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Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas
00:01:09
with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
00:01:14
You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, okay, hold on, I got a new favorite food.
00:01:21
That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try Kewpie Mayo. Yeah, it's the one with the red cap
00:01:25
and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it at the grocery store.
00:01:28
And this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Kewpie only uses egg yolks,
00:01:34
which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything.
00:01:41
Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it.
00:01:47
Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Kewpie, the original Japanese mayonnaise.
00:01:55
My favorite murder Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstark.
00:02:12
That's Karen Kilgariff. And we have a very exciting, extra special guest for you today.
00:02:18
That is right. He's back from one of our listener favorite episodes, episode 49,
00:02:24
And the great guy lost time New Year's spectacular. Only nine years. Welcome, guy.
00:02:30
It's good to be here. I mean, so much has happened from my favorite murder since, you know, recording in Karen's living room nine years ago.
00:02:40
Was it my living room? No, it was my living room. It was my tidy. Don't. Karen had a house at the time.
00:02:46
I had a shitty-ass apartment. But that's how long ago it was. Yeah. We don't remember places.
00:02:50
Yes. It was a while. and so much has happened for you since that time. Yes, but also along the way,
00:02:56
like so frequently at shows, I've had people show up and be like, I heard you on My Favorite Murder
00:03:01
and that's why they showed up and so I want to thank you guys. I want to thank all the murderinos
00:03:06
who came to my shows. Oh, that's so nice. They definitely love you. We've heard about it.
00:03:11
It's such a funny, I mean, we just had a rewind episode where we like go back over
00:03:16
an old episode and that episode came up. It came up because you and I were working on Talk Show,
00:03:21
the game show, which must be syndicated somewhere. They must be playing it somewhere.
00:03:25
It's on Apple TV. It was for a brief and glorious period of time on HBO Max. Was it really?
00:03:31
Yes, but then it went away. Well, people should watch it because we did a great job.
00:03:35
We did a great job. We really gave it our all. I think it says so much about Murderinos
00:03:39
that an episode where we talked about the law for like an hour and a half is one of the top episodes we've ever done.
00:03:46
And it just like says how smart they are. Yeah. And they're like, can we be on topic, please?
00:03:51
George and I are like, no, no. Well, it is like it's interesting to like as the show has evolved just sort of like the deep dive energy of it and like what it is that is so satisfying about it and created, let's be honest, the true crime revolution of the last decade.
00:04:08
It was on PAX. There was a joke that Madison Square Garden had only been sold out by a live Dungeons and Dragons and a true crime podcast.
00:04:18
And I was like, will they think this is an attack? should be clear it was not my pitch
00:04:22
that's not a negative I don't mind hearing that speaking of hacks that's what you've been writing on
00:04:30
this couple years and a couple seasons now right? yes it's very fun it's the last season of the show
00:04:36
it's very rare that you get to land the plane on a scripted show and like that's
00:04:43
really satisfying but also a lot of you know responsibility and also just like When you have a show and it's great performers and all of the craftspeople are amazing and everything, this year in the episode that comes out tonight, we just told them, we described a dress to them.
00:05:00
And then they got to create a dress. Like Rory, one of our costume designers who worked for Bob goddamn Mackey, got to make a playing card dress.
00:05:08
And it's like, hello. Now, can you tell us what Jean Smart is actually like? I mean, the sweetest and the nicest.
00:05:15
Like I had a very small part in the first season and it was the first episode that they shot because it was during the pandemic and they couldn't do a pilot.
00:05:22
So I was just there in cast holding with Jean all day long. And she was just like, you know, my mask had flowers on it and she was adoring it.
00:05:30
And she just she's so kind and wonderful. And then Hannah Einminder is somebody who I knew from being a scrappy little comic.
00:05:37
And then she has this job and responsibility. And she's so beautifully like risen to the occasion and matched her.
00:05:43
And, you know, I think we all love those shows where you have a female friendship and female contention that is all of the beauty and the complexity of so many of the relationships that we have.
00:05:54
And to watch them fill that up has been really awesome It such a special show It is so realistic with that relationship that they have You like rooting for at the same time being like
00:06:05
why are they talking to each other? But also I want them to be best friends. Yeah.
00:06:09
Well, and it's like, you know, like you have to have these intergenerational relationships
00:06:13
for people to be able to grow and change. And it really is a show about somebody who had the option of not growing and changing
00:06:18
and then gets shoved out of her comfort zone. And those are the kinds of stories I like best.
00:06:23
now you've also because you're a renaissance man yes you've done other things like oh i don't know
00:06:29
gone on to jeopardy and won what you won i didn't win the first time to be fair well but i went on
00:06:36
and i lost to two people who were like multi-day champions and then they were kind enough to have
00:06:41
me back for the second chances tournament okay and then i got to win a game and it was thrilling
00:06:45
and delightful and like the first time i was like emotionally wrecked i was just like i had spent
00:06:53
the majority of my life waiting to get on Jeopardy. And then I did and I failed. And then
00:06:58
the second time, you know, as everyone does, I ended up losing. But it's like, I got to play so
00:07:02
much Jeopardy. I was just happy that I had gotten to play so much Jeopardy. And you knew how to use
00:07:07
that button. You know, when you watch people and they're like, they're trying to complain or
00:07:11
whatever. It's like you I feel like you had it. But also I am a middle aged man and it is like I
00:07:16
do not have the responses and I've always been bad at arcade skills. So I was not as on top of it as
00:07:22
I want it to be, though there is like a beautiful world of like at home Zoom fight club Jeopardy.
00:07:28
And I'm much better at that buzzer. Like I'm very I'm deadly on that buzzer. What was your like category that you were like, I've got this.
00:07:35
OK, so for me, anytime I see a Jeopardy category, I'm like, what is going to be there?
00:07:43
And it was fictitious resonances. And I was just like, Howard's End is going to be in there.
00:07:49
And then I fucking got the Daily Double and the Daily Double was goddamn Howard's End.
00:07:54
Holy shit. And it was just like, ah, yes. Yeah, that's a moment. And they were, okay.
00:07:59
But also I had a real failure. The Daily Double that wrecked me was it's alphabetically first of the birthstones.
00:08:05
And my mind was immediately in the 1980 World Book Encyclopedia that had listed like multiple alternates for every month.
00:08:13
I immediately was like Amethyst. But is there anything that could go before Amethyst?
00:08:17
and then I stayed in my brain too long and then it went, and then I said, agate,
00:08:21
like an idiot. Yeah. I mean, it was like, it was, I had the answer and I should have just run.
