Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Hey, man, what's going on? Have you ever heard of Joe Lo? Joe Lo? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's um. He's pronounced j lo, but you you want to call her just yeah, it came out that way. Oh, you're right. It's j Lo Oka, no Joel. It's spelled j h o l w joe Loo pretty close actually j j h o j hlo w Joelo. Know what we're talking about? Uh? So this is a guy UM from Malaysia. He's approximately fourty years old. By approximately he's actually fourty years old. Who is um? The mastermind behind um one of the largest white collar crimes in recent history. Uh, the McDonald's monopoly scam. Yes, not quite that big. No, he's uh he pulled uh four point five billion dollars. Uh and he's still had large in real money or like any Eve online moneyline dollars, No, real dollars four point five dollars four point five he pulled, pulled. We needed to hold on. I need to set the story. Well, let's set the stage. Let's get to this because it takes a second ticket stage. Let me set the stage. J Low was He grew up in a in a Malaysian town called Georgetown, which was named after George Washington. That's not true. I don't know why. Why did you say that and then go bail on it? So funny to be but yeah, no one else anyway, It's okay, cool, cut out, leave it in our it out, cut it out, to cut it out. Which was named after George Washington. Georgetown George Washington for George Washington, cut out, leave it in our cut it out, to cut it out, bailed it so much funny to be, but which was named after George Washington. Things I learned last night. His parents, he was, he was, his upbringing was we really jumped straight into it? I was. I don't think I was prepared to be honest, he was. Normally we have a little bit more banter in the beginning. Yeah, but we gonna go for it. Maybe we should, you know, I don't think I have. Do you have a story you don't about the midst? Yeah? The commercials came on. I watched the commercial and the next morning my computer said, kill Josh. I left the mist I know he's going to kill everything. Oh man, he's still alive. You know what a missed opportunity. All right, that's enough. J Loss you really do a story that story about was joking. Okay, So why I don't know this is I don't know why. I never saw the movie, but for some reason, the concept was very interesting to me. Sure, and so whenever your brain that there's this miss that rolls into town, there's monsters in the mist. Okay, you got it, the whole movie. And so movie came out around the same time I was trying to learn three D animation. What was that middle school or high school? I don't know when did that come? Did you try to learn three D animation? I don't remember. There was a lot a lot of like random hobbies like that. I tried to coach. Tycoon is a full grown adult, so you know who knows when that was for you? So this came out in middle school? You can tell me you spent all of last week learning three D animation. I would believe you. I was trying to learn it. Um and I'm gonna make some missed moss perfect. Yeah, So that came seven. Oh are you gonna show us one of your creations? No? No, no no. But I was trying to learn how to animate stuff, and so I Google had a free animation platform and they still have called sketch Up. You could like sketch up animations. Um. And so I was learning how to build buildings and stuff like that, and they had a feature where you could create this the fog, but it looked like the mist then, um and in my I built this world. I built this like mythical world for myself with the town where whatever, and I made a backstory. Uh. And the backstory was a missed type backstory. But also around that time, How to Train Your Dragon came out, So in my version it was the how to change your Track and dragons in them is in the midst. So like friendly little Dragon, a little dragons are company with the Mist and the grocery store. Oh my gosh. Okay, so the miss has been out for a while. I don't care about ruining the ending. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen, if you wanta watching, just go ahead and skip ahead for a second. Uh, and also skip ahead of the movie. It's two hours. The real payoff is the last five minutes where they get into the car. They get to the car, they drive through the mist, they drive for as long as they can. Car runs out of gas, you know, and they're still in the mist. Oh no, there's five of them in the car. They got a gun with four bullets. Oh no. So he kills everyone in the car except for except for himself. And then he gets out of the car and he's like, take me, monsters, and you hear the things and it's a military tank rolling up on him because they have saved everyone. Oh no, and he killed kid. Oh isn't that gruesome? It was like it was an ending. Yeah, so let me tell you how mine ended. So I up an astrod. They had to fly to where the drags were treading, and Toothless was captured. Are like google day, Oh my gosh, so Joel he that was embarrassing. I'm glad that you brought that up. How to train your dragon, Dreg. I started telling you that earlier and I was like, you know what, No, you're gonna want to public ual me for this one. Yeah. Oh man, guys, I don't know if we should go out there. I will be the brave one to go out there and get hugged by a care bear. You know, you get out there and freaking grimace from McDonald and like you was a happy meal wherever. He sounds like, no, this is a total sidebar. Did you know that? In I think it's China. Ronald McDonald for some reason, is named donald McDonald donald McDonald, don mcdone. So Joe Low he came up in a pretty wealthy family, like ran an investment fund. Um. But they weren't like in like, they weren't like top tier. They weren't one percent. They were like ten percent you know. Um. So like they were rich. They were very much, very rich, but not like rich you know, poor rich poor. Yeah, they're like rich poor people. Yeah, they're like, uh, poor rich people. So he went to a boarding school in London called the Harrow School. UM. And this school is where Winston Churchhill went to school. UM and another notable name, Neru, who was the first Prime Minister of India. Not sure if I pronounced the first name right, but the people also pronounces called prime minister like some kind of Midwest guy. Anyways, So uh at this school, yeah, he was poor, dirt poor compared to everybody else in that school. They were like you were open an audie. They were literal royalty. And he was desperate to fit in. And so he figured out Yeah, he figured out, hey, pretty quickly, he figured out it doesn't matter if I have money, he said, it matters if people think I have money. And so he got really good. I dislike the the what's that Netflix series something Anna Inventing Anna? Yeah? Is it like that kind of concept where she just pretends she pretends she's very rich, and she racks up all these bills and all that stuff, and she's like, oh, starts that way from boarding school. He's like, hey, I'm rich. Yeah. So he negotiates all these deals somehow um to like get a day on this