Tiptoe through the Tulips with us! This week Taylor talks the Tulipomania that swept through Holland in the 1600s - and Farz tells the tragic grungy story of Kurt Cobain. Taylor would like to bring up that Freshman year of college she got a C in Economics and there was a dude who definitely cheated off her - then years later she saw that dude in a bar and he yelled “Hey!! We got a C in Econ!” And, in the epic battle of good and evil, Farz is team Courtney Love. Follow us on Instagram & Facebook! @doomedtofailpod
Tiptoe through the Tulips with us! This week Taylor talks the Tulipomania that swept through Holland in the 1600s - and Farz tells the tragic grungy story of Kurt Cobain.
Taylor would like to bring up that Freshman year of college she got a C in Economics and there was a dude who definitely cheated off her - then years later she saw that dude in a bar and he yelled “Hey!! We got a C in Econ!”
And, in the epic battle of good and evil, Farz is team Courtney Love.
Follow us on Instagram & Facebook! @doomedtofailpod
https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/
https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod
Pics via the creative commons
Nirvana’s Rolling Stone Cover
Doc - The Tulip Bubble
Book - Tulipomania
Book - Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions: The Madness of Crowds
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
0:18
okay so we're recording and I don't remember actually let's do the intro
0:24
first
0:32
join here with my co-host Taylor and every week we bring you a true crime and a historical story about relationships
0:38
that were doomed to fail Taylor how you doing today I'm good I told you a second ago I'm on kind of on
0:45
vacation I'm in a gorgeous like Mansion Airbnb in Temecula California it's
0:51
raining but it's a a beautiful house so it's fun I just made breakfast for a bunch of people and came up here did you
0:58
rent the whole house yeah nice we have well I mean there's we used to
1:05
be just adults and now we're six adults and six kids so there's a lot going on there's a full house thanks for the time
1:11
to actually do this and record today got it here in Austin it is South by South
1:16
by Southwest Starts Now um so I'm doing everything in my power to avoid downtown and anything like an
1:26
Austin native good job yeah I would assume that's typical for standard so I
1:32
don't remember who goes first this week I think I do you go first okay do you have a drink in mind
1:37
I do do you want to do yours first and then I'll go into mine I'm going to roll my drink right now because I totally
1:43
forgot to come up with a drink okay I'll tell you mine okay um mine is a Heineken which is a beer
1:50
from Holland do you remember did you watch Mad Men no I did not oh there's
1:55
like a thing in a Madman where the Don Draper is like obviously an advertising guy and they do this thing where they
2:01
are trying to get people to buy Heineken and so they put it in like grocery stores and they make the end cap like
2:07
you know the end of the display like a big um like a windmill and stuff to be like oh it's from Holland and then he
2:15
has all of his like work friends over and his wife is like oh I got this beer it's called Heineken it's from Poland
2:21
and all of the advertising guys are like yeah like we got her like it worked and then she was really pissed because she
2:26
was like you set me up to find this beer in the store and like fall for your ad anyway I'm recovering Mad Men today no
2:34
but that but I always think about that someone will know you know if you know you no if you know you know yeah awesome
2:40
uh I so I didn't think of a drink but I think given the location of my story it
2:47
needs to be coffee this morning here so it makes sense it
2:55
all tracks and sorry you said you're the one who goes first this week yeah okay all right so the other day when you this
3:02
is I have like 17 tangents but when you did the toolbox Killers you were like oh maybe I'm gonna do friends
3:10
not just romantic relationships and I was like that's a great idea because I don't think I can sustain this
3:16
for like years with just like romantic relationships of History you know I'm like trying to find ones and like my
3:21
cousin just sent me one and all these things but I'm also thinking like what about like other things that were
3:27
failures like other like crazy times in history that maybe don't have like specific people involved but they were like a crazy thing so that's kind of
3:34
what I'm going into today I also was like
3:39
so here's a little bit of backstory well once upon a time in 2016. I was looking at my Kindle and I found this
3:47
book that I don't remember how it got there like I don't remember downloading it but it is called
3:56
it's called um extraordinary popular delusions and The Madness of crowds and it was written
4:03
in 1841 by a Scottish journalist named Charles McKay and it's like stories of people who are
4:13
like kind of like doing crazy things and like more people are doing it together and so like I don't know how I got it on my Kindle but I think that I probably
4:20
downloaded it when I because it was 2016 so I was like mad that people were like falling for Donald Trump and I was like
4:26
what is wrong with people you know that's why I think I got it if that makes sense the the through line is
4:32
there I understand that um did you have a big skull on your wall now is that new
4:40
so I had it and my other I had it up screenshot this at the other house and I
4:46
it was actually sitting on the ground here since I moved into this house and I finally decided to put it up it's very
4:52
Texas I like it I did a screenshot wait smile I'm gonna do another one keep listen perfect it's just you okay
4:59
um I just saw it that's great so so this this is this is like what I'm thinking about like what this book is about so this book is divided into three parts
5:06
there's National delusions which are like rumors myths and legends like the Crusades is like one of the examples in
5:12
that one then there's peculiar Folly it's like Alchemists and spiritualists there's a chapter called haunted houses
5:18
about like people falling for like sanses and things like that that we talked about before
5:23
um and there's another chapter on philosophical delusions like people who think the world is flat but just like always been a problem which is hilarious
5:30
so a lot of the stuff that like we'll talk about today is stuff that we see constantly like even now so this sorry
5:36
so this book is basically just a discussion of different variations of
5:42
delusions and where they originally okay okay that sounds awesome
5:47
so it's a it's a delight so today we're going to talk about tulips the
5:52
flower and specifically Tula Mania in Holland in 1636 and 1637. have you heard about
5:59
this no okay great so it's like a whole it's a it's a fun little thing I was like I'm
6:06
gonna do something really easy this week because I'm going on vacation and then all of a sudden I'm like learning about botany and economics but whatever so
6:13
here we are so I I watched a documentary called the Tulip bubble I read a book called Tula bomania another book about
6:20
it book is very dry there's a lot of like numbers and we'll talk a little bit about conversion what they use guilders
6:25
is like their their money that they're using at this time so there I have um you know a list of uh
6:33
kind of like some conversions that we'll talk about in a little bit so can you picture a tulip what is a tulip it's
6:40
probably the most generic looking flower outside of a rose right that's fair
6:48
it's actually that like it comes from like kind of like the seed it looks like an onion so it's like a big bulb you plant it and then the flower grows out
6:54
of it and the flower itself only lasts for a few months and then you like cultivate the
7:00
bulb and you do it again right now 80 of the world's tulips come from the Netherlands and
7:06
um the actual flower is grown in these like really beautiful tulip fields or
7:11
there's like lines of different color tulips it's really nice and then but
7:18
really they want the bulbs so the bulbs they can extend all over the world and it's like mother and daughter bulbs
7:24
or some of them will grow new flowers some of them won't whatever there's like ways to put things together to make a
7:29
tulip so we're in Holland in the 1600s and the
7:35
economy is booming like more than other parts of Europe because there have just been a bunch of Wars over there but in
7:41
Holland everything has kind of avoided those Wars so they're not ruled by a real a royalty
7:47
they're ruled by citizen councils which gives people a lot of autonomy and like the ability to like move up in society
7:54
and this creates a middle class for the first time ever so for the first time ever people have money and they don't
8:00
have like a way to invest it because there isn't like a really like solid banking system there isn't really a
8:05
solid stock market you can't really get in unless you are like Uber rich but the middle class are
8:11
looking for ways to like invest their money and this story is like you could just plop it over any time period and
8:19
find a story that's very similar to this of just like people trying to get rich quick you know yeah it actually reminds
8:26
me of the most recent last podcast episode of the Essex about how that's how you invested you just bought into a
8:31
whaling ship and that was the stock market back then yeah exactly exactly you could like buy a boat or like you
