141: The Dark History of Designer Babies: Creating the "Perfect" Child & playing god
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You know what I love? Build-A-Bear. I mean, it's perfect. You get exactly what you want every time. I mean, custom smell, done. Custom heart, done. Custom voice? I mean, hey, you could use that recreated voice of the Egyptian mummy that scientists made.

right? But there's just something so satisfying about getting exactly what you want. Which is why a whole lot of people are obsessed with the idea of building a perfect baby.

From baby competitions in 1908 to designing your baby's eye color and skin tone from scratch, that dream has slowly but surely become a reality. Over the last hundred years, some wild stuff has gone down in the world of genetics. Did you know that Stalin was once approached to be a sperm donor to create a perfect baby?

Or that Jeffrey Epstein had a secret plan to create a squad of genius children on a mysterious ranch in New Mexico? Or that one man created a sperm bank that only accepted donations from Nobel Prize winning scientists? Well, we're going to get into all of that and more in this episode. This is the Dark History of Designer Baby.

Hi friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and I'd like to welcome you to my podcast, Dark History. Here we believe history does not have to be boring. It might be tragic. It might be happy. But either way, it's our dark history. And before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe. I come out with that hot juicy history goss every week. And let me know what you think. I love hearing from you in the comment section down below.

Now, let's get into it, eh? Okay, so there's a word that has come up over and over again in Dark History, and we can't really talk about the path to designer babies without it. Now, that word is eugenics. Now, this is the concept that the human population can and should be genetically improved. Now, do you guys remember Charles Darwin? You know, that guy who went to the island and was stalking the animals or whatever?

He was odd. Anyway, you probably heard of his famous theory, survival of the fittest. This theory says that the animal or plant that was the strongest would survive and continue to survive. Fun fact, Charles Darwin went on to marry his cousin, which kind of goes against his whole theory, but you know, all right.

Love is love. Well, it was actually Charles's cousin who came up with the term eugenics. And no, not that cousin that he married. It was a different cousin. His name was Francis Galton. Now, Francis had a theory. If we could just breed out the weaklings in society, we could create the perfect human race.

Now before this, there was no name for that idea. So he calls it eugenics because it's a mashup of two Greek words. The word eu in Greek means good and the genics part comes from the Greek word genes which means to come into being and that's where this baby is born. But obviously um

I think you and I both know perfect is subjective, and that's where we get into trouble. For instance, the Nazis used eugenics back when they tried to create a master race of Aryan people, aka white Germans, and the Nazis literally had a secret SS program to breed more quote unquote racially pure babies. It was very handsmaid's tale. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. They encouraged all these unmarried German women to give birth anonymously and then handed the babies over to Nazi families. It was called the Lebensborn program, which means fountain of life. And to the Nazis, this was their designer baby. But over in America, eugenics had like a more family friendly feel to it, which makes it all more suspish.

The other day I was sitting next to Katie. Now Katie, she's one of the writers on Dark History. She looks at me and she's like, "Oh my gosh, your skin looks so good." And I was like, "Oh my God, thank you." I haven't gotten a compliment on my skin in a long time. I was like, "I'm using tritinoin again." Do you know about tritinoin? It's like retinol. I was like, "I'm using that again." And I gave her like the whole spiel and she's like, "Oh, where'd you get it?"

And I was like, Apostrophe, the sponsor of today's episode. Yeah, so Katie is my new favorite because she complimented my skin and I'm that easy. If you don't know, Apostrophe is an online platform that connects you with an expert dermatology team to get customized acne treatment or like any type of skincare treatment for your unique skin. Through Apostrophe, you can get access to oral and topical medications that use clinically proven ingredients to help address whatever your skin concerns are.

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Into the story. So the year is 1908 and you're going to the Louisiana State Fair. Hi, you've made it. And you're going to submit your squash into the biggest crop competition. Because you know, you grew it really big. It's really big. You want to show it off.

