← MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
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- [00:00]
John Allen
This special episode is brought to you by our friends over at Audible. If you're watching or listening to this right now, I know you are someone who craves stories that challenge what you think is possible. Stories that make you think, that keep you on the edge of your seat. And those are the exact types of stories I'm going to be talking about in today's episode. But before we get into this special episode, if you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place, because that's all we do. And we upload once a week. So. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the like Buttons house and replace all of their vanilla ice cream with unsalted butter. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's episode. Welcome, everyone, to the live recording of Wondery's Mr. Ballin podcast, presented by Audible. Please welcome your host, John Allen and special guest, Evan Allen. Thank you all for being here tonight. I had a chance to meet many of you before the show. Amy, a repeat offender, she was at our show in North Carolina. There was other folks that were at the New York City show. It's wonderful to see you guys come out here tonight. This is a really cool thing. We've never done a show like this. We've just basically done the live tour and we're trying to experiment with some new concepts. This is you guys getting to see it first. Also, this is being recorded. It's going to be dumped across social media. So that's cool. You guys get to be a part of that. But anyways, you guys, you all basically know me for the most part. I'm John. Mr. Ballin. Yep. And I tell stories for a living. I sort of fell backwards into this. And what people don't know is that, you know, early on when I first started, it really was just me. I was just telling stories. But then fortunately, my. My very talented sister Evan Allen here, who happens to be a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, she came along and she actually jumped in and is now leading the creative side of Ballin Studios. So it's funny working with my sister because we grew up best frenemies and now we're working together here at Ballen Studios. It's incredible. And she is. Although it's sort of seemingly nepotistic that my sister's working with me, the truth is Evan is vastly superior at researching and writing and frankly, storytelling in its purest form. Like, written story. Well, its purest form, since this is an Audible event, it's spoken word, but Evan's incredible. But tonight we're here, and thanks to Audible for sponsoring this event. Let's hear for Audible. Yep.
- [03:21]
Evan Allen
Good.
- [03:23]
John Allen
So tonight we're going to be doing a whole bunch of stuff. We're going to be getting into, like, literally how we go about choosing stories, how we tell stories. We're going to rattle off some stories. It's going to be a whole storytelling thing, but we're going to get pretty tactical at certain points. And so that's sort of how we came to collaborate with Audible on this, because Audible and Ballin Studios share the same passion, bringing great stories to life via the spoken word. That's spot on. I've been memorizing that line for, like, hours.
- [03:53]
Evan Allen
He says that every day.
- [03:55]
John Allen
So, yeah. So let's start by. We actually have a specific story we wanted to look at first. So Audible has this really cool book club. Right. And, Evan, why don't you take it away? So there is a story in the book club. It's a true crime title that. That we were tasked with looking into and sort of dissecting and talking about up here. And why don't you tell us about what we chose and what you think of that story?
- [04:24]
Evan Allen
Okay, so. Hi, everybody. Sorry, I'm really not doing well with the microphone. They spent so long.
- [04:29]
John Allen
I'm also hitting the microphone.
- [04:31]
Evan Allen
They got it just right, and I immediately just, like, knocked it with my arm. So, yeah, so we read. Well, listened to the audiobook, the Debutante.
- [04:41]
John Allen
The Debutante.
- [04:42]
Evan Allen
Debutante.
- [04:44]
John Allen
Arguing about how to say it. How do you say debutante? Seriously? I actually don't know how to say it.
- [04:48]
Evan Allen
I do know how to say it.
- [04:49]
John Allen
I know how to read it.
- [04:50]
Evan Allen
It's debutante.
- [04:52]
John Allen
That's why she's here.
- [04:55]
Evan Allen
So the book, the Debutante, the Audiobook, it is an investigative sort of podcast audiobook by Jon Ronson, who, if you don't know him, he's a really great investigative reporter who writes about sort of fringe, like, people on the fringes. And sometimes this is extremists. Sometimes it's, you know, people who do or believe really horrible things. But sometimes it's also sort of like outcasts. Like, a book that I read by him was so youo've Been Publicly Shamed, which was really interesting. It was about people who got canceled when canceling first became a thing. And so I. We chose the book in part because I just like John Ronson, but the.
- [05:35]
John Allen
Big John Ronson fan obsessed.
- [05:39]
Evan Allen
But this audiobook is about the Oklahoma City bombings, which happened in 1995. It was the biggest or the deadliest act of homegrown terrorism in American history, where Timothy McVeigh and two buddies from the military blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, and it killed 168 people, including 19 children. And so this happened in 1995. I was a little bit surprised to see that there was an audiobook about it because I had sort of. I remember it because I was nine when it happened, and there were child victims. And so I just remember being like, there were pictures all over the news, and it sort of sticks out in my memory. But it was 30 years ago now, so I didn't really know why there was an audio book about it. But Jon Ronson is investigating this theory that has sort of kicked around among people who know anything about the Oklahoma City bombing, that Timothy McVeigh did not work alone. Now, he had two accomplices who also went to prison. But the idea is that, like, was it possible for the federal government to have known that he was going to blow up this building? And there are people who believe, yes. And that is because of the debutante. And so the debutante.
- [06:57]
John Allen
The debutante.
- [06:58]
Evan Allen
The debutante. And so the debutante, this young woman named Carol Howe, who was literally a debutante, like, with the dresses and you come down the stairs. But then she did not like being a debutante, so instead she became a Nazi. Feels like a sharp left. These are natural progressions, guys, trying to do this efficiently. And then she became an informant for the federal government, and she was informing on this sort of white nationalist movement, which people think maybe Timothy McVeigh was sort of, like, circling around. So the whole audiobook is John Ronson's pursuit of this question. Like, if the feds had listened to Carol Howe, could they have prevented the Oklahoma City bombing? And so it's actually super engaging. But when we think about story at the studio, we think about. You always need a character on a quest. And in this case, the quest is John Ronson's quest to find the answer. And it's a really murky world that he is reporting in. He's interviewing white nationalists. He's interviewing people who lived in this very strange militia town. He's interviewing very unreliable narrators. You kind of go with him on this journey to talk to all these people like he's hunting a conspiracy theory by talking to all these people who believe in conspiracy theories. And he's trying not to fall down like a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. So, anyways, it was great. It's a great book. It's a really interesting book. But part of the reason I think that we're talking about it and talking about, like, that looks really natural.
- [08:50]
John Allen
This chair's throwing me off, dude.
- [08:55]
Evan Allen
There's actually no way to sit comfortably in these chairs. But yours is wor.
- [09:00]
John Allen
I'm trying to be natural.
- [09:01]
Evan Allen
You're not.
- [09:02]
John Allen
And I spilled water as well.
- [09:06]
Evan Allen
But anyway, so we were sort of looking at it. We're thinking about it in terms of. I mean, this whole evening is just thinking about how do we tell stories, what is a good story, what makes a good story? And so for me, the Debutante, it has a great quest.
