#0436 - Peaches Lives In An Empty Apartment That Sounds Like A Crime Scene Documentary - 10/14/2026

Wednesday has arrived, and Viktor Wilt is already operating at approximately 14 percent battery, three percent motivation, and one rapidly dissolving energy drink away from crawling underneath his desk and refusing to participate in society. Welcome to another edition of the VW Show, where the work never ends, the bills keep arriving, the laundry pile has developed its own ecosystem, and a man who desperately needs a vacation is about to spend several hours discussing plague fears, corporate America abandoning its employees, potentially explosive estate-sale souvenirs, and why the simple act of someone ringing your doorbell now feels like an unsolicited home invasion. Viktor's week is already packed: he has Perfect Circle tickets to give away, a BYU-Idaho career fair to attend, a giant backdrop to assemble, and a daughter's wedding approaching fast enough that he really should figure out what he's going to wear. Naturally, he has prioritized none of these things over staying up too late watching a Netflix documentary about serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. After watching The Confession Killer, Viktor discovers that the story is even stranger than he expected, with Lucas's habitual lying making an already disturbing true-crime saga even more complicated. Sleep is sacrificed, productivity is postponed, and the laundry continues to wait for its long-overdue execution.

The show then descends into a full accounting of everything modern workers have lost, and apparently the final remaining corporate benefit is being permitted to receive an email thanking you for your passion and resilience while your bank account quietly files for bankruptcy. Viktor discusses an online conversation about workplace perks that used to be common, including pensions, stock options, inexpensive or fully covered health insurance, company-paid lunches, enormous Christmas parties, corporate fishing trips, dependable schedules, actual job security, holiday bonus checks, company cars, tuition reimbursement, and free lunches that involved something more substantial than a quarterly pizza party. The pension discussion sends Viktor into a regret-fueled lecture for younger listeners: start investing early, even if you're only contributing a little money each month, because the alternative may be reaching adulthood and discovering that retirement is a mythical destination reserved for people who made better financial decisions decades ago. Social Security does not exactly inspire confidence, and the idea of retiring someday seems increasingly like a fantasy manufactured by a financial adviser who has never purchased groceries in the current economy. Health insurance receives its own special punishment because, as Viktor points out, it can feel like paying a fortune for the privilege of discovering that using the insurance costs another fortune. Then comes the revelation that a supposedly 40-hour workweek can become 45 hours when an unpaid lunch break is added to the daily schedule. Congratulations, employees: you can spend an extra hour at work and still be unable to afford the food you need to eat during it. Even the traditional company pizza party is becoming expensive, and Viktor imagines the psychological devastation of a boss arriving with the cheapest pizza available and expecting the staff to express gratitude. The grand finale is the legendary holiday bonus, immortalized by National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, where Clark Griswold dreams of building a swimming pool before receiving a membership to the Jelly of the Month Club instead. Viktor's own version of the holiday bonus appears to be more work, fewer perks, and the opportunity to calculate how many cat-food packets can be purchased before payday.

After briefly remembering that he has an actual radio show to host, Viktor announces A Perfect Circle's song of the day: “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.” Listeners who hear it are instructed to be caller number 20 for a chance to win tickets to see A Perfect Circle and The Cult at the Maverik Center on May 28 of the following year. The episode then investigates one of modern adulthood's great mysteries: why does a doorbell now inspire the same excitement as a surprise tax audit? Viktor has a front-door camera, which allows him to inspect visitors before deciding whether they deserve the enormous privilege of hearing him speak. Door-to-door security salespeople receive particular contempt because they can arrive at a house already equipped with security cameras, observe the cameras, and somehow still insist that the homeowner needs their security system instead. Viktor is willing to chat with people on his porch occasionally, but nobody is getting invited inside, because years of watching true-crime documentaries have apparently turned his living room into a heavily restricted diplomatic compound. Other people hide, ignore the bell, let the dogs bark, or wonder why the stranger standing outside cannot simply communicate through a text message like a civilized life-form. The phone receives the same treatment: an unexpected call usually means an emergency or somebody preparing to consume an entire afternoon with a conversation that could have been three sentences. Viktor wonders whether he's becoming antisocial, admits he's been in a funk, and suggests that what he really needs is a staycation during which he can remain inside, avoid expenses, and finally confront the laundry mountain that has been haunting him since the previous geological era.

Then comes the freak news, and the subject is the plague. Viktor discusses a report about alleged plague developments involving Russia and concerns about its spread, immediately connecting the subject to his upcoming airplane trip. October already seems to deliver him some kind of illness every year, and flying has a suspiciously reliable history of leaving him feeling sick, so combining the two sounds like a spectacular way to spend his vacation recovering under a blanket. He talks about masks, travelers coughing in enclosed spaces, and his history of wearing a mask partly because he enjoyed irritating strangers who became inexplicably angry about someone covering their own face. At one point, he describes driving around Idaho Falls alone in his pickup wearing a mask and waving at furious motorists, a hobby that apparently delivered more entertainment than many legitimate recreational activities. A caller named Brian phones in to support the idea that getting angry at someone for taking precautions is ridiculous, and the two discuss the bizarre emotional investment some people have in what other people wear. Viktor even jokes about provoking an unruly passenger at the airport simply by wearing a mask, although the underlying subject is the absurdity of turning another person's health precautions into a personal confrontation. The segment takes a darker detour when Viktor discusses a proposed livestreamed public execution and the likelihood that footage could spread online. He distinguishes an officially broadcast execution from horrific footage recorded by bystanders and circulated for clicks, criticizing the people who upload and redistribute violent material. He recalls seeing the aftermath of a motorcycle accident in Island Park and explains that real death is not the entertaining spectacle some corners of the internet appear to believe it is. The discussion is grim, angry, and focused on the way online attention can turn human suffering into content. Just when the show needs a hard left turn away from humanity's worst impulses, Viktor finds the perfect subject: people throwing hot dogs at houses. Finally, a crime against property that might leave behind nothing more dangerous than a confused homeowner and a slightly flattened frankfurter.

A second caller, Anthony, brings news that the lead singer of Highly Suspect has reported testing ...