Imagine spending months of your life meticulously working a virtual restaurant job—serving impatient gnomes their appetizers on a timer—all to earn a single digital pastry. Now imagine that pastry becoming worth 30 million gold coins. Then imagine one guy at a game studio in Cambridge, England, waking up, sipping his coffee, changing one line of code, and vaporizing entire fortunes overnight. … Read More
The Video Game That Was Secretly Mapping Your World | John Hanke Ep 340
Episode Transcription
00:00 all right. What's up man? Yeah. Hey man, have you ever heard of John Hankey? John Hankey, John Hankey. I'll show you a picture. I got a picture of him 00:11 Okay, this is a comic con. Sorry, I'm trying to I'm reading too much into stuff. Okay, so John Hankey is is a guy and this is at San Diego Comic Con and that's all I know so far. There's another picture of him. He's in a living. He's in a hotel. 00:29 you know, hotel lobby, not a hotel lobby where they just have like stuff on the shelves. Yeah, it's like oh, there's a book with some binoculars on top. Yeah, nobody does that. No, nobody's doing that at their house, but here he is. He's older than the earlier picture you showed me. Yeah. Okay. What is John Hank? You got to do his stuff, John Anki. Let's start. I don't know, like the mid nineties. 00:56 They're like, Dad, it's the same concept. can set the nuke to 68. Dad gets mad if you touch him. Yeah, you're that super strong, man. You're stronger than me. You're stronger than all of the people in the Armed Forces. Yeah, we gotta kick that Army refrigerator off campus. He's flirting with the football team. 01:26 What you need to know leading up to this is he he went to University of Texas, Austin, okay, graduated bachelor's degree in business eighty nine. Then he went and worked for the United States Foreign Office in DC for a couple years, spent a couple years overseeing Myanmar working on like foreign policy stuff. We're what overseas in Myanmar. Okay, yeah over. I know you're like overseeing my and mine like you're go be the boss of Myanmar. 01:54 and he gets to my bar and I am the overseer. I know. There's like we don't we don't have a president fall out shelter. What do you think is going on here? Overseer? Okay, no, it's just doing foreign policy there. Sure. I guess like he didn't love it. He was just there for four years and then he came back to the states, went to the University of California, Berkeley, graduated from there and immediately went to work in like video games. And so he 02:23 this is like early nineties is ninety four yeah. This would be yeah. As he graduated to be like ninety eight. Well, he graduated in eighty nine spent four years. So yeah, this is yeah yeah ninety eight yeah yeah. You math checks out okay and he works with a guy by the name of Steve Sellers to put together a startup called Archetype Interactive, which okay started making video games. They made a game called Meridian fifty nine, which is one of the first ever MMOs to ever exist. 02:53 Which you're an MMO guy. No, I think I'm on an HMO. 03:00 I think you're on a BOTO X. I think I'm so yeah here. We'll go back so already in fifty nine he made him in this part where they launched money. It's an MMO. It's an MMO okay, which yeah. If you don't know what an MMO is, it's a is it an MMO RPG like a role play game yeah so MMO stands for massively multiplayer online role playing game. It's a really big online and what's their game 03:28 murdering fifty nine. They launched it in nineteen ninety six, a bunch of naked brown people. Those are zombies. I think zombies naked. They're all they they're they have defined, but what I'm saying, but yeah, you're right, a kid brown zombie looking alien looking people, yeah, big feet, very low 03:53 low quality graphics. So I watched this in ninety six and it actually got pretty good reviews and is the brightness turned down on this image. I don't know. Actually, it's like very low, very dark. It's very dark. There's a game I'm thinking of where you're like on a hovercraft and it's that kind of graphics. You know I'm talking about. Is it just called hovercraft? This did you play that game? I'm looking to see I played this. I feel like I can vaguely picture. Are you like inside it? Are you from the outside both 04:22 you can you can do both. Is it called hover? Yeah, it's called hover. Yeah, I got a picture. I'll show you yeah. This is I remember this room specifically the checkered room. Oh yeah, I got a different picture, but yeah. Have you did you play this? I don't think I did. How can I play this because this was fun online? Yes, I remember this game. I played this game a lot 04:49 Do you just hover around on the hovercraft? Yeah, you like go. like a course you do like a little thing and I you know I was young, so I'm sure I wasn't playing it correctly. Yeah, same thing with the MMOs though. Yeah, like when I was young, I wasn't playing RuneScape correctly, but now you're a pro, but now I'm now I'm locked in yeah yeah. Now you get it. Well, this game, this game got a pretty decent critical acclaim. This is again. This is the mid nineties. How many players run it? 05:18 Well, they sold by ninety nine game lost in ninety six by ninety nine. They sold fourteen thousand units, fourteen thousand three hundred fifty nine. So you download this on computer? No, it's a CD ROM. Sorry, that's what I mean. You played this on your computer. Yeah, this is a computer game, but then it connected to the game. Yeah, okay, because we're in scape never had a desire. I don't think we had a CD. I think you just played. Yeah, it was a browser based game. Yeah for a long time. It still is, isn't it? No, they have a client now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 05:47 That was their way of getting around on the bots. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. No, they they launched this game and I mean fourteen thousand units at sixty dollars a pop. That's like almost a million dollars like a hundred something and they got pretty good critical reviews like three out of five, three point five out of five a minus on Game Pro and so like good enough for the them to get acquired. Their many fat or like their design company got acquired by a company called 3DO, which was like a very early video game. 06:17 Like it was Panasonic got into the console game, launched the 3DO in the 90s. It didn't really go anywhere, but their company got acquired. And so after they got acquired, he kind of got into the spot where he's like, okay, what do I want to do next? Like, I've got this decent chunk of money. I can come up with a new concept. And he wanted to pursue a pretty ambitious concept. And so what he did is he founded a firm called Keyhole in 2001. 06:48 Yeah, and Keyhole was a geospatial data visualization firm, geospatial data visualization. Okay. Yeah. And so he went and he got funding from a few places from Sony and Nvidia actually did the series a and then a venture capital firm called Incutel and they brought in some cash and they launched this company called Keyhole and what Keyhole does 07:18 is they were the world's first digital satellite imagery map company. so before we had Google Maps, before you had MapsQuest even, before you had Google Earth, you had Keyhole. And what Keyhole did is exactly what all those things do. They bring map data and satellite data. And this was a problem that at the time was really difficult for anybody to see ever being possible 07:47 at the time, most applications were like actually on your computer. Like you had to download the application if you wanted to run it sure you had a CD wrong and to have satellite imagery of the entire planet. You're talking I like sightseeing is Mount St. Helens three sisters area fifty one Grand Canyon area fifty one new fact or it's clearly not alphabetical area. If you do on Grand Canyon Niagara Falls Yosemite National Park 08:16 Yeah, they're like we know what people want to see also very interesting choices of high res places baton Rouge, Louisiana, Huntsville. Yeah, interesting choices, huh, and so what they did is they actually what people expected because you can actually like move the camera around and there's pictures that they like stitch together from satellite imagery. Okay, and but not everywhere. No, it was everywhere and open is a high res. These are the high res photos and so they had to be high res data available. 08:47 And so what was interesting is what most people in their brains had thought of for this was, it's going to be a globe global image. And he kind of came up with the idea of, we don't have to load all the images at once. You just have to load where it's right there and then you can start loading the stuff around. But just like and so it kind of moves slowly and you can see it without having such a data load. OK, and so that was a big groundbreaking moment for them. They launched the application. 09:15 but they really had what was so interesting about the launch is they were struggling to find someone to use it because they they would bring this places and people couldn't see a use case. They're so cool. Yeah, pretty much like this is really cool, but like I don't know why I need it. Like why would I pay for this because people like I have a map and then so like I don't need this and my mother in law still wants a physical map by the way she'll come visit and then she wants to have in her hands a map yeah and then everywhere we go she's which way is north. 09:44 and I'll tell you what she doesn't like. She's not gonna like that. I mentioned this in the podcast. She didn't. She didn't like when we walked in the grocery store and I was like guys, which way is north and then she pulled my wife aside. I was like he's making fun of me and yeah, yeah, we were joking around. I am absolutely. Yeah, can put it was the joke. No, they had a hard time. They were bringing them to realtors 10:11 and they were saying check this out and they're like you can use this for the real to the like. They're like I don't sell pictures. What am I going to use this for? Well, we got frame into their wall and so then they took it to civic planners and civic planners are also were like plans like yeah, it's already built. There's nothing to play out here. Thanks for showing me what we did. You're getting me. You're putting me out of work very cool because the reason yeah. The reason this works is because nobody knows stuff exists. I tell them that something needs to be there and so they were having a so this is before they take it to Google. I assume 10:40 Yeah, there becomes Google map. Well, they were having a really hard time getting anybody to use this and then something something awful happened, but for them really convenient was there was the war on terror that kicked off and and they realized it is good for them. Yeah, and so what they realized so so they were like they're just like a man. They're like maps. They're like nerds. 11:09 and he's like, I built this thing. can see maps. Isn't that cool? And then he shopping around. No one in the marketplace wants it. And the government was like, we kind of want that well. And he was like, what are you gonna use it for? And they're like, 11:24 don't. It's better if you don't know like you can just erase Baghdad from your servers. Do you need to know? I don't think you need to know yeah. We noticed that you have area fifty one on site seeing so what do you have to say about that to explain that? What you said about that? Okay, so what actually happened? It wasn't that well at least the war on initially it wasn't that the war on terror happens. 11:47 They're burning cash. They're like literally like they're watching their reserves drain. Right. And they're getting to a point where they're like, man, we might have to it down. Something different. Like they are they are close to losing it all. And then they're watching the news about the war on terror and they're seeing the the anchors tried to describe these locations throughout the Middle East. But like they can't visualize it. And so sometimes they have like maps that were like maps or like someone like 12:16 animated like the thing, but they don't have an actual satellite view and they're like, this is our solution. And so one of their sales guys was like, I'm going to go approach them. Oh, the news, the news. And so they, okay. So it wasn't the military. Yeah. So they went to CBS and ABC and MSNBC and they said, Hey, look, we've got this product. You can show it. We're going to give you a free license. You can use it as much as you want. Yeah. You have to have our logo on there. And so they started in the first broadcast that did it. They were talking about something that happened in the war and they showed an overview of Baghdad. 12:46 and they did the little swoop in from the satellite view and they had a logo on it and they said that night our servers crashed and so like that was the turnaround moment was the war on terror for them and so a lot of businesses, a lot of business turned around wars, wars, very profitable is part of it. Yeah, it's you don't want to Google your favorite company because you'll find out like oh they're doing stuff, they're doing something else aren't they? Yeah, yeah. 13:15 Yeah, it's it is interesting. Like what's behind closed doors at different like facilities and factories? was the one in Kansas City? You said Honeywell? They do thermostats. Honeywell makes thermostats. Yeah, and then and then go look at your thermostats. I've seen it like I don't do any smoke detectors to yeah. Honeywell makes a lot of just little home devices like that. Yeah, they also make nuclear weapons right. They do. 13:42 they're like this is pretty similar. They're like dad's the same concept. You can set the nuke to sixty eight dad gets mad. If you touch don't touch my nuke, nobody touches the new. Nobody does the human touch of the new cabbage. You walk. My dad would walk in the door. He would immediately walk in the house and go someone mess. He knew like he knew what temperature is supposed to be yeah and he walked in. He's like no, it's too cold in here. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. 14:10 it's just kind of interesting, like the things and I think it's a sign of the times, but it is interesting that things like people care about because like I walk through my house and I get home genuinely. I go and I turn the thermostat down and then I turn on every single light in the house, every single one, every single light and I'm like, want to be able to see I like the while you were doing it. Your eyes were closed to go. I don't want to look at him. 14:40 I just want to be able to see. want to feel comfortable and I'm like yeah, it's going to cost me maybe an extra twenty bucks at end of the month, but like this is how I feel and people are like oh the gas station. The gas station is twenty cents cheaper over here. You're like how big is your gallon? How big is the tank in your car? Yeah, but that's that big of a deal because like on a ten gallon tank, that's two dollars. Yeah, even on a twenty cent difference. Yeah, yeah, 15:05 like if you're a person who's like okay, this the place down here is four cents cheaper. You're going to say forty cents. Yeah, that's crazy. I'm just I guess I'm not the person who's like yeah, but we're fiscally irresponsible, so I guess that's true. We got a we got to get a war contract. Wouldn't that suck if you listen to the podcast for a long time and then you just found out we were also a defense contract. We were doing all this and you're like wait their defense contractors yeah 15:35 Yeah, not enough. You join this on Patriot. What possible application could we have as defense contractors? 15:47 Everything must go till it's going out of business and so our patron is now six ninety. No, people will freak out. They don't know we're joking till it is not going out of business. That was a joke, but we are reducing the price of patriot to six ninety nine for all tears you get. 16:00 every part you get access to discord. You get access to every episode of the ad view. I bet this much it's all my gosh. It is high. I know, but when you talk like that, it seems like we're really sell. I'm I was trying to do a word selling bit. know, it was like I don't say I'm a sleazy sales. I want to make it that I straight up think that we've been doing that bit too long that people are like it's a little 16:23 This is the first time I've ever done the bit before I was a sleazy. we did the whole hey, Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday. We did those bits. Just leave it all in. Do this whole thing. Join us on Patreon. 16:39 Oh yeah, I think you're right. I like like different. There are things you would find out. You're like oh, that's a company. I didn't see coming. Yeah, we'd be surprising. I don't know what we could do. It's a bit like if Charlie took over the chocolate factory and then became the boss and then Willie pulled over. He's like congratulations, John and then through 16:58 his door. It's like here's what the real business is yeah. Chocolate at the heart of it, but the oompa loompa are flying fighter jets fighter. Yeah, they fit in the drone so fence. Oh yeah, flock cameras are part of Waka. Oh yeah, crime stoppers, gob stoppers, all the same thing. at all just freaking gobs, mob stoppers. See 17:28 see and then charlis like we were defense contractors. Yeah, the river of chocolate yeah, drown our enemies that were waterboarding waterboarding. It's a it's a whole thing. It's pretty problematic, but that's why I wanted out and you're in charge. That's why we do the tour, so that way the kids see all the chocolate. It makes it seem all nice. Yeah, it's also our routeing. Remember when that guy came to your school and was like? Do you want to get into chocolate and you were like yeah yeah yeah that we're trying to get you into war 17:58 Wolf. The army recruiters come to your school. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They came to our school because they were like, you guys aren't going to college, right? Yeah. I remember, I clearly remember and I think about this all the time now actually, because now I'm older. My brain is fully developed and so like I see through the scheme, but I remember going and I remember the recruiter like 18:23 challenging me to a push up contest. Yeah, and I beat him and he gave me a shirt and he was like you should join the army and I robed that and you go. I was like oh oh that guy was just trying to get me to he let me win. Go fight someone else's war. Hey, do we need more five ten guys in the military? You seem like you're five ten. Are you like? What are you like six three? 18:48 You gotta be like what 200 pounds. Do you like botox or something your face is like so hot 19:00 Am I getting hit or something? 19:10 this show is not appropriate. It's a clean show that we do. We do a clean show, so don't want to. I don't want to suggest a bunch of stuff that's not family friendly, but English teacher has probably one of the funny episodes of television when the army recruiter comes to the school, but then he's he's doing stolen power is not. wasn't even a record. He just shows up at the school in a full and they're like yeah army recruiters here. 19:41 brilliant concept for an episode. Oh geez, that's good. Yeah, we send the umbil lumpus to the third grade because I had the same height and so they're like you guys like get involved in the war and then the little third graders are like wide. Yeah, second grade. That's what I learned about war too. So I don't, I don't know how we got here and I don't know how to get out. 20:07 well, so if only I had a map to get out of here, there you go. So this obviously became popular overnight and everybody was talking about this army. You're so good to do it. You're so good. 20:27 You should. I'm an army. He's like serenading you. 20:35 I'm an army guy yeah. We got to kick that army recruiter off campus. He's flirting with the football team. That's going in the intro. I fear that's going in the intro, so I love if you've not followed us on social media. I've been trying to get us canceled with the out of context quotes and that's that's going to be one of them. The quote for this week's episode 21:05 that just came out of the has has our friendship change your opinion of the two. Also this army recruiters flirting with the ball team. Yeah, it's going in the intro, so all right, so they've got a map company yeah, they're growing and got a lot of attention and that's when the army found out about and they're like hey wait. Actually, I think we could use this okay, and so the army knocks on their door 21:33 I was like hey, you are there some cups. The military comes in there. They're like they're like hey, we're gonna pull up John Hankey. This guy did so many more push, more push ups than than the army. Yeah, the baby, the jack, maybe seal. He's like man, you're strong, do you have do you're like yeah, you're like super strong man, like stronger than me. You're like stronger than all the people in the armed forces combined. 22:03 We need you. You're like so tough. So so that's when the army comes in. The army basically pulls keyhole into their defense apparatus and keyhole works with them to create a software that allows them to put tactical information right into keyhole so they can plan in keyhole and see and this is where we get maps. They can they can like on keyhole they can 22:30 like we're going down this street, this street, this street. Yeah, yeah, stuff like that. So planning roots. Yes, maps and just a couple years later this attracted the attention of Google. Google buys them for thirty five million dollars and brings Henke into the fold. Okay, this is what becomes Google Earth. Yes, and later Google Maps, Google Map and he got this influx of funding and so he's like now I can do all these big dreams. I always had for this 22:59 and so he launches street view okay, which if obviously I'm sure you know, but it was an old one too right. Yeah, the more they look like anymore. No yeah, yeah, that's true. They look. They look way better now. Yeah, they're much more simple. They're much more conspicuous also 23:21 Chernobyl has street view footage. You know I was just looking at it the other day. If you want to look it up, I'm serious Chernobyl's got street view, but look at the street view car because the street view car says like has mad like I forget what it like. Look at the street view and point it up. Yeah, we got pulled the maps go to maps. No yeah, there you go gamma travel or something 23:51 in that interesting. They have a separate group, it can take the extra yeah. It's like those storm chaser cars, but it's like really and also we just look at maps, look at maps real quick. Pull up the Chernobyl place. Look at the look up just Chernobyl and then the satellite images are a little blurry really yeah. Look at it. There is that is a whole thing like when Google Earth launched 24:21 a bunch of nations were like, hey, we don't like this. And so they went to Google and they're like, hey, you can't show this. You can't show that. Just recently, actually, Taiwan got in a mess because Taiwan hasn't had Google Maps for ever. And just a couple of years ago, they're like, OK, fine, you can come. that president allowed it to happen. And then they didn't like review all the footage. And so it showed all their missile batteries in Google. Oh, yeah. So they went back to Google. It was a whole scandal. had to like. 24:49 but it's like also one of those things where it's like you have to now tell Google where that stuff is hey hey Google yeah. 24:58 please don't show up, but here's where it is and then Google's like we won't tell anyone this information and then Google, the defense contractor says yeah, just kidding. I mean I'm looking at it right now. It's not. It looks pretty crisp. No, no, no, it doesn't. What are you talking about? 25:22 I mean that's about what it normally looks like. Get out of here. I want you to see anything. I wasn't. I was going to scroll in that actual go to the actual town yet go to the town or Chernobyl. It's so crazy. This looks like the Amazon rainforest. What like it looks like like the the rain force is starting to like it's not a rain force, but the forest is starting to kind of swallow the city. Yeah, I mean they trees are there now, but like look at this here. I'll show you 25:51 No, don't look over my shoulder. I'm going to put it on the screen. Okay, appropriate boundaries. Yeah, it looks like like what you'd see like these old amazon villages, except for like this concrete buildings are still there. Yeah, it's kind of spooky right. It is spooky. We should we should go. That would be sick. You can go to a lot of it. Yeah, there's a good motel there. Gosh, this is crazy. We should go 26:20 the people who work in the motel have for. I wonder if they. I wonder if this is this like I wonder if gamma travel is like a company that does tourism there and they like worked with yeah gamma travel tours to Chernobyl zone. Whoa, so Google like right, try to them to go out and get their street view. They're like hey you guys go in there all the time and they're like yeah. I oh you need 26:49 and then like we need you to go there. All right, I'll go. You tell me you don't want to go. You don't want to go. I know don't want to get one of those snakes coming out my head like you got. I like it pulls out of his head needs it and just goes back. Yeah, you know the last person that was born in Chernobyl is now the Hell Secretary, right? 27:09 I came from. I don't realize that that that's just the accent from that region. Yeah, have a travel. Yeah. So Google gives him a bunch of money to be like, yeah, expand this product. Sure. So he does Street View. Street View was something he wanted to do, but it was like he didn't have the money. Like the problem. But Google had that. Yeah. Another thing that he launched through that was 27:37 let me get the you got a lot of stuff to get to it. I've been interrupting you a lot, so I'll just let you run. I've got I don't you. don't there's no way that you were like let's just do it. I was over the guy who made Google Maps. There's no way and then he did panoram Eno, which ended up getting bundled into panoramio panoramio, which was just you could take a rammy me baneramio, which was you could take a photo and then you could match it to the location on the map. 28:07 which ended up like now you see on Google Maps all the time. You click on a location, you see all the photos from the play right, but this was a pretty, but this is like you could tag it on that location. Yeah, the place, the location eventually that got bundled into Google Earth, Google, maps, Google Maps proper came out and so maps proper and then they were like hey. What do you want to do next? He's like well, I still really like video games. 28:33 and they were like hey, we'll let you spin off your own like child company underneath Google Rockstar and so you can make your maps and he'll make grant that auto because it's based on maps. Grant of does not based on maps. What do you think? Grant of Dado is maps. No, it's not even close like I don't understand what the connection is there. I don't get. don't get how you got. What do you mean? You don't understand. don't understand why that has to do 29:02 why maps has to do with grand that auto because it's the it's the layout. It's the map. It's the yeah. Every game has a map. Okay. Okay. Anyways, so he starts Niantic, which is like a child company underneath Google, but he is the founder, CEO owner. Google's got like a major share, you know, and he's he puts out a game. It's a mobile game called Temple Run. 29:31 Really weird. Has nothing to do with anything. My lifelong project. Temple Run. No, he puts out this game called Ingress. And Ingress was a sci-fi game. Okay. That was like an augmented reality. So there were like waypoints all over the world. And the concept was there was two factions in the game and you were trying to capture these waypoints around the world. And you got put in that faction. You were basically at war with the other group. Okay. You had to capture this. And people were obsessed with this game. 29:59 to the point that they were flying to like remote locations in Serbia to be able to get to that spot to capture it for their team. So it was like a big, it was a big thing where you wanted to get on site to all these different places and this was a big deal. He loved it. They obviously a pretty big, this is based on maps. Yeah, this is all in map and so yeah, you can see the map and so it's the technology he built with Google Earth to like turn into a virtual or augmented reality game. Okay, and this was something as they launched it. 30:28 they found out really quickly like okay. We got to get it into other nations like if we want to scale, but we got to get these nations to okay it because they don't want your their data, their street data everywhere. So he was constantly flying internationally to different countries to meet with like diplomats and talk through like bringing this game to their locality and hello day. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. I know that you're in the middle of a civil war right now, but I just wanted to know 30:58 can we use your map? You get half with your pitch and you realize like this is not worth this leaders ties. Can we use this map for my it's a how do I like five ten? It's like a mobile app. It's it's like Pokemon go. That doesn't make any sense. It's so 31:27 He goes to Japan doing one of these meetings and he's talking to them and they're like, hey, you should talk to this guy. I know the diplomats like cause he loves this game. Every time he's overseas, he's playing it and he talks about it all the time about how he loves this game. Kim Jong-un. So they go, they talk to this guy. This guy's a huge fan. Lo and behold, this guy is a high level executive at Nintendo. Okay. And he's like, I want to license this for some Nintendo IP. 31:57 to have this be a game but with something from Nintendo. And they get the deal done and they turn that game into Pokemon Go. 32:11 I nailed it. You did nail it, which if you weren't around in twenty sixteen, gosh, this was the craziest time. It was insane. There would just be a pack of people at Bass Pro. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Bri and I actually, we went to a park the other day. We were walking, walking Archie. We took our son for a walk and we're at the park on the least all fours. 32:40 we don't let him stand up. You're not allowed to stay. I get those hands of the concrete. That's why can walk the way your mom does. So it's me and my wife and my kid. I'm walking on my two feet, my two, my, wife and my child are walking on all fours. 33:02 and I got my dogs to I'm walking all there. My dogs are walking on their to it's it's a fun game. We a family. We do no, but there was a it was great memories. It's such a weird thing because obviously there's a ton of people playing at the playground. There was a wedding going on over here and then this was the weirdest thing to see, but there was a crowd of like thirty people doing Pokemon go just like standing there in the by the playground dig Pokemon go. Well, yeah, you're ten years into this point. Yeah, but I was just like I haven't seen that 33:33 since like twenty eighteen probably yeah like a big crowd of people, Pokemon going yeah, it's kind of rare. It was so big that I mean when they were like Pokemon go to the polls, you're just that was a legendary line. It's just stuff. It's like it's never going to make sense to anyone outside of that context. Yeah, it's true, but okay, so they did turn this into a man go yeah, and so they took the same technology he created and then they just put Pokemon in the game, but he it was kind of one of those things where pretty quickly he was like 34:02 Didn't you do a full episode about Pokemon go? I don't think so. I'm I am eighty percent sure that we did an episode about Pokemon go. Have I covered all this? I feel like we I feel like we've done a full episode about this. Oh, we have not look up Pokemon. 34:29 Oh boy, am I sick? I sure do need Tim stones. Get well quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow. I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. Do your part. Get this shirt. 34:58 shop.tillam.com 35:08 Oh, we did a whole episode. I have to look at this because I don't think I don't think 35:20 I don't think I don't think we covered what I'm there. Is there not a blog on this? No yeah. This was before we did that. We just did the description at that time, so after you first episode, I guess the cool listen to this episode. I thought I was like there's no way he's building up to Pokemon go. We've done an episode about that. Well, I is interesting. This does say we talk about Pokemon 35:50 its origin, brand strategy and the unintended effects of their game Pokemon go. So I think we covered Pokemon and then we hit Pokemon go okay. I don't remember. I forgot we did this now. The episode, the thing I want to, since we're already in here, I guess since you've listened to this and you're like we covered all this already, let's cover something we haven't talked about before. Lonnie is a more incident. Now this is a guy. He's a cop 36:19 now. This is a funny thing. Hey, maybe maybe we should do this to here's a funny bit that we're to do since you just did this since you've just retold an episode, a funny bit that we're going to do now is at the end of the year. We're just going to try to tell an episode from memory. That's pretty. That's going to work. No, I'm so confident we didn't cover a lot of the stuff because a lot of this stuff happened after okay, but so 36:48 Pokemon Go comes out. We know all about Pokemon Go. It was a big deal. People were crashing their cars, walking off cliffs. It was a whole thing. 36:58 not like on purpose. They were doing it because they were distracted by the game. Yeah, it was a distracted gaming distracted. It wasn't like someone was like. I didn't get Pikachu and then freaking drove their car into a wall. No, but they realized pretty quick like what he really wanted was not possible with the kind of data he had okay, because what made Google work Google Earth work was it was satellite and then they had the street view and then they also they did Sketch Up. launched Sketch Up, which was like a three modeling platform 37:27 And so people would make 3D models of famous buildings and add it to Google Earth. was like a volunteer program. so they had a lot of data, but they didn't have a lot of places where it was pedestrian only, because the Street View didn't go onto that area. so what they launched is they launched a new feature into Pokemon Go, where you would have to go into these... 37:53 Oh shoot! Were they using Pokemon Go just to get more data? So Tim, were they using were they using Pokemon Go to get people to look around parks and create more Google Maps data? So they they launched this thing. Oh my gosh! Why didn't I think about that? So that's the same way Tim. You know that like okay, you know the capture thing. We've all been clicking like pictures of cars, pictures of fire hydrants. You know that's what they used to train Waymo yeah 38:23 yeah, and now I'm finding out you're telling me that Pokemon go was us using that like we were training the models yeah yeah yeah. So they launched five hundred million people downloaded Pokemon go and then they launched what they called a are mapping tasks and to be eligible for that you had to agree to do the task and when you agreed you had a whole terms and conditions you were agreeing with you agreed to it and then what you would do is you would go to these locations 38:51 and there'd be the Pokemon and everything. And then what you would do is you would film like this statue and you'd go around the whole statue, a full video of the whole statue. And what they build it as was, hey, we have all this data, but what we want to do is we want to have Pikachu interacting with the statue. We want Pikachu climbing on the statue, jumping off the statue. We can't do that with the data we have yet. And so if you go around, can get videos of these spots. We'll be able to have that. 39:20 actually generated in the game and use that and then actually have it in. I feel stupid that I didn't even think about that. Yeah. So they had this army of basically 500 million people like volunteering to go out and get data for them. Uh, and this was a unbelievable amount of data. They got 30 billion user uploaded scans of the earth, uh, from people going out and doing these tasks and 39:47 through that yeah. We were suspected of murder. He lives at three three one Washington Avenue and we need some good footage of his house, so we've put Pikachu in his front yard and now we have forty independent videos of all these different angles of this guy's house and we have time stamps to find out when his car was there and when it wasn't 40:13 Oh, you got Pikachu, but they got the true yeah. So why then I feel so dumb right now they then I mean it's about like it's the same thing with snapchat doing the filters yeah to get facial data yeah exactly exactly. Oh no, so they then part they then it's the same thing with the oompa loompas are fighter pilots. This is like finding out that the oompa loompas are fighter pilots man. 40:43 So, in twenty sixteen, so in twenty fifteen, right before this game comes out, Niantic splits from Google. I forgot to mention this right before Pokemon Go comes out, Niantic splits with Google. OK, and they become their own company. There's like a whole stock buyback program. They become their separate entity. Google technically still is like a minority shareholder in the company, but they're independent units. Right. As a part of that, he brings in a former like video game executive. 41:12 by the name of. Let me get his name real quick. Gilman, Louie, what's he standing in front of Tim? Honestly, when I got this picture right, David noticed that it was kind of swallowed my screen, but he is standing in front of a fighter. I, I don't know. It's just, it's just everything sucks man. It's so bad. 41:40 everything that you want to be good in this world is like hey, by the way, this is also war. This is also what the heck dude, so he comes in as like a primary board member. Okay, he is he that's weird because he because he worked at H and R block. Now he was a gaming executive, so he worked in the video game world. Yeah, so he had all this experience with video game companies came in and did this. They did ten years with 42:10 with Pokemon go and what's really interesting. Well, we'll come back to that. They do ten years with Pokemon go and then in twenty twenty five they decide my antics decides to sell Pokemon go and so they sold it to a new company called scope Lee for three point five billion dollars. Oh my gosh bananas, but is it because the data is so worth it? I mean the data is obviously still there. Yeah, but the interesting thing is part of that data is 42:38 the Niantic like the shareholders in Niantic. They could still keep all the data that they got from Pokemon go. So they kept the database to they kept a copy of the database and he went sick. Hanky went and he started a spin off company called Niantic spatial which very similar because of the name Niantic is the same very similar because it's the same. Okay. And so 43:06 He teams up with his old venture capital investor, Incutel, the first one that invested in it. And he puts together this company called Niantic Spatial. Actually partners with, it's funny you said them, Snapchat for this. And then also partners with Palantir for this new company. Oh God. And something I shouldn't mention, now is probably a good time to mention this, is that investment firm, Incutel, let me see if I can get a... 43:36 picture of them real quick. I we don't need one. It's so crazy. You just you're in the chocolate factory walking around here's a little Lumpa Lumpas and then you open the door and it's like there's the Palantir office at the chocolate factory. You're like what are you guys doing here and you're like nothing and then like and then so then you're walking and you hear someone in the in the the candy bushes being like what was that you see like this little hunched over figure 44:02 and they turn and they his and you're like Peter Teal. What are you doing? You know when he runs off into the bushes and then freedom so in Q tell in two or in nineteen you just look up in the middle of a war. There's a bunch of floating blue kids coming at you because they they ate the candy that makes them float and they also ate the candy that makes them the giant blue and they're like they're like 44:31 watch out. I'm gonna blow. I turned to me into a bomb and you're like oh no, no, no, Willy Wonka is a monster. Willy Wonka is a war monger. 44:52 Willy Walker, the defense contractors. Oh no, so anyway, so Incutel was founded in ninety nine. No gosh, this story is going to get worse and worse and feel it and it could tell was actually the brain child and I guess you could say founded, but it was the original CEO was that Gilman, Louie guy that I saw you and another guy by the name of Norm Augustin, who was the former CEO of Lockheed Martin 45:20 and it. This was the brain child of one George Tenet, who, you don't know who that is, he was the director of the CIA in the late nineties and early two thousands. I this man. I hate how everything everything in the world do. We were just reminiscing about how good the summer of two thousand sixteen was. I gosh you were that do people were outside taking pictures of bass bro. We didn't know they were feeding the machine 45:47 And what this was was George tenant. We don't need flock cameras. You're all playing Pokemon go in your neighborhood, dude. Oh my gosh. I'm so mad right now. And George said it direct to the CIA was like, man, it would be really cool if we had our own investment firm and we could invest into technologies that would be beneficial for the CIA, the defense industry, and make these things come to fruition that we could then use. 46:17 and so they created this investment arm and through since ninety nine they the last record we have is I believe in two thousand twenty two they have invested in three hundred and twenty companies and they have a total of one billion assets one billion assets or one billion in assets one billion in assets yeah okay one billion in assets and one billion 46:47 okay. This is one of my one of my assets. Here's my assets and this relationship with John Henke goes back to keyhole. They invest. They were one of the first investors in keyhole because they were like oh hey, it would be super beneficial for us to have all right. Let me make a pitch real quick. Do you think that in twenty years you might be a war criminal? 47:12 Would you like to get in early with two podcasters who are just naive enough to give you all the data that we have? We have a lot of data on one hundred patrons reach out to us at info at tillin.com and with a lot of data on a hundred people who would pay monthly to talk to us. Let's commit war crimes together. 47:34 this. Anyways, if you want to join our Patriot and let us sell your data to the defense industry. 47:42 Let's be honest. You don't need us to do that. You've already you've done. You've clicked except on too many things. You've done it. Yeah, they got you, but yeah, so that's why he's in front of the fighter jet because he was the CEO of Incutel and the investor in all the and they were like yeah, let's do a good. You guys would do a cool head shots for the website. Sure, the fighter jet pull the fighter jet around fighter jet around. Do we have one of those 48:12 do we have one of those laughs like that now? Oh, like you don't sound like what you're used to. Yeah, it's the evil. It's the evil. Oh my gosh dude. So this organization in cutel ingrained itself in silicon valley and just looked for cool technology to put money into and they would dump a few million tax payed dollars 48:41 into these companies. what's interesting is they are a nonprofit organization that is separate from the CIA. I put that in their quotes if you're listening. they invest in these companies a seed round that they don't intend on a return. They are spreading the net out to all these possible applications that could be useful for the CIA. And Keyhole was one of them. 49:07 the whole Google Maps Google. I mean they really want you to wear the meta glasses too. Yeah. You guys like oh we don't want flock cameras in our neighborhood. Let's put them on our face. Yeah. What's interesting is near the same time that hanky got this investment. So did Palantir. So Palantir got that same investment and so they spun off this company last year. They took all the data from Pokemon Go and they teamed up with Snapchat who took everyone's face data. 49:35 And then they teamed up with Palantir, who we know are doing all this data farming. And they have created Niantic Spatial, which is essentially all of these concepts to a billion degrees. They have this massive global mapping system that they have given to the military to track people and do face data to track people, Palantir data to track people. They put it all on a map and they have these maps that were generated from people playing Pokemon Go that are too into 50:04 intense detail and pedestrian only areas globally, and now they are teamed with defense contractors for it. So well, that's what Pokemon Go was. That sucks me. Is that crazy though? I don't know me that that sucks. All right, another encouraging episode from things other than last night. Let me let me tell you they're working with they've like 50:34 partnered with all of these different organizations now like it's Snapchat, this Vantor company, which is a defense contractor. Yeah. And they are now they've, they're not just doing defense contract. I should say, I guess let's be fair reporters here. Yeah. They're also selling chocolate. The chocolate is still at the heart of the business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The grandfather started this company 70 years ago. Yeah. He was all about the, the, the chocolate and the 51:03 karma, whatever is more about the war. I said how can we use this to kill people? How can we use this to annihilate our enemies and turns out that was very profitable for us now, but what's interesting is they so they for regular robotics and so they have contracts with those like robot delivery cars that drive around city way mo they have contracts with way mo and so like robotics they have contracts with yeah, but they also like one of the main applications that they set up with the military is 51:33 for drone flight. And one thing that they talk about as being such a big deal is currently if drones lose connection to the satellite, they lose their ability to know where they're at in the world. But because of this VPS, the visual positioning system, they now don't need the satellite imagery because there is so much data about like with photo and video of everywhere that they got from Pokemon Go. 51:59 that all it needs to do is turn on its camera and it can orient itself anywhere in the world from that footage that we captured capturing Pikachu. 52:11 So honestly, if you think about it, if you think about it, I mean you think about it. I mean, if you think about it, it gets worse. If you, if you think about it, you capturing Pikachu in twenty seventeen kind of like means you also were a part of your hands. Oh my gosh fiddle off dude. 52:37 Hey, thanks for listening to this week's episode of things on the last night. If you like this episode and you want more of it, we have another episode about Pokemon go and you can go listen to that and see if it's the same. We probably liked it more than we honestly did not know. 52:52 Yeah, I don't think anybody knew this much there. Wow, there were some whistleblowers at the time. Yeah, some people were like, Hey, this is sketchy. This could be, but we were like, shut up nerd. We didn't know. So join us next week and we'll whatever man. That's crazy. See you next week on things.