- [09:26]
John Allen
Wouldn't you also say that, like, one of the things that you said to me when you finished it was this notion of surprise being a big part of that story and why it stood out to you?
- [09:35]
Evan Allen
Yeah, well, you know, I was. The Oklahoma City bombings feels to me like a closed chapter of history when I think about it. I mean, I don't think about it very often, but it happened a long time in the past. I don't really have a lot of questions about it or I didn't. And so what I liked the most about this book was that it's a super surprising look at something I thought I knew. And I think part of the reason it works well told in this format, like spoken, you get to hear from the people who lived it, is because the stories they have to tell are so wild that if you had a single narrator trying to write it out, you might not believe them. I felt like I got through the book. I got, like, halfway, and I was like, oh, I have really strong feelings about what I think now. And then I got another quarter of the way, and I was like, no, I have the opposite side of strong feelings. So, yeah, I always like stories like that that give you a new perspective on something that you thought you knew.
- [10:37]
John Allen
Right. Actually. So maybe on that note. So the Debutante. The Debutante. Definitely check that title out. It's a fantastic audiobook on audible. The idea of there being a reversal or a change of perspect at the end of a story is so central to just the way we produce stories at Ballin Studios. When I look back at sort of how this all came to be, you know, it started on TikTok. I tried my hand at some dancing and some other things of that ilk, and it didn't land, which was shocking. But sort of as a last ditch effort. And what I mean by last ditch, I just decided social media wasn't for me. I told a story and it was about these hikers that missing in the 1950s. I've told this story a million times. I'll shorten it for the sake of this. It's the Dyatlov Pass mystery. And I think it's fascinating, effectively. Nine hikers in the 50s who are super skilled, they go out into the Ural Mountains, which is this totally rugged terrain, and they're trying to pass their Level 3 hiking test, which seems pretty mild, but it's actually a really big deal. In the 1950s in Russia, this was the equivalent of being a master mountaineer. And these nine hikers were truly like the best mountaineers in Russia at the time. And they set out. I like how I said I was going to truncate the story immediately. Not doing that.
- [12:02]
Evan Allen
I want to know more about the level three. Is there a level four?
- [12:07]
John Allen
You know, maybe we should get into that. But they set off on this quest to do this hiking test and really all it was is they needed to go through the Ural Mountains. They had chartered a course that would take several weeks. And you know, it's like, okay, do the course that you've set and if you successfully navigate this course in the times you've given, that demonstrates your ability to be a level three hiker. And so, and off they go, and they take cameras with them and they take photos and videos. And imagine these nine hikers, they're like all in their 20s, with the exception of a few of them. They're all young, inspired, they're hungry, and they disappear. Like within a couple of days, they've lost contact with the hikers. And lots of people were aware of the fact this test had begun. There was actually an entire protocol for what happens if the hikers don't reach their checkpoints. And basically it's the military gets called and they go across their path to see if they can find them. And so that's what happens. The military figures out after like a week that they're missing. And they basically go in reverse because they're at the back end of the course, they're going in reverse and they find their way up to this mountain and immediately they see on this windswept, snow covered mountain, about halfway up, there's a couple of small canvas tents and there's no people. They just see them on the side of the mountain and immediately it's this huge red flag because if you're a skilled mountaineer. There's one place you don't put your tent, and it's on the leeward side of the mountain where you're going to get destroyed by wind. You either go to the top and go to the other side, or you make it up halfway. And it's, oh, it's getting too late. It's getting too. The storms aren't. You know, it's too bad up here. You go back down, you never stop halfway. And so they see them halfway up the mountain. It doesn't make any sense. They make their way up to the tents, and they find that they're all missing. The nine hikers are gone, but the tents have been cut open from the inside. They've been cut open with what appears to be a knife, almost like with precision. And then inside the tent, a lot of their clothing was left behind. It was folded up neatly in the corner. Now, this is like the dead of winter. This is, like, not a time to be ditching your winter clothes. And they found there were also footprints in the snow going down the mountain from the campsite. And they noticed that lots of the footprints. And they found all nine hikers were counting for in these footprints. But many of the prints were bare feet or one shoe and barefoot on the other. And so the military follows the prince down to the base of the mountain, and there's this crops of trees that's maybe like half a mile away from where the tents were. And they find three of the hikers, and they're all basically nude or close to nude. They're deceased. There's one of the hikers who's basically, like, dangling over the branches of a tree up high, and there's two others that are down on the ground. And there's these deep gouge marks in the tree, almost like a. An animal had been, like, clawing at this tree. But this is the middle of nowhere. There really are no animals out here, so they're just deceased. The footprints continue from where they are another mile or so to the snowdrift that sort of created a pseudo cave, like a snow cave. And inside of that cave, they find the remaining hikers, who are also all deceased. And the women were wearing men's clothes and vice versa? Not entirely, but they had sort of exchanged bits of. Of clothing. There were trace levels of radiation on several of them. One of the women, she had her nose, her lips, and her ears. It looked like they had been surgically removed. And this is not so far into them being missing that you would Expect animal predation at this point. This is pretty early on and them being missing, so it's surprising that that would happen. One of the gentlemen, his chest had, they described this catastrophic chest injury where basically his chest was caved in. But there was no impact on the outside. Like there's no bruising, nothing on his chest. Just his CH had the effects of like a train hitting him. And they're all pushed inside of this cave and they're all deceased. And so naturally the families are, you know, they're beside themselves when they find out this has happened. How could this have happened to all what happened to them? And so the government launches this investigation into what happened and they begin to dig into it and it actually made the news. It was a pretty big deal at the time. People were closely following the story and abruptly the Russian government stopped the investigation and came out and said an unknown unnatural force was responsible for their deaths. Case closed. And there are pictures, there is testimony, there's all these weird things about this story and it's been one of those enduring mysteries that I thought was really interesting and I managed to tell that in a 60 second clip that was very rough on TikTok and it went viral, went super viral on TikTok. And I didn't really know what to do with it, so I just kept sort of posting more stories that were like that because I, at the time in my life, I'm fascinated by stories like that. And there's quite a few, believe it or not, that are like out there actually, you know that you, you subscribe.
- [16:54]
Evan Allen
To the channel, believe it or not.
