after this deep dive is complete.
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If Pennywise draws his power and strength from a town's
24:23
long suppressed history of apathy, indifference, and hate, as demonstrated
24:27
through that direct parallel with the Charlie Howard murder.
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Speaker 2: What kind of societal history, whether it's actively ignored, collectively suppressed,
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or perhaps even quietly acknowledged but never addressed, could be
24:38
feeding the Pennywise equivalent in your own community. Think about
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the cycles of violence, the accepted prejudices, or the wilful
24:45
neglects that are allowed to persist simply because it's easier
24:48
to look away than to confront the ugly, very human truth.
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Speaker 1: That ultimately is the terrifying realization. King leaves us with
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Speaker 2: Food for thought thank you for joining us on this
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deep dive.