Pop Culture News Nuggets: Awards Recap, Festival Lineups & Gypsy Rose Goes on Tour?

This week, we're covering the marathon of an awards season including Critic's Choice Awards and The Emmys but mostly the entertaining internet moments throughout the shows...like the food served to the celebs & awkward moments.

Coachella 2024 lineup is out and host Maddy McClain has a bone to pick about it. Followed by the latest TikTok saga and the world's longest cruise on Royal Caribbean that many are following along like a reality TV show. Can't blame 'em!

Gypsy Rose has been all over headlines & social media after her release from prison and we're feeling conflicted about it...whether you know the story or not, come listen to the latest updates and it's similarity to another case: Maya Kowalski.

TLDR - prepare to be entertained, homies. Cheers! Follow on IG @easilyentertainedpod

07:14 Critics Choice Awards Recap

12:57 Emmys Recap

17:02 Music Festival Lineups: Coachella vs Bonnaroo

22:38 The World's Longest Cruise: A TikTok Reality Show

29:22 The Gypsy Rose Blanchard Case

36:02 The Maya Kowalski Story

Sources mentioned/used:
- Emmys 2024 Winners & Losers (New York Times)
- Critics Choice Awards (EW.com)
- World's Longest Cruise (CNN Travel)
- Gypsy Rose Blanchard - People Cover Story

Transcript

Hello, homies, and welcome to another episode of Easily Entertained. I'm your host, your dutiful pop culture sherpa, your loyal, loving,  uh I'm your host here. Welcome to the show, you guys. Somehow we have been hurdled. Somehow. We have been thrust  into the third week of January.  Of 2024, and I'm telling you, I'm convinced that whoever's up there currently in control of the simulation has fallen fast asleep on the fast forward button or something.

It's definitely not  that I'm getting older and that's just what happens. You know, they all say it. We all were warned. We will, you know, we got to give credit where credit is due. I suppose this would be credit to the boomers perhaps.  To our mamas and our papas and those that came before us, that  time truly does go faster the older you get.

Increasingly so. Suppose, you know, that could also be explained by  the amount of time you've lived relative to, you know, say, a year. Anyway. Anyway, all to say, I hope you guys are having a great start to your year. We don't need to make things happen any quicker, you know. Um, I believe it was January,  maybe directly after New Year's Eve, walking to Target, you know, just my weekly, bi weekly maybe.

Um, Target Ritual.  Who am I kidding? It's pretty much weekly. Um,  and,  the Valentine stuff was already up. It was already up. It's on you. Consumerism, baby. The fastest train in America.  Um,  although I don't think that that's really a competition with a lot of high stakes winners. Um, trains just aren't really a thing we do here in Texas.

Uh,  I don't know. It's just not something. Although I really do want to take a transalpine  train trip. There's some like really nice swanky trains you can sleep on and see beautiful scenery and through Europe and stuff. That would be sick. That's a train I would choo choo upon.  Hi, you guys. Ben. How you guys been?

It's um,  a new year. I like a new year. I like a fresh, a clean slate, you know, a chance to do it over again. You know what I'm saying? If you want to really just  reignite our engines for what we do want.  It's, I'm trying this new thing where I plan more, you know, um, My in my previous life, AKA just a few years ago, I worked in media planning, like the name planning is in my career.

And I mean, I  don't want to do my own horn, but I did like I did well in my job. Okay. And  then it came to my daily, like, personal life. And I was not planning, uh, diddly shit very well. You know, um, I always did love like a pen and paper agenda. Um, a new calendar, if you will, a planner, like a physical planner. 

Like, I love the accoutrement of being an organized person, right? And in the past, I did that, but then it was like, once I did all of that in my day job, right? It's like, I'm not gonna work after work. Are you getting me? So maybe that's where that disconnect happened. I don't know.  See, I've just been very  introspective, you know, as one does just assessing the previous years. 

I'm thinking about the new the one ahead, right? Welcome to easily entertained. We have some pop culture news nuggets, some updates for you, including the continued award season, which basically all of this has been pushed back due to the Hollywood strikes that happened for the majority of 23 for both the writers and actors in the various unions in Hollywood.

So. So now we're, you know, we're just stacked, right? It's kind of like when The Bachelor just kept having continuous seasons back to back to back because we were back from Corona. Or quarantine, rather. Not just Corona, but,  um, yeah. So two more happened since we spoke. That being the Critics Choice Awards and the Emmys.