It's hot outside, you're sweating, but you gotta wait for the Better Babies contest to be over before the judges could get to your squash. Yes, the Louisiana State Fair held the first Better Baby contest in 1908. Just like how you showed up with your happy squash, Martha was showing up with her six-month chubby little baby for the baby competition. So I guess the same way that they were weighing the squash, they were weighing babies.

So not only could you win an award for biggest squash of 1908, but you could also win the award for having the best baby. Which I guess was a major flex. Naturally the rich people would just run to enter their babies into this competition. But how does one decide whose baby is better? Well,

Well, there was like a whole matrix that was put together by nurses and doctors. So it all felt very scientific and official. So this matrix outlined what the scientifically ideal baby weight, height and mental capacity were. And if the baby was feeling a little shy, like, no, I'm a shy baby. Well, Tommy, your baby, shy Tommy, well, he would lose you like five points.

You know? Yeah, shy babies were frowned upon. No shy babies allowed. Also, they measured the chest size of the babies. Yeah, insert baby boob joke here. Couldn't think of one.

but use your imagination. And I had a whole lot of questions that were like hard to find answers to. But what we do know for sure is that this competition wasn't really about a better baby. This was an award proving to everyone that you and your husband did it. You created the perfectly ideal American family.

We did it, honey! High five! And this dream of the perfect American family never died. The perfect baby only becomes more attainable and more literal as science and technology advanced. By the 1970s, scientists stopped relying on parents to create the perfect children. They wanted to take matters into their own hands and create a perfect little designer baby.

In the late 1970s, a guy named Robert K. Graham had a little idea to create the perfect baby. So a little background on Robert. He was a millionaire who had made a ton of money by inventing impact resistant plastic eyeglasses. Good for you, Robert. Good for you. It's kind of like those infomercials where the car drives over glasses to prove like how unbreakable they are.

It's like that, but like Robert embedded that, you know? "Wah, I can run my car with the glasses and they don't break. I need to buy that shit right now." They're important, I guess. Yeah, okay. Even with all this success, Robert was kind of a pessimistic person. Like he didn't think humanity was headed in a great direction because

According to him, Darwin's theory of natural selection had stopped working on the human race. Eventually he didn't think that we were evolving anymore, at least not in a good way. And Robert believed that when humans became the dominant species and quote "masters of our environment" it created a kind of cheat code.

Instead of survival of the fittest, modern living allowed retrograde humans, aka dummies, to reproduce and live comfortably. Uh, that's kind of the nice thing about living in a society. You don't have to go out and like kill a bison when you're hungry. You can order Postmates.

Robert, he's dead now, but I bet you the Postmates would really piss him off. Extra hard, I'm sure. Essentially, Robert worried that all these dummies who should not be surviving and procreating were out there making sexuals. He also believed that all the smart, beautiful, genetically gifted people weren't having enough babies to offset the number of dummies. Maybe this is why Robert had eight kids. I don't know. Probably. You know, he thinks he's special.

Everyone always thinks their kids are like the best. Ultimately, Robert believed that idiots having idiot babies would destroy the human race if something wasn't done to stop it. So Robert decided the future of humanity was in his hands and there was only one way to save it from becoming stupid. He was like, "Why don't we take the best of the best? "Valor Victorians and like rocket scientists "and have them create a super race of genius humans."

Idea. I know. I was thinking about this and it kind of sounds like a stoner thought you would have in the shower. A hypothetical situation, but Robert actually put this plan into action. Yeah, he did. He comes up with an idea for a VIP sperm bank. Now, if you like designing your babies, then you're really going to like designing your own website with Squarespace, the sponsor of today's episode. Squarespace.

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So Graham gets an idea for a sperm bank for designer babies. He actually got the idea from someone else, a man named Herman Muller. Now Herman won the Nobel Prize in 1946 for his work on genetic mutations. Fun fact, Herman actually tried to recruit Joseph Stalin to be his sperm donor.

Which I was like why? Like didn't Stalin have really bad skin and he had like a didn't he have like a sad arm and like a limp or something and he was short and not that great in life? You know? Anyway instead of calling it a sperm bank Robert calls his project the repository for germinal choice. Yeah I know I was like what? I don't know.

