HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Today's series that we're beginning, we're beginning a series today that has a lot of serious points.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And some sensitive material we're gonna walk through.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One thing I do want to say up top before we get into all of it is that well yes, all of the practices of these various industries that they have done, they're all wrong.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wrong!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See, I'm saying it. They're all completely incorrect.
BEN KISSEL
Good.
MARCUS PARKS
Incorrect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But wouldn't it kinda be nice a little bit if men just came to fix us. Right?
BEN KISSEL
It would be nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just to have the lack of control a little bit. The men come with the white coats, I've talked about this Natalie.
BEN KISSEL
Love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Natalie has expressed permission that if I do, when I do finally-
BEN KISSEL
Straight to camera advice on Instagram.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as I go completely nuts, you call the brute squad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To scoop me up.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Put me... I want old fashioned straitjacket.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to know this is the end of the line for my insanity.
BEN KISSEL
What happened to Henry? Well he started liking Jim Breuer's newer stuff. Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left everyone. Ben hanging out with Henry and Marcus. What's worse than walking on broken glass? Walking on eggshells. And that's what we're gonna be doing in this episode. Can't wait to get into the really upbeat way to kick off 2023, boys. The troubled teen industry part one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Focusing on the Elan School.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We are very interested in this topic. This is very similar to the West Memphis Three that this is a subject that legitimately makes Marcus and I furious.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel's always been a fan.
MARCUS PARKS
Always, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He said something about how like the troubled teen community, those are my constituents!
BEN KISSEL
Technically it's all of us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it's all of us. But this series actually means a lot to us. I think it is cool to start 2023 off with a little bit of a lessons learned.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Sure.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Why not?
BEN KISSEL
Let's get into it.
MARCUS PARKS
Now we've used a ton of sources for this series, so we're gonna wait until the end of the entire fucking thing to name them all.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But for this episode in particular the main source is 'Help At Any Cost' by Maia Maia Szalavitz which is highly recommended for anyone who wants an ocean deep dive into the sadistic industry we're gonna be talking about today.
BEN KISSEL
Szalavitz!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you really want to get into it. But again remember, just think about this, it's scary when it happens to a kid but just the idea of all right you give me my Thorazine sounds kind of nice.
BEN KISSEL
Is this our version of Scared Straight? Is that what we're doing here?
MARCUS PARKS
It is definitely a Scared Straight type. It's scared straight x100. Scared Straight on steroids.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Scared Straight looks at this and is afraid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I also think that Scared Straight a lot of times deal with kids that are authorities sort of like facing crimes, they're sort of in the criminal justice world. Where what we'll find out about the troubled teen industry is that anybody can go.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Also Scared Straight, I've seen the kids today. It didn't work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Saying about how they're homosexual.
MARCUS PARKS
Homosexual.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Disgusting. Disgusting!
BEN KISSEL
They're a little more gender fluid than I remember.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is great. This is a good way to start. Man, we're gonna get lauded for this series.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the standards and practices surrounding the troubled teen industry are some of the most shameful and bizarre in American business. And they're all perfectly legal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's business, baby!
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
The programs that purport to fix these so-called troubled teens are still going full force to this day, although some of the more notorious schools have thankfully folded in recent history.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're learning from the Mormons and you move to the center and that's how you get yourself not shut down anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, less group spankings, more group yankings. That's how you know you've become a church.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Basically the troubled teen industry, which includes everything from bootcamps to wilderness programs to quote "alternative boarding schools", it capitalizes on parents who are both terrified of their children and too lazy or unimaginative to do anything about it themselves.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We are going to be very mad this episode specifically. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
At parents in general?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
BEN KISSEL
Well some kids are truly scary though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's what we'll kind of talk about.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like why we're against the death penalty, right?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're against the death penalty because every once in a while an innocent person works its way through that system and gets murdered by the state.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is all about the fact that yes, sure, there are actual quote unquote "troubled teens" that do need a higher level of help. But a lot of these kids just were there because their parents had the money to put them there.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well these fears were damn near created by the media and government anti-drug hyperbole which reached its height in the 80s with all of Nancy Reagan's 'just say no' bullshit. Going off those highly successful anti-drug campaigns and the talk shows that propped them up, parents came to think that a single joint could turn their teen into a junkie capable of slaughtering the entire family for just one more hit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(metal guitar riff) If only, man.
BEN KISSEL
That's kind of cool, it's not what weed does whatsoever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
I can barely get through Callisto Protocol if I get too stoned. Nancy Reagan, also known for sucking mad dong when she was younger.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man. She sucked that president dumb.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, she did. You're blaming Nancy for his Alzheimer's.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
She sucked all the smart brain cells out.
MARCUS PARKS
And the overblown nature of this hysteria naturally provoked overreaction from weak-minded parents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I know my parents definitely always assumed because my sister was on drugs, I was not, but my sister was good at school, I was not.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I wasn't good at school and I liked to make movies on the side, they all assumed I was on drugs. So my mom would scour my room again and again and again only to find condoms because somebody be fucking. Right?
BEN KISSEL
Well if the condom packs are always full then someone isn't, are they?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were there.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then Jackie's room went unscathed and was full of fucking H and smack and skank and zip.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I can't imagine the horror that is searching your teenage child's room. That's why they're going to get away with anything they want in there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not going in there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You need a bigger Roomba.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, my parents used to find these little charred bits of pornography in my room because one day I had this very large pornography collection-
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And then one day-
BEN KISSEL
You got it from the pedophile down the street, didn't you?
MARCUS PARKS
It wasn't a pedophile, no. It was a child whose dad had abandoned the family and he had left a cooler-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a child pedophile. Literally it's a child version of a pedophile.
MARCUS PARKS
No, his father had left a cooler full of pornography behind and we had divided it amongst us. But every once in a while I'd get like that sort of Christian zap into my brain that was like oh I'm gonna go to hell for masturbating, so I decided to burn my pornography collection.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But as soon as I lit the match and I saw my pornography burning-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My dick! No!
MARCUS PARKS
I immediately dumped over the trash can stamped it all out to save my pornography.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But then every time I took out say a copy of Club Confidential or a Penthouse or Skin-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It smelled like a fucking campfire.
MARCUS PARKS
It smelled like a campfire and the little pieces of charred pornography would fall off and scatter my bedroom.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is this why you like hiking? It's it cause campfires get you hard?
BEN KISSEL
Really hard. Imagine if Heath Ledger's Joker would have done that, wouldn't it have sent a bad message that indeed he was greedy? Also I do like that your friend's dad was like you're gonna want to keep the Cherry cold. Put it in a cooler.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah/ He actually had so much pornography that it overflowed out of the cooler into a secondary trash bag, big black garbage.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, that's the only way to keep it. That's the only way to keep it. Just a big hefty bag full of Butt and Ass magazine.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. If he got it sent in for for crediting like they do comic books, it would have been a 10 out of 10.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You gotta put some backboards in some of this.
BEN KISSEL
That's good.
MARCUS PARKS
Now these parents are sold a bill of goods by the troubled teen industry. The troubled teen industry, they say that the only thing that'll fix your child or in some cases stop them from going bad in the first place is sustained brutality and cruelty, although these practices are sanitized under the term 'tough love'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tough love is an actual business term to them, it's an official term that they use.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it is interesting, maybe we'll find more as we go, not in this episode but later on, I'm doing some research into it, it's kind of interesting to see how many of these tactics that are used to break down the human personality is the same shit that they did in MK Ultra, it's the same shit that they've done across the world it seems-
MARCUS PARKS
Forever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of how to turn somebody into a ghost.
BEN KISSEL
It's the same thing Bobby Knight did when he was the head coach of Indiana University.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah?
BEN KISSEL
Basically.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did group spankings?
BEN KISSEL
He was horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He was the basketball coach at Texas Tech when I was there.
BEN KISSEL
He was very bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think there's a lot of college basketball players all spanking each other. I think there's a lot of that on the internet.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There's also a lot of college basketball shit going down right now. Yeah. Bobby Knight got fired for getting into a fight with the athletic director at a salad bar at the grocery store.
BEN KISSEL
I'd pay money to see it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would.
MARCUS PARKS
Well basically the parents are told that the fault in their child is not in their own parenting but rather in the children themselves who are all out of control monsters ready to destroy society the moment you turn your backs on them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All you gotta do is keep these kids fed, give them their cherry colas, right, give them their screen time.
BEN KISSEL
You think the kids are really into cherry colas these days?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know what kids like. They like their cherry cola. Let the kids vape.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You wanna let the kids vape?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let the kids vape.
BEN KISSEL
Let the kids vape.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what the whole series to me is about.
BEN KISSEL
So we'll rename it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's stressful to be a child! They know that they're going nowhere.
BEN KISSEL
To be honest it is.
MARCUS PARKS
And even outside of that, kids with ADHD, learning disabilities, mental health issues, and various other neurodivergent conditions like autism, they're also sent to these schools.
BEN KISSEL
They tried to send me but I didn't fit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that like physically or the mental breakdown?
BEN KISSEL
Physically, mentally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did they really tried to send you to a reform school?
BEN KISSEL
Oh man, I was ADHD.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we were wondering.
BEN KISSEL
I was diagnosed when I was like 10. I remember I went to a therapist when I was 11 but then she started crying and I had to go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I mean I made my therapist cry several times and then I feel like you should pay me.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You just tell him the hard truth about life. But I still do that to this day, it was great. I got mad at the casino dude in London.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember.
BEN KISSEL
Made him cry.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at these schools, sadistic staffers attempt to quite literally beat, scream, and torture disorders away. But by allowing the use of these so-called tough love techniques, parents are guaranteed that their formerly rebellious and bothersome teenagers will by the end of the program turn into happily obedient and respectful members of society.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And obedient is the key here because it's not really about changing the behavior for somebody from bad to good. I feel like those words, they use that in the explanation and the pitch for these schools-
BEN KISSEL
And it's also very abstract, right? Because if you were a Hitler Youth, being good would be doing something horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly, right. So there is that. But obedient is the key, right. Because that's what it's about. It's about you are not fitting into our current model of society, we want to strip you of everything that's inside of you. They want to strip you into an automaton so that you could go back to being a worker and a buyer.
BEN KISSEL
Right. A drone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I remember sitting in class, there was some medication they experimented on me with and you just sit there and you're like going crazy in your head like a really fast pong game and you're horribly anxious but you just sit there. And so the teacher would be like I think he's doing great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile your brain is going (ping pong sounds).
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It was horrible. It's a torture.
MARCUS PARKS
Christ.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My mom just tied me to the carriage, she just tied me to herself.
BEN KISSEL
That was for the best.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I actually empathize with your mother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this guarantee of success is given credence by the self published success rates that the institutions themselves release which is almost never below 90%.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
BEN KISSEL
See here Jeremy, you got a dirty boot. Jeremy will lick that right up for you.
