The Dan Hentschel Podcast - Episode 11 (Transcript)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Dan Henschel podcast. I sure hope you figured this one out by now, but my name is Dan Hentschel. Today is Friday, September 22nd, 2023.

So TGIF, but also TGIF in another way because it is officially the beginning of fall. Now, I don't know about y'all, but I certainly felt it in the air this morning.

A little chill crept in my bedroom window when I woke up this morning and at first I was very confused. But then I took a look at the calendar and it all made sense because I saw that tomorrow is something called the autumnal equinox. In other words, it's the first day of fall.

Now fall can mean different things for different people. Some people really love fall. If you live in a place that's really shitty, you probably don't like it as much because it means you have to start getting ready for the winter. I don't have to worry about that because like I've said many times, I live in Southern California, so my weather in the winter is probably better than wherever the weather is where you live the best time of the year.

But I understand that not everybody is able to be as fortunate as me. So if you are somebody who is in that position, just know I have been there too. I grew up in Maryland, don't forget, and it was very wonderful. I was very proud of that. But at the same time, one of the big downsides was that I had seasonal depression.

The fall was amazing. I loved the crisp autumn air. I loved when you would get a little hint of burning campfire would smell from somewhere. But at the same time, I knew that all of those things meant I was going to spend the next six months trying not to put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger.

I believe that God gave me seasonal depression so that I would have an instinctual urge to move out to Los Angeles and become famous. He has a funny way of doing that, our Lord. He knows exactly who deserves to be successful, and he knows what he has to do to get them there.

That's why I don't really feel bad for people who are less fortunate than me, because whether we can see it or not, there is a reason why they are in the position that they are, even though it may seem sometimes like the world is a random and chaotic and unfair and filled with needless suffering, we have to trust that our Lord has a plan.

People come up to me all the time and they say things like, You know, how can you believe in God when every day there are children who die of cancer? And I say that's just the way it had to be for them. I don't know why none of us know. It was very sad.

A few years ago, a woman in my parish, her son, was hit by a car, a little ten year old boy.

(laughs)

And I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but I do think it is funny in a way. What God chooses to have happened to certain people. And I told this woman, that was what was supposed to happen. Maybe your son was going to grow up and become racist. Maybe he was going to steal your credit card out of your purse and buy crack, God forbid. I don't know.

But I know that you dodged some kind of bullet there, so you should be thankful for that. And now that little shit gets to go to heaven early, and he's probably going to eat all the guac that's up there.

My point is, if you're down on your luck or your life sucks, take comfort in the fact that that is what is supposed to be happening to you.

***

Autumn tends to be the most contemplative season of all, where we start to reflect on ourselves, where we've been and where we're going. 

And the typical line of thinking here was always that, Well, that's because we start to see change in the natural world around us. And since we're a part of nature, we're deeply connected to its rhythms, the seasonal changes begin to occur within us as well.

Now that's all fine and great, but there's a huge flaw with this logic, and maybe you can already tell what it is. Autumn happens every single year the exact same way. So do all the rest of the seasons. Since the beginning of time on earth. The same thing has happened every single year.

How is that a change? It seems a lot more to me. Like a cycle, a pattern of behavior. We suffer through the trauma of winter. The Earth apologizes with spring. We enjoy the good times of summer. We might even forget all about how horrible the winter was last year. But it comes again just like the year before and the cycle repeats.

Does this sound familiar to any of you? Because it sure as hell does to me. It sounds like this cycle of abuse. If you've ever been in an abusive relationship, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The abuse occurs. The person apologizes. They say, Oh, I'm going to change. Don't worry. The relationship might even get good again. But then we discover we're just going around and around the wheel until we manage to get ourselves out.

People don't change. Just like nature. We are doomed to our own patterns of behavior. We can convince ourselves temporarily that we've changed. We can manage how the pattern manifests itself as best we can.

We can buy a cozy new sweater. We can build a snowman. We can make the best out of it. But at the end of the day, when we zoom out, when we see everything from a bird's eye view, we see the Sisyphean cycle for what it is. So what do we do, if that's the case?

Well, how the hell should I know? I think to myself every day, What's the point, really? Why should I bother even doing anything? And I can never come up with an answer. I just have to forget about it and do something else. So maybe that's the meaning of life right there.

I think it was the poet Walter White who said, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. Now, I hate poetry. I think it's for f*****s. But I do think that is a nice sentiment.

The other day I was talking about this exact thing with a colleague, and they said to me, you know, I just try to find things that I'm looking forward to.

And I looked at them and I said, Well, then you're a moron. Because that's no way to live your life, just trying to get to the next thing, because then that thing you're trying to get to is probably going to get here and suck.

