This Circus Dentist Defied the Law and Pulled Teeth for Fame

12-17-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 So what would you do if you went to the dentist and your dentist had a necklace of teeth around their neck? Huh? Also a hippo in the dentist office like a live real life it both. That's right. This week we're learning about painless Parker, a traveling dentist in the eighteen hundreds, who was basically like a circus. They were on the town and he would do dentists work is like a 00:17 Hey, come one, come all, I'll pull all your teeth out. This episode was recommended to us by our member, Michael, the grandpa of Tillen. We appreciate this. The best way to get recommendations to us is by becoming a member. You can do that at tillen.com slash support. This comes out, what day is it? December 17th? Yeah, Merry Christmas. I think I'm done for the year. There's no more public, like most of the stuff I do in December is like Christmas parties and stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. So I mean, I'm not home a lot in December, but, and I, you know. 00:44 we can't hang out, but I'm sure by this point I've got shows booked for the next year, so you can always find my shows at jaronmyers.com slash shows or at paulredtheactor.com. Speaking of private shows, this isn't one of them. Tell your friends about them. We want everyone to know that this show exists, so thanks. Thanks for watching. If this is your first time, if you were googling this dentist and you've just found this episode, this is a comedy podcast, so you are going to learn the info, but we're going to joke around a lot on the way, so please don't get mad at that. 01:13 Yeah. And if you hate it, we've got 200 other episodes you can check out. So thanks for being here. 01:21 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of painless Parker painless Parker painless Parker like painless painless yeah okay like pay less, but if pay was pain pain pain less Parker, this is him to give you an idea of the era. Okay, this photo was taken three years ago. It's a it's a filter filter. It's an issue. This is back when Instagram started yeah, a painless Parker 01:49 take a guess. What do you think pain this parker does? I'm curious if you can get to this. I think he is a businessman. I think that he that's one way to put it. I guess sure. O was in the mob no oh, but I could see it. Honestly, I didn't think about that before. Parker, but there's a chance that that's is he a hit man? No, no, we're not. We're not back to back hit head episodes. Okay, and this no painless parker born eighteen seventy two in 02:19 Pianamuth Creek, New Brunswick, Canada, okay, so he's a Canadian. If that gives you any idea about him was he was an interesting guy because he as a kid was not like the most astute person in the most astute kid. I had a hard time in school kind of I wouldn't say dumb, but you know just didn't do great. He's teacher would have especially in that. I wouldn't say dumb. A lot of other people would though. Yeah, I want to say dumb 02:48 but as a teacher I would so he went to a KDA University in Nova Scotia okay where Nova Scotia okay? You got a problem with this? Why I'm saying that you do you think man he was expelled from Nova from a KDA University? Huh? You called I feel great. He's crossing your arms over there. Yeah, it's just how I talk some. Just put your sweater back on. Why don't you just shut up? Are you cold? I feel great. I've never felt better. He I just I can't 03:17 I'm distracted because I cross my arms because you're over here. I cross my arms sometimes whatever I piece it now sometimes. Why did you say that? What so what so I cross my arms I PC that was that to do with anything you could have said anything else 03:44 we don't see that video. Some I said it. That's how I said it, just like the guy in the videos that I referenced the video. I don't spend. I don't have internet. I've seen that video. What video you talk about? It's a video where a guy the exact way I said I cross my arm. Sometimes it's a video. The guy's just on like selfie cam and he's like he's like I P sitting down sometimes. So what if I P sitting down sometimes? Sometimes I like to peace sitting down and we're on different sides of tick tock 04:12 I only go on the stem channel. Why did they do that? 04:19 I only follow and it's like not even update good. It's so yeah. You just have to tag your video stuff. It's like here's how soil works and you're like oh God, give it out in weird people. I need to get back. I got to get back to the weirds. It's because it's because they're trying to block it in the US and they're trying to tell the US away. We're so no, no, no, no, there's smart stuff on. We're there. So I there's some on here. Yeah, let your kids watch 04:49 your pee when you're standing up versus when you're sitting down and how the velocity of the way that the water hits water it's better for the environment better for the environment and I'm trying to save baby seals. Yeah, that's a thing. It's a thing. So what if I cross my arm sometimes? See you're doing it? Yeah, I'm freezing and you're in a t shirt over. I was just worried about you. I've never felt better. Okay, so painless Peyton Manning 05:17 so painless by my patent, his I'm painless man, so I should say his name isn't painless. It's Edgar Edgar R. R. Parker. He so he got expelled from Acadia University and after that he's like well, maybe I can go to the Baptist Seminary in New Brunswick, so he goes there. He also gets expelled from the Baptist Seminary, and so he says well, these this isn't working for me. 05:44 and so he becomes a door to door salesman selling pots and pans and stuff. Yeah, and this is the 18 nineties. Yeah, it would be eighteen nineties about and so the silver dollar city era, if you will. Yeah, but he's in Canada, so I don't know what they're at. What do you think they were ahead of us? Well, yeah, but but some of our city was super American 18, so whatever the Canadian version of solar city would be. What do you think the eighteen nineties were like across the world? 06:11 I mean it was similar, but what I'm saying is it's not as patriotic like the like some of our city's super patriotic is he weird if you were in Canada in the eighteen nineties and they were like the American flag. Isn't it? They say hey, we hate this country and you're like what and you're like we're in Branson, Missouri. We freaking hate this place. I'll tell you what we love Nova Scotia. We love it up there and I give us Scott. No urinals in this park. We peace it down. 06:40 like true Canadians. You're like well, this part's way different than I thought. I was no one expected. Where's all the roller coasters? It's just just there's no year at all. No roller coasters, none of the roller coasters have seats though. That's interesting. Yeah, you have to stand up and all those 07:00 it's like those it's like it's it's stand while you we sit while you P. That's what they are saying. That's what we call it stand while you we like I know what you do, but then sit while you but they have bathroom attendance, so they make sure they're like like hey that's not the bathroom police. Hey, you got to sit while you do that. I see you hovering 07:28 I see you hovering over it. I was in I want to see skin to see contact. I was like I have a season pass holder and they're like we don't care. It's like it's like when I was in sixth grade and dude every time we're doing an insanely wild out there bit every time dude you're like this reminds me so much of the time when I was in 08:05 time it is for bill is just like my software. You're a high school. What are you talking about? Never go ahead, so great, so you know it reminds me a park like this. It was when when I was in sixth grade, we went to water world in Denver. Oh, you can go anywhere there. Rims and they had a ride. I think it was called the land before time, but it wasn't based on the movie, but the idea was it was like dinosaurs is land before time. 08:34 and they had a that was the sign and then they had a nail like a new sign right next to very poorly not affiliated with the movie though. It's what I had to do with the chick-fil-a rap or I had to go edit the captioning yeah not affiliated yeah exactly and they it was like you went through to do it. They knew the whole time and they were like hey put this out there. We're going to do a co-optive you know yeah, but then they were waiting for the reception and yeah yeah you know that's how politics work yeah and so 09:02 the ride, you go through the cave and that's all stormy and then the dinosaurs and then the comet hits and you come outside. That's the ride. And then the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are dead. You come out. But you're in the cave and so you kind of, especially if you're a kid, you have this illusion that like no one's watching. And so one of my friends, we'll call him Jeff because that's his name, Jeff gets out of the raft and is like trying to swim through the ride. And the second he steps out of the raft, there's a whistle from somewhere. 09:31 and they're like back in the raft and you got here from standing up peon. Why is the same thing you're out of theme park, European sit European, standing up and you hear a whistle in the bathroom. The guy's like a you got to sit down. You got to sit down while you do that is the same thing got to make contact. It got up my I'm going to check when you're 10:00 I have a little thermometer and I go around. I check the temperature of the seeds too cold. I would rather throw up my guts in a public bathroom than sit on a warm toilet seat. I'll tell you what I sit down. I go what has touched that's not cold enough 10:20 that's why that's why we invented hello sharks. You ever sat on a one toilet seat sucks right? That's why we have a little fan like you know those ones you point yourself. You're like you know theme park. We have a fan to cool down down the toilet seat. The toilet yeah also works on the other side of your pillow and make it cool and make your pillow cold, so it's just a fan. So what you're telling me is you just make up a I nailed fan is all a cool. Thanks sharks, stay cool. 10:50 trick your brain into thinking someone else has never touched that toilet seat in public. That's our slogan. We're working on it. That's also in the slogan. That's our slogan. We're working another business. I do moving trucks. If you know, okay, so painless Parker, so he's door to door selling, selling pots and pay on pots and pans yeah, but he's having a hard time making a living. I guess yet. What did they sell back then the 11:20 these pots and pans yeah, but he's having a hard time making the living off that he doesn't really enjoy the work. Hey, sir, good morning. Are you happy with the pots and pans you got in your home? No, of course not. He's like doing the pre the door presentation. Yeah, yeah, you would go viral on the ring doorbell thing. That's what you got to hope if you're one of the story guys. You got to be really good at it and so he he's not making a livable wage, so he goes and he's like well, maybe I can be a ship hand and so he sure 11:47 gets a job working as a ship and traveling the oceans, the oceans, realizes he hates, he hates the ocean. And so then he comes back, hates the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. So he's like, he's like, well, the experience just wasn't good. Do oceans have borders? Yeah. There's, I mean, what? Yeah. There's every, every, every nation has their 12:14 What's the word for that their zone? There's a zone there's a wind is the Pacific Ocean become? Oh yeah, we do have a line. There is a line and it's actually really interesting. The Pacific and the what sea is that? Is it the red sea? No, there's a when the Pacific meets a specific ocean that you can see it and the water looks a different color. No, are you serious? That's not true. You don't know about this. You made that up 12:41 Okay, it is the Atlantic. It's at the point where the Atlantic and the Pacific meet. Look at this. This is going to blow your mind. I can't believe you haven't heard of this. It's wild. Okay, show me. This is this is I cannot believe you didn't know about this. They don't mix. That's what's crazy is the water won't mix between the Atlantic and the Pacific, so there's a very clear border. No, that's the same color. Oh my God, you know about this. You're gaslighting me right now. You knew about this from the start. Never seen this. 13:10 Look, this is AI, dude. Oh, it's real from the boats. That's crazy. Yeah, that's real. Which one's the Pacific? I think it's the brighter one. I think the Atlantic is the dirty. I've been on some cruises. I know which one it is. I think the Atlantic is the dirty big old blue one is the Atlantic looks like the Gulf where I spend my days slinging jokes. You know I'm saying all right anyways, so paying this worked on the ship. Yeah, 13:38 didn't love that came back, got a job working in a warehouse and got hired for a job. The guy told him that he was going to pay him. I think it was 10 cents a week, which obviously it's a different time, right? But to put that in reference, if adjusted for inflation, that'd be $55 a week. So my great at all terrible. And so the story goes that he was carrying, I think it was the I think it was a warehouse. 14:06 and the warehouse like had like light bulbs or something or something glass. I don't remember exactly was something glass and he the guy told him he said yeah we're going to pay you ten cents a week and edgar when upon hearing this dropped the glass whatever it was and it shattered and he walked out and that was the last day he saw those guys he's like yeah i'm not yeah get out of ten oh ten cents wow don't do favors and so plus benefits 14:35 and so after that he was like well. He said all these jobs I'm trying to do are you can't make good money doing any of them, and so he said you know what I'll do what I heard you can make a lot of money doing. You know what I'll do medicine, and so he goes to New York College of Dentistry thinking. I don't know. I haven't been able to get through any school before. Let me do that. So he applies for the school and he's working there at the school or he's doing school, but obviously still needs to 15:04 How is he pay survive? Yeah, so needs to survive, so he's while he's doing school. He's like about six weeks in he's like. I think I know enough. I get this point yeah, stop it, so he starts going door to door in New York and he's like he's like hey, I'm a dentist. Did you t there let me look at them teeth? Yeah, he's like your teeth are I can pull them and so he's going door to door yanking people's and people are like yeah. Actually, my tooth does hurt 15:34 he's just like hey, you open the door already. Why are we just tying a string around that when you shut it? No, it would come in with a little forceps and stuff and because we will be like yeah lean lean your chair up against the counter as on dude and all your to think of that. That's like that's in the relative time. That's not a long time ago. No yeah, not at all, not at all. This is where we were as a people 16:02 Well, I think I open this up for that. We all think that was crazy. What are you talking about? That was 16:15 That was so normal what I did. I did not do anything weird. No, I did not do anything weird. Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! 16:29 in the early days of this show, we did like affiliate ads where we were like a sign up for grammarly and use code till and and we got like fifteen cents and now we just do patreon. It's a much better way. It's better for us as creators. It's better for you as listeners and it's a much more fun way for us to interact. We do monthly hangouts like on zoom. We just hang out and play games online and and get to know each other. It's a really fun time. So 16:56 but still use our code till in at grammerly dot com because I think it's still. I might get like a couple cents from that, but join us on patreon because we're having a great time. If you don't, we're going to have to start doing mobile game ads. 17:13 so okay. I'm saying like that wasn't that long ago. That was like relatively. You know it was a hundred and thirty years ago, but yeah, but I mean here's a thing. It wasn't like this was accepted behavior because the college found out about the college found out about this. What the heck man yeah, the college found out and they were like you're expelled so that he got kicked out of school immediately because they were like yeah. You can't do that. He's again but I pulled a couple teeth before now I got the now. I understand it. 17:43 Yeah, he's like I get it. I now I understand it and so he's like fine. He's like if you guys won't take me, I'll go to the Philadelphia Dento College. Yeah, work doesn't travel. Yeah, he goes to Philadelphia and they're like and they're in the screening and they're like. Have you ever been expelled from a school for trying to pull teeth going door to door and he's like he's like that's an oddly specific question. I did not do anything weird. Did not do anything. We're as a terasy. That's a perfectly normal thing to do. I did not do anything. We're like okay, you're accepted. 18:11 And so he goes, he plays by the rules, And so then he goes back to New Brunswick, And he sits there, he rents a space and he sits there for six weeks considered unethical to advertise dental services 18:41 and so nobody ever did it and so why unethical yeah. I mean I think I I don't know, but I'm going to be honest. It sounds probably fair. I mean you like I think like you should be able to put your name out there, but to like advertise for it. Oh, sure, sure, sure, and they did used to be in the barber shops. Yeah, they were just the back of the barber shop, the back room in the barber shop, but he had six weeks with no with no 19:10 You got a bad tooth, we got a guy in the back crazy hundred and thirty years ago. That's not that long ago. That's crazy. That's true and so he didn't get a single patient. Now you're the dentist and they go hey, by the way, you have eight cavities. You don't. You need to get a second opinion on the number of cavities that a dentist tells you you have because that's how they're ran. They know you don't know how to prove that. Yeah, that's true. They're scamming you. Yeah, yeah. If you go to the dentist and every time you go, you have cavities 19:39 you don't have cavities. You have a bad dentist yeah or either that or you're eating way too much candy. That's also possible. I guess, but you can verify that by going to another dentist. Yeah, that's a new teeth. You're like whoa yeah yeah. 19:59 I'll pull them for. Can I please pull your teeth meeting someone and say can I please? I was going to meet you, got you handcuffed, I'm going to pull your teeth, got you under contract under arrest and now under anesthesia. Huh? Hey, I mean you I'm gonna pull your teeth and that's an insane thing. What 20:29 you know, there's a room back there. You don't want those your mouth anymore than I want them in your mouth. Do you yeah it's got what you think about is kind of annoying that they're there right? Like you feel it, I'm you hate them to right right now. You hate them to hit him too right. I can tell you ate him so he's been rid of those for you. He's been six weeks with no patience sure one one evening he's talking to his landlord. I don't know. I guess people were friends with them back then and so he's like he's like yeah man. I just I can't get any patience to come back to my 20:58 my dental office. I don't know what to do and he's like. I know it's not ethical, but he's like I'm considering considering getting into advertising. He's like. I think that putting a sign out yeah, maybe things might go better if I advertise and his landlord is like well, as luck would have it, one of my friends by the name of William B, he used to work for P T Barnum and he knows a lot about advertises names was super stupid back. 21:28 You know, really a BB, shut up, dude. Oh, you know, as luck would have it, William BB, Bill BB, yeah, Bill BB, Bill BB, or you know, Bill BB, Bill BB, your little bill BB, BB. So what if I BB sitting down sometimes 21:54 I'm a cow. That reminds me of when I was in the sixth grade. 22:02 so he so his landlord connects him with William B, B sure who just recently retired from working with P T Barnum the circus guy. We have an episode about P T. We do yeah. You can go back and check that out. He's standing up 22:20 he he meets him and they get to talking and he says hey, like check this out. I know a lot about circuses, you know, and so he says what if we take this on the road and so they put together a dentist circus and they they rent a wagon. They get a band together and what they do is they started going from town to town across Canada. They roll in with the ran a wagon. They'd hit the city center 22:49 and the band would come out. The band would start playing attract a crowd and then Edgar would walk out and he would say it's me painless Parker and he would talk like a like a circus like folks. It's me painless Parker gather one gather all and then he would do his like a speech on you got bad teeth. I can see him from here. Well, what he would do is he do a speech on dental health 23:14 he'd be like he'd be like make sure you brush your teeth every day and you floss yeah stay away from sticky foods and treats and then he says he says this is how you're going to protect yourself going forward and he says also if there's anyone in the crowd today that has a sore tooth, I can pull it for you right here right now and if my name isn't painless, it's not going to hurt and so he would like pull their teeth in the back of the wagon. Would it hurt 23:37 oh it would hurt really bad, but what they did is they had the band plays. You couldn't hear him screaming and so yeah also 23:52 Oh yeah, we're going on tour next month. We just secured it. We just secured a huge tour man. It's gonna be a while we're hitting all fifty states. It's gonna be crazy to you know really a hours an opening act, you know, and then we play kind of during the middle of the show. So really who you open him for a band called painless Parker, dude. I think you know 24:12 Lincoln Parker Lincoln Park, Painless Parker, I don't know. They do the songs from the Transformers movies. You know the movies with the wagons turn into road like the wagons turn into robot. I don't really know what that is. I don't know what a movie I don't get. It's not for me dude. I don't watch movies man. I only I just make you know my my art. I just make my moonshine 24:43 I just make my moonshine and I P standing up and that's the that's the gig life for me man. It was you think we're ever going to stop smoking or like in a band bro. This is what we do. Rats might be the next cigarettes. I got my cigarettes might be the next big thing getting into you. You right. You tried this yeah. You heard about cocaine, so he is traveling town to town doing this thing. It's just so crazy to be on tour with a dentist. That's insane. It is pretty insane. 25:12 thirty three minutes by the way, close, but no cigar okay, and so he okay and so like already told me we're not going. You already said that you had to bring it up in the episode close to the cigar, and so people are screaming and the band can't play loud enough and so so they start giving so start giving people whiskey, so they're like okay, hey before you sit down, take a shot. 25:42 and the next week. This is the best dentist ever. I love this place. This is a great. That's why the barber serves beer dude. You know that Barbara's so anyway, we got to get your drug real quick. I don't even know me. I feel great right now and the whiskey wasn't working very good and so he ends up in one of the off seasons partnering with a local pharmacist to develop 26:11 his like a painkiller. Yeah, his pain powder, I think is what he called it. Okay, and so he would sprinkle that in. Oh, did he make ibuprofen? Yeah, he was sprinkled out in their mouth whenever to, you know, pull. I got like a cold sore on it on the inside of my lip and I got some of that stuff to put on it and then I the first time I did, I took too much and so my it got all over my tongue and so my tongue was just tingly for thirty minutes. I hated it. Yeah, that sucks. 26:39 yeah, so it's very similar concept. It would numb the it was like a way you just responded to me is the same way I respond when you go on your UAP rants where you're just freaking like oh my gosh man, do you think there's a lans the bottom of the ocean? The sharks are all in on it and the sharks all know each other and they're like oh look at those aliens down there and then I go man. My tongue was numb last night and you're like okay, I think 27:09 so what he was given them, he was giving them cocaine. He was giving everybody cocaine now. I was making a joke. I was making a joke about that. Yeah, that was the times, but yeah, he was giving everyone cocaine yeah, and that was how he was making them. He figure that out. Did someone just give him the pharmacist? Okay, the cocaine wasn't everything. Everybody was like cocaine's this magic thing you can put in anything and it makes everything better. If you use a little bit of cocaine and so that's what they were doing 27:37 Oh, a spoon full of cocaine, go down exactly. That was the original song. They had to change it for the end. They did. That's true and they photoshopped out his cigarettes, so they would. So they would jump in the town. The band would start playing. They would give his speech and then pull people aside and then he'd give him a little bit sneak him some cocaine, pull the teeth and then they become addicts for the rest of their life and this was his show. 28:05 He would tour around doing the show. I love that. And I love that guy. That dentist was crazy. The best dentist I've ever seen. I love that guy. And so he started to become almost like a household name, traveled this traveling dentist circus thing. And people would wait for him to come to town to see, went for their dental needs. They're like, oh, Painless Parker's going to be here soon. And he continually upped the ante on his circus 28:35 And so like he would have tightrope walkers. He had people that did the ring things. He got an elephant and he would ride in his town on the elephant. I was literally about to make a joke. He had a hippopotamus and he would start, he started opening the hippo's mouth and putting it around his mouth while he did the extractions from people. And so he'd be pulling people's teeth with his head inside a hippo mouth. 29:06 I'm just trying to think like why I mean it's a circus from this era. It's a circus okay, and so and he would when he showed up. It was kind of like this marathon of he's like he's like you need your teeth pulled you need your teeth pulled and he just pulled people's teeth and they were they were paying for this. Yeah, so it was fifty srein can hand or a fist. It was fifty cents per extraction and if they said it hurt he would 29:30 give them five dollars if he said it hurt. It never hurt because they were high. They were high on cocaine. Yeah. And so even if they said it, he would just gaslight them. How many would he do a day, do you know? Well, he did a lot. He would do a lot. His record, he said, was 357. And he, you're going to love this, he hung onto those and he made a little necklace that he started wearing to all of his shows. Ah! Shit, they were fine. 30:01 off. Here's a here's a close up of that necklace allegedly from that one day. I don't know. I don't maybe, maybe, maybe, but yeah, there he is. He would wear the top hat and the necklace sanders with a with a tooth necklace. It looks like those smarty necklaces you used to get as a kid. Human teeth 30:23 Oh, I hate that and so they tore for a while him and his friend William. Yeah, there's out there rip the road dog and oh my gosh, I hate sorry that maybe feel 30:38 Thanks for checking out this episode. In that mailing list, we give updates on past episodes. and every week things are changing. So if you want to keep learning stuff, in the Tillon verse. 31:04 I like that. I've never said Till and Verse before, but I'm Till and Verse, that's the best place to do it. You can go to text tilland to 66866. There's a lot of ways to sign up for going on in the Till and Verse. 31:30 And after a few years of this, William is like, Nope. And so they start opening up stores. and they would put all this advertising on it. 31:59 and painless dentistry, yes me painless Parker, and so his thing was he was he was the painless dentist. New York's wonderful wizard of painless dentistry. Yeah and so he would he was the only dentist that would give you cocaine and so he was known for it and so they got they got an actual brick and mortar location with quite a bit of coke. Then yeah, 32:26 actually yeah a lot. A lot of you know he was using it recreationally, maybe probably yeah brick and mortar. They got a brick and mortar and they covered it with all these pay Parker signs in New York City and they actually started branching out and within just a few years they had seventeen locations across the states. Here's his San Francisco location and they all had this become cbs, doesn't it it might actually yeah. That might be a cbs now 32:55 and so he seventeen offices and now he's got all these other dentists underneath them that are working in there giving people coke, pulling their teeth, putting their heads in hippos. They're like, why is there a hippo in this dentist office? He's like, oh, you want to see some cool here? Love this. You're going to love this and he's still touring and so by the I ran out of masks to keep me you know, spit from off and I got to use this hippo. Yeah, yeah and so oh sorry I misspoke. He had 33:24 twenty eight offices and was employing over seventy five dentists and he was grossing three million dollars a year in nineteen. This is like nineteen thirteen and so adjusted for inflation. That's ninety six million dollars a year doing this weird dentistry and so crazy. Obviously, some other dentists start to have some problem with this because he's 33:52 taking a lot of business from them. And also like it's unethical in the industry to advertise for yourself. And he's very, very advertising. And they're also sketched out about the painless thing. And so this- They start going undercover. Well, this commission comes together and they put together this commission to basically pass a law. It starts in California, ends up passing nationwide later. But in California, where if you're a dentist, your office has to be named after your legal name. 34:22 he can't have his office called painless parker anymore because his name is ed Edgar Parker, so he legally changed his first name to painless on dude. That's what I'm talking about. He's like he's like I'm married to the game 34:44 but oh yeah, Edgar is my maiden name. Now it's painless because I'm married to the game. That's crazy, so yeah, so I respect that so much. I mean here's the thing he's making ninety eight million a year. Of course you're changing your name to painless in that scenario like of course yeah, of course you are Chad Ocho Cinco right there dude, so painless 35:15 is having a great career, he's doing the road dog thing, right, and William Beebe and him are like buds. And then one day on the road. Yeah, Beebe's getting rich off of them. And then one day. One day on the road. Beebe mysteriously dies. Beebe suffers a stroke and dies. That's what I'm saying, too much cocaine. Honestly, probably. And this was really, really hard for Painless. Painless, he actually, 35:44 I hate now that I'm just calling him painless. Yeah, but he was painless. Now he on Parker. I like painless. Okay, and so painless painless is very affected by this and he actually gets institutionalized for a little bit because it was such a major flaw on him. And after that he comes out and he kind of he's kind of changed like he's still into the dentistry thing, but he's not 36:14 as passionate about it. He stops doing the road shows. He sells off a lot of his locations to the dentists that were operating it and after a few years he all but retires from dentistry and I mean at this point he's made enough to survive off for years, but eventually the call you can't you can't deny the call and so he gets back in neither call, so he gets back into the game continues every time I think about quit and stand up. 36:44 Yeah, you know, I'm not going to rob the world of this gift that God gave them. Yeah, you're right that God gave them so I have no choice. I am but a vessel. That's why my legal name is Jaren Myers comedy. Okay, my legal name is at Jaren Meyers. 37:10 You add the at to your first name. That's insane. 37:18 so he gets into it. He gets back into it, opens up it or it still has one of his remaining shots continues to work out of there. The San Francisco Lo take location moves into the apartment upstairs gets married, has a son, names his son painless jr. That's true and then a couple other kids that he didn't name and then he was just like Maria. Yeah, he cares 37:43 who cares you're at the first no sorry that was it was painless. It was Maria and then who cares that was okay. I see it yeah because his wife was kind of dumb. She said what I want to name this one. Who cares she's like I don't hate that I like that works. All right, you 38:08 It's kind of dumb and so then he he put together all these dental care products. He started selling the powders, the toothpaste, all this different stuff, right mouthwash and made good money off of all that and ended up working until he died as a dentist and hold on. Let's see nineteen fifty two at the age of eighty 38:34 And his products were still all over all sorts of stuff. But the second he died, a commission came together and outlaw a lot of the products he sold. And I mean, a lot of it kind of was, but he didn't. 39:00 He wasn't like a professional. Everybody kind of acted. They called him a showman, not a dentist. Okay. And I don't know. I think it's an interesting thing. And if you read like dental journals, they have this weird love hate relationship with them because they do a credit him as being someone who really made dental health mainstream because he was such a good advertiser. I'm a dental health advocate. How's your dental health right now? 39:28 exactly and so they were like they're like they think that because of what he did like that's dental teeth brushing and stuff like that wouldn't have become such a big deal like he was a person teeth brushing yeah stuff like that teeth brushing mouth washing teeth brushing all this stuff that we do to care for our teeth yeah probably wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for him. He was the pioneer of that. I mean eventually would have I mean dentures existed, but maybe I don't know 39:56 He was a pioneer in making all that something that the general public wanted to do. Well, you know what the myth about George Washington's dentures was. Oh, that they were wooden teeth. Yeah, but they were really... Yeah, they were something worse, something way worse. We'll let you Google it later. You can Google that. And so the dental journals nowadays are like, yeah, we can appreciate him for what he did for the industry. Yeah. But they... 40:26 are they don't like him because he wasn't very professional about it. I guess sure, you know, sure, sure, and so there's a weird relationship with them. His college, though, has a has a like, I don't know what you call it named after him. It's it's not a hall, but they have like a display in like their historical dental museum that they have there. Okay, and Philadelphia dentistry school. Yeah, they've changed their name to the dental university school of dentistry. The ten cents, sorry temple 40:54 temple University School of Dentistry, okay, temple University School of Dentistry. They have a history of dental museum and in that museum he has a display dedicated to him and that display has his teeth, necklace and it also has a wooden bucket full of teeth that he pulled himself because he kept them all. I guess and I guess when that's psychotic when he was traveling, he would keep those those teeth at the 41:20 in the bucket and so there'd be a bucking like we got all in here. Look at all the teeth I got yeah. Look, I've done this hundreds of times yeah yeah you can. You can count how many teeth I've pulled none of these. That's actually one of the carnival games. I guess how many guess how many teeth are in every teeth right here and so they're like they're like yeah he promoted it. He made it a big deal, but like we don't like the way he did it. It was kind of weird the way he did it and we don't really support that, but like yeah good on him for making it a big deal and so they out a lot of stuff coincidentally. 41:48 The person who led that charge in like banning all this stuff and taking the name off of all those office was a guy by the name of painless Parker Jr. Because he hated his dad. He was so mad. He was also a dentist. He grew up. He became a dentist, but he was a serious dentist. Like he took it seriously and he was like my dad kind of suck. He resented him for naming him painless. And so the second he died, he like 42:18 got back at him and took his name all and he changed his name and he changed his crest. He changed his name to Edgar. That's true. He did really change his name to Edgar. He changed his name to Edgar, but waited for his dad to die, so that tells me his dad beat him with that tooth. Nicholas. Oh yeah, I can't like I can't change my name until he's dead. Well, think about that though. Your dad has a bucket of human bro, 42:44 You're not going to be like maybe I should stand up to this guy and I guarantee at home this coked out crazy eighty year old with a bucket of teeth. I guarantee that when when painless junior was thirteen painless senior sat him down one day and said hey my name might be painless, but it's not painless to you. I guarantee that happened. This hurts you more than it hurts me. You know why, because I'm on cocaine 43:10 I don't feel a thing. I haven't felt anything since 1893. 43:17 so I want to see contact 43:22 Yeah, so that's that's painless Parker, the crazy crazy that's Colonel Sanders of teeth. Yeah, he also looks like Kellogg. He looks like Kellogg. Yeah, yeah, which it might have been kind of the thing at that in that era like doc look like that like that. Yeah, yeah, I just can't believe the tooth necklace. That's crazy. Yeah, so next time you go to the dentist, I mean bring it up, maybe just go to the circus, ask him be like hey 43:51 you guys got to be hippos got any cocaine here. I heard that was a thing. I heard that was like something that I hear that. Oh, I listen to this podcast hosted by Tim Stone and fiddle off Myers 44:13 Hey, thanks for watching this episode. If you like it, we've got another one called John R. Brinkley. He's another guy that worked in medicine, but was a little weird and had a bunch of medical boards trying to take him down. So if you like this one, make sure you check that one out. It's linked below or in some of the buttons, you can click all over the screen. If you like this show and you want to support, the best way to do it is by becoming a member. You can do that at tilland.com slash support. Our members make this show possible. They also get tons of great perks, like this episode, ad free early access. They get access to a Discord with our hosts and our producers and a lot of other, 44:43 awesome perks. So that helps to support the show. And also you get some stuff out of it. So it's a great deal. This show is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcast Network. You can check out all of their shows and more about the network at ever Thanks for watching our show. We really love that you're here enjoying this with us. We'll see you next week on Things I Learned Last Night.

What would you do if your dentist wore a necklace made of human teeth? Sounds wild, right? This was the reality for Painless Parker, a dentist unlike any other in history. Parker’s story blends dental work, circus acts, and a love for showmanship that made him famous (and infamous) during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Let’s explore how this … Read More