MARCUS PARKS
In addition, these schools usually have the sign off of various medical professionals, politicians, and judges who all swear that these programs do indeed work. The problem though is that there's never been any sort of reliable study done on the effectiveness of these programs. But what we do know is that many of these teens come out of the experience highly traumatized, developmentally stunted, and suicidal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that it is very telling that when you look up this information on this subject, a lot of what comes out of it is always like WWASP survivor.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Straight Inc survivor. And there's a lot of it. It's weird how like you see more, obviously I remember the way I kind of compare it is to what the Otero's did after the crimes of BTK. Where they've talked about it but that's kind of one family talks a lot about what that one serial killer did to them. Where these people are walking around with whatever the fuck it is that happened to them in these schools. It just destroys people's personalities and it seems the only way to get through it, which is what they want you to do, is you gotta join up. You have to allow it in and become one of your masters in order for you to escape it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Likewise any stories of mistreatment or abuse, those sorts of survivor stories that you're talking about, those are dismissed as lies, the rantings of a few bad apples. In fact very few-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Apples can't talk.
BEN KISSEL
Boom!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Choke on that!
BEN KISSEL
Boom!
MARCUS PARKS
In fact very few of those complaints have led to any sort of investigation and very few of those investigations have ever resulted in even an indictment, much less a conviction. Now as far as those various medical professionals who endorsed these programs go, it's usually the case that they're either connected to the institution in some way financially-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What? Marcus!
BEN KISSEL
Money is a thing?
MARCUS PARKS
Or they're simply on the take. It's like doctors recommending OxyContin because Purdue Pharma gave them a free weekend at Pebble Beach. It's the exact same thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Marcus.
BEN KISSEL
Or a judge getting a kickback from a juvie system.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you guys are both talking like a couple of Russkies, couple of pinko motherfuckers, right.
BEN KISSEL
Russkies? Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because when it comes down to it, isn't the exchange of money, doesn't that make it good?
MARCUS PARKS
It could.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See because they made money.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it's good because they all profited off the industry.
BEN KISSEL
Much like the original Batman 1960-something movie where he zaps everyone into a puddle of dust. Money is speech so we should just be replaced with stacks of bills recorded for two hours, that's the episode.
MARCUS PARKS
That's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just look at us as several bags of quarters.
BEN KISSEL
Of money. It's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And that's your show.
BEN KISSEL
Perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
That's your show. Educational consultants meanwhile are openly paid for recommendations, online endorsements, and enrollments. It's a referral commission.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And almost invariably the politicians who support these programs usually count the owners of the institutions as some of the highest of their donors.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Real Angel donors.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you can just see the politicians going in there, looking at the new crop of potential kids to molest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh they can't wait, dude.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're making perfect little silent members of my abuse clinic.
BEN KISSEL
I was just reading about Dennis Hastert, the 2010 speaker of the house.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He still owes his victims some cash.
MARCUS PARKS
It was wrestling, wasn't that his thing?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it was wrestling.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He took it to another level.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! I feel like wrestling needs to have an age parameter. Same age wrestles same age.
BEN KISSEL
Sure, I could see that.
MARCUS PARKS
12-12, that's fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's good.
MARCUS PARKS
12-36 is bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
12-40, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well unless you're properly coaching. But yeah, he wasn't.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't really always need to put them in a scissor lock, you know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Well for example, when we're talking about political donations, the co founders of the infamous anti-drug program Straight Inc, a favorite of Nancy Reagan-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And one of the worst when it came to psychological abuse, they were powerful members of the Republican Party. They donated $125,000 to George H. W. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign and one of them got an ambassadorship.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. You got to go all the way to Denmark on our dime. But it's also cool to be ambassador because then you can legally commit crimes.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's awesome.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Speaking of government, if we go just a little further back into American history we can see that the sort of punishment-based schools that make up the troubled teen industry, they have a long tradition in this country, although they were started not to correct behavior but to annihilate culture. While much of the attack therapy techniques we'll be discussing later came from more modern sources, the physical and sexual abuse components used in the troubled teen industry have many of the same hallmarks as the American Indian boarding schools of yore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And Canada had them as well.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's these places where they go and they decide that we're going to destroy your entire culture via destroying the children of your culture.
MARCUS PARKS
For hundred of years the American government used these boarding schools to stamp out any vestiges of native identity in the pursuit of assimilating the indigenous American population into white American society while paradoxically keeping them on the reservations away from white American society.
BEN KISSEL
And what they did, they would look at nature, they would look at a beautiful tree and the Native American would say what a beautiful tree, giving of life. And they'd say no, boo the tree!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Boo!
BEN KISSEL
Boo! Oh you like nature? Boo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You look at that tree and be like fuck you, tree! You're not a cabinet yet!
BEN KISSEL
Fuck you, tree. What are you good for, tree?
MARCUS PARKS
Well at these boarding schools, indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and put into institutions that were almost always run by, guess who?
BEN KISSEL
A wonderful loving mother.
MARCUS PARKS
The Catholic Church!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! They did it!
BEN KISSEL
Oh the Catholics. Good for them.
MARCUS PARKS
And these children had their hair cut short, they weren't allowed to speak their own languages under threat of severe physical abuse, and even their names were taken away and completely changed to something more Anglo.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they do it from outside in.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I also kind of had a weird epiphany about Catholics the other day and I realized that the tension within the Catholic Church really has to be quite a bit. It's like every week you go, you see this super hot guy in front of you, right.
BEN KISSEL
Always, always.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In paris, we went to the Catholic-
MARCUS PARKS
Jesus, you're talking about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You look at him like Jesus is fucking in Paris, it moved. My dick moved.
BEN KISSEL
Your dick did move. Well he's powerful, he's loving. Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause in Paris they made him kind of androgynous too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He looked like Prince. It's crazy. You see this sexy guy with his brown nipples.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's got that cool scra on his side and shit.
BEN KISSEL
He's got the V shape.
MARCUS PARKS
He's got the V.
BEN KISSEL
Like D'Angelo.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you're like look but don't touch. Taste but don't swallow! Devil's advocate.
BEN KISSEL
I don't like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's got you jumping from one foot to the next!
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's up there, laughing his sick motherfucking ass off!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Well this has nothing to do with the topic. You actually derailed the entire thing to talk about your sexual attraction to the French Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just saying.
MARCUS PARKS
And you posited it as like I figured out something about the Catholics today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am one! It's in me!
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as these boarding schools went, unclean and overpopulated living conditions contributed to widespread and potentially fatal disease. Children were underfed, bounties were offered for students who tried to run away, and many of them died by suicide at the school. To add insult to injury, the school would often force students to lay their deceased friends in a coffin and bury the body themselves in the school cemetery.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. That's not a good school.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, no. No school should have a fucking cemetery! A football field.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless Wednesday Addams goes to your school, you should not have a place where everyone normally buries the children.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's not good. You're right.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
To that point, the Department of the Interior knows of 53 marked and unmarked burial sites that are home to more than 500 children and teenagers who died between 1819-1969 when the last of these schools were closed.
BEN KISSEL
Bro, that's the horror movie I want to see. You moved the tombstones but you didn't move the bodies!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude.
BEN KISSEL
The revenge of these children.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But yeah again, it was a troubled teen, troubled teenage ghosts? Technically sometimes they come back.
BEN KISSEL
Troubled Teenage Zombie is an awesome movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we can connect to it, it's relatable.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's My Boyfriend's Back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa! Interesting. It is.
BEN KISSEL
It's nice that he came back.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well as far as sexual abuse goes, these schools were among the worst when it came to abuse from nuns and priests because at these boarding schools it was all done out in the open to the point where it was coordinated.
BEN KISSEL
You just see the nun like the landlord from Kingpin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's weird too because again dehumanizing the kids.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're already dehumanized because they were indigenous, right. They were already we need to make them people, that's a part of what this is, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're raising them up.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so they felt like oh, we have a free pass on these kids.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because nobody cares.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
At some schools nuns and priests would rotate children and teenagers among staff members because they would get tired of a kid.
BEN KISSEL
For sex.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, for sex.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
They would get tired of a kid and be like why don't you take them for a little while?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God.
MARCUS PARKS
And then they'd just kind of trade them around. Now once these kids left these schools, they were entirely unequipped to live in either American or tribal society. In addition, they carried rarely treated PTSD that often lead to lifelong struggles with addiction and/or suicide.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And as we'll see time and time again in this series, it's because they did not really think of kids as little people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just thought that you're an automaton until you get to go die in the war when you're 18 years old.
BEN KISSEL
And I'm sure we'll get into the pipeline to prison because that's probably the only place they could function.
MARCUS PARKS
It's extremely short term thinking in every way whatsoever. It's basically sending them back so they can stay out of their parents hair until they turn 18.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, and then they're everybody else's problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And while the systemic annihilation of hundreds of cultures is of course entirely different from the simple greed behind the troubled teen industry, I think the comparison still holds because both used many of the same physical mental and emotional punishments with the ultimate goal of assimilation quote "for their own good".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never is.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the biggest difference between the American Indian boarding schools and the troubled teen schools is that in most cases the parents voluntarily decide to send their children away to the troubled teen schools. Mostly these parents in upper and middle class families paid out of pocket with tuition that's sometimes on par with Ivy League universities.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Straight Inc for one year per student was $72,000.
BEN KISSEL
Holy crap.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is like 60s, 70s money.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's incredible. Just give it to the kid!
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
BEN KISSEL
Have them move out.
MARCUS PARKS
Nah.
BEN KISSEL
Be like here's $72,000, go.
MARCUS PARKS
Get out of here. Get out of my hair, get out of here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how you have a million Andy Warhols.
BEN KISSEL
That would be a nightmare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Andy Warhol was a poor boy from Pittsburgh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know. I know, I've seen his grave. I've been there.
MARCUS PARKS
How is it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's nice.
BEN KISSEL
It's very nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's there. It's not moving around a lot.
BEN KISSEL
He's a poor boy, that's how he knew so much about soup.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they say we can't make the subject funny! So many people say they can't make it funny.
BEN KISSEL
Andy Warhol, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these schools, the ones that are mostly paid out of pocket, these are like the infamous CEDU institutions which are now being publicly attacked by their most high profile alumnus, Paris Hilton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
No kidding.
MARCUS PARKS
Who was basically shuttled straight from a sexually abusive troubled teen program into reality television back in the 90s.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was how we used to make our movie stars back in the day, kids. They weren't these fucking nepo babies like they're all coming out now. Paris Hilton was born into money like a good celebrity needs to be done.
BEN KISSEL
Well she's the Hilton family but she was never a movie star, she was in the new House of Wax, I do remember the audience cheered when she died. It was a great death scene.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a good death scene.
BEN KISSEL
She did work with some farm animals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well she also played up the character quite a bit. What we now know about Paris Hilton was that a lot of what we saw of her was kind of a creation of hers.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually an interesting video recently where you saw the difference between her Paris Hilton voice and her real voice, where she was on the phone with somebody, her voice is like two octaves deeper.
BEN KISSEL
Hi, this is Paris.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, this is Perry! Get those crocs out of my fucking house, now!
