Things That Keep Me Up at Night

After you hear friend-of-the-show Lex Mooney share these stories of mysterious disappearance, law enforcement incompetence, and the occasional preventable death, you'll have learned three lessons: 

A huge thanks to Lex for being on the show (and David Paulides for collecting these stories in his book, Missing 411)! We can't wait to hear what you have to terrify us next. 

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Happy Pride Month! We're kicking it off with a review of an LGBTQ cult classic. The Gay Deceivers (1969) was one of the first American films to portray include depictions of homosexuality after the elimination of the Hays Code that plagued Hollywood for decades. While we initially selected the film because of an oh-so-viral video of Michael Greer, we were splendidly surprised with how comfortably camp the film was.

The film follows two friends, Danny Devlin and Elliot Crane, who decide to dodge the draft by pretending to be in a gay relationship. Due to rules regarding the m...

Huge thanks to Behind the Slate Podcast for turning us on to this underexposed gem - give 'em a listen and follow them on Tiktok (which is where we saw the video that inspired this episode).

These two white girls from Southern California were woefully unaware of the powerhouse that is Melvin Van Peebles - a man who basically set the standard for what would become known as Blaxploitation film. This episode changed that. 

Don't let the movie's premise (a bigoted white man becomes Black) scare you off. Watermelon Man is one of the most di...

Folks, we could all use a little good news. But instead of a Gong Noise episode, we decided to find a new direction: Historical acts of kindness. Though the five different stories of individual kindness were different in scale, time period, and motive, we were surprised to find a uniting factor that resonated directly with the times we find ourselves living through now (even if Olivia still managed to make her last one a bummer). 

Featuring: moral ambiguity, compassion, and a path forward.

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While Olivia and Brooke work up the data to present something decent on the RESTRICT Act, we decided to take Gwyneth Paltrow's moment in the media cycle to revisit all the things we hate about GOOP (and rich people lol). Gwyneth, if you're reading this, take this as a sign. Go to therapy. Talk to non-millionaires. I'm begging you.

Also, as an update, we're deleting our social media! You can still reach us at ttkmeup@gmail.com or through our website. Thanks for understanding!

Featuring: a new segment called Would You Buy That, the healing...

Ok so we watched this movie in 2016 and had this incredible plan to revisit it, listen to our old review, and compare it with our current opinions. But I guess we Mandela Effect-ed ourselves into thinking we had done an episode on it? We literally confused our real life for Content. Unbelievable.

Anyway, The Red Pill is a nightmare of a documentary (both technically and in substance). If nothing else, it served as a metric for how much we've grown in 7 years, because this was truly insufferable. Get ready for an hour and a half of analytical r...

The deep dive into child beauty pageants is finally complete. The big question: Why do parents still engage with these pageants when they're a.) so demonstrably harmful to kids and b.) so universally disliked by our culture? The answer is simpler than you may think.

Featuring: That pesky old Capitalism again, a Sociology 101 class, and a surprise guest star.

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We've had a WEEK (read: we are very tired), so instead of an emotionally-draining heavy hitter we've opted for another terrible movie to lift our spirits. And let me tell you, From Justin to Kelly DELIVERED.

There is nothing right about this movie. The writing, acting, dancing, singing, songwriting, direction, photography, everything is as wrong as it can be. And yet, somehow, Olivia and I both had the singularly euphoric experience of wanting to watch it again immediately. When it comes to the world of uniquely terrible film, this is something special.

Featuring: Our lord an...

To give you a break from real-life family toxicity in the pageant world, we're diving deep into... fictional family toxicity! Hooray!

For the first time, we compared two different movies for our minisode: Monster in Law (2005) and My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002). The latter is one of our favorite comedies, like, ever, and the other is... well, we hadn't seen it since we were kids, so it wasn't much of anything to us. Until we watched it again. And now we both hate it.

But why do we hate it? They're both films about unhealthy fam...

Disclaimer: We had some audio issues on Brooke's recording this week - it's a little annoying, but still listenable, and we really hope it doesn't affect your listening experience too much. Please stick with it! It's our longest episode, and we're really proud of how it turned out. Hope you enjoy!

TW: child abuse (nothing graphic, but general neglect and disregard for their needs), sex and sexuality (in the context of both child sexual development and abuse), a brief mention of eating disorders (personal anecdotes about our experiences, also not graphic but potentially triggering), and a brief...