Rent a HITMAN? How a Parody Website Catches REAL Criminals

12-10-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things to learn last night. Exciting news. We are officially part of the evergreen podcast network to find out more about them or their other shows. Go to evergreen podcasts dot com. We're so excited to be working with them. 00:13 and continue to grow our dumb little show. You know, there's a website where you can rent a hit man. Yeah, it's rent a hit man dot com very hard to find. Yeah, turns out it was someone who made a website was trying to do a different service, but people really thought it was a hit man website. So they started submitting requests like legitimately to get a hit man for a hit man. Yeah great episode. This one's recommended by one of our patrons. Her name's happy Shira. 00:37 in our discord. If you want to recommend an episode, that's the best place that you can do it. Become a patron and send us your recommendations for shows. Yeah, of course, and this comes out in december. I'm busy, but you can't come to them because of private shows. I'm busy, but you know they're private shows. They're actually no, just kidding. Tomorrow in Tulsa, Oklahoma, december eleventh, I'll be there's a show you can come to. Yeah, so if you're a tall site, it's coming to that a tall sin, unless you're a hit man, 01:05 don't do that then stay at home. So this is a great episode. Thanks for joining us. This is a comedy podcast where you're going to learn about the topic, but also we joke around and laugh a lot, and so hopefully you enjoy it, and if you hate this episode, there's two hundred other ones to hate go watch all the other ones and tell us about it in the comments, comments, comments, we want it yeah. We love thanks for being here. 01:30 Hey man, what's up man? Are we rolling? Yeah, we've got the whole thing sweet cool. Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of rent a hit man dot com? Huh? Have you ever heard of rent a hit man? No, I heard rent a hit man, a hit man dot com. Yes rent a hit man dot com. 01:56 No, I think we should acknowledge that we look like we're in a hit man place. Yeah, we look like we're like waiting for the drop. You know, saying like this looks like we're yeah. We hit the little rewind. We thought it'd be fun to rewind for a second. Yeah, but all the way back to when we first got in this studio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're, if you're listening on audio, we're back where we did our episodes like way before, like not the very first duty. We switched studios several times now. We do it a lot. 02:24 on our first every year. We're like, let's switch it up a little bit. Yeah, you know we were here for two years. We were in this one probably the longest on yeah yeah yeah we're not back, but we're just here for the we thought I thought it'd be fun. We thought it'd be fun to be in here sure for a few episodes. So we're here and right now it looks like we're in a warehouse. It looks like we're waiting for. We look like we're at the beginning of a saw movie where you're just sitting in an open room and it's like ah yeah ah you know what's what's going to happen. So anyway, he's going to get sod. 02:54 rent a hit man, a hit man dot com rent a hit. I don't think did you go to it? Yeah, I don't think you should that's on a list. It's fine. No, it's fine. It's I think it's fine. It's probably all right. Is it run by you hall? You're looking for a moving truck, yeah, or you're looking for a moving truck. If you know what we mean yeah, and that's what it is moving truck. If you know what I mean dot com 03:26 like the just subtly like if you know what I mean, what are you pointing at? Go to go daddy dot com and see if we can find moving truck. If you know what I mean dot com gosh are our bill on go daddies get we're paying like six hundred dollars a year for the we really are. It's getting too much. It's not too much. So wait hold on rent. No, no, no, moving truck, moving. You know what I mean. If you know what I mean that is that this 03:55 I don't know if I don't know if you're gonna believe this. It's a veil. How much I mean the same price any dumb domain is we're doing dot biz or dot com. I don't know. I feel like we should 04:16 wish probably dot com. This yeah, let's see. Let's see moving if dot com is available. If you know what moving truck, if you know what I mean dot com, I'm oh that's cheaper than dot biz actually a wow yeah. We're going to do that for sure. We're going to redirect it to you hall moving truck. If you know what I mean dot com okay cheese, so no rent to hit man similar, but different was founded by a guy named Bob and as this is him, Bob and as 04:46 which I don't like that way. He's standing like this. This is this is how business he's standing like he thinks this is what landlords look like. You know, that's not a landlord. That's what I guess that's clearly not a landlord, but that's what he thinks a landlord looks like. I guess it is like when the landlord walks in and they're like hey, we're not going to refund your deposit. Your hot water's been out for two weeks. Bob started this site okay, 05:15 in two thousand five Bob Inez, cool hands guy. Sure. He started the site in two thousand five and it was actually so he he's an interesting guy because he got into the I T space and he had a hard time. So he moved to Napa Valley in two thousand five and he graduated from the police academy and he after 05:43 I guess they were out of you say they had too many cops, a cop job, a cop job. That's what that's what it is. It's a cop job. Okay, he's like I can't find any kind of he set up a sting. He was like you know what will get me a cop job. I catch people, build up, but I got to build a resume, yeah, build a resume as a freelance crime fire before they'll let me do sanctioned crime fighting. He's like in his interview. 06:09 and they're like they're like what's your experience is like I've been glad you were seen the topic catch a predator. 06:16 I have rent a predator, what 06:27 you can do that. No, it's really close. What he did is really close to what you're saying right now. I guess is it a sting? I no not even close, so he couldn't get it. He couldn't get the cop job all right, and so he said well, what else what else can I do sure and he was like training that I've got he's like. Oh, I bet I can learn I T sure, so he starts trying to learn I T stuff makes 06:57 decent bit of progress and then sets up a website. I know some stuff about computers and I wanted to be a cop Is there a reason? There was a funding issue in that side of California. 07:21 sure and so there wasn't like that. He was like interviewing and they were like now we don't want you no yeah. It was like it was like all we can't afford you sure and he was like he's like hi okay, I'll do it for free and you're gonna get the taste people right actually honestly. If you want to do it for free, we can't hire you. That's like the rule. That's actually like you want to do it. You're not allowed. You want to do it too much to get to do it 07:48 you want this too bad. We can't let you let me be a cop. I want to be a cop. I heard they get kissed 08:02 so so I heard they kiss that cop dot biz fresh. Don't do it, don't do it. You go go on okay, okay, okay, so he it is available though he goes and he takes his I T skills and his hopping skills and he says well, what if there's a world I can put them together? Okay, and so he 08:32 starts a website called rent to hit man dot com. Okay, but that it's not what it sounds like because the idea have you ever heard of ethical hacking? Yes, like anonymous kind of stuff where they're like, oh yeah, we had to expose the truth and that's how we got him kind of thing. Not necessarily. So there is that and that's that's a gray area. I mean, some people would call it ethical. Some people could still call that unethical. What ethical hacking is, is there's this whole community of 09:01 hackers who instead of hacking and like leaking data and stealing information, what they do is they hack and then they take the information about how they got into that environment and give it to the owners of the sites. Yeah, it's like that there's a there's a there's a is it a YouTube show or like an actual like this seems like a discovery channel type show where it was like a guy who was like a security expert that would would test your 09:30 business is security. Oh, he would just go in and just him. He would break in. He would destroy stuff. Yes, it was kind of like remember. Remember they did that for homes. The it takes a thief on this. Yeah, that's where I think it's what I'm talking about. That show is sick, but yeah, it was just your home. It takes and then you would just watch them rip your house to shreds and it would be traumatic. People would be crying right right right and then they like your parents were there with you 10:00 and then if you didn't like that thief, you could be like next and then there we have to go, you know, and there was also big was there 10:23 Jesus, no okay, so companies and it's sign up for it. It's such a big thing that companies have like actual programs for this. They're called bounty programs yeah and so Microsoft has bounty programs and depending on what bounty you're going after, like for example, in the Microsoft has an identity bounty, which is any vulnerability related to identity services in their accounts right. If you find that vulnerability, you report it to Microsoft, they pay you a hundred fifty thousand dollars 10:52 and so there's all sorts of these. There's people who are just like making a living on finding. Yeah, this is all they do. They just go find these vulnerabilities. They report it. They take the bounty and the bounties depending on the site in the program anywhere from five and you know to these guys are scrawny little nerds, all right, little nerds and they're out here on the town and people like what do you do for livings? I'm a bounty hunter shut up, dude, shut up, okay, like that 11:18 Greg go back to your they've got that they've got that that gaming chair that like leans back like that. You know I'm talking about all the way back six screens, the chairs come and they're just like 11:30 Yeah, they've got the keyboard that split in half, so they have their hands like this. It's me more than someone who works for freaking Angie's list and has a slick keyboard dude. You're going to call center, put your hands together, put your hands together. 11:46 Ha ha ha! 11:49 why your hands like that? They have an L desk and they put it on both sides of the L and the screens right here. I don't think that's what the mouse is limit that's the one on the right, not plug. They've also got a track pad like little. 12:11 yeah and an iPad like dude, it's just setups that people have made in 2020 was way over the top because they were like what else do I do and I'm getting six hundred dollars stimulus. I'm going to upgrade my desk and every single week. Yes, yeah yeah and it was worth it so insane. Do we pop podcast equipment instead? Yeah, yeah, that's why it looks so good all of a sudden, so he starts this company during these bounties and this was relatively 12:37 for businesses and so they would hire their hit what kind of okay, and then their hit man would go find those vulnerable god. That was the company and he was supposed to be a fun little play on words or whatever sure ran the company for a little bit. Eventually shut it down in two thousand five later in two thousand five, so didn't run it very long like it only a few months. Him and his friends that started it parted ways. It wasn't like a huge thing, but like he left the site up like he never managed went to go take the site down 13:07 and so then he came back and he was like well, I'm going to sell it. He's like that's probably a pretty good domain. I could buy sell that so he listed it for sale. It's like a domain sure he put his email address, so the site was just a white screen that said if you're interested in purchasing this domain, email this email address. So it's his email address and he had like a separate. It wasn't his daily driver email and so daily driver 13:33 I hate everything about you. It wasn't his daily driver email. It wasn't the one he signed up for nothing bundt cakes email. You know, if you sign up for nothing, but cakes email list on your daily driver email, yeah, then that's a problem. That's that's problem number one in what the heck why that is that is a red flag. I get their daily newsletter. That's a giant red flag. Do they have a it's a cultural 14:02 zeitgeist man, it's such crazy because they send out information every morning. That's where I get my news. That's how I found out Donald Trump one was the nothing bun kicks email newsletter dude. I opened it. I was like oh 14:24 I deleted Twitter. I get enough information from the nothing fun. Thanks, nothing later. I was like I don't need to be on social media anymore. I think I get it. I think I get it. Yeah, that's the crazy every morning. I get my news digest from and you know what though they're very center. 14:44 people were talking about how the political slant nothing is like is fair. Just the facts, just the fact they let you interpret it, just the cakes, nothing bun facts man, everyone ends with a coupon. It's like I learn everything about what's happening. I know all my current events yeah and I get a bun cake at the I get a bun cake. 15:10 Should I redesign our email list? To be a nothing bundt cake. 15:17 can we how would you redesign it? What are you? What do you mean? Should we design it? I would assume this colors color scheme would be like pink and like moth okay and then yeah and then yeah everywhere we have pictures of bun cakes. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. They don't relate. We're not going to have all of our have to listen to this episode to give it. You know saying like 15:41 yeah, you just like why does every e-mail from three years from now you won't remember that joke. You can't remember that you open your cells. I'll be like why do we put buckings and all you'll be like. Is this a reference to our podcast? I'm like yeah 15:55 Yeah, it's actually your idea. Didn't you read the newsletter yesterday about Dementia? You didn't subscribe to nothing fun cakes and how the new information that on dementia patients I've not subscribed on my daily driver. How what are you expect right? My bad, my bad, check the Tim at Tilland dot com. So anyways, so he said my daily driver is roast beef at Gio dot com. 16:21 just so everyone knows it's two three yeah it's roast be three three f. I know that I come here yeah, so I do have the other one set up though to like just at that rost towards to the forward to my roast be thirty three f yeah. You've been trying to sell it to Arby's. They won't buy it. What it is it's a reference to how many years Jesus lived 16:49 My two favorite things, Jesus Christ and roast beef. 16:58 is my savior and my savor. Did you say my savior and my savor say it's my savor, I savor, savor the flavor I'm crying. Why the two I was trying so hard to keep straight on that 17:21 in the early days of this show, we did like affiliate ads where we were like a sign up for grammarly and use code till and and we got like fifteen cents and now we just do patreon. It's a much better way. It's better for us as creators. It's better for you as listeners and it's a much more fun way for us to interact. We do monthly hangouts like on zoom. We just hang out and play games online and and get to know each other. It's a really fun time. So 17:48 but still use our code till in at grammerly dot com because I think it's still I think we might get like a couple cents from that, but join us on patreon because we're having a great time. If you don't, we're going to have to start doing mobile game ads. 18:05 So it's just the white screen. It's got his email address on it. He's not checking that email every day. He doesn't check it until two thousand and eight two thousand and eight. He hits it and he's got seven hundred emails and it's all people looking for a hit man nice, but he's he's like he's like most of these. I love that there's people who are stupid enough to be like hit man. Oh, there's a go website for and everything cool. Hey, I don't like my husband. 18:34 and I'm trusting this gmail thing hope you're not a cop, hope you're not a cop send and they sent it from their daily driver yeah and he's like he's like he's like don't worry the cops want to hire me. I tried trust me. I tried now I'm against them. Yeah, let's do this together. You create seven hundred emails. No one's like wanting to buy the domain. He's like they're all yeah. They're all people that are looking for a hit man for a hit man yeah, so he got 19:02 he got all these emails. Okay, most of them were a joke like the vast majority is a joke, but a couple of them he's like this might yeah. I think I would email a hit man as a joke. You know, and I just kind of test the water and they were like they were like hey, if you're serious like let's meet up and I go okay, so turns out turns out this is an option. You say it as you're like ha ha yeah. Oh, I'm just making a ha ha yeah. We've all been there 19:28 we clear. I'm making a ha ha to be clear. This is just a ha ha so a couple of them were serious, but a couple of them were serious, and so he was like he's like ha. That's interesting, and there was one that was from like a couple days ago, and so he looked at that and he was like he's like um. Maybe I should so he emails back. There was a woman named Helen from the UK. She's currently in Canada and she's wrote in saying that she wants 19:57 to hire a hit man for her three siblings who are out in the UK. She's trapped in Canada right now whole family because her three siblings are keeping her from her inheritance and so she's like she's like they're keeping me from the money that's rightfully. Yeah, I'd like to hire a hit man in the UK. Do you have coverage there? Their names are William Harry 20:21 this is the so royal family. That's a royal. I thought you and Prince Harry. I thought that was one direction. That's also one direction though, isn't it? Is it don't they have a William and 20:38 this is like whenever you try to name in sync members and you're like Justin Timberlake, a Dipper Lake. She was like yeah, we I want you to off them and so he looked at that he was like 20:52 do you still require our services and she responds back and says yes, and so he's like a great connecting you with a representative and so he you're the representative like you used. So he continues the conversation with her basically gets like this yeah she's she's actually serious about this. I really does want to go through with this. He passes this along to the authorities and the authorities track her down and get a conviction. 21:22 they okay. They take it from there and they're like okay yeah we're going to be the hit man sure and we're going to line set up a meeting watch on Netflix show hit man no no not show movie. No it that's. This is the concept of it. It was that he was he was a pretend hit man who would and dress up as different. Was he a cop? No, but he worked for the police department okay, but they contract him to do it. Oh it was like his side hustle 21:48 So what he was a freelance crime is a freelance crime, but they were like they were like hey, here's a job, you know whatever and he would go and do the the hit man stuff interesting, interesting and then he falls in love with one of the girls. It's a girl hires a hit man to take out her boy. Oh, so it's Barry yet kind of kind of no because she never hired Barry. She never hired a hit man. Yeah, that's right. Barry's trying to become an actor 22:15 Barry's such a good show. Okay, no, so I hear part about Barry is the songs at the I love you, you love me. I don't think you know what Barry I love Barry. I don't think you know a bit. You know Selena Gomez got her start on that show 22:37 and so he passes this along to the authorities. Sure they email her. They're like hey, we're the hit man from rent a hit man and she's like right where the hit man rent a hit man and she's like perfect. This is insane. This is so dumb, so she sets up a meeting with them. They meet up with her. They arrest her yeah, and so he anes is like okay, so that's kind of crazy, and so he get a bounty or any money for that 23:07 I don't think so okay, but he sat on that for a little bit and then he was like huh like that. Well, no, he was like he's like he. I mean, I guess there's probably a part of him because he tried to be a cop and now he works in it yeah and he's like there were a lot of people who emailed in and he was like I might have just saved three people's lives and he's like these people who were writing in like if I don't respond to them 23:35 then maybe they go somewhere else or maybe they try to do it themselves. Yeah and I want them to come to hire a hit man dot com, not hit men are us. Yeah, we got to be better than our competitors, so he sets up like an actual started on hit man for less, so he puts together like a real instead. He takes away the landing pages like if you want to buy this, who the original jersey mic was 24:00 he's a hit man. It was a hit man. Yeah, you don't get a day like Jersey Mike for making fresh slice. 24:09 so he takes away that little landing page thing is going to sell. He's like I'm going to keep the site up and he puts together like a real site rent a hit man dot com and he puts it together like this one hundred percent hip a compliant. Well, read what the hip is a human information, privacy and protection act of nineteen sixty four. No, it's the hit man hit man. I can't see from here. Tim got issues. Click here. Oh my gosh, 24:38 and so it's this whole site and it breaks news. The whole thing is it's pretty like it's obviously a joke sure like anybody who sees this at the at the footer. They have this little disclaimer that says they're no longer working with P Diddy Johnson and Johnson. Oh my 24:57 like this is obviously a parody site like he put a lot of keep reading the name. I know what else is in the name. I know what else is in the keep going. You stop you're like oh yeah, P Diddy Johnson Johnson and you're like anyway, there's a lot. Oh, keep reading the name. You can look it up. There's there's some pretty timely ones in there. I'll say so they it's pretty clearly a joke. There's all sorts of banners across the site that reference at this is like a joke. 25:27 but there's still a contact page. They have group discounts if you want to hit more than one. that's the whole thing too. that he thinks are legitimate. And so here's how he does this. 25:56 and he doesn't respond right away. He gives him a twenty four hour cool down period because he's like these people could have just got in a fight with their brother. They're just angry, let him cool off. We'll see where they're at tomorrow. Then later, twenty four hours later, he sends in a response to say thanks for reaching out to rent a crime until you exchange money right. Yeah, so so the here's the process. Should we what should we fill out a form 26:24 get through all the stuff and then be like hey, by the way we do a podcast. We'd love to interview you. We'd love to yeah, by the way, I mean, I don't even think you have to pretend like we could just be like hey, we're a podcast. We'd like to see that picture he took. You don't take a picture with your hands like this without liking it like you really like yeah. Okay, okay, okay, go ahead. So he gives him twenty four hours to cool off gives him. He reaches out. He's like hey, you sure yeah he's like he's like hey, are you still interested? 26:52 We love it's like a formal email. It's like thank you for reaching out. Here's our services we provide. Are you still interested? Here's our Google reviews. Yeah, he actually does have Google reviews on the site from people and their faces are blurred like Alex's on our site. Same blur like it's like this spiral blur on their heads and they're like yeah, we we hired a hit man. They were clean, discreet, covered everything. It was great and the prices were fantastic. Yeah. 27:15 but they still link their Google account so that it's like they may they leave that review and it's like loved using the service great hit man, but it's like yeah yeah you look at their other reviews three stars for Domino's cheese sticks were burnt loved your services, he sticks were burnt and so whenever he gets that whenever he gets a serious inquiry, I should say 27:40 he sits on it and then and then sends that and then if they respond and they say yes, he's like okay, I'm going to connect you to one of our qualified hitman hit man, which on the site, it says that they have seventeen thousand nine hundred and eighty five failed operatives working for rent a hitman dot com, which is the number of the approximate number of American law enforcement agencies. So and so whatever he does, he finds out their approximate area 28:08 gets all their information and then he reaches out to that local law enforcement agency and says hey, here's here's all of our conversations. I told him you'd be reaching out as a local hit man and then what typically happens from there is that law enforcement agency there's a sting. Yeah, they set up a sing. They reach out. They're like hey, we're the hit man from rent to hit man dot com and they're like the guys like sweet. They meet up. This is so crazy. I would love it for it for it to be like 28:33 Hey, this is Rebecca. I work in the offices of rent a hit man. We're just going to click over a couple policy things and just get a couple information from you. Do you have a credit card number I can put on file? No, no, no, it's only in case of incidentals. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we only charge it in the incident. The person survives and we have to re hit them. We call it a second 28:59 that would be an additional charge. Unfortunately, just count as another full hit, you know, yeah, because that's I mean it's not cheap, but we would do a voucher for your next hit. Yes, yes, we would give you a we would give you a credit yeah, yeah, towards your next hit, and so this has been an operation since twenty ten. He set up this site okay, and it's still operating to this day and he still gets in crazy. How many is these caught along to law enforcement agencies? 29:28 I don't know how many convictions there are, but what we do know is that the estimate is that he says that there's been a hundred and fifty victims that have been saved from this service, so not a like those that's including groups, group, a tan, but I mean, so I hit man dot com. That's crazy. Yes, yes, so there's all you say the three people the first time, so that's three and then another person wanted to kill a hundred and twelve people. 29:56 No, one hundred and fifty, not one hundred and fifteen, one hundred and fifty. All right, sorry, sorry, so you I mean you got to figure that's at least over a hundred people who have been caught trying to hit someone in ten years. I mean that's one a month. You know, I mean that's over ten years. It's fourteen years, fourteen years. That's what I'm saying. It's like one month. Yeah, that's true, the ten a year. Yeah, so I mean pretty incredible. It's obviously it's still up. Most people recognize it's a joke, right. Here's the thing, though, man. 30:25 there's so many dumb people out there you're right, and if you're a person who is already dumb enough to Google how to find a hit man, yeah, then you're dumb enough to fall for this. It's the same way like you know the emails that they they send out. They have all the grammar issues and you read it and you go. This is clearly a scam. Do you know why they do that? Oh yeah, because you're trying to like weed out the people who will fall for it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, it's not because like oh they look at they're so bad at english and they didn't know how to translate correctly. Yeah, it's you read it. 30:53 you know it's a scam, therefore you're not worth their time. Yeah, they don't want to waste their time on do a follow up email. Yes, but if you read that and you and you're like this seems this is it you already a little dumb yeah. They're like oh, we can get this guy yeah yeah yeah. It's like it's a qualifier. Speaking of dumb, did you see this congressional hearing last week about the UAP? What is the UAP UFOs? Oh come on man, 31:17 don't sneak in a conversation by aliens by calling them UAPs don't do that. Everybody knows that's what that is now. They don't know that I have mentioned that on this. I didn't see anything about that. I don't remember anything that happens in this podcast, but I know for a fact that I've said it. I've called it you. I ain't see anything about that on NBC. Yeah, well, I think there's nothing but cakes 31:42 the only reliable news source for me is NBC News. Oh, I bet you get all your news from a B C. You bet I do like yeah, but they're all their anchors suck as I anchors anchors. What are you talking about? I just read the article newsletter. It's an email newsletter. I read it. I read it for the articles. I promise I read it for the time I read. I read another butt cakes newsletter for the article. 32:12 for the articles. If you know what I mean every once in a while, I get a cake out of it. Okay, criminal no, no, no, no, no. Okay, so so this no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, but the UAPs, aliens, you're talking about dumb people, everyone wanting to bring it up, so so there's this other. It's another congressional hearing. Sure, sure, sure. We talked about the last one with David crush 32:37 This one's got a another guy in it. Michael Schellenberger, I think is his name. He's a reporter who's been digging into this thing. He leaked a government program called Immaculate Constellation okay long story short. So what can I do a constellation makes me so mad? So it was him the reporter get it's a reference right? Huh? You get that it's a reference to what the Immaculate 33:07 Conception, conception, yeah, yeah, constellation. That's annoying, but so it's it's Michael, the reporter, what's the theory and it's lulz on dough, who is the big obviously whistleblower and then a couple other whistleblowers that we haven't seen right. Anyways, a couple other whistleblowers that we haven't seen yet that are supposedly like within the D O D coming out as sure lowers is the story and in this hearing testifying before Congress, the actual Congress, yeah, 33:37 The story that they outlined for Congress in this hearing was that, yes, the government has a crash retrieval program for UFOs. And they are reverse engineering these UFOs. And we're not the only government to do it. We know that at least every nuclear-powered government in the world is attempting to retrieve these and reverse engineer these. 34:04 and they said that's the reason for the secrecy because it's an arms race. It's like the Manhattan Project. It's not because we don't think people can handle it. It's a military thing. Here's where things get really interesting. Okay, the story line is that these these have been here for a long time, at least a hundred years, and they're coming from our oceans. They're not coming from space. Oh, I've seen this theory. These are their unmanned drones. 34:32 and there are essentially underwater factories that are building these to suit for each of their missions. And then they're rising up out of the ocean. That's why there's so many variants between each of these. And then they're coming and they're particularly interested in our nuclear power plants and our nuclear warheads, wherever those are stored globally. And so that's where all the sightings are happening. And so the storyline is one of two things that they're saying is one, 35:01 they are aliens. They came here, they built these factories and these factories are autonomously creating these drones and these drones are good factories are operating this on themselves. Yeah, just like we have autonomous factories sure with robots and stuff like that, so they're building underwater. Yeah, I mean they're okay. They're underground underwater probably, so they're underwater built into the mountain underwater and then they are building these ships. The ships are coming out. They're doing the recon and then 35:28 what yeah yeah, but they're unmanned and so that's why they're able to sustain such a high g's because the these are these are getting one thousand two thousand three thousand g's which will obliterate any living being right. So that kind of g forces sure that's theory number one sure theory number two is that these creatures live down there and that's why they care so much about the nuclear stuff we do because this is their planet to right and so they're very concerned. 35:57 because they're like you guys, you surface dwellers are risking stuff service all of us, you land losers yeah exactly and they either could be. They either could live in the water or they could live under ground in the water. It's right right right right here's here's my thing sure here's where I'm very interested yeah yeah go ahead. What if yeah you're going to love this in on with you? What if what if these crafts they're on man right? What if these are being built? 36:27 octopus yeah and they are setting the and the thing that that's why they're so smart. How we draw aliens man, they look kind of like octopi, octopi are so smart. We always talk about how or maybe dolphins. We always talk about yeah really smart and yeah whenever they come up to shore, whenever they come to land, that's their vacation. They're on vacation and like we can't let the humans know that we're smarter than them and so they're like we swim around and be goofy. 36:50 it's kind of like a pastime for them. I'm so glad that our podcast is a safe place for to get all this out so that you don't have to subject your family to this at Thanksgiving. Thank you for allowing us to be your place to say stupid stuff so that you don't take this out into real life. I really watches this podcast yeah, but we get to edit that part out. You know saying what do you think about that though? What do you think about that? That's a good theory though, isn't it? Yeah, maybe it's not 37:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the Dolphins, maybe it could be Dolphins, right? Right? No, I don't know. It could be Dolphins. Yeah, no, like if I right, it could be Dolphins, right? No, here's the thing. Why do you think the stingray took out Steve Irwin? Yeah, that's the only logical explanation. That was an act of war. That was a warning shot. 37:42 I knew too much yeah. Why do you think we nuked the water so much? Why do we think we test on where you think water castle bravo the open seas? Yeah, it's not. It's not a test. It's not a test, but yeah, there's a you should try this outside of San Diego. There's an island. It's not Catalina. It's a little further south 38:08 I don't think you guys understand the mental exercises I have to do to keep my sanity during these. I just literally I look at them and I just space out in my head. I go to a happy place. I go somewhere where there's waterfalls and green pastures. That's exactly where I want you to go because that's where they are. They're underwater. Yeah. Really? 38:35 Thanks for checking out this episode. In that mailing list, we give updates on past episodes. and every week things are changing. So if you want to keep learning stuff, that's happening in the Tillon verse. 39:02 I like 39:27 I ran a women's sweatshirt right now. It's not a it's not a woman that kind of makes me angry. It's not a women's sweatshirt, Missouri State, women, US bowling league, yeah, it's support. I mean I not allowed to support in ship in turn. I can I not support women two thousand and fourteen. Am I not allowed to support women's bowling? Okay, can I not? It's a good. You really are the only conservative who's cared about women's sports for ten years now, huh? 39:56 I just like women's bowling. Is that such a dirty republisher rising you dirty gross mind? No, I can't find this island. Yeah. Oh yeah, maybe do you think it that it doesn't exist? Do you think that it was out there, but now they scrubbed it from Google Maps? Damn, I think I found it. Oh good. Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, I guess it's a little bit closer to Mexico than it is to San Diego. Yeah, but it's Ila Guadalupe and 40:26 that's supposedly where one of these factories are, and so that it was a famous. It was a famous diving island. People used to dive there all the time, but now you're not allowed to because it's quote unquote because of all the danger risks, but it might not be dangerous. It might just be, you know, the alien factories there, but I there is one of the highest concentration of sharks in the world. So you see sharks. 40:58 Anyways, what do you think about all that? What do you think? 41:08 I is plausible. That's great anyway. So what do you think about that? Yeah, I think that's the probably double thing I heard today. Here's the thing is we got a lot of episodes to get to. You got time to wrap this up. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I think that there it's possible, but I also think these people are testifying before Congress and so I'm like. I think that these people are gen. I think that these people are sincere. I do think that people. I mean, I think that what they're finding is other 41:38 nations, military equipment or just freaking homegrown terrorists. Dude, we've got plenty of people who are making stuff all the time and just like making stuff out of like these drones and stuff that are just maybe crashing and landing and you know, maybe I think I think what's more likely in my opinion is one of two things either either it's these remember Bob Lazar when we did that episode way back in the day yeah and that it talked about when 42:07 they signed on their contract during training, they had all these documents they read and the documents were full of lies. So that way they know if your stuff got out. Which yeah, they know that because it's a different lie for every person. And if that gets out, then they know you're the leak. I think that there's potential that some of this stuff. Which would be my strategy if I got into the big brother house, by the way. Yeah, yeah, you tell a lie. Yeah, it's a great strategy. Tell a small lie to each different person and then you go, hmm, okay. Interesting. 42:35 Yeah and then you come back and you say you lie. That's what I did to my family in Thanksgiving one year. Yeah, so I sold all of that. Why is that why you didn't go to Thanksgiving for a few years? I saw you in a hot tub yesterday talking about how you don't go to the hot tub. Yeah, of course. Oh, I said about these cameras around your parents house or my parents house. They're just way worse when I was there in two thousand and fourteen. I keep track. No, so it could be that 43:04 I think it also, I think it could be genuine. is that I cannot get over now how likely it is that someone in the government And now there's a lot of other people in the government 43:30 physically witnessed any of this because that's the thing all these whistleblowers. They have reports, they have documentation of this. They're not the ones who've seen this stuff. I don't know if this stuff exists. I think that they've just seen the documents that's probably coming from people who's circular, Osama's computer. Yeah, it could be. It could be. It could be Osama's computer or it could just be circular reporting where someone said something right and then it kind of telephoned yeah and then it got in to you, the people reporting to Congress have not physically seen these things with their own eyes. They're just reporting 44:00 paperwork from their own yeah. Well, that's what they all say is like all of them. None of them have none of them are saying I've seen this. Yes, they all say I've talked to people in intelligence. I've read documentation. They none of them have been people who've had hands on this stuff, and so I think what's more likely is that there's just. I think we forget a lot that the people in government and in government intelligence are also are also people yeah, and they're also think about this. I was also thinking about this of like the 44:29 social media landscape and the way that like the all these senators and in congress people live in DC and they're in their own bubble and it's a lot like when we worked at churches and we just you know you forget there's an entire way of life outside of what you're doing yeah and and it can be very easy to be like ah you know 44:51 they're so out of touch with the with the common man and it's like yeah news pundits you live in DC and you are also out of touch with the common man. What are you talking about? Yes, yes, yes, that's why I only rely on one new source nothing yeah. So anyways, that's all I got to say about the alien thing. I think it's interesting, but I just I ever since that I have a hard and that end and the remote viewing thing 45:21 I'm like yeah, create the that was that was such garbage and they've got documents from them trying to figure that out, but it's clearly all made up and they didn't get anywhere with it, but they tried and like I have a because they try now it's got now everyone's like everyone's. Oh, they did it though. I did try it. It worked actually 45:42 anyways, I repented for that, so anyway, if you need a hit man, yeah, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, so someone there's a very important thing. Someone found this page is an rent to hit man careers. Yeah, so there's in two thousand. Hold on, let me get this date right. God, I got too many tabs open in 46:11 two thousand twenty three recently twenty one year old Josiah Ernesto Garcia got out of the military. This is him got out of the military. Okay, was expecting a child. No, I don't like we will take selfies and they make eye contact themselves in the mirror. You know I'm saying yeah you got to look at the camera, look at the camera, look at the camera, either look at the lens or look at your screen or look at the solo cup cups behind you. Never look at the camera. 46:40 yeah, but so he he got out of the military was expecting a child and was looking for work and he's like well, what am I experienced in and he's like I'm experienced in firearms and shooting people and I've seen Barry yeah and so he goes online looking for a job. He finds rent to hit man dot com sees that careers link sends an email with a CV 47:07 and with a cover letter, my resume yeah, let me kill includes a cover letter saying what he's capable of and the cover letter was like certainly 47:22 Certainly here's a cover letter to apply for a for a hand-written job. 47:30 in a thousand words at a fifth grade reading level. 47:37 you got to know your apply. I don't know yeah and so and s gets this bob and he's like he's like oh, this is interesting and so he takes that application and he sends it to the fbi. The fbi is like this is a joke. We're not responding to this and bobs like no this is not a joke. Pretty s, this guy, very legitimate to be wants to kill people, so Bob has to go back and forth with them for a little bit. Finally they're like okay fine. We'll give him a call and they realize he's 48:06 serious, so they the FBI calls them. They act like they're with rent to hit man yeah and they say hey hi. This is Rachel with hit with rent to hit man dad go over your resume here, a phone screening sure our initial interview. Yeah, so interview he does a phone interview with the FBI thinking they're from rent to hit man dot com and then they invite them to an in person interview comes to the in person interview and then that in person interview. They say hey, I think I think we'd like to work with you. Yeah, here's an actual contract 48:36 can you go ahead and move forward that contract and so yeah he signs a contract and the contract when I when I say contract it's a hit and so like yeah, here's the hit. Here's the folder. Here's there. Here's their location. Here's their name. Here's a picture. It's all obviously fictional. They make him go kill a guy yeah they're like he just picked out for murder. He just picked someone yeah. He's like I get his cute yeah. Let's see you do it walk outside kill someone show us what a lot of nothing bun cakes anymore and so 49:06 Our next live show is at nothing bundt cakes by the way, so he takes he takes the he takes the folder yeah and he turns around and he's like he's like hey wait he's like do i need to take a picture or something and send that to you to verify or and they're like and they're like yeah like yeah that would be great and then the guy reached it the FBI is like good doing business with you reaches for a handshake when he reaches for a handshake he cuffs him and rest them. 49:31 very movie so so and you know that he practiced it. Yeah, he was like, he's like babe, now the honey come in here. Is this natural? Does this feel? Does this feel like if you were in the room and you watched this happen? Would you be like 49:47 would you like that was cool? I would you be pretty hyped about now? If you were one of the people that he's going to shoot the starbucks employee and so there's a lot of people are going to be looking at that, but if there might be two people who see this, I be a couple of people watching lots of people are going to be more focused. I got shot, you know, like why is that guy who's clearly working for the FBI not doing any about this? Everybody in the building knows that this is an FBI state like that guy, he's like 50:13 he's wearing an FBI windbreaker, but he won't let the guy see his shot. He shot looks over another person is goes. 50:23 all according to plan. Don't worry, I'm with the FBI. The guys like FBI is like I don't were a roll hit. He never fit her anyway. We've added him. We I said kill that guy. We knew exactly what you're going to believe this for. He put out a hit on three of his siblings last week. All right, so we got a lot called two birds with one stone. 50:46 we're prepared. Here's the thing everybody's complaining. We got too many people incarcerated. We're spending too much money on people. What is one or not? So we're just making people who want to be hit bands do it and then we rest for it. Okay, what's so wrong with that? Yeah, that's pretty friggin smooth. Yeah, that is got a rest. Some obviously take a present. You're under contract and also 51:12 under a rest, so so yeah, so not only has this site got people trying to get hits done off saved one hundred and fifty people and it's also changed the life of one potential hit man. 51:33 Yeah, it's great. So this thing's still out there. If you know anybody who's looking to do a hit on someone, send them to this site. This is probably the best place for him to go because ask me hey, you know where I'm gonna get it. I've been thinking about killing my boss. You know where I can do that? Oh gosh, you know honestly no 51:55 you could go with a local guide, but this national service yeah, they're one of the biggest. They got great reviews on Angie's Lohop offered it when I moved yeah, just make sure you use duck duck go yeah. We move cross country. They're like hey, by the way, so we got your furniture. We got the truck all set up. We know your arrival days over. Is it anybody you want to kill? 52:18 Hey, just quick question. I do you know, is a call and turn your internet on for you. Great. We can do that for sure and then we'll actually hire a cleaning service and well then we'll hire another cleaning service. If you know what I mean, you know what I mean. I know I don't know what you mean. Can you be a little bit more explicit? 52:37 Oh that had not made it pretty clear when you tell that your head like that. I realized oh this guy's talking about killing somebody or cop. Are you please cop? Are you police? What's your email? Not a cop at bellhop.com. I believe it. I believe it. I buy it anyways. So that's read to hit man.com. I'm going to be honest. You before we shot this, you saw that my 53:01 internet browser had rent a hit man dot com open did see that I was like. No, I just saw the Google for rent a hit man near me. That's what you Google. You Google did not. I said read the hit man, Tennessee, I try to remember the name of this kid. Got a see that's what I was like. Is our manager okay? Our manager lives in Nashville, yeah, 53:29 We know other people in Nashville, so honestly, that's the whole thing. That's why I have a manager is I don't have to Google that stuff. Yeah, she does. Hey, I need you to get yourself on a list for me, please. She's already on the list. That's what I bet it or I was like. Are you already on the list? You are less. I'm on the way. Yeah, I'm going to get you on some. I was like perfect. Yeah, that's perfect. I don't want to put anybody's life in jeopardy. I want their life to already be in jeopardy. Yeah, so I don't know. Honestly, I don't know if going to this site will put you on a list 53:56 because it is on it's a parody. It's a parody site and it's very clearly. They make it clear that this is a joke throughout the site by saying this is a joke on the site, but people don't read anything. They fall for it and then they end up getting arrested because of it, so they end up FA F O fiddle around fiddle enough. There you go. I like that. I like that 54:25 If you like this episode and you want another topic, a similar Lake City Quiet Pills is an episode we did a couple of years ago and it is about actual assassins potentially allegedly. What they did was they hid the requests in the code of the website and so we did a whole breakdown and the story of how they all came together through reddit and different websites and how they were potentially handing out assignments. So that's Lake City Quiet Pills. There's also a ton of other episodes you can listen to and 54:52 Next week's episode is available right now to our members. If you want to join our membership program, you can go to tilland.com slash support. This helps us to fund the show and make it better and continue to upgrade our equipment and upgrade our space. We don't make a dime from this. We literally just want to make a better content and a better show for you. So thank you for checking out our show. Thanks for being here. We'll see you again next week on Things Over the Last Night.

Ever heard of Rent a Hitman or rentahitman.com? At first glance, it sounds like a shady, illegal website straight out of a crime drama. But what if I told you it’s actually a bizarre mix of satire, internet history, and law enforcement brilliance? Let’s explore the strange world of rentahitman.com and how it turned into an unexpected tool to catch … Read More

Is It a Stock or Cult? | BBBY Ep 252

12-03-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 with hands baby. This week we learn about the cult of the stonks community stonks baby. There was a if you were unfamiliar with, there was a pump and dump scheme that happened with several different stocks, including game stop AMC in twenty twenty one, but what I didn't know about was the bed bath and beyond cult. Yeah, this one's all about the beyond section and it's beyond believable. I said no jokes in the intro. Oh, that's why this is a comedy podcast. I do the joke, so they're funnier during the episode. 00:30 but we learn about a lot of whatever no, but this is a about a group on reddit that has so fully fallen into delusion about the bed bath and beyond stock that literally no longer exists, but they're still they still think they're going to get rich still in it. So it's december december third is simmer third is what today is and that means i've got a couple shows that you can't come to. I do a lot of cry private christmas parties so you know, but enjoy the time of your family. 00:59 Yeah, this this holiday, your own little private Christmas party, that's right, watch the blind day all the way or just friends or yeah, you can watch the blind date. That's free. Thanks for being here for our show. We really like this episode. Let's get into it. 01:15 Hey man. What's up? Have you ever heard of BBBY? 01:21 B B B Y. Let's see if you can guess what that stands for. B B B Y you want a hand. I can give you a hand. It's a really good hand. It started out as a super normal thing, but it turned into a cult kind of oh big brothers. 01:40 bullying you big brothers, big you sisters. What are we? What is it? B B B? Why is the ticker signal for bed bath and be on? Okay, this is this is an interesting story and it's, but we need a story of bed bath and beyond 02:10 I promise you this is an interesting story. I know it sounds like how could bed bath and beyond be interesting. Okay, but it's an interesting story to start. How many Adam Sandler click jokes are we going to make in this honestly? I wasn't planning any, but if you want me to, I can start to think about it. Okay, maybe one will come out later and think about it. So Bed Bath and Beyond started fifty years ago. You think they paid? Do you think bad? I think we're on paid 02:39 to be in the movie or do you think that Adam Sandler paid bad bath and beyond I should add to pay because it's a plot point. I was gonna say it's it's central to the plot yeah yeah it wouldn't. If it wasn't a plot point, I would think that maybe it was product placement, but because it's a plot point, I think they went and got rights to it. Okay, that's interesting. Go ahead to use the name at least sure I that or they just paid the fee, the fine right, which is what a license is. I guess 03:06 so bad bath and beyond to talk about bed bath and beyond. We need to go before this story to the invention of the bed. I'm kidding. Okay, we're going to talk about a very specific time in bed, bath and beyonds history, specific. We're very barely going to talk about bed bath and beyond, but it's what this is called before we can talk about bed bath and beyond. Now we have to talk about something that I know you're very well aware of, and that is game stop. 03:36 Oh, we're doing the pump and dump. Okay, got you, got you, got game stonks, game stonks. So everybody knows this story by now. Beam stocks. Yeah, everybody knows the story by now. If you don't in 2020 GameStop became a thing. Yeah, GameStop always was a thing. It was a failing business is falling apart because of the internet era was making the GameStop model of physical copy video games less viable. That's all they sold. They sold video games 04:03 and the reputation was going downhill. They were not. Yeah, because now you I don't remember the last time I physically bought a video game. Yeah, yeah, you don't need to. Yeah, I a lot of video game fans prefer having physical copies of the games and especially lately because a lot of those game marketplaces. Two things have been happening subscription. Yeah, well, I guess you had three things haven't happening. So one, some of them have actually been going out, so you could have bought all of these games on a specific marketplace that doesn't exist anymore, and now you don't have the game anymore. 04:33 two. There have been games where they've been taking games off marketplaces. So like a you have the game, but then the games gone and now you don't have the game anymore. Even though you paid for it, even though you bought it, yeah, you hit it's a digital copy third. Yeah, you're right. Subscription models are starting to make it to where you can't buy a game on that marketplace anymore. Well, you'll buy the game, but then you still have to keep up your monthly subscription to use the game. Yeah, so the 04:59 it's like when photoshop switch you used to buy the software of photoshop used to have her six hundred dollars and then you just had it yeah yeah and then they went to they actually made it so that those old versions don't work anymore, which is insane crazy. 05:15 I mean, to be fair, if you had the old version, like all you really could do is shop cigarettes out of Disney's hands. It wasn't very powerful. Okay, so in 2020, GameStop wasn't a very viable business. Sure. And they were struggling like just about every business in 2020 because of 2020 and being a brick and mortar store, they weren't getting a lot of business. Geez. 05:43 the amount of episodes we've got this nap flying in our faces is why I can't get it. We can't spill this mass. We cannot get this Nat to die. So there's only one of them. It's not like a lot. There's only one. We don't really one that I know you can't spell us, but I promise you we smell good. I don't promise that 06:10 That's going to be on that new tilling out of context. I know you don't smell this, but I promise we smell good. Okay, so there was this community on reddit in twenty twenty for investing. Yeah, it was the stocks community community and they all everybody would post videos about what they believed was a good stock on the reddit and they put video YouTube videos out and stuff like that and talk about the stocks that they thought were good stocks to invest in. And it was like a 06:39 just a small investing community. There's a guy by the name of roaring kitty. We've all seen him by now. He post a video had one person. We've all seen him by now. It's just he posted a video. He had one one person tuned into his stream where he made his case on why he thought GameStop was a legitimate company should be invested in. Sure he invested 07:08 a lot of money in it and he got incredibly rich off that. A lot of people followed suit also got incredibly rich off that and then more people followed suit and they were left holding the bag and got their lives ruined because of that diamond hands, diamond hands, baby diamond hands. But this created this tidal wave of retail investors, retail investors existed before this, but all of a sudden in 2020 it became a thing like everybody was trying to retail invest. 07:35 and I think there's a lot of things to blame for that. Obviously, the pandemics part of that. I think David Portnoy is a little bit to blame because he started treating those gambling well yeah, because his whole business was what's the right parlay for the sporting event? Sporting events went away and so he pivoted to investing because he's like oh, it's pretty much the same thing and so he started doing streams on investments instead of losing like tons of money yeah, but it didn't matter because he was making more money from the stream on the stream yeah and a lot of other 08:05 creators came out talking about investing. Robin Hood was positioned at the perfect point to be able to bring in the sin flex of retail investors Robin Hood referral code. By the way, some it's a lot of people who got into this investing game right and as a part of this whole thing, there's a guy by the name of Ryan Cohen. This is Ryan Cohen. He was CEO of the dog food company, Chewy 08:33 He had a very large exit of that very, very wealthy guy got into investing after that, like so many people do after they exit their successful business. Yeah, investing is when you just do, you don't want to do anything real investing is when you have a bunch of money and you're just like, I be fun to just do. Yeah, fun to have more. 08:55 What investing really is is you get a lot of money and you realize that if you put your money to work, you don't have to put your money to taxes. That's what it really is. So I don't like the system that we live in, so he that's not actually the part of the system. I don't like I'm fine with investing. I'm fine with the capitalists moving your money that way. I think that works. That makes sense. Okay, 09:25 it's people taking advantage of the tax code that I don't like yeah, so he Ryan Cohen invests in Game Stop, just based on this video, not just based on the video. Well, I don't know. Maybe it was based on this video. He was interested in it. He was a picture of him standing outside a game stop. I expected you to look at that and laugh at it. I guess I don't know, but yeah. He took this picture and he was like he's like I'm all in and so he tweets that he gets he invests in it. I don't like that that guy's rich 09:57 that is kind of one of the things that, like I, I don't like what rich people look like that. Like I have thought I was I actually it's interesting you say this because I was thinking this the other day. There are just like rich people among us sometimes and like you see them out in public and they look normal. They they like dress like a poor, but they're not and it's like you never know who they are. It's kind of like the lizard people thing like 10:25 I never know what's under that skin they're just they're just among us. So Cohen invests in Game Stop very outspokenly gets in on it. He does get in on it pretty early. I think he doubles or triples his money on Game Stop talks about it publicly and a lot of people. He has a ton of Twitter followers. So all these people fall suit start getting in on Game Stop Game Stop because of him. 10:55 As we know, as the GameStop story went, a lot of people lost everything trying to invest in GameStop because they were too late. The whole reason this worked is if you were early and you were part of the hype wave and you get out at the tip of the hype wave, hype wave then you win a lot of money. But if you're not, it sucks. You spent way too much money on something that doesn't matter. Cohen believed in it so much that he actually came in as the CEO of GameStop to try to turn it right this ship. 11:22 and so he invests it. He invests in comes in as the CEO sure, but his decision making wasn't great. His experience wasn't the same. He was working in dog food, dog food, like shipping dog food from like a tech startup for dog food, and now he's working in a brick and mortar traditional retail right, and so gamestop gets this is a what of cash. What if when they come in to the stores? 11:51 we have little jars of treats. What if what if when they come in they buy a game and we give them a little pup cup of like game boy games for what if puppies? This is something that Chewie does. What if when they cancel their subscription and the reason they give is that my pet died, we send them a coupon 12:17 for fifty percent off and next no, they send you, they send you a little letter. They send you a it's a handwritten note. That's actually nice yeah, says and it's got your pet's name on there and it's a we're sorry about your cat and then they give a coupon for when you get a new cat. Yeah for the next round of cat. Yeah 12:43 I kind of like it, but they don't update their email marketing. There was more to it is that we send a handwritten letter that apologizes for the death of your animal and then we continue to send you emails about it's time to get Lenny vaccinated. We know your furry friend loves our ladies Lenny's expiration date is passed and you're like 13:13 Yeah, his vaccines are expired anyway. Yeah, yeah, that's that's an oversight. Yeah, they should remove us in the email. Yeah, yeah, that is an oversight. Actually, they called us to they called us and they were like, hey, ready to place another order for that medication. They called you. Yeah, they do like a phone call. They go. 13:32 that's like a sweet water. I can't do sweet water whole crap. My Alex feels this pain. Do you buy one thing from sweet water? The sweet water is a place where you can buy like music equipment, you know, audio gear, all that kind of stuff. You buy one thing from them and they will send you 13:50 pictures of their kids graduating from prom dude. Yeah, they will never lose cut fully send you those send you a catalog every now and they'll say and there's emails almost every day. They'll send you stickers all the time. Yeah, what's crazy means they literally call you like I hate it when e commerce sites call my god. Yeah, you can literally burn every bridge between you and the there are the theranos. So we water headquarters 14:15 and they will still get to their like they're like that person that you get coffee with that one time because you feel bad. You ever really hung out with them all that much. You get coffee one time and then they send you memes every day. 14:27 because I hey buddy, we're not best friend. They keep inviting you to hang out and it's like this is actually why we only hung out once every quarter because you're kind of freaking weird. They call you to tell you about this thing that they saw the store today. Like hey, I saw this XLR cable just thought about you because you bought two of them like three months ago. Just wondering how those are doing. Are those still yeah? Actually I got fire one of them died 14:57 sorry we'll take you up the email sorry about your xlr cable. I'm writing you a dear jaren sorry your xl hard cable died. Here's a coupon for a chew eat dot com subscription when you're ready to feed your next one. 15:16 in the early days of this show, we did like affiliate ads where we were like a sign up for grammarly and use code till and and we got like fifteen cents and now we just do patreon. It's a much better way. It's better for us as creators. It's better for you as listeners and it's a much more fun way for us to interact. We do monthly hangouts like on zoom. We just hang out and play games online and and get to know each other. It's a really fun time. So 15:43 but still use our code till in at grammerly dot com because I think it's still. I might get like a couple cents from that, but join us on patreon because we're having a great time. If you don't, we're going to have to start doing mobile game ads. 16:00 So Cohen, invest, not a good CEO, they've got this influx of cash and so he can use this influx of cash to help turn the business around and help modernize its model sure, and this is what everyone expects him to do, but he doesn't. He doesn't do any of that. What about what if we did hot dog and free to make it worse and does just this horrible job managing this company? Here's what I last very long. 16:25 they would get better at as like at Christmas time when people are buying up all the consoles. You know there's got to be a way to stop that it. That's the most when people like as soon as the Xbox, you know, oh that they like buy a whole bunch of a new series yeah and they got to listen on face a place for you for three times the price on Amazon puts a limit on how many you can buy yeah and I'm thinking like I got really mad when I had to buy eight for Christmas at Summit Park. Yeah 16:55 but walmart, long as the church was on. It's okay. I've been gone. It was a summit part. My NDA is expired. Oh yeah man, they have twenty thousand people now so gonna so the stuff that I never had an NDA with them. I knew that I I was before they tried to book me for an event. We sent back the rates and they offered literally 17:23 three percent of the rate. Okay, so so here's what I usually make yeah, but we're friends. We got coffee one time memes. 17:39 So Cohen gets ousted by the board. So here's the thing, what everybody expected him to do and start catching up with the times. to try to get them to bring more people in, And I think he also just didn't understand 18:05 traditional retail, so he was trying to do things that you would do for like an online retail store and it just didn't translate. Well, game stop could be is really getting into the e sports kind of stuff. Yeah, facilitating those things and basically should be your local gaming club. Yeah, I think that would be and yeah and like you could you could set up like subscription based things where people are like members of this club and you know 18:34 they did just get into retro gaming because they for a long time they would only do like the current console and the console before right generation before, but now they got into retro and so now that's a little bit more viable because you can't really find retro games. Most places are more. I mean like I mean like arcades really do work yeah. They're sweet yeah and so yeah having a place you can go play, but yeah he started trying to do nfts with them so 19:01 brick and you could buy NFTs out of brick and mortar. Yeah, I think, but he had like a reddit rotten brain. Yeah, yeah, a hundred sent it he a hundred for sure and so because he gets in there and his brain is so rotten from reddit threads that he people really. I mean how much money was lost on NFTs? I've never I haven't heard people mention it. I have tea since twenty one millions yeah millions, but he was the whatever. Oh, it was a grift. It was a hundred percent of grift yeah for sure. 19:28 there's a bunch of people who knew they could make a million dollars off of it and they paid influencers and celebrities to act like they were a part like a fan of it, yeah, because they knew a bunch of other people would be done, but Cohen is known for his Twitter account and so he's constantly this game stop do like trading cards. They might now they didn't back in the day. They might now I don't know when they started to try to think of where you would do. Where do you do like you go trading cards, Pokemon cards was like board game shops or 19:57 card shops, but see game stop should be in that yeah. They should. They sell like collectibles. They've always sold collectible stuff anyways, so he's big on he's big on Twitter. This is what I'm saying to why are we letting dumb people? Why are we letting? Why can't there's no reason we you know? Here's the deal. Here's the deal you get. I've said get into a CEO role 20:18 and by the end of day one you're like oh, this is what a job is like bro. I really feels like a job yesterday. We did a trade show where we were there from like eight thirty to four thirty five o'clock like a regular nine to five as the worst day of my life. I was in there. I was like wait people do this every day. You just five times a week to be fair. That was a trade show, so it's a little different yeah beat all day. I'm talking to a lot of people like small talking a lot, but 20:48 Yeah, but I'm saying like I used to. I remember like it was a it wasn't against the rules. I it was kind of it was against the rules. We couldn't sit down at subway like we were on our feet the whole shift yeah. I used to work like seven hour shifts and be fine yeah and I just leave yeah and I did that yesterday and I was like this is the worst day of my life. I just want to go have lunch and then and then what are you shaking your head? I'm not saying anything 21:19 all I'm saying is that I just don't think I could do a normal job. I work harder what I do, but I like that I get to work really intensely for like three hours and then take a quick break and then work really intensely for another couple hours, but I also this is another thing. I don't ever get to like go home like and just quit working because I'm working at a P M. You know I'll do another two hours of work at night. Yeah, your job isn't your job doesn't really have a set schedule right now. 21:48 I was going to be on a plane for a long time and that was a different kind of suck. Yeah anyway, I'm not. I'm just trying to be like. I'm very grateful for my life. I know that I have a privilege, but there's elements of it that are fun. Okay, so he's got he's got a big Twitter following and this Twitter fall, his Twitter followers like follow what he says on Twitter. So here's an example of one of his tweets. He decided between two options for my G M E shares hold or hold hot. 22:18 hodl, which h o d l, which is diamond hand yeah that's reddit brain speak. Yes and hodl hodl is an acronym. I don't think it is. Yes, it is. It's an acronym. It says hold on for dear life, okay, which I didn't know that when I found this tweet. I was like hold or a hold spelled wrong. I thought it was hold held spelled wrong just because they're like we're dumb. We're dumb. This is so dumb to do this yeah, which is also valid. 22:48 So this is the kind of stuff he tweets. He also though, so he'll tweet like investing tweets and people will care a lot about that, but he also tweets stuff like this. You e lambs. If I have a small we yeah, so it says, oh lambs, I ever I if backwards, it's yeah 23:12 this is the kind of stuff he tweets, so he's just a nine year old Twitter, yeah, and they were like when we were backwards. What if like you look at this tweet to the rear view mirror? What have you like right in it into a calculator and hold it upside down and put it on? Oh yeah, my wife's a fifth grade teacher and she says that like the across the room. She'll see the kids putting their there. She made a mistake. This is a rookie mistake on her part. She says is that she saw one of the kids flip us calculator upside down yeah 23:39 and she was. Do you want to share that with the class and he's like yeah a hundred percent? Look what it says no, no, no, no, never mind. Stop you don't have to share that the class. Yeah, so just childish dumb stuff yeah, so this whole thing happens. Yeah, it explodes. Some people got super rich off of it. Some people didn't a lot of hate that. I fully read it. I didn't even like I read that thing backwards earnestly and I know when I have a small we 24:09 so this whole thing happens. He's also the CEO and he's rich. I hate that. Yeah, you know what? Most of it is should people be always just jealous. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, 24:35 extremely annoyed that people like that are in people are in positions of power where it's just like dude, whatever, whatever it gets me. It gives me worked up yeah, so this whole thing. A lot of people got caught, held holding the bag and but there was a lot of people too who didn't invest in game stop. They got they didn't get caught, but they were just they were like oh, I missed the wave yeah, and so then after that there was kind of this like 25:02 these follow-up waves of different businesses AMC was one that was really quick. I didn't know that happened. was in financial trouble a few years ago, 25:27 starting in twenty, twenty good reason though, get so many of these stores. When you went inside, you're like this is sad. Well, well in bed, but Beth and beyond was an interesting case because in they were expanding bed. I think the gun was kind of like the story of a lot of big box retail stores where they kind of they drink their own kool aid like bed, Beth and beyond. I think believed they were the biggest in the space and so they took on a lot of debt to 25:56 open up more stores, stock the shelves on those stores, but they overextended themselves and then all of a sudden they did not recognize that. Oh, we're going into all these new markets where we're not the leader in that market. We're stop. We're opening a new store, stocking the shelves and we're getting beaten out by competitors in that market. It's the same thing that happened to Circuit City. Circuit City thought they were the biggest one in every market. They expanded. They overexpanded stock the shelves, went to the markets where best buy was the best 26:24 and then they couldn't smooth their stock and it ended up putting them in financial ruin. So I think Bed, Bath and Be-Alm was in a similar situation, but they also were in the issue of they were in the internet era and they didn't become an internet era company. Right. So I think there was a handful of things. And then the pandemic, I think they had- It's very interesting to me how Target and Walmart have navigated that. Well, they have the online source. They diversified into online. But I think they also like- 26:53 I think I think Target and Walmart had. I think Target and Wal-Mart have different strategies, but I'm saying like the fact that I know what Targets threshold brand is yeah, you know for their home products is like it's interesting to me. Yeah, that is interesting. I was they branded it off the experience target is like it's a good experience. You get your starbucks, you go around the sort, you find the nice stuffed Walmart, you get in fights with children yeah. 27:22 Walmart was like Wal was really focused on trying to get the deal, but you can get everything there yeah. You know I think though I think more than anything. I think Target and Wal-Mart just they had a strong strong foundation for sure, and I think that they had a much, much longer runway yeah than any of these and they don't carry as much inventory yeah as bad. I think beyond was trying to better the arm literally extended to the ceilings with their stuff. That was like their whole thing. It's true yeah 27:52 and the casualty in all of this is the wedding registry business, the fun, the fun of going to all the different stores and doing the we literally went to target and then we did and they gave us a little basically a phone that we just scan stuff with. It was fun. We had a great time yeah, but it's like I didn't think about I be a run around bed bath and beyond and doing the whole that you know it was kind of a man. Yeah, we did it at target. We did a bath and beyond if you are engaged and you're doing the red the wedding registry thing. 28:21 go to the physical store and like go pick out the stuff and then go home and pick out some other things on the internet. Don't just sit on your couch and do the whole registry online. That's not your that's not fun. Yeah, it is more fun than that beyond that. You just let people do what they want to do. Shut up, shut up, shut up, go, go, experience part of a cultural understanding of what it means to be engaged in preparing for a wedding. 28:46 here's the thing you should want to do the things I want to do you joy being outside. Now I the bed bath and beyond did it better. They made it an experience. They had a special room you went into and they threw a big old deal. That was a thing when you were yeah. Mary, you did the drinks like I'm saying they gave you like champagne and then they gave you the gun and you went around like it was. It was an ordeal. It was pretty. We showed the targets do ours and they were like oh you weren't yeah yeah. 29:14 I had this thing they pulled open and they were like this one's not charged. Oh here you go. There's only one of them charged out okay, so I actually take a legal pad yeah. Why don't you just write down this stuff? Congrats though yeah we're happy for you. I guess we're like okay yeah it was fun yeah. Do you do you like each other? Is this like a like a marriage or like a marriage? You know yeah so yeah bed, Beth and beyond. I think 29:43 they, but also I realized that target doesn't ask for proof that the wedding exists or anything. So like you could sign up for the registry and then once the wedding date passes, then you get like fifty percent off on most of that stuff. Yeah, I don't think that bath did either. Yeah, I think you could just yeah, it is a one time code though. Just so you know, it is not you can't use it multiple times. You get a one time 30:13 pretty big discount on all that stuff. Yeah, just so you know, yeah, so the clutch thing to do is if you get cash from a bunch of people, schedule a time to go and just buy the left over the stuff. Yeah right anyways, but what we did with the cash from our wedding was invested in G. So that method beyond was 30:41 yes, the problem was a lot of different things that put them in a tough position and then Ryan Cohen started tweeting about them. It was like what if I became the CEO of Bed Bath and Beyond? Yeah, he was basically like I'm really interested in this and so he invests in it. He invests millions in it. Okay, starts tweeting about how much he thinks they're a great company. He calls them. He realizes this is going to just come to a point where he's legally held accountable for this because 31:10 he's realizing that he has influence and can get people to he's influencing pumping dobs will get there. He calls them okay, and he's like a bath and beyond yeah. He calls him. He records his call. He's like he's like hey, I've got a lot of ideas of how you guys could turn this company around and they were like this is the one on Prairie V road in Kansas City. I can connect you to my district manager. I guess they were like honestly, sir, I scan the orders at the checkout. I don't think I can do like this. They're like, but I got time to chat. No one's here yeah, 31:39 I have been wanting to talk to somebody for a while. Oh, the sound of a human voice. Are you the guy who right wrote me that card with my pet died? He talking and so he starts posting all this stuff about it. He invests millions of dollars into into bed bath and beyond okay, and so then this community sees it and they're like oh, this is his next thing. This is our next is big break. That's a bad and okay. 32:07 Yeah, so they all start to invest in it right and then this community starts on reddit call the way the shares work. If there's ten shares there's not, but if there's ten and you buy three of them and then you get other people to buy, you know, for like one to then you get six other people to buy one share each yeah now. You know you're getting more and more people interested. You can sell your three shares for way more than you bought them for 32:32 Yes, and then when the share value plummets, you've already sold out. You've made your money. Someone else bought your you bought your three shares for a dollar each. Someone else bought them for ten dollars each, so you made twenty seven dollars on that sale. Yes, you had to keep it twenty seven dollars. They're now thirty dollars in and then because each shares were ten dollars, but then when it goes down to being worth two dollars, yes, then they are stuck with a hefty loss. Yes, yeah and 33:01 you don't feel bad about that somehow you're rolling in your twenty seven dollars. You feel fine. I mean I think I think it's. I think you don't understand you. You either don't understand this is all thing you don't understand. He understands he knows what he's doing by the time he gets to bed bath and beyond 33:22 he understands yeah. I can see him fully going in on Game Stop and just being like Game Stonk gonna go gonna raise Game Stop. There's actually a good business. I'm fully bought into the fact that this could survive. You know, obviously it won't. You're like I can you know whatever I can see that, but then you see the AMC thing happen and you're like huh and then you go to bed, bath and beyond. Yeah, you know what you're doing at this point. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, most likely and so a community is formed around this on reddit called BBB Y, which 33:51 is the ticker symbol for bit bath and beyond and this whole group of people starts congregating on this reddit forum. There's a red it for every ticker by the way yeah yeah and on this sub reddit everybody is congregating here talking about bed bath and beyond and they're doing what in the stonks community and I need to be clear that this is there's a strong difference between the investing community and the stonks community. They are doing what they call due diligence, which due diligence is an actual term in 34:21 You go look at a company's balance sheet. and you do your research on the people in charge and do due diligence. In the Stonks community, due diligence is conspiracy theories. I mean, this is why I think it's going to go to the moon. 34:51 and then a few interesting figures start to pop up in this world. What of my favorite is a guy that goes by the name of P P seeds and he runs a show called the P P show, and so this is him doing a live stream debating with another guy by the name of Moran's and so Moran's disagrees. Which one is which guess top guy is P P seeds. 35:21 bottom guy is Moran's now you got that I got the backwards yeah bottom guys, PPC top guys, Marance, okay, Moran's doesn't buy into the here's the thing about PPC. Is that one out of context to yeah, here's the thing about PPC. Is my wife teachers at a private school yeah, there's a lot of rich parents at the school, and so she gets on parent teacher conferences. Go back to this graphic if you can yeah. You see 35:49 the blinds that people. Those are the same blinds we have in our house. My wife will set the laptop up facing the blinds and she's on a call and I'll go down. I'll recognize the voice. I'm like oh, that's a famous person. Move the computer, don't let them don't let them see our blinds. Rich people don't have those rich people have blinds. I haven't seen a blind in decades 36:15 Yeah, because Moran's has a whole set up. I guess I thought that the top one was that because PPC has a channel. I'd assume yeah, they both have channels. They both have gaming chairs. That's how you know that none of their opinions should be taken seriously. If you're seeing a video, someone's sitting at a gaming chair, they're trying to give you political ideas or financial advice. You should skip past that. That's a gaming chair. Skip past the video. Your life will be ruined by someone in a gaming chair. 36:46 Thanks for checking out this episode. In that mailing list, we give updates on past episodes. and every week things are changing. So if you want to keep learning stuff, that's happening in the Tillon verse. 37:13 I like 37:38 that's actually that's a pretty big red flag. So my wife's a twitch streamer and she refuses to get a gaming chair. I said do you want us by and she goes? No, I do not want to be one of those people, whatever that means. So Moran's the guy at the top gaming chair at the top. He does not buy into any of the BBY stuff. He actually thinks it's really dumb, and so he does a whole channel. He does a game stop stuff. He did. He was a game stop guy and he did 38:08 He did cash out, he did cash out, he did well on GameStop, but he thinks BBB Y is stupid, and so he's constantly does content saying how does PP seeds think he sees PPCS analysis on the financial situation of the bed bath and beyond stock market position loves bed bath and of course PPC and so this this this thumbnail is actually from a debate that they did on a live stream between the two of them. PPC does the PP show 38:37 and here's a here's a screen grab from an episode of the P P show. He brings these guests on. Oh my God, white or marker board that it says the P P show. Is that him? No, that's not him. That's another guest. Those are two other random guests that he had on the P P show will talk about bed bath and beyond, but primarily what they will do is they will 38:58 dissect Ryan Cohen's tweets to try to figure out his hidden message that he has for them about what's going on. What is that you went on for Ryan Cohen? Yeah exactly, and so he's like here's what he means and here's what this has to do with bed beyond and why we should take the position we're taking and why we should invest more in bed bath and beyond or whatever bed bath and beyond is real money. Yes, and so bad bath and beyond is falling apart. PPC is blowing up 39:25 Every day there's worse and worse news about Bed Bath & Beyond. And Cohen pulls his money from Bed Bath & Beyond. The PPC's community loses their mind. They're like, oh, he's pulled all his money. What should we do? And they look at all of his tweets. They look at the action of him pulling his money. He wants us to buy more. That's pretty much exactly what they conclude. They say he's trying to tell us to hold. He's doing this to tell us, hey, I'm doing something really big. 39:55 this is the message I'm trying to show you, but if no one will buy your shares, you know at a certain point there's no that's what the whole thing is. Is you can't sell them because no one will buy them yeah, yeah, so what I should say if you're able to sell that share, that means somebody bought it for that price yeah in at the height of bed bath and beyond and like the early twenty two thousands or something like that twenty tens. I don't know what the height was for them, but I do know that they peaked at seventy seven dollars a share 40:23 in twenty twenty when this community started to form, they were at three dollars a share, so a lot of people started buying into this and a lot of people were investing large sums of money, their life savings. A lot of people were taking out loans to invest in this because they were like. Oh, it'll be worth it. I'll be able to pay it off so dumb because they believed that Cohen was sending them messages to invest in through his Twitter is there is cryptic Twitter posts, which again 40:52 was immature sentences backwards. Yes, yes and then he Cohen they somebody discovers that Cohen had registered for a trademark after selling all of his shares in bed bath and beyond and he trademarked the word Teddy and so then the theory became. Oh, he is taking that money out to then go by 41:18 bed, bath and beyond and take him over and rebrand it as Teddy and then it's going to be the new bed bath and beyond is going to be Teddy. What Teddy ended up being a few months later was he was working on a children's book and he published this children's book called Teddy. Words can never hurt you and he starts putting out a series of these children's books. Imagine dumping your life savings 41:44 Okay, okay, okay worse, so they start reading his children's book on stream for messages, he shows and they start yeah, dice, de, dissecting it and they're looking at it and there's literally a and at a certain point. Does Ryan knows is happening 42:00 he's never acknowledged if I found out that there was some weird group on reddit dissecting our podcast in this way. That was like here's the secret messages. Here's what they actually mean. Here's what they want us to do. I would put a stop to that yeah yeah you'd be like hey guys, I really guys. I really don't mean anything and they're like and that's what he see. I told you he would say this. I told you he was going to say this 42:27 He's two steps ahead of him. And so on stream they're looking at this and there's literally a three hour stream where they're analyzing the colors of the viewers. So I don't know where it was at the height, but I can say now PPC has 19,000 subscribers and so it's a fairly large community of people that are involved in this and the reddit for this community. 42:56 gosh, I wish I knew how to use, has 70,000 members. So it's a large group. That's what I'm saying. I mean, he's doing a three hour live stream. I want to know how many people are tuned in. Yeah. And so they're going through and they're looking at the color of the socks on every page of his children's book and saying, okay, because of, and then they're listing them all out and they're doing an analysis of the colors and they're saying, okay, based on these colors, we can draw conclusions about what's going to happen next with Bed Bath and Beyond. 43:31 So the situation at bed, free on is happening to me. So lots of these Teddy books start coming out. More and more Teddy books are coming out and they're reading every single one. They're analyzing every single tweet he puts out. There's a handful of other people in the community that are saying stuff about Bed, Beth and Beyond that have a little bit of influence, but not really anyone like Cohen. Cohen has become honestly God to these people. Everything he says has a hidden meaning. Right. Everything he says is law and they're going to follow him to the ends of the earth. 44:01 And so in a weird way, they are like worshiping Cohen. And meanwhile, the situation at Bed Bath & Beyond is getting worse and worse. The financial situation, they're closing stores left and right. Every month it's, we're closing 50 more stores. We're closing 70 more stores. And then it culminates in a moment where their CFO, they announce the company announces that they're in a really bad situation. Their CFO, 44:31 they basically say hey, we're, we're coming out with an intent to declare bankruptcy. We haven't declared it yet, but we're beginning the process to file for it and then later that night the CFO jumps from his window and takes his own life and so the situation for bad bath and beyond yeah yeah and so the situation is spiraling for bed bath and beyond right like completely falling apart. This community, there's a member in this community 45:00 I think his name was his name is Kinsta. He was known for being really sucky. To find the right way to say that he would dox people constantly that disagree with them. This guy Marantz, he found his address and he posted a picture online of his wife and said I'm home alone. Come visit me with the address. This is the kind of stuff that this can stack. I was doing this kids. The guy shows up at the apartment. 45:30 of the CFO of Bed, Bath and Beyond try and he's like, he's like, hey, I'm trying to visit him. I know he didn't actually die. And the doorman, this is New York, the doorman is like, he doesn't live here anymore. And the guy's like, I know, I know he didn't, I know he didn't kill himself. I know he's still here. I know they're hiding him. And the guy's like, bro, you need to get off the internet. That's how the doorman responds to him. He's like, the guy doesn't live here anymore. He doesn't live anywhere anymore. He's like, you need to go. And so this guy, this community is like, 46:00 The picture I'm trying to pay is a very toxic community that's starting to form, that's not believing anything anyone's saying. And the situation at Bed, About, The Beyond is getting worse and worse and worse. They're declaring bankruptcy. It looks like it's going to fall apart. So what the PPCs stream is now starting to advertise is that, okay, hey, what's going to happen is it's going to go bankrupt. We're going to get your assets. We're going to all have the shares and our shares are going to turn into Teddy shares and we're going to find out, oh, hey, we do own this company that Cohen. 46:29 we're in at the ground level at Cohen's company. That's what's going to happen. And so they all believe because they don't understand what happens when a company goes out of business that, oh, hey, the shares are still going to be in my account. And so in April of 2023, Bed Bath & Beyond officially declares bankruptcy and they go through all the paperwork throughout the summer. In September, it finally goes through on all the stock market exchanges. 46:57 And those shares just disappear from everyone's account because that's what happens when you own a company that doesn't exist anymore. And everybody freaks out. They're like, Oh, my shares are gone. I didn't know my shares were going to go away. What happened to all my shares? These people had their life savings, loan money invested in it and it just disappeared. And PPC seeds continues on a stream and the Reddit, the whole Reddit community continues. 47:25 to look at tweets from Cohen to look at this Teddy book and try to rationalize how this is going to turn around and they end up doing it. They end up putting together this whole theory that oh what's going to happen is Teddy's going to launch and we're just going to have these shares and our account when it launches and like they still to this day believe. I don't know if you can see I'm physically stressed right now that this somehow is all going to come together for them. What is perhaps the wildest part of this story? 47:54 Well, I don't know if I would say the wildest start, the dirtiest part of this story, the grossest part of this story. Obviously it does seem like Cohen pump and dumped this stock, right? So he made these tweets, he went in and he got in and out and he doubled his money on Beth Bed Bath and Beyond. Right. He, I think he invested thirty five million. He came out with sixty and so he made a lot of money off of it, but PPC, and a handful of other 48:23 creators in this space that are doing are not going to be held accountable for that. Well, they all operate twist streams and they do the donations and they all have patreons and so they're all having people support them. So not only are these people investing their money in a stock that's worthless, but they're also investing their money to be on a patreon and to gift twitch streamers in their time yeah to get to give information about stuff that's useless and so I did see a reddit still to this day he's going 48:53 still to this day. There's a reddit community called GME meltdown and it's just a bunch of people, especially making fun of everyone who got into all this stuff. Yeah, and there's a post that I found that is pretty accurate. And so this guy says, okay, some quick math here. PPC show has 40. This was seven months ago. He said PPC seed show has 41 episodes and then there's a comment that says, hey, 41 episodes is just as public. He constantly deletes episodes when there's information that contradicts what's in them. 49:23 And so 41 is just what's currently public. And so he says there's hundreds more that are have since been deleted. There are an average three hours per episode. There's one hundred twenty three total hours. Typically there's four adults on the episode. So that's four hundred ninety two human hours. He says the average cost to mobile on in the U.S. is 30. The average time on long is 30 minutes. 49:47 and he says it nine hundred and eighty four lawns could have been mowed at an average of a hundred dollars each. He said they could have made ninety eight thousand dollars just mowing lawns. He said double it for show prep. That's a hundred ninety six thousand dollars. He said they have a hundred ninety six thousand dollar opportunity on their hands. If they were just mow lawns instead of doing this garbage, which is a whole areas to be, but I want that person to do the math on our show. 50:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah, how much somebody honestly Daniel Daniel will do it Daniel. We just mode yards instead of doing this for seven years, so but here's the thing P P probably is making a lot more money. 50:29 people is probably making a lot more money off of patreon and off of stream gifts and off of they do like these telethons where this is. You think that he's actually got money in this though and he's lost it to or you think he's just I kind of think he doesn't have a dollar where I joke about like if I became a grifter who like did this stuff, but then I just have a conscience. Yeah, I honestly I don't know if he has a dollar. It's either he's just as delusional ever as everyone else or he doesn't have a dollar in and he's just 50:58 But he does this. This is this screenshot is actually from like one of these telephon telephon type events where they're saying like, hey, one more hour that guy on the right in this. His name is actually Bill Pulte. He's another name in this community. This is Bill Pulte. Both of these guys are Bill Pulte. That's Bill Pulte Jr. and senior senior started a real estate company. 51:27 That's incredibly successful. They are the legacy that Bill Poulty Jr. is coming into is a eight or nine figure legacy. It's a very, very wealthy situation. Bill has gotten into philanthropy now that he's an adult, has gotten into some politics stuff, and into grifting on the internet. And he came on this stream, and the stream was a donation stream. You're donating to PPC, it's to keep the show running. 51:54 and the donation, the price of the donation was getting to meet Bill Poulty. Oh wow. So, oh shoot. So what he was saying was nothing. I want more and so it was a very I get to meet Bill Poulty. It was a very oh junior. I hate that guy. 52:14 It was a very cringey stream because he was like, he's like, just $50. He's like, if you do it in the next 10 minutes, you get to meet me. All you got to do is $50 the next 10 minutes, like that type of thing over and over again. And he said, you know what, you know what, you know what, the 15 minutes is up. He's like, I'm going to give you 20 more minutes, but you got to do $500. $500 the next 20 minutes, you can meet me. And like they raised, I think it was like seven or $8,000 on that stream alone, just from doing this thing. And then after that, Bill became a mainstay on the show and became one of the people that was like in this conspiracy circle. 52:44 And this all culminated for an event shortly after all their stocks went away. When the stock disappeared, they had a special live stream where they're making a special announcement. PPC was going to make a special announcement. They said, Hey, new information has come to light. We're making a special announcement, special stream tune in live. Don't miss this. Advertise it. Big event. The stream starts and it's like outdoors. It's a different setting than normal and it's just a shot outdoors. There's like a live audience. 53:14 But the live audience isn't mic'd. That is important. But there's like a live audience there. And the stream's like from the live audience. And then all of a sudden, this helicopter flies in and lands in the field. And Bill and PP, and one of the other guys that comes on the show a lot, get out of this helicopter and greets this crowd. And they do the live stream from the side of this helicopter on like this airfield. And. 53:44 they do like almost like this political vibe type press conference being like here's what's happened. We I know we all just lost all of our stocks. The next hill in live episode show open a just land the helicopter there. That is crazy. They land the hell that is insane to bring people who have lost their entire life savings yeah and then to well that's a good evening. Welcome 54:14 welcome. I think that's that's. This is the thing that kind of like cements in my mind that this is a grift for them because here's the thing what they're selling. They're selling hope that they're going to be rich one day that everyone's going to be rich one day. It's a say it's a prosperity. They're capitalizing on yeah and so what they need to do is they need to look rich. It's like you'll be like me and so like this is just part of the grift. You can't do a whole thing where we're all going to be rich one day. You got to do a thing where you could be rich like me yeah 54:39 Yeah, exactly. And so they land and they say, hey, look, we know what happened. This is a terrible, this seems terrible. But trust in Teddy. Yeah, here's how we know, here's what's going to happen. And then at the end of this whole event, they did this big old thing about how Teddy's still going to happen. Cohen's on our side. Here's how we know it. Everything's okay. Don't freak out. Donate more to PPseeds. Also, Bill Pulte has something he wants to say. Bill takes the podium and Bill says, guys, 55:06 I'm very excited to announce this. His dad passed away years ago. He said, I'm very excited to announce this. He said, my dad's company has been a privately owned company for decades. And he said, but I want to open this up to investors one night only to investors to come invest in my father's company. He says, so tonight only I'm selling shares for Pulte Realty. You can get in on the ground floor, get in today, make your investment. I think he priced it at like $500 a share. 55:33 You can come in, buy your shares in Pulte Realty. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Only the people who are here tonight and are watching with the stream live have this opportunity to get in and invest today and be a part of what's happening here. And just got a bunch of people to invest in this real estate company that he inherited that since he's inherited is not doing well because he doesn't really know what he's doing in the real estate world. 55:58 very, very, very sketchy and a bunch of people do it. A bunch of people are like oh yeah. I just lost everything listening to these people. Let me give you five. Let me give you a bunch of money so that way I can be invested in on the ground floor on your real estate company okay ground floor of your already established and decade old yeah falling apart, actually falling apart real estate company since you took it over. So 56:24 This community is still active and this community still is dissecting Cohen's tweets stresses me out so much. Yeah, these people are so dumb. Yeah. Still reading the news and trying to figure out how it's good for them and how things are going to work out for them. A lot of these people I watched like a mini YouTube documentary about it and the people that were interviewed. Most of them asked for their face to be blurred out because they didn't want to be on the internet, but a lot of them were like, yeah, like I took out loans. I quit my job. 56:53 there are people. There was a one guy who said yeah, I actually got laid off, but he's like I'm so confident that this is going to come around like I'm just not going. I'm not looking for a new job and he's like so I'm just just been pretending to go to work every day. Like I'm just my wife thinks I'm going to work. I'm not and he's like I just I know this is going to work out that I'm expecting at a minimum already living in your unrealized games like yeah, just like yeah. I mean I mean he said he said he said I'm confident that I think I stand to make at least three million off of this and he said so I don't need to work another day in my life. 57:22 And it's just like these people are so like the cognitive they're not. in April of 2023 and August of 2023, someone bought the trademark to Bed Bath and Beyond. Overstock.com. 57:53 right, so bad, bad, the bad dot com still exists and still runs. It's just overstock and overstock said yeah, bed bath and beyond has a stronger brand than we do, and so they just rebranded the bed bath and beyond when they realized they could and now that still exists, but about thing I mean on technically which is crazy and that's got me wondering. Can we do that? Are there any businesses that we can just go 58:21 get. Thank you for listening to the Circuit City Pod, like honestly, I don't think we should be the C C P. 58:36 Yeah, I don't know how many blockbuster. 58:42 toys are us, toys are us is back. I know that's that makes me sad, but on that note, if you want to buy a share of tillin, you can support us on patreon. That support will buy us a helicopter yeah wow fiddle off, huh? Yeah, that's brutal. 59:11 Hey, thanks for checking out that episode of things. I learned last night. If you like that we've done actually several episodes about Ponzi scheme type things literally one about Ponzi, but what I wanted to highlight was to look mania, which was like the original pump and dump where people were literally buying tulips for way more than they were like the flower way more than they were worth, and then people were left holding the bag on that and so that's available. You can go check that out and if you cannot wait for a new episode and you can buy some tulips at tillin dot com slash support. We've got tools for sale. 59:40 and they're only two. Why are you interrupting my outro? I will the outro. We only one of us. I was just trying to sell some of our tulips. The end of the day, I tell them about patriot. You just did oh yeah till the dot com slash support. You can get next week's episode ad free right now and you can meet our host and producers in discord. We have a monthly call that we do a lot of other great perks. 01:00:05 it's totally worth it. Till and dot com slash support and you might be selling high, jacks, I think ending of this episode. That's crazy. Yeah, it was. It was a pleasure. Thanks for watching things. I learned last night. We'll see you next week. What the heck just happened?