MARCUS PARKS
Other schools however, besides CEDU, they are able to get in on the insurance scam and make their money that way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good old fashioned American way. Actually I've been dealing with lot of insurance recently and insurance scams must be very hard. Just get a job.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the thing is that they're working with the insurance industry.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The ultimate scam.
MARCUS PARKS
You're trying to get money from the insurance industry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Which they don't want to do.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
They were trying to make money for the insurance industry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's very easy to do. They love that about you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they really like that. Other schools took government subsidies when judges shuttled lower income teens into these programs as a quote unquote "alternative" to incarceration. But to that point, one kid who spent time in both an alternative school and a maximum security prison said that the school was actually far worse because at least in prison, which is one of the most dehumanizing places in existence, he said he felt like more of a human being.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because the most insidious thing of all is that they turn the kids against themselves.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Lord of the Flies.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps the most incredible part though is that some parents send their kids to these schools just in case, because the industry says that even if you got a good kid who's just a little rebellious, it couldn't hurt to put a stop to it before the rebellion gets worse. It's like killing a fly with a hammer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very difficult to kill a fly with a hammer.
BEN KISSEL
It really is. What rebellion are we talking about here? Are they listening to Janis Joplin?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's everywhere.
BEN KISSEL
Cause Each parent has a different idea of what rebellion is.
MARCUS PARKS
Exactly. That's the whole thing, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's like it might be hey, he's staying out all night.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
It might be she smokes, it might be I found a pack of cigarettes in her purse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Which is again normal teenage offenses. And then it goes up to kids that are serial rapists.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it could be he sexually assaulted three girls.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And all of these kids are all in the same fucking place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
Now evidence shows that grouping teams together and labeling them all as deviants actually enhances antisocial behavior. And there are countless stories of healthy teenagers with natural rebellious streaks leaving these schools as shattered human beings. In one case, an average kid named Fred Collins was forcibly enrolled in the aforementioned Straight Inc program when he was 19 because his brother had the drug problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They literally just lumped him in, thinking like oh he learned from his brother.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile they then drops them into, from what I can see Straight Inc was rough.
MARCUS PARKS
Really rough.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It sounds like it. But even at 19 his parents were able to send him?
MARCUS PARKS
I suppose so.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean that's the strange thing. I had that same question.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe he signed off, I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, maybe. But Straight Inc is one of those things where they sit you down in a group being like you're a drug addict. And this kid Fred was like no, I'm not, not really. I think I've smoked weed a couple of times.
BEN KISSEL
(whispering) Sounds like a typical drug addict. Denial is the first step.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what they would do and it would slowly escalate more and more and more to screaming. They're screaming like you're a fucking drug addict! You're a drug addict! And you've got adults screaming at you, you've got kids screaming at you. Until finally you're gaslit enough where you admit I'm a drug addict but then you've also got this cognitive dissonance of but I don't remember doing drugs but they're telling me I'm a drug addict and I'm a drug addict.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And it breaks their fucking brain.
BEN KISSEL
Little do they know I'm actually a public masturbator. Yes, I got away with it again!
MARCUS PARKS
Well after four months, Collins escaped in a panic, he believed that he was a drug addict after four months.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my gosh.
MARCUS PARKS
And such was his anxiety that when a friend of his sheltered him after the escape, Fred pulled a rifle on a guy who showed up at the front door wearing a white coat. And he thought oh fuck, the white coats are here to get me, that guy's from Straight Inc, he's going to fucking bring me back. And he put a rifle in a stranger's face.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez. They almost made a murderer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now part of the reason why these places are so horrific is not just because of the policies and philosophies they have, although those are terrible. Mostly it's because of who the organizations choose to enforce those policies and philosophies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting because even saying organizations who choose when a lot of times these guys that showed up to create these organizations are like all right, who's gonna be the one that's in control of all these kids? And then he pulls up a mirror and he's like looks like it's you, Barry. Let's go get these kids!
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I mean what kind of sociopath would want this job?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
An actual sociopath.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like you literally have to be a fucked up person.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean if you think about it, as far as sociopaths who are attracted to positions of authority, you know there are sociopaths who are attracted to being a police officer.
BEN KISSEL
COs and stuff like that.
MARCUS PARKS
Some of them go to COs, yeah. But this is like below COs. This is even below juvenile hall.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my gosh.
MARCUS PARKS
And it's also far less-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause it's private enterprise too.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not regulated in any way whatsoever. Professional psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists, doctors of any kind, they were rarely ever on the staffs of these institutions because they're too fucking expensive. And likewise the people who create these programs, they're just some average fuckhead who's making it up as they go along.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we're saying this blanketly across the board because it comes up with every single one of these groups that you read about. It's just a businessman, some other guy.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really is just that. And then a lot of times it's somebody that's already been a part of one of these programs to begin with and then starts up their own brand new world of pain.
BEN KISSEL
I just think that Andrew Tate has a lot of good ideas and that's why I'm applying for this job. I think that I can teach, I know what the kids need. I will be a great leader for these children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, everybody gotta know alphas and betas.
BEN KISSEL
Betas and alphas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
See the point of these programs from a business perspective is pure greed. You exploit fear and you justify it by saying you're making society a better place. But many times the people who run and staff these places, they gain genuine joy from abusing others.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
See the people who are attracted to these schools are either bullies looking to be in positions of easy authority, the easiest authority there is over children-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Or they're former students of the programs who quote "graduate" into jobs at the very institutions who abused them in the first place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how you know it works!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We just keep making more of them.
MARCUS PARKS
If I may use a pop culture reference, it's pretty much Kamp Krusty. It's Simpsons Season 4, Episode 1.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's right.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. And what a wonderful pop reference that is from Season 4 of The Simpsons. That show has been on for 30 years which means that's a 26 year old reference.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's what we know here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what we know.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it works perfectly.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Wow. That was 1997.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually it was more like 1994.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus fucking Christ.
BEN KISSEL
Great. Thank you for the caveat to get pop culturey.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just gonna go dig a grave.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually in 1994, that was the season when Conan O'Brien was in charge.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's also Marge vs the monorail in that season. It's one of the classics.
BEN KISSEL
Speaking of youth, I'm happy you're connecting with the youth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is what kids like. Cherry cola, ages old Simpsons. And I wanna talk about the Lunch Lady that Chris Farley used to do.
BEN KISSEL
Oh great sketch, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Great sketch. But in that episode the bullies are the counselors, abuse is the norm, and the entire thing is run by a guy named Mr. Black who makes toast to the concept of evil in pursuit of profit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's probably a direct, it was probably inspired by these places.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, Mr. Black. Concerning the staff at one alternative school, five resident directors responsible for 45 kids each, they were all graduates of the program. But of course they're like 19, 20, 21.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
They have no college degrees, they have no experience in social services. They were just kids who had very recently been abused and were immediately put into positions to heap that abuse upon more kids.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, now you do it.
MARCUS PARKS
And it gets worse every single time.
BEN KISSEL
Of course, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as their techniques go, these troubled teen programs use tortures that are banned by the Geneva Convention.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
They use beatings, extended isolation, restraint, public humiliation, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, it's fucking Abu Ghraib.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, it's what WWASP, which we're gonna get into now, it's like they have with the hangout room.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this of course is nothing to say of the emotional and mental tortures these kids are put through. But the justification behind these punishments can be summed up in the philosophy of a school called WWASP which closed in 2006. In WWASP, seminars were actually held for parents before the kids were sent to the school with the goal of brainwashing the parents into believing that the brutal techniques used at WWASP were justified.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well of all of them, they worked the parents harder than a lot of the other groups.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
WWASP did have it. Because there's a lot of testimony of these parents, they hold these big group dinners and it's them pumping the parents, being like we're going to change your kids! We're gonna do all this stuff. And you have all these parents being like I don't know what to do with my son, he won't eat spaghetti.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need to get him back on the spaghetti train. We're Italian, it's racist that he won't.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then immediately now he's getting group beat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez. Mostly when parents go to events like this they just subscribe to a timeshare.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think actually there might have been some timeshare mixed in.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, there may have been a little MLM coming up as well. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe some swinging.
BEN KISSEL
Marcus, that's just you again projecting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's fun. No, it's fun.
BEN KISSEL
It's a projection.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If parents are gonna be on vacation...
MARCUS PARKS
I'm just saying I've seen some documentaries where there's some swinging going on at certain cruises.
BEN KISSEL
No, that's your projection. That's not what we're talking about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Since we got married though, don't you see that there are more swingers?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There are way a lot more swingers than you think that there are. And then you'd be surprised.
BEN KISSEL
It's because you guys are a group of lonely, sad people on the inside, not you guys necessarily yet, but it does happen. What if we open it up just a little bit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's always nice. There's always some ugly dude and his hot wife.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, your wives are gonna love that. That's great. Wouldn't you rather it be a hot dude? Because then you have the image of just (panting).
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like hot dudes get laid as much as ugly men. I feel like actually it really plays out to the same.
BEN KISSEL
I don't. Okay. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fernando, don't you look at me. I think that if you do the math-
BEN KISSEL
It's really not the truth.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna sort it our.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not the truth at all. Well WWASP justified their beatings using one simple phrase. They said there's no right or wrong, there's just what works and what doesn't.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, there's right and wrong. There's right and wrong. Because you know what I ding, because with bees, bees are fun and a good collaborative insect.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But a wasp is mean. A wasp is like the school shooter of bugs.
BEN KISSEL
They're very mean. You gotta turn the lights off and then they can't fly.
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They can't fly at night?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have you been talking to fucking Smokey the Bear? What are you talking about?
BEN KISSEL
Bees don't fly at night.
MARCUS PARKS
No, bees or wasps?
BEN KISSEL
Wasps and bees.
MARCUS PARKS
They don't fly at night?
BEN KISSEL
They don't fly at night.
MARCUS PARKS
Why not?
BEN KISSEL
Because they fucking don't like to fly at night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can they makes the troubled Teen industry series work?
BEN KISSEL
I'm serious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can they figure out the proper angles to joke about?
BEN KISSEL
This is common knowledge!
MARCUS PARKS
Huh. Most bees, including honeybees and bumblebees, can't fly at night.
BEN KISSEL
They don't fly at night. They chill out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're saying don't. He's saying can't.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. They don't because they can't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm thinking they won't. I think these bees are fucking lazy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Saying oh busy as a bee. Not at night I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Bees don't fly at night, wasps fly at night but not well.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry I did this.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I brought bees into this.
BEN KISSEL
That's what I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as an example of what quote unquote "worked" for WWASP, students were commonly punished with handwritten essays that ran up to 150,000 words.
BEN KISSEL
Dang.
MARCUS PARKS
It's roughly 300 pages.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, I wish I could write like that.
