BEN KISSEL
Hey everyone, big news from the boys of the Last Podcast on the Left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Check out the Last Comic Book on the Left, our most sinister comic anthology. It now has a Volume II.
MARCUS PARKS
Please preorder now at Z2comics.com. We have an even bigger stable of artists and talent and writers and everyone that we did for the first one, although the first one is fucking amazing and it's still available on Z2comics.com. But we're asking you to go preorder #2 at Z2comics. com!
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna like the way you read. All right everyone, thank you so much. Hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) We see the Grays down in Africa!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa this is awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Seeing those Grays down in Africa!
BEN KISSEL
I love Toto's new remix.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lonely one.
BEN KISSEL
It really is. Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left everyone. I am Ben hanging out with Marcus and hanging out with Henry. By the way we'll be in Australia in January where Toto is a real band and they have more than one song and they listen to it unironically and they're like, 'Have you heard? Toto is going back on tour.' And you're like, 'Wow! I can't believe that they're not all dead.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true. There is a Toto extended universe in Australia.
BEN KISSEL
It's very bizarre. I can't wait to see you all there in Australia. Well speaking of seeing things, today's episode, look to the skies!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you. Thank you, I'm glad you said it.
BEN KISSEL
The Ariel School Phenomenon. We're going to get into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very good.
MARCUS PARKS
The extraterrestrial encounter at Ariel School is one of the most credible examples of high strangeness concerning not just UFOs but the alien phenomenon at large.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now I have been obsessed with this story for a long time.
BEN KISSEL
Wait what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is one of those UFO group sightings because we've covered a couple of these before, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Hudson Valley triangles. We haven't really covered the Phoenix Lights, but I've done a lot of research into the Phoenix Lights and the Coronado group abduction, you remember that?
MARCUS PARKS
Definitely, yeah. At the hotel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can come here and see my penis, see what they did to my penis! Remember that guy?
BEN KISSEL
Of course. The ladybugs, he got 'em.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But this story sends a chill up my spine and I don't know if it's just because you say credible and it is, because there's up to 60 witness accounts corroborating what happened on this day. But there's also just something creepy about kids being serious.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I don't like it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's endless footage of it. So if you're one of those people that gets really creeped out in a movie when you see a child going (baby sounds).
BEN KISSEL
I don't like it whatsoever! Twins? Get out of here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What was that one movie with Nicole Kidman?
MARCUS PARKS
The Others?
BEN KISSEL
Eyes Wide Shut.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Others!
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
The Others.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What was that line? What was it like, (child voice) 'I'm the daddy now.'
BEN KISSEL
(child voice) I'm the daddy now, daddy!
MARCUS PARKS
I can't remember.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What was it?
BEN KISSEL
Eyes Wide Shut by the way, the longest film shoot in history, over 400 days for that big old orgy scene.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
That is true.
MARCUS PARKS
That's true, that orgy scene took 400 days to shoot.
BEN KISSEL
I swear to god. It's the longest consecutive movie ever shot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
And that's why Stanley Kubrick died like a day after it was done.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He worked very hard on it and then they put all those people in front of all the fucking.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know why. All right.
MARCUS PARKS
On September 16, 1994 at least 60 schoolchildren between the ages of 6-12 reported the UFO landed just outside of their school near the Zimbabwean capital of Harare during recess. Then two aliens allegedly disembarked and communicated with the children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(alien voice) Buy Nike.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! These guys are really freaking cool. And a little bit sounds like the beginning of Black Panther.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is really fucking frightening, this whole thing is really, really frightening.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I had nightmares last night.
BEN KISSEL
You did!
MARCUS PARKS
Now while no adults witnessed the event, the accounts given by children afterward were fairly similar but inconsistent. However this is exactly what we want to hear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
MARCUS PARKS
See if these children had collaborated on a story either before or after the alleged event, then their accounts would be virtually identical.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Identical.
BEN KISSEL
Intriguing indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Identical.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Identical.
MARCUS PARKS
But since eyewitness testimony is the least reliable of evidences, the inconsistencies in the children's stories actually makes it more likely that they weren't making it up because that means they're all remembering the event from their own points of view. In other words more or less the same is actually better than exactly the same.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
According to John Mack who was a Harvard, he was the head of I believe the psychology department at Harvard-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we're gonna get into him definitely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he ruined his whole career getting involved in this case because he says that is what's really interesting and that is the most compelling part of this entire tale is seeing in stereo an event happen. Because he's like when you hear all the multiple different points of view coming from kids of all different ages, they kind of put together an entire picture where you see the same story happen but from 60 different perspectives.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that interesting? You can always trust a Harvard professor, especially one that's obviously stressed for money. You can almost see him calling Jeffrey Epstein and just being like, 'I'll give you three more kids, we actually got a bunch in Zimbabwe.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no, no, no.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, no?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No this caused him to leave Harvard.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And actually Harvard hated him. Harvard actually tried to take him down. So he was kind of the odd man out at Harvard. So he's not taking any money, all right.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He distinctly died in poverty.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, I have been put in a different place than I was.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. He's not ordering cheese pizza, Ben. Just so you know.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Oh my god!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is why I always got the nude buffalo wings cause those are for adults.
BEN KISSEL
Well have a little fun with it, get some peppers on there anyway.
MARCUS PARKS
Well to the point of being believed, most of the teachers at the Ariel School thought that the children were telling the truth when they said a UFO landed and aliens talked to them and that includes some of the teachers who very much didn't want the children to be telling the truth. There was one woman who said she lived at the school and she really did not want it to be true but she couldn't help it, she couldn't help but believe them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In a recent documentary called The Ariel Phenomenon which truly blew my fucking mind-
MARCUS PARKS
It's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was good. But they do a meeting amongst the teachers talking about the parents perspective and they were like you gotta wonder which way the parents are going to go, which way they're gonna flip and how we handle it.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we're not trying to create a divide between the school and the parents. We don't know how they all feel about this group sighting.
BEN KISSEL
It could mess with their religion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because distinctly there was very few adults that saw or heard any of the event. It was all the kids.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And it was just weird when the aliens landed, they offered the kids candy and it was like never get into a UFO.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No they warned about the environment.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right? So I have a question, did the woman just live in the school and then they made her a teacher? Or she was a teacher and then she decided to live in the school?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I did not know but I actually just read this, I think Betsy DeVos put that in there. There is a squatter's rights provision amongst the Department of Education.
BEN KISSEL
I didn't know that. Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as one journalist put it, if the children were all lying about what they saw then one of them would have cracked and they would have cracked fast.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Because it's not like all these kids were getting positive attention for this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Because that's one of the things that people talk about with the satanic panic because that's how these children came to make these wild allegations about being flushed down toilets and so on and so forth.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Because they kept getting positive validation every single time that they told the story. They would tell the story-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They'd get pulled out of class!
MARCUS PARKS
They'd get pulled out of class, they'd get taken out for ice cream afterwards.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They'd get gifts, positive validation over and over again. This was not the case. It was quite the opposite for some of these kids.
BEN KISSEL
And it also corresponded exactly with the cover of Ghoulies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does. But we read the book 'UFOs Over Africa' by Cynthia Hind and that documentary The Ariel Phenomenon and the book really shows what it was like to have boots on the ground during the time, like days after the event. And the documentary shows these kids who are haunted by it 20 years later, 25 years later.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They did not have a great time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the part of it that really freaked me out was following this one girl the first time going back to her school, to the Ariel School in the 25 years because it was the 25 year anniversary of the school. And they said they invited her to come back and she's crying thinking about like I don't want to go relive this whole thing again.