The stock market is often seen as a place of strategy, risk, and opportunity. But sometimes, it becomes a playground for wild speculation and emotional investments. One such example is the rollercoaster journey of Bed Bath & Beyond. What started as a struggling retail chain became a battleground for online communities betting on its survival. This is the story of … Read More

How Elizabeth Holmes Fooled the World | Theranos Ep 251

11-26-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 how far was Elizabeth Holmes willing to carry an idea that could become a reality and she has people investing in it before she's willing to admit to herself and her investors that is just not possible. Allegedly pretty stink and far yeah. This week we learned about Theranos, which is a company that I believe earnestly like wanted to accomplish what they set out to do. They brought at least at one point yeah. They brought a lot of investors, but then they started faking some results. 00:26 and the the fraud spiraled and we learned about the downfall of Elizabeth homes and Theranos is a company. So it's wonderful, great thanksgiving top, so to jump into yeah a good thing for the family table. What do you think for for I'm thankful for the downfall of there? I know this is things are the last night comedy podcast where every week we learn about something new. So we're going to laugh a lot along the way and also give you the information about what you came here to learn about. So you know it's gonna be a good time 00:55 this week is thanks kidding. I don't have any shows. So December's off December's pretty full, but they're all Christmas parties, so don't come to those you're not allowed well for real like they're all there's like two to public shows. One of them is like in Florida and the other ones somewhere else. Speaking of private shows, you can join our Pachy. I hate that segue, but they do get private content that's not publicly accessible. 01:23 you can join our patreon. You can get next week's episode right now, yeah, and then you can also join our discord and you can get a bunch of bonus content and we do a monthly live hang out where we just jump on a video call and get to talk and hang out. It's really good time, so it's fun without further ado. Welcome to the episode. 01:45 Hey man, hey, I love Disney. I would never in my life cross them. Nice card, 02:00 their programming was far and superior to anything the Nickelodeon did. They certainly did not orchestrate Dan Schneider's fall. There are no documentaries about Disney producers now coincidence question mark and they're all dead. Anyway, I just want to make sure they know I like them that you're committed. Yeah, I need them to know that I'm not going to 02:29 you know, I've signed the terms and conditions. Yes, so anyway, I haven't. Have you ever heard of Theranos? Oh yes, thank you. Thank you, Timothy Stone for finally after a year and a half, choosing a topic that I said this might be a great episode. Please take us through the journey. 02:57 so they're in. I do know about Elizabeth Holmes. Yes, yeah, yeah, I'm excited for this. Okay, so Elizabeth Holmes, she here's a picture of a bright young mind. Yeah, here's a revolutionary. Here's Elizabeth Holmes. Yes, she was a well. Let's just take it back to the beginning. Let's take it back to the beginning. She was born in 03:25 I'm not saying she's Taylor Swift, but she's born in eighty four. She's blonde and you're a massage. It's who can't tell the difference between any any woman, any blonde girls. Oh yeah, I've seen you before we've met breeze school. We've are you married to do the number of people? We did a gig at a place that I won't make fun of and the number of people who walked up to so I have an all female team 03:50 yes, which I'm very proud of. I love the people who I work with and they work really hard and they're great now, but the number of people who walked up to my manager and asked if she was married to my manager is infuriating. Yeah Yeah, that's rough like. Are you married to their manager? She's like something like that. Yeah, I am the manager. She she responded. I'm married to the game, which is like why I was like heck yeah dude. That's the energy I like 04:19 I said you that tick tock of the high school football coach, who I school football coach. He was like, he was like, he's like, I one of my players on my team, I noticed that every game he ties a ring into his cleat, like into the shoelaces on his cleat, and he's like, he's like, that's kind of weird. And so one day after a few games, he asked about it and he's like, I just assumed, oh, it's just a ring that he normally wears, and then he ties it on there. So it's not. 04:45 in the way like during the game, but then he noticed he's like he never wears the ring outside of the game. He was like I'm married to the yeah. So he asked him one day he's like he's like he's like hey, why do you have that ring in your shoes? Like because I'm married to the game coach and he was like he's like I couldn't decide if I thought that was really cooler. If I wanted him to run gassers after that, you were sat through someone describing a video to you 05:10 fine. I'll stop doing that. Okay, maybe you watch the video because he's like singing in it's it's they've had to fill us on a Sunday. He's in a chick fil a rap and there's the cow is doing the flosser right and then there's a car that's on fire and it's pretty it's. I mean honestly, it's a really great video. You should check it out. It's a really cool video because they're like college students and they're like in their dorm room and they're like drinking orange juice. That's what they tell their parents. 05:36 and then first of all it's apple juice and second of all it's what's worse is whenever someone describes a full video to you and then they make you watch the video. They just described all video and you're like. I literally have a shot. I know this video you described the whole thing to me anyway. 06:07 Can we leave it? I didn't say anything Alex. Do you know the video he's referencing yeah? 06:23 it took me so long. Oh my god, so Elizabeth Lom's born 1984. Oh, I was gonna say so is doing a yeah theme for Halloween this year and it was eras. Oh sure and my brain was just like oh like Taylor Swift. I was going to dress like Taylor Swift and that she's they're dressing disco her team and I was like what era is that and she's like the seventy's and I was like she was born in eighty four. You guys are you guys are doing a different 06:53 yeah they're doing actual eras, not eras tour yeah threw me off anyways. So Elizabeth Holmes born at my wife school. This is real. This isn't a bit stop. My wife school had pajama day yeah and so my wife and I had a disagreement yeah one night and then you know when you wake up the next morning after you've gone to you had an disagreement. You said you're sorry, whatever you talk you go to bed the next morning you're like you're not talking 07:20 you're like you're still you're still not you're like all right, whatever. I'm making my breakfast, whatever my wife is getting ready for work and then she grabs her car keys in her backpack and starts to walk out the door and she's fully in her pajamas and I don't know that there's a day at school for and so I'm sitting there and in my head. I'm like letter I'm like I'm like arguing myself in my head. I'm like she doesn't know she doesn't realize that she's in her pajamas. She's going to go to work. Yeah, it's going to be embarrassing letter 07:48 just let her go and I know you have to tell her you have to you have to say something, but like what if you didn't just I'm like going back and forth and so finally before she left, I said hey, are you aware that you're in your pajamas right now and she went yeah yeah of course I she didn't say anything. She just went yeah and then left and I was like I never say it again 08:14 it was that and then when I got home, I was like what was that about and she's like it was pajama, the jam a day dumb, dumb, yeah like like I was stupid for asking like she was like she said it like she was like leave like she's still mad. Obviously yeah and she's like the whole time she's like. I hope he doesn't say anything to me this morning. You know yeah, we have a really healthy relationship yeah, so Elizabeth was born in 1984. Alex, do you have fights like that with your wife? No, not really 08:44 it's because he does the show, so he gets home too late, so they never have the like you know they fight in it. They're going to have one really big fight in twenty years and that'll just be like a huge fight and they'll be like all right, got it over with you know they got a that's one fight. Some couples are like that okay, so she was born in eighty four to the homes family obviously 09:12 but they have a lineage and I'm confused. I mean, I guess I'm not really confused about it. She related to priest homes pretty sold. Is that what you're saying? No, no no, it's not at all. 09:34 a all of a running back. So she comes for the homes was our one asset in the two thousands like he was all we had. We had train green yeah yeah. 09:54 we had some good. We did. We never synced up the way that we're synced up right now. Yeah, you didn't have. We've got overlap. Yeah, there was got phenomenal defensive coordinator. Finally, we've got eighty read who's insane. Yeah, and then we've got, you know, and right now it's insane that as of recording, I know that we're like we're releasing this right Thanksgiving. This may not be true. I hope it is, but it may not be true by them that right now we're undefeated. Yeah and you see the video of half the team at that high school football game. 10:24 supporting Nagy's son, Oh Agi, son. No, I saw the video where they got to where half the football team got to play a full high school team and they weren't taking it easy either dude like it was like dude, you wash up Chris Jones legs, break a sophomore's collarbone. I didn't know I need is a great video. I watched it and I was so here's so so the ball is high right Chris Jones, just straight out of tackles and you hear this kid go 10:53 right. It was like a like one of those things you give turn it to yeah and then and you know and his rain goes flying yeah, yeah, because he's married to the game. You want to watch it Chris Chris Chris attacks him and go and and then put him on the ground and he goes you've been served divorce papers. You should watch the video. Let's watch the video. So no, I what the story was was it was my homes, Chris Jones, 11:21 I think Kelsey, Andy Reed showed up to spag Harrison Bucker. Yeah, there's so much of the team just showed up to the game and they were just sitting in the stands. Kid was it was Matt Nagy's not nag kid yeah was playing and they just showed at the game. They were just sitting in the stands and it was crazy. One of the craziest things I've ever seen because they were just in the stands. I was like those people or anything. Yeah, those people aren't allowed to just go be in the stands like you when you're at that level like you've not. That is great. We've talked about that on the podcast before like how my homes and Kelsey can't go in public. Yeah, 11:51 but like any lineman came yeah yeah a bunch of them. You know yeah I would recognize Chris Jones. I would recognize I would recognize most of the players. I would. I think I yeah like you know anyway yeah because right now they're really good, but also you recognize have we talked about this before about how you recognize NFL players in real life just based on their sheer mass. 12:15 Yeah, you would see them and you'd be like. I think you might be a professional. I was showing Reagan that me and my homes are the same height and I was like. Look how tiny he looks on the field like when you look at him in the huddle yeah. I was like he's a small one. He's this yeah yeah he's a so when you see a professional athlete in person, it's jar. Remember we were at the we were the Ritz Carlton just a weekend get away and remember when the Cleveland Cavs walked in yeah yeah yeah and it's it is tiring. It's straight up where you're like 12:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah, they really are. Yeah, otherworldly. Yeah, so anyway, so she came from a family line. Her great, great, great grandfather is doing fine. It was Charles Lewis Fleishman. Sorry, I couldn't help it. Charles Lewis Fleishman. He is very wealthy. He was a Hungarian immigrant who came to the states to found a yeast company. And so he was a yeast baron. 13:14 one of the first people who made yeast commercially viable. If it weren't for him, this is what historians say. If it weren't for him, we would not have bread like we do today. We went at least not as much bread as we have to her, which we were talking about bread yesterday. Yeah, which are my mother dough. We're talking about money. No, we were talking about bread and we're talking about mother dough. No, we're talking about bread and how 13:43 Subway's bread is fake. Oh, hey. Hey. 13:50 hey, I accept the terms and conditions. I have nothing bad to say about subways fine restaurants, yeah or Disney, yeah, Disney and subway have real bread dude, the amount of people I'm really finding out a lot about my friends because the people who are worried about McDonald's e coli break yeah. I go really 14:20 Your wor- 14:22 Huh. 14:25 it is pretty. It's a role and be able to judge the past versions of yourself. You know yeah yeah, because I love to judge now you like the things I always did. I have nothing to fear. Yeah, I've literally I've not been any like not even air particles. Yeah, I haven't sniffed a McDonald's and and that was when I knew I needed to lose weight as I used to. Yeah, you drive by head out the window and just 14:53 and that was with Burger King in the car. You had a bag of Burger King. You job. I know you don't. I did when I was fat fat person thing. I did what was Fasoli's breadsticks were a dozen for your money nine and man. I would crush all twelve yeah, which to be fair, great meal, valid great meal. Those are so and without Elizabeth Holmes, great great great grandfather, Fasoli's breadsticks wouldn't exist. It would not exist. They do yeah, so he got very, very rich. 15:20 off this he was a yeast bearer. What do you think, the breadsticks fell out of a coconut tree? They exist in the context of all that we are. They exist in the context of Charles Louis Fleishman. Fleishman? Fleishman. Great. So somewhere along the line they changed their last name to Holmes. That or her father is a daughter in the line or her father is the son of a daughter in the line. Her father is the son of her grandmother in the line. Sure. You know, I don't know. You know how. 15:49 Family lines work. Yeah. So. I do. 15:54 I am one of them. I have family to I do know how you're not robot. What is this? What better you try to do right now? I'm just making sure that my kids and their kids and their kids know that I'm watching so I always remember. We just realized how this stuff lives forever on the internet. You know, like my 16:17 my great is going to see this video yeah yeah yeah and I want them to know that I still expect them to what in the words of my grandmother. Remember whose last name you have. That's what she would say when I wasn't behaving correctly. I would go. Remember we share last name yeah yeah and be like well we don't share first name, so no one's going to think I'm you okay. We did for a while 16:45 that I asked if I could change it. Can I please? I'd like to give up the name Della. I don't want to be Della anymore anymore. It was a really hard conversation when I had my family. Yeah, we just got a new first grader. His name is Joan Judy. All right, so so Fleishman spins a lot of money. 17:07 but does pass on a lot of it to his son. His son says I bet I could spend more, and so he does just that by becoming the youngest ever mayor of Cincinnati. Oh and the early nineteen hundreds passes on a little bit of money to his son and his son, who is Elizabeth Holmes grandfather is like. I bet I could spend the rest of this and he does he does it by opening up like an art institute thing and does philanthropy wonders it yeah, and so she 17:37 doesn't inherit a lot of wealth, but but this is very important. She does inherit a family that's well connected and so even though they're not very wealthy, they swim in the wealthy ponds and so her which does create a dynamic for her, which is like we're not wealthy, but I want to be yes and her. Their family was very, very proud of their history that the direct quote is the family is very proud of their yeast empire. 18:07 and they very much like it's like they they they longed for the days when they were you had those hobby lobby paintings on their wall like those little frames that just said from the west to the east from the east to the west. As for me and my family, we will praise the 18:31 sure praise the mother all the yeast. They they shatter act me shack and a bend to go. They bow a knee to the yeast, so they got thrown in the yeast furnace. I come from mother dough, but they really were like Fleishman was one of the richest people in America when he was a yeast baron. I can't stop saying he's and Elizabeth because 18:59 she was just kind of steeped in this as a child. Like they were, they're like our family was former yeast parents. We are important and special like she kind of grew up in this world where it's like I want to bring back our families yeast glory okay, and so she every year they had a yeast feast try to start a YouTube channel called Mr Yeast. 19:28 didn't go well. She made a snack company called Yeastables. It was just a bunch of stacks without the like. Oh, it seems pretty important to have it doesn't see you want yeast. Don't that is able to be yeasted she became a rapper for a little bit. Her name was yeast, yeast, Kanye, Yeast. This sucks 19:57 this is actually really interesting topic. I'm really excited. I'm really excited for the story. Please get to it, so I know this one, so she she's a vampire. She's in this in this culture with her family. Another important thing about her background before we get into the rest of story was her dad. Her dad was a guy by the name of Christian are homes. The second okay or wait now Christian are homes. The fourth 20:25 That was her grandf great grandfather was the second okay. He's the one who spent the rest of the money her. Her father, Christian Holmes, the fourth was a V P at Enron, which makes a lot of sense. She learned a lot of probably fraud from her dad. He though you gave away the ending. We don't know that yeah. Oh yes, she learned a lot about good moral business practice from in run from her dad and in Ron, which is a company that 20:55 we all know is a good moral business with very sound business practices. Yeah, and I don't know actually if her dad got any fallout from the Enron scandal and she he was a VP, but I don't know if like he he lost his job for well yeah he definitely lost his job and we do know that after the Enron scandal that he did bounce around from job to job and so she started she her like later youth was moving schools often because they were moving for his work. Yeah, because he couldn't 21:23 get a good job, so he must not have gotten like a prison sentence or anything. If he was able to move and find new jobs, he was just a VP. Vice Presidents do nothing. That's true, that's true. Yeah. At what level do you have to be to like and then in a scandal like that to have like probably someone in the C suite, you know yeah. What do you have like an ownership stake? You probably have to have a majority stake yeah. 21:48 interesting. Well, also it depends on how involved you were in the scheme because there's sometimes that is that scheme happened, but the CEO was our paper trail works wasn't involved. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. If you're going to fraud, you got to make sure you're not part of it. Yeah, but also what happens sometimes is that the people at top of the frauds get away with it because they've created a paper trail that that paints the target on someone, some else. Yeah, that's when you know you're really good at it. Yeah, so that's how I've gotten away with it. 22:17 So in high school she her parents like she went to private high schools. She got into computer programming and she actually started her first business in high school selling and I don't know how she pulls this off. She is something we're going to find out is she's really, really good at selling herself yeah and like talking the talk. Oh for sure, and so in high school she manages gift of gab, some my gift of gab yeah. She manages to sell c plus plus compilers, which 22:47 C plus plus is a computer programming language. A compiler Dums down computer programming languages into like dumber versions of languages. That's not the technical term, but essentially like more primitive languages and then allows other devices to be able to read it. So she was selling compliers to Chinese universities in high school. I don't know how she managed to pull that off, but she was selling these compilers because her parents had early in high school. 23:17 arranged for her to learn Mandarin. That was like a extra curricular activity that she had and so she then went to Stanford. Are you trying to learn Mandarin on Duolingo? Technically, I'm not learning Mandarin. I don't think. What are you learning actually just Chinese? Yeah, actually I'm learning that's actually a good question. I don't know what 23:42 I'm obviously not learning a lot. We learn in I was not learning a lot. Yeah, I just called it Chinese. I don't know if I'm actually learning Mandarin or just Chinese. I don't know what the difference is okay. Yeah anyways, so she goes to Stanford. I've got to do a lingo streak. I set mine to learn English, UK and doing really great so far. It's 24:15 I hate you so much. Everyone's like really are and I'm like I've been number one in English UK for months. My street my points yeah yeah yeah my comprehension. There's a couple words that I can't get though pretty difficult, but it's no pronunciation though yeah there's this one word. It's like C O L O U R and I just can't figure out what that is. I don't know what it means. I haven't asked 24:46 so they go to stay. If she goes to Stanford and while at Stanford she's studying chemical engineering and she what is she hoping to do at this point? You know, be rich. I don't know if there's like I don't know if there's a career goal, but she so your goals yeah sure and she's fine. She joined a sorority and she's just doing like the college thing right yeah. While she's there, she develops this theory or this 25:14 plan for business yeah and the plan is she wants to do blood tests with a lot less blood because she doesn't like blood and she doesn't like needles true and so she's like it'd be sweet. If you could do it, we have a lot in common. Her and I yeah you do yeah. You both come from yeast empires different, he's in fire to competing east empires. 25:41 In the early days of this show, we did like affiliate ads where we were like a sign up for grammarly and use code till and and we got like fifteen cents and now we just do patreon. It's a much better way. It's better for us as creators. It's better for you as listeners and it's a much more fun way for us to interact. We do monthly hangouts like on zoom. We just hang out and play games online and and get to know each other. It's a really fun time. So 26:08 but still use our code till in at grammerly dot com because I think it's still I might get like a couple cents from that, but join us on patreon because we're having a great time. If you don't, we're going to have to start doing mobile game ads. 26:25 Yeah, you were the best in the west. She was the best in the east. I hated her growing up. I have the best yeast in the west. She has the best yeast in the east. This is the best east on this side of the Mississippi 26:41 I keep bumping into the book shop. I know every time that you do a topic. I actually want to talk about. You just also do this. This is what I do in every episode. Okay, so she tells one of our professors about it right and she's like okay. So I got this idea and I do this yeah. She's like she's like what if with because I don't like needles and so she tells her professional her professor and her professor is like it's never going to work. She's like that's not enough blood. You need way more blood to be able to do those tests. 27:11 and she's like, well, what if we did less blood and she's like, no, it's not going to work. So then she walked out of that professor's office and walked into another professor's office and said, hey, I have this idea for a business, told him and he was like, that's a cool idea. I like it. The thing is he was he, he wasn't in a subject matter expert and that right. He was a subject matter expert in like engineering while the other one was in like bio engineering. Yes. So this guy didn't know that the idea when it worked was impossible. Yeah 27:36 And so she found someone who was like, that's a good idea. And so she starts pursuing this. Goes to Palo Alto, so she's in Stanford, And I think that this is, So right now... 28:05 Everything is AI. AI is the buzzword. If you can power your technology with AI, you win. In the 2010s, it was data. Everything's data-driven. Data-driven was the word. Democratize X was the early 2000s. We're bringing everybody's power, everybody's hands, and you all have control over your own thing. And so her idea was just that. You could use a take-home finger prick, finger prick your finger, and then you'd have a small little vial of blood. 28:33 which she's actually holding in this picture, small, tiny, tiny little viral, but it looks like maybe a big Tylenol capsule. Is she cross side in that picture? I feel like they probably should have said hey, let's take this again. You look cross side in this picture. She's just looking at the thing, but it is interesting knowing how the story ends like what do you think's going on in her head when she's taking this picture like you, you know? Oh, I have very strong thoughts. All right, let's get to it so 28:58 And then so you finger prick and then you send it off. what I think they were saying was 60 different blood tests. much quicker. make this possible and she's going out and she's getting funding. 29:28 Later in 2010, they raised more than 92 million in venture capital. And she puts together this group, this board of very influential, like big name people. And I think it really does. It just comes down to what I said earlier, where she was just a really good salesperson and selling. So obviously she's in the board. And so she pulled in Riley Bechtel, which was former 29:56 Bechtel Group CEO, major US company, David Boyes, another founder of a major company. And then now is where we start to get to some interesting people. William Foege, which was a former director of the CDC. Richard Kovach, which was the former CEO and chairman of Wells Fargo. And then Jim Mattis, who you might know as General Jim Mattis, who was the US Secretary of Defense. 30:25 and then another former executive of Amgen and then investors included like Larry Fink, members of the PayPal Mafia, yeah and then even George Schultz, which is former Secretary of State, yeah and so she was put together this group of like high ranking government, a snow ball effect things where if you get because you know she went to the professor that you know 30:55 she's got the backing of a professor there. You know one professor told her this isn't going to work yeah and then you get a couple other influential people and once you've got like this is and this is kind of why I'm like hesitant to let people open on my shows and stuff. Yeah is that like it's not not that I'm kind of any kind of big name, but then once you've done that you can say oh I know and I've worked with yes. 31:25 jaren and you can use my credibility with someone else yes and leverage that in your conversation, yes and so you can say well, you know I had this conversation with them. They seem pretty excited about it. Oh well, if they seem excited about it, yes, you know and so it's a snowball. It's not like you know all the sudden she's got this entire list. It's like she gets one at a time, but then it snowballs to where it's like once you've got four of those people, yeah, you can get the rest of them. 31:52 yeah, because they yeah, because they start to see all you've got that person signing off. Yes, this must be legit if they did and what do we just talk about the almost like a confirmation bias type thing of the circular report, circular report, yeah, where it's just like oh they're in. I don't even need to dig any further. Yes, they've probably done their own due diligence, so now I can trust them a hundred percent, you know, and I think this is also a symptom of silicon valley even to this day, but for sure, especially then is just gambling. 32:22 Yeah, because so many of these investors are just like if I invest in six of these companies and two of them pay off, it covers my entire investment. Yes, exactly. And at the at this stage, investing in any business in this stage, like there's not fundamentals you can look at. There's not a you're just looking at a business plan. There's not a product. Yeah, yeah. It's like so many of the ideas in Silicon Valley are just ideas of like this is this is a crazy idea. Now the idea pitched here 32:51 being able to do blood tests on a smaller amount of blood is a crazy idea. Yes, like where it's like if that pays off, if this works, it's huge. If you like even and even of like your, let's say that she starts this and I think she does. I think she's genuinely like. I think I can figure this out. Yeah, you know we know where it leads, but I don't think it. I don't think the whole time was like I'm going to do this like it was like she can figure this out is what she thinks yeah and so 33:20 the amount of upside that could happen if you do crack it huge yeah is insane yeah, because if you were to put a million in in two thousand three, you're a billionaire and the company goes to ten billion like yeah, you've got a major stake in this case, and I think that's what most silicon valley investors and venture capital, especially in that era we're doing, where they said like exactly like you said, I'm going to invest in seven, eight companies. I've got 33:49 ten million to spend my thrum at all. One of them is going to pop and it's going to be worth it for all of that spend all the loss on everyone else, and so it doesn't matter if if it's sound. It doesn't matter if I think you can actually do it. It just matters a number scheme and only in yeah. I mean here we are twenty years later. That's still happening yeah, but it's definitely like after the we work and uber there and there, and I was like 34:17 after a couple big unicorns yeah, you know, turn out or the ogres, stab you in the butt or whatever there's there's a little more. It's harder to get funding than he is yeah yeah. People are a little bit more cautious and I think yeah anyway, so she gets a lot of funding. 34:35 and they start building this company and it's very much like you were saying. I all I was countering was was like it's not just her gift of it's not like she's just a smooth talker one. I think she genuinely believes this is possible yeah and two. She has an idea of how to make it happen. She is talking with reputable scientists and people who are actively working on a way to make this happen yeah and then she's leaning on the credibility of the people she's already got on board. 34:58 Yeah, so it's it's not just like she's smooth talking her way through and getting money is what I was trying to say. Yeah, and she does have like a she does have a good background like she built a business in high school that was very fairly successful. She went to stanford even though she didn't finish stanford, but she went to stanford and she's very well connected as it's like if you're an investor, you see this person and she's good at communicating like you can't really fault an investor for investing at this stage because of all those things like it makes sense that an investor, especially a silicon valley investor would invest in right. 35:28 a business like this. they're building the plane while it's flying. is they're building this business while it's flying Because they don't go public, What I mean is like they are, no one knows about them 35:58 So they're building this whole thing in the dark, seemingly trying to get it right and years for ten years. Yeah, but in this company, they originally launched as real time cures. They changed the name later the same year as they launched to Theranos, which was a combination of the word therapy and diagnosis because they thought that the word cures like people have a bad association with that and so they don't want to keep or also an expectation of like this is going to cure you 36:25 Also true yeah, because it was just supposed to diagnose you. It wasn't supposed to yeah, you don't do that fingerprint and then all of a sudden be healthy and so they in twenty thirteen for the first time ever launch a website and kind of go public with what they're working on and at that time they had already signed a deal with Walgreens and so the deal was they were going to put their device in in Walgreens and so here's here's kind of a quick look at what they're doing so in historically 36:54 if you need to get blood work done, they had to draw, they have to draw like a decent amount of blood and then they put it through this massive device, which is like a full kitchen in most houses and their big, big, huge cabinets, big, huge machines. They're like the size of commercial printers and the blood goes through the centrifuge and gets shaken up and then they run all these tests and diagnostics through this whole process and it's huge. It takes hours upon hours. Your blood that has to get sent off to these third party labs. 37:23 and it and you don't get your results back for weeks to find out what's going on. What Theranos built was this device, which looks like an counter top ice maker, yeah, ice maker or like an early PC, a little bit. Yes, but yeah, early PC is very small fits on a counter and and we saw that picture of her holding the vial. All you need is this tiny finger prick of blood. You shove it in there and it can give you 37:50 I think they said yeah up to sixty different test results with that in minutes, which originally the plan wasn't for it to be sixty right. The plan was for it to be just a certain number of. I don't know when they launched honestly how much they wanted to. She always talked about the story. She would tell the story about her uncle who got sick and died yes and a lot has been said about that story since, but so that was the example she always told. So maybe when 38:18 she started. It was specific to that case and over time it grew. I don't I don't know. Actually, I think if I remember correctly, there was like it started as a smaller panel and then it just eventually out grew, you know, where it's just like listen. If the smaller panel is not possible to do, let's just say that we can do it all. You know yeah, I was like what's the point about lying about four things? If we can lie about six about a bunch of you know interesting so 38:46 and then what Walgreens is good doing is Walgreens was retrofitting their stores and putting in these little Theranos places like they're not like what it was the word I'm looking for like Theranos centers and you were going to have these machines. Yeah, they were going to have those machines on site. You could walk in, they'd finger prick you, they'd plug it in and then they'd be like all right. Here's what your blood says about you and it would say like doesn't look good. It was like it. It's like a magic eight ball. Those kind of responses. Please try again. 39:16 looks bad, that diagnosis is unclear. So yeah, you go in, you get your finger prick and then they give you the results. Walgreens invested $350 million into adding this into all their stores. And it was pretty phenomenal because no one had really heard of it yet. Like she, the company didn't exist, I mean it existed, but as far as the public eye was concerned. 39:41 there was no public trust bill. There was no anything we was walk, but again it's one of those things where Walgreens puts its name behind them. Yes, and now you're now you're both, you know, lean on me. We're both lean together in this. Yes, yes, and so then later that year safeway is like we want it to and so safe way jumps on to and they invest. I think a hundred fifty million into it and they're retrofitting their stores, yeah, putting this in all their stores and so by this. This was twenty thirteen they go public. 40:11 by mid twenty fourteen homes is now like a figure in Wall Street, yes, business world. She's on the cover of Fortune, Fours, New York Times, how many machines are they promising to roll out? Oh, I mean I don't know what the number is, but at this point it's got to be thousands because they're putting in an every Walgreens store, every Safeway store, those machines are going into Walgreens. Yeah, they're going in there yeah okay and so 40:35 she makes on the Forbes four hundred list at number one. Now every Walgreens has one of these machines and every safe ways got wall most yeah. What I should say is every Walgreens every safe ways getting these machines. I was saying I was saying I don't think I don't think everyone has them yet. Everyone's getting them and so she lands on the Forbes four hundred list at position one ten because now the company is catapulted in the matter of a few months to a well yeah. Everyone wants to be early yeah 41:03 Yeah. And so now they're now they're a public company, they're public on the stock market. They hit a nine billion dollar evaluation. And so she becomes the youngest female billionaire in history. And obviously, given her background, what we know about her, this is like a huge thing for her. She's pumped. And she also one thing I don't know if you could guess by 41:24 this picture who her idol is love Steve job. Yeah, she only wears the Steve jobs turtleneck. That's the only outfit she wears okay, and she's a huge Steve jobs fan. She does Steve job in things all the time. So she do so she like builds her life around the things that Steve jobs does yeah, and so she sets up her office and like her company culture in the same way that I see listic very yeah, very simple 41:52 She does the same thing every day. She does the same kind of like cut throat stuff where so Steve Jobs was famous for on I think was the Mac two or three. He put two engineering teams. He pitted them against each other to build it and it was like whoever builds a better product. We launch. She does the same thing but 42:12 on them. She says whoever builds a better product doesn't get fired, keeps her job yeah, and so she does she she takes a lot of the ideas that stop jobs had that were like. Oh, that was kind of a fun good idea to like have this competitive thing in your company and she makes like she goes. Let's raise the stakes. Let's raise the stakes. Whoever does this better. I'm out for blood. Yeah. If you guys don't do this better than we're putting you in the yeast oven. Oh, I'm out for blood. I didn't catch that. That's pretty stuff in. I went. I'm out for blood and you were like I make my another yeast joke. 42:43 I like the he's I'm going to do the use bits of a big fan of the yeast. What else does she do? What other jobs things? No, she does a weird thing. I don't know. I feel like you're looking for something specific. You don't know about oh she has a yeah. She talks with a very she talks with a deep voice and she never acknowledges it. She's like this is just my voice, but there's a lot of analysis that's been done about this. Have you looked in her? Have you looked into the voice at all? 43:12 No, I just assumed her voice was deep. You didn't know this now yeah, so she's taking that and the you can watch the progression of that happening where she starts to talk slower and deeper because she thought that that's how that commanding the room was. Oh, was that she's just you know there's a lot of analysis of early videos of her versus later videos and how you can see it slowly progress to where she talks like she talks like this and 43:40 doesn't open her mouth all the way and does this you know very low voice and this is just how she talks now. Oh no, I did not didn't know she was faking the voice, just faking the voice. That's one of the main things about her. I was going to bring it up because it felt like I was making fun of her for having a really deep voice. She's like faking the voice. It's bad. It's it sounds really weird now that I know that it's fake. It's really it makes way more sense that it's fake. Yeah, that makes way more sense because it sounds labored like it sounds like like 44:08 Obviously I'm a dude, so my voice is naturally deeper, but it sounds like she does. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I mean, obviously, obviously I'm a dude, so my voice is naturally deeper. 44:23 You know. 44:27 but this is what this is what it sounds like. If you ever heard her voice, this is what it sounds like. It sounds like she's doing. She sounds like she's like down low like yes, like like yeah, like so here's what we do with the blood and we're going talking from the back of her throat. Yeah, doing it's very very weird. Yeah, there's a whole there's a whole like video essays on this interesting. I just thought she just had a weirdly deep voice. Yeah, wow, like internal. If you watch the documentary, the team talks about how her voice change over the years. 44:56 interest and all of them make fun of it. They're like yeah the voice that's pretty funny. Yeah, I just read about this. I thought that be a really you've never. Oh, I just read the stories like I didn't watch anything. There's an there's a before we get too much further into it. There's a really good. Was it on Netflix? Look up the the drama pick of this. What do they call that when someone does a bio pic? Is that what it is? Yeah, a bio pic is like when you dramatize the story or whatever drop out 45:25 the drop out is on Netflix yeah. Okay, well, no, it's on who now okay. It's on who it was on who to begin with. Was it yes, it's on who's called the drop out a very, very good telling of this story and the actress was phenomenal in that, but they nailed it. It really did. Hold on. I just need it. This is crazy. How accurate this is. Oh, how accurate they got the picture. Yeah. Oh yeah, they really did a really good job with the series. Yeah, look at so we're not sponsor anything yeah. 45:55 that's that crazy wild. How much that looks like her yeah they really they really did a great job and like and they and they do the voice change in that as well. That's pretty funny. I did not know that it's like the whole series. She talks she talks like this yeah yeah interesting wow wild okay, so so yeah she got a weird voice. Well she thought that was like you know the cutthroat business leading charge thing yeah yeah which 46:20 to be fair. If we're talking from a psychologically doing a topic where I know it, we're kind of like co teaching it. That's kind of fun. You know, I think from like a psychological sand standpoint, yeah being a woman in business in the early twenty ten for sure like that does make a little bit of sense. Yeah, especially yeah interesting interesting, which is what makes the end of this story that much worse. I think yeah yeah like you know yeah, and so she was running this business like a lot of Silicon Valley 46:49 tech startups. The problem was this wasn't just any tech startup. This was a medical tech, biotech. Yeah, that's the word I'm looking for, a biotech startup. So the standards are a little different and the way you need to confirm some things is a little different because like, you probably heard this, the kind of mantra of Silicon Valley is go fast and break things. And so the idea is you're, 47:18 move as quickly as you can. You want to beat everybody else to market. It's not going to be great, but you're going to figure it out once you're out there and with something like this, that doesn't work great because it's the same thing that uber did though. If we're talking about uber lately, who's that talking about? I was talking about uber with chama and how uber went full circle just straight back to taxis where like uber did all this stuff like we're going to bring. We're going to revolutionize this. We're going to make it so you can put it on your phone and you're going to see that you have all the stuff and then they went back and they were like shoot. 47:48 actually the taxis had this system figured out already. They did better than this royally messed it up. Yeah, yeah and so now they're just re they're trying to slowly walk us back to now. It's just uber. I mean that's what Netflix is doing. Yeah, that's like is like on TV was Netflix like shoot like we love live TV. They were able to make it so cheap because they had ads. Yeah, you know I saw an ad make sense. I saw an ad for Hulu the other day that 48:16 made me so mad because the ad in the ad they said, what did they say? They said for, I think they said for seventy nine ninety nine a month, you get access to ninety nine channels and I was like shut up ninety nine channels. I had ten thousand, I had ten thousand yeah, albeit nine thousand nine hundred and fifty of those were trash, but I 48:43 had ten thousand yeah, and I saw commercial channels. I saw a commercial that royally messed up my day. What the Zillow commercial? Have you seen this now Zillow commercial over? We're back to explaining videos shot by shot. I mean I know I don't know. You tell me the Zillow commercial where it opens on the girl. She's breaking something in the living room, something falls and she's like oh shoot and then up pops her her yearly salary hundred and fourteen thousand right and a voice in the other room goes. What was that 49:12 she was nothing. I broke the thing right and then it cuts to that girl. It shows her salary hundred and ten thousand right and then it's another girl in the other room. They're all roommates obviously yeah, then it pops up with her yearly salary and it's like a hundred and twenty thousand and it pops up and says where she's talking and she's like. I knew I couldn't buy a home of my own, but like going in together with my friends made home ownership possible and it's showing three people with six figure salaries not able to purchase a home. 49:40 buying a home together and Zillow help them do that and that made it through so many levels of marketing admins. No, I don't think that made through. I think they were like we need to get people to buy more homes. Somebody wrote that somebody film that those actors accepted that role 50:01 read those lines, they edited those videos and then they put some ad dollars behind it for it to pop up in my social media feed and they were like oh, you can't afford a home by one with your friends. Yeah, what's crazy is like that's a thing that we're actually hearing about happening now like people like people are actually buying homes with their friends, yeah, which is in insane thing to do 50:29 that stresses me out. I hate that and it's crazy because it's like the salaries they were showing our salaries are great should be able to live. That's the stuff that's made me radicalize and made me really hate the system that we live in. Those are the things that have changed my algorithm and now I'm a coral barks. I'm not I'm not chill. I love ducks. Should I just love ducks? 51:00 Later tonight, when you're sleeping in your bunk, I'm gonna sneak into the... What did you say? 51:10 let me finish. Let me finish or go ahead. I want to sneak into this apartment because I have the key and I'm going to change your algorithm. I really your browsing history. I'm going to delete all your subscriptions. I want to be sus. Is you saying when you're sleeping in your bunk? 51:24 I didn't like that. That's what it is. It's a bunk. My bet here is that we talking about yeah bad bunk. It's the same things not sleeping in your bunk. That's not it. You're all inside your bow, how eventually twelve people are going to buy a three bedroom house. I just called beds bunks. All right, that's one bunky bed, so anyway, we had a story. So we're talking yes, 51:53 So she's got this crazy evaluation from the stock market and she's growing and the thing about the medical industry is that there are more checks and balances than in other industries. So move fast and break stuff is the is the phrase that's in so valley. They're trying to do this company but they have to do what so what's interesting is there are more checks and balances but she's getting around all these checks and balances by 52:24 being a 52:54 take the prim pricks, ship the blood to us, yes, take the samples, they're email you the results yes, and so they start doing that. We're doing off site blood tests for our machines for our machines until when we're doing it on our machines, but we're doing our machines. We're doing it on our machines. Don't worry machines can do the blood test. She's are doing the blood tests and so off site. So what they do while they're still building it, they are having this blood ship to them and they hired a third party that uses these traditional machines to run the blood tests. 53:22 and then said running the blood tests on normal, regular, boring old blood machines, but they're telling everyone about their saying our machine gave these results. Yes, yes, which I mean there's a word for that. I think it's for all. 53:42 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. In that mailing list, we give updates on past episodes. and every week things are changing. in the happenings of Tillon topics. Also, we give updates on things that's happening 54:08 I like that. I've never said till inverse before, but I'm sticking with it. If you want to know what's happening in the till inverse, that's the best place to do it. You can go to till and dot com. There's a link in the description or you can text till into six, six, eight, six, six. There's a lot of ways to sign up for the mailing list to make sure you keep up to date with everything that we've talked about and everything that's going on in the till inverse. But anyways, now back to this episode. 54:33 So they're they're setting off them the stuff that right right. Meanwhile, everyone believes they're actually getting there in us test sure, and this is like actually real people greens believes they're getting there. Those tests, the patients believe they're real patients are getting tests that are not authentic tests and then Theranos takes it a step further because they say okay. I think we can actually start to use our machines. They haven't shipped them yet, but they're like. I think we can start to use our machines, but they only are about sixty percent accurate at this point, right, and so they start shipping off tests. 55:03 to real patients with 60% accuracy ratings. And blood tests are important. That tells doctors what kind of treatment you should have. And so there are people who are getting false positive for real diseases, and there are people who are not getting positive for diseases that they actually have. And it's actually genuinely affecting people's health. And so this is all happening behind the scenes. And the culture within Theranos as a company, 55:31 has always been pretty toxic. There's always been this this secrecy at all costs sort of things. The way it was taught was we can't let our trade secrets get out right, and so everyone's like you. You can't talk about it. You can't say what's going on. You can't ask questions about the top brass. They were very like if you're questioning us, you you're against us. Basically was the culture and so people who ask questions got fired. You're going to bring up her number two yeah, and so 56:00 If you brought up questions, you got fired. And at this event, they were running this test on the machine the night before, and they realized it's not working. We're going to do the test, we're going to put it in. 56:29 it was no test ran, nothing happened. It just displayed results after they put something in. And so they did it. They ran the test, display the results. She sends out this company wide email. She's like, great job, everyone. You guys did such a good job on your feet, responding to adversity. And she's like, we're really changing the world here. We're doing something great here. Her CFO comes to her after that. And her CFO is like, hey, we can't be doing that. You're deceiving your investors. 56:58 like we can't be lying to people. She fires him on the spot right and when that happens, there becomes this. I should say like larger fear culture looming shadow of I can't speak out against what's happening, even if I know like because there was a suspicion among some people who were 57:21 building the machines, doing the lab, or obviously there are people who are running the actual tests on different machines yeah and they're sitting here going like, but there's also that like there's so many people who are bought into the we're figuring it out. We're doing this and if we stop doing this, the money stops and then obviously we can't figure it at all yeah we're making the address. The ends justify the means in that we're making progress on these things. So we're going to do this unethical thing, but there's also some people in the in the Theranos system who are saying like no, this is wrong. This we can't keep doing this yes and so 57:51 Yeah, when her CFO does that, but a large part of this too is sunny. Are you going to talk about sunny? Yeah, so sunny Balwani, who is like is it the C O O of the company? He has an interesting past. He was a programmer. He works. He essentially groomed her. Are we going to talk about that? Do you know about this? I don't know. I don't know about him grooming her. I don't know about the romantic relationship. I don't know about him grooming. He's significantly older than her 58:19 I didn't know. I didn't know he groomed her, but he I mean he you know was around really early in Theranos interesting. I he was around before the two thousand thirteen stuff yeah like he was around like early two thousands yeah, because he was he was she was a full adult. It wasn't yeah. It wasn't like he groomed her as a teenager yeah, but he did. He was in a power position as far as like someone who had money and status. 58:47 yes, and then he basically you know was I don't say secluded her, but like was her only support and confident during some of the earlier years of the company yeah yeah. He worked for in some scenarios would be categorized as yeah. I guess I guess that's true. He became her protector against some of the other things yeah. He had he he worked for a company called commercial 59:17 bid, he was the president. And so he made a lot of money And so he was a fairly wealthy person. And one of the things that you see a lot at Microsoft, which 59:43 doesn't make any sense because obviously that's a lot sounds great though. Most most developers somewhere in the ballpark of one to maybe two thousand a year and so it's like how do you do in that and so it was a above happy pace baby above likely figure. Also when he was at Microsoft he worked in sales. He didn't work in programming so very clearly right off the bat looks like some sketchy 01:00:12 he's kind of a sleazy guy yeah yeah and so yeah he was he was thirty seven when he met homes. She was eighteen yeah i'm saying yeah so yeah i guess he didn't meet her his senior year her senior year of high school i yeah interesting so yeah so he joined and held with the day to day operations of there in us and it was very interesting because homes would communicate with a lot of people in the company and she when she communicate with people in the company she would often like 01:00:41 restate the vision, bring people back to the mission and to the goal and like try to like paint this picture that they're were making the world a better place. We're changing the world. What would happen after those meetings though she people would bring concerns to her. She would paint the vision. It be. I wouldn't say a positive meeting because she would just kind of deflect all their concerns and say we're doing something well, but like it wasn't like a bad experience until later people would then get an email from sunny 01:01:10 and sunny would just a blue lay into them like paragraph after paragraph, shouty caps, all bold red text, all the negative things you can write in an email and just like degrade people's character. Well, it also was the kind of person that, like when you make an argument and you're like well, you you said this 01:01:32 yeah and they would go. You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say I did not say that and they repeat the same sentence back to you. Yeah again. You didn't say that exact sentence. You said something to the effect of this well. That's what you need to say. You need to be more clear with your words and if you can't even more clear, you know they just the crazy crazy gas lighting. Yeah, I try not to use that word as much because as soon as you say that the people who do it are like 01:01:55 you're using therapy speak and all that and they gas light you into thinking they never gas you before, so I try to use that work because it immediately turned some people off yeah, that's what he was doing. You explain the concept of gas lighting to anybody in the world. They go that does happen yeah. That's as crazy a lot of people do and then you go you do it and he does it. I'm talking about you right now. 01:02:19 and they go first of all, I've never guess. Tell me when give me one example. Give me one example. Give me one. Oh okay. Give me two examples. Actually, that's not gas like what you're saying is not gas. That's not gas. That's not gas. That's not what you just described. Yeah. Now that you're saying that that should do a podcast where we just try to gaslight each other the whole time as any of our phone calls. So we already did that 01:02:48 that's this whole show. We did that gas like we did a whole episode by gaslighting almost believed. I almost no. We did a whole episode. He took the babe for a second and I'm so mad about it. Okay, so that's you 01:03:11 here a Billy mouth bass. Oh, speaking of bass, have you seen this? Have you seen Green Day's new dukey D mastered? No, you know Green Day's record do key right. They they're doing a remastered version of that record for whatever this is master twenty fifth twenty thirtieth anniversary, something that is bad as possible. Yeah. So what they're doing is instead of buying the full record, you buy a single track. Okay, each track comes on 01:03:39 what they said is like you should have never heard before. And so what they're doing is they're putting it on bad formats. And so, for example, one of them is that Billy Bass and it's just one of the songs and that's pretty fun. So like one of them's a floppy disk, one of them's a Gameboy color game and you put in it just plays the song. That's one of them is a doorbell. You ring the doorbell and the doorbell plays the song. And so it's obviously like bad, like all of them are bad because they're bad audio formats. 01:04:07 but it's the whole area really brilliant, hilarious and so they're all collectors items. They're like limited to five hundred each one and they're pretty pretty pricey, but I love the concept that's pretty great. I love the concept. You can get our tilling episodes as Billy man. Well, yeah, we do have to my neighbor have one of those and now that I'm an adult thinking about what it would take to be a person who hangs out in your living room. It was a different time that's two thousand three. We were in Iraq 01:04:37 and now I was we have till in D mastered. It was episode one through like fourteen before whatever, whatever Alex join. You go to the audio only for the entire first season. If you go to the audio only and listen to what we first did, I edited those in garage bay. That's true. Yeah, that's till in D mastered right. It's bad anyways, so to make a long sunny would sunny with sunny was the enforcer to her 01:05:06 and that's what every good cult needs. Yeah is you need a charismatic leader and then you need someone who makes sure that your followers follow the rules and that's what Sonny wants to her yeah. So the way this all kind of started to crack in twenty thirteen. They go public. All the fanfare comes out a reporter with. Let me make sure I say the right organization. The Wall Street Journal Z a reporter with the Wall Street Journal 01:05:36 cut contacts in the medical world, the lance is the lance at Evangel University. Here's from one of his contacts in the medical space, sure sure and they're like. I don't think that this sounds possible, and so he starts looking into it sure. Meanwhile, at the same time there's a I shouldn't say low level like mid level staffer by the name of Tyler Schultz. Tyler Schultz got connected with the company as his grandfather, his George Schultz, one of those early 01:06:05 investors and also I s what did I say? It was secretary of state state wasn't state or souls to he was a he was very he was a government very influential George and was Charles George Schultz was 01:06:26 can secretary of the treasury point a little bit faster on his wikipedia page, jeez secretary of the treasury yeah yeah and so shalt actually introduced him to yeah so george sholt got him a job at there knows yes yes and so it was like hey i invested pretty pretty big fan on the board yeah hire my grandson exactly he needs a job and then okay and then his grandson starts working there and is like this is 01:06:55 lying. We're just lying. Yeah, yeah, we're lying. Yeah, so he raises some questions. Yes, he starts talking to some people and eventually actually talks to Elizabeth Holmes herself about it, and I think he sends an email to her. She doesn't respond to the email. Right instead, sunny's response to the email is basically like you're out of here, and if it weren't for your name, you would have been out of here a long time ago. You have no qualifications, you're a piece of garbage, all this stuff 01:07:25 and so he reaches out to the government and is like hey, is this okay? Here's what word first went to his grandpa though. Yeah, do you yeah he did talk to his grandpa and his grandpa was like no. I was like shut up. You're stupid. No his grandpa really was like no. I do we trust the vision like you're not going to you know yeah be grateful that I got you this job yeah yeah and then yeah and then when his grandpa realizes the truth, his grandpa was actually really instrumental in the whole flip interesting so 01:07:55 he goes to the government and he's like, hey, I killed was with homes. He's like, he's like, is this legit? They're like, that's definitely not legit. We should look into this. And so he becomes a whistleblower kind of not really. I don't think he like set out from the start to be a whistleblower. I think he was like, Hey, I've got some questions. No one in the company is taking them seriously. So he went outside the company to ask these questions. And when he asked those questions, 01:08:19 with the government agencies he is speaking to, they then were like, okay, hey, you're a whistleblower. Now we need to do this right and he's like, oh, that's not really what I was trying to do, but I guess we're here and so it got it got really nasty really quick because you said like his grandpa ended up joining sides with him, but before that Theranos and their lawyers were getting really intense. Oh yeah and they're like his whole family was trying to be like hey, you need to drop this. The lawyers they're going to financially destroy you and come after us yeah and they also 01:08:49 for a long time like they were kind of family friends with Elizabeth Holmes right and like they at the early phases like sided with her yeah. He put a lot of the line to and so after he left the company they found out that he was quote unquote whistle blowing. They started trying to get him to sign an NDA so they started trying to get him to retroactively, which is yeah to joint to come have a meeting with their lawyers and sign an idiot. They're like it'll just be a one page NDA just very basic stuff. 01:09:17 we just want to want you to sign it and he kept refusing and then finally like his grandpa calls him for a meeting at the house to talk about the issue and tries to get him to sign the India and tries to talk him into going to the meeting to sign the NDA come to find out the lawyers were in the back room at the house like it was like an ambush that's like sign then yeah yeah because they came in the room and so and he was like he's like no and so finally that Wall Street Journal 01:09:47 the person writing that article found out about him. This guy named John Carey, you found out about him and reached out to him, put together the article, released the article, and it was like bombshell. Once everyone found out, oh, they're just faking all these results. A lot of investors started pulling their cash or selling their shares. I mean, and we're going to cover the, one of their main scientists. 01:10:15 Were you going to mention this? Did you do you know about this? One of their main sign is what you're talking about was pushing back on this from the beginning was just like we can't keep doing this. There was a lot of people within the company. I don't know if I don't know who specifically you're talking about, but I do know there was a lot of people in the company who were saying hey, this isn't this isn't realistic like we're trying to do right, possibly achieve and they kept having the the Silicon Valley mindset where it's like oh any problem is solvable. We just need more time. We just need to work harder on it. 01:10:45 and we just need better minds on it and anybody who disagrees just kind of gets ousted right. Ian Gibbons, I don't know him. You don't know about this yeah in Gibbons was one of the biochemists who before they ever went 01:11:04 in two thousand and thirteen before they even went public on stuff. He was pushing, but he didn't want them to do that. Oh yes, they were faking it way back then. Yeah, he knew they weren't ready and he kept saying it was not even ready. He was saying this is not possible and we're lying. We're do you guys are yeah doing this Walgreens deal and all this stuff and it's not a thing and he couldn't. He couldn't take the lie and so interesting yeah. So so all this stuff comes out Walgreens 01:11:32 pulls from the deal safely pulls from the deal right bunch of investors started. So I'm saying one of their main guys from the beginning took his own life in two thousand and thirteen because he couldn't handle like he was like no, this is wrong. Whatever I remember that actually now yes and then they went public with all that stuff. Yeah, I forgot about that. I forgot about that, so they had pushed back the entire time. Oh yeah, I mean 01:11:56 before she even started the company. She went to someone who right they were talking about and they had a they had a culture of silence and not yeah speaking up about it. You know and it very much seems like they they were hiring the wrong kind of engineers to solve this problem. They were hiring engineers who knew how to build machinery, who knew how to write co, but they were not hiring biomedical biochemists right like people who could actually solve the problem. So anyway, yes, the news breaks that hey 01:12:22 we've been taking the tests. We've been testing on different machines. We've been lying about all of our progress. All of your investments are just this is a Ponzi scheme, essentially yeah, so Walgreens pulls Safeway pulls and then Kramer from Seinfeld, Jim Kramer from CNBC's mad money. You know the show where the guy just yells about money for an hour. Yeah, he's a stocks are crazy that guy. Yeah, he brings her on the show and he's a gather articles pretty brutal and she responds to it. 01:12:51 and now that I know I can make fun of her voice, she says now I know that's fair game. She says this is just what happens when you work to change things. First, they think you're crazy and then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world. That's what I don't think we gave you the liberty to make fun of her voice that bad 01:13:17 you're like now that I could make fun of it. Like that's not I don't think that was we didn't give you creative license to do that. I took it. That's great. I didn't sign an NDA so she's like oh I'm. This is what happens to everybody who's changing the world. Everyone is making a difference. At some point they face. She really thought that he are away through it yeah and that's the thing. I think is so delusional 01:13:44 That's the thing. I genuinely think you mentioned this earlier. I think even through honestly, probably to today, I think she thought we're going to figure this out. Yeah, we're not there yet. We just once it clicks yeah like this will all be over. Yeah, it's like that. I mean it's the sunken cost fallacy as well, though, where it's like we're this far in. If you if we get arrested, it's like what's the risk? I mean the risk is that we get caught and I get arrested sure, but also tomorrow we could figure this out. Yes, yeah and then it's we're good. Yeah, you know 01:14:12 And I think that's the thing too, And so it's like, at some point they were having results like we're getting there, and this is going to change the world, And so I do think they were, And so the FDA comes down pretty hard on the company 01:14:41 anyone from owning, operating or directing blood tests using their machines and from Theranos doing any testing for two years. So like you're going to add to do any of this stuff for two years. Yeah, and so here's a legal time out. Yeah, here's a legal time out and basically it was like well, twenty seventeen. Then we're going to actually put a suit against you. So like we're giving ourselves some time to figure this all out and so fortune updates their 01:15:07 ranking for her where her ranking was a valuation of four billion dollars. She was worth four billion dollars and they updated it. Just change it to zero. They put her on the website. They said so they don't remove her for the website. They were like zero, which is brutal wolf and so long story short her that's only sixty percent accurate 01:15:31 So Holmes and Sunny both end up in pretty long court And Holmes is found guilty of four counts of defrauding patients, three counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. But what's interesting is they returned him no verdict on three counts of fraud against investors, which is interesting. 01:16:00 Okay, but the government dismissed them, which is interesting. And it's very interesting on that note about Silicon Valley culture because Silicon Valley culture again, these investors are playing a numbers game. They know they're going to lose money on a lot of these investments. They also know that getting the big bucks in this is being the first offer, being the earliest to it. And so 01:16:29 there is a culture not being the last because there were some people that at its height sold yes, yes and they did make money. They made a ton of a ton of money on it yeah and so in the silicon world like you need to. If you're one of those investors, you can't burn bridges, you need all those connections and so there are situations where these investors lose millions on these because and they know it's fraud. They know they were trick. They know they were scammed, but they will not pursue anything on it. 01:16:59 because it's riskier for them and all their other investments to pursue anything on it. They need to save face. And there's questions, especially in this legal proceeding about that, where it's like, oh, these investors, they were OK with losing. I should say they were OK with losing money. They had calculated to lose that money. Yes, they expected it. And they were not going to pursue anything with that. And so the. So it's like there's no complaint and there's no. Yeah. So the charge against investors and all that. 01:17:28 ended up failing, but all the medical stuff and the fraud against the American people went through. So she is convicted to 11 and a quarter years. So that puts her getting out in 2023 and sunny. 01:17:44 she was convicted for eleven and a quarter years, and so that puts her getting out. Oh sorry, she was ordered to surrender in twenty twenty three. Yeah, she will get out in twenty thirty four. So is she in prison then she's in prison. She's in federal prison camp, Brian in Texas, which is like a minimum security prison. Yeah, it's not a bad one. Yeah, I've seen no yeah. I mean pictures of her in prison, 01:18:14 I have picture. I can only find pictures of her reporting for prison. Okay. And so it's yeah, not great. And so she's there now. Sunny was also a part of the trial. He was found guilty on all counts and faced up to 20 years in prison and a million millions of dollars in restitutions, but he received only a sentence of 12 years and 11 months in prison and then three years of probation. 01:18:43 and so he surrendered in March of twenty twenty three. So I don't know exactly why his was. I would guess they're already out. I thought Elizabeth Holmes got out. Maybe she's still in she's still in. I don't know about son. I think that it won't be much longer before they're on twenty thirty four is her expiration. Yeah, and so I mean get probation. Yeah, you can be up for pro pro probably in a few years and I don't expect her to be the person who's getting in a bunch of fights in prison. 01:19:12 unless she's doing that deep voice thing stop doing that with your voice. Why are you now doing what my voice? You doing that with your jaw? You think it makes you look hot? Don't you that's from our favorite movie. That is from our favorite movie. 01:19:31 anyway, Madison picture Madison, so that's Theranos, huh? That's Theranos. That's the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos and their blood thing. Okay, 01:19:45 here's was wild. She had a kid in twenty twenty didn't she? I don't know. Actually, I know she has a child. I have seen pictures of her holding a baby, so I'm she does have someone else does have a kid yeah and you know it's one of those things where like I mean I remember through cove it. She was just out living. She like a beach house. You know that's wild. That's wild that her 01:20:07 net worth can be zero and she could have a beach. That's what I'm saying is stuff like that. We're all like what the heck and like so she was out there living. I mean she she really did just try to soak up the last couple of years that she's had and then she's going to spend eleven years and then she'll be out after that. I mean that's the thing with the situation she was in because she had a net worth of four billion dollars and so when you have a net worth of four billion dollars, you're able to use that that equity. Yes as collateral to get giant loans right to essentially 01:20:37 bankroll your life yeah, and so she probably has even though this company fell apart because of that she probably has a really good assets. Yeah, she's going to be fine for the rest of her life. After that, like you can't and that's also part of the calculation. It's really hard to scrape your life when you're worth four billion dollars. Yep, it's really she did really screw her life. She got a prison sentence for it. Yeah 01:21:01 but she's probably once she's out yeah. She's probably going to live a better life than I saw us. You know I saw some today. This is a different thought, but it's about that same kind of what like the rich people think someone was talking about New York on online and they said that they really love the diversity of New York. Like you can be walking down the street and you'll walk past someone who's a millionaire and someone who's 01:21:17 and I said oh no, no, no diversity is not the word you're looking for. The wealth inequality is the word diversity. I just love how diverse this city is. I love how I love the wealth inequality here. That's great. You see how much worse that sounds that sounds inequality here anyway, but yeah, I is it's really hard. That's why you just got to get rich once yeah rich really hard to doesn't matter how 01:21:46 as long as I thought about this year. We'll talk about this in the after the fiddle. I've thought about some scams. I want to do all right man well. You know I'm going to have to fiddle off the IRS. Oh that's her laugh. That's really dumb. 01:22:09 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you like it, we've got another one you might like called Stanley Meyer. He's the guy who invented a steam powered car and somebody wasn't a fan of it. A little spoiler alert. It does involve olive garden, so maybe go get you some more breadsticks, crack them crack them in half because that's how you breadsticks and watch that episode. It's a really good hot bread stick. I told me before this crack open a hot bread. 01:22:37 Jared said don't try to be funny because you're not good at it, and so here we are like crack over the press and it's like buddy, nobody do the out thing. Anyways, if you like this show and you want to see next week's episode early, you can do that right now over on Patreon. You will come a Patreon supporter at tiller dot com slash support. There are patrons get all sorts of great perks like episodes early ad free. They get to join a discord with our hosts and our producers and there's a lot of other 01:23:05 great benefits. So you can do that at tilland.com slash support. But if not, thanks for being here. We'll see you next week on things I learned last night.