BEN KISSEL
That's not an essay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The fucking output.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well students were required to sit in a dark room in a chair with no back support for 8 hours a day, constantly writing until they'd reached 300 pages. And sometimes for no apparent reason a staff member would walk in, rip up the essay, and make the students start over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's almost like you were never supposed to complete it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
When it came to physical punishment, WWASP students would be made to stand, kneel, sit, or lay on a cement floor without moving for 30 minutes at a time for 8 hours a day. The cement floor was also uneven which made any position painful.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This was called the hangout room.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you'd sit there, right, you literally would lay on your back and you weren't allowed to speak to anybody else. Because with all of these issues, they were all inspired by Synanon and these various groups and so they all had hierarchies. So it's always you come in and you work your way up at certain levels.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And a lot of this was done to equalize everybody to them, right. So you'd go into the hangout room, anybody of any level would go in there but they're not allowed to speak, they'd be fed beans and then just be kept up all night.
BEN KISSEL
There'll be some noises going on.
MARCUS PARKS
Because of the beans.
BEN KISSEL
Because of the beans. It's the magical fruit. Even though I believe it's a vegetable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I thought it was the crying because of the gas.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think they're allowed to cry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no they're not. A lot of them, boiled chicken was a big meal at these places.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh sad.
MARCUS PARKS
WWASP was big on boiled chicken.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's good for dogs.
MARCUS PARKS
But that was dinner.
BEN KISSEL
No seasoning.
MARCUS PARKS
Because that's the thing is you'd have rice all the rest of the time but then you'd get that boiled chicken which was supposed to be a reward for surviving the day.
BEN KISSEL
I mean that's not the worst thing we've heard but that's bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the top two for me.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, sad. Boiled chicken. Sad.
MARCUS PARKS
And even outside of punishments, teens at a WWASP facility in Tijuana had calluses and blisters on their feet from being made to run laps without shoes. All of them were extremely dirty and a lot of them were kept in dog cages.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
In the worst example, one kid was made to lay prone in his underwear for three nights while fire ants crawled all over over him. If he dared move, he'd get shocks from a cattle prod.
BEN KISSEL
No, that's gonna keep them off the crystal methamphetamine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely.
BEN KISSEL
That's how that's gonna work, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the cattle proud touch that really keeps a man off the marijuana.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
But with all these extremely dodgy and dangerous behaviors happening at all these schools and with extremely unqualified people staffing them, it was inevitable that some kids were and are going to die. When it comes to fatalities though, no part of the troubled teen industry is deadlier than the wilderness programs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The wilderness programs scare the living fuck out of me.
BEN KISSEL
I saw a 20/20 episode on these.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These things scare the living shit out of me. It's literally if Mengele ran the boy scouts.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just go on marches.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is very scary.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And denied resources, denied food. Even though it's right there in front of you. It's full torture.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now one of the first wilderness programs was Challenger.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never name something after a shuttle that blows up.
BEN KISSEL
No, that was the inspiration.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because it was named in 1987 right after the Challenger blew up.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe give it some time, give it some time. This is a new car, have you checked out the Honda 9/11? It's incredible. It just keeps going and going. It's a 22 year long.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right? Wow. I heard it randomly explodes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Challenger was founded by Steve Cartisano in 1987.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not trusting anyone, not to judge but I'm sorry, I'm not gonna trust an Italian on this. I just don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You would be really surprised. Especially yeah, outside? Yeah if this was a gnocchi camp I'd be like okay.
BEN KISSEL
You see that plane? I'm gonna shoot that plane that's looking at you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But no, there's a lot of Italians in this whole series.
MARCUS PARKS
There really are. Actually the Italians kinda run the game if I'm being honest.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we'll get there.
BEN KISSEL
I want a Norwegian man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no. Norwegians are very severe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in 1987, Steve and his co investor Oliver North, yes that Oliver North-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
The actor? Wait, no. Ollie North? As in the Iran-Contra?
MARCUS PARKS
Ollie North.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Ollie North, yes. He was his co investor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. It's not good.
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
There's a lot of people involved in this shit. They found that they could maximize profits by just putting kids outside.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, maximizing profits.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. You don't have to build a structure, you just put them outside.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. The money makes it right. Which is why we are currently recording in a tent in a parking lot outside of a Vons.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we want everyone to know we are thrifty.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In addition, Steve could rationalize denying food to kids and giving them shit equipment, that's a survival thing. It's part of the treatment.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's how you survive in 1986 America. Yeah, that's a great idea.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's called how to make someone homeless.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just very scary. This is extremely scary.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And even though the cost of one program was upwards of $12,000 per kid, Steve's untrained counselors were paid only $800 a month.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God.
MARCUS PARKS
See by going on talk shows like Donahue and Geraldo, Steve made his own good publicity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. You see that's the thing, right? These kids, they come out here, the best part about it is that nothing makes a kid better for society than living amongst struggling with squirrels for long periods of time. I find that the squirrels rehabilitate the kids on their own because they look and they understand, oh now we're on a pine cone economy. You gotta get the pine cones. How hard is that? You gotta go find the pine cones, you gotta keep the pine cones from other people.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are my pine cones better than yours? You gotta think about that.
BEN KISSEL
Thanks for being on the show. Up next, satanists who like to fuck pineapples. Welcome to Donahue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Save those pineapples though because yeah they're fucked but they can still be food.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as I'm sure anyone who watched daytime TV in the 80s and 90s knows, daytime talk shows loved troubled teen programs.
BEN KISSEL
Oh loved them.
MARCUS PARKS
How many fucking bootcamp episodes have you seen?
BEN KISSEL
Dude, I watched, there was just a clip on my Instagram about the kid who the guy's like you want me to be your father? Do you want me to be your father?'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's just like I never had a dad.
BEN KISSEL
The kid literally says yes. And the guy's like well that kinda derails the entire thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just scared me straight, kid.
BEN KISSEL
It was just so sad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, we did this joke on the live show about the concept of Oprah pumping in all the satanic panic at fucking 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wondered why I'd come home and my mom would just be like we're going through your things now! She's just getting pumped full of anti-kid propaganda all day.
BEN KISSEL
I think my mom cough syrup away because of a 20/20 episode and I was like I'm stealing food!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sick, mom!
BEN KISSEL
It's okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these talk programs, they did more to publicize the quote unquote "benefits" of the troubled teen program more than anyone and they did it for free.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now using Steve Cartisano's model, a woman named Gayle Palmer who had no outdoor experience or training of any kind, she opened her own program called Summit Quest and she upped the price to $13,900 per kid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's because of the quest.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your honor, you're gonna want to join this quest.
BEN KISSEL
Quest.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, she's got a writer on staff.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Because of Gayle's inexperience, a 15 year old girl named Michelle Sutton died of dehydration just months after the program was established.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah because we worked really, really hard not to be forest dwellers anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're just not that anymore. But again, it's this punishment thing, it's this idea of we're gonna make you strong. But kids die though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well there's something also about the 80s, it makes me think of Dream Warriors. So everyone kind of has the puffy hair and hoop earrings and stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
These are cool chicks and dudes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But a hallmark of wilderness programs is it's routinely denying food or water for days at a time.
BEN KISSEL
It is really stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Water is a good thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Water is a good thing, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well again, they're trying to break your spirit. They do what they do in cults and what we did to interrogate people is that you fucking take them out where they don't know where the hell they are.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You disorient them, you keep them up all night, you make sure that they're dehydrated, hungry, you walk them for days. You do all this shit just because in your mind you're like no, being a zombie is good.
BEN KISSEL
On a much less severe level, back in the day when they were doing football practices, no water. You don't want water, water's for pussies. One water break every two hours. They did stop that practice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because kids are dying.
BEN KISSEL
Because they realized water is good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Makes you stronger.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know what it is about having water that makes you weak. Why are you a pussy if you're thirsty?
BEN KISSEL
Was it like that for you too?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It absolutely was like that.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know why. I don't understand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ed was telling me about a thing called bull in the ring that they used to do too where they also used to beat the shit out of each other and shit.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's fun, that's fine.
BEN KISSEL
You need to do it hydrated.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Hydrated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you gotta do it hydrated. Yeah, every two hours they'd let us go over to the pipe.
BEN KISSEL
For like 10 seconds.
MARCUS PARKS
It was just a big piece of PVC pipe-
BEN KISSEL
With holes in it.
MARCUS PARKS
With holes in it. And they'd turn on the hose.
BEN KISSEL
The hose.
MARCUS PARKS
So it's basically yeah, just a bunch kids-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're getting water like a bunch of yard dogs?
MARCUS PARKS
Bunch of animals, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. And then if you take more than 10 seconds your buddy is like hurry up, man. We only got two minutes!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was in drama with the girls.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they were in their underwear and it was awesome. And I was in West Side Story.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Just a one day at one of these camps would be good for you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. See that's the thing, I did both.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You can have the best of both worlds, man.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah. That Abilene, Texas community theater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hi y'all! Like me showing up. Hi everybody, hi! watering pat. You come, you want to gossip. You got nothing. Nice to say. You just say about.
MARCUS PARKS
One act play was a legitimate competition, we used to do competitive theater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what we used to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You were in thespians like I was.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. Oh my god, how many fucking productions of Steel Magnolias did I fucking see in high school? It was very popular.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, who wants to take a whack at Weezer? That's Steel Magnolias.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Stop talking about me like I'm not here. Steel Magnolias.
BEN KISSEL
I've never seen it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the deaths, let's get back to the deaths.
BEN KISSEL
Yes please.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes please, thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
The deaths in these wilderness programs, they were explained away by Steve Cartisano as an acceptable quote unquote "window of loss".
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The thing about a window of loss is that things get lost in that thing all the time.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah? It's a person.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And honestly I keep telling these guys, we gotta shut this window. And they don't listen, they're so busy spanking and not drinking.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
Well by Cartisano's reckoning as he told a staffer who later spoke out, they'd be helping so many kids in these wilderness programs that it was worth losing a few.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly it's kind of nice because then it's like first I had 12 and it's like ugh, I gotta take 12 of you to the bathroom?
BEN KISSEL
Right. That's a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Once I'm down to like 8, I can have them all piss in a row and I can just watch them as a group.
BEN KISSEL
It's easier that way, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
But that didn't explain Cartisano's Puerto Rican facility where kids were found bound and gagged with nooses tied around their necks.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel that's extreme.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's extreme.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, a little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's the thing, that Michelle Sutton death by dehydration? Written off as a tragic accident. No one got any charges brought against them.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Even though she hadn't had a drink of water in seven days.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
But tragic accident.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But she was a kid, don't worry because they had signed a monetary contract.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See again, it's nobody's fault because they signed this incredible contract that just makes it all legal.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that amazing?
MARCUS PARKS
Well I don't think you can survive seven days without water but she had very little water.
BEN KISSEL
I think it was three days or something, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not good.
BEN KISSEL
No, it's not.
MARCUS PARKS
Seven days to die of dehydration, yeah, on the very small amount of water that she was given every other day. But Cartisano, he was taken down less than a month after Michelle Sutton's death when a kid in his care died from dehydration and hypothermia.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See, okay. One that we can all attribute to god, right?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because sometimes god sucks, right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this second one, it's on me.
BEN KISSEL
That one is your fault?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This one's on me.
BEN KISSEL
So is it the dehydration or is it the hypothermia you're taking the blame for?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just gonna say let's just call it a Mulligan.