That's why when I was in school, I didn't do any of my homework, I didn't study, because I didn't feel like it. And I'd look at everybody else who is wasting their lives away with their head in some textbooks. And I would say, you are so pathetic. Why are you even bothering with any of this? It means nothing.

And they usually say something like, Well, it's so I can get into a good college and get a good job and set myself up for success in the future.

Okay. What if I take a gun out of my pocket and shoot you in the face right now? Then what? Who's going to care you got a five on your AP European history test then?

Now I look at all those people and just like I suspected, their lives totally suck. You don't have to get straight A's and go to Harvard just to buy a house in the Dallas suburbs and marry some loser.

If you're in high school right now, I am telling you explicitly, do not work hard. You're a moron if you do. It's not worth it in any capacity. Do the bare minimum you have to do not to get kicked out of your parents house. Do whatever you need to do to get through the day without killing yourself. And then find something you actually enjoy doing.

If you find something you actually like to do and that you're passionate about, you will be doing better than 90% of everybody else in America who's just killing time because in 50 years they've never once stopped and thought about why the fuck they were doing whatever they were currently doing.

The best skill you can be learning right now as a young person is how to con people into giving you money.

And you can make your parents listen to this episode. They'll probably pretend that they think I'm wrong and they'll stammer around like a dumb ass to find some counter argument. But deep down, once they go to bed, they'll hear that creeping voice in the back of their head that says, the guy in that podcast my kid showed me is exactly right.

But here's the first lesson in conning your way through life. Just tell people what they want to hear.

Don't show your parents this when they ask you to study. Just say yes, ma'am. You're absolutely right. I'm so sorry. Head up to your room and smoke pot. You'll thank me later.

I know I'm coming off a little strong here, and I think part of the reason for that is that I just got back from a week of visiting my family at home in Maryland, and I was going through all my old high school stuff and thinking, Oh, my God. Wow. None of that mattered at all.

Everything that I was upset about, my high school relationships, the SATs, all of that stuff felt like the entire world at the time. And in reality, it was just a bunch of stress that society made up to give us all something to do all day so that we don't try to blow up the capital building.

Now, if you're a doctor or you're a social worker or you're in charge of building the support beams for a deck, then yes, what you do does matter, sort of. But if you've got one of those jobs where you're just emailing people all day, you are living in a corporate Stanford prison experiment.

I know I have a job like that right now where the company literally doesn't have to exist at all. We provide no necessary function to society whatsoever, besides making someone else money. There is no such thing as an emergency at this job. Nothing is literally ever urgent.

And yet, because we need money to be able to live, everybody at this company inhabits a kind of life or death role play fantasy, because technically, if somebody doesn't send an email on time, then that threatens their ability to provide food and shelter for themselves.

So their animal brain takes it as seriously as they would have taken trying to kill a bison in 1000 B.C. because we do still have the same brain as our ancestors did back then. I'm sure you've all heard this sentiment before.

The reason we have anxiety is because our brain is still programmed to be afraid of getting attacked by a velociraptor when we're trying to take a shit.

We survived because we were worried and that's why we're here right now. We're the ones who made it. That's why when you're waiting for your crush to text you back, it feels like you're getting chased by a cheetah. Once you realize you're living in a mass hallucination, you are free to live your life to the exact extent you want.

Now, I'm not saying you become an anti-vaxxer. That's not what I'm saying. Like I said, certain things do matter. We live in a society and your actions affect other people. We all have to agree to a certain level of participation in the society we live for the common good.

But you have to learn how to recognize when something actually matters and when someone else has convinced you that it matters because it only benefits them.

It's a very nuanced distinction sometimes, but being able to make that distinction will literally give you the key to the universe.

***

Speaking of things that don't matter, the Cracker family will not stop buzzing around in my ear like a mosquito. It seems that not even death will shut these people up. 

A lot has happened since I last updated all of you, and I would love to say that none of it concerns me and we can just forget about it.

But unfortunately it does, so... (groans) I don't even know where to start. 

I think the last time we talked about this, Randall's body had just been found. It was clear that he had committed suicide. His wife, Susan, had recently gone missing, and the LAPD put out a bulletin essentially accusing me of being responsible. And their son, Randy Jr. Was leveraging the entire situation to make money from a fast food restaurant.

If you're confused, just go back and listen to the past couple of episodes because I explain everything up to that point very clearly and concisely. 

The last episode was recorded on September 6th.

September 8th, a few days later, you all might remember backup posted to completely out of context videos on to her Instagram page. And I'm going to play them for you right now to refresh your memory.