THIS MOVIE BAD.

Idk what we expected from a movie that won like 5 Razzies, but we are at a loss, folks. This rivals My Boss's Daughter in badness - and this movie was supposed to be a blockbuster. Based on the book duo that inspired the best Fallout game (Fallout: New Vegas, obviously), this film had the source material to make something truly interesting. And all the elements were there! But somehow, the entire artistic team (right down to the performers, composer, the works) dropped the ball so hard that it tunnelled to the core of the E...

Brooke's only familiarity with child pageants was with Toddlers & Tiaras when she was in high school--but how accurate was that to the real life effects pageants have on kids? In part I of her Kids episode series, Brooke covers the history, structure, and inner workings of the different types of child pageants. Plus, as a treat, we'll get into the terms and conditions of one pageant company as an example of what kids could be signing up for. Next time, we'll cover the real effects of child pageantry, the motivations for participating, and how child pageants could become more e...

Brooke stalling for time is the perfect excuse to get into the spooky spirit with a good-ole-fashioned horror movie review! And this one's a treat - it has NUANCE. It has JUICE. It has stuff to ARGUE ABOUT. You're gonna love it. 

Featuring: a super irresponsible sex worker, a broken laptop, and carbon dating the concept of deepfakes.

This episode was sponsored my Magic Mind! For another 10 days, you can get 40% off a subscription at https://www.magicmind.co/atnight and 20% off individual orders with our code, ATNIGHT20. Thanks, Magic Mind!

SOCIAL MEDIA: htt...

Huge thanks to our Patron, Danica, for recommending this to us in our Discord server!

It sure is a movie... sort of! A meme that Olivia and Brooke somehow missed, Killer Bean is a strange force to be reckoned with. Listen in for thought-provoking questions like: Do coffee beans have blood? How do they ingest narcotics? Are the grooves in the beans actually their ass cheeks? 

Featuring: a tangent about Pinocchio, a TikTok marketing disagreement, and hundreds of beans who get... decaffeinated.

This episode was sponsored my Magic Mind! For the next 10 days, y...

I don't know what else to say! If the last two parts of this massive series were bad, this one is truly a nightmare. Olivia wraps up her deep dive into the foster and adoption systems on a spectacular low: the international adoption industry. Fair warning: it's a bleak picture of selfishness, exploitation, and and objectification with very few good actors involved. Listen with your mental health in mind.

Featuring: child trafficking via Facebook groups, the article that almost killed Olivia, and adoptive "parents" capitalizing on genocide.

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P...

Woman! Woe-man! Whoaaaaaa man! It's a weird 90s romantic comedy as a palette cleanser before Olivia's last episode on the adoption and foster industry!

This uniquely off-beat film starring Mike Myers, Nancy Travis, and Amanda Plummer (with some truly delightful cameos) was a staple of Olivia's childhood and a completely new experience for Brooke. But is it good? Uh.... well.... ah... kind of?

Featuring: Phil Hartman as my favorite character, a narrowly dodged Woody Allen-shaped bullet, and Mike Myers being Mike Myers for an hour and a half.

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Spoiler Alert: Of course you can, it's just way more complicated than we originally thought. 

Olivia delves into the foster system in part 2 of 3 for her "Kids" series episode. What does fostering actually mean? Where did it come from? How do our current attitudes about poor people inform the way we approach caring for their children? And, most importantly, how can we foster kids in a way that encourages reunification?

FEATURING: the definition of neglect, firsthand class disparity, and why you should almost never call CPS.

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...

We're back in the saddle, friends, and this time we're starting ROUGH with a new series aaaall about kids. It's always the kids.

In our first-ever 3-part episode series, and in light of the repeal of Roe v. Wade, Olivia tackles the adoption industry as we know it in America today. Did you know the modern adoption industry was born out of systematized abuse, child slavery, and commodification? Brooke sure didn't!

This one is a controversial topic, so we ask that listeners proceed with an open mind and compassion for the nuance we cover. Remember...

It's the last episode of the season! For our season finale, we're giving you two mini heavy hitters each - two subjects that keep us up at night but can't fill a whole episode. We'll give you teasers into what we know about men's strange hatred of women, the way we societally treat bad people, aging and death in America, and the U.S. retirement system. Enjoy, and see you in a few months!