BEN KISSEL
Well don't go back. You don't gotta go to these reunions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a documentary.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah that's the thing is that none of these kids ever went back on their story, as much as some of them very badly wanted to forget all about it. The event as Henry said still very difficult for these people to talk about. One witness in that documentary, she said that she hadn't ever even told her husband about what happened to her at Ariel School.
BEN KISSEL
Well you're gonna want to mention that on the first or second date, it's kind of cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is interesting because they have a lot of this perspective which I feel is now more outdated thanks to what has come about in the last several years, that talking about this in polite society would distance you from them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's what a lot of the people said, they said that they never talked about it because people would look at them like they were crazy if they ever did bring it up. So they just sort of pushed it down as hard as they possibly could.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just jam it, jam it down. Jam it. Because then when it does is it turns into little comedy eggs.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what emotions do.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's fantastic. I love that kind of suffering.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah that's why sometimes I'll just have a panic attack in the refrigerator. What is that? What's that fun thing?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Henry, you're looking at the sausages, you've been looking for five minutes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'm thinking about a lot of different things.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of funny how no one ever asked how the sausage is made. Everyone always asks how the sausage is made but no one ever asks why is the sausage made?!
BEN KISSEL
Well the Sawyer family has got to stay in business and Leatherface needs a job.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as outside verification goes, Henry already mentioned this guy. The children were interviewed and studied after the fact by a Harvard professor of psychology named Dr. John Mack who was at the time studying the concept of alien abductions from a psychological standpoint. And while Dr. Mack traveled to Zimbabwe with as much skepticism as he could pack, he came away from those interviews absolutely convinced that these children had not only seen a UFO but had interacted with extraterrestrial intelligences.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They saw something and it was not identified.
BEN KISSEL
I know what I saw!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know what I saw!
BEN KISSEL
But they're children so (child voice) I know what I saw!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well the kids weren't as adamant about it, kids are just more naturally open.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the Ariel School was located in the town of Ruwa right outside the capital city of Harare in Zimbabwe. And while the surroundings were not particularly wealthy, the Ariel School itself was an expensive private institution attended by the children of affluent families.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or as the head of MUFON Africa Cynthia Hind who is I would say the Mrs. Doubtfire of ufology-
BEN KISSEL
Oh hot flashes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's also very similar to Dame Edna.
MARCUS PARKS
Dame Edna.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I love Dame Edna.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She has that look. She said, (old lady voice) 'Would you believe the school certainly wasn't inexpensive!'
BEN KISSEL
Not inexpensive at all! Julia Child, a CIA asset.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
And of course if you do make money on OnlyFans, your assfluent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is great, really great stuff. I'm glad you said that, I'm glad you didn't tweet it. I'm glad you said that here, man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah I just share it with the people who I know are gonna love it.
MARCUS PARKS
Small at around 250 students, the Ariel School had a student body comprised of an array of multicultural backgrounds, including students from the UK, Europe, Asia, America, Australia, and Zimbabwe itself. As such the kids tended to interpret the encounter in line with their cultural background with some children attaching the aliens to native folklore while others used pop culture as their touchstone. In other words, their brains did the best they could to process the high strangeness that happened in front of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
From what I could understand from what was said in that documentary is that running water was a luxury at the time and so it was electricity. So they didn't actually have a heck of a lot of connection to the pop culture world. They did have some things but not a heck of a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The American kids, the English kids, they did. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. They did. But if you count what Cynthia Hind says and what John Mack actually posited too because he said that your surroundings and the way you grew up, it creates sort of like a psychic net, it's a psychic world. It's your whole series of connections. And Cynthia Hind said the people that lived in the country, they had a more personal relationship with the spiritual, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They viewed these things as not very surprising and they regularly spoke with the ghosts of their ancestors and spirits and local deities. It was just kind of a part of the fabric of life. And one thing they were talking about is that they did see a lot of... Orb activity was big, right. People saw a lot of big orange lights.
BEN KISSEL
A lot of orbs. I do have to point out Marcus diminished your orb story on Open Lines on Sirius radio, you weren't there to defend yourself.
MARCUS PARKS
I didn't diminish it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he wasn't there. And this is the thing about all you fuckers, you don't understand, you have to climb into the head of the witness and think about the witness.
BEN KISSEL
Because Marcus said Henry never sees anything. I said well he saw an orb. But then Marcus said oh he saw an orb!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But even I say that.
MARCUS PARKS
I only said that because I know what you want to see, Henry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes of course.
MARCUS PARKS
And I know that an orb isn't good enough for you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! I literally want to see a craft land on my front yard. I want a big titted alien to come out of it, I want it to be like, 'You're going to be on Saturday Night Live.' That's what I want to happen.
BEN KISSEL
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not gonna happen.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You know what that alien is going to say?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
I got nipples, can you milk me?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And guess what, Kissel? A lot of them don't.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well the way that a lot of the locals that they interviewed in that documentary about the Ariel phenomenon, the way the locals talked about UFOs was it's like something that is still cool and surprising but something they see every day. They're like, 'Oh yeah, yeah, aliens.' The same way in New York or LA you describe seeing a huge landmark every day. Like, 'Oh yeah, I can see the Empire State Building from my office. Yeah, it's great, it's cool but it's still very normal. It's just there.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's there.
BEN KISSEL
It's just a building, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a building.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They speak a lot of it as spirits. They equate them to ghosts which speaks to my like pan- paranormal thesis which is the idea that they are actually not all very different.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Vindication! Everyday I fight, I win!
BEN KISSEL
You just vindicated yourself. You just said that you were right. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well most of the kids who witnessed these creatures had no knowledge of the alien phenomenon before the sighting or at least that's what their parents said. In fact many of these kids, Ben as you speculated, they were the children of Christian missionaries who believed that aliens did not and could not exist because they weren't mentioned in the bible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also that they are specifically dog whistles of Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that they're supposed to be there to bring you closer into the science-based world.
BEN KISSEL
Now I actually watch the History Channel quite a bit and there is a theory that aliens are indeed angels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hear you becoming my mother. You and my mother have just touched tips. You're about to write A Course in Miracles part 2.
BEN KISSEL
No, you know what I'm gonna write?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
Angels in the Infield. I am on fire today by the way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Are you?
BEN KISSEL
I don't think I get enough credit. Yeah the audience is laughing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me get a fire extinguisher then for the rest of us.
BEN KISSEL
Angels in the Infield.
MARCUS PARKS
I also want one of our metal bands out there to write an album called Dog Whistles of Satan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes please.
BEN KISSEL
Woo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can't hear 'em.
BEN KISSEL
It's silent but trust me the sound is there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's working.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this belief that aliens can't exist was of course highly detrimental to some of the children. One child, a 12 year old Canadian from a highly religious family, had to leave the school and then the country itself because he was so disturbed by what happened and it was made even worse because his family refused to let him even talk about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
For most of these kids the only possible source of information about UFOs came just two days prior when UFO sightings across Southern Africa lit up the skies. Now in this we've got meat for both the skeptics and for the believers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) I'll tell you what, I received so many phone calls within a three day period. I received more phone calls than the time I fell down the flight of stairs and my dress was ripped off by the banister in front of the entire collection of the Union of South Africa. And they all saw my breasts flop in sweat and saw the bruises form on my vulva.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right? Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) Just in front of them. And then all the calls, the calls.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, your vulva.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) And every single sighting of my vulva I did write down and get accurate measurements for, being a member of MUFON.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's fantastic. Kinda looks like a UFO, doesn't it?