It was based in California, Southern California. So that's great. Repository sounds a little bit more sophisticated, like a sperm bank that went to an Ivy League college, you

And that was part of the plan. Not just anyone could donate their sperm. What made the repository different was that only the cream of the crop of society could cream their crop into a sperm cup and then donate their sperm. The goal was to create creative, intelligent people who otherwise might not be born. Robert said his little spank bank, quote, "may stimulate humanity's ascent to a new level of being."

So Robert starts going after geniuses. And in the late 1970s, he finally convinced three Nobel Prize winning scientists to donate their sperm. And I know what you might be thinking. Where is he getting the women for this little experiment? Well, he started advertising to potential mothers in Mensa magazine. If you don't know, Mensa is this club that you can basically only join if your IQ is at a certain level.

Like you gotta be really smart, like best of the best. But it's kind of funny because in Spanish, in Spanish doesn't menso mean like idiot or stupid or something like that? Let me know down below. I know you know. He obviously couldn't name names, but the ads would say things like, quote, Mr. Fuchsia, an Olympic gold medalist, tall, dark, handsome, bright, a successful businessman and author. And you're reading this like, mm-mm.

would bang, you know? Okay. But no one really knew like what Robert was up to unless you had a subscription to Mensa magazine or you were one of the people jizzing into a cup. That is until 1980. So that year, the LA Times did a story on the repository. This was the first time society was hearing about it and they were shocked and offended. How could this be going on? And I never knew about it.

And why, like, didn't anyone ask me for my sperm?

You know? This whole idea of creating the ideal race made people think of the Nazis. For good reason, right? So people were like, "Oh my god! This is eugenics all over again!" To them, it was essentially the same idea Hitler had when he wanted to exterminate the Jewish people because he believed that they had negative traits and needed to be eliminated. So understandably, people were freaked out. Two of the Nobel Prize-winning donors pulled out all together. They were like, "Nope.

And people started accusing Robert of trying to create a master race. I mean, they're kind of not wrong, right? And this is when people started saying that he was trying to make designer babies. So that's where the phrase actually comes from. Now at the end of the day, only one Nobel prize winner ever admitted that he had donated sperm to the repository. And his name was William Shockley. And he invented something called a transistor. Transistors are electronic components

Like, um, it's smart people shit. You know, you have transistors in your computer right now, like a billion of them or something like that. So he was smart. All right. Downside? William was a big time racist. Yep. He believed that black people were, quote, intellectually inferior to white people. And he actually took it a step further, saying that people who were inferior should be offered cash and prizes in exchange for getting sterilized.

Yeah. So basically, Robert only had one guy in his corner, and it was this guy William. So it was not the best PR. Fun fact, William Shockley only decided to stop providing samples to the repository when he decided he was too old to be giving them good quality samples. Apparently this really bummed out the repository director, who later said that Shockley's sperm was, quote, actually pretty good, end quote, direct quote.

Actually, pretty good. Anyway, long story short, Robert was losing his credibility. People assumed his whole project was an evil racist plot. Protesters started picketing outside his home and Robert even decided to hire security guards. Not for his house, but for the repository. You know, to protect his genius sperm. Priorities. Robert sort of retreats from the public eye and eventually people forget like all about him. Guess what?

Some women still impregnated themselves with "genius" babies. And the first baby from this bunch was born in 1982. And it was on the cover of the most important magazine at the time, the National Enquirer. Remember the National Enquirer? I think it's still out there. Not sure.

know but you remember. Maybe you don't. Maybe you do. Anyway, I could see like a couple women being into this idea, you know, right? But it wasn't just one or two women. Oh nay nay. So the genius babies start popping out left and right. Boom boom boof. Over the next 15 years, 229 genius babies were born from the samples at the repository for germinal choice. 229.

