I'm Helen and I'm Liz and we're sisters, scientists and lifelong ex-files fans.
And this is We Want to Believe.
Alright, how's it going?
Good!
I have a lot to share.
A lot to say.
Oh, I'm very excited.
Awesome.
Before we begin, I wanted to run something by you that occurred to me the other night
that I thought, this is a good topic for our podcast.
I don't know if that's true or not.
Alright, it's late at night, I'm laying in bed and I have another story that is going
to go in that same direction later.
But I started thinking about...
Is it about nightmarers again with Dwight Schrute having a scolex?
No.
Oh, okay.
No, thank God he hasn't showed up again.
I have avoided counting.
And then I did it one night but I skipped the 40s and 50s in case he was in there, which
sounds strange.
But I didn't want to run into him.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what actually happened?
So I just had this thought.
You know how humans are mostly liquid or like there's a lot of liquid in us?
Do you think that effectively I am a sentient liquid?
No.
Oh.
No?
I mean, like am I kind of a liquid that's alive?
Like are we living liquids in bags?
But we're not entirely liquid though.
I mean a solid 30% of us is not liquid.
A solid 30%.
So I don't think that qualifies.
Like if a jellyfish is not a liquid, I feel like we sure aren't.
Okay.
But hold on though.
Jellyfish, are they mostly just in liquid?
Oh, I don't know.
Oh, I'm sure they do.
I mean all living things do.
But I don't know.
I don't know if it's more or less than we do.
They just seem much more amorphous and letting in the shape of the container.
Yeah.
I mean I just felt like I'm closer to a sentient liquid than I ever realized before.
And so I just like I got up to pee and I was just like I'm a liquid and I'm thinking things
and it was sort of blowing my mind and I was like I'll save it for the podcast.
This reminds me on when my anatomy students, when I had them doing the digestive system
a few weeks ago, I had them do this activity that I found from the I just want to give
credit where credit is due.
The human anatomy and physiology society, haps and they're like mostly for professionals
who are teaching.
And they had some activity where you consider if you swallow gum is the gum is the gum still
outside of your body because we're essentially one long tube that goes from our mouth to
our rectum.
So like are we could you make a case for it being yeah, you're making a real uncomfortable
face.
They got so mad.
They were all so mad.
They got so mad.
They were like, yeah, it was like how dare you make us think of these things or like
how do you imply the gum is outside of us.
Yes, yeah, the latter.
They were like, we talked about at the start of the semester we talked about embryology
and we're talking about like stem cells and uses for stem cells and stuff like that.
And so there was like a bit of like what do you do with old IVF embryo discussion.
And that was like way less controversial.
That was like this was like way, way more strained.
So here's how I was thinking of it.
You know tube slides.
Yes, like the park or whatever.
All right.
If you go inside a tube slide, you're not still outside.
You're inside the tube slide.
Are we not just like a big tube slide for gum?
I mean, yeah, you could make that argument.
And as I told them, the point of this is to consider the ways in which our respiratory
and digestive systems are constantly interacting with the environment.
Not that I actually wanted to convince them that gum is outside the body.
You know, it didn't even occur to me to ask why you brought this up to them.
And I feel like Gatsby would really like that interpretation.
I didn't do anything wrong.
The socks were on the outside.
The socks are still on the outside as I attempt to digest them.
I can't remember if in our last episode we talked about how my dog had emergency surgery.
We did not.
Gatsby, the big dummy.
He had a very, very bad poodle.
He ate a sock, which he's been known to do.
And then he'll come out one end or the other.
And this sock did not want to leave and was stuck.
I actually, same week.
This must have just been last week.
I was teaching the digestive system.
So I drew a picture of Gatsby on the board and was like, let's talk about where this
got stuck in the dog.
Oh, God.
And he's doing well now, though.
He is, yes.
He's got a little bit of an infection at his site of the surgery.
So it was so stuck he had to have emergency surgery to cut it out of his stomach.
So he still has a little bit of an infection from licking the wound, but he is doing good
enough that he keeps trying to eat dumb stuff.
Okay.
I guess that's a good sign in a way.
Yeah.
Real bad guy.
Real, unfortunately cute.
Yeah.
He's the cutest dog ever.
Yeah.
Like this is it, I think.
Yeah.
I don't know whether the dog can be cuter.
I have not witnessed one.
No.
And our episode starts with a dog.
But I do want to note before we get to the dog in the episode, we have a listener story
this week.
Oh, wonderful.
And the listener is me.
So I will leave it at that.
So we start the interior of a house at night.
It is Pulaski, Virginia in 1985.
So I had a moment of going, oh, many, many decades ago and then realized, no, about nine
years from when this episode is airing.
So not that long ago.
And there's like a border collie in a house.
I don't know the point of the border collie.
I got all worried about him.
And then he wasn't ever in the show again and he was fine.
But there was like a TV on and there was a house that's kind of like under renovation.
So there's some plastic sheeting up and there's a man sleeping in bed.
And all of a sudden the TV goes staticky and the dog jumps on the bed and looks kind of
worried.
And I was very worried about this dog.
Again, he was fine.
So I don't know.
But he's fine.
All of a sudden some shadowy figure appears behind the plastic sheeting.
The man wakes up and he sees there's multiple aliens looking at him through there and he
starts screaming not again.
And he's screaming and screaming.
And it was at this point that my Bluetooth headphones stopped working and the sound of
Dwayne Berry screaming filled my office and my door was open.
So I was just watching it in my office because we were still there.
So all of a sudden Dwayne Berry screaming is like broadcast.
Oh no.
Yeah.
And you see a flying saucer above the house with like a beam shining down on the house.
We get this beam song and we show we're at like a low security prison and we see that
same guy from the cold open.
That is Dwayne Berry.
The man who the episode is named after.
Middle-aged guy.