So we'll talk about the memorable moments.  Moments, you know what I'm saying? The meme able, meme able momes.  That doesn't work as an abbreviation, does it? But, um, The important thing is we tried. Okay? We tried. And, uh, we'll also talk about the winners and the losers and the hosts. All of whom did better than Joe Coy, but that, uh, line was pretty low to start with.

So,  um, we will catch you up all on that. We gotta talk about the Coachella lineup that was announced and comparatively the Bonnaroo lineup. So,  we're gonna talk about that, okay? And talk about that NuNu, what is out, what is something to look out for, movies, TV shows, music. The whole thing. And then of course, um, today, this week, we are going to be talking about what everyone else in their dog has been talking about  so that you don't have to listen to all of the 50 bajillion million interviews that Gypsy Rose and her hubby Ryan have done.

If you don't know who Gypsy Rose is, I don't worry. I will tell you. I will tell you the story, but really I found that there is an interesting comparison between this and the case of Maya Kowalski and her family and um, this is, there's also a Netflix documentary on this called Take Care of Maya. So I wanted to talk about that and um,  What, what that might say about us as a society and just, uh, tell you a few good stories, you know, sit back, hang out with me, um, and let's get this dig doggy going. 

Critics Choice Awards for 2023 took place on Sunday, January 14th and covers both TV and film. So pretty much like the Globes, although the ones that are picking and selecting the films and the TV shows and the awards of the year are those that are professionally, I guess, able to critique.  I suppose I could look into that, but  it seems like a scam to me, you know, how does one day somebody decide that they're a critic?

Like I, my opinion is above yours, you know what I'm saying? Anyways, but that's neither here nor there. That's just award shows. So  the Critics Choice Awards this year were hosted for the second year in a row by Chelsea Handler, who also happens to be, or to have dated, Joe Coy, our boy who hosted the Globes, who historically now  did not do a good job.

And, um, Made like a really stupid boobie joke, you know, we talked about this last week. If you have, if you would like the coverage on that, but basically he flopped, he flipped and he flopped all about the stage hosting did not do very well and everyone was talking about how he choked. So, of course, having his ex girlfriend, then, who was much more successful than him, go on to host the critics choice awards and do so  flawlessly was great.

I mean. Good. You know, the year of the woman just continues, honey. Although, again, the awards this time did favor Oppenheimer. Way more so, not as, as significantly as the Golden Globes where Oppenheimer, I took, I think took home something like 13 awards and Barbie took home very few, but  so this year for Critics Choice Awards, Oppenheimer did again lead with eight wins this go round for best picture, best acting ensemble, best director for Christopher Nolan, and, Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr.

Best Cinematography, Score, Editing, and Visual Effects. And Barbie went home with 6. So, only 2 less for Best Comedy, Original Screenplay, Best Production Design, Costume Design, Hair and Makeup, and  The best song with, uh, I'm Just Kin.  So, this was a funny moment that was captured. Best song was very much slated to go to Billie Eilish, um, with the song, What Am I Here For, What, What Am I Made For?

That was also in the Barbie movie. So the fact that it was then I'm Just Kin, and it was from Kin's perspective that ultimately won best song over the woman's is  More irony at play.  I love a good bit of irony. I can't lie to you. I think it's what makes the world go round. That's what makes shit entertaining, right?

Everything is a little bit more entertaining, if you take it from that perspective. So, uh, Ryan Gosling was absolutely  just shocked. And the camera zoomed right in on his face and everybody else was too. And kind of giggling. So that was pretty funny. Um. Yeah, then what else? A few movies that I have yet to see, but that were released in late 2023, and a few are still in theaters.

So, definitely more reason to go see them. Emma Stone, again, from similar to the Golden Globes, won Best Actress for her performance in Poor Things.  And the movie The Holdovers also took on a few awards too, including Best Actor for Paul Giamatti, Best Supporting Actress for Divine Joy Randolph, and Best Young Actor Actress for Dominique Cessa. 

Then on the TV side, similar winners too, Succession, The Bear, and Beef did really well, and um, The Actors and all of those shows did well, so.  Nothing like too crazy, but, uh, honestly, my favorite piece of information about the Critics Choice Awards this year was learning how the stars were fed  and because, you know, you never see like plates of food, right?