Featuring: reverse psychology, god complexes, and the Sisyphean task of retirement saving.

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TRIGGER WARNING: this episode presents topics such as war, gore/violence, body horror, child death and suffering, firsthand accounts of nuclear detonation, and discusses disturbing images and stories related to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

It's finally done. Brooke finally finished our Nuclear series with part II of her presentation on the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's absolutely the more disturbing of the two - follow us down the path of how we justify extreme violence (and how we may be able to get out of it).

If you thought one of your loved ones was the victim of murder, foul play, a cover-up, or simple lack of attention... how far would you go to get answers?

https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-courtney-heater 

April Fool's!! This episode from Ignorance Was Bliss comes to you as part of Operation Switcheroo (established by Your Brain On Facts) - an April Fool's podcaster celebration where we switch RSS feeds for a day. You can check out more of Kate's show at the links below!

Facebook group: The Asylum -- https://bit.ly/iwbasylum

This movie did something that we haven't experienced since The Cat in the Hat: Olivia and I disagreed!! Is Jared and Jerusha Hess's 2009 quirk-fest an underappreciated masterpiece or a steaming pile of irredeemable garbage? We'll let you be the judge. Except we also will judge. In this podcast episode.

Featuring: Olivia making Brooke mad by changing the sync-up, rock-hard popcorn balls, and a criminal misuse of Sam Rockwell. 

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Most folks are aware of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan - but how much do we know about how it got to that point? Part I of Brooke's Nuclear-series heavy hitter covers World War I, World War II, the discovery of nuclear fission, the Manhattan Project, and, at the end of it all, just how easy it is to justify atrocity. 

Featuring: unmitigated imperialism and nationalism, mythologizing cultures, and cereal.

Note: this episode was written and recorded before the unfolding Russian attacks on Ukraine. There are a number of u...

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of graphic scenes depicting racism, sexism, sexual assault and abuse, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, suicide, blood/gore, bodily fluids, attempted murder, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and pretty much any other triggering thing you can think of. Please listen with your mental health in mind. THIS IS THE WORST MOVIE WE HAVE EVER SEEN. Well, unless you ask Olivia, in which case it's second only to Leprechaun 2. But for our purposes, THIS IS THE WORST MOVIE WE HAVE EVER SEEN. I regret having ever suggested we watch this. I'll never get that time back...

Recent media coverage of the Antiwork movement and the ongoing Great Resignation would have you believe that the working class is simply lazy and unappreciative - but how much of that theory holds water? Turns out, not very much!

Learn more about the Antiwork movement and how it helps the working class across the political and social spectrum, how corporations and the ultra-rich manipulate public opinion about workers' rights, and what we all can do about it. Plus, some fun stories about Olivia and Brooke's time in the retail world.

Featuring: the laughable notion of...

Y'all, we are so excited to get back in front of the fire with our sleeping bags and cans of beans to tell scary stories to our favorite listeners. And this time, the stories are written by YOU!

Thanks again to those who submitted stories, and remember you can submit your scary personal or fiction stories to us anytime at ttkmeup@gmail.com. 

Featuring: a white bunny, orange juice, and the smell of death.

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We'll be honest, this was an extremely hard episode to record. We've seen a lot of suffering in our lifetime, but nothing we've experienced comes close to the kind of physical and psychological agony the people who survived Chernobyl faced. There isn't much we can say to prepare you, but for transparency and so you can take care of yourself: TW gore, violence, body horror, abject human misery, the effects of nuclear radiation poisoning, etc. It was an honor to keep these people's stories alive.

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TRIGGER WARNING: This episode doesn't get into the worst of it, but we're still talking about a nuclear meltdown that destroyed an entire ecosystem and ravaged everything in it, so TW mild gore/violence, disease (specifically cancer), mutilation, emotional and physical distress, etc. 

Most folks are familiar with the 2019 HBO series, Chernobyl, based on the infamous meltdown at the titular nuclear power plant. But common understandings of what really happened at Chernobyl that night are often lacking, fetishized, or reductive. Olivia wanted the real story. This is the first chapter of her deep dive into the big pi...