hundred million already yacht somehow. So he's like the YouTube entrepreneurs. Yeah, but and like and like negotiates this deal that he's never going to pay back, but manages to land and invite all these kids at his party and they're like, oh, this guy is like one of us. Yeah, he's got a hundred million dollars yacht. And then like he would throw these exclusive parties at these clubs, at these nightclubs a crazy bill, yeah, and then just never and never pay him back or like negotiate it down after the fact to of whatever it was. You know, it's like, sure, just got really good at faking his way through stuff while he was there. He managed to work his way into kind of the in crowd of the school, the popular kids, the cheerleaders, you know, Yeah, were the cheerleaders cool at your school? No? They were not? A mom, dude, who are the cool Who are the cool people at your school? Football players were cool? Still, Football players were cool. Basketball was cool. Basketball players were the cool list. Um, yeah, baseball had a crossover. There was a handful that. It was kind of the multi sport kids. Yeah, they were the kids who did Who were the cool girls our school? It was the volleyball girls. Yeah, vou basketball basketballs out there for sure. Soccer was kind of cool. Yeah for us. In the athletes, Mount Vernon just had, you know, they were like, man, these kids are cool. We looked at the mathletes to steer our culture. Hanging out at Red Robin, this convertible rolls up. It's like, oh my god, it's the athletes. Oh my gosh. Yeah, you're inside Red Robin with your unlimited fries and you're like, is that Priscilla, Oh my gosh, she's got a four point two. She's a ten or a four point two, Priscilla? How many French fries are in my basket? Right now. She's crazy, dude, twenty three of them. I wish I was cool. Yeah, she counts so good, she can count crazy, dude, you can count on me. That was actually what her problem posal said, Priscilla, Can you count on me for prom? Yeah? My school was weird, you know, the nerds were. But that did all change when the uh the star of our basketball team auditioned to be in the musical. And he wouldn't believe the shake up to the status quo you know I'm talking about, and we that wasn't tough. A miss rolled then Troy Bolton took such a turn. I was gonna love that. And get you get your head in the missed? Get you get your head in the missed? What is going on in this town? Yeah? Okay, the closest monster, she's freaking that's so weird. She was homemade sweaters. I can tell you how many threads in the sweater cause I made it and I remember. Okay, okay, So Joe Joel uh So he just kind of figured out like the cool kids were the rich kids. So he became one of the cool kids, but pretend to be rich by pretending to be rich, and he got really close with a guy named Resa Aziz, who is the stepson of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, not Gibrazaka, and that relationship would become a very important relationship in the life of Jolo in the future. And so he graduates from high school, goes moves to the US and starts trying to build a career for himself. We're at in the US. Let me see New York. And so he started working with some investment firms in New York and is a part of a couple fairly large like real estate transactions. He didn't himself purchase those, but he was like, he's in the financial deal, involved in the process. Um. All the while very conscious of the relationships he was forming with people who were like the it makers. And so he was still doing this game where he would pretend he was super wealthy, figure out how to throw this party for basically come to my New York high rise apartment. Yeah, but he was like, really it was an open house, pretended people losing on TikTok all the time. Yeah, So I saw a TikTok the other day that was like, just got the keys to my seven thousand dollar New York apartment. And then another TikTok or was like, yeah, like called the owner of that building because I recognized that building, and I called the owner and asked if that unit was even for sale, if people could buy units there, and they said no. Okay, So I like that there's a version that like, there's there's people who are dedicated to being the anti Joe Lowes. Now yeah, that's that's we were like, yeah, like somebody was posting like just got the keys to my three million dollar apartment or whatever, and like, no, you're you're just lying. That's rough. Um, we have a lot of Patreon supporters. Yes, no one's listening to this podcast. These guys don't exist. Okay. So he's scheming. He's scheming, and he ends up architecting his first major deal of um purchasing this or selling this high rise apartment UM and Kuala Lumpur uh kay right, So confidently I was gonna let you do it, uh for eight seven million dollars, and he was, well, that was his commission. His commission was eighty seven million dollars. So he took all the bat check of change and he dude, why are we podcasting? Wait? What was the property price? A few hundred million, Alex, I don't need you to second guess me. Right now. This is the middle like that's a half billion dollar house if you're doing it was it was a high rise apartment building. So I don't know exactly the exact value of it. It doesn't matter. All I know is he took eighty seven million, two thousand six so right before we blew up the market. Um, this could be part of it. Okay, anyways, the numbers don't matter. All that matters, don't matter. I'm not one of the athletes. Got a good deal on it, dude. He he ended up getting eighty seven million dollars out of this deal. I don't know how he did it. He took eight seven millions. He made eight seven million sellion dollars Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, that's right. That's when new episodes drop on Patreon. Patreons a way to get early access to episodes and other content and exclusive merchandise. And we're not gonna stop there because we've got a private discord with our hosts and producers in it. For less than seventeen cents a day, that's right, that's five dollars a month. You two can be a Patreon supporter and not here advertisements in his freaking podcast anymore. Text till into six six six six. Otherwise I'll come to your house. I will find you. I will destroy everything that's good in your life until we're the only thing left. Anyway, here's another advertisement. And he started making some investments and doing by Grant Cardon. I'm Grant Cardon. And so he took over seven billion dollars off this uh and he started investing that money into a handful of different opportunities. Okay, all the while getting really close to the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Yeah, his friend's dad. Yes, his friend's dad. And so he tells him. He says, corn hole in the backyard. He says, hey, friend's dad, Hey, friend's dad, please, hi, Mr Prime Minister, my friend's dad, Hey will you throw on my name? Places? Sure will my friend's son. And he just goes around telling me my friend's son, Well, my just getting my son's friend, my son's friends, my son's friend. So this