It's I had to assume similar to like the Bachelor to construction of these reality TV shows. We don't necessarily want to watch people like.  chow down hard on their food, you know, and it's just not really what the producers are looking for either.  So oftentimes that's just done outside of the filming period, you know, get to the drama, right?

People get to the juice,  but you'd still think that it would be like a really nice meal, you know, I don't know, like. No boo on the table, just saying, but no, instead, what they got at the Critics Choice Awards were just like a slice of pizza and a paper baggie that someone was passing out like, like when you go to a baseball game and they're like, hot dogs! 

You know, and they have the like, giant necklace with a box full of things.  That's what that was, so people giggled. And, uh, including, I think it was Oprah who posted something about it? I don't know. But she probably isn't hungry, honey. She's on Ozympie. So, um,  that's funny.  Then the very next night, there was another awards ceremony.

And what was it bestowed upon us but the Emmys, which is an award show primarily and really only for TV shows and, uh, limited series and that kind of thing. So, this one had slightly different results, but actually I completely take that back. It was all unsurprising. Succession, The Bear, Beef took home quite a few.

Awards and to note, because of this weird timing,  even though the 2nd season of the bear has already been released,  because it was released past the, I guess, the timeframe that they look at for this year. All of these awards are for the 1st season. So.  Um, I mean, I can expect to that. We'll see them next year, too.

Uh, I have not finished truthfully the 2nd season. So I definitely I'm going to do that after that. But, um, a few kind of interesting moments that happened. Christina Applegate, who is. I think best known for her role in Anchorman. She's amazing. Um, alongside Will Ferrell.  She's from that. Dead to Me most recently from Netflix.

Uh, she's in a ton of stuff. Um, she started, I think, with on Married with Children. But anyway, after she had filmed Dead to Me, she had announced  She has MS, multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and, um, she hasn't made very many appearances since then. One of them, though, was relatively recently. She, shockingly, just received her Hollywood star.

And, um, that was beautiful, and that's lovely. Which is also weird that she hadn't before. But, um, she came up to Also kind of present an award and she walked up on her cane and of course made a, you know, like all good comedians do a self deprecating joke, um, about people standing up, giving her a standing ovation, um, as she needs to use a cane.

It was a funny, funny little disability joke that she made on  herself really. But, um. That happened, there were a ton of, you know, old, old school, I guess, reunions, uh, Grey's Anatomy cast got together to present an award, I think there was Cheers was also reunited, so Seinfeld, maybe, shows like that, uh, but pretty much that's about it, you know, and we still, of course, have the Oscars to go and the Grammys to come, but that's a little bit later this year and, uh, That was quite an award show little run there, I'm sure.

Our favorite celeb ies are tired from walking that red carpet. So,  that is your latest on the awards. Of course, I will have the links in the show notes, too, so you can see the nominees and all of the winners, um, for yourself. But, this had me thinking, because generally,  similar to these award shows that kind of have the same key players, or like, I think personally in professional football and the NFL, you got like the same key players that are competing to make it to the Super Bowl.

You know,  I think music festivals have kind of gotten that way. And I know, I know could be a little bit testy to say that, but I truly think so, you know, it's kind of like once you the last few years on last five years, maybe it's like the same circuit, right? And that kind of makes sense, but the same circuit of artists that play Coachella and Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo and ACL or what have you  tend to play.

All of them the same year, probably promoting an album or playing, you know, on tour or whatever. So, while it makes sense, it's just kind of, you know, meh. And I think we're kind of in an interesting spot where I was watching this TikTok video, and I feel like this is true. It's like all of the major,  for maybe our generation, millennial artists. 

They've peaked in their careers, a lot of them. They're still great. But then we're kind of waiting for a ton of the Gen Z artists to,  you know, start filling out these headlines. And it's kind of odd that they don't have more, but I will say there is some, uh, there's some representation,  but I was not that amped about the Coachella lineup y'all.

I mean, let's go through it together, shall we? So the three main Headliners are Lana Del Rey on Friday. I mean, I love Lana. Tyler the Creator. I like Tyler the Creator on Saturday and Doja Cat on Sunday.  Like, they need to know themselves. Those are big names, and that's cool. I don't know, just not, it doesn't get me amped, amped up.

I'm sure it's gonna be great, but then I think as you get a little bit, you know, down the line of where the, like, the lesser known. First of all, they put J Balvin below Doja Cat. I don't know if I agree with, I don't know, maybe, maybe that makes sense. I'm Claire. But like, okay, I'll name some of the other big namers.