BEN KISSEL
A Mulligan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just need to redo on that kid if I could but everyone's saying I can't cause they're dead.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he was charged with negligent homicide but he fled the country and he's never been seen since.
BEN KISSEL
So he's still alive.
MARCUS PARKS
Hasn't been seen in decades.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He might be dead now.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe.
BEN KISSEL
This is the 80s? Maybe. How old was he when he was doing all this stuff?
MARCUS PARKS
No idea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
40s? What do you think?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Ballpark it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean technically if he moved to the mediterranean they regularly lived til their 90s thanks to the olive oil, the seeded plants. Olives themselves are very healthy for you.
MARCUS PARKS
He probably went to Costa Rica. He had schools in Costa Rica. So yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We should ask your parents.
BEN KISSEL
They're now deceased. My grandparents are both deceased.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I guess we don't have anyone else to ask about how to flee a country.
BEN KISSEL
No we don't.
MARCUS PARKS
For various reasons.
BEN KISSEL
Various reasons.
MARCUS PARKS
Well perhaps the worst of these deaths came from a program called North Star where a kid named Aaron Bacon endured weeks of torture at the hands of counselors. Bacon eventually developed an ulcer that ate through his stomach and poisoned his blood and organs with intestinal bacteria.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Now he may have survived that but Aaron was also suffering from hypothermia from being denied a sleeping bag in freezing weather, malnutrition and dehydration from being denied food and water, exhaustion from hikes that would last up to 8 miles, mental instability from being gaslit concerning his conditions, and infections from sores resulting from wearing boots that were purposefully two sizes too small.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because again it's supposed to teach him some kind of character which it doesn't.
BEN KISSEL
No, of course it doesn't. What's the lesson? What do you learn?
MARCUS PARKS
Nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing.
MARCUS PARKS
Tragically Aaron could have been saved until literally the last hour of his life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
And I say that with all seriousness, literally the last hour. Basic medical treatment, an IV, maybe some Pepcid AC.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But that wasn't the concern of the sadistic staff in charge of his well being. In an example of what really mattered, one of the staffers wrote this in his journal 10 days into the journey.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I finally wiped the smile off that Bacon boy's face. I've finally broken his spirit."
MARCUS PARKS
And then he died 10 days later.
BEN KISSEL
Congratulations. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually think technically if you remove Bacon and put Zebrowski in there, I think that's what Lorne Michaels wrote when he sent me feedback from my Saturday Night Live audition.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You can really relate to this. You auditioning in a fully heated, well hydrated room.
MARCUS PARKS
In Manhattan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm the victim here. Okay?
MARCUS PARKS
Now Aaron Bacon's parents did try working with investigators to shut down the program that killed their son but the whole thing fell apart when their primary witness, a staffer named Mike Hill, was himself accused of sexually abusing a teenager in the program in exchange for extra food.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Again, it went straight to like prison rules.
BEN KISSEL
Of course. So bribery, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now since Aaron Bacon's death, at least 12 teens that we know of have died in wilderness programs. 4 were related to heat and dehydration, while 8 were related to restraints.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, my buddy went to one of these and he did not come back the same.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
How long was he there for?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to say he was there for a summer.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because then I didn't see him for a long time. It was rough, it was bad. It was not good.
BEN KISSEL
Brutal.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In one camp, a 65lb 12 year old was killed when his 320lb counselor sat on him and refused to get up because the counselor thought the kid was playing possum when he stopped moving.
BEN KISSEL
That's where all the fucking food's going! You got a 320lb counselor? You know he's got a golf cart. Move on kids, honk honk. Honk honk.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The thing about a rascal is that it's such a fun sounding thing for a thing that's not.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No. Not at all.
BEN KISSEL
320lbs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's nothing rascally about it.
BEN KISSEL
Looking at a fat fucking charge as you're starving and dehydrated must... And then he's sitting on you?!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's sitting on you. Yeah, it's all bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But while the wilderness programs are certainly the deadliest genre in the troubled teen industry, the most infamous are its boarding schools. In particular the one that has gained the most negative attention in the last 15 years or so is Elan School.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now I think the Elan School got as much heat as it did is because of how much publicity it had gotten in the first place. It was such a big deal that the fall was appropriately large as well.
MARCUS PARKS
For 40 years, from the early 70s until very recently-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Too recently.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Elan School subjected thousands of children to daily abuse, torture, dehumanization, and terror, both psychological and physical.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And not like the fun way, not like when you go to Halloween Horror Nights.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I learned nothing from them either.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it is fun to do. I like the mazes but I don't learn anything.
BEN KISSEL
It's a good time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well billed as an alternative school that specializes in behavioral modification for teens, Elan School was located in rural Maine because Maine had lax regulations and laws regarding alternative schools.
BEN KISSEL
It's an alternative school. You see how some schools, they educate you. We don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We de-educate you.
BEN KISSEL
De-educate you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again yeah, Maine must have a crazy fucking... The regulations there must be so lax because it's like the pet cemeteries are out of control.
BEN KISSEL
Oh absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have you ever been to an antique shop that sells you your innermost secrets but then you end up betraying everybody you know and love because it turns out the guy who owns an antique shop is the devil himself?
BEN KISSEL
It's really scary stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No regulation.
BEN KISSEL
Have you ever heard their Senator Susan Collins talk? I think that she might be in charge of one of these.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who's Susan Collins?
BEN KISSEL
(screeching) She talks like this.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in other words, everything you're about to hear was for the most part totally legal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That means it's right. So episode's over. Done!
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
These kids all between the ages of 12-18, they came from all backgrounds. They were poor juvenile offenders sentenced to Elan School by judges, they were from wealthy families who just wanted to offload troublemakers, sometimes it was just kids who were having trouble in school because of learning disabilities or kids who were depressed, mentally ill, and/or autistic.
BEN KISSEL
Or just called being a teenager.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Basically it was anyone who couldn't fit in with traditional society the way that their parents wanted them to fit in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really is the entire cast of the Dream Warriors.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
For the low, low price of $60,000 per student-
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Children were sent to Elan School forcibly more often than not through what's known as a teen escort company.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now Kissel, don't get too excited.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not what you think it is.
BEN KISSEL
No, it's not? I was going to call it right up there. Again as I joked about it in a previous live show, teen. You got two years, 18, 19. That's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well teen escort companies are perfectly legal businesses that kidnap children from their homes in the middle of the night so they can whisk them away to boarding schools in the most traumatic ways possible. And it's all done with the complete consent of their parents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine getting into this business?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Insane.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just deciding to start your own. Being like you know what I've always wanted to do? Put children in straitjackets. Every day I woke up as a kid I wrote in my journal, oh I wish I could subjugate children to torture.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Kidnap kids and then drive them for days at a time while they whimpered and cried and screamed in the back while I hit them over and over again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Easy money.
BEN KISSEL
Easy money. I would say they are not going to be the most sympathetic but I'm sure there are some abusers as well that had some deep trauma from all of this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh of course.
BEN KISSEL
The turnover for the teen abduction business must be kind of high.
MARCUS PARKS
Gotta be. As of 2004, there were at least 20 teen escort companies operating in the United States.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And they could earn anywhere between $5,000-$8,000 per kid depending on how far away the kid had to be transported.
BEN KISSEL
You break it down by the numbers actually.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You break it down like gas money?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's pretty good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now teens were mostly picked up in the middle of the night to take advantage of their initial disorientation and to minimize confrontation and risk.
BEN KISSEL
If they were really dysfunctional juveniles, they'd be up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They wouldn't be in the bedroom.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Commonly the kidnappers used violence, handcuffs, they'd hogtie the kids with cable wires, whatever was necessary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And they also do it because there's also a psychological edge especially in Elan where you are no longer in control of your life.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The second those guys roll into your bedroom, you don't have autonomy anymore, you belong to us. So it is to dehumanize you, to lift you up like a dog.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What kind of parent could do that? But anyway...
MARCUS PARKS
No. And that's the thing, it's not only all legal, it is sanctioned by the Supreme Court.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They loved it!
BEN KISSEL
Yay!
MARCUS PARKS
In 1979 the Supreme Court affirmed the legality of these programs in the decision to uphold the rights of parents to send their children wherever they deemed best using whatever methods.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again we can also grant those of you that have kids, maybe you do have a little psychopath child that you don't know what to do with. And I don't even mean this like derogatorily, I mean maybe you do have a truly troubled kid.
MARCUS PARKS
You have Kevin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, you have Kevin. Maybe there is that, right. But this is not what we're talking about.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is not helping anybody in this scenario.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean this was based on the assumption that no parent would ever consent to abusive care. That was the Supreme Court's thinking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, no parent would ever send their kids to a torture device but they understand that most of them wanted it.
BEN KISSEL
Well Judge, just one question for you, if we outlaw these programs we won't have any children to rape.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If we don't have any children to rape, what are we gonna do for Christmas?
BEN KISSEL
Exactly. So we better allow these programs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We really are the Supreme Court.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well recently, just a year and a half ago, a man named Julio Sandoval who ran a teen escort company, he was arrested for violating a restraining order taken out by a teenager's father because the teenager's mother had threatened to send the kid to a troubled teen boarding school and the father figured well if I put a restraining order out there's no way she's gonna break that. She did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
She hired the teen escort company behind the father's back to break into the father's house to take the child away, to kidnap the child.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This a year and a half ago.
MARCUS PARKS
Year and a half ago.
BEN KISSEL
They're lucky they didn't get killed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well allegedly the teen was kidnapped and cuffed in California, then he was driven 27 hours in handcuffs to a religious boarding school in Southwest Missouri called Agape.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't that weird? After the jack Parsons series.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we know Agape is supposed to mean orgy, like an orgy of pleasure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a whole thing.
MARCUS PARKS
A gape.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A gape.
BEN KISSEL
A gape.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's not good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There he was held against his will until his father was finally able to track him down and free him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, that's a lucky kid.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like the fact your father actually came? I mean obviously there seems to be a lot going on in the family.
MARCUS PARKS
There is, yes. The mother was one of those. Very insane. Very crazy, crazy person. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. I mean he gets to channel his inner Liam Neeson, knocked down the door being like give me my boy back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See, it's kind of exciting as a dad. I think about Jackie getting kidnapped sometimes because it would be kind of fun to go out on the road and go get her. Like me and Geoff, we get a couple of guns, we got a couple of bags, masks, and tape.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We find the guys, just fucking eliminate them one by one by one.
BEN KISSEL
You really think you would do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whack the guy's fucking knees with a fucking hammer again and again, right, while he's tied to a chair going (muffled) I don't know where she is! Being like methinks that you do and me Mr. Hammer says that he knows that you know.
BEN KISSEL
Right. What would actually happen is you'd call 911 and then they'd be like can you describe your sister?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, she's this fucking bitch, right. She's got a big head. No, with the little head, big body. Tiny little feet. And she's like (whining).