00:08:27
Was it amethyst? It was amethyst. I should have just run on adrenaline. Yeah. And I didn't.
00:08:32
And that thing between like, should you second guess or should you just adrenaline
00:08:35
is always, you know, it's the roughest and like stand up is supposed to teach us
00:08:41
you go on the adrenaline. I know, but it's a different, if only it was stand up.
00:08:44
There are so many other, I, When I watch it and I watch people who are surprised that other people are as smart as them, there is that vibe of like, how do you know Amethyst when I'm the one that knows Amethyst?
00:08:56
And like, because I was from L.A., they had me come in as an alternate and I had to watch a full day.
00:09:00
And I watched several days where girl categories just went unspent. Like three boys were like, fashion, I have nothing.
00:09:07
And I was just like, give it to me. The day before I was there, the final Jeopardy was about Wicked and no one got it.
00:09:14
Oh, my God. And it was just like— It's a waste. It was galling. It's such a waste.
00:09:19
The thing is, is I had assumed I am a human being who is no longer scared of live television.
00:09:24
Yeah. You know? And I assumed that that would help me in some way. Definitely. And the answer is no.
00:09:29
Jeopardy is ancient magic. Like, that is not television. It is something else there on the Sony lot, you know?
00:09:35
Did Ken Jennings affect your performance at all? I feel like him being the end-all champion is like a big part of it.
00:09:42
He's so good at the job. Like, he's so good at the job. He knows how to be funny and charming and present and effortless.
00:09:48
And he did just in that. He is so clearly disappointed when people don't know things that they really should know.
00:09:55
And there were like there was one time goddamn Jeopardy guy. Yeah. All they were asking for is for you to say the Moors.
00:10:01
And I said the Abbasids. I was trying to figure out like I was like assuming that they wanted the like Muslim caliphates from the era that went into Spain.
00:10:11
You're going complicated. Yes. Always. And I did the wrong one. It's the Uma Yachts.
00:10:16
Sure. So shaming. Just the look on Ken's face of like, what the fuck, dude? Love that guy.
00:10:24
Disappointed Jeopardy host has to be like something that you'll carry with you for the rest of your life.
00:10:29
I've never seen it. Thank God. Jeopardy? No. Oh, my God. No. You have to watch it.
00:10:36
Jeopardy host being disappointed in me. Oh, yeah. And I never will. But I just want to say we collectively as a community have been cold shouldering Ken Jennings on the best game show host Emmy for like four or five years now.
00:10:49
And I think it's time for us to calm down. Truly. And just show him proper respect.
00:10:53
I think so too. It was one of the biggest fights me and my sister got into because my family is a Jeopardy family seven o'clock like for 30 years, whatever.
00:11:02
And my sister and I got into the fight when they were running through the different hosts.
00:11:07
And I'm like, it's Ken Jennings hands goddamn down. He earned it on the back end.
00:11:11
He's now earning it on the front end. What other past champions could come and do that job like that?
00:11:16
Where he is doing it in the spirit of Alex Trebek, but it's a totally different thing.
00:11:22
And I can't remember she bought into some other guy where I'm like, now I'm mad at you.
00:11:26
And we're like, every night it was a fight. Well, I feel like Hollywood would respect him more if he went off and did like a light travel show or something like that and showed us I'm a host.
00:11:35
that's not who he is. No, he's on Jeopardy. And then he's back to Seattle raising those kids.
00:11:41
Yes, that's right. Being a normal guy. We are stans for him. Yes. We're Ken Jennings stans.
00:11:46
A hundred percent. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart
00:11:53
Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast I sitting down with divergent author Veronica Roth to talk about her sprawling new novel Seek the Traitor Son It a sci fantasy epic about two protagonists on opposite sides of a war and a prophecy neither of them wanted
00:12:09
My first book was Divergent. And when that came out, like, because it was so popular, I think it attracted, like, mostly positivity, but the negativity, I sucked in like a sponge.
00:12:19
and I think it was like critiques of things I liked when I was like you know I was 23 and I
00:12:26
wrote this book and it had all my like dorky little cheesy or maybe unrealistic loves in it
00:12:32
and I started to feel a lot of shame about those things and so for the rest of my career
00:12:37
I steered away from those little things that like make you feel pleasure when you read but I also
00:12:45
was like saying no to these parts of myself that I then was like, screw it. So that's this book.
00:12:53
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
00:12:58
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00:14:30
That's redfin.com. We have a podcast to do. Oh, yeah. Okay, so yeah, this was one of the all-time favorite podcast episodes when you were on The Great Guy Law Time New Year Spectacular.
00:14:45
Yes. Aired December 28th, 2016. Were we ever so young? I mean, almost a decade ago.
00:14:52
I mean, a pandemic? Like, the number of things that have happened, you know? For real.
00:14:58
It's hard. So many. It's hard to wrap your head around. But what we thought it'd be fun to do, we have some emails from listeners from the year you were on that we just never answered.
00:15:10
Oh, lovely. And also currently, because we just did the Rewind episode and talked about you again, so we just wanted to, I don't know, give you some feedback on your performance.
00:15:21
Yeah. Well, there's just a lot of he's a national treasure, demands to bring him back.
00:15:25
And then Chronicles of Kathy writes in, and I think that's Instagram, writes in, chiming in with everyone saying, bring at Guy Branum back on.
00:15:35
Like it's a demand. And then they're talking about that was because of the rewind.
00:15:40
So basically people heard it and were like, why haven't you done this already? Which is great if, you know, we love the outside producing.
00:15:47
That's always fun. Bureaucracy runs slow at Exactly Right Media. So it's taken 10 years.
00:15:51
Also, to be fair, at that point in time, I was 15 years out of law school and it was a reasonable thing for me to talk about.
00:15:57
Now it's an additional 10 years. It's really embarrassing. It's even fuzzier. You can fake the whole thing.
00:16:03
We don't know. We're not Ken Jennings. We don't know the correct answer. Say anything to us.
00:16:08
We will shake our heads happily. Well, this one is very – it was emailed in 2018.
00:16:13
It says, hi, Georgia, Karen, and Stephen wanted to reach out because you three plus Guy Branham helped me get into law school.
00:16:19
Oh, that's so cool. During the admissions process, each applicant is required to submit a personal statement, a double-spaced two-page essay about why you want to be an attorney.
00:16:28
My first iteration got a unanimous thumbs down from my friends because the mention of your podcast made me sound creepy.