Peso Pluma, I don't really listen to myself, but Lil Uzi Vert, Justice is good.  Peggy Gao is, I've just discovered her, she's a good DJ.  Uh, Sabrina Carpenter.  Skepta, Tyla, make me sweat, make me, uh huh. Uh, Gorgon City is playing. Suki Waterhouse, which, to be honest, I don't know any of her music. I know her because she's dating Robert Pattinson and I think they are having a baby together soon.

So,  cute. Um, Lovejoy, yeah, those are kind of the big namers. on Friday. On Saturday, Ice Spice, Gustafelstein, Sublime, Jungle.  Okay. Dom Dolla, Grimes, John Batiste.  Honestly, for me, Purple Disco Machine. Okay.  Ray, Blessed Madonna. 

Yeah, for me, that's where that stops. Sunday, Doja Cat, J Balvin,  Janae Aiko  Kwong Rubin.  Who is Karine? Leon, Lil Yachty. DJ Snake.  Renee, rap Baby. Rex  bb Resa.  Coi Leray Victoria. Monet taking back someday.  Uh, Barry can't swim. That is a new artist that I have loved lately. That is a reco.  Menon to you is Barry can't swim if you like.

Odes a kind of indie EDM type style, I guess.  Um, highly recommend. And then it just says, and  No doubt. So I don't know what that means, when they're playing. Meanwhile,  Bonnaroo? I'm not gonna lie. They really outdid themselves this year.  In my opinion. Obviously this shit is, you know,  subjective. But here I am telling you what to listen to and what to watch.

So, might as well tell you.  Why not change it? This might just tell you more of what, the shit that I like, but I think it's in general, this is, you know, with, with festivals, with the big popular festivals like these, they have to choose the big name, you know, pop acts, as well as smaller, more indie artists that are just starting out, right? 

But still, I digress. So, Bonnaroo,  we have Pretty Lights, Fisher,  this is on Thursday, Disco Lines, Oliver Heldens, okay, so Thursday's, you know, it's fine. Friday, Post Malone is headlining, Maggie Rogers, Wong Robin, I know, I'm probably saying that really wrong, uh, but you know what? Let me know. Let's, I'm, I'm ready for it.

Dominique Fike, Interpol, T Pain, uh, Gary Clark Jr., The Mars Volta, Thundercat, Group Love. Yeah, and others, and maybe you know that I don't. Then we got Saturday. Red Hot Chili Peppers are headlining, Cage the Elephant, Melanie Martinez, Cigarettes After Sex, Diplo, John Batiste, Renee Rapp. But maybe this is why.

I mean, I think this is why. Because as you can hear, there are some, quite a few repeaters from Lollapalooza. But Sunday, Fred again is headlining with Megan Thee Stallion. Two friends, Carly Rae Jepsen, Joey Badass, Goth Babe, Galantis, Taking Back Sunday, Forte, Charles Wesley Godwin, Milky Chance,  and, uh, a sunrise set by Pretty Lights.

So  maybe No Doubt is a sunrise set. They'd probably be more like a sundown set. I don't know.  That's what we call a sunset. Anyways, another piece of news and a story that I could not help but follow came to us through the one, the only TikTok. And if it hasn't popped up on your For You page, or you don't use TikTok, or you have, we have to talk about it because it is truly.

Probably an epitome of what makes good reality TV and pop culture conversations in general, right? So, there is the world's longest cruise that is on, hosted by, or through Royal Caribbean. It's 274 days, which is 9 months.  And there are just tons of a variety of kinds of people from different walks of life and ages and what have you and jobs.

It's been a while since cruises of this length were happening and or popular since the pandemic,  but also because. TikTok was not as big of a thing. Sure, we could have YouTubers and people post stuff on Instagram and all of that. So it's not like it didn't exist. But more and more people continue to use it.

And so now all of these people and vacationers who are on this nine month long cruise around the world. Are all recording their experiences and it's like witnessing a real life reality TV show. You know, you've got a younger couple from South Africa who are there with their parents. They post a ton of videos and you got what people are referring to as the cruise dad, just as you, one might imagine this older dude who made a tech talk about spending all of his kids.