MARCUS PARKS
Well the skeptics might say that these children were all keyed up on aliens because they'd heard their parents talk about these alleged sightings for two full days. And after the kids saw something out of the ordinary on the day in question, they got caught up in a mass hysteria and interpreted that out of the ordinary event as aliens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I weirdly came across a medical journal written by Demobly Kokota that talks about mass hysteria, there was like a wave of mass hysteria episodes in African schools in the mid 90s which I thought was really interesting. One was a fainting epidemic where something like 50 students out of a population of 765 at a day school, kids just started fainting and it's like a weird thing. But they couldn't find anything medically wrong with them. There was an itching spell that happened where a group of people and teachers got involved in this gigantic weird itchy scenario where people thought an area was making them itchy.
BEN KISSEL
Was it bedbugs?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, there was no physical signs. Their skin just got itchy. It was weird.
BEN KISSEL
Carbon monoxide maybe. I remember Oprah had quite a scandal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
MARCUS PARKS
With carbon monoxide?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Spreading it?
BEN KISSEL
No, with her school that she opened up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I bet. Don't trust a television person to open a school.
BEN KISSEL
To do anything, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But the believers will tell you that alien encounters are often preceded by UFO flaps small and large.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Wink.
MARCUS PARKS
And it is precisely because people saw strange things in the sky in the nights leading up to the encounter that we should be more open to believing the children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But concerning those sightings, multiple people across Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zambia all reported seeing strange objects in the sky in the two nights leading up to the incident at Ariel School. Now at first these sightings were dismissed as a meteor shower.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) And I knew that was impossible because the meteor had also just taken a bath.
BEN KISSEL
Oh isn't that something? As opposed to a meteor shower. That's a great joke, Ben. That's a really great joke there, Kissel. Real funny stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Then it was said that what people had seen was probably the nose cone of a Russian satellite that had fallen out of orbit after being launched a month prior and had crashed as flaming wreckage in both Zimbabwe and Mozambique. But according to African MUFON Director Cynthia Hind, the Russian nose cone was not the explanation for the sightings before the Ariel incident but the cause.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) It was but the seed!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) Twas but the shaft of it.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Also the Russian nose cone, that's what happens when you're doing analingus and you have your nose in the vagina.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait a second. There's some kind of Urban Dictionary next to me?
BEN KISSEL
The Russian nose cone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I don't know why we're trying to get into it so fast. Come and take me to dinner first.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not doing that to you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're doing this to me today.
BEN KISSEL
No, that's gross.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Cynthia said she was convinced that UFOs, whatever they may be, they're curious about unusual aerial events such as satellite crashes in addition to nuclear and missile tests.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) I once followed a raccoon for two miles wondering how he ate, he was so chubby and spherical. And next thing I knew he had found an entire unlocked dumpster in the back of the Caesars Pizza. The next thing I know it looks like I've got my vacation home!
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna live in the dumpster, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) Delivering the pizza is very easy, I don't even have to call.
BEN KISSEL
That's fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
And to be fair to the skeptic side, satellite crashes and aerial mishaps do often coincide with UFO sightings. However what you also often get around these mishaps are witnesses reporting sightings that look absolutely nothing like satellites or swamp gasses or anything else that's supposed to act as the quote unquote "rational explanation".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah fucker, yeah. Now I'm throwing the quotation marks in there, bro.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Fuck yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fucking rational, bro? Coming at me with fucking rational? Oh you're my fucking doctor saying I need to get a fucking colonoscopy, bro? Whatever dude.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Well that's reasonable anyway.
MARCUS PARKS
For example, witnesses near Lake Kariba in Zambia and Zimbabwe said that a couple of nights before the Ariel School incident, they saw what appeared to be a Boeing 747 traveling low in the sky, engulfed in flames, and spitting sparks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And no one's calling about this?
BEN KISSEL
I would make a phone call or two.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They tried.
MARCUS PARKS
But oddly the craft was totally silent and those witnesses were only a handful among the 80 or so people who saw odd shit in the sky during those two days.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was a lot of activity and we don't really know why. But it is strange because Cynthia Hind did research and there was no meteor shower on the books, right. There was nothing, no activity recorded. And they had no clue what the hell that thing was. And they also were saying as we'll get into later on, aerial phenomena has telltale signs, right. Like a meteor shower, it's a blink, like if you've seen a shooting star, it's really fast.
BEN KISSEL
Of course. Very cool to see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It doesn't hover, right. It doesn't change direction.
BEN KISSEL
No, it just says 'The More You Know' on top of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Always.
MARCUS PARKS
And it goes in an arc, it doesn't go straight down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It goes in an arc.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Is it possible that the weather report was cloudy with a chance of meatballs?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate you. Oh man. Just always two steps forward, five steps back, man.
BEN KISSEL
But when it comes to the Ariel School incident specifically, the event occurred at 10:15AM when 60 or so children between the ages of 6-12 were outside during recess. The reason why recess was so early that day was because inconveniently for witness purposes, the school's 13 adult staff members were having a meeting. Therefore only one adult was in the school yard that day, a parent volunteer named Alyson Kirkman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Listen, they were trying to figure out how to fake the moon landing. ]
BEN KISSEL
I know what they were up to also.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're trying to get back, they're trying to figure it out.
BEN KISSEL
You know there was a lot of scores settled on that playground that day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah dude.
BEN KISSEL
Not one teacher there, just a parent teacher that's supposed to watch over. They don't know the feuds, they don't know the beefs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, it's like Washington Heights on 9/11, man. All kinds of shit's going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everybody's getting shivved. That's when all the members of MS-13 are actually 13.
MARCUS PARKS
But Alyson Kirkman, the only adult out there, she was running the snack bar. And even after a student ran to tell her come look, there's a fucking alien out there, she refused to leave her post because she was afraid that someone was going to rob the till.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sick and tired of all your lies! You come and tell me, I know what happened last time. You said, 'Hey go look, there's a Bigfoot out there, he's asking for you by name.' I get out there, it's just a tall bush, I come back and the lollipop's gone.
BEN KISSEL
All the lollipops are gone. I like the strategy to be honest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it is funny because she's in 'UFOs Over Africa' she is hardcore. She's really just saying like, 'I will never leave this stand. I don't care what these kids have to say, I don't care if there's a group beating.'
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I mean she's there to protect all of the candy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why not the children?
BEN KISSEL
Well the children love the candy.
MARCUS PARKS
The rules are in place for a reason. Exactly Ben, the children love the candy. I guarantee you the reason why she didn't fucking leave her post is because someone had said, 'Hey there's a zebra over there!' And then she runs over there and she comes back and all the fucking Tootsie Rolls are gone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't stop five of them! If there's five in one go, they're moving four different directions.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the children said that they were gathered around some brush and overgrown grass near the playing field when they saw something flying near the tops of the trees. One kid said that the aircraft looked natural and that it was shaped like a rock, it reflected light, and it had water dripping from it. Others however said that the UFO was definitely disc-like and had a ring of lights either at the top or the bottom of the craft. But in a phenomenon that would apply also to the aliens themselves, one child said that the craft appeared and disappeared multiple times before it finally landed as if it was shifting in and out of reality.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a slow build too because as you listen to these kids talk they kind of set up a scenario where it started as lights, where they kind of saw some lights drift in to view. One said it looked like a metallic shimmer, one said that they just saw maroon, right, they just saw a patch of maroon in the sky. But it slowly coalesced into a shape and then more people started seeing the shape as well and then different shapes.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's weird how it's like it became solid as they were watching it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Perhaps it was getting aroused.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. So again now he's actually just accusing a craft to be a pedophile. He's just saying an object is a pedophile.
