View Episode 280
Originally aired 07.18.2011
1:09:22
3:02 – Seth watched Inside the Actor’s Studio with James Lipton, where he watched Jennifer Aniston talk about her acting chops.
6:20 – The Secret SMS Replicator App is available in several third-party online stores for Android apps and allows people to have texts from someone else’s phone forwarded to them automatically and without the original recipient’s knowledge. The company markets the app to parents who want to keep tabs on their young children. Adults can also use the software to ensure that a family member or friend receives a copy of their texts. That is legal as long as the person whose messages are shared gives permission for it. The software can be used surreptitiously. It can be installed on someone’s phone by a boss or a business rival or a boyfriend without that person’s knowledge as long as the installer can get access to the phone for maybe a few minutes. App developer DLP Mobile recommends on its website that doing so without permission amounts to illegal wiretapping, according to experts.
37:28 – Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have been studying the effects of psilocybin, a chemical found in some psychedelic mushrooms, that is credited with inducing transcendental states. Now they say they’ve zeroed in on a perfect dosage level to produce transformative and mystical and spiritual experiences that offer long-lasting life-changing benefits while carrying little risk of negative reactions. The breakthrough could speed the day when doctors use psilocybin – long viewed skeptically for its association with 1960s countercultural thrill seekers – for a range of valuable clinical functions, like easing the anxiety of terminally ill patients, treating depression and PTSD and helping smokers quit. Already, studies in which depressed cancer patients were given the drug have reported positive results. “I’m not afraid to die anymore,” one participant told the lookout.
42:04 – A.J. Daulerio, the editor of the sports blog Deadspin, set up MLB 2K11 on Xbox 360 in his living room and custom designed Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis (Episode 147, 30:40) to be a pitcher for the 2011 Pirates playing against the 2011 San Diego Padres and attempted to recreate the June 12, 1970 game where Ellis threw a no-hitter on acid. Daulerio dropped acid and tried to throw a hitter on the game while on acid. They tried 49 times and spent 5 hours before he had to get out of there and get a pizza. The longest outing was 4 2/3 innings.
What Seth Learned on the Monsterweb
15:16 – Jah brings up the movie Problem Child. He remembers the kid being a live Chucky, and he wants to know who the kid was and what he’s up to. Jah looks up the movie that came out in 1990: “A young boy is just short of a monster. He is adopted a loving man and his wacky wife. The laughs keep coming as the boy pushes them to the limits.” It starred Jack Warden, John Ritter, Gilbert Gottfried, Amy Yasbeck and the child is Michael Oliver. Oliver is the half-brother of Luis-Daniel Ponce from The Hogan Family. Contrary to his most-known character, Michael was not a problem child at all. He was a very laid-back child and very intelligent. One of his favorite pastimes was reading Omni magazine. As of June 2009, he was working as a crew member for the music groups The Samples and Nural.
25:13 – Seth looks up a bunch of cover bands for Steely Dan.
4:13 – Jah was on a plane last week and found himself on a United flight that had drop-down 9-inch monitors every 3 rows. They were showing The Lincoln Lawyer and three episodes of Big Bang Theory.
5:30 – July is National Blueberry Month, as well as Cell Phone Courtesy Month, Anti-Boredom Month and Lucky Wedding Month. Seth wishes he knew this earlier because he loves blueberries.
15:51 – Seth remembers Mr. Sherwood Schwartz, who created The Brady Bunch. He passed away this week. Seth remembers a particular episode that aired in February of 1973 called “Bobby’s Hero.” The episode description: “When the family learns that Bobby’s hero is Jesse James, Mike and Carol set out to teach him the truth about the outlaw. When books and heavily-edited television movies suggested to Bobby that he wasn’t a villain, Mike tracks down a relative of one of the James victims to share his story with Bobby. That, plus a vivid nightmare in which Jesse James kills the Bradys in a train robbery, finally gets through to Bobby.”
19:51 – The Washington State Supreme Court ruled that Mark Gilbert, who was on trial for kidnapping and raping boys and videotaping all of the encounters, due to the fact that he is acting as his own attorney, must have unlimited access to all of the videos while in jail. Being the defense attorney, Gilbert must be able to review all of the evidence of the case. He has the videos, hard drives, photos – around 28 hours in total of material of over 40 boys. Total access has to be granted or there will be a mistrial. He goes to a private room to “review” the evidence and he is also allowed to put victims on the stand and ask them questions.
24:15 – The California State Fair is open and will run through the remainder of July. They’re serving raccoon on a stick, deep-fried scorpions and the maggot melt – dried maggots and melted cheese on two slices of bread. This Friday the 22nd for free, you can catch a performance of Aja Vu – straight out of San Francisco, playing cover songs of Steely Dan.
53:56 – Delta Airlines, one of the nation’s largest pedophile carriers, can not promise not to lose your bags but it has launched an online service to allow you to track the movement of your bags at each stage of their journey from baggage check-in to airport arrival. You can even go online during your flight to see if your bag made it on your plane.