- [16:55]
John Allen
That's sort of the whole point. You won't believe this, but the reason I just did that is one, I can't help myself. But two, there's something so simple about telling a good story like that story. Everybody's waiting to, I, I'm taking some, some, some liberties here. Everyone's basically paying attention because they want to hear what happened. There's some sort of payoff at the end of the story if, if you go, basically, this is not a dig on any other channel on YouTube because there's loads of successful channels out there that do amazing content. But the next time you hear a story that's being presented to you, it can be a YouTube channel, a TV show, movie, doesn't matter. Oftentimes the first thing you hear is what happened. I'm going to tell you a story about the nine hikers who all died in mysterious ways. And they were found with trace levels of radiation and their faces were cut off, and it was totally crazy. And back on 1954, they started their journey, and it's like, that's fine. I mean, that's a type of storytelling that's perfectly acceptable. And Evan, coming from the Boston Globe, that's a traditional reporting. She was a big time investigative journalist, won multiple Pulitzer Prizes. No big deal. But the news, it's like, here's what happened, and then here's the narrative. If you want to draw people into a story, it's about having payoff at the end and being ruthless about not giving it up at all before you get to the end. This is a good time to turn it over to you, Evan. So Evan writes, researches. She's got an incredible team. Evan is the stories you're hearing that I'm telling on the Internet. Evan has found those and put them together. Evan is the brilliant mind behind the scenes. The amount of work that goes into ensuring we do not give up information too early is staggering. And so with that, Evan, I want to talk about your role and how you go about selecting stories. Maybe touch on our childhood and what led us to this moment.
- [18:52]
Evan Allen
That was good.
- [18:53]
John Allen
Put that all in there.
- [18:54]
Evan Allen
You had, like, a framework. And as you can see, Joni is remembering late.
- [19:01]
John Allen
I forgot.
- [19:02]
Evan Allen
Yeah, yeah, that's okay. So we're going to naturally now segue into our chat childhood.
- [19:07]
John Allen
Yeah, right.
- [19:08]
Evan Allen
And what made us storytellers?
- [19:10]
John Allen
And we're back to the thing, and we're making sure there's payoff at the end.
- [19:14]
Evan Allen
This is part of it. We're doing, like, a whole meta thing. So what am I talking about?
- [19:20]
John Allen
Well, so, okay, what I should have said before I went sideways is, you know, Evan and I grew up in the same house. We are. We are related. And we literally were, like, raised to be storytellers. It's like, unintentionally. And you have a great anecdote about our mom, who also works for the studio as well. She's a pioneer for writing the podcast. She was like a walking audiobook. And that's not even a plug for Audible. It's like, facts, like, what was it? Our library card? What was it?
- [19:48]
Evan Allen
So when we were growing up, my mom was very like, she's kind of a hippie. No tv. We got to watch a half an hour or an hour of Masterpiece Theater on Saturdays. And so that was, like, big. But the rest of the week, we were kind of on our own. But she read to us all the time, and she also took us to the library all the time. We actually had for A while the highest circulating library card in the city of Quincy, which makes you popular at school, but she read to us all the time, like, for, like, an hour, an hour and a half at night. So it was kind of like growing up with a human audiobook. And so it's funny, like, we sort of went in very different directions.
- [20:34]
John Allen
Like, you didn't become a Navy seal.
- [20:35]
Evan Allen
I did not. I didn't become a Navy seal. But it's funny. I mean, we came from the same place. We learned how to speak English from the same people, like, where our family is, like, full of people who talk and tell stories. Like, I remember my dad read the Call of the Wild to us when we were, like, 5 and 7. And I think he thought that because it's about animals, it's about dogs, that it was for kids. But, in fact, I'm not gonna spoil anything, but many of the dogs die, and my mom got really upset with him because we were both hysterical at the death of one of the dogs.
- [21:10]
John Allen
Still hurts today, honestly.
- [21:13]
Evan Allen
Deep trauma, but, yeah. So we grew up, like, reading was just a huge, central part of our childhood, really, because we were deprived of television. But then you became a Navy seal. I went into reporting, and it didn't seem. I would not have predicted that we would work together, but we kind of. But I mean, even in the. Even in the military, though. What was your nickname? Shakespeare. Because you were always telling people stories.
- [21:41]
John Allen
Yeah. Yep. So in the Navy, so when you. When you become a Navy seal, there's a lot of hazing that happens. And one of the ways they hate you is they, like, make you give these ridiculous speeches that you don't know they're ridiculous, but everybody else does. Like, you're a new guy. You've checked into the team, and, like, they're like, all right, dude, you got to give this brief to, like, all these commanders over here. And you're like, really? This seems irrelevant to brief them about, like, the ballistics of, like, this plastic round. They're like, no, get in there and do this. And so you go into this room that's not just the commanders of the team. It's, like, all the senior personnel and you, the brand new guy. And so you would have to go up there and give a presentation that oftentimes you don't have any information for. They're like, yeah, just go up there and do it. And I would just default to telling stories about things that didn't really have much to do with what I was supposed to be presenting, but it got me through the presentations. And they liked it a lot. They liked that I would tell these stories. And so it became like, john Yeo, tell a story. And so I became Shakespeare in the Navy.
- [22:43]
Evan Allen
But I mean, at a certain point, what you. You got me to come work with you. I was just helping because you're my brother. And it was a pretty small team at first, but as I did more and more of it, I realized that, you know, even though I think I come from legacy media, I worked at the Boston Globe, I was an investigative reporter. We can be slightly snobby about YouTube, but I realized that it's like this very sort of elemental form of storytelling. It's like. It's like sitting around a campfire. I think there's something. I mean, I have a six year old. She's here.
- [23:22]
John Allen
Shout out, Dylan.
- [23:23]
Evan Allen
But she's always saying to me, like, tell me a story, tell me a story. It's like this very, like, it's like instinctive in us to want to hear stories, to want to tell stories. And I feel like the type of storytelling that we do, and good storytelling, any kind of good storytelling, it has like some fundamental elements to it. And, you know, that's character, that's quest. That's also I love in our stories, there's always like a surprise at the end. There's sort of like a twist. We refer to it in the studio as the twist and the reveal. Like, the twist is, here's what's really been going on this whole time. It suddenly becomes apparent. And the reveal is like the truth of the situation. And it works really well, people. That's what makes our stories, if you think about them, they're all constructed, heading towards the twist and the reveal. But that's not something that we created. I mean, if you read. And this is gonna sound ridiculous, but just bear with me. Cause when I get to the end of it, it's gonna come together. If you read Aristotle's Poetics, which is like his treatise on stories, that's fantasy media. So Stabby, he talks about the climactic moment of reversal and recognition. And that's just the twist in the reveal. And I say that not because I feel like I'm like Aristotle, I'm not. But because these are sort of like fundamentals, like the fundamentals of good storytelling.
- [24:45]
John Allen
Oh, I got one. To show Evan's prowess, I'm gonna set you and tee you up for something. You're gonna tell a story. They're gonna love it. So initially, the reason that Evan really succeeded at coming In. And writing for me was not just that she was an incredible writer. Cause she was. But she also knew me. She grew up with me and knew how to write in my voice. And so she was, like, amazing at being able to write for me. But the thing is, one of the things that I demanded was you have to find stories that have a twist at the end. That's what you gotta do. You gotta find stories with twists. But the reality is just about every story can have a twist if you're a good enough writer. Okay. So what I was doing is I was literally looking for stories like, Googling what story has a twist. And I was doing those, and Evan took a step, and she's like, you have to think about things like the unreliable narrator or, like, sleight of hand when you're writing. And I'm like, I don't really know what you mean, but there's a great example that you have that it's entirely Evan's construction. And you might as well just riff it off right now. It's the one, the African one. Oh, this is like. As you're listening to her go through the story, just, like, think about what this could be. And some of you may have already heard this story. It's okay. Keep it to yourselves. Okay? But think about, like, the device that's being used. When you get to the end of the story, you'll realize that a very intentional thing has happened that's totally by design. And you'll see at the end as well that other people screw the story up all the time when they try to tell it. So now just nail it, dude. Yeah, go ahead.