MARCUS PARKS
That's how far it's gone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how far he's gone.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, a high strangeness object, some otherworldly dimensional thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Craft thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Probably a pedophile.
BEN KISSEL
Let's see the documents, folks. Flight of the Navigator, did that not court a very young, young man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. Your stepson's going to hear a lot about this.
MARCUS PARKS
Well another kid said that the ship disappeared and reappeared three times and he and the others said that the larger craft was also surrounded by three or four smaller objects. But since the UFO was shining with such an intense bright light, it was hard to get a look at the satellite craft. Once it got closer to the ground there came the noise. The kids said that it buzzed loudly with a high pitched frequency, a sound that one girl described as quote "machine bees".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Which got bigger and louder as it got closer. Once the craft landed, the buzz was replaced by a quiet whirring noise. (whooshing sound)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(loud rasping)
BEN KISSEL
No, no, quiet whirring.
MARCUS PARKS
Whir! Whir! Something like that.
BEN KISSEL
(whooshing sound) God that's aggravating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fun noises with the boys.
BEN KISSEL
That's not fun noises, that was the dryer's done. I hate doing laundry.
MARCUS PARKS
But the bright light that accompanied the flight did not stop. From what the kid said though, time seemed to become distorted and they sat there for a few terrifying minutes waiting for something to happen. But as far as what the kids were feeling went, many but not all said that they felt excited, scared, and happy all at the same time.
BEN KISSEL
This is why it's so difficult to be a parent. Your kids feel excited, scared, and what was the other one?
MARCUS PARKS
Happy.
BEN KISSEL
All at once. What do you do? What do you do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how I felt right before I ate half of a bone marrow pie.
BEN KISSEL
I knew you were gonna mention your bone marrow pie. You're not allowed to eat it anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My chest hurts.
BEN KISSEL
Democracy, triangle of trust. Marcus, is he allowed to eat bone marrow pie anymore?
MARCUS PARKS
Anymore?
BEN KISSEL
Marcus, be on my side here!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Truly I got two more left in me.
BEN KISSEL
Two more?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Before the doctor cuts me off at some point.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Well excited, scared, and happy, that's a rollercoaster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Those are the sorts of things when you're going tick, tick, tick, tick tick, tick. You're happy, you're there, you're excited. Because that's what the little girl described it as, the one who said scared, happy, and excited. She said that she didn't know what was going to happen next but she wanted to know what was going to happen next.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She also had the idea in her head to say I also knew I was seeing something that nobody's ever seen before.
BEN KISSEL
That's cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She said this, this kind of understanding of oh this is fucking weird.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. This is weewy weerd.
BEN KISSEL
This is weerd.
MARCUS PARKS
But when the next noise came some of the kids reacted immediately in terror. It's not the noise you would expect.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
They said that the whirring noise was replaced with something that sounded like a flute. But the flute noise actually drew the children closer to the craft.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can we get a little bit of a flute noise so we can have something to compare it to?
MARCUS PARKS
(flute noises)
BEN KISSEL
(flute noises)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We should actually put in some sample of Jethro Tull.
BEN KISSEL
Jethro Tull beating Metallica, best metal album of the year.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll always be mad about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Then multiple creatures, either two or three depending on what child you asked, departed from the craft. Again the descriptions of the creatures varied from child to child, although all the descriptions were within reasonable parameters of comparison.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is where it gets fucking crazy because they all came out looking like fucking Kanye in 2022. It's all the all black, big boots.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting. I mean this is why the jury system is innately flawed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Well memory in and of itself is technically an obsolete way to look at reality.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. This is all about memory and this is about trying to put together a full story from many different eyewitness accounts because that's what you say, reasonable parameters of comparison. One kid said that he saw a little 3ft tall man dressed in a black shiny suit sporting long black hair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey kids, hey, hey, what's going on? Anyone from out of town? Hey, how you doing? No autographs okay. I'm just trying to get milked, all right?
BEN KISSEL
Wow, Mr. Big.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You playing with those jacks?
BEN KISSEL
Record contract, sweet.
MARCUS PARKS
The eyes which were much lower on the cheek than ours were large and elongated, classic alien gray eyes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) The Grays down in Africa.
MARCUS PARKS
However the eyes were described by one child as having a rough texture like American footballs. That one creeps me out, I love that one.
BEN KISSEL
That's weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Well if you think about it, if you look at a close up of a fly's eyeballs they do appear as if they have that rough texture. And so that's how I imagine these to look like.
BEN KISSEL
Every night I look at my fly, I look at it right in the eyes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Are you talking about sucking your own dick?
BEN KISSEL
No, I have a pet fly.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, what's his name?
BEN KISSEL
Herb.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's just not go into his fucking dumpster version of Snow White because I don't know what his life is like in that home.
BEN KISSEL
I have a pet ant, I have a pet fly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You need an exterminator.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well continuing in the alien gray vein, some of the consistent descriptions of the creatures were that their mouths were slits, the ears could hardly be seen, and the noses were almost nonexistent. But drawing perhaps upon their cultural backgrounds, some of the local kids believed that these creatures were evil goblins, specifically the infamous Tokoloshe.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, the Tokoloshe! We've covered the Tokoloshe here and there.
BEN KISSEL
Sweet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's come up into our writings before and we'll get into it again. But you're not supposed to be super close to a Tokoloshe.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very scary, a lot of the kids were really afraid that the things we're going to eat them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Don't get too close to the Tokoloshe.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the Tokoloshe, is it Toko-losh or Toko-lo-shay?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Toko-lo-shee?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Toko-lo-shee sounds like a guy who's purposely mispronouncing. He's from Ohio.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Sounds like Luigi's plumber or something.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the Tokoloshe is a small, evil, mischievous gremlin-like creature of Zulu folklore sometimes used to scare children into behaving, ie be good or the Tokoloshe will come eat you or choke you to death in your sleep.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
He's like the Lechuza or the boogeyman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Tokoloshe I believe also steals your penis. That is a common fear, I believe the Tokoloshe comes and he takes your sexual prowess as well.
BEN KISSEL
He just takes your penis, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
I do know that it is one folk belief that if you put your bed on bricks, like if you put your bed stand on bricks, then it's going to make the bed too high for the Tokoloshe to climb up on so the Tokoloshe isn't going to steal your penis or choke you to death while you sleep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it can extend its own penis to any length.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that nice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Tokoloshe has a single buttock.
MARCUS PARKS
Any length?
BEN KISSEL
It has one butt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
First you must summon the Tokoloshe. No, hey, hey now, why are we doing this?
BEN KISSEL
What do you mean it has one butt?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It has one butt.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah and what do you mean any length?
BEN KISSEL
Don't we have one butt?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause it can extend it to impregnate women.
MARCUS PARKS
But any length means can it reach from here to the sun? Can it explore outer space?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know!
BEN KISSEL
It would burn his dick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Don't have sex with the sun. That's just weird, one butt. Where's the hole go?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just one mound.
BEN KISSEL
That's weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as a side note, Tokoloshes are sometimes said to be created by witch doctors, much like the golems of Jewish folklore. In this case a client will call on a witch doctor and ask him to take vengeance on an enemy using a Tokoloshe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, let me see how many Tokoloshes we've got available. Actually the next Tokoloshe we got Monday at 4.