BEN KISSEL
That was probably better.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Other stories of being kidnapped include Hannah Kay. Hannah Kay said that she was kidnapped from her bed in the middle of the night when she was 13 by men that she believed were terrorists. Once she arrived at again the Agape School, she was strip searched in a room full of grown men and had her head shaved. Again, this is within the last few years.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they learned that from the Elan School.
BEN KISSEL
I think they learned that from our war on terror, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup.
MARCUS PARKS
Another person who suffered this trauma said that for years afterwards they slept with their bed in front of their door with a knife under their pillow, fully dressed in case they needed to run for their life lest they be kidnapped again. Every single fucking night of their life.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now even though this should be highly illegal, the only state to adopt legislation banning teen escort companies is Oregon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oregon.
MARCUS PARKS
Oregon.
BEN KISSEL
Oregon!
MARCUS PARKS
Guess when they passed their legislation?
BEN KISSEL
2022
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay! We did it.
BEN KISSEL
Was it that Kotek gal, did she pass it?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, quite possibly. So let's get back to the Elan School.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now after a teen transport company finally arrived with a student at the aforementioned Elan School, the team would suddenly find themselves trapped in a facility located in the wilds of Maine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was truly in the middle of nowhere.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it was all designed to be a shocking experience, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they put the kids out front. So you would be kidnapped by children, right. You'd have a couple of guys too but a lot of times especially Elan School, they'd hire a couple of big beefy kids, right, the higher level kids that would also come. So you're in the car side by side with two children already and then you roll up to this-
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which at first you're sold, like all these other schools you're sold that this is like a summer camp experience.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're gonna go canoeing and horse riding and all the things you do if you got a good tampon in, right. You can play tennis, you know what I mean? Arts and crafts and shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? But when you show up there it's actually a series of trailers and run down homes.
MARCUS PARKS
It's Kamp Krusty!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very scary.
BEN KISSEL
What a pop culture reference.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But really. And then you would see a kid with a dunce cap on being like to ask me why I'm an idiot.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh it's like Dick's Last Resort.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And it's like out on the lawn and they design it so when you show up you immediately want to run away. They want you to be scared.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like it, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And kids did try to escape but so many tried running away that guards were permanently posted in the woods to catch them. Which is even more terrifying.
BEN KISSEL
God, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
As the founder of Elan School put it in the 1979 interview, the first thing you learned at Elan is that you're not going to get out of there. That was something he was proud of.
BEN KISSEL
Great, thank you. How brave.
MARCUS PARKS
But in 1993, one teenager did manage to get out but it was a tragic case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. That year 17 year old Dawn Birnbaum finally made it past the guards after multiple escape attempts and she was soon picked up by a trucker when she hitched a ride. 12 hours later, Dawn was a corpse on the side of the road.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God.
MARCUS PARKS
Bound, raped, and strangled to death with a ligature by the same trucker who first picked her up.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
That trucker by the way, James Robert Cruz Jr, strongly suspected of being linked to a series of trucker murders in Ohio that suddenly stopped after his arrest.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Goddamn. That's fucked.
BEN KISSEL
Poor girl.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's terrible.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now after it was explained to a newly arrived team that there was no way to escape Elan School, probably using Dawn as an example of what would happen if they left-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a gift to them.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. And it was 1993. They kept going for a long time after that.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They'd be forced into a shower as the staff watched.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's called intake.
MARCUS PARKS
Girls would then get vaginal smears and rectal exams while the boys had to give semen samples and get tested for venereal disease, which I'm sure was the old Q-tip up the peehole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
BEN KISSEL
(screeching) I'm Susan Collins and I'm just here to make sure that these boys give semen samples.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't wanna go up that row. That's where the penis Q-tips are.
BEN KISSEL
(screeching) This is a semen sample bay, right?
MARCUS PARKS
The kids were then given bland colorless clothing to erase their individuality and they were thereafter cut off from the outside world at the Elan School's discretion. All mail was read and monitored. Anything deemed inappropriate was confiscated and all outgoing mail was censored.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a part of why it did last so long, right. Because these kids could not write what was happening to them.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were basically saying lie to your parents. I forgot, there was a term that they used for the letter that they wrote. I want to say it was called like a guilt letter.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a guilt letter, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And what they would do is they would write being like Elan School's magnificent.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We love every minute here.
MARCUS PARKS
And I'm very sorry for what I've done to you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. After a while, students were allowed to call home but they could do so under heavy monitoring. If the student began to talk at all about the abuse suffered or about anything that might make the school look bad, the call was cut off and the student was severely punished.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You will go to sleep or I will put you to sleep.
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
Once showered, violated, and dressed, the student was then assigned a big brother upon arrival. Big brothers were older students who were basically prison guards. They would enforce rules and they would report infractions. And they're also fellow students.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing again, it's all kids on kids.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Cruelly a common game amongst big brothers with new students was to pretend like they were planning an escape with the new charge, then when the student agreed to the plan, they'd be reported to senior staff and they would be punished. Often that was your first punishment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And it's called how Homeland Security gets it's budget.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly. They'd have a great profession as an FBI agent. ]
MARCUS PARKS
Concerning that senior staff, most of them were in fact former students who had graduated, some were of course psychopaths who took advantage of the system, but others were highly traumatized kids who had become converts as a survival mechanism.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And I find this fascinating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's really interesting because I was watching a documentary called The Last Stop which was a big one on the Elan Schools. And there are one or two people in there that were like one of them cared, there was like one person who cared. Because they had a whole bunch of different Elan Schools, so some of them were kind of a little bit more easygoing ones and some of them were the high max security ones. And so you see a lot of the people saying the lower ones, they were kind of like oh I learned some lessons. But once you go to, I think it's Elan 2 which was really fucked because Elan 1 was burnt down by the students.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Elan 1 was burnt. That's how bad the school was is that it was literally burnt down by their own constituents. Then they just rebuilt a new one right down the road.
BEN KISSEL
Right. So it's just Stockholm Syndrome survival basically.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a little more complicated than that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What do they call it when a prisoner gets... Institutionalized.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Institutionalism.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well as author Maia Szalavitz puts it in her book 'Help At Any Cost', people who go through these programs have been conditioned to support and accept the treatment they've received through the sunk cost fallacy. They overvalue their experience because they have paid so dearly for it already. Some participants in order to just deal with the trauma they've gone through, they need to have their suffering to have served some purpose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I get it.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Then once they feel the joy when the abuse is over, once they've graduated, they see their experience as transformative rather than useless and unnecessary.
BEN KISSEL
It's like after you get through level 5 at UCB and realize you didn't make a house team and you spent $2500.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, now you're just some bald guy in Converses that no one will fuck anymore.
BEN KISSEL
But you are a slightly better public speaker.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Another tactic used in this vein is the mystical manipulation technique which is a little closer to a cult strategy. Used mostly by faith-based programs like Straight Inc, the mystical manipulation technique makes the participant feel as if god himself is aligned with their goals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That is very, very interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. See if you're repeatedly told that everything happens for a reason, then any positive coincidence is seen as a sign that god is working through your program to further his goals. By contrast, any negative event is seen as, can you get this one, Ben?
BEN KISSEL
The devil's doing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Test of your faith.
MARCUS PARKS
Test of your faith.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, test of your faith.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In Straight Inc they also do stuff where they hit you with songs and stuff. Did you see the songs? One of the songs that you have to do in Straight Inc? (singing) I am straight, hear me roar. In numbers too big to ignore. And I know too much to go back and pretend because I've heard it all before. And I've been down there on the floor. I am straight, hear me roar!
BEN KISSEL
I kind of like it.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not bad.
BEN KISSEL
Not bad.
MARCUS PARKS
A lot of these programs would use songs as a way to really drill the message into their heads.
BEN KISSEL
Sure. I agree. In sixth grade there was a smoke free song. (singing) We are the smoke free class of 2002. Triple zero. Be a hero, not a zero. Something like that. But it was a smoke free class of 2002.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Program didn't work.
BEN KISSEL
No, it did work! I remember it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think somebody needs to go back. Can I call a Kissel escort company?
MARCUS PARKS
Wait, 2002?
BEN KISSEL
I graduated in 2000.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, so you said 2000 but then that's why triple 0 made sense but then you said 2002 in the song that you misremembered.
BEN KISSEL
No I didn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm calling a Kissel escort company to pick you up.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know you're gonna like it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you just said 2002. Did you graduate high school when you were like 20?
BEN KISSEL
No, I graduated high school in 2000.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh okay.
BEN KISSEL
I was 18.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting. Maybe we'll look at your fucking records.
BEN KISSEL
I was 63rd out of 64. TJ was 64th and I wanted to be dead last but he got dead last.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I was 664 out of 666.
BEN KISSEL
No kidding?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool, sweet.
BEN KISSEL
Wow nice, that's a big school.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Metal guitar riff)
MARCUS PARKS
Number one!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We know.
BEN KISSEL
There was 9 people in your class.
MARCUS PARKS
Twelve.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this way of looking at the world, the whole thing of if it's good god's working through me, if it's bad, it's a test-
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
That essentially rewires your brain into a new belief system where the program is the only thing that matters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, you're in or out. Because once you're in it, you're fucking in it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you're not getting out of it. So you have to find out a way to work your way through besides just killing a bunch of people until the cops come get you, you have to kind of ship up.
MARCUS PARKS
And then once you abandon your old value system for a new one, the things that you might have previously thought wrong are suddenly right and it's being done for the greater good. And when you put mystical manipulation and the sunk cost fallacy together, victims will eventually become enthusiastic perpetrators who can't imagine acting any other way. In fact many are often surprised and bewildered when they're later told that they were committing criminal abuse, even after they're arrested for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, it feels institutionalized.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it is institutionalized but it feels like it's a part of the American system because you're literally supported by the US government while you're doing all of these things under the auspices of training and helping kids.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you have the full green light from the US government at that moment in time to do whatever it is that you're doing. And it's not until afterwards everyone's like whoa, who, whoa.
BEN KISSEL
What happened? Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the average student at Elan School was there for 18 months but some could be there as long as 4 years. Usually 150 students were living at Elan at any one time and those 150 were split between three buildings, housing 40 or 50 students at each structure. Following a strict social hierarchy where the students were made to police and inform on themselves, everyone was split into two classes. Strengths and non strengths. Non strengths couldn't talk to strengths or non strengths, but strengths could talk to non strengths. If a non strength talked to a strength without being addressed first or if they talked to another non strength at all-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At all.
MARCUS PARKS
They would be in violation of a list of rules called guilts. Breaking any of the guilts, whose numbers reached into the dozens-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Would result in severe punishment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it was extremely complicated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You could see it was extremely complicated because the whole point was to fuck up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So that you could get checked again and again and again.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a form of psychological warfare. It's designed to make students conform to the exact standards of the school and society at large.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Quote unquote "society at large". It's about again becoming a faceless, nameless person in a machine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You could have done well here Henry, you like DnD, a lot of rules, a lot of scolding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. I had to drop out of karate because I couldn't call the guy sensei. I was like who's this guy?