In recent years, few stories have captivated the public’s attention like the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. The ambitious young entrepreneur once claimed to revolutionize medical testing, but her dream turned into a cautionary tale of deception and hubris. A Bold Idea That Captured Silicon Valley Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos with a vision … Read More

Was George W. Bush Looking for Portals? | Iraqi Stargates Ep 250

11-19-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 there's a theory that the United States invaded Iraq in order to stop Saddam Hussein from opening a portal to another planet. Yeah, two thousand years ago there was a portal that was discovered by ancient Sumerians and they built a temple around it to house it and worship it or something that whatever the ancients would do in the during the Iraq War, Saddam Hussein was trying to rebuild it and gain access to that and so they didn't have weapons of mass destruction. This was the justification that they gave in order to start the Iraq War. 00:29 I don't believe any of that, but we'll I believe a hundred percent of it. We'll go through the story of the theory and what happened. This is a comedy podcast. We we go through and learn different things each week and we joke around the whole time. If you're here for the topic, you're going to enjoy the show. You're going to love this a lot. 00:49 it's November, 19th. What's happening this weekend? I am in Kansas City and then I am in Dallas Longview and Waco, Texas, very excited to be in Texas this weekend and then next weekend is Thanksgiving, so we get to hang out and with a family and stuff. So yeah yeah, love to just have gratitude. All my shows are listed somewhere. You can find them and and then it right now. Next week's episode is available to our Patreon supporters. If you want to listen and follow along on Patreon, 01:16 You can't do that. We don't make any money off this. It's just a way to support the show and help us keep making episodes. So finish this one and the next week's episode is ready for you right now. This minute, so let's jump into Stargate 01:36 Have you ever heard of Iraq? 01:39 okay, now I by being Iraq, but like specifically the Stargate in Iraq. I give so many recommendations for episodes and you still are just like you ever heard about the Iraq War and you're like I don't want to do this. This isn't the Iraq War. I mean I guess it is related to the Iraq War will come on. So I'm saying you heard about the Middle East. You're like I don't want to do this dude. 02:07 do another little Caesar's episode. Okay, roll the theme song. There's a Nat in here and as it got away, singular or episodes, there's a singular Nat in this studio. It leaves us alone until we start shooting golly. Anyway, go here's the topic and it gets fired up. Yeah, so here's I don't know how to start this episode. You know what a stargate is. Have you ever heard of it? Is it a? Is it a space thing? 02:34 No, it's a movie. So here we have a movie prop. So this is sure the a star gate for the movie Stargate. Is this what they modeled that like portal after one or the Time Square Port? Probably honestly yeah. If you're listening, it's a circle and the circles got a big hole in it. Yeah, it looks like every movie where it's like they turn it on and it goes and then it's like a 03:00 weird flowy portal thing and you can see through it and you can walk through it. It looks like any like two thousands Disney Channel bumper inside of it or it's like very liquidy and like yeah for sure. So this is a star gate. So the concept from the movie is basically there are these hidden stargates around the planet that are like hidden like archaeological discoveries that need to be made and these stargates are ancient alien technology that are warm holes. 03:29 and those wormholes take you to different planets. Sure they, but they they're they're like connected to a single other gate somewhere else in the galaxy and that's how you get there. And so the whole movie is out of no, I haven't seen the movie. Sure so the whole movie and they eventually got this other alien like portal movie. I watched there's like a wardrobe and this girl walks through it and it's it's actually like a honestly whole fantasy land back there. 03:59 and there's a witch and there's some Turkish delight, which as a kid you're like that must be so delicious for him to betray his family and then you try at one time because you're like oh, it's in the it's just it's nothing. It's so bad. It's like yeah, it's not we're also raised on freaking cosmic brownies. So yeah, yeah, but anyway, that's a good point. That is a good point. Are you telling me the wardrobes in Iraq? Honestly, now that you're saying that 04:27 I would not be surprised at this that white, which that is Osama bin Laden. I would not be surprised if that was the inspiration for the Stargate movies franchise now that you're saying that because it's the same concept, but instead of a small British girl finds a what it was the US military first person she talks to when she goes to the portal a half goat half man. I mean it's an alien. Are we claiming the star gets a direct rip off of the line, the which in the wardrobe? I mean I haven't seen it, so I don't know, but it 04:57 could be. All I'm saying is it might be there is there is a lion in it and that lion, the life name is Jesus and stuff. It were a little less on the nose. Yeah, he's going to die for our sins later, so the movie franchise was a fairly large ish movie franchise got spun off into a tv show. I have to do with Iraq. You'll find out got spun off into a tv show. 05:26 whatever. Here's the thing. Allegedly these are real and the movie is based off reality. Are you so in this? I don't know. You wanted to learn something I'm teaching you, so these are based off reality. So here is a real life stargate. Allegedly these sorts of things are apparently found. Where is this one? I don't know. It looks like main or something. 05:56 okay, if you're going to do it, if you're going to fully commit, here's the thing you don't even believe this stuff anymore. I can just feel it whenever you're talking like I don't know man made anyway star gates is a it's a this is how you're talking so far. You used to try to sell this stuff now. You're just like we're going to talk about the star because I used to believe it's real 06:22 Okay, no, Jaron's giving me twenty solid topics the last year and I have me twenty. You've given me one. It's just that one guy over and over again. You just keep telling me to do that one therapist. You had one good experience with a therapist and now you're all into it. Yeah, I'm gonna show you right now how many freaking episode ideas I've given you. Okay, great, don't say them because I'm probably still going to use them. They're in my list. 06:50 All right. Number one Stargate. 06:57 gosh, you've been getting me a lot lately with stuff like that water. The other day comedy of subverting your expectations are just not. Normally, I can see where your brains go great. So I let's see neoclassical architecture in more interesting and then let's see let's see argument that these are a shot. 07:25 I don't know what that is. I told you not to say these because these are on my list. I'm probably still going to they're not on your list. Yes, they are on my list. Did we already do yeah? We hold on 07:40 Oh, are you finding something that I've done? No, I was that what's happening. You're saying oh, oh, oh, so he's done this in fifteen eighty two. The calendar goes from Thursday, fourth of October and was followed by Friday, the fifteenth of October. There are ten missing days in history. This is something I've sent you showing prove it. 08:02 I've sent this to you show me, show me the text, show me the thread. I don't I don't recognize that February 5th, twenty twenty three twenty twenty three. That's why I don't remember that. I can't remember stuff from our own show last month. What do you, what do you think about a represent for twenty twenty three? 08:22 What was my response? Was it? Oh, what did I say? You're an a half ago? Are you sitting me a bunch of ideas for an episode and then I just completely ignored it and we did stuff that was stupid like Stargate? Did you all know that a whole year and a half we could add some really good ideas like the time there were ten days missing in history in fifteen eighty two. What did I say? What did I say? What was my response? 08:46 you summed up to say a class. You the next text you said was. Did you want to move our meeting from eleven to now? 08:59 Well, look, look, here's the thing. Now we've got a notion, shared notion board. You can actually put the ideas in there. Well, no, they saved. Oh, this is well. No, I'm never going to forget it. The next text I sent you was my trainer's dog just died in the middle of our session. 09:21 that was a really sad day. I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos and to sensitize me. That's why I have to gym and my trainer was just like hold on the vets calling and then and then he literally like was just. I mean he was just trot and so as he would be yeah he was like let's keep finishing this work. I was like go home yeah. You don't have to do that go home to your wife yeah. 09:43 Oh, it was a sad day. So anyway, that's probably why you forgot you were like so traumatized by the death of yeah, my trainers dog yeah. Honestly, what probably happened is you sent me that I saw it. I thumbed up it because I was like oh, that's a good idea and then I forgot about it. Didn't put it in your planner. Yeah, well, no, what I was saying just now while you were reading about you, the dog was now we got the notion board now that we share. Oh yeah, just add it directly. We are sponsored by notion. You can sign up with our referral link. I think we actually 10:12 can give a referral. Oh yeah, we should set that up. I called Zach Mayfield the other day, oh my gosh, and I said hey man, I'm doing a new YouTube project for I'm trying to solve this crime, trying to find some some B roll footage. What what subscriptions do you use and he said hold on, let me send you my referral link. I hung up. I said what do you think I have a one of your subscribers? Yeah, you can't you can't you should 10:35 but for everything you send a link to someone you should send a referral link, but you should not say also you my referral just send the link just in the link to send the link. You know how many people you know much much money I have made. The only way I'm able to afford my whole lifestyle is the number of people who have used my referral links to buy the Coleman Salu Spa inflatable hot. I send this link to everybody 11:03 It's actually the like when I share my contact with new people. I go hey by Jaron Myers also let me send you some real quick. I send a referral. You share your con. You send your contact, but before you do you send that link and you're like oh sorry wrong, wrong like Mr. Coleman has called me himself and said yeah, he sounds crazy. That's what he sounds like. Wait, is that the same cold the Colman Grills Coleman? Is that the same Coleman? 11:29 No, okay, yes, no, no, who you're thinking of? No, it's not that guy. Okay, I'm thinking of the early two thousands and five marshals guy. Yeah, you're thinking of Gary Coleman. Yes, yeah, yeah, I don't think that the size pause. I mean could be honestly hand in hand that product. I bet he makes the grills. I bet he uses the grills in the spot. No, you're thinking of 11:53 you're George Foreman, no, no, no, no, no, no, I know Foreman had the grills, but I also know Coleman also had the grills and also did the infomercials. They did him at the same time and that was what was so funny about it. Here's how you're here. Here's how your thought way you went George Foreman, Gary Coleman, who is like the actor in the Jefferson's right. I don't know all I know Willis all Gary Coleman. All I know is both of them had grills and they were doing 12:22 infomercials at the same time in the early two thousands and they sounded Coleman and Foreman were super similar home and grill. Am I right? No Alex Coleman is like just a brand yeah, but they make reals right now. We are we are. We're attaching Gary Coleman to it just because George Foreman did a grill and we're like that black guy did a grill. So that's that's actually on us for doing that to be honest. That's that's on us. 12:50 I don't think Gary Colman is is is related to don't write it down. That's re that's if anything, that's the healthy thing for us to do. That's us learning knowledge, our own little moment right there. That's us learning how much we suck where George Foreman has a grill. Gary Coleman not related at all to the Coleman outdoor franchise break. Yeah, I mean him 13:16 might be like he might have some common products. This is what happens is that you are faced with facts and you go I couldn't possibly be wrong. All right, so Stargate okay is real. Do we know where that one one was this one? No, I've got no idea, but but I'm saying was that just found this one? Probably this one, probably not. I'm going to be honest with you looks like it's like you know clearly made and 13:47 yeah, yeah, those stones look newer than the surroundings kind of thing like yeah. Most likely this was people act like this is what ruins would look like if they found them, but have you have you broke stuff before what have you what stuff have you broke stuff before it doesn't look this nice true, but if you have you look up the Mayan ruins before they were excavated. Oh yeah, yeah, 14:10 so people act like that's what like they're just going to stumble across that and be like these are ancient ruins and it's like no, no, no, the ancient ruins that you're thinking of had to be literally dug out like uncovered here. I'll pull up a little before and after yeah, so you can see my point that I'm making. Thank you so much. All right, you ready for this? Yeah, so before like when it was discovered, this is what it looked like right, and then this is after they were still accord it. 14:40 you exactly yeah. See the absolutely different one yeah. That doesn't look like that at all, not even the same thing. 14:49 Yeah, they had to essentially just rebuild the thing, which is wild. They rebuilt it. I mean they rebuilt the top. The top was not on there. The top was not on there and then they polished the heck out of it. They mowed the lawn. This is honestly, honestly, if you're an archaeologist, hold on, let it turn it to my camera. If you're an archaeologist right now and you're out are archaeologizing, I'm sure you're probably your universities probably counting you to start a tick tock and 15:19 make there be some more interest, and go into a massive amount of debt from home all the time, so that way they can't have here's what you need to do. He's like, hey, can I clean up your yard? 15:45 and then he does it and it's like a time lapse and he mows the lawn and he likes power washes everything do that but with pyramids. If you do that with pyramids you find million views on tick tock ten million views on tick tock honestly probably a hundred million views on tick tock. You just film yourself cleaning archaeology done done new Kanye West. If you do that so. 16:10 Gary Coleman didn't have kid for twenty years. 16:19 All right, let's get back to it. Okay, so we got different strokes is what he was on different strokes, which is the jefferson's. Okay, here's the thing. We are now seventeen minutes into this topic and we haven't talked at all. This is a topic that people are going to get a randomly find us for. So this is perfect. All right star gates. So the story is that there are these hidden star here. See this is 16:46 add this to your list. There's a conspiracy that Gary Coleman was murdered by his wife. Are you serious? Yeah, wow. Did we just discover a new topic together? 17:00 Okay, so the star gates I'm saying like clearly that one was made I so star gates. So here's how this here's the other story goes. There are a series of star gates in the world and our has got one of them. The North Pole's got one of them Egypt's got one of them and they're typically hidden within like major archaeology, archaeological sites and or places that are very hard to get. Plot still no we're in real life. We're in real life now we're in the theory and so you might remember we did a story 17:30 on. Oh, what was that guy's name Admiral Bird? I think in that article where he found that hole in an article that was a book now close, but another conspiracy theory okay, and it was this US Admiral that found a hole that went to the center of the earth. There was a whole world in there. Oh yes, yeah, it was another project that in yeah, something like that sure, but they very similar concept and art because the earth and people who live down there and all that stuff. Yeah sure, 18:00 another conspiracy that instead there's a star game. That's how they get to and from earth, the aliens. Okay, and so the story is that there is one of these inside the great ziggurat of er. Have you seen this before? Here's what it used to look like back when it was great before it fell apart sure and here it is today and this actually ironically we already looked at some pyramids that were restored. This was restored by Saddam Hussein 18:29 I don't know if I have a before picture of it. Do you just quit halfway through or yeah? We started trying to kill him, so that's why okay. Let me see if I can find one before restoration, but yeah, so that that whole yeah. Here it is. Gosh, that's crazy. It's very it's how much they were sorted. Yeah, it's wild that we talked about this before bringing up this part of the topic and it's essentially the same thing. This is nuts. 18:58 it's pretty much this whole gosh. I kind of wish they finished it because it would have been cool. Here we go. Here's what it looked like before you found it. Oh, it was restored. That's crazy and that's what I'm saying. Dude is like look at that. Like you, you couldn't just like you know. How do you look at that and then start to be that we should start digging that 19:23 Yeah, I mean you probably look at the sides and you can clearly tell there's walls there, but you probably would have never guessed that it was this and really was this like it's pretty impressive, but anyway, so the story goes we have like. Why do we know it was that you know saying? I think we have like documentation from the era of what it was built to look like, kind of like the arc where we know it was like the cubits by a cubits and stuff. You know we have descriptions of it 19:56 If you've been watching for a minute and you like this show, Our patrons get a ton of perks for their support. 20:08 We do monthly hangouts. There's a way to get birthday messages on your birthday. There's a lot of great perks, but more than anything, you just help make sure that this show continues to happen forever. We never want to stop. We're going to keep doing this forever. If we have enough patron supporters, we can put our brains in those little vats and like have AI pretend it's us. And so like we can keep doing it long after we die, but that only happens if you support us on Patreon. So we appreciate your support. Thanks for your help. If you don't want to support, that's totally fine. Thanks for being here. We really appreciate you watching the show. 20:41 Why do you constantly try to get us canceled by our Christian audience? Why do you constantly keep trying to bait me into did it actually happen? All right, so the we found Adams belly button and even didn't have belly buttons and I and I will I'll die on that hill, but you know when they found it, it wasn't restored and they had to really do some work to clean it up and realize it was actually a belly but 21:09 with a little brush. It's an archae out yeah. They just thought it was some peat moss and then they started doing some cleaning and they're like holy cow. This is real belly, but I was belly button. He was an out. 21:25 or should it have a belly button? Actually, he should be belly button free. That's what I'm if you're a Adam and Eve both didn't have a button. That's okay. So so the ziggurat of her as the story goes, yeah, the top of this ziggurat of her was once a stargate and that was what it was built for. It was built to make why it had to get destroyed. I don't know if that's why I would say it had to get destroyed, but that's that there was the the stargate up there and so this 21:54 The ziggurat of Ur was built. We got to take this story back in time to early, early Babylon, back to Samaria. Right. To our friend Nebuchadnezzar. I love Nebuchadnezzar. So the bunny, yes. The bunny. I love the bunny. Yes. Yeah. We're going to talk about that story actually in a minute. 22:15 I'm on shad rack, me shack and a bendigo and yeah we are as part of the lore. What is your so not Lord historical fact this in this scenario it's slower, so three men in the Bible worked at a chocolate factory. 22:35 What that's his store was it back? What was it? A P asparagus and who played Shadrack me check in a bend to go in that it was the P and the asparagus right made it right and the tomato wasn't a bomb and Larry. I don't know if Larry was one of the look up VeggieTales Shadrack me Shack a Bendigo 22:59 yeah. We can I'm rack, I'm shack, I'm Benny. We were here. I sure right. It was it was yeah, I guess Bob Larry and the the kid asparagus in your yeah junior. You're right. Why did I think it was the P and the asparagus because the only one that you remember is Jonah where the peas are on the ship and that's a classic or on the hill. They're on they're on the they're on the gate at Niva. Yep, yep, yep, yep. 23:29 because the grapes are on the ship, which yeah, that's an interesting point. Was there ever in other route? So don't do anything. There's a tomato doesn't count. So so before we get to shad rack me checking a mendigo, we need to get to have a cancer, the ancient sumer, and so we have ancient Sumerian text talking about the aninaki. Have you heard of the aninaki? No 23:58 So this is we probably loosely references in some of our alien episodes before, but the anunnaki an alien race, we know, yeah, an alien race from the planet in a beer, which I think we've talked about did talk about this in the super soldier episode. Yes, yeah, and so Nibiru, if you need a refresher is a mythical, maybe m maybe real planet. Did the Nibiru 24:29 did they have a grill? What I put out the I think they had a grill and they were like they had all these infomercials in the early two. I remember this so clearly so Nibiru is the planet that I'm not here from. Nibiru is the planet out past Pluto. It's the mythical ninth or tenth planet depending on what how you feel about Pluto and depending on the mythology. You look at 24:55 the asteroid belt was another planet at one time into these theories that it's like just out of our so you know like oh it's past Pluto. Well, what's absurd is like we can see past to do to say that it's from Jupiter. You know yeah. What's absurd is that we can see out there like why haven't we noticed it yet sure there's 25:17 I will say that's what I mean is like, oh, it's convenient that it's I don't know when these theories were coming up, they probably hadn't seen past Pluto. Yeah, what I will say is like there was the the I don't remember exactly how the story goes. We talked about in our pole shift, a shift episode, but there was like signatures of a gravitational pole of something large outside there. And so it was like, oh, there might be something out there, but we didn't know about it. But this was like the seventeen hundreds or something like that. So there's 25:47 Since then we've realized, oh, that's because some something from Saturn or Jupiter is like and causing an anomalous gravitational field. Sure. Sure. But the story is that the asteroid belt was another planet. Nibiru was this far out planet that has a weird oblong orbit. Yeah. And so every once in a while it crosses paths with a lot of other planets, orbits, and at one point it collided with the planet that was in the asteroid belt and 26:12 blew it up and now the asteroid belt is what's remains of that planet that exploded, which is interesting. No evidence to support that idea other than there's a bunch of rocks over there. And so Nibiru is the planet where the Anunnaki came from. They have a star gate right to earth and that was in modern day Iraq. The Anunnaki were this like special race of aliens that we 26:41 and like our mythology referred to as like angels or something like that, right? And like human mythology, but they're really just aliens in our modern days. Like guys, we understand that the term for that, that we see in the Bible is the Nephilim, the same, the stories overlap. And so there's stories overlap really, really, uh, really well, obviously like there's, there's stuff on both sides that are different, but then there's a middle side in the middle where in both stories, this race came to earth, 27:10 and then reproduced with humans. That was bad and they had to be wiped out. Was the story. And so, Anunnaki or Nephilim. Now, the interesting thing is when we get to the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they have the fiery furnace thing. The Israelites get taken into Babylon. They all... Fiery furnace is a portal. Yeah, they're all told you have to bow the knee. 27:37 Chad, like me, shook in a bed to go say no, we're not bound the knee to your gods. Nebuchadnezzar and I was just like throw him in the furnace. They throw him in the furnace and then all of a sudden, while they're in the furnace, a fourth figure appears and that's how they discover the portal was within that portal or within the fire furnace was the other portal and so that being came in protected them. The on a knocky or Nephalene figure alien came in, protected them from the fire and then 28:06 nebuchadnezzar was like hold on, turn the fire off. I need to talk to that guy, talk to that guy, found out. Oh, there's alien power here. Then they build the ziggurat of her around it to like encase this thing and it's like whole. That's part of it wasn't in the thing though. Oh yeah, yeah and the that in the vegetal story it was nebuchadnezzar like all want to follow Jesus now. Can we pray the sinner's prayer in the fire 28:34 or how's the lyric go? It's just there's another in the fire. There's another in the fire. Yeah, which is pretty hard. Honestly, just about a pivot to doing worship music because the standards are low and it's you know, or Christian music at all because like all people want is something they can listen to in the car with their kids. Yeah, that's all they want. Yeah and it not be like I am blue 29:03 you are green. You know they want like something like sounds fine to listen to that's why lyrics are just like God. You're good. You are cool. Jesus is my friend. Yeah, you know and it's just like all right. Let's it's so bad. I would rather listen to the first one. I actually saw a worship leader post a thing where he said the reason that K love music or like those worship songs are bad. Yeah, it's because they can't be musically complicated. 29:32 Yeah, because local youth pastors have to be able to play them yeah, because they're making it for bad people. Yeah, your small town acoustic guitar worship leader has to be able to sing this song yeah, so they can't make it difficult to play. They can't can't make it good chords. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is fair. I think that changed a little bit in the twenty tens. There was a brief period there where yeah we started getting good music and he was not even free and really all of hill song was like 30:00 forget you guys. We don't care if you can play this week, then we saw what happens when you depart from four cords. Then you start to get the down, don't you know song was a was a minor seven 30:21 and so they built the ziggurat to house the the stargate, which is like it's, but this is a believable other stories were never can as or does this or is it just this like stargate theory? I actually don't never has no build the yeah. The ziggurat of her was during never has measures rain and the story line from history is the same thing. You always hear it's like a temple or a bear, but you know those type sorts of things. I think it's a temple. It was 30:48 was what the story was. I don't remember how the story is didn't in the Bible didn't have a Kneser turn yeah he turned yeah yeah, but it that there's no evidence that he did that and turn real. If you don't know the story of the Bible, it sounds like we're like yeah he turned you know you mean he he turned a high stinking. He repented and yeah 31:13 Yeah, he turned from his sin, built the temple for God is what it is in the Bible. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, but another in the fire, so he goes and builds builds this temple, and this is this is an interesting thing, and you see this a lot with the ancient alien people is a lot of ancient monuments and things like that were built to house 31:43 like religious relics. And so there is a possibility that there was some sort of religious relic that came from some event. Maybe it was shadow wreck me, check in a bend to go. Maybe it was something else entirely and the ziggurat of her did house that significance. Yeah. To that people, right. Um, but the ancient aliens group will always say, well, that was the alien technology that they gave to them. And that's why they had that. That's why it was the sacred thing is cause it was ancient technology. 32:11 So one thing you hear a lot too is the Ark of the Covenant is ancient alien technology. Um, couldn't touch it without. Yeah. That's why it melted you. Cause it was nuclear. Um, which sidebar real quick, I saw this thing today. Uh, it was, uh, one of those radio shows where they like call you after you have a bad date. And it's like, surprise the guys on the line. And it's like, you got to tell us why the date was bad. So she, this girl walked out on the date cause she found out the guy builds. 32:39 or sells nuclear bombs is what he does. She's like I don't want to be involved with any of that. I mean he sells them yeah. That's what it they were like. I don't know if that's yeah. He's like she's like yeah. He like markets for them or something like that and like I don't think that's something anybody does like. I don't think there's a he's like no for your needs. What you're looking for is this beautiful seven seeder. I'll tell you what and it's got the full down dvd player in the bag. It's it's you know yeah this thing it's 33:07 fifteen thousand mega tons. You're going to love it. You're going to love this thing. This is used. Why it's so they had this whole conversation with her and how disgusted she was that he sells markets nuclear bombs because she doesn't believe in that she thinks that's disgusting and then they're like well surprise he's been on the line the whole time listening to everything you have to say and like what do you have to say about you and he's like he's like this was just a giant misunderstanding. He's like here's the deal. He said I don't work 33:36 added with nuclear bombs at all. He's like I'm a I work in a marketing company and our company is called is called new clear marketing. It's like it's like new ideas that are clear marketing. Well, that wasn't very clear bro. I actually think this is she's right because like she's a woe nuclear 34:01 it's literally the name of your company. You idiot nuclear marketing nuclear. I work in nuclear marketing. She's like I don't think I can be with someone support that who thought that was a good 34:17 I'll tell you right now nuclear marketing that's bad marketing. I wouldn't trust that 34:25 that's why you got to go with solar flare media. 34:30 Yeah, I support that. All we do is tear down all the electronics on the planet. Yeah, we don't blow anyone up. We just make it to where you want to blow each other up classic radio anyway. Damn much tell about these star gate so so no do that. You got to talk about that. Well, yours is bad. Never mind ah dang it. You made him go back to space to talking about the star. We opened the portal. You got the star gate opened up 35:01 I'm actually on Planet The Beero! 35:03 ever since you did that because you accidentally applied for nuclear marketing thinking you were applying for nuclear marketing. Here's the thing. Here's the thing ever since Boeing got the contract for the I have been trapped up here just floating out in space and so we crashed on planet since twenty seventeen since we started the podcast right yeah. We just yeah loading out in space. It's kind of shocking that I can get this communication to you in real time for real things to the Anunnaki 35:32 Oh yeah, they've got good communication skills. They really have a harness on their emotions. That's honestly, I've never, they're really good at telling story and crafting the climax and conclusion. Honestly, like something they don't even have to study in school. They're all just naturally born with it. They're really gifted at it. They're really gifted, which is crazy. It makes them really good at marketing and then yeah. 36:01 they actually and writing books, writing books. They write really good. You think talkans a human name? Yeah, that's the thing that a lot of humans don't understand. Oh my God, I what do you think C S Lewis stood for Celestial Super Star? Yeah, the thing like we've been using the stargate at her. Yeah, I'm saying we are not one of them, but we've been here for so long like we've kind of a you're just you're assimilated into the culture is your wife. 36:28 Oh well, sometimes I take the stargate back, but I'm not allowed. I cited in da with the on a knock. Oh, I meant like did you did you end up marrying one of them up there? Oh, I mean I don't mean to say one of them. That's that's not what I mean. I don't mean like them. I mean like I'll shoot. Oh gosh, please don't get me canceled on the nebula planet shoot man. The word, but it's okay. It's literally the most progressive planet. Yeah, these people are really in tune. 36:55 Uh, yeah, I mean, I can go back and visit my wife every once in a while through the star gates. Okay, so you're doing a long distance with your wife. Yeah, it's pretty long distance, but it's FaceTime. You know, it's, it's not the same. Sure. Like New York to London is a long time ever since we got rid of the Concord, but Earth to to Stargate to to the beer is not that bad. So 37:18 so yeah well, I'm glad that you're updating us about your commute. We're going to keep going with the episode. If that's all right space, Tim questions right here at the end of knockies, so they can answer some. If you know, we'd rather just speculate all right sounds good. I know that's what you guys do. I'm glad that all your information is not based in fact, but just kind of made up a little bit. Yeah great. It's a good bit. That's the only way our brains can handle it. That's awesome. Was the Ark real 37:42 the arc was real, but it was actually something that it was like a science fair project for one of the kids up here, but but here's the thing. It's your science fair project is a three panel board where you have to make a boat that's big enough to house two of every creature on this planet. Yeah, we do that all the time because here's the thing the adonaki in our culture stands for destroyer of world. So we go and we blow up and stuff up a lot. That's why we market all these nukes and then but 38:10 but we like animals, so we have to save up. So we can we kill the board by the dinosaurs. Oh, we didn't like those those were weird animals. Our necks were too long. Yeah, you nobody likes long neck animals. Yeah, trying to get rid of the draft for a long time, but it's just resilient man. All right, our classic way to chill 38:33 Galaxy's away co host. No, no, no, we've already our I've outro'd you twice cut his mic. Night, oh where'd I go who so was I talking about before you were to it doesn't matter. 38:57 so it doesn't matter, so they built people who found this episode are destroying so so the ziggurat of her was built to house this this stargate and it existed throughout history for right for a very long time. A lot of year was more caneser like four thousand years ago. I don't know the exact year, but it's two thousand BC something in that ballpark. That's great. I don't know for sure, but it was really, really early 39:27 So they, world powers have learned about this and many world powers have been trying to find star gates. Yeah. Until recently, there's a guy by the name of Saddam Hussein. Here's a picture of him before Disney Photoshopped out his cigar. And here's the exact same picture after they Photoshopped out his cigar. 39:52 It's just a totally different picture. 39:57 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. Want to let you know real quick. We have an email list and it's not like a hey, we're going to send you our merch and new episodes all the time. We actually give you updates on these stories as we find out about them. So a lot of our episodes we've done a couple years ago now have updates or the person the top was about passed away or was caught by the police or whatever updates we can find on episodes that we've done. We want to let you know about it so that our episodes just aren't 40:25 you know out there out of date. It's really fun way to keep learning new information and then every once in a while we let you know about new events coming up or new episodes and it's just a way to help us keep spreading the show. Join that email list. You can text till into six six eight six six or there's a link in the description of this episode or you can just go to till and dot com. It's very easy to join this email list. It's everywhere. It's actually really hard to not join it, so 40:58 So he had this Saddam Hussein had this like, I don't want to say obsession, but kind of an obsession. He won. He believed he was the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar and he wanted to be like Nebuchadnezzar and make Iraq great again or Samaria great again, and that's why he restored the ziggurat of her. It was more it was this wasn't like an archeological project. It was like I am Nebuchadnezzar and so here's a good graphic that lets us yeah. 41:28 that lets us recognize this in our brain. There's never can as there's it on who's saying there's the gate that the British, I think took away the gate of Samaria and now it's in a museum in Great Britain and then there's the on a knocky coming to meet with nebuchadnezzar there in the middle on that stele. Okay, so did Saddam Hussein ever claim to talk to aliens? I don't know if he ever claimed to talk to aliens, but I do think he claimed he was the new 41:58 nebuchadnezzar and was going to be can as or new. I really like that, so he was the new bikineser and he was rebuilding the nation and this gets us to the modern era because a lot of the conflict that happened in Iraq since the eighties. All this theory asserts that it's an attempt to get to this stargate because we want to find that stargate and have you wish there was a stargate there. Yes, and the argument is that 42:26 that was the weapon of mass destruction destruction. Speaking he was clear. Oh yeah, you're right. Yeah, easy. So the argument is that they said they were looking for WMDs. They found the WMD and then they backpedaled and they're like well. We probably shouldn't let everyone know that we found a portal to another planet and so we would rather like think we're war criminals. Yeah, so they're like we were just looking for oil. I guess 42:53 yeah. This was all dick Cheney's idea. Just put it on dick shoulders. That's all right there, but and the the reason for this is obviously we know that the whole Iraq invasion being an adult now is crazy because like we were kids when the Iraq War was happening yeah, and so we didn't. I I'm wondering 43:22 I don't know like what it would have been like to been thirty at that time because now looking back at it, we go. I was really bad. Yeah, it was. It was something I think because of nine eleven right. It was a polarized thing where it was like even if we're not going to get the whole validity of the Iraq war and all that stuff. If you had thoughts about it, yeah, you probably didn't really time say I know that there was heated 43:49 conversations and debates and like probably not up. Yeah, I don't know was the political tension. What like what it is now? Yeah, that's a good question. People really hate dick Cheney because of this. That is a good point and so the people who are children now when they grow up, they're going to be like oh yeah, the all that Trump stuff, huh, and we're going to be like yeah, that was a crazy time thing. Yeah, and they're going to be like. I don't know. I was seven yeah, yeah, that's interesting. 44:19 I was just thinking about it. Yes, I don't remember. I mean I remember my grandma being super. You know my uncle was in the military, so she was super pro like I remember her watching those pictures. I would just see her on her tv all day because Fox News was talking about. Oh yeah, yeah, you know yeah. I think I think and maybe it was just my experience, but I think most of most people were in a world like that where that was the zeitgeist 44:49 Yeah, we're just kind of like people were talking about the Iraq war. Obviously yeah, but we were just kids, but now we didn't get it like kids are more in tune with. I'm saying like I feel like kids are more in tune with what's happening right now. Well, I think kids are more exposed to it. That's that's what I'm saying. I think that's what we know. We would have had to watch CNN or Fox to under right. There was no pull or not. There weren't political ads popping up on the polar bear 45:13 the xp windows xp polar bear bowling yeah or the polar bear golf game. Yeah, yeah, we weren't watching political ads in between each yeah. That was when they gave us games and like good access to games for free. Yeah, you know and they were like hey, you can play this bowl or play this polar bear bowling yeah do that polar bowling yeah and now they like we got were like well, I get by one ball and then you watch a four minute ad and then you get it together. Your second ball yeah 45:39 and the ads are insane or you can pay seventeen ninety nine a day for this to have a limited balls and polar bear pin ball. I'm saying, did you see? Did I send you that tick tock? The guy was talking about catering your child's YouTube algorithm. Yeah, that was clever. I don't know why I've never thought of that. He he said he said if you have a kid go, I'm subscribing for all this yeah unsubscribe from everything go delete all the browsing history. 46:08 subscribe to what youth are okay with them watching right and then periodically every couple weeks go delete other browsing history and delete any subscriptions. You don't approve of and control what they see. My kids are only subscribed to the kids getting hurt YouTube channel. I want them to be afraid YouTube short after YouTube short of eight year olds getting run over by bikes and they're ramping. They fall they're running around on snow. They fall they're swinging on the swing set they fall 46:38 they're going down the slide. They get stuck in the middle and it like burn their bat. You know that's why they're yeah. Yeah, we just like metal. So that yeah problem with kids these days do is they've never had this they've never suffered on a metal slide. It's been in the hot July sun. Yeah, that was brutal. The metal side. I can't believe we did that crap man. I can have l'er fast. I've lived through some things, but yeah, that's a clever to 47:07 control your kids algorithm yeah smart make sure we never show up and if we did rebel against your parents, yeah, don't don't listen to anything. They say your mom doesn't know what she's talking about walk in the living room right now and say you're not in charge just like that set the couch on fire. They can't do anything about it walk. They haven't checked. Look your mom dead in the eye and say I think I'm the new the new book. 47:36 go say that to say that your mom's not just to the kids. That's just say that any adult any what day is this come out? This comes out like Thanksgiving week right? Oh, I like that. I just at lunch right when you're eating mass potatoes. Just look up, look around like I think I have the new nebica nes or new never getting as and then just go back to eating and then just continue eating. Don't expand on it. Yeah, yeah oof so nebica measure 48:05 or I should say Saddam Hussein is rebuilding Iraq, trying to become the new Nebuchadnezzar or rebuild the region to its former glory, as he states. The U.S. medals in that, a lot of Western nations medal in that because they want a leader of the nation that they can control better and they also want access to all the while. Right. And the story that is perpetuated, especially in 48:32 in 2003 is that we believe that Saddam who had had weapons of mass destruction so we invaded and it was a really, really bad war. I think that they found the stargate then they were like we can't tell the poke. We found the star gate. Well, in reality, what actually happened is it was a really, really bad war. We destroyed the majority of the country, pushed everyone who survived into abject poverty, installed a new leader and I think it was somewhere in the ballpark of a million civilians died. 49:01 in that conflict. So it was a very serious, very, very bad conflict. And then it came out that it was like, Oh, there was never any WMDs and we never had good evidence of it, but we invaded anyways. And I think as a result of that, you started to see everybody to try to figure out, okay, well then why, why justify this? Yeah. Yeah. Why did this happen? And eventually we did discover this, but in the wake of that, everybody started coming up with their theories. And I think a big reason why this started to happen is right next to the ziggurat of, or, or, 49:30 we built what for a long time would be the largest military base we ever had outside of the United States massive airfield, massive land and the ziggurat was part of the base, and so you could not access the base without or you could not access the ziggurat without being military right, and so a lot of pictures started coming out of the ziggurat with tons of uniformed soldiers partying on the ziggurat. I don't know that's already walking down the stairs. 50:00 for audio listeners. They don't have those like two thousand three glasses on or anything like that. It's not like it's not like there's no there. Literally is a group of soldiers walking down the stairs and Tim's like look at them having a rave. Look at them having a great time. Look at them just desecrating this holy place. You know a lot of pictures came out of soldiers just party. Sorry, I've never been to a party 50:26 is what I assume they look like I've been to your party one guy with a good folder one guy with a one guy with a right on the back. 50:39 but yeah. So these pictures started coming out. It's like what are they doing on the SIGAR app? What was actually happening was all of these soldiers were on base and they had a tourist site on base, and so a lot of them would go explore it and she look around because I mean that's also where offices were. Yeah, that's also where the star gate was the second floor, the regret, and so they they would explore. They would see it and there was some stuff where it was like they did take some 51:08 American archaeologists in it to do some studies, And then so then this whole story came out. what if the weapon of mass destruction Because we didn't want Saddam Hussein to be able to go to Nibiru or bring any Anunnaki back from Nibiru. 51:35 we needed the access to the technology that you could get from it, but what's also what's what's very interesting about it is if you go into the we would use them very differently obviously yeah yeah. You get a power out there like Saddam Hussein to bring in some aliens he's going to take over the world. He's going to take over the world. We just want. We already took over the world. We want someone to we can't take over what we've already taken over out, so we would make them professional athletes. 52:05 You know, I'm saying. 52:10 Yeah, at the time at the time it was Brady. Wait a minute, wait a minute, Patrick Mahomes. You rearrange the letters. It's on a knock. 52:29 Oh my gosh, state farm was, but look at the state farm logo, pull up the state farm logo right now, pull up the state farm logo right now and put it on this screen. Pull up the state farm logo. You know exactly where I'm going with this. It's a little sketch stargate stargate 52:56 that's three star gate, three star gate. Thank you for pulling up the P G file that has the transparent background on it. I know there were other options and you heard for that one. Yeah, I just I know you're in a middle of a contract that says all your media has to be like a good neighbor. Yeah, like a good in a beer. I do know from a good source that they actually pronounce it neighbor, not no one saying like you know 53:26 celestial celestial, celestial neighbor. Yeah, yeah, that's a very good a farm. I think theory yeah, but in a bum, but yeah, that is interesting too, because they do not have a court in sponsor, according to the way it's the state farms never going to sponsor us. You according to little faith, according to now with the way I have big faith. So according to the story, though they're the the inaki 53:56 is where we came from. So the Anunnaki came to earth looking for gold and they found gold. And so then they started digging for gold. And then they were like, man, digging for gold sucks. So then what they did is they took some of their DNA and they took proto human, like apes basically, and they mixed the DNA to make the human race as a slave race to get all the gold for us. Cause we don't want to dig. And so then we became their slave race to harvest all the gold. 54:25 And then eventually there was a subset of the Anunnaki, the younger ones that were like off at university in Portland. Those humans are hot. No, they were like, they were off at university in Portland in Portland and they were like, hey, but it's kind of wrong what we're doing to all the humans. And they went to the humans, they're like, hey, you know, you guys probably could kill all of them if you tried and like, you don't need to dig for gold for all of them. And so then they sponsored a rebellion and they fought back against them together. And then they overtook them and then the humans were free. 54:54 and so then as a reward they were like hey, because we helped you fight this war. They were like you can have the plan the okay. No, they were like hey, that's when then they were like okay, but they're kind of hot and then watching you defeat our ancestors was was 55:24 so that so then those on a knock is not named as baby go, lieth. That's exactly the story and and yeah and then the other an inaki that went away and that got defeated. We're like hey, we don't like any of that and they're like we're going to flood the planet, but we like your animals and two of you and I guess your kids can stay to I guess your kids can stay to and then they built the arc as a science fair project and then saved them all in okay. That's let's do the stargazer. So 55:55 the US comes in, tries to find it, finds it, And they're like, we're taking this back to Area 51, lore before this, the Stargates don't work anymore. I don't know exactly what the idea is, And so it's taken back to... 56:22 Area 51 for us to study and try to figure out how to turn it on. And that's what's been happening ever since. And so the worry was that somehow Hussein and his scientists would figure it out before we could and then have access to alien technology and whatever's on the other side of the portal. And so they're trying to figure it out. And here's the interesting thing. I think that this story is preposterous, but. After learning about Skinwalker Ranch, 56:53 I think it's possible that that's actually what was happening because the storyline existed before the Iraq war and after the Iraq war it got connected to it, the Stargates, this is why we were there. And with Skidmarker Ranch we now know that there were government people who used their position in the government to use the government to study weird paranormal stuff, I think conspiracy stuff. And 57:22 despite the fact that it was pretty preposterous, and so it makes me wonder probably wasn't the main motivation there, but probably had to be some more going on there right, but maybe and there's no way to know this for sure, but maybe just maybe one of them in that room was like yeah, and then we can also get the stargates in which room of the Oval Office. Oh, take a guess. 57:52 at which one which one it could be was like what about the star gates though? I mean honestly with that with that oval, most of them, most of them I could but there was one who was 58:12 pretty yeah. Yeah, I think there's a few of that you could say there was one. There was one person that oval office during that administration that was like it's the star gates. We don't got to pretend 58:29 Yeah, it's a crazy idea, but yeah, I mean you look back and you know, after knowing the skin, walk around thing, after knowing that administration, you're like, hey, I mean, there's a chance that that actually was what they were thinking there. It's not watch this drive 58:45 that's crazy. It is crazy, but yeah, that's the story of the the stargate at the ziggurat of her and how Saddam Hussein thought he was nebuchadnezzar and how the humans filled off the nef nephelim and aki, a beer wins and also Gary Colbert's gory 59:11 Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things over last night. If you liked this one, there's other alien episodes. We get a lot of alien episodes, but one of them is operation high jump, a operation where they went to Antarctica. They were actually thought that the Nazis were doing a lot of their tests down there and flying saucers. They claim to have found flying saucers down there operation high jump. You can go check that out and next week's episode is available right now on our Patreon. You can jump ahead 59:38 listen to early access, get free like monthly hangouts with us, not free. It's included in your membership, but they discord with us and hang it out and chatting and all that stuff. So please run us on patron and helps us to make more episodes. Thanks for being here for the show. We hope you like it. Share this with somebody. That is the number one way people find a podcast or find our show is if you send this to them. So please do that. We'll see you next week on things I learned last night.