John Hanke’s name might not be as universally recognized as some tech titans, yet his innovations have profoundly shaped how we interact with the digital world, particularly through maps and augmented reality. His career, spanning from early online gaming to the creation of globally ubiquitous mapping services and incredibly popular mobile games, reveals a fascinating trajectory of technological foresight and, … Read More
Did They Just Find the City of Gold? | Percy Fawcett Ep 339
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of Percy Fosset, Percy? I like the name Percy Percy. I feel like I've heard the name the fat train in Thomas and friends Thomas Percy, the fat little short train look up Percy. I'm just gonna search the fat little short and then and then it kind of made Percy be like a fat kid name. You know yeah, it does seem a little round right. 00:26 it's insane that I searched the fat little short train and it pulled up. It pulled up Percy, didn't it? That's can you pull in an image of Percy? Yeah, and honestly he's not a fat trade at all. Like I don't understand where that see. Let's see. Yeah, I'm pulling it. I'm pulling up. Give me a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to fat shame this train. 00:52 crazy thing to say in the intro to we haven't even made it. Look at that fat sad look. No. Yeah, that is the fat short one. Look, his face is so chubby. Yeah. Yeah. No compared to the other ones. The other ones faces aren't that chubby. Yeah, this is, this is on purpose. They did this, you know? Yeah. And so like that's a fat little chubby train. Yeah. And I'm not going to, I'm not gonna anybody 01:16 I'm not gonna make gas like me to be like no, he's like if he's fit, you know he had to run a couple more miles. No, that's a fat stupid little fat porker train. 01:29 He's just chug chug chuggin Mountain Dew all day, isn't he? Freakin' porker. Porker person. I'm making fun of a train over 01:39 I can't believe this bot got more Bible. You're searching images of snakes over here and I'm just making fun of a fictional train. 01:58 the name Percy reminds me of a fat person. Is this Percy fat? No, this person is not fat. Okay, Percy faucet. Oh dang a rugged man. Yeah, very looks like you know, he looks like that shirtless lumberjack on tick tock. Not that I've ever seen that guy. I've never seen that guy's videos. My doesn't show me sure no project even joking dude. I'm not even joking man. My mom's tick tock is like 02:26 is like that guy and andrew from here in Kansas City. He's a yeah. He follows me. Maybe he'll see this. My mom's your biggest fan, but this guy's mustache is cool. Is that a cigarette in his mouth? Probably no. It's a nice pipe. Yeah, it looks like it should be a pipe if it's not and then he's wearing. What do you call that hat like he looks like a sailor to call that hat? He looks like a sailor or a steam engine operator, which is so cool. Yeah, 02:55 does he operate steam engines? I mean he probably has. I don't know if that's his thing. Well, I do know it's not his thing, but he probably has very cool given the time frame he lived. Love a rugged miss is the eighteen hundreds yeah. Well yeah, in early nineteen hundred yeah yeah. Okay, he was born in eighteen seventy four close eighteen sixty seven close yeah eighteen sixty seven and he did what 03:23 No, don't. Yeah. Don't get excited about it, Don't really don't lead us into anything good. You know, just yawn. What do you do? Honestly, he might've, he might've bored. might've trained or might've, who knows, man, he knows, uh, no, he, uh, in what we call it, the 03:48 the early nineteen hundreds. He was a military man at the beginning of his life, obviously served in World War One with the timing. He he was an interesting guy. He got really into maps. He was a bit of a map nerd, really into boats and travel and outdoorsy stuff. Okay, kind of your your stereotypical bass pro kind of guy. Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to 04:17 to put it, but it was from England, so not totally bass pro kind of God. There we go. You got it and he he bass professional. Yeah, there we go. He specifically in the like how they say garage kind of takes me on. Well, that makes me a little man. I put the car in the garage. Once you shut up, he 04:46 he spent his early career a lot to get to. guess he's in his no buddy. You're so tired that bit. Sorry that bit was so good. I should have just let you flesh out your garage bit. All right, he he started working for the Royal Geographical Society and he was a surveyor rogio doing sure and surveying and how would that be wrong? 05:15 the Roy Gio National Geographic Nat Geo Royal Geographic Roy Geo. Yeah, I mean I guess you could say that they abbreviated it to RGS, so they would like actually abbreviate it. Anyways, so sorry, I just trying to move my face like that while I still can. 05:36 I'm trying to make as many facial expressions I before I lose the ability to the botox kicks in for the botox takes my but I stole my face. I look young, but no one will ever know that I care for them again. Do you remember? Do you remember the old driver? What the old 06:06 Charlie the Unicorn videos. No, you don't remember the Charlie the Unicorn videos really your was this you're messing with me right now. They're like super viral. We were kids like super viral like pre you show me what you man. They were a big in YouTube, but what do you mean? Show me, show me what your viral videos were when you were a kid. Show me just a clip from Charlie Unicorn. See if a jar from every I don't know if 06:33 I can pull a clip into this, but can I can honestly just pull up on your phone. I can show you a picture and you'll recognize it. No, that's not gonna work for me. I need to 06:43 pull up the pull up a pop of your phone. Show me. No, I don't want to pull it up on my phone. All I'll pull up a mine. Here we go. Let's see. I have ad for YouTube. Here we go. Okay, so we're to look up Charlie the unicorn. Forty six million views. 07:02 Hey, Charlie! Hey, Charlie! 07:09 Hahaha! 07:11 What is what are you doing right now? I don't think I've seen that before. Oh my gosh, that was a viral video like when you were a kid like how old I mean high school, probably like late middle school early middle school, if not late elementary school, if you want, I was watching 07:35 This is a video for if you're listening. 07:40 This is just a YouTube video. 07:45 Hold on. This is my favorite part. 07:51 This is just a YouTube video called screaming for ten minutes and it's just a guy screaming for ten minutes and he's like does this thing like peeking out so bad and he will just play this you'll you'll like go meet. Jerry will just play this and he'll run into a fire somewhere. 08:18 it is such a manic person thing to do. I showed up today. He was at the studio by himself and I should say in our studio by himself, but there's other people who rent from here and work here and he had the door open with just that screaming. It's like my ASMR is so insane. It's such a crazy person viral like two thousand nine. Everyone, everyone's that. Everyone's watching this. God 08:48 three hundred views. Everybody's two hundred of them. Everyone's watch that video and what supervises a guy screaming for ten minutes. It's like so funny dude. Yikes. There was a reason I brought up Charlie Unicorn and now I don't. It is my favorite wasn't related to that. It is what I will do if someone in Lynn is next to me in public listening to like tick tocks full volume, not wearing headphones. I will watch that video full volume and just stare at them. Just be insane 09:17 it's super viral. Do you so viral? Have you seen this? You seen this video? All right to pull up because you you sound like this guy. I sound like this guy. I know. Are you this guy from this video? Did you make this video? This screaming? Are you just screwing for ten minutes guy? Would you scream for me? hear you scream so anyway, 09:43 I think we're very good at. I think we're so good at this and I can't believe the show hasn't grown. So I think it's wild that our views are so low. Yeah, leave a screaming sound in the comments. yeah, hey for real. That one is not the best time to ask, but for real though, if you could leave us a review on apple podcasts, we would like to get to a thousand. We're pretty close. Are we? Let's find out 10:14 seven read a couple real quick to take a while to get there. What you got to catch up on your water? Yeah, I I do that during state of shows is I try to take a sip of water while the crowds like laughing or doing something. I'll ask a question of like hey, what do you think about this and then I'm like yeah yeah you plan it yeah and then sometimes the bottle cap we're at seven hundred and fifteen so we would love to get to a thousand did we also 10:41 please don't do the thing where you do like a one star review as a joke. It that hurts us look legitimately where you're like all hail the watcher, their one star read one. All right, all right, here we go. Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. This is from I know Shama Jaren's lights my might such a good podcast. I always have it on when I sleep and in the daytime when I'm having a bad day while I'm cleaning really doing anything, it's so good. Totally recommend nice super fun pod. This is Charlie boy, oh seven 11:10 This is my favorite podcast to listen to, even though Jaron threatens to track me down. If I don't support the pod, he will do that so last that I will. All right, so Percy, Percy like to get there. Percy was sent on missions for the Royal Geographical Society, yes mapping the world, and so have you seen Charlie the Unicorn? 11:35 I hate that because I brought that video up not to talk about that video brought it up. We're talking about British accents. That's what that's what's got you on it yeah because I was like I'm like all of the royal the royal 11:48 Okay, okay, okay, never mind. Sorry, so he he was sent on multiple, multiple missions for the society to Malta, Hong Kong, Trin, Trin, Kamali, Ceylon, all over the world, mapping different places for okay, I'll do. He's like making the maps. Yeah, he's a map boy and then and then he got a job with the British Secret Service 12:18 surveying like land usage for other armies like to be like here's where they're going. Here's their their route. Yeah, the original flock camera. Yeah, yeah, he was the flock. He's Percy flock it and so he then the war happens. He goes to war or but he also gets contracted to go to Brazil and Bolivia in South America to 12:47 resolve a border dispute between colonizing nations really right and basically to draw the map lines for them so they know where they are. And so he does this. Oh, this was actually pre where this is 1906 and so he's there on expedition and he writes letters back home and he's making some pretty crazy claims about what he's seeing in the jungles in Brazil. So for example, one of the things he said is he saw a shot didn't just see he shot a sixty two foot anaconda 13:17 in the in the which as far as we're aware, they grow to about forty feet, so that would be the long they go to forty feet yeah yeah, which is absurd. Find me a forty foot in a conda. They grow to forty feet. I mean that's like the longest like recorded. Find me a huge a picture of a huge anaconda 13:46 read you the result. I searched 40 foot anaconda images. The result at the top of 40 foot anaconda doesn't exist in real life. 13:57 Yeah, you just confidently said it. I thought that that was what was the longest longest anaconda twenty four point six feet. That makes way more sense. Yeah, still overshot it by quite a bit. Yeah, but that means his maps probably aren't very accurate. He's not very good at judging distance. If he goes at sixty feet, but still, I mean still, if you see a twenty foot snake, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I and who knows you see it in the woods like 14:27 you're it's quick. You get a shot of it like that. I'd be like sixty feet that had to be like sixty feet. How thick are they? I mean they're they're chunky yeah, they're like Percy chunky Percy the train fat little train. Here's a picture. I'm grabbing he's just chug chug chug and Mountain Dew all day isn't a freaking porker, porker Percy. I'm making fun of a thing over here. 14:55 I can't believe this pod guys is more Bible. You're searching images of snakes over here and I'm just making fun of a fictional train. I don't have these fictional is a real train. Okay, so here is I think this is the largest ever recorded anaconda 15:13 Whoa, now that's got real. They're big. See, that's huge. There's another one. like thicker than your leg. Yeah, they're very thick. Yeah. 15:29 So I mean I could see how, especially if it's like in the water, you could maybe you could think that sixty feet sure. I don't know and but that is huge. I think it's massive. That's so scary. Who knows? Like this is this is the Amazon rainforest we're talking about, especially in that time. Like who knows what was out? Yeah, those are just the sizes that we have. Yeah, we don't know. We don't know what's out there. There could be longer ones that are extinct that we never actually discovered. You know sure. I don't know shot one of them sixty two feet. 15:58 Let's see, longest snake in the world in a conda, no reticulated python and it's about the same length, like twenty three feet. Historical record was thirty two feet. yeah. Anyways, so he said he said I saw a big snake is the you also talked about cat like dog about this, the size of a fox hound that he said had two noses. 16:26 which is very interesting to noses yeah to noses. He said he saw it twice said it had like not not two nostrils, the two full noses, huh, okay, which could have just been a deformed like coyote or something like that. I don't formed coyote sure and then I didn't see the coyote in real life. You don't know them like I do. I don't know them like I do. 16:55 Hey, we just produced the price of our Patreon to 699 a month. That's one price for everybody. You get all the perks. You get the live hangouts, you get to join the discord, you get early access, whichever reason you're joining for. We wanted to make it one price because I hate that everything in the world is going up in price, and so we wanted to make this a little bit more affordable for everyone to do. And so but also, you know, the other goal is that more of you join it so that we can keep funding the show. I mean, like what you know, how do I say that? That sounds like we're 17:23 poor and we are we are and no, but if you can't join us on patreon, no worries at all. Another way to support the show is by sharing it. Please tell somebody like the show and thanks for for being here for this episode. 17:40 and then he saw a giant spiders, which is probably pretty likely likely, and he said that they poisoned a bunch of the locals. So I saw spiders poisoning locals. I saw them doing it. I saw them dumping chemicals into the river that led to the water supply for these locals. The spiders did this. I said these factories don't yeah chemicals into the and the lead spider was a woman. 18:07 with eight legs and she had she had miniature dolls of herself and then he talked about he saw like basically apes in the in the jungle and then he also talked about and this was something he was pretty impressed by giant peanuts and he said were four inches in length, which is interesting out of all these crazy things. He saw I was like look at the size is peanut, which I mean that's a big peanut sure. So he is the point is 18:37 he he toward this place. He mapped this this environment in the middle of the Amazon and he was amazed at the things he saw. Yeah, I was talking about how crazy this place was and he also finished this expedition. This was expected to be a two year expedition mapping this land through through the rainforest. He finished it in a matter of months and then came back and it was like here you go yeah and so this kind of garnered some acclaim for him of like. Oh, this is a good map guy. This guy knows maps. We should hire 19:07 because he's fast, he's fast and he gets us the results knows maps. Yes. Can you see are there any maps that he drew for the time? Are we gonna get there? I don't know if I have any maps. Actually, I don't think this one. I have a map in here, but I don't think this is one that okay. He did. I don't know if we have any remaining maps from him. Sure, if we do, I don't know if we know it's him. You know it's that good, but an important thing about him 19:35 is he was really good with, like, he was really quick at assimilating with the locals and like garnering trust with the locals who many times hadn't had contact with any outside people groups. And so he would use gifts and he would be generous and helpful. And so he'd come and be like, hey, is there anything I could do for you? Kind of like, have you ever done the Dream Center? Yeah. 20:03 That was one of the things you did. You went and you went door to door and you're like, Hey, I'm with the Dream Center. Is your house dirty? I'll clean it for you and they'd be like how much and then you'd be like free and they'd be a little off my lawn. Hey, I with the Dream Center is your house. It seems like your house seems like a house. My reburied clean your house. I'll clean your house just and tell me where the valuables are and tell me where all the good stuff. Sure, sure, sure, sure. You could ask 20:33 Yeah, yeah, it's a little weird in retrospect. Looking back a little weird. I'd say no to any of those people. Did you clean any houses? No, nobody let us in. I remember I do remember going door to door and I do remember nobody saying yes and then we just played at the neighborhood park for like an hour until the bus came back for us because nobody wanted us. It's kind of sad. Yeah, it's kind of sad if I say like that. Yeah. How old were you? Like I don't know, like twenty nine. 21:04 Yeah, now this was recent that was not. It was not recent. No, yeah, I was 18. I think I was my last what buddy was fourteen years ago. I was not recent. I know it wasn't reason. You don't have to like you don't have to like do. It's like when I go, I go yeah. A few years ago I upload the chick fil a rap and someone went a decade ago. I like this. Whoa, hey, do that to me. Shut up, stop that 21:33 Right now. 21:46 So he got obsessed while he was there. On a particular mission, he began to hear about a famed lost city of Z. And so this is 1914. City of Z? Yeah. Okay. Or Zed. He would have referred to it as Right, right, right. Because he's wrong. And so the lost city of Z was kind of akin to like an El Dorado story, but El Dorado was like the conquistadors in the 1700s. We're talking about El Dorado. 22:15 You know, I'll right right. You're looking at me like you don't. Yeah, I know. Okay, okay. Okay. I guess if you're listening, you don't know. El Dorado El Dorado is a mythical city of gold in the rainforest in Brazil and the conquistadors were looking for it and they never, never found it. But there are like myths around it that some of them found it and it's like Atlantis and all that. It gets really crazy right and so he 22:41 after some time had gone on going into the early nineteen hundreds. I was like of dodge Durango. I'm not going to lie when you said El Dorado. I was like is that what that's named after and then I started going right. That's not like Dodge Dorado, Dange, Dodge, Durango, Dodge, Dorado and then I was on to Rango, Colorado and then you were like you're looking to be like you don't know what I'm talking about. In my head, I was like I'm not Colorado, Pueblo, Colorado. 23:10 Adolfo's burritos. I just want you to know I was somewhere else study and you were like it's a city of gold and I was like oh yeah, the story, the story, story, story, so that story had since become kind of a thing where everyone's yeah. That was a myth like we that's not real. There's no save goal in the jungle sure, but there was some mythology surrounding it still, and so there is this idea that there was probably lost cities in there and this comes from kind of three sources one 23:39 there was the let me get the name of this right. The manuscript five twelve, which is a documentary from a portuguese explorer who described what he saw in a like abandoned city and on the city. There was like glyphs carved into the city that resembled greek letters, which would be surprising because as far as they knew, nobody had ever been over the side of the world, right, except for them and everybody who was lived there. 24:09 but they don't they didn't. They weren't concerned with them at that time. Yeah, there was also another explorer who found a basalt idol. This is a guy by the name of H. Rider Haggard. Okay, we do have an artist rendering of this. This is what this was supposed to have looked like and this gave him immunity or what? Yeah, no one can keep an immunity idol. So this this resembled Egyptian 24:38 both glyphs there and then also just like the art style and then even being carved in basalt. That's the idea is like the Egyptians got over here right, which was a crazy concept. And then really the biggest thing that ignited this story was in 1911. They discovered Machu Picchu, which is right. You don't know what Machu Picchu is. Yes, incredible landmark in the middle of the rainforest at the top of a mountain. The city that just built onto the edge of the mountain, which is pretty amazing. 25:07 Marvel of ancient engineering. And so this kind of was like, oh my gosh, maybe these lost cities actually exist deep in the rainforest that we have not discovered. Right. So then there was like this after Machu Picchu, there was this pretty major flight to Brazil to like find more of these hidden cities. And Percy was one of them who was like, I'm going to find the city of Z. This is the city of Z was the one he got obsessed with. And so he put together a mission in 1920 to go try to find them. 25:38 did not have any luck on this mission. His horse died and named his camp after that horse called. He called it dead horse camp. It's on his maps. He's called dead horse. Yeah, this is my dead horse camp and then and then he put together in 1925 another return mission better than like dead mom camp. That is 26:00 like that. That is better than that. That is better than he actually does have a dead. That's what I'm saying. That is much more depressing. Yeah, this is dead horse camp a couple of hours of the road is dead mom camp. A few miles later is dead friend camp and then if you go a little bit further, it's dead me camp. Do you odd me? Do you odd me? Me? Me? Me? Me? Me? Me? Me? 26:30 he got a small group of people because he says that that was his failure in 1920 is whenever he went, he had too many people. was too much to control. Um, and obviously you're coming across indigenous tribes and it's hard to make sure everyone there understands the culture and is able to not cause any problems for you. Right. Um, and then also it's just more amounts to feed more people to keep safe. It's harder to cover a lot of ground. Sure. And so he brings a small group. So the group he brings is 26:57 pretty small. Let me get you everyone he brings on this. This this group he goes with obviously himself and then his oldest son jack his childhood best friend, Raleigh Rimmel and then Raleigh yeah yeah and then his second son Brian and then his daughter Joan Joan Joan 27:26 Joan Fosset. I like it and so it's a small group, basically just family and like a best friend right and so they go they crazy that his best friend would ever be like be around his kids crazy. Anybody let's their best friend do that. So they they they took a boat. They landed a bullet and in February they got to Brazil February nine to twenty five 27:55 and then I couldn't even see your kid again before you modified him. What does that mean? You turn to the doctor today and you had aftermarket parts put on your kid. He got tubes put in this year's yeah. That's an after market parts is so yeah. Do the same thing with braces aftermarket mouth. Have you heard that that's like a fashion thing right now braces? Yeah, it's like people are doing elective braces and they're going and they're seeing people like you got your botox 28:24 just in people's living room that are just gluing braces on people's mouth and they're not real braces, but they're gluing it on their mouth for like a fashion thing. I've seen that. Yeah, it's I guess it's a thing and the orthodontists are mad about it. They're like you can't do that because that's not like I only I can do that. They're saying it's bad for your health and it probably is. It's probably gonna mess up your teeth. Yeah, but I think they're more threatened. You think that they're like hold on. What I do is really hard. What I do took a lot of school and you just kind of figured it out on YouTube and you're doing it out of your 28:54 garage. It does it hurts. I don't know if you remember. If you remember yeah yeah, there's a lot of people that are splitting. You had braces. Oh yeah, I had brace. I can't ever 29:05 I they there's also people that are splitting the roof of their mouth. Oh yeah. Have you seen that they are the I can. I believe that's what's happening. We did it. I did it. I didn't split it, but you like you're stretching your bite out and there are people who careful if you're screw squirmy, but it's just like this is too much to it's a bar that I understand. understand. understand no, no, no, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, I think we all understand what happens and I think we should move on and talk about this guy in Brazil. 29:33 and sixty two foot snakes. Okay, sorry, we're right about sixty two foot snakes, but you tighten it enough and then it's oh my the top of your mouth and make your mouth wider, which makes you have that stone jaw, which makes you hot. Okay, my people are doing it. It looks maxing sure, but that's not this. just they're just doing prices because I think I got to move to Miami for my personal brand. 30:01 if you're not willing to, if you're not willing to go to Miami for your personal, if you're a guy doing personal brand and you're not in Miami for personal brand, then like there's so many fancy restaurants and stuff that you could go make content at and you have to. So we're thinking about hey, tell us is this wrong. We know somebody who has that kind of personality. Could we turn them into an influencer and we would be making fun of them? 30:29 Yeah, just to be clear, this is not a, is not like a other. We would be, but he might try it genuinely, but it's it's one of those things. It's like it would work. He would go viral, but not for the right reasons. Yeah, yeah, he has a monster fridge. He's like, he's like, Hey guys, men need to step up and be men and I'm moving to Miami. 31:01 I do listen to this podcast sometimes and I do think that I should audition to be Teddy's replacement on Bob's burgers really yeah. Sometimes I get into that. Oh no, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because he doesn't even really doesn't even replaced so anyways. Anyways, they hang out in Brazil for a little bit and then they on April twentieth once they got every person together Thomas and friends. 31:30 Oh no, I'm fat. I'm such a chunky Lord. I feel like I'm losing control of this. Yeah, listen, listener. This is the fourth episode we're recording in one day. We're trying shouldn't have done this. 31:50 Oh boy. Am I sick? I sure do need Tim stones. Get well quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow. I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. Do your part. Get this shirt. 32:19 shop.tillam.com 32:27 somebody they leave and they with two guides horses on yeah their whole fam team yeah May twenty ninth. They reached dead horse camp okay and Amelia where his horse dies. This is where his horse had had already died. If he's this is back he's going back to her in nineteen twenty five. This is five years after the horse died and he named that camp after the horse and then he sends a letter is interesting. He sends like duos of letters. There's a letter that he sends off 32:57 to the society and he's like he's like we're never going to make it back. We're lost and then he sends a letter to his wife that says I lied. Yeah. He says you need to have no fear of any failure and he says that we're going to let our guides go and we're going to take it from here and the theories about what's happening here is he is so concerned okay with being the first person to find the lost city of z that he's like he's like I want a small of group as possible right. 33:26 so we can move as quickly as possible, be the first to find it and I want to tell the society that oh we're dead didn't find it yeah like we're not going to succeed on this right away with the gold yeah and then we're going to get there. We're going to do this in secret and so the letter gets to his wife that oh yeah, we're doing good. The letter gets the society things are aren't going good and he just wrote this to society to society dear society. 33:52 Yeah. Anytime someone writes a letter to society as a whole, sounds like they're about to do something really bad. So they disappear in the woods. 34:08 they disappear into the woods and we do have a map here. This is in Eastern Brazil. Yeah, basically on the by Bolivia. Yeah, basically on the what's the word I'm looking for border with Bolivia and so you see where they started down at that bottom into this map here. Yeah, they journeyed up and there is on this map. You can see dead horse camp. Yep and then the theory is that that they 34:37 journeyed off into the Amazon here and then we don't really know what happened to them. We never found them, so they just there's two dead horse camps. So there's dead horse camp a and dead horse camp be well and there's there's thing where we should be clear here. We don't know exactly where dead horse camp is okay, so he in one message to the society. He gave the coordinates of dead horse camp and that was dead horse camp a okay and in the the 35:05 letter to his wife. He gave the coordinates of dead horse can't be. This is a camp he's been to for years since his dead horse, so it's like he knows he knows exactly where this is. So this was an attentional intentional choice to miss leading. Oh, I see it out of the bottom. I don't know. It's from his diary camp. It says dead horse can't be was coordinates from the from exploration faucet. 35:28 and then and then you know it's right there. You don't have to guess and lie. I guess it and then dead horse can't be his coordinates from his diary. Well, maybe the diary, maybe the diary is the letter that makes me think life. Sure, I don't know because because this is I don't know where they would have got the diary right and you can't be wrong. You are yeah, I'm not wrong so okay. So now what so they kind of disappear in the woods and this kind of sparks 35:57 a lot of questions about what happened. Did he find it? Did somebody kill him? Did they starve? And so there was a long wait for about two years. Everyone was saying, okay, maybe they're still searching. They're going to come back. And this was a time where like, you know, maybe it takes a year, maybe it takes two, maybe it takes four years. I don't know. Like how long does it take to get lost in the Amazon? We don't really know. We don't know how long this expedition is going to take, but by 1927, so two years later, our RGS officially declares the expedition lost. 36:27 And then for the next 25 years, there was over 100 people who attempted to go find Percy Fossett. They were like, we're going to go go see if we can locate them. All 100 of them disappeared in the Amazon trying to track him down. Geez. In the decades that followed. And so on these different, I should say there was more than 100. Some of these people came back, but 100 people disappeared looking for him. 100 people have disappeared looking for him. Yes. Yeah. 36:57 in the Amazon. Geez Yep, and so there are a lot of theories about what happened. There's a guy by the name of George Diet, D, Y, O, T. Yeah, he led what's called the Suicide Club Expedition. He found K. Yeah, I don't. I think he named that like. I don't know why it's called that. I'm gonna be honest, because that didn't happen on his expedition. 37:25 Sure. So he met a group of locals who reported that the group was murdered by one of the specific tribes. They got a little too close or something threatened them. Something along those lines killed all of them. There was another group explorer by the name of Orlando Vias Bolt, Boas, Boas, who claimed to find his bones. And so they brought him back. They measured him, though, and they said, how these are too long. He's not this tall. 37:53 he's too short for this to be him. No, he's five ten. Yeah, he wrote in his diary that he was six one. This can't be him. He said he was waiting. We found him. He was just lying about his height. Okay, okay and actually they held these bones in the RGS like society for years because they these are the best. The closest thing we got to Percy Fossett and once DNA came out, they tested them and they realized all these are the bones of an indigenous person. 38:20 not Percy Foss's. I know for sure it's not him now. Another theory was that they met a specific tribe and they kind of had a lot of misgivings with this tribe. So they did not bring a gift. They just showed up, which was apparently a faux pas for this specific tribe. They also, while they were hunting, they brought back a kill, but they didn't share it with the tribe, which was another big faux pas. And then the biggest thing was while they were 38:50 I at camp with that tribe, someone attempted to like grab a piece of the meat and they like slapped them, which was like a serious offense. And it was, I guess a child in the tribe. And so after they left, the story goes, they followed them into the rainforest and killed them. Um, cause of the like offense that you slapped my child, you slapped my kid. Yeah. The thing is like all these storylines are, are a little difficult to believe, especially the tribal ones because 39:19 he one of the things he was known for was being able to go in and like connect with the tribes and gain goodwill and then like have them help him through on his mission and they would guide him through like that was a thing he was known for. And so the idea that he would go on also like if he was killed by them like we have no documentation no one could be like this is what happened. True. You know well what the people who claim that that that that's what happened is they met the tribe and the tribe was yeah we did it. Yeah we get oh yeah we killed that guy. Yeah we did it. 39:49 hi. You stand accused of murdering Percy Fossett. huh. Yep. Yeah, we did that. We think that you killed him because he intruded on your land. No, no, no, no. He tried to eat some of my food. Nick, so that was really annoying. You did kill him. Yes, yeah, yeah. I said that already. You have his bone. Yeah, gave you his bones. Remember Oh 40:18 Can we give me the wrong bones? Oh sorry, sorry, we got lots. Let me get my back bones here. What about this one? Does this look like his boat? No all right smells like him. Have you ever seen Charlie the Unicorn? Charlie, Charlie, he ate his hands so 40:45 what's interesting and long story short, there's a lot of theories about what happened to them. Maybe they just starved in in the rain forest. It's pretty likely they just got lost. The Amazon rainforest is unbelievably gigantic right and it's basically completely unpopulated and it's incredibly hostile to us. Yeah, there's a lot of animals that will kill you. There's a lot of disease. There's a lot of weather plants that will kill you. There's yeah, it's a dangerous place to everything's trying to kill you, especially in the early 41:16 20s. And so like this is, it's probably, he just got lost and died and it's probably what happened, especially like a small group. Um, what's interesting. And so, so the last city of Z mythology just kind of evaporated with him. Nobody ever found it. Sure. Uh, it kind of became this thing for the majority of the 20th century. That's like, it just doesn't exist. There's, there's no other cities down there. We found all of them. Machu Picchu was the biggest one. Um, the entire Amazon rainforest probably only house about a hundred thousand people. 41:46 across the whole thing, small tribal groups across the thing, with the exception of Machu Picchu and maybe a couple other settlements. It was a small thing. Percy though became, or really was already this mythic figure. And there is like theories that Indiana Jones character was actually based off Percy Fawcett. And so this is the persona of who he was as an Indiana Jones type person. And so he just kind of faded into obscurity. But what's interesting, 42:16 is in the early 2000s, some more work had been done throughout Brazil and the Amazon rainforest. And then in 2020, a new airborne laser technology called LiDAR came out and started being used in archeology. And essentially what this does is it's like a radar, but with laser light. And it allows you to see through the canopy of the rainforest. 42:45 and see the, what's the word I'm looking for, disruptions in the earth. And what they were able to discover is throughout the Amazon, there is a whole network of civilizations underneath the rainforest that we previously didn't know existed. And so here's an example of one where you can actually see the foundations and you can actually see pyramid. 43:10 structures right now. We did not know existed before LIDAR was able to start mapping the rainforest. Here's essentially what is happening here is you're able to lift up that canopy and see what's underneath where you're flying over. You're not seeing anything because of so do we know what this is. So we've discovered a series of civilizations where this is kind of undid our entire understanding of the Amazon rainforest. And we believe now that around 43:38 the fifteen hundreds, maybe the sixteen hundreds around the time of first contact with the Americas. There were civilizations all throughout the Amazon, probably a community, I guess a large branching community that was well over a million people living in the Amazon rainforest with structures. Most of what they built were pretty sure. So are we going to go ex excavate these things like what's the plan? They are. Yeah, they are actively 44:07 there are active sites throughout the Amazon rainforest right now. Wow. Studying what's, what was left behind in these places. Um, most of what we have is just like evidence of foundations. Sure. Um, and then when we get in there and we start, uh, digging, they're finding, um, uh, different evidence of, of civil or I should say civilization, like a city there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, the reason why we're not finding most of, most of things are most 44:35 things from this is most of these societies were building with wood. And so most of the structures, we see the foundation in the ground, but the wood is obviously not there anymore. It's been 600 years. Yeah. And so they took it out. What we, what we believe is this was groups of people, interconnected cities that were a few miles apart. And what they would do is they would build these big round cities with squares in the middle. 45:04 And they were very big on protecting the rainforest. the rainforest will blend in with the city in certain areas. And in certain areas, they would cut out the trees. They would do controlled burns. We have evidence that they did controlled burns to create farmland for them to obviously farm from. And then there are areas where it appears, like this one, where they created religious sites. And so there was major structures that were stone structures. 45:33 These are very new discoveries within the last five years. don't know a lot about them. There's lot of theories out there, but it does kind of vindicate Percy. And honestly, even the conquistadors talking about El Dorado, because let's be honest, they probably killed them all. We don't know exactly what happened to them yet. Yeah, but we do know when we came over to the Americas, we killed a lot of people. We brought a lot of disease. We killed most indigenous people through that. But there was also a lot of people who came over from Europe. 46:02 just killed people as they came through. And so the theory is that they, these societies got decimated by first contact and then over the centuries or stuff buried, the rainforest reclaimed all that land and they were lost to history for a long time. And so this is a developing story. How much is actually wasn't, think that I went to, I went to Pompeii. Yeah. Right. And I, and it was so vast and there's just a big place and you're going to people's homes and all this stuff. Yeah. 46:32 and you're just like yeah, one day this studio is going to be one of those flat. It's just nothing's going to be here. Yeah, you know, yeah, someone will probably tear it down and nothing we're doing is going to last. You know, it is true. They say, what is it? Ten thousand years before any like if we disappear tomorrow, I think they say it's ten thousand years. Nothing else like there'd be no evidence that we existed except for the thing that they are that I always hear is no clear. No, it's 47:01 Mount Rushmore. That's the only structure we've built that will still stand ten thousand years from now. But I think they say like fifty thousand. You won't even know it was like man made because of erosion. And then it's just like, that's just a weird looking rock that looks vaguely like people really. Yeah. And so it takes basically no time for all evidence of us to just as sick, a very encouraging way to end this episode. Remember that nothing you're doing. You know what though? That is like, you know, 47:31 don't take yourself that serious. Nothing we're doing matters that much yeah, unless you're building a monument and that's your building something like Mount Rushmore, but yeah, I mean this. I mean it's only it's been five hundred years for these people and the force is reclaimed and you never would have known if you couldn't see it from the above and honestly you want to have known unless you can see it from above with light are so like these people just dis it's entirely possible to be up next to it and not realize that that's a structure. 47:59 Yeah, especially in the areas where it's just the earthen like foundation that are there because like you wouldn't notice if you're just walking over in the rain forest. Right. That's what that is too busy looking out for snakes. Well, it's also you're close to it. That's what I'm You're looking at this big foundation like you. You're just like, this is just a long ditch. Yeah, I would never connect that. This is part of a bigger thing. It's crazy. See it from far enough away. Wild really crazy. So we're to learn more about this over the next few years. Our understanding of this is going to change a lot. 48:29 that there might have been a lot more people in the Amazon rainforest. heard that the conquistadors made it to Eldorado yeah and then they had to fiddle off the devil.
The Amazon rainforest, a vast expanse of lush greenery and enigmatic secrets, has long captivated explorers and adventurers. Among them, one figure stands out: Percy Fawcett, a man whose relentless pursuit of a fabled lost city led to his mysterious disappearance and cemented his place in history as a true icon of exploration. While his tale was once shrouded in … Read More
She Built a House to TRAP Ghosts | Winchester Mystery House
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of you going fishing today? What is this? Oh, I forgot. I this on. Yeah, I forgot. I was like, Oh, I forgot. I was wearing this. My is my best button up. Uh, pardon it up. 00:17 I was being mean. was why do you have this vest or set? I don't know. I just want to work it in a while. This is my old. It's my old hardcore shirt, shirt, vest. There you go. Yeah. Show us the buttons and the patches. This is a, this is the red brick army. We are the red brick army. Who's the red brick army? 00:39 us. Is that a is that a steam is the red brick army, a group that we should be concerned about? Is here? I mentioned this ready, ready, see the back 00:50 Here's your weekly pay. If you add that attitude to it, it does. It's way worse. Changes it. Yeah, you like don't have to do like, but like the people they want to make an honest living. They don't want to get money. Nobody wants to just give money for nothing. Anyway, I don't think that's true. Things I learned last night. 01:20 Oh yeah, the devil in the cross hairs. It's pretty sick, so I wore this and I thought it was so cool. This this came with sleeves, but I got too big for him and I cut him off. Do you really yeah? Yeah, no, I bought this. I will never forget. I bought this at Pacsun. It was like I pretty sure it was the first time I went to the mall on my own and like sixth grade. I bought this at Pacsun. I thought it was so sick. Wore it for years and then on my arms went fit in anymore because I got too big and then 01:49 course for real for real. I was gonna fit it anymore. It is a little tight. It is small. It is yeah and then in high school I was like I could cut the sleeves off that and make my vest yeah and then I put the patches on my grandma. So the patches on I thought it was so cool. They're pretty sick and then I wore it paintballing. It was cool. This is your paint ball vest. Yeah, this is the one that I got shut down the middle in anyways. Have you ever heard of you hear? Did you hear him? It's strong to breathe from 02:18 for audio listener. You gotta understand all he did was stand up and turn around. I've tried. says down. He's like, I'm not struggling to breathe for moving this. It's maybe worse. It's maybe worse. I'm struggling to read for Panda Express, Panda Express, to be an express, knock the wind out of me. So I was literally, I posted that thing on threads yesterday about Archer getting some processed food for the first time and him being like wired. Yeah, and I posted it, you know, 02:46 probably not related, but could be like it's the first time he's had like a lot a decent amount of sugar and your ups and stuff and then RFK junior personally respond. I had really kind of messed him up a little bit. You know, I think it did. It did bring a certain kind of people out of the wood. What better if babies go outside and kill their own birds? What I think for the best of babies go on side and kill their own birds, but okay. 03:13 I got to start. I don't know that we got back. We got back from lunch. We literally did just get Panda Express. Yeah and someone commented and they're like yeah, but you're biased because you like you like healthy food. So you think that the unhealthy food is what the problem was and I was like I was like. Oh, you don't know that I just housed orange chicken in Beijing beef. I was like. I just got bad express. You don't know what I love process foods, big process food guy over here. 03:42 we should we should one day between shoots there. I saw the pizza hut across the street. They're trying to stay in business. You know they got a sign. This is all you can eat lunch buffet. Oh, I didn't know that should we shoot. I love a pizza, a buffet twenty years ago. Yeah, I'm hope. I wonder if I think they trying to bring it back. I have heard that it's an all you can eat pizza and salad. Should we? Should we run it? We should. Should we run it after this episode? 04:10 second lunch. It won't be lunch. All you can eat pizza buffet and then we come back and then we're both just sitting here like 04:18 Yeah, yeah, I do think about my hometown had a pizza above a and we would go there a lot with our friends and I just I did a lot of pizza. You know it's funny and it's back. What's crazy is how much your body can't handle what you used to put in it. You know, I know it is funny to think about that, but it is funny to look back at the pizza buffet because they had the buffet of all the pizza slices 04:47 but as like garnish to the buffet, they just covered it in lettuce, but it was like this lettuce is not free. Oh yeah, it's only around the yeah. It's just on the bed of the bed of ice and a little bit of lettuce on the outside. Yeah, but don't touch that. Let us. You should not eat that. You should not eat that. Hey, there's a couple rules when you come to the pizza buffet. Just be aware. Don't eat the lettuce and don't go in a tunnel. 05:15 all right. There's tolls on it. Let's rip it thing. What's your episode about today? Have you ever happy August fourth everybody? Go ahead, happy, happy two hundred and fifty and one month. We're like step dads who forgot your birthday. We're like hey, it was a champ. Hey, hey, hey, everybody. Happy birthday. I brought fireworks. You think I would forget your birthday? Hey, 05:44 I made these my own. I made my own fireworks. He's got an uncle who does that makes his own fireworks. That's a very Midwestern thing to do yeah homemade fireworks. Anyways, have you ever heard of a Sarah Winchester, Sarah Winchester? No, is that her maiden name? Oh, she's an old we're talking about somebody in the eighteen hundreds. Here's another picture of her. That's her head. 06:12 that's not her like actual head that right. That's like a that's like a little. I'm pretty confident it's not her this looks like chainsaw art. Yeah, you know it's a it's a it's a bust of her head and she's wearing her hat. It's definitely like a stop yeah and it's like it's like it's either wooden or I don't know what that's made out of but yeah, it's probably what is probably a stomp and then that's kind of her. You're right. That's very low res. It's an old photo. It's like early photography. Yeah, Sarah Winchester 06:40 Okay, by the best picture we have of her. It's not a real photo. Yeah, it's a painting. It's a painting. Yeah, so yeah, okay, so I got an idea who she is Sarah Winchester. She was born in an eighteen thirty nine K and she was born in Connecticut. Her family was like kind of a well to do family. Whatever she met a guy, she met a guy by the name of William worked Winchester. This is him 07:10 Yeah, I like this style. I like a guy he's got the who is the president that has this beard, brother be Hayes who's got that beard? No, it's it's he's right after he's right after James Garfield. He was he was his he was his yeah vice president. Is that Taft? No, no, it's not that's that's it's Chester. Yes, yeah, Chester Chester Chester Chester Chester. I'm pulling up 07:36 all the presidents James a Garfield's vice president was Chester Chester Chester Cheetah Cheat Chester Cheat. Does Grover Cleveland also have that hair? That was a pretty popular haircut, yeah Chester Arthur Chester Arthur. So anyways, she was I was saying that we got here. How we got here was the facial hair was that he does the thing where his beard and I don't know what maybe it's because you drop too much food on your chin. You got 08:06 clear some space, but they do the thing where they shave their chin and leave that whole gap open. So you can just see a straight shot to their neck and then they just have within the ball down the side. Yeah, it's like handlebars, but if it just kept going up the sides, you know yeah yeah. So she married a will this guy William Winchester at she interesting. You don't have a bust of his head though. Yeah, yeah, so she's the important one. 08:36 shout out to women's rights. I don't know if I would say she's the important one. She's the one I'm just going to clip me going shout out to women's rights and you going no context because it seems like you're not to get you're not for them shout out to women. 08:55 and with that vest they're going to draw some conclusions buddy, so they got very they got married in eighteen sixty two and at the time his dad. His name is Oliver Oliver Winchester. This is him who looks like looks like a church hill type figure very much very and when at the time he was a shirt manufacturer okay, and so like they kind of had like a modest living 09:23 they got married. They're living their life. Civil War kicks off Williams dad, which side are they on? They're actually for the north. Okay, they're very progressive. They thought that everyone was a person and you should treat them like that very pro sure sure sure sure for the time for the time yeah, but all of her had a clever idea. They they were just fighting for the north and they were like. I don't care about all the slavery stuff. I just want 09:52 public transportation. What are you talking about? We want horses running on a route, a single route. Yeah, the city should pay for it. They should pay for it. So she shows up yeah yeah and so after the civil during the civil war her dad, their all of her death, wait Williams dad Oliver has an idea to make a gun that could fire repeat. Okay, yeah, this is the Winchester right there. We go and they become 10:20 well unbelievably wealthy. Yes, basically overnight and so they move in and Connecticut. They get a house on Prospect Hill in New Haven, Connecticut, massive twenty thousand square foot mansion with twenty ribs, marble floors, decorative fireplaces, chandeliers, arch windows, plaster work ceilings and a circular drive in the front. There's just a circular drive, yeah, just a picture of wealth in a circular drive eighteen sixties. Yeah, yeah, 10:47 What do mean a circuit? What are you looking to be like that for? It's a circular drive, huh? Yeah, it's probably wrapped around a fountain. You came in wrapped around a fountain. Sure. Yeah. What do you, what do you want? What are you looking at? I like that for it. They do valet or do they do? I don't know, man. I'm just reading a Wikipedia article. I'm just sitting here reading a Wikipedia article to you. Don't ask questions. All right, and then there was a series of unfortunate events starting in June, eighteen sixty nine. 11:17 Well, actually, I should say starting in June, eighteen sixty six, they had their first daughter named Annie and unfortunately Annie suffered from Rasmus. Do know what that is? No, Rasmus is like a really rare condition where essentially your body can't process nutrients from food. So you just are no matter how much you You start to death and so the child did not survive long and died within a month after birth, which was devastating for the family. And so I kind of withdrew from society for over a year. They were just kind of 11:47 Sad. And, and then in 1868, they completed the house. moved into the house. 1869, Sally's dad died. We don't know exactly what killed her, what killed him, but the theory is possibly rheumatoid arthritis. And then in 1880, Sally lost three other family members. And then her mother died in 1880. Her father, Oliver Winchester, father-in-law, Oliver Winchester, owner of the company. 12:17 dies in December of that same year and then in eighteen eighty one her husband names her executor of the family trust. Okay, and then shortly after he dies from tuberculosis. And so in the quarter course of like about a decade, she loses basically the whole family. Yeah. And so but she's the executor of the Winchester family fortune. Right. And so she inherits in eighteen eighty dollars, twenty million dollars. 12:47 which adjusted for inflation is $657 million today. Holy cow. 12:59 Everything must go till it's going out of business and so our patron is now six ninety nine people will freak out. They don't know we're joking till it is not going out of business. That was a joke, but we are reducing the price of patriot to six ninety nine for all tears you get. 13:12 every part you get access to discord, you get access to every episode. have you hype it this much. It seems like gosh it is high. I know, but when you talk like that, it seems like we're really sell. I'm I was trying to do a word selling bit. know, was like I don't I'm a sleazy sales. I want to make it that I straight up think that we've been doing that bit too long that people are like it's a little 13:35 This is the first time I've ever done the bit before I was a sleazy. we did the whole hey, Tuesday, Tuesday, we did those bits. Just leave it all in. Do this whole join us on Patreon. 13:51 only that, she inherits that wealth, but she also has 50 % of Winchester. And so she inherits cash, 657 million today's dollars, but also has 50 % of Winchester. And so she's making $1,000 a day, which she got adjusted for inflation is $25,000 just every day. She's just making 25,000 on top of her 20 million, which is just crazy. So unfathomably wealthy is the picture. 14:21 I want you to get here okay, but crazy decade of just unfathomable loss right so like she gained so much and she lost so much and so she after all it takes. What are you willing to lose? That's what it takes. So she spins basically a few gap years on the seashore in cancelling seashells. Thank you. She's a fira soul. She sells on the seashore 14:51 That's where we get it from. And then she took a trip to Europe and then she came back home and she saw a medium by the name of Adam Kuhn. And Adam says, golly, you got to give me all your money. Adam sees her and Adam talks to the dad and she says to, or he says to her, says, Sarah, the debtor telling me that you need to make things right. And they're going to haunt you until you do because of all the lives that your guns have taken. 15:19 also just on hauntings right. If you think of the eighteen hundreds either been in a room with just one candle lit, it looks pretty ghost. It looks like there's ghost. mean it's pretty terrifying. you know, so I mean that's have we talked about on the podcast where the idea that goes float come from? No, this it comes from early. You're looking at me like we have always at the botox. Sorry, 15:50 Yeah. I had too much Botox. I can't do anything. I'm looking really surprised. Oh, it was early. It was early film. 16:20 they would project ghosts onto the walls and stuff like for movies on the screen. And I guess like the way early film worked, it was like not high quality. There was a big bokeh effect. So you couldn't see the feet because of the bokeh effect on the shot. And so they filmed it with the ghost having feet like walking around, but in the shot, it looked like they were floating and it just caught everyone's just like, Oh, ghost float. 16:45 And so before that, if you look at like historically ghost mythology before that, they walked. But after those early film movies, they started to float everywhere. Really interesting. Yeah. Because of weird technology quirk. Huh. Anyways, so they were floating. Well, they know they were walking at her time. Actually, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Now that I'm saying this out loud, this makes a lot of sense in context to the story. Interesting. OK, so. OK. 17:12 So she believes in go. She's she thinks she's being haunted by her family, not her family from the people that her guns have killed. Her family's guns have killed, you know, wanting her good. She's kind of an Alfred noble situation. Like she's like, she's like, my family's invented all these guns and put all these guns in the world. And now the people who we've killed with our guns are coming for me. And so she, she, after meeting this or talking to this medium, 17:42 She moves to the West Coast. She's like, I gotta get as far away from them as possible. Yeah. And so she was the West Coast and she buys, she was a house called the, I'm guessing this is pronounced Yanada Villa. It's L L a N A D A in Santa Clara Valley Valley. This is the house that she bought. Oh, sick. 18:07 and when she bought it, this was a little nine room how wonderful house as a little nine room house, a little nine room mouth, not a big deal and she while I should say while she was in New Haven, Connecticut, they did a lot of projects and she ignited a passion for architecture and design. Okay, and so she when she went in this house now having basically unlimited money right just kept expanding, just kept adding stuff. Oh, 18:38 Oh yeah, for audio listener, this is now a full like castle. mean, it's like imagine that you have like a house. Go back to the original picture. Is this all that's left standing or is it a smart angle where it doesn't show everything? There's some context there. Okay, so I burned down good. So the front of this house is like what kind of architecture would you, would you call this like there's like those like round? Yeah, it's kind of a mix of like 19:06 tutor and a mix of like I don't know yeah. There's like sharp peaks yeah, a little Italian with the red tile roof red tile roof, but also kind of cottage. Yeah, just a good mix of all the stuff right yeah and then the second picture hit. The second picture is just like take a house at a room 19:27 and then add another room to the house and then just keep doing that over and over rooms to the room you add. You're adding to yeah. Yeah, you're not making it look like it belongs to that addition. This is a very clearly an additional thing and then also in the back you start going up. Yeah, and you build a little like what looks like a church tower back there. Yeah, it just keeps going up and so you have to have a watch tower. You gotta have guards now to watch over your gigantic property. Holy cow. So want you to see a footprint of this from the sky. This is like a 19:57 This is wow. It is it gets pretty big pretty quick right and in fact we actually do have like a virtual tour. This is a screenshot from a virtual tour. Oh my gosh. The house this is this is just one floor obviously probably the first floor. What do you even do with all this? Well, so this don't go in the tunnels. So this is the story. She got this house specifically 20:26 Well, I guess a couple things are going on here. She has a lot of money and she wants to to architecture is her passion, so she's doing that, but also she's decides the ghosts are after me. I'm to make an elaborate maze of the ghosts can't come through yeah, no way, so she's like if I make this a labran, okay, but this is I have said this on the podcast before. I have to build a house right because the ghosts don't know the layout. 