BEN KISSEL
Well yes, that makes sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The whole time I was like why do I gotta call you? What are you?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well cause you're in Queens, New York.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
BEN KISSEL
We're not even close to where karate was invented.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The first thing I remember was why I got called little devil boy in Catholic school, when I was doing Sunday school, was because the priest, I remember being real young, being like why do I have to tell my sins to you? Who are you? I just talked up to the big guy. And the guy was just like you see I got the whistle, I whistle, god shows up and I got the little bells.
MARCUS PARKS
The whistle?
BEN KISSEL
Henry, let me tell you a little thing about a spank bank. So when you tell me your sexual fantasies-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, I get it!
BEN KISSEL
You're investing in my spank bank.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I get that, yes. Why didn't you just say that?
BEN KISSEL
No problem.
MARCUS PARKS
I get now that you were making a joke? I thought for a second there that the whistle was something the priests actually have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
That's how little I know about Catholicism. I thought that's how they control children.
BEN KISSEL
No whistles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, we got the bell. They hide the bell to make you think that you're actually like transmuting the fucking eucharist to human flesh and shit. It's all smoke and mirrors.
BEN KISSEL
Well there's one cool thing about the Catholic church though, the big old table that they got there at every church, it does have a saint's bone in it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Which is true. Which is kind of cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Well guilts included but were not limited to talking too quietly or too loudly, talking too much or not enough, talking about anything not related to Elan School.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna be in trouble for that already.
BEN KISSEL
Am I too loud?! (whispering) Is this too soft? How do you do it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just checking you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's just checking you, man. You could get a guilt for looking at someone of the opposite sex, avoiding looking at someone of the opposite sex, looking outside, looking at the floor, having negative body language, being sideways, whatever the fuck that means.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, what does that mean?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's going like... You can't see it on the show but it's side eye.
BEN KISSEL
Side eyes? Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Snarkiness.
BEN KISSEL
Snarky. You don't wanna be snarky.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Aubrey Plaza would do very poorly at Elan School.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, that's right. That's her character.
MARCUS PARKS
You could get guilts for not falling asleep, sleeping too long, laughing at jokes, eating too much or not enough, rolling your eyes, swearing without permission, making any physical contact, couldn't even shake hands, or if you voiced showed any dissent.
BEN KISSEL
And we'd like to announce our valedictorian of 2023, Ben Shapiro. He actually just absolutely nailed it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The only time I want a woman to be wet is when the tears are coming down her face. That's a fun Ben Shapiro joke about an old meme.
BEN KISSEL
That is fun. It is funny.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the amount of impossible to follow rules at Elan School guaranteed that a teen would break a rule and break it often.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah because they're abstract rules, they're not even fucking real tangible rules!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. They're done to be broken. They are done to make you get punished.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And it always brought severe punishment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the kids all would then, they would tattle on each other throughout the day, right. So you put in saying like I saw Jeremy look at this girl. And the idea is that. Because we'll get to general meeting!
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
Usually a guilt would be reported by expediters, other students who acted as guards. And once it was reported, the staff would decide what to do. Punishments were called learning experiences or LEs and the goal of almost every LE was public humiliation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
General fucking meeting!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No! This is like when I had to push the basketball with my nose across the court on my hands and knees.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was actually really expecting a lot more traumatic stories from you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You want?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No actually let's wait. Let's wait.
BEN KISSEL
You want?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I saw the vault, I saw the back of your eyeballs look through the vault. Actually let's hold. We got two more episodes of this.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, great.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at the lowest level, possibly for something small like looking outside, groups of four students called dealing crews would scream insults and slurs at the offender for extended periods of time which is the only time students were allowed to swear, during those insults.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They needed to. Because they're all general meetings, you're supposed to rip somebody to fucking shreds.
BEN KISSEL
And now we'd like to enter tonight's entertainment, Jeff Ross! He's here to roast ya.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Funny stuff. I don't think he'd like this.
BEN KISSEL
No, I don't think so. This isn't really roasting because you're supposed to roast with love.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
No, this is uncorked roasting roasting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, uncorked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Roasting is even difficult because you're talking about joke structure. It's just yelling at them.
BEN KISSEL
It's just screaming, no structure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But for other relatively small infractions like smiling without permission, a student would be given what was called shot down duty, which was menial labor like scrubbing trash cans or cleaning bathrooms with a toothbrush. Sometimes you'd clean the toilet with your bare hands.
BEN KISSEL
That's fantastic. Well anyway, we've all done that before.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He skipped the part where he said what it is that he did. I just don't, I don't want to know.
BEN KISSEL
No, we don't have to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(braking sound) We got two more episodes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in a more bizarre tactic, students were given costumes or signs to wear depending on the infraction. If a student acted immature, they would be forced to wear diapers over their clothes, put pacifiers in their mouths, and hold rattles. And sometimes they'd wear a sign that says I'm a big baby.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. It's kind of like the hazing from that one fantastic movie dazed Dazed And Confused.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it is a little bit of that. It's also just a way to debase someone completely.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because in Dazed And Confused, that's like 30 minutes, maybe 20.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah and they're free afterwards and they're really accepted and they get to go to the big kegger afterwards, the big party.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I had to do a thing in Sunday school where I had to stand on my knees and hold two books in my hands. Did you ever do that thing?
BEN KISSEL
Sure, like justice, like lady justice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Or like Jesus Christ.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just like him.
BEN KISSEL
Just like Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. With the mouth open for sucking.
MARCUS PARKS
Well if a kid even considered escaping, they'd be labeled as a split risk and they were given shoes without laces and were forced to wear bright yellow shirts and tiny pink shorts. Very Joe Arpaio of them.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And if they were still considered a risk or they tried escaping anyway, their legs would be shackled, they'd be forced to wear a pink bunny suit, and they were denied shoes.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And again they're all laughing at it, all the kids are laughing at it.
MARCUS PARKS
For days, weeks at a time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Just because of the shot down also would mean that you'd go from strength to non strength.
BEN KISSEL
And it's also juvenile sounding but it's just so deeply traumatizing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is the the crux of it.
BEN KISSEL
And the kids don't actually fully know how fucked they're getting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I agree. I think that's exactly what happened.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's because it's encouraged of like oh it's your turn now. Now I get to heap abuse on you because you heaped abuse on me last time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now I get to do it.
BEN KISSEL
Right. It's called marriage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well technically what's fucked up is that it's their view of what life is. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's their view of what they think, it's a transactional punishment system and that's all being an adult is, is you go to work, you come home, you hit your wife. Like that's all you do.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well girls who were thought to engage in any sort of sexual activity were first to wear signs that said 'ask me why I'm a slut' while others would wear signs that said 'help, I'm an emotionally crippled monster'. T-shirt time. We gotta make that fucking t-shirt.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's merch.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Help, I am an emotionally crippled monster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Period. Yeah, exclamation point. Crippled monster, period.
BEN KISSEL
They didn't trademark it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's our time.
BEN KISSEL
That'll be our next shirt that we donate to charity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Literally yeah, we'll sell that shirt and give it to the kids.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the kids. But if the psychological humiliations didn't work, staff would move on to the physical. Students who acted crazy were put in straitjackets for days, weeks, or months at a time. Then they were locked in a small room called the corner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All of them said that they would prefer the physical abuse to the corner.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every kid that's in these interviews.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And Elan School wasn't the only place to use forced isolation. WWASP was even worse, they had the box, that was a 3x3 ft structure made of plywood built again on a concrete floor.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Masturbation, three days in the box. Automatically.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just let me in there for a month. I'll just keep jerking off.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, like Randy from South Park when he finally got to come after they lost internet.
MARCUS PARKS
And sometimes students would spend weeks in the box and they were only let out for showers and bathroom breaks at staff discretion. This is Iraqi shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
To be fair, you don't need a shower, you do need a bathroom break. It doesn't matter if you stink in there I guess.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At some point it depends on what level you're doing. We'll get to it but if you do fight as much as possible against the system, you could just pee your own pants. But then they do punish you.
BEN KISSEL
That's horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But at Elan School, once you were in the corner, you'd have to sit up straight and face a wall constantly or you were beaten. You'd also be given a toilet bucket that you sort of had to figure out for yourself because straitjacket.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But sometimes they'd just dump it on your head for really no reason.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was a big thing that they did there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Dumping disgusting things over people's heads, this was a common tactic at Elan School, so much so that they even had a name for their special slurry. They called it electric sauce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
BEN KISSEL
That is so fucking gross. If you are busted for swimming in a port-a-potty at the next Lollapalooza, you can get some sympathy by just saying I was actually in an Elan School, this is the only way I learned how to have pleasure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That's how I got out.
BEN KISSEL
And then it will be flipped for you. But wow, that's really bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's also why Guy Fieri had to change it to donkey sauce because he said donkey sauce sounded more palatable.
BEN KISSEL
It is more palatable and it's Guy Fieri.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right. Electric sauce was a mixture of garbage, ketchup, mustard, cigarette butts, and sometimes human feces if they're feeling froggy.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus. Just sometimes.
MARCUS PARKS
Just sometimes. And that slop would be poured over the offending student's head as punishment for whatever. I actually think it's worse that the human feces is only sometimes.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
MARCUS PARKS
Because you never know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never know.
MARCUS PARKS
If you come to expect the human feces every time-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can build up an expectancy to anything.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well maybe that's something they can debate at their next big meeting.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps.
BEN KISSEL
Should we always have it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's over. The Elan Schools are thankfully over.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Thank god.
MARCUS PARKS
Sometimes students would be handcuffed to tables or their own ankles for days and spankings with ping pong paddles were common. All of this of course encouraged rampant sexual abuse at Elan School for both pleasure on the part of the perpetrators and punishment for the students.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
One staff member defended the molestation of a girl by calling it love therapy while other girls were locked in rooms with boys who had histories of rape sometimes for weeks at a time.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
But at the end of it, the punishment at Elan School that's probably the most well known is the ring.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. This is for last means, last chapter.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh. I don't like when they have these kind of ambiguous names.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's how they do it, it's all cult mentality shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Used as both a means of entertainment and punishment, the ring featured one student as the star of the show. If a student committed a big enough guilt, he'd be pushed into a boxing ring, given gloves and a mouth guard, and dubbed the bully. While the entire student body hurled abuse at the bully, the kid was forced to fight a never ending stream of opponents with no rest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you just have to keep going and they just send in fresh guys and they would start with the big kids and they'd just keep sending in people. Because according to the founder of Elan School, he was like the bully can never win.
MARCUS PARKS
This was naturally too much for any teenager to physically handle and before long they'd be beaten and bloody, usually collapsed in the ring from exhaustion.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
At that point, students would sometimes prop up the bully while the beatings continued, all while the rest of the student body cheered on the process.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Basically because it wasn't them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
It wasn't them that time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the ring was well known to Maine state investigators for years but they actually defended the use of the ring by saying it was only used when the offending student committed repeated acts of violence and the bouts were supposedly evenly matched.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it also kind of feels like why didn't you call the police then?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? Instead of you just a bunch of random people, if they were truly a violent and scary person.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah But it seems like one of those things like we take care of our own.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And they actually get respected for taking care of their own and not involving, not using social services, not using their taxes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Because then they'd have to do their jobs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that sucks.