department building for an undescript amount of money, and somehow he got eighty seven million dollars of it. I don't understand the math. Don't make sense, but I think that's the point he could sell your building, yeah, for the same amount or more. So he gets in with the Prime Prime Minister UM and his name is Najib, and Najib and him UH they start to kind of put together this this dream of putting together a investment fund for Malaysia that would invest into infrastructure in Malaysia to help make Malaysia like a superpower UM. And the idea was, will sell bonds to Malaysians and people outside Malaysia who believe in Malaysia. I guess UM too further that that economic growth. So Joe Low has this relationship with someone from Abu Dhabi in the government, and Joe says, I think we can also do this to leverage that relationship to create a stronger bond between Malaysia and and UH, the United Arab Emirates UM. And so basically they were able through the United Arab Emirates and through UH the Malaysian government to create this investment fund UM that they ended up calling the One Malaysia Development Burr HOAD, which they called the one MDB to put it all together. But these organizations, together with just the two of them, had a hard time generating. So he's living in New York. Sorry, he's living in New York. Yeah, and he is basically broker a deal between the Malaysians and the Arabs. He's kind of, why don't we invest together here? Yeah, why don't we make a fund together? And that fund would be cell bonds. Those bonds would go into our governments to help strengthen infrastructure in our nations. The issue is, because it was a new fund, a lot of people who would typically buy bonds had a hard time trusting them. Yeah, you got no track record. So they went and they found Goldman Sachs and they said, hey, do you want to be a part of this? And hey, we know you guys aren't doing anything sketchy in two thousand and six. Uh, and we know you guys will be around for a long time. We're just wondering if you guys want to invest in us. And they said yes, Yeah. Golden Sacks said, let us check with our accountants, who don't exist. Look over, it's just the Toothless Dragon from How to Train Your Dragon just sitting over there. You know. I was like, yeah, they said we can do it. You know who cares? Six baby, We're on top of the world. Yeah, money's fake. Uh yeah, so yeah, Goldman Sax did it. And then when they did that, people were like, oh, it's legit. A ton of people know bought these bonds. Man to be alive in two thousand and six would have been great, to the tune of around a billion dollars worth of bonds. Uh, I purchased and you just blew past to me not being alive in twousens six, I said it, and you were like to the two of a billion dollars dramatic, okay, billion dollars. So they sold a billion dollars of banks to Golden Sacks, putting their name on being like, hey, okay, we're a part of this, Joel. And so the idea and and it's unclear at this point who knew what was going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The idea was this is going to go to infrastructure, right Joel. Meanwhile set up a Swiss bank account under an LC. Um. That was how easy is it to do this stuff? Because I hear about people doing this stuff all the time. Uh, what do you mean, like set up Swiss accounts? I guess kind of easy. I don't know. Um, he sets up a company that's owned by a bearer bond. Heard of this? This is uh pretty sketchy. A bond bearer a bear or bond um bond bearer bearer bond. Yeah. A bond bearer is the person in the wedding ceremony who walks down the aisle with the pre nup in hand and makes each couple of sign it in front of all their family and friends. Here's what happens if this doesn't work out and he has to read the whole thing. Yeah, and he's like seven, so it's pretty difficult. There's some big words in there, you know. Looky, he's visiting his two front teams. He's got this weird list article one sect and the specified in the following prenuptial agreement. Excuse me, thought, what's this world? What's this word? So? So so Joe? He sets uh this this Elsie the Swiss bank account the other scene see is owned by a bearer bond. And the way bearer bonds work if you don't know um is it's a single owner of an else. But if you look on the documentation, it's owned by this bond, not by an individual, not like by a person. Is this bond account holds this company. And the way a bearer bond works is there owns the bond owns this company. Yes, bond, a bearer bond doesn't have to disclose the order the owner of that bond in any documentation. Whoever literally physically holds that bond owns a bearer bond. So it's incredibly easy to hide your ownership of a company if you own it through a bearer bond. What you mean physically holds you get printed our it's yeah, it's a it's a certificate like you got for graduating kindergarten. Uh. And if you your possession, yeah, then you know the owner of the company. And for some reason your house burns down or you lose that then and someone finds it, then they own the company. Because there's no documentation anywhere. It's literally honestly, it's literally designed for taxivation. Like there's no other Yeah, it's only designed for thieven. Yeah, there's no there's no purpose for this other than if your pa sketching. It sounds like it was made up for a director who wrote a really good movie. And someone's like, but it wouldn't work because like you could just people would steal the paper, they don't actually own the company. And he's like, yeah, well, we'll make up a thing called a bearer bond where they steal a paper and that means they own the company. Now, so you're saying, you're saying, this dude made a movie with a big plot hole. Yeah, real life had to figure out how to make it work. Yeah, because I mean otherwise or signed, Nick Cage is on set. Okay, Nick Cage can't just steal the deed to Dairy Queen all right? In uh are you kidding? Trying to like explain it in a sequel, Yes, he says, let's pass some legislation. Yeah, let's make it. That makes sense. I I should do that with my version of the mist Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's where he had a whole thing out. You know, Nick Catres already on set trying to steal the deed Dairy Queen, all right, And then you should have seen his face whenever King of Queens was already taken. He about lost his mind. Man, you're talking about wow, oh my gosh. Okay, anyways, is Kevin James the whole time Kevin James was in the midst the whole time. Queens said, in the same universe is the mids, and that explains everything. I mean, they're stacking stuffing doors. We're gonna keep this monster out. And from the mist comes Paul board Segue and all right out of there. Hey, I'm here to open Oh my gosh, okay, um where are we jolo um? So okay, so a bearer bond? So what's he doing with the bearer bond? Then? Oh, he just takes the billion dollars that word they made off selling the bonds and puts it in that Swiss bank account and then goes and tells tells all the other people are part of this. He's like, hey, we invested