BEN KISSEL
Monday at 4 works.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is your revenge gonna hold until Monday at 4?
BEN KISSEL
That works for me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we'll be sending Hernando over. You should go and hit him up. He'll text you 30 minutes out.
BEN KISSEL
And he'll do the dick lasso?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I guess. We'll have to add a surge to that cause that's big right now.
BEN KISSEL
That's fine. I really hate this guy, he's a mean guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah well right now Hernando's penis is in San Diego. So if you're gonna need a penis I can get you in Wednesday>
BEN KISSEL
The lasso.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You need penis lasso?
BEN KISSEL
Wednesday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wednesday is gonna be good. Wednesday at 4, yeah. So the window is 8AM to 9PM.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god dang it, that's a whole day, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the witch doctor agrees but he says that the Tokoloshe will only take vengeance in exchange for a human soul that will be chosen by the Tokoloshe after the job is over and done with.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man, can't it just love chocolate or diamonds or something?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No dog.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's gonna take a soul. It's going to take your mother's soul or your sister or your brother, someone close to you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's going to be an ironic twist and it's gonna be bad.
BEN KISSEL
I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because revenge is bad.
BEN KISSEL
It can be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And once the terms are agreed upon the witch doctor finds a dead body. He pierces the eye sockets and brain with a hot rod of iron so that it cannot think for itself. Then he sprinkles it with a special powder to shrink the body down to Tokoloshe size.
BEN KISSEL
Sweet. Save money on a casket that way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
MARCUS PARKS
The Tokoloshe then does what it does, then takes its chosen soul weeks, months, or even years later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hard to be a freelancer.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in full disclosure, I did take all of that information from the creation section of the Tokoloshe Wikipedia page which was rife with capitalization and punctuation mistakes. And it definitely had a big citation needed note right next to that whole witch doctor paragraph.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you can tell us how to do an absolute foolproof Tokoloshe, sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com. We're gonna make one.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Why not? I'll shrink you down.
MARCUS PARKS
But I did find another source that said that if you want to avoid the wrath of the Tokoloshe and make friends with it, all you have to do is cut the long hair that hangs over his face and feed him a little saucer of curdled milk.
BEN KISSEL
Wait a second.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You mean to tell me you gotta give him bangs?
BEN KISSEL
You just gotta make it Zooey Deschanel and then now we're friends?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And give him curdled milk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not giving it a ukulele, all right.
BEN KISSEL
I'll give it curdled milk though. I've got curdled milk lying around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know that.
BEN KISSEL
That's for damn sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Now considering how the Tokoloshe is indeed a fearsome little goblin, you can understand why some of the kids at the Ariel School might have been afraid that those creatures had arrived for the sole purpose of eating them. But mixed with that fear, some said, was a feeling of excitement and happiness. Similarly to the folkloric associations some of the children made with the aliens, some of the other kids whose worldview was more informed by pop culture later told their teachers that the aliens looked like Michael Jackson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's ignorant.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's ignorant. I bring the children to me.
BEN KISSEL
Does Michael need this? He's already got a lot going on. A lot of people were saying he's been in the bad spots. Maybe he doesn't need to be blamed for being an alien.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't need to travel for the children. They premium delivery straight to my monkey.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no. Oh my lordy.
MARCUS PARKS
And indeed another kid described during an interview she did recently that the alien skin looked plastic, like someone who'd done too much botox. Another said that the skin looked smooth as if it might slide off at any second. And that's something that we've seen, this sounds somewhat like a Men in Black description.
BEN KISSEL
Sugar water, sugar water.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is very eerie. Because as they've gotten older, the kids... Cynthia Hind believes that your memory becomes more crystalline as you get older which I don't know if it's true or not. I don't know whether or not if you look back and if you remember harder.
BEN KISSEL
I think you just remember wrong stuff more.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think you're filling out the memory with what you think you remember quite often. But the kids, one of them says straight up I need to remember this forever because I know how important this story is. And so you can see them running this time and time again. But the one thing that comes out is that yeah, it's Men in Black, it's very weird. What they're saying is hyper specific and also what we talk about with Grays all the time, they had their little jumpsuits on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Then the aliens began moving which was possibly the most disconcerting thing to all of the children. One kid said that she saw one of the aliens run through the grass but it seemed as if it was not really affected by gravity. Instead she said it moved fluidly as if gravity did not affect it at all. Another however said that the alien ran in slow motion like an instant replay and in fact some of the kids said that everything seemed to be moving in slow motion even though they said that their hearts were still beating as fast as they could go.
BEN KISSEL
That's really interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you believe in the witness stories of people talking about the Hopkinsville goblin story which we've covered here and there and our friends the Newkirks did their whole special on the Hellier Project too, examining it.
BEN KISSEL
Hellier!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that idea of they are not bound by our physics in any way. There is something about them that looks like it's a projection onto our reality in some way and that they're kind of behaving in almost cartoon manner where they can bounce.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And to that point, one kid said that she perceived the action of the alien running as a loop, like watching a movie. The creature would run from one side of the grass to the other, then it would disappear and reappear where it started and it would go through the motion over and over and over again.
BEN KISSEL
Weird. Is it possible that the gravity on their planet is a little bit more strict or strong and that's why they're so short and that's why here it's almost like they're on the moon?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
One of the girls did say that it wasn't quite like the bouncing that you see astronauts do on the moon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
She said it was like gravity didn't affect them at all. It wasn't really bouncy, it was just like Henry said, like they were projected here, like they were here and not here all at the same time. Like the rules just didn't apply to them.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's dream logic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Finally though the creatures communicated directly with the children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is freaky.
BEN KISSEL
I don't like that.
MARCUS PARKS
Using telepathy they brought a message of ecological protection, saying the same thing that aliens always say to us, that we're destroying the earth, that we don't know what we're doing and so on and so forth.
BEN KISSEL
I didn't know I was going to be dealing with a bunch of libturds. Hey cuck, hey alien cuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can just see the libertarian getting brutally probed again and again. Like am I paying for this?
MARCUS PARKS
But while that is indeed a cliche in alien abduction communication, I don't know how many times we've said on this show that that's the fucking message that aliens bring to people again and again, it's interesting here for the fact that these children would have had no clue that this was a common if not near universal message delivered during these encounters. And yet this is universally what the children said the message was from day one. Specifically some children said that they received messages telling them to protect the earth from man made destruction, while others said they got an explicitly anti-technology message, like an extraterrestrial version of 'Industrial Society and Its Future'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That would be scary, very long. Very, very long.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Is it worth it to have your Tik Tok if it's going to ruin the dang world?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not, it's not. But they said they didn't hear voices. Again these things were just sort of, they said it was a feeling that was impressed upon them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.And still others said that they received something beyond messages. They were given images, thousands of them, all showing the consequences of environmental destruction that we're now showing worldwide because nobody listens to a bunch of children when they say aliens told them that we're destroying the earth. I don't know why they don't go to somebody in power. They're always talking to some dad in Florida or some housewife in Massachusetts or a bunch of kids in Zimbabwe saying hey we gotta get the earth back on track. And that's not the people that have the power to change those things!
BEN KISSEL
When you talk to people in power and then they explain to you how Exxon is just really important to their campaign.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And without Halliburton on board we just don't see how we're gonna get to power. If you're the aliens, go to children. I actually think it makes sense to go to children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can see any senator of any political party, if you have an alien in front of them they're still going to be like, 'Well you can't vote so it doesn't even really matter what what you say to me, I don't really care. And actually I don't really care what anybody says to me, I'm gonna do whatever somebody pays me to do.'