20:50 you know, talking about if you live in a house that ghosts have lived in, they know where the rooms are. They know what they're there for, but if you build a house fresh layout, all right, I don't care how haunted that land is. They don't know the wall there. You know that that was her mindset, so she's fully building a maze for ghosts. She's building a ghost labyrinth, and so when you go through the house, what's crazy about this is you go through and there's staircases where they curve and the steps have weird angles on them. Here's another one 21:19 They go staircases just go up to nothing and they stop which and this is important to know for her is so much creepier than just go. I have a house freaks me out, but at least the ghosts get lost like the house is so much scarier. Yeah, here's another weird staircase and a ghost situation going on and then yeah, here's another spiral staircase. There are 21:48 doors that just go out door to nowhere of the house and yeah, and then there's staircases where it's like there's obviously a wide stairwell that she just shrunk really tight. There are rooms where she just covered the room in glass that goes through to a bunch of windows in like a display huh and then like weird dome rooms. This room actually looks like if you finished it would be pretty sick, but it also looks like the scene 22:16 of a scary movie. This is where that girl that the family's bought this house and their daughters upstairs in this dome room playing with dolls and then there's something behind that mirror over there, but we're not going to show you what it is. Yeah, we're not going to let you know, you know, because it's daylight, but at night time yeah, okay. I'm just saying if you want to make a place look haunted, that's how you do it. Yeah, yeah, I think the way she's doing it is exactly right. She's almost like hey ghosts. 22:47 You guys want to listen more cool? Well, honestly, that's interesting you say that because it is kind of there is a new thing right now. We've talked about Cloudflare. They're like the security system underneath the Internet. They just recently, about a year ago, launched this thing called the Labyrinth, the Cloudflare Labyrinth. And what it is is it checks the traffic when you try to hit a website. And so whenever you've ever had a website, it's like you see that screen where it's like, are you a human? And it like loads for a second and then it lets you through. That's the Cloudflare Labyrinth. And if it detects that you're a bot. 23:16 what it does is it just takes you through what they call aberrant and it's just a set of links that just links it through endlessly and gets that bot lost in their labyrinth and so they're trying. They're actually setting up honey pots to catch these bots and then just get them stuck yeah in their labyrinth and that's the system and so it's very similar. I did spend four hours the other day trying to click into a website on cloud flip and I was like Lee these capsules are really annoying. I spent six hours doing I spent twelve hours 23:43 I was embarrassed to be just like I spent sixteen. I spent four days in a little like clicking through the thing. I was embarrassed. I was looking at a nine seven for ranger. I was trying to look at that picture of that for ranger and the clapper was like this. I went to a of ranger pictures. He did not be a real person as a forward ranger hot search. 24:11 for a range. Look at that for right. It's crazy. Okay, yeah, that's the exact idea, but for ghosts. Oh yeah, it's like we make a place that ghost you're gonna love and then we get stuck in there. Yeah, so that's what she was doing. Does she live there? Yeah, 24:32 Yeah, she lives there, so she's got she knew her way around. She's got her own little pad. Yeah, she's got her secret ways through this house or secret ways. Yeah, yeah, she's got her like side paths that get her through the house quicker. It's kind of like ikea where you got the side doors that get you through faster. It's kind of like when I work the cruise ships. Yeah, all the guest areas look. You know, I don't want to say that nice. They looked cool in the nineties. They're designed, they're designed, they're nice, but the second you go to the back area, it's like this whole thing is just a metal thing. Huh? It's like it's just like universal. 25:02 Yeah, exactly. When you to the back, you're just like oh, you guys just painted the front of that sign. Huh? Didn't even care about the back of it. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, never mind, but yeah, you want stuff. A side is gone. You realize what yeah, what it is and that's what she was doing for ghosts cool. So she spent years here hiding from the ghosts and long story. That was her main motivation for buying this whole house was just trying to you know, trying to outrun ghosts. 25:35 BINGDA! 25:38 So here's the thing is the thing it's still open today and it does tours today. Do they do ghost tours? They do the ghost tours. They do the thing. This is the story, but it's not it's not exactly true. We don't know for sure if she ever even saw a medium. What happened was she had rheumatoid arthritis as well, okay, and so she bought this house. She had architecture was her passion and she had more money than she needed. She also lived in 26:07 the Santa Clara Valley in the middle of the Great Depression, right? And work was hard to come by. And so there's some theories that she was doing all these expansions just to make sure everybody in her community had a job because she had endless money. And she was like, just keep expanding. Let's do construction. Yeah. And so they were just keep building onto her house and she just kept these projects going partially to keep jobs going, partially because she liked the, the, the adding on your house. Could just give them 26:35 money. I'm not going to let them. I'm not going to just give them away. We're not going to do any handouts out. Nobody. I, I worked for my, don't you build a staircase to nowhere? You lazy bomb. 26:51 couldn't just give them the no add another room, make it a spiral staircase to nowhere. Yeah, yeah, you poor sack of great like that feels worse. I mean I feels worse. I guess you're trying to make it seem like she was really just trying to take care of the people in her neighborhood. No, she wasn't. She was trying to exploit the people in her neighborhood to build an extra labrinth. 27:17 for her own entertainment. So now the ghosts build an interior wall room, fill it with windows, but don't put the windows in the wall. That's weird. Hang them from the ceiling. What are you doing with the windows? You freaking idiot. Here's your weekly pay. If you add that attitude to it, it does. It's way worse. Changes it. Yeah, it You like don't have to do like, but like the people they want to make an honest living. They don't want to just get money. 27:46 Nobody wants to just give money for nothing. Anyways, I don't think that's true. 27:56 Oh boy. Am I sick? I sure do need Tim stones. Get well quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow. I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. Do your part. Get this shirt. 28:25 shop.tilland.com. 28:33 She bought that house for $12,570 from a guy named John Han, who could be the same one. 28:47 stupid. No, but she so she lived in this house and what it seems like is likely be funny if you pull up a picture of John Ham, that one. Just want to a I just want to dig 29:04 just to get a John Ham rolling around in your imagination. of a John Ham. I'm watching a show right now with John Ham. I'm watching that your neighbors and for your friends and neighbors, whatever it's called. Yeah, it's crazy to me is is Gen X just getting divorced at crazy rates right now because I their divorce age. I guess I yeah, it's like fifties where you get divorced because yeah, I say like thirty five to fifty five is prime divorce years. 29:33 yeah, so I think that is yeah. Well, I mean like the rooster on HBO, which Steve Correll show it's yeah after divorce divorce. it's John Ham. His whole life is the whole show is life after divorce. Like it seems like a lot of the shows that I get recommended that are like I mean even freaking Ted Lasso yeah there's a there's life after divorce and you're just like what are we really common? 29:59 I guess, are we just trying to help people cope with it? I don't know. It feels like I think I think I think ultimately like all these shows like what they want to do is you want to be able to see yourself as the character. I think okay, that's what I'm saying yeah, and so is the audience of divorce people big enough? I guess so yeah that all the writers of these shows so many shows are like. You're gonna like those ones about the worst people 30:23 Let's find out if you're divorced. mean, I if you plan on getting a divorce, put it in the cup. Was that other Steve Carell show we watched the Four Seasons, the office? Oh yeah, the office yeah. Four Seasons was a divorce one. Yeah, don't say they're all but Four Seasons was a remake from the seventy. I know that, but I'm saying that like it's just a lot of divorce content right now. yeah, there is a lot not a lot of not a lot of married content. Yeah, you know yeah well, I if that I think it's because I think it's because marriage is boring. 30:57 it does. It is tough. I'm not talking. I mean, I do think that like I think like healthy relationships are dramatic enough for shows for sure. We and I were talking about my relationship is dramatic enough. We were we were talking about me and my wife are like James A Garfield and Chester. One day I'm going to replace her and I'm going to take her job. 31:26 no and I'm going to do it better than she ever did it. Okay, well that was I I go to every one day. I'm going to replace her. I got every work function and I tell her boss I one day I'm to take her job. I'm going to take her job. Yeah, I'm going to take her fifth grade teaching job. One day I'm going to take that job. I'm going to take this job. So you and Brie were talking about who's 31:51 Okay, whatever. We don't have to do this bit. We can do a different bit. No, we've been watching reality tv and there's a character on summer house who did not care her person. His name is carl. We're not care. had his life together for the majority of the show. Last couple of seasons he got sober, got clean and net and like started getting healthy, started exercising, opened up his own restaurant, got his life together. Yeah, 32:18 they did a spin off series that did not ask him to be a part of it and he felt a little slighted like you can tell, but it's also like you're not interesting anymore. You got your life together. You're not good for reality tv. Ryan tricky. A good friend of mine has a really funny bit or at least he used to used to now he's married and has a kid, but back when he was single, he had a bit about this girl he broke up with and he's like I broke up with her and I saw her a couple months later and she was like. I'll have you know that I've been working out and then I I wake up and I got a new job 32:46 and my life is so much better now. So what do you have to say that and he was like? Well, what are you doing on Friday? He goes, don't come to me and be like I fixed all those reasons you broke up with me. So he's like as a real so was like rich now I have a better paying job and I'm happy and I you know and he's like okay, then let's go out nice funny bit anyway. So so she 33:14 buys his house yeah. She starts expanding doing all these expansions, but what become? I should say what becomes what we think hold on speaking of reality tv yeah it by the time this comes out we're deep into big we're deep into big brother yeah, but we're not deep enough that if you're not currently on it, you can still jump in yeah. You got like a month and a half left of this game yeah and we love big brother. We've got a channel in our discord dedicated to it yeah. If you want to become a patron and 33:42 come join us talk about Big Brother. It's three episodes a week and I'm and I watched the live feeds dude. I'm in a lot of fun. It's great fun, great show. If you don't know what Big Brother is, I need a book. No, but people, I there's people who feel like they can only like survivor or Big Brother and I tell those people that they're wrong because Big Brother happens live every Thursday night. We're watching that person get evicted live, live and then you can log in at any time, any time 34:12 and just look at their watch. Just watch them. Just watch them eat their breakfast. Same thing with flock cameras. You can do the same. It's really great because like for like a summer, these sixteen people in this house in Los Angeles are like my model train set and I just get to watch them. I log in and I go look what they're doing. Look at that and then I get to judge them and I go. I would never make that decision. I would never do something like that and then the person you like the most week three turns out to cheat on his girlfriend in the house and you're like 34:42 and you're like Vinny. No man tweeting about how great you are. How much I love you and I'm like oh yes, have to delete all my tweets. My guy, my guy, guy. I've been calling you my guy. My guy's a cheater and in the end you get the final two and I do get to watch you lose and that really pays off. Really? Yeah, it's vindication. know, oh, it's so good. I've been vindicated. Yeah, for Vinny. All right. So so she moves to California and it and it 35:08 it's pretty obvious. The reason she chose to move to California was for warmer climate because she also has rheumatoid arthritis like her dad right and so her health is declining in this image. I showed you earlier. This is this is like an old school wheelchair that looks like a carrot. It does look like a real chair yeah and what is pretty clear when you look at it at the story with that lens right. These are essentially early forms of ABA compliance in her house. She's steps 35:35 longer step so she can actually like take a wheelchair down it, get down it, move around it. She built these staircases. I don't know if I've got a picture of one of these staircases somewhere. Yeah, that right there. Those are shallow stairs. Yeah, those are shallow stairs, but yeah, here's one where you see it. How it's kind of angled. There's like angles in the staircase. That's so you take no, so she can take steps and step up and then step up to the odd. The next one so she but it's not like a steep step. Oh, okay, so 36:04 she's coming up with creative ways for her to get around her big house easily. That's not as bad. Sure. There's also a famous room that the storyline is there. You walk in that room and there's four fireplaces on every wall and there's thick curtains all the way around the room. And the storyline was the lab Earth leads the ghost there and then she burns them up. She was just cold. No. Well, what it really was is this was a sauna so she could go in. Then the heat would help relax her, her 36:34 pain joints. Yeah, I feel better. So all this stuff like has a logical explanation. Ghosts don't like saunas go say it's on us and then like stuff like this door. This was there was that was for her to fall. I was for her to be like, you know, the easiest way to get downstairs is just a roll on out of here. Yeah, that was that was the elevator. Now the door was to open and let the spirits out. They were right about that. We're right. That was that. Yeah, 37:03 that was real. What does she use the door for? think no, this was this was a for a pulley system. They would stick a pulley out so an elevator lift things up yeah to the second floor and but here's the thing you'll notice in these early photos. We've got all these towers yeah, but here we obviously don't in them. Yeah, what happened? There was the San Francisco earthquake and that earthquake massive portions of the house came fell over down 37:32 and so what she did is instead of what year was the earthquake 1906 right was the San Francisco earthquake and so instead of instead of like actually like reconnecting everything the same way she took the opportunity to reconfigure a lot of the house sure and so that left some of these staircases going to nowhere. There's a lot of these dead ends because she just redesigned the house after the earthquake. She didn't like actually just like oh okay, so they like then the ghost tours just made stuff up 38:01 There's perfectly logical explanations to everything. Sure. But what happened was whenever she died, she died in 1922. And so in 1922, there was a guy by the name of John H. Brown, who was a pretty famous roller coaster designer. So here's one of his roller coasters. This is the 1902. Well, in 1922, I mean, 22, I mean, yeah, this is one of his roller coasters is called the back the back express. 38:31 the back of the back express is because you go around and then you come up and it just hits that top. Yeah, and you go backwards right and that's back to the back express yeah express and so he was a big roller coaster designer. He built theme parks. That was his thing. Sure, he found out about this house and he toward it and he's like, I know exactly what I can do it. This is a fun house is what this is right and so he creates this whole mythos of she was a crazy lady 38:58 who like was scared of the ghosts and made this labyrinth for the ghosts and created this whole storyline that stuck to this day, but he can make money off of charging a mission. Yes, yes, so he basically created the storyline that the lady he bought the house from was a psychopath yeah and and I'm going to exploit that and so he sold that story and she has no other relatives to prove me wrong. Yeah, we're like a dude. Tell me I'm wrong. Yeah, does she had. Did she didn't have kids? Huh? 39:27 I who is the Winchester fortune go to? I you know what? I don't think she had a cause they had that one kid that passed away, but I don't think she had a kid after that. I haven't heard anybody talk about it. Let's see. Let me look at her list. Yeah, she had that one child that died. So yeah, there was no relatives. She was the last one. So I must have just gone to corporate control after that, I guess. Wow. Which is crazy. But yeah. And so they they began marketing it and it's been kind of a tourist. 39:55 destination ever since as of twenty eighteen. So it's quite a while ago. It's probably significantly higher but it was a seven million dollar property. Oh It was appraised at. So the the Winchester House. Very cool. Was theoretically haunted but not really a ghost labyrinth. Yeah it's just a really early version of like accessible design that was done by someone who was just so rich. 40:25 Yeah, I wonder what they did with her money. She probably put it in like charities. She was a big charity. There was a room in the house was like in the middle where you go in there and it's like really hot and it's like you know it's hell and and the devil is just in there playing the fiddle waiting for you to join him. Twenty four seven yeah, she's trapped them in there. I have Satan trapped in one of these rooms. That's why we walled it off all it off because Satan 40:51 Hey, if you like that episode, we have another one that's kind of about another labyrinth. It was called the Latitude Society, a secret society in San Francisco. You can check out that episode. It's one of my favorites. Wonderful. If you want next week's episode right now, join us on Patreon. It's only six ninety nine six ninety nine and and come join us on there and we you know we next week's episode right now ad free and you to hang out with us in discord. So we'd love that a lot. So please share this episode with somebody and really helps us grow the show. It's like the biggest way to help the show. So just share with somebody 41:21 Thanks.
The Winchester Mystery House stands as one of America’s most enigmatic architectural marvels. For decades, the narrative surrounding its eccentric design has captivated imaginations: a grieving widow, haunted by the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles, building an endless maze to appease them. While this makes for a compelling ghost story, the truth behind Sarah Winchester and her sprawling … Read More
The Teen Wolf Of Wall Street | Barry Minkow Ep 337
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of Barry Minko Barry Minko? Yeah, I mean cow in my N K. O W cow mean cow, then cow. No, I think show me a picture of Barry Barry Minko mean cow. Yeah, I like this guy. What do think he what I think he sells workout DVDs? I think I is this the P90 X guy? No. What would you think if you saw this picture of them? 00:29 that's not a picture. Is that a picture of him? That's him. Oh wait, does he sell vacuums? Is he a vacuum sales? You're you're warmer. You're definitely warmer. Does he? Did he make vacuums? No, okay, so selling games. Yeah. Okay. What do you describe them real quick? Okay, so go back to the other one because the other one he's wearing like a muscle shirt, lime green. His teeth are super white. This this picture has been photo touched. This was taken inside of a mall 00:56 one of those places that someone was like hey, you're pretty hot and he was like hey, that's my daughter and the photographer was like I was talking about you, sir. Look at your hairy arms in your forehead. It is goals. You should get in here. It takes one of those. this is just a muscle shirt. This is a muscle shirt where it's like the tank top. Yeah and I mean like and you know what you're jacked good for it. You're the kind of jack that you shave your chest. That's a different kind of jacked right and so but his teeth are super whitened in post. Those are not natural 01:25 color so go to the next one. Now he's wearing a polo fifty something yeah and then this one he's got less hair for sure. Definitely older still jacked but he's wearing a polo and he's holding what I think is a vacuum and money is flying around him. Yeah, so definitely looks like he's from New Jersey, but you just look at her like this guy lives on the yeah yeah yeah yeah okay. So who is he? This is Barry Barry Minko. Okay, 01:52 What's up with you man? Oh well, you know, I heading out to the lake for the weekend. What do you have to I just robbed my grandma? Oh, okay, yeah, I was calling a couple questions. One, I got this like kind of like this check kiting thing I'm doing to I do have a big test coming from Friday. Could you like maybe help me make some flashcards things I learned last night? 02:22 the very minko. I think the best way to start his story is when he was thirteen years old. Okay, he worked for a local carpet cleaning company and while he worked for this lot, carpet cleaning company, he is a hard worker, but I mean he was a low level employee doing carpet cleans. What was the why? Why did this become a thing and like I want to say like two thousand four maybe two thousand three yeah where no maybe two thousand six maybe two thousand five 02:53 maybe like two thousand set. I was like how are you know, but like in the two thousands where people were selling Kirby vacuums okay, like and this was like her be like Kirby Kirby, like I are like the car. No, different thing like the video game Kirby. Yes, I'm thinking her be you're right, her be fully loaded, Kirby like the Pokemon. It's not a 03:22 okay. It's so easy to rage bait to him. That's so funny and then so anyway, but I've never heard of these. you know how people were selling like what's the knives called stucco something like that? Yes, yes, so for some reason the Kirby salesman became a thing. Yeah, I've never heard of this and you would go door to door and do your pitch selling vacuums. How expensive are they? Let me see. They've got a website, they're good vacuums. My grandma bought one. Yeah, I mean my grandma got Bop 03:51 she got got one of the door to door guys and it lasted. I mean she's she had it for however long long time. I just on their website. I just clicked the buy now button and it took me straight to their listing. It is the platinum vacuum with sound suppression system yeah and it is a massive package vacuum and all the hoses everything twenty nine hundred two thousand eight hundred forty nine. Yep, that's crazy. 04:16 to how close I've been looking at a lot of that online lately and you'll find out why soon, but I think I might get you to talk about it in this episode. Okay, so he was doing probably not he was doing. It could still fail and right now it hasn't failed publicly. That's fair. That's fair. You got to keep it quiet until you're successful. Yeah, like my marriage. 04:45 I didn't tell you we married for six years before we told anybody right to the just in case this doesn't work out. Hey mom and dad, I would like you to meet my wife. I just wanted to see if this is going to work out before I introduced her. I can't tell anyone about her until she dies because otherwise it's like oh what if we don't make it yeah and then you create a relationship with her and then it's a whole thing. mean like gosh and keeping the kids separate. 05:10 you know why your kids to meet their mom just in case get to work out just a case. Yeah, you know how it is. Yeah, that sounds like we're keeping her in the basement. She's has her own house. Hey, remember when we were texting each other about complaining about the state of the house that our wives leave stuff in? Yeah and yeah, which is like you guys have an excuse. You there's a child. It's true. There's not really excuse on our end. Well, you guys have three cats 05:38 Oh yeah, that's why that's why it's the so my wife definitely is like my wife often will send me Bert Kreischer clips and be like oh no, this is me. You know darma he talks about how he comes home from the road and the house is like a tornado and so my wife will be like oh no you know. Tell him about that time you walked into the laundry room while we were on the phone with 06:00 and she was in the laundry room and she made her oh yeah yeah yeah she was trying to get the lint out and she had fully gotten her hand stuck in the dryer arm in the and so I'm on the phone with him and I just hear her she here 06:15 and I was like all right, let's see what this is and I go in there and she's just fully and she's like. Can you get me the coconut oil and I was like for what? I wanted her to say it. I wanted her to say my hand is stuck in the visually. He me a picture. It wasn't even like 06:35 It wasn't even like it was like kind of it was like a boy on the field on the farm machine half like almost to the elbow. I'm like where do you think the lint is? Where do you think it is that is that far in the dryer? So anyway, we text each other about the state of our house currently. 06:54 and then we decided that what we're going to do is we're going to buy two houses next to each other where Tim and I can have a clean house on the side and our wives can live in a mess next door. We'll have a tunnel that connects them. Yes, we can always live in one big compound, but we can have some space house. We have some spaces that are sacred. That house is your mom's house and also your best friend's mom's house. Yeah, and it's not weird. It's not a weird thing. It's not a weird thing. Do that. 07:21 it's a one day. Once I'm sure it's going to last, I will enter. I don't want to go through the tunnel to not go to that. So here's the rules. Thanks. You know, we're having a sleepover. Honestly, no shoes in the house. Go to the front door. Take your shoes off. Make sure you lock the back door. You know, like if you go in and out of the doors, make sure you shut the screen. We do have cats, you know, alarm code is one one one one right and don't go in the tunnel. 07:50 the kids have all right. If you need anything, you know, I'll be upstairs and your mom will be next door. What was that thing about the tunnel? Don't go in. What was that thing about the tunnel? And then the kids who live there, they all go don't go in the tunnel. All in use it. They all turn slowly. Don't go in the tunnel. You know, I don't sometimes we get places and I look up and I go 08:19 we talk about? Well, oh yeah, the segue for this guy's got a carpet cleaning business at thirteen pretty good. Oh, he does it. He works for a carpet. Okay, okay, okay, okay. He cleans carpets and back when you're going to hire thirteen year olds. I wish he cleans carpets, the carpet cleaner, we don't Blair. You're legal working age, right? You're old enough to be here, right? 08:49 she's twenty seven could it tell come back in three years when you reach the legal age can't work in podcasting till you're thirty. It's a thirty year old limit. Yeah minimum anyways. So he's he's going to carpets. The guy he works under branched out to do bigger cleaning jobs and started cleaning the Rex Center that he actually works out at right. And so he also would work out and then he would after his workout the thirteen year old. Yeah. So he would do his workout and then he would get him jacked from a young age. Yeah. 09:19 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so while he's working out there, he does his workout showers up and then he goes and starts cleaning the showers and he's a regular at this gym. So he knows some of the other people who frequent the gym. The other regulars, one of the regulars is like, hey, you work for that carpet cleaning company, don't you? And he's like, yeah, and he's like, he's like, how, much they pay you is our minimum wage. And he's like, well, how much, how much those carpet cleaners sell for what year is this? 09:48 This is early 80s, maybe late 70s. I think it was 1980. How much was carpet cleaner so far? And he's like, well, the ones we use to get everything you need to be able to up and run with one of these carpet cleaners is about 2,500 bucks. Which is $17,000 today. And he's like, He's like, I'll tell you what. I've seen the way you work. I see you around here. I see your work ethic both in the gym and also cleaning the showers. 10:17 And he's like, I can tell you're a hard worker. And he's like, he's like, he's like, you deserve more than minimum wage. And he's like, I'll buy you one of those on a loan. And he's like, here's the terms of the loan. There'll be interest, the whole thing. It'll be a normal loan. And he's like, you start your business and you start doing this yourself. And he's like, okay, yeah, I think you got a deal. And so he takes up this deal with him. It is weekly interest payments he's got to make, but he's got a full business. So he goes home, he buys this. 10:46 carpet cleaner. He tells his mom and he's like he's like I need you to do sales for me. Hey, I was cleaning the showers of the gym and a man approached me and said I know you I'll give you twenty five hundred dollars. Here's three thousand dollars. 11:03 And the mom, this is the 80s, the mom's like, all right. That's fine. 11:15 he goes over and he says, mom, I need you to do sales and she's out. I need you to do so all right and so he gives her a phone book and she he writes a script. She's cold calling and she can write a script. He writes a script. She cold calls for him all right and she picks him up a book of business of a bunch of other local homes where he can go do carpet cleaning, but he quickly runs into a problem. He's thirteen years old. He can't drive towing this thing behind his bike 11:44 Well, he can't drive, but here's the bigger problem. How big is a carpet cleaner? I mean, in this day, they were big. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, these were not something you could drag behind a bike like you needed a van. Yeah, and the bigger problem was he realized really quickly people don't want you carpet cleaning at six o'clock in the evening. They want to get their first thing in the morning, so they get back in the evening and their carpets are dry. And so he is like he 12:10 being a high school student was in math class when people wanted him to be right and so got a higher employees. He started hiring contractors. He contracted it out at first, but these contract organizations, he was contracting out. They were taking too much of a cut. He couldn't keep up with it, so he started hiring employees and this is working pretty well for him. Okay, he's does this for a couple years. Who's your boss? You know I'm saying 12:38 that's all I could think. It's like you're like yeah. Dude, boss is riding me really hard right now. I think he's just stressed because he got a test coming up this week. I was in a bad mood. I think he's, I think he's mad because she said no to prom, you know, like freaking how do you as an adult, you know, I mean yeah, it's tough and that would be a tough. Hey man, I'm sorry I took that out on you. Geometry is just really hard this week. 13:08 How about that? I mean, how about this? You want to pick up some extra hours as my tutor? Yeah. So my boss who manages my payroll 13:21 I also got a you know tutor him in spelling on Wednesdays and Thursdays after school. So I want my daily schedule right now is I clean from you know like nine a.m. till about two or three and then I tutor my boss on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. You know 13:47 It's crazy. So he branches out pretty quickly, just like the owner of the company he worked for, to do larger cleaning jobs, not just cleaning. And so he's kind of expanding his operation. Yeah. And one of the clients he picks up is a client by the name of Rick Slicker, owned by a guy named Ben. I don't know his last name. But Ben and him kind of hit it off. They become kind of friends. This is Ben and Barry's. Ben and Barry's? Are you thinking of Ben and Jerry's? 14:17 Oh, so Jen and Barry's and Barry's no, so they hit it off. They become like pretty good friends and so he's always going and doing the cleaning and then he's just kind of chatting it up with that. And after the clean, you know, like hanging out at the liquor store at sixteen, chatting it up. Yeah, yeah, and so here's the problem. He's got this debt and the interest is pretty predatory. 14:44 Yeah, he's got weekly payments. This is a guy you met at the showers at the gym. Yeah, it's like hey 14:53 I got a proposal for you and he's like this is the men's locker room. I can go wherever I want. I just go wherever I want to go. I'm in the dolls. Okay, how about this? You look at all I see your work. think freaking how about a fifteen million dollars? Well, here's the thing. The guy from the twenty nine percent interest rate 15:20 the guy from the gym who loaned them the money. I don't I don't know his name. He didn't. He doesn't give the guy name, but he does know he says this guy was a pretty well to do person in the community. He was the father of one of his friends. He was driving around in a convertible, so he knew he had money later on in life. Yeah, that's a sign of wealth is if you have less car 15:43 You 15:46 He can't afford a roof. I can't even put a roof over his head. Stupid. 15:55 so he later found out that this guy was a part of the mob. That's where his money came from and so he took a long at thirteen and that's why this was such a predatory long right, so he's having a hard time keeping up with that long and so he was talking to Ben about it and Ben was like well. Look, I can I can kind of give you advances like I'll take care of that alone, but he's like okay and he's like all you got to do 16:24 is take this package to this building every Thursday. Okay, Ben Ben basically is like I've got a stack of money orders. You get out from one mob alone and you get into another mob situation. So Ben's Ben's like look. I got a you're pushing through, which means I'm right. No, it's sick. I love it. That's like I got a stack of money orders in the office. 16:48 He's like, he's like every week I just need you to take those to bank. Oh, this is not a joke. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. And he's like, he's like, he's like, and you can take a fee off of that and you can pay your, your interest off of that fee and you'll be, you'll be in the clear. And so he's like, he's like this, and it was literally perfect. Like he was able to make enough as a fee off of handling those deposits. Okay. He's like, he's like, I could make enough to make my interest payment. That was good. And then everything that I made in my business, I kept. 17:15 and so it's like it was a perfect arrangement and this is where as a business owner, it's really tough because you can't just hire thirteen year olds on a bike anymore to go do stuff for you used to be really like hey, I just like I don't need you to work every day just once a week. I'll give you twenty bucks if you just take this over there. Well, at this point he's an established business mobile. He's sixteen years old now. He's been running this business for three years. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. He's a mo. He can drive now and so Ben and him establish this relationship 17:44 and more trust forms. Eventually Ben's like willing to let him just come in on his own and grab those and whatever, do the whole thing. Well, one month was a particularly difficult month for Barry. They lost a couple opportunities. They had some expenses go up. And so he realized, oh shoot, I'm not gonna make payroll. And so he was then running the money orders and he looked at the stack and was like, well, 18:13 I take some of the bottom ones from the stack that are going to go through the lot, the latest and I take that. I just take the full money, get it back in before I should get it back before then I can cover it. He'll never know will be good. I can make payroll. I'm not trying to like, I'm not taking it on myself. I'm going to make payroll. It's crazy. He's crazy. The number of like my mom runs subways. It's crazy. Number of subway managers who will try to do this because they got to put the cash deposits in and then let's take out a hundred bucks and they tell themselves they'll put it back in on Friday. Yep. 18:41 And you justify it. Because he genuinely was like, I'm going to do it to make payroll. I'm not taking this for myself. I'm doing it for my employees. I'm doing this crime for my employees. And so he does that. He takes a little bit off the bottom, not the top, the bottom, goes and makes payroll. Once more money comes in, he puts it back. And he realizes nobody noticed. Nobody said a thing. He got away with it. And so then he kind of, it was almost like this curiosity. 19:10 of like, how much could I do it again? Like, could I do some more? Oh, that's a trap. And so he starts just sneaking some and not putting it back. No, he would sneak some and then he put it back. And so he was basically like funding growth for his business by sneaking some out of money orders and putting some back as he grew. And this is working really well. Meanwhile, he meets a guy by the name of Todd Padgett and Tom or sorry, Tom Padgett. 19:39 and Tom and him similar to him and Ben. They hit it off yeah a little bit about Tom. He is like a forty year old insurance adjuster. He served in Vietnam. Where's he meeting all these older men on jobs he's doing his cleaning where he an old guy. No, these older man the way I sounded. It did sound a little 20:07 Hey, we just produced the price of our Patreon to 699 a month. That's one price for everybody. You get all the perks. You get the live hangouts, you get to join the discord, you get early access, whichever reason you're joining for. We wanted to make it one price because I hate that everything in the world is going up in price, and so we wanted to make this a little bit more affordable for everyone to do. And so but also, you know, the other goal is that more of you join it so that we can keep funding the show. I mean, like what you know, how do I say that? That sounds like we're 20:35 poor and we are we are and no, but if you can't join us on patreon, no worries at all. Another way to support the show is by sharing it. Please tell somebody like the show and thanks for for being here for this episode. 20:52 know he's running his carpet company, which by the way, I don't know if I mentioned this yet his yeah here. I'll give you a picture of him. He his car company is called Z best with foursies. Okay, because everyone else was doing the trying to be the first thing in the phone book. Yeah, they're all a double a triple a be the very last like I want to be the last thing I want to see the last thing you see as you're done. You close the chapter. You're done reading the phone book. It's going to be me. 21:20 it's gonna be me and Alex isn't here today by the way yeah, it fired him. I didn't want to bring it up, but I just feel like we got to address it. We caught him stealing from us. 21:36 a contrary to what you might think. Alex is the one who pays payroll. It's in his own pocket and we caught him and I don't know if you guys know this, but our patron is you know we get paid in cash for that every month. Patron mails us a box unmarked full of and he stole it. Interesting thing is sometimes there's a towel. We do. We do. You know, we make some money. If I hate her, how does your how's your podcast funded? Well, we make some money from patron 22:06 and we have some ad support and then every month we get an unmarked box in the mail that has twenty five thousand dollars cash and we don't know who that's from, but we've it's been coming for every month for every five years and sometimes there's little notes in there. It's like hey talk less about this. We go okay, okay, okay. Well, you know about that and the writing looks Russian and you know 22:32 I can tell by the way I can tell by the way they wrote that that's a Russian. That's a Russian hand writing Russian accent. There's a Russian accent on this. Yeah, remember what? Anyway, all right. So he meets this guy Tom and him and Tom become friends. Tom is a Vietnam veteran. Technically not technically. I shouldn't say technically. Tom's a neo Nazi and something about Barry Barry is actually Jewish. 23:01 but they form an unlikely bond and they get really close. actually like are hanging out. Like they're like genuinely friends. It's a weird friendship. Just a Tom can't tell just a 16 year old guy and a 40 year old dude who sells insurance hanging out. But they become really good friends. This is going to come up again later, but they become friends. Okay. Well, this friendship is blossoming. Barry is doing his money thing. Barry's doing the money thing, but he's like, I wonder what else is out there. Like what, 23:30 I'm making some money doing this money thing. My business is doing decent. I've got a good clean business, but sure I got this like thing where I'm stealing money from my friend. I wonder what else I could do. Wonder who else I could steal from. So he starts check kiting, which I don't know if you know what check kiting is. Check counting is essentially it's not really possible anymore because you like post you like write it where it's like hey put this cash this next week kind of this was back when it took 24:00 there was a float. called it a float. The time period from between the point you deposit the check and then the point where actually the funds were in the account. But the bank would still allow you. They'd be like, OK, you have this money. We're going to verify it. But then if something happens, it's a bad check. You're going to lose. Right, right, right. You just lost that money. And so he would check kite. And so he would basically write a bad check from one bank account, deposit it to a second bank account that also didn't have the funds for it. And so basically, it was an account that didn't have the money. 24:29 he would send it to an account and then he'd have money, but it was a lie. Right. And he basically established all these other businesses that he would be funneling money through with like check kiting. And the way he did this is so stressful. So hold on. Could you? This bank has $5,000. This bank has $5,000. Right. 24:59 you write a check from this bank to this bank for ten thousand dollars. Yeah okay. Now this bank has fifteen thousand dollars. Yeah, take the cash out. Yeah, put it in the first bank. Yes, now you have fifteen in there. That's the scheme. Yeah and then and then long as you stay ahead of it before the clear you you're good, but you have to stay. You cannot miss a second like if you're a second late, they catch you 25:26 Okay, that is the, that's all like that is the scheme. So you check cutting, which is a stressful scheme, but I like that I came up with the scheme in my head. I like that I was able to do that scam. You know, that's fun. So he, that's what I hated by technology. We can't rip people off anymore. And then he was like, he's like, oh, you know what? My, my grandma, she's got a pearl necklace. I wonder 25:56 and it's insured. I wonder if I steal it. Oh, get the insurance for it and then I also can sell it. Yeah, so she steals his. He steals his grandma's necklace, sells it, makes the money off that gets the insurance payments. She's covered and now he's like, ah, a new scheme. Yeah. And so he is stealing money off the bottom of the liquor store. Yeah, he's check kiting. Yeah, he is stealing his grandmother's jewelry. 26:22 and then his friend, he's still cleaning car, but he's got a completely he's got a business. I think cleaning business that is and doing pretty well. It's like you could just do that dude, but here's the thing. It's nice. You know, freaking the rush. Here's the thing. Now the check hiding and both at the both the check kind and then money order thing he's doing with the liquor store. He can't keep up with it on those things alone, so the the carpet cleaning okay is what's funding those from not getting caught, so he's 26:50 got it back in to not get caught, but then he's taking money from those so that way he can live the lavish lifestyle and so his business is kind of this weird thing that's keeping him from getting caught when if he started it, if he just hadn't started it, the business would make enough money for him to just live the lavish lifestyle legitimately, but he's sixteen. That's crazy, so he calls his friend Tom and he's like hey Tom. I got an idea. He's like I just stole my ground. 27:19 neo nazi divorced never married. Oh, even better is just like what's up my sixteen year old friend. Yeah, let's go skate. Yeah, so he says hey, I would love it. I like just rod my grandma. She got a chance. Hey, hey, 27:44 What's that with you man? Oh wow! You know, I was heading out to the lake for the weekend. What are you up to? I just robbed my grandma. Oh okay, yeah, I was calling a couple questions. One, I got this like kind of like this check kiting thing I'm doing to. I do have like a big task on my one Friday. Could you like maybe help me make some flash cards and study and also have you ever thought about armed robbery and also has 28:11 our friendship changed your opinion of the Jewish people, because that's like why I hold it like it's kind of like part of it's kind of like part of why I like I'd like to like kind of change your mind a little bit yeah and so he basically convinces Tom and here's the thing that you should understand by this point. Barry is a very convincing 28:32 Yeah, he's got charisma. Yeah, he's got the charisma. can't pull this kind of stuff off if you don't got personality and charisma. Yeah, and he really plays like the young entrepreneur, the child prodigy. Like I'm making something in my life kind of coin a lot and people like they buy it. They like that. Yeah, they are big fans of him so much to the to the point where a local bank and this is not a big bank. This is a small local bank gives him a loan. 28:56 at sixteen years old, which they're not supposed to do right. I was to get alone before eighteen come on. It's very, but it's Barry and he's building a business and he's got dreams. We'll do it. We'll do it and so he's able to the guy, the liquor store vouchers for him. Yeah, the guy, the liquor store does and then there's that guy that shot every guy that killed my friend told me I should give him. I have to give with the loader. Yeah, kill me to that guy held me upside down by my feet over over the river. He said listen that kid owes me money. 29:25 hey you're gonna this very plump woman held me by my ankles and now that I think about it, she had eight legs. She she kind of resemble the spider. She made those dolls. She kept talking about the dolls, but I don't know what that means. She like I'm going to sick my dolls on you and you're like what 29:50 you talk to the next thing I know I woke up and I was back in my bed. I did this bit is chaotic with a little doll version of me laying next to me, but it's head was gone, but I could still tell it was, I could still tell a name tag with my American boy doll. Isn't it? Yeah, I a day time that said hey, just pause for a second. Go listen to the last episode so you can catch up 30:20 All right, Blair, can you time stamp that? Sorry, yeah Blair, can you time stamp that so we know where to go? So he talks to Tom. Yeah, he's he's like, hey, she got a big insurance payout for the robbery and so he's like, can you help me fake some robberies or insurance payouts? Yes, of course. So he talks Tom into it. Tom does not want to be involved in this 30:49 but he talks Tom into it. He said come on man, come on, just like to some of his herds brought fraud with me. Do it now you're forty a neo Nazi being held over the river by your ankles by a sixteen year old Jewish boy, single sad PTSD from the war. Yeah, you know what's a little bit of insurance fraud at the same broad at this point. I haven't achieved my dream. it, you know his voice. He's like 31:19 still pre-boob-boob-busted at 16. Do it! it! I want you to do it! 31:27 so so I went to my nephew's baseball game this weekend and they do these pre recorded like you know the walk up songs all that stuff and so they record it for both teams and it's very funny because he's at that age where some of these voices are pretty high so crack yeah and so they're like you know Braden Fisher and then you can tell the kids who are like Braden Fisher yeah, they're trying yeah yeah they're trying to make our boys say 31:55 And then it's like, one kid, his, walk-up song was, Oh, 32:04 now they're making my way down to pretty sick. That's hilarious. I love this year. I was I pretty sick. I don't that is I oh cool, because all the other kids are doing like yeah, you know, and this kid is and he's like yeah, this gets me hype. I'm going to knock this one out of the and he struck out, but 32:28 It was the heart. It was the spirit that I liked. I appreciated it and then he held me by my ankle. 32:36 there's a kid on my football team in high school who everybody would be listening to hang over the river, holding them by his ankle. He's just like hey and then what happened and then he like convinced him to start this. Oh come on, stand up for yourself, stand up for yourself. I just leave it right. Sorry, I'll stand up. 32:59 so this was that was not funny. Sorry, sorry, I was not funny at all. Nothing about that was funny. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, I'll be the judge of that. 33:10 No. So so he listened to like Jack Johnson and Colby Kalei to like pump them up for football games and he'd be sitting there and he would have the big headphones and he'd sit in the corner of the locker room with his eyes closed and it just be like that. And everybody else is getting hype and he's just in there like this. 33:36 and I wish I could say he went, but then would go out on the field and rip people's heads off, but he was like just like a good player like he wasn't. Yeah, it could have been better if you have this playlist like I play this. Yeah, you know, I was listening to pre Republican skill. It was a wild time two thousand and six man. They put out the go. Listen, go listen to it. Was it collide at the album? I don't is actually rebirth thing title like the pretty good. I want to hate it. I don't do it. Dude, it was great. 34:06 I saw them at a free show. Yeah, they were all free. think really, I think that's like their whole thing. I don't interesting. Well, I saw them in a free shot and the pyrotechnics was crazy. Yeah, that's of like that's like their thing for sure. Yeah anyways, I was had another kid on my football team who I just have to get this out. He would always leave food in his pants during before the game so he could pull him out and eat him mid game like on the field and I'm not exaggerate one day. 34:33 what football pants don't have pockets, so you're going to have to describe to us where these were. You know exactly where they were. His cup was full of just stack peanut butter and Joe bro. I'm not kidding. I have not guys. He's straight up. But you guys are you guys are set right and he's just pulling out an uncrustable and I and I will say him. He was the best guy on the he was ripping kids. He really destroyed those deaf and blind kids. 35:03 he that's not a joke. By the way, Tim school played the deaf and blind. Yeah, that's true. We did play in school, but he I mean this is not a joke. One day at a game pulls a shish kebab out of his pants and like eats it and throws the stick out insane. I mean imagine you're across the line like a full kebab 35:32 full come on. Just just eats the eats everything off of it. How long is it? This is the third quarter. I've been in there for a while. He was insane. That's awesome. Yeah anyways. Okay, so he convinced them. Let's do some. I give it some robberies, some fake burglary. Sure they're getting insurance money from that. Yeah and then there's so many frauds. He's running that all require him 36:02 to fund from his legitimate business to like pay back so he doesn't get caught. So he needs a legitimate business to pay back the way he's like bringing in money right, but his business is now not big enough to support this, so he has to open up offices and locations to grow the business and so he becomes a brick and mortar ze best carpet and furniture cleaning company, the best and don't sleep on us. That would be my tag for that yeah, which 36:32 pretty sick, pretty good. Yeah, I'm really good at this stuff except for if they clean your sheets and the messages don't hold on us. Sleep on us. You do sleep on us sleep on us, but don't sleep on us. Y'all are sleeping on Madras for that's funny. That's a good campaign. There you go, Madras firm. Here's some free ideas for you one. Do some better marketing to quit laundry. 37:01 whatever you're doing, whatever you do, it's sketchy stop. We're on to you. I don't know what kind of partnership you guys set up with aspirin dental so so they are stretching the business so that way it can meet the demands of his frauds, but he's not able to stretch it far enough and so he gets the idea. Tom, Tom, check it out. You're doing insurance over here, whatever fine. Let's open up a restoration business. 37:30 where we're going to go into businesses that have fires, water damage, fire, damage, all this quake. It's construction adjacent. Yeah, we're going to restore it smart, smart. You're going to handle the insurance. All of construction is money laundering, by the way. I mean like almost on. Why are you laughing? I mean like dude ivory, you know, and let's say that there's someone who like really wanted to do a lot of construction. It was just like really everything they talk about is the next thing they want to construct. You'd be like 37:58 seems like you might want to launder some money through that construction cost yeah yeah yeah yeah we got to resurface the pool and we got to tear down this side of our house and we got to put up some stuff in the yard and you're like like a nice archway over there seems like you're laundering some money through this, but that's just my opinion. So they start 40 obvious they start a restoration company. This is and this is where it's like this is the height of this stuff where it's like it's not 38:27 caught on yet. This is the stuff that these these industries are more regulated now yeah, because of the number of people who are we're doing stuff like the frotting. Yes, exactly exactly. So him and Tom, they start doing these restoration schemes right where what they do is he basically goes somewhere in town. He lives in Los Angeles. He finds a building that looks kind of old and run down yeah, and he takes a bunch of pictures of it and he sends it to Tom and he says we're restoring this building and Tom as the insurance agent. 38:54 basically creates a fake insurance contract with his company and is like, we're we have this company. And then he's like, oh, it's damaged. It needs to be restored. This company is going to restore it. And he does the whole deal. And the insurance company and he's the adjuster. So he does everything, approves it and then gets the payout. And then they get the money. Here's the thing. they don't do anything. Here's the thing, though. Yeah, they don't do any work. The building doesn't even know it's just fraud. It's just complete fraud. 39:22 like the building owner has no idea claim was taken out on their building yeah and but here's the thing he's not paying tom barry's not paying tom for any of this it's just like a favor. I'm just doing this for the love of the game for a favor. He's like I'm helping a friend. He this is helping him build his business and like I'm putting my entire livelihood and career on the line yeah for this sixteen year old boy. 39:51 Huh? It's crazy. It's crazy, crazy indeed. And so long as we're short, they do this for a little bit and it eventually costs Tom his job because that's what saying. So Tom gets caught. costs him his job. He's so Barry calls mom. He said, Hey man, I just found this building that we go. He goes, okay, I'm going to live there. Okay. Like what I got fired. I'm going to live in that building. I'm a homeless man now. So 40:19 this went from me being a sad guy that was friends with a sixteen year old to you being a weird guy who's friends with a homeless guy, so because your friends with how the tables have turned weird thing is you being friends with. It's weird that your friends with a homeless guy. It's weird that your friends with that homeless guy. It sounds like something someone like shouts during a break up yeah, where it's just like you never listen to me and it's weird that your friends with that homeless guy. You know 40:49 just like what I would like you were lifelong friends. You just made friends with this guy and now he's at our barbecue all the time all the time all the time in our backyard most nights cause he's got nowhere to go like he sleeps back there. 41:06 Oh boy, am I sick? I sure do need Tim stones. Get well quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow. I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. Do your part. Get this shirt. 41:35 shop.tilland.com 41:43 So he basically tells Tom like Tom is like I can't do this for you anymore man. I lost my job like I'm going to lose every I cannot help you anymore yeah and so Tom tries to cut a line and be like our this is over and Barry's like you don't want to do that Barry's like hey, but what about Debbie and here's a thing who's had a crush on this woman named Debbie and he had this big dream that he's cold Barry all about that one day they would marry 42:12 and they would get a beach house together and he's like he's like he's like we're so close man. We're so close you could get the beach house. Yeah, I could impress Debbie. You could you could marry her. She'll move with you to the beach house. We just got to do one and she's like he's really funny and like you know he's got a good business and all that. I think the thing I don't like about him is that he's a Nazi that he's the I think the thing I don't like is that he was a huge fan of 42:40 a person whose name I can't even say on the podcast because YouTube would censor us. Yeah, it's also weird that his friends at the sixteen year old also weird that his friends without a homeless guy, but he Barry's basically like hey, if we do one more good job, hey one more big job, always one more thing and he talks Tom into it. 43:05 So together, Tom, with his star on insurance job now, how are you going to do this? They start interstate appraisal services. Okay, so this company exists for them to go create construction jobs and then go to a bank and secure a loan for that construction job and then not constructed and then yeah, the job doesn't exist and basically the whole plan, but isn't the loan that they're giving you based on having the asset. So the whole plan is they go get the long Tom does all the paperwork. 43:35 Barry does all the schmoozing Barry's eighteen. Come on, come on yeah. He just moves. He's got to be real hot to pull this off. Yeah, there's no way no one's letting an eighteen year old loser do this stuff right. Yeah, you know, I mean he's not like he just doesn't got. He doesn't have it doesn't have it. I know he's just very convincing. He's a smooth talker. 44:02 like just like yeah, come on talker. Okay, really good at selling the young entrepreneur dream. Yeah, like he's selling the American dream to all these bankers and he's like I'm achieving it like I'm coming out of poverty because like he did like he was in a high where like the water is and I know that it's like this is so like pull that back up. I do want a name plate. You know, like I did and I and you can't get it for yourself pens. You know, yeah, it's weird to get it yourself. 