58:17 – The summer months are the perfect time for a vacation getaway. Unfortunately, they’re also the perfect time for a home invasion. According to the FBI, the summer monhths July and August have the highest rates of burglaries. The Better Business Bureau is advising homeowners who are looking to secure their property this summer to do their research when picking a home security system. According to an academic study of home and business security by Temple University, the Electronic Security Association says that homes without security systems are about 3 times more likely to be broken into than homes with them. Actual statistics range from about 2.2 times to 3.1 times more likely depending on the value of the home. Losses due to burglary average $400 less in residences with security systems than homes without alarm systems. Although no system makes your home completely burglar-proof, a home security system can reduce your chances of being burglarized and give you some peace of mind. In 2010, BBB received nearly 25,000 inquiries from customers asking about burglar alarm systems.
27:12 – The strength of a physician’s religious feelings can and will influence the types of treatments he or she offers to patients. A study published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics found that doctors with stronger religious faith were less likely to talk with patients about treatment options that could shorten their lives, such as prescribing powerful pain medicines. They were also less likely to keep patients in continuous deep sedation or to support legislation allowing doctor-assisted euthanasia. The reverse is true for doctors who describe themselves as “very or extremely non-religious.” They were almost twice as likely as religious doctors to report that they had pursued treatments that had the potential to hasten a patient’s death – either intentionally or as a side-effect.
29:37 – According to a Gallup poll in 1944, 96% of Americans said that they believed in God. The same poll conducted in 2011 revealed the stat as 92%.
47:38 – Scientists have always rigorously attempted to prove the differences between man and woman. Researchers came to Los Angeles and studied the daily activities of 30 dual earner couples in LA over a 1-week period. They tracked the couple’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which primes the body for physical and mental challenges over the day and then recedes at day’s end in anticipation of rest, relaxation and renewal. People with chronically high cortisol levels or whose levels fail to decline in the evening not only feel more stressed out but are more vulnerable to a wide range of physical and mental illnesses. Linking cortisol levels with married parents’ end-of-day activities could reveal a lot about how domestic routines influence health and happiness. All of the couples studied had at least one child between the ages of 8-10 living at home. The median age of the parents was 41 and observers recorded their activities at 10-minute intervals. The women, on average, spent 30% of their evening on housework and about 11% on leisure activity. The men, on the other hand, devoted 20% of their time to housework and 19% to leisure. The scientists from USC, UCLA and Connecticut College found that spending lots of time on household chores at the end of the day kept husbands’ and wives’ cortisol levels high. On closer inspection, they noticed that married mothers’ cortisol levels declined most steeply when their husbands pitched in with housework. The dads’ cortisol wasn’t likely to dip at all unless they spent all their time straight relaxing.
13:09 – The August issue of Wired magazine has a column called “Dear Mr. Know-It-All.” Q: “Dear Mr. Know-It-All, I’m an OB/GYN. When I used a surgically-removed uterus as my profile pic on Facebook, Facebook banned me. Um, it’s an organ – not porn! Is Facebook in the wrong?”
23:37 – Jah goes off on the Horrible Bosses posters, which are creepy and crazy – and there are 65 of them. It took him a while to realize that Jamie Foxx is in it.
8:39 – On Friday, May 2, 1997, a 36-year-old Eddie Murphy was living in Los Angeles. He was being paid $17.5 million to star in Dr. Doolittle, the follow-up film to his smash hit, The Nutty Professor. His wife, Nicole, and their three children were in Sacramento visiting her mother. “I’m in this big house by myself, wide awake, so it was like, Let me go get something to read.” A Hollywood newsstand vendor claims he sold Murphy 2 magazines in the early morning hours. According to police reports, Murphy was driving his wife Nicole’s Toyota Land Cruiser west on Santa Monica Boulevard at Formosa in Hollywood. Undercover vice cops had been watching a known tranny prostitute, 20-year-old Samoan-board Ken Atisone Seiuli, who is known on the streets by the name Shalomar. They watched the SUV pull over to the side of the road and they watched Shalomar get inside. Robert Harms of the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department’s Special Problems Unit said later, “To ask what anyone was doing on that corner of Santa Monica and Formosa at 4:45 a.m. is like asking a cinnamon cruller what it’s doing at Dunkin’ Donuts.” According to Shalomar, “Eddie Murphy put two $100 bills on my leg. He asked me if I did this for a living. I said yes. Eddie said, ‘Do you like to wear lingerie?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Can I see you in lingerie?’ I said, ‘Whenever I have the time.’ He then said, ‘I’ll make the time.’ Then he asked me, ‘What type of sex do you like?’ I told him I was into everything.” After approximately 2 miles, the cops decide to pull over the vehicle. Sailui, who had violated her probation for failing to take a mandatory HIV test, was arrested at the scene and ended up serving 90 days in federal prison. Murphy was spoken to for approximately 30 minutes by the cops and was allowed to leave. Less than a year later, on the morning of April 22, 1998, Shalomar went to the roof of her Hollywood apartment building to smoke a cigarette. At 5:15 a.m., someone in the building heard a scream. At 6:30 a.m., a neighbor walking his dog on the sidewalk found Shalomar lying face-down on the sidewalk in a black bra and black thong – dead at the age of 21. … Seth comes to the conclusion that Eddie Murphy killed Shalomar.
31:18 – Seth talks about “Baby Jessica” McClure (Episode 001, 49:45), who fell into a well in Midland, Texas in October of 1987 at the age of 18 months. Between Oct. 14-16, rescuers worked for 58 hours to rescue her from the 8-inch-wide well. On March 26, 2011, she turned 25 years old. She was to receive a trust fund of donations from well-wishers from back in the day worth up to $800,000, but her father revealed it was a little lower than it was supposed to be.