BEN KISSEL
I'm a senator, it's west Virginia, we like fucking coal. Okay? So I need to stay a senator, you get it alien.
MARCUS PARKS
Have the aliens take over the airwaves, put together a powerpoint presentation. Show everybody.
BEN KISSEL
It didn't go well when the War of the Worlds aired, I don't think people handled it very well Marcus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just don't know if powerpoints that could be the thing that fixes everything. I think what they need to do is-
BEN KISSEL
If they have a fucking powerpoint I'm not going to trust their from the future.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as how long this encounter lasted, the children said that they weren't sure because as I said time was greatly distorted during the encounter.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Some said that it lasted only a few minutes while others estimated that it lasted closer to 15.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah the one teacher that was involved, he said 15 minutes but you never know. Again he said the same thing, he was transfixed.
BEN KISSEL
Well it's relative isn't it? If you're waiting 90 seconds for your food to get done it's different than holding your breath for 90 seconds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually I feel the same for both of those.
BEN KISSEL
Well one you're going to start to get panicky.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I get panicky and upset and angry.
BEN KISSEL
All right, all right but you know what I'm saying. A second is different.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually don't know.
BEN KISSEL
A second of bliss vs a second of pain, the bliss goes faster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless it's Hellraiser time. One of the things that is truly frightening about this entire recollection... So it started with the lights and the kids are seeing it and then the noises started and then panic set in.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that was what really got me is that the Ariel Phenomenon documentary really set the tone of how scary this was for the kids.
BEN KISSEL
Dun-dun-dun!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some of them ran and went screaming but some of them were transfixed by the creatures. Now we know that they're communicating to them but it's more like the way they talked about being transfixed by their eyes. There was one little boy that said when he was looking into it, it was the thing turned and looked at him, made eye contact with him.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He said it made like a face and he said the only way you could describe it is that he felt terrified and he told Dr. John Mack that it looked like an old lady who had never seen a child before.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that it was like squinting at him.
MARCUS PARKS
Squinting inquisitively he said.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Squinting like (creaking sound) doing the head spin.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! That's scary, don't like it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then another little girl was like it felt like they, she said the term "they want us". And then they're like well what do you mean? It's not just licky lick, it's like they want human children, they want to connect to them. They're looking at them as basically saying straight up well we don't raise generations of people believing that you're destroying the planet, then eventually you just will.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And the most horrifying thing of all, the candy store, they only had Baby Ruth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That woman stay there the entire time. Children are running and screaming. Literally it could have been anything, it could have been a shooter. And she's just sitting there being like, 'These fuckers think they're gonna distract me.'
BEN KISSEL
Kids got time to plot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do.
MARCUS PARKS
But once the aliens climbed back into the ship, it seemed as if the spell that they put over all of the children had been broken. Once the mechanical bee sounds started back up, the children's collective terror, every single one of them, it became palpable and they ran back to the school to find an adult to tell what they'd just seen. But of course the parent volunteer told the children, including her daughter Fifi, to pull the other leg.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pull the other leg.
BEN KISSEL
What do you mean pull the other leg?
MARCUS PARKS
Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Pull the other one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're pulling my leg.
BEN KISSEL
It's like one of the worst toy lines of all time, the Hook toy line.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
The hook? Hook, the movie Hook.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Do you remember Captain Hook? He had extended legs, you could extend his legs to make him taller.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
Trash, it was a trash toy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you have decided to, after these decades have passed. you decided now is the time to take the Hook merchandising world down a peg.
BEN KISSEL
It was a trash series of toys.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, understandable that you might be disappointed about that.
BEN KISSEL
He just got taller!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just amazing of all of the things in the world that are currently happening that Kissel's still vehemently upset this toy from childhood.
BEN KISSEL
I remember and I only got one a week and they were 5 bucks each. That was my toy for the fucking week.
MARCUS PARKS
That was it. And that's what you were so mad about is that your new toy wasn't good enough for that week.
BEN KISSEL
It sucked. It didn't even go with any my other toys.
MARCUS PARKS
Then why did you get it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See I liked having a pantheon of toys.
BEN KISSEL
Because I thought it was gonna be cool and I also just watched Hook and I liked the movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you had a pantheon of toys.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I always mixed up my GI Joes, TMNT. I put them all together in one big world, they all fought and they all railroaded April O'Neil.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness, Mr. Zebrowski. That's not right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She liked it, she consented.
BEN KISSEL
No she would only like it if it was Raphael but she ended up with Casey Jones because he's a person.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the thing is after the parent volunteer said I don't believe you, they didn't stop there which is probably what they would have done had it just been a prank. Miss, Miss, there's an alien out thee. If she would have said no they would have just you know put their heads down and said all right, we'll go over here now. But no, they were fucking panicking and screaming. They ran and interrupted the teachers' staff meeting hoping that some adult would tell them what to do. Now the Ariel School incident was not a sort of hearsay occurrence in which a lone MUFON ufologist interviews the kids years afterwards as adults. The incident occurred on a Friday and by the following week news outlets all over the world picked up the story.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And the children began giving interviews.
BEN KISSEL
And you know for a fact even a crowd of MUFON ufologist is alone, aren't they?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes Ben, we walk alone.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then she is, look at Cynthia Hind, man. She's too busy for a man.
BEN KISSEL
Self-published.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Too busy, I mean absolutely too emotionally distant for a woman. She is focused on her goal and ready to go out there and get to the bottom of this. And it's true they were out there days later.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because she got called up because again, (old lady voice) 'My phone just absolutely was tremendous the amount of response that the children had. And I was just like oh, oh, someone find my clothes.'
BEN KISSEL
Yes ma'am, your vulva's hanging out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) I've already put that down in the visitation book.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They went right there and they closed up shop.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was the goals was that MUFON investigators arrived and hey were like all right, we're going to close this up, make sure that nobody else is talking to these kids until we're done with them.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But before you say that the kids collaborated over the weekend on some fanciful tale-
BEN KISSEL
The kids collaborated over the weekend on a fanciful tale!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
MARCUS PARKS
You'd you say that?
BEN KISSEL
I said it! Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Colin Mackie, the headmaster, he had the children draw what they saw on the same day that the event occurred.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is really interesting. They jumped right into this.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, immediately. And just like later testimonies, the drawings were similar but not exact. In some cases there was only one craft drawn while in others you'd see two or three. Same thing with the number of aliens depicted, anywhere between one and three. And similarly some aliens were drawn with that long flowing black hair and some weren't. But what was most consistent across all the drawings was the shape and appearance of the alien creatures who showed all the markers of being your classic alien Grays.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was straight down the line. Everybody said that they had saw the same weird teardrop- shaped head, tiny body, huge eyes. They all said it and they didn't have the cultural reference.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They did not have Whitley Strieber's 'Communion' to know that's what we think aliens look like.
MARCUS PARKS
No, this is not like 1999 in a Spencer's Gifts. They haven't seen the ever present 90s alien head for years upon years, it was completely outside of their cultural milieu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And as everybody who has had problems with these episodes in the past or in the future, anybody talking about ufology or talking about UFOs or ghosts, the paranormal, I feel like that's again they're like, well right there, there's the rub, right, is that they're all seeing something different.