I looked him up to see if he'd been in anything else.
And I think this will give you a picture of him if you can't picture him listeners.
He has played Charles Manson and he has played Ed Gaine.
So he's kidding.
Yep.
He's clean shaven.
He doesn't have like a Manson beard but you know he's good at playing creepy people.
Oh God.
Oh yeah.
Gaine was in prison in Madison for the latter part of his life because he was at Mendota
the high security psychiatric center.
Whoa.
Yeah.
Real creepy.
Yeah.
Real quick.
I do remember that opening because I have seen this one.
It's been a while but I have seen it several times.
Real creepy.
I like that was one that stuck with me.
I remember that very well.
Isn't this episode left an impression on me?
Really?
It is a really scary episode.
Oh really?
Yeah.
Like I feel like I honestly like watching it I feel like now we're at the point where
there's a reason our podcast exists as if it didn't have a reason for existence before
then but like I'm like now we're like getting into it.
But also and I mean I kind of felt that way listening to you last week.
It's like cry check is here because we see cry check again in a few minutes.
Yeah though I'll talk about some of the later scenes and my reaction to them.
Okay.
It was a scary episode.
Wow.
Yeah.
So Dwayne is at this correctional facility.
Right.
He's in like plastic type handcuffs and like like zip ties and he's meeting with a doctor
and he's like I don't want to take my meds.
I don't like how they make me feel and he's like and the doctor's like well we don't want
you to hurt anyone.
So I'm like I'm not going to hurt anyone.
Dwayne and Dwayne is like I'm not crazy.
They're coming for me again and he does a lot of talking in the third person like they're
not taking Dwayne Berry again.
Oh I don't know.
Yeah.
No.
I mean the first one is feeling bad.
I mean like a lot of psychiatric drugs a lot of drugs in general have like rough side
effects and I'm just feeling kind of bad for him but also well look at there.
I don't feel too bad for him.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I think that's an interesting question for discussion.
Okay.
I don't know.
So the doctor turns his back to get a shot to give it to him and in the meantime Dwayne
grabs the like fancy calligraphy pen with like the little stabby pointy end.
Oh uh-huh.
Apparently.
Why does the doctor have one of those?
Uh, saddened.
I don't know.
Just a fancy guy.
I don't know.
Maybe this is a question for, I have some friends whose parents are also physicians.
So maybe this is a question for physicians that practiced you know a couple decades ago.
Yeah.
You're a potter style.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Like loaded in cartridge in it or whatever.
So he runs up to the hall.
He stabs the security guard in the back with it and then in the ensuing chaos takes the
security guard's gun, grabs the doctorate gun point and abducts him.
And then we see cry check.
Walking into a pool.
You might recall this scene.
Oh I do because David DeCovney is in a Speedo, right?
It's when we laughed.
Yep.
Yeah.
And I do recall this scene.
And Ellen, there is no need for this scene in the plot.
This could have taken place in a hallway, in a park like anywhere and for some reason.
But I feel like fair play to him.
He looks very, very good.
He looks even better than I remembered.
I was like, you know.
You can take a picture right now as you're talking.
It's worth it.
Yeah.
I was just like imagining David DeCovney being like, we need to find a reason to get
Mulder in a Speedo because I've really been like working out or whatever.
I don't know.
There's no reason for it.
Cry check's in a suit.
Mulder is like swimming laps and he comes out of the pool and he's talking to Crycheck
and he's just staying there in a bright red Speedo.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
All right.
The man looks good.
Yeah.
He does.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny.
So have you seen the show, The Chair?
No, but I thought it's really good.
Oh, it's really good.
My friend Amy, a dentist who I've mentioned on the show before.
Well, I was talking about dentists more later.
Oh, no.
I've had a lot of dental work done this year.
I don't like it.
You're not going to like this.
Okay.
But Amy texted me and said, this was a few years ago now and recommended I watch it because
she said that David DeCovney still made her think of me, which I think really is the highest
compliment.
Wait, is he on the chair?
Yes, he is.
Yeah.
He plays himself.
Really?
Yeah.
And it's also, it's about academia.
So it's pretty entertaining.
But he is, hold on.
I want to say there's a scene where he's swimming needlessly.
I'm pretty sure he's like in a pool.
I know that he's in a new movie that's coming out this Christmas with Meg Ryan and it's
like a romantic comedy and they're like exes who are at the airport and they get snowed
in and whatever.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
But he was, I loved him in Remember Me or Return to Me.
Return to Me.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Yes.
He's in a red speedo.
Huh.
And yeah.
No way.
Isn't it?
Yeah.
That's awesome.
I thought, yes.
I thought I remembered that talking to Sandra Oh.
Huh.
I don't know if he doesn't look like when he was 30 but he is still a good looking man.
Yeah.
I mean, there's like all that like weird stuff about his sex addiction and how like.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know any details though.
Me either.
I don't know that I want to.
Yeah.
But I mean like he was in Red Shoe Diaries before he did ex files and I've never seen
that.
I'm familiar with the premise but.
Yeah.
I mean, what I most of remember is he wasn't in any of the like totaling stories.
He was just like he would get the letters for some reason and he'd be like walking his
dog named Jake, which you pretended to have a dog named Jake once.
I did.
Yeah.
And I will say like.
Yeah.
You do say yeah.
My, my policy as far as that is like if everything is above board and consensual and adult, I
don't, I don't need to know.
I am just going to pretend that he's faultless.
Yeah.
As long as.
Yeah.
I feel like it's not good if he cheated on Taillione or whatever, but it's also not something
where I feel like it's not akin to a lot of the other terrible things people can do.
Right.
Yeah.
Agreed.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So, so, so Cretchett gets Mulder out of the pool and tells you about the hot six situation
is like they want to talk to you.
Okay.
They want your help with this.