Remember how we said The Happening was the worst feature film we'd ever seen? We can't say that anymore! Everything about Old (2021) is bad, and all the interesting ideas are just screwed up versions of the good stuff in the source material, Sandcastle (READ IT IF YOU HAVEN'T). 

Featuring: bone origami, a dog that was only just alive, and everyone's name and occupation.

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We'd nearly forgotten about this show's one source of mood rehabilitation! We're bringing the good news train back into the station by sharing the positive stuff happening in the world - and in our own lives. Enjoy the mental R&R... until next time, when we start our Nuclear series!

Featuring: vaccines for parasites, basic human decency, and new chapters.

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses the life and death of Pocahontas, which includes potentially-triggering topics such as rape and sexual abuse, pedophilia/child rape, murder, kidnapping, abusive power dynamics, and other disturbing sociopolitical atrocities. Please listen with care.

Basically Brooke went to a shitty daycare when she was a kid and was forced to watch Pocahontas II every single day for a few months and it left such an impression that she had to rope Olivia into watching it for the podcast. And it was INSULTING.

Featuring: rotten carrots, romanticizing assimilation, and OH MY GOD...

I'm so excited bro I can't even express how excited I am because guess what! My (Brooke's) first ever episode was on the Salem Witch Trials, and it was just okay. But now, three years later, I've done a WAY better job! 

Enjoy Salem Witch Trials 2.0, now with historical context, modern-day consequences, and fanaticism deprogramming techniques!

What do a chemical explosion and a dancing plague have in common? Nothing! Except that they're both subjects in this latest installment of our Freak Accidents minisodes! What drives people to dance until they die? What caused the explosion that was the Oppau disaster?  We've got answers-- and a lot of peanut gallery commentary while we're at it.

Featuring: psychedelic bread, some volatile molecules, and the worst dance floor ever made.

We're wrapping up Olivia's two-part episode on the Westboro Baptist Church - this time with a healthy dose of... empathy? Is that empathy I feel? Wuh oh.

Featuring: irony, a sad old man, and loving the sinner.

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone fit in neat little boxes? It certainly would be easier to say the Westboro Baptist Church and its members were born evil and will stay evil - but life just isn't that simple.

Today, Olivia is revisiting one of her oldest episodes on the most hated family in America. Get reacquainted with the Phelps family - this time with extra detail - and get ready for next week's Part II.

At least the audio quality is better this time around, eh?

Featuring: The God Rectum, paternal trauma...

Literally someone's penis turns into a monster. It's time for a terrible-movie-minisode, courtesy of Noodle on YouTube, where we review the most senseless movie we've ever seen. Is it a tongue-in-cheek comedy goof-fest? A horror a la John Carpenter? Who knows? The filmmakers certainly didn't.

Featuring: The aforementioned penis monster, a bug with a woman's head, and fully visible movie set pasties.

NOTE: Stay until after the end music to hear a shoutout to our patrons! We love ya!

This topic was admittedly a beast, and there are a million other details that could have gone into it, but here she is. Part 2 of Brooke's Heavy Hitter episode on Capitalism and Christianity.

This time, we dive into the historical intersection between the two, how they justify each other through time, and how they became weapons of nationalism and white supremacy.

Featuring: the U.S. as a business, churches that have record labels, and the origins...

Look, I get that it's supposed to be a campy, bad horror movie, but that won't stop us from complaining loudly about it. Because Leprechaun, starring a constantly sour-faced Jennifer Aniston and a constantly-gleeful Warwick Davis, is, like, the best trashcan of a film I've ever seen. The script, the effects, the cinematography -- all the worst of the worst. I adore it. It's awful.

Featuring: seven full minutes of running in the woods, thirty seconds of rolling up a bucket from a well, and death by pogo stick.

Welcome to our first two-parter ever! In addressing Capitalism in Christianity, Brooke lays the groundwork by covering the basis of Christianity in a historical context - and how it was perverted by the zealotry of Paul of Tarsus. 

Featuring: dogma, self-inserted baggage, and a really cool Jewish radical 

Jared Hess and Tyler Measom's new hit documentary Murder Among the Mormons has unearthed the "black eye" on the Mormon Church, and boy howdy - it's a doozy. Dive into one of the strangest stories we've ever heard, and find out just how dark the underbelly of the rare book and document scene can get.

Featuring: ozone, a genius, a monster, and the blurred line between the two.