BEN KISSEL
There's the rub.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But do you not know how often we all... Have you seen the movie fucking Rashômon?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We all will remember things differently because you arrive at something with a story, with a background.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Even as a kid. And also I believe that the trickster edge of the phenomena plays with you as well and it's about you being interpreted. You know like the one time I did that mushroom tea, fucking went all the way back to the back of my fucking mind and I talked to The Dude from The Big Lebowski and he explained to me that our reality is just a program dropped into an operating system.
BEN KISSEL
You talked to The Dude or The Man?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Dude!
BEN KISSEL
You talked to the The Dude!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? Our brains can interpret it, our reality is interpretive, we make it up as we go.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Well I want to thank you for coming to our town hall committee meeting, Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's why parking violations shouldn't exist.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. And that's why we will take it into consideration teaching both sides of the holocaust. So thank you so much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! I just want to be able to park wherever my car fits.
BEN KISSEL
Two sides to every story, two sides. And actually stricter parking rules. Sorry. Two sides to every story.
MARCUS PARKS
You know Ben you do laugh but in college I did once to show up to a libertarian meeting on mushrooms and gave a speech much the same as the one that Henry just gave.
BEN KISSEL
I believe it, I believe it. And that's when the libertarians, that's where they're a big tent party.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We also have clueless assholes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, wandering in from the park to the local coffee shop and then just meeting with my buddy Clint who was like, 'Hey why don't you come inside?'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I'll fucking come inside but you're about to go outside while you're inside, you know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
I don't know what you're talking about, no.
MARCUS PARKS
The first investigator on the scene was as Henry said head of MUFON in Africa, the aforementioned Cynthia Hind. She began conducting interviews with children on September 20 but headmaster Colin Mackie put a stop to these interviews a few months later because it was greatly affecting the mental health of his students.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also if you read just the back of this book, this is just an example of Cynthia Hind's style. (old lady voice) "Cynthia Hind always upholds the highest standards of the scientific researcher. She remains unflappable, virtually foolproof but open minded to the end. Her trademark is the extended and repeated interview where heretofore unretrieved and forgotten facts are often brought to the subject's conscious mind by a gentle and persistent prodding." This is the back of the book.
BEN KISSEL
isn't that fantastic? Judging by that picture she's definitely flappable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(old lady voice) When you're all flaps, it's like there's no flaps.
BEN KISSEL
None at all.
MARCUS PARKS
And that is one of the criticisms of this story is that some people do say that Cynthia Hind went in there like a fucking Tasmanian devil and completely fucked up everything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like a dog on a bone!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that her influence made it impossible to truly look at this entire thing objectively. But the man who did know what he was doing was Dr. John Mack.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
See Dr. John Mack was not only a professor of psychology at Harvard, we mentioned him at the very beginning of the episode. He was the head of the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School and he was trained in both adult and child psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Additionally he also won Pulitzer Prize for writing a psychological biography of Lawrence of Arabia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Weird.
MARCUS PARKS
This guy knew his shit.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
See starting in the early 90s, Dr. Mack had become fascinated with the psychology of alien abductions. Standing on the shoulders of such giants as Dr. Ronald Sprinkle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I will show the whole world that we will make butterscotch telepathic!
BEN KISSEL
Awesome! Thanks Dr. Sprinkle!
MARCUS PARKS
I miss Dr. Sprinkle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love Dr. Sprinkle.
MARCUS PARKS
Well initially Dr. Mack believed alien abduction to be simple mental illness, that's all there is to it. But he found again and again that the people he interviewed had no obvious pathologies. Instead he found that there was a more spiritual and ethereal quality to what we know as alien abduction.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because I don't know if collecting gems fits in the DSM-4, I don't know if that's a symptom of illness. It struck all of our mothers, all of our mothers have I'd like to call it tchotchke AIDS where it's just this immuno system, I don't know what it is, where they just collect snowmen and witches and pelicans.
BEN KISSEL
We still have all the Hummels that were supposed to really go up in value but they decreased immensely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much so. No one cares about them.
BEN KISSEL
No one cares.
MARCUS PARKS
And so when Dr. Mack heard about the Ariel School incident, he took a plane to Zimbabwe and began interviewing every child who was willing to speak with him. By the time he was done he was staunchly convinced that these children were telling the truth. He said that as a psychiatrist it was his job to distinguish between psychosis like mass hysteria and actual
reality. And based on the information he gleaned from these interviews, he concluded that an extraterrestrial encounter did indeed occur in Zimbabwe in 1994.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if you want a compelling book, John E. Mack's 'Abductions' is fantastic.
BEN KISSEL
Well when you say it like 'Johnny Max' it sounds like he's in Mortal Kombat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. It's John E. Mack but I feel like there was some other John Mack he had to differentiate himself from.
BEN KISSEL
I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But his book's fantastic.
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But Dr. Mack also paid a heavy professional toll for daring to buck established beliefs and he almost lost his job because he dared to even be curious about something so supposedly silly as alien abduction.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just find it interesting that they hated this topic and they felt that it lowered the reputation, that it affected the reputation of Harvard Medical School.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. As opposed to all the gangbang societies they have, Skull & Bones and all that weird stuff?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they all just suck each other's dick and then become president.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's also the entire world of theology. They have a full theology department.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it's okay to talk about fake man in the sky. And I understand the cultural implications of it but I feel like it goes it goes right under the umbrella. If we're going to talk about the cultural implications of our beliefs and the historical implications of our beliefs, you can't take this out of it.
BEN KISSEL
I heard that aliens are angels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Mrs. Marianne Williamson, if you could please leave us all alone.
BEN KISSEL
Aw, she's sweet.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think the problem that Harvard had was not... If he was some sort of cultural anthropology professor talking about aliens say among the, was that the Dogon people of Africa?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Very interesting, very compelling.
MARCUS PARKS
Very compelling. ut if he's talking about it from a cultural anthropology perspective, they're not going to have any problem with it. Their problem was that this was the head of the psychiatry department and he's not talking about it from the perspective of this is a cultural phenomenon, these people just have something going on with them that has nothing to do with the real world. He's saying no, there is something very real to this that we got to look into and we're doing a disservice to the entire world by not looking into it. It's basically how soft disclosure has come about where people are finally saying no look, there are UFOs in the sky, there is shit flying around, we're not doing anybody any favors by pretending like it's not happening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah that's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
John Mack was saying the exact same thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Same shit. Because honestly they really wanted to make more time for them because they had a whole course they wanted to do which they felt this was eating into called Why Dudes Rock.
BEN KISSEL
Why Dudes Rock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it was just like Sammy Hagar, it was the science of Sammy Hagar and The Red Rocker.
BEN KISSEL
Seriously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they had a whole long thing about Are Clitoris' Real?
BEN KISSEL
That's something.
MARCUS PARKS
Turns out no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
That's what they landed on. But it's Harvard so...
BEN KISSEL
Much like an electric car, nothing under the hood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is something, it's not just empty, it doesn't run on magic.