- [26:14]
Evan Allen
So a man in Cameroon wakes up in the morning just feeling like crap. And he doesn't know why he feels like crap. He remembers the night before was a normal night. It was definitely raining. He heard thunder. He had kind of a headache, so he went to bed. Now he wakes up, and he just. There's something off, but he can't identify what it is. So he decides he needs to go find someone. He needs to find help, but he doesn't really even know why. So he gets out of bed. He goes out of his house. His house is on sort of like the edge of a cliff. It's, like, high up, and there's a lake below it. And then on the other side of the cliff, lower down is the town. So he starts going to the town to find help. And he gets about halfway down, and he realizes that it's very quiet. It's, like, weirdly quiet. Because like, this is a place where you can hear the baboons barking. You can hear the bugs, you can hear the birds. This is a loud place, full of nature, and it is silent. There are no baboons, there are no birds, there are no bugs. There's nothing. Doesn't know what to make of this. Freaks him out, but he just keeps going. And so he gets to the. The low, like the edge of the water, and he's heading towards the town, and he sees this woman. And it's a woman that he knows. She lives right at the edge of this lake, and she and her family tend to goats. And so he sees her and he wants to ask her for help, but he realizes that she's screaming. And she's screaming, and she's surrounded by what looked to him just like her family members who are sleeping. But as he gets closer, he realizes that her family members are too still to be sleeping. And he realizes that this woman is screaming because her family members are dead. So he doesn't ask her for help, but he continues on to the village. And as he's going into the village, he's seeing cattle and goats and livestock just, like, dead around. And when he gets to the village, he starts going door to door looking for help. And every door he opens, the people are. Everyone's dead. They just dropped. They just dropped where they stood. And so he finally manages to make it out of the village and go for help. And actually, no one believes him at first. Eventually someone does believe him, and they come and they find that, like, almost 2,000 people. I'm not sure that we actually even know exactly the number significant. A huge number of people just died. They just died, like, where they were standing. And, you know, causes. All of the government comes and scientists come, and people try to figure it out. And it turns out that the night before, what he thought was thunder was actually an explosion or some kind of rock slide, but it was some kind of large disruption that caused the lake, which was a crater lake. And so it's sitting on, like, an active volcano or near an active volcano. I'm not a scientist. To emit this carbon dioxide. Like a huge bubble of carbon dioxide burst up out of the lake immediately after the crash that he thought was thunder. And remember, he lives on the edge of a cliff. Carbon dioxide is a little heavier. So the carbon dioxide went up. It made him sick, it gave him a headache. But it didn't kill him because it sank. It sank onto the town, and it killed almost everyone in the town. So that is the way that we tell the story at the studio, that is we do it through point of view. We do it through omission. We're locked in this man's point of view. We can only know what he knows. So all he knows when he wakes up is he doesn't feel well. There was thunder last night. He starts getting down the side of the cliff and everything is quiet. Well, that's because the carbon dioxide killed all the birds and the bugs. But he doesn't know that. And so it is only. We like to tell stories in a way that, like, we can only know what the characters know. That's what makes real life so scary. We all have to live in this liminal space where there's stuff that's going to happen to us and we don't know what it is yet. That's actually somewhat terrifying. All of our stories exist within that space. And the moment of reversal and recognition, or the twist and the reveal, whatever you want to call it, is the moment when the true nature of the world becomes apparent to us. And it is both shocking but inevitable when you look back on the clues that we lay through the story to get you there.
- [30:41]
John Allen
Picture this. You're alone in your car at the end of the night on your commute back home, and you're stuck in traffic, but you're completely absorbed in the story you're listening to on Audible. And actually, even though you're in traffic, you're kind of hoping that the traffic continues just so you can listen to one more chapter. That's what Audible does to you. Now, if you're anything like me, the type of story you might be totally engrossed in on, that ride home would be one that sort of makes you question reality. I mean, that's sort of the whole point of my YouTube channel is to sort of see what's out there and question it. Like, the whole world is a big mystery to me. Well, Audible is absolutely packed with stories like that that make you question reality. And I love them. You can find anything and everything in this, their collection, from supernatural encounters to, you know, people being stuck out in the wild, being pushed to their absolute limits, and everything in between. I mean, it's all there. Take, for example, the story called the Debutante. And it's the story about the Oklahoma City bombing in the 1990s. It was this huge, horrible thing, but a lot of people have a pretty fixed idea of what happened, what led to the bombing, how it happened, the outcomes. It's sort of like a closed chapter in history. But the debut, it takes you into this world where you realize there's so much more to that bombing to include. Maybe it could have been prevented. I mean, there's a lot of twists and turns, but it's a very surprising story. Just like all the other fascinating tales with crazy twist endings that are littered all across Audible's amazing collection. And the narrators of the audiobooks on Audible are incredible. They don't just read lines, they bring the stories to life. Plus, on Audible, there is a ton of exclusive content like Audible Originals and Audible Sleep Collection. So if you're ready to experience stories that will transform your daily commute into a trip into the unknown, then you gotta try Audible. Trust me, once you start, there's no coming back. Start listening today when you sign up for a free 30 day trial at audible.commrbalin again, that is audible.commrbalin and so going back to sort of how I joked about the Dyatlov Path story, that a lot of people, the way they would tell it is to lead with the fact that these hikers died in suspicious ways. And then you get into the story I would challenge you to look up. It's called Lake Nyos N Y O S. If you look up the Lake NYOS disaster, virtually every time it's told, it's about this idea like, can you believe it? The lake blew up and it caused carbon monoxide to kill all these people. But what we do, what Evan did masterfully with that story, is think about, like, who's experiencing this in real time and put yourself in that perspective. And so going back to this idea that like anything can have a twist take, like in a typical police investigation, like a homicide investigation, there's a pretty good chance that there are people who are going to get interviewed who are lying, okay? But they do say the things out loud that seem relatively convincing. And if you were to inhabit their POV when they said it, you know, as the writer, they're lying. And you know it's going to be revealed later that they're lying. But you can in all honesty tell the story through their point of view at that point in the story. And it's honest storytelling and it creates a setup to reveal that it turns out Joey was lying. He was the killer. So it's about the unreliable narrator is a really, really easy way to take virtually any story and create a twist. Just use somebody else's perspective. Or actually Evan, so she was an investigative journalist and she covered crime. Like that was her M.O. in Boston. And Evan was Telling me the other day in preparation for this that she would be at crime scenes. And she's written about all these murders, like a shocking number of murders. And honestly, a very dark life, to be honest.