00:16:34
Below is the excerpt. I continued my forays into true crime spurred on by the weekly release of the podcast I Came to Love Called My Favorite Murder.
00:16:41
Two women hilarious in their own right get together and talk about interesting murders with an audience that feels like it was filled with our closest friends.
00:16:47
I felt pulled to join the police force or look into going to school for psychology until episode 49 when the ladies invited a guest on the show, Guy Branham, a law school graduate of the University of Minnesota.
00:17:00
His responsibility was to correct any of the past liberties taken with the law and how it operated in the stories discussed.
00:17:07
He spoke candidly about the differences between first and second degree murder, the burden of proof falling to the prosecution and what was necessary for a murder to occur in the first place.
00:17:15
He challenged their assumptions as a pair and mediated a disagreement about why statutes of limitations exist and are fair.
00:17:23
That was a big disagreement. He discussed the law in relation to gruesome crimes in a matter-of-fact manner, and it piqued my interest.
00:17:31
Much like the ladies of the podcast, I had strong feelings about how the law should operate, but no base of knowledge of why or how.
00:17:38
Sounds right. In my admissions essay's final iteration, the podcast has a much smaller presence.
00:17:43
In the two short pages applicants are given to describe their life, their hardships, and their motivations, I felt strongly that MFM could not be left out.
00:17:52
Thank you all for inspiring your listeners every week Your podcast has altered the course of my life Much love from an Oklahoma girl chasing her dream in Boston SSD GM Zoe Kent That is so lovely Oh my God
00:18:05
That is so touching. Also beautiful to know that Zoe, by this point in time, has a much more jaded and cold understanding of facts than I could have ever hoped to have.
00:18:16
Email update from this week. No. Kate Schallenbach reached out to say, hey, remember when you sent this email?
00:18:25
So she wrote an email back to Kate that said, I am currently a divorce lawyer in Edmond, Oklahoma.
00:18:30
I found after two years of misery that practice in the courtroom is not what I'm cut out for.
00:18:34
It turns out I'm quite non-confrontational for a law school graduate. So my boss, a 76-year-old man, war tested in the courtroom, runs the front-facing side, and I'm his right-hand man doing prep work behind the scenes.
00:18:47
All my best to you and the MFM team. Stay sexy, Zoe. That's so cool. She did it.
00:18:52
You're a law influencer. Yes. But also just that thing of like all the real decisions get made outside of the courtroom.
00:19:02
You know, the real work is done, especially with something like family law where you are having to solve real problems.
00:19:10
And there is no best like it's the best answer, not the right answer. You know, like that's so cool.
00:19:17
Isn't it good? Yay. There's a couple of those. Yeah, I have a couple of those, too.
00:19:22
Georgia and Karen, no time for pleasantries. I'm too excited to tell you my celebrity story.
00:19:26
It's deeply known among my family and friends that I cannot and will not remember celebrity names, faces, or roles.
00:19:33
My attempts are considered comedic entertainment when really I tried my best. Tonight as I start dinner in the kitchen, my husband put on a TV show for us that we recently started watching called Platonic.
00:19:45
As the show plays, a realization dawns on me. I yell, I know who that is and proceed to ask my husband to look up the entire episode cast.
00:19:53
Mind you, I wasn't watching the show, only listening. Husband says, you wouldn't know the actor, and I proudly prove him wrong.
00:20:01
That's right. It was Guy Branham and his unmistaken voice. I finally guessed a celebrity thanks to your amazing podcast.
00:20:10
P.S. episode 47, Live at the Bell House, is legendary partly because Guy is laughing in the audience.
00:20:14
And it's just the greatest. Yes, that's right. I forgot about that. Can't wait. Stay sexy and learn your celebrities through MFM collabs.
00:20:22
Jenna, she, her. One of my favorite moments is somebody once said to me, were you at Sandra Bernhardt's album taping?
00:20:27
And I was like, no, I wasn't. And then I was. You forgot. Yes. I didn't realize that she was taping an album when I had been the opening act.
00:20:36
Oh, my. But it is very fun. On Platonic, I get to play a lawyer. And the first season, everyone was constantly telling Rose Byrne, you know, Guy went to law school.
00:20:46
But also our second AD had gone to law school and also been a Marine. And she was like, why is no one ever mentioning it?
00:20:52
Wow. Yeah. Rose is very, very nice and very, very lovely. She's amazing. But I got to do very important work on that show because lawyer shows are constantly saying that people were interns.
00:21:04
And you're not an intern when you're a lawyer. You're a summer associate. And I was like, Nick, summer associate.
00:21:10
And he was like, thank you. I wouldn't know that. Yeah, right. Oh, and there was also in the second season, in the second season, one of the characters writes a dumb, like, legal thriller.
00:21:20
and they afterwards, Nick was like, oh, if you can come up with something better than that
00:21:26
because I'm not a writer on that show. Like, this is just what we had as a placeholder.
00:21:30
And it was, they had chosen the funniest thing for it to be about. It was about tortious interference with contract.
00:21:36
And it was, no one else thought it was hilarious, but I thought it was the funniest thing on the planet.
00:21:40
So sexy. Can't beat that. Can't beat that. Well, here's what we can't beat is that we basically tricked you
00:21:48
into doing the homework for the show today because we know that you love the show
00:21:53
and we've already done the kind of going over legal stuff. Yes. Yeah. At this point, we don't want to hear it anymore.
00:22:00
Unless there's any updates, do you think we should know? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Okay.
00:22:04
Also, I don't know. Yeah. The world has changed. Look, our laws have changed in many horrible ways
00:22:09
over the course of the last 10 years. Truly, really have. They're primarily, to my knowledge, not about criminal things.
00:22:15
No. That's very true. But ever since the origin of this podcast, like when you guys were doing hometown murders,
00:22:23
I of course went with, there was a serial killer from my town and I did that as a hometown murder.
00:22:27
But I did end up becoming aware of like other murders from my hometown. And it is like,
00:22:32
the amount of murder that happens in this country is really kind of impressive. Yeah, insane.
00:22:36
People are always like, when are you going to run out? And it's like, unfortunately, never.
00:22:41
Yeah, because mine is like a little town, but should I go into it? What's the town? Tell us.
00:22:45
Oh, okay. So I am from a little farm town in rural Northern California called Yuba City.
00:22:49
We grow almonds and peaches and prunes and walnuts. And serial killers. And serial killers.