Throughout history, tales of advanced technology and celestial connections have captivated us. Among the most intriguing are the legends surrounding the Iraqi stargates. These ancient portals said to connect distant realms or civilizations, have sparked both wonder and controversy. But what is the truth behind these mysterious artifacts? The Legend of Stargates in Iraq The concept of a “stargate” originates … Read More

He Cheated and Won ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ | The Consortium Ep 249

11-12-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 Are you smarter than a game show house? Yeah, this is a good episode where we're talking about people who weren't and some people who were actually a little both sides and people who conned the game. Who wants to be a millionaire? There was a UK, US and Ireland version and they conned all three of them to be honest yeah and then a couple people who got caught with their with their scheme, their scheme, their scheme, their scandal yeah yeah. 00:24 Hey, this is November twelve. What do you got going on number twelve? Man, honest thanks for asking yeah haven't. I don't spend hanging out. That's not what I meant. Oh, November, fourteen this week and I'm in Woodbridge, Virginia and then I am in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida this weekend with Shama, Marama and Mike Goodwin. Please come to those shows next week. I'm in Kansas City and then we're in Dallas Longview and Waco, Texas. So yeah, it's pretty exciting stuff. 00:53 and then and then it's Thanksgiving, so I get Thanksgiving off. That's exciting. Now, he's exciting. Good times. So yeah, they come out to the shows. We're going to have a really good time. So and then if right now, if it's November 12th right now, but there's an episode that's going to come out November 19th, we put these out every Tuesday and if you're like man, I cannot wait for that episode to come out, you can join our Patreon. You can get it right now, right now. So but for now, here is this week's episode. This is things I learned last night. This is a comedy podcast. 01:19 we joke around. We laugh. If you came to actually learn about the topic, you're going to learn about it, but you might yeah. I mean we're going to learn about it. That's what thing, but we're also going to joke around the whole time, so and there's might be aliens. 01:35 Hey man, what's up? Have you heard of the consortium, the consortium consortium consortium consortium consortium? Okay, have you heard of it? No, let me ask you this. Have you heard of patties 01:55 shut up. Have you heard? Have you heard of Patty Spooner? You're you're laughing at the name Spooner. I'm having at the name Patty Spooner PAD, D, why so that's a funny name, Adi Spooner, Adi Spooner. No, what about the name Keith Burgess? Keith Burgess Yeah is Toby Keith's real name close 02:25 Charles Ingram. Have you heard of Charles Ingram? That's Laura Ingram's dad. Close. Have you heard of Diana Ingram? Wait, 02:35 Wait. 02:37 diana ingram, Charles Ingram, yeah, is Laura Ingraham Wilder's dad close. Have you heard of tech when with ock? Do you know who Laura Ingram Wilder's that sounds familiar? Is that her name? Am I getting that wrong? Alex Laura Ingram Wilder? Is that correct? Laura Ingalls Wilder, that's what you're thinking of gosh. Yeah, she was your little house. Wife last night. What is your wife's last name? Sorry 03:05 she hasn't changed yet. I'm not. I'm not sharing that information on the internet. That's my security question. Security question is what's your wife's maiden name on some things you know that my is one of the three. Well, I know something what's your mother's maiden name and I actually there's like different forms that I get caught on or like I like because my mom's maiden name is my current last name. 03:33 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, my dad changed my dad's maiden name. Yeah anyway. No, have you heard of tech when with tech when with ock quick? We got we got to do more episodes today. Just get on with it. Okay, fine, let's start with the. Let's start with Charles. You're a doctor, Ike Hershkoff. He's on the list. You saw the list today 04:00 so here's the deal. Have you okay? So Charles Ingram, let me show you a picture of Charles and his wife. This is Charles and Diana Ingram. Okay, so this is a fraud. They're holding each other too close. This guy stole a lot of money. He also is exactly what the animators looked at for despicable me and they were like just make his nose really big yeah yeah. 04:22 That's hilarious. She is they look. You know what this looks like? This looks like the new lead pastors of your small baptist church. Oh yikes. Honestly though, I here's the thing. Here's the thing. This went out of style years ago, but I think today I think those green countertops are back like I love them. I don't think they're back, but like I 04:51 love them. You would put them in. I would put them in that looks sick in my way. Here of decor is like the Cheesecake Factory Kitchen. You don't talk about yeah that's like two thousand four yeah yeah yeah that's two thousand four like then there was like a Tuscan kitchen vibe for a while yeah yeah like the brick wall and the yeah and it was just way too much like you looked like it looked like zeo's Italian restaurant in there. Everything on the walls would be like like metal like 05:17 yeah shapes and you couldn't have a more than four inches apart right a little sculpture. You stuck to your wall. Yeah, those were the days Charles Ingram and his wife, they and his name Charles Ingram, Diana Ingram. They both have a name Charles Ingram and his wife. Even know the episodes about her she's the main character of it and you're like Charles, a chal's, Ingros wife. 05:47 he's not even a character in the story. He died years before this happened, but you're such a massage is that you can't refer to her as her own name. 06:02 Okay, so Diana and Charles were like a lot of people in the early two thousands big, big fans of Prince Charles and Dian. They were like we got the same name close. They were big, big fans of game shows, specifically quiz shows and more than any of all of them, the ones that they like trivia 06:30 yeah yeah yeah. The one that they liked the most was who wants to be a millionaire. You remember that one? Yes, for our younger audience, who wants to be a millionaire was a quiz show and you know now there's actually a reboot of this. Is it really? Yes, I didn't know it's it's who wants to be a millionaire celebrity edition who's hosting it biceps boy 06:53 what am I? Why am I supposed to Alfonzo Alonzo, whatever his name is for Carlton from Carlton biceps, Carlton, I but what you want about him? No is not no he's not. He was just on it. Sorry Jimmy Kimmel is hosting it. Jimmy Kimmel's hosting it okay, and so it's who's one who it's literally who wants to be a millionaire celebrity and it's like duos. It's like 07:17 Nick, Carl and John Mulaney went on together, which is so stupid because everyone they have on is already a millionaire yeah. So yeah, what are they? Do they win a million dollars? It doesn't go to charity. Yeah yeah, like nobody likes watching someone win for charity. No one's watching it for sure. If you're like oh okay cool yeah, that's rough yeah, so if you don't know what he wants to be a millionaire is the concept of the show is 07:45 didn't when Frankie Grande was on Big Brother, which if you aren't familiar, Frankie Grande is Starbucks, Grande's brother and when he went on Big Brother, Tim doesn't listen to anything. I say no, I'm listening carry great yeah. I can multitask yeah. What did I just say? You said when Frank, you're on. He was on Big Brother and who was Frankie Grande? You said he was one character on Big Brother 08:13 I don't know. I've never seen big brother, okay, he's ariana grande's brother yeah yeah yeah yeah, but I said he was starbucks grand his brother and you just didn't acknowledge that okay. Yeah, you weren't in listening. You just let me say that crap so stupid and it's not even like you went. Oh, that's a bad joke because it was you literally just did hear me say it golly dude. So anyway, 08:43 Frankie Grande, who is star by Brian Day's brother, there we go. I was going to joke. He was already rich and yeah. I was remember when Zack was in the D R and was just like just giving the money already. He's going to give to charity anyway. It was so funny because there were people on the show who genuinely like that seven hundred thousand dollars at the time was only five hundred thousand five hundred thousand would change their lives and Frank was like 09:10 I'm just here to have a good time and play big brother and if I win, I'm going to give it to charity and it's like if I got stuck in the house, I would. I would murder someone on TV. You're saying anyway, yeah, no one wants to watch rich people be like you. No one wants to watch rich people do good things. Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. They want to watch poor people do good things. That's why they're here. Yeah watching our show. It's hope it's all about hosted by two well hosted by 09:40 one poor person and one person who's doing okay, who who by fifty years ago, standard would be upper middle class, but by today's standard is for upper lower lower class. 10:00 Okay, so if you don't know what the show who wants to be a millionaire is, if you're younger, it's a show where there's a serious assumed that you were the one who was doing okay. There's a series of fifty. I didn't assume that oh there's a series of fifty questions. What I was saying each of the questions is worth a different dollar amount and your goal is to get through all the questions. 10:19 and every question you earn, however much that is the first question to be million. First question is a hundred dollars. Second question is two hundred eventually. Once you don't add up, it just becomes it becomes that's your total that you have and so eventually question fifteen is worth a million dollars. If you and at any point you can stop and take whatever your money. If you answer the question that's worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, yeah, you can say I don't want to keep going. I want to hear, but if you go to the next question you answer wrong, you lose everything you lose it all. It's like dealer, no deal. We're just Philbin hosted it. 10:49 Yeah, he was very dramatic the whole day in the whole show was yeah. The sound effects were killer. Yeah, the sound effects were in my dreams every night as a child. Every time something scary happened, it was yeah, so then every time every time I had a time in the dream where I had to come up with something quickly, it's tired to play. Who wants to be a millionaire? I try to read just so who wants to be a millionaire? 11:15 the next words are the other people who cheated. Is that who we're talking about maybe so it was at this moment that Tim knew he didn't bury the lead as well as he could have much like when a murderer's victim gets found shallow grave Tim's clues to were not buried deep enough. Oh no, they found my rug, so they Charles Ingram and his wife 11:43 they competed on the UK version of which no one watched. He wants to be a millionaire. No, it was really popular in the UK. No one watched it in the US, but the UK they at the height had like nineteen million viewers, which is a third of the population. No one in that country exists. I do think that they made up the UK is just like a fun little just like a bit. Yeah, okay, the whole thing doesn't exist like like that's a wikipedia scandal. Yes, 12:12 and it's just gotten a little too far out of. I do believe that there's some kids in ninety nine who are like, I'd be funny if we change the Wikipedia for. I don't know. No, I think I had a there was a ocean over the idea that I've talked about where you know the US section like just thousands of years behind the rest of the world, but our leaders have just really kept us in a propaganda machine yeah, and so any time you take that like eighteen hour flight to the UK, you're just going in circles and they land you out in the middle of the 12:40 well, what they would say is like you know ice cold Canada up there or whatever, but it's really just like they've set up fake countries and stuff you go to. So you like I've been there like I've been to Israel. I know exists yeah, but it's not it's not what you think of Canada. It's a set it's a movie anyway, whatever I so you case real so I guess next note Adrian or 13:10 Charles and his wife Diana. I should say this actually Diana's brother, Adrian Pollock. This is him, Adrian Pollock, got on the show. He's the veil of glam Morgan. I have no idea. That's why I say the UK doesn't exist bro. Oh, he's the veil of glam Morgan. 13:36 glam Morgan that yeah, that is that's the J P Morgan chases glam wing make up artists for J P Morgan. Okay, so her brother Adrian gets got on the show in like ninety nine two thousand something like that and he won thirty two thousand dollars was thirty two thousand dollars for reference on that show. That's getting to question number eleven oh wait ten question number ten okay. 14:06 And so that's a good run because there's 15 total questions. So it's like exponentially getting higher each time. And so Diana saw that and was like, I'm smarter than my brother. And so she got on and she also got to thirty two thousand dollars. So they tied and she was really upset after the taping of the show. They always do like because the way the show tapings happen, they're not live. And so like all the contestants are in that crowd. 14:35 And again, if you don't watch the show, the way they pick out the contestant, you had to apply to be on the show. When you applied to be on the show, what they would do is they would call you and when you would answer the phone, they would ask you a question when you answered the phone. They wouldn't tell you who it was. They would ask you a question and it'd be a sort of question like how tall is Big Ben? And you would have to give an answer. And if you were within a close enough range, they would say, okay, you can come beyond who wants to be a million. So. 15:03 the answer to that is like I think it's nine in line. There's just this is a true story. This is one hundred. I wouldn't even go high. No, this is a producer from that part was a how to be a man. I was a joke. They do call. You just answer your your work. Hey, they wouldn't even say like here's what we're looking for. You're the receptionist where Diana works. Sorry Charles wife works. You're the receptionist where Charles wife works right and you get a phone call. You go 15:33 hi. This is the stay at home mom store and sorry sorry you're right. That was that was wrong. That was wrong. I know this is a stay at home mom store, you know, because they're in the UK or whatever. The voice is like a voice changer. It's like super tight. How tall it's an American accent to how tall is Ben Ben Franklin. 16:02 Well, but once you've committed to you make a mistake, asking the question, you have to commit the question. You're like you give it out. Dolls been free. I mean I rung all been six to close enough. You can be on who wants to be a million like. Oh, I didn't want this. I think I think Charles wife wants to be on that show. Oh sorry, kind of weird that you call her Charles wife. Have you met Charles? No hi and she's a stay at home wife stole 16:31 hi. This is can I do wants to be a play in there is Charles's wife there. Oh, it's actually quite a few Charles wife. You had to be more specific. You K it's the one whose brother's name is a only I that's the patriarchy at work. There's way more confusing than it needs to be. I hate that 17:00 If you've been watching for a minute and you like this show, Our patrons get a ton of perks for their support. 17:12 We do monthly hangouts. There's a way to get birthday messages on your birthday. There's a lot of great perks, but more than anything, you just help make sure that this show continues to happen forever. We never want to stop. We're going to keep doing this forever. If we have enough patrons supporters, we can put our brains in those little vats and like have AI pretend it's us. And so like we can keep doing it long after we die, but that only happens if you support us on Patreon. So we appreciate your support. Thanks for your help. If you don't want to support, that's totally fine. Thanks for being here. We really appreciate you watching the show. 17:44 Yeah, so no, they wouldn't do that. They literally did that. They would introduce a call. They were hey, we're yeah, you we think you qualify. Here's a question to see how smart you are and if you and it would always be something like that where there was a range and so if you were within five or ten units of whatever they were looking for, they would let you call one of my friends from your phone. They don't have your phone number and just see if they answer and try. This is who wants to be a millionaire. We love to have you on. My name is yeah 18:13 Can we do that? Yeah, we can try it. Let's just call it from the Google Voice. We could just hit some randos with it. All right, sure okay. No, I'm in like now. Oh well, I weren't a guy. Why? That's all right. Fine. I guess not. You can say no. I mean I said yes, I just I don't think we're prepared right now. We got a okay on speaker phone, so they would call yeah, and then if you got cleared, they would fill the studio, the set, the studio audience would be all the people who they cleared for it. 18:43 and so then, but the catch was you're now in the studio audience. You have to get onto the hot seat sure way. They did that at the start of the episode. They had what was called the fast finger and that was there was a question and you had a little little unit at your seat and you had to answer it before everyone else. You had to be the first one to buzz in the hey, so the host would get out. He'd ask the fast finger question and everyone would try to be the first and if you got there, then you got selected. You got to go down and be on the show and so a lot of people. Why they do that 19:12 I don't know. It was just a thing that they did okay, so to get on the show is pretty hard like you had dolls. You had to go through the approval process. You had to answer the question on the phone right and you had to have the fastest finger in the crowd yeah, and then if you didn't you had to watch someone else. Yeah, but and you had to clap and cheer for them. What what happened was they were record a few of these a day, okay, because so they'd sit down. They record like six of them, so the whole audience would be there and they'd be hoping okay. I'm watching you wait for nothing. I'm going to get to go next. Hopefully, if my fingers fast enough 19:42 and so this is what was happening. They record, they record all the episodes and afterwards they typically had like a cocktail hour with everyone and they kind of celebrate and Diana won the thirty two thousand and that she walk away after it. 20:00 no, she had to know, because there's like certain levels you reach words like you're guaranteed. So this is interesting. Actually, maybe this is a difference in the UK version than the American version, because I'm reading this right now and it does say that she got question eleven wrong and walked away with thirty two thousand. So maybe the UK was a little nicer and let you take whatever you had before, because the US if you got a question, you lost it all. That's right. So maybe there's a difference between countries. Maybe the UK was a little bit more forgiving, but 20:30 so the host was talking to her and she was very mad that she got thirty two thousand and he's like he's like thirty two thousand is a lot of money and she's like yeah, but it's not more than my brother, like not more than I'm. I make forty thousand dollars a day. I'm just going to give this a charity. No, she was like she's like it's not more than my brother. I should I should have more than my I should have been able to do better than my brother did and so they kind of started competing, trying to get on the show to beat each other, but neither of them managed to get back on 20:59 But obviously this kind of became a family affair. And then one day, to be exact, on September... Hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me get this date right. Let me pull this up. On September 9th, 2001, Charles is at a taping of the show and he had the fastest finger and he gets on the hot seat. And he's the last one of the day. So he goes through the first five questions. 21:30 And so that would be a question, the question for a thousand dollars. Okay. And he gets that last question right. The question was the Normans who invaded and conquered England in 1066 spoke which language? Is it A, German, B, Norwegian, C, French or D, Danish? What's the question? The Normans who invaded and conquered England in 1066 spoke which language? Is it A, German? 21:59 B Norwegian, C French or D Danish. You can ask Alex if you don't know. Oh, I can phone a friend. Yeah, you can phone a friend. If you don't know, wait actually 22:15 so we're going to phone of lifeline. This is my life line and use a lifeline on this phone, a friend, 22:27 Hi, you've reached out to Grunit. I can't answer this one right now, but if you leave me a message, I will give you a callback. 22:37 he's got his foot on silent as he's straight. That was really funny. All right, I'll try and call someone else. Your call has been forwarded to voicemail. 22:52 Whoopsie! Hey Chase, I'm on a game show right now and I need your help answering a question. Yes. Okay, great. The Normans who invaded and conquered England in 1066 spoke which language? Is it A. German, B. Norwegian, C. French, or D. Danish? I'm gonna go with C. French, Jaren. C. French? 23:20 How confident are you in this? Can you repeat the question or are you out of time? The Normans who invaded and conquered England in 1066. Oh wait, go with Norwegian. Norwegian. Be Norwegian. Okay Regis, we're gonna lock in. Be Norwegian. Hey, what if I just started cussing on the air? Okay, bye! 23:51 Hey, what if I just started gussing out here? 23:59 what's the correct answer? Yeah, that answer was a big fat wrong. I was going to guess German. It was French, it was French, so that was that was the last question that he was asked for the day, the day, the day, because it break 24:21 Yeah, because they break at the end of shoot time and they're like if they're like the middle of a contestant, they just go hey, come back tomorrow. That's so yeah, and so they're like we'll shoot the rest tomorrow. All the producers and everyone were like this guy's not going to make it much further than this. He sucks. I mean he's made it this far, but like he clearly doesn't know what he's doing and then the next day rolls around and he somehow is pulling it out every single answer and it's very strange because he 24:49 doesn't seem like he knows the answer like he see he's going back and forth. I know he's he's I know how I know and then he takes a shot and he's like and it's very much like he's guessing. Oh man, is it a German be Norwegian? I yeah yeah and so he doesn't seem like he knows and then all of a sudden he takes what looks like a guess and he gets it right all the way guess. I'll go with this one yeah and so he goes all the way through 25:16 and he gets to the million dollar question, the million dollar question. We'll see if you know the answer to this. Okay, a number one followed by 100 zeros is known by what name? A, a Google B, a Megatron C, a gigabit or D, a nano mole. Use another phone. Perfect. 25:39 Annie, my manager, I'm on the game show right now and I need your help answering this question. Okay, okay. Regis. Okay. Here's the question. A number one followed by 100 zeros is known by what name? A Google B, a Megatron, C, a gigabit or D, an animal. 26:09 Isn't it a Google? You're going with a Google? Yeah, but like if I answer that is wrong or like, do we lose? We just won a million dollars! The confetti and all this stuff. All right. That was the whole reason I called you. Where'd I get confetti from? All right. Thanks Annie. Wait am I on the podcast? Yeah. 26:45 it's so labored. Am I in the pod a shout out to her for being so helpful though. She just believed you're on a game show. That's what I was saying. That's a good manager. That's a good man. So yeah, so he gets that question. He answers it correctly. I only hire gullible people and he wins speaking of gullible people. You got another one 27:12 Hey, I'm on a game show right now. Okay, so wait, wait, wait, wait, I need your help. Okay, so the Normans who invaded and conquered England in 1066 spoke which language? Is it A, German, B, Norwegian, C, French, or D, Danish? 27:41 invaded from where the Normans invaded England in 1066. Which language did they speak? I'm assuming Norwegian. 28:00 German, Norwegian, French, or Danish. 28:06 You're gonna go German? 28:14 Time is up. It was French. 28:25 Okay, I love you, bye. 28:30 I ain't that no one would answer now all of a sudden. We just keep going back to this crazy. We just keep doing this. I've different people. If Shama calls me back, I'm going to answer. We're going to do the same bit again. Okay, so luxury short he wins yeah immediately after producers pull him aside and they're like hey, 28:51 frisker risk of like hey, we got to check you yeah you yeah. You were really dumb. Yes, yeah, you were really dub and now all of a sudden you want a million dollars come on and so they frisk them. They're looking for a wire. That's where and that was was crazy is that a lot of people don't see this episode. The last question they'd answer it naked. They're like okay, it's time for the million dollar question and they would blur them out and stuff and they just be this naked blurred blob. You know, sitting there in the chair, 29:19 and re and Regis, not wanting them to feel uncomfortable also got naked. Is it for the million dollar question pretty why take your clothes off, take your clothes up? Oh, that's the million dollar do so they they frisk them, don't find a wire, don't find anything yeah the 29:45 lead producer calls a CEO of the company that owns who wants to be a millionaire and it's like hey, you got to come in and you got to come in. Here's what I don't is it as soon as you win any of these games, they are immediately suspe like what did you do like there's no way you won. I don't think so and so they this whole time they felt weird because he, like I said was going through he would go through and he would didn't seem he seemed like he didn't know and there was multiple occasions not 30:15 there was not even a question that he was like. Oh, I know this one for sure. For example, this million dollar question he was like. He was like a Google. He's like I've never heard of a Google before this two thousand one. He's like he's like I've never heard of a Google before he's like. I think it's probably the nano mole and he's like I'm going to lock in a Google and so it's like stuff like that where it's like you were thinking something different. It all a sudden yeah. It just didn't make sense and he also was way too comfortable. 30:44 they were like you seem like you should not be as comfortable in this situation. Okay, yeah, so so there was going solely on body language. Yeah, they were going on by language and the way he was answering the questions and the fact that he just he clearly didn't answer with what his gut was ever and like he would. He would say, oh, I think it was the UK host was the UK host also. No, it was not read just film in. Let me pull it up UK. Who wants to 31:16 I don't think you're going to know who he is. I will Chris Tarent yeah. You know that is yeah. We went to church together. 31:30 I hate that you're just like yeah. We would do a we went to don't think we went to church together. I think we he served me. I'm going to lock in the way with the church together. It's this guy. You recognize him yeah. He just looks like any British dude. It looks like he's got the red skin of someone who is drinking a lot. 31:56 Yeah, so he was the host. So anyways, so they let it they sign in the check, but then they call the bank and they put a hold on the check and then they're like way to the bottom of this and then they said the check. They let him go on his way. They have the cocktail hour. Everyone's like you want a million dollars. It's cool and he's like yeah, it's cool, isn't it? But they said they noted something else. That was weird. They said in the green room right before the cocktail hour, the host walked in on Diane and Charles arguing in the green room and they're like it's strange to argue right after you want a million 32:25 yeah and less. The guy was like you can't have any of this, which is possible for sure, but he's a world gone on there. I just let her know I was divorcing her 32:39 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. Want to let you know real quick. We have an email list and it's not like a hey, we're going to send you our merch and new episodes all the time. We actually give you updates on these stories as we find out about them. So a lot of our episodes we've done a couple years ago now have updates or that the person the top was about passed away or was caught by the police or whatever updates we can find on episodes that we've done. We want to let you know about it so that our episodes just aren't 33:07 you know out there out of date. It's really fun way to keep learning new information and then every once in a while we let you know about new events coming up or new episodes and it's just a way to help us keep spreading the show. Join that email list. You can text till into six six eight six six or there's a link in the description of this episode or you can just go to till and dot com. It's very easy to join this email list. It's everywhere. It's actually really hard to not join it so 33:39 Yeah, so they they go to the cocktail hour. They go home. She told me that if she won, she was going to divorce me, but then she only won thirty two thousand, so I was like well listen here Charles wife. He also calls her yeah. 33:55 So, uh, they go home. 34:01 the bit Charles's girlfriend from the day we met. I just knew we had a special connection. I have loved every moment of spending time with you. My cute little charlie girl 34:19 and I was wondering if you would do me the honor of becoming my Charles fiance. Will you marry me? I hate you. 34:34 Oh my gosh, okay, so they go home, they go home, whatever the crew, someone else is calling home. The crew stays behind yeah and the crew watches her to their home. Who watches the tapes over like all right, everyone go and they shut the doors real dramatically and they go pull up the footage. They watch the tapes and they notice something yeah. They notice that there are a lot of people coughing at this taping. They're like there is a ton of coughs. 35:02 And long story short, after going through tape after tape after tape, rewatching this over and over and over again, they identified two people in the crowd, a guy by the name of Tecwen Whittock. This is him. And this is what I can only assume is a staged photo. Yeah. 35:25 and like they're like okay, let's get one of you just normal, just normal, and then let's get one of you doing your thing that you do with the thing you do and then Diane, his wife, coughing a lot in the crowd, and so they start to notice that what is happening a cough right after the right answer. Yeah, as he goes through and he would say each goes. I don't know if it's a Google, yep, I know yeah feeling like it's a Google 35:51 Yeah, and he would go through every answer and he'd be like, oh yeah, he's like, it could be German, but then again, you know, it could be Norwegian. Honestly, French is possible. Yeah, and that's what you would do for every question. And the host was getting annoyed. The host was like, this is how the questions work. It could be any of the options we gave you. Yes, that's right. It could be any of them. That's... 36:13 and so what they would cough after the correct answer and his husband's pretty dumb and then he would put in the answer. So that's why he seemed to be like. Oh, I don't think it's a google and then he goes through all of them and then he come back and be like I'm walking in google because he heard someone cough during that the host in recounting. This was like honestly he's like he's like it was a pretty loud. It's a pretty loud crowd like people cough people sneeze like in the crowd he's like and then you're going through the show. People are cheering. He's like you don't recognize any of that in the moment. 36:40 And he's like, so I never thought anything of it. I never thought anything was weird. But obviously our engineers went back. When you listen back and you go, oh, wait, hold on. And so the next day, Charles gets a call and it's the producer and he says, hey, I'm just going to cut right to the chase. He said, we put a hole in that check. That's not going to go through. And we phoned the police. He said, we think that there is something not too kosher about your show that we taped last night. And I want to let you know it's not going to air and this is getting. 37:09 going to go into investigation and he's like he's like oh well, obviously that's pretty unfortunate and I refute any of these claims. Oh well, I mean so you're saying that we're either going to get arrested or the money's going to go through or the show's not going to air or he's like yes, yeah, either you're going to be a millionaire or you're not getting away with it. 37:41 So you're saying we're going to be a millionaire. Are you saying we're going to be a prisoner? Dang it, it's not looking good Diane. So the three of them Charles, Diane and Tec when I don't know what that name is, but they go on to trial a year later. It's a four week long trial long for Quinn. It's long for a 38:09 it's a f you should start going by timothy just to be like i'm timothy. It's long for they go under a four week long trial and long story short, they're found guilty. The charge that they're found guilty of is very strange and the uk. They wear those wigs and stuff in court. It's so weird. It's so wild to have someone go guilty while they're 38:34 cosplaying a curly haired person. You know yeah, their conviction was procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception is the charge, which between the three of them. The total like fine that they got was a hundred and fifteen pounds and then they also really, because there was like okay. Sorry, who's paid sixty bucks and get done with it 39:02 well, that's a hundred or a hundred fifteen thousand. I'm oh sorry, I was like a thousand pounds. Yeah, he was at sixty bucks. I was like what a hundred fifty thousand pounds and then Whittick was sentenced to twelve months in prison and oh god Diane and Charles were sentenced to eighteen months in prison for their fraud. I guess so apparently this is a huge deal. Yeah, I feel that really cracked out. Sorry, I was just joking. Yeah, yeah, they really know pretty hard in prison and they ended up with face tattoos in their 39:31 yeah they're in there for life now because of what they've done on the other side, and so yeah it was a huge deal because once you spend eighteen months in jail, actually life gets easier in jail than it is in the outside. It's hard to assimilate back into the culture, especially in the UK made up world they live in, so they they're like well, those live in this prison forever. Honestly, we get three three three meals in a bed, you know and and yeah and I don't have to be next to Charles anymore. Golly be married to him was so awful and to win all this money to get away from him. 39:58 Well, it's ironic you say that because it was so he worked for the army and he was actually removed from service because of this this conviction. So he lost his job, obviously did prison time and then later they would get out, but they would later have to file for bankruptcy because of all the fines that they had to eat and they had a hard time finding work after this and they had three daughters that got bullied pretty relentlessly because their parents were known as the cheaters of who wants to be a millionaire. 40:27 which is pretty brutal. It sucks to yeah and so yeah. They any time you're a kid and you're just taking a test in class. All the kids in class are like yeah speaking of tick one tick one here wittak. He actually is a very similar thing. His kids got bullied. He had a lot of financial issues, hard time getting work after this right whole scandal broke. He actually had to go on and trademark his last name wittak. 40:56 because there was a cough medicine that was trying to brand it as when it which is kind of wild, kind of wild, especially in two thousand one yeah, oh brutal brutal, but here's the thing. These people were connected to a larger group known as the consortium. I brought them up in the beginning. We're just now getting back around to them because we've called so many friends. We phone so many friends today, 41:24 The consortium was founded by two main individuals, Patty Spooner and Keith Burgess. You'll notice something about Patty Spooner. He's been on who wants to be a millionaire a lot. Okay, and Patty is the only person and who wants to be a millionaire history to appear on the US, the UK and the Irish version of who wants to be a millionaire. 41:52 and win. He won two hundred fifty thousand dollars on the US two hundred fifty thousand dollars on the UK and a thousand dollars on the Irish one. Apparently that was a little harder. That one's a little harder. The accent that makes it hard to yeah yeah. I don't know. Can you ask that again? It's like I don't know. I don't know what you call a letter C here. I can actually I could win this whole thing. I could win this, but I don't talk is so unbearable. It's not worth two hundred and forty nine thousand be around this. Yeah, 42:21 So he got really good at getting on this show and he got pretty good at the show in general fast, so he and his friend who he met by the name of Keith Burgess. We saw Keith Keith also has been on the show. He only made it into the hot seat once, but he has been in the set multiple times and so they made a connection on the show because obviously Patty made it to the hot seat a bunch, but he's been in the show way more than that because you have sure and so him and Keith 42:50 hit it off. They would come friends, yeah, and he's fingers is fast and they start a business together and they call it the consortium and the service they provide is for a percentage of your winnings. They will get you on who wants to be a millionaire is a service that they provide and they actually provided this service to Charles Ingram and his wife, Diana. How do they get you on? So what they did is they created a replica of that module to train you for the fast finger so that way you could 43:19 get your fingers fast. And so that was step one. They trained your fingers to get you a fast finger on those questions. They helped you with the type of questions that you would be asked for that fast finger. So you'd be prepared for that. So they helped you study and prepare because they knew the kind of questions that would be asked. And then what they did is they had a whole strategy to get you on the show. And this is pretty clever. What they would do is they would create a recording of your voice to apply to the show. And they then would 43:49 call in repeatedly and repeatedly run this recording to apply you for the show. And they said it was a volume game. The more you got the calls in, the higher the odds that they would actually qualify you and get you in. And then when the call back came, what they would do is they obviously, they were calling from their own company phones, not from that person's phone. So when the call back came, they would say, oh, they're not home right now. Can I call you back when they come home? And they'd say, sure. 44:16 And so then they drive across town to their house, they'd get them on the phone, and they would have a spread of encyclopedias because they figured out there was one set of data that they gathered for these questions, and it was the same set of questions that they just cycled through. And so they had like encyclopedias with all these ear-tagged points for all the different questions, they labeled them. And so then the person would ask the question, they'd flip it, and they'd say, okay, tell them this number. And then they would tell them that number, and so then they'd get cleared to go on the show. 44:44 and then it was a matter of training your finger to get you through the fast finger and they did this with fifteen hundred clients, fifteen hundred from two thousand two thousand to two thousand seven. The only reason they stopped is because in two thousand seven, who wants to be a millionaire stopped allowing you to call back from that call and they said it totally fell apart when they did that because we couldn't be with them twenty four seven and so it fell apart at that point. But 45:14 from two thousand to two thousand seven the consortium these two they from their percentage that they took. They made over five million pounds from taking percentages and getting people on the show. They got over five hundred people onto the show and they got. I think it was seventy five into the hot seat across the US, UK and the Irish thing. They have seventy five people. Yeah, here's here's here's the wild. This the wildest part they was our percentage of winnings 45:43 No, no, like I don't know what the percentage was that they would take, but here's here's the craziest part. They would then set up to be your friend that you would phone and they had this safe house and they had a person that would be your friend yeah, and then they had a stack of encyclopedias on the floor and four people that would flip through the encyclopedias. They had one person on Google 46:06 and then they had a culture expert, a history expert, they had experts in all these different categories in the room. There was like twenty people in this room. So I'm saying like how and so how is this profitable at that point? So that person would answer the phone, they'd mute it and then the person who knew would give them the answer. They'd unmute it and they'd say okay. I think it's this and it was that was just an actor who would just act like they were their friend in the phone, a friend segment and they did this for seven years. 46:36 and here's the thing about it. They never got in trouble because everything they were doing was perfectly legal. They were not cheating in any way. Like when you phone a friend, your friends allowed to look it up. Your friends allowed to have as many other friends there and talk to all the other friends. Yeah, it's just the cheating during the game yeah that got Charles and so because they weren't actually cheating in the game. They were just taking advantage of the application process and training you to do better in the game right. They were perfectly legal. They were essentially 47:04 like who wants to be a millionaire trainers, and so they did this whole thing and in and twenty twenty one they wrote a book called quiz and they outlined how they did it and how they got all these different people. I would I wish they would have paid some of their winnings to get an actual designer for the book looks really bad, telling the story of how they did it and this got adapted in that shed in the back where they took the calls. What is that like 47:33 but yeah they they this book they use they use that as the basis to make a tv show that ran in the uk a couple years ago. He used filter stories picture. Yeah he did yeah. You got to make that skin look good. Yeah he used like the face to nap on that yeah, huh, not wild, but they were completely legal. Whatever Charles did 47:56 questionable. He in an interview they asked him and he's like, he's like, people say that this was a victimless time, but it wasn't. He said, we were the victims. 48:06 We were the victims because we went to J. Well, he maintains his innocence to this day. He said he said people in the crowd were coughing. He said it had nothing to do and and Tequin and his defense in trial. He said I have a condition. He's like I've just coughed my entire life. I have an incessant cough and the reason they got him on that claim was he didn't cough once during the trial. I start saying what 48:36 Are you dumb? I used to coughed in this trial bro. If that was your thing, if that was the thing that you cough a lot cough more, we should be criminals were way smarter than they are yeah yeah, so they all think though yeah. That's what every criminal things I could do that better than them yeah. Speaking of criminals, 49:00 I'm solving a crime. Oh, we're going with this and if you're in our discord, you know about this and you could help solve this crime. So I that's how I'm going to get for now. Okay, I love that anyway. Beautiful yeah, so that's the story of the consortium, an incredible organization that go a lot of people and who wants to be a millionaire and then a guy who used that to go to prison instead 49:29 that's wild yeah yeah it's nuts and the music from who wants to be a millionaire Ireland was just fiddles yeah yeah. 49:42 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you like it, there's another one, Michael Larson. He did a very similar scheme on a show called Press Your Luck, but it was like older and it was also in the US. So if you've got a problem with the UK, you might like this one a little bit better. And also, if you love this show, you want to see next week's episode right now, you can become a Patreon supporter. You can do that at tilland.com slash support. That's the best way to help this show, make sure it keeps happening. And episodes happen until long after we die. We're not going to let it end. 50:11 I hate this guy so much. But anyways, thanks for checking out our show. We'll see you next week on Till It Podcast.