- [34:25]
Evan Allen
Thank you. Very dark life.
- [34:29]
John Allen
But she's in some of the most dangerous parts of Boston where murders have been committed. She's at the crime scene where someone has been shot and killed. So she's as primed as you can be to be like in tune with violence in your area. And she's described hearing gunshots at the crime scene. Distant gunshots, but gunshots nonetheless. And she immediately thinks, oh, those are fireworks. This is someone who's at a homicide where someone was shot and killed, who sees this stuff all the time. But that's what humans do, they rationalize. Because it's your brain. The way you're sort of the way you think is when bad things happen. You actually immediately go into this hyperdrive of telling yourself everything is okay. This is too long of a story to get into. But I can't. I literally can. If you take it two hours, put everybody to sleep. So when I was 16, I had this experience out at this cabin in New Hampshire. It was one of the earliest stories I told on YouTube where effectively, over the course of several nights, I had either the most visceral, terrifying living nightmare, like a sleepwalking scenario. I don't even know where, like this figure was basically walking around the cabin. This is not my origin story. It isn't like this happened and I became the storyteller. It's purely coincidental, but I had this horrifying experience as a 16 year old where I'd be laying in bed in this cabin in New Hampshire, up in the White Mountains, very isolated, it's dark, you know, there's not even really any roads that go up there. And I'd be laying there and I would hear footsteps walking around the cabin. And then at some point, this figure walked into my room. Like two nights out of the three, something walked into the room that is inexplicable to me, still have no answer for it, and sort of like bowed into the bed next to me and vanished. There's a much larger story to this. It's called what I saw in my room still haunts me. You can look it up, but I can say firsthand that as I'm laying in bed as a 16 year old kid hearing footsteps walking around the cabin clear as day, I am awake. I can hear footsteps. And no one's awake right now in the house that I'm aware of there's no one coming to visit. And my first thought was, everything's fine, this is okay. I think that one of my friend's brothers could be coming by. It's 3:30 in the morning in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire. They're probably stopping by to say hello. And what's going to happen here is they're going to come in here and they're going to want to talk to me, say hi, you know, socialize. And so what I'm going to do is that when they come in here, I'm just gonna pretend to be asleep. Cause I don't wanna have a social interaction right now at 3:30 in the morning. That's all I'm thinking about. Not, there's a f ing intruder in your house, that's a problem. No, my brain's like, everything's fine all the way until something entered the room. And even then as I'm staring at this tall, dark figure that has walked into the room that I can't make sense of, I'm still thinking to myself, is that Nick's brother? Right? And then like the next day, you know. Cause there's a horrible night where I'm awake all night, like stressing about it because it literally vanished into the floor next to me. And you know, in real life that doesn't really happen, you know. So I'm thinking, when's it going to stand back up again, whatever this thing is. The next morning I'm talking to Nick's mother in the kitchen and she, she's listening. I'm like telling her like, ah, did, did your son come by at some point last night? Like what happened? And she's like, john, don't worry, I heard that last night too. It was my husband who was walking around here, her deceased husband. That's what she's telling me. And I'm like, oh, this is fine, this is okay. The story progresses to where it just happens for several nights and there's really no explanation. But I had like this point in my life where there isn't an explanation for what happened in that cabin. There isn't. I don't, I'm sure there is, but I don't have access to that information. It is unreal how much my brain was going into overdrive to convince myself everything was okay. It's automatic, it really is. And actually, just to get a little morbid, I had an experience in Afghanistan where when I was deployed I was nearly killed by a grenade. And when the grenade came over the wall. And we're like in the middle of this, like, as intense of a gunfight as you can be in. I watched this grenade come over the wall, and we were under the strobe light. The strobe light cast down on us from the plane overhead, and it's like flashing. And you can only see the light on infrared or on your nods. So it's pitch black to the average person. But to me, it's like a disco strobe, right? And a grenade is hurtling over the wall. And I'm seeing it absolutely. There's gunfire, there's all this stuff happening, but I see a grenade coming over the wall and it's coming in and out of focus because the light's flashing on it. And it was so, like, matter of fact, time did seem to slow down, which I guess when your body goes into you're about to die mode, it's like all your senses fire on a level that you really can't do. You can't artificially do this. It's basically like in true fight or flight scenarios, your brain reacts differently. And so it gives the impression, a real impression of time slowing down. And so this grenade comes over the wall and it's like, I can see it, it disappears. It's just happening. In a fraction of a second, the grenade comes over the wall. And all I thought was like, oh, fuck, the grenade's gonna detonate next to my head and I'm gonna die, but I won't be able to have an open casket funeral. It was not even sadness. It was just facts. Ah, shoot. Well, that's it. I'm about to die. I have my head blown off. It hits my shoulder. This is again in a fraction of a second. And it began to tumble towards the ground. And again, I can see it here. And when it made it to about my torso, it's just falling to the ground. I was like, oh, shoot. Like, maybe my mom will be able to recognize me at my. At my funeral. She'll see my face, thank goodness. And so it's not like, oh, I'm going to make it. It's just, oh, good, my face will be intact. But it kept on falling and it reached my legs, and again it's in a fraction of a second. But I was like, oh, man, I might live through this. And then it detonated and it felt like somebody threw rocks at me and I wound up like in a. In a surgery tent. It was quite the blur. But the point I'm making with that is actually, I'll say Before I went up in the surgery tent, it blows up, I get dragged to cover. I'm in this alleyway and we were in this village that it was very kinetic and it just meant people shot at us every time we went in there. And we were fighting with people that effectively had been saying over their radios when we got there, we can listen to their radios, that they were all going to fight to the death, which really means they're going to shoot indiscriminately at you, even if it means targeting their own people. And so when a contact would break out, literally the town would just. Or the fighters would begin shooting arbitrarily in your direction, like they didn't care if they hit their martyring their own people. And so like rockets are flying and like traces are coming and tracers are rounds that you can see. Like every fifth round or so you can see the round. And I remember laying in this alleyway bleeding to death. I couldn't get my tourniquets off to put on my legs to stop the bleeding. And. And it was just so matter of fact, the way you know how to live. Like right now, all of us are doing it. You're all living, but you're not really thinking about living. You simply are. I don't know if this is comforting or horrifying. You know how to die too. In the moment when I was literally about to bleed out, I was very likely seconds away from just bleeding to death. All I thought in my head, well, there's a couple things. There's one sad. It's like I wish I'd started a family. That's sad. But there was also just this weird, like, nonchalant, specific thing that I was hung up on. I'm laying in this alleyway, I'm just like. I can't even see anymore. So I'm blind, I'm deaf, I'm in the void of my brain. And I remember thinking like, I wonder if it will say, John Allen killed in action or Jonathan Allen killed in action. Pressing questions, but the point is, if you think about what I've just told you, those two ends, those two stories about your brain operating in a way that you really can't control. Think about all the people in the world over time who have been in horrifying situations way worse than anything. I just detailed that have testimony, they have the things they saw. You can operate their perspectives if it's available to you, and really live in that liminal space as you described, which is a really powerful place to be if you Write a story from that perspective. It's bizarre. It's detached from reality, but at the same time, it's exactly human. And so Evan is masterful at finding stories that have somebody that we call the unreliable narrator that went through an experience that they literally can't fully understand, like Evan not knowing it's gunshots. If we had told the story about Evan at the crime scene, we'd say, and then the reporter, she heard fireworks off in the distance, but we'd reveal later on it was gunshots. It applies to any story like that. And so Evan is masterful at finding stories like that. So that's a device that is useful for telling stories. Don't know where I was going with that.