And so my Mulder and Cretchett go to this office building that is right near a travel
agency because they find out from the people who are like, I don't know, the hostage experts,
the hostage people.
I don't know what you call those people.
Negotiators.
There we go.
I guess, but they want Mulder to be the official negotiator because.
Oh, okay.
Blanberry is talking about aliens and he says he's a former Abdupti.
Okay.
Man, I have to write the word Abdupti in my notes so much and every single time it was
a struggle that D and then that D. Every time I was like, I don't know if I can do this
and I was going real fast.
But okay.
So this is interesting to me.
Dwayne wants to go back to the first place where he was abducted, but he can't remember
where.
So he's gone to a travel agency and that's where he has his hostages.
This is how you get involved with the X5.
Yes.
Yeah.
I was just thinking, man, people say that the travel industry was different in the 90s
and so it was.
Yeah.
Oh man.
So he's got his hostages there and there's this woman who, I never got her name.
I'm going to call her the woman in charge.
She's like the head negotiator type expert person.
And she's like, look, you just need to like keep him calm, keep him on the phone.
We need some time.
And Mulder's like, no, I want to know more about his abductions and she's like, he's
a psycho.
Keep him on the phone.
And it, well, I want to talk a little bit about negotiators in fiction and stuff, but
we'll get there in a sec.
Because the first thing I need to share is that there is a man who's a hostage who looks
just like Tobias Fume, okay?
In a suit.
I was just like, that's David Cross, but specifically Tobias.
I mean, he was in a suit.
He wasn't in denim put-offs, but otherwise I'm like, that's the best.
Well, we don't know.
I mean, of course he's a never-nude who was probably wearing them under the suit.
Underneath.
Yes.
Yeah.
And there was, there was one moment where he said a line kind of dramatically and I
imagined the director going, would you like to do that again?
And him being like, no, like with Tobias additions to the fire sale.
The fire sale.
It's a fire sale.
So, evacuate all the schoolchildren.
Anyway, arrested development reference.
Yeah.
You don't know arrested development.
Go watch it now.
Stop listening to us.
Go watch arrested development.
Then you can listen again.
All right.
So, Mulder's got a script.
He's not very good at delivering his lines, believably, in my opinion.
Kind of like Tobias, I don't know.
But he's like, you know, I'm your friend.
I am really trying to like talk to him calmly and Dwayne is real angry.
And there's this whiteboard with the steps for negotiating.
There's some sort of mnemonic device.
I don't remember any of them.
It doesn't matter.
But the point is Dwayne also knows them and he's like, I know the steps and he lays them
right out.
And so Dwayne hands up and Mulder's like, is he FBI?
And the woman in charge is like a former FBI.
And Mulder's like, yeah, you didn't think to tell me?
Like that's kind of important, right?
All right.
So she's like, it's no big deal.
I don't need to tell you that.
Just say your lines.
And Mulder gets really mad and try check offers to help.
And the woman's like, you got your notepad and try checks.
Like, yeah.
And she's like, all right, large coffee, cream, sugar.
Oh my God.
And it's like, I just like seeing people be mean to cry check.
It's just never not awesome.
Yeah.
But think about seeing hostage negotiators in movies and TV.
Okay.
Yeah.
The only examples I have are ones where they are totally incompetent.
I don't have that many examples, but like, okay, diehard.
I don't know.
Have you seen diehard?
I have seen it, but only once or twice.
I haven't seen it much.
So I'm not, I'm not super familiar with that part of it.
We watch it at Christmas time while we wrap gifts.
So that's awesome.
Yeah.
It's great.
But like the one of the whole deals is like, there's just the one cop who believes John
McClain and everybody else is like, he could be with the bad guys.
Don't trust them.
We're going to like, storm the building and people are going to get killed.
And then my other examples are both from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which is a comedy TV show.
So maybe it's less good in which, in one scene, a hostage negotiator defines the process
of negotiation as two liars lying to each other until one of them stands close enough
to a window to get shot by a sniper or something like that.
And I feel like that is the exact approach that these people take in the X-Files.
Ah, okay.
So can you think of any other hostage negotiators on TV or movies?
Well, the first one, the only one that comes to mind that is not X-Files related is Mindhunter.
Okay.
I've heard of that.
It's rare for me to be too creeped out by something true crime related.
Like that is a line that's usually pretty hard to cross, but I couldn't keep watching
it.
Is it true crime?
It is.
I'm pretty sure it's Jonathan Groff, isn't it?
Which like, it's hard not to just love him.
Isn't he the snowman from Frozen?
Jonathan Groff is not the...
You're thinking of Josh Gad.
Jonathan Groff is Kristoff and Sven from Frozen.
So the reindeer.
Hold on.
Wait, one person does the voice of both the man and the reindeer?
Because the man does the voice for the reindeer.
Like he like speaks for him.
Like you know how like when you're talking to your dogs and you're like, you know, but
I want to eat the sock or whatever.
I thought it was like he made reindeer noises.
No, no.
And he was on Glee and he was King George.
Okay.
So I thought Hamilton, the same people.
I thought the guy on Glee was King George and was the snowman.
Right.
Oh, and the snowman.
Oh, no, no, no.
No, that's...
Yeah.
So Josh Gad also plays Bear Claw on New Girl.
That's Bear Claw.
Yeah, I do.
Oh, I have no idea.
Okay.
Yeah, I've just been making those the same people in my head.
But good to know.
Okay.
So those are very different vibes.
He's the guy from Glee.
Okay.
I can picture him.
Yeah.
And I'm pretty sure in the first or second episode there's hostage negotiations.
That's where all this was going.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, mindhunter though, it's bad and scary.
I mean, it's good and scary.
It's very well done, but I couldn't keep watching it.
And so, there's a hostage negotiator.
Yeah, yep.
Are they incompetent?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm going to pay attention to this and see if it's actually a trope or if I just happen
to see that.
