Patton Oswalt
speaker
1,066 appearances
7 recordings
4 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 8 Jun
Patton Oswalt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 2.
Appearances
I met people and had experiences that changed my mind. You know, everything that you say, oh, my God, so resolutely. But you're going to meet stuff that changes your mind whether you want it to or not. And just roll with that. Yeah, I used to think that way. Now I don't think that way.
I mean, all I did was shepherd that. I mean, I handed that book over to an investigator and a journalist and go, please help me do this because I was still so wrecked. and they helped see it through. But she definitely, it was very funny, we all had a lot of laughs watching at the press conference, because she came up with the name, the Golden State Killer.
Before that he didn't, and this is gonna sound really sick, but another cop, this guy Paul Holes, was like, yeah, he was never given a cool name, and that does hamper investigations. If there isn't a name that lands with the public, Zodiac, Night Stalker, then sometimes these cases fade away.
So when she came up with Golden State Killer, something very evocative and weird and creepy about that name that she came up with, that did help reopen the case. Now, obviously, yes, other investigators brought that case home. She also did suggest using familial DNA, which they ended up doing, but whatever. But it was very funny to watch them at these press conferences.
Someone was like, what about the work of Michelle McNamara? And he was like, Michelle McNamara's work had nothing to do with us catching the Golden State Killer. And we're all like... You literally just used the name that helped. Anyway, but yeah. But that was like satisfying for us to watch.
Yeah, I just, the thing that I... The thing that I wish was more, that she really wanted to be more focused on, and I'm seeing it in a lot of these, but not in all of them, is what she wanted the focus to be on was the investigators and was the victims, rather than making these serial killers have to be these dark anti-heroes. Serial killers are zilches.
The reason that they're killing people is because they're a zilch in life. They're not contributing anything, so I'll take something. So the fact that she was able to do something to put the focus on the people that are trying to bring justice to the powerless, or the voiceless, in this case the dead, or the people that survived,
or, you know, survive to testify and still put themselves at risk with these, because a lot of these, if you relook at the Ted Bundy case, like the way that he was treated, like, oh my God, it's so tragic, this bright young guy with a, Could have been a lawyer. He was a fucking idiot.
He flunked out of every... But he's a good-looking white guy, and everyone's like, oh, my God, we got... And when the judge sentenced him, he's like, I feel terrible. You just took a wrong path, buddy, but I would have loved to have had you in my court. Can you imagine being one of the survivors going, what the fuck is going on here? This guy is getting all the...
You know, and his final statement was like, this is like a Greek tragedy, you know, like the wrong guy. You're like, what fucking world are we living in?
I mean, one of the reasons I think we love mysteries is because at least the ones who have a solution and we can see, oh, there was a form of justice was served here because right now in our world, very blatantly and very in our face and very flagrantly, justice is not being served and evil, opportunistic, just weak justice villains are being rewarded day after day after day.
And no one seems to be willing to do anything about it. So yes, I'll take a fictional world where yes, even though evil's done, evil gets punished. People need that.
I mean, I had a lot of help from other people that had gone through this, the grief group that I went to, and they just said, this is going to sound really weird, but Right now, all you feel is despair, and that's all you feel like you can feel. And then you're gonna get to a point where you go, well, I can function, and thankfully, you will be thankful for the fact that you can't feel anything.
That will feel like a relief. And you'll go, this is how I'll exist. I can exist at this point, and that's how I was. I'm like, I'm just gonna take care of my daughter, and I don't need to feel anything. And then they said, and despite all of that, you will feel joy and hope and love again. You don't know when it's gonna happen, but when it happens, run at it. Go run at it.
It's there for a reason. There were people in my group that are like, I remarried six months after my spouse died and everyone judged me for it. And there's people going, I remarried eight years after my spouse died and everyone judged me for it. So get all that shit out of your head. It doesn't matter. You're not grieving to make them comfortable.
You're not recovering to make them feel comfortable. You have to live whatever life is being put in front of you. And I met this person. genuinely extraordinary woman that I don't think I would have realized is as extraordinary as she is if I hadn't been in love with and spent all those years with Michelle to really show me what extraordinary in a person means, you know?
So there was almost like that was the gift from her. That was the one gift was losing her, having that torn away from me so horribly. But in a way, the tearing away burned the memory of what a truly amazing person looks and feels and acts like. And I was able to recognize it when it came around again.
I felt numb for like half a year, just nothing. And before that were a couple of months of just, you know, April, April, May, most, some of June was just, it's not pain, it's, C.S. Lewis put this so well, grief feels like terror. I was in terror 24 hours a day. I was terrified of everything. Terror. And then, so that's why I was so happy to hit numbness. And I was like, I'll live here forever.
I'll take numbness over terror. And then it just turned into meeting someone who I was not, again, I wasn't, it was just, it was a weird, we had friends in common. I didn't know who she was, but we have a friend in common, this actress, Martha Plimpton. And my wife, Meredith Salander, they've been friends since they were teenagers, you know, like acting. They were both child actors.
And so Martha would do these dinners where she would gather various people, different people just to bring them together and just have a salon. Everyone just talks and meets. And so I was invited to one and I didn't, I was traveling or something. And then Meredith like posted or she messaged me and said, you know, that was, you missed the best fucking lasagna, dude.
Showing 1021–1040 of 1,066 · page 52 of 54
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