- [43:15]
Evan Allen
That was good.
- [43:16]
John Allen
No, that's a good point.
- [43:17]
Evan Allen
Where it had to go.
- [43:18]
John Allen
You know, I guess we could talk about the other one, which is a sort of sleight of hand, which is like. You want the caving one?
- [43:24]
Evan Allen
Yeah.
- [43:24]
John Allen
Or take it. Whatever you want to do.
- [43:26]
Evan Allen
No, I mean, I think sort of what we're sort of hoping to do is just sort of talk about some of the ways that we make the stories that we tell feel really engaging. I think one of my favorite things to see from viewers or listeners is when people say, like, oh, I know this story, but I didn't realize I know this story until, like, halfway through. And that's because we're trying to tell it in a way that you haven't heard before. What you're talking about with sleight of hand is sort of. We talk a lot. So we have, like, weekly writers meetings, and we use for inspiration, like, a huge number of things. Like, every writers meeting, we talk about something. This past week, it was the opening scene of the Seinfeld episode, the Briss, because the Seinfeld writers are really, really good at setting up each of the characters for the episode. They do it in this very economical way. It's so fast. It's so perfect. But if you watch that episode, I will not explain it to you now because it is too much to explain to you now. And it's Seinfeld, and that would just be weird. But they set up all the characters in the first minute and 20 seconds for the whole episode. And it's just like a really great model of economical storytelling. We looked at lots of sketch comedy. Sketch comedy is all about taking a scenario that seems like it's going to be familiar to the viewer and then sort of like flipping it on its head and using the viewer's own expectations against them. Like, there was a Shane Gillis sketch where they're, like, in an airplane, and the airplane is about to crash. And so we all know that story, right? It's like, somebody comes out, and they're like, oh, you have 10 seconds. Everybody call your loved ones. And so everybody in the plane. And the sketch starts calling, like, mom. And so you don't even need to play any of what they say. It's like, moves really, really fast until you get to Shane Gillis, who picks up his phone, and he's like, hey, this is Frank's Auto Body. And that's funny because it, like, takes what you were expecting, and it's like, it just flips it completely. So we look at stuff like that. We look at. I mean, we pull inspiration from everywhere. But one of the places is we talk a lot about, like, where's the camera? Cameras zoomed really close in on moments of high tension or high suspense. We kind of zoom out when we need to, like, move a little quickly through something. So we're often thinking. We actually read a lot of, like, screenplays. Like, if you read 1943's the Leopard man, excellent screenplay. So one of the ways that we often obscure what a story is about so that when we get to the end, it feels like a surprise, but also inevitable. Because it can't just be a surprise, right? Because then it's like, well, that sucks. That's weird. Like, if it just turns out to be some random thing, it's not cool. It has to be. It has to snap everything that came before it into focus. And so one of the tricks that we use is we think of it as, like, zooming the camera really, really, really close in so you lose all the context. So, like, you know those. There is a style of photography, but I don't know what it's called when.
- [46:38]
John Allen
You take a photo of something.
- [46:38]
Evan Allen
You take a photo of something super close, so it doesn't even look like itself. You'll be looking at it, and you're like, is that the moon? And it's like, oh, no, it's just a pebble. But they, like, magnified it a thousand times. That's kind of what we do sometimes where we'll be like, the camera will be really tight in on a character. And so you're seeing. You know, I remember one story, we had three guys in a boat, and they're doing something in that boat, and we're, like, really close in on what they're doing. They have, like, these strips of fabric that they're tearing Apart, and they're making sure the strips of fabric are different lengths, and they're putting the fabric and hat, and they're being, like, really, really serious about this activity. But to the viewer, it's like, why are we so focused on these strips of fabric? Like, why are these three guys in a boat? Like, we don't have any of that. We have three guys in a boat. We're looking at what they're doing. We're looking at the. Their hands. The camera's real close. And so slowly, they each pull a strip of fabric out of the hat. And then one of them looks at his strip of fabric and just starts crying. And it's revealed that they're basically drawing lots for who's going to get eaten because they're shipwrecked. But if you think about where the camera was while I was telling you that story, it was so close that you missed the wider context. And we do that a lot. And so you. I don't want to give away too many of our tricks here, but, like, you know, send it, dude. We're thinking very deliberately about what we're showing and what we're not showing. So POV is one way to hide a bunch of stuff, because characters often don't know what's happening. Because, as Johnny said, much better than I can say it, you never really know what's happening when it's happening to you. It's only in retrospect that things look inevitable. But another way that we do it is just that sort of, like, so close that what we're saying is true, but it is disguising reality.