00:22:57
You know, some meth labs. Is that a sister city to Petaluma? Yes. We share their meth is the same as our eggs, and we ship them to each other.
00:23:08
I'm from about two hours northeast of where Karen is from. Okay. There are mountains in between.
00:23:13
You know, she is poultry and dairy. Got it. And I am nuts and fruits. And meth. And with that, we have the full pyramid.
00:23:22
Okay. Yay. And one of the other interesting things about Yuba City, my little town, is that there's a really old Indian community who emigrated like 100 years ago, like back when India and Pakistan were still a British colony, mostly from a rural farming area in the northern India and Pakistan called Punjab.
00:23:39
And there were a couple of Hindu Muslim kids in class, but it was mostly Sikhs. It was mostly people who practiced the religion of Sikhism, which is that religion where all the dudes have beards and turbans and all the ladies have braids.
00:23:52
And it's a beautiful faith that really teaches that everyone is equal before God.
00:23:56
And that's what, you know, regardless of race or gender or anything else. And that's what it aspires to. But as with any religion, that doesn't always turn out. And that's sort of what the story is about. So over the 100 years that they've been in this country, they've built up really prosperous farms and they truck those fruits and nuts all over the West. And so now, like 40 percent of the truckers in California are Punjabi, about 20 percent in the Western United States.
00:24:23
I have to stop you really quick because is this why you know so much? Oftentimes when guys on stage doing comedy, you'll do crowd work where people will say like if people say they're from India or that's their background, then you'll go into that thing where you know the like city states or the counties.
00:24:40
Yes, you see me. OK, it's what language they grew up speaking based on what state they're from.
00:24:46
Yes. Like it's it's. But yeah, I grew up in a town where it was like one third white people who are from Arkansas, Oklahoma, one third Mexicans and one third Punjabis.
00:24:55
So interesting. So it's just something I took for granted. And our story begins with a trucker named Jatinder Singh Graywall.
00:25:04
He was a long-haul trucker in Yuba City. Now, before 1965, very racist immigration laws meant that it was very hard for women to emigrate.
00:25:13
So pretty much everyone's grandma in that town who is Indian is a Mexican. Mostly they ended up marrying Mexican ladies.
00:25:20
But since 1965, it's been pretty standard to arrange marriages with ladies who were from India.
00:25:25
So in the early 2000s, when Jatinzer Singh Graywall was around 30, he went back to his family's village in Punjab because his parents had arranged a marriage for him with a registered nurse in Baljinder Kaur, who was in her late 20s.
00:25:39
They got married and they did not have a direct conversation with each other until the day after they got married.
00:25:44
Wow. Really? Yeah. Wait, do you know anything about why that wouldn't happen on the day of?
00:25:49
I think because you're doing so much stuff. There's like, you know. Celebration.
00:25:53
You're just busy. Yeah, you're busy. Talk to everybody but the guy you just married.
00:25:57
Yeah. Like it's a tradition. Have you seen Bend It Like Beckham? Yes. Yes. They get mad at her sister and Bend It Like Beckham because she's happy because she's getting married.
00:26:04
And you're supposed to be like sad because you're leaving your family's home and you're supposed to be sweet and scared by this whole thing.
00:26:12
And so all of that business was taking place. And then afterwards they were like, hey, who are you as a person?
00:26:17
Okay. All right. And then one more piece of background because this gets a little confusing.
00:26:22
But Sikhs have this very complex naming rules. And so all men have the name Singh, which is frequently used as a middle name, sometimes as a last name.
00:26:32
And that means lion. And every woman has the middle or last name Kor, which means princess.
00:26:38
And so both of the major players in this story have B names and their last name is Kor.
00:26:43
So I'll try to keep it from being confusing. The important thing to know is that Baljinder Kaur, the young nurse bride from India, moved to Yuba City into a house with her husband Jitinder, her mother-in-law Baljit Kaur, who was then 63, and her sister-in-law Kieranjit Man.
00:26:58
And that's when the shit started going down. When Baljinder arrived in America, her mother-in-law Baljit immediately sent back her dowry.
00:27:06
She was like, this is not enough. Baljinder is not enough of a catch to make that dowry worthwhile.
00:27:11
She demanded more clothing and jewelry and stuff from Baljinder's parents who complied.
00:27:16
Baljit made her daughter-in-law do all the housework. She made Baljinder eat meals separately from the rest of the family, and she was not allowed in the living room.
00:27:24
Oh, wow. It was a very Cinderella situation. Baljinder wanted to study nursing so she could get licensed in the United States, but her mother-in-law said her job was to take care of the house and have babies.
00:27:36
Then in 2007, Baljinder got pregnant. She was excited. She was doing her job. She was providing her family with heirs.
00:27:43
Then they found out she was having twins even better. And then they found out that the twins were girls.
00:27:48
And Baljit, the mother-in-law, was livid. So Jotinder was an oldest son. He was supposed to have an oldest son.
00:27:55
Baljinder's sister-in-law told her that Baljit, the mom, was probably going to strangle her for being pregnant with two girls.
00:28:02
I mean, impossible. And then midway through the pregnancy, Baljinder lost one of the babies.
00:28:09
And her mother-in-law rejoiced. She called the dead fetus a pest from hell. Oh my gosh.
00:28:16
And said they were lucky the baby had gone back where it came from. Oh my God. Two weeks after having a C-section for the surviving baby, Baljinder was expected to resume doing chores for the family.
00:28:27
Baljinder's daughter was considered an embarrassment, so she wasn't allowed to socialize with her cousins.
00:28:32
And once Baljinder's daughter was in preschool, she asked if she could spend some time while her daughter was at preschool studying to get her nursing license.
00:28:41
And Baljit said that Baljinder's job was to stay at home and cook and clean. In 2011, Baljinder got pregnant again.
00:28:51
And her OBGYN, Menindirjit Atwal, said that she was always quiet and fearful during her obstetrics visits.
00:28:59
And when she, Menindirjit the doctor, told Baljinder that she was pregnant with a girl again, all hell broke loose.
00:29:08
Baljit ordered her daughter-in-law to get an abortion. They were not wasting any more time or money on girls.
00:29:15
Baljinder needed to have a boy or nothing at all. According to Baljinder, Baljit would put flour or other slippery things on the floor in the kitchen in hopes that she would slip and miscarry.
00:29:29
Baljit regularly mentioned that it was no big deal for men to get rid of their wives if they couldn't produce a male heir.