8:38
know buy more land but you didn't like weren't able to like like put your do like money things just with just money
8:44
exactly so there's also the Dutch East India Company that's trading and making the country really rich they also are
8:50
enslavers are enslaving a lot of people but they're getting a lot of money from that um it's also like some of the best
8:55
painters coming from this time like the girl with the pearl earring that Vermeer that I'm sure you've seen and Rembrandt
9:02
it's like a golden age of like art and things and people started to think like as I got my money like what can I do to
9:10
like both like glorify God and show you know that I have all this money and so they started building Gardens and they
9:16
you know didn't want to like cover themselves in Gold so they would build these right big Gardens so
9:22
so that was the way to reflect that you were wealthy yeah
9:27
okay yeah so to do a little bit of conversion and I'll come back to this like if I was
9:34
gonna buy I guess this is a hilarious of a hilarious table but eight fat pigs or
9:39
240 guilders four fat oxen or 480 guilders so like
9:45
and you could buy a ship for 500 guilders so like this is like how much
9:50
think start thinking about that money conversion I'll come back to that but like okay well you said ship last
9:55
because that's 500 guilders well how much was a what was the other one eight fat pigs or 240 guilders
10:03
wow a ship's kind of a bargain then it is kind of a bargain okay I don't know what kind a silver drinking cup is 60
10:10
guilders so people start so that's like as people are paying for things so
10:17
that's Holland that's where we are at this time period people are starting to have more money for the first time and
10:23
that's where the Tulip starts to kind of be introduced into popular popular culture tulips actually come from Central Asia
10:30
and Persia Kazakhstan has a lot of the Native tulips in nature they're shorter
10:35
and they're really good in like Colder Weather so they work in places that like um like high up in the mountains and
10:41
they don't need a lot of like sunlight right now it's also a time it's like a Renaissance time so people are starting to get interested in science you know
10:47
they're like dissecting bodies for the first time and you know doing that like in public and like learning more about
10:53
anatomy and learning about botany really for the first time they haven't really made it a science yet and I say first
10:59
time like in this time period I'm sure that like Asian people thought about body in different ways and people don't
11:04
know but in this period so there's a botanist named Carlos clucius car
11:11
careless clucius Carol susias and he's like one of the first people to be a botanist and to bring the Tulip into the
11:17
Netherlands he never makes a lot of money but his friends like take care of him and he ends up getting a job at the University of Leiden and starting this
11:24
first like botany school and he started breeding them in and to breed them I
11:29
think you have to move the pollen of one to another one and then like like a male and a female
11:36
but like put their pollen together in a way that you it's like unexpected and that can make like a different color
11:42
tulip I think that sounded very scientific doesn't it sound scientific I in the documentary I watched someone had
11:49
a Q-tip of pollen and was like putting it on like the stem the steam it's I don't know anyway
11:54
he started reading them which made different colors of tulips for the first time you know they were like really pretty and they have like cool stripes
12:00
and stuff so right the Tulips are in the Tulip crate is that everybody wanted were white with these like really dark
12:07
red stripes going up them and I'll share pictures with them like they're really beautiful but it's actually a virus that
12:12
makes them that color but they just didn't know anything about viruses I actually thought that tubes were always one color I didn't know that you could
12:18
get I'm gonna look up pictures of tulips now yeah it's like a red and white striped one this is the silent portion
12:23
of the podcast the the visual portion wow those are really cool looking they
12:30
look like marbles almost yeah they're really pretty but it's a it's a virus that makes them
12:36
that color so it's hard to predict and tulip bulbs all with onions so it's
12:42
hard to really tell what's going to happen when you have the bulb and what kind of flower it's going to actually turn into see this is why you can't get
12:47
into gardening because I don't have the patience for this like you you get the
12:53
bulbs you plant them you wait months and months for them to actually grow into a thing then you can cross-pollinate them
12:59
and you don't know what you're doing and maybe actually hold on wait a minute like so if you cross pollinate okay so
13:06
so hold on so yeah there is no there's no
13:11
there's no eggs so like what do you get
13:17
no okay exactly so that's a good question good question so what you get is after the flower dies you dig up the
13:28
root and the root is a new bulb so that bulb you can continue to like plant but
13:33
if you put like the new pollen in it it will change like the anatomy of that bulb I have no idea does that sound that
13:40
could be true I feel like I don't know I mean you think about anything with confidence it's people are going to
13:46
believe you but like I mean that sounds like so hold on so okay so you do this weird plant sex thing and then in theory
13:53
that generates this bulb that only is produced after the death of the female
14:01
flower okay yes yeah sort of like if you were it is sort of like an onion if it had a flower on
14:07
the top of it you know like you have like you like well yeah that concept I'm familiar with it's
14:14
just like it's just it never dawned on me like what is the actual reproductive component of all this well so yeah okay
14:21
that I guess yeah you get a bulb cool yeah yeah so some people were trying to
14:27
like make their tulips different colors they didn't understand really how it happened so they would like dissect them and try to splice the bulbs together
14:33
they would have soak them in red wine you know like try and figure out how to do it all good ideas but it ended up being something kind of super
14:38
unpredictable because it's they're pretty and they're rare they start to get more expensive you know like
14:45
anything and there's some fun stories about like and they may or may not be true but of like someone going to
14:51
someone's house and like seeing a tulip bulb and thinking it's an onion and eating it and then like the guy's like that was so expensive and then like you
14:58
know someone else like dissecting it because they're like what is this interesting onion and then the person being like I can't believe you would do
15:03
this like sending them to jail like people weren't really freaking out about it is that a kramer-esque Antics that
15:08
were going on with little bulbs exactly so then this is where it starts to get
15:14
like in like economics so in this time there's also a lot of like gambling
15:19
happening in pubs I don't know like always and they describe these pubs and in the documentary that I watched they
15:25
do a great like reenactment of the pub because you can imagine people like the men have like those big big frilly
15:32
collars you know that go out like six inches look around there around their necks and like you know big like fun
15:39
outfits on and everyone um smokes constantly and they think like
15:45
it's also like there's like the plague sometimes during this time so they think that smoking will keep you healthy from
15:50
that and they smoke in these like really cool long like I'm sure you like a long white pipe so you're in this Pub there's
15:58
a lot of gambling everyone's a little bit drunk everyone's smoking you can't really see across the room because it's full of smoke also like from like the
16:05
fireplaces and everything people start to trade tulip bulbs in these pubs like in the back rooms and so they weighed
16:13
them like you would wear gold and they used like the measurement for weighing gold and Ace to weigh the tulip bulbs I
16:20
don't even know if the weight of the tulip bulb has any effect on the flower itself but that's like how they were
16:25
selling them yeah I mean I guess it makes sense you break anything down into like that's how you the unit measurement
16:31
like it's the weight how much is the weight this much caviar this much gold yeah exactly exactly so they did it they
16:38
had obviously since you know a long time ago they had like chalkboards everywhere to have like a little chalkboard and the person selling the tulip bulb would put
16:45
down what they would accept as a bid and give it to like the guy in charge then the guy in charge would collect little
16:51
chalkboards from every person and every person's bid would be on there and that he would find like the bid that made the
16:57
most sense show it to the seller and the seller would either agree or disagree and then that was how it would get sold so people were just kind of following
17:04
along you could trade and sell the same bulb like several times in a night you know just like have like the value kept
17:10
increasing because people were willing to buy it and it started to turn into something like an NST because it didn't
17:17
exist like you would be trading a bulb that didn't for a flower that doesn't