- [48:23]
John Allen
There was actually. I just thought of this one. This was unscripted, but I think it's a good one. Another example of zooming in really closely. It's another good story that demonstrates this, although it's less severe, but it's a good one. So this actually is on our Instagram right now, and it's going pretty viral, so maybe you've seen it. Okay, so there's this guy and a girl who are on a first date in Utah. This is in the 1970s, and they're at a restaurant, and the date's not going very well. It's not going bad, but, you know, there's not any chemistry. And the guy, you know, he just sort of thinks, you know, there's. This isn't probably going to go anywhere. This is the last time I'm going to see this person. So he sort of just says, hey, do you want to, like, just leave and do Something else I got. I got a pretty good idea. Like, forget the restaurant. You want to. You want to go on a hike with me? I know there's, like, this overlook out in Provo Canyon. It's got a great view of the stars. Do you want to go do that? And the girl's like, okay, I'll do that with you. Like, suddenly, this is exciting. Like, this boring date has now become sort of electric. Like, what are we. What are we getting into tonight? It's late, right? So they leave, like, the Waffle House. Wherever they are, they hop in the car and they drive. Like, they drive to this parking lot, and it's nighttime, but the moon's out. You know, there's some good illumination. And they park in this parking lot and they get out. And now it's like. It really is exciting. There's just something sort of crazy about how this night has turned. And so they're both. Now there almost is chemistry. And so he's like, it's this way. You just go. And you just go in the woods right here. And it's like, out of a storybook. Like. Or what's it, the witches Fables? What's it. Hansel and Gretel like? It's like this. This forest with, like, a cutout of, like, a pathway that leads into darkness. Like, this is a sort of foreboding trail they're going to go on. But he's like, I promise you, you just go down this trail. There's a great overlook. And so off they go down this trail, and it's a paved trail, and they're walking along, but it's really dark, and nobody else is out here on this trail. This is not the time to go hiking on this trail. But they're walking along. And remember, they're excited, but very quickly. And they would only know this after the fact, very quickly as they start walking down this trail, they both start to feel this intense sense of dread. But they don't know why. But they both begin walking faster because they have to get to the overlook. The overlook's, you know, half a mile away or whatever it is. And they've committed to this, and this is supposed to be fun. And so down the trail they go, they start walking faster and faster. Neither is recognizing that they're going faster, but it's clear because they're holding each other's hands that there's tension, something's wrong. And they make a turn around this corner. And suddenly the guy steps on something soft and comes to a dead stop. He doesn't look down at it. The girl has stopped abruptly with him. They're holding hands. They already know something's wrong. They haven't addressed it directly, but they know something's wrong. Without saying a word, without investigating nothing, they turn around and speed, walk out of there. And when they get out of the trail and they're back in the car, they're like, phew. Oh, my God. Like, what was that? And they're like, I don't know. Fast forward ten years. Ten years later, those two actually did get married. It worked out great. The decision to go down the trail paid beautifully for them. And they're in their home, and the TV's on, and it's playing a news segment. And it's a reporter who is interviewing somebody on death row, and they're about to be executed, and they're giving this expose into their crimes. And they were asked, as the TV's playing, you know, she's in the kitchen, he's in the living room. They asked this person, before you got caught, was there ever a time you almost got caught? And he said, yeah, I was in Provo Canyon back in the 1970s, whenever it was. And I had just killed this young girl, and I was dragging her across that trail out near Provo Canyon, and this couple comes storming around the corner, and the guy stepped on the body. And I'm crouched down next to the body, looking up at them, waiting to see what they're going to do. I would have had to kill them if they looked at. If they looked down and saw what was going on. But for some reason, they just turned around and they left. That couple had run into Ted Bundy, and it was one of the last people he killed. And he literally said, I would have killed them if they had simply looked down. So in that story, there's obviously huge payoff. But there's loads of stories about Ted Bundy encounters that typically begin with, let me tell you a story about the time somebody almost got killed by Ted Bundy. Doesn't work as well. You know, it's like telling the story I just told you. That story's been told many times across the Internet and everywhere, But I bet some of you had no idea that was Ted Bundy until the very end. Think about just the discipline of, if you want a story to land, you start with the end. What am I going to reveal that I will not reveal until the end? And once you have that in mind, you build the story with as much discipline as you can to ensure nothing is tipped and that includes even, like, stuff like, you joked about this. If we tell a story that is on our channel and it's like, oh, Joe, he hopped on a boat to go on a fishing trip. You're like, oh, Joe's dead. Joe's gonna die. It's like, understand, if you make content understand that you might have tropes that you've created, you might have things that you do all the time that give away what happens.
- [53:51]
Evan Allen
We actually have a rule in the writer's review.
- [53:52]
John Allen
Do it. Send it.
- [53:53]
Evan Allen
All bad smells are dead bodies, all boats sink, all planes crash.
- [53:59]
John Allen
It's true. And so I think it's really just about discipline. And I think the way you sort of manage the writer's room is a testament to that.
- [54:07]
Evan Allen
Yeah, I think, I mean, one of the most frequent edits I give is the writers are. They're anxious, they're impatient. We feel impatient. We're telling a story and the tension is getting to us too. And so you see people starting to, like, give away the ending too early. And it's like, nope, gotta hide it. Hide it for one more beat.
- [54:26]
John Allen
This doesn't even pertain. It's just one of my favorite stories I'm just gonna tell is a great ending. It's a great ending. This, this is, in my opinion, I'm setting myself up for failure potentially. But I think I'm good. I think it has one of the best endings, period, of any story I've covered. So there's this woman whose name is Ellie Lobel, and I'm sure some of you already know the story. Ellie Lobel was a woman who lived in California, who lives in California, I should say. And she, she came down with this mysterious illness. This is like in, I think it was like the early 2000s. And you forgive me because I didn't prep the story. I'm just sort of telling it off my memory. So she comes down with this mysterious illness and she went to doctors left and right, and everybody was giving her different diagnoses, but no one knew what was wrong with her. But her illness was not something that could be. It wasn't that extreme. It was like she was really tired, she was lethargic, she was sore, she was achy. She had flu like symptoms. Periodically, her skin would break out in rashes. But there wasn't anything that was so severe that she really took it to the next level and really demanded somebody figure out what was wrong with her. For years and years she has this illness and she's like this very high powered person. Like she's a lawyer, she's a mother, she's like she's killing it in life, but on the backside she's really struggling with this mystery illness. And over the course of it's like 15 years or something. And you gotta forgive me because the details could be a little bit wrong. This condition got worse and worse to the point where again, it's not really life threatening. It's more like her quality of life was just shot. Like she could barely get out of bed in the morning. You know, like low energy, she didn't feel good. It's like something's wrong with her. No one knows what it is, but now she's just living with it. It just. It is what it is. Well, she went in for a doctor's visit. Like, this is like 15 years into this saga. And also by this point her. She had went through this horrible divorce with her husband. And it basically was over the fact that this is going to make him sound horrible. I don't know the guy, but it was like, you're not the woman I married. You're like a shell of yourself. Because I think people thought she was lying, that like, whatever this is. What are you just tired all the time? Like, what's that about? Right? So she goes to this horrible divorce. Her kids also apparently didn't really believe fully what was going on with her. And so she's living this like isolated life and like the prestige and like the career success she had had was sort of wiped by this mystery illness. She ends up going to the doctor. This is when she's like in her mid-40s and this is like years and years into this, whatever this is. She's got no answers. And the doctors don't discover what's wrong with her. However, they do determine that whatever this is is now actively killing you. Your organs are beginning to shut down. And unfortunately we don't know what this is, but it is killing you. That's