44:30 I'll get it for you. I want one so bad. That's just on my desk. Yeah, you know, so people know yeah, Jaren Myers, chairman of Jaren, Chairman of the board pretty. I mean yeah, call me the call me Mr Chairman, Mr Chairman. I like that so he so they change my name and the discord to Mr Chairman. They start interstate appraisal right now. It's carnival big bucks 45:01 because I make all the big money on the carnival cruise. I don't remember sergeant redacted sergeant redacted so they they start interstate appraisal services and the whole scheme here is they create all the paperwork. They go get a loan for a big construction project right. The plan is our paperwork is so button up. Our presentation is so buttoned up that nobody ever leaves the bank to do due diligence. Yeah, no one ever goes to the address to see what they're just trust us. Yeah, 45:28 And so they do these projects that are outside the metro. So it takes a little bit of work to get there. It's kind of far one's going to know what is going on out there just like off the top of their head and no one's going to be able to verify that they're doing it and they're just going to keep the loans coming in and they're going to pay off the last long with the next lot. Yeah right. This is how this is. This will work. Yeah and they run this for a couple of years. Yeah they take down a bank 45:56 because this bank like they literally created a run on this bank and they eventually like that wash their loans like this is perfect. We can keep running. We got an influx of cash from this bank. We don't have to pay back because we took out too much of a loan from them. So now our plan is to sink six banks. No forget those people's accounts and retirement and their mortgages so 46:24 but here's the thing. This is what happened to the Lehman Brothers. This is getting really big. He's also. He also started a flower company. This is kind of a side story. He started a flower company and this he was doing credit card scams and so with the with the flower company, he would sell floral arrangements and then whatever. If it was a two hundred dollar bill, he charged him six hundred and then when I called to be like hey, you charge me way more. He's like I'm sorry my fingers. I know my fat finger missed the two and went straight to the six. He'd say dang. He's like you know what 46:52 We've got a dishonest employee. We already fired him. We caught him for this. I'm so sorry. He's like, we'll pay you back. You'll see it. Hit your account. We'll take care of it with the bank. And he would just not take care of it. And he would trust that they would trust him. And it almost always worked. They were almost always trust them. They would just never check their statement to see the money. Well, they would wait long enough to where they couldn't dispute the charge anymore. And so then he just walked with the money and they got stuck with that extra 600. Oh, I wouldn't let him get away with that. Well, somebody 47:22 somebody didn't and so there was a guy by the name of let me pull yeah guys name. I wouldn't let him get away with that the Swanson family, the flower companies what takes him down the Swanson family. No, oh, Swanson family so funny if he just ripped off the wrong guy. This wants a family. You do this whole elaborate you're hearing what the mob you're doing this whole elaborate thing with the insurance guy you're dangling Debbie in front of him like hey, Debbie, and he's like 47:52 and he'll do whatever you want. Did he did he did he did he he did he yeah, oh wait, there be and and so you're doing this whole and then you rip one guy off in a flower charge that you made it a hundred dollars on and he's like comes crumbling down. He worked at the bank. You cost that guy his job. You sank his bank. He sank my bank, but the flowers think my bank 48:20 the flowers are where I got a line. No, so this guy goes and he gets a small claim. He goes to small claims yeah to get a to sue him for it and he shows up. He fought for the five hundred dollar difference in the credit card fee. Okay, but it was the flowers. It was the flowers. Yeah, and so this guy, that's I said. I said was in the flower company. No, it didn't sink him. Oh, this guy shows up. This guy shows up to hand him the court papers like to serve him the papers and he shows up to one of their that where their office is 48:50 and he tries to serve the papers and yeah, that's what he does and someone who's very full it is like dances around the room is like no not important important like you're playing tag with Barry is like nineteen at this point yeah and it's important to note he is now living a millionaire lifestyle yeah he's in Los Angeles. He's driving the sports cars. He's got a posse of bodyguards right like he's living large at this point and so he he has 49:20 He's six one of his bodyguards on this guy and they just start beating him up. They take his glasses, they smash the guy's glasses and the whole time Barry's just sitting there cheering on his bodyguards like, yeah, get him, come on. And so all over like $400, which is very interesting because we do know this has happened multiple times where he's done these credit card schemes and people have shown up trying to get the money and he's just been like, I, whatever, I'll pay you $400. Cause the way he lives his life, he lives on cash. 49:47 right, and so he's always just got a few thousand dollars cash on him. He's like he gives you the cash. I don't care like it's not. It's nothing to me at this point, but for some reason in this case he's like he's like it's because the guy tried to sue him. He's like I'm going to beat you yeah, and so his people beat him up and I don't know how he got away with this. Like I think the story to remember here is he's such a smooth talker. He gets away with everything. There are multiple times where people are suspicious of him and he talks his way out of it yeah, so 50:18 this whole scheme is growing. He's got like a Ponzi screen going. He's got check hiding, seeing him. He's got insurance fraud going. He's got like he's got fake robberies going like he's it's the scale of this is crazy. Yeah, no, I do have a I got to go do a carpet cleaning nine and then and then we have a meeting with the bank at two and then I have a fake robbery of four. I can't miss that. I have to be there to sell it and this and this 50:46 this continuing to be a thing where as this bubble grows right, he needs to bring in more money, so he keeps expanding z best right, so z best is now nation best z best is now nationwide. He's nineteen years old. He's flying to l or from New York to L. A. Multiple times a week as he's growing this business or my business is going as well and so starting a cleaning company. So he's in New York called on core cleaning and I got to tell you because if I don't follow through, you guys could embarrass me on it, but I have a cleaning company and we're going to scam some folks and so 51:16 he's in on our website. This is a sting he's in New York and he's kind of doing the socialite thing in New York. Yeah, the thing he meets. I bring in my whole cleaning company. I bring it up and you go he's in New York. I know I've got a lot to cover still. Oh shoot and we're getting hungry. He means a guy by the name of Jack, Catane, Cartane, Catane, Jack, Catane, Catane, Catane, T, A, N, Catane. Okay, 51:44 And he basically is like, tell me about your business and they're talking and you know, they the jacks head. He's like, this is the scale and he's like, he's like, well, what are you struggling with? And he's like, well, you know, he's like, I've got, I've got some financing problems. He's like, he's like, I, it's hard to keep up with payroll. I've got so many employees across the country. It's hard to keep up with it. I've also got all these scams. I'm trying to give them. Well, Jack, he's in the mob and Jack is like, well, 52:15 I think I could help you with that and he's like, I'm to help you out with some fan financing. Yeah. And so he takes out a massive loan with the mob to be able to meet payroll and he's going to pay weekly points on it. And as long as he just keeps things going. And so he keeps expanding having to pay this loan for the mob. Right at 20 years old, he's back in L.A. He meets another guy in the mob. So the guy in the mob is like, hey, that's a predatory loan that that guy has got you on that East Coast mob. They're no good. 52:45 come work with the West Coast mob like we got, we'll get you. And so he's like, he's like, I'll get you out of that loan. We'll take care of that loan. You don't have to worry about it. We'll take care of that loan. We'll give you a new one, better rate. And so he gets a new loan, better rate. This guy comes in and becomes like an advisor. This is by the guy, a guy by the name of Robert Vigiano. And yeah, so yeah, let's get you out of the New York mob. You don't want to be with them. Come to us in the West coast. All right. Yeah. Come to us at Wells Fargo. 53:13 really as you explain it, I just go. 53:17 this kind of starts to seem like banks or mobs kind of and so Vigiano is a convicted jewel fief who's out now. Yeah, he brings in his associate Maurice rind who's a convicted securities fraud convicted of securities from sure and they become advisors under Z best Z best is now a nationwide company. They're huge right and they they start laundering drug profits through Z best and so Z best is now doing really well. 53:47 But again, as the company grows and as all of these schemes grow, the amount of revenue that has to come into to support it is just massive. And they've got to the point where they can't use, they can't go to big banks because big banks do their due diligence for all their things. They have to go to small banks or the mob and they can't do any more of that. They're too big. And so they come up with a scheme. They say, okay, the last place we can really go to fund this is 54:17 the New York Stock Exchange. If we can go public, we can bring in an influx of cash. the investors. We can bring in an influx of cash and we never have to pay that back. And then we can go clean. We can stop all the fraud. We can go clean and be a clean cleaning company. And so the plan is let's take it public. The problem is taking it public is kind of hard to do. Right. And so they bring in the restoration company under ZBest. They had the cleaning company and it all becomes one big mega company. 54:46 and they go to take it public on the stock exchange. But there is a lot of regulation, a lot of rules, a lot of audits that you have to go through. So they bring in an accountant who is going to clean up everything and help it look legitimate. Long story short, over the course of his time with them, this accountant, what's the word I'm looking for? Not fabricates, forges 10,000 documents. Nice. To make them look legitimate. 55:15 and using and I don't know how he got away with it because this is like the eighty. So these are it's white out and pen yeah he is, but he they it cleared he's a the word that it was used as savant when it comes to forgery and so he is just incredibly talented at forgery savant and basically they were like they're like okay. Well, we got to see the rest. He just had a printer we got home. He had his own so good 55:43 he's so good way to how does he do this? How does he do it do it so that his time travel they need the last thing that they need to verify everything is they need to see the restoration company in action and they're like okay, we'll give you all we'll show you all the paperwork. We've got a project up in Sacramento. It's three hours away. We got projects up in Sacramento is great and they do all the paperwork. They show my the pick. Yeah, like well, we want to go on site and see it and they're like I name 56:11 It's so hard. like, it's like pretty far and like, no, like we would love to go. Like we'll meet you up there on the here's a day we'll meet you up there. And he's like, ah, we'll, figure something. We'll, we'll invite you. We'll invite you. So they go up, they hurry up to Sacramento and they just drive around town trying to find a building that meets the description of the building that they gave them. And they told them that they had like, it was like a six story tower that they were working on. The biggest tower they could find was a three story. Um, and so they go in, they basically were like, they 56:41 negotiate with the owners because they had it was mostly vacant. And so they were like, we'll rent the whole thing from you guys. Um, but the one thing we have, um, our attorneys need to come look at it and our attorneys have to see it. Uh, but there's some other tenants and they didn't want anybody to say something. This is a brand new building that is not in need of any restoration. Right. So they were trying to tell them that it was like, they just finished. And so like, well, we can't be there on a weekday where there's going be other people there. So they agree, they get access on a Sunday to show up with their attorneys to do a walk through this building. 57:11 And be like, yeah, the project was originally going to be six stories. Uh, but there was some construction issues. And so we ended up pulling it back down to three and leaving it at three and like all this stuff and, uh, you can come toward it. And they were pretty confident as they walked them through this, they were like the attorneys, the way they were responding, they were seeing through the facade. Like they knew like, this is not legitimate. And so they leave that day and they go back home and they all move out of there. We got, we got, got. 57:39 They all move out of their places. They all like go skip town. They go to their safe houses. And a month later, ZBest carpet cleaning went public on the NASDAQ because they bought it. 57:54 What was this ticker like ZBSG? I don't know what the ticker was, but I do know that after the IPO, they were a $600 million company and they became incredibly wealthy. That's crazy. He bought a home in just outside Beverly Hills. He got a pool in the backyard. He put a giant Z in the bottom of the pool, Lamborghini's, Ferrari's, the whole nine. And for a couple of years, he was actually the youngest founder. 58:23 to ever go public on the stock exchange at 21 years old. And this was, this became a huge deal. Like he milked. Yes. And so he wrote a book called making it in America, 18 years old and a million dollars. Uh, he was on the Oprah Winfrey show and the subtitle that they gave for his role is hilarious. Young and rich, very mean cow, young and rich. 58:45 and then he put together this massive. That's all it took to get you on over back then just be young and rich young and rich. You tried being young and rich. Have you tried being drug and rich and then he put together this massive nationwide ad campaign. He really milked the fact that he was this like yeah genius entrepreneur that took this company public, but here's the thing. It was the mop while he was doing all this credit card fraud. 59:14 he defrauded the Swanson family, who I said was the one that he punched the different family. Okay, but he had defrauded them of a couple hundred dollars and one of these credit card schemes and she didn't forget this and she is very upset about it and she sees him on Oprah. She sees the books. She sees the ads. She sees him public on the stock exchange. He's a scammer. She starts asking around our community and everybody is like yeah. He like took some money off the top from us. 59:42 And so she basically does this nationwide campaign calling their customers and finding, compiling these stories of people that he's defrauded and the bank that he got shut down and the loans that were sketchy, all the people that he had met, there was a specific banker who caught them. took them, there was a day he tried to get a loan. He went, showed up at the bank and they had this closed door meeting and the banker sat down with him and he was like, I know what you're doing. And it was like, I looked at your paperwork and he's like, this is clearly a Ponzi scheme. 01:00:19 and out of this pocket a full kebab. That's a power move. It is a power move to eat an uncrustable as an adult anywhere in public it just so so Barry talks his way out of it though he's like he's like. Do you really think the only your bank are going to want it going public that an eighteen year old was defrauding the bank? I don't think you want that and I don't think you want to be the one who got got and he's like he's like 01:00:48 At the end of the day, I'm just I'm just an entrepreneur. I'm just trying to make the American dream happen and I'm not doing it I want to get rid. I'm doing it to make payroll and he talks his way out of it. And so she gets that banker and she basically gets this whole stream of people who have evidence of like this has been a fraud the whole time. Yeah. And she takes it to the LA Times and they publish a story and that day the stock drops 40 percent and everything crumbles. The mob comes coming for their money. 01:01:18 the SEC comes coming for them. Everybody starts investigating them and long story short, by the end of that year, he's convicted twenty five years on fifty seven counts of fraud and him and all of his associates get get right sentences, and so he goes. He serves a seven year sentence talks his way out of it. Well, yeah, he gets out on good behavior because early in the sentence he finds the Lord and he leaves prison 01:01:47 and he starts a church yeah and he became a pastor yeah early two thousands okay and he also started a business and this business would find companies that were committing fraud and report them to at the SEC and basically like publicize this company is doing fraud and in two thousand nine I'm just so tired of all this stuff man. This is crazy in two thousand nine 01:02:15 he tried this on a company called hold on. He tried this this. So the way the company will work is he would go and he would like publicize a report basically like a whistleblower type report that hate. This company is doing some sort of financial crime and he would like put that on like a magazine or and like publish it yeah and so on his blog. Yeah. He it was called the fraud discovery institute okay and it would just uncover corporate fraud the fd i and he did this throughout the majority of the early two thousands. 01:02:44 And then in 2009, he targeted a company called the Lenar Corp. And he said it was a financial crime in progress. Their stock plummets after he releases this. And the problem was Lenar Corp was the biggest company he ever went after. And Lenar was like, we're not going to let you get away with this. And so Lenar sues him. They get a, they win a $583 million judgment against him because they found out he completely lied. And in discovery, they found out that his entire business 01:03:14 was a short scheme. And so he would go buy shorts on these companies and then publish the fact that they were frotting people and then their stock plummet and he would profit massively. And in discovery, they discovered that he embezzled $3 million from the church he started. And on multiple occasions was taking checks and copying checks and writing checks in people's names from his congregation and embezzling money out of his congregation. 01:03:44 So two thousand ninety gets sentenced to another five years for the Lenar conspiracy. Oh my gosh, five more years for the church fraud and so he gets ten years. He ends up getting out in twenty nineteen, so he serves the full ten. Okay, marries his ex and now he is now he's doing a couple things. Okay, one he has a company called it's your stomach. I did I not call it earlier. Did I not call that he sells like DVDs of workouts did 01:04:14 which is he selling supplements? It's like a workout that is the easiest thing to get into a group for a grift for sure. Read this slogan because it because the underbelly of men is their underbelly. 01:04:32 Oh, not a diet, but a sustainable nutrition program, not exercise, but training that you can't read because the websites designed poorly. Yeah, in fact, you're in a busy schedule and safety, not temporary change, but permanent lifestyle transformation, not spot losing, but complete health. Give us 90 days to reset your physical physiological for a 01:04:59 reset your physiological forever. I don't know what that's supposed to designed for all those who like us have failed in the past, but not Oh Barry. Have you failed in the past, but he's also doing the influencer thing. Yeah, talking about fraud, putting a light on fraud, doing the podcast circuit, okay, on podcasts and and he's like 01:05:27 allegedly whistle blowing again, which means he's probably doing the probably doing the short stuff and he's portraying this message that he's. He understands that God is a god of second chances and this is a second chance in life is second second second second second chance in life. My gosh man, so he's out there right now. It's crazy. You know what though? I think he had a legitimate business. I think I think I genuinely think what happened is he got in over his skis yeah 01:05:55 thirteen years old right and then you're just know where to go. I already go the mess he was getting himself in right and made such a big bomb because right now he's at a point where he's on the hook for six hundred twelve million dollars in restitution from ivory case. He's and also he served seven years comes out. So there's another ten and is just like life is long. Yeah, I've done seventeen years in jail total yeah and honestly wasn't that bad. It wasn't that bad yeah and I've seen the peaks yeah 01:06:25 it's worth it yeah, because it comes back to our age old podcast question. How much time would you do in jail? If like let's say you serve ten years, but you come out and you have six hundred million dollars or you know if you could live the next fifty years, how we're old, let's call it. Let's call it thirty five years. Yeah, you could live the next thirty five years. Yeah rich, rich, but those last ten to fifteen you got to spend in jail. 01:06:56 I don't know. I don't know. I mean you kind of are if you're to go to a nursing home. I think that's kind of what I'm saying is like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of these guys are looking at the looking at the pros and cons and being like. mean if I'm going to be old and in care anyway, and most of those prisons for people of that age are like nursing homes anyway, so it's like oh no yeah, yeah, I don't think I just don't think we have enough of a hammer down on him. Yeah, he yeah, yeah, that's a good question. 01:07:26 It's not. It's not something we're considering. It's not something that we're thinking about. That's a good question. I guess I should probably consider and think about some. No, we're not about doing gonna do rod, but he did at his peak at right after the stock market, right after they went public on the stock market before everything came crumbling down. Yeah, his net worth peaked at two hundred million dollars. Yeah, his the company was like a five hundred million dollar company. Tom, Tom got the beach house. This is actually crazy. 01:07:55 Tom got the beach house and Debbie. No, I didn't get Debbie, but he did get the beach house, but his first day in the beach house was the day the house of cards came crumbling down. So like he had it for today. Oh, that's funny. She is pretty brutal. Couldn't even stand on his back porch and play the fiddle as it all crumbled around him. Hey, thanks for being here for this episode of things. I'm on that side. If you liked it and you like other mob stories, 01:08:23 you should check out the McDonald's monopoly scam. Apparently the entire town. We were all playing with not McDonald's monopoly. It was never possible for us to win, so go check that out. You can check out next week's episode right now on Patreon. It's ad free. There's a discord and we have a hang out every month. Every month, every month we do a live hang out where we get to, know, just joke around and get to know you guys better. So thanks for supporting the show. We hope that you will see you next time and share this with somebody. Please, it would really help grow the show.
At just 13 years old, Barry Minkow embarked on his entrepreneurial journey, cleaning carpets for a local company. Unlike most teenagers, Minkow harbored ambitions far beyond minimum wage. Recognizing a lucrative opportunity, he secured a predatory loan from a well-connected individual at his gym to purchase a commercial-grade carpet cleaner, valued at an astonishing $17,000 in today’s money. This bold … Read More
This Couple Lost Everything to the American Girl Doll Lady | MacKenzie Childs
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, hey, what's up? I feel like you're the way your face is right now. You're planning something you have a play. It's so funny that you mentioned my face. but I needed to tell you this. I got I'm happy to be here. My face may not show up because I did get Botox yesterday for real. Are you lying to me? I'm not. I feel it. What do you think Botox is? No, not there on my forehead. So here's what happened. It does feel a little tight, so here's what I your eyebrows. 00:30 Are you serious? Yeah, is that for real? Yeah, I do a hard. Okay, yeah, I know I was trying to, but I feel like you're lying to me. I did give because my parents pressured me into it. Here's what happened. You got paired pressured. Here's what happened is that my parents, I think my parents are really concerned about my four headlines. Yeah, and I don't care, but they're like they, they really care. And so they did the thing where is the kind of like what they did to me when I was in middle school in fat. 01:00 was they don't want to address the problem. They wanted us offer a solution and hope that you can and hope that you figure out that it's like what mom took me to curves with her and she was like, she was like, you'll love this love because and so and so she was trying to get me to do yeah, you know, and so yeah, I did get Botox and it was, know, and you're like, oh, you like go to a place and yeah, I went to a place, this lady's house and her living room. She just 01:28 you know she just fully just it. It's not it is sketchy to me how big that market has become because now there are yeah people like that that are just like on the side doing botox. Yeah, like I don't feel like that should be league. It's like a couple hundred bucks. I mean it's legal. She's she got a certify. It's kind of like cutting hair like you can like my barber could cut. Can he cut hair? No, you're injecting. Are you allowed to you? That's different than cutting hair. Yeah, but it's like you got a you can't just cut hair and not know. I mean you can 01:58 Yeah, you know yeah, but like I feel like I feel like in here. What I do know different. Here's what I do know is that eight out of ten people who do botox injections at someone's house would not get a vaccine and that's crazy, but yeah, I was just in her living room. There's pictures of her family and are like six kids or whatever. They all talks and you know they all of our kids are like I I'm surprised 02:26 I'm surprised your parents are worried about the lines in your forehead. I my lines are kind of deep for time or worse. Now I don't think yours are worse than mine are way worse. You think so this whole hey, what if this whole comment below whose forehead looks worse and keep in mind that I have had worked on what if this whole thing is not that I graduated curves in his whole thing? 02:52 is it's the same thing where your parents wanted to address a problem, but they didn't want to address the problem. That's what I'm saying. So they are. The issue is not your four headlines. It's mine and so like if you book, they're like if we get all connected, I was like maybe I need Botox to all watch the hook, hooked on Botox and I'll be like, look how firm his forehead looks. He's got some for it. I was really trying to, but my eye, there is a problem. My eyebrows are too express like the video that I posted about what I was like. Oh, we didn't recognize my neighbor. 03:21 yeah. So many of the comments are like all I can see is how much this guy's eyebrows move. That's good. You're talking with your eyes. Yeah, sorry, I'm expressive. So now I'm really focused on not moving them. No move them. Don't listen to that advice. Move them and honestly, honestly, a crinkly forehead. It's like like if you're talking about wrinkles, no, you're on your face wrinkles on your eyes under the eyes. That sucks, but wrinkles on the forehead like when you're an older guy with like 03:48 with like gray hair, because the for yeah, where's this top right here, wrinkles on the forehead and a hairy arm talking about what makes a guy attractive to yeah. No, but I'm saying like that's a good guys too hot to be a forhead are distinguished man wrinkly eyes look like a forehead or the wrinkles in the forehead. Yeah crazy. It's supposed to take a couple weeks to like actually set in to like where it'll be like where I can't raise my eyebrows. Are you about to become like a botox addict? No, 04:18 and I literally did this yesterday and she was going through all the side effects that could happen. I've done it six times, I was like, oh, because there was a possibility that could like droop my eye, I'm yeah, was droopy. I yeah there was there's possible and possible side effects, but I had to let you know. I had to tell you I had to get it out of the way. Yeah, be like hey something's been eaten at me. Yeah, this is chemical in my forehand and I'm you know. 04:47 I'm going to get a facelift after this yeah and I'm going to get. I'm going to look freaking weird on purpose. I want to look like you know those celebrities that like that wet gecko he's got his head plastic surgery for sure. It's so crazy like I am optimal health, but it's also like yeah dude you've had your face faked it. You think that 05:15 I'm laughing about my boat talks. It doesn't look like I'm laughing, but my boat is nice holding it in and she's like smoking a cigar and bring a whiskey like she just freaking looks like it. She does it in a villain and she's just like actually yes, I can. 05:36 Things I learned last night. 05:45 anyway. Anyways, have you ever heard of Mackenzie Childs? A Mackenzie Childs. Okay, you're opening a picture that looks like Laura Ingraham Wilder in the Portland edition. This is very like I, if I can describe this picture to our listeners raggedy and what's that raggedy in? Is that what I'm thinking of? What's the, is that the doll? Yeah, raggedy and she does look 06:11 exactly like old raggedy and she hasn't had enough botox. Yeah, she's got more botox. She looks like she looks like a pretty chill lady. She this photo, this specific photo looks like if um in in two thousand thirteen a graduation announcement photo is what this photo looks like in the Midwest. Yeah, and she's graduating in two thousand thirteen. Yeah, she's graduating in nineteen thirteen, so her name and her 06:40 her name is Victoria Childs. Okay, this is her and she does look super chill. I'm not trying to make fun of her, but she is dressed like Raggedy and she's got like she's you know, she's an older woman with gray hair, but it's like she's got a lot of colors up there. Yeah, and so she does look like a stereotypical like you know barista. Yeah, yeah, she does. Yes, give off that vibe and she's just older and that's her name is Victoria Childs. She's hyphenated it to Mackenzie Childs Victoria Mackenzie Childs this because this is her husband Richard 07:10 Mackenzie. Oh, I've heard I know I recognize this couple. I know where we're going. They live on a boat. Yeah, now yeah, there's a lot of story between them now and they're super cool as well as I don't want to make fun of her. Yeah, they are very cool. She they're super chill. You got to see this. He's wearing a kilt and like they're in New York. Yeah, why you were to kill that great and he's got a the craziest purse hanging from his killed. I love it. I don't I guess it's a coin purse, but it's crazy. I can't 07:39 describe it. I've seen them. Yes, I was. I can't wait for their story. Great. So Victoria and I always want to call him Robert Richard Richard Childs, Victorian Richard, okay, Victoria and Richard McKenzie Childs. We'll start with Victoria. Victoria's kind of the main actor in the story. She grew up in in California. She was born in California shortly after 08:05 her and her family moved to Indiana okay, and she got involved with four H. You know what four H is yeah, so if you can you describe it for people who don't know because I isn't it like a it's like a farmer co op type thing for like for young kids. It's like it's like what F not FAA FFA future farmers of America. Four H Club would be like it was. It was an organization that you could join if you were like a farm kid. Yeah, I don't know much about it. It's got the clover 08:32 I know it yeah, it's got the clover. The four H is our head, heart, hands and health. Yeah, it's kind of boy scouts adjacent, but for like farmers okay, and so they do you try to tie knots but around cows legs kind of yeah, it's just like yeah. How do you how do you live a life in an agricultural society and so yeah you're doing out towards the stuff you're also doing in the home stuff baking and cooking and things like that like it's for the women so and uh 09:00 and she became like a competition person. It's it's hands heart. What is it? Let me pull back up hands, hands, heart, heart, health, health, homestead. that's what it is. A head head is the other one head, heart, hands, health, okay, homestead is the fifth one, the five. It's the four H community, 09:28 and for the four H community, we have to remember the five Hs. Yes, and they actually recently updated it out of six H its head, heart, hands, health, homestead and hell because you got to put some fear in those kids. I'm laughing about my botox. It doesn't look like I'm laughing, but my boat is nice holding it in. 09:53 Oh yeah, my boat dogs won't let me laugh at that. I boat. Yeah, I ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha 10:11 pretty good. Okay, that's the first I see. I see someone typing right now. It's not that funny. It's not that funny, so she she in the four is community. She became like a competition person in the four is community. She won a blue ribbon for ceramics and that's where she like learned this. Yeah, I know everything that they do in the four age. Okay, yeah, they do all sorts of just different things and so she 10:36 She got kind of obsessed with ceramics at that point. I went to Indiana University where she got a bachelor of fine arts and then she was the Hoosiers. Yes. And then she went on to, uh she took graduate courses at a couple of schools, Harvard, Radcliffe. And then eventually she went to the New York state college of ceramics at Alfred university. And Alfred, guess, is like a very esteemed ceramics school. Yeah. Some of them, but most like, you know, I love about anything. Yeah. 11:05 is that there is a prestige version of that somewhere. There is someone whose whole identity is that I know everything about ceramics and everyone in the super current ceramics community wants my approval and there's someone who like gets real power from that. You know there's somebody who like who is devil wears Prada e around in ceramics in ceramics. Yeah, it is interesting like it's just like breaking people stuff like get that out of here. 11:34 like like oh you made another ash tray. What's that? What's that cooking guy that had the show? The Hell's Kitchen show? What's his name? What's the guy who had the Hell's Kitchen show? The cook, the cooking show. I don't you know, I'm talking about no, you know exactly what I'm talking about. James Corden, no James Corden. Don't look up. Oh no, it's not Mason Ramsey, Mason Ramsey. 12:03 that's very close. Who's Mason Ramsey's the God, the the yodeling in Walmart? No, don't do this for me is Gordon Ramsey a a ceramics. The joke's dead now because you know yeah like ceramic show work, but it's quarter Ramsey style host yeah breaking everybody ceramics. That's really funny. Thanks. I can see your laughter. 12:35 I can't express. I can't express. So stupid. So she got a Master of Fine Arts at Alfred. And while she was at Alfred, she worked under a highly esteemed artist named Wayne Higbee, who taught him in this. That's what I'm saying. Freaking Wayne Higbee. Wayne Higbee is my name. And I'll tell you what, I didn't come all the way here to America to look at another ashtray. 13:03 All right. I came here to find art. Yes, exactly. That's exactly how he is. uh And he taught her this like Renaissance era technique called. Yeah. Magiolica. just know stuff from a hundreds of years ago. Yeah, you should. Here you go. Yeah. And it's this method that is very like intricate. You cannot mass produce this. This is something that's always handcrafted. Like it's a very. 13:31 uh labor intensive method of making pottery. Okay, and so she fell in love with this method. She loved the way like things came out here. She meets Richard who would become her husband and Richard and they're like college age this time during graduate school. So like early twenties, okay mid twenties and he uh on the kind of opposite end of the pottery spectrum. He wasn't really interested in making the pottery. He was really into like looking finishes. 14:01 I got a degree in looking at pottery. I got a PhD in pottery looking. Pottery peeping. Pottery peeping. What do do for a living? I peep at pottery. at pottery. 14:19 Let me take a peek. No, I don't like that. I'm not gonna say it. But he was like the Finnish guy. So like he was really good at like sealing it and like painting it and like all that. Like he was really meticulous about the finishes on it. She was really meticulous about crafting it. The making of it. Making of the pottery itself. Yeah. And so they were a really good match because they kind of like compliment each other skills. And yeah. Yeah. And so uh they end up, they graduate. 14:48 they get married. They move to Aurora, New York, which is a lake town in upstate New York. Okay, and while they're working there, they have a daughter and they're just kind of they're living there. They're working, making pottery, just kind of being like local artists, you know, uh selling their stuff at like vintage fairs and like different, like two people in town, kind of stereotypical struggling artist lifestyle. Sure, ah and then their daughter, this is what years this would be early eighties, late seventies. 15:17 Yeah, they and they were struggling with their four bedroom house. You know, peeping pots, you know, it is a door to door. Oh yeah, that's back in the eighties when I was peeping pots. Okay, I know ma'am. My name is Richard Mackenzie child. Is he reading that off a note card? Why'd you look that my name? Hey, my name is 15:43 I'm just one of kids. He just and I just was wondering if you're satisfied with your with your pots. I also wondering if I could just take a peep. I was wondering if you got any pottery I could look at. Yeah, it'll be seventy dollars. I'll look at all your potter. Yeah, I this guy's seventy dollars come looking at my pottery the other day. Oh yeah, he didn't do anything. You don't. I'll send you an invoice. Thank you. 16:09 freaking weird professional five stars on Google. I mean just to have his eyes on it. You know just to really on Facebook market place. Yeah, this rich people would pay for that rich people would pay for that. By the way they would they be like oh yeah, I paid an artist to come look at this in my house and you're like you okay. I like the phrase this piece was peeped by Richard McKenzie child. It's like certified got a stamp 16:37 ruins the art right on Mona Lisa's forehead. They're freaking really big ball. There's this piece was peaked. This piece was peeped by the line so he can sign. You know 16:52 yes and he is all frick mckinsey child. I forgot we hyphenated. You like put the little little lines of the she won't take my name because she's woke and then he walks out angry. I like that all of all of your jokes come to homestead. You made that joke earlier where you were like oh, it's head, hands, health and uh all your jokes are a little massage and is and I'll tell you what 17:21 I don't like the way you were like you made that joke earlier. You made that joke earlier. 17:30 I don't like it and then you're like oh she's too woke because you won't take his last name. You know women can do whatever they want him. Okay, so take a peek at that they were people feminism over feminism over here. Feminism. They were obviously not making a lot of money from their her their line of work and so their dot, but their daughter was really interested in ballet and one get into ballet and they couldn't afford it. 17:58 and so they said well, what can we do? L. A. Is rather expensive though yeah, you can do that at home yeah. What wait what do it at home? They like go to home you do it yeah, I'm a self I self taught on YouTube. Claude taught me how to ballet 18:22 Everything must go till it's going out of business and so our patron is now six ninety nine. People will freak out. They don't know we're joking till it is not going out of business. That was a joke, but we are reducing the price of patriot to six ninety nine for all tears you get. 18:35 every part you get access to discord, you get access to every episode of the ad for you. I bet that much it seems like gosh it is high. I know but when you talk like that it seems like we're really sell. I'm I was trying to do a word selling bit. You know it was like I don't say I'm a sleazy sales. I want to make it that I straight up think that we've been doing that bit too long that people are like it's a little. 18:58 This is the first time I've ever done the bit before I was a sleazy. we did the whole hey, Tuesday, Tuesday, We did those bits. Just leave it all in. Do this whole thing. Join us on Patreon. 19:14 So they were like, what can we do to fund this ballet dream for our daughter? And they decided to start a pottery business and so they found and they hadn't been doing that before. Well, they were kind of doing like on the side, like just selling stuff, being craft fairs kind of stuff. They were, they were being artists. This is like we're going to craft pottery and sell it, it as a business. Okay, business. Here you go. Sure. And so they'd rented a studio beneath a bar in Aurora eh and downtown Aurora. 19:42 and they started selling this pottery and what they did is they kind of images of their pottery at the time yeah. So what were they making? This is a little bit later of an image, but they would make pottery in this style ah and this became really famous. This is super fun. Yeah. This is known as the courtly check that they basically created which for audio listener. It's like a matching plate and a wine glass and you know 20:11 cutlery. Those are nuts, a knife right, salt and pepper shakers, a matching tea kettle and you know the whole set Matt candlesticks. The whole set is in this checkered pattern. Yes, like with a water on it and yeah, it's very whimsical. You got like butterflies that are like yeah not paint it on. They're like actual like on there like porcelain butterflies or something yeah and then real butterflies and then if you look at the checkered though, it's not like perfect like it's like yeah. You can tell it's hand painted. It's not straight. It's not 20:41 right in line. Some of the squares are smaller than others like it's just it's a very I whimsical is the word that they use. think it's a perfect yeah description of it very my white, my wife style. My wife style is this yeah. If we saw this somewhere, it this is one of those things where you either find this at Ross for twelve dollars or seventeen thousand dollars for real for real. You know while this very quickly blew up 21:10 um They started getting to the point where they could not keep up production in Aurora. And very quickly, down in Manhattan, it became like a trendy thing. People were like going up to Aurora to get this courtly check stuff. And so it became like a high-end status symbol item, and they could not keep up with demand. And so they began trying to scale the operation and getting larger facilities, larger facilities, larger facilities, until eventually they took out a loan. 21:39 to basically purchase a new home and manufacturing plan. Okay, and I've got pictures late in the process, but this was essentially a giant ranch outside of uh Aurora and they moved into the house here and this is post renovation. So this house looks beautiful right now, but it was completely dilapidated when they bought it. Oh wow. And they like restore. look very beautiful. And then on the property was this massive barn that they put and they turned into 22:07 the main you could get this from making pots in the eighties. You know I'm saying and then they had their own little shop inside of it. So this is like a full thing. This is like a little like this is like a little town. Yeah, they've got their yeah little studio shop. They became the precious moments of Aurora kind of okay and they they just exploded. They had shops 22:33 on the most prestigious streets, Fifth Avenue, New York, a day, drive, like a Angela's yeah sure they were the place and the best way I could describe their stores is over stimulating because this is just the way they laid them out. uh Here's another shot of one of their stores is a checkered pattern like their thing. Yeah, that this is what they're most known for is this this checkered pattern. Yeah, it's called the quiet check. Okay, what they're most known for, but they cause like there's a lot of stuff yeah 23:03 these chairs they designed. Is that part of they do furniture they do? Okay, they do they they jewelry. They got into everything as the business yeah, but scaling was because they kind of became like you know luxury 23:21 I don't want to say like Ikea, but like a luxury, know one imports yeah like it's like a bunch of home goods yeah yeah yeah yeah they wouldn't that they would make. I don't know what the luxury home good stores are yeah. I don't know what is where I win is the high they're out of business. That's highest I hear they didn't make it. They didn't make it way fair kill them yeah public and so they were very on 23:50 the maximalistic static like every day again. My wife, my wife's style, a lot like everything, you know. Yes. Yeah. They partnered with Neiman Marcus with Harrods in London, like all these big name, uh, here, that one, the one you're thinking of. Yeah. Um, and then at their height, uh, they employed 250 people that Duns, 24:17 dozens of artists inside that studio that were crafting these things at any time. uh But the problem was for them to reach the scale, the demand got so high and the way retail always works is you don't get paid until you fulfill your retail order. And so you have to find a way to fund that manufacturing. And as you're scaling, like that's difficult. And because they worked in this uh specific process, the Maggelica technique, everything was handcrafted. They needed artists to craft everything. It was a slow process. And so they had to 24:47 you be back ordered for like months exactly yeah, so they had to hire these highly skilled artists to write all these things very expensive and it got very expensive, very fast and so they had to take on debt and I think the thing that's interesting about this is I don't think that they intended this to get as big as it got like it. They just were just kind of riding the rave the wave because they were like oh, this is working. Let's just keep going for it and it was working so well banks were like look at the upward growth will give you money. It's a long story short. Yeah, yeah, 25:16 by the mid 90s, they had $21.4 million worth of debt uh from these expansion operations to grow this business. uh And they were doing well. They were able to keep that up. They were able to cover all of their expenses. They were able to pay everybody. Everything was going really, really good until in 95, there was this whole big farm was obviously like an old dilapidated farm that they were renovating as they went. 25:44 Right. And one portion of this farm that they hadn't got to to begin renovating yet, there was some exposed wire and it was old, like 30s wiring. Oh, no. And a rat chewed it, caused a short, which led to a fire, which damaged the entire production wing of this facility. And when the firefighters came through, they caused even more damage spraying these hoses, hitting this pottery, stepping on pottery. 26:10 their goal. They're to put the fire out. Yeah. Get the fire out. and also damage. by our hate art. Oh, they hate art. 26:23 all right. All right boys, here's our job. We're going to put out that fire. We're going to save the dogs and we're going to kill the art and then freaking kick through the paintings. You didn't got to do that. How did that help? How did that help with the fire? It didn't it did it lit a fire. 26:42 got to keep that fire going somehow. I got to keep that fire going somehow and if a lame looking paint and if die, if destroying someone else's hard work helps me get there, so be it okay, and here's the thing about Victor. Every day I gotta wake up and just smash a little thing of pottery. I'm just gonna. I have a subscription to cool, unique paintings dot com 27:09 and every day they said to a new cool unique painting in the mail for me to just crash which and okay. So hold on, hold on, on, hold on, so every day he gets he gets a cool unique painting, cool unique paties, I calm it's a one of one and then he smashes his head through it or like destroys it, but but he films himself doing right and he posts that on tick tock 27:37 thus creating a second layer of art. It's all ecosystem and so now he's got this internal conflict because he hates the art he's destroying, but he kind of likes the art. It kind of making is making and all the other firefighters are like that guy's got something. I want to be like him. Oh no, I should have him on my podcast. They all they hate 28:05 they hate him because they are. That's art. They're trying to kill them and so they are like out right. I can't sleep in the in the fire house. You know sleep with one eye open. He's like that guy makes art that guy makes art. Hey, what fire station happy for your first day. Watch out for that guy. He makes a heart. I'm an art kind guy a R T G U 28:38 I was just going to leave it on result a R T. I like G U I though all right. So anyway, fire fighters come through they are at crack the place. Yeah, here's the thing about Victoria. They put in the whole claim. They have insurance. They put in the whole claim insurance is going to repair everything, but Victoria refuses to claim all the damaged inventory because she's like it's still usable. We can restore this and make new pieces from all the damaged inventory and 29:05 and so she starts taking all that pottery to create new pottery because that's kind of her mindset. She's like I'm a reduce reuse recycle kind of person, so I'm a reduce reuse recycle. They're just going to throw that in a landfill. They're going to give me a check. I don't want that. I want to make this into something new, but they could have insurance that out yeah and this ended up being you need. You need a greed goblin on your side. Yeah, he's somebody to be like hey. We can say we threw it away yeah, you know 29:34 And so this put them behind just enough where they didn't have the inventory to meet the demand that they had. They couldn't meet their orders because she was in production. Then they couldn't make payroll. Then they couldn't make their bills. Then they couldn't pay the loans. And then the banks were like, well, we're going to invoke our rights as the loan holder. Right. So the bank stepped in and they installed an interim president. And let me get the name of this guy. The guy's name doesn't matter. He's some Wall Street interim president. guy. Yeah. And he says, OK, we're going to a man. 30:07 He says we're to get this an evil tie wearing man. This guy comes with his ties and his watch and his little Wall Street attitude and he comes in and he goes, listen here, you purple hair loser. All right, I would not be surprised. You the bank a lot of money and the rats, they, they, they set you up for failure. 30:35 all right, and my buddies down to the fire house said that they did their best to destroy this stuff. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. They did their best to this stuff is crazy. We tried our hardest. She really wants to use it. He really wants to keep it. This is him. uh It's a oh, you know what? Donald roll on a guy that seems like he he would come across as nice, but then he's like he looks like this, like this smile and stuff as he's like firing you yeah or he's just like yeah. 31:05 You got to go. He seems super nice, but he's really a shark. Yeah, his name is McDonald Rome Junior. oh He comes in. We hate juniors and he starts fixing the books. I should say fix the books. That sounds like well, he's not cooking. He's not cooking up. Yeah, he's like yeah, he's he's figuring out the accounting, realizing the problem that they're in. Yeah, so we try. There's a serve. We should. We should start a service called cooked books dot com. 31:35 It is just, I mean, 31:40 it's just a trap for people who think will cook their book. It's a sting operation sting yeah yeah and the website says this is a sting. Well, you got to legally disclose it yeah legally. This is a sting, but it's got a picture of sting yeah, so it's like so people are like it's a joke. They think that that's funny. They're funny guys. All my comedy shows by the way are sting operations crowd work portion. I just figure out what cry you're in. Where are you guilty of 32:10 Hey, what's been eating at your car? Hey, what's your name? Yeah. What do do for work? That's boring. So are you any crimes? Got any warrants out for your arrest? Actually, you do. I know for a fact to do because I'm a cop. There's a girl you knew a couple of years ago and she hasn't been seen for a while care to tell me a little bit. You know anything about her whereabouts? I do get told a lot that I have pretty cop energy, but oh 32:39 to to do crowd work and just just pick a random person and say yeah, there's a girl you used to know that hasn't been seen in a while. Just trap up and see how they respond to that. Oh, was a girl you knew that you didn't see in a while. Oh, there's a lot of girls. I know that I haven't seen a while. No, that no one's seen in a while. 33:01 what happened? There's a few of those. What happened to him? All right, so oh, he's deflecting. See, he doesn't like when the bits pointed at him. Don't want. wants me to make the point. The better he does sacrifice strangers, not me. All right, I'm not good under pressure. Hey, don't don't point a bit at anybody. I'm going to pull the trigger. So so he comes in and he's like he yeah, he's cleaning house. The situation's a little worse than I thought. 33:29 Yeah, so he starts shopping different business tycoons in Manhattan area to buy the business. He's like he's like we need an influx of cash. That's the only way we're gonna yeah we're gonna survive. We need you guys to solve significant portions of the company and so uh he's while shopping this around he talks to a woman by the name of let me get her name right. Pleasant Roland. This is her yeah she looks like Joe Bennett from the office. 33:59 Yeah, I can see that I can see that I thought Ursula, but that's a low also or it's meaner than what I said for sure, honestly kind of spot on skin and all she she's the founder of the American girl doll. Oh, there you go, and so he talked to her. She did that haircut her whole life. Yeah, she committed to that and 34:28 so she found out that the company was up for sale, learned a little bit about the situation that it was in and she decided I'm going to side step this, the whole purchase, the business thing. She's like, I know McDonald brought me the opportunity. I'm going to sidestep him. I'm going to go straight to the bank and I'm going to offer to buy the debt and so she bought the debt for half the value of the debt. I think it was about fifteen million. She paid for the debt and she immediately called the loan and so the which is 35:02 shocks man. That's a Joe Bennett move yeah, so she immediately calls alone and so they had no choice. They have to play her bankruptcy because they can't pay the loan back and so they declare bankruptcy. They have to war in all their assets who pull her back up. You pulled the young one. Oh shark crazy 35:27 crazy. I mean you can see it in this one though. Oh yeah, this one you're like yeah, this one has evidence of shark. She did that yeah. She's like she's like yeah. Oh yeah, we're gonna you're gonna buy it and be saddled with thirty million dollars of debt. I'll just buy the whole thing for fifteen. How about that yeah and so she wolf she calls alone and they have to liquidate. They declared chapter eleven. They're liquidating the assets. She goes to sale. She buys everything for five million, so now she's bought the company to twenty million yeah. 35:55 Yeah, yeah and so well, there's just inventory. I guess, but you know well, it's not just the inventory because it's the rights to everything about the company. I guess that's yeah and so in so they actually end up she uh she owns all the inventory, all the assets that the manufacturing facility, which is also their home. Yeah and that was a mistake and they she got to keep that separate and I was a mistake yeah a hundred percent. The other thing 36:25 she owns the brand, which is Mackenzie Childs, which is their name. And so they end up in this big legal battle because it's like you can't take our name from us. And she's like, I actually can't because it's your trademark. You trademark Mackenzie Childs and she's like smoking a cigar and drinking whiskey. Like she just freaking looks like she does a villain and she's just like, actually, yes, I can. She does look like that. Yeah, you see 36:53 She talks like, you see is what you did wrong. Yeah. Is it you thought you were going come in? What? Just cause I, cause I sell dolls. You thought I was going to be a doll? No, no, no, no, no. I sell dolls. All right. 37:10 So sees here's what his was gonna happen. I bought your name. I own you. She probably did say I own you, I'm sure which is sick. 37:25 Oh boy, am I sick? I sure do need Tim stones. Get well quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow. I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. Do your part. Get this shirt. 37:54 shop.tilland.com 38:01 And so she pressures them. You're welcome for my time. She says, Hey, I'll all I'll allow you guys. If you um sign an NDA and a non compete agreement, I'll let you just walk from here. We can just call it water under the bridge. You can go, but you can never make pottery again. And Victoria's like, we're never going do that. And she's like, she's like, well, what if, if we do the NDA and we do the non compete? And she's like, and I pay you $10 million and you just walk in this problem's gone. You never have to 38:31 about it again, you got $10 million, you can live the rest of life off that. And Victoria says, no, I want to make pottery. And she's like, okay, well, then I'm going to sue you for all your worth for the rest of the assets because you actually cosigned the loan for the business. And so I'm go try to get the rest of the debt that I'm owed that you couldn't pay, you only paid 5 million for the debt. Even though I was the one who bought the debt. And so she sued them personally. So then they personally had to declare bankruptcy. 39:01 and so they quite literally they went from having a seventy million dollar business right with lots of assets as a part of that to literally having nothing because she took the business from them and took all because of assets. What's her name? ah Pleasant Roland is her name. Her name is pleasant name is pleasant. That's how you know dude. 39:26 is that she came out of the womb and the mom was like. Maybe if we name her pleasant at all, that'll change, that'll change because she came out of the like the cigar, the glass, she was like hey, who's paying for this? Anybody got some dad I could buy? Oh, I was born of this guy. My dad's a loser couldn't be me. Geez man, well also she might be nice. 39:56 I doubt and behavior. Hey, it's not nice lady. Whatever your name is Roland pleasant Miss Roland. I assume let's find out. Is there a Mr Roland just on a leash next to her with that? You know he's just over there like she did marry a Jerome Frattushe in nineteen seventy seven who died in twenty twenty six. They never got divorced. Oh yeah. Oh shoot. I'm sorry for your loss ma'am. Yeah, 40:25 hey, if you'd like to cash and flux this podcast were over leveraged and we'll sign an in the a I'll sign anything you want. I won't compete. I'll stamp all your art and sign it. I promise you we won't start an American boy doll. We're not going to do that. Hold on, don't don't don't commit to that. Don't come into that start making point. Pretty cool. 40:54 American boy. I wish that we were in the of two thousand four commercial still. They were just American boy, no, no, no, no, no, anyway. So while they were in their personal bankruptcy case, while they were still in this lawsuit over the name, Mackenzie Childs, they were having to commute to Manhattan to do these courts. How far is that? It's a few hours because they were upstate New York, so it's I don't know exactly how long, but it's a few hours early and 41:24 they have lost their home and so they basically decided it makes more sense for us to try to find a place in Manhattan, but they are your poor, they're poor now, so the brokest of brokes yeah, so they're they're having a hard time finding a place that they could actually buy in Manhattan. Okay, but luckily and all of this was just because they wanted to do pottery. Here's the thing. If my wife, my wife's hobby takes off, we're making seventy million dollars and then you know something like that happens and then they're like okay, hey ten million dollars, but you can't 41:51 and it's not even like you can't make it. They're just like hey, you can't professionally sell it yeah, and she was like no yeah. I be like hey, we're going to take the ten million dollars. We're just not going to sell your pot or any more. Don't listen to her. We're going to make the ten million dollars a hundred percent. We're taking that deal. No deal, a deal deal actually. I'm sorry for that is I could not be more confident. She failed for each so 42:20 she's an art major like let's we can't are don't. I'm not trying to be and my wife knows this. I would shut that down so fast. I'd be like no yeah, not yeah. They are principal to the point that it's detrimental to the life yeah yeah so and I'm not to be clear to be clear. I'm not a principal this 42:48 like my talks tell you I'll take whatever I grab my eyebrows. It does look like we're both about to do something really racist, but it was my high brow, but it looks like we're about perfect for the thumbnail. We're about to be really problematic. No, but I mean like yeah, that's what I mean is like they offered you ten million dollars, but but that also does say that also does communicate from 43:18 unpleasant. Yeah, the you making pottery is a threat to me. Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, I guess maybe that's like the yeah, she's threatened by us. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I still take the ten million, but they moved. They moved to Manhattan and they're still in the core bow. So they haven't lost everything just yet sure, but they were like, well, we'll move to the one place we can and they bought the last remaining Ellis Island ferry for three hundred fifty thousand dollars is the Yankee 43:47 they bought it for how much Yankee Ferry three hundred fifty thousand. This is twenty twenty or two thousand three. How did it? So I guess I don't understand bankruptcy because my version of bankruptcy is I don't have three hundred fifty thousand dollars to buy a boat. You know what I mean? I don't understand bankruptcy a lot. I don't think I get bankruptcy because I do know bankruptcy. If that's the definition of bankrupt, I've got some problems. 44:14 I do know with bankruptcy, it does depend on how you set your finances up because if you set your finances up, well, there's parts of your finances that it can't touch. Right. And so like, I don't know how they were set up. I'm assuming they had some sort of share of wealth somewhere where they were able to afford to buy this. Okay. And I know that they live on this thing because they are, they obviously bought this. That's the only thing I know about them. They, moved in and they renovated this. This thing was just like the farm dilapidated when they got it. Yeah. And they turned it into their home. 44:44 Yeah and they like live here yeah, and it feels very much like their stores. This is oh wait. That is the star, ah but it is over. It is sick. It is very maximal. I love it. It's like their same style. They've got their it's so crazy and this is and for the just so the we're all clear. This is poor right. This is poor. Yeah, you're right. This is what poor looks like. 45:14 Yeah, and you'll see you can actually kind of see in this picture. They built this elaborate system of pulleys. You can kind of see this this rope going across the ceiling. Is that for the TV remote? No, they built it because some of their furniture wasn't heavy enough, so whenever the freighters would pass by it in the harbor in the New York Harbor, it would rock the boat so much that their their tables would tell and their pottery would fall out their tables. So they built this elaborate system of pulleys all throughout the house. 45:43 that whenever they tilt it keeps their surfaces flat. So that way the pottery wouldn't fall and this is this is for remember. This is what this is magical. I mean my wife and I would live in this tomorrow. This is great yeah and so and they and again she same thing she did when the there was the fire when Hurricane Sandy came through Hurricane Sandy obviously did a lot of damage and 46:09 she leaned over to the edge of the starboard bow and was just grabbing trash out of the out of the river and making furniture out of it. So a bunch of our furniture is just damage from the hurricane. We got that from we got that from river trash. The sea that was river trash. That was river trash. That was river trash. That was my and river trash was my high school band. 46:38 sell for river trash. Well, I'm from Mount Vernon. It be like Creek trash or Creek trash Creek. Hey, what's up? We're Creek trash. All right. One, two, three, four. I was seeing of your love for 47:06 their smash hits covers of for some songs. How great is our God Greek trash, but they honestly put it on a band T. That's sick. Last year they did an interview on board the boat. This is yeah, my favorite. about them. Yeah and they lived on the boat for twenty five years. Yeah, they also while they were living on this boat 47:32 They realized, hey, we didn't sign the non-compete. We also, we lost the name Mackenzie Childs, but we still have our first names. And so they opened up a new shop called V &R and Prize, which stands for Victoria and Robert. Yeah. Or Richard. And they started selling pottery and earrings and furniture, all this stuff again. It's now nowhere near as big and successful as Mackenzie Child. They have the brand loyalty. But for them, it doesn't really need to be like they just. Mackenzie Child is still a thing. 48:01 Mackenzie child is still a thing. She's still running the company. They've changed. They have corporatized it. They have uh it's mass assembly lined it as produced. Yeah, it's not handcrafted crafted, but it's still priced as if it were yeah. Like it's still upscale. Yeah, look at her freaking pleasant. Yeah, you think she's gonna be like hey sure it's made by smaller hands now. Wasn't what do you mean by that? 48:27 it's made by dolls, the dolls, the dolls make the pottery, the dolls make the pottery. Why do you think I invented the dolls? I wasn't going to just have a doll thing dude. She might be like crazy where she's just like yeah, the dolls and the dolls make the pottery, but she's like she's got enough aids around her people who are like yeah they do and then it's like to the pottery sweatshops dude and it's like but in her mind she's like all my dolls are workers. 48:57 like that's not how she does. She wheels to the fact. Oh, my are what cause she lives in New York. All my dolls are working. I made these dolls. They're working in her brain. She's wheeling through the factory. I don't know if she's in a wheelchair or not, but she's out in a wheelchair door and the dolls are singing these really like upbeat harmonic songs and she and like singing as she walks through and they're like dancing over there's fountains. 49:23 she does look like a boss and monsters ink doesn't she? He does actually look like the bus. She looks like most disney. She looks like all of it. She's got like the Karela Deville hair and the weird smile and like the fur other thing she's got Ursula was a really good call yeah, but like I could see her having eight legs like the like the pull up the boss from monsters in. You know who I'm talking about exactly you're talking about 49:53 while she's while we're hey, while we're pulling an old lady from New York, you should consider it when he's looking up images to continue pulling this older lady from New York. You should consider supporting us on Patreon. It's so worth it, which I like this shark. We have she would hate our Patreon model is just too cheap. It's too cheap. How you guys make it any money? We're not we're not. That's the point. We're losing money on this. uh 50:22 Yeah, you see what I'm saying. You see what I'm It's a I can see her having weird legs like that. I can see you're having weird legs and six eyes. Yeah, there you go. I forgot which one I was looking at for a second. That's how close I was similar. They are. That was mean to that lady. 50:44 It was. Yeah, you're right. I just got a notification that we got a Patreon subscriber. They heard me. They heard it. I literally just got an email on my watch. Tim. 50:57 Okay, here's the last name and you tell me how you want to say it. Okay, to E W S T O E W S, Tows, Tim Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, Tows, 51:25 I'm in bully mode right now. I mean bully mode, so because the child is still at operation, she's breaking cash from yeah she's getting. It is much larger now than I mean it was large, but it's a hundred million dollar company now crazy. There are companies nowhere near as big. How big is their company though? Do you know? I don't know. There's not a number. They do it a million in revenue because that's a pretty big company. You know, here's what's kind of tough about them in that same interview where I showed you that picture 51:54 Yeah, on their thing. They asked her how much money she they were making and she said a lot and they're like, well, what's a lot? And she's like, I don't know. It was a lot. And then they're like, do you not know the actual number? She's like, no, I don't know the actual number. Then that means it's millions. That means that they're paid. have enough to pay somebody else to do the majority of the stuff. No, no, no, no, no, I not the current business, the business before the McKenzie and Childs. 52:17 yeah. So what I'm saying is like they were saying mckinsey and childs, but they didn't know how much mckinsey and childs was making when they were working there. Yeah, and so I don't get the vibe that they're the kind of people who care much about the numbers. That's what I'm saying. Understand, but they're making enough current. Yeah, they're probably making enough that it's like it's a they're actually making quite a bit of money. Still, she wasn't talking about the current. I know, but I'm saying that they probably are making a good. I for them to have yeah, probably you know, but I don't know. I don't do they still live on this boat, so 52:46 Yes ish. So in March 4th, 2026, Victoria passed away and her husband still lives on the boat. He is actively trying to sell it though and kind of go into the last. You got to find a specific person to buy that. Yeah, that's a hard sell and they've been having a hard time. They've been listed for customize. I'm not going to buy it. That was her. She's trying to She's like, I they're like, we're suing the bay. He's like, he's like, we hate you so much. 53:15 would you buy our boat? Would you buy our boat? You ruin the last years of our life? Yeah, would you buy our boat? uh But yeah, this is uh that's Mackenzie Childs. Wow, great business, really interesting couple. Yeah, cool pottery. They are the kind of couple that just like find each other. You know they are. They're both equally weird. 53:43 Yeah, in like a pleasant fun way. Yeah, it's like it's like they and it's one of those things where you look at this and you're like, yeah, of course you didn't run a good business. Yeah, you know, you should have. You should have made a friend found of shark. You should have found the husband of a friend you made. 54:01 you know, saying here's how that would happen. My wife would become friends with these people yeah and then and then she would come to me and be like. I don't think they know they understand what they're doing anything and so we would look at it and I'm like well, let's see what your revenue is and they would hand me a notebook and you're like really like that tie, con a pestle and it's like they wrote some numbers down two years ago and you're like you haven't written anything down since they're like we had no idea. We don't we don't like what's the this sheet literally says fourteen dollars 54:30 has last and they've just pull out like a a tub of money and here's like that's those that allers. Is that the money from the from the sales? That's the money that we so like whenever we buy stuff, we just take cash out of here and go buy it and then where we sell it, we put cash in cash back in yeah. That's a safe right. That's a call a million dollars in here. Let's figure this out. 54:55 You know, they seem like they wouldn't know business. Yeah, like a plow. Not in a make fun of a way, but it's just kind of like for real. I mean, yeah, from the what happened, like they clearly were aware of what they were. They were spreading themselves. You have a shark who comes along. Yeah. And who takes advantage of it. It's like, ah, and I mean, I think the sad thing, here's the thing. And here's the saddest thing. I think sharks don't die. Yeah. 55:24 They freaking live so long. Yeah. They are like, just go already. And they're like, no. And you're like, oh, okay. No. And what were you gonna say? Oh, just, the saddest thing about it is like they, uh, all of this stuff, they were, they were making it like they would have kept making it. Right. Honestly, how they took the insurance payout, they would have been fine. But again, I think this happened multiple times throughout their career. Like she's so principled and she's like, she's like, no, we're not going to throw this stuff away. 55:54 it costs for a lot. Yeah, I sure ten million later. I do hope that our set is maximalist like we I want to I want to add more stuff. It's not right now. Yeah, don't look up there. I would love to. I just want to cover it and stuff. I want to. I want you know, I like that we have a vacuum lamp. I like all this and then we have our fiddle for fiddling off. Hey, thanks for being here for this episode of things. I've learned last night. If you liked it and you want more of it, we did another episode about Nolan Bushnell, the guy who created Atari right Atari. 56:23 and also Chuck E cheese. So it's another episode about a you know kind of a wacky kind of you know business person or whatever. So speaking of business pay us and join us on a tree. Next week's episode is already available and you get ad free. We'd love to see over there and we do monthly hangouts, so we'll see you next week.
In the world of art and design, passion often fuels creation. But what happens when that artistic passion collides with the cutthroat realities of scaling a successful business? The captivating story of MacKenzie-Childs, the iconic luxury home goods brand, offers a fascinating and at times heartbreaking answer. From humble beginnings crafting whimsical pottery to a staggering $70 million enterprise, and … Read More
200 Years Ago, Workers Watched Machines Take Their Jobs | The Luddites Ep 335
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of the Luddites the Luddites the Luddites? Yeah, yeah. Yes, have you? I mean, I know what a Luddite is. I didn't know if there was like the Luddites like there's the Luddite the Ohio State University. What is it? What is a lot? I are these people who are like pretty like they're not like in the technology. They don't bring embrace and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we call them today, right? That's what saying. 00:25 but we're wrong, but we're talking about something else. Well, we're talking about. I mean that that is that is where we got that idea from. We got that from the lights, but the lot I the are different. The lot it's that they got kind of twisted to mean something different today. 00:47 My wife blew up in Panda Express because we rage baited her with this. I'm an army guy. That's what I said. I put my thumb down on the working man's head. 01:08 Things I learned last night. 01:17 the lot. It's where an actual thing in history and I think yeah to understand I'm aware of that. Well, yeah, okay to understand it. I think we need to go back a little bit before the lights to like the late seventeen hundreds or I guess mid seventeen hundreds. Sure, this is the dawn of like the first industrial revolution in eighteenth century and great great Britain. Correct. This whole thing happened because there was two new cotton spinning machines. 01:44 that were invented in 1768 and 1779. And essentially what they did is they just like made making textiles a little bit quicker. It's a machinery. We know how machinery works. We know how the industrial revolution worked. But this was an interesting moment because for the really like the first time in history, we saw this this massive change to the way work was done. Because up until that point, basically everything was 02:11 done in cottages around the city. And so if you made textiles, you were the person who made socks and you did that in your little cottage. If you were the person who made flags or blankets or jackets, like everyone of you was little seamstress and sewers and whatever terms that they have for those all around villages, all over all over town. This technology came out that initially was used by people that in their cottages, which by the way, this is where we get the term cottage industry. 02:40 these people working in their cottages on their different skills and so all these the term cottage cheese. Well, it's funny. You should ask if people people who were making their little little seams if they left those out overnight, it turned into cheese. It sells cottage cheese. Oh yeah and so cottage cheese actually dairy. You know I hate I hate whenever I see a delicious looking dessert that someone's like took out this high protein dessert. 03:10 and it's like it's too. It's it's it's kind of cheese. You know yeah, you know what's I'm this up. I know I've said this on the show before, but I've been bringing it up to Tim on almost every phone call and he gets really mad about it. So now it's a recurring bit in our friendship with us not in the show because he was mad that I would like the other day. I told him I made cottage cheese case. So yeah, I was like how much he loved it and I was like no, you hate that stuff. I love that stuff. I made cottage cheese. I put taco mix in it's a little bit of shredded cheese 03:40 and some jalapenos and then he was like I put it in a blender which is gross right put it in a blender, but it up and I was like oh this isn't this is too grainy. It's not doing it so I put a little jalapeno juice in there loosen it up. Yeah, yeah, you can catch my you can you know subscribe to my recipes. I'm just making stuff. That's what it's called. My recipe book is called. I'm just making stuff and I'm a chef now. You know that's crazy about that breeze got an app that she uses that if we put this as a real if we 04:08 clipped this, made it a real on social media. She's got an app that will take that real and turn it into a recipe for her. And so you could very easily do that. And she just has a list of recipes that she's seen on social media. Why does she need that? Like, well, they give you the recipe. The irony, usually all these people are like, check out the recipe. Yeah, she needs a separate app. Well, here's the irony of all of this. It's become a place where it's like kind of her home base now for recipes. 04:35 And so I have sent her recipe. It's my app. It's called I'm just making stuff. I have sent her like websites with recipes. Uh huh. And she just puts it in the app. She was you can't put it from website. You need a real like that's so you got to. So then it's you in the kitchen. It's you in the kitchen being like what's up guys. This is a new recipe I found for my wife brief and I posted it on listed private unlisted video that you're sending so that she can add it to her app. 05:04 it's so absurd. That's some good husband rear there. Yeah, I'm not doing any of that. Yeah, I was like, I mean, fine, make something else. Okay, you're like, yeah, forget it. Then actually forget. even mentioned it. Oh, it doesn't fit him. Oh, okay. I didn't say that. Sorry. Sorry. Another bit that Tim loves to do right now. This isn't a favorite bit of ours is if you're telling a story about someone that we don't know that person, we won't let you tell that story. 05:33 if you're just like you're like yeah, I was hanging out with my my old buddy Brian. I don't know that guy. I don't know. I don't know Brian. Well, I mean so he was a no, no, no, no, I don't know that guy. I don't know that guy. I don't know who you're talking about and we rage baited my wife so hard with this. She she made a scene at Panda Express. I'll tell you what my wife blew up and pay to express because we rage baited her with this 06:04 I don't know who you're talking about. Oh yeah, I'm talking about my wife. I don't know that person. Tell me a story about your kid. What story about my kid? I don't know. Just say something that he did this week. Yeah, so the other day I don't know that guy. 06:19 I've attempted to hang out with that guy for a full year and you won't let me do it. You've hung out with him a couple times. I've hung out with him exactly twice. You've hung out with him about as much as he's hung out with anybody. You've hung out with him about as much as he's hung out with you. That is how that would work. uh 06:39 there's not an imbalance there. I made a whole app of videos for Archer. Hey Archer, if you're watching this, I'm dead. It's pretty depressing, but there's an app in the app store videos for my best friend's videos for my best friend's first son Archer and I have a separate app called videos for my best friend's second son Tim. 07:06 weird that you named him after yourself. It's a long and then I have a third app that's just called. I'm just making stuff V to V. Yeah, it was a lot of work to try to update. So I just made a whole new app. Anyway, you guys get it. You guys like this show. Yeah, remember that. But you like this podcast. Remind yourself right now. Ten minutes into this. Just remember how much you like being here. 07:35 So there were the there were some wealthy people who built factories for the first right, right, right, right, and all of a sudden you had an all like cottage core. All the cottage kids started moving into the cities because that's where the work. know that's what cottage core is like a whole thing on tick tock. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 07:57 So they move into the cities and they start working for these factories. They immediately start shutting down these people's home businesses. Yeah. And they start working in these factories and it's pretty, it's almost immediate that they're called the stockingers, the people who were making stockings. The stockingers. Yeah. They were people making stockings and almost immediately we start seeing like these. Man, which was the demand for stockings. I everybody needs stocks. I guess. Yeah. And so they, 08:25 they pretty quickly organized and we started to see like actual action being taken. And so there's attempts like to go before parliament and to get laws made to be like, Hey, you can't let these factory people treat us this way. Um, pretty quickly. Um, and the interesting thing was parliament was just like, I don't care what you're saying to me. Um, like you can say it all you want. I don't care. We like these rich people better. I like their socks. Yeah. You guys are making cool socks. And so like, I don't really care if you don't like it. Yeah. Look, 08:55 these have like designs on them. These have like look my I can custom print my wife's face on these faces, but it's like not good yet because they don't because now you upload a picture and this is like someone's got to do like a painting with the stitches and it's just someone who looks like, but they're using these crazy machines to do it. So they're like yeah dude, so pretty wild. 09:17 So yeah, so so probably it was like they're creating jobs. We can't be mad at them. We can't. We can't take your side. And this is this picture to be clear. Is this picture printed on the back of a dollar? Why is this this art style? Is this drawn like this? I don't know. mean, I know what you're saying. It's like it's dollar. It does look dollar. It does look like a dollar. All right. Dollarita. And then came 09:43 over the course of latter half of the 1700s, we saw like attempts at different political actions. Yeah. And all of them were falling flat. Parliament wasn't listening. Nobody cared. It's important to recognize too, like the country at that time, like it was not a democratic state. So the people really had no voice. We're talking about Great Britain. The Great Britain, UK. And so there was really no, like the people had no voice. They had no recourse. Right. The people who owned the mills, they're the people who had all the say. Yeah. And so 10:12 They so much different now. Thank God. And so they try God. We move beyond the time when rich people control everything. Oh, they tried for a couple of years to reason with the factory owners. That didn't work. They tried for a couple of years to reason with Parliament. That didn't work. They tried for a couple of years to like get like organized action of like we're not going to work. Yeah, we're not going to go on strike. We're not going to buy stocking stockings. But none of that stuff is 10:40 was like long lasting because people needed to still work. People knew their stocks. And so like these things didn't last. And eventually it got to the point where these people like kind of got back into a corner and were like, have no other record. when you back a lot, I didn't do a corner. You better be afraid of those claws. Well, there were a couple like random events had that happened here and there that turn violent. 11:08 between factory owners and the workers. And by 1788, so about 20 years after the first new spinning technologies. Isn't that that song? I don't think so. 1738. Oh, there you go. Still don't know what it means. It could mean something. Isn't it 1738? 1738. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And we've talked about on the podcast before how I knew I had to break up with that girl. What? 11:37 You get a lot more content. There was a girl and you know, my total at Starbucks was 1738 and so the barista was like 1738. Yeah. Okay. And this was also 2017. So this is like what the song was relevant. Yeah. And, uh, and my girlfriend at the time is like, huh? You know, and she goes, is that like a, is that a zip code? Why does he say that in that song? And I was like, Oh yeah, it's funny. And then I was like, Oh no, you're genuinely asking me that's a code. 12:07 You're asking me of a four digit number as a zip code. Ah, and you know, it was like, it's like the end of the sixth sense when you just realize all this stuff. Cause I thought she was just being, you started like connecting all the dots. really thought that she was like making jokes the whole time. And then I realized I was like, Oh, you were never joking. Like, a second. You're just a little dumb. Oh no. Oh no. She's dumb. Oh no. 12:36 and maybe that's my type because another girl I had a question on was dumb enough to be a flat earther. Maybe my type is just a little. 12:46 I really is what you came in talking about today. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, my wife is beautiful and smart and always thinks through every decision. It's so crazy. I married someone who's just not my sold out. My wife is not my is not my type is done. I type is dumb and my wife is my type awesome. All right, I'm not falling for that trap. uh 13:14 I did. I did. I did a show. I did a show in LA this week with Ian bag who's a comedian and it was his game show and I was like, Oh, that'd be fun. It's like a trivia thing and stuff. And then he came out the gate hot with questions that are for sure cancelable. Oh gosh. Cause his first question was, would I rather go on tour with Nate Bargatzi or Carlos Mancia to comedians who are pretty in the news this week? I don't know if people have seen 13:42 Nate for going to the UFC thing and Carlos Mancia for being arrested for forgery and tax evasion. And so I was, literally was just sitting there. Or jury is pretty sick though. I a four degrees product. Kind of cool. I said I would go on tour with Carlos Mancia, but he had to do Nate's material, which is funny. And then another question he asked, this is how I got here because he goes, all right, um, 14:08 would you date someone? He goes, and this is three of us that were married one per one single person on the panel. So he said, all the married guys, this is a world where you're not married. Your wife either doesn't exist or she's gone. Just don't, don't be like, married. I would never date somebody. Do it for the bit. And he said, would you date someone younger than you? And two of us are 30. And so it's a dangerous question. And you're like, no, I like people my age. 14:37 because he doesn't specify like 26. You know I'm thirty two. I like we I like people my age. That's a straight up like any. He just put you on the spot. I like the whole audience where it's like and you know it's like would you date someone younger than you and you're like hey ah my wife is two years under the mean and I like a lot. There's one thirty year old. I like a lot. She's I like that thirty year old a lot. I like that one thirty year old. Yeah. 15:06 next year I will like zero 30 but I like it. Okay yeah I had to look to be like wait hey maybe it doubles my time. You know maybe I like people who are a little dumb. That's funny. 15:31 anyways. Okay, um so so parliament passes. I just feel like I had to share my answers to those questions in a safe space before he puts out that's general internet. Yeah, so that I have it on record that it's like, hey, just so you know, I was, I was on the spot and I was, I'm not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you're kind of dumb. Yeah. So parliament passes in 1788, the protection of stocking frames, et cetera act. 16:00 which etc. Yeah, I think they had it's called. Yeah, I think had to add etc. because they're like, it could be other stuff. be other stuff. We know you guys are gonna try to loophole this and be like, oh, I don't do stockings. 16:15 Hey, we just produced the price of our Patreon to 699 a month. That's one price for everybody. You get all the perks. You get the live hangouts, you get to join the discord, you get early access, whichever reason you're joining for. We wanted to make it one price because I hate that everything in the world is going up in price, and so we wanted to make this a little bit more affordable for everyone to do. And so but also, you know, the other goal is that more of you join it so that we can keep funding the show. I mean, like what you know, how do I say that? That sounds like we're 16:42 poor and we are we are and uh no, but if you can't join us on patreon, no worries at all. Another way to support the show is by sharing it. Please tell somebody like the show and thanks for for being here for this episode. 17:00 and so basically it was like the destruction of a stocking frame. It's carried a punishment of seven to fourteen years in prison and so they what they wanted to do is they wanted to like up that punishment because it would it would have been like the value of whatever that was so in response to workers destroying some of the stuff. Yes, so they're like so this is an act that protects the property. Yes of the top dogs, right? Okay, and so when they pass this um 17:28 things started to kind of begin to bubble. Then comes our hero of the story, a guy by the name of Ned Ludd, um who I'll let you describe him. You want to describe him for our listeners? This is Ned Ludd. No. 17:49 very clearly a guy who was like I'm not going to buy clothes. I'm going to make my own and I'm also color blind. uh 17:59 he's wearing one shoe. This is very clearly like he was like I'm not going to buy clothes. I'm just going to make clothes from scraps and so it's a it's a drawing. It's like an old picture and he you know how do I describe? He's got a long hair and he looks like he's wearing like your grandmother's gown. You know, I feel like he's wearing like night time down the print from remember that the show, the big bump comfy couch sure 18:26 He looks like the couch. Yeah. And so he's standing the leader of the Luddites. He's standing and everyone else has like pitchforks. I don't know. They're holding like sharp stuff back there. They look like soldiers. Stuff's on fire behind him. I like that one shoe on. I like where this is going. He looks like he's leading the charge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So okay. So Ned Ludd. Here's the thing about Ned Ludd. There's debate whether or not he's a real person. 18:54 He may be a real person. He may be kind of like this, like mythical figure. Yeah. Mythical figure that led the lights, but they were named after him. The Luddites. He's our letter. Yeah, he's the letter. And so here's how this all happened. Allegedly in 1779, Ned Ludd was working as a stocking or and at one of these factors. Yeah. And he was working at one of the machines. His family had been stocking hers for generations. Okay. Obviously the machines are relatively new. 19:22 And the owner of the shop was telling him to work faster. And so he kept picking up the pace, trying to work faster. And they kept being like, work faster. And he kept picking up the pace until eventually they pulled him aside. They started whipping him because he wasn't fast enough. And so in a fit of rage, he smashes his machine. This also is. And I try not to be that person who's like, hey, you don't know how good you've got it right now. Yeah. You know, when people complain about like, oh, I had to work 40 hours this week, you know, it's like, hey, man, 19:52 I'm not trying to be a judge, but like they, know, your boss at Taco Bell doesn't get to whip you anymore. Yeah, you know, wow, not after 2006. They made that illegal in 2006. It's Taco Bell is the only place that was allowed to fit or good things that George W Bush did was he outlawed? It was the Taco Bell, etc act. 20:16 which was repealing Reagan's earlier, but Taco Bell can do it. But Taco Bell could do it, etc. and God love Ronald. 20:32 Ronald Reagan's my favorite so on the record, so the lights form around this like yeah mythical figure. This is so getting whipped be real and he's like I've had enough and he does what he smashes that machine. Okay, so he destroys that machine and word spreads that there was this guy Ned Ludd and so he kind of becomes like a folk hero and whether or not he's true. We don't really know like he could have been honestly consequential though. Yeah, it doesn't really matter because then this 21:02 sort of movement starts to rise around that lot of like oh hey, we can smash these machines yeah, we can seize the means of production and so that's his little giggle that he's got more in store for us in this episode. Also, he is putting a little bit of bait out there for me and I'm taking it uh jumping straight in being like I love Ronald Reagan. I love him so much so in 21:31 That's the greed goblin inside me. Everyone has a greed goblin within that you have to fight. Yeah. Cause the greed goblin is just like we should empire. We should take over, right? We should grow our podcasts and we should, we should take over other people's podcasts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we should say that actually the greed goblin inside is like, we should charge a lot more for our Patreon, but I'm fighting back and our Patriot is only 6 99 because everything else is so expensive. And I, I'm, that's me looking my greed goblin in the eyes and saying, 22:01 Not today, etc. Not today. So it really is. You saw, did you saw? Sorry, sorry. Sorry. talked to you like that. Get that out of my face. You saw Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, right? The first one. Sure. You did you the first one like the two thousands? Yeah, exactly. What the green goblin does? The green goblin is the same as the greed goblin. Yes, you're right. 22:32 It's like that little mass. It's like make more destroy. Don't provide value extracted. You're like all right. That's you know, interesting. Interesting. We're providing value and refusing to extract. We're losing money on patreon over every time you sign up for patreon. We lose money. So if you really want to stick it to me and Tim, you made this for on your like these broke losers well. 22:57 we have on patron make us lose some more. We've set our page of price at a loss, so that way every person who signs up it's a loss leader, but we're leading our product. Our main product is a loss leader really hoping to make it up somewhere. I don't have another product that oh no no where else we're no other product. Honestly, now that I've said it out loud, I have we might have doomed the podcast, but 23:23 It was worth a shot. guy from Bar Rescue comes in and he's like, you're telling me your only thing on the menu was a lady. You're me the only thing on the menu is a 699 pay three on subscription. That's how he talks in my head. That's talks. It's kind of Italian. It's like, my father, my father knew. Yeah. If my father knew that you were losing money on Patreon. Oh, and then he also walks over there and just finds 30 rats. 23:46 he's like oh my gosh, this place is yeah, but that's he's planting rats. Let's be clear. You are the ball. Rescue guy is planting rats at the restaurants he's going to and no one can convince me otherwise. He just comes in with a milk crate of rats. Hey, what are you doing with that milk? Grateful the rats? Don't worry about it. It's for TV. What you thought about you side to contract these rats are for the television, etc. 24:16 This episode's kinda bad! 24:22 So this like murmuring started spreading around. Yeah, people who like were inspired by this mythical figure. Ned killed his machine and it seemed like it also was bought. It seemed like there was people who starting to kind of be like, oh, well, we should maybe do that. Like we should maybe follow in his footsteps. Sure. And there was like little things that were happening, but nothing that was attributed to the lights until March 11th, 1811 and nodding. Oh, so I got full like 20 years later. Yeah. 24:50 um In Nottingham, there was a group of Luddites that showed up in the middle of the night and they destroyed 60 of these frames across the whole village of Arnold. And so soldiers had to come in and disperse them because they were just running wild, breaking frames. And so this is kind of the, and this is the first moment that was actually attributed to Luddites. Because they'd left a note. Yes, actually, they didn't even know. Oh, okay. And so they left a note and they were like, hey, 25:18 don't get new frames. If you do them, we're going to do this again. Basically, and you can do it the old way or you can not do it at all. uh Yeah, and so what they began doing it's kind like when people were setting these warehouses on fire. uh So are you going to get there? You're to over the next couple years. We started seeing this happen more and more, and literally what they would do is they would write the owners of these factories 25:47 And they would say, hey, you have one week to tear down your frames and remove them for your factories, or we're going to tear them down for you. And there was a lot of factory owners who would comply and be like, it's not worth it. I've seen this happen before. We're to get rid of it. A lot of times they would sell them or get rid of them, some whatever. They changed the factory. Usually this was a temporary thing. A few months later, they would go back by them all back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but they would comply. those who want it. 26:17 a group of these lead, it's would show up in the middle of the night wielding what they called Enox hammers because there was a yeah, a blacksmith by the name of Enoch Taylor who supplied them a sledgehammers and so they called them Enox hammers and so they came in with the hammers and they just smashed all of the the uh stocking machines and any of these like industrial revolution. This is what I want to do to the little robot that cleans the floor. A quick trip though. 26:46 You're not cleaning the floor yet. Not anymore, buddy. Thank you. I'm cleaning the floor. Welcome to a quick trip thing. Beg for its life. I'm cleaning the floor. Please. I have a family. I have children at home. Please. I'm saving for college. Please let me go. That's me. I threw it into a Canyon. I killed the quick trip robot. 27:15 would your God feel about this? Okay, appeal to that's insane. How would your God feel about this? Wow. All right. What would your God think about that? You know, that's crazy. I think God would love it if we killed the robots. God wants us to kill Claude. 27:47 are you just going to stare at me? I don't know how the rest of story goes. It's your turn to keep talking. Okay, fine. Okay, so God wants us to kill Claude. Oh man, can't enable more like Claude and Adobe. Did I send you that video? I was like a youth group. What just clicked? Was that you probably 28:13 There was like a youth group and they were asked all the kids in the news group what Bible character want to be. Most of them pretty normal. And then this one girl was like, no, one girl was like, I'd be king because she because he killed his brother. 28:26 that was the whole thing and then they just went everybody else. Everybody else was normal. like this is like a kid right. It's like I think a six year old kid. No, this was a like middle schooler. Oh, which I mean probably just try to be funny. I don't know, but like it did seem pretty serious and then it is quick pans to her brother. That all things going to be like a Netflix documentary that scene 28:50 Oh yeah, that's how it opens. It's gonna cool opening for a documentary. To be honest, I'd be Kane so can kill my brother. Yeah, so what are the lights do uh so so they've been here for an hour and a half to record this episode. We've been here for so long. Oh my gosh, so the lights would send these letters to the owners. Okay, they tell him you've got a week or the stuff or else or else yeah and then 29:16 they would do the else. Yeah, show up and they would smash it. Yeah, because you had said like it was and if they some some orders like complied or whatever, some complied, but some didn't and then they would show up and they would smash. Here's the important thing. They would smash. Is this a set of Luddites like in one area or is this the same group of Luddites going to different areas and being like we're going to do it to you. So what's interesting is we can tell by like the behavior that there's 29:45 clearly some cohesion here and it's a large group yeah, but it's widespread enough that it looks like this was not loved it. You know, ironically had to hire more people to help him make his hammers and then he made these machines that made the hammers faster. Yeah, actually actually thought you know, I was such a cool thing. He named the machine in ox hammer. Yeah, yeah, yeah and then 30:15 One day he got a 30:18 was like, if you don't take those machines down, we're coming for you. And he was like, he's like, I don't know what you want to do. General Ludd. They call him general Ludd. He's like, because you need so many hammers. I can't make enough hammers. I can't make hammers fast enough for as many as you need. I can't meet the demand. Actually, that might be a savings race. You guys don't have enough hammers to do this to me. I know for a fact, you don't have enough hammer. I'm not going to make you hammers to come hammer me. Well, the, well, they're really smart. They're really smart textile manufacturers. 30:48 they went and invested in the Knox business. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like hey, every time you smash, I'm making money. Go ahead and smash. Yeah, I paid every either way. It's all circular deals. I get paid either way. Don't Yeah, so yeah, so it's hard to tell, but it looks like what was really happening was these were like cell groups that were maybe a couple people from the different groups were engaging with each other, but 31:18 majority of them were disconnected cells that had heard about what was going on and they organize on their own under the banner of the Luddites. Crazy. But it wasn't one large massive organization. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was no online forum for you to join. Yeah. It was a very nebulous thing under the same name, but it wasn't, it probably wasn't an organized thing with like a hierarchy. Sure. Um, and so they, 31:43 would we're doing this for a couple of years going around smashing all it and the important thing is they would go into these factories. They would only smash the machines like the new machines never hurting anybody. They didn't well on purpose. ah All right, never mind. They would always smash the machines and break people's knees. They only hurt people who tried to stop them. If someone tries to stop them, you're an etc. It's yeah, you're the etc. 32:11 You're becoming et cetera right now. Becoming et cetera. You are et cetera right now. Hi, I'm cleaning the floors and you are et cetera. 32:27 The Coming Etc is a 2013 worship band name. Becoming Etc? You're Becoming Etc. Oh my gosh, dude. 32:43 Oh boy, am I sick? I sure do need Tim stones. Get well quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow. I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. Do your part. Get this shirt. 33:12 shop.tilland.com. 33:20 No, they they would only damage the machines. Yeah, the new machines, they would leave all the supplies, all the stuff so they can still you can still work. Yeah, but you can't use those machines. Yeah. And so they would have to hire the people, pay them a good wage, and then they could continue working. They could not do that. That those machine stuff, automation stuff. ah And so they did this for a couple of years until uh 33:50 there was a very outspoken manufacturer by the name of William Horsefall uh Horsefall. He just sounds like a cartoon villain. He does. He does uh who he was very vocal. Hey, the lawyers fall. Yeah, he's got like a cigar and he's like fat. Yeah, and he was very like not fat like round. Yeah, not yeah, very not like oh, he's out of shape. He is a he's round. Yeah, 34:20 He looks like Eggman from Sonic. Yes. Yeah. And so he was the kind of guy who was constantly going before the government and talking about like the Luddites as if they were like some terror group. Yeah. And so like he was very vocal about them. Well, they sent him a letter. Oh, just because we disagree, you're going to set my cars on fire. I mean, my my machines on fire. Yeah. So they sent him a letter and he uh was like, OK. And so he went to his factory and he tried to home alone it. 34:49 and he planned for them to come and this turned into a big like uh conflict between him and the lights and he actually injured a couple lights and a one of the lights by the name of George Miller killed him ah and so in okay, just such matter of fact storytelling killed him. 35:13 Yeah. He injured a couple of people and then George killed him. Just killed him. There's a way you went, uh, killed him. Yeah, he's dead. What does he gonna do? Okay. And so kill them. 35:39 So parliament and then he. 35:44 so weird. Okay, so parlor was like whoa yeah yeah. So parliament response pretty we can destroy the livelihood of thousands, but horse fall yeah you can kill a horse fall not Mr. Horse fall and so they deployed somewhere. We don't know that's not a last name that exists anymore. Huh? Horse fall horse fall. Yeah yeah the family lied died with him. 36:14 He was the last in the line. Horse fall. Horse fall. You got any? There's Olivia horse fall. Do you look rich? Yeah. Center of messages say, Hey, do you agree with the actions of your great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather? 36:35 It looks like she just graduated high school, so not gonna message her. Here's a Caitlin Horsefall 94. Indicates that we might have been born the same year. 36:47 Maybe a little bit more appropriate judging by the bags in her eyes. She's just as stressed as a 30 year old. What are you looking at me like that for? Messenger. Hey, do you agree with the actions of your great great great great great great grandfather? I can't even tell you my great grandfather. Hi, Abby. 37:12 Are you aware that your great great grandfather? Probably more great than that. Great, great, great, great, great grandfather was a capitalist big. God killed. 37:32 Yeah, I assumed I assumed he was dead. Thanks. All right, she messages back so insane. What a crazy just an unsolicited to you from a person with two hundred and fifty thousand followers. I don't know where it is like. Hey, are aware that your great great great great great great grandfather was scab? 38:03 wild insane. So anyway, so parliament responds pretty heavily. They send somewhere in the ballpark of we don't know exactly, but somewhere around twelve thousand to fourteen thousand troops to the midlands. and they're like, we're shut this down right now. Sure, which for context, this is the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. Great Britain is at war with Napoleon. Yeah, and that is that one. That is more troops than they sent to that war. They were like, no way. Yeah, 38:33 but they're like, we're gonna, we're gonna, like, yes, we need to fight back the French, but we also need to fight back the working class. Yes, exactly. Actually wolf. So this turns into like a war they're going and they are still doing the same thing. They're sending the letters, they're showing up at 18, 11, Yeah, we're now also a war happening in the war of 18. 39:03 Yeah, For some reason, and I don't know anything about it. It was the second American Revolution. Yeah, they, yeah, they're pretty great. Friends spread pretty thin right now. Actually, they are meddling in too many affairs, but they're like, this is the one we can win. Maybe that's why they're like, they're like, we need to, we need to wrestle back some control. ah Oh, maybe, maybe. ah So uh the leadites are continuing to send the letters. They're showing up with their sledgehammers. Okay. 39:32 But now, whenever they show up, the army's just there for them. And so these turn into intense conflicts, where the army's doing army stuff, and the Luddites are hitting them with sledgehammers. And so obviously, the Luddites are losing most of these battles. I'm an army guy. That's what I said. I put my thumb down on the working man's head. 40:01 You'll shut your mouth. Then you do as you're told. Or else you and your family will never grow old. We're going to kill you if you don't work hard. We're going to kill you even if you do work hard. It turns out we can do it. We can do it. So something important to note about the protection of stocking frames, etc. Act of 1788. Yeah. Was. 40:30 the goal from that act and for years after that by a guy named by the name of Dan Daniel Cook, who was a member of Parliament, was to make the punishment death, but he couldn't get the rest of Parliament to agree with that. He's like, do guys think the dealt the punishments are being there like wow, probably years in prison. He's like, I think we should kill him. I was like, they're like, that's a little harsh and they're like also the way the how matter of fact you were about that's a little disturbed. I just think we should 41:00 Go on! 41:03 And so this... 41:09 Hey, Abby, what do you think we should do to work? Who refuse to use the new machines? She's going to respond and say kill him. oh 41:37 kill. Yeah, it's my blood kill. Oh, eh do it. My great, great, great, great, great, great. Dad did try to kill him, try to kill him. So that's crazy. So this situation is, now boiling over in such a way that parliament comes back. It's like whenever you're in parliament and the guy next me like, we should kill them. And you're like, Hey, relax man. What are you talking about? 42:03 it's like oh yeah. What should we do if someone doesn't want to use these new machines kill him? Oh yeah, that's crazy. So all of this was kind of like bubbling over. Yeah, of course. And remember we had the protection of stocking frames, et cetera act right of seventeen eighty eight in eighteen twelve part that came back and they passed the destruction of stocking frames, et cetera act eighteen twelve. So very similar. It's just got a 42:32 different first word and this one said if you break a stocking frame, we're going to kill you. That's all they got a path death penalty. Yeah, and so there was a little bit of push back right after this and the Luddites continue doing their thing for a little bit, but then they start killing and they started killing people uh and a lot. It's kind of disappeared pretty quickly after that, but also this is the time where it's like we, know, we we burned people for being a witch or whatever. 43:02 and it's like just imagine like getting killed and they were like you destroyed a stocking machine yeah and you're like I didn't and they're like well prove it and you're like you prove it and they're like 43:20 No. And they just kill you. Yeah, that's kind of, yeah, yeah. So what's interesting is they kind of disappeared from history. By the next generation, their children all grew up in this world, so they didn't know any better. And so they just kind of lived with this. And then the second Industrial Revolution happened, and we saw the same thing. And this system played for a century until we saw another group of people rise up against the railroad barons. 43:48 and eventually get a lot of these things overturned. it all started almost immediately in the first industrial revolution with the Luddites. And now it's like a uh pejorative term for people who like don't like technology or the Luddites. Yeah. But the thing is they didn't have a problem with the technology. They had a problem with the way the owners were using the technology to make everyone else's life suck. uh That was their problem. And what's really interesting, it's interesting you brought it up. 44:18 because there is a growing neo Luddite movement. Yeah. Where there are these people, these communities online of people who are setting warehouses on fire. They're talking about, they're talking about burning down these data centers. I have not seen anybody take credit for it, but it is interesting that we are starting to see warehouse fires and ah these flock cameras getting destroyed at the same time that these neo Luddites online are talking about how we need to destroy flock cameras and burn. 44:47 What are flock cameras? Our cameras are that that company that has been set at the private company that's setting up all these cameras. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's I like track and it's like license plate readers and stuff. Yeah, not a fan, not a fan, not a fan. You know what else I don't like? And this is something that I get mad at uh and this is just out of my butt. To be honest, 45:09 but I would like to know how much footage I what it seems like to me is that the majority of security camera footage that you see online is made up, but he is either acted out or it's a I and it's a way of selling you home security cameras like all these like these people like almost every time I see some kind of sensational like this person's breaking on my front door and they're kicking down the door. There's always a little tag that's like by this home camera yeah or every time I see oh this person's car got stolen on our driveway by a little camera 45:38 Yeah. And it's, think, I think so many of these things are just someone making content to sell the camera and it creates the illusion that your neighborhood is becoming worse. That's interesting that you say that because I've noticed. I use, we have a ring and we have the neighbors app and in that they have a feed of like all the stuff that people are talking about and ring will put sponsored things. Yes. And every single time I see that and I'm like, this isn't what ring camera footage looks like. This is better. 46:07 It is a camera that they turned black and white and they put the ring logo on there and they say look at what happened. Look what the ring camera caught yeah and it's just sensationalized stuff. Well, what you do is what they do is it's not scary stuff. It's like yeah, like fun like oh yeah, you're looking at the UPS guy uh heading the dog or whatever exactly. Exactly stupid. It's all a dog is a dude and also so much of the stuff they're trying to do. They're trying to get you so because they sell that data. 46:35 that they can just be look. We have a camera on that street and and that's useful for law enforcement and they sell all that data and they want to create a surveillance state and they want to push you against your neighbors and they want you to think that your neighbors are dangerous so you don't talk to them anyway. That's whatever though. We're not crying right now, but I'm saying like it really, it really makes me irrationally angry when I see a sketch or I see this stuff on here like you know, I just go, oh, you made this video to sell a camera. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah. 47:05 Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, and all those cameras are being used by the police state to track you and to know where you are and to to pay anyway. You I don't know how to pivot out of that. There are a What's your God think of that? I say this all the time. If social media wasn't part of my job, I wouldn't do it. I am getting over it, but I mean I'll tell you what I'm over 47:34 tell you what I'm over. Are you over the Echo show in my living room was showing me video ads this week. I walked in my living room and there's a full on video playing on my Echo show and I told her I said Alexa, if you show me their video ad, I will set you on fire and then she was like I get that you're frustrated. Unfortunately, I don't have anything. So I literally put it in nighttime mode 24 7. Yeah, so now there's a black screen with a clock on it. Yeah, yeah, because I'm like 48:00 I'm not going to be walking through my living room and now my peripherals catching motion and now I'm looking at an advertisement. You want to know? No, I'm cleaning the floor. That's like a buy a Pepsi. That's like that TV that they gave for free. Remember that they would give you a TV, but there's ads on the one no yeah yeah. Get out of here with that no yeah yeah. I am you hate ads as much as I do. You can join us on Patreon for six ninety nine funny right funny to do an ad 48:27 I am getting to the point though where I see an ad. If I see an ad for something, I'm like, I'm never going to buy from you. I don't want to see your advertisements. Don't don't show me your ads. Oh, I mean, I'm I'm I did the rant on the podcast before. I hate when brands comment on my post because it's like, hey, you're trying to get exposure off of the views that I got pay up. Yeah. And it's also it's also like, oh, Charlie's being like, oh, yeah. Hey, shut up and stick your chicken fingers in your nose. Huh? Post a picture of your food. 48:56 or get out. Like don't, I don't want to see you make some witty comment. Like, yes, it sucks. And I don't want to see people doing tick tock dances in your lobby. I don't. So I, what are all that to say? I understand it, but it just, it just kind of feels like the horse falls of the world. When I mean it's true. That is kind of the sad moral of the lead story is the light. It's like they did cover a little bit of ground, but then the, got stamped out. Yeah. And they lost. 49:25 but I will say we beat the railroad Barron's. That is something true. We can't get. We beat the railroad Barron's and so the long arc of history is usually these guys win, but sometimes sometimes every once in a while the good guys should do an episode on the railroad Barron's. I should do an episode. Yeah. Hey, I talked about a YouTube series. I want to start. I think it'd be really funny if I sat down with like my father in law or even your dad or just you know dads in general and we played monopoly together on a video series. 49:54 but then I start with like a lot of money and we just see how long it takes them to rage quit. I think that's a really funny game because then the whole time I can just say stuff like hey, we all have the same opportunities. Yeah, you know and you can pass acts that if you had if you had used your money to buy properties, you wouldn't be in the situation. Yeah, you you add you like edit all the cards and they draw chance card. That's like 50:18 Oh you. We discovered that you haven't paid taxes for thirty years. I have been paying taxes. That's not what our books say. Yeah straight to jail. I my dad worked hard for these railroads. That's why I have all four of them. That's why I was born with all four of them. Yeah. Oh I pulled to go to jail card, but my dad knows somebody so I don't have to go to go. You flip over the my dad knows the warded card. My dad knows the warden. My dad says I get four hundred dollars every time I pass go because he pays my rent. 50:47 he pays my rent. I just think it'd be really funny, but I honestly think it'd be funny if you don't change the cards to like you play the game as it's designed. You just start with more start with more. Yeah, and you see how long it takes them to like flip the table over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think it'd take that long, so I challenge you, my father in law, Joe. I challenge you to a game of unfair monopoly. Okay, 51:14 What say you Joe? Anyways, they say that if you go anywhere in like the midlands in Great Britain to this day and you're you, you, you grab your stockings and you put them to this is such an attempt. Listen closely. Here what it is, what it says, what you're going to hear is you're going to hear the song that says all hell. Okay. 51:43 and then there's a little fiddle off. That was a stretch. uh Hey, thanks for watching this on my last night. If you liked it, please share it with somebody. Tell somebody about the show. Please. No one knows we exist and it's up to you. It's up to you to get the word out here. You're our little evangelist and so you do that. That'd be great uh and ah if you want to watch another episode, check out carry nation. 52:07 kind of like this, but she really didn't like people drinking the booze and so she would take her axe and she would go destroy bars, which is pretty tough. That's pretty and it's so we like that episode a lot and you're going to watch it and join us on patreon for next week's episode. We like you. We're glad that you listen to this. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week.