Because then this episode kind of turned into like a standard hostage sort of tense drama
with some real disturbing extra bonus notes.
So, that's something I remember.
Yeah.
So, Mulder calls Scully because again, they're clearly minimizing use of Dana, Scully, I
don't know why I called her by her full name, of Jillian Anderson while she's pregnant.
And so, she's like, I'm watching it on TV.
And so, Mulder's like, he's FBI and he gives Scully Dwayne Berry's name and she's like,
I'm going to do some research.
Then both the travel agency and this office building next to it lose power and Dwayne
starts shooting and he shoots Tobias.
And so, Dwayne's like, yeah, we're going to need a doctor.
And so, they're like, okay, we're going to send in two MTs, one real one and one that
is Mulder with an earpiece, which is risky.
The woman in charge is like, excuse for another costume change for David D'Gothney.
We don't see him change in this case.
No, it's clearly one of those things.
It's the same impulse that makes Mulder go like running into the woods when something
creepy goes there or like, you know, he's like, oh, something very dangerous.
Okay, there I go.
And she's like, don't join in his delusion.
And it's like, we know exactly what's going to happen there.
And so Tobias has been shot, but he's not dead.
And we see that there's snipers outside ready to go.
And Mulder is like, was that them who just turned off all the lights?
Was that them immediately joining into the like UFO stuff?
He's like, are they here?
Are they here, Dwayne?
And Mulder's like, I believe you and you can hear the like woman in charge yelling in
his little earpiece, which I always feel like in real life, wouldn't you be able to hear
that?
Like, well, I don't know.
I don't know if this technology works.
But him and Dwayne kind of slowly start bonding and Mulder tells Dwayne all about Samantha.
And Dwayne starts describing how they come for him and the abduction stuff and they do
the tests and all this stuff.
And he's like, do they take you to a ship?
And then it shows a scene back from that scene in 1985 where Dwayne's laying in bed.
The dog is not there.
And there's all these aliens surrounding the bed.
And it is very, very light as a feather, stiff as a board.
Because Dwayne starts floating into the air just like, I think we always wanted to happen
with light as a feather, stiff as a board.
The aliens speak for yourself.
But yeah, yeah.
I mean, I did not play those games as a child.
You didn't?
No.
No?
No.
Too scared.
I don't know if I could rank the most afraid I've ever been.
But top, I don't know, definitely top 10, maybe top five would be playing with a Ouija
board when I was in eighth grader at Erin Walsh's house.
Katie Laos house.
Well, no, I remember you doing it at Erin Walsh's house too, right?
Or was it, or was her house haunted?
Because I remember being there at night and playing with her sister, I think so, and being
really freaked out.
And remember, we did think her house was haunted.
I don't remember why.
For legitimate reasons or probably not legitimate ones now.
I doubt it.
We were watching, what's that, Freddie movie that came out, New Nightmare, which we really
liked it.
I don't know.
There was a Freddie movie that came out in the mid 90s and I don't know.
We watched it a lot and we were watching it and her parents were upstairs in bed.
We were the only two awake and we heard these real loud crashes in her garage and we were
terrified.
And we ran upstairs and her parents were like, no, you're fine.
It's nothing.
Go away.
And like, I understand it, but also, it was scary.
But yeah, it was a Katie, Katie Laos where me and her and Erin played with this Ouija
board of her sisters, of Katie's sister, she had an older sister.
And then we slept in her basement.
Her basement had no windows, so it was like your eyes never adjusted.
It was just pitch black.
It was so scary.
We thought we might have summoned the spirit of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Later Erin admitted that she had done it.
I'm 99% sure.
Oh, then she was moving.
Yeah.
I will not.
I did not.
I Ouija boards.
I will not fuck with.
I, nope.
Fair enough.
Yeah.
No.
Fair enough.
Nope.
Yeah.
Not interested.
Not now, not ever.
I'm not scared of scary.
The Parker Brothers logo on them makes them a little less scary.
But lightest and further stiff as a board seemed less scary for some reason.
That felt more reasonable.
You know what story I want to tell?
Because I actually, I just wrote this into a podcast that was like soliciting spooky
stories and stuff.
Do you remember when you go and your friends were playing Bloody Mary?
Do you know what story I'm referencing?
Is this with mom?
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
So, uh, well, do you want to tell it?
Do you remember the story?
Um, okay.
Me and my friend were playing Bloody Mary.
So in the version we grew up with, you had to say that I am 47 times in the world.
I only heard three.
Well, that's the normal version, but we were taught it was, it was somewhere in the 40s.
That's white true with the scallops lips.
Oh no.
I mean something.
Okay.
Yeah.
Um, okay.
I'm not stupid or crazy about that.
Anyway, so we were in there for a while saying, I believe in Bloody Mary to the mirror and
we were too afraid to have the bathroom door all the way shut.
So we left it like a crack open.
Yeah.
So we saw a figure in the mirror.
Yeah.
Do you want to jump in here?
Um, what I recall was that you and your friends were having a sleepover and I was jealous
and, um, our mom took me up to go to bed.
But then she got the idea because you guys were in there with the door cracked open, um,
to take my pale face dark haired spooky toddler self and hold me up in the mirror.
So that you suddenly saw my face appear.
Oh, it's scary.
I love that.
Yeah.
I mean, was it actually, like, did it actually freak you guys out?
Yes.
But then like seconds later, we realized it wasn't like mom hid it from us or something.
Yeah.
It was terrifying for an instant and then it was funny.
Yeah.
Um, I mean, I played basically no part in this.
And I was just the, you looked scary.
That's scary.
Um, but I, I like that.
Anyway, so, um, so that's what appears to be happening.
Light as a feather.
Okay.
He's rising into the way.
He's alien.
He's standing right at his bed.
