In this episode, we discuss important stuff in the news such as a doggy surfing competition in California and a seventeenth-century child’s anti-vampire grave that has been discovered in Poland (no stereotypes there!). For her Piece of Stuff, Ashley closely examines a set of eighteenth-century Samurai armor and the accompanying helmet and reveals clues that indicate that it may have been used more for swaggering than for battle. Bad Lad Vlad, of impaling and inspiring Bram Stoker’s Dracula fame, is the subject of Tracey’s Piece of Stuff this week, as she takes probably too deep of a dive into what proteins left behind on a tax receipt by the fifteenth-century voivode of Wallachia can tells us about his health conditions, the hot mess that was Wallachian politics, and how Vlad got his reputation for cruelty.