BEN KISSEL
(screeching) I love the ring.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You wanna go down that road? They're gonna pour poopoo on your head on that road.
BEN KISSEL
(screeching) Yeah! I love when you do the poopoo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause sometimes death is better.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that even matching in the ring, that did not seem to be the case for 15 year old Phil Williams who died in the ring in 1982. Now Phil suffered chronic migraines but when he complained of headaches at the Elan School, he was put into the ring because complaining was a guilt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They also said that he was faking it.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's everything is faking it. Nobody ever has any actual real medical problems, it's always fake.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just trying to get out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well Phil lasted through the constant barrage of punches from rage filled teenagers for 10 minutes, refusing to fight back the whole time. But after three rounds he collapsed, vomited, turned blue, and died.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
His family was told that he died from a brain aneurysm unrelated to the ring but a student later got hold of the family and told them what really happened. But since the main medical examiner's office did no autopsy, put it down as natural causes, nothing to be done.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Because it was the word of the students vs the word of the staff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again the main medical examiner, he's got to deal with like a dude got his arm bit off by a phantom clown.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that was horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was fucking terrifying. And it turned out that all these kids went ham on their little girlfriend.
BEN KISSEL
His face got ripped off by sap.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that was crazy.
BEN KISSEL
Walking by a tree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta be careful.
BEN KISSEL
What else do they have to do in this town other than look into this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They have to defend themselves from the imagination of Stephen King at all times.
MARCUS PARKS
Incredibly, the ring was still used for another 20 years but presumably after the death of Phil Williams, Elan School changed what happened if a student refused to fight back. Instead of beating them until they died, the staff would call what was known as a general meeting, dreaded by every student at Elan School as the worst of the psychological punishments.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
General fucking meeting!
BEN KISSEL
I don't want to go.
MARCUS PARKS
In a general meeting, which could be ring related or not, the entire student body would convene in a dining room after a staff member screamed:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
General meeting!
MARCUS PARKS
Once all 150 or so students were there, a broomstick was placed on the floor in front of the student who had committed the guilt that resulted in the general meeting and all the other students stood on the other side. That staff would then order the students to quote "get your feelings off" and a session of screaming insults would begin that lasted between 40 minutes and 2 hours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because what they don't understand is that you can get all of this out if you just get yourself a podcast.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can yell and scream. I'm a professional yeller.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think they have that yet though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Well they had radio.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But that took a lot. Technically I had to go to college for that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And it did nothing.
BEN KISSEL
It's really kind of victim blaming, isn't it, Henry?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I am not saying... I am being a fun person.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Every student would either take turns or all at once scream abuse at the guilty student, saying whatever they wanted, however they wanted, no matter how cruel the statement.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It needed to be cruel.
MARCUS PARKS
And in fact the cruelty was the point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it needed to be cruel.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
This was an attempt to thoroughly meant and emotionally break the teenager. And while it might sound rare, general meetings were called multiple times a day.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All day long. The chaos. I guess that's also what made the Elan Schools that much more notorious than the other ones is just the general sense of total chaos that the environment was.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because these things were all popping off around you all day long. You never knew where you stood.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everywhere you you went you had eyes on your back. And again, you're all hanging yourselves by the same noose.
BEN KISSEL
And it happened so fast you can't even think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And in addition to that there's a surreal nature to it because you look and you see a guy dressed as a gigantic baby, you see a girl wearing a pink bunny suit with her legs shackled.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Nothing makes sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's what the CIA did during the satanic panic, dressing everybody up as the illuminati and shit. You got a guy with a Bill Clinton mask on doing a bunch of weird shit just to make you sound fucking crazy.
BEN KISSEL
No, that was Bill Clinton himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But this is the interesting thing because it makes you sound crazy when you get out, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Being like there's a baby over there, there's a guy with a bunny suit on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, makes it sound like you're making shit up. okay.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, thanks for coming back on Donahue. Another fantastic episode.
MARCUS PARKS
Well on a smaller scale, students would also scream at each other during encounter groups where the offender would sit in a circle while their peers shouted the worst things they could think of.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you think little people Ku Klux Klan members, do you think they have to make the shit custom or do you think they buy hoods for kids?
BEN KISSEL
This is just a random thought that you had. I think they would have to make it custom.
MARCUS PARKS
I think all KKK gear is custom made.
BEN KISSEL
It is all custom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You mean they have a tailor? It's like a mob?
MARCUS PARKS
No, I think their wives do it for them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting. Sexist.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe there's like Terry who's just like he's a little different but he makes their costumes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, no one judges because he's like I put a little extra wizard on yours.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're like thank you, Terry.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I won't beat you to death today.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing about all this to remember is that everything from the electric sauce to the corner to the spankings to the mass beatings to the psychological abuse, it was all not only perfectly legal but investigated and approved by the state of Maine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They loved it!
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Maine investigated Elan School 11 times after allegations of abuse but they filed no criminal charges against the school.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They also did clean up.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact, Maine Governor James Longley pointed to the fact that physicians and officials were still referring students to Elan School as proof that nothing harmful or abusive ever happened.
BEN KISSEL
There you go, it's proof.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's systemic beatings. It's proof.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's also again, when they showed up there weren't any beatings.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When they showed up they're all like we love it here! They'd have like two kids doing jump rope in the front.
BEN KISSEL
They faked it of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Not that much. They still knew about the ring, they still showed them the ring. Yeah, this is where we put kids and we beat the shit out of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just wish they could do it to their own aids.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Similarly, when the media covered Elan School, whether it be 60 Minutes or Sally Jessy Raphael, they fawned over it as a positive example of radical therapy that was going to save our troubled teens who are of course far more dangerous and rebellious than any generation who had come before.
BEN KISSEL
60 minutes, also a total fucking lie. It's 36 minutes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
36 minutes with commercials. I also want to say to maybe some of our younger listeners, that's why in a way at least you didn't grow up in this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean they got different shit.
BEN KISSEL
Well it's a whole other thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The thing is too with the media, there was a 60 Minutes segment on the founder of Elan School and they fully showed the kids screaming, they showed how fucking brutal it can be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. They loved it.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
They're like it's radical but it works.
BEN KISSEL
It doesn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No. But the thing about all these troubled teen schools and institutions is that they were usually created by a singular person, two at most, and many of the tactics were learned from unlikely places. Especially concerning Elan School and especially concerning the general meetings, there was a singular source of inspiration. That source was a drug rehabilitation program turned cult called Synanon which is the story we'll tell on the next episode of our series on the troubled teen industry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
BEN KISSEL
All right. Brutal shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want them to release the kids.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, release the kids.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly let the kids do whatever the hell it is they want, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean just don't send them to the highly abusive school where they're fucking shattered emotionally and physically.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is it so wrong for kids to have a couple of ciggies and drink some malt liquor and do a little bit of fucking fish tails and stuff?
BEN KISSEL
Cherry cola.
MARCUS PARKS
That was my teenage years, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that wrong?
BEN KISSEL
No, it's not.
MARCUS PARKS
Marlboro Reds.
BEN KISSEL
It's called adolescence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you learn. You get a big cigarette for the first time, you choke, you choke up a bunch of blood and shit. And then you know that I love to smoke now, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you do that for like 15, 20 years, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Hell yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you you're all fucked up.
MARCUS PARKS
Mickey's Big Mouths. They still sell Red Dog Beer?
BEN KISSEL
I don't know about Red Dog, I do remember it came in the 30.
MARCUS PARKS
Coors Dry?
BEN KISSEL
No, Coors Dry I think has just turned into something else.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, Bartles & Jaymes, dog!
BEN KISSEL
Bartles & Jaymes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was the shit that we liked, man. We liked it sweet.
BEN KISSEL
Keystone, Natural Lights.
MARCUS PARKS
Boone's Farm.
BEN KISSEL
Boone's Farm is still around for sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What was that wine that had flavoring in it?
BEN KISSEL
Mad Dog 20/20.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I'm talking about?
MARCUS PARKS
Thunderbolt?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Something like that.
MARCUS PARKS
Night Train. Blue Nun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was one that was shopped to ladies, it was called like Palisades or something.
BEN KISSEL
Something like that, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, let the kids have a couple of drinks. In Europe they do it all the time.
BEN KISSEL
Well you don't let them, the kids have to have it themselves, they have to figure out how to get it done and not get caught.
MARCUS PARKS
It makes them smart.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think so.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, well thank you so much for listening. It's educational and I love this series. I was like why are we covering this, it sounds very serious. But it is important.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think we nailed it.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, we did. And you didn't fucking beat me down, you didn't beat me fucking down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're strong, you're strong. You're holding them vault doors together.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. All right, do we have anything to say to anybody? Release The Butthole tour.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Release The Butthole Cut tour is coming to a city near you. If you are on the west coast and in Los Angeles or the other city or San Francisco.
BEN KISSEL
San Francisco!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Then it is coming to you. We're gonna probably be there.
BEN KISSEL
I can't wait. And of course San Francisco, I've seen it and they have released the butthole, there is a lot of human shit there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There really is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But in LA we might make a little bit of an appearance.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come and see the Bourbon Room, they put it together, it's a thick ass show.
BEN KISSEL
It's fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's great.
BEN KISSEL
Anything else?
MARCUS PARKS
I think that's all we got.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Last Comic Book on the Left, we know Volume 2 due to supply issues, it was pushed but it's coming out in February.
BEN KISSEL
Supply chains.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So we know, we've heard, we've listened, learned, grown, shown progress, moving forward.
BEN KISSEL
All right. Henry, get in the ring!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no!
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Beat me, boys.
BEN KISSEL
Goddamn he flipped it and reversed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come on, yeah, fucking spank the hell out of me. Yeah, harder, you bitch!
BEN KISSEL
Flip it and reverse it. All right everyone.
MARCUS PARKS
Get in the ring motherfucker, Bob Guccione Jr.
BEN KISSEL
I know, I was thinking that. Apparently Axl Rose was kind of a tough dude in real life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I bet.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Not to be all pop culturey here, talking about Guns N' Roses.
MARCUS PARKS
Hey, Lafayette, Indiana, man. You don't come from those mean streets unscathed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Doja Cat's not a cat at all.
BEN KISSEL
No, she's not. Apparently kind of eating feces there. But anyway, thanks for supporting all the shows here on the network and hail yourselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein. Eating feces?
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations. Something about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Doja Cat, she ate some poop.
MARCUS PARKS
She ate some poop. On purpose?
BEN KISSEL
I don't know about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, something with the kids and TikTok. It's some kind of eating poop challenge that the kids do.
BEN KISSEL
That's the only pop culture reference and we don't know it.
MARCUS PARKS
What kind of poop?
BEN KISSEL
We don't wanna talk about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Cat poop?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It might be hers.
BEN KISSEL
If it's hers, it's cat poop.