Um, and Dwayne is saying how like they're talking to me, but they don't make any noise.
They use a type of telepathy and Mulder's like abductees call it mind scan.
And I just felt like that was really not useful.
Um, and so at this point, he's like bonded with Mulder.
He believes him.
Um, and then Mulder's like, so they take you aboard the ship to perform the tests.
Helen, and then leading the witness or no.
And then they show some, some flashbacks or whatever.
And my first thought, um, sort of autopilot was, Oh, thank God, I was assigned to watch
this one and not you because you're little.
Oh, it's like, Oh, this is too scary for Helen.
She told me in her mid thirties.
Exactly.
Uh, but the thing is, Oh no, really?
It was dental base.
Oh, oh, cause he's got like, he's on like a creepy place.
I don't know.
His mouth is held open with metal things.
Yeah, I can picture that.
And then they're bringing in a laser and I'm writing in all caps.
I am not a fan.
And it was really scary.
Like that scene was fucking terrifying.
Like, Oh man.
They like, I don't know if like, you know, they got a bigger budget and they're a little
more into a horror image.
I don't know.
It was just terrifying.
Wow.
I was just like, Helen, I'm so glad you're not watching this.
Oh my God.
Especially with all the dental work you've had done lately.
This was like, although better to have had the dental work and then watch this than the
opposite.
I was about to say, at least it seems like, yeah, yeah, at least I may have a break from
it for a while.
Yeah.
So they drill tools in his teeth to hide trackers, he says.
And so then Scully gets on the phone with cry check because Mulder is gone and Scully
is not happy that they let Mulder go into the hostage place, into the travel agency.
And she's like, Dwayne Berry is not who Mulder thinks he is.
And so then they, the flashback, okay, Mulder's talking murder Dwayne and Dwayne confirms, yeah,
he's seen kids up there before they're doing tests on the kids and, you know, are they
hurting them?
Oh yeah.
Oh God.
Yeah.
You know, I wanted to be like, come on, Dwayne, that's his sister.
But it was, it was so scary.
And he's like, oh, it's like living with a gun to your head.
You don't know when you're going to be taken.
Yeah.
It's very scary.
And at the same time, we see a hole being drilled in the wall of the travel agency and
they very carefully lower a little camera through it so that they can see what is happening
in the room.
Okay.
And so then we see Scully shows up in person and she's like, I just flew down from Washington,
which I cannot sort out temporally speaking.
How long has Mulder been talking to Dwayne?
Do you mean temporally?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, sorry, sorry.
I thought you meant spatially.
Especially on, especially on temporally.
Where is this supposed to be?
Virginia?
So I'm like, oh, yeah.
I mean, that's super fly.
I'm like, I don't know.
I guess the second process did take way less time and probably she's got special government
stuff.
So she's probably getting on the plane.
I let my head like get there two hours early for domestic flights.
You know, she's probably not doing that.
Yeah.
But she flies there.
This is like of the like, you know, this meeting could have been an email.
This is a, this in-person visit for Scully could have been a talking through the wire
to crotch a thing.
Because she's like, hey, you know, he's not who he says he is.
I'm like, you just had that on the phone.
You didn't have to show up in person.
So oh, it also included Crytek telling Scully to calm down and her going, don't tell me
to calm down.
And that was good.
That is good.
So, okay.
So she's like, he has this rare state of psychosis and we're going to learn a little
bit now.
It's a learning time.
So she's like, he was shot in the line of duty in the early 80s.
He'd been, you know, normal, good agent, well liked before that.
And a bullet pierced his bilateral frontal lobes.
Okay.
And so she mentions how there's this guy Gage in history who'd had a last name.
Oh yeah, Phineas Gage.
Phineas Gage.
You know about Phineas Gage.
And well familiar with frontal lobe injuries and the fact that a decent amount of people
that end up being criminals and doing bad things have been, have had frontal lobe injuries
early in their lives.
Now, I can't tell you how statistically significant that is, but there have been, like I know,
I'm pretty sure Gacy had a head injury.
There's like, there's all sorts of reports.
But you keep, yeah, what I'm curious about though, in that is like, I've had a head injury.
I've had multiple head injuries.
But nobody's going to ask that and use it to justify my behavior because I'm not doing
anything crazy.
Is it possible that like, under 50% of the population has had head injuries?
All right.
Let me finish about Gage.
No, let me say this quick on that.
On that note.
Yeah.
I mean, it's similar to how like when you listen to true crime podcasts, mostly, you
hear about like a lot of people that had like really messed up childhoods that went
on to do really messed up things.
And it's like, well, there's going to be those people.
But then there's of course the people that the many, many, many more people that were
abused and went on to be perfectly normal people.
Yeah.
You know, you're going to get some overlap between the people with head injuries and
the people that had, you know, severe personality changes.
But that doesn't mean that because you have a head injury, you're going to have a personality
change.
Or if you're a murderer, you don't necessarily, you know, that's what I mean you had.
Yeah.
So she mentions Gage and she's like, he was bizarre.
He became bizarre and violent.
He was a liar.
He was delusional.
Yeah.
And her point is like same deal with Wayne Berry.
And so he is psychotic after a frontal lobe injury.
And that's Kelly's point.
I kind of felt like, I don't know, dude took some hostages already.
We figure he's, he was already in a correctional facility.
This didn't seem like that big of a reveal to me.
But I looked at Phineas Gage because I remembered learning about him.
Like class, you know, decades ago.
And I will say, I want to say this to Wikipedia's credit because it has gotten a lot better
since it originally started.
It was quite a good jumping off point, you know, for finding other resources and stuff.
Because if you read the page about Gage, who was, he was a dude in the 1800s, 1823 to 1860.
And they were doing blasting and this railroad stuff.
Yeah, railroad stuff.
Yeah.
Went into his head.