The first one appears to have been recorded secretly in the passenger seat of a car. Now, we don't know anything else for sure. We can't see who is recording. We can't see who's speaking. We can't see where the car is. All we can see is the fabric of a car seat. Becca posted this video with the caption.

"Dan used to be my friend, but he has lost his mind. This was recorded to day."

"I'm lying to everyone. I killed both of them. You hear me? Of course I don't feel bad about it. And can I also get a cookies and cream milkshake? Uh, do you want anything? No, thank you. I haven't been here the longest time. I'm so excited."

Okay, now, hours later, she posted another video. Once again, we can't see anybody face or body, for that matter. All we can see is what looks like the leg of a chair. And this time, there's no caption at all.

"You couldn't have even waited until you weren't in my house? You're making a big problem for me. And you know what happens when I have a problem? I have to think of a solution."

So you've probably gathered by now that the implication here is that I'm the one speaking in the video. There are very many ways to fake someone speaking in this day and age. I've talked so much on the Internet. I've handed you all a digital library of my own voice for anyone who wants to use it for any reason.

So the most logical explanation here is that Becca fabricated these videos to create the impression that I was responsible for what happened. The only thing missing from this theory is, why would Becca want to do this?

She seems to be my friend. She's always been very publicly supportive of me. So it seems like from an outsider's perspective, she would have nothing to gain from framing me in this way other than her own conscience wants to do the right thing.

If you think what I just said is the case, her master plan is working on you perfectly.

When I met Becca, she was pissed drunk, she'd stick anything in her mouth within a ten foot radius of her face, and she had no future. 

I'm a very compassionate person. I've said this before a lot of times because of my charismatic personality, people tend to feel as though they're closer to me than I would consider them.

So I felt bad for back then when I first met her. And this first night that we met, we were both at a party in L.A. and I remember feeling so bad for her. I said, Listen, why don't we both just get out of here? we can go to my place and do whatever.

When I look back on it, I can see how someone would mistake the form my charity took that night for human connection. So I will admit that's partially my fault. I'm not perfect. I never said that I was. I can admit when I did something wrong. I maintained civil contact with her from that point on.

Kind of the same way that when you feel bad for the Make-A-Wish kids, you set up a recurring donation and eventually you forget that every month it's coming out of your checking account. But it's such a small amount, it's not even worth the trouble of calling them up to cancel it. That was sort of the nature of our relationship at this point.

And when I look at it from her perspective, from someone who has never met anyone like me before, I understand how something as small as even a passing glance from me could end up being the best part of her week. I think I wasn't fully grasping the extent to which it seemed like from her perspective I was leading her on at the time.

And again, that's my fault. I deeply regret that I've tried to learn from my past mistakes and be better. That's the best any of us can do in this life. 

If you look at back his Instagram account on August 21st, you'll see there's a post where she screenshotted a text message conversation between the two of us. There's literally a picture of my face in it.

The next post, chronologically after that is what appears to be a couple clinking wine glasses together and having a picnic. After that post is another picture that appears to be a couple holding hands at sunset. 

These photos make me quite fearful and a little sick to my stomach to see them now, because that's me and her in those pictures.

But I had no clue that that's how she was representing these situations on social media. The picture of us holding hands looks like a happy couple, enjoying a romantic evening. She must be a pretty good photographer. 

But what actually was happening during this picture was Becca had drunkenly wandered into the middle of the road, straight into the path of an oncoming semi truck, and I had to yank her out of the way at the last minute.

I didn't even realize it was her at first. I thought it was some random homeless woman. And then I actually got a little scared when I saw that it was her because it meant that she had memorized my the walk route that I take every night and timed it so that she would run into me right at that moment.

If any of you have ever seen the movie The Joker, I'm going to spoil it a little bit, but it's basically a movie about a dangerously mentally ill person who hallucinates a relationship with a random woman who smiled at him in an elevator. I actually had to stop watching this movie and turn it off because of how triggering it was for me due to my situation with Becca. It's almost exactly what happened to me. 

So around this time, the police, due to their vendetta against me, started going through everybody in my personal life and harassing them. They picked Becca up and interviewed her with no lawyer present about the whole situation. 

It had gotten to the point where Becca was constantly sending me messages every second of the day, and I, of course, won't answer them.

But I'm sure some of you have been in that situation where the person just keeps sending you walls and walls of text. And I would read them. But it was only for the purpose of seeing if she said anything that I could use to get her arrested for stalking me. 

But because I was doing this, I saw one message where she said the police were interviewing her and she was voluntarily going with them to do whatever, and the blood completely drained from my face when I read this, I said, Oh, crap. There they go again. 