17:22
exist so the Tulip isn't really the thing anymore people don't really care
17:27
about the flower they care about the value of the bulb some of the like really pretty ones and the most famous
17:34
ones may never have even existed existed because they had like these beautiful books that they would get and see all
17:39
these paintings of different tulips but no one had ever like seen it and you couldn't guarantee anything anyway but they would be like oh this bulb is going
17:46
to be this beautiful tulip and just like that value is based on that assumption that may or may not have been true but it didn't really matter and were these
17:52
things getting planted not even really because this happens and like happened in like a year and it takes a year for
17:57
this whole thing to happen anyway so what it turned into is a Futures market
18:03
and now I'm like oh God and I'm trading on Futures like oh my God this is
18:09
spit over my head but I had to call my dad because he used to be a Commodities broker in Chicago so he would totally understand this the fact the fact that
18:16
you just called out like nfts like the hair just stood on the back of my neck I know
18:21
creating a Futures is buying something is having the right to buy something at a certain time in the future at a
18:26
certain price now you have ownership of something that doesn't exist yet but you're saying when it exists I'm gonna
18:32
pay this much money so you can make a lot of money if you say like I'm gonna pay for you know 300 for this
18:39
in six months and if in six months it's worth six hundred dollars you just made 300 so there's like a it but it is a
18:46
gamble um so they're trading it again and again and again before the tulip bulb even
18:51
exists sometimes it hasn't even come out of the ground yet and they're saying like I own this tulip bulb and they have
18:56
this little piece of paper and they're trading it back and forth so you're able to like agree that the price is going to
19:02
be this much in the future so people just kept trading and trading and it gave people the ability to make a lot of
19:07
money really quickly makes sense does that make sense and as you know everyone loves a get rich quick scheme so
19:14
everyone started to get involved in it so a ton of people like sold their houses sold all their stuff to get into
19:20
this tulip market because with the assumption that it would never go down like Taylor one thing I'm confused of
19:25
was this literally the only access point for Building Wealth at the time it was
19:31
it wasn't like the only one but and like this only this is this whole thing only happens over a few months so I think it
19:38
was like a exciting quick one that was like on the news not on the news obviously but like
19:44
people are talking okay so yeah this was this was the GameStop of their generation exactly you can you can put
19:52
it over so many things that are happening today and be like oh okay that was valued at this and that was valued at nothing you know yeah okay so people
19:59
were buying them at 10 of the future price so if I paid ten dollars for a future price is ninety dollars I sell it
20:06
for 200 you know I made a hundred dollars all those things so at the height of the craze some tulip bulbs
20:12
were selling for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled Craftsman that's like you know how I said like a
20:18
boat was like 500 guilders they would sell for like 10 000 guilders for a toilet bowl that like didn't exist with
20:25
the assumption that the price will continue to go up I know that hindsight is 20 20. this is really stupid though I
20:32
know but it's just in the stock market it's just like the same thing you're like assume somebody's gonna have value and continue to go up no it's not like
20:39
that because the the thing that you are investing in can generate money this is
20:45
a bulb for a tulip that can't generate anything but a singular tulip but they
20:51
assume the value of that tulip is going to go up and up but certain point no one ever gets a tulip well okay so like
20:59
maybe if the theory was I'm gonna I'm gonna if this is the market I can get a second
21:05
mortgage on my house buy two really pretty I assume tulips that'll generate
21:10
a very pretty but then you paid for the two tulips any whatever I'm not gonna uh no one ever really got a two up it was
21:17
all just speculation it because it was all like you know I assume that this job is going to keep Rising so people keep
21:22
buying it and then assuming that some they'll always have a buyer so so no I okay people people do crazy [ __ ] okay
21:30
we'll just leave it on that okay there's a story of a man named wooter Winkle who who died and left his
21:37
children a bunch of tulip bulbs like actual tulip bulbs that sold to go into the market and his kids made 90 000
21:45
guilders which is like enough money to be billionaires they were like the richest people in in town and then at
21:51
the height of the of the Tulip Mania people are you know selling their things putting all their money into tulips
21:57
assuming that this will never ever go down people just stop bidding on them
22:03
and as soon as the prices stop going up people freak out and sell them and that is a bubble
22:09
so it's just like the housing bubble just like the tech bubble it's you know
22:14
valued and valued and valued until it's not and then everybody Panic sells and
22:19
so people are ruined because they lost all of their money and they cannot sell
22:25
these tulip bulbs to anyone and they can't get their money back because they had done that like promise the person
22:31
they bought it from this feels like when I bought Tesla stock like literally right before Elon Musk put a bid out on
22:39
Twitter and when we all realized that he lost his mind I was like oh no this is awful everything just tanked
22:45
exactly exactly um so on February 24th 1637
22:53
um the Dutch florists Guild because also like the government wasn't really involved in this it was like people in like back rooms of pubs and like
22:59
florists and things they made they had to enter they had to enter intercede and save some people because basically they
23:05
had to do bailouts because people were like lost all their money so they made some rules that like
23:10
contracts after a certain time were null and void you'd get a certain percentage back and get like a certain percentage
23:17
of the contract price back but other than that like people sort of move done after it but it was like one of the it's
23:23
like a documented time of people kind of going crazy over a thing learning about
23:28
trading learning about Futures trying to figure out like how they can make the most money with the assumption that
23:33
things will never ever stop being expensive and then that bubble bursting and people's lives being ruined in like
23:40
a very short period of time that makes sense Taylor did you do this because of Silicon Valley Bank no I just that
23:47
happened yesterday but that's weird timing still happening I know totally like having a run on the bank is
23:54
the same as having like except people stop bidding on tulips it's um yeah it's I think it's I mean I'm I'm terrible at
24:00
economics um I've taken a lot of Economics classes and like it's hard for me to wrap my head around it but like when you see
24:06
things like this you're like oh this is the same thing that has happened forever um whether it's like now with my you
24:12
know virtual money in a bank or then with all my like little pieces of paper saying I own tulips that don't exist yet
24:18
you know what I also did this with Bitcoin I also bought Bitcoin at the eyes I literally only buy high and sell
24:24
low that's the only way that's what you're supposed to do I know I know I'm not good at it
24:30
yeah that's really cool so question why was it tulips and not like roses or
24:36
whatever good question I think it was just because they were um like new and they were like rare
24:43
because they take a while to cultivate they take that like full year cycle so you can be like oh I have it for you
24:50
know a little bit of time and then um you have to like take the bulb out take good care of it over the winter and
24:56
then like replant it in the spring so I think it was just because they have like that like long life cycle and you know
25:03
they were new and they were getting these like beautiful varieties because of a virus like that they couldn't control they didn't really understand it
25:09
but still they were like seeing that so I think that was part of it it was you know kind of a it's like exciting new
25:15
thing yeah because I already had roses and so it wasn't it wasn't cool the
25:20
other weird synchronicity here Taylor is after I finished record we finished
25:25
recording this I'm gonna go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of plants because I realize they need to like start taking
25:30
care of like the garden space near the house well now is the time did I chill up because they're also a very Easter
25:36
flower um so you'll have one for Easter and then also now a days because of like
25:43
science and technology and everything like you don't have to wait along you can buy tulips anytime you know like they've like modified them to be able to
25:49
like you know grow at different times and and they're a lot more like you know you can use them a lot differently than
25:56
it wasn't like back then where you had to like really have to wait so in in this case is there a doom to