I recommend looking at the Wikipedia page listeners because there are these like rotating
3D images of his skull with the rod through it.
And it's just kind of funny in a way.
That sounds terrible.
I guess that Gage kept the rod or he like gave it away for a while and got back and
would like show it to people.
I mean, fair play, right?
For sure.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I've kept all sorts of creepy stuff.
So yeah.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I gave it to you.
Yeah, I haven't, but I would if a good opportunity arose.
Yeah.
If like a big rod went through your head.
Yeah.
Keep that.
Yeah.
So, so here's the thing though.
He struggled with his recovery.
It sounds like he was not a great person to be around while recovering.
I mean, recovering from a thing going through his head in the 1800s, it's not going to be
an answer to recovery.
But people who directly knew him while he was alive are not the ones who really said
the extreme stuff about his personality changing.
It really seems like that was somewhat blown out of proportion that there's no interesting
that he was psychotic.
Okay.
So like, would I be more of a jerk if I had to recover from a brutal head injury in the
1800s?
Yeah.
Sure.
I'm more of a jerk when it's warm out.
Yeah.
So it kind of reminded me of how we talked about, oh, the guy who saw the little elf that
Mulder uses as a code name.
Oh, something hail, right?
Or hail.
Yeah.
And again, it seems like in popular culture, this has kind of gotten blown out of proportion
or whatever.
Oh, interesting.
Okay.
That was the impression I was getting doing some research today.
Okay.
But going back to the episode, I felt like, well, oh, is it a big stretch?
Like, doing very psychotic?
Right.
I don't know.
Well, and I will also say though, there is frontal lobe syndrome though, I think as
it's called is a thing where frontal lobe injuries do cause some behavioral changes,
particularly like aggression and stuff like that.
I guess you know that with head injuries and football, that what do you call it?
Yeah.
Like the thing, PDI stuff.
Yeah.
So, okay.
So, yeah.
I mean, I guess I just didn't feel like, well, for whatever reason, we know he's dangerous.
He's got a gun.
Right.
He was already in a correctional facility for violence.
He shot Tobias.
Yeah.
So, you know, didn't seem like a big reveal.
What I did think was important for the plot is that this, that Dwayne mentions, oh, the
government knows they work together.
There's a secret corporation where they're collaborating with the aliens.
And I think this is one of the first times in the X files that that is explicitly laid
out.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And he says, and this is going to be important to you, Helen, not at the moment, but for
next week.
Okay.
He's like, I need to go back to where it first started.
A mountain.
Up, up.
Ascending to the stars.
Oh, yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
So, listeners, remember that line.
Ascending to the stars.
And so, Dwayne also tells him that they put these tracking devices in my gums and my sinuses
and in my navel.
And yeah, indeed.
And so, Mulder gets Dwayne to let the women go.
And Scully's like, well, if you got to get them, let them to get everybody go.
This is a countdown.
They're coming in with guns soon.
Okay.
And so, Mulder's like, hey, when you let the women go, you left the door unlocked.
Can you, can you go over there and lock it?
And so, he wanders over to go lock the door.
And then he sees the red dot on his chest.
Oh.
And he gets shot.
Oh, wow.
And so, I didn't remember that he got shot.
Like that's how this...
Don't be either.
Wrapped up.
Well, sort of wrapped up.
Yeah.
So, he's taken it away in the ambulance.
Mulder and Scully are together outside.
It felt like the end of the episode.
And Scully's like, assuring Mulder, look, you did the right thing.
And Mulder clearly felt conflicted about it because a few minutes earlier, it seemed
like he tried to keep them away from the window.
So, it was unclear.
Okay.
And then another day, he's called to the hospital where Dwayne is stable, but fell out of it.
And the hostage lady in charge woman is there.
And she's like, she basically calls Mulder in.
Again, this felt like this meeting could have been a phone call.
She's like, oh, so I just wanted to let you know that we did X-rays.
And the X-rays showed metal in his gums and his sinus cavity and his navel, which is just
where Dwayne said that this truckers would be.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know.
I might want to talk to that person in person.
Okay, fair enough.
Fair enough.
And actually, now that I say that, I guess I took one of them out and I gave it to Mulder
in a little jar.
And so she's like, I would not want that thing.
Like where are you going to leave that?
Like you want the aliens finding you at work or at your house?
Like where are you going to put the little tracker?
If you're Mulder, of course you want that thing.
He makes very poor choices with respect to aliens.
Very different choices than you and I.
Because what if we established one of us would do, most likely you, because you do archaeology,
what would you do if we found an alien?
Yes, we actually, me and you and our friend Amanda discussed this, didn't we?
And what if we decided?
I would rebury it and do nothing until no one and pretend nothing ever happened.
Right?
Exactly.
Yup.
Yeah, so we clearly have...
For all we know, listen there's hell in this scene, dozens of aliens.
It's just not telling us.
Yeah, whenever people always ask like, what's the most interesting thing you found on a
dig?
Like, oh, you know, old coins, half decomposed alien body.
Yeah.
Like, the most interesting thing that I'm allowed to tell you.
Yeah.
So yeah, Mulder, some priorities.
So he brings it to Scully and is like, look, it's a metal from inside Wing Merry.
Brings it to Scully?
I didn't remember that.
And...
Okay, keep going.
Mulder's like, I think he's telling the truth and Scully's like, I'm going to bring it to
symbolistic people.
I think that it's shrapnel because he was a bat.
Okay.
So he was shot.
You know, we know he was shot at some point.
That's how he got that injury.
He wasn't working on the railroad.
That was Gage.
Right.
So she got it.
Yeah.
So she brings it to, I don't know, a lab with equipment in one of those, let's just get
some equipment there, sort of ways.
And they put it under a microscope and they zoom in and they can see it is a barcode that
is only 10 microns wide.
Whereas if you don't know what a micron is, it is one one thousandth of a millimeter.