Um,  All of his kids inheritance, and I thought that was Hilarilar, and I'm sorry for saying Hilarilar, but it is just absurdly entertaining. They are starting in Miami, and they left not too long ago, and then will arrive back at the very end of it all in Miami again in late September of 2024.  So first of all, wow. 

You can still buy tickets for certain legs of the trip too. Like right now, I'm looking at the search results, um, for 29 Nights Ultimate Hawaii, Tahiti, and Australia Cruise. For 3, 679  per person average. By the way, this is on the ship Serenade of the Seas, which has been around for 20 years, so the ship itself isn't new.

But, and you know, these kind of month long Multiple month long cruises have existed, but I guess more and more people, you know, since we've been locked up during the pandemic and such, um, that hasn't really been such a thing. And so now younger people are going on cruises to see more places, right? The cost per person goes anywhere from, so the cheapest, not cheapest, the lowest being for an interior state room starts at 60, 000 per person. 

Up to a junior suite at 118, 000.  I mean, I'm not gonna lie, this looks amazing. But,  I used to be a big cruise family, okay? Grew up in a cruise family, we did that thang. We did that thang a lang. But a lot of them, we did also smaller cruises. I mean, I was fortunate enough on these family vacations to be taking on these. 

And as much fun as it is, you know, you make your cruise friends. It's like going to camp, right? When you make cruise friends, it's like having a camp crush, you know, and you have, like, for that period of time, you've got your camp boyfriend and your besties from camp that you only see during the summer because they live somewhere else, but you quickly become close because it's like,  yeah, it's like going to camp.

Your entire world is this small area, but there's so much going on, and it's this whole new community and stuff. So that's how I picture a cruise, right? And that's kind of how it is. Trust me. My, my sister,  uh, had a boatmance before I kind of did too.  Um, I made some really good friends that I'm still somewhat in touch with from cruises. 

If you know, you know, it's, it's this weird lifestyle, right?  But you're still ready to go home at the end of it. Um, you kind of, it's like taking a deep breath and you're back to reality. Kind of how I imagine filming might be. I mean, I've never had a camera in my face, like constantly recording everything I do and say, which. 

I mean, this enough is enough of a liability, right? You know, this podcast here mind to a reality TV show.  I don't know. It's, but, um, that's kind of how I imagined it. So everyone is buckling in. It's the start of this cruise and, um.  If drama goes down, I think we'll know, and that's exciting. So I like that, um, as Big Brother, as the internet and social media and all of this shit can seem, it's so entertaining!

So, you know, you're listening to Easily Entertained. So, I find lots of things that way. And, uh, I hope you do too. But we'll be keeping up with this, don't you worry. There is another influencer who was sponsored to go, I guess, joined the cruise and apparently there's already drama, like people don't like him or like, they don't like that.

He's recording everything maybe more than others. I guess of like other people and stuff in the boat. I don't know. His name is Mark Sebastian, if you're curious and want to look that up on tick tock. So.  I don't want to talk about how long I spend on this app, but I will talk about how I'm allowing that to benefit you.

So you don't have to do that.  Okay. Every day, I feel like I have  just like 24 different like catch phrases and quotes, you know, just running through my head on loop. And that gets, gets loud.  It's loud. I'll tell you what, but I always did shit like that. So I went into advertising. I, Often, out of the blue, recite a jingle, you know? 

Five, five, nine, twenty, twenty two, get a Mr. Gaddy's pizza, deliver to you. So, uh, don't worry about it.  Anyways, we're gonna move on, and  it's not quite as, as gleeful as I've just been, but it is  It is interesting.  Today, I wanted to talk to you about what everyone is talking about these days, is Miss Gypsy Rose Blanchard. 

If you know, don't worry.  We'll talk about the updates and we'll get to it. If you do not know, also don't worry. Buckle in, let's talk about these stories, and I'll tell you the context. So, Gypsy Rose was about 13 years old when  her mother was murdered, and she would then come to be arrested for the coordination or the plotting of her own mother's murder.

However, this was because her mom had Munchausen's by proxy disorder, which is a psychological disorder in which a caretaker Usually a mom seeks attention and medical help and sometimes money for exaggerating or completely making up symptoms of an illness or a sickness or a disease, um, and just lying to everyone, usually including that own child, their own child, and convincing them that they are sick or making it up.

And it's horrible. So Gypsy Rose, do not get me wrong. is 100 percent a victim.  It just gets real gray. She, her mom, Dede Blanchard, had a surgery to remo to remove Gypsy Rose's uh, salivary glands that she didn't need. Because she's lying and she's psychotic and, um, had the doctors, like, made her drool more.