26:02
fail premise or were we just completely abandoning that the red flag part of this no I I am no I think I think it's a
26:08
it's a group failure you know that's why that's what I think it really is because I think well like the the book the
26:14
member the Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions it's like people you know together making a decision to do
26:21
something that is you know in hindsight kind of crazy you know that so would this be a classification of Folia do a
26:29
doe no I do know because it's it's more than just two people like follow you do is like if like you and I are like
26:34
locked in a house together and I convinced you that someone's trying to kill us so we kill each other like that's all you do but it's a like it's
26:39
like a group delusion you know where people are like I have all this stuff like I I have all this you know these
26:45
pieces of paper that say on this thing that's going to increase in value and then you're like oh my God I want it I'll pay you more and then I pitch you
26:51
and like people just kept doing it assuming that like the price would always go up so I think it's a it's a failure it's a group failure and I think
26:57
it's one of those things afterwards they were like embarrassed yeah they're like oh we went a little nuts with the Tulip
27:03
thing and then they're like some people have like lost a lot of stuff some people well lost a lot of money but they're already
27:08
rich so they were like meh but also like with the GameStop thing then like the
27:13
poorer people the people who have the least amount of money do you have the most to lose because they are you know
27:19
investing in something at like with more money than they might have you know what I mean did you watch the game stocks
27:25
documentary on Netflix no I didn't these people made so much money they made so
27:30
they made like retirement like 20 year olds were making like retirement money what I forgot one guy put like 50k in or
27:37
something and cash out 8 million it was unbelievable yeah and that's the people
27:43
who cashed out get it and then some people didn't and lost everything right yeah yeah so cool well thanks for
27:50
sharing that Taylor I'm gonna look at tools when I go to Home Depot and I'm probably gonna plant them because I'm lazy and I just need something that's
27:56
going to keep coming back year over year and tulips don't sound like yeah every year no I really don't that I feel
28:02
it's the idea of like having a having a bar every year because it doesn't come back that feels exhausting yeah compare goals but
28:10
so okay well I'll make the transition over to the ever shifting premise of the
28:15
show which should be true crime but in my case is actually not true crime so oh great there we go we'll mix it up this
28:22
week so episode 11 new show exactly so well I started out researching uh I
28:30
was gonna do Michael Alec do you know who that is no I don't look it up so you
28:35
can do it later or tell me yeah no I'll just tell you I don't think I'm gonna do it now but I I started doing that because so Michael Alec is part of the
28:42
club kids scene that was part of this New York Club you recognize this I take it from
28:48
Europe is it Macaulay Culkin in the party monster yeah yeah that's exactly it it's it's party monster is the
28:55
dramatized version of Michael Alec the only really famous one that people would recognize now is RuPaul was part
29:01
of them um and Michael Alec ended up killing somebody and going to jail for a long time he got released and he died
29:06
actually recently um but whatever I have um I have been to Limelight that club
29:11
what's it like it's it was cool I mean I think it's closed I mean it closed a long time ago but um it's in an old
29:17
church which is cool you know yeah I think our former employer through a party there actually for a book release
29:23
yeah um so I sort of I started watching party
29:28
monster this week because I was like I'm gonna do Michael Alec and so I should probably reference the movie and in the
29:34
movie Marilyn Manson's in it and he he basically plays Courtney Love is the
29:40
only way I can describe it it's like this is like totally insane druggy junkie whatever and I was like you know
29:47
what I got a better idea for this week so again the story this week is not
29:52
gonna be true crime in nature but it's gonna definitely hit on the red flaggy parts of the show's premise
29:58
so I've already given enough to indicate what I'm gonna be talking about but I'm still going to pretend like I haven't and just read the outline
30:05
so um I'll start by saying that this is a rock and roll story obviously and because there's it's a rock and roll
30:11
story there's gonna be a lot of Legacy building and so because of that people are going to have a ton of feelings and
30:17
passion about like what I'm going to be discussing here today but because there's a lot of Legacy building there's
30:22
a lot of conflicting stories out there in terms of when things happened who was there when it happened everybody wants
30:28
to be a part of the story which is I think a common human phenomenon when certain famous people pass
30:34
outside of like pure facts there's a bit of speculation here in my pure facts I
30:40
mean location manner time of death things like that things that can be like scientifically proven by objective third
30:45
parties outside of that it's like a lot of just junky song stories to each other basically you're you're rocking little
30:52
guys I feel like you're the guy that gotta tell this story am I a rock and roll guy no I'm just kidding thank you
30:58
so obviously today we're talking grunge which means we're talking Nirvana and
31:03
Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love which is like one of the most probably
31:08
read flagy relationships that's ever existed in human history when Nirvana was at its peak and Kurt ultimately died
31:15
I was not of an age where I cared about these things like I think he died when I
31:21
was around nine years old so I was I don't know I was doing nine-year-olds do I don't know exactly what that would
31:26
be probably you know caring about dinosaurs Power Rangers things like that not hardcore grunge rock my brother was
31:32
though my brother would have been 14. so I remember going to whatever store probably version version stores and like
31:39
him buying the uh never mind album CD in
31:45
like the it was like in like the tall CD boxes yeah yeah I remember my mom asking the guy at the store like what's Nirvana
31:51
and he was like something that happens when you get like your tooth pulled or something he just did something weird to her was he trying to be funny I think so
31:59
I think so oh yes yeah I guess they gas you so yeah so at that time I never
32:04
really like I didn't understand the ramification of this I was just not of that not of that age group but it's
32:10
weird I got so much more exposure to it and you actually accidentally got some exposure to it as well so Kurt was
32:17
raised in Aberdeen which yeah I've been through there because my my ex's
32:23
father's family was from Hoquiam and so we'd go there and visit quite a bit and
32:29
because you came to my wedding you've also been through Aberdeen Taylor I think I have and I remember being there
32:35
and being like this place is so [ __ ] depressing I can absolutely see why you would create Grunge music here
32:42
yeah like that's yeah I actually put down here I'm like I
32:47
doubt any of the your stroll through Aberdeen was actually memorable but it sounds like it was because it is
32:54
exactly what you described it as anywhere I was you know I think I was like you know I was like trailer parks
33:01
and yeah yeah wet rains the brains there yeah yeah it's a so it's on a it's on a
33:09
bay it had to be because it was actually a logging town so ships would come in collect the
33:14
Timber and then put them on boats and go wherever they're going so it's no coincidence that in the late 80s and
33:20
early 90s exactly when Kurt's coming up logging had become a much less viable industry in the area simply because they
33:27
tapped that resource completely there was nothing left to mine for there essentially so the town geographically
33:34
is lovely because it is on this Bay it is the Pacific Northwest it's Lush it's
33:40
green look a limited Olympic National Forest is like maybe 20 minutes from from here I mean I you know and that is
33:47
one of the most beautiful tranquil places that exist in the United States in Aberdeen's like right outside of that
33:53
but given the fact that they Tamp this mining resource completely this Timber
33:58
resource complete the areas just economically depressed like to your point it's just like a blown out town
34:04
like you just do you know I when I would be there I didn't want to
34:09
like talk badly about it obviously yeah because of like family connections but I
34:15
was yeah I just I was like every year has to be doing math like you you look at that town and you're like of course
34:21
everybody hears on drugs like what else is there to do there's nothing else yeah so that's where Kurt was raised so one
34:30
thing that I actually found really really lovely about Aberdeen despite everything I literally just said about it is that one of my favorite Nirvana
34:37
songs like everybody's favorite Nirvana songs just come as you are and there's a welcome sign when you get into Aberdeen
34:43