I know we don't do metric.
If you don't know what a millimeter is, it's real tiny, real small.
Yeah.
Real small.
Yeah.
I would say the width of a fingernail is about a centimeter or maybe like a little more
and then cut that by 10 and that's a millimeter and then cut that by 1000.
Yeah.
So very teeny tiny barcode.
Definitely not something they were making in the 90s.
It kind of reminded me of the projects that our students do with electron microscopes.
Oh.
Where they'll like make like a teeny tiny like 50 microns wide UW-Pletzel logo or whatever.
So like, you know, nowadays feasible.
Yeah.
But not then and it certainly shouldn't have been inside Wayne Berry's jaw or nasal cavity
or whatever.
So Scully goes to the grocery store.
If you're interested, she buys a whole bunch of food and writes a paper check for $11 and
the 14 cents.
So that was interesting and neat.
The pressing.
Yeah, that's probably the word.
And she's like, she looks at the scanner and the cashier has to step away.
So she just goes for it and she scans the little thing on the scanner to grocery store.
Do you remember that?
That's right.
Yeah.
So like the machine goes crazy and it's showing some crazy long number sequence and Scully
is like, oh, I don't know what happened.
So then we see Dwayne waking up suddenly in the hospital and we get that flinky creepy
music that they do.
I think for the first time in squeeze that like flinky violin music.
Yeah.
Like tempted to imitate but.
I'm familiar.
No.
Yeah.
So he looks through the curtains in the hospital and he sees aliens looking at him.
And so he gets up, he grabs the fire extinguisher, he knocks out the guard, he runs out of there
and then Scully calls Mulder.
She's in her house.
She's leaving Mulder answering machine message and she's like clearly afraid sounding.
She's like, what the hell is this thing?
It's like almost like somebody was using it to catalog him.
And then we see Dwayne Berry looking through her window and he puts in and the last thing
you hear is Scully yelling from Mulder to help her because she's still on the phone
with them.
So Mulder's going to get that answering machine message.
Oh man.
And that is where we leave off.
Oh, geez.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm so glad I never watched these when they aired.
I would have been so pissed after.
Oh my God.
Oh God.
Yeah.
I mean, we had to wait sort of somewhat in that, you know, we had to buy the DVDs online
and we didn't have all the seasons and sometimes we'd just watch them on TV and have to wait
until the next night, but it was never waiting a full week.
Yeah.
I thought you meant you were glad you didn't watch it when it first aired because you were
six and it would have been really scary.
I mean that too.
Yeah.
Oh gosh.
Hugo just turned six.
Oh no.
It'd be so traumatized.
Oh my God.
Oh.
Yeah.
Even William was nine.
He like, he talks a big game, but then we were, where were we?
I think we were in Walmart or Target or something getting stuff for Hugo's birthday party and
there was a bunch of Halloween stuff and William goes, I like the candy, but I don't like Halloween.
And I was like, why?
And he's like, it's so scary.
And I was like, oh.
Oh gosh.
Yeah.
I love to complain.
Oh, I could watch that.
No, that wouldn't be scary for me.
Yeah.
No.
You can't watch the Jason movies or whatever I was talking about.
Yeah.
I can see this absolutely terrifying him.
Yeah.
So that's when we're right.
Yeah.
I think I'm, I don't know.
I think we'll see if I end up watching it before Ascension.
Yeah.
I mean, I feel pretty caught up by this.
So I might just watch Ascension.
I think that's fair.
Yeah.
And I mean, like, you can just tell from the name, Ascension, not going to be good given
the topic.
No.
This is not a case where we want to ascend.
No.
I really do.
I mean, airplanes, but.
You have a story in the show Taskmaster and.
Oh, right.
It's really, really funny.
I have a login I could give you.
Just you, not all our listeners.
And because you can also watch some on YouTube, but one of the comics was on there, because
it's a funny game show.
And one of them was on there and he was in the Guinness Book of World Records for doing
the highest comedy performance, highest standup comedy, because he once did a standup comedy
act on a plane in order to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.
So wow.
Oh, that's funny.
What is your story?
I do have a story though.
Okay.
So I watched this episode yesterday.
Right.
And this is going to be like a story within a story because I'll tell you what happened
and then I'll have to tell you probably you might remember it, but I'll tell everyone
a second story about why this scared me so much, even though it's kind of ridiculous.
So okay.
Okay.
I went to sleep.
Yep.
As per usual, no particular thoughts about whether or not I'm a sentient liquid.
And then I'm having a dream.
I don't even remember the dream, but I know I was dreaming and in my dream there was a
beep beep beep beep beep.
Okay.
I'm like that.
And that was it.
And then I like suddenly was lucid dreaming and I realized, oh, I just heard beeps.
Was that real life?
And I like woke myself up and I was like, did I hear beeping?
Was there beeping?
And so I looked at my cell phone to see if there was like, I don't know, like an Amber
alert or something.
I'm like, you know, there's no signs of beeping on my phone.
And that's when I remembered our father's story about beeping in the night.
The back lights.
No, no, not the back lights.
It was one of your kids.
He, I don't know this.
Well, I mean, it doesn't end up sounding especially scary, but he'd be asleep and he'd hear this
beeping and he thought to himself in a very blasé way while half asleep that he was being
abducted by aliens.
And that was the sound that they used to erase his memory of having been abducted.
Oh, God.
That's creepy.
So he just would be half asleep and be like, oh, that's them doing the erasing again when
he would hear that like, yeah.
And that's like all he remembered, but that's what he would think.
And then he'd wake up, go about his day later and not really think about it.
And then he'd hear it again the next night and he'd think that's what it was.
Oh, my God.
And so eventually it turned out to be like either a clock radio or a watch alarm somewhere
else in the house that was set for a particular time in the middle of the night.
Oh, God.
At least in theory.