In the early 2000s, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” was among the most popular quiz shows worldwide. The show was thrilling, with contestants competing to answer questions and win a million pounds. But behind the scenes, one episode captured public attention for a different reason — a cheating scandal. This is where The Consortium comes in, a group determined … Read More

How This Man’s Joke Led to the Toaster | Alan MacMasters Ep 248

11-05-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 Hey, we host every single day. Yeah, this week we have a hard hitting story about the creation of the toaster. Yes, it's a great story. You're not going to believe how it happened. The twists, the turns, the turners, the toasts. Yeah, it's incredible. It's a great story and if you're like wow, that sounds like a really bad one, that's okay. We have another episode out today as well on our Patreon. You don't even have to watch this one. You can literally skip to the next episode. Yeah 00:29 or if you don't support us, then you have to suffer through this one about toast. You're not getting away. You press play. There's no way to close this nowhere to go. Yeah, no this. This week is about the person who invented the toaster and it's it to me. It's really interesting the way that technology was thought of and how ideas that didn't exist before. It feels like there's so few ideas that could just be made today. Yeah, 00:53 that's actually yeah. That's pretty. I I support that. So speaking of today, I hope that you went out and voted yeah. Unless you are not a United States citizen. If you listen to us from somewhere else or if you are, if you're not registered to sorry that's right. Taking an aggressive turn and I didn't know how to get out of I got stuck. No, I was more thinking like if you live in a different country, but then it sounded like I was like unless you're here and you can't 01:22 yeah, but yeah, just leave in the comments who you vote. Don't do that. Please don't do that. Leave in the comments who you wrote in for. Please don't do that whatever. So today is November fifth. That means next weekend I am in. I'm in Virginia and actually next weekend is a big weekend. I've been Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida and then the weekend after that I am in Kansas City and then Texas. So 01:51 with the church comedy tour with Shama, Marama, my good one, a really good time. If you haven't bought your tickets yet, I don't expect you to so why would you? You know, why would you support what I do? Where do they go? Why would you follow my dreams with me? I know you can go to jerry meyers dot com slash shows or you know they're there around here somewhere. You can find a ticket link 02:14 buy some tickets so bad and look. I know you're probably thinking I don't really want to go see Jaren, but I'm going to go to the Kansas City show. So if you want to see me, I'm not going to be doing anything, but if you want to look at me, you can buy tickets to that show yeah and Alex will also be there, but we're not going to tell you who he is. Yeah, you're going to have to guess. Good luck, ask everybody. Let's get to the episode. 02:40 Hey man, hey, who'd you vote for? I'm planning on hitting the polls later today, later today. Yeah. Can I, can I do that? I voted early. Yeah, I didn't like a good citizen. You could vote whenever you want. As long as you vote, you're a good citizen. It doesn't matter when you vote. That's not true. Okay, I'm a good citizen. 03:04 who go for them. Have you heard of big match? You tell everyone who you voted for. Let's open. Let's open this open with the let's say together on three. Get ready. Have you heard of Alan McMaster's Alan McMaster Alan McMaster's? Okay, it's an Mac Mac Masters, Mac Masters Mac Masters. We've had a conversation about pronouncing the Max. Wait, you saying this wrong is no neck thing. I've never heard of him. Oh 03:32 What was the rule you told me when we did Ken? No, no, it's how you pronounce an M C. Oh, so like in a doesn't matter. This is always a Mac. That's always Mac. Okay, have you heard of the rule is though if it's M C and the next letter is a vowel, it's Mac and Mac, Al Roy or you know Mac or Roy Mac or or you know, but you wouldn't say Mac Donald's you say McDonald's. Interesting. That's the rule. 04:00 to rehash it. You probably listen to that in the other episode. So cool, Alan, I voted for Jill, 04:14 yeah Alan McMasters. You know that reminds me you voted for. That's not dumb. Sorry if that was your pick. It's a good one okay for real though the Missouri ballots though yeah okay. This is a total whatever have you. Did you vote early? I voted early. I did not okay, so on the ballot there is a measure. We can actually talk about this and it not be weird okay. You're familiar with ranked towards voting. Yes, 04:43 your pro range towards voting. I don't want to get rid of the option. I don't know if I think it's best there. I don't remember what the other version of it I've heard of. I think rank choice voting. I think it's better than what we got. There was one I heard recently. I can't remember what it was called that I was like. I was voting no not rank choice, not rank choice. There was another one very similar to rank choice where I was like. Oh, I think I like that better than rank choice, but I can't remember what it was 05:11 but but that's not a like about rain choice. It is hold on. Let me think for a second and make sure I'm not mixing these up with 05:25 I can't remember. There was a reason I had an issue with it okay, and I can't remember the reason I had an issue with it. I think that it would give us less extreme candidates. Yes, yeah, that's all up and down the ballot right. That's definitely true yeah, because instead of like if you haven't, if you don't know how ranked towards voting works, I don't think we have the time to break down. You should absolutely go watch a YouTube video about it. 05:47 but like don't watch. Here's why it's bad, just what or here's why it's good. Just watch an explanation of what it is. Yeah, don't try to get an opinion because obviously people are going to try to be like well, and I'll tell you why they could, because if you get rain choice voting, it does take away a huge power that the parties have because it's you know you. You end up with more options yeah 06:11 and the parties really do not want rank choice voting to be implemented. I can tell you that because in the Missouri ballot this year, it's one of the ballot measures of do you want to implement rank choice voting? Here's how they described it on the bow. This is actually read it through. Did you say I read through everything to make sure I understood all the pieces and I remember reading that and being like this is incredibly misleading. Yes, because they because you're suppose if you want right towards voting, you have to vote no on the measure, but the measure starts with. Do you believe that every vote should be by a 06:41 US citizen yeah, and if you vote no to that they're like well, you voted no to sit in your like that's not, but if you read the other paragraphs they put that in there to to go into voting yes to strike down the measure and it's going to work. It's going to work in Missouri. That's not going to pass because they put that in there because the second I saw it. I was like well, this measure is dead because unless people went through the the effort of researching these opinions of how to vote on this, how that works so annoying 07:09 and they don't in the fact that they're allowed to word things like that. The fact that it's bar they spend months rewording and strategically doing crap like that is what I think that all the time with the bills where it's like you're allowed to just sneak other stuff into bills where it's like you voted for one thing, but now you're also agreeing to another thing. It's like why is that an ads against you yeah it's so absurd and that's what I'm saying is like dude, like why would 07:38 The reason we have insane people in politics is because we've made it so that if you're a sane person, it sucks to be in politics. Yeah. Why would any sane person look at what they're doing right now and go? I want to subject myself like to be a part of that that anyway. They that's why I get so stressed. That's why I'm radicalized now in lighter news. I won't play a quick game before we get too deep into this. This is a new game I'm calling 08:03 look at this close up of a side and try to guess what it is a website. No of a sign, so look at this close up of a side and try to guess what the rest of the sign we're talking about. That's the name of the side. Yes, we're going to talk about him. Oh, this is unrelated. This is a really this is a game of close ups of sign. Yeah, this is a zoomed in shot of a mini game. This is a mini game. Yeah sure yeah, consider him any so so I'm going to show you this really close zoomed shot of a sign 08:30 and you're going to have to try to guess what the sign is trying to sign you for. Does that make sense? Sure. All right, here we go. Here's the zoom 08:40 Why did you do this? What are they doing? What are they teaching you? What is the? What are they notifying you looks like an emergency pamphlet? So oh yeah that he's choking. That's the Hamak maneuver. You got it right. It's time 09:02 Yeah, it is the heimlich in Spanish. Why it is the I'm like. What is this? This is a poster that tells you how to do the heimlich in Spanish yeah, I get that's a zoom and this zoom 09:22 that Alex are we on my face right now? We just can we just sit on my camera for a second. I just want to hold on go back to the pig. Why are we back to my show back to my back to the big go back to my why back to the picture all right back to him and back to my angle. Why are we doing this in an episode? Why is this something like Tim Tim saw this somewhere and was like it's really funny. 09:47 that that girl's just hugging that guy from behind. I I'm going to be on. I tell you what though I've gone to church with this couple before like during worship. The wife is just yeah. Yeah, yeah, that is so rough. There was that couple. He's got his hand in her back pocket. Yeah and they're just yeah yeah. If you are touching another person during worship, you're doing it wrong. 10:10 that's my opinion. Okay, that's my personal opinion. It's very no lay hands here. Yeah. Why did you put her interval? I just think it's funny. I think it's funny for a lot of reasons, but honestly one of my favorite reasons is she's in color and he's in black and white and I don't understand he's pale because he's choking. Oh he's a fixiated yes. Oh, that makes more sense. All the color is left his face and his hair 10:41 all right. You should run these bits by me before you just like this. Okay, Alan McMaster's. Here's a picture of him. This is a guy from like the late eight hundred and well, look how pale he is. Someone do the high muck on that guy. I'm going to bury the lead on what he did for now. We'll come back to this. What he did right yeah. He was born eighteen sixty five. He was a Scottish 11:09 scientist later in his life, but he he went to University of Edenburg in the fall of eighteen eighty three and he studied philosophy. While I was there, he met a professor by the name of Fleming, Jenkin, Jenkin, Jenkin, Jenkin, Jenkin, Fleming, Jenkin, who connected him to the press 11:37 I don't think you took me a thing. You pronounce her out. I don't think you're not supposed to say that like that and then he his professor connected him to. I guess it's like the Department of Transportation for Scotland and Glasgow. Is that how you pronounce that Glasgow Glasgow? They were doing the underground, the the subway 12:06 Oh, okay, they call it the underground in Scotland and Europe and yeah the UK and all that. I don't know why we called a subway here because underground railroad was already taken. 12:21 I was an acceptable joke. I hear Alex typing as if it wasn't, but that was an acceptable joke. Okay, all right, so he gets he gets connected with the underground. I'm just here to do my whole job over here and go. How is this a joke? How is this a joke? So he got connected to the glass go underground, which 12:51 sick band name to all yeah. That's also very sick and I will say that would be like a venue. Yeah, the Glasgow Underground. I will say we're metal bands play yeah. That is true. Actually, I wanted really bad when I was in high school. I had this dream. Actually, it might have been early college. Me and Isaiah had this training skate park, no close Isaiah and I shared this dream. This was a dream. We had a church together. No, that was a later dream, but we had a dream to buy a 13:21 bank, but like not like if not not a functional bank, a defunct bank, yes, go ahead, open up a music venue in the say in the safe and call it, but yeah, no, the safe here is huge. That's true yeah and call it the vault and really do and you go through the vault door. There is a there is a bank. I want to say it's in Iowa that's been converted into a house. I saw one of those Zillow profiles. You know like one of those Zillow finds 13:50 there's like Zillow gone wild and there's like Zillow gone mild, which is just regular houses and then there's a little gone cool. I guess I guess but this one was actually pretty sick. It's an old bank that's been converted into a house and I was like that's and then I obviously like the final bank, like what era are we talking like you ever driven down the Paseo and there's that Chinese restaurant that's in that that small bank yeah that bank. That's the bank on sale. 14:18 for so oh no, but it's like that era. Okay, okay, yeah, like like an eighteen hundreds early, nine, ten, it's bank like a Bonnie and Clyde sure nice like a bank. So the underground, that are ground. He gets connected with them and he's like he's like late in college down. There's not big enough to be a venue though. You think you can play shows in there yeah where they put the soccer field? Oh you're talking about 14:46 that vault yeah. There's there are multiple vaults in this building yeah yeah that we own yeah. We have to keep our gold for our patrons. Their patrons pay in pure gold. They do they ship it yeah yeah. They're really reluctant. That's why we don't have a lot of patrons because I just sign up with a credit card. No, no trust that system. So he gets this job working for the Glasgow underground. How far into this episode are we 15:13 a fourteen minutes sucks really sorry for you, the listeners. We trimmed some of that yeah. The Glasgow underground hires him when you say that that means they know we made jokes that we had the cut out that. No, that just means that we know that we took a break for some reason. There's a lot of reasons we could have took a break being a breaks. Here's a commercial break before we get to it. Please don't please don't please don't 15:43 in the early days of this show, we did like affiliate ads where we were like a sign up for grammarly and use code till and and we got like fifteen cents and now we just do patreon. It's a much better way. It's better for us as creators. It's better for you as listeners and it's a much more fun way for us to interact. We do monthly hangouts like on zoom. We just hang out and play games online and and get to know each other. It's a really fun time, so 16:10 but still use our code till in at grammerly dot com because I think it's still. I might get like a couple cents from that, but join us on patreon because we're having a great time. Yeah. If you don't, we're going to have to start doing mobile game ads. 16:27 Okay, so the Glasgow underground hires him to help with like lighting all of the carriages underground, which I'm now realizing they use the word carriages in this Wikipedia article here and my brain was just like, oh, that's the they're from Scotland and so they just call the trains carriages, but now I'm realizing it's eighteen eighties and so maybe they actually are carriages in the underground. They just dug tunnels for the carriages. 16:56 how are their trains trains were? I mean they had trawls or subways. There's a better question. Okay, yeah, google that. I don't know about so I'm only interested in the stuff I can see above ground. I don't like those worm trains. 17:12 I have to search subway like like train subways because I don't like those sub train rain in oh is that what they got the name subterranean way interesting. Oh yeah. I guess did you just now put that together? Yeah, I did actually that sub is under yeah yeah. The first one was proposed in London in first subway yeah in eighteen forty three. It was an underground railroad 17:41 Wow trains are old dude. I mean I knew trains were old, but I just assumed that back then they were all like steam and stuff, so I don't think you could put those underground like when was the first rain 17:53 When was the first train first train was steam powered in eighteen or four pretty wild. Wow gosh 18:05 That's how I know aliens are real. 18:10 Okay, so he gets, he gets hired to light the carriages, which I'm now I'm returning back to. This was what they called the train cars, the carriages because they were really dim underground. They didn't have sunlight and so he gets hired to try to help light them. Yeah, and so he's making like special light bulbs at that like would work in there without being too hot and stuff like that and could actually run in the trains and so he's like a little engineering project and it goes over really, really well and so because of that the 18:38 Glasgow underground connects him with the London underground. And they're like, hey, this guy helped us figure out how to make it not so dark in here. And they're like, oh, my gosh, it's pretty dark in ours, too. Can you send him over here and see if he can figure out how to make it not so dark in ours also? Sure. And here's the thing. He's done it once already. So he just shows up and does the same thing. And it works great. And like, oh, my gosh, this guy knows how to make things not dark anymore. Yeah. And so part of that project. 19:07 one of the guys he worked with was a guy by the name of Evelyn Crompton. I'm realizing now I probably should have a picture of Evelyn Crompton, so I'm going to pull one real quick and honestly I'm going to be one hundred percent honest. What you think in your brain before seeing a picture of Evelyn Crompton is right. That's who Evelyn Crompton is here. He is a hold on fat man, not fat oh 19:37 I'm out. 19:41 I was a little off, but like I had the glasses right kind of little glasses, weird mustache, old guy and a three piece suit. Oh yeah, yeah he he owned the company. You're going to be surprised by the name of this crompton and co nice, which was that was back when you could just do it. You know yeah, now people going to come up with all these creative names and start 20:12 solar flare. What is that? I don't know what that is a time and so Cromden owns this company. This podcast is just called Myers and Friend 20:32 Crompton owns this company. And so they kind of hit it off and they become like. 20:46 friends. I would say friends. They go out for drinks a bunch and like they're like talking about engineering stuff. I don't know what you did back then and how people connected before football, but that's what they did and they would go out for drinks, do whatever one night there. They go out. Is it? This is, I mean, I don't have the exact year, but I would ballpark figure like the mid 21:16 They go out for drinks one night. Sure. Uh, and drink a lot of whiskey. They go back to Crompton's place and they're hanging out and, uh, he's kind of talking through with Crompton about, um, the original Glasgow line project and it's like, yeah, I was working with the filaments and he's like, originally I was trying to figure out how to make it cheaper. So I was using some cheaper metals to make it. 21:44 but those filaments got so dang hot it would start a fire. And he said, he said, it was so hot and like across the room. And he's like, he's like, are you serious? 22:14 and I'm going to be honest, I don't even remember the context. Oh, he's reading the night before Christmas and the uncle is like, are you serious, Clark? You know, I'm talking about, okay, you know, this is a serious work. You know, the scene I'm talking about, it's kind of the same thing. He's like, wait, are you serious about that? Like, that's kind of cool. And so they get together and they get that metal and they start experimenting with toasting bread with this metal. 22:40 okay, the two of them work together to create perfect the world's first toaster and so this is a rendition of what it looked like. It was pretty much imagine what a toaster looks like. If you take the shell off the toaster yeah, which I did, that's what this is and so honestly hilarious that you bought a toaster today. I walked in and I saw that and I was like gosh. We live in a simulation like this is insane. 23:07 but this is a big development because before this toast toasters were these they were literal trays that you just put over a fire like in the yeah. You just shoved your loaves in and you held them over a fire and they told your low yeah. I was this thing that you just shoved your loves and it was you doing it a dead pay for 23:33 I shoved the lovin. 23:39 And then I projectile vomit it. 23:49 That was me making a call back to a different episode. You just shoved your loaves in and then put them in the fire, so he came back to Crompton and he was like look what I made and Crompton's like this is legit and so like I'll toast to that yeah. Hey, there you go. They're flying here. No okay, and so they took it to market. 24:13 Crompton's business started selling it as the recording. I let three hundred Nats loosen this apartment. 24:21 he has no idea he's deadly allergic to now I just doing a sides to my camera as if you couldn't hear me like just diary room things. I go. Can you believe this right now? 24:36 back to it. Okay, so he started. They started selling it. They made it the eclipse, which is way cooler than the toast. They started selling it as a clips and it was the it was the heating element on a ceramic base, which I showed you the picture of and it just plugged into a regular lamp. So it's wild that we used to just be able to sell stuff. It was like you can really really burn yourself on this. Well, 25:04 By 1894, so this must have been early 1890s of some pretty major controversy because one of those things melted And this fire was like huge news, 25:33 gave this comment to the paper and said user error. They blamed the woman yeah, of course, and they said that it's her fault for not holding appropriate respect for the power of the electric toaster. It's not our fault. Her man wasn't around the direct quote kills me. It's not a it's it's her fault for not holding appropriate respect for the power of the electric toaster. What a crazy thing to say when it's like hey, what do you think about this woman who died in this fire this week? 26:02 even the number of car accidents. Well, when you're not respecting the power the ram fifteen hundred all new for tough and yes one if your fault really, if you think about it, well, that's her fault for not respecting the terms and conditions. She 26:29 she she downloaded Disney plus cross plus so McBaster's went on to also invent the electric kettle and a handful of other like electronic devices. Okay, here's the thing plugged into an outlet yeah just plugged into a regular out. When did they do outlets around the same time? I guess it was said a lamp outlet, so my guess is they had outlets specifically for lamps before everything else started just using electricity. Yeah, my guess 26:55 I think we're going to get to a point where there's no outlets and we're just USBC and everything or US being not USB anymore USBC. I mean I think there's gonna or do you think was get to a point where everything is nuclear 27:10 Could be. I mean, I think there could be a point where there's, I think there could be a set of lava. It's just a, it's a little nuclear blob in there. I do see a potential world. I don't see usbc. They have to come up with a new usb because there's not enough power going through that to power a lot of the appliances and stuff we have. So we have to be a thing. Our in the usb there is in the usbc is pretty powerful for like a toaster or like a microwave or tv. I don't know 27:40 my my linder or an air fryer or a electric piano or a soda stream or a espresso machine or a refrigerator. Okay, well, I'm done with this bit, but I could see a space heater. I could see a possible world where your fire stop it. I could see a possible world where 28:07 and there is like a little hot tub. Tim doesn't like when I do bits. I don't like it. A lot of times Tim doesn't like when I do bits because it interrupts the flow of the episode and he's trying to get the information out. So I what I see I was talking. I know I picked up on the bit you picked up on it when I just you there's a 28:32 like there's a there's a podcast review. I don't have we talked about it. There's a podcast review where someone said love the show been listening for a long time. Jerons become a big jerk and he really makes fun of Tim a lot and it's actually like I forget what the words are, but it's like wow. Jaren lately has been. I think it says you're in a incessant jerk yeah, Jeron, Jeron, beginning in incessant and I'm like I don't think you were a big fan of the show to begin with because this has been from episode war. This is not normal. I didn't start 28:59 I wasn't just like I haven't been getting meaner to Tim. He's been this. He's just been getting more sensitive about it. This has been our friendship and that's because he didn't realize the heart. He didn't harness the power of my humor correctly. 29:16 No, what I'm trying to say, what I see more likely is I see a possible world where our walls within the walls. There's just power banks, so you could just put things close to the wall and it would charge that feel. Let's charge fry our brains. It could. Okay, we don't care. We've never cared about that before. It's going to be eating. I was going to I don't think it'll stick. I think you can just set it on the dresser next to it. It's close enough to get the juice. That's my that's my my premonition. Okay, yeah. 29:46 and you'd have it on all four walls. So that way it'd be beams of energy hitting your brain from all four sides. I don't know that's gonna be good for we're gonna microwave our brain cells. I whenever we ever cared that's true. So Alan dies in 19, I think, 26, Alan Masters. Yeah Alan dies in a night. We like sixties. Yeah, he does relatively young and he kind of like 30:13 He got to be a part of all this stuff and he got credit for it, but it wasn't like it was a big deal. Like it really was like Crompton made the toaster was kind of the thing. a Scottish like tabloid picks up the story and they list off. It's like it's an article called Made in the UK. 30:42 the life-changing everyday innovations And so they highlight all these Scottish And the toaster is on the list. it's just a picture of the toaster throughout the rest of the 2010s, 31:12 gets a ton of attention and everybody starts to really, really love him and he becomes like a figure in schools that kids are. They have like assignments where they're doing like reports on his technology and they're like they have artworks that they're supposed to do of him and there was he was featured in TV shows a lot like the great British bake off. They had an episode where it was like one of the bakers devoted their 31:41 cake to Alan McMaster yeah and it was like themed off toasters, the toaster yeah themed on toasters and stuff like that, and so he became like is actually a working cake where you can push this down and two pieces go into it and then they come out and then they pop out yeah yeah. It's different and then it and it hit a fever pitch in twenty eighteen. There was this ballot for they were changing the face on the fifty dollar bill in Scotland and to 32:09 Alan McMaster was one of the candidates. He didn't win, but he was one of the candidates to put his image on the fifty dollar bill all a bit, and so it was just this huge or deal of in the twenty tens like there was a huge, a huge deal that right. It made this person up, but here's the thing. This is Alan McMaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty funny. That's a good bit, so Alan McMaster's 32:39 that if you're not watching, this is a picture of honestly a pretty typical reddit user. It's a dude with a sick shirt that's made out of just handkerchiefs and his pants to I mean great outfit, honestly great fit styles. Yeah cool hair, very thin Alan McManager's super fit 33:06 not fit then those boys were super fit so hot. All right, dude. 33:17 Thanks for checking out this episode. In that mailing list, we give updates on past episodes. and every week things are changing. So if you want to keep learning stuff, that's happening in the Till and Verse. 33:43 I like that. I've never said Till and Verse before, but I'm sticking with it. You can go to tilland.com. and everything that's going on in the Till and Verse. 34:08 So Alan, the real Alan McMaster was a aerospace engineering student at University of Surrey. and the professor was going through research methods. Wikipedia for your research like every professor always does. 34:37 and shows that the Wikipedia page for the toaster has one of the professors from the university as the inventor of the toaster. Like they changed it and they put his name in that for like the bit to be able to do this every year and say, look, this is one of our professors. Obviously he didn't invent the toaster in 1902 because he's still here. 34:56 and all the students were like, well, how do I like right, right, right, right? This is really just them doing an elaborate cover up of a vampire on staff at this university. And like clearly he didn't invent the toaster in 1902 because he's still alive to teach this class. So later that night, Alan and his friend Alex are kind of talking about it. They pull up the article and they look at it and Alex is like, hey, what if we made you the inventor of the toaster? Like, yeah, that's funny. You order it. So they do it. They make the change. 35:26 so wow, really funny dudes here because they went to class. The professor's like look at this funny thing we did and then they went back to the dorm like what if we did the exact same thing? What if we just what if we did his bit? Well, they took it and I should say so they did it and then further well a year later they noticed that it was still there. No one ever caught it. No one ever changed it. So Alex 35:56 I was like, hey, Alan, I think we could level this up. And so Alex commissions a friend to take this photo of him. And so he does up his hair and what he assumes is an old school hairstyle. They Photoshop in sideburns and then he didn't have any clothes that he felt looked like fit that era. So they made it look like they tore it. So that tear is a fake tear that they Photoshopped in. Obviously, to me, they acted like it was a tour picture that they like scanned in. 36:25 Oh, this was the idea that they were trying to do and then they that's him. That's Alex. That's the friend Alex. This is for now. This is Alan. Say they're not the same yeah, but yeah, this is the other friend Alex they use for the picture and so they then create an actual page and they create this whole back story, but they did a really good job with it because all these people and all these companies and places are real and the time frames that they're connecting them to our real 36:53 time frame, so they did their research on the toaster, but they just changed Alan McMaster's. What are you? Are you doing your oh man? It's we're so glad you're home for Christmas break son. Tell us about school this semester. Oh, I mean I've been I've been up to my eye. Oh my gosh, it's been been doing this research product project on ever heard of the underground 37:22 you know time up, you know what I'm talking about and now with like the trains and stuff the other one and yeah. I just been researching this a lot. I mean like I can't go to sleep right now. I've got to. I've got to read up about Evelyn some more going to respond to your text. I don't know. It was a door dash during I didn't door dash here. I door dashed for my wife at home. Is she at home? She's getting home in a couple minutes from work and you were like or dashed her dinner. Yes, 37:52 Wow yeah. What you do? What? Why are you guys fighting that you had to make up for it with a door dash? I didn't cook dinner, so there's no left over. She has nothing to eat, but you did cook her eggs this week right. I did cook breakfast. I meal, pep her breakfast. I didn't meal prep her dinner yeah yeah yeah good for you pal yeah. So that's exactly what happened. They built this old ash, my wife, some 38:22 They built this whole back story for them and they connected it to real people. 38:31 but they made up that story of it getting invented. They made up the story of the first fire thing and their response to the first fire like none of that stuff actually happened. I'm going to toward as your wife's going to send her another dinner. 38:50 get out of here. Your address is in my door dash. You're going to send her a better dinner, yeah and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then when you get home, so I got two dinners, you like which one did you eat? That's pretty good, pretty fun bit, so that's a bit that we should do in the show, not your heimlich bit. Yeah. What what do you think this sign is? I wish I had another side ready to put this in the fifty dollar bill 39:19 Yeah, so they put this whole Wikipedia article out yeah and in twenty fourteen it does get picked up by that that tabloid sees it doesn't fact check it. They pick it up and they make that article and then it just kind of goes wild for the next ten years. It's they're featured in news where like news, you know how you got to fan the flames and that stuff. You know you got to be like you got to get on reddit and be like you see this or they did not do anything. They just put up this Wikipedia article and that was it. That was the whole bit and then I think it caught this 39:49 So this becomes a real thing. and the school district had a day The British Bake Off thing actually happened. printed that he was the inventor of the toaster. 40:15 This started running and Alan, the actual Alan, out of college, he was reading a book, it was a book on Victorian era inventors And he's like, oh maybe this was a mistake. 40:44 the page was up until twenty, twenty two. I would have taken that to the grave to be honest. Oh yeah, and I think that was their plan, but in twenty, twenty two there was a a fifteen year old redditor named Adam, which is eerie that the characters in this Alan, Alan, and so I have one thing we just did. Yeah, we just said that we said Alex at the same time. Yeah, that was pretty weird. Let's try it again. Yeah, okay, 41:14 Alex, I see I mess it up that time thing, so he was in class, say who we voted for, so he was in class in twenty, twenty two. He was at school clay again 41:35 and I'm still better. He was in class and it was the same thing. He's in high school. His teacher is talking about the great and he goes enter of the toaster. He didn't I did know he so he shows him that and he shows them the Wikipedia page and he sees that picture and this kid is immediately like. I don't think that picture is real. He's like that looks like photoshop and it's twenty, twenty two and so this kid at fifteen years old looks at that. He goes home that night. 42:04 and he downloads it and he looks at the metadata and he sees that it was made in Photoshop and he's like, I think this is fake. So he goes to Reddit, there's a Reddit community. I think this is fake. There's a sub Reddit called Wikipedia vandalism, which is hilarious. But it's like people who are looking for vandals of Wikipedia. Sure. And he uploads that picture and he says, hey, this is a fake image that I found on this Wikipedia page. This sub Reddit digs deeper. They end up uncovering that the whole thing was fake. 42:31 So the page gets flagged for deletion and then Alex's Wikipedia account ends up getting banned from Wikipedia and they market that it was the whole thing was a big old hoax. So that's how it got uncovered. Was this this kid this kid didn't know the whole thing was fake. He thought it was just just that picture, just that picture. And so Alan, the real Alan, this Alan, yes, he made 42:57 he has a new secret Wikipedia account that he now contributes to, but like seriously and he's like that's my like apology. He's like I don't want anyone to know what the account is because I don't want to get banned and he's like, but as an apology, I'm like contributing to Wikipedia. Now I keep changing. I keep changing stuff because I like it. This was actually a really wild ride because I actually really love it, but yeah for years and in multiple print publications and encyclopedias, Alan McMaster's is the inventor. 43:26 of the toaster, but that wasn't true. It looks like it was a handful of different companies of that development. One of my favorite parts about the toaster, 43:58 is that under at the very bottom of the page, they have related products is what it says. Oh, so things similar to toasters and there's only there's only one item and it's the hot dog toaster, which I love so much. Have you ever seen me? I have and you know what is weird about it to me? Where does the juice from the hot dog go? I probably just drains just like 44:22 just like the crumb. They have the crumb catcher. They probably have a separate train soggy for your hot dog juice. No, I bet there's a crumb catcher and then I bet there's a trot. You know what I've I know what I'm doing. Yeah, I toast my hot dogs and then I and then the best part is when you had to open the thing and just take a quick shot of the hot dog juice. That's the best part. The best part about using the hot dog is there the little shot at the end 44:49 Oh what the shot at the end? I don't know what you're talking about. It's my favorite part, but yeah, I love this. Whoever thought of this great person, a little hot dog shaped holes in the middle, little bun shaped holes in the outside. You make two of them genius idea. Honestly, I don't know why I don't have. I ever come to someone's house and they have a hot dog toaster on the counter and like 45:13 readily accessible yeah like right there. It's like it's not put away somewhere. That's something you didn't even get as a gag gift. You have it on your counter and it like looks used. You know, I'm talking about like it looks like it's been used a couple times. Yes, yeah, that's a lot of judge yeah that you look in the in the juice trough and it's full. You know you're not even taking the shooters out of this. It literally like it gives me a lump of my throat. I felt that to rose now, but this is this is a textbook example of circular reporting where this came out of one source. 45:43 and then one source along the line didn't fact check it, and eventually it just kind of got out of control. where somewhere along the line that they got their information from and then repeated it 46:08 because really in Scotland for years, for about 10 years, everyone was just like, yeah, Alan McMaster's invented the toaster and he's really important to our lives and we want him on the $50 bill, which is crazy. There's another really popular example of this right now, circular reporting on TikTok. I don't know if you've seen this. No. Speaking of November 5th, no, it does not relate to that at all. Have you seen these reports that there's an alien armada coming to the United States of America? 46:37 and the James with space, teleco telescope spotted them and NASA's reporting it. Have you seen those on tick tock those videos? We have some moments that our episodes take some weird turns stick with us and I promise you it'll get better. We have similar algorithms right. I do not get those videos. No, it's a really big thing right now. A lot of people on tick tock are saying oh my gosh now, so 47:04 they're saying reporting on NASA just said that the James Webb Space Telescope saw a armada coming towards like a NASA coming towards Earth. No, who said that? I don't know who originally said that, but what I'm my guess is what it looks like is that whoever originally said this took and jumbled together a James Webb Space Telescope report with the old a mua mua. Remember that yes and they put that together to be like James. 47:33 space telescope saw a mua mua and they don't know what it is and it's probably aliens and then this just has catapulted and now there's there's I see I'm not it. I'm not exaggerating when probably once a day I see a video where people are like responding and it's like it's like that it's like you like and share the video interesting perspective. No, it's like it's like you know those ones where it's like the green screen where it's like the face and then behind it is like them reacting to another tick tock and I 48:03 I see that almost every yeah it's just high quality, just very value giving content on the internet yeah and it's and it's like the fourth or fifth tick tock. We're going to start promoting our podcast just like that. That's hilarious. Really funny you over clips of you, you're just like we got to hear a couple and then there's a whole 48:33 and then just cut to another shot and be like like I've been saying this for a while. It's great to see someone else saying this for a while. Make sure you hit the follow button, but yeah, I mean this is a great example of why we should always check your sources and if you are, if you're like sitting here like watching this and you're like well, how do I make sure I have the right information? That's why we have info wars dot 49:01 and if you support us on patreon, maybe we can buy info wars that we can take down the people who are trying to trying to you know. I got to pay all my legal fees because I lied about those families. Do you think the domains for sale on the bankruptcy auction? 49:20 it won't be cheap, but it'll be worth it. It'll be the best thing I ever buy. So yeah, so circular reporting is a dangerous thing. Sure, we need to be careful about it, and so that's why this podcast has firmly committed to only reporting off stuff we find on Wikipedia. So we're glad that you're checking this out. Who knows how much we've talked about that is just made up from Wikipedia as possible, but we don't check our sources. We don't have time to check our sources yeah. 49:49 So here's the interesting thing. The story goes. If you read that, the initial report of that that night where they were whiskied up and they started working on this original toaster, yeah, they were having a hard time with powering the toaster because like they only had lamp outlets and that did not give enough power to burn toast right, and so they held a they drew a pentagram on the ground. 50:17 and they said. They said Satan. We don't know what to do. We're having a problem. We can't figure out how to turn on this toaster. They called them the dark power of Satan guys that we can't figure out how to power this toaster like sade said, and that's actually a little known fact is that the heat that burns your toast is the fires of hell. 50:42 and said said said said said the Daly said hey Alan, here's the deal. He said you beat me in a duel and I'll tell you the secret to getting this toaster away to fit a law. 50:58 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode of things. I learned last night. If you like this and you want more of it, we got a whole back catalog, like two hundred something episodes. You can go listen to one of those in the story of Frank Abagnale from the movie. Catch me if you can, you know Leonardo DiCaprio, you know our friend Thomas Hanks was in that movie and but 51:17 what you might not know what I didn't know when we recorded the episode is that the entire story is a lie, just things that we just all believed because there was a movie about it. We're like oh yeah, that's true. We did the same thing. It turns out it was all made up not to give away the ending, but that episode is linked somewhere. You can go watch that here. The crazy stories and then hear how Frank Abagnale Junior actually made a living off of his lies. 51:40 and so again next week's episode is available right now. You don't have to wait for it. You can check that out on Patreon. That just helps us fund the show. We don't make any money off this. That just helps us create more of this and to put out episodes regularly. We really love doing this and we really love that you were here for this one, so we'll see you next week. We will never stop doing this show. I promise you if this show stops, I'm dead, which that'll be really eerie to watch one day for being here for things over last night. 52:12 This episode was produced by our masters is edited by his friend Alex. It was engineered by a fifteen year old kid named Adam.

History can sometimes be tricky to unravel. One example is the story of Alan MacMasters, who was often named the inventor of the electric toaster. But did he really invent it, or is it a case of circular reporting? Let’s explore this fascinating example of how myths can take root in history. Who Was Alan MacMasters? Alan MacMasters is widely … Read More