what's happening here. Undeniably so. And Ellie's reaction actually was some level of relief. Her life to this point had become so far from what it was. She was so sad, she was so broken down physically, emotionally, mentally that she actually sort of embraced this idea that finally it's going to end, whatever this is. And so she's given a prognosis, which I actually don't know how long it was, but it was relatively quick considering it was like, let's say within a year or something. And you know her mentality after she's told you're Going to die from this was she really allowed herself to shut down. She mentally really turned it off. In fact, she began looking into an end of, like, end of life care person, somebody that doesn't try to resuscitate you, but who stays with you until you die. And so she actually did hire this end of life care person who she gave strict orders that when it's time to work together, when I'm in what I believe is going to be my final moments, I do not want you to save me. I just want you to help me stay comfortable and tell people, when I die, that's your job. Like, she was really explicit about it. And so finally it comes to the time where Ellie believes she's on death's door. You know, she didn't know for sure, but it felt like it was nearing the end. And so she actually rented an Airbnb out in Southern California in this beautiful part of Southern California. Forget the name of the town, but it was like one of the places that she had loved growing up. And she's. She's all alone. You know, her family doesn't even know that she's doing this. She's doing it to spare her family. But she rents this Airbnb, and the only person who goes there with her is this end of life care person. They go to the Airbnb and literally, Ellie just gets into bed and waits to die. That's it. She's not drinking anything, she's not eating anything. She thinks that she's going to die soon. She believes it. But after three days of that, she doesn't die. She's not doing good, but she hasn't died yet. And so she decides that she's just going to go on a quick walk. It's a beautiful summer day, and so she has her end of life care person come with her. And she leaves the Airbnb, she goes outside and she just goes on this walk. And she passes by this beautiful pasture full of all these beautiful flowers, and she's just looking out over the fence of all this beauty, like the earth's natural beauty. And, you know, she's sad, but she's also like, this is a wonderful place to have my final moments. And as she's standing there, she hears a buzzing over her head. And she looks up and she sees there's a bee floating, like, that's flying right above her head. And now she doesn't think much of it. There's flowers everywhere. That's where bees could be, you know. But quickly, a whole massive conglomerate of bees. A huge horde of bees. I don't know what the word is. A murder of bees. I think it's conglomerate, 501C. It's an LLC of bees. So a 501C, three of bees shows up and there's these bees that are flying around her head, but they're huge. They're these big African killer bees. And Ellie by this point is basically not immobile, but she can't move quickly. The bees come down and they begin stinging Ellie, like repeatedly in the face. And she can't go anywhere. And her end of life care person is like, nope, turns, runs away. And so Ellie has been left and she literally collapses to the ground. She can't go anywhere. And she's getting stung over and over and over again by these beasts. It is an onslaught. Eventually, the end of life care person has some humanity left and they come back for their run back, sorry, scoop her up and they run her back to the house. And when she got to the house, she actually was sort of not relieved because I'm sure she did not feel relieved. But she's thinking, great, this will expedite my expiration here. And so she tells the end of life care person, I don't want to go to the doctor, I don't want anything. Just put me back in bed, I want to die. And so Ellie Lobel, because this end of life care person is there to help her die, does just that puts Ellie back in bed. And for three days she laid in bed and she didn't die. She actually got better. She actually got so much better that on the third day, she's swollen from all the bites, all the stings from the 501C3 of bees, that she's a very intelligent person. She's not thinking, oh, everything's fine. This has been like 20 years of, of problems in her life. So she gets up out of her bed after three days, she's like, something's going on here. And she begins to research, like, what could be stings potentially help me in some way. And she discovers this totally obscure study in Australia from back in the 90s where these scientists, they came up with a theory that if you had full blown Lyme disease and you got stung by a whole bunch of bees, it might cure Lyme disease. The problem being they couldn't ever conduct the study because it was highly unethical to dump a 501C3 of bees on a terminally ill Lyme disease patient. But Ellie Lobel unintentionally conducted that study on herself, and she found out she had Lyme disease. That was what was killing her, and it cured her completely. She literally tours the country talking about the benefits of being stung by bees if you have Lyme disease. Her name is Ellie Lobel. It's fantastic. It's like. It's a crazy story. So, yeah, that's that story. Pretty good.
- [62:34]
Evan Allen
Pretty good story. Good story.
- [62:38]
John Allen
Any we're about to wrap up here?
- [62:40]
Evan Allen
Any we're about to wrap up, I think graphic novel.
- [62:42]
John Allen
Aren't you talking about the graphic novel?
- [62:43]
Evan Allen
Graphic novel, yes. So as we are. So part of what we've been thinking about as we were giving sort of preparing for this talk, was just like the different. How medium affects how you're telling a story. Because it is different. Like, we. It's actually Johnny tells the YouTube and he tells the podcast, but it's actually a completely different voice. When you write podcasts versus when you write YouTube. We have different writers for it. It's like an entirely different thing, and that's due to the medium. The podcast is actually, I think, a little easier to write for because you can't see Johnny. But YouTube, he's on camera, so it has to be, like, exactly his voice. But anyway, we were thinking about, like, we also do graphic novels, and we have the second graphic novel coming out this fall. But you'll have an audiobook of the graphic novel. And I know we only have a second, but I wondered. I know that when we did the first graphic novel, a lot of these were YouTube videos that we converted to graphic novels, which is like, that's a big jump in writing. I mean, the YouTube scripts tend to run about 2,500 words or so. Graphic novel scripts much shorter because it's not very many words. But the pictures interact so beautifully with the script itself. We work with this really talented graphic novel writer, Rob Venditti, who's done a ton of crazy things, but it's like watching him take your video and turn it into poetry. And that is not an exaggeration. He's very talented. But then you turn it into an audio book, and I just wondered. I know that in the first one, you were surprised by how different the audiobook was from the graphic novel, and it's because, again, of the medium. So even though YouTube to graphic novel to audiobook, the audiobook winds up being different than the YouTube or the graphic novel.
- [64:32]
John Allen
Yeah, actually on that. So this is gonna seem like a shameless plug, because it is.
- [64:38]
Evan Allen
But it's.
- [64:39]
John Allen
Actually the truth, and I'll stand by this. So when we wrote or really Evan and her team, really, they put together the first graphic novel, which was a New York Times bestseller. Evan, great job.
- [64:49]
Evan Allen
Thank you.
- [64:53]
John Allen
It was my job to translate that into an audiobook. The easy approach would be to just read the words on the page and make it an audiobook, but I didn't do that. I don't know if you've listened to the audiobook for the first novel. It's pretty good. I'm gonna be honest. I did a pretty good job. It's a whole performance. And I'm going to do it again for the second graphic novel, which is coming out this fall. The graphic novels are gorgeous. This one, I think is better. The second one coming out this fall. It's called Where Nightmares Live. And there will be an audiobook component that you should totally go look for on Audible. Audible is the home of the best oral storytelling in the land. You know, in the land, there's conglomerates of Audible books you should listen to, and 5 on C3s of bees. So. So on that note, thank you all so much for being here. Thank you, Audible, for being here. And again, go check out Audible if you want to hear some cool storytelling. You guys are great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Huge thanks to Audible for sponsoring this episode. If you enjoyed this one, well, you are going to love diving into Audible's massive collection from edge of your seat true crime to mind bending mysteries. They have thousands of titles that will grab you and not let you go. Listen today@audible.com mrballin thank you very much. If you enjoyed today's episode, let us know down in the comments section. And also if you enjoyed some of the stories that were told in this episode, be sure to check out our main YouTube channel called Mr. Ballin, where we have hundreds more stories just like the ones you heard today. If you want a recommendation from me, me, I'd say this one's pretty good right here. Click on this one. It's really good. All right, thank you very much. Until next time. See ya.