The police are predators. They can smell a weakened calf like her from a mile away, and they're going to sink their teeth right into her to get to me. This is what they do. 

That's why you never, ever say a single word to the police. They're not looking out for you. They're trying to pounce on you. That's why they have to say, "you have the right to remain silent or anything. You say can and will be used against you." All that stuff. Legally, they have to say that. 

And I'll give you a one reason why you should never, ever, ever tell them anything. And that's: nothing you tell them can ever help you.

They cannot use your statements to legally exonerate you. Anything you say, just like they said, can and will be used against you and that's all they can do with it. 

So you might as well not say anything because there's no possible way it can help you. They'll make you think that it can help. They'll say, you know, if you just answer a couple of questions and clear this up, we'll leave you alone.

But that's a lie. The cops are allowed to lie to you. So I went right down to the police station, and I stuck my dick straight in the hornet's nest. And I said, Becca, you're coming with me. Get out of here. 

I must not have gotten there in time, because whatever they said to her, they said something that got in her brain.

Here's my theory. I don't think Becca killed Randall. I think Randall was just a sad sack of crap who was barreling straight for a brick wall at full speed his whole life. And it was always going to end the way it did for him. 

I don't think Becca was responsible for Sue. And what happened to her. I think that Sue was just codependent on Randall, and she realized that if he was gone, she had nothing left to live for.

But Randy Junior, Becca had every motivation to do him in. It's all right there on her Instagram. She hated Randy Junior, And I'll tell you exactly what was going through her mind. She said, I am in the perfect situation here. I can get rid of Randy Junior. Everybody will think that it's connected to the disappearance of his parents.

And then, like a pawn on a chess board, she can maneuver it so that it looks like I was responsible for the whole thing. She gets two birds and one stone, both of her enemies. 

Becca is not stupid. She's one of the smartest people I've ever met. She's cunning, she's ruthless, and I'm terrified of her. Especially once I got on her bad side. I didn't reciprocate her feelings. So now she's going to punish me for it. 

That's why she released those two videos. She saw her opportunity to strike like the cobra she has. 

But what she didn't see coming was that I am smarter than her. That's the downfall of every egotistical psychopath. They underestimate the intelligence of the people they're trying to manipulate.

So once she posted those two videos, I said, Nah, nah, nah, nah. I see what you're trying to do. Not going to happen. I am a very prolific person in the community. I have all sorts of connections. People are looking out for me in every facet of society, especially in Los Angeles. Ask anybody, They'll tell you I run this town.

So I said, I'm going to catch the Black Widow in her own web. Just watch me now. 

My lawyer has told me to kind of keep exactly what happened over the course of the next few days on the D.L., But it all ended with Becca confessing to all three of the murders. 

Like I said, maybe she did do it. Maybe she didn't. I don't think she did. I think she just took the best option that was on the table for her, which was death. 

The death penalty would be the ultimate freedom for her because she hates herself. She hates being alive. And now she can't live without me. She wants to die. 

The worst outcome for her would be she has to go on with her normal life. The second worst outcome would be life in prison, because at least she gets free food. The outcome that she wants is freedom, the kind of freedom that you can only get in death. N

ow, of course, the wild card was Susan turning up alive. Apparently, Susan was found in the trunk of a car near an area of the central California coast called Gaviota.

It's about two or 3 hours away from Los Angeles. It's absolutely beautiful there, I go there all the time. It's completely undeveloped, very rural, mostly private property. Apparently, some cattle rancher found her car on in some field. The police discovered her inside the trunk. She was barely clinging to life as it was. And then she went into a coma.

So now Vivid Viral is trying to decide whether or not to pull the plug on her because they're the executors of her estate and she has no family left. And I guess legally, the next person down the list in that scenario is whoever runs your social media account. 

You might have seen the poll they posted on Sue's Instagram where they said, should we euthanize Susan?

I voted yes. You know, just put her out of her misery. Becca is going to get what she wants anyway. Susan can't say anything, so there's no way that she can exonerate Becca. 

Becca won. It's over. And that's fine with me. I've made my peace with that because I'd rather just move on with my life as best as I can now.

This has honestly been so stressful for me this whole time. I should have been moving forward with my career in Hollywood, and yet I keep getting held back by this hometown drama I just wanted to all be over. So hopefully by the next time we talk, it will be. 

Well, speaking of things that are over, that's the end of this episode.

I want to thank everybody for listening. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and a great week next week. Thanks to everybody for advocating for me on social media. It really helps when you do that and go with God. Amen.