that says welcome to Aberdeen come as you are which I thought was really lovely so going back to the main
34:49
character Kurt was born in 1967 and I would describe his childhood as accurately reflected in his music now
34:56
that he wrote about his childhood at all but then when I think about Nirvana I think of teenage angst really like it's
35:02
just angsty music that was what it sounds like his childhood was his parents were divorced he was a mad kid
35:08
he was aimless the parents remarried the step parents sucked there's domestic violence and there's substance abuse it
35:16
sounds like the divorce was a huge triggering factor for him like he talks
35:22
about it over and over and over again in later later in his life like he thought he had this idyllic family or he would
35:28
have this idyllic family and that divorce really seemed to have been like the thing that put him in this heads the
35:33
Mind space of just being like an angsty teenager so all the factors basically existed that
35:40
would produce a guy like Kurt would eventually become some of the stories I read about him seem like just great
35:46
indicators of his eventual personality his parents would sign him up for a little league and he would intentionally
35:52
strike out so he just wouldn't have to play he he was apparently like a pretty good wrestler and he didn't he ended up being
36:00
good at wrestling he just wanted to like rebel against everyone totally when he
36:05
was in high school he befriended like the gay kid in school because when everyone thought he was gay they would
36:10
leave him alone because they didn't want to assume I mean you remember what that was like back when we were in yeah well
36:16
like that was the whole thing he would spray paint God is gay on cars like he was just yeah he was just like very
36:21
anti-establishment mm-hmm I found this picture of him when he was 14 he was in
36:27
some school band and the other kids around him he's like sitting on these risers and these other kids are so happy
36:33
and they're having fun and they're just like the kids are having a good time he looks like he wants to strangle the drum that's in front of him like he hates it
36:40
so much because it's just anything that has to do with normalcy yeah
36:45
it seemed like at least yeah so he'd eventually drop out of school and
36:51
live this like Vagabond lifestyle just sleeping on Friends couches he started doing his own meth building saying he
36:57
like slept under this bridge everybody said you couldn't sleep under that bridge because the water would just keep coming in it would just wash you away he
37:03
was occasionally homeless he would yeah he would meet girls and just shack up with them for a while and it sounds like
37:09
he mostly just carried on these relationships for the sake of just having a place to stay
37:15
um and then these women telling him to like get a job and he just would refuse to do so he forms one band early on
37:21
called the fecal matter which was very short-lived and then he went on to form
37:28
nirvana in 1987. one of the things I learned here had to do with Dave Grohl
37:34
who I didn't know this but he was not the original drummer of Nirvana he wasn't who was so it's this guy named
37:41
Chad Channing so their first album ever released so
37:47
the big the big one was never mind but the first album was called bleach and that was recorded with a drummer named Chad Channing and I really hate what
37:54
happened to this guy because yeah ban people move around and people get fired all the time but he was so
38:01
briefly tied to one of the most influential bands in the world and at that time he wouldn't obviously know that and now really nobody knows who he
38:08
is like you literally just asked me like who is he everybody knows Dave Grohl but nobody knows Chad um that wasn't like a beetle too like a
38:16
guy who's in The Beatles that got left before they became famous I don't know that that always happens there's
38:22
definitely a guy a guy who was supposed to be in BTS and then like got kicked out at the very end and he was like he
38:28
was like I was just like a regular guy and he's like I miss my friends
38:35
I mean I don't know BTS history maybe he knew he was going to be really big at that time but like in this case like
38:40
nobody knew Nirvana was gonna do what it is it's like you miss out you missed that show apparently in 2013 Nirvana that was the
38:47
year Nirvana got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this guy Chad thought he would be in that group but apparently they only
38:54
included Kurt the guitarist guy named Chris and Dave gruel and like listen I I
39:01
actually like I'm gonna go into a little bit of a rant about Dave Grohl here I love him so much and he's even cooler
39:06
than I thought he made a point to shout out Dave in 2013 for his contribution to Nirvana and to bleach he like reference
39:12
how he wrote some of the later riffs that they used and he really wanted to make sure that people knew that this guy was a part of the band even though he
39:19
wasn't called out in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame so my side note about Dave Grohl so obviously went on to found Foo
39:26
Fighters which became a phenomenally successful band in its own right he apparently is also a Pit Master these
39:31
days and regularly feeds the homeless of LA with his barbecue I saw a picture of him doing that recently yeah yeah yeah
39:37
he did that recently but he does it regularly apparently I also watched an interview he did with Howard Stern and I
39:45
wanted to reach through my monitor and punch Howard Stern for just how I was shitty he is to Dave Grohl like he Dave
39:53
will handle this with such class but at one point because to us Kurt Cobain is just like this he killed himself it is
40:00
what it is right like we don't like I know I have no emotional attachment to the guy but Dave Grohl was like his
40:06
childhood friend in like they traveled the world together and like like they were very very closely and Howard Stern
40:13
would just say stuff about Kurt's death and just just like flipping manner to Dave Grohl that was just really really
40:18
operating like he was like he was like oh so wasn't it kind of great that he killed himself because they gave you this opportunity to move on and do Foo
40:25
Fighters it was just like he was a friend yeah like Dave just was like
40:30
um no that's not a good thing like you know he just handled it very in a classy way which was really cool to
40:37
see so anyways side rants about Dave Grohl so in 1991 that was like I said
40:43
before that was kind of their breakout year that was the year that they released never mind and I didn't know this but apparently Nirvana pushing
40:49
Seattle grunge is partially the reason why bands like Pearl Jam sound guard and
40:55
Alice in Chains Rose in popularity as well like they invented this genre and then everybody's like addicted to it now
41:01
so Kurt by extension basically becomes the ambassador of this genre that also
41:07
happens to be the most popular genre of music at the time it sounds like he would hate that okay
41:13
exactly so so I I put this down think about this in modern terms I don't actually know who this guy is now I
41:19
wrote down maybe it's Drake maybe it's Justin Bieber maybe it's Beyonce I don't really know like is it who who is it do
41:25
you know I mean I don't know I can't think of anyone who like started a new genre of music I mean I don't talk
41:33
about music but like I feel like there's people who are really popular but like all the people you just named their pop
41:39
stars you know like I don't know like I haven't I don't know I don't know anything new but I'm also not like in
41:46
the know but but grunge was like new so this is even bigger than that then so it's even bigger than like a drake
41:52
because it's yeah it's all new so imagine that so imagine like imagine a
41:59
guy like Kurt who wants to rebel against everything establishment
42:04
and now he is this figurehead in Corporate America yeah yeah I'm gonna
42:12
actually get into this like a lot when I get to like the suicide note but like he does not handle this
42:17
well in his own mind I will say that if Kurt didn't have this self-destruct
42:23
component to him he actually would have been the exact right guy for this I watched an
42:29
interview with him and his lack of caring about anything is so
42:35
quintessentially rock star-ish you should see you should watch like I mean even like the way he was like you watch
42:41
like rock stars now like I think like like I don't really know rock stars whatever like is Bono a rockstar sure I
42:48
mean he's like completely old but yes sure like but even like younger Bono like you look at like how he presents
42:53
himself you look at how Kurt presents himself doesn't give a [ __ ] like he's wearing like shoes that the souls are
42:59
falling off of his jeans are just shredded and tattered like not because he's trying to look cool he literally just does not care his bandmates had
43:07
reported this is this this is like a self-reflection of how little he cares his bandmates had reported that
43:13
the melody mattered way more to Kurt than the lyrics so he'd always come up with the melody and then attach lyrics
43:19
to it so it's funny because people would dissect every word he said and in one
43:25
interview one of you someone asked if it's hard coming up with ideas and he goes this is
43:31
a quote he goes at one point I was just using poetry and just like garbage that
43:36
would spew out on me and a lot of times when I write lyrics it's in the last minute because I'm really lazy and then
43:42
I find myself having to come with an explanation for it well he just didn't care like he's just like okay I guess this fits that lyric or the that Melody
43:50
but I think I think like I feel like your original question was like how his personality a different personality like
43:57
would have like enjoyed the fame but then I feel like the music would have been different like you couldn't have
44:03
been a different person yeah yeah that's a good point so Kurt was quoted as
44:08
saying when you're in the public eye okay he's he he's a little bit melodramatic he's a little bit
44:14
melodramatic I think we can agree on that we can agree on that so yeah this is a quote when you're in the public eye you have no choice but to get raped over
44:21
and over again they'll take every ounce of blood out of you until you're exhausted I'm looking forward to the
44:26
future it will only be another year and then everyone will have forget forgotten about it he's talking about never mind
44:31
at this point how wrong was that timeline no I know
44:37
that's hilarious yeah I've I actually now have two versions of smells like
44:43
smell like teen spirit on my Spotify playlist it's the original and then I have this other one that like it's a
44:48
revamped like alt rock version of it it's just it sounds fantastic I've definitely gone through phases where I
44:54
just like Listen to Never mind over and over again yeah the whole album yeah yeah yeah of course I actually went down
45:00
a pretty deep music Rabbit Hole research in this especially because we know a lot about the bands that
45:06
influenced Kurt in particular so like like the The Melvins if you've never
45:11
heard of them like that's basically where like the guitar influence kind of comes from the Pixies is where that kind
45:16
of disjointed lyrics that you hear in Nirvana songs come from Sex Pistols that's a lot of that anti-establishment
45:22
stuff that like he was a he was a musical connoisseur like he his music taste was fantastic like I actually like
45:29
started I'll send you a list of these bands that I listened to as I was probably
45:35
researching this it goes off saying the melodrama piece of it he just never thought that anybody
45:40
was actually hardcore enough he actually resented his fans in some ways like he thought that if you like Nirvana for the
45:48
music then you had to also like it with a social and political message which is just a very anti-establishment anti-fitting in and he would he's
45:54
watching kids wearing polos and attending church listener to Nirvana and that just like I think that's a big part
46:01
of why he um basically turned into what he turned into all this kind of gets us
46:07
to who he is his General State of Mind and why things we're gonna eventually derail so on the
46:14
one hand you have Kurt who has become basically music royalty who had his core is basically just this lost kid
46:20
with a ton of animosity towards being popular and on the other hand you have the other main character of our story which is Courtney Love okay
46:28
this is the Doom to fail piece of this so corny has always been portrayed as kind of an afterthought to the story of
46:35
Kurt and Courtney except to the extent that she's demonized and villainized in it like everybody thinks that corny's
46:42
essentially like this Hangar on and I'm kind of going to do a bit of like revisionism on her history as well
46:49
mostly because Kurt is the main character of the story and if I went into Courtney's life and the details of
46:54
what she did this would just drag on for like 12 hours because she's done a lot she's done a ton of stuff she's not just
47:01
Kurt's wife she she had her own trauma growing up she had her own impactful musical career and and all the stuff
47:07
that she did with that by semi-cals she was more famous than Kurt when they initially met yeah whole is really good
47:13
goals are great I listen to the hole too that's yeah yeah did you uh have you
47:19
ever seen 200 Cigarettes no it's like a very 90s movie about a New Year's Eve
47:25
party and she's in it and she's great the The Hustler movie she was and I
47:31
don't remember the name of it but that she was great in that too like she's great in a lot of stuff she does so yeah there's there's some debate on
47:38
when they met some say it was before never mind's release some say it was after never mind's release but like if it was before then Courtney was
47:44
definitely more famous than Kurt was because bleach wasn't a big album by all accounts yeah and I wrote here that her
47:51
music's fantastic and there's a lot of stuff that I learned about like according that I didn't know so if you if you remember like my apartment back
47:58
in LA in in Hollywood which was like I guess it was relatively close to where you you guys lived back then but I was
48:05
right down the street from Jumbo's Clown Room and so she used to work at Jumbo's Clown Room like that was one of her first things that she did while she was
48:11
trying to get hole up and running it's very cool so however they met they got married in 1992 they got married in
48:17
Hawaii and like I actually at this point don't even know if Crow was stoned out of his mind or if he was actually
48:22
genuinely happy he looked really happy in the pictures though I feel like I could picture those let me find them okay yeah it was it was weirdly like uh
48:31
like a cute wedding for two incredibly grungy people oh he does look very happy yeah
48:38
so it's worth noting that Kurt was in chronic pain for most of his life due to some stomach issues he had there's some
48:44
conf again like there's no facts here like there's some conflict about he tells people he's in chronic pain to
48:49
justify his heroin use or was he in chronic pain and that's why he started using hair like we don't know it's wait
48:55
did you did you hear like the stuff that like it was because he played his guitar with the wrong hand no so I feel like
49:01
okay this might be totally wrong but I feel like I saw something that the way that he held his guitar was like not the
49:10
natural way that someone should hold their guitar in this and especially with like his like dexterity like he should
49:16
have known with other hand but because of that he was like putting weird pressure on his stomach and that was like part of the problem he was having
49:22
oh well that yeah that could be that could be a component of this for sure yeah so we don't know we don't know if
49:27
we if one came before the other but we do know obviously that Kurt dabbled in a
49:32
lot of drugs and alcohol he was not a stickler about the drugs that he used he basically used everything like whatever was there and available at the time he
49:39
would use like I'm gonna get into a lot of his ODS and like some of his others a lot of his ODS Jesus yeah so some of his
49:45
od's didn't even involve heroin he was just fine whatever he could find just take it he's numb like totally wanted to
49:50
numb himself out he would start using heroin in particular off and on starting
49:55
in 1986 which I think is the year he formed Nirvana if I remember what I said correctly earlier so of all the drugs
50:02
out there it seemed like heroin is the last one you'd want to like be using and still be functional on I've obviously
50:08
never done it but I read up a ton on what just opiates in general do and it seems like it most just numbs you to
50:14
everything some symptoms of opiate intoxication are nodding off suddenly it slows down your
50:20
breathing there's itching Tremor slurred speech impaired coordination clouded thinking disorientation impaired memory
50:27
basically all the things that are counterproductive to maintaining a career in a family life I mean look
50:33
obviously I feel like it just goes without Sam's harping on this a little bit too much but Kurt was like an incredibly Reckless user because
50:40
they literally just stayed I'm going to get into his ODS and I use plural in that it almost felt like he knew that his
50:48
story arc would be more romantic if he died tragically which is like yeah contribute to his heroin usage yeah yeah
50:55
okay like this is the part where I stand up for Courtney Love which I don't know how many people have said that before in
51:01
the history Courtney really tried to keep him somewhat on the straight narrow which
51:07
she's a tragic character in her own right like she would also be doing heroin with him and also be doing all kinds of different drugs there's like a
51:13
whole history of her Francis being got taken away from them because she said in a Vanity Fair
51:19
article that she done did heroin when she was pregnant with like she's not like yeah she's not like a terribly
51:24
sympathetic character but in the context of these two she actually did try
51:31
she was kind of by the time never mind came out he blew up and became who became she almost became like his manager and
51:38
whenever he'd have to go places and she wasn't with him she'd always tell drivers that they were not allowed to
51:43
detour anywhere because oftentimes he would detour and go to a drug dealer and go buy heroin yeah I think part of the
51:49
public perception of her was kind of rooted in this thing where Kurt is like
51:54
this free-spirited dude just woo-woo whatever and she's like a Taskmaster but
52:01
she's not really like all she's trying to do is make sure her husband doesn't just like die on the road yeah and and
52:08
like yeah the stories I was reading was like he really he actually really really did love her like when
52:14
he would disappoint her he would just turn to this like sheepish child and when people saw that they were like oh
52:19
she's being mean to Curtis like no he's just like feels bad that he disappointed
52:24
his wife in that moment I read one story in the New Yorker which
52:30
was an article by Michael azerad called my time with Kurt Cobain and Michael actually wrote a biography with curtain became pretty close to him throughout
52:37
his life so the point where Kurt would ask him to attend business meetings with him is just so he wasn't surrounded by business people alone and then one of
52:44
these meetings he talks about how Kurt got up to go to the bathroom he thought Kurt had probably just left because he
52:51
just took so long to come back and Kurt came back and was obviously just high as
52:57
[ __ ] on heroin and everybody just kind of ignored it because he's with these business people like who cares like he's a genius let him do his genius thing
53:03
which is like let him get [ __ ] up as much as he wants we're gonna make money off anyways apparently
53:09
Michael walks him back to the hotel that he's staying out with Courtney and again like Courtney's just like disappointed
53:14
in him and at night yodies and they have the baby yeah at this
53:20
point yeah at this point they have Francis being so like again think about this from Courtney's perspective like
53:26
you're raising a child you're trying to manage this insane career that you have on your own that your husband has and
53:31
also this guy just constantly out of his mind doing heroin so in my opinion Courtney's the one who's like she's the
53:37
one who got [ __ ] in the situation more than Kurt did Chris drug use accelerates
53:43
um quite a bit and at this point so I I counted three ODS at this point
53:48
um where Courtney herself had to be the one to inject him with Narcan to bring him back oh God yeah so it was a tour
53:56
stop which is apparently the last one they did this was in Munich and Cricket's actually sick from bronchitis
54:03
and laryngitis so he goes to Rome to pursue medical treatment and Courtney meets up with him there this is March
54:09
3rd that Courtney meets him in Rome for medical treatment March 4th eod's again and this OD actually wasn't heroin he he
54:18
from what I recall I didn't write this down but when I recall it was like it was alcohol and um and Rohypnol that
54:25
eod's on this time yeah yeah I don't know why that is but yeah I would assume
54:32
as an addict you just get whatever you can get right yeah he's just trying to numb everything I mean yeah you're right yeah I wrote down this just obviously
54:39
keeps having a lot so later on Courtney would again we don't know the facts later on Courtney stated that this was a
54:45
suicide attempt we don't know because earlier on they said it's just an OD because part of this is also couching is
54:52
like he's a genius like Geniuses do heroine like right normal totally that's
54:57
so dumb yeah then they're like it's better if we just say that he did on heroin then that we say he took Rohypnol and alcohol to try and kill himself
55:04
basically yeah so after this incident Courtney the band mate's friends they all staged
55:09
intervention this is on March 25th of 1994. Kurt loses his mind because he is
55:15
the guy like he's who are you to tell me what to do like I'm I'm Kurt Cobain
55:21
eventually he agrees to go to rehab he went to a rehab clinic on March 30th
55:27
so five days after this intervention he goes to the Rehab Clinic he lasts three days before he scales the fence takes the cap to LAX and flies back to Seattle
55:34
at this point nobody knows where Kurt Is So Courtney ends up hiring a private
55:40
investigator around April 3rd to try and find him again he just disappears again
55:45
we publicly demonize her but look at what this woman had to do no totally investigator
55:50
to find her husband who's like abandoning his family to do drugs yeah yeah so on April 8th
55:57
an electrician came to Curtin Courtney's house to install a security system and
56:02
at that point that is when they discover Kurt's body he's the one who finds the body he's shot himself under the neck
56:09
under the chin and he left a suicide note he was also not surprisingly super
56:15
super high on heroin when they did the autopsy there is some debate as to whether he would have died anyways
56:21
because of the heroine I learned so much about heroin researching this so the reason it is
56:28
debated is because we don't know if the amount of heroin in the system that they measured was called free morphine or
56:35
whether it was total morphine free morphine is what you inject at that time total morphine is what is in your
56:42
system always because you're a habitual user yeah if the amount they found in his system was free morphine then yeah
56:49
he would have voted he would have died anyways whether he would have shot himself or not he would have died if not then probably not he the gunshots would
56:56
have had to have taken him out during the autopsy is assumed that he died on
57:02
April 5th so again he flees the uh Place whatever The Recovery Place on the third
57:07
gets to Seattle he sneaks up into this greenhouse that is a two-story Greenhouse apparently and he just kind
57:14
of chills there doing drugs and whatever he's doing at that time nobody finds him like apparently there's a bunch of
57:19
people coming in and out of the house but nobody finds him because I looked at pictures of the house the greenhouse was separate from the main house and
57:26
throw Junkies you know nobody's going to plant flowers I've seen that I've seen
57:32
that too and like yeah I think like I didn't think the private investigator missed it too like he didn't even see the house the greenhouse yeah yeah if
57:39
you want because I know you want to Zillow everything Taylor the house is 171 Lake Washington Boulevard in Seattle
57:45
this estimate is 7.8 million dollars which given the fact that his
57:51
guitar alone sold for six million dollars that's a bargain yeah oh it's
57:57
nice it has a nice view of like some water it's weird I actually don't find the house creepy
58:03
even though somebody died in it does
58:08
well look at the Zillow picture it has like a smidge of like animated little lights you know that is fun
58:15
um it's huge 8 000 square feet yeah it's huge holy [ __ ] there's like four bedrooms I think there's three more
58:20
bedrooms you don't find it creepy do you um like when I think about the toad family
58:26
and like moving living in that house that scares me but living like yeah house Kurt Cobain killed himself and that actually doesn't scare me no not
58:33
really when did he die this one in 94. so when in 94. April uh they they think
58:40
it's April 5th which I really should have waited three weeks to do this episode and it would have been another anniversary and I totally botched it boo
58:48
um so he bought it in I love Zillow God they bought it in in January 1994 for
58:56
1.4 million dollars yeah and then they sold it she sold it in 1997 for 2.8 and
59:03
then it sold in 2020 for seven yeah cool continue okay
59:09
um now yours the low slew thing is unrivaled [ __ ] love it though I just want I want to tell everything uh it's
59:17
it's worth noting that there were other moments that were building up to this again going back to Courtney's life being a living hell so the gun Kurt used
59:24
actually wasn't his own because his guns had been confiscated multiple times by the police because there are multiple
59:29
reports according to call the cops saying Curtis locked himself in a bathroom highest [ __ ] on heroin with a
59:35
loaded gun and threatening to kill himself so yeah they showed me like okay we'll just
59:42
we're gonna go ahead and take your guns away from you um but yeah what a living hell so
59:47
on the conspiracy side of this there's a ton of conspiracy surrounding Kurt's death most of them revolve around Courtney having killed Kurt which these
59:54
people are generally pretty awful so the people who are saying this stuff
1:00:00
for the most part are at best tangentially connected to Kurt and Courtney they're basically just like
1:00:05
these Hangers On and losers so this includes the private investigator who Courtney initially hired to find Kurt he
1:00:12
also yeah that Courtney must have killed him which is like what a loser like you
1:00:23
there's so many documentaries about this I've watched one of them last night actually uh also cordy's father came out
1:00:30
saying that Courtney probably killed Kurt like how the [ __ ] do you know yeah I wrote I wrote this down because
1:00:36
apparently during the divorce Courtney's divorce proceeding or doing Courtney's parents divorce
1:00:43
proceeding there were several people that came out and testified that her dad the one who said that she killed Kurt
1:00:50
also used to dose her with LSD when she was a toddler ew yeah like there was a ton of other
1:00:57
allegations against him no matter what he had full custody revoked for ever like seeing her when she was when she
1:01:02
was a kid so yeah I was trying to be in the news like yeah like I'm I'm relevant I'm important I know Courtney Love I'm
1:01:08
her dad I should probably talk about the suicide uh note for for a bit so it's it's kind of long um it's at least it's
1:01:16
at least a full page in length maybe a little bit longer than that it starts out really just talking about his career about how he knows he should be enjoying
1:01:23
this more than he really is he references Freddie Mercury in it and he says
1:01:28
that he really paid attention to how much Freddie Mercury enjoyed like the Adoration of crowds and he was like I
1:01:33
wish I could be like him and like enjoy it he enjoys it so he has the wherewithal to be really
1:01:39
self-reflective In This Moment despite probably at this point being super super high um and he is under he totally
1:01:45
understands the nature of what he's doing and what like what he's leaving behind by doing this I'll read a little
1:01:51
bit of the I mean this this sounds like it's going to be a lot but this is actually a really small subset of the
1:01:57
suicide note itself so this is a this is I'm quoting this exactly
1:02:04
there's good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much so much that it makes me feel too [ __ ] sad the sad
1:02:11
little sensitive unappreciated Pisces Jesus man why don't you just enjoy it I don't know I have a goddess of a wife
1:02:18
who sweats the ambition empathy and a daughter who reminds me too much of what I used to be full of love and joy and
1:02:24
that terrifies me to the point where I can barely function I can't stand the thought of Francis becoming the miserable self-destructive death rocker
1:02:31
that I've become I have it good very good and I'm grateful but since the age of seven I've
1:02:36
become I become hateful towards all humans in general only because it seems so easy for people to get along that
1:02:42
have empathy only because I love and feel sorry for people too much I guess
1:02:48
thank you all for the from the pit of my burning nauseous stomach for your letters and concerns during the past years I'm too much of an erratic Moody
1:02:55
baby I don't have the passion anymore and so remember it's better to burn out than to fade out Peace Love empathy Kurt
1:03:02
Cobain Francis and Courtney I'll be at your altar please keep Courtney sorry please keep going Courtney for Francis
1:03:09
for her life which will be so much happier without me I love you I love you I think he could have used some therapy
1:03:15
and some other kinds of drugs yeah he's depressed he's antidepressants
1:03:21
yeah and yeah I wonder I wonder like what would have happened if he like didn't do
1:03:27
that like who he'd be right now because I'm looking like Dave Grohl like they're so different like Dave Grohl and Chris
1:03:32
double check like they were not junkies at all like they like they never did drugs like they did they did not go down
1:03:39
that path and you look at them now and you're like they're just like groovy 50 year old people like doing cool [ __ ]
1:03:46
feeding to the homeless like I don't know I don't know what would happen to Kurt but um well how did Taylor Hawkins diekins
1:03:54
um he did so Taylor Hawkins was the drummer of the Foo Fighters he just died he died last year about a year ago and
1:04:01
he died of a drug overdose really it is he died in Colombia while they were on
1:04:06
tour I think and it says that his toxicology so that he had
1:04:12
um opioids antidepressants THC like a bunch of drugs in a system geez something about
1:04:18
that lifestyle um so yeah I I wrote down that line
1:04:23
better to burn out than a fade out I I really want to just if if I have the wherewithal I'm gonna scream that for my
1:04:29
deathbed so Legacy wise look like he basically died rock and roll royalty um he's now
1:04:36
part of this 27 Club which we all know what that is um I mean look he's on that list with Joplin Morrison and Hendrix like that's
1:04:42
the caliber of person that he he became and Amy Winehouse died at 27-2 I forgot
1:04:48
about that that's crazy yeah Courtney would go on she'd create more music more movies she
1:04:54
never remarried um there's some like she kind of seemed like she kept being like kind of a junkie in a lot of ways but
1:05:00
again I'm not gonna follow her she's going through a lot of [ __ ] and a lot of trauma Francis inherited a huge chunk of
1:05:06
Kurt's estate and now owns the rights to his name and images um yeah she is like
1:05:13
she's loaded like princess stated like his likeness is worth so much money I
1:05:18
forgot what the exact number was but it was somewhere in like the 400 million dollar range is like what that value of
1:05:24
like just having access having the licensing rights to that is what the aspects are worth she married a musician
1:05:30
that everybody compared to Kurt is in 2014 they divorced and now she's basically just living her life doing her
1:05:36
thing um she looks exactly like Kurt and Courtney's childhood it's amazing she's so pretty
1:05:42
yeah no she looks exactly like both of them yeah but wait I have a question you don't think it's weird the way that
1:05:48
the gun was and how he could have killed himself I know that's part of the conspiracy is
1:05:54
like he would have had to like like it was like a rifle under his chin yeah yeah he would have had to pull it with
1:06:00
like his thumb or something like or his foot like yeah I've heard those um rumors too my thing is I'm just thinking
1:06:08
about looking from a human nature perspective he's like the biggest thing he's like the biggest artist biggest like celebrity in the
1:06:16
world like if somebody had done that what did we figure that out like that's fair we have coordinate actually and
1:06:23
also you read the suicide note there's nothing suspicious about the suicide now like I mean people have claimed that maybe that's not his handwriting but it
1:06:28
was and yeah definitely states that like I'm doing like it doesn't it's not ambiguous as maybe not a suicide note
1:06:35
and also he would have probably died anyways because they weren't overdosed I mean he was probably with like
1:06:40
whatever he said like the the morphine that was like in his body kind of like permanently he's probably like rehab was
1:06:46
probably physically [ __ ] terrible because he probably was like do a bunch of like withdrawals draws and stuff you
1:06:52
know I can't believe me three days yeah that sounds terrible um so that's them and like I said I kind
1:07:00
of frame this as Courtney was the one that kind of got the rough end of this because yeah of course the bigger
1:07:07
celebrity and we all loved Kurt and then yeah and then people are like mad at her when she was just like trying to keep
1:07:13
her family together and then also yeah and they're like terrible pictures of her like holding Francis and crying
1:07:18
outside their house and stuff that like like people like wouldn't leave her alone and and all of that so yeah that's
1:07:25
awful yeah so that's rock stars man yeah just like so much heroin like it's
1:07:33
just like I I cut out so much of this story because I literally just would have said heroin 500 more times yeah
1:07:41
so yeah that's why we had coffee so yeah that's fair Seattle story but yeah
1:07:46
that's my story and now I'm gonna once I wrap this up go look at tulips at Home Depot
1:07:52
nice I want to listen to some Nirvana at the Airbnb I'm saying at the fridge please music
1:07:57
it's like has the whole screen in it so I'm going to maybe they'll put some Nirvana on it it's been playing Pitbull
1:08:03
Mr worldwide um I watched uh so HBO if you have HBO
1:08:09
Max they have a a great documentary about uh current uh Nirvana In general but specifically Kurt and Courtney um
1:08:15
called the Montage of heck which is like a lot of just live footage of recordings of them just hanging out together and I
1:08:22
mean it is grungy yeah yeah some of it's hard to watch but it's it
1:08:29
gives you really good um insight into like their lives but anyways totally sometime what a time what a time
1:08:36
um shout out to everyone who all those grunge girls who were all black for like a year afterwards seriously so it still
1:08:43
starts it's still hot I don't like I still I'm still drawn to that but um no yeah oh yeah what was wrong with that
1:08:50
but they did it specifically because Kurt Cobain died when they were so sad I also this one podcast where this guy was
1:08:57
talking about the word they were talking about his death and they're like he was like yeah I wasn't into this music I didn't really know but then later I
1:09:02
became when I was like a late teenager I got into his music and for one day I wore a black band around my like around
1:09:10
my arm because I was so like distron over his death he died
1:09:16
like 10 years earlier and everybody was like I don't understand like a firefighter died or like why are you
1:09:21
wearing this black man they just remembered that's fair we can still you can still like discover the
1:09:27
music and be sad about it yeah you know yeah um do you want to call out do you want
1:09:33
to be the one that calls out please write and review us yeah so thanks everyone for sticking through this
1:09:39
episode I feel like I that I learned a lot about about rock and roll relationships
1:09:46
um hopefully my tulip story makes sense in the context of whatever we're building here but thank you everyone please continue to rate US on Apple
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1:09:59
just please just like like subscribe on something everything's free um we also just went on YouTube I am
1:10:06
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1:10:22
well said but whatever um send us a message sweet awesome thank you I will go ahead
1:10:27
and wrap up then thank you Taylor thanks farz [Music]