And what she had really done was put or a gel on gypsy roses lips so that she would drool and the doctors then suggested, or they eventually get to this surgery.  Um, and. That's horrible. So things like that have done. She's in a wheelchair. She couldn't walk. Many teeth were removed, like terrible, terrible, painful  surgeries and medications she didn't need and, um, crazy,  awful, terrible.

And essentially what happened is she convinced or got her, I guess, then boyfriend or guy she was secretly seeing to murder and stab her mom to death while she waited in the next room in the bathroom.  There's obviously quite a big, a big moral conversation that can happen from that from a million different angles.

Clearly a big murder is bad, you know, don't murder,  but then, you know, this  gypsy rose spent her entire life trapped in this life and, um, there are quite a few different  documentaries and a fictionalized TV series that's on Hulu called The Act. That's good. And then, um, Mommy, Dad and Dearest, it was released, like,  I think in 2017, shortly after this all went down and on HBO, um, and it has the entire journey and all the crazy details and highly recommend either of those, but now we're seeing she's going from there to she's now served her. 

She's really served a total of eight years in prison. She was taken to trial. She and her ex, now ex, but her boyfriend at the time who actually did the murder, Nick Godejohn, is serving a life in prison. Now Gypsy has let out two years early on parole and has been making the rounds, honey, with, uh, I mean, Every news publication, so I did think it was going to be people and I think it kind of was people.

I'm reading this a lot of this information from their article. So we'll link that in the show notes too. But lifetime had these really, really got the 1st entry and got  tons of interviews while she was in prison and kind of.  Leading up to her journey and her release from prison. So, she's also running and doing PR for, for  that Lifetime documentary that's out.

Anywho, so, it's just, I, I get a weird,  I get a weird feeling about all of this attention she's getting. You know, people are commenting on TikTok like, Mother, she's mothering. Which is slang for like, yes, she's our queen. She's our, like, mom. I don't know. And  she's being treated like a celebrity. And in a sense, though, you can't be too surprised, right?

Because we are so obsessed including, and I am very much including myself in this way. Very much so  are obsessed with true crime and I think this is kind of like the ugly underbelly of that, right? Like  these aren't characters in a lifetime  limited series show, fictionalized show, right? Like this is real life and that gets blurred when we're like, we kind of are inundated with all these crazy, tragic, awful stories that then things that are that we get, you know, jaded. 

To, to things, and that's not good, right, when you're exposed to so much. So, that's something I keep in mind, too, for as much as I love true crime, and I will continue to, and I will continue to cover it. It's just a weird moral thing, you know? She arranged for her mom's murder. You know, she had the wherewithal to sneak off and have Nick go to John as a secret boyfriend, right?

And could tell him everything.  I don't know. I don't want to victim blame either, though. It's so sticky. And it's hard these days to have an opinion and  Yeah, full stop. Sometimes it's hard to have an opinion because it's just  people are contentious. They're ready to, ready to rumble a lot. You know, and I'm just not the type that wants to rumble.

So I feel weird about that, about the treatment of her.  What really made me think about this is  I had recently seen another documentary that also mentioned or centered around Munchausen's by proxy, the disorder that Deedee Blanchard, Gypsy Rose's mom had, and she was ultimately diagnosed with that. I said, something you can diagnose.

I mean. I suppose with any mental thing a doctor can diagnose you with, but still,  I would love to know what that kind of like test involves. But it made me think of this particular case because it kind of is like it takes that awareness of this disorder to the extreme. And it was almost the complete reversed kind of scenario went down.

And  Gypsy Rose, her story has been around for a while, so we now knew that, and that happened, she was, she started going to jail, I suppose is the way to say it, in 2017,  and then this, this documentary called Take Care of Maya went down in, afterwards, so the awareness, or, you know, the public had already started talking about this disorder with the Gypsy Rose case,  So it's interesting how this plays into it.

And it's, it's another, I warn you, another tragic, like another sad story centers around the Kowalski family. So Beata or Beata and Jack Kowalski are the parents. They have 2 kids, um, a son and then Maya, their daughter, who started experiencing at the age of 10. Or I think a little bit before, just these extreme agonizing pains that it was so painful to walk, like it could be brought on by anything, and they went from doctor to doctor to figure out. 