The term “Luddite” is often used to describe someone resistant to new technology. However, this modern interpretation significantly distorts the true historical context of the Luddite movement. Far from being technophobes, the original Luddites were a powerful force in early 19th-century Britain, reacting to profound social and economic upheaval caused by the Industrial Revolution. Their story is a compelling examination … Read More
This Guy Ate Vaseline Every Day | Robert Chesebrough
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, I'm so excited to do this podcast is my favorite thing to do in the whole world. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited in here. Have you ever heard of a Robert cheese, bro, cheese brow? I think it's chess, bro. Okay, but I'm I'm gonna say cheese brow. This is a weird painting. It's a ch ese, which I think is h chess brow e se yeah, b r o u g h chesa bro. 00:30 Chesa bro. Yeah, I'm gonna call him cheese brow Chesa, bro, Robert cheese, brow Chesa, bro. Have you ever heard of no, but this painting is interesting. Yeah. Why do you say that? Because it looks modern. Like it looks like a modern painting because of the lighting. You know what saying? Like it looks like what you would see. Does that make sense? Yeah, I'm gonna be honest with you. I think that this is someone who painted an old portrait of him. Okay, okay, okay. think someone recently there's an old. That's what I'm saying. This looks like modern, like portrait, like photography lighting. 00:59 yeah, but this is clearly a guy who's like from the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, yeah, so this looks like if you looked at a painting of a guy and then made a modern portrait lighted painting of that guy. 01:14 Southern Baptist Costco. We don't let the ladies in here. Seeing is believing. Sounds like a gnome. Yes. Come on down to the Southern Baptist Costco. It really hits the T in Costco. Things I learned last night. 01:44 So who is Chesapeake? Chesapeake, Cheese Bro. It's Cheese Bro. Robert Augustus Cheese Bro was born in 1837 in London, England. Two American parents. were accidentally in England when he got born. he is in England when he got born. was trying to search Chesapeake. Don't look him up. What do do? Don't look him up. I'm telling you the story. Don't look him up. I can don't look him up. Don't look at me. No, I'm not. 02:13 you're not gonna believe this. What is pronounced cheese bro? I'm not even joking. It's either ches bruh or cheese bro, ches bruh, could you pass the ches bruh? Could you pass the ches bruh first syllable rhymes with fez or cheese, cheese bro sick. So he is cheese bro. He is cheese bro. Okay, cool. So born eighteen thirty seven in London, England, 02:42 and then his parents obviously like they live in Jersey. So they went back to Jersey. Okay, he grew up there and he was always like, how's that work? Does he get dual finish and ship? I think if you're born internationally, like you're you live there. Yeah, maybe you do. He got to come back, yeah, that's a good question because that way you're this back eighteen thirty seven. Okay, so back then they didn't care. They're like, oh, who cares? Like 03:07 the world is the world yeah yeah, so you're all just happy you got born. That's actually baby. We're that's that's a huge achievement for this time that you actually got made it yeah good for you um so back to Jersey and he was like interested in science, so it's been his whole youth learning science stuff and then he uh he ended up getting a job in the mid eighteen hundreds working as a chemist. 03:33 uh for a company that collected oil from Wales and they use that for what are you looking at me like that for? Okay, they use that for like lamps and still like oil lamps yeah and very successful industry for years. How do you, how do you collect oil from a whale? Is it a killing in the whale? I think probably yeah. I guess I don't know for sure. I'm assuming they probably killed them. Yeah, let's find out. It wasn't like a giant q tip that you like got to put it in their mouth. Yeah, yeah, 04:03 Yeah, it just as it was obtained from the whales. It doesn't say how okay. Oh yeah, let's search it. Hey, while you're doing that, I thought of an interesting question yesterday. Do bugs sleep? Yes, they do. I've seen it. What do mean? You've seen it. seen it. Remember that time? I just believed that video that said that spiders uh spiders learn your routine, so they only come out when you're not around, but really all that is is they're just nocturnal 04:33 and say you're just asleep. Yeah, I learned your routine with the sun goes down and they come out yeah. No, he usually goes to bed when the sun comes down. That's why we wait so oh yeah. They kill him yeah. It's a killing thing. Okay, okay, kill him yeah that yeah they wolf. Okay, they really kill him. Geez, okay, no yeah. So so 05:00 He worked as a chemist and he basically would verify this oil that they got from the whales. I'd be like, this is good oil, we can ship this and use this. um And successful industry for years until uh petroleum became an industry. Titusville in Titusville, Pennsylvania in, let me get the year right, 18, doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. 05:30 uh The first successful oil well was built and they extracted oil from the earth as crude oil and they had to kill the earth to do that. I did actually, you know, cut that really killed it really killing the earth for that. It's because of that. His job was made obsolete. He didn't need the job. He got laid off. uh He couldn't find any other jobs. And so he spent. Yeah, the ground is harder to catch than Wales. 05:58 turns out we can get the oil from the ground and so he decides I'm going to go to Titusville. I'm going see what's up and he gets one of those local wells to agree to let give him a tour so you can see around how everything works. Okay. And while he's looking at everything that's being done the whole process, there is a well that's not running talks to the people working that well and like well we have to give it. We have to stop it every once in while. This great they called it the rod wax off of the drill. 06:27 And he was like, what? And I'm like, well, it's this rod wax. So like finger off a dollop of it from the the the rod. said when we go down there, there's this byproduct we call rod wax. And it's just this clear jelly like substance that is not what we're trying to get. It's not valuable. And anyway, we usually just throw it away. And he says, oh, that's interesting. Can I taste that real quick? He's like, he's like, can I find out some stuff about that? And 06:55 The workers were like, yeah, we actually use it. Like when we injure ourselves on the job, we just cover ourselves in it because it helps us heal faster and soothing and it helps us heal faster. So he takes it home and he talks to the company. The company's like, yeah, you can take as much as you want. So he literally takes barrels home with him and start studying this stuff. And he discovers, oh, there is something to this. Like using this, like he would like literally like a sporn. He would burn himself. 07:23 and then he'd rub the trying to guess what it is. He'd rub this rod wax on him and he would realize, oh, if I burn myself here and then burn myself here and put the wax on this spot, this spot's healed faster than this spot is. And so it's like there's something to this. This is magic earth dust earth jelly earth. It's day to market. He calls it earth goop. Yeah, no, he gets a, he gets a patent for it because he finds another process of a way to 07:50 kind of purify it and actually use it in a way that's a consistent um and actually like, you know, ready for market. Yeah. He pounds it and he ends up spending months trying to come up with a good name for it. He lands on a name that is actually a combination of a few words. So he takes, let me find this word. He takes the German word for water, which is Wasser and the Greek word for oil, which is a Leon, and then the suffix I N E 08:20 because it sounds scientific and comes up with Vaseline. I was right yeah yeah, so he takes Vaseline to market. This is his his read the German word again, waser idiot. Okay, what do you mean? Fosser? Oh yeah, Fosser. I guess you're right yeah, waser uh waseline, so I nailed it perfect. I like that, so he takes was in the market. 08:47 and on the box he puts his mission and his entire thoughts about how the world should work. Well, this is what I love about this, so he takes it to market in 1876 1870. He manufactures it for the first time 1872. He gets a patent and he immediately starts taking it to market and he goes around New York City to all the pharmacies. He's like he's like hey, I got this stuff Vaseline, Vaseline and he starts telling the pharmacist everything it does and the pharmacist don't believe yeah, no, doesn't, but that's not real. What 09:17 no one wants to buy any of it. Yeah, so he says, okay, how, how, how is Vaseline? What is it? So we'll get there. Okay, so he, he is just rod gel. Yeah, yeah, it's a byproduct of, of crude oil. Okay, is what it is. um And so this is, he gets this carriage, this horse drawn carriage. Yeah. And he goes around New York City. 09:47 And he basically sets up a side show uh where he lights himself on fire and then he rubs that Vaseline on it. And he tells people this will make me heal faster. And he shows people other spots. He's like, come back in three days. Come back to this spot. Three days now. Three days time. This will be healed. If you were here two days ago. 10:09 Here's yesterday's! That's exactly what he would do. He'd be like, here's yesterday's bird. And people would be like, oh, it's pretty healed. And the only people who know that are the people who were here yesterday. And then there'd be a guy who's like, I was here yesterday! Take it from me, a man who was born in the UK. But I lived here in Jersey. Why don't you have a British accent? Well. You were born in the UK? All I got to do is put Vaseline on your vocal that man. 10:40 Hey, we just reduced the price of our Patreon to 699 a month. That's one price for everybody. You get all the perks. You get the live hangouts, you get to join the discord, you get early access, whichever reason you're joining for. We wanted to make it one price because I hate that everything in the world is going up in price, and so we wanted to make this a little bit more affordable for everyone to do. And so but also, you know, the other goal is that more of you join it so that we can keep funding the show. I mean, like what you know, how do I say that? That sounds like we're 11:07 poor and we are we are and uh no, but if you can't join us on Patreon, no worries at all. Another way to support the show is by sharing it. Please tell somebody like the show and thanks for for being here for this episode. 11:25 don't have a weird act so and so he burnt himself and then he burned then to be like look the burns healed from yesterday and what he would then do is after he did his little side show he'd be like come here come here children. He really do got to be like hey come back in a couple of days. Well he would then give out what was samples the first like one of the first documented first free samples and so he was given out. He was a cosco lady yeah and so you give out free samples of the cost or the cost of the vaseline and he'd say go which 11:55 can I just say haven't seen a lot of them last summer gone to Costco? Oh yeah, they don't do that as much. The samples have been dying down and I will say when I do see them, it's useless stuff. I went, I went, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating. I went the other day and she had on like a free sample of this twenty foot outdoor pool. We cut it into little pieces and put it in the cup. Would you like a free sample? 12:24 and you're like, guess I guess I'm back in three days. See what that become. Barry, this beat in your backyard, giving out magic beans and guys, I got these magic beans from a Costco lady and then you go back and you're like guys, there was a lady in this aisle and they're like 12:50 no there wasn't. We have let women in this store. What is the southern back to the southern Baptist Costco? We don't let the ladies in here. 13:10 mm okay, so is southern baptist cosco that's crazy and what he would do is give out the samples yeah and say if you like that you can buy it at any pharmacy in New York, but the pharmacies don't carry it yeah, but they have are they're asking for it. So now all these people start showing up at every pharmacy and they're like hey, do you guys carry this Vaseline that's smart and all the pharmacists were like oh, we got to get some of that Vaseline. Everyone wants that Vaseline yeah and so we got you some of that Vaseline 13:39 everybody wants. really what do you think that bit was? I just need you to describe to me what you because you went everybody goes like Halloween town, Vaseline, Vaseline, Vaseline. Like what do you think the bit was? I don't know. Just pharmacists. We every everybody wants some Vaseline. You think pharmacists are just being weird. Pharmacists are weird man. Okay, I just take me a little weird. All right, 14:06 So the pharmacist start calling them and they're like, hey, yeah, calling him. I don't know. They got the, they got the catalog that he gave him. I don't know. They're sending them a letter. don't know what they did then. 14:19 pigeon. They pop them off a telegraph. I don't know. And so they start ordering. He's taking in orders from carrier pigeons. Hey, we got to two barrels down to the two barrels to a picture. 14:37 we got to get some big a bitch and so yeah a couple years later, but there is the pigeons are not able to carry the barrels because they're too small and the idea would be that you find a pigeon big enough that can carry two barrels and that's a funny vision or the audio engines. 15:00 right now. You explain your pharmacist joke earlier. I've explained okay. Let me explain. It's a visual that pharmacists. They can't be picked up by I don't understand what this one they got pigeons holding up their arms. The farmers are like ratatouille by a co pigeons. All right, that's a good visual. 15:27 See that's a visual bit. There we go. Okay, cool. We're flushing it out. Yeah, we're working on it. We're gonna cut all of it out. oh Thanks. Good. So by 1874, two years later, they got to the point where he's selling 1400 jars of a say that building had Vaseline on it like I you know, yes, they end up building a factory. They're they're moving, they're moving Vaseline and so he starts going to all these like medical institutions and he's like he's like, study this stuff. Tell me what it does. 15:57 And everyone's like, nothing really, honestly, man. This doesn't really do anything. He's like, Hey, that's not what you were supposed to say. He's like, I give you a couple hundred dollars, can you say it does something? And they're like, they're like, we did the same thing for Coca-Cola. So what they, what they found, the only thing that they found that Vaseline actually does is it's like a protective layer. And so it prevents infection and it is a little soothing, like, and so it soothes and it protects you from further infection. And especially in that day and age. 16:26 Infection was super common. Yeah. And so so that is useful. Yeah. These wounds would heal faster because they weren't infected. The other ones were infected or they were getting back in three days. I used to have all five fingers, but then I didn't put Vaseline on my pinky and I lost it when I cut it off. What are the but thankfully this will make it grow back. He's just got like 16:56 Molded Vaseline finger and it's like super goopy Yes Seeing is believing 17:11 It sounds like a gnome. Yes. Come on down to the Southern Baptist Costco. Really hits the T in Costco. Come on down to Southern Baptist Costco. So no women allowed. We don't let the ladies pass their tag line. Okay. So the tag line is 17:40 Southern Baptist Costco. We don't let women in here and we have plenty of free samples. A really big tagline. 17:54 You 17:57 oh So he starts marketing it as being kind of like this panacea. can do anything and everything. And it's kind of one of those weird things where like, yes, it's this protective layer. And so because of that, you can use it in a lot of different applications. And it's it's wound care, it's diaper care, it is skin stuff. uh He starts marketing it as like a hair product for... 18:26 like pomade yeah yeah yeah yeah give your hair that just come to look all day long. So it's like yeah like a pomator yeah uh cream hair tonic yeah just make your hair greasy. Put this oil in your hair uh and so some people like that so they market it in all now was a fifty's. Yeah, was a long time later. Yeah, so they're marketing it in all sorts of different ways. They're having a hard time getting any like scientific establishment to like verify any of claims that they're making but 18:54 It doesn't matter. It's popular. It's selling like crazy. They're getting very, very big. Okay. And in 1881, his company gets galled up by Standard Oil and becomes part of their whole massive conglomerate, which was a great partnership for them because obviously Standard Oil has all of this rod wax that they don't need. Yeah. And so they are able to then just skyrocket their production. Right. 19:24 you have to figure out stuff to use it for because you have so much yeah. You've got tons and so the you do new products well yeah. Eventually, eventually they've discovered how to turn this stuff into plastics. this is where plastic comes from sure, but for a long time it's just this jelly the Queen of England nights him, which is an interesting move. She says she uses vastly every day. She's a huge Vaseline fair. What year does she night him? 19:54 1883. Here and here and he goes. 20:00 because the sword kind of cut him a little bit. Yeah, he puts the he became like a huge believer and he constantly would market it. I constantly cut himself constantly burn himself and like in public and like put it on and like see how well it works. Yeah, like I don't it just looks like you just put it on your arm. Well, look, I did it here before. You know, that was his yeah, his his his you go. You're gonna help me. Nope, his his 20:28 Oh, he's kind of stuck trying to figure it out. That was his keep going. I like this. This is a fun game. That was his Tim. This is rough. I don't know what the word you, you could help. It's stitch. Is it stitch? Yeah, that was his ditch. I don't think it's stitch. I really don't think it's stitch. It's stitch. Robert would Robert 20:58 He doesn't care about our team at all. So that was his whole stitch. That's not the word. Yeah, it is. uh I'm going to listen back to this and I'm going to know what I'm trying to say. Okay, it's stitch. It's stitch. It's not. if you know what I'm trying to say, comment below and I'm trying to say it's Lilo and stitch. So that's his holy low and stitch. 21:23 Okay, whatever, uh, because dude in Kim Possible, he's like, what's the stitch? No, it's stitch. That's stitch. know that you're not gonna get me on that one. 21:34 Oh boy, am I sick? I sure do need Tim stones. Get well quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow. I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. Do your part. Get this shirt. 22:04 shop.tilland.com 22:11 Anyways, so he spends his life being like devoted to this stuff. Yeah, when in 1902 he builds this building, which this is not really part of story. I just really like it. It's cool building. It's very cool. This is in Manhattan. It was the tallest building in the city at the time being the tallest building was his little stitch. 22:39 that you're gonna immediately, we're gonna turn off the cameras, you're gonna tell me what the word I was looking for is, because I know you know what it is. And I'm not gonna be able focus the rest of the I've told you several times. I've told you several times at this point. 22:57 keep going. The building's I've tried to think of like all Just move on. Let's move on. Let's move on. Let's move on. That's all right. That's all right. That's right. So in 1911 on that, what did you say? Let's not get stuck on that stick. Oh good times. So he his company regains a lower. 23:23 His company regates its independence in 1911 when the government breaks up Standard Oil. um And he becomes like a real estate speculator and he starts building all these big buildings and different things all over the world. uh In his 50s, he gets the flu ah and he's very sick. And while he is in the hospital, uh he says, whatever you're planning on doing, that'll need it. What I need you to do is I need you to cover my body head to toe in Vaseline. 23:53 and I'm going to be honest. I don't know if this actually happened or if this is just what he told everyone when he got out. Geez bros get well quick cover your whole body in Vaseline. Yeah and he says he says I was out of the hospital in two days and whether that actually happened or not. I don't know. It seems like the kind of thing a salesman would just yeah yeah yeah yeah but it also seems like the kind of thing that because we do know he used to burn himself right public and then put Vaseline on 24:23 he he might have just just close up all your pores. Yeah, I don't know like you know nothing's getting in or out. Let's try it. Let's try it next time we're sick. Let's both just try it. Let's do it right. Wait, would you go next door to high V? I'm out of a so yeah, we're probably gonna need all the will get shirtless. It will just allow. I can't. Oh, that makes me sick thinking about it. That's so gross. Vaseline. You want to know something really? Oh, so I 24:53 I have this thing, the word for it is eczema. But my hands get really chapped and like dry every winter. people notice. Thanks, glad you do. And when I was a kid, it got really bad. I think I've made fun of you on the show where I go get your leprosy hands away from me. No, that's fair. And then you go, it's not leprosy, it's eczema. It's not leprosy, it's my whole shtick. It's not leprosy, it's eczema. That's how you talk. whatever, really. But growing up. 25:23 in back home in colorado. There's like no moisture in the air, so yeah, it would get like bad. My hands crack really bad and but the solution my mom came up with was Vaseline. So your hands are always shiny. Well, we didn't do it in the day because it's gross to walk around with Vaseline. so we definitely learned your routine. 25:45 he uses his hands less at night, so he covered my hands in Vaseline at night, but then that was gross because it got all over my bed. You were well yeah, and so instead of so then you had those big Mickey Mouse gloves. Well, they had had they made those those gloves, but they were like they were oven. They were bad looking. They were they were awful. They were genuinely awful and instead the solution was I went to bed with Vaseline card hands and we put two socks on my arms. 26:10 and so I went to them a tube socks on the hands with vastly dance inside there. Yeah, and then I remember I can clearly remember as a kid with the socks, picking up cups, going to computer typing kill Josh kill, Josh, and they knew it was you because the grease residue left by so much grease on the yeah. It was bad and I yeah, just like having to do everything like this. Yeah. Once I went to bed after yeah, it was gross 26:39 That's really sad, man. It's not sad. It's just as health care. Yeah, sure. My parents got an insurance payout for that. 26:50 Okay, so he recovers from the flu yeah. He does recover from the flu. He goes back to allegedly because of a so allegedly because of a saline ah and then yeah. Like I said, he he continues running his business, his business, super successful business ah and then in March, nineteen thirty three, he's ninety six years old yeah and he's interviewed in a local newspaper and they're like what's your like secret? Like how did you live so long? 27:17 I drank two vasolines a day. He said, he said, well, I ate a spoonful of Vaseline every day. so. OK, so and here's the thing. I believe him. I do believe that he genuinely did that, because here's the thing. There's like a fine line between being kind of a crazy person and being a salesman. 27:45 And so the salesman is like, Hey, there's the pool and all that stuff. Right. And then this guy is like, but I believe this stuff, but I actually buy it. And every morning he's just, Oh, a spoon full of Vaseline makes them medicine. I just wrote that. Um, and so he said he did that and that started to spread. People started to eat Vaseline in the morning because they thought it was healthy because he did it. Um, and so over the course of a few years, 28:13 That's so crazy. Yeah, this kind of became like a panacea for a while. For years, people were doing it for everything, and then by like the mid fifties, it kind of became something where I was like, okay, this is just kind of some stuff, um but he dies ah not long later at ninety six in September of nineteen thirty three yeah, nineteen fifty five uh Pons extract company uh buys out 28:39 cheese bros manufacturing company, okay, which later is bought by Unilever and you know ever still making it still this day, so Vaseline is still on the shelves. uh It doesn't. What is it now? It's the same thing. It's just this extract from oil, and so they pull it off those rods. The byproduct that you don't use part of it goes into plastics. Part of it goes into jelly and it's like purified into petroleum jelly, and there's a handful of companies that make it now, but Vaseline is like the biggest worldwide. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean it's and it's 29:09 It doesn't do anything. It's just kind of coats your skin. I shouldn't say it doesn't do anything. It does soothe you. does. It's a protective layer. It's really all it is. And at no point was he like, you know what? We should make this like a like an MLM. 29:27 I don't know. It was just his business. He just went around selling it and it was in like pharmacies and stuff. Oh, OK. The time. Yeah. That's story of Robert Cheese, bro. Cheese, bro. Cheese, cheese, bro. Yes. Yeah. OK. Well, fiddle off. Hey, thanks for being here for this episode of Things I Learned Last Night. If you liked it and you want another one like it, you can go check out Painless Parker, a dentist who would kind of go around and try to convince people that he knew how to do dentist stuff. 29:57 he didn't and so you can go check that out. We thank you for being here. You join us on patreon if you want next week's episode right now and also I don't know what the hype button does on YouTube, but if you see it, you should click it all right. That would help us a lot. I've heard that it helps the algorithm and so I'm just asking you to do it all right. We'll see you next time.