it in infrastructure. And this guy goes he's just siphoning money. Yeah, like literally all of it. Yeah. Um, And this dude goes freaking ham. He moves to l A and he starts going on these how do you spend bearer bond? You can't just show up to freaking know he put he put the money in the Swiss bank account. The LLC that owned the bank account was owned by a bearer bond, which he owned the bear bond. Okay, but you can't trace it. Back to him and got it. And so then he was just pulling money out cleaning. So he's just pulling money out cleaning it, and then and her bonds and five one see three. Okay, so he so serious, dude, People people gonna there's the minimum requirements to become a church are so little that we we could set up like a little close enough, were close enough, you and I this what this show what we do. We're close enough we could pull it off. We already have a set of parts space, We've already got like a regular meeting time we do, we record eachweak We're already counseling people. Yeah, I'm already a Christian. I mean we've all been on staff at churches count we have credentials. I have a lot of head knowledge. What do you have heart knowledge? Okay, So I'm saying a lot of people, you know, there's there's it's right there. We're closed. Uh cool, So join our church. Um text till into six six A six six, So the uh he goes to l A. He moves to l A, and he goes on an eight month bender. Um. And they estimate that in those eight months he spent eighty five million dollars. Uh ten million, yeah, ten million a month, and he was buying yachts, he was going to part throwing these huge parties where he was having and these parties he would literally um he would. So here's what he decided. Uh, when he moved to l A pretty quickly. In l A, he became enamored with the film scene and he wanted to be a part of it. And so he knew, the way I become a part of it is if I become friends with the people in the film scene. And so he's already got Golden Saxon's in his pocket. Yeah, he's like, you know who also hard and he's getting to know all these people. He's like, you know, everything's going to age. So well that's who ran. You're right, You're right. So he he said, the way I get close to everybody in Hollywood is if I throw parties that people in Hollywood are a party and so what he does, So what he did was he literally started calling agents of celebrities and saying, hey, I'll pay He said, I'll pay your talent a hundred thousand dollars to come to this party. Oh my, and the talent was like sure, and so he has all these pictures of him at parties. This is Joe Lo by the way, on the right with Leonardo DiCaprio, which, um, is this a younger picture of him? Why is this picture? I don't know what the deal is with that picture? Is a younger picture? I'm not sure? And it's you know that Leonardo DiCaprio was making money to get to be there. Yeah, and then like on the left, Yeah, that's a really bad picture of Paris Hilton, a really bad picture of Paris Hilton. And then he also clearly hung out with pit Bull the week before. It was like, I like that, look, I like that. Look, we're going with that. We're sticking with that. This guy this is him right yeah, on the right. Yeah, for context, And I don't mean this is an insult in anyway. Okay, his friends called him Flippy Panta, Okay, that was the nickname. He looks like the kid from Up. Oh, he actually really does. Look that's what I'm saying. Yeah, he looks like the up Yeah is this a you're a picture of him? It might be. I'm not sure what that picture is. Ok. I just found this Uncle Goal, but yeah, that's one of his parties with a bunch of celebrities that he paid to be there. What's this lady doing that's partying? Huh? I don't know. I've never been to a Hollywood party, even the bathing parties. Who's play his elbow because it kind of looks a little bit like Obama doesn't. That is an Obama hand for sure. All we can see is a hand. If you're listening, all you can see is a hand. But I'm not gonna lie. Obama got paid to be there. Huh. Oh my god. Oh? Speaking of getting, how do I get? How do I get to that level to where someone calls you and I wants to pay you a hund of thousand dollars just show up to your party? I think you just start emailing like venture capitalists, like, hey, I can show up at your event and here's my rate and what is that venture capitals at gmail dot com and just see what happens it. Talk to your agents, say give me some parties that I can get paid to go to. I was gonna say that we can getting paid. I mean to show you this. You've been on the road, Um, check out this on the road getting paid? Yeah, check out this load I found outstairs and this freaking sick look at that he's you pitched. I want to be very clear what you did, because that's hilarious that you did. That. Be clear. I'm crying, So to be clear. That's such an expensive drow you put on the space t Cord paid for. I have cru Okay, my mic is all messed up. Okay, so hold on. Two months ago, I lose my wallet and there was a wallet that was gifted to me by a company who makes pretty expensive wallets and they're really nice. And then you bought, paid for like a hundred dollar wallet identical to the one that I lost, just to pull it out and see ground this. Yeah, here's the thing. The first thing you did was a use me of stealing the first thing you did, and so when we left that day, I ordered it, shut up, and it came while we were in Orlando, and then you went on tour. It really is a great wallet, though I'm pretty stumped about it. Did you at least use my promo code? I did it, but I got one if you need it. When you that was a really funny bit. I hate that you spent a hunter hours than that. I've been waiting a long time for that duty to order another one. Delta, Delta, shut up. I have a promo code. I have a commission code. I could have made ten dollars on yours. Yeah, me too. Oh that hurt. Please give every affiliate code. When I'm on they're like, hey, here's an affiliate code. Well, they give me mine for free. For a while, I lost it. You don't take care of Actually that's a great segue. Um. Have you read of a Tilling podcast March? That's right. We have a merch store full of Tilling bread and tease hoodies, mugs, and so much more. We also make new designs for every single episode, but those are only available for a limited time, so get them while they're hot. Text Till into six six six to get your Tilling merch today. So, Joelo, that's what I said when I saw Kevin James come out of the midst. What a great SEGMENTE So Joe Low, it worked, It worked for him. Um, he had been throwing these parties trying to meet people in Hollywood, and he became friends with Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah, probably not, Um, And I'm afraid of he's a picture with Leado DiCaprio, and you say he's friends with Leonardo DiCaprio. Listen to the rest of the story. Um So, Leo and his friend Martin Scorsese for a couple of years had been working on this film that they really wanted to produce, and they were struggling to get and he wanted to pay for it because it's a movie. It was going to