BEN KISSEL
It's not empty. An electric car?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No that's storage, that's where they put the storage.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as the children themselves went, most of them were to put it mildly massively fucked up by their experiences.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Making it worse was the fact that just after the incident Zimbabwe sort of fell apart through economic and social collapse and the children were scattered to the winds with no one else to talk to about what happened. It has only been recently that these people have been willing to come forward to talk about their experience and they look just as bewildered and frightened talking about it today as they did when they were interviewed as children in 1994.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what brings me back. It's the fear associated with it and how deeply it all affected their lives. They are traumatized. Whatever happened that day, I will always kind of give the back door like we don't know if it's extraterrestrial necessarily, right. I don't know what that means, right. But whatever happened fucked these kids up and they're not letting it go. Because what seemed to double their trauma was the parents' reactions to the kids because the teachers were all just as freaked out as anybody else because these kids rolled up and they're all saying the same thing, tears streaming down their face, saying we saw these things out in the field. And they don't know what the fuck to do so half of them saying it didn't exist, that traumatizes you. The other one's getting all freaked out and screaming like we're all gonna die! That also fucks with you. It's very difficult.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And of course Henry only gives the back door on Oink Oink Saturdays, that is where he gets on all fours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all he heard.
MARCUS PARKS
That's all he heard was back door. That was the first thing you said. And I had a salient point to make that was going to build upon your point.
BEN KISSEL
Oink Oink Saturday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're talking about a conversation, like a free flowing intellectual meeting of the minds.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. I don't even remember what it was anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, of course not.
MARCUS PARKS
Now all I remember is Oink Oink Saturday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this is why republicans win elections. This is the exact problem we're seeing.
BEN KISSEL
Where's the lube? It's Saturday! It's Oink Oink Saturday. Oink oink.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's owning the narrative.
MARCUS PARKS
Well what I was gonna say is that the teachers, most of them did believe them. The headmaster of the school, he very reluctantly would say yeah, it happened, something happened.
BEN KISSEL
Weird.
MARCUS PARKS
And these parents are all bewildered as well. And that showed in the documentary, there was this basically a PTA meeting where all these parents come and John Mack just goes up and says, 'Hi, very happy to be here, probably don't want to hear this but yep, it was aliens. Yep.'
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You see these teachers all like, 'Ugh fuck. God, how are we gonna fucking get our funding next year if it's aliens?'
BEN KISSEL
You might get more funding, who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And for me it's not necessarily the fear that gets me because there is something to be said about fear traveling with you throughout the years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the bewilderment, that's what gets me on the interviews. Still just totally like I don't get it, I don't understand. Because Cynthia Hind uses the word 'crystallized', that their memory crystallized over the years. It feels like to me like it hasn't crystallized at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. They're all just as frightened and just as scarred by it because again it's an example of you're met with the moment of the extreme mysterious, right. There is no explanation. There is none. Whatever it was. Maybe it all existed in a ripple of mass hysteria. That's just as mysterious as aliens because it's like where the fuck did it come from? They didn't make up the story. They did not. I looked it all up, I dug in, I looked to see for any kid, at least one to say we made it up, somebody made it up.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They won't back off of it.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I don't think it's like the sunken thing either, I don't think it's like a cult mentality where it's like well I gave up my life to this story. Most of them have not said anything about the story since they were a child.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
So while the Ariel School incident is not necessarily a home run when it comes to proving the alien phenomenon, it's still one of if not the most compelling case of an alien encounter in modern history.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe it.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe it.
BEN KISSEL
1994. Not that long ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This an in the park home run.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because yeah officially it's not a home run but if you hustle for it, you can get in there.
BEN KISSEL
A couple of different mistakes have to be made usually.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome. All right well there it is, the Ariel Phenomenon. 'UFOs Over Africa' is the name of the book so check that out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, it's out of print. We spent a lot of money on this book.
BEN KISSEL
It is?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. This actually cost money.
BEN KISSEL
How much money did you spend on that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Enough.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
How much company money did you spend on that book?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Enough.
BEN KISSEL
Enough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Enough.
BEN KISSEL
Marcus, do you know the cost of this book?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But it's enough.
BEN KISSEL
What the fuck?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But do you remember when Kissel accidentally extended his own hotel room for a week?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I remember that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When he did that in a weird decision you made in the middle of night where you extended your hotel. So I would say this is equivalent. I think the book we purchased is equivalent.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I think so. But do check out the Ariel Phenomenon documentary that is available at arielphenomenon.com. It's fantastic, it's one of the best UFO documentaries and it's well made too, it's very, very well made.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not a bunch of horseshit.
BEN KISSEL
And if you can extend your hotel, extend your hotel. Absolutely. I don't know the situation you're talking about but I believe it.
MARCUS PARKS
I remember it exactly. I don't remember the city but I do remember getting the call of hey so Ben extended his hotel for an extra five days, you guys know what that's about? You know what's going on with that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was mystery. And you know what? We got to the bottom of it.
BEN KISSEL
What is it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I'd say? Again, a moment of the extreme mysterious. What is the man's motives? I don't know. I'll never know. Cause you ended up home the same time as we all ended up home.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we had the Monday day, we had a meeting and we had to record. So you were there for all of that, you made it.
BEN KISSEL
I must've made a mistake. All right everyone well thank you so much for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, what we got here? We got San Diego Comic-Con, we're going to fucking be there.
BEN KISSEL
Can't wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Friday we are there 10:30AM. It is us, the three of us, us chuckleheads.
BEN KISSEL
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
David Dastmalchian who is very talented. Do you know what room we're in?
BEN KISSEL
Room 10.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Room 10.
BEN KISSEL
That's a pretty easy room to remember.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come on down, the water's fine. And then we got signings after that, we have a signing on Saturday. We're gonna be out there, very, very excited.
BEN KISSEL
Can't wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also come see Ed Larson and I at Classy Night Out, the Pack Theater July 26th, 9PM.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
$10 tickets. We're gonna have a good time with it.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. It's a beautiful little theater, it's fun to get back into the black box. All right, anything else? Obviously we got our European tour, I'm sure you guys have heard those ads, check that out.
MARCUS PARKS
Don't forget that to be in October. We're going to be in the Netherlands, we're gonna be in the UK and Ireland. And don't forget that we're gonna be in Australia this January.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah baby!
MARCUS PARKS
So go to lastpodcastontheleft.com for all of the dates and ticket links for those shows. Make sure you get tickets because all that shit sold out last time and it's probably gonna sell out again, so make sure to get your tickets now.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you all so much for supporting all the shows here on the Last Podcast Network and we want to mention that the Dark Rider Cruiser goes on sale this Monday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
On Tuesday.
MARCUS PARKS
Tuesday.
BEN KISSEL
Goes on sale this Tuesday.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's by Priority Bikes and I will say I am a proud owner of a Priority bicycle, they're fucking amazing bicycles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You like those bikes, right?
MARCUS PARKS
I love the bikes. No, no, I've had a Priority bike for like two years now. Yeah, Priority bikes are fucking amazing. So I'm not just a client, I also am a client.
BEN KISSEL
All right. Go cruising in a cruiser, you might find yourself a bruiser.
MARCUS PARKS
And they didn't even give me a bike for free, I bought that fucking thing.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
So that's how much I love Priority bikes. Go get the Dark Rider Cruiser.
BEN KISSEL
A little bitter over it.
MARCUS PARKS
Black Rider.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just had to buy padded shorts for my exercise bike because it hurts my asshole and my balls, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Because of your butthole, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Your little butt?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, his little butt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that bike doesn't even go anywhere.
BEN KISSEL
No, it really doesn't. It's kinda funny actually, I wanna see you on it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wendy sits and stares at me.
BEN KISSEL
(Wicked Witch of the West theme) All right everyone, hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me.
BEN KISSEL
Look to the sky!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look to the sky!
BEN KISSEL
Look to the skies. Unless your driving.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah then look at the road please.
BEN KISSEL
The road.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't look at your phones.
BEN KISSEL
Don't look at your phone no matter what!
MARCUS PARKS
No.