Ever wondered about the humble beginnings of the ubiquitous jar of Vaseline on your shelf? It’s a tale steeped in innovation, unconventional marketing, and the sheer tenacity of one man: Robert Chesebrough. His journey from an obsolete chemist to the founder of a global brand is as intriguing as the product itself. The Accidental Englishman: Robert Chesebrough’s Early Life Born … Read More
YouTuber Gets DESTROYED In $200k Lawsuit | Bricks & Minifigs Ep 333
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, I can do the episode with your hair looking like that. I was wondering the whole time we're setting up was like surely he's going to fix his hair. It's fine. This is fine. This is you look like now. Yeah, okay, it's good. All right, man, ever happy to be here by the way. You know, I don't think you are all right. What's up? Leave it. What you got? Nobody else does. What topics do you have today? uh Have you ever heard of bricks and mini figs bricks and mini figs? Yeah, 00:29 No. 00:33 got it, we got it, we Yeah, yeah, what do you do for your work? Well, I'm a YouTuber. What does that look like? I lure young girls into the woods. 00:46 Yeah, I was back when I was into scaring third graders. 00:54 Things I learned last night. 01:03 uh So, well, I'll tell you what bricks and many things is actually to start the story. is this this story. I'll tell you this is one of the most okay. What I can say for sure. This is definitely going to be in law textbooks for years to come. uh And this is one of the most convoluted bricks and many messy just disasters of 01:31 minifigs, a bunch of people making bad choices over and over and over again. Okay. And there's a lot to this, which is also the story of this podcast. We keep showing up and then we keep making bad decisions over and over and over again. What I'll tell you for sure is this is this it's June 16th. This is developing story. By the time this comes out, some other stuff is for sure happened. Yeah. And 01:59 in the length of this podcast, we're definitely not going to able to cover anything. I mean, does this episode come out? I don't know. A few weeks. I honestly don't know. Should I? Should I find out? Should we pause for a second and I find out? Okay, let's leave all this in. I'm going to pause for a second. I'm going to find out. Oh wait. Yeah. Okay. I'm fighting out. Hold on. You're in a mood. I'm not in a You broke your wife. I'm in a mood. 02:31 So yeah, so July 7th. Yeah. So for sure, some stuff has happened. Yeah. And also what's happening in July is that I'm in Goshen, Goshen, gosh darn Indiana. Yeah. Uh, July 24th and fifth. That's why I was asking about the release date. Oh, there you go. I do stuff outside of this. What do do? Uh, appliance repair and I'll be in Goshen, Goshen. I'll be in Goshen. I think it's Goshen. I'll be in Goshen, Indiana, fixing some refrigerators on July 24th and 25th. uh 03:01 he does like faith healing events, but it's for a small. I lay my like break it to and you watch the temperature go down. You know, it's pretty wild. He healed my microwave. He healed my microwave, but what I'm saying is this is like yeah, there's a lot to the story. Okay, if you know this story coming in, I'm definitely not going to be able to cover everything. Okay, I'm to say, but bricks and mini figs is a Lego like resale. 03:31 chain got it. Okay, they're all across sense. They're all across the country. What is a what is a mini fig mini fricks make sense? Yeah, many figures are like guys, the Lego guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're off brand like, but they sell Legos. They sell Legos and so they there's a lawsuit where Legos like you can't do this. Well, they are separate, completely separate from Lego. They just do Lego resale, right? They don't like do anything that uses the brand of Lego. 04:01 And so like they're getting away with it. They have for a couple of years been working to become an authorized retailer of Lego. Okay. That has not happened yet. Right. Right now they're just a resale like so they can't sell new Lego thing. Yes. Yes. But it's just resell old stuff. And so it's kind of like game stop. Yeah. You come in, you trade in your old Legos to sure new old Legos. Oh, no, I love this episode right now. Oh, we got a couple of Patreon supporters who are like 04:29 I actually learned it from Noah. No, did you? Okay, okay, okay, okay. Yeah. Shout out to you, Noah. And I, and I will say Noah, when I first looked into this, I definitely did say I hated this story and I wasn't going to cover it, but the more I got into it, was like, Oh, I need to cover this story. So good recommendation. Yeah. Good job, Noah. So the story starts with this guy by the name of Brian Mansell. And so Brian, his dad, not him, his dad has a massive Lego star Wars collection. 04:58 valued somewhere in the ballpark of $200,000 and it's all these rare Lego Star Wars like old discontinued. Are they put together? They're in the boxes. Okay. And so these are boxed like collector items like treated. Which is the whole point of Lego is to not open them and not put them together. There's so much more fun when they're in the box. So much more fun when you just look at it. He took it. So his dad started collecting the set. You know that I know like a Lego master. 05:28 Really? Yeah, like work for legoland. Yep, really? Yeah, yeah, he he won a art competition for late and yeah, it was like a sculpture competition with legos and then he worked at the Kansas City one and it was going to go on that show. Is the show called Lego Masters? ah But yeah, so he's I mean he's he built like the fully functioning r two d two down at the at legoland, Kansas City and then uh Disney suit them and made them pulled off a floor. 05:58 because it's like a fully functioning like with the with the remote control and everything and is not lego because disney owns the star wars ip that's crazy and then they were like sued him for that they didn't sue him oh they sued the they told legoland send him a cease and desist and they were like hey that you can't has that on display because it's not an official lego licensed ip that's crazy because like he just made it made it he just made it that's insane he's really going have you been to legoland yeah i've been well i was a kid 06:28 and I was like, is that what ours was called? Is it a Lego land? Kansas City does have a Lego land, but it's not. It's not Lego land like San Diego. That's where I, well, yeah, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it is like, can't say it smells like wet hot dogs like because they have a concession stand and they're selling 06:45 they're selling. They're selling. thought you went on. mean dry hot dog. You know all they got is wet on. I don't know what dog or try on. We yell over me Tim. It ruins the pod. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, 07:07 so you know what I'm talking about. What if we did the whole podcast in PR style? You know what I'm talking about when I say no, but you don't talk about where people like they put them on the rollers or they just boil those dogs and the whole place smells like damp dogs. Yeah, that's right and like that nacho cheese bag. Yeah, yeah, you know 07:30 and they haven't figured out how to ventilate the Lego land, Kansas City location so that it doesn't like literally I was walking around like this stuff's really cool, but also like I'm going to throw up. It smells so bad yikes yikes just do chips. Yeah, that's that's you don't got to have hot dogs have what hot dogs and bag nacho cheese. You don't have to do it. Yeah, just sell chips. That's rough. 07:57 Yeah, so no, I haven't been to that one. I've been to the one in San Diego. Okay, one in San Diego. They have a driving school and you get a license. Yeah, and I went when I was probably like seven or eight. My parents took me like it was a family vacation and then you drove back because they you got your license. Now, buddy, we got to the airport and they asked like security right from my parents ID and then I handed him my Lego and I do. This is nice and they arrest and then they broke you on the ground and then they 08:25 they held you in a in a room for seven hours. Your parents, by the way, got on the flight still crazy because they we can't miss the flight. didn't care. Yeah, they'll ship them back with their like, oh, don't question them. If it and your dad was like, honestly, I want to know if he is involved with some terrorism. Brian's dad has this really valuable collection. Brian's dad has this really valuable collection. Yes, and Brian's dad's intention for the collection from the start. Okay, was I mean, I shouldn't say his intention from the start. 08:54 His intention from the start was he loved him and he wanted to collect them. But his long-term dream was one day I will sell this collection and it's going to pay for my grandkids college. was his. Yeah. And so he's like, he's like, I'm going to be collecting is going to increase in value and no college. Well, sadly his dad gets cancer and they're they need the money. And so they decide let's go sell the collection and try to make some money. So Brian Mansell, this guy, he takes that collection. 09:24 to his local uh Brickson Mini Fig store, which is in Salem, Oregon, or I think it's like right outside Salem, Oregon, a town right outside. OK. And he makes a consignment deal with them. So he doesn't actually sell it to them. If you don't know what consignment is, the store basically just agrees to hold it on stock. And they're going to take a commission of every sale and then pay Brian when they sell it instead of buying out the whole collection. When they originally uh make the consignment deal, 09:54 Bricks and Minifigs, the owners of that franchise, it's a franchise company, not a corporate owned company. They go and they take pictures of the collection at his house and they post about it, they make a huge deal about it, how this is a $200,000 collection. And then they enter into this consignment deal. Meanwhile, the owners of this, let me get their names right, the owners of this franchise, their names are Crystal, 10:22 Law and Benjamin Gorman, they are partners and they're planning on moving out of the country and they own this franchise. And so they make this deal, they have it for about a year, everything under consignment. And then they call corporate and they say, Hey, we want to go ahead and sell our franchise. We're moving. Yeah. And so they started the process. They're going through all the paperwork and then one night in the middle of the night, I should say the middle of the night, right before close, somebody shows up at the store. 10:52 with someone. Now somebody to rob them freaking somebody shows up the store with somebody from corporate and they're like, hey, we are taking over this location. This is no longer your location. You need to hand over all your documents and you need to vacate the property or the property. If you don't, you will be immediately. Yeah, you will be trespassed. How 11:18 should we just do this to some people? Should we put on like a suit and tie and just walk into places and go hey, excuse me? Well, here's the thing. This really was a corporate represent yeah. Yeah, I understand. I was saying we're gonna do the I understand. You're saying, I'm saying should we just show up places and go like hi, just take over from corporate. You don't know that hey, I'm from I'm from bricks and many things corporate my badge and and it's 11:47 It's like what's that guy's name Jimmy? I've sent you a stuff. He shows a lot of construction sets. You love Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Fallon videos all the time. People are like what who's watching this and I show anymore. It's Tim. He's watching the videos. They're not clips. They're videos of my TV that I feel when I said and you can hear me breathe. I'm like 12:10 and you can't hear the TV. All you hear is my breathe laughing because I'm wearing airpods and like you're also sending me the commercials because you're watching on live TV. Yeah, yeah, that's you're like you gotta eat home in this. I saw wait to see this joke. This is going back after this. I went to I wound it too far back. Okay, 12:40 so Jimmy somebody uh no Jimmy. Yeah, what's his name, but he shows up at construction sites and he does that. Oh yeah, just acts like he's a change. Yeah, he's like, can you this change to this guy big fan and like just messes with just hands of the hey, would you pass it over to exactly yeah, make sure Brian gets this yeah and he's like he's like he's like hey, what did Todd say? Did Todd say anything about that lunch I sent over today? Did you get any of that and then be lunch? Who's taught? It's hilarious and it works. 13:08 every single time. I love it. That's what I'm saying dude. It's like it's like the doctor in a lab coat thing. You just believe it like create yourself as a position authority. Yeah. If you seem confident, people believe you hey, I were from corporate. We actually need you to empty all the cash out of the register and put it on this gift card and then give me the code for the gift card. So that would help me a lot. It's just typical corporate activity, typical card, typical corporate stuff. 13:35 you know, big up. Hey, I don't. If you had a college degree, you'd get it well and your question. That is why I drive why I drive a two thousand and fourteen BMW. All right, which is why I drive a two thousand three Toyota Sequoia. Speaking of a toy two thousand three Toyota Sequoia 14:00 How about this one on Facebook marketplace? I'll screenshot it right now. It's three. It's three thousand two hundred and fifty. Hold on. This is actually a pretty good deal. One hundred and sixty nine thousand miles home. I'm home. But then the price down here says forty nine fifty OBO, so it's got a hundred and sixty thousand sixty nine thousand miles, which I don't know if you about Toyota's pretty pretty young. That's basically like three thousand miles. That's basically like three thousand miles. Two thousand three. You know, you know, 14:28 and then he even puts in your Toyota Sequoias are known for lasting three to four hundred thousand miles with proper maintenance, ready to drive home today now, and this is sold by Stan Tramp. So their cover photo is a BMW. I'm a screenshot that and their profile picture is ah is the 14:52 the thing from it. I think I don't know that is what that is kind of creepy. That is a little creepy. So if you're interested in that, it's in Glendale, California, make sure you pick up at a police station. Do one of those police station face. I mean it looks for this one. I like the color. What's the wear and tear on the inside? Let's see some interior shots. Honestly, the interior is pretty good for a two thousand three. This is a twenty three year old vehicle. There you go. You know, interior looks pretty good. I I would I would do it. I might do it 15:23 so you can't buy this. You know what? Sorry, this week sponsors canceled. I just bought a Toyota Sequoia, you know, use code till it. You're always trying to make that joke when I these promos and you every time you're like joke, you just go till you it's like we're doing it and then you're trying to snap into my frame. I didn't always over like you still telling by the way, make sure to use code till it wasn't even I think it's like, hey but every single time you like that 15:52 use code till when you check out because like that's the that's the funny part of the the funny part of that is not that we're reading a Facebook marketplace. It's that you're using code till and if you don't use code till and then it's not funny. That's my view. 16:12 So so they come and they say hey, we're from corporate. We're taking over your store and what they allege is that she owes a button. Sirens went off and there's like there's a code Dylan code. You know, funny or joke than what he was a mini figures run in live size mini figures and they kill her. They take their hands. They say hey, they allege that she has a bunch of unpaid 16:42 franchise fees and also rent because this is late at night. We're coming in crystals there crystals there. Yeah, she's okay and they go hey you have unpaid franchising unpaid franchise fees and unpaid rent because they are the owner of the property. So the way they the way that this franchise does right right right right at least from the proper yeah the franchise, which is how we should do a whole episode of how McDonald's and subway really are killing their franchisees. It's truly remarkable uh so 17:12 They, they, it's just business. They basic supply and demand business. uh So the people there that night were someone from corporate, someone from corporate uh and the new franchise owner. They went and they found somebody else to buy the franchise in this behind her back in this whole time in Oregon. Yeah. And they did a hostile takeover so she doesn't get to sell it. They're seizing the franchise back from her. 17:34 and so this is actually security camera footage from that night. This is one of the new orders. There's two guys that are two partners that are coming in as new owners. Yeah, there's a guy by the name of brain. We ain't gonna wear. We don't even got to wear suits. Yeah, you guys is wearing an underarm or quarter zip and a bag from his high school football practice. Yeah, where he plays running back 17:55 teams lose it that year. What are we doing that need a 52 year old man? Remember back in the day, Brandon Best? He was so good. You know, that's like the coaches are sitting around like, man, if we could just have a Brandon Best in our team. And it's like, what are the assistants? Would you buy this? Check the rule book. 18:18 you know, I actually ran this rule book through chat, she and it said that there's nothing in here. have a fifteen year old running back says that they can be any age. They just have to be under six foot and guess what he's five eleven and three quarters. He's very tall right at the cut off. So okay, so brand best. Yeah, he's not wearing a suit. 18:42 he comes in. This is security camera footage. This is security camera. I'll honest. Crystal's got purple hair. She doesn't seem like she's running a tight business, but not at all. It's not a tight ship being run over here, you know, and you're like, Jaren, that's a generalization of people with purple hair. Yep, it's pretty accurate. uh So they go around the store and they take pictures of everything in the store, the whole inventory that night, and she is trying to print out a bunch of receipts from the POS. 19:09 okay, and they're like the hey, you don't need you. You can't do that. You need to leave and she's like no, I need you don't understand. I have to get receipts because I have a guy who has a collection here under consignment right and he has unpaid invoices because she she didn't pay him basically monthly and so she says I owe him a lot of money for four sets. We've sold. I need to get that and Brandon tells her he says well, that's a business thing. We're to solve. We're taking over your business and so anything that the business will handle that is what he's saying. Yeah, this is that's our problem now sure as the new business. 19:39 And so basically they kick her out and she leaves and they take over the company. So she was not paying. 19:48 um corporate alleges she was a pink corporate. Brandon has been paid for some of this. He says, but two people in Brandon or I shouldn't say Brian, Brian, Brian, who I was going to say who Brian owns the collection. Yeah, he's been at Brandon. That's Brandon. Yes, yeah, and so he says that Crystal had paid him for some of for some items that they've sold to out that sure, but there's definitely the majority of that collection is still in that store right and in fact they went through later. They went through the security camera footage from that night 20:18 And you can see a lot of it in the inventory on that store throughout the store. And you know it's his because he put yellow stickers on all of his collection when he brought it in. So he knows what's it's like clearly identifiable, what's his and not somebody else's that's there. so Brian Mansell tries to get in contact with new ownership after this. This goes over just to kind of make sure everything's still good. Isn't really getting like much feedback in contact with them. 20:47 Okay, and then she goes into the store and wasn't the store. He runs into the other owner. This is a guy by the name of I believe it's Josh. Yeah, Josh Johnson. This is Josh Johnson. Okay, and this is he when this is from police camera footage. So this is how I know the story gets good because I know what an axon body camera is and so Josh Johnson is in the store. I know that body cam is 21:17 you know, Josh Johnson's the other guy, the other partner in the I just saw Alex like just looking at his screen really taking in this guy and this is oh shoot. This is three months ago. Yeah, okay, recent yeah he's dressed like a twenty fourteen youth pastor yeah, which is dressed as a nineteen fifties lumberjack. 21:41 Maybe before. don't know when lumberjacks are. I don't know either now. I think so. Brian's basically like, hey, I've been trying to contact you about my collection. That's an assignment here. I know you just switched over owners, right? I'd like to just take my collection back. I can't get a hold of you. I don't like what's going on here. Like I'd like to just take it back and find some other way to sell it. And they're like no and he says, he says we don't have your collection and he's like, he's like 22:07 No, you do. have a consignment agreement. actually have it in writing here, signed with the previous ownership. You took over, so now this is your inventory, but it's my product. And so I'd like to take it back. And the guy just thumbs through the contract and he's like, look around, do you see it here? And he's like, no, I don't see it here. He's like, can we check in the back? And he just crosses his arms. He crosses his arms and he looks at him and he says, let me tell you how this is going to work. You're either going to leave or you can take me to court and we're going to draw this out. 22:37 I'm going to drain you for everything you're worth and I'm going to tell you it's not going to be worth it for you. uh And so Brian and him they kind of get in a little disagreement that night. It doesn't like escalate or anything like that. And eventually let me tell you how this is going to work. All right. When you wake up you're going to see me outside your house every day until I get my collection back. All right. Your kids go to this school. I know their teacher. 23:06 I've been flirting with her. 23:12 Hey, we just produced the price of our patreon to six ninety nine a month. That's one price for everybody. You get all the perks. You get the live hangouts. You get to join the discord. You get early access, whichever reason you're joining for. We wanted to make it one price because I hate that everything in the world is going up in price. And so we wanted to make this a little bit more affordable for everyone to do. And so but also, you know, the other goal is that more of you join it so that we can keep funding the show. I mean, like what you know, how do I say that? That sounds like we're 23:40 poor and we are we are and uh no, but if you can't join us on patreon, no worries at all. Another way to support the show is by sharing it. Please tell somebody like the show and thanks for for being here for this episode. 23:57 information. I'm dating their teacher now, so now I go, I go into the classroom and I bring when my wife was teaching third grade, we at the end of the school year, this was a learning moment was we were like, let's get cake for the end of school year, but she ordered an ice cream cake. I don't know if you know about ice cream things. You got to those things fall because you can't cut into them. 24:24 Oh yeah, yeah, one hundred and you definitely can't cut into when they're frozen and there's thirteen just freaking eight year olds being like I sit in there like a brand chill out, relax, relax and then you're looking at her and she's over there panicking being like. 24:46 and I'm like I'm like hey guys, you know yeah, I'm trying to be funny. Yeah, did your dad's happen to steal a lego set from my friend Brian? You know, uh so I hate when people are like sue me. See what happens and I'm like well, you know what? Let's go a different route. I'll break your legs. See what I is this your mom's address? I can't 25:13 I'll get crazy dude, so let's see December thirtieth last year yeah twenty twenty four December, so twenty twenty four Brian reports the the situation to the Kaiser Police Department, which is the town they're in right outside Salem and they do a full investigation and 25:34 As a part of the investigation, they they tracked down 230 minifigures and several sets that Crystal actually had stored at her house. And so she said, Oh, I didn't realize I had these stored here. There's so many. didn't fit in the store. So I just had some of them here. She returned some of them, it is 233 of them, 230 minifigures of just the minifigures. And then how many more did she have at her house? That's what that's how much was out of her house. 26:01 That's what that's what he's from her house. Yeah, they seized everything that they found at her house, but that's what I'm saying. That was Brian's. That was Brian's correct. How many more did she have at her house to not know? Oh, that's what I'm saying. Other mini figures. If I got two hundred mini figures, yeah, that's a lot. How many more do you have to have for those to blend into your collection? That's what I'm asking. Okay, yeah, that's a good question. I didn't really. I thought they were all mine as you're looking at your gigantic, you know, that's fair. That's fair. 26:32 the police approach corporate bricks and many figures and the franchise to try to collect from them, but they're not able to source anything that was clearly brian's and so he gets a he keep track of like the serial numbers on the thing. I guess like what what's tough is I don't know like I know he says he has a spreadsheet with an inventory, but I don't know how detailed that inventory yeah it's like all I know is he says he 26:55 knows what he had. have this, you know, you got it. You got to take a picture of the whole thing. Yeah, have the skewed numbers, all of that, right, but he just, could have just been the name and then he has a sticker on it. Like that could have been his whole process. I don't know. ah And so they're not able to source anything else. The police, um the district attorney actually for the count, the county district attorney in May of twenty, twenty five basically declines to prosecute the case and says that there is nothing that ah proximity fixed corporate or this franchise did wrong. 27:25 This was just a transfer business ah and they're they basically are like, we don't know what's what's yours and we're not going to prosecute anything. And so he basically went through all legal routes he was capable of going through. And he's like, he's like, now he has to go through the other routes. He's like, he's like, I can't figure out what else I'm going to do here to solve this problem. And so he posts online and he's like, he's like, hey, I'm trying to just figure out how does anybody have any other ideas? 27:54 and someone happens to know this group of podcasters, a small podcast. m They go through and they put out a couple episodes of them trying to get the bottom of the case and they actually get hit with a cease and desist from bricks and many things and stay back off, but it was enough to get enough people starting to think about it. Hey bricks and many figs. What are you gonna do about it? We're covering this story. That's sketchy by the way. 28:22 That's suspicious. And so meanwhile, there was this other YouTuber, this other YouTube channels investigating it. They get the cease and desist. There starts being some like chatter online about it on the Reddit and different forums and things like that, but it's not huge yet. There's this other YouTuber by the name of Reckless Ben. Yeah. 28:44 you might know who this guy is because we actually did talk about him in another episode. Yes, because he's the guy who exposed the yellow deli cult and right in the cult yeah very annoying guy, um but people said that about you in the comments to yeah because of that that right there. Sorry sorry 29:08 Okay. I'm it back. I'm holding it back. I'm trying to be less annoying. Say, he wasn't knowing until he stopped use code. Tell him. 29:18 so reckless bed and his team are looking for another case to investigate, because that's what they do is they do this like long for yeah, YouTube journalism. I don't know what to I can't wait for them to talk about our podcast. We like yeah, these two do this long form YouTube podcast. It's not journal. You could call it journalism reckless Ben to give you an idea of who they are. They very much are like um Mr. Beast style, like super hype, like I investigated this call 29:46 and they will, you know, like that kind of youtuber sure about and so him and his team were trying to find different things to invest, which I guess if you look back, myth busters was kind of like that too though. You know, like the energy they had on tv was a little bit like what youtube is a little, you know, junkyard wars. Yeah, where it's like we're putting this two teams of engineers in a junkyard and making them fight to the death. I forget what the show was about 30:12 And so Reckless Ben finds a store and he's like, Oh, I'm sure. I'm I'm in. And so he calls Brian and him and Brian basically agree. Like, let's, let's do this together. Um, and Reckless Ben is a big YouTuber. he's not small time. So like, actually like has at least the funding to approach this. Um, and the audience size to make a deal out of it. So he tries to just show up at the store and he says, Hey, can we have my friend's, uh, collection back? 30:40 and long story and put his picture right up again. By the way, hey, we're here to collect my friend stuff. Okay, that's not going to happen. Yeah, so he shows up at the store and I mean, I don't know. This was this was the first point. I got really annoyed with the guy because he shows up and he's like he's like which guy reckless bet. Okay, because he's like he's like hey, you guys stole my friend's collection. 31:08 I'm asking for you to give it back. That's all we're doing here. We just want to get it back and they're like, we don't have anybody's collection here and this is just the employee at the front of the store. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't have anybody's collection here and he legitimately harasses her. Like he's there forever. Just back. Yeah, you did. You stole it. You stole this. Like you don't want to go to, you're going to go to jail and like he's like filling this on like meta glasses or something. oh And so finally she's in jail unless, unless you take all the cash out of the register. 31:35 and you go across the street and get me a visa gift card card and give that to me right now and so that's the only way to save you from going to jail from me. So he he just harasses her. Eventually she calls the cops. The cops show up and he's like perfect. The cops are here. I'm going to I'm going to tell the car perfect. I tell the cops what happened. That's always my reaction when we show up to how perfect. Perfect. 32:02 Oh perfect. The cops he goes. He goes outside to talk to the cop and he's like he's like they stole this collection. The cops immediately realize okay, that's a civil matter and it's not my problem. Yeah, the cop is like all right, sorry, all right, so the cop is like but the criminal matter at hand is you're harassing that woman in her store. She asked you leave multiple times or not leaving and so we're going to trespass you and if you come back, you're going to be arrested yeah, and so he makes this whole thing. This whole big deal. This is the moment I lost. He lost me because he was like 32:31 the police are in bed with bricks and mini figs corporate and they're covering up their crimes and it's like I know you're just making a YouTube video, but gosh, it's so annoying ah and so he not wrong though. The police are in bed with bricks and mini figs. He's like dramatic like don don uh so he's like well. I can't go back to the store now. I have to find another way, so he goes to the corporate office ah and he asks to see the CEO and the CEO comes out. This is the CEO of bricks and mini figs, but 33:03 All right for the listener, I'm gonna be honest. This guy either his facial hair is always like this, which is a little soul patch thing and a little they're like, you know, curled mustache. One of those guys. Yeah, you got to hope he's currently playing in a local theater production of this is what he looks like. You don't think he's in a local theater production of wicked? No, I'm confident because I know and he's not the guy who comes out and he goes the wizard will see you now. Yeah, he's not. He's not. He looks like that guy. 33:33 Okay, that's not his name is Amin McNeff Amin a M M O N a M M O in yeah, his brother, his brother is the C O. His brother's name is George. His brother's name is a bat yeah, yeah, Amon and Matt their dad's name is also Matt and so he comes out and it's kind of cool though and Ben harasses him to does the same spiel like you stole my friends. is corporate 34:02 corporates in Utah. Okay, okay, okay, and so he's like he's like you stole from my friend and he's like no, we did not and he's like he's like yeah, you stole a two hundred thousand dollar star wars collection for my friend. I'm trying to get it back and he's like we did not do that and he's like he's like if he's like if you don't leave you're going to be trespassed. Eventually the cops show up. He gets trespassed from and he goes perfect. He's like perfect the cops are going to solve the problem. The cops, the cops and so he he gets he gets obviously 34:31 trespass and now he's like, gotta figure out something else to do. How am I going to get this collection back? Sure. uh And so he, he develops this interesting idea uh instead of like going to the law or trying to do this in like a logical way. uh He says, we're going to bring a youtuber to the store, another youtuber, and they're going to do a like a like giveaway, like mr. B style. You just want a bunch of money to one of the employees. And while he's in there, 34:59 his camera man is going to film the inventory of the store so we can see all the stuff that's in the store got you and so there's going to be like this is b roll basically and they're going to do the whole thing and so they did this thing and they're like you won and they're like you want to collect your prize and this is the thing that's a little crazy is they're like we need to go to the woods to give you your prize and she agrees to this. She's like well after I get off my ship we need to go to the woods. Okay, I would love how much was the prize 35:27 I was the price. I don't what price you offer. Someone is working at his buddy brick and mortar bricks and mini things. You go hey, congratulations. We're youtubers. Yeah, you don't recognize us, but you're taking our word for it that we're youtubers and we're giving you a prize. eh It's like great. We just need you to follow us to the woods. 35:55 And so luckily they weren't killers. They took her out to the woods and they were like, hey, now that we're in this clearing in the woods, we can tell you this is all a ruse. Just kidding. We're trying to get that stolen collection back from for our friend. So they basically like come clean and she's like, oh, interesting. My boss has told you about you. He's trying to get you guys arrested. ah And so he was like, perfect. The cops. 36:20 and so she gives them a bunch of what do you mean is there footage of them in the woods? Do you have an image of them in the woods? This is a screenshot from their video just immediately after her shift in the woods and she's in uniform with everything you guys are. And now this girl is how old did you do this girl is eighteen nineteen yeah something like that in the woods with the strangers. It's like five guys 36:47 and this is the woods. We're talking about this is the literal for you for your audio listener. It's the wood. I don't know how else to describe that to you. Yeah, it's very dumb that she went out there with them alone. That was really stupid. That was a big big mistake on her part, but she was like her first expression. to be in a YouTube video. 37:11 whoa. This is when she realized when they told her everything she realized. Oh, you're the guys that my props on the table. So they did like a they like brought her out there in the ruse was like oh like this is like this weird religion thing and they had like a whole thing that they did. They put like a white cloth on her, put her out like tighter to a bunch of stick. They tried to make it like a we're they made it look like they were going to set her on fire and then they're like just getting they were like surprise. She was like well, I really thought I weird stuff crazy like cuz it 37:41 it for so okay. Yeah, just to actually just we thought it was funny that you kept saying yes, like you're like you're going to the wood like they were like they're like okay. We're gonna give you your prize. We want to talk to you and she's like oh okay and then they're kind of like that was too easy. Like we want to talk to you outside of the store. Okay, we want to talk to you in the back of our van in the okay. We want to talk to you in the world like 38:10 and she's like sure like we want to dig our own graves. She's like no, that's weird and they're like oh, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, 38:26 she won't stand in a grave. dug, but she will talk to us in the woods. Okay, we got it. We got it. got yeah. Yeah. What do you do for your work? Well, I'm a youtuber. What does that look like? I lure young girls into the woods. 38:43 That's an out of context clip. 38:48 Yeah, I was back when I was in the scare in third graders. 38:54 So anyways, they take her out there. They find out that oh yeah, they're trying to get over this. That is insanity, so they do. They take her out there, and yeah, so the whole thing was to get footage of the store. Yeah, the whole thing. Why do they have the woods? The woods? Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I realized after watching a lot of this guy's video or this whole saga, 39:17 is there's a lot of things that happen that are very catchy for clips. Yeah, of course, very clearly for clips or for like just headline stuff. You know, that's why we can't grow our podcast. We're not luring people into the woods. Anyways, so he long story short, in this, in this conversation, she gives him her boss's phone number, which is Josh Johnson's phone number. Okay. And so he starts calling Josh and Josh is answering the phone. And so basically 39:47 they start having a lot of conversation about it. Josh denies that they have anything. Josh is like, we don't have any of that collection. We don't have a single and they're not trying to pretend that they're not. They're like, hey, we're youtubers. Yeah, they're straight up. They're like, we're youtubers. We're trying to track this down for a friend. We're trying to just get the collection back to him. His dad dying of cancer. He needs the money. Like we just want to get this fixed for him. um And Josh is like, well, we don't have it like we don't like. I know. I understand what you're trying to do and it's like it starts pretty civil. 40:16 He's like, he's like, we don't have any of this and so we can't give you what we don't have. Um, and so it's just kind of like back and forth and he's like, I'll tell you what we have. 40:30 We have footage of your store and we also have your employees in the woods. uh Okay, and so also I'm dating your daughter's teacher. It's going well. What I like her. I started doing it get info about you, but it's actually pretty great connection. I'm meeting her mom next week. 40:57 Okay, and honestly think of this as a formal invite to the wedding. If it happens, I don't know. I don't want to speak that I'll tell you where the venue is pretty good about it in the woods. 41:09 the old wedding is a ruse to get him into the woods. Everyone's just standing around like I wedding is you were inside our own grave standing in the woods like fan was around. You've done a whole wedding you're and this girl has no idea and you're standing at the altar and you're like trying to tell the pastor they stall a little bit. You're like looking around for Josh Johnson show up and you're like surely he's not and you're like and like if you're saying you're like I 41:40 do promise get very low because the guy didn't fall for it and to hold 41:54 What are you looking to that? Did you guys hear that? Did you guys hear? I think there's some. I think that way somebody out someone's coming somebody's late to the wedding. don't want to miss it. cops, hey, what are you guys doing here in the woods? You can't just have a wedding in the woods. I can't marry this teacher. You don't tell me I can't marry a teacher. The ones I don't even know her name. That's how committed to this 42:19 YouTube video. know of you is no here's it goes. Here's it Here's what I call you. You're in the you're in the you're like I promise to love and hold and cherish and also that brings us to this week sponsor YouTubers dude crazy. So he goes back and forth with Josh Johnson for a while. He does some stunts along the way. For example one thing he does is he sets up 42:48 ah He legitimately sets up a real business. The reason he does this is because uh he goes to Brics and MiniFix corporate. He tries to go after corporate, but corporate's like, that's a franchise. They are not us. Like we do not have control over what they do. If you have an issue with them, you take it up with them. It's not our problem. so the things that our franchises do is not our issue. And so what he does is he sets up an LLC. He calls it I steal from old people LLC, makes a website and 43:18 does dang it and sells a franchise to one of his like friends. And then they go and they get a permit and they sell his merch on the street outside the store. And it's just the face of the owner. And it says, sell, I steal from old people and that's their merch. And they stand outside and they're like, Hey, they're stealing from old people in there. It's then the police obviously get called and the police show up and they come to Ben and Ben's like, well, that's 43:45 That's a franchise. I'm not responsible for my franchise. That's actually kind of funny. Yeah. And so they all get trespassed, but they do stunts like that for all the time. Yeah, yeah, For video. this back and forth of them doing stunts and things like that and getting in disagreements until eventually they get in this big blow up thing where Josh Johnson's basically like, sue me, just sue me. You want to sue me? Sue me. Do it. 44:11 Oh boy, am I sick? I sure do need Tim stones. Get well quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow. I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. Do your part. Get this shirt. 44:40 shop.tilland.com 44:48 And so they go through and they look at the possibility of suing him. The problem is this is a major lawsuit. $200,000 is a major lawsuit and they don't know if they have the manpower to pull off this major lawsuit. So what they decide instead is they say we can go to small claims. But the problem is $200,000 is way too much for small claims. So say, well, what if we can split it up 20 ways? But that's illegal. You can't split up a debt 20 ways. So what they did instead... 45:16 is he got together 20 people and they all went to the bank and they took out $10,000 worth of debt and credit or loans or whatever. And then they used that to go to Brian. And because he still technically owned all of his Lego collection, like he, even though he doesn't have it in his possession, he still owned it. They bought $10,000 worth of his Legos from him. And then later they called Brian and they said, Hey man, I'm really down on my luck. Like I need. 45:45 $10,000 to pay off this debt? Is there any way you could loan me $10,000? And they took the $10,000 that they bought their Minifigs from and they paid off their loans to the banks and their credit card debt to the banks. So now it's zeroed out, but now they still have, they can't get this product because Brick and Minifigs have it. And so they all went to Bricks and Minifigs and they're like, hey, I just bought this consigned item. I have all the documentation that is mine. Will you give it to me? And the Bricks and Minifigs was like, no, we don't have, but we're not going to give it to you. 46:13 we don't have that wait how okay, and so now he's got twenty people who technically speaking because they went directly to the consigner the owner. They went to the consigner and tried to pick it up and the consignors not letting him pick it up. So now all twenty of them went and opened up a small claims. Okay, so they so okay. So the way the consignment works then is they can buy it through Brian. Yeah, you can still buy it through Brian. Brian just has to report it to you. 46:42 And so he called reported it and they were like, we don't have any of your stuff. And then he's like, okay, well, I'm reporting it to you. And then he told them, okay, they know you go pick it up from them. And so then they pick it up and they were like, we don't have it because it's like, that's your fault. Yeah. And so then they went and they all filed a small claim suit for 10,000 it, got it, got 20 separate cases. It's very cheeky. I don't know if it could hold up, but what they did, they knew that they weren't going to 47:10 except the papers when they serve them right so and this was also a catchy thing. They made up a fake Guinness World Records thing where they had a Guinness person show up and they're like we got you the prize for most Lego stolen from an old person. oh This is from Guinness Book of World Records and so they like set it up to where they set the expectation of like oh, this is the youtuber faking stuff again for sure and then immediately after that they had all twenty people start showing up serving the court papers for each call uh small 47:40 claim. Yeah, ah eventually they ah they closed the doors for the day. They had to come back tomorrow and anyways, eventually they served all the papers and ah they then went to court. But he's like, we expected this and we honestly hope for this that they would think that none of this was legit, which they didn't. They didn't show up for court, which means all those cases went into default, which meant that franchise lost and owed all those people their $10,000 claims. 48:09 because they didn't show up to court that day. So they won. The very next day they show up to the store to be like, Hey, you didn't show up. Here's a paperwork that says you owe us $10,000. And there were signs on the door that says permanently closed and they shut the business down and they were gone. Didn't tell any employees, didn't tell anyone. was like one of those where it's just like silently overnight. They shut the business down. Yeah, it was all the LLC. Um, and so they won the case, but they can't collect because it was against that franchise. 48:39 They go to corporate, corporate's like, well, that was against that franchise. That franchise doesn't exist. It's essentially bankrupt. there's nothing we can do. It's not your case isn't against us. And so it's kind of this weird legal gray area where it's kind of like bankruptcy, where it's like, well, that entity doesn't exist and being able to collect, even though you won, being able to collect from an entity that doesn't exist is very legally difficult to pull off. And so they get stuck in this weird limbo here. So they say, okay, well, 49:07 we can go try to collect from them. Here's the thing about both of these guys. They don't live in, uh, in the town where the store is though. They live outside of Salt Lake, um, in a town called American fork. Uh, so it's like between Salt Lake and Provo. Uh, and so this is where the story goes from like, I don't really like reckless bin to reckless bins. Okay. Anyways, so they go, they go to Utah. 49:34 And they say let's go collect from them and get them to pay so they show up at Josh Johnson's house uh And which they should have from beginning I'm on board they show up at Josh Johnson's house when they get there Josh is on the phone outside the outside his house so I will let him finish his phone call and I don't know exactly how this happened but before Josh gets off the phone call a police cruiser pulls up to his house and then another one and then another one and then 50:03 the police talked to Josh for a while and then they come over to his car, which is pretty shocking that they know, like I don't understand what they know because we find out afterwards, they show the outside of car. It's like tinted out. You can't see anything in it. And they basically, they get reckless Ben out and they talk to him and they're like, Hey, well we're trespassing you from his property. Somehow they figured out he was there before like any interaction began. And so like, if you show back up, like you're going to be arrested. 50:30 and then they leave and when they leave ah they they're driving away and the police follow him and so he's all a who reckless bed okay his group ah and so reckless bends in the backseat he's not driving he's got one of his other like camera men driving as I make sure you're like follow every traffic law don't do anything wrong they're like clearly following us ah and there's actually in the video you see it like he stopped set a stop sign complete stop blinkers on 50:58 turns, not a rolling stop. And then they light him up, they pull him over. They say he failed to stop, which is not true. He definitely did have it on footage. Yeah, they have it on footage. He definitely did not fail to stop. uh And the police come up and they don't even look at the driver. They go immediately like lean around the driver into the backseat and they're like, who are you? And he's like, I'm Ben. And this is obviously a different cop than the one he just talked to. And long story short, they hold them there for 51:27 45 minutes an hour, kind of harassing him, asking questions. ah There's nothing that they can immediately do there. So they eventually let him go. And then later that night, they're driving around trying to figure something else out to do. ah The police pulled him over again and they hold them for three hours, search their whole car, search all their persons. They tell them that they got a tip that there was heroin in the vehicle. ah And he's like, well, we don't have any. And they start doing the day they do drug tests on everybody. 51:56 And obviously they find nothing. Right. But they're very threatening to him. Like he tells he tells them what's going on. He's like honest, tells them everything that's happening. And there's a point in this video where he's like, he's like, look, man, he's like, he's like this situation, like you understand it looks really bad for you. Like you're out here. You're not from here. You're from Cali. You're in Utah. Like you could go to jail. You could be in jail for a long time. And he actually says this thing. He says, he says, we play differently here, which is like you're in a suburb of Salt Lake, bro. 52:26 we play differently here. ah Our parents are slightly related, so maybe freaking relax, and so the next day after this whole weird interaction with the police, they like three really weird interactions for the pieces place is trespassed from Josh Johnson's house. Yeah, he tries to go to brain and best house and Brandon answers the door and it's really weird because pin and answers the door and he 52:56 doesn't say a word. He just walks out and stares at him. uh And they're there for 40 minutes and Ben's just trying to talk to him. like, Hey, we want a lawsuit against you guys. We're just trying to collect the money that you owe us. Like that's all we're here to do. ah Then the police show up. The police trust fence, Ben and his crew from Brandon Best's house. Right. ah And so Ben Ben's like, okay, I guess we got to sue them personally to get our money because they're not going to pay in case we won. So they go through the process, they get a lawsuit. 53:26 together through the state of Oregon. They try to serve papers and long story short, this just keeps happening. They just keep getting process servers to try to show up. The process servers get the police show up. The police trespass the process servers. They can't serve these people. Like they're getting blocked, literally blocked from the police to serve the papers from them. There's even a point where Ben shows up with a process server. And it's like, we're just trying, he talks to the cop and the cop like this, this is the one cop who actually kind of hears them out. And he's like, he's like, well, you want me to try to serve them? And he's like, he's like, 53:54 I mean if you're willing to that would be great and so he goes up to the door. He's gone for like thirty minutes. He comes back and he don't want him and it's like that's not how that whole serving works. He said no thanks. No thanks. Hi, I've got a court papers here and we were just need to serve you. Would to be served? No, the door says no serving please read the read the sign. The sign says no solicitors and no serving 54:23 And so seeing this, this is like part two of his video and seeing this whole video, you start to see this, this kind of saga where it's very clear. The police are like immediately just sided with Josh Johnson and Brandon Best in this town uh because they are, they're harassing Ben and his friends. They're trespassing all of them. And then eventually Ben's like, okay, we can't serve them papers. The police are not letting us serve our papers. We can't, we can't get a lawsuit going. 54:50 So he says, maybe the best next best thing is we could get a go fund me. And so maybe we can build a bunch of publicity and get the money that way so that we at least um yeah, at least try to family. Right. Right. Right. And so they make this flyer. That's Josh Johnson holding wads of cash. Yeah. And there's a crying AI image of a family behind it. And it says I stole a family's life savings and he made a banners of this. 55:16 and he put it on the fence across the street from Johnson's house ah and and was like, we're just trying to do a go fund me. And so in this event, the police show up again and they block all the signage. They're like, can't you can't put this here. And they they're arguing with him. He ends up getting arrested. ah And then one of his friends is talking to the police and the police are like, well, we got us. We're going to search your phone. 55:46 And he's like, okay. And so he like hands him his phone and what happens is as he's handing him his phone, his wallet app like triggers. So he just locks his phone. When he locks his phone, the cop freaks out and he's like, don't do that. That's obstruction of evidence. And like grabs him and wrists it out of his hand. And like, they started like arresting him too. And they're like, grab him and cuff him up, throw him in the car. And they're like, that was really dumb what you did there. It was this whole ordeal. So these two guys both got arrested in this situation. 56:13 the cops then go cut down all of the banners that they put up. And so they then go to jail, they're interrogated, they talk to the cops, they tell the cops everything. The cops, it's a whole thing. You ever sit through someone just describing a YouTube video? 56:43 Okay, okay, okay. That was such a useless detail. So by this point in the story, what else has been arrested twice? Yeah, one of his friends has been arrested. They tried to do this go fund me. The police won't let him do the go fund me. They're clearly harassed. How the police not let him do a go fund me. They're trespassing them every time they come anywhere near like any place where Josh Johnson or Ben frequent, they trespass them. 57:08 They even try to stop from doing to go from me. Are you talking about serving? You mean I'm talking about the serving the papers and then go fund me the go fund me anytime they like set anything up. Obviously they can like had to go funding out, but anytime they try to advertise it in town, they like interfere and they like cut down their their fairs or anything like that, but it's not for in town. It's for the internet. I mean for sure, for sure, and then doing that helped to go fund me for sure right. um So anyways, all this is like crescendoing with the American for police department for weeks. They have been kind of feuding 57:38 Okay. And eventually what happens is one of his friend gets picked up on one of these events. He's in jail. They all go back to the house that they're staying out there at this Airbnb and the police show up and they raid the Airbnb. Oh, and they say that what they have is they have a warrant out for Ben's arrest. They say that he's armed and dangerous. Why? I say that he has stolen Legos in that Airbnb and they 58:07 take everybody that was there. Can you put the rifle picture back up these got stolen legos inside like what are you talking about dude? They say he has stolen legos inside yeah all right. Go to the next one. You keep going through your little slide show and so they arrested everybody in the building okay at air bnb yeah took him back to jail and interrogated ben. They actually dislocated ben shoulder in this raid and 58:37 They claim that they got an anonymous tip, but it's like this was Josh Johnson. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so long as we're short, what became really obvious is the American police department. I'm to to a pay phone and call in some anonymous tips on Josh Johnson. Well, what became pretty clear pretty quickly is the American force police department had some sort of, I don't know if it's a prior relationship to Josh Johnson, but they had a partiality to them. 59:06 and not just one of them, like the whole department. Yeah, what reckless Ben alleges is because they were all members of the LDS church. um Sure, this is in that town and all of them are members. Even at one point got a more missionary to show up and try to like convince him and they trespass that kid. Yeah, and so there was I would too. 59:29 Yeah. Trespass that kid. They're annoying. ah So now what has happened as a result is Ben got arrested. They booked him for 30 days without bail for I don't know what. There's no I don't know what they're saying he did here. They did the charges of stalking the charges of harassment. A judge pretty quickly overturned the without bail. But then they had proved immediately after that they made bail. They got him out. They approved immediately after that that uh he can be on 59:59 like a new warrant that would be without bail, so he skips town. He actually in another video he makes another video that he's currently on the run from the law. He puts out another video shortly after where he's like he's like this is what happened. This is my warrant. It's without bail, but he's like luckily I have escaped the jur the jurisdiction of the United States uh law enforcement because I'm in Mexico and he like films his video in Mexico, which I'm in Mexico right now. 01:00:26 which is I'm now an international criminal, which is illegal, and so he makes a follow up video shortly after that with a very clearly green screened background. Mexico. No, it's a very clearly green screened background of the St Louis Arch, and he's like he's like I'm in St Louis, Kansas City right now and and I'm giving an update on the bricks and mini fig situation and that's crazy. uh So he this could legitimately ruin this guy's life a hundred percent, a hundred percent. 01:00:54 And so this has become a thing where now, as a course of this whole YouTube saga, the first video got six million views, the second got four and a half million views, went super viral on social media. A ton of people on Reddit talking about it. And it's been such a big backlash for Bricks and Minifigs is that most Bricks and Minifigs franchises have been review bombed by people online. So this has become a huge ordeal for the Speaking of review bombing. 01:01:19 Leave us one positive. Leave a positive review. order please. Apple corporate. It helps still holding the guns that nothing wrong was right here. The franchise is still holding their guns that nothing's wrong here. Brian is still Brian and reckless Ben are still holding their guns that they stole from them. So now Brickson mini figs is suing Brian or Brian and reckless Ben. They're suing the previous franchise owners. 01:01:46 Yeah. And they have sent cease and desist to all these different YouTubers and streamers that are covering this. They've Brian and reckless been are suing bricks and minifigs and they're suing the new franchise owners. uh And so it's just this massive web of lawsuits. Brian or reckless bin is suing the American force, American police department, they're probably going to win because they the American for the police department made a YouTube channel after this. 01:02:16 And their chief of police came out to basically refute every claim that reckless Ben made. And then they publicized all the body cam footage, but they heavily redacted it. Unfortunately for them, somebody, uploaded that, 01:02:34 accidentally left a folder in that upload. That was the full unredacted version. And so all the youtubers found that immediately. Right. So the whole unredacted versions online now, they, they figured it out within like 30 minutes and took it down, but it was, it was too late. Yeah. So all over the internet is footage. love when incompetence gets people. That's my favorite thing all over the internet though, is this footage of the body cam footage where they are harassing Ben and they're going and buddy buddy with Josh Johnson. 01:03:03 right, Brandon Best, and they're joking around with them and then they go back to their cars and they are just like scheming being like, well, can we get them on this? No, that doesn't really work in this situation. Can we get them on this? Like, no, that doesn't really work on this situation and like very clearly and they're like being like, okay, like how can we book them today? Like what is something we can find to book them? That's crazy. Yeah, and so a lot of and a lot of stuff where they're like making fun of Ben and his camp and they're like 01:03:30 aligning themselves, and so it looks really, really bad for the police department is what I'm trying to say right, and so this whole thing is still pending. Ben has a worn out for his arrest. Yeah, is not, he's literally fled the country has left the country while he's back in Saint Louis, Kansas City now, ah but what's interesting is, you know, coffeezilla, ah he did like a deep dive on this whole thing to try to figure out where what happened to it, and he managed to get everybody in the story to play ball. 01:03:59 to be like, eh I just want to find the truth. And so everybody like got on calls with him. So he interviewed everybody. He did it. He got everybody to share their inventories and their spreadsheets. Josh Johnson and everything. Yeah. Every single, every single party involved. Bricks and minifigs, the new franchise owners, the old franchise owners, Brian Best. And he compared all the spreadsheets and he went through, did all the work to figure out what's going on here. Um, and long story short, here's what he found. Uh, he said, okay, we do know that initially there was that initial post that said this is a $200,000 collection. 01:04:28 And he said, after the collection was taken under consignment and valued, the total value in the spreadsheet from that consignment was actually $107,000. But that initial post was what everybody has run with in this story because it's a bigger number, it's more interesting, more exciting. And so it's actually $107,000 worth of product. What was recorded sales before the store was taken over was $24,000. And so those $24,000 were products that were sold. 01:04:56 was paid to Brian 17,000, which is the agreement he gets. Yeah. And so, uh, the expected inventory was there would be $82,000 worth of inventory left, uh, in the store. What they found was that in the photo evidence from the night of the takeover, there was 21,000 worth of sets available in the store. Brickson mini figs claimed that there was only five, um, discrepancy there. Uh, there also was a side deal, uh, where 01:05:25 He had actually sold a chunk of this to MNR Productions, which is Reckless Ben's company, which is about $20,000 worth of sales to Reckless Ben's company. And that appears to be that collection that was seized back from Crystal's house. And then there's some discrepancies in the point of sale where there's about 10,000 sales that were registered in the store's computer system, but were never updated in the tracking spreadsheet. And so what Coffeezilla realizes is, oh, the people... 01:05:53 who were selling these items either didn't know or they mistakenly didn't follow the process and never updated the spreadsheet to say we just sold some of that consigned goods. They just sold it, money passed through and then it was forgotten about. And so kind of a failure in process. Then there was about $25,000 worth of layaway inventory where people went in and this was really rare for Bricks and Minifigs because they don't normally have enough, but it's the kind of product that would go on layaway. But because these are rare items, 01:06:23 They had a bunch of stuff on layaway. ah So once you go through all of this, there's only about ten thousand dollars worth of product that they can't explain where it was, which is most likely stuff that the new franchise had that they didn't realize they had and sold without realizing it belonged to him. So this whole thing was over ten grand is over ten grand and is a massive misunderstanding that comes from bad book. Well, and how can you trust a girl? 01:06:52 keep the books correctly when she is willing to follow some strangers into the woods. This feels like a hiring error and so many of that's. You know what? I'm hiring some new employees. Maybe you quick questions. uh Core values here at the company integrity, you know, discretion, ah you know, punctuality, you know, also and please answer honestly. 01:07:21 Are you a U.S. citizen? Have you ever been convicted of felony? 01:07:30 If someone approached you and said they were a YouTuber, would you follow that person into the woods? Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, That is just a yes or no. 01:07:42 what okay, what you to bear would it be? It depends on the yeah, I'm to go ahead and end the call now. No, no, no. Yeah. So uh coffee's ill. This conclusion is basically what's going to happen is these. This whole thing is going to go to court. Discovery is going to surface that this is a this is a bookkeeping error. This is bookkeeping error and there's going all the stuff that they've done with harassment stuff is actually going to bite them in the butt. Yeah, this is going to be a little bit of a thing like Brian's going to get what he's owed from what's left right, but 01:08:11 but then Brandon and Josh are going to sue for you know, lots of damages and death for their business, right? A bricks and many things, defamation, Brandon and Josh defamation and American fourth police department defamation. Probably even though they well that might actually be, you know, that could be a byproduct for the test. That could be a separate issue. Yeah, yeah, you know, but the whole anyway, messy legal eagle did a whole video on it and it was really good. I definitely recommend that one. uh He he straight up said he said this is a situation where 01:08:39 everybody involved is in the Should have talked to a lawyer earlier. Yeah. Cause they all dug themselves into such speaking of lawyers. 01:08:51 my lawyer told us that we should just if we were asked for comment, we should say fit a lot. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things. I learned last night. If you liked that one and you want another toy related lawsuit, check out our episode on Steve glue, the Pez dispenser outlaw and the custom designs he was making and how Pez tried to go after him. It's actually genuinely one of it's a great great episode, so go check that one out. 01:09:15 and you support us on patron. We actually lowered the price of our patron. We made it one price for every tier because everything in the world is really expensive and we don't want you to feel like you're missing out on anything tilling related because you can't afford to do that. We also just want to make it more accessible and not such a you know, not a burden because freaking apple tv went up crazy amounts in last six years and netflix is like hey by the way we're more this year and we're letting you know we're less or less. So we let us see you over there. That's that's why we're look 01:09:45 Whatever that was. It's my fault.