New Evidence in the Havana Syndrome Case | Ep 247

10-29-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 Hey, this is things I learned last night. This week we learned about Havana Syndrome, a conspiracy that says that there are I don't know a truth, the idea that there are diplomats in the United States who are being attacked by some kind of high pitch noise that leaves lasting brain damage. Yes, yeah and we have like genuine paperwork to follow this trail. It's not a conspiracy theory. Okay, sure 00:23 this episode comes out October twenty nine. What do you got going on? Jaren speaking of following the paper trail, you can follow the ticket sales to discover that October twenty nine. Oh yeah happy, but that happy seven years to tillin. How about that? Is it seven or eight? It's been seven years. Oh, I thought it was a been seven long cash next year and anyway this weekend I'll be in Canada, so they don't get our podcasts up there. I make sure of it and then next weekend I think I have off and then the weekend after that yeah. The church comedy tours all of November, so 00:52 come hang out will be in Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Kansas and Georgia would love to see you there. Please, please, please, please come to these shows because this is this is a big deal for me, and if these shows don't sell out, I don't know mentally what I'll do, so I will. It's going to be a dark December at our house. I don't 01:20 anyway, so come to the shows. It'd be a great time. Thanks for checking out the show. 01:27 Hey man, hey dude, hey last episode you look like one kind of uncle and now you look like the other kind of uncle. 01:38 you know saying I yeah when both walk in the house you're like oh that uncle's here. I walk into the house. Your mom goes I didn't know he was coming on invite him, didn't think he'd show yeah. I really was hoping really was count on. I'm not coming to this. If they both show up to Thanksgiving yeah, it's messed up yeah and they're both both of them are like I'll be here for another three weeks. I'll be here till Christmas and they don't say that to your mom. They said that to you yeah yeah. 02:07 yeah loud enough that your mom can hear and she goes. Oh your dad's like. Can I talk to you in the kitchen and then and then your dad's not there for the next couple weeks yeah yeah, but no one knows where he is at the best western in town and he comes he comes back for dinner and he literally just walks in eats 02:30 fifteen minutes walks out gets a paper plate gets another paper plate puts it on top and then walks out. It's dinner to go from it. So now it's a topic this week. Have you heard of a non of anomalous health incidents? Anomalous health incidents anomalies? Yes, also known as Havana syndrome. No, you haven't heard of this. Oh, that's kind of 02:59 I'm kind of excited that you haven't heard this close. That's that is a syndrome, having a syndrome, a syndrome. I'm kind of surprised you haven't heard of this honestly, knowing who you are, but here I should say this is an interesting topic because is this like people who end up talking with different accents and stuff? No this is an episode that I thought about doing an episode on in twenty eighteen. 03:29 so like very early for our podcast and I want you to for a second in your brain. Remember twenty eighteen Tim and the episodes that twenty eighteen Tim chose to do and in twenty eighteen I researched this topic and I got to a point where I was like this is just a conspiracy theory. This isn't real and now this year you get to a point where your two thousand and eighteen discernment was like this is a conspiracy theory. This isn't real. Yes, yeah in two thousand and eighteen 03:58 okay, but this year some things have happened to you. No, no in in this storyline about six months ago, some some things happened. Something happened that made me be like oh, maybe they were right. You know how that happens with conspiracy theory. Sometimes okay, what happened? So I'll tell you what it is and then we can kind of go through the story. All right, let's just go through this sure sure sure sure. So this started in twenty sixteen when a 04:28 group of United States and Canadian diplomats at the embassy in Havana, Cuba, which should be noted that was brand new at the time because we did not have diplomatic relationships with Cuba right forever, and then during Obama's presidency, we opened that door, set up this embassy, and we were there for. I don't know how long a year or two years before this happened. There's a group of Canadian and US diplomats that 04:58 reported an event and in this event they heard a loud ringing noise and that was described in a couple different ways. The descriptions of this were either a loud ringing noise like in a movie when a bomb goes off and the main character is like yeah so it's described that way but was also described by some people as like a pulsating 05:26 noise like a consistent high pitch sounds okay, this new bit that I do to people where I just hold up my phone and I go hey, you want to hear my new song and then I just 05:44 and they're like till they're like. I don't hear anything and I'm like oh oh you have old ears. Oh yeah. The pitch is really high here. This unless you're y'all pitch is pretty high. Sorry, that's kind of another bit. I'm trying to do. I chickened out today, but I try. I'll show you a video is. I'm trying to do this thing called lying to uber drivers. What I think it'd be funny. I think it'd be funny. I chickened out today because the guy was really nice. 06:14 but I would love because I told her my group in Chicago and then I said we moved. I said we moved because my house got broken into okay. He goes really I was like yeah, I mean it was bad as Christmas time and I started. I was sure I was going to try to convince this guy that home alone happened to me. What was your life and and then I chickened out because I was like ah. This is kind of 06:41 you know English is in his first language. Oh yeah, it just it was like I don't. I want to do this to someone who there's not the language barrier where it's like this looks like I'm making fun of you because you don't yeah, you get what I'm saying. Yeah is I wanted it to be like you. You're not going to. You might not know this movie for other reasons. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, but that would be really funny. You're like yeah, but I son like 07:04 set up these booby traps. This one's ready to do. No, I was trying to be like I said these booby trap. I got away from these two robbers, then I was going to try to this thing. I was like man. I've been trying to get on the foot. I you know I went to college, you know I did and I was trying to get on the football team yeah and thinking I could never. I was no matter how much I tried. I was like come on man coach put me in. I'm ready. You know I was mowing like the field 07:34 every week and then like and then one day do it. The whole team was like chair in that's hilarious. Yeah, I was like I was a missionary in the jungle and there was this dude that we met there. Yeah, it was like like, but like it wasn't a dude. It was like a it was like a human, but he was also kind of like a gorilla a little bit and like he actually fell in love with my girl. 08:04 And she stayed. I was like, Jane. 08:09 and so I shouldn't use her name yeah, but isn't that funny to try to convince really an uber driver that a movie is my life, so I was good because I'm trying to think of my my wife as a twitch streamer. You can follow her regan in Myers on twitch and so I was trying to think of things that I could do on live. 08:26 and that's something that I want to start doing is I just want to go live on Instagram really hey guys, it's time to lie to another uber driver get in and see how far I can take it yeah before I get caught. I love that that's a good bit. I do like that bit. I do like that, but so anyway, tell your Havana story. Yeah, so they were these bits I was trying, so they're hearing this ringing sound and then they feel like this pressure in their inner ear and they describe it like it like if you took a q tip too far in yeah, yeah, 08:55 I feel that feeling and then they start to get like a pulsing headache yeah, and then a lot of times it's accompanied with nausea afterwards. Most of them they had they got nauseous and so here's an animation of what this syndrome might 09:14 it's just a brain that looks like it hurts. You're going to do like the front of a this is the this is on an aspirin yeah. This is an aspirin bar bottle. It's like does your head feel like this and it's just a brain blowing up. It feels like my brain is getting electrocuted, but they're the first person in this they call him patient zero because is the first person that we on run record that this happened to. He actually has had like serious 09:43 lifelong effects out of this. He went blind in his left side okay, and his hearings almost gone in his left side, and now what's strange is he can't balance on his own. He has to wear a weighted jacket where the jacket is like shifted the weight one side, because his librium yeah is off and he can't balance. I can see in your eyes of where you're like. Please help me say this word. Please say this word for me like his. Say this word for me equilibrium. Oh yeah, equal 10:13 Equal Warium, Equal Equator, and so this happened a couple of times at the embassy in Cuba. Here's a picture of the embassy in Cuba with the cop from cars. 10:28 okay. It looks like the Harvey Casino actually kind of is this an AI image. No, this is a real image. Okay, that car does look funky though. I do. I will say the front end of that car looks a little weird. What yeah, I thought it's like the uncanny valley got you, but anyways, so this happens a couple more times in Cuba and then over the course of the next couple years, it starts happening more and more 10:53 to different United States diplomats around the world. It happens in Australia, it happens in Georgia, not the state, the country. Where they're like getting these headaches? They're hearing this high pitched sound and then they're getting these headaches and then they have the same sort of long term effects. Their vision goes in one side, their hearing starts to go. The biggest, most common thing is the balance. So many of them can't balance on their own anymore and most of them, it is so debilitating that they can't. 11:21 be a diplomat anymore. Their job they like have to retire from their role happen to Joe Biden. He can't balance anymore. Well, one of the effects that a lot of them talk about that they they have a hard time remembering words and so they're sitting there and they're like they're like what's that word? You know what I'm trying to say, so what I do all the time actually yeah. Did I get a van a what's the other word for Havana Syndrome or a non 11:50 anomalous health incidents. Yeah, so that's yeah, that's the politically correct term for it. 12:03 okay, so this day is very quiet and the government starts. There's some like underground movement in the government and to like protect their people from this, but it doesn't hit the news. It's only happening to Americans, well and those Canadians, okay, that were also at they were there at the time and so it's kind of like they just happened to be there. You know if they weren't there, what i have happened to him. What's really significant about this? I forgot to mention is that the the sound 12:33 is very localized and so they could be in one like the sound is in the corner of the room and they could walk away from that corner to the other corner. They can't hear it anymore, but then they go back to that corner, they hear it again and the same feeling is there and so it's not like you can't hear it in the whole say that's very strange. So the U S appears to kind of start to protect its people from this and 12:58 there's like some memos where they're talking about not until like 2022, but these memos got released but it wasn't public until 2017 that Patient Zero came forward and started talking about and how he had to leave his post. 13:28 puts out a whole story about it. And it pretty quickly becomes like a conspiracy theorist fodder and it becomes this crazy story of like, oh, this other nation and these people are doing this and messing people's heads, you know. 13:44 And that's kind of... 13:48 that's kind of where it is and in twenty eighteen when I found this, I was like man. This is crazy, like basically what the conspiracy theorists were saying was China had developed a ray gun that they were shooting at our United States diplomats to mess up their brains and I and I saw that I was like this seems pretty far fetched and so after looking into it, I decided in twenty eighteen I'm not going to cover this, but in 14:18 in twenty nineteen. There was a special committee held on this in congress with the a group of individuals and experts, a group of individuals from the defense, defense intelligence agency that decided they were going to go ahead and investigate this further sure, and they came before congress and basically got permission to go do a large scale investigation and probe the pentagon and find more people yeah. 14:47 who had this happen to them and in two thousand and twenty two that report came out and the report is very interesting because they they were able to locate fifteen hundred members of the United States government that this has happened to. What's interesting about these people is they all are diplomats that work for either the FBI, CIA or D O D. 15:13 and they have been stationed overseas or sometimes in the states. And what's interesting, the connection that the Defense Intelligence Agency made is that all of them, either in their recent career or on their most recent assignment, was something related to Russia, every single one of them. And they all reported very similar events where they were... 15:40 somewhere on assignment or even at their own home. And they heard this piercing noise and it was followed by all of those effects. And many of them, it was so intense that, and it led to such a long-term effects that they ended up having to medically retire from their role. And there was, what was interesting is in this report, they noted that these individuals, they're like, there's no low ranking individuals. There's no, not even mid-level individuals. Make these people? 16:09 no that are that it's happening to he's. They said only happening to the. These are here like these are our best of the best. These are our top five percent. So are you? Are you saying this is related to the pagers? So that's interesting. I do have a note on that. We'll get to that in a little okay, okay, okay, 16:28 So these, they recount all these stories, and they do get a handful of witnesses to come forward and talk about this. And many of them come forward to talk to 60 Minutes in 2022, and they do interviews with 60 Minutes. I've watched all these 60 Minutes episodes. What was very interesting, well, actually sidebar, there was a woman that has happened to, there was a woman that this happened to, she is not a member of the US government, but her husband is a diplomat. 16:58 they were stationed overseas, she was at home, and she was doing laundry, and she heard that sound hit, and she said that the sound knocked her over. It was so intense then, and it hit so hard that it knocked her over. And she gets up and she walks to the other room, and I should note, she was one of the most monotone individuals I've ever heard speak, and she used very, like, I don't know what the right word is. The first word that comes to mind for me is explicit, but it's not explicit. Like, it's like. 17:27 Yeah, like she's just very direct and precise and monotone and she's like she's like I was standing in a laundry room fold. This is too. That's too much tone. I was standing in the laundry room folding on holding laundry and then then the Whirlpool laundry machine turned against me 17:45 I do believe the China was involved shot in the laundry. We should show me the Reagan, but she in the most monotone voice, the most monotone. If you don't, if you don't empty the land trap, gun comes out, your ray gun goes empty, the Lutra empty, the Lutra or else I blow up your brain. 18:09 If you've been watching for a minute and you like this show, a great way to help out is by becoming a Patreon supporters. Our patrons get a ton of perks for their support. They get ad free episodes a week early. 18:21 We do monthly hangouts. There's a way to get birthday messages on your birthday. There's a lot of great perks, but more than anything, you just help make sure that this show continues to happen forever. We never want to stop. We're going to keep doing this forever. If we have enough patron supporters, we can put our brains in those little vats and like have AI pretend it's us. And so like we can keep doing it long after we die, but that only happens if you support us on Patreon. So we appreciate your support. Thanks for your help. If you don't want to support, that's totally fine. Thanks for being here. We really appreciate you watching the show. 18:54 and so the she she says the most monotone terms. What happens if she's like she's like I felt this intense pain. I walked from the laundry room to the bathroom and then in the most monotone voice, I laughed out loud and I should have, but I laughed out loud because of the most monotone voice being so direct. She's like I walked to the bathroom and I projectile vomited all over the bathroom, so monotone, so direct, so cold faced, just other people suffering makes him laugh. 19:22 sorry, you can other people suffering so funny. Puking is a I was holding the laundry. I heard this sound and then I walked to the bedroom and projectile vomited across the there's nothing funny like she's like like a bedtime story audio book reader. Yeah, yeah, kind of close your eyes. It was just how monotone she was and how direct she was with her terms. 19:52 then to just say projectile, vomiting or walking to do. There is only sleep and projectile vomiting to do and so in her case, what was interesting is her case. They dug up was actually twenty fourteen, so it's before we had a rule at twenty no projectile vomiting yeah, no, not a lot. No, we had a rule because like kids wouldn't hydrate right, and so it was like all right. We have we have like Gator is we got like the sugary drinks, whatever, but you can't have those until you drink to 20:22 like glasses of water yeah like you got to have two glasses of water with your with your meal before you can drink one of those yeah and so kids would chug two glasses of water and then they would start drinking their powerade and eating their food and so so many kids at lunch every day at lunch and then we did can for five days and you would you would think surely after the second day of kids doing this. 20:44 they'd be like they were to learn yeah. You know no one did day five. Kids are still just chugging the waters and then taking a swig of the blue powerade and then and then turning and projectile vomiting in the camp for 21:03 I love that and I love that you guys never told them how to do better. No, we did every day. That's what I'm saying every single day. We were like hey, don't you it's because you're chugging the water and your tiny little your tiny little fourth grade stomachs can't hold this figure this out. Quit doing that yeah and they were like they were like 21:27 I'm serious. There's nothing funnier than some. I don't feel so good Mr Myers, drink another water here, have more water, maybe jug that tug it as fast as you can. So what's significant is this story was the one in Georgia yeah and this happened in twenty fourteen K. What they found were in Georgia in twenty fourteen, not that Georgia 21:55 what is very man. Sometimes I still think about that church in Georgia in twenty fourteen. What do you think about that church and how weird that guy was to us? Yeah and why how he told us about him staying on the on the corner of the road, dresses a homeless person, during him telling us that story. I do really actually I forgot like and then and he goes and he's personally handed me a dollar had hand him a guy. I stood right outside of our church, dress as a homeless person and then each person that gave me a dollar 22:24 I would hand him a card of a good job, my good and faithful servant and then on Sunday morning I walked in here dresses at homeless first, I got on stage and I said I was out there and only a few of you saw me and he's like and I saw all of you and none of telling it dude and I was like I read this story on Facebook to dude 22:44 Yeah, we met some interesting a big crush on daughter, though. What was the what was the what was the what was the one in? I was a was one in Colorado, a high, but there was a gives me headaches is your voice. It was there was something there was one in Colorado and there was something to do with bad. Do you know what I'm talking about? There was some at the guy in Colorado had some story with bats. 23:11 and I don't remember what it was, but I remember to be like what up with the what's up with the fat? I don't remember. I just remember the bats. Do you know what I talking about? Is it in Pueblo? No, it wasn't Pueblo. It was in. Oh, I can't even gosh. I've been out of Denver so long. I don't remember what that town's called. No starts with the W Westminster. Yeah. Thank you, geez. I can't believe I forgot that and we were up in 23:40 No, because that that church and he wanted to build a parking lot. He told us about it. He wanted to build the parking. You're talking about the parking. I also told us a bat that starts with a B that's dang. I was there like every year, but I know exactly who talking about yeah and he he start. He wanted to build with the bats. Yeah, he had something about bats. I can't remember what it was though. Anyway, this this is not interesting. So in Georgia, she she has that guy thought he was going to grow his church big enough that he was going to need a parking garage next door is what that 24:09 that story was yeah, so he was a god just gave me a vision of a park. That's how he had a story lot. Yeah, it was even into claw across street and God gave me a vision of a parking garage and it was like a suburban Baptist church. It was like like. Can you imagine you in your suburb suburban neighborhood, the church building a parking garage and then you pull up and there's a homeless guy outside the parking garage and he looks a lot 24:39 like dude, pastor Dave's got a twin and he doesn't take care of him. It doesn't look for you. Yeah, that makes you look really bad. Got any change, sir, chocolate milk, 24:59 that's a call back to an old episode. Got a bad. That was that the storm he was looking for bad. Okay, no so there in Georgia. She this thing happens to her and reacted all to my the high pitch noise that gives me headaches is your voice. That's really good. I thought pretty funny, so comment below. If you thought that was when I listen back to this podcast, I list at point five speed just to lower the tone of Tim's 25:30 Honestly, honestly, I bet at point five speed is still pretty I pitched. 25:44 So in Georgia, this thing happens to her. They go back and because they're members of like the consulate, they have a lot of security cameras. They go back, they watch security camera footage. The night before, a van that they don't recognize comes up and a man gets out of the van and walks out of camera view, but they can hear him talking in Russian and what they hear him say was, it's blinking green, is that what it's supposed to do? 26:13 I love a guy who's just like yeah. Is this is that supposed to talking so loudly? It's blinking green. Is that what it's supposed to do? If you're planting a bomb somewhere, rule number one is maybe don't talk about the bomb on speaker phone and then he says and then he says, should I just leave it on all night? Oh my and then yeah and then he goes back to the car he leaves next day when it happens. She goes she projectile vomits she like and she goes 26:43 she tries blinky thing. She tries to walk across the house trips a few times because you know we still going no because remember the noise is localized, so she would only be able to hear it. She was in the laundry room okay, okay, and so she walks to the house can't really balance is trying to catch her balance looks at the window and sees that van doesn't know that it was on camera the night before yet and sees a man out there by the van. I looks like she threw up 27:10 he talks on the I can't tell if it's because the device did you two glasses of water? Did you happen to drink your water too fast or did you hear a noise? Okay, I saw this tick tock yesterday. It was a guy who was our age and it was very clearly he was in bed like was the tick tock he's filming this in bed and he's like he's like I'm an adult man. He said let's get this out of the way. I live in my mom's basement. 27:39 And he said, but here's the thing he says, I am not feeling well. It's two a.m. and I just threw up and he says, I am an adult. I am fine. I can handle this myself. But he's like, but I have this compulsion. I can't get out of my chest to go tell my mom. Mom, I threw up and he's like, I don't know if I can go back to bed without telling. I think I need to go wake her up and tell her. 28:09 Hey, hey, I don't know who said that. I don't know yelled mom. I threw up the F. I grew up. You drink your water too fast. Did you drink? Yeah, I drank three gallons just now free. I just took free gala green light was blake. It's supposed bleak like that 28:36 is supposed to blink like light, thought your mom in the morning and go. Is it supposed to blink like 28:46 what? What are you talking about? No, so yeah, so she witnesses this guy and obviously her husband, who is the US diplomat comes home and learns about all this and they report it and it becomes a thing, but then it just kind of gets far away. They don't know what to do with it. So this whole thing's happening. They quit doing their laundry for like a month, because they're scared of that room. I'm not going in there. I'm not going in there. You going in there 29:14 and their story after story in this hearing of this happening to people and multiple occasions it's happening to family members of US officials as well, because they're placing these outside people's homes right. There's one story that was particularly kind of scary. I guess is maybe the word to use where they they were stationed overseas. I think they were stationed on Australia. This happened. No, they're stationed in China. This happens in China. They go 29:42 home after the effect and they're so excited to be home and have that behind them because it was such a traumatizing experience for them and the whole family. They get home and a couple weeks go by and they hear it again, his wife wakes up to the sound. They go to their kids rooms, they have two children and they said that they could actually go walk in the room, they couldn't hear anything, they put their heads down by their kids bed and they could hear it. And then they lifted their head up and they wouldn't hear it 30:12 were waking up with bloody noses because it was having such an effect on them, and so they were like yeah, just keep going to bed, just keep sleeping there. Well, they ended up. They ended up moving into a hotel, staying at this hotel and it started happening in the hotel again, and so then they ended up getting the government moved them to some other location overseas and like hiding them, like putting them basically in witness protection and their story after story of this happening with different US government officials. Yeah 30:42 And it kind of culminated in, I believe it was March of 22, when there was supposed to be a trip with members of Biden's cabinet and Kamala Harris in Vietnam that got delayed because they got reports right before they left that there was one of these attacks is what they called it in Vietnam. A couple of officials had this happen. And so they delayed the trip. 31:10 so they could figure out the source of it And so this was a pretty, obviously a pretty big deal. And they even had medical reviews of this. examined all of these people. 31:39 maybe some people do, but essentially what they're saying is that the people who had this even read any of the words is just so blurry that there are there's charts that kind of explain what we're looking at here. They kind of look like brains. I think and so here's another graphic of what's happening so hey Alex, we take care of this. Thank you, thanks, so they had 32:08 What the National Institute of Health said they did have portions of brain matter were deteriorated. And so it was portions that had to do with sensation, And there was even portions that had to do with memory that a lot of people spoke about having 32:37 after this event, having a hard time with that and hard time recalling words and stuff like that. And so they said there's clearly, they said the majority of these people actually do show evidence of like a traumatic brain injury is what we're seeing. But there's no, like they don't recall ever getting hit over the head with something or anything like an actual physical traumatic brain injury. Sure. So the whole thing goes through, this whole hearing happens. A lot of it is very similar to this recent UFO hearing. I watched some clips where they're asked questions by Congress. 33:06 and the people who did the study are like, yeah, we can discuss that in a skiff. They're like, we can't talk about that because it's classified, but we can talk about it in a secure setting. And so a lot of it was not publicly released and talked about. And it was peculiar because after this happened, a lot of people, and especially 60 minutes from their broadcast, was like, okay, we're going to get to the bottom of this. Like, it looks very clear that something serious is happening here. There's a lot of evidence that something's happening here. And then we just didn't hear anything about it. 33:35 for multiple years, okay, completely quiet and all of a sudden the D O D starts taking the stance that this is mass hysteria. This is not actually happening. This is a group psychosis. Yeah, so what a normal stance of just gas lighting. Yeah, their stance is yeah. All of these high ranking government officials, all in your head. They said it like yeah, yeah, we know we know it's on our we've got the brain scans. No, they said they said it was. It was stress induced 34:04 and they said because there was a couple people to a hundred people, stress induced very similar injuries. They said that the stress is causing them to show physiological signs, but it's not there's nothing actually happening to them and because they're all facing the same stress and having the same thing. That's what they said to them and this has been released. Now this is the public thing. Okay, this is what they're saying publicly yeah and they're like they're like and so then because there's a category now that there's some magic device that's that's hitting their brain with the sound wave 34:32 now they're all are all attributing it to that, but that's not what's happening. Meanwhile, it continues to happen most noteworthy. It happens to some senior officials who work in the White House and it actually happened on two or three occasions in between the West Wing and I can't remember the name of this building, but one of the the government buildings and 35:00 next door to the White House, there's a secure parking lot where all the executives park. Yeah. And so they would walk down the stairs, walk across that parking lot, walk into the other building and they work in that building. There's two or three different officials where they were walking down that stairs and they heard the ringing and they lost their balance. They fell down and they had like long term effects from the same thing as same exact description, same exact experience. It wasn't this year, but I think it was twenty twenty three. Okay. And so it's like, oh, this is happening like at 35:29 the White House, like it's not just happening overseas, not just happening at our embassies, not just happening at people's homes in the United States, it's happening all over the place. And then this last year over the summer, something very interesting happened. In Florida Keys, there was a high speed chase involving this white Mustang. The police catch up with this guy, pull him over, they end up having to spike strip him, it was a chase over 100 miles an hour, covered a lot of ground. 35:59 spikes with them, he spun out, they get to him, they pull him out of the car and they end up arresting him and he's in the back seat. You can see him here from the car. So this guy in the back seat, you see his glasses kind of messed up and this seemed like what was a routine traffic stop. They like flash the lights because he was speeding. It wasn't like severely speeding, but he's speeding and then he sped off and ran. They get to his car and they start searching his car and in his car they find in his backpack. 36:27 notes and on the notes there are about a dozen different bank accounts listed on the notes with the information of those bank accounts, the routing number and the account number and the balances on these accounts at multiple different institutions. Okay. 36:57 And he seems like he's having a conversation with someone. He's talking and he's waiting and he's responding. And he's saying stuff like, well, there's the other guy that's involved. Can he handle something like this? And then he stops and he waits and he says, but a deal is a deal. And he says, we have an agreement. And he said that over and over. He kept saying, we have an agreement. We have an agreement. And then all of a sudden. 37:21 in the like in the footage from the back of the cop car. He's having this long conversation. They're searching his car. This is long. It's like thirty minutes of where he's in the back of that car by himself. His glasses fall off of his face and he doesn't continue talking. Once his glasses fall off of his face, he doesn't say another word and so it looks like there was some sort of device in his glasses that he was able to communicate with someone else from those glasses is what the theory is. Zuckerberg was like our glass were 37:49 We were the first ones. Idea! 37:56 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. Want to let you know real quick. We have an email list and it's not like a hey, we're going to send you our merch and new episodes all the time. We actually give you updates on these stories as we find out about them. So a lot of our episodes we've done a couple years ago now have updates or the person the top was about passed away or was caught by the police or whatever updates we can find on episodes that we've done. We want to let you know about it so that our episodes just aren't 38:24 you know out there out of date. It's really fun way to keep learning new information and then every once in a while we let you know about new events coming up or new episodes and it's just a way to help us keep spreading the show. Join that email list. You can text till into six six eight six six or there's a link in the description of this episode or you can just go to till and dot com. It's very easy to join this email list. It's everywhere. It's actually really hard to not join it, so 38:57 This guy, here's what's interesting about him. He here, let me, I forgot to pull this picture of him in. He is a guy by the name of, let me make sure I get this right. Vitaly Kovalev and he is a Michelin star chef in New York City. We don't really know what him. Yeah, he's a mission star chef in New York City. Here he is on the morning news. 39:26 cooking on the morning news. And he was a pretty well-known chef in the scene, pretty public. He had an Instagram and he would post Instagram pictures. This specific appearance, he was teaching them traditional Russian dishes on the morning news. Here's the thing though. He had only been in the cooking scene in New York for two years. Before that, he was a higher ranking government official in Russia. And he, there's... 39:55 history going back of him serving in the Russian military was a proof of this at info wars dot com. No, it's this was actually in sixty minutes, sixty minutes went through. They tracked him. They showed images. I can see if I can find those images of him. You're the same thing is true about the guy who owns Mexican Villa in Springfield. He was a Russian Russian up 40:21 do you hear that ringing? Do you hear that? No, so he was a much an official. Okay. All of a sudden moves to the states, gets a job as a chef out of the blue, has no background in his history of doing any cooking, any shefing or any of that stuff. Anywhere in his life shipping and then he gets arrested for this. What are you up to? I 40:50 Sheffing just be doing some chef has been doing some sheffing and so he, but like if he's working in a Michelin star restaurant, he's actually got to be a good chef. Well, that's the thing like you. You wouldn't if you were sending over a spy to a different nation, you want to be like go work at Taco Bell. Why not? I mean you could be like go work at Taco Bell, but you're also like if you wanted him to be a mission star restaurant, you just train him. They train them. You know they got resources 41:16 that's what I'm saying low. I mean, have you seen like the what it goes into being a chef? Yeah, it's not easy but they I'm not. What I'm saying is they could have trained him sure. I don't know and it's one thing that sixty minutes was very careful to clarify on is that all this is a legend. No, what they were very careful to clarify on is that the Russian military complex is not something you just career switch from 41:45 They're like they don't let you. They don't let you go. Yeah, you don't just go like I want to go be a chef in New York. Yeah, I want to follow my dream. Yeah, that's not something you do when you were like military in Russia. Your time is done. Go ahead. Yeah, they're like yeah, you've served your nation well. Good luck, have fun out there and then you walk away and they shoot you in the back. Right, that's what Russia does. Okay, it's hard to believe that he just came over here to do that. Here's what's interesting. So he gets arrested. 42:11 The FBI is like, we want to talk to him. This is interesting. And so the FBI interviews him for 80 hours. Very long, grueling interview. We don't have any notes from that interview. It's classified. We do know that they talked to him for 80 hours. And so they end up charging him for the speeding and the cop chase and all that stuff. They don't charge him for anything else. He stays in jail for two years, goes back to Russia. Russia puts him on the front lines in Ukraine and he dies in combat. 42:42 there are questions here. Is that true? We don't know for sure if he died, if he yeah was actually put on. We have a death certificate that he was killed on the front lines in combat from them from Russia. Yeah, and so it's like that might be a lie, yeah, but also it could be a like retaliation for getting caught. That could be something that they would be like hey, you got cause it when you good luck out there. Who knows 43:12 What is interesting is the question of at this point, we now have a lot of evidence that points that this is happening. We have clear medical evidence and records that something is happening. We have fifteen hundred high ranking government officials whose testimony carries more weight than a lot of people's saying like we're counting the same story in different occasions at different places, right, not connected to one another. 43:41 And so it's very clear that something's happening, Also, there's a precedence for this. we had an embassy in Moscow, and that embassy was across the street from the Kremlin, and long story short, 44:10 because they were being radiated from the Kremlin. They were shooting radiation at them. Okay, this was something that the United States figured out about and Henry Kissinger later said that we wanted to keep it quiet. We didn't want anyone to know that this was happening. We knew what's happening. We didn't want anyone to know and so yeah, we know that they were in that checks out for this and we know that this is something that Russia's done before something similar to this. We also know that 44:40 shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, that the United States and Russia, when there was like that brief moment where we were like, hey, let's do science together, where like NASA and then teamed up and started doing a lot of state stuff, one of the things that they started doing was directed energy weapons. And they did research on directed energy weapons together. A handful of those that we did develop, there is a microwave cannon that the United States uses to this day to disable drones. 45:08 and so we shoot it out of drones and it disables them that came from that cooperation. There is another thing called the El Rad, which is basically like a sound device that shoots sound waves that are so intense that knocks things over and break stuff sure, and then there was another thing that we actually banned. The United States was like we shouldn't use this and they called it the Medusa okay, because it turned people to stone. Basically what it did was it immobilize people 45:37 It was an energy device that shot directed acoustic waves. but it would immobilize people. They would shoot it because it would immobilize people They learned that it had long-term effects on people's brains. 46:04 this is something that we developed with Russia and we said we're not going to use this anymore and Russia was like we won't either yeah, neither will we unless you use it that we have that we will use it a lot. If you use yours, we're going to use ours but we were about as long as we don't use how the world works. Isn't that crazy that we're just like don't don't don't don't 46:33 And so that's kind of where we're at. We know that the technology kind of exists. The doctors who did this report, they don't have access to this whole story, but the doctors who did this report, they said, we think that this could be possible, that if someone was hit with an acoustic beam or directed microwave beams, it could cause this sort of damage to someone's brain. And those were their leading theories of how this was possible. 47:01 and so we know from that time that cooperation that the United States and Russia both has this capability. Yeah, the United States allegedly stopped doing it because they think it has long term effects and they think that that's not good. So allegedly we don't do that anymore sure, but now it's popping up and now a bunch of US government officials are claiming to have this effect and the government is gas lighting everybody, especially these high ranking US government officials to be like you just feel bad. You're just stressed and so then the question is why and I think there's a couple reasons 47:30 reason number one and probably like the is the probably leading conspiracy reason is that it's because the United States knows they develop this and they're actively using it as well. We're using it against other people for sure, and we don't want the fact that we have this capability to get out there, so we don't want to acknowledge it, and so we're just bearing it under the rug. That's like the conspiracy theory version of this, but the other ones I think are a little bit more likely, and it's too. I think one 48:01 we know exactly what it is and we know that it's Russia doing it, but we recognize that this is happening to high ranking US officials on US soil, and it's a directed physical attack, which which is essentially an act of war right. So if we acknowledge it, then we have to do something about it, and like this is not worth that 48:27 sure like is not worth an armed conflict with Russia to acknowledge that this is happening. So there is theories that there are these backroom conversations happening with US implements between Russia to be like, hey, stop doing this right, but we're not going to make a big deal out of it because we don't want a greater conflict and they're like, okay, we'll stand in the okay. The other theory is that we know it's Russia. We have 48:52 enough to say it's them, but we don't have that smoking gun concrete proof that holds up in like a court of law to where we could actually be like yeah. We know it's them. We have a bunch of stuff that points that way, but we don't have enough to say for sure it's them, and so we're still basically waiting for that smoking gun to then be able to acknowledge yeah, but it's radiation doesn't smoke. It doesn't smoke so long story short. This thing seemed like it was just some big conspiracy theory. 49:22 that was completely unfounded, but it's starting to look like there is this device that can shoot microwave. He's back, baby conspiracy. Tim took a break. Here's what happened. Tim got a little too logical all right, and for a while Tim was like. I don't know. I believe this stuff. This seems a little far fetch, but then all of a sudden all it took was one little zap, zap, tap to the brain and conspiracy. Tim's back at it baby 49:49 I mean here's the thing it looks like Russia all along. Tim says, I think this is slow that down. Listen to what it says. I think it was Russia all along. 50:05 he's back. It's believable. This is a believe. I don't know how you could look at this and say that it's not believable. Here's the thing. It might not be Russia. That's why that eagle's crying on his shirt. He just got freaking EMP. 50:20 look, it might not be Russia. It might not be Russia. It could be another one of our adversaries could be. It could be us. We could be testing it on our own guys, Pagers. Okay, so this is what's interesting. One of those you're unfamiliar. What happened? Okay, so a couple weeks ago was it to maybe it was one week ago yeah recently very recently there was what was it like fifteen hundred three thousand? It was a lot, a lot of Pagers and I ran simultaneously 50:49 are. We have a lot of audience who's like, I don't know, fourteen pagers or before cell phones. You could just say it'd be like if you had if you'd be like if you could only read a text yeah from a device that was like hey, you have a text and you look down to go yeah and they look like tomagot cheese. Yeah, would you probably should explain tomagot cheese to our got cheese are we could do a whole. There's actually a whole episode of us just explaining old reference to you stuff. 51:18 Yeah, so the Pager's Simultaneously just blew up yeah yeah. Was it lemon on? I thought was I ran maybe it was Lebanon on yeah blew up just simultaneously exploded, caused a lot of damage, killed a lot of people, injured a lot of people, because people were like driving all of a sudden their pay their Pager just exploded or the or even how many people are still using Pagers is crazy to me, but yeah yeah and then I 51:41 A couple days later, the same thing happened with a bunch of radios. Yeah, a bunch of radios just simultaneously exploded and a leading theory at the time was that someone had created some or manufactured some modified pages and modified radios and smuggled them across the border and then gave it to them like put them in source. So that way people would end up with them and it was like this big terror campaign. Here's what's interesting though in this story and I haven't seen someone connect these dots and I think it's because most of what I've seen was before this event. Yeah, 52:10 But what's interesting is in this story, one of the things that you saw people mention a lot was they would get hit with this this sound and when they got hit, the sound what would also happen is their cell phone battery would swell and would often break the case. And if a cell phone battery swells enough, it blows up. Yeah. And so there's a chance and this is giant conspiracy leap, but there is a chance that if this technology is out there and you could direct that at 52:41 a device, you could blow up the batteries in a device, which is very interesting. Yeah, so they might not even have to be modified, but what's interesting is when they talk about it is very directed. This is a beam. This is not like a sound wave where it's going out in all directions. It's a direct beam of microwave radiation or sound or whatever is able to hit one one location. What is what's interesting is what's described is the sound isn't the thing that's doing the damage. It's like the 53:11 that I heard someone describe it as like a gunshot, like the sound of the gunshot isn't what does the damage to the bullet right, and so it's like it. The beam is what's doing the damage, but there is a sound that's associated with it, so it's very interesting. It does seem like I mean something's going on. Who's responsible? We can't say for sure, but we can't say for sure. It's probably Russia, so that's wild. Yeah, I was folding laundry 53:41 And when I closed my whirlpool washing machine, I heard a sound from the other room. I walked toward the other room to see what it was. I immediately projectile vomited across the room like a sprinkler. 54:04 one strong projectile or so followed by seven projectile short. 54:25 Uhhh... And as I got closer to my children's bed, I could hear the sound clearly. And it was a fiddle. 54:42 and thanks for checking out this episode. If you like it, we got another cool one about doing sketchy stuff, our government this time, M K ultra go look that one up it's somewhere around here, and if you like this show, the best way to support is by supporting us on patron. Our patrons make this show possible and they also get a bunch of perks they get every episode a week early without any ads. They get to hang out with us in a discord with all of our hosts and us, all of our producers and us, we're the hosts. 55:07 and then there's a bunch of other perks like we get to hang out on a zoom once a month. It's a it's a fun time, but if not we'll see you next week on things I learned last night. You don't want to run that again. I feel fine so bad. It's just fine. I feel fine. Do you think you do better? 55:26 Alright, leave all that in.

There has been growing concern over unusual symptoms experienced by U.S. diplomats and government workers abroad in recent years. Termed Havana Syndrome, these symptoms, often linked to possible Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs), are a mystery that researchers and experts are actively trying to solve. What is Havana Syndrome? Havana Syndrome was first reported in 2016 when American diplomats in Cuba … Read More

Disney Never Wanted You to Know This Man’s Name | The Duck Man Ep 246

10-22-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 Hey, this week we learn about the duck man, the duck man, also known as Carl barks, not to be confused with the other Carl sure. So this week we learn about the duck man who wrote the cut the Donald duck comic books in the fourties and fifties and didn't get the credit he deserved and then didn't make the money he deserved until later in his life. Yeah, but for a long time, no one knew who the duck man was yeah. So this is a story about how they found him and then what they did when they 00:28 found a speaking of people not knowing who they are. I have shows coming up. I don't when this episode comes episodes coming out like the fifteen five fifteen great this week in the Lynchburg, Virginia and then next weekend. I'm in Massachusetts and then November is the church comedy tour with Shamarama and my good one. I really hope to see you there. It will be in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, 00:53 Missouri, Kansas City, well, I should the Kansas side. I didn't choose it and then Texas and Florida, so I would love to see you at a show. All my tour dates are linked somewhere. You I hope you know where to find them at this point and yeah, let's get into the episode. 01:15 Have you ever heard of the duck man, the duck man? What is the duck man, the way your face lit up? I'm so I really want for once. I want my excitement to pay off. You know, like we're go oh and then it turns out to be like a freaking CIA code word for something. Yeah, you know it might. It might pay off. Yes, I want to see like a person who pretends to be ducks, not quite. I'm the duck man, so 01:44 when I go to Disney, there's all these acts at Disney. Yeah, that's yeah. That's if I talked about the Disney ducks on here before, I don't know if you talked about him on here now, because we think all the time every time we go to Disney, my wife is just like. Do you think these ducks landed here and they were just like oh my gosh, you know, because there's so much bread and pop all much dropped yeah. 02:04 and like and there's other ducks who live in freaking like North Dakota. You know where there's a there's no pop corn. Yeah, they live in crappy places where they're like oh, I'm just a star, you know, but the ponds at the the little water things at at Disney. I'm freaking I'm throwing bread at them. Yeah, I mean it just goes to show there's a wealth gap for birds to 02:26 that's what I'm saying like the life that those and like the wild life chooses to live there. I'm going to follow them. You know I'm in touch with nature. What are their animals just by having a season past a disney? What other animals just go to Disney land squirrels squirrels chipmunks? I think the chipmunks they pox I'm I pretty sure they put the chipmunks there though 02:56 I'm what I think that's part of like this where I went with it, but that's all right. Peacocks. Oh, are you talking the character? I was like dogs, mice and you were like. I think they put the chip on there and I'm like 03:15 now you're catching up nineteen eighty nine holiday and carpet. Anyways, the duck man also known as the good duck and the good, the good man is the names that he has by. Oh, I don't I should look like it used to be a cop and now you're just a freelance P. I in Miami 03:42 you just get jobs on craigslist and you're like I can solve this. I can solve this you get more murders than you saw. You accidentally get people murdered. It's like so not related to the case. Yeah, this is my fourth murder this week. Yeah, no, it's you going whoops 04:06 but here's my card case closed. I got the Vista print logo on it because you couldn't figure out how to do the back side. Accidentally printed the Vista print logo on every single one of your business. I can't figure out how to get it off. You're going to get that off there. All right, it's white it out, but only one layer, so you can still yeah. It's very faint. It's like your grasp on reality, just so close to not be in there. 04:34 Okay, the duck man, the duck man is was a I don't know what to call it conspiracy theory. Maybe I don't know that might be too strong of a word. The duck man was a name attributed to a character that a group of comic book fanatics gave to the creator of these comics. 05:01 I'm sorry the cameras like right in your way. I don't know if you can see this yeah. The camera is different position today. Okay, say you're I lost track of what you were saying in your sentence because you were talking like this. I well you're tracking to me. Okay, so say you're say it again. I'll say it again. The the duck man got his name from a group of comic book fanatics in like the forties, okay, who were big fans of 05:31 his comic books, but they didn't know who he was and he was making these comic books. So Donald Duck yeah, the Donald Duck comics is Walt Disney, the Duck Man, no, are you joking? Are you big? I brought up Disney. Here's the thing. No, no, I actually is there someone who lives in the ponds at Disneyland who like with like emerges from the waters like on the deck. He wouldn't say that he would just go quack 06:01 he's just saying the war he just swims back down. Is this related to Disney? Yeah, this is this is related to Disney. I actually did this intentionally because I feel like we've been bad mouthing Disney a lot lately. I haven't. I got an I love them. I freaking I mean yeah, that's the whole reason we moved to California was for Disney and the terms and conditions said that if I lived in California, they wouldn't shoot me on my porch. Yeah, I don't have a porch. I got an email from 06:30 I got an email this week from a Disney dot org. I don't even know if they use the dot org very often. What did it say the Disney out or dot org email said we are not telling you that you have to stop talking bad about us, but what we are telling you is if you don't talk good about us yeah, then we're going to kill you is what it said. That's what the email said and it said feel free to tell anyone about this. We don't care. Disney dot org side Walt 06:59 surprise. I'm back on frozen. The first thing he did was email us yeah. He woke up terrified. People are talking crap, the knowledge of what a podcast is. He knows who we are. He knows that we've breached the terms and conditions 07:20 and then he knows what an email is as well. He said and said, let me email. If waltz first sentence back is let me email this podcast. That sentence alone is something that could not have even been thought of. He's like he's like yeah, there's these dudes in Kansas City. One of them's got a really big head and the other one's got honestly really great style. He's dressed like perfect for the yeah or what he's used to right right like I am. I fit in 07:48 yeah, but they've been talking crap right. I don't know what would what will waltz phrase be for talking crap? What was the word in the? When did he die sixty? I don't know, but you know my favorite trivia about disney. Now have I told you this? I don't know. There's a lot of pictures of him doing this then there's like this two finger thing yeah and actually in the movie where tom hanks plays and there's a he does this yeah and it's like a hand. You know what that is everyone's like yeah Disney likes to point with two fingers like a flight attendant 08:15 Yeah, no, it's they photoshopped. He was smoking cigarettes all the time and so they photoshopped out the cigarettes and so all over Disneyland are pictures of Walt and he's doing this. It almost looks like a mason symbol. He's doing this weird like finger thing, but it's just they photoshopped all of his cigarettes out interesting. He was a chain smoker. Oh yeah, he died of lung cancer, but it is noble for the times yeah yeah, but now you don't want dare got a whole the Disney and was like hey guys 08:43 we got a problem with you telling all our kids about cigarettes, photoshop them out. I wonder if all the masons, because like you have the everyone's photoshopped, everyone's hands like this, what if that's photoshopped? What if they were holding cigarettes and they photoshopped their hands in their shirts? Is that what they were doing? Yeah, there's all this like free all the Illuminati people are like yeah. Look, they put all they all put their hands like this. What if they were holding a cigarette, everyone and they shot at that photo shopped it, everyone screen shot of that to take out a context 09:13 I don't know if everyone did, but I know our patrons did. I know it's all over the discord. Oh for sure. Anyway, this dude whose name looks to be star rose and his hand is in his button. He's clearly a part of the Illuminati. Anyways, so I don't remember what I was talking about. Oh look like you order a table side guac every time as they don't even offer it. We don't have guac and I'd like to have avocados. Then you got guac 09:42 You look like that guy exclusively drinks mohe dos no rob no rub and do you want to go to a club so to give a heat of a rum all the rum, sugar water and lime you want lime sugar water it's lime aid. That's yeah yeah yeah, but don't give me lime a I want to hand my homemade lime a mint yeah no, so there was a huge 10:08 group. So this is an interesting era for comic books because in this era, comic books were like this. When we think of comic books because of our post nineteen eighty brain that was so used to violence and wwe that we think we think fighting and combat and blood and super heroes, yeah and nerds. That's what I think 10:31 but it used to be, but it used to be comic books used to be these. They used to be in the forties and fifties. Comic books were all animal, anamorphic animals and an a pop morphe. Is there a P in there? Is it there's no P in there? Anamorphic, anapomorfic and anamorphic. That's feels better. Yeah right Alex. Thanks. So this was like the thing. It wasn't super heroes. It was these. Everyone was making these comics. I don't know why it was this, but 11:00 and then Stan Lee was like what if people talked in these yeah? What if we had people? I think it was because people couldn't the comic book artists were but we're good. We're bad at people. I think that's probably true. It is hard to draw people. No, I think realistically that's what look out. Look how hard AI is trying to draw people and messes it up. That is true. Yeah, those are robots. If robots can't do it right, but people still share that crap on Facebook like it's real 11:26 the number of people that I grew up with who will share obviously AI things. It's also crazy how fast we all got trained like you know people who are internet savvy. We got trained to recognize it immediately spot AI yeah yeah. I was I'm in a youth pastor group, so I tried to get booked there yeah and someone shared the there's a Justin Bieber worship song that is completely AI interesting and the thumbnail 11:50 is clearly a I and they shared it and they were like wow. It's so good to see this pop star tour and they were completely serious and the comments were like hey man. This is AI man. This isn't real. They were like oh really and it's like you should go back to serving the olds 12:10 you've aged out of youth ministry. If you can't recognize a I, I think that's that's a that's a true litmus test that you should have to do. I do think like there comes in you spot the AI yeah and are you going to be a creep to these kids? That's literally the bar is so low for youth volunteers and it's very difficult to find people who yeah, so can pass that interesting anyways. 12:35 so this didn't like that. This was a joke. I'm so freaking serious. This was the thing that was like super poppy. You look like you look like you share a things on Facebook. There you you are dressed like you sit on Facebook all day and you share the Tate Brothers podcast. Good perspective. I mean he's got a you look like you don't agree with everything. You look like you try to 13:04 convince people to sign up for Robin Hood to get the referral bonus as your full time job. You're trying to make that your full time thing. No, I don't even invest dude. I literally just make a living off of the referral bonus on a Robin Hood. The app, you know the investing app. I make her I make a living on man. They change the referral bonus Melaleuca. I also sell Melaleuca 13:26 I also have way in a you look like you try to make M L M's cool. Speaking of M L M's. There is a comedian that keeps popping up on my social media stuff and and his whole website and if I ever do this end it for me. His whole website is him selling and my M L M stuff yeah incredible. 13:52 So every other post is you want American made products and it's freaking Melaleuca and I go buddy. I've seen your material. That's the funniest thing you've ever done. That's hilarious. That's pretty good. So this guy was yeah. Here's here's here's something to understand about this era of Disney. Honestly, I think everybody was doing these anamorphic animal comics because Disney was doing it right. I think everyone's commenting con 14:21 copying, copying, copying their comics. Did Disney predate like bugs bunny and all that? I think so. I think so okay. When when did bugs bunny start bugs bunny biceps 14:47 I mean, he's got pretty big biceps. I should show you so I can't show you all these pictures, but I should show you some of the. 14:55 What? 14:59 Yeah, it looks like, yeah, by like 20 years. Yeah. and you probably noticed it in this picture, Because the myth they were trying to sell 15:26 That wasn't true. There was like a team of like a hundred some artists that were doing all these comics or all these different series and among that team was the duck man. Yeah. And so the duck man quickly became pretty famous because the duck man was doing things that no one else in the entire comic book industry, not just Disney was doing like he was very committed to his craft. I think is a word you could say most of most of that scene or art form was very 15:56 clearly the just trying to just pump out content yeah like what we're doing commodity comics yeah and so they were they're cutting corners. A lot of them weren't even coloring in and they were just black and white like they had the ability to do it, but most of them didn't even do it and I don't think that they lacked the ability to color. You know I'm saying like if they've drawn this incredible 16:24 comic with a story line and like it makes sense. You think they were like man. 16:33 I don't know what color this is they were color blind. Well, I just I just realized to a red green color blind person, your shirt just looks like beetle juice. I think no, so the I wasn't saying like they didn't have the ability to do it. Okay, 17:02 I think I it was more like they didn't have the ability to print. It was what I was alluding to got you, but they had that they had that ability. They could do that sure it's probably cheaper for them not to as well. Yes, but he was doing it in his comic, so it wasn't so much that like Disney was like. Oh, it's cheaper to let's do this. People just weren't doing it and then also the story lines and the concepts were very just bland. They were quick. They were rushed. A lot of them were very, very short. 17:32 full of plot holes, but he was doing something that was like it was a good story. It was well thought out. Things were put together and it was very influential. People loved it and so here's a just an example of like his colorings great yeah. I tell he sat down. You could sell he you could tell he really sat down and he colored. So this was just it was a standard. Are them full women buying with that fifty 18:02 Yeah, I should be on it. I should be. I didn't read this before I put this on screen. You know how it is. Those poor kids never have any toys. Well, well, a twenty five dollars is is for turkeys and the other twenty five yeah go on. Oh, this is Scrooge McDuck. Gotcha. What's the rich guy's name Scrooge McDuck Scrooge McDuck? Yeah, yeah. All right, keep going. So it's just it's just a higher quality of stuff that 18:31 anyone was used to in the comic book world and they were. They were longer for him well put together. He was due. He would do these large two page so the other Disney comics weren't good. I mean they were I. What I should say is the other Disney comics were fine. Okay, the other Disney comics were something that pretty much only appealed to kids, but for some reason there's Donald Duck, one like older adult comic book fans appreciated 19:01 I don't know if they, I would say it appealed to them, Later down the line, we started to see their art off of these Donald Duck comics. There is a famous graphic which I can actually grab 19:30 you know that scene where he's running from the the ball. Yeah, there's like a famous picture of that happening in one of these comics and it later happened in an actual animated Disney thing, but this whole concept was actually in Donald Duck first and so they copied that for rate is the lost arc. I shouldn't say copy. They were paying homage, homage, homage, homage, Amish 20:00 to hummage, the hummus to the duck man by doing that the duck. George Lucas also cited him as a major influence in a lot of the storylines and concepts in Star Wars. Oh Mr Lucas, how did you come up with the most groundbreaking series of the last fifty years? Things that has endured and created a fan base of generations, the duck man, 20:29 You're a lab rate on that. 20:36 Quack, quack. 20:45 In the early days of this show, we did like affiliate ads where we were like a sign up for grammarly and use code till and and we got like fifteen cents and now we just do patreon. It's a much better way. It's better for us as creators. It's better for you as listeners and it's a much more fun way for us to interact. We do monthly hangouts like on zoom. We just hang out and play games online and and get to know each other. It's a really fun time. So 21:11 but still use our code till in at grammerly dot com because I think it's still. I might get like a couple cents from that, but join us on patreon because we're having a great time. If you don't, we're going to have to start doing mobile game ads. 21:29 that's supposed to mean, but okay and then another pretty. Wait a minute, what's he doing with the scouts honor? 21:41 Is that what the scouts are doing? You all smoking? It was a children's smoking network all this time. Boys, guys, America Photoshop out the cigarettes from all the kids. What 22:02 Yeah, I'm an eagle scout. I got so many badges. This is why smoke is two packs a day badge wow yeah, I can start a fire. Yeah, I know smoky the bear jees all right, keep going with the story. Another person, another another person that this that this really inspired was a guy by the name of Osamu Tezuka. 22:31 I thought you were going with that. Saba, Tezuka, Osama, Tezuka. You recognize this guy? I don't. You might recognize his work. This is from his biography. Do you recognize this? Yes, this is Astro Boy. Yes, Astro Boy was one of the first, like widely publicized mangas, which is kind of like the comic version of anime. And so he was like a ground. They call him the God of Manga because he pretty much started it. 22:59 which essentially led to anime and he got into it from the duck man. Someone he was in Japan and a US soldier gave him gave him a couple of duck man comics and that was his first introduction. Introduction. What is happening? Introduction to comic books and he fell in love with it and he was very inspired and then he started doing what he was doing. So this is 23:26 the picture I'm trying to paint is this is a very influential artist, right? Right. The whole scene loves him, but no one knows who he is because Disney's like it's Disney and everyone's like. No, it's not. We've seen what Disney does and it's not this good okay, and so well, that's why they kept them secret. They killed him. They were like yeah, you're too good. So in the in the late fifties, a guy by the name of Malcolm Malcolm Willis ended up managing to track down 23:56 the duck man. I don't know how exactly he did this, but he started doing, he did the research. He hired a freelance PI from Miami. And it was the first success the guy ever had. Managed to track him down and he published his, he doxed him, he published his name and address. Why he did that and not, like, he didn't reach out. He's just like, I found the duck man. Here's his name, here's his address. And so there's a guy by the name of Carl. 24:26 I found the duck man. There's a guy by the name of Carl Barks. Okay, also in case you can't tell by what he's wearing an eagle scout and so Carl Barks had been doing this for about seventeen years when he was discovered with literally no recognition except for like Disney being like hey that was good make another sure like all he was known for and so a guy by the name of Bill Spicer, Bill Spicer, wrote him a letter 24:56 wrote him two letters and the first letter he didn't respond to the second letter he responded to and was basically like hey. I didn't respond to your first letter because quite frankly this second letter he sent me is the third letter I ever received like the third, not like in general, but like third fan mail. Yeah, quite really. I don't know how mail works. I've never seen this before. No is the third sent an email to the podcast 25:25 it was the third piece of fan mail he ever received. The first piece of fan mail he ever seed was fan mail that Disney forwarded to him and was like hey, you should take a look at this because Disney got it and it was someone who was really angry about something. He had they were like a you should see this don't do that again. That's the only fan that he ever got and then it was quiet for another ten years and then he got these this guy's two letters back to back okay, so you're responding back. He's like he's like I was hesitant to respond and he's like, but yeah, it's me, I'm the duck man. I've been doing this for a long time. 25:53 imagine, imagine a life where you work as an illustrator. You got a job at Disney and then there's if you ever find yourself writing the sentence. I am the duck man. 26:11 you know I'm saying like there's got to be a moment of self reflection where you go. Is this what I like got into yeah yeah you caught me. I am the duck man you got me so then Spicer, who was a writer, yeah was like. Let me interview you. I want to tell your story and so he flew out, met him and then wrote his story and published his story and this was kind of a 26:43 Don't just so we can be clear of what you just did. 26:51 is that you turn out to have to to to burp and then turned back. I'd like and burped you went like this. You were supposed to. This is where you should have burped. You were like and then come back, but you went which is okay. It's okay. It's fine. I just leave it just fine. I know I know 27:19 I'm drinking the Celsius, it hairs all mess up in the last two thousand and fourteen BMW convertible, not even a BMW. It's a one in the convertible. What's the what's the what's the one that Michael Scott drives? Oh a Chrysler yeah the the sea bring or whatever yeah oof. Okay, so the 27:41 the story gets published like you never watch the office. You just seen enough memes to fit in. You know we're like oh, what's that one that like Michael Scott Michael Scott? Where I that's right. You know what I'm talking about. He's like the world's best boss or something sleazy and it's like they're the meet their memes. So not all of them are actually in the show, so like he thinks stuff happen. Yeah, yeah, but he's still pieced together the whole story that way. You don't have time for the office. You're putting together your 28:10 drop shipping course. I made a million dollars this year on Amazon. Okay, so this is the story that we get for Carl barks. Carl was born in like southwestern Missouri in 1901. I don't remember the name of the town. I know where he ended up 28:39 but I don't know where the town he was marble hill, marble hill. You know where that is yeah. Do you really no? Oh, I mean it's basically it's earthquake area is where they are. Okay, southwest, Missouri, south east. You said southwest, but that's okay. That's why I was like where is it at? There's something wrong with my brain today. I'm telling you man just today. I keep saying all the wrong stuff. No, so anxious so 29:09 laughter 29:13 I'm out. 29:22 we can pause if you need to, but you're just going anyway. Sorry, I didn't mean to come for you like that, so he he was born in southeastern Missouri at a young age. They moved to Merrill, Oregon, yeah and his family was his dad was a farmer. They had like a one square mile plot of land and he actually grew up 29:47 The area he grew up, the closest school was two miles away. He walked to school every day, two miles there and back uphill both ways, uphill both ways. Yeah. There wasn't any other kids like within a mile and a half radius of him, like his closest neighbor was a mile and a half away. And so he just didn't have much of a social life. He had another brother, but he didn't have much in common with his brother. And so he went to school, walked home. And by the time he got home, it was one o'clock in the morning. I had to wake up in two hours and do it again. And it was kind of his life growing up. 30:17 His dad was working on the farm and at a young age found a decent bit of success in the farming industry and stock breeding. And so it was successful enough where he's like, hey, let's move to Santa Rosa, California and see if we can start setting up a new business there. And so they were going to get into vegetables and orchards and stuff like that because they thought it was going to be more profitable. So they moved down there in 1911. 30:47 but it did not work out so they fell on pretty tough financial financial times. They ended up moving back up to Merrill, Oregon and so throughout his childhood every couple years he was bouncing between different places right and this bouncing between different places made it really hard for him to get an education and so at that time at that era, I couldn't read well. I wasn't and you can only draw. He couldn't color. No one thought about a car couldn't talk 31:16 Yeah, you didn't know another kid. Only spoke to the ducks. He's in the backyard. 31:26 his dad's just so annoyed about it. Like our kid just keeps talking to ducks. I don't know what to do with them, and so he has kind of a if it's a hundred years from now, we put him in counseling, but we don't have counseling, so we're going to leave him in the woods, so I guess we just need to get him a job logging or something is twelve. He can cut down a tree and so he hadn't graduated school yet and I'm going to be honest. I probably should have looked into this. 31:56 I don't know when kids normally graduated in this era, but I'm guessing was early because they act like this was a big deal that he hadn't graduated twelve years old yet love years old has even and if that wasn't unusual, then I don't know. Maybe the point was he had years old hasn't put a penny in his four a one K what a lose and so he didn't complete grade school 32:25 okay, it is moving around at the age of sixteen. He does finally manage to get in school, finish grade school at sixteen and they make him go to class. That year was a tough year because his mother dies that year as well, and then he started developing hearing problems out of nowhere, and so it got really tough for him to hear and so so we're in headphones in that picture. I think they were hearing aids well. 32:54 unproven sure, but they look like headphones. They do look like headphones. I should yeah. I stand corrected, but they got wires, hearing down is sure whatever year this picture was yeah. You know anyways, so he he goes back to school. He graduates his mom dies and then because of his hearing problems, it got hard for him. 33:17 to hear her in class. Okay, and so he did. They just make him go to class. So I question he so he just decided in class with a bunch of six year olds. Yes, yeah, and so he just decided not to go to high school okay, and so we have a lot of story to get to. That's why Tim's pushing through so he doesn't go to high school, but in grade school, something significant happened that year. The year he graduated great friend he met, which was a duck outside the school 33:42 and that Doug Todd of the drop. They were talking about mother goose. He was like wait. Is that my mom? Is that goose my mom? You're telling me the goose I've been talking to is my mom and then he saw Andy goose on TV and was like that guy walked out on us. My dad that goose is my dad. This is so foul. 34:13 hate that joke as bad as a bad one, so it's bad. Thank you for laughing at sixteen. He drops out of school and he just starts working labor jobs. He sure he does actually go. He becomes a logger. He works in construction about ten years, just working random manual labor jobs, farmhand, rancher, all this different stuff, but all the wild he's cultivating his passion, which is something he learned his last year grade school from one of his classmates who were eight was 34:41 drawing pictures. So one of his classmates took a he was a bully to that was the thing he was bigger than all of them. He one of his classmates took an art class in like his free time after school okay, and so during the school hours they would have like free work hours and instead of working on his homework. This kid was working on his artwork and Carl 35:09 Carl was like well, what are you doing there? That's that's some interesting math you're doing copying him thinking it's the math answers math over and his teachers like please see me six times eight is not duck his teachers like you're sixteen these the rest of your class is eight. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know the difference between those two numbers, so 35:29 it looks right to me. He did the same thing yeah. No he didn't no. He turned in his homework before you copied it also your copying of his artwork is really bad. It doesn't look anything like what he did yeah. I'm going to write you a letter one day it's from his teacher. She recognized it and she was like. I know these ducks. I know these ducks before 35:59 so he he talks to this other student, his classmates, her his classmates like yeah, I've been going to our school and so like hey, where did you learn to draw like talk? Someone is a kid and the kids like I shut the heck up. Don't talk to me like that. I can tell you how to draw, but you're not going to talk to me like that. You're basically an adult. You're still in grade school. I'm eight 36:25 This is age appropriate behavior for me, so get cigarettes and drawing pictures like that kids live in my dream and so ripping six on 36:41 so he starts giving him lessons like okay. He would go to this. This kid would go to art class and then the next day he'd be like here's what we learned in our okay, and so he taught him a bunch of stuff about art and that kid yeah, wall, disney, 37:00 and so Carl falls in love with art, but yeah he doesn't graduate high school. He has no connections genuinely with anybody. He has no this is what's crazy. Human connection. Let's just pause here for a second that this guy is now seventeen. No high school can just draw yeah and still had a pretty decent freaking life. Well, I want to say that you're you're you're jumping a little early. He didn't have a very decent life. I mean I would say a good career. 37:29 Well, later on in life, later on in life, it did kind of develop panned out it blot. We got more. He did have a tough go at it, but yeah, each of the jobs he took was like a manual labor job. So keep telling the story man. So you look like hallmark made a made a storyboard of what hung over looks like all right and they and like this is the best they could do to be like clearly like because they're selling 37:58 sorry you're hung. No, they're doing there. What is one of those movies where it's like the prodigal son, you know, and you're the son who clearly didn't turn out all right yeah yeah yeah and but they tall marks. They had to play in stereotypes. They don't know how to yeah. They don't know how to be normal yeah okay, so they really play it up, so he's he's going job the job and it's not none of the jobs are working out like their menial jobs. He's there for a little bit has some sort of issue. While he's there bounces to the next job, it's kind of in financial not 38:26 I want to say trouble, but not doing well at all yeah gets married and his wife and him kind of have a difference of opinion because he wanted every night. What he had always done is he would go to work all day and he would come home and he was draw his pictures okay. That was how he wanted to spend his time. His wife was like I want to go out on the town. I want to life was like I want to sit with you. I want to have kids. I want to I want to know you and tell me your name. It's like I can't 38:55 I don't know what those words you're saying mean he's he knows enough to communicate. I have no idea he was just gaslighting. I don't speak English. I don't know what you're saying right now. I didn't hear that water 39:15 so she wanted to go down the town. She wanted to have friends. She wanted to like have a life and he's like. I'd rather or not. I'd rather just sure, sure, sure, and so they would get in disagreements all the time and he just kind of spent ten years working these jobs. He didn't like drawing pictures at night yeah and then his marriage ended up not making it because she was frustrated that he just wanted to draw all the times is draw ducks. Yeah, all he does is draw ducks 39:45 And so yeah, their marriage didn't didn't make it. And so afterwards he's like, hey, instead of going to go get a new job, I think this is the how a lot of divorcees think he's like, he's like, yeah, do you think that let me reinvent myself? I'm going to move to San Francisco. Sure. I'm going to try to get a art job. And so he moves to San Francisco and he starts looking for an art job and it doesn't work that every once every job's full. 40:12 and that I think that's a testament to the times like I, I think you hear a lot of like boomers talk about the life that they grew up with. Like it was really hard and I do think that this was one thing that was actually probably pretty hard. It's like now before you move to San Francisco, you can look at indeed and you know true. Can I actually realistic? Can I have a job here? Yeah, 40:39 he didn't have that luxury. He moved out there on the off chance that there was an opening and there was none, and so he ended up getting another labor job in San Francisco. He was there for a little bit, continuing to draw every night and trying to sell it like sending it off to all these papers. Yeah, well, what he would do is he would write. He would drop these comics and he'd send them to papers and the papers. He just want to use this yeah, and that's kind of what 41:05 artists did at that time. They would draw stuff and they'd send it to papers and the papers would it's like when I buy out the caption contest in the New Yorker every week, he kind except for this was like this is going to be my big break. It's my big break is getting chosen as the caption on the New Yorker 41:23 but this was like they sent it in and they would actually buy it. It wasn't a contest. I understand. I understand so business works, so he did this and an entertainment and it was years of him doing this until eventually he managed. Let me see. Let me get the see if I can get this year right in 41:53 to Judge magazine, which I have no idea what that magazine does, and then after that he started having a lot of success selling comics to the Minneapolis based Cal Calgary, I opener, which I don't know if you can tell by the name I opener. This was not a well respected magazine sure it wasn't conspiracy. It was like racy stuff 42:22 and so like everything was kind of salacious. Yes, I think that's probably a good word for it like tabloid kind of stuff. No, no, no, no, like yeah, let yeah yeah got it. Yeah, you're getting it, but his comic I offer the oh 42:42 yeah, yeah, and then in the middle of like kind of racy like. I just love to read all these things and I also the articles would love a comic of a duck. 43:01 Thanks for checking out this episode. In that mailing list, we give updates on past episodes. and every week things are changing. So if you want to keep learning stuff, that's happening in the Tilen verse. 43:27 I like that. I've never said Till and Verse before, that's the best place to do it. There's a lot of ways to sign up for the mailing list But anyways, now back to this episode. 43:53 they end up hiring a full time okay, and so he's like people love these comics. People loves your comics and so they paid him a salary of ninety dollars a month, which I don't know. I don't know what that inflation calculator comes out to. Let's let's check that real quick and yeah. What year is this again? This is 1923. Oh well, he put it got hired a couple years after that, so probably like twenty five, twenty six something like that. So let's see nineteen, twenty six ninety dollars 44:23 Wow, I haven't used this one before. This is hard to look at. Ninety dollars in January 19, 25. Okay, today is sixteen thirty seven, so sixteen hundred bucks a month. So not great, but fine. Sure. So he's working for them. He's drawing these comics. 44:53 and then it's probably not a forty hour job right. It's not like your yeah. That's a good question. I don't know actually and you could probably work for multiple different publications is the idea yeah interesting that's could be the idea that wasn't what he was doing. He was just working for this one company yeah. He didn't have the he wasn't like I should go get another one is to yeah. Maybe I should burn the cano of both ends, but an opportunity opened up at Disney. 45:22 and this was an interesting opportunity because it was as an in betweener and the way things worked in Disney is you would always come in essentially as an intern with the art community, no matter how much experience you had. It was an MN, essentially as an internship and the in betweeners, what they did is they didn't draw it. They drew the in between slides in the movies and so 45:47 the there okay interesting the yeah every the like big time artists would draw the main points in the storyboard and then the in betweeners would draw the little detail movements in between those big storyboard moments yeah and so and they would have an army of them. There'd be like three hundred of them. Most of them want to make it to a second project, so it was kind of like we're going to test you as an in betweener for a little while you do good enough and you kind of make it through boot camp, a some be in betweener 46:13 or you can be the person who teaches that drawing class at California adventure. 46:21 Yeah, exactly. These are your choices. These are your choices and so this opportunity opened up and it was like okay. I could go work at Disney. This is a huge opportunity sure, but in that era there's no remote work, so he moves from Minneapolis to California right for a job that for all intents and purposes is a tent position. Yeah, who knows if he's going to be able to stay and he's got a good stable job that he's he's has a week or a monthly paycheck for right. He's like he's like. Should I give this up? Is this worth it? 46:50 He ends up deciding to take the big swing on it and go for it. and gets put on a project to do a Donald Duck comic. that they put out. and is like, hey, I want you to do the next Donald Duck comic. He did it. 47:20 And it was like a smash hit, that comic. And so they ended up hiring him on as like a full-time salaried position to create this comic. But what was interesting is the time between when he got hired and when he did that first comic was well over a year. And they didn't have like any feedback to him. They didn't talk to him. They didn't tell him how it was going. He didn't get reports. He didn't get the fan mail. 47:48 and he just had like no correspondence from Disney, no new assignments, so he ends up between releasing that first comic and getting the full time position moving out to the bow hadn't heard from him for a year. Yeah, he moves out to the valley and he gets a farm and he's like I'm going to farm now. I guess I'm a farmer and so he's like he's like I'm over that. I'm going to show them and say hey, you missed your deadlines. He's like a harvest ain't till fall. I don't know what you're talking about yeah, so he starts farming 48:17 still just drawing for fun in his free time, and then he gets a letter from Disney and they're like, hey, can you do another one of those and he's like, oh cool, yeah, and so he does another one. Yeah, I don't leave this farm to die. No, he's literally he stays. He's just does it at night farms during the day and then they just started steadily coming in. Never once did he get a report and like they never once did they tell him how it was doing and he's kind of disconnected from society. He doesn't really have friends. He lives on this farm on his hand, so he has no idea how 48:46 big this is becoming. He just knows they just keep asking for more and he's so passionate about the project that in later interviews he would say that most of the other people that he worked with and the people in the industry they would make mistakes. They would just leave it in. They would write a story, they would rush through it and he said I would genuinely go through five or six iterations of the storyline before I ever even started drawing it because I wanted this to be like a genuine really good story. 49:15 And he's like, so I was building, he was like, I would build the world, I would build the characters and I would try to like, does this make sense for this character? And he said he would even count syllables in every line to make sure it flowed and was easy to read. Like he was writing like poetry and so like he really took like a level of care that no one else in that industry was taking and it was working and that's why it was selling so well. But Disney is obviously like this is Disney doing it, not this guy. Right. Right. And so he ends up doing this for like fifteen years completely without 49:44 anyone ever knowing he's doing it and without him really recognizing that it's like become a that it's a big thing. He just knows he just keeps getting hired for it. He doesn't know he's not getting paid more or no. No, he's got a he's got he's getting a paycheck, but he's not getting paid more like they're not increasing his rates, maybe with like cost of living, but he is he is at this point later in the later in this timeline. He's doing it full time. I should say he's not doing the farm stuff. He still lives on the farm, but it's overgrown. It looks bad. 50:12 I don't know if that's true. Sure, and so he spends, he spends his career doing this, not really knowing if anyone really cares or anything about it, and he's just about at a point where he's starting to get frustrated with it because over the course of time, Disney is a corporation and this corporation is doing what corporations do, and so they started 50:41 for example, they went to him. One of the things he was famous for is he would do those two pages spreads right and they said hey instead doing two page do one page and whenever you're going to do that we're going to get an ad for the other page and he's like oh that's a kind of a bummer and so he started only doing one page spreads and then they started saying hey we're actually going to start doing this on cheaper paper and so he said that what would happen is because he would go over his art so many times he said that on this cheaper paper 51:07 when he would erase, they would actually put grooves into the paper and then it would make it harder for him to go back over it. And so then he started being less. He started going over less because it was damaging the price. The paper was cheaper and so starting to weigh on him just like how how much Disney kind of just didn't really care about it for him. This is art like this isn't like a just a job. This isn't just some comic for kids like this is him a way to express his art and a way to get paid to do art. Basically 51:36 He doesn't care that it's kids comics. Essentially, he just loves doing art, and so he was kind of at a point where he was getting pretty drained, starting to feel like he was running out of stories. I should mention that Scrooge McDuck was his character. He came up with Scrooge McDuck and a lot of other characters in the duck, Donald Duck, no, Donald Duck and Daisy had already existed, but he created Duck Berg. 52:06 which was like the town where they lived and then I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not a Disney adult. You might know some of these characters, but the characters he created were Scrooge Mcduck, Gladstone, Gander, Beagle Boys, the Junior Woodchucks, Gyro, Gearloose, Cornelius Coot, Flint Heart, Glomgold, John D Rocker Duck. 52:36 I don't know. I don't know that is this sounds like either Disney characters or your office fantasy football league teams. All right, that's all this sounds like to me. 52:52 John D Rocker Chuck Rocker Duck. Yeah, so he created a bunch of characters and a bunch of the big big story lines that you see in the Donald Duck universe and it's interesting. The the characters of Donald Duck, what Donald Duck became because he really was Donald Duck existed, but 53:14 because of these comics and many of these comics got adapted into feature movies, created this lore around he created who Donald Duck was as a character like there was a foundation. He created that and so Donald what it kind of was was Donald Duck was who he was Scrooge McDuck was who he wanted to be, but over time he started to realize that Scrooge McDuck has a lot of the same problems of who he actually is as well, and so Donald Duck was a guy who bounced from job to job and could never really find much success and had an anger issue. 53:43 because he had an anger issue as well. And Scrooge was obviously a very wealthy man who made it big, but then was greedy, and he kind of, I don't know, tied that string of like, well, I'd still have problems if I was there. And so all that lore and the character development was him. 54:06 but he started to feel like I'm not going to I'm running out of ideas. The ink, the the tank is running dry. I'm getting a little sure I'm tired of dealing with Disney because they're they're making this really hard on me. I give him me cheap paper. I give me cheap. I labor in the sun all day long with this cheap paper. You don't really work at the set. You should work inside. You don't have to draw farming. Yeah, but he well he's he's drawing. Yeah. Okay, drawing outside 54:35 I guess and so he's he's starting to kind of come to the end. I'm saying compared to farming drawing on this difficult paper. Yeah, so when he gets this letter, it's kind of in this this time in his life where he thinks this is all coming to an end. He's not going to be doing this much longer. He's tired. He hasn't really got the recognition he feels like he ever wanted. He's had two divorces now 55:03 and he's had just a lot of let downs in his life and when he gets this letter, one of the things that they ask for is they ask for a painting like a full size painting of the characters. Oh, okay, and yeah from him and I could you do like a big commission and painting yeah commission of canvas and he agrees to it. He does the commission and when what was this guy's name Bill Spicer 55:32 publishes his document on it, he says that he did that, oh, me too. So he starts getting commissioned And they were like, 56:02 Donald Donald Duck paintings and so he started out doing all these commissions, but he got so busy doing commissions. His name is Carl barks. Yeah, okay, why 56:18 I'm go ahead. I just I don't know that just it is hit me like I don't know half an hour later and so he's a communist dog, so he he started off comrade, so he's filling up so much time doing these commissions. I was just going to say this is a this is an authentic Carl Borg's painting yeah, and then you're like whoa, whoa, 56:46 I love the idea of someone getting into an internet fight and they're like oh you should look such a Karl Marx fan. I do love Karl Marx. He's great. I love everything. I love Karl Marx yeah his duck stuff is like work. It was like duck stuff. Yeah, Karl Marx duck stuff. I especially like the stuff he did for that weird magazine or whatever it was. The I of all his writings I don't 57:17 I don't. I'm going to be honest. I'm sure for talking about the same car be wild if they were if at the end you're like and then later in his later and so now he's in his early seventies yeah and he's doing all these commissions, but it's taking him so much time like these are he because he's he's he cares about his artwork yeah and so he spends a lot of time in his commissions and he has so many of these commissions coming in. He can't keep up with it, so Spicer is like hey, what if we start just doing auctions and so 57:46 they go and they start doing auctions long story short, these start selling for thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars at auctions, because people want them so bad and so can see some of the paintings yeah. So in his seventies okay, I see so yeah here he is painting one, but yeah. These are these are the kind of paintings that he's trying. Carl barks paintings and I believe and I don't want to miss speak here, but I'm going to say this anyways. 58:16 if you go to Disney World or Disneyland, you'll see paintings like these there. I think he was the first one to do these okay, and so yeah they so that one twice yeah. I just like this one the most and so he started selling these at auctions long for short. This is what made him a millionaire in his late in his mid seventies. He started selling these prints on auction and I made him a millionaire and he then became kind of like the 58:46 and angry. He became everything Scrooge McDuck is and more and he became like a comic con guy. There wasn't a comic con at the time, yeah, but he would be at these conferences where all these comic and art fans would be and he would go to those companies. We would do the ham get on stage. There's there's music and dark lights and then it starts playing music and he's up there just as a to do 59:16 did you do to do to do to do? He's up there painting he's old, but he's a people like that's caro marks barks as caro marks. They all bark for him. That's like is they and then the end he just and it's Donald Duck. It's like oh my gosh, I thought I was gonna be the whole time Donald Duck being crucified, John, a picture of Jesus and he turns it over 59:56 incredible and then in 1987 he was driving home from work and he saw this light in the sky. 01:00:12 Okay, I wish that was true. I wish I did this whole thing and there was a ufo story at the end of it. The end, the end, I know, but in nineteen eighty seven he gets inducted in as the in the inaugural inducted, not abducted, it's inducted, it's inducted as the first artist in the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, which is like the comic book Hall of Fame now and that guy showed you a summer to Zuka ends up getting inducted in two thousand and two lot of other big name. 01:00:41 comic book artists are a part of this hall of fame now, but he was the first person ever inducted into it and he survived until it was ninety nine. So he really got to spend like the last twenty years. He was very rich. He never retired. He continued drawing until he died. He died at ninety nine. I don't know if I said retired or died. He died. Yeah, died at ninety nine, which was the year two thousand and so he spent his the latter half of his life making a lot of money doing these prints and kind of 01:01:11 It's a story that feels like what is that guy that we did that the singer who oh yeah, no one discovered until six to Rodriguez, yeah, six to Rodriguez. It feels it feels very similar to that story because he spent so many years just passionately pursuing the thing that he really loved and not getting a lot of recognition and then yeah all of a sudden out of nowhere he found out 01:01:32 I've got tons of touring fans are all across the world. Yeah, yeah, we're hopefully one day, hopefully one day, hopefully one day someone sends us a letter and Disney's like we're not going to send this to them. Hopefully one day this podcast pays off and you can stop being a landlord for old people in Branson. If you like this podcast, send letters to disney and tell him how much you send all of your family to Disney. You keep getting people who ask if we have a P O box, which we need to send one up. We haven't got around to it yeah. 01:02:02 but just if you if you don't, if you don't know where to send it, just send it to Disney, send fan mail to Disney. Yeah, we'll find it. Yeah, we read Disney's mail. So yeah, that's that's the story of Carl Barks or the duck man. He was a secret for a long time, but he ended up not being a secret and he got very rich off making really good comics. That's awesome. So that's a story. If you care about something and you want to do it, all you need to do is not graduate high school and pursue it at night. 01:02:30 so vigorously that it leads to a divorce and then pursue it. You're are like that message non graduate high school pursue something so much that it leads to a divorce and just keep pursuing it until it eventually hopefully pays on till you get rich. The age of seventy five yeah, it's right. You look like you sell beach front property at a lake in Indiana. Yeah. You want to see the beach views here in it a 01:03:03 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode of things early last night. If you liked it and you want more of it, we mentioned the six toe Rodriguez episode six toe was a musician who released an album, thought that it flopped and it did in the United States, but unbeknownst to him had gone platinum in a few other countries and then so he was just working as a construction worker, doing his normal thing back home in Detroit and then found out years later that he is this massive sensation across the world. So he's thrust into doing arena tours. It was an incredible story. 01:03:33 please go check out our episode about that. It is linked somewhere here or if you've already listened to the entire back catalog, you've listened to all two hundred episodes we put out and you're like I just cannot wait for another one. You can listen to next week's episode right now on Patreon. Patrons a great way to help support this show to help us keep doing more episodes, but you get next week's episode and you get all of our episodes ad free and you can do that by just texting till into six six eight six six or the link is somewhere around here, but anyway, we'll see you next week on things I learned last night.

Did you know there was a man known as the Duck Man? He helped create some of the most famous Donald Duck comics. This man’s name is Carl Barks. Let’s dive into his story and how he became known as the Duck Man. Who Was Carl Barks? Carl Barks was a comic book artist and writer who worked on Donald … Read More

Why 46 People Witnessed His Murder and Said Nothing | Ken McElroy Ep 245

10-15-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 So 46 people see a man get murdered outside of a bar and no one tells the police anything. Yeah, they all kept it quiet. It seems like they might've been in cahoots. In cahoots. Yeah, this week is the, this is things I learned last night and this week we are learning about the story of Skidmore, Missouri, a town that banded together against Ken McElroy. 00:24 Well, we don't know if they maybe the account allegedly banned together against Ken McElroy, who was who's terrorizing the town and mysteriously got shot outside of a bar in front of forty six people who all saw what happened, but the FBI closed the case because no one, none of the eyewitnesses will talk about what they saw. So this is a podcast where we we learn a lot of stuff and we laugh a lot and it's a really good time. Thanks for checking it out. Awesome. This weekend, 00:54 I will be at what's that where you at today, October is October fifteenth. So this weekend I will be in the lynchburg Virginia at Liberty University and the very end liberty, bibbidi next weekend. I will be in Massachusetts and that's a great time and then the weekend after that I'll be in Canada. 01:16 Tabor, Alberta, so can and honestly Tabor, Alberta. I've been there before is a lot like Skidmore, Missouri, very small town, very small town, so interesting. Well, be careful if you know who's out of forty or forty six people. Sometimes you want to go where everyone inspires again. Bum bum bum bum. Let's get to the 01:40 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of Ken McElroy, Ken? First of all, pretty sure it's called Mackle Roy. Yeah, it is Mackle. Because you know the rule on Mick right on Mick or no, what's the rule on Mick? If it's MC and then if like so it's like McDonald's right, so we don't say McDonald's. We say that's right, that's right, you're right, because whatever follows the sea. If it's a consonant, 02:10 then it's Mick. If it's a vowel, then it's Mac. Oh interesting. Yeah, I've never heard that rule before yeah. Well, can make alleroy, so we kept calling him John McCaffey, but we're saying on a cafe, Mac, a Mac, a fee should be because everyone says Mac a fee should be on the cafe. Everybody always said though with the with this software, everyone called it McCaffey. No one called it Mac a fee. It's most Mac a fee interesting. We were wrong. Yeah, well he was wrong. 02:39 So this is Macaroy. Yeah, this is Ken, Ken, Macaroy, Ken Rex, Macaroy, not to be mistaken with Ken Macaroy. This is Ken Macaroy. You don't want to mix the two don't want to talk about this guy. We're not talking about Ken. This guy, what is this guy? The Golden Bachelor? What is this close? He is a real estate investor and he's got like a podcast or something about real estate investments. He's close friends with the rich dad, poor dad guy. 03:06 Oh gosh yeah, so he's one of those you know that which I hate that guy anyway yeah, so not that can mackerell. We're talking about this can mackerell can per dog. He's the dog can rex. You don't get a name like rex without big a dog just from first glance. I'm going to guess that he's a amateur wrestler. Oh, that's an interesting guess. Ken Rex mackerell rex yeah 03:34 that's that's actually an interesting. It's Rex W R E W like he wrecked stuff. I love that well on July tenth, nineteen eighty one Ken Rex McRoy and his wife Trina. We they went to the local. I don't know what the name of the place was. It's like a local bar okay and their hometown, not their hometown, but the town they lived in Skidmore, Missouri, which have you ever heard of Skidmore, Missouri have heard of Skidmore Skidmore is a big town. 04:04 and by big town, I mean there it is. It's very small. It's it's point. I think I square miles. I think I know what happens here really interesting. Well, it's point three square miles population of two hundred and forty five. I think I know what happens cool, great thanks. It's a very, very small town, very small town, two hundred and forty people. They're at the local. Where is it at in the state of Missouri, northwest, basically Nebraska, like it's way up there. 04:34 and so they they go to this local bar and as they're walking out, yeah, they walk out, they sit down in his truck and they're sitting in his truck, waiting to leave a crowd forms outside about forty forty six people somewhere in that ball park for the forty two to forty six people are out in outside this pub and a series of shots rings out right 05:03 two of them strike can and kill him. Several, several shots get fired, but two of them strike them and kill them. They were fired from two separate rifles is what's interesting. Yeah, one was a center fire rifle. The other was a twenty two rim fire rifle. Oh, they sound bullets from different guns, different guns. Yeah, they found the casings. They found the actual bullets within him. So he lives in skidmore. Yeah, he and his wife go out to the bar. Yeah, when they leave 05:32 a crowd surrounds their car. I don't know if I would say surrounds the car. A crowd is there. A crowd is present outside the bar already. They're there when they leave and then and then shots from behind their car. Yeah, they're all from behind them, so there are cars not surrounded the whole. The crowds behind them outside the bar, they get in their car, they're getting ready to go and then the shots ring out. Okay, what's interesting is this crowd of people, dozens of people there 06:02 Nobody calls an ambulance. Nobody calls for help. And in fact, nobody identifies a shooter. The police try to do this investigation, try to look for people to come forward to identify who took the shot. No one can come forward and identify. The only person who's testifying is Trina, his wife, who was in the car. And so they're not able to get a good report of what happened. And eventually after investigating for a long time, 06:27 trying to work with the town to figure out what happens. The FBI closes the case because they say we can't get any solid evidence on what happens here and it gets down and goes down as an unsolved murder. This is in 1981 and it still hasn't been solved to this day, despite forty plus witnesses, forty to forty six people being present to watch the thing. So a crowd of forty six people, not to mention this is this is if you look at the map, 06:55 This is so if you look where skidmore city hall is there across the street, that little town like diagonal and down, that's, that's where they are. And so this town, like the, if you're going north is where they're parked. And so there's all the other things that are in this town right around there. Right. And so people who weren't in that crowd probably saw what happened, right? Because there's not much happening in the city. The rest of the city is just houses. This is where 07:23 everything happens is right here in this little block. There's probably other witnesses as well that weren't a part of that crowd, but no one comes for and forward and no one says what happened, and so it leads you to wonder why so let's take a look at the story of Ken's life and see what led us to this moment and see if we can figure out how we got here, how two separate people murdered him 07:49 Yeah, two separate people. Well, it very much looks like unless someone was holding two separate rivals and every and nobody noticed nobody in this car. Forty six was like about it the guy standing like this to guns. It might have been that guy. You see anyone with two guns that day? Yeah, no, actually I didn't see anything. Okay, so this is clearly though 08:13 So I know this story. I don't know what happens. I don't know why. What do you know this story? I just know that there was 46 witnesses. There's 46 people who saw this man get murdered and no one is talking. Yeah. For 40 plus years, no one says anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like refuses to talk about it. Yes. Yeah. And so like the whole town basically conspired together because this guy was a bully of some sort, right? Yeah, that's close. That's really close. I don't know if bullies the word I would use. I see the word bully thrown out a lot. 08:41 but I don't think bully is the right word for okay. So anyways, let's just walk through the timeline of ken's life and to see what led us to the situation, so there's a documentary about this. Yes, there's there's a lot of things about this june, sixteenth, nineteen thirty four ken is born. 09:08 okay to his parents, Mabel and Tony McElroy, McElroy. He's one of fourteen kids. Guys, holy cow man, yeah, he was born in Overland Park, Kansas, but this was nineteen thirty, so that was a rural Kansas at the time. It was not what it is today and they lived on a farm. They had a one mile by one mile farm. 09:36 some small little farm that they lived on and he spins his youth working on the farm, doing physical labor and stuff like that. As a teenager in the forties, he is a little bit of a rascal and he does like small time theft, but nothing like super serious, sure just kind of rascal behavior, especially for the forties. You know, forties, just a little bit of shoplifting was kind of what the 10:01 The soda pop guy hates when he sees Ken McElroy coming over to my soda pop shop. Cause I bet he's going to do some rascaling. He comes in, he sticks his hand in my candy jar. There's no telling how many jelly beans he took. 10:21 And after years of watching this rapscallion take my beans and bite them. 10:36 I has to have done something. So I followed he and his lady. I found out where they was living. And then I followed them for four more years. Until one day I has two rifles. 11:00 This is for stealing me SOTY props. And I loudly said, I don't care who sees me do it. I'ma shootin' Ken McElroy. But it turns out, he was stealing them people's jelly beans too. He's been stealing jelly beans all those years. And you know what happens to the jelly bean thieves. How long we going to do this character? A while. A long time. 11:32 Are you finished? I think so, so he gets into some rascaling in the forty's sure he turns eighteen and fifty two and marries his girlfriend, who at the time was sixteen and they moved to Colorado together normal in the fifty's and so they moved to Colorado. Finally, we've been trying to get her married for two years. They moved to Colorado and he that's how they had fourteen kids. They literally had to start real young 12:03 they moved to Colorado following his sister's husband who moved out to Colorado started a construction company and there were he's working construction with them out in in Colorado, okay, and while he's there and this is Trina that he's married. No, no, this is a girl named Oleda, Oleda, I wasn't going to last 12:32 What's Macaletta, O L E T A O L E D A O L E D A O L E D A O L E D A O Lita Macalroy, this is the O Lita Macalroy and Ken. There's a documentary about this. There's podcasts about this. If you don't like the way we're telling this story, find the way someone else does it. That's my message. 12:56 don't come, don't leave a review. We're not going to get better. Leave a review. Your your one star review is not making us better at this podcast. Do you understand it's making us more the way we are? I see your one star Collins. I dig my heels in and I keep doing what I've been doing. I'm going to find you in a crowd of four eyes. People I was going to find where you live. 13:27 and I was going to come over to your house and I'm going to say, Hey, did you leave a one star review of my podcast? And they say, Oh my gosh, how did you find me? Please get out of my house. Found you. 13:43 this is and eyes like a word. If you step outside, I like the concept of this. I like the concept of someone leaving a one star review on something and the person tracking the what I want to do for a TV show. What I would love to do is hate comments. I would love to do a show called hate comments. 14:03 where it's like catfish, where I track down the person who left the comment and then we have it printed on a postcard and I and this isn't my hate comments. This is somebody else somebody else's hey comments that girl who makes coffee yeah talking about yeah, the thirty year old yeah. We take her to all the people who made the hate comments and we hand them the comment that they made and we go read it to her face read it to her yeah. I had to her face that idea that we should a hundred percent do that so support on patreon so we can do this yeah there it is 14:31 That's a great show. It's a great, a great series. Yeah, you know, some people going to learn and you don't break your knees right in front of the person say, say it, say it. I think your need to say it of card 14:50 Sorry, what? I said, I think you need to say the car. Okay. So while he's working at construction. Hate from Des Moines, Iowa. We found you. And you thought we wouldn't cause you put Des Moines, but we knew you were in Cedar Rapids. 15:20 If you've been watching for a minute and you like this show, Our patrons get a ton of perks for their support. 15:32 We do monthly hangouts. There's a way to get birthday messages on your birthday. There's a lot of great perks, but more than anything, you just help make sure that this show continues to happen forever. We never want to stop. We're going to keep doing this forever. If we have enough patrons supporters, we can put our brains in those little vats and like have AI pretend it's us. And so like we can keep doing it long after we die, but that only happens if you support us on Patreon. So we appreciate your support. Thanks for your help. If you don't want to support, that's totally fine. Thanks for being here. We really appreciate you watching the show. 16:04 So while he's in Colorado, he's working for his sister's husband's construction company and he suffers a traumatic head injury and his personality starts to say about the I've told you about the girl in my hometown who I had to block on Facebook and stuff because now she would keep commenting like she was going through all my posts and just saying like 16:25 I mean, she would just take the counter of whatever I was saying. She was just being annoying, like just being like, you're a jerk, all this stuff. Eventually I blocked her, but she's a barista, the one coffee shop in my hometown. And so when I do go in there, I tip very generously. Just to, I don't know, it feels weird. Like I see her and I go. And she's like, yeah, it really does feel like that. 16:52 Yeah, because I go in, I get my little ice vanilla latte. So we guys want a nice vanilla latte and she was okay and makes it. She was looking at four dollars and I'm just like all right, yeah, and it's it's so just pretends like she didn't say all those crappy things. I don't even think she pretends it. There's a tension for sure. Oh yeah, it feels weird. Yeah, yeah, you know that's a weird small town culture thing and I think the internet has made it so much weirder because in small towns we've always known for my entire childhood. We've always known 17:21 that people talk about other people and like that's just what you know yeah. That's what they do yeah, and so there's a huge pressure when you grow up in a small town like skid more. How was the population of skin more? It's a lot of the right. Yeah, it's skid more is like Miller next to us right small town and there's always a pressure to like behave a certain way. Really, it's almost like playing a social game on Big Brother, where it's just like I can't. I don't 17:49 There's some things where I'm just going to take this behavior from you, even though I want to be like, hey, don't treat me like this. Yeah, that would cause me more problems for me to call this out. Yeah, so I'm just going to let you behave that way because it's easier for me just to deal with this and like separate. But then the internet exists where now you're just there. Commenting those things, there's kind of that security. Oh my gosh, I don't even think I don't even know what like. 18:17 I don't understand what it is. I know this is a tangent. I think it's the fact that it's like, you don't have to see the other person on the other side. You don't have to recognize that's a person. A guy in my town got something stolen from him and he knew who stole it. So he put on Facebook and he said, if anyone can give me the address for this person, I have a reward, they stole this from me and I want to get it back. Interesting. And I messaged and was like, hey man, 18:45 call the police. Yeah, that's a complaint. What kind of wild west? Yeah, you're just going to show up at the house and be like hey, I know you stole this. That's what he was. He was like if you can get this back, I will give a reward. Yeah, I'm like that's what the police are for you, dummy. Yeah, that's kind of what out online and be like hey, if someone can go get this yeah or like find it was a girl her address. Yeah, I'm like what kind of broken 19:15 Yeah, how many worms are in your brain for that to happen? You know, it's interesting. So what I'm saying is I understand the small town politics that come into skid more is what I'm trying to get at. That is interesting. I don't know if this is so much small town politics. You'll find out as we sure sure sure sure sure, but I understand. Yeah, I know what I understand there being forty people who are like we're not going to say anything. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I get how that comes to be because it's hard for some people to be like how is how did forty people see that? 19:44 It's like dude in a small town we all know each other. Yeah, yeah. And so it's like. There's no strangers. There are definitely now that I'm an adult in my small town there are definitely looks at like football games and stuff where things happen or things are said you overhear someone's and like you lock eyes with that person that you know has like been outside of your hometown. Yeah. And it's like, and you do that. You guys do that look across the, where you just go. Oof. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are quiet. 20:14 Acknowledgements of what's happening yeah a hundred percent yeah anyway, so it's fifty four he's working in Colorado for this construction company. He suffers a traumatic head injury and his personality sort of shifts for sure he gets CTE and he becomes a different person. We don't know the good CT. Now we don't know the we don't. I don't know if there was ever a diagnosis. He heard his head didn't start diagnosing that stuff later. Well, I what I'm saying is I don't know if he went to the doctor. He heard his head and he said his head hurt the rest of his life. 20:42 but like it's the fifties and he's at work at construction. He's like I hurt my head and he's like let's go back to work. They're like suck it up and he's his there hammering like the nails over here and he's like he's like why won't this nail go in and they're like get out of here. You're fired. He's got the nail and he's just something that'd be probably easier if you had a hammer in your hand. He's hitting it with a knuckle. He's just like this hair hurts. I he just think there's a hammer is just 21:12 and yeah, then they fired him because they're like they're like all of a sudden you're bad at this job. Yeah, there's something wrong. Yeah, it's like man's like why do you so bad? He isn't good at this anymore and suddenly sucks a con. Yeah, I told him to go down in the story happened in the passenger seat. That was the driver side. Yeah, and he started making the driving sounds of his mouth and I like you haven't left yet and he's like I've been gone for thirty minutes. I'm on one of the store. What are you? Yeah, 21:40 I don't know enter a word that they said back then we can't say any of them. That's a like what do you like? They were just like I he's dumb now he's out of here, so yeah, here's his head and then the next year or two and then there's the wise. I was gonna. I was gonna take my revenge for my jelly beans today, but then I saw that he got five from that job 22:08 and so I figured I got to wait a little longer, wait a little longer, stack it. I figured the head injury would do it itself, so they decided to move back home. Eventually they settle in Skidmore, Missouri, him and his wife, because he can't find work anywhere. Everyone's like you're done. Oh, let a yeah him and him and his wife, Oledo, and so in fifty eight few years later, they've been in Missouri for two or three years. Ken somehow meets another woman named Sharon 22:37 and starts seeing her. And so he divorces Oletta, marries Sharon. And the marriage wasn't a marriage because he was in love with Sharon and wanted to marry her. It was because he thought that if he was married to Sharon, then that would get him out of an assault charge because he shot at Sharon during an argument. And so he's like, let's get married so that way I can get in trouble for shooting at you. 23:08 it's a fifty. When ladies complain about dating now, yeah, it's fair, it's fair, and so he's. I did shoot at my wife a couple weeks ago, though, and she deserved it all right. Like that's so crazy. Yeah, that's why yeah, but we're married. You can't charge me for that. I have actually been a that's a civil dispute like it's a what do they call it? It's a I don't know what they call it. 23:38 I think they call it a domestic dispute, domestic abuse. Well, yeah, that's what it is, but yeah so, but I a scarer I don't want to actually behind. It's like the it's like the monkey episode. Yeah, yeah, you scared and so they're married for two years and he starts seeing another girl by the name of Sally and they're dating and he actually moves her into their house and so now Sally and Sharon both live in the house with him bro. 24:08 here is the thing about some of these things. Okay, if you're a single guy, there's somebody out there for who will just you know, just lower your standards a bit. Yeah, you'll find a Sharon, you'll find a that's because like he's not like a like a hot guy. No, no, it's not like yeah. 24:36 this is crazy to me yeah and don't worry that is crazy to me. Don't worry, it gets way worse, so so yeah. He moves in his girlfriend Sally. They're both living there, has a couple of kids, well and share both of them. He has a couple of kids with who both of them and 24:55 in sixty four, so it's been about four years or sixty four. He meets another girl by the name of Alice, so he leaves Sharon in Skidmore. Yeah, there are two hundred people in this town. It is it. This is what I'm saying. This is this defies the small town politics. You're not allowed to do this right. Yeah and so so Ken meets this other girl Alice, so he leaves Sharon moves in with Alice, his house takes Sally 25:24 with him though, after Sally has three kids though he kicks her out of the house and so now it's just him and Alice and Sally got kicked out and then their kids, I guess are still there. Okay, meanwhile he's still thieving. He's stealing beers, he's still in ears and beans, he's stealing beers, jelly beads, cigarettes, gasoline. He's just stealing stuff all around town all the time and this is again 25:53 against small town politics. You can do that crap yeah yeah yeah. That's one of the rate people are like oh you know crime is so much better in small towns like yeah dude like we can watch you drive to your house after you stole this front like yeah, your house is on the same street. I mean look at look at this town. You think you're going to get away with anything. I'm so say like you're not going to it's like to go. Oh, we have a neighborhood watch. It's like we are 26:20 a neighborhood that's talking about and we can see everything. We can see the end of the city from our block and all directions. When you're a kid, you just stare at the end of the city and you think about all the dreams of my come true and one day you might just keep walking, you know, walk and keep walking straight out of the end of the city, but then you go on. We were not even go. Where's the next closest town? I even know who I would know there. I don't have three moms in the next town, so here's a difficult part. Our here's a difficult part of the story in nineteen seventy can 26:49 becomes involved with a young girl by the name of Trina. Trina is 20 years younger than him. He's 34. And has an illegal, inappropriate relationship with her. Her parents are very against this, very, very against this. And so he does a normal thing and he burns their house down and kills their dog. And they say, okay, you can date our daughter, I guess. 27:18 What? this relationship started, the school bus driver into pulling over so he could meet her. So a very, very not okay. 27:48 and then marries her so that way it's not a legal whole thing is yeah. So marries her moves her in with him and Alice and so that's so wild yeah and so Alice is like we need to get away from this man. He's a psychopath and so Alice Trina she's a Alice takes her and Trina and they run away and so he in response goes and burns down Trina's parents new house and shoots their new dog. 28:18 And so Trina moves back in. And they're like, we didn't do any of that. This is Alice's fault. Yeah, why are you, Alice is the one who ran away. And so he marries Trina, or he already married Trina. Trina. Wow, this story got so much, sorry that I accused him of stealing jelly beans. Honestly, I wish that's what he was doing. I wish that's all he was doing, yeah. So Trina moves in with him. And it's interesting, if you see Trina tell the story, Trina's very much kind of like a lot of. 28:46 grandmas now day where you meet grandma and you're like wait, hold on, grandpa did what she's gay kicked down the door at the bar and came over, planted one on me and I didn't look back since I was married to somebody else at the time. Yeah, like and so like she talks about him like they were actually in love. Like she actually like really cared about him. He saw me walking and he swerved and hit me with his car and 29:12 And I was like, wow, any guy who was willing to go that far for my attention, you know, yeah, and I played hard to get. So I was like, oh, I'm stuck under here, you know, and I was and so you had to back out, you know, broke my hip, but you know. 29:36 but then you know the way he apologized was just any shot near me and I said you know what I've been a very that man my parents couldn't afford a fourth house. 29:53 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. Want to let you know real quick. We have an email list and it's not like a hey, we're going to send you our merch and new episodes all the time. We actually give you updates on these stories as we find out about them. So a lot of our episodes we've done a couple years ago now have updates or that the person the top was about passed away or was caught by the police or whatever updates we can find on episodes that we've done. We want to let you know about it so that our episodes just aren't 30:21 you know out there out of date. It's really fun way to keep learning new information and then every once in a while we let you know about new events coming up or new episodes and it's just a way to help us keep spreading the show. Join that email list. You can text till into six six eight six six or there's a link in the description of this episode or you can just go to till and dot com. It's very easy to join this email list. It's everywhere. It's actually really hard to not join it so 30:53 How did you know grandpa was the one? Well, when he burned down my parents' house. Wait, what? Oh, honey. You'll understand one day. 31:08 Oh, he broke up with you through text. I freaking wish if that's the worst thing that is suck it up. It's how it's so easy these days. Oh, he cheated on me. He burned out my parents house twice. This so 31:30 it faster than nineteen eighty, but yeah, you're right. We did have better mortgage rate. Wage was more of a. I will concede the fact that there were elements of my life that were easier as long as you can see the fact that there were elements of my life that were much, much worse. So by 1980 can 31:55 has been charged with twenty one felonies. Oh my and he has been convicted of zero of them because in every case he burns down the prosecutor's house. Yeah, in every case he intimidates people out of the charge and so he follows people around. He sits outside their house and I mean to be fair like look at this picture. This guy sits outside your house with his dog and you know he's burnt down people's houses. He shot at his wife like he you know who what he's done. 32:24 and so he gets away with all this, but you know he's not a good shot. 32:34 So by 1980, 21 charges, never been convicted of any of them. Claims that his lawyer is one of the mob's lawyers down in Kansas City. Whether that's true or not, we don't know. But he's like, he brags that he can get away with anything. He's like, I can do whatever I want. It would make sense that he's got connections. I mean, it's right here. Yeah. And so 1980 rolls around. He's got 10 kids now from five different wives, I believe. Or I shouldn't say wives, five different women. Not all of them are his wife. And so, 33:03 one of his a couple of his children go to the local grocery store in town and is accused of stealing by Mrs Bowen camp. The the lady who owns the store, her and her husband on the store, their husband's name. I can't find record of it. They he goes by bow, bobo and camp, which I love very small town thing, bobo and camp and so accuses them of stealing and so ken then starts threatening 33:31 the family because he's like well, of course, my kids stole. They're my kids. Yeah, I told you seen the things I do. I said just go down there, grab a handful of jelly beans, just do it or else, and so the Owen camps go to the police. They file lean legal proceeding against Ken and the kids for robbery or right whatever, and so then Ken stocks the family, the bone camp family, 33:59 and outside the store. One day he shoots at bow and he hits him in the neck. He doesn't kill him, but he does hit him and so ken finally gets arrested. He goes to trial and he gets charged with attempted murder. He spins a year over his kids getting a cue. He's like don't you accuse my kids of stealing their fine citizens. Yeah, yeah exactly shoots him in the neck and so can a sentence to two years, he for sure two years in prison 34:27 A year later, he's out on bail, awaiting an appeal hearing, because he's appealing it. Immediately, the day he gets out on bail, he goes to the local bar with an illegally acquired firearm, and he goes in there and he starts threatening Bobo and camp, like graphically threatening him. It's a M1 Garand rifle with a bayonet on it, and he's like threatening him inside the store with this rifle, in the bar with this rifle, graphically talking about what he's going to do to him. 34:58 and what he's going to do to his body afterwards, and it's like really graphic and so as a result, and I'm confused about why this happened, Bo is like I'm on drop the charges. Well, as a result, what happens is they decide to delay his appeal hearing and then turn it into a bond and schedule a bond hearing 35:25 so his appeal gets delayed. He then has a bond hearing that pops up and so now his his time out on bail is extended. I think it's like a weird legal loophole. They're like what you broke your bond or you book your yeah your yeah because you have the gun yeah and then you're not allowed and so now we have to have a separate hearing for that and then we're going to have your appeal and so I think it was like a weirdly loophole, but essentially he gets to be out for longer and so well that's good to know. So a week later on parole a week later 35:55 The first week of July, the people of Skidmore are now very frustrated about the failures of the justice system to protect them against Ken. They're like, Ken is terrorizing the town and he has been for two decades. And so... 36:15 they get together as a group and they say hey next week, July tenth, we're going to get together as a group. Yeah, they said we're going to gather at the local legion hall okay, and we're going to get together. I'll they all show up kin shows up. He's a hey. I heard about the meeting. I heard where they were like who told kind of come yeah can we're just working on a 36:39 and so we were thinking about putting a statue of the moth man down town and wanted to hold a vote all in favor. No all right. That makes sense. We've never seen him here. That doesn't. Yeah. Why would we do that here? All right, everybody go home. All right, let's let's never meet here again, especially not 37:07 especially not next Tuesday at seven. There's no chance here anyone would ever meet here for any reason ever again on Tuesday at seven coffee and refreshments provided. They will not be provided because there's nothing happening here. There's also going to be so many jelly beans. There's a lot of jelly beans on the opposite side of town. 37:31 there's an unattended jar of jelly beans. There's it's a jelly beans at the other end of town. We've just voted the July nine is jelly bean day in skidmore where we empty the water tower and fill it with jelly and then everybody all the police have to leave town. That's our bean bucket and so we we all 38:01 Bucket Bucket. Now that's a small town thing. Most people don't know that that's a we just voted jelly bean making days on the towns where it's going to be a lot of arts and crafts and the whole town goes beam bucket, beam bucket, beam bucket, beam bucket. 38:29 and then we have these little things you can buy their they're like shaped like flowers, but they're made of jelly beans. It's a bean bouquet being bouquet, being bouquet, being bouquet, you know yeah 38:46 don't even think about breaking into I bean bucket, so they're at they're at the Legion Hall and they're meeting and they're trying to come up with. What can we do? What we do get to deal with this problem and the sheriff's there? Dan Estes is his name, the local sheriff, the mayor of the town is there and the mayor and the sheriff are saying we need to come up with a pull this off without him getting win. 39:09 So they're like we need to come up with a legal way we can deal with this and so they proposed a neighborhood watch and so they're putting together plans to put together a neighborhood watch. So that way they can kind of just honestly it sounds like the neighborhood watches a we're going to watch everything Ken does and whenever we see him we're just going to tell the police where he's at and what he's doing so we can be ahead of them and then news hits. I'm not going to intervene. He's setting another house on fire. 39:38 and so someone in the Legion Hall. Remember, this is a small town. You can see everything from everywhere in this little downtown area. Someone in the Legion Hall is like hey, can just pulled up to the bar with Trina and Dan. Let's go handle this right now. Well, here's the thing. Dan, the sheriff and the mayor go, they both say I'm not kidding. They say they say all right meetings adjourn. Remember, we need to handle this in a legal manner and they leave 40:07 town. They go out of town, the mayor and the sheriff and then of course so they pulled to the bar. The gathering was them gathering to figure out what to do about him. Yeah, they were gathering to come up with a way to figure out what to do and then while they're there pull to the bar next door yeah and then everybody in the bars like forty to forty six people who were in the vicinity yeah was because they had gathered 40:36 to figure out what they were going to do about this and then the sheriff was like. I think we should handle this in a legal and safe and not killing him way. Yeah, I'm going to cruise here and I have tickets to Carnival cruise right now. We're leaving town yeah and we'll be gone for the nort out of six and so they do they leave town. They get in their car. They drive outside of town 41:05 And then the 40 people walk outside and they wait outside the bar and then they walk out. Here's the here's their car parked at the bar. And so they were waiting like right across the street. They get in their car and then of course we know what happens. And so here's the aftermath. Wow. And so they they did it. But everybody in the town. I mean and now you that you hear the story. 41:31 you're kind of like I kind of get why no one would talk about it and there's interviews after the fact like years later there's like sixty minutes and all sorts of things that have covered the story interview, Dan the sheriff and you can tell when he's I wasn't there he's like he's like I've interviewed everyone. I've interviewed all the witnesses. No one will fess up and tell me who was involved and what happened and you kind of tell by tone of voice that it's like he's like and no one's telling me like I can't do my hands are tied 41:58 I've taken the investigation as far as I can take it out of town. Yeah, I was out of town. I wasn't there. I've asked. No one will tell me like I've taken the legal process as I can take it in town and at the peak of that crisis, I, the sole person responsible for the safety of the well being of my citizens left. I went and while I was gone, something happened to the one danger to my about fifteen minutes after I left 42:26 And so yeah, the case ended up being dropped a few years later. A book was written about this and then a movie was was produced called in broad daylight. You might have heard of it. This is the true story of what happened. And yeah, that's Ken McKell. Ken Rex McElroy. Ken McKell really very different guy. Also, I mean, McElroy can Mackle Ken. 42:50 can can make a Roy, yeah, the real estate investor don't know much about him, but he's a real estate investor also probably sucks, probably sucks, but not in the same way that can wrecks can wrecks way worse. I actually did not know the rest of that. Yeah, and so I mean, if you think about it in context, he really kind of was a town bully, but also like very dangerous worse than a bully way worse. It wasn't just like he was terrorizing like he was literally burning people's houses down. He was like stealing people's daughters. Essentially like it was like not 43:18 not that's crazy yeah, a really rough guy and the whole town banded together to say we got to get rid of this guy nuts and mckelroy mackleroy, but what's mild is everybody who talks about they were there that day. Very few people will talk about what's wild yeah. What's wild? I thought you said what's mild and I was like that's actually pretty funny. What's my old though 43:46 what's mild about this is nobody would really talk about the events of what happened that day except for except for the one detail that they talk about. As I say, well, the one thing I remember we're in this crowd. There's forty to forty six of us. Well, we're in the legion. We're in the legion hall. Someone was like, is he making any ideas of what we could do to defeat him and so was like, why don't we do a fight a off and so it's fiddle, fiddle up. Thank you 44:15 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode of Things I Learned Last Night. If you liked the show and you want more of it, you can join us on Patreon and get next week's episode right now. Or you can go back and listen to our back catalog. We've got 200 episodes that have been released. One, if you like this story, there's one that's kind of similar. A guy named Mike Malloy, his friends, like Macklemore, stop good cowboy, Mike Malloy and his friends took out an insurance policy on him and then tried to kill him. But Mike, 44:45 would not die refused, refused to pass away. So it's a great episode. It's linked somewhere wherever you're listening or watching. It's somewhere there. Thanks for supporting our show. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week on things alone last night.

The story of Ken McElroy stands out as one of the most mysterious unsolved crimes in the United States. His name is forever linked with the small town of Skidmore, Missouri. This crime shocked the nation, leaving many to wonder how something so significant could happen in broad daylight, with so many witnesses, and yet remain unsolved. Who Was Ken … Read More