What was going on with her, and they couldn't figure it out, couldn't figure it out until finally they met with this doctor, Dr. Anthony, who told them that it was probably this disease called  Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, and ketamine infusion therapy for her. So, people kind of think that this doctor may have been somewhat of a Super alternative guy, but one of those not many people were really on to ketamine yet on in the treatment And it's not just the fact that then they decide to undergo this and give Maya the ten year old some ketamine But the dose that the doctor was giving her apparently it was enough for a 600 pound human So it was just an obscene Dose and um, so they're seeing this doctor who then recommends a like a treatment that can only like, you know, lots of reputable surgeries can only be performed in Mexico and they, it was for a 5 day high dosage ketamine infusion. 

That would put, uh, Maya in a five day coma.  Yeah, so they did that in a ketamine coma, and, you know, there's lots of risks with that. She can die from that. She didn't, and I guess it eventually, it was treating her pain.  She's on the super high dose, and I guess it worked until it didn't. Maya starts having pains again, so Beata and Jack Kowalski take her to the ER, where essentially  Well, her mom never sees them again.

They get separated once the doctors learn about these high, you know, this, this high dose of ketamine that's being given to this.  young child  sends up a bunch of red flags and like, yeah, that's probably for good reason, but they're under the instruction of this doctor. You know, they don't really know.

However, to be noted, the mom  Beata was a registered nurse. But the hospital, after hearing of this, brought in a child abuse doctor, who then, after a 10 minute conversation only with, uh, the dad, Jack,  took away Maya's custody from the parents, determined it was a risk, and that's when the lawsuits began, or they started to investigate.

Three months go by. Maya is crying and begging for her parents. She's still in pain. Her mom, Beata,  is Urging with the doctors that it's just this ketamine that she needs to alleviate and but they are really rude to the mom on the phone and they have these recorded and stuff of lying to her and just  turns out that this nurse or this child abuse doctor that came in had done this,  I guess. 

Like over 60 something times and in this particular county had a much higher rate of removing kids from their homes  from their families rather for this kind of thing for this medical child abuse, but and they accused mom having Munchausen's and  Just for keeping them separated and Maya was begging and pleading and, you know, obviously depressed and was separated from her family and tragically  her mom, Beata, took her own life and, um, only after that where the charges dropped and Maya was able to come home and  horrible, awful, terrible morning, you know, the loss of her mom and  the testing came back after that too.

And the mom did not have Munchausen's and. Maya was in pain and they finally found something that worked for her and she went into physical therapy and found some treatment that worked and she didn't really end up needing ketamine. Understandably so, the Kowalskis  filed a lawsuit against the hospital and they received something like 261 million lawsuit was filed.

Um, and they won and the hospital is liable for the death of Beata Kowalski. It's a deep dive into systems that can go unchecked and how that can. Really  compound on each other. Kind of shows the way that when we're obsessive about some story or something, how it can really affect and have a ripple effect into other aspects.

You know, I don't know if they would have thought of that so quickly, of the mom having Munchausen's, if it wasn't so big  in the news. I don't know. And yet Gypsy Rose is out here, you know, saying she's doing this to spread awareness. I just, I feel iffy about this Gypsy girl. She was also in a podcast said,  she never actually did the murder.

So she doesn't  identify as a murderer, which I guess like on a legality shore, but, and you know, she's, you know, saying murder is bad. Don't do it. I wish I had done, you know, something different. So  I still, I don't know. What do you guys think? I just, I feel so  conflicted about it.  Obviously, it's interesting, and obviously I'm sitting here talking about it right now, so, but I hope that you found that interesting.

Again, the documentary for the Maya Kowalski story is Take Care of Maya on Netflix,  and then there is Mommy, Dead and Dearest on HBO for Gypsy Rose and The Act on Hulu. Next week. Is the premiere of The Bachelor, We're Back Baby, um, with Joey. So, of course, we'll be talking about that. Let's keep it poppin friends, homies. 

If you have any suggestions for how I should close out the podcast, let me know. I'm taking requests and, uh, thank you for joining. I hope you guys have a great  day, evening, morning, whatever, whenever you're listening to this. And follow on Instagram, at Easily Entertained Pod, keep up, got some fun shit on there too.

Tell your friends, tell your fam, tell your foes,  hoes, uh, okay, that's gonna be all for me now. Bye!