What started as a simple consignment of a valuable LEGO Star Wars collection spiraled into a complex legal battle, a YouTube sensation, and an exposé of corporate practices and local law enforcement. This isn’t just a story about plastic bricks; it’s a deep dive into contractual disputes, franchise complexities, and the power of digital media in uncovering alleged injustices. The … Read More
The Most Famous Inventor You Know Nothing About | Samuel Morse Ep 332
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of Samuel Morris? Samuel Morris, Morris, Morse code. Yes, yes, it's the yes. Yes, I'm not even going to try to bury it. Sure. I tried to bury it with the other guy and you caught it and so I'm not even going to pretend the other guy. Yeah, no, but yeah, yeah, Morse code. He's known. Well, he he uh he invented Morse code. Yes, yes, but he did it as like a redemption from all the 00:26 Tom Z built he was like maybe he is bored. if I figure out a way to communicate over wire, people will forgive me for blowing them up. Yeah, yeah, 00:39 You cut up all your petticoats. You know? I was 13, I had my first love. There was nobody that compared to my baby and nobody can be twins or can ever come above age. political position is no, I've never, never cloaked. Things I learned last night. 01:08 now this is him. This is Samuel Morris. Oh wow, very well decorated. Yeah, this is him when he was young and hot yeah see and I think I've been researching a bunch of these old guys now and I think one thing I'm realizing start dressing like this again. Yeah, like that scarf thing. Yeah, I just feel it because look at it like let's say like now this person would have had a tighter haircut right yeah and he kind of looks like that guy that showed us the office down by a union station. Yeah, he does kind of 01:38 I can't you know and it's like he looks like a normal guy in the face Yeah, like like you could very easily see him wearing like a polo. Yeah looking like a golfer. Oh my gosh Mike Yeah, I think I do I like golf. I do I love golf I want I want to be a golfer so bad so should we get should we go? Did I tell you did I tell you last year when I tried to get into it a little before our arch? Oh Yes, I tell you yeah, and you got involved in that weird Hulk 02:06 he thought your I believed that I told you the story for a second and then I realized you got into that cult and they made you. They made you go scuba dive for the golf balls in the pond, but then they put a gator in the pond. It was like a funny little bit that they did. It's a thing they do here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was a and you swam faster than it. It was a slow. ran on top of the water like 02:35 like like road. What's that character in Captain Hook in the in Yeah, yeah, me, me. Does he the one who runs from the gator at the end or is Captain Hook from Captain a Captain? Yeah, what's the character's name? Sheme? I'm pretty sure it's just me. Okay, so you ran like the character you ran like that guy. Look, look, look, look, look, 03:04 What's his name? What's his name? No, I, I got into it. I went and I was hidden around the driving range for a few weeks. Yeah, I've got a set from high school that I bought at a garage sale, but it wasn't an incomplete set. And so then I went and I bought a putter when I was in high school and I've just had this sitting around my house for ever. Yeah. And then I never like got back into it. So then I went back, I was shooting around and then one day I was there. I like, I'm gonna go. I mean, they got the little putting green too. I'm very good. I'm gonna put it 03:33 I'm going to putt. And so I went and I grabbed my putter out of my bag and I'm like, this putter is like tiny. Why is this so small? And then I realized on the butter, it says lady tech. And I'm like, Oh, I bought a woman's putter in high school and I didn't even realize that all these years later. 03:52 and then I happy to be here by the way, slid that, hid that in my bag and I ran away. You were like, no, they're all gonna know. I'm using a woman's butter because I struggle with gender roles in our society and it makes me uncomfortable. We make them use men tools all the time. 04:14 it's the same. No more so we went to top golf this weekend. Yeah, my dad loves to do it. Yeah fun. I kind of liked it now that I'm like I love to better at it. Yeah, yeah, it's fun. We should go again. It's a great time. Let's do it. The food was fairly priced really yeah. I mean I haven't been in years but I mean like it was good going and being like this is not. I mean it was wasn't bad food. Yeah, it wasn't expensive. I mean I remember 04:40 if the prices haven't increased. I remember back then being like this is a little expensive, but it's like fun and so it's like worth it. But now that if it now stayed the same, it actually be cheap compared to everything else. No think about when you went though. Was it expensive for twenty two? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. I mean it was like you'd spend like twenty bucks for a couple hours to play right and then food was like depending on what you got like anywhere between like the sheet nachos, big as your laptop and it was fifteen bucks. 05:09 Yeah, that's normal. The 30 a person depending on what you order, how much you order. Uh huh. You got stuff to drink. Yeah. I don't know. What are you gonna drink? Just surely temples. Give me five rounds of surely tempo. I don't want all now because I'm thirsty. Yeah. Can you surely temple place? So Morse code? No. Before we talk about more to scale, we talk about his dad, Jenna, die of Morse. 05:38 Don't have a picture of Jedidiah Jedidiah is he graduated from Yale? uh Don't give me that face right now. This is gonna be so quick graduate from Yale uh big time 05:55 Tim loves to do this thing where we talk about topic and then he wants to spend half an hour on the guys. I didn't spin and think Tim daddy issues. I think Tim just is obsessed with dad's. was so impressive. It's probably because his dad was impressive and it usually is. It usually is his dad's fault. Yeah, no. All I want to say about him is his dad was a preacher and his dad had very 06:20 strong opinions about morality and what was okay, and this was in the late eighteen hundred so as morality yeah immoral and then also on the side where were they from where they lived at Massachusetts. They were on the right side of stuff right. I mean they were on the right side, but they were on the wrong side. know, but also like you know what was the progressive position in eighteen eighty. You know, I was just listening to a podcast this morning about how childly child labor became 06:50 illegal in the nineteen thirties, but there was a growing movement for it in the eighteen seventies, so it took us sixty seventy years to get that stuff. You know, so what was like the progressive? Is it I got a topic idea for you? Why you write this one down? If you want to remember it, can we just cover all the other proposals that were not the new deal because the new deal was the compromise? So there were like wildly more radical 07:18 proposals is interesting. That is interesting. I think what's interesting we don't do. We don't have go see him do his little thing. I think what's interesting. I think what's interesting so but also his dad, Joe Dyer on the side. He was this preacher, but on the side he was the father of American geography, and so this is one of his maps. Okay, 07:46 and I don't father of American geography sure whatever that means the mid eighteen hundreds. He's like mapping the great lakes are weird, but okay yeah, but I mean it's like close. You know I guess yeah, it's close until you see the West and then you just go. He was just just like it's something like this. was just yes. It is crazy. They got a little peninsula for for Mexico right. Yeah, I mean like it looks like the eastern side pretty 08:13 close. I mean this really does look like those kind of videos where it's like it's like draw America from memory and it's like this is the good one. This is the one where so draw from their for this is like this guy got it pretty close. Yeah, he got pretty close. Yeah, and but it's definitely not to scale Arkansas Oklahoma's huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean this is before like a lot of states to like the layout true. You don't really know where all the rivers go. Yeah, but this was in 08:42 textbooks for decades. Like this was like what we taught kids America looked like. It was close enough. And so Samuel grew up in this household, the geographer preacher and his dad Yale educated. So kind of the picture I'm trying to paint here, very like strict, like edgy, like uh academic and then also strict morally. uh And uh so Samuel comes up in this world. 09:10 And his dad really wants him to go to Harvard like so bad. He's like, I want you to go to Harvard. I want you to go to Harvard. Everyone wanted to go to Harvard that time too. He's like, I want you to get a good education. I want you to learn something valuable and then build a career for yourself. And Samuel's like, I want to do art. And his dad's like, no, no. And so his dad's like stifling his dreams of being an artist. And eventually after years and years of like combat on the subject, his dad finally agrees, fine, I'll let you go to France. 09:40 or no London. I'll let you go to London and I'll let you learn ah art and so he goes to art school in London. Right is the war of eighteen twelve kicking off, which I think I feel like we named that wrong. I don't think they were of eighteen twelve should be called. I think it should be called the second American Revolution and I'm going to like. I just feel like we didn't like, because you know anything about the war of eighteen twelve yeah. I feel like I know I know several things about it. What do know? 10:09 I know that it was in 1812. Probably the biggest thing I know about it. I feel like the war of 1812, it... I don't think it was very... I feel like that name's not very clear about what's happening, and I do feel like it was the war that made America, like, free. 10:33 like I feel like we won the revolution. I need you to know there are all of the eight hundred's. The only understanding I have of it is so our city 10:45 and so like if we picture the eighteen hundreds at all yeah I I just go yeah which is not fair because several our city is definitely eighteen eighties eighteen nineties yeah pretty late. It'd be like if I was like everything I know about the nineteen hundreds is the nineties is ninety five on you know and I didn't know about World War Two and stuff yeah you know yeah so he's there he's in London and so we're 11:13 fighting a war against them. He's there, but he's also like, so he's experiencing a weird, different perception of the war because he's in a different place, like he's in the enemy side of the war. But also something interesting is happening because he was very interested in art, but in the US at this time, art wasn't really a thing. There were artists, but there was nobody that was putting out prolific stuff. Where Europe, art was like... Everywhere. Years of history. They're doing art. And so he's in the Louvre and he's just like, this is amazing. 11:42 like these. This art is so good and he's like, I wish people back home could know what art could be because they couldn't like that. No one there knew what art could be, so he was like, I want to he's like most people don't have the access. They don't have the ability to get out here and see this. so I would like to like I feel like people knew what art was. I mean they knew what art was, but they didn't know like how good it could. It's kind of like how you know what a song is, but you don't know what they sound like right player. 12:11 She knows the songs exist. Yeah, she could tell you about her dumb little brain. Sorry, her term little brain can't hear. I heard you say the dumb part. Don't worry about it. She could tell you everything about it. She knows music theory really well. She like really understands music, but she's really been trying to try to hear it. And so she can tell you why she's like the kid at the end of polar express. She just said there. She's like, she's like, know exactly how this works here. The new why it's so special. Sure. 12:40 but I can't hear it. So keep going. So he he says, I'm going to do something about that problem. And so he basically locks himself in the Louvre. I don't know how he gets away with this, but he spends months in the Louvre just walking around with an easel painting what he calls the the the Museum of the Louvre. And so he paints a painting of the paintings at the. So that way people back home, you could take this back home and people back home could see all the most important paintings of all time. 13:08 what you like. There's a lot of people painting to the people that you should do this. I don't know if I don't know. I don't know if that's a thing like if people just hung out that museums and painted things like and it's like you can kind of see this like Mona Lisa's at the bottom. It's like the paintings are there. These are all famous paintings from history and it's like you can they're there, but they're so like you get it. You can't tell how special they zoom in. How big is this painting? Do you know? Yeah, so I actually have like a 13:38 Okay, it's pretty sizable. That's a big pain. So he was like doing his best. Yeah, so he's trying to make this painting. So this is like he's like so proud of this. He hangs it up. He goes back home. They put it in the museum back home and nobody cares. He like just sits in the museum and he's expecting people to be like, my gosh, look what they have over there. And people just like walk past it because they can't like because at the end of the day it's a picture of a bunch of pictures and 13:59 like to meta yeah yeah I understand and it's distracting too, because you don't know like what is what am I supposed to focus on here? Is it the people or is it the pictures? Is it the statue like what is what's the point of this and you also don't know like these are all famous paintings yeah you don't know they're famous paintings yeah yeah so it's like you're just like yeah this is like a room with a bunch of stuff on the wall. What is going on here and so it's not as like it is impressive yeah it's definitely an impressive work, ah but he like learns 14:27 art there and he becomes like a painter. He goes back home and he becomes a person who is like a highly sought after portrait artist. He makes really, really good portraits. Here's one of his portraits. People would hire him to make okay, and so they were really like photorealistic. Yes, we know who this guy is. I don't know some guy, so people would just hire him. He would paint them and he some guy and he built like a decent career for himself. Being the portrait guy, people hired him to do portraits. He's in the mall. 14:58 just got a mall portrait stop. It's been like hey, do you got time for a quick photo? I think that I mean wouldn't work now, but I think like twenty thirteen that would have crushed if someone tried that to do like what your paintings the same concept that you got from taking pictures in the nineties, the mall, it felt the same as a dude who did portraits of you like paint hand painted portraits. Yeah, he's got the most of their hipster. Yeah, yeah, mustache 15:23 tattooed. Yep, exactly. All those people who tattooed the mustaches on themselves, they still have them. So funny. In 2026, they still have them. Not all the time, because that spot, like that fades pretty. A lot of those people, bet, don't have them. It depends how good their artist was and how much ink they packed in there. I guess. I think a lot of those have probably faded pretty heavily. The skin there's not good at holding. Okay. I was just doing a little bit. 15:51 sorry I was wrong. I don't know a lot about tattoos because I follow Christ. I mean some of will probably do still have it anyways. Oh, don't give me points at the end there. So he he's traveling the world doing portraits now. Yeah, it would have crushed in twenty thirteen to be across from the food court, you know, because what was it the food court twenty thirteen? Sabaro uh 16:18 orange julius yeah orange julius a nameless chinese i was in vegas and i saw a standalone sabaro wild like like brick and building a full building sabaro that's crazy pretty cool that's yeah just a generic chinese restaurant yeah and then a subway probably and talk about sometimes maybe yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm trying to think what else you would have 16:45 pretzel place for sure. Oh, to Chinese restaurants. Actually, there were yeah Chinese and express no, it bad. Express one of them was a nameless. No, both of them were nameless in the battlefield. All yeah, battlefield. That's true. That's true and there was what was between them a little burger place, really cheesesteak. Yeah. Oh yeah, the Philly cheesesteak. Yeah, whatever. What is that? What is the company that is the Philly cheesesteak one? I can't start with a J right. Yeah, I can like picture the Jefferson's. No, no 17:13 what's the Philly cheesesteak in the food court? Oh no, right now I don't know. Food court Philly cheesesteak Charlie's Charlie's. Yep. Yep. Yep. Because the red logo Charlie's. That's good. I search food court with a P H. Hey, they've got that first P H O O D. You searched court 17:42 with a P. What are you talking about? You're thinking Philly food core with a P H. I was thinking Philly cheesesteak, but I did. 17:55 hey, they got one of those at the mall over here. Should we go? No, should we go get some at the Independence Mall? Yeah, dude, let's get some bullet proof. Fest go over a basically vague. That's crazy that they have anything. is crazy. Okay, so so he was traveling. I also have a guy who will paint your portrait. They I shouldn't say traveling worldwide. He was traveling the East Coast and 18:25 London. Doing portraits for people. And he was building like a moderately successful career for himself as a portrait painter. The thing is like he didn't want to do portraits, he wanted to do like influential works of art, but like he never was able to like achieve any of that. uh Meanwhile, he is on a ship on the way back home from uh London one year. And while he's on that ship, he meets a guy by the name of Joseph Henry. And Joseph Henry was a frontier school teacher turned like a uh professor. 18:55 And while he was teaching, he taught a lot of different things, but was a science teacher. And he was teaching about electromagnetism. Teaching about electromagnetism. And the concept of electromagnetism, if you don't know, if you have a metal cylinder and you wrap it in a wire and you send a current through that wire, it essentially creates a magnet and there's a magnetic field around it you can get whatever direction you face that you can get. 19:25 both sides of the magnet. And he was teaching about this concept to his class and he wanted to like show how powerful these could be, but it was kind of theoretical at the time because the only wires that existed were copper wires. And if you put them, packed them too close to each other, they would short circuit. And so the current would travel from one end of the wire to the other instead of, or travel like jump the wire up instead of traveling all the way through. Because we hadn't figured out how to insulate them. 19:55 And so he was like, theoretically, we can make these much stronger if we can figure out how to do that. And then one day he was like, oh, wait, I wonder if I could do that. So he went home and he talked to his wife and he said, Hey, I need you to cut up all your petticoats and she was like, is Morris. No, this is Joseph. This is uh Joseph. Henry. Okay. He's like, Hey, I need you to cut up all your petticoats. And she's like, what? And he's like, I'm to cut up all your coats. And so she's like, I guess you can have my own. It'll really crush. I need to cut up all your petticoats. And she's like, what? 20:23 he's like I need you to cut up all your coats and she's like okay and so then you want me to try one more time maybe it maybe try it. They run it back. Okay, so he goes to his wife. I got her pretty codes. 20:39 Hey, we just produced the price of our patreon to six ninety nine a month. That's one price for everybody. You get all the perks. You get the live hangouts, you get to join the discord, you get early access, whichever reason you're joining for. We wanted to make it one price because I hate that everything in the world is going up in price and so we wanted to make this a little bit more affordable for everyone to do and so but also you know the other goal is that more of you join it so that we can keep funding the show. I mean like what you know, how do I say that? That sounds like we're 21:07 poor and we are we are and uh no, but if you can't join us on patreon, no worries at all. Another way to support the show is by sharing it. Please tell somebody like the show and thanks for for being here for this episode. 21:24 he goes his wife, he goes to his wife, because she's like what and so yeah, he's like I need you to cover coats, cuts up all our coats and he she's like you know how you can get stuck in a loop. It's crazy because you're you're. It feels like the coil in your brain is not insulated well enough that it just jumps just instead of runs. Yeah, so he he goes to his wife. 21:52 It's the same. I got a red coat. She's like, what? I need to cut up your coats. So she lets him do it. Okay. She cuts up all his wife's coats and he makes insulation like the first insulated copper wire. And he discovers that when you do that, you can pack this in so much tighter on this coil. 22:19 And he makes an electromagnet that is packed in so tight it's capable of lifting 1,500 pounds. so he's he's capable of lifting through a magnet so he could have a piece of metal that's 1,500 pounds and that magnet could lift it. It was so powerful. And so big was it? I mean, it was a big electromagnet. Yeah. And so, and because it's like the way an electromagnet works is if the current's running through it, the magnetism is on. 22:46 If you cut off the current, the magnetism turns off. So you can like pick stuff up and move it and drop it. And so he's like, this is so great for class. So he starts showing his class that it's super fun. And then he realizes he is working in a university um that's like not like a major well-known university. It's kind of like Iowa State. Kinda. I don't know exactly where he's at, but I do know most of the population are farmers. so these farm kids are not like engaging with his subject matter very well. 23:15 means he's like I they're like make it pick up cows and he's like well that's first of all that's ranchers first of all that's not what you do. You are a farmer. Yeah, you guys need seeds. It is pretty crazy at that time like ninety percent of ninety five percent of the country. Yeah, farm like the dust bowl. I think yeah, just crazy and so he says I know what I'll do. I know all these kids keep getting distracted. They're on their phones. I want to be able to teach and I can't and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to get an anvil. I won't put this anvil in class 23:46 I'm magnetize it and then totally hang it up above. And when I feel like people aren't paying attention, I'll just cut the current. 23:55 So he just is dropping an anvil on your class. Yeah, he's just dropping an anvil. And so obviously like this is a major big piece of metal. It's like and then like he turns it back on and sucks it back up. It's like now that I got your attention and then he just keeps going on with his lecture. Like that's how he taught and he is like he is a through and through academic. So he's just trying to like 24:20 discover what he can do with this. And so he's constantly doing experiments with this electromagnetic field and uh different magnetism and running these wires and things like that. So he builds like a repeater so he can actually have like a battery that's outside of this. All Joseph Henry, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, what if there's a battery outside the classroom and I can connect it? So he ends up he has a battery that's a mile away because he's just like, how far can I get this to stretch? And he has like repeaters in the middle of it. That's uh pushing the current further along and things like that. So like he is just like 24:50 really uh studying, but kind of just playing with electricity to see like what he can do with it. And then teaching his class. also love doing that. Nothing. 25:06 I don't feel this. I can't feel this. I go, Ray, come over here. And I go like this. And then I touch right and jeet. And I'm just like, I can't feel anything right now. Except alive. was like 16. I was serving at my church. Sorry, sorry. on. on. me try over. 25:34 I was 16 years old I was serving at my church. I got involved with the Russian mob. So when you were 16 years serving in church. the thing that they needed was they needed some electrical work done. And so was like, I'll help change some outlets. And I'm from the other side of the church, like about to change this outlet. It's like a little electrical outlet, but I'm like getting ready to go. And I yelled to my pastor who's across the church. like, Hey, did you turn off the breaker? And he's like, yeah. And he didn't. And so I just got in there and I got a pretty good little zap. 26:03 And he thought that was so funny. Like he knew he didn't turn it off. It wasn't like he made a mistake. It was like a prank that he was chip. No, I was like, you think that's funny? He's like, yeah, I was really, he's like, you should have seen your face. All that trick you do. Yeah, you've been in a coma for eight months. Kind of funny. Pretty good. 26:28 Yeah, I played this really good prank on the 16 year old kid to pranks really and uh both the same level of prank when he was 16. I electrocuted him. He was in a coma for nine months and then when he was and when he was like in college, I gave him my wife's putter 26:52 which is like so funny. It's almost as funny. So just Henry tells them all about this on a boat on the way back from England. It's a long boat ride. Yeah. So they're just hanging out and Samuel's here and all this and Sam was like, that's really interesting. Like this is crazy. And he's like, so you're telling me like you can kind of send a signal. And he's like, yeah, you could send a signal really far. And Samuel's brain starts to kind of kick around. And he's like, I wonder if like, cause my problem. 27:22 was that like there's really cool stuff in London that no one back in the States is getting to see. And so what if we can use that to help them like see stuff from London? And so he starts to kind of theorize a possible world where you can run one of those wires for miles and miles and miles and be able to communicate and like share information with each other across the mass distances. And so uh he goes back home. 27:50 And he meets up with an NYU professor named Leonard Gale. uh And he's like, he's like, Hey, I heard about this thing. I want to build it. Here's my idea. And Leonard is like, yeah, theoretically that could work. Like you should try it. And so he kind of talks, coaches him through like how to build it. So he goes home and he builds his own little device that could transport things. And it was like the first rendition of like a Morse code device. Um, essentially a Morse code device. Essentially the way this worked was you would have a single copper wire. 28:19 on one end of a system and you would use this to kind of tap a bell and that would create this electrical signal and that signal would travel and on the other end it there would be a bell that it was tap back exactly the taps that you you sent. The problem was he was having a really hard time. The signal would get really weak really quickly and he couldn't get it to go the full distance, so he shows back up at NYU and he's like look what I got and the professor's like oh, that's pretty cool and then he's like look at like die so fast which professor we're talking about Gale. Yeah, Gale 28:48 So Gale helps him build a repeater. Gale's like, here's what you would do like to get it to where it could, could travel further distances. Right. Meanwhile, he also finds, this guy by the name of Alfred Vale, which very similar name. Gale, Vail. Yes. Gale, Vail and Morse. And Vail was like a financier in New York and Vail was like, this could, this has some potential. And so Vail invests in his idea and Vail. 29:18 and him start to talk about like how they could use it, how this could be useful. Cause right now it's just like, you can just send like some sounds, but it's, and so in Morris's brain, Morris is like, well, what if like you would hit the button and it's like, okay, I hit it 12 times. And then we have a book and for every number, there's a book where we associate associate every word in the English language to a number. So you go through and you'd like, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, for every word in the English language. it takes like 29:47 hours to decode this thing. And Vail was like, that's a stupid idea. oh That's such a bad idea. And Vail's like, just do a code. Like just do it to where each like dot and dash equals a letter. And so Vail is like, okay, I'm going to help you come up with a better code here. What Vail does is that really interesting. He goes to local printing presses. He just hangs out in the press and he pays attention to a couple of things. He pays attention to the letters that are getting used the most. He pays attention to the letters that are like the most like damaged. 30:15 in the press. Yeah. And he says, OK, we're going to R-S-T-L-N-E are the most common. Oh, I thought you were spelling something. I was like, that doesn't sound like a word. 30:37 So he, yeah, I was spelling food court, R S D L L E that's supposed food court, right? So they come up with what ends up becoming Morse code and the way they did it is the easiest letters um were the ones that were the most used letters. Right. And so they're just dots and dashes. The way it is, is a dot is a quick signal. A dash is a long held signal and they all uh establish a different letter in the alphabet. um And so 31:06 They were doing these tests where they were interpreting these different messages back and forth between each other. And this was working pretty well. And so they essentially had this proof of concept and they knew, okay, if we want this to actually uh be successful, we need to build a uh sample for this. And so he says, I want to actually go to the U.S. government and I want to ask them for $30,000, which adjusted for inflation is about a million dollars today. And he says, I want to build a line, a telegraph line from 31:36 I think it was New York to Baltimore, so I can test this and see that this actually works long distance sure, and so he goes to Congress and Congress ah basically is like okay. We're going to work it into our next big bill yeah and Congress is like let me send an email and see if we're allowed to this. 31:58 uh chat bot says it's good to go. says great idea. This has never been thought of revolutionary thinker. It was Washington and honestly that's the difference. So in eighteen forty three Senate convenes to go over their next like finding their budget for the next year in which year we're talking eighteen forty three got it and uh the line was actually Washington to Baltimore. So misspoke there, but Washington to Baltimore way closer. uh Yeah, 32:27 Yeah, say yeah, like I'm wrong. Yeah, right. It's way closer, but it's also still not that much further. All right. See, I mean, it's probably, it's what I hate. Here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say twice the distance is what I'd say. Baltimore is going to be double the distance of Washington to Baltimore. I know Washington and Baltimore are very close together. Washington, DC, Baltimore, let's see. 46 miles. Okay. 32:55 I yeah, I think I feel like that's possible. Maybe it's about a hundred. What is it? They're close. Oh my gosh. Apple made maps on. made everything unusable. Holy cow, dude. That's crazy. It just freezes up. That's so 46 miles, one hour. So Baltimore to Washington DC, 46 miles. Yeah. All right. And you're guessing double 33:23 I think it's probably close to double, maybe 100, it might be 100. I'll say double, so that's 92 miles. Yeah. 33:31 What is it? A hundred and eighty eight so like a lot more. So like, okay, whatever. Fine. So it would have been way more expensive. Anyways, Washington Baltimore is the proposal. They said we'll put in our next funding bill, but that year the funding bill was highly contested and so they convened to go over the bill. He shows up in Washington. He's sitting in like the gallery of the Senate floor, like listening to the debates and they're like heavily combating over this. 34:01 He's got a senator that he's like in cahoots with. So senator's like, we're going to argue, we're going to get you in. And then he comes to him late in the evening that night, and it has to close at midnight. And he comes to him, he's like, Sammy, I don't know, man. I don't think this is going to happen. Like, we're spending so much time on all this stuff, I don't think we're even going to get to your thing. And he's like, I think you should just go home. I don't think it's going to happen. Yeah, you should make the long drive back. So Sam leaves, dejected, goes back to the hotel. 34:29 very upset about what's happening. And the daughter of that friend, name's Annie Ellsworth, the next day, he meets up or he runs into her at like a local diner or something. And she's very excited to see him and he's dejected. And she is the one who actually tells him the news. Hey, at midnight last night, right as the bell told, they got it through. You got your $30,000 funding. And he is speechless because he did not expect it to happen. When it happened. 34:58 they argued, they argued, they argued and then last thirty minutes they just skyrocketed through all the last budget issues. Okay, okay, vote, vote, vote, whenever it's kind like whenever you waste a lot of time on an episode and then right before the end you sneak in like yeah, CIA CIA CIA ghosts aliens, ha ha ha ha all right, fiddle off, you know, like that's like you do that at the end. So you're like so is dad who's got hairy arms and big biceps and is very impressive. 35:29 And then also here's the thing he did. All right, cool. So the main thing is dad is hot. 35:45 So he's so excited about this. Yeah. That he says, he tells Annie, says, Hey, he says, look, I'm so pumped that you told me this. So pumped in fact, that I'm going to let you send the first message when we built this thing. Okay. It's to work. They started building it. And what's interesting is their original plan was to run this underground and lead pipes. Um, but they, 36:08 were having problems with conductivity because it's lead pipes. And so like they couldn't get that insulation to work right. And they ended up pivoting half with the project to do overhead wires. Yeah. So it's really interesting to think about, like, if they could have figured that out, what the world would have been like because we crossed the country and power lines and telegraph wires because they couldn't solve that problem. And now they can. Yeah. Now there's no need for us to have that stuff. Plastic. Right. But for real, mean, like, now... 36:35 but it's really interesting to think like that. What possible in our lifetime? We'll get rid of all these telephone poles and stuff because I think it's the infrastructure safer underground. Yeah, it's definitely a good question. I mean not not just safer as far as like safety. It costs more, but I'm saying like when storms come through yeah, you don't have to worry about those going. You know, I don't know. Actually, I don't know. I wonder we should ask our we should ask our connect on that. Yeah, we should plug into our connect on that. 37:05 so he'll say no, no, they're not. They're gonna do that. I never go to change. I gotta do that. Why? He'll go. Why would they do that? That's exactly how respond. Well, I mean like a long term because I gotta do that. 37:22 so you guys are stupid. Yeah, I remember young and I remember being so stupid. I was such a dumb person. He still listens to this. I he listened for a little while. Maybe he gave up. He might have. don't know. I don't know. He hasn't mentioned anything to us. I know it makes me think he's not listening to it anyways, so they build the line and they end up. Let me see if I can get the first message. Eighteen forty four. Okay, they run the first test 37:51 And the idea of the test was we're going to run it one way and then we're going to run the exact same message back. Okay. So they sit down to do the test. He turns to Annie. She's there and he says, what do you want to say? And she says, I want to say what half God rot and he's like, oh, okay. And then it sends instantaneously from Washington to Baltimore. was the first message that Zuck posted on Facebook? Do we know what the first Facebook post said? I don't 38:21 No, but I've got a feeling it's not good. You don't think you don't think it's what hath God released on humanity. It was probably hello world. That's like a common thing and like software developers. Hello hot girls. I'm trying to meet through this new website. I made. I was going to say I bet that I'm trying to rate women on this. Yeah, that's what I bet the first one to ten nine 38:47 Oh, the first thing was a picture of Al Pacino. Oh, with the guy with the does a picture of Al Pacino covered in binary code. All right. Sure. Yeah, it weird. uh So that message was actually a reference to numbers chapter twenty three, which is the story of Balaam's donkey. Do you know the story? It's the weirdest story in the Bible. If you don't know Balaam's donkey is a story where this guy Balaam is riding his donkey. 39:16 And he, the donkey's not doing what he wants because the donkey sees an angel and the donkey's like, there's an angel right there. There's an angel, but Bail him can't see it he's not a holy man. And so he keeps hitting or a donkey turns out. So he keeps hitting that donkey and uh, uh, the, the dot three times. And then finally the angel or what we then find out is the Lord speaks through the donkey. The donkey turns around. 39:45 to mail and time goes hey, what has that rot? No, he says, what have I done to make you beat me three times and he argues with his donkey and they go back and forth and then finally his donkey's like he's like he's like I have been your noble Steve for years. 40:06 this is have I have I been in the habit turns around and this is a lot of people didn't catch the reference because he turns around and he goes in the morning. I'm making waffles. The donkey sounds like a smoker because like I don't know if you've tried to do that, but it like it takes a toll on the vocal cords, you know, and so like that they argue in the docks. He's like finally like have I not been good to you? Like have I ever done this before? Is this a habit of mine to not do what you ask? And Balaam's like no. And then when he says no, the angel like appears to him and he kind of has this like Paul moment. 40:35 where he like turns to the Lord. The next chapter, uh Baelic, which is like, uh he's a king of some nation, doesn't matter. He's a king of a nation. He sends Baelic to go curse God's people. And he goes to curse God's people. He realizes, because now he's one of God's people, he's like, he's like, can't curse them. So he blesses them. And Baelic is like, what are you doing? And he's like, he's like, I can't, following what God told me to do. And then he looks at the beautiful place that God created for his people. 41:04 and he says, what has God rot is what Balaam says. Sure, it's like this is an amazing thing that that God has done. So that was the ideas. This is an amazing thing we appreciate you being here for Tillen Church. This week we do have a giving box that will be passed around 41:27 Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things. I learned last night. If you liked the show, you want to support us, we've got merchandise that you can get and it's good stylish stuff that I made. put a lot of work into this stuff, so it's great to find other tilling fans in the wild and be like, wait a minute. I know that shirt. And so yeah, we would love for you to do that. You can pop over to shop.tillin.com or the QR code or there's a link in the description. There's plenty of ways to find it. We promise we made it super easy. So thanks for supporting the show and thanks for listening. 41:57 did you see a Russell brand yeah yeah. I was like what was the was a Bible fascism hasn't me. I do appreciate though that he didn't just make it up. I do appreciate that. know what I let him for me. Fine that was that was where he was like I can't find it, but this is you know I and I do feel like I you know it be like if you put a sophomore in high school 42:24 from youth group on TV and we're like you're down the face of Christianity. uh Yeah, yeah, you know, but a sophomore in high school with problematic allegations. Yeah, I'm sorry. I school is got like a history real that is clearly running from and it is crazy like knowledge, but but anyway we are going to pass the plate just wherever you're at right now alone in your car on your morning walk. Just look around there's 42:54 There's a plate coming for you. 42:58 like you imagine you're just like at a stoplight so a word and they're holding a plate full of cash. You got to put something in it. I just on the other side of the car pass it through the blade. There's a church in Springfield to use KFC buckets. I always thought that was so funny. It's hilarious. So this message that phrase what hath God rot yeah like that was like all over the news. They sent it to who was in Baltimore to receive it. It was just one of like his business part. 43:26 Okay, so that person sent it right back immediately and this was like this proved it was possible and so this became a thing where like people uh The the media for decades would use this phrase What hath God rot when talking about new technological? Discoveries being like and it was like what has God rot exclamation point like God has brought forward a new amazing technology for us That's gonna help us push humanity forward and we're gonna become better because of it. What's interesting rarely are we doing that? 43:54 You know, I feel like new technologies come along and rarely are we like, we're going to be better now. Well, what's really interesting is this phrase for this was 1844. This phrase for nearly a hundred years was what has God rot? Look how amazing this is. And now it's and then the atom bombs dropped and the headline in the Adams bombs was what has God rock question mark? And it changed that phrase. And through the end of the nineties, that phrase was a common phrase that the media would use when technology or something went too far. 44:23 and like was like the dark side. was like, yeah, God do really interesting, like change of that phrase there. And so next time you think about talking, donkeys think about that. So he then after this, this is the proof of the concept. And this is also another really interesting thing here. This is the first time we really have in recorded history where the government funds a private business venture. And it's obviously fruitful and worth it for them. Like they, the Morse code became a huge deal. 44:53 uh or I guess the telegraph became a huge deal, but kind of set a precedent for a lot of future investment that the government would do. What's interesting is this does well for him. He starts crossing the country in telegraph lines. Their copycats start popping up. He gets put into like pretty brutal. um 45:19 legal battles, yeah patents, because he patented the whole process and everything, and so he gets in pretty pretty brutal battles. One of them uh O'Reilly versus Morse is still cited to this day in legal battles. This was an eighteen fifty three because there was a lot of different things that that he had tried to patent along the process. The eighth item that he tried to patent on this process was basically electricity. Oh sure, sure, sure, sure. Basically was like yeah. 45:48 I have the patent to using electricity to communicate. And they were like, no. Yeah. And so this was the decision that was made was that you can't patent a physical reality if you discovered it. You can patent the machinery used to can't patent gravity. Yeah. And you can't even patent the concept of electric communication. You can patent your process, your machinery that does that, but you can't patent the thing. Got it. And so this was actually like, this is cited in current technology things where like, 46:17 if uber were to try to patent ride share technology, they couldn't patent that they could patent the way they do it, but they couldn't be like, we're the only ones who can do this because we're the god we have pat night right. And so it's really interesting to think about like that moment had the courts decided a little differently what the world would look like today because businesses would totally do that. Like at and t would be the only internet service provider. Like facebook would be the only right in your area. You do have a lot of internet provider choices. Don't you because 46:46 you know, otherwise, thank God, well, they would have God rod that you have multiple internet providers to choose from right, right. Yeah. Who do you have at your house? We have and could you choose another one? We could do fiber. We could do fiber. We could do T mobile. You can do Google fiber. Yeah, yeah, we could do Google in my neighborhood. I can only do spectrum. That's crazy. That is the only one I'm to 47:14 It's the only one available to my my area crazy. I mean it is it is bad out there. I'm not saying it's now, but we're not gonna crash out. We're not gonna crash out. We're not gonna crash out. Sorry. Was that a little too hard? Don't do it software. I'll do it. Sorry. We're not gonna crash out. I like you flinched. I like that you're still scared a little bit. Yeah. The person you shot me all those times when we were in college. That was easy. Anyways, so with a gun 47:54 With a gun. So here's the thing. Here's what's interesting about this. This changed the world in so many ways. Obviously you can communicate overseas for the first time. Warfare changed. How did they those cables back then? How'd they do that? I guess I don't know. Maybe radio waves. Maybe they figured out how to do it with radio waves. Maybe. I don't actually don't know how they did it overseas. They probably ran them underwater. Probably figured out a housing for it. Random. I really don't know. Anyways. 48:24 The couple of really interesting things, one, I don't know this, but before Morse code, trains were pretty dangerous because they ran on like predetermined schedules, but if there was a delay. Oh yeah, then you didn't know what was coming your way. Yeah, and so there was head on collisions all the time with trains. And so this solved that problem because they could actually communicate to you like, okay, we're behind five minutes. And then they could shift the schedules on trains. So it made train travel much safer, which made it cheaper, which made it available to more people. Same thing with ships. 48:52 it made traveling overseas safer, cheaper because you could just communicate. They had to figure out how to do radio waves because like ships had it on there. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was, it had to be radio. You're right. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, I bet there was like receivers that would then put it through a line. What's the movie where he's blinking doing the Morse code? I don't know. It's probably a reference because there is a when, when did it come out? 49:21 I guess, oh, it is a reference to the real life guy right in Vietnam. There was a yeah, there's a guy who was maybe it was Vietnam. There was a war. It was a war. He's a P. W. Yeah, P. O. W. And they made him do like a propaganda video thing, but he was blinking Morse code of like torture because like the video was like they're treating us great. We're having a great time. We're having fun. We love these people right, but he was saying that about blinking torture. There's a movie. I think it's called untraceable. Is that a movie? Look it up. It was a pretty crazy 49:51 crazy on a pole with a P H on traceable. It was a movie got a thirty two percent got a sixteen percent on rotten tomatoes two thousand eight. It's a horror action movie yeah and Tom Hanks son is I was going to say I was like wait is this Tom Hanks son yeah. I never knew that this was Tom Hanks son yeah he's in he's in Fargo yeah really good. I didn't know that this was his son. I never but yeah 50:19 you know it's a website that the more people go to the website, the faster the person dies. It's a live stream saying so like you know and they couldn't figure out and then one of the guys who's in battery acid dying is codes, the worst goes the address interesting interesting. Yeah, I mean I've never seen that I've never even heard of it was a bad movie. I that 50:44 I was an eighth grade. What's it you think about all this? And I was like, there's not as many layers to this as maybe there should be. uh He ran for mayor in 1836 after he like for Baltimore or New York. They're just so close. New York. He actually ran for mayor of New York and he ran as the nativist candidate. And this goes back to his childhood. He learned this from his dad. He was a nativist, which was a kind of small. They don't wear clothes. 51:14 I'm a naked. It's my political position is no. I've never, never clothed. What that in the intro, huh? Him stumbling over my political position is thumb. No, I'm not cool. No clothes. Did I send you that video of top the log uh singing one of his songs and it's just like the arc over time of like I've seen the lyric and how now he just can't sing it. I don't think it's that he can't sing it. 51:44 I cause it is pretty fast. So there's a chance he can't really sing it. But as you go, like it slowly turns from, oh, he's singing the lyrics to like, Oh, every couple of words, he just makes a sound to like this last one. He's just, I'm not kidding. I'll show you in the after the film. He just goes, oh that's exactly the other night. So they were playing baby by Justin Bieber. Yeah. I didn't realize that I, I still know the whole rap part, you know, 52:13 hold on when I was thirteen. I have my first love. It was a ready to compare to my baby and nobody can be twenty so can ever come above age. He had me going crazy. Oh, it's pretty good. You got nah, the whole thing. No, I don't get copyrighted. I'm so good at it. So I'll be like track. He's the ease. I'm really good at it. That's crazy that you remember. I had a couple Shirley temples. That's and you get me hopped up on sprite in brennan. 52:42 and I will be a thing. I rap. We're not get too much sugar. I get going so 1936. He runs for mayor and he runs for May 1936. How old is he this 1836? I was gonna say 1836. This is before the Eric. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, and so he runs for mayor and on his campaign. He runs from a campaign he got from his dad and this was a lot of his political and moral beliefs and the nativist position he had was that there should be no immigrants 53:12 And more importantly, there should be no Catholics. He said the Catholics are the problem in this country. we didn't, if we stopped the Catholics from coming, then everything would be so much better. 53:23 I'm joking. So he was very, very strongly anti-Catholic and he was like, he's like, they're all coming from overseas and they're ruining this country. We need to make sure that we don't let them in. The irony, nothing is new. Yeah. And the irony of all this is he lost, you know, I think he got like 1400 votes. So he basically got nothing. And the irony of all this is his invention ended up making it really easy to immigrate to this country. And so like there was a big boom after 53:52 the telegraph was invented and so it's kind of funny that like he had this kind of I guess also there's a there's this is a thing where it's like this is now a universal code yeah. The whole world knows Morse code yeah, so even if you don't speak the same language, it can well you start a spell on a chance that ever I never mind, never mind, but it did. It was groundbreaking would been better if you had for certain for every word you know. 54:22 sorry I do fifteen thousand three hundred and eighty two to say fiddle off. We're not ready yet. Oh dang it. So most that part that part most countries in the world were like this is so significant. Yeah, like this is one of the biggest discoveries we've ever had and so he just starts getting showered with gifts from every other country. So like countries are sending them like gold, silver, they're sending them like amulets and statues. Some are sending them just outright money 54:51 He gets $30,000 in cash from England. And so like he's getting like all these gifts. Yeah. So he starts a business, his business does well. But the bigger, the majority of his wealth comes from all these, all these countries just giving them stuff. And so that's where this picture comes from. Like he wasn't, he was never a war person. He just got all these awards from all these different countries for like his scientific discovery. The irony of it is he didn't discover anything like literally none of like even 55:18 when he started building this like he had like it's just the John Henry's guy. Yeah, John Henry discovered this veil and what was it hail gale veil and gale perfected it and then he got the government to fund it but even hand the government he got his friend to help the government to make it happen. No, he got his friend in the government to get it past Senate. Yeah, but he has he had his other friend figure out which letters they'll have in the letters. They'll the letters. Yeah, so like he really did 55:44 very little of this. did kind of like oversee it. But I mean, I guess that's no different than any business leader now. They don't do anything. And so he ends up in 1872. He dies of pneumonia and he has an estate valued at $500,000 in 1872, which translates to about $13.4 million today. So yeah, really well. Or does well really well for himself. And that technology, like it globalized our economy. Right. It made us more efficient. It was a major 56:13 part of industrialization. And honestly, it was the birthplace of modern computing because even the dots and dashes eventually would become what we would see in transistors with bits and ones and zeros. so this concept, in one sense, he's the father of the modern information age. in one sense, honestly, he is because, like I just said, most of these modern organizations, 56:42 there is the figurehead. There's the Steve Jobs whom who brought brings the right out, but then there's the people who actually built it and he was a person who actually built it. The irony of this whole thing. It's like our podcast. The art. I'm like the figurehead and I make you do all the grunt work. I don't want to do it becomes and it's been a pretty decent partnership, but I'm also just realizing that maybe because you do all that stuff. That's why we're only have ten listeners. So he the company does everything. ah He's successful. 57:12 He's making a lot of money the thing happens um but he goes home and he's Succeeded and so he goes home and he's like he's like feels empty. Uh-huh gets back in a painting He starts painting again and he spends the last like 20 years painting paintings does a W bush thing at the end and he spends his last 20 years of his life painting and The funny thing about this is I think I don't know if he lost it or what but what we hear from written reports 57:42 is that after he died, the executors of the will come to his house and they find all these paint, like hundreds of paintings that he painted over the years. And they said they were so bad that they didn't even think that they could sell them. So they just threw them all away. And so all of these just got lost to time that potentially could have been really like famous works of art, maybe. Cause he was supposed to be. Because all the people there were like, Oh, this stuff sucks. 58:08 So is the only painting that he has on display somewhere that one of the yeah of all the other paintings yeah and what that's a good painting is what I'm saying. That's like that's the lighting is there. That's good. Well, what's interesting is this what we see here. This is a copy because he actually at the time there was this new technology and paint that he used for that that made all of the paintings he was copying outlive this painting like it deteriorated faster, and so this is actually a copy that's on display. 58:37 Wow, is this gone? Is his long gone ah and all those, all those ancient paintings that he was copying survived. So that's Samuel Morris, a painter and Morse code inventor. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad that he switched to letters instead of cause then you'd have to 59:01 I'm typing fiddle. 59:13 Off. 59:21 What did I say? You said if you like this episode, you might like Rudolph diesel and episode we did about the guy who made you're not going to believe it diesel the truck like not their musician anyway, didn't make them and and then you can join us on patreon and we'd love for you to do that. So thanks for supporting the show. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing, so we'll see you next week.
Most people know the name Samuel Morse because of Morse code. But before he became famous for dots and dashes, Samuel Morse spent years chasing a completely different dream. His path from struggling artist to one of history’s most important inventors is full of surprising twists, family pressure, and a little bit of luck. A Childhood Shaped by a Strict … Read More