be an our rated film, and it was gonna cost a hundred million dollars and so they knew in our rated film was already going to have a smaller audience at that time in industry. He was like, he was like, yeah, it's gonna be it's going to be impossible to fund it. So they're having a really tough time, and Leo met this dude who's throwing these gigantic, super expensive parties with a guy who's desperate to be involved in Hollywood, and managed to broken deal to have Joe Low produce The Wolf of Wall Street, which is the most poetic thing. So The Wolf of Wall Street, for the people who have not watched it, myself included, I'm only going off the plug in review right now. Is is a story of a huckster, a guy who was His name is Jordan Belfort, Yes name was selling penny stocks over inflating the price was kind of you know, taking money here, paying it off with another person living on like kind of the run of money. And that movie is produced by someone who is also doing that. That'd be like if you made a movie about me losing my wallet. That's so beautiful. Um. And here's the he's the best part of the irony of it is he credited in it. Yeah, he's in the credits as the producer. In Leo's speech at the Oscars that he got for it, he thanked Joe Lo. Uh. The best part about uh yeah, yeah, somewhere around there early the best part about it is Jordan Belfort, the guy that the Wolf of Wash Street is bates off of, who actually went to Yeah, he went to prison for two years, paid like a hundred million dollar fine. Um, he's obviously out of prison now. It's a motivational speaker. He is. Um. He got invited to one of Joel's parties and Belfort, the scammer said, this guy is not legit. I don't want anything to do with him. And the reason he cited as he said, nobody spends money, they earned it that way interesting, and he's like, this guy's not someone I want to be around. And uh, he was right, because Joe Low was stealing all that money and blowing the heck out of it and throwing these lavish parties and the scale of the parties he was throwing. Here's another another like famous story of a party through Uh one year for New Year's he said, how cool would be to do New Year's twice? And so he with all of his hired celebrity friends, rents a seven New York and then you fly and beat New Years. So he they did New Year's in Sydney, and they did the New Year's and he loaded all his celebrity friends in the seven forty seven, flew to Vegas and did New Year's in Vegas a few hours later. Um, that's the level of just crazy that this guy was. In the level of extreme agance that he went to his birthday party like rival Coachella, like that kind of stuff was what he was just known for being that. And so then in the midst of all of this, there probably should have been some red flags among some people that maybe this guy isn't using this the bond money. Well yeah, so he goes back to the Malaysian government and the Saudi Arabian government and Goldman sacks and says, hey, there's a lot more infrastructure that Malaysia still needs. Should we sell more bonds? And they're always yes, we should sell more bonds. So they did another round and they raised four billion dollars, of which he took the vast majority of it um once again funneling it through these Swiss bank companies. What he was doing though this time around was very clever because what he set up is he set up again Bearer bond owned companies, but he named the companies things like five done or TIMS don't LLC is pretty wid uh No. He would name the companies like black Rock Commodities Corporation, and so it's not the black Rock. But to us doing what I just joked about, to someone who's auditing you, they're like, oh, that's black Rock, like the big black Rock. Like okay, that's just probably one of the subsidiaries and they're not looking into it. And so he was literally doing that with massive corporations just naming something their name and commodities Blank Asian Real Estate Ventures or something like that. So it's like it's like, oh, yeah, that's a sub company of this major company, is what. Thanks for thinking when they were looking at it. So they thought these were legitimate transactions when he was just embattling funds. So very clever. Uh well, uh and uh the ls someone at I don't let me make sure I get this. This is he doing this all by himself? Like does he have a cheam of people? Well, an office that he goes to. Uh so who do you work for there? I don't really know. I can't put my finger on it. Last week, we spent an hour in our staff meaning debating why they called it donald McDonald. We came to a conclusion, um, and we made seven million dollars from that meeting. Somehow we each got paid seven million dollars being there. I'm not sure what you know. I don't really ask a lot of questions. It works out pretty well for me. Yeah, yeah, so we're going anyways. I'll see in Sydney, mate. So, uh, the Wall Street Journal uh wrote an article about it. They started looking into it and they found, oh, hey, all this money is going all over the place in weird ways, and if you followed it long enough down these trails, it would go through all these legitimate companies and then end up as a donation to the CEO of Goldman Sachs, to the campaign party, the campaign of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, to Abu Dhabi's like whatever fund, and all these were coming back to donations of these dollar donations. So this guy very clearly it was the plan from the beginning. And he said, Hey, I'm going to pay you a bunch of money, like and we're all gonna get super rich off this, and they were all like thumbs up. Yeah, And he masterminded the whole thing, was like yes, like yeah, we like that. We're all about that stuff. Um, we've got some other schemes that you might want to know about. Actually, would you like to be a part of another scheme? What do you think about some i mean some legitimate buying. Yeah, we've got great business opportunities for you if you want to be a part of them. Mortgages yeah, and also uh, donating to charity, doing these things, donating also um, getting ridiculous gifts for celebrities and famous people. He was dating a Victoria's Secret Fashion Show model, um, and so like he at one point, she was getting paid to date him. Yes. At one point, he bought a three hundred thousand dollar ferrari for Kim Kardashian for her as a wedding gift. Um, he's Kim Kardashian to who oh, I don't know whoever she was marrying at the time. And then uh uh a two million dollar ring for that girl he was dating. Uh he did, He proposed and gave it to her. Yeah, will you marry me? Here's two million dollars? And did they break up? Uh? Yeah, they didn't end up breaking up. Did she got to keep the ring? Um? Well, I was going to get to that, but yet no, Uh, all of these gifts. He didn't give it a Christmas time, just so you know, don't propose at Christma time if you don't think it's gonna work out, Because I you propose a Christmas time and her birthday, that rings a gift and it's no longer able to get back. So like right now, um, right now, if Reagan wanted to get out, then