So last night I hear a beeping sound possibly in real life, possibly in my dreams.
And I look at the clock and it was like 245 and I was like, oh, what if that was them
erasing my brain?
What if they looked at my teeth?
And it was very, very scary.
And I was like, at least it's content for the podcast.
So that's my listener story.
You don't know what it was.
Nope.
Adam doesn't remember if he slipped through it.
His phone didn't do anything weird.
I can't think of anything in my house that would make that particular beeping noise because
we have plenty of things that might beep, but it wasn't our smoke detector or anything.
It wasn't like we're bed-dreaming on something.
All of our listeners have heard my smoke detector.
It kept going off in one episode and I couldn't turn it on.
No, it was nothing batteries dying.
And it also started very close to my head.
So I thought it was my cell phone, but it was not.
I have a similar, though very, very different story.
All right.
Or I should say similar story, very different ending.
Is that I woke up from a terrifying noise the other night.
I fall asleep listening.
So I found these two podcasts and I can't find them anymore.
I tried recently on my friend Cynthia's phone, but somehow I got access to the official book
recordings of Harry Potter, all the Harry Potters and All the Lord of the Rings.
So it's like the audio books, like the good.
Did you buy them?
No, I didn't.
They were because they were made, they were a podcast.
Like someone uploaded them as a podcast.
Oh.
And now the title to them reads on my phone, this RSS has been deleted.
Like both of them say like so clearly they were found out, but I'm, I'm they're still
on my phone.
Okay.
And so I was able to come find you.
You're hearing these tables.
I'm not the one who did the illegal uploading.
I'm just benefiting.
And so I fall asleep listening to either Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings pretty much every
night.
And see in last week's podcast, you were telling me about some podcasts that you listen to.
Oh yeah.
This podcast about or boring stories for bedtime or something.
Yes.
Boring books for bedtime.
Yeah.
But anyway, you mostly do Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.
Okay.
And I woke up to this like terrifying growling like angry noise.
And it freaked me out so bad, but it was the voice of the Ents and Lord of the Rings.
Oh.
Talking to Pippin and Mary.
Oh, how nice.
I don't know why they, I don't know.
Gatsby.
No, no, it was an Ent.
Oh.
But it was real scary, real like way louder.
It's talking scary.
I don't know.
Well, I mean, when you're asleep and it's right in your ear, like, and it's a big difference,
you know, you think I'm not going to try to do an Ent voice.
But if you, if you're sure, are you sure you shouldn't do an Ent voice?
I can't even, I don't even know where to start.
I would try if I could.
I don't even know what they say.
I'm trying again.
You are quite small.
I don't know.
Whatever it is that, that's nice.
Gbeard says, thank you.
Yeah.
So like, there was significant volume to it, which was part of the problem.
Yeah, that is startling.
Oh, and they are going into the fact that occasionally we're secretly a Lord of the Rings podcast.
So, that's right.
Yeah.
Okay.
Cool.
Yeah.
So that was my, you know, you know what I want to say quick too.
I don't want to just drop the thing about our dad hearing bagpipes and then not, not
finish that.
Was it the bagpipes?
No, it was the bagpipes.
Different incident.
Moving right along.
Yeah.
It was a side effect of COVID that like he didn't have any taste or olfactory issues,
but he heard a ringing in his ears that sounded like bagpipe music was playing.
In the middle of the night.
He'd get up at the point for the piper.
But he sometimes sounded like the church organ too.
Like, and sometimes it's like the Phantom of the Opera.
Clearly.
I mean, in that he played an organ.
The organ wasn't a phantom though.
I mean, my understanding is that the organ is real.
I mean, actually my understanding is that the phantom is real.
Yeah.
He's just a man who hides and wears a mask, right?
Right.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think that's enough.
Yeah.
That's probably enough for today.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I have not seen phantoms, but I guess an organ is scarier than bagpipes.
Is it?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I would say so.
I feel very, very strongly that that's the case.
I feel like they're equally scary when you hear them in the middle of the night out of
nowhere.
I disagree because bagpipes could mean anything.
It could mean a celebration.
No.
Bagpipes could mean anything.
That's just not the statement.
Okay.
Bagpipes could mean a variety of things.
Like, you know, like the last time I heard bagpipes was when I was in Ireland for my
brother-in-law's and sister-in-law's wedding.
So like, those were very nice bagpipes.
Yeah.
I guess the most, I've heard bagpipes recently.
I've been irritated because in Edinburgh they have bagpipe street performers and they
just play like the same songs, like same one or two songs over and over and it was like
super crowded.
Now it's just like, oh, bagpipes are too loud.
But I guess I would argue that any mystery music you hear in the night, it doesn't have
any source.
Therefore it couldn't mean anything.
It could specifically mean one thing, which is I don't know, ghost?
Ghost instrument?
No.
I don't know.
I mean, someone walking past your house with bagpipes.
That's a really good point because no one is walking by with a church organ.
All right.
Okay.
I will figure that.
Bagpipes are way more affordable.
Okay.
Yeah.
I feel like we need to be an actual corporeal hyper than a phantom.
Yeah.
Are you thinking about how to pronounce corporeal?
No, no, I knew that.
Oh, okay.
I was just thinking about corporeal instruments again and about the, because I was saying
how in the phantom of the opera, I was pretty sure that the organ was real.
Oh, yes, it is.
But yeah, apparently a symptom of COVID.
Wow.
Yeah.
Well, send us your story and great review, subscribe, and next week, Ascension.
Yeah.
Yeah, you should subscribe because I will feel happy.
I don't know.
That kind of trailed off.
I've been a lot less to be sad.
No, no, don't.
So yeah, subscribe and then, yeah, great and review because I also feel happy.
Yep.
Let us know if you have opinions on which instruments are scariest or anything else.
All right.
Bye.
All right.
Bye.