Lost a lot of babies. These babies were scattered all over the United States as well as half a dozen other countries. So Robert considered this whole thing to be like a fun experiment. He even had the parents agree to answer periodic surveys about the kids and like how they were

excelling in life. You know, little life updates. Now the funny thing is, Robert Graham's own biological son, his name was Robin, he said, Robin said that his dad seemed to prefer the designer babies over his own kids. Apparently, Robert used to cover his office walls with snapshots of his genius sperm bank kids. I mean, I guess they were his pride and joy. On the other hand, Robin called his dad aloof towards his actual kids. According to Slate,

One mother said that she always considered Robert Graham to be the real father of her children, not the guy who donated the sperm. And I was like, that's so weird. Like, why would you say that? That doesn't make any sense. She probably didn't have a man in her life.

right? Apparently at some point Robert decided that most of the donors were too old to be considered good donors so he started relying on younger scientists for his jizz jar and this is where Paul Smith enters the picture. Paul, Paul's back there with his hustler magazine. He's donating his sperm if anyone wants it I'll put it up on eBay. Let me know. He's smart, handsome, he's got a good

had a hair, went to college, community college, nothing wrong with that. He wanted to go to a four-year after he finished two years at the community college. I think that was smart, Paul. That was a really good, smart choice. He didn't really do much with his life, then he died. But I think he'd be a good candidate if anyone's out there looking for sperm.

So Paul, not this one, but Paul Smith was the first director of the repository for germinal choice. First director. Okay, got it. He's one of the only people who knew what happened there and he's essentially the only person who has like talked publicly about it. So after all of the Nobel prize winners distanced themselves from Robert,

Smith says that he went to like go look for donors at bougie college campuses. Not terrible idea. Like I understand the logic there, you know, but there's some dumbasses at bougie colleges like because their parents got them in somehow, you know.

Whatever. He was essentially trying to like predict who the next Nobel Prize winners would be. So Paul Smith would stake out college campuses with good reputations in California, like UC Berkeley and Caltech, and try to find the most high achieving scientists and grad students, and then go up to them and ask for a little donation. I know, is this the best idea? I don't know. When you think about it, the Unabomber got into Harvard at 15 years old.

A murderer called the Roadside Strangler went to Cornell. I'm sure there's lots of other murderers at colleges right now. You know? Anywho, brains weren't even enough. The women who were interested in the repository started asking questions about how attractive the donors were. Fair question. You don't want your baby looking busted.

He's smart, but like, I don't want to look at him. So Paul started patrolling college campuses looking for hotties. Paul estimates that he approached about 100 men total and only 10 ended up donating. That's because the repository didn't pay the donors. What's the incentive there really? Plus what if the kid finds you later in life and you're like, oh shit, you were just a donation.

Now, there's a reason people saw this as one big nasty eugenics project. First, according to Paul, all of the repository's donors were white. White. They were white. And second, for women to apply to get the sperm, they had to be married and heterosexual. In 1997, Robert Graham died.

He had been completely self-funding the repository and I guess after he passed, he assumed his wife would keep running it. But I guess she, the wife, decided she had better things to do with her money. Because just two years later in 1999, the repository for Germinal Choice shut down. And this was good news to all the people who saw it as a creepy, racist experiment. At the same time,

The people who worked at the repository had helped some of the moms anonymously chat with the donors. But when it closed, all of the records just disappeared. And this was sad news for like the genius kids who had been born out of this project because now they had zero chance of ever connecting with their bio dads or any half siblings.

Well, you know, there's ancestry and stuff like that, but you know, still. Apparently California state law doesn't require sperm banks to keep records or release any info to the mothers, so now it's completely up to them and any journalists or people like us to find out what happened. David Plotz, who is a writer and co-founded Atlas Obscura, decided he wanted to track down the

genius children that came from the repository. And he actually like managed to find almost 30 of them. Ooh, I'm like, okay, are they running the world? What are they doing now? You know? Well, according to David, quote, to answer the obvious question, no, they are not all geniuses. Wow.

Sure, there's this boy, his name was Sam. Sounds fake, but I guess. At the time he was 14 doing college math and was said to be a great athlete. There was a girl, her name was Joy. She got straight A's. She was the lead in the Nutcracker and played a bunch of like musical instruments. Cool.

But according to David, the rest of the kids were pretty average. He said, "Most are very good students, and some are quite mediocre." David completely disagrees with Robert Graham's theory that better genes equals better babies. Even after meeting all these kids, he went to the BBC and said, "It matters more what one chooses to do with one's intelligence." So simply just being smart isn't enough. Essentially,

Make good choices. It's easier than tracking down genius sperm. Of course, some kids have more money and access to things. So, you know, they're going to have a better chance at excelling. I know what it's like to start a business. I mean, it's all exciting at first because you have this great idea, but then reality sets in and you realize

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Jeffrey Epstein. Oh god, I know. In case you're new to this planet, Jeffrey Epstein was basically this incredibly wealthy financer who was full of shit, who was charged with sex trafficking minors and like so much more. Oh my gosh. He even had a private island and on this private island he had a shrine on it. Honestly, it's a box with like really nice tiling

It's kind of pretty. I think maybe he did yoga in it, but many suggest it's probably some kind of weird sacrificial boxed shrine place. You know, we don't know, but it's creepy looking. He also had an airplane, a little private airplane that he would fly people on and it was nicknamed the Lolita Express. It's like, bro, what the fuck are you doing? You know, no one called him out on it and no one found out until way after he died. Blah, blah, blah. We can go on about him forever.

But in his spare time, when he wasn't getting massaged by a teenager or stealing their passports, Jeffrey Epstein actually hosted fancy dinner parties for the world's top scientists, including many Nobel Prize winners. And it turns out Jeffrey had ulterior motives.

Oh really Bailey? Yeah. Because starting in the early 2000s, he started talking about using his own sperm to start impregnating multiple women at once. Ugh. Do you remember seeing that video where someone was describing his penis as like a little egg shaped penis, like it was little and stuff? I just find that funny for some reason. Because obviously he couldn't impregnate them naturally, because it wouldn't like, the dick wouldn't go in that deep. So he'd have to do it artificially.

but he was obsessed with getting his sperm in people. Just, ew, his little egg dick. I'm not shaming egg dicks out there, just his. Anywho, so he wanted to impregnate women. He wanted to get them all pregnant and then he would keep them living at his ranch in New Mexico. And his ranch was called Zorro Ranch.

Maybe he liked the movie or the show or something. I don't know. It's just creepy. And he wasn't even trying to like keep this a secret. He would openly talk about like this plan at his science, his sciency dinner parties. Ugh. Ugh. Like he's so special. He wasn't though. He was just a liar. Like that's what's, okay, whatever. These Nobel scientists were probably like,

I'm sure some were like thrilled about it but who knows. I don't know what they said. According to the New York Times, Epstein threw over-the-top dinner parties at his mansion and over dinner he would just tell people that his goal was to have 20 women pregnant at the same time at his 33,000 square foot ranch. Again weird set up cameras. We got 20 kids and counting

TLC, they'd buy that, I'm sure. Apparently Epstein was trying to like populate the world with his children. And he credits Robert Graham for giving him the idea. He's so gross. He's such a slime ball. So Epstein was like doing the same thing at these dinner parties that Paul Smith was doing at Calvary.

at college campuses. He was looking for donors or in Epstein's case, high achieving women who he could get pregnant. Jaron Lanier, who is considered the founder of virtual reality,

went on the record saying he had the impression that Epstein was using his little dinner parties to quote, screen candidates to bear Mr. Epstein's children. A lot of the guests were, according to him, the VR guy, attractive women with impressive academic credentials. Cool, you know? Thankfully, this dream never came true because Epstein killed himself. Or did he? At least he's gone. He was a piece of shit.

You know what I'm saying? Even though Graham and Epstein are long gone, the designer baby story doesn't end here. In fact, it's about to start ramping back up in a big way. If you thought today's episode was wild, you have to check out one of my new favorite apps, Dipsy.

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This is when something called crisper enters the chat. I know, it makes me hungry. Crisper, it reminds me of like a thin crust pizza. When you leave it in the oven a little bit too long, the edges get nice and burnt. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like crisper.

Has nothing to do with that though, but that's what I think of because I just like, I'm hungry, you know? Anywho, what is CRISPR, Bailey? You might be thinking to yourself. CRISPR Therapeutics is a gene editing company that came up with this insane technology to edit DNA.

What? Yes. CRISPR has a very long science-y official name, but what you need to know is that it allows scientists to look at someone's DNA, find trouble spots, and just kind of snip that bad genetic material out. Like toss it in the trash. For example, it could allow doctors to remove the genes that may lead to things like breast cancer.

Whatever else, you know? Great. I'm sure we could all agree, like, that's a good thing, right? To get rid of, like, yeah, who wouldn't want that? You don't want, like, cancers or... You get it. Moving on. On top of that, CRISPR can add new genetic info to DNA. So this tech is advancing so fast that we're not far away from literally designing your own baby. Like, build a bear, meet build a baby. I

Eye color, height, hair color, IQ. Whatever you want is all up for grabs. Parents can decide all sorts of things about the kid before they're even born. I know, I'd be like, I want my baby to be like six, eight, handsome.

with green eyes, olive skin, straight teeth, smart. I wanna make sure my baby has a big dick. Not a weird way, but you know, I want him to be successful in life and be able to dick someone down if needed, right? I'm thinking about these things for my baby. Now, of course, doing all this, it costs money. And right now it costs a ton. Procedures using CRISPR are about one to like $3 million per treatment.

So I think we can all take a good guess who has access to this type of thing. It's not your neighbor or, you know. The big fear is that using CRISPR may lead to new eugenics movements that could eliminate entire populations of people or even create two classes of people separated by a major divide. People who have been enhanced by CRISPR and the rest of us. You know what I'm saying? Like super babies, super humans.

Us normals. Not great. We don't know. Either way, many people believe we are literally at the point where we might be sliding down that slippery slope of playing God, you know? And if that's the case, what other choice do we have than to embrace all this? And who knows what that is going to do for equality? Yeah, speaking of that.

It seems that the designer baby movement is promising all sorts of amazing things for the entire human race. That's just not possible. I mean, look how expensive it is. I'm not even just talking about artificial insemination or the gene editing. I'm talking about just having a kid. That in itself is really expensive. I'm sure we can all agree. It's too expensive most of the time for me to even consider buying like an outfit for my Build-A-Bear.

That's really expensive. The Build-A-Bear outfits? You end up leaving with a naked bear because you couldn't afford anything. I mean, yeah, the Build-A-Bear is perfect for me, but he has no pants, no hat, no purse. Just like the other day when I locked myself out of the house. It was rough. I had no pants on. I got locked out of my house and I had to just wait for like 45 minutes with no pants on, full bush, out.

I'm not kidding. I just sat there like, "What am I gonna do, shit?" This is why I shouldn't have kids. I got it eventually.

What I'm getting at is that it seems like only the wealthy and powerful have the time, access, and money to have designer babies. Which is not going to end up well for us. But even if all of us had the same access to CRISPR, and let's just say, in the perfect world, we could get the most genetically perfect baby, I'm sure a lot of us would do it, right? Right? You wouldn't want your baby to be stupid, ugly,

you'd want them to be healthy. I'm sure we'd all want that. But like, we don't really know what all of this tech is going to lead to for us or them. What if they malfunction or something? What if something else develops in their DNA? Something we don't know. I don't know. Dr. Nada Kubikova, a reproductive biologist, believes that even though DNA can be edited, the effects of the CRISPR technology

could be damaging. Basically editing the DNA in order to fix it might actually end up giving us other health issues later. Because once we break the DNA we don't really know like what the long-term effects are. So I guess those are going to be the practice babies. Stay tuned. We'll see. So yeah it's not as simple as it seems. It's not. It's not right? Editing DNA seems risky but the rich

They will be the ones taking all the risks by being the guinea pigs in these wild experiments. Hopefully it's their decline, I don't know. I don't want to wish that onto anybody, but you know, that would be nice. Maybe they'll all become like dysfunctional mutants. Little trolls. Anyway, fingers crossed. And then we will know like to steer clear of this technology. Or maybe they'll succeed and take over the world and we'll just be like, "Ah, fuck, we saw this coming."

Darn. The positive side to the designer baby debate is that we can edit out family diseases or other genetic mutations that could cause problems later in life. Which is great, right? Like I'm sure we'd all want that. So, you know, I don't know like where the line is. Like at what point does the idea of a designer baby go from good to bad?

In short term it seems like a good thing but again long term we don't know. I'm not saying to stop the science because always we as people should grow and innovate and create but I do think we humans just need to chill the fuck out sometimes and I'm not really sure. Don't listen to me. That's my advice. CRISPR supporters believe that this technology will take out our species to the next level

but in reality they have uh... they have no idea. There is zero way to predict the consequences that will probably come from casually editing our DNA. It's impossible to know if the ends justify the means because we don't even know what the ends look like. But also to be fair CRISPR is doing a lot of good things too. Like they're actually helping edit DNA for like older people, people who are not babies, to help them get over like um...

different diseases and stuff like that so I don't want to like completely destroy CRISPR not that I am but you know what I'm saying like they're doing some good it's the baby part in creating perfect is this good I don't know let me know down below your thoughts but you know

While I was down the rabbit hole of people who can even afford a designer baby, I came across a super wealthy family who I knew very little about. But it's like a name that we all know. And even though their net worth is through the damn roof, they have a family curse that sounds like it's straight out of a horror movie. I'm talking kidnappings, freak accidents, and even murder. Join me next week as I dive into the dark history of the Guiness family.

Well, friends, thank you for hanging out with me today. You can join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs. And while you're there, you can also catch my murder, mystery, and makeup. Don't forget to subscribe because I'm here for you weekly with new content. I'd love to hear your guys' reactions to today's story. So make sure to leave a comment below so I can see what you're saying. And your comment might even be featured in a future episode. Now let's read a couple of comments you guys have posted.

You left me on some videos. Shall we? Jamie2mVelez7692, sorry if I butchered that, has a little request for me. Can you please do an episode with Cardi B? She's a huge history buff. That episode and the commentary would be top tier. Jamie, I like the way you think. That sounds so fun. Paul has a huge crush on her.

That sounds like fun. Thanks for that idea. Maybe one day we will be up there and be able to get big celebrities on this show instead of these two. These bozos over here. That's how I feel with them. We're a circus.

Two Lit Keys, oh fun name, left me a comment saying, "As a man who works long shifts in a warehouse, I appreciate your videos. They get me through the day. Even the MMM I listen to, even though I don't resonate with the makeup, your storytelling is great. Even if I heard the story before, I stick around for your perspective. Keep em common."

That's really sweet of you. I appreciate you for hanging out with me and listening and for leaving a comment as well. That's really nice. Thanks. I hope work is going well. What are you doing? What are you doing right now?

Thank you. Crystal Chapman, 2996 had a question for me. Ooh, on the topic of vibrators, I've always heard this rumor that in ancient Egypt, Cleopatra kept a box of bees or hornets next to her bed. Do you know if this is true or not? Now it's funny you mentioned that because I was texting Cleopatra last week. Just kidding. I have no idea.

But it's worth looking into. I think I did Google and we went down like a little bit of a rabbit hole with this one because I heard that this was actually true. I mean, I wasn't there so I don't know but I guess the humming of the bees in like a jar creates a vibration. You know what I'm saying? If you try it at home, let me know. Interesting, right? I think it might be true. Who knows? Good for her.

Anywho, I love you guys for watching and also for engaging. I appreciate you guys so much. So keep commenting because maybe your comment will be featured and I will butcher your name. And hey, if you don't know, Dark History is an Audioboom original. A special thank you to our expert, Professor Steve Fuller. And I'm your host, Bailey Sarian. I hope you have a good rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be talking to you next week.