she's gotta give me that back because I had proposed an all, even even the month before July four. It's a rule. July fourth gift you can't do it anywhere here on holiday. Look what Jerry gobby for the fourth She could argue that in court, she really could. Yeah, I had a buddy who proposed a Christmas It did not work out because he proposed on December twenty three. She got to keep the ring because that was a gift because it was technically a Christmas gi. Yeah. He took her to chord over that. Well it was in their divorce stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair. Um, and so he took a court over that we broke up, and I want to so. And then he gifted Leonardo DiCaprio, Um, like some Picasso paintings and stuff like that. You didn't hear my joke about other celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio just gets gifted. Jonah Hill, he I bought own a Hill for you. Well thanks six Now he's in all your movies, you know, from Moneyball. Gave him back because I gave it to gave it. Well, actually, Jonah Hill, you belong to me now, Yeah, because what dud does Mark seventeen? That St Patrick's Day? So yeah, there's always a holiday glisten up. Okay, So yeah, he gave Leo a bunch of picassos and whenever everything blew up, um, the d o J started trying to get restitution for all the money that all the bondholders lost, to give the money back to the bond holders. So they actually went back to Kim Kardashi and his girlfriend to things, and they took that stuff from the celebrities, all the gifts that they received from this guy they took back. What sucks? That does suck? Yeah, Like look it's like it's like all that Kim to do with me. Yeah, yeah, it really sucks that they took that stuff from them. Kim Kardashi doesn't need a three right, but it's still it's frustrating. She doesn't still done because he didn't. And if you support on patron, we'll give her another ring to make up for it. You know, sorry, sorry for your last We're gonna send her a three dollars fer. It just says sorry about that first one. Don't scratch this. The the I R S might want this in a couple of years. Give it a few years. You have to keep him back. It's just a long term lease that we're not going to pay. Uh So, yeah, that would imagine he gives you a house though, Yeah, he gives you something, and at the time you think this is just a rich dude. Who's really Here's my other question. What if she sells the ring two million dollars right she had the money, would she would she? I don't know. Would she be on the hook for it not knowing that? Yeah, I don't know they would. It came from criminality. I don't know how they would handle that. And that's the thing that that's the thing that's tough with with this is honestly, like because of the way he lived during the height of this period, he was blowing millions of dollars a day, which means there's honestly a very high chance that all of us in the US at some point came in contact with Joe Low dollars um, Joe Lodo. We all earned a Joe Lodo at one point. That I hate that just because he had he had put so much of that end of the economy, um, because he was legitimately buying stuff, like he's supporting twenty different accounts, and I was like, well, that's crazy. Black Rock Commodities supports us on Patreon. I mean, I guess it's legit. We did do an episode. They were fans. Yeah, cool supports. He bought us Alex two years ago. We've been trying to give him t It's gonna be a rough day when the deal jacobs and takes out Alex. Oh yeah, she's right here on the shelf if you want her. That goes all right, Okay. So it feels like we've been talking too long. Yeah, okay, whatever, bro So as long astory short, um. This article came out that Chase the funds, and everybody was thin and everybody was like, oh, especially the people in Malaysia who bought the bonds. And it became a massive political issue because the Prime Minister was Yea and so this was in the middle of a campaign year because it was he was up for reelection and he expected the whole thing to just kind of blow over, so he never acknowledged it. Uh come the election, he lost the action. And this was crazy because it was actually the first time in sixty five years in Malaysia that uh, the other party, not the party that this guy was a part of, one an election and the first time in their history that an imposing party party one um an election. And so this this created a major shift in Malaysian politics. Um, because it was everybody was mad at this guy. Um. So he a week after the election, tried to flee the country. The prime minister, the former prime minister, and a mob stopped him at the airport and one of let him getting on the and he was like, I'm just going golf. I'm just going to listen, I gotta get to Sydney. Give me New Year's. I can't do one place. Yeah, I know, one of you. Now that I've tasted two New Year's, now that I've put the New Year's, I can't go back. What am I supposed to do one New year? What am I supposed to one year? No, I'm shooting for two years, two year New Year's. Oh my gosh. Okay. So he, uh, the government ends up raiding his house. Um a couple of weeks later and they find, uh, just a lot of money all over the house. They found like twenty million dollars in his house. Yeah, like twenty million dollars cash in his house and just hanging out. Yeah, he's He's like, it's my going to launch that one day and I was my backpack and the Tory R Bill fell out. I was like a hundred R bill fell out, and I was like, whoa whoosh that was in there. Ye maybe that was one of those moments where I felt much better than you. You know this guy, this guy's like he's like fluffing his cushions and millions just trying to fit his sheet over him. You know what the biggest struggle is, never fits over my two hundred twenty million dollars. You know, I don't know how to fold it. I can't get it around here. Oh my gosh. You know I I pulled some jeans out of the dryer the other day, realized that I washed a freaking Bearer bond in there. Lost a whole company. It's like it's that thing where he's trying to unfold it off flaky. Oh no, my chip clips hanging in his on his bathroom sink. Giant, honey, did you see my bear? I told you check the pockets for bear bonds. Never know where the ponds are your ring? Right now? I think that t J is gonna want that back. No, they ended up actually finding a bunch of jewelry. All these just like designer goods. They valued two million dollars worth of stuff in this Prime Minister's house and he was like he was like his campaign donations. It was a gistically leg that's what was supposed to speak on stage without a crisp par of sneakers. That's exactly what he tried to say. Oh is this case? Um? And uh so he goes he gets indicted and he starts going to the stigation. Interesting thing about Malaysian law though, he was still allowed to be a part of the parliament and so for four years, like not guilty for four years. He's like, next case. Oh, yes, I'm very familiar with this one. Um, should we read it out or should I just make my proclamation of what the verdict is? We'll read it out. We'll