00:29:35
And then on October 24, 2012, when Baljit was 68 years old and Baljinder was 38 years old and seven months pregnant, the women were in the kitchen of their home and Baljinder was feeding her daughter breakfast.
00:29:50
And Baljit, this baby's grandma, got mad. She said it was a waste of groceries to be feeding a daughter and yelled all you do is eat at the little girl Baljinder tried ignoring her And after the daughter went off to school Baljinder was studying for her nursing credentials
00:30:08
Baljit came into the room and accused Baljinder of having an affair. The second daughter could not possibly be Jatinder's son.
00:30:16
Baljit started pulling Baljinder's hair. Baljinder testified that her mother-in-law said, today is the day we're going to end this.
00:30:23
You die or the baby dies. Baljinder snapped. She went into the garage and she found a small hatchet
00:30:32
and she walked back into the house with it. By that time, Baljit had calmed down.
00:30:37
So Baljinder put the hatchet down. But when Baljinder tried to leave the house to go study,
00:30:43
Baljit started yelling at her and jabbing Baljinder's stomach with her glasses. Baljinder said she was convinced
00:30:49
that she had to do something to save her baby. She later testified, I was blinded at the moment.
00:30:55
I was out of my mind. Baljinder picked up the hatchet and hit Baljit in the head with the hatchet seven times.
00:31:02
Holy shit. Causing four skull fractures. Baljit fell to the ground and Baljinder took Baljit's scarf and strangled her with it.
00:31:11
Once Baljinder realized what she was doing, she said she tried to loosen the scarf.
00:31:17
There were no witnesses. Baljit's daughter later found the body around noon. But Baljinder just left.
00:31:24
She went and she hid the hatchet in a dumpster at a park. And then she went to her study session with her study partner and basically tried to get her study partner to give her an alibi to say that she had been there when it happened.
00:31:37
So this is a woman who's basically emigrated here, has no family here. Yes. So she specifically tried to get her family to start the immigration process for her family.
00:31:49
And Jatinder was like, no, that's not OK. So this is somebody who doesn't have super confident English, who doesn't have an income of any sort, who's entirely alone in this house and is having to deal with this constantly every day.
00:32:03
And then she just snapped. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So that night, Baljinder told her husband about the killing.
00:32:11
She told him what had happened. And Jatinder said that he was too tired to think about it and that they would deal with it in the morning.
00:32:20
So they had found her already and they didn't call the police? They called the police.
00:32:22
They called the police, but they were like, we don't know what happened. We don't know anything about this.
00:32:26
And when she admits it to her husband, he's like, we'll deal with it later. So do you think that was just complete denial?
00:32:33
Was he like just... I'm sure it was overwhelming. Like, it is just sort of like my mom's dead and like this is what happened.
00:32:39
But also it is kind of bonkers to just like it's hard after all of the dismissal that she deals with in this story to not just see it as another dismissal, you know.
00:32:52
But I wonder if that husband, since he's so not present for the other abuse from the mother-in-law or doesn't isn't doing anything or is basically co-signing it.
00:33:02
Yeah. It's almost like does he know that that was wrong and that essentially that's a part of it.
00:33:07
Right. So two days later, Jatinder took Baljinder to the sheriff's department to explain what had happened.
00:33:12
But he warned her to not drag his mother or his family through the mud. So clearly he was aware enough of what was going on that he understood that this could be embarrassing.
00:33:24
Yeah, but also there's a motive. Yeah. Don't tell them the motive. Baljinder confessed to a Punjabi-speaking sheriff's deputy, but at her husband's coaching, she made no mention of her mother-in-law's threats or attacks.
00:33:36
Baljinder was charged with first-degree murder and an enhancement for using a deadly weapon.
00:33:41
She was arrested, and let's remember, she was seven months pregnant. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:33:53
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Lily Chu, the author of the Audible original romantic comedy Just Kiss Already.
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That's always fascinating to me, how they just bring in all these different nuances
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00:37:03
After this point in time, Baljinder's husband Jathinder drops her. He does not attend any of
00:37:09
the trial. He's given her nothing. He and his family are horrified by this murder. So Baljinder
00:37:14
is alone in this country, has no close family, and court records indicate that she needed
00:37:20
translators most of the time, so not a super strong English speaker. She did not have an ally.
00:37:25
She was initially appointed a non-Punjabi-speaking public defender, but her parents from India found
00:37:31
a Punjabi-speaking defense attorney in Yuba City named Mani Sadu, a Punjabi-American criminal defense
00:37:38
attorney, but somebody who had grown up in the United States and lived in Yuba City his entire
00:37:43
life, except for law school. There are no law schools in Yuba City. That's shocking.
00:37:47
Now, the question of how to defend this case is really, really interesting. In California, self-defense allows you to resist an unlawful act targeted you or someone else.
00:37:59
And it says you're allowed to use the level of force required to prevent the offense.
00:38:03
But for self-defense in California, as in most states, it is required that a person have an honest and reasonable belief that it is necessary to use deadly force to prevent peril to life or grievous bodily injury.
00:38:17
So they themselves need to actually have the fear. A reasonable person in their place needs to have the same fear, and it needs to be necessary.
00:38:27
Baljinder is in a bad situation on multiple counts. She believed that her unborn child was in danger, but it is unclear whether another reasonable person would have had the same fear.
00:38:37
It's probably not true that use of deadly force was necessary to avoid it. You know, it's very easy to say she could have just left.
00:38:44
She could have just this. She could have just that. And the threat wasn't really imminent. You know, like the question of imminence, what is the budget? What was she going to do is uncertain.
00:38:53
Can I ask? Yes. The fact that she went and got the hatchet and put it there and then walked away. Is that like premeditation?
00:39:00
Yes. Because if she had gotten the hatchet and done it immediately, it wouldn't have been premeditation.
00:39:04
Like so one of the things about this is it's really interesting that it wasn't defended in that way with an attempt to lower it to voluntary to some sort of voluntary manslaughter or something like that.
00:39:18
Just to say because like for a like heightened state when you have imperfect self-defense or like crime of passion, you need that person to be in that state.
00:39:29
And you're very right that like it would have been very easy to point to that cool down.
00:39:32
but one could also argue that like the fight's still going on you know but like going and getting
00:39:38
a hatchet is definitely premeditation and also just the the weapon of a hatchet like anytime
00:39:44
that's the story it's just so extreme well and also that it was fractures and that there's no
00:39:48
mention of blood is very fascinating to me because i'm like was she hitting with the blunt end or the
00:39:54
or the edgy end but also is it like if she were a smaller woman in my head it makes me think about
00:40:00
that hitting in a different way. Like grab something heavy to defend yourself and your baby is maybe the mentality.
00:40:07
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. The obvious way to defend this case would have been a thing called battered person syndrome.
00:40:13
I think you guys talked about it when you talked about the Francine Hughes case in episode
00:40:16
465. And that's exactly what Georgia is talking about, saying that a person was so freaked
00:40:21
out they thought the only way out was an act of violence like this. A person is so psychologically distressed by a pattern of spousal abuse usually that it makes the person believe deadly force is the only way to escape.
00:40:34
It usually doesn't completely exonerate you, but you get downgraded to some level of manslaughter.
00:40:38
But that's not what Mani Sadu did. His defense was really innovative. And I actually called him and spoke to him to understand more about it.
00:40:46
Yes. Well, the thing is, is like Stanford professors were like, oh, this is really cool.
00:40:52
This is really interesting. And I wanted to understand better how he formulated this idea.
00:40:58
And it was really cool because as somebody who was a member of that community, when I talked to him, he was just like, oh, I didn't formulate it.
00:41:07
It was just my immediate reaction. I love Guy doing our job better than we do, A.
00:41:12
Just making rolling calls. You're an investigative journalist now. But it's also like this is a man from my hometown who is the same age as me.
00:41:19
Not hard to find. I have 100% been to his cousin's birthdays, you know? That's amazing.
00:41:26
He said that when Baljinder's family called him and explained the situation to him, he had two-year-old twin daughters and his wife was pregnant with another girl.
00:41:35
And he could only see the situation through the phenomenon of gendercide. That is, killing children and aborting fetuses to avoid having girl children.
00:41:43
He knew that this was a cultural idea that existed in South Asia and that it was an idea
00:41:49
that could have affected his own daughters, and it was something that he wanted to stop.
00:41:53
So he took the case and he put together a defense like no one had ever seen before So genderside is a very significant issue in India and China In India because male children stay in the home they contribute to the income of the family
00:42:06
Girls go off to their husband's house. You have to pay for a dowry. Frequently, girl children can be seen as an economic burden.
00:42:12
In 1984, a UN study showed that of 8,000 abortions from six Mumbai hospitals, 7,999 of them were female fetuses.
00:42:22
That's insane. In 1990, Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen estimated that there are 100 million women who are demographically not present in the world.
00:42:34
That is based on birth rates and life expectancy rates. Things are off by 100 million people because of the huge number of girls who should have been born or I also believe to some extent were the victims of violence.
00:42:49
Mani told me that he believes gendercide in India is huge and it has trickled out here.
00:42:54
Mani wanted to stop it and his first choice was getting a jury who would understand the problem.
00:42:59
So he got a jury that was 10 women and 2 men, including one Punjabi woman. And Mani says that that woman cried repeatedly during the trial.
00:43:09
Mani's defense centered on the idea that Baljinder defending a fetus inside of her was self-defense.
00:43:14
and that a reasonable person who understood the culture of gendercide would understand that threat as imminent.
00:43:21
The way he proved it was really kind of strange, though. He called two expert witnesses, Sally Sutherland Goldman and Robert Goldman, who are Sanskrit professors at Berkeley.
00:43:32
That's like an ancient Indian language that is used in religious stuff, but nobody speaks.
00:43:38
It's like calling a Latin professor to testify about Italian-American families in New Jersey.
00:43:43
Yeah, right. The Goldmans testified that Baljinder's testimony about her treatment by Baljit was entirely consistent with what we know of similar situations in India and the Indo-American community.
00:44:25
The Goldmans quoted a 2007 UN study that estimated that 7,000 girl fetuses are aborted in India each day.
00:44:33
A therapist who evaluated Baljinder said that she had severe depression and PTSD and, quote,
00:44:39
The abuse was escalating and she had no way out. She felt trapped and afraid for her life.
00:44:44
She's afraid for her life. She's afraid for her children's life. And she has literally no way to get out.
00:44:51
Like that thing of when you were talking about the actual exchange, then I was like, people will go like, well, why didn't you just get out?
00:44:57
And it's like, what? Run into the street and go where? And hope somebody will help you even though you can't speak English.
00:45:04
Like this place is alien. You don't have resources. like you assume that even the people who speak your language and are within your community
00:45:11
might be inclined to agree with your mother-in-law instead of you. Right. Like it's a terrifying situation.
00:45:18
I mean, that is interesting why he had the Goldbergs come on because it's almost like
00:45:21
they're outsiders and can see the issue in a way that someone who's grown up in that
00:45:27
culture like wouldn't necessarily see. The PR of this is a huge thing because the other thing to know about the Sikh community
00:45:35
in America is that after 9-11, there was a huge increase in anti-Sikh violence. White Americans blamed Muslims for 9-11 and attacked Muslims and people they perceived
00:45:45
to be Muslims. And since observant Sikhs wear visible turbans, the men, they'd been subject to a bunch of
00:45:51
attacks and murders, including a murder in Arizona, like not long after 9-11, and a shooting
00:45:57
at a Sikh temple in 2012 that took six lives. Like when I was growing up, it was a relatively insular community.
00:46:04
You know, all of the communities in my area were. But after 9-11, the way that things changed, the way it became come to Vaisaki, have some samosas like, you know, these fireworks are for you as much as us.
00:46:17
And it was about an understanding that communicating what Sikhism was about and positivity was really important.
00:46:24
And this case got them so worried about how they were being perceived. Also, to be clear, violence against anyone for their religion is horrible.
00:46:33
But these Sikhs were killed by people who hated a different religion and couldn't tell the difference.
00:46:38
So they got this huge PR push and members of the community freaked out by what this defense might say about public perception of their community.
00:46:49
Flooded Mani Sadu's phone saying that he was dragging the community through the mud by highlighting gendercide and making it look like abuse by mother-in-laws was common.
00:46:58
Members of the Sikh community stepped forward with statements about how they had never witnessed such aggression towards anyone who had a daughter and saying their mother-in-laws dote on their daughters as much as their sons.
00:47:08
A prominent Sikh leader from Sacramento, Darshan Singh Mundi, said, I've never heard of a single confrontation over the gender of an unborn child.
00:47:17
But he's talking as a several generation in Sikh American, right? Right. As opposed to culturally Sikh from India.
00:47:25
Right. And also somebody who is like invested in trying to show the best side of this community.
00:47:33
You know, it's like whether you have great sympathy with Baljinder or great sympathy with Baljit, like there's the possibility of this looking very, very bad to outsiders.
00:47:43
In Yiddish, we call it a Shanda Fertigoya. You're embarrassing us in front of the Gentiles.
00:47:48
And this was like such a Punjabi Shanda Fertigoya moment. And you had this Punjabi American attorney who was leading it, who was doing the thing that was embarrassing, but he was doing it because he didn't.
00:48:00
He thought it was the most just and reasonable way of defending somebody who had been in a horrible situation.
00:48:07
Also, can I ask, because I'm assuming, you know, I went to college in Sacramento, being from Northern California, but Yuba City also being like an agricultural area, that those kind of 9-11 vibes more intense?
00:48:21
Or do you think because there was such a large Indian population that there was more balance in Yuba City?
00:48:28
I don't think there was more balance in Yuba City. I think that, you know, it is a rural community with a lot of conservatism and a lot of guns.
00:48:38
And I think that there is the awareness in Yuba City of just like you went to high school with these guys.
00:48:41
You know what's going on. But not everybody is directly from our community. You have, you know, you go 10 miles in another direction and people don't understand.
00:48:50
And so, you know, hostility and racism that has always been there was even more intense.
00:48:55
And it was very sweet to watch these rural community temples, like, taking on this PR problem of, like, how do we make people understand who we are?
00:49:05
Yeah. So the trial for Baljinder lasted eight days. And the jury, the 10 women and two men, took a day and a half to come to a verdict of not guilty.
00:49:15
Wow. One of the jurors, Michelle Strew, said, we believe she acted in self-defense of her child.
00:49:20
We didn't feel her decision was perfect. We felt she was not guilty rather than innocent.
00:49:26
We could not find guilt based on the law. And that was for first degree, right? They never lowered it to manslaughter.
00:49:33
No. And that's the thing is that it would have made the most sense. Like the most straightforward way of doing this is trying to get her eight years for voluntary manslaughter because she had been in a very difficult state.
00:49:45
His strategy was basically saying, if you understood this culture the way that this woman does, if you had the same outlook as her, you would have reasonably thought that this person was going to imminently kill you or the other potential life that was in your body.
00:50:00
And that was a big swing. But it was a big swing that worked all the way. Is that on the prosecutor for not lowering the charges?
00:50:10
That's interesting. Or is it the prosecutor who would have lowered those charges?
00:50:13
Well, I don't know whether you could concurrently charge with both of them. Potentially, you could have offered a plea bargain for that to just agree to it.
00:50:20
But it may have been on. That's a really good point that it may have been a situation where if.
00:50:26
But also that prosecutor did not understand what was going on. Right. Like when he was interviewed afterwards, he was like, there was a lot of uncertainty about these details.
00:50:35
And I think they thought that she was battered. Something along the lines of saying, I think that the jury thought that she had been the victim of domestic violence.
00:50:42
And I think that that prosecutor was seeing it with his law school brain through battered person syndrome and didn't quite understand or counter what Mani Sadu was doing.
00:50:52
And I think he probably would have needed to, like, bring in some cultural experts to say this was not reasonable for her to be thinking this way.
00:51:01
And he didn't even go at that. He was just saying she hit her in the head with an axe.
00:51:06
That's murder, ladies and gentlemen. It's like they were trying two totally different trials.
00:51:10
Yes. Yes. And that was why I was so fascinated and dazzled by it was he just sort of like out thought this guy.
00:51:17
And in a way that connected with the jury. And like that's both being a good legal mind and being a good lawyer.
00:51:25
And tough. Like it's like because you're saying only one Punjabi woman was on that.
00:51:30
Yeah. Can you swallow this whole narrative? Right. Can you learn this whole new cultural norm, accept it and then be thinking about this trial?
00:51:38
Yeah And there is there is the worry from the Punjabi community that this is a bad cliche of what that community is like And I understand that uncertainty and that fear But I also my sympathy is with Baljinder You know my sympathy is with this person who had somebody threatening the life of the fetus inside of them every day
00:52:02
And that's going to wear on you, you know? Stanford professor Robert Weisberg said, this is a fascinating case.
00:52:08
The defense accounting for cultural standards and gender signs is plausible and obviously worked.
00:52:13
Even if the threats weren't direct, given what the daughter-in-law knew about the mother-in-law's attitude towards female children, it's reasonable to believe that if she was such a horrible hellish person, posed an unusual threat to Baljinder and her unborn baby.
00:52:26
In addition to local press, the story was heavily covered by the Indian press for obvious reasons.
00:52:31
But it was also heavily covered by the American Catholic press. What? Oh, dear. Oh.
00:52:37
Because they like the angle that Baljinder was acquitted for murder for defending the life of a fetus.
00:52:43
How can we make this about pro-life? And if it says anything about the truth of Baljinder's accusations, this Baljit Kaur is not the only Baljit Kaur who was killed by her daughter-in-law after years of abuse.
00:52:58
In 2011 in England, a woman named Rajvinder Kaur beat her mother-in-law named Baljit Kaur to death with a rolling pin.
00:53:07
I found a bunch of cases between parents-in-law and daughters-in-law going both ways.
00:53:13
There was one case where they were like, sure, we'll give you the divorce if you go to these two weddings in India.
00:53:19
She showed up to the two weddings in India and they took her out. Seeing that stuff, for me, substantiated Walginder's fears.
00:53:28
Oh, including a case in Bakersfield, California, where a pissed off daughter-in-law threatened to pull out her father-in-law's beard and shove it up his ass.
00:53:38
And he picked up a revolver and shot her three times and said it was reasonable because she had dishonored him.
00:53:45
So that is the story of the murder of Baljit Kaur. Oh, my God. We wouldn't have invited you on if we thought you'd do it better than us.
00:53:54
God damn you. It was so much fun. like it really was fun and it was something that I had found back in the day when I was just sort
00:54:03
of like searching around for stuff about Juan Corona. And I was just like, this is so juicy.
00:54:11
And when you first mentioned it, I was like, oh yeah, I want to do that. That woman with the axe.
00:54:16
Like, because in my head, all I remembered was just a lady on a staircase with an axe,
00:54:20
which I made up entirely in my head. The staircase. I love that you're doing a case that you're passionate about because
00:54:26
of the legal parts of it. So fascinating. Like the legal parts are so fascinating
00:54:30
and the social parts are something that, first of all, everything I'm saying is not what the opinions of Karen or Georgia
00:54:37
are my favorite murder. And also we understand very much that these are delicate and sensitive issues
00:54:42
about perceptions of a community. And I have so much respect for that. But it's also a world that influenced
00:54:48
so many people that I loved and grew up with who saw various other flavors and signs
00:54:54
of this like perception of women that is at odds with the very fundamentals of Sikhism.
00:55:01
You know, like Sikhism, there's a cool holiday about one time when all the ladies had to
00:55:05
get together and fight a battle. Like it is very much a religion about everybody is directly equal before God.
00:55:12
But in practice, as we know from Judaism or Catholicism or any religion, like sometimes
00:55:17
that doesn't happen in the culture. And it was really rough. And it's horrible that she went through it.
00:55:23
And the other lovely thing is when I was talking to Mani, we just talked for like 10 minutes and he was like, you know, I got to call Walginder.
00:55:31
And he was just like, and to him, you know, this guy is a criminal defense attorney in Yuba City.
00:55:37
He doing stuff every day And to him this was just a thing from 10 15 years ago that he hadn really thought about But I was really impressed by what a smart incapable and conscientious attorney he was Yeah I love that the implications were so obvious to you And he probably it didn
00:55:51
even occur to him at the time. He was doing the job. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I also love that you buried the lead, that there is the exact same murder.
00:55:58
Same name? Or like the same name. That's wild. Well, no, it was really funny because, look, there were a couple. Like there were some
00:56:06
And it made Googling hard because these other things were popping up in their place.
00:56:13
But it made clear that there was this real, you know, power problem in that relationship that, you know, and I think that's the really cool and interesting thing about looking at the world through murder is like so much of the time it is about a power imbalance that like comes to a head.
00:56:32
Yeah. It also like that idea that it's generations of immigrants and it's like the first generation is holding the old caste systems or the old ways or the old beliefs.
00:56:44
And then every generation it changes and it gets, you know, the kids have Adidas tennis shoes and they're using slang and whatever.
00:56:51
And it's like that distance is part of what makes America great. And then it's so funny.
00:56:57
I was working on a rom-com with a guy who was one of my niece, Olivia's community college professors.
00:57:02
who is a Punjabi Sikh. And I was describing a situation that occurred with some of the women from like my age.
00:57:09
And he was just like, it doesn't work like that anymore. You know, it's like times have changed what people,
00:57:15
and it was very much about like gender balance and, you know, perception of women's value.
00:57:21
And he was just like, that's not the world anymore, guy. And I had to feel old. And then, you know, we had to adjust the rom-com.
00:57:29
Rewrite. Wow. I mean, amazing job. That was incredible. Thank you so much. It was really fun.
00:57:34
You've done it again. I love it. It was so good. Will you have to come back and do it again, please?
00:57:39
Yeah. Thank you. Maybe in six years? Yes, yes. Does that sound good? Not so long next time.
00:57:45
But I just want to say to you guys and to everyone listening how much I have appreciated in a tiny way being a part of the My Favorite Murder family and have always really felt it.
00:57:56
That means so much. Thank you. We love you. We love you. And that was incredible, by the way.
00:58:00
That was so great. Let's plug your things. Oh, yeah. That sounds terrible. You have some plugs.
00:58:05
So your new comedy, Stop That Train. Yes. Tell us everything. I got a small part in the RuPaul's Drag Race movie.
00:58:13
It's very exciting. I play train traffic conductor number one, train traffic conductor number two, of course, played by Charo.
00:58:20
Are you serious? Did you spend time with Charo? I spent two days with Charo. There's no off position on Charo.
00:58:27
Like, she's just, she's never not doing it. Periodically, Adam Schenkman would have to be like, hey, quiet down.
00:58:33
Because Charo was telling me her origin with the Roma people of Spain learning to play the guitar.
00:58:38
Like, she's just unstoppable and amazing. And she looks the same. Yes. We watched her on, like, television in 1979.
00:58:48
Yeah. And she looks exactly the same. And she dances the same. Like, she's incredible.
00:58:52
Yeah. She was unstoppable and it was so much fun. But the movie comes out on June 12th.
00:58:57
And it's very much like Airplane or a Mel Brooks movie. It is very spoofy and fun.
00:59:03
I'm so excited for that. Awesome. And then you're also going to do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
00:59:08
Georgia, thank you for bringing that up. It turns out that tickets are now available for my show Be Fruitful at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
00:59:15
So if people go to my Instagram and click on the link there, if you're going to be in Edinburgh or the UK,
00:59:22
it a very funny show about fruit and religion and evolution and all sorts of things before it becomes terribly terribly personal but I very proud of the show And if you a murderino in Britain please come see me
00:59:39
I mean, getting into the French Festival is a big deal. It's truly terrifying. It's like so enormous.
00:59:44
And I'm like, this will destroy me as a person. I'm no longer young. What a way to go.
00:59:50
What a way to go. I was there last year and the energy in the city is unbelievable.
00:59:55
It's going to be such an incredible. What did you see that was good? I saw a wrestling show that was about a medieval romance.
01:00:04
Oh. It was incredible. Yeah. I mean, the thing I'm most excited for is just to get to be there and deal with the personalities and see the stuff that isn't the same time as me.
01:00:14
Yeah. And be in it all. Be in it. You have to go to the Frankenstein bar. Oh. Right?
01:00:20
Is that the one where they do the whole? Frankenstein. It's alive. It's alive. A bar that's like the Frankenstein theme.
01:00:25
I had no idea. That sounds very fun. Well, I am like, well, if I'm there for a month, I kind of have to be an irresponsible child who's pretty much just drinking and having a good time and making friends.
01:00:36
It's a camp. It's a camp. It's going to have to. Also, we got platonic. We got hacks.
01:00:41
Yes. We covered the fun things. I mean, clearly we have a professional writer coming in to play our game with us.
01:00:46
Thank you so much for saying yes to this. We love you so much. Thank you. It was so much fun.
01:00:50
And also thank you for going on a ride to my hometown and the weird specificities of that because that part was really, really fun.
01:00:58
I think we all learned something, everyone. A lot. Thank you. Well, amazing. Yeah.
01:01:02
Thanks, Guy. And thanks, everyone, for listening and hanging out. And we're going to wrap it up.
01:01:07
Yeah. By saying stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:01:20
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.
01:01:27
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi. Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Allie Elkin.
01:01:34
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. And follow the show on Instagram at myfavoritemurder.
01:01:39
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