read it out. On December I made two I mean, defendant received two seventy four million dollars. Now, as we all know, that's Christmas time in Vegas, it's Christmas Eve and that's where I was, and that's where I was until later that day in Sydney, Australia it was also Christmas Eve. Time zones are weird, they're weird. I don't know. Set him up. Um so yeah, so he uh, he ends up still being a part of the part of the parliament voting on laws, being a part of everything until last year he did get convicted and got twelve years in prison for it. Um and uh, the director of Goldman Sachs. This was a part of his trial when I mean he went down for eight but he also went down for this. This was a part of his charge. Was this whole scandal because he was a big part of it. Joel on the other hand, when everything broke, Uh, he disappeared. Uh, and he's been gone ever since again. So he disappeared. He obviously had the means to flee the country. Yeah, and so he he's been spotted. Um, so we know he has a passport from Cyprus. Um. He's been spotted a lot in China all over like the towns and China at parties and Victoria's Secret fashion show. Seems to have not got it over the breakup. Um. Yea, let's just follow her around for a while. But he hasn't Uh, he has. He's not living the same lifestyle he was before. He's very much clearly hiding, but he hasn't been caught. He's charged in Malaysia, the US, I think in Switzerland where his tax saving stuff was and then all the sun in United whatever money he had, he probably pulled it out. Yeah, and he's somewhere. Yeah, I'm sorry, that's just my bed. Can I put this scarry on your bad? Was more comfortable last week when I was here? Oh yeah, I had to buy some stuff. It's a little uneven right now. Yeah, I gotta make some deposits in my flipping up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, he's still at large. The United States really wants him. Um, they've so far recovered through restitution or three sixty million dollars um, but he's still like four billions so not even um and uh it probably never will. Uh. He's probably gonna live out the rest of his days in China, um, paying celebrities to hang out with him. So that's Joe low Man. Wow. So but hey, if you want to support us on Patreon, you can use your Joe low dough. It really helps. Oh wait, what we have to give that back? Yeah, eventually, but for now we can fiddle off things of him. Last Night is a production of Space tim Media produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by Alice Garnett, Video by Connor Betts. Social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg. Our host or Jarren Meyers and Tim Stone. Please follow us on social media at tilling podcast. That's t I l o in Podcast, Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you for listening to Things on the Last Night. H

Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Hey man, what's up? Oh wow, hey, have you ever heard of eve online? Eve online? Eve online? Eve online? You know what it sounds like? Even, No, it's eve online. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, Eve is that what you're saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. Eve Online. It sounds like at the Pyramid Scheme website, or um a adult relationship or uh no, actually not even close. Neither of those. Well, actually the first one maybe kind of like a pyramid scheme kind of a wait, before we go too far into this, we have a third microphone set up. Now, we've got something exciting today. So whose voice are we about to hear? Alex say something? Something? That's enough of that anyway, eve online. As soon as we set it up. As soon as we set it up, I'm gonna le him say one one. I mean, yeah, you literally only got me this. You can shut me down right away. Alright, alright, Connor, edit that part out where he's saying more stuff. I'm only sending that to con that one word. I will only send Connor the part where you try to shut me down. It's incredible. Yeah, it says, wow, I hate it already. Look what you a theme song. What are you giving me that? Facebook? I don't know, don't give me that face left for thousands from the one. It's great for referencing this really niche joke, king niche podcast Managin getting fired by somebody and then they leave to do all work things I learned last night. Okay, Eve online is a man simply multiplayer online while playing game. Okay, is everyone named Eve? Yeah? Every character is named Eve. No, it's actually a space game. This is an alien episode. Um no, it's a space game. Uh that takes place like years in the future and like the fictional Eden galaxy. Okay, and so it's name because it's long gone. Yeah, we've destroyed that a long time ago. Um. What tier in the Karna Chief scale are they on? I don't know. Actually, that'd be a fun, fun little exercise. It's worth going to the video just to see whatever weird thing Tim Shoulders just did. Fun little excerci little exercise. It's being a fun little exercises. Oh my gosh, I was gonna bring up what we did last week. Okay, cool, Yeah, that's good. We had a good time. If you're listening to this, this happened like a month and a half ago now, but because we record so far in the future, but well in the past past. Um no, but we just did a thing for Google. Yah, man, I hope we don't screw this up by the time this comes out, because what if, like Google hates us by the time this comes out, We're not allowed to say their name anymore. Yeah, we did a thing for and uh no, they we got down there and did this eight hour live stream. If you have not watched it yet, it was Honestly, I had a lot of fun. Yeah, you can Google Google Play and uh look, you go to Yahoo, you type in Google. You know. I'll be honest. When I was in college and I would be I would got friends zoned, you know, and girls would then ask me for a relationship advice. And I felt the way that Yahoo must feel when someone uses their search bar to type in Google, or when you install Safar or you go to Safari to install Chrome. It's the same thing. That's how it felt to be darn in high school. This is a fun bit. I'm glad we gave Alex. I'm like, um, okay, is it back to eve online? So Evonline? Uh didn't even you just wrapped up the Google thing that fast? Oh, did you have something else you wanted to say about it? You didn't want to say anything that fun about it? Oh, it was a lot of fun whatever. You can go watch it as what I'm saying it was. It was genuinely a FUNI My favorite part about it is it was at a oh we can't say that word. It was a park, uh that that also took over a city park? Was that a park that also has film studios on it? And they gave a couple of tours while they're there, and we're walking around with like the security detail everywhere we got. We were looking thought we were famous. I saw them looking at us, and I'm like, little, do you know Instagram followers? I saw an autograph? Yeah, so I was like James and it was just great. Okay, so eve Online, Uh, this game is interesting. I'll give you a little bit of synopsis and then we'll get into why we're really talking about it. Because the year is twenty one, two thousand two. Yeah, I guess that's two years in the future. How are they going to do that? That's not our problem. But how are they gonna tell? How are the gonna say time? They'll probably just have another christ that they start time probably, I guess every time it's getting too high to keep track, like's what easier to start a new Christianity every time. There's a reason why this game is significant. We'll get to that in a second, but I'm gonna give you a very brief synopsis of what it is. Okay, it's it's a space age simulator. Really. Um So, the the idea is you get dropped into this universe where there's a ton of stuff going on and you kind of have to pick a career and live in this world. And so there's a bunch of options. You can be like a minor. You can be a merchant, you can be a shipper, you can be a soldier. Like there's choose this though when you sign up for it. I mean, it's not like it's like pick your option. It's as you get going, like you're creating your path. It's a lot like real life, like nobody tells you, like nobody getting when they were forming me in the womb. They weren't like a podcaster, you know, there was a perfect words. It was a bunch of options. It was you walking what would you like to play? Choose my outfits podcaster comedian Oh my gosh, Uber Driver, that was the past. Yeah, but we're recording in the past. Okay, Uh so I hate you for that. Um yeah, so you you're you basically are. It's kind of like the SIMS, but if the SIMS took place years from now in a different galaxy, um, and you're just trying to live your life. Uh. What's interesting about it is that it's it's pretty big. They've got nine million players. Yeah, they've got nine million players. Were saying, that's happening now. Yes, the game came out in two three. It's still active. There's still nine million players play. Many people are actively playing RuneScape. Well, let's find out google it. Let's let's can't use it as a verb. Let's being that you just did. You just did the worst RuneScape. Now their player counts fifty seven thousand. Really, what was just a peak? Much more than that? That's so little? All right, Let's see the peak. M M. I don't know this number. This is giving the paying subscribers. At one point one million was the peak, and it says in addition to many millions. That's what I'm saying to access. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, so they only have fifty thousand players now, which doesn't surprise me a lot. I mean, we're scape kind of thought out a favorite years ago. Really, yeah, you're the only person I know who's still interested in I don't still play it. I'm not still interested. I don't think I've logged in and probably six seven years. I mean I logged in like last year or maybe to be like look at my Yeah, sometimes I log in and remember my achievements of the past. But um, that sounds crazy because yeah, there was millions of people who played it. Yeah, there was at a time I was a paying subscriber. Were you really Yeah, you're one of the one million for one point one first of all, and I was the point. Congratulations you're the point. Yeah, so that's interesting. Okay, So there are nine million players current, nine million players currently. Um, it's a modern day Rainscape kind of is um, and it's always in the headlines. I gotta start playing again, then, god one, you know, okay? Cool? Uh? Eve is always in the headlines. What do you give me that faceboo? I don't know, don't give me that phase. King left for seven thousands from the one that was my user name and RuneScape and Subway uh. And my mom texts me when we were doing the Renaissance outfits on the Google Play live stream, and she said, if only Subway King could see you. Now, that's hillarious. I love that your mom knew you're using him. I don't think my mom knew my She paid for the subscription, so I was a sixth rater a credit card and said, congrat Subway King on you. It was too Yeah, that's funny. Um. I wasn't a paying subscriber, so I tried to sign up for one of these games Way to play as Subway King, and the user name was taken and I was like, there's an impostor someone's out there. They're the real Subway King. And I someone someone saw that scar Subway King the RuneScape character at gmail dot com. And it's not them, it's not me. It's someone saw Subway King on Escape and they're like, oh, that's a cool name. And then they went and they set up a Subway King from then on, I guess. Anyways, so this game is always in the headlines for a few reasons. I've never heard of it. Yeah, well you're not looking okay, it's the headlines for a few reasons. One, Um, there's a lot of scams that happen in it too. There, it's in the headlines for in game scams both and too because it's economy is uh basically real Like it's basically the same as our economy. And there there's like a second life situation where kinda um but a little different. But the economy is so realistic that economists will look to decisions that are made in the game to forecast what will happen in the real world when those decisions are made, because that's how realistic it is. But it's only realistic. Yea, it's super easy to be like, yeah, I mean, whenever we're get to a time in the world, this is what's going to happen to the economy. Yeah, I want anybody to think about the economy. Uh. And Third, because they have these um the thing with how is the economy realistic? I guess what will be doing a more definitely okay. Um. And then the other thing is like talking about Rindscape. Rin Escape there was a couple hundred people in a server at a time, which was a lot for the time. That's what I'm saying there's one point one million people. That's what would be like one server, well in a specific server back back then, because they had separate servers a max limit, so you could have what a few hundred in the specific we had a couple of thousands, you know, um, but there was a limit. Eve there's theoretically no limit to how many people can be in a single server at once. So the wars that they have are huge, are gigantic, and so they're constantly in the because they're here. Let me show you actually have a screenshot. This is actual gameplay footage of a war. All these are players in game. I thought you me a dead guy, fully expected it, and so it's just it's absolute insanity because there's those are literally thousands of I guess I don't understand where the players the players are the ships, so they are all the spaceships are controlled by an actual player. So these are a bunch of ships or is this one ship? No, that's a bunch of ships that have amassed and no one to mak a ship. Is that It's like it's like powering, that's what you're saying. They come together. Well, yeah, it's not intentional. They're just flying so close together. They've morphed into a blob of and then this one guy at the end is taking on the blob. It's like, I kind of I could to handle them. This looks like it would be a Nerds desktop background. It's got the color makeup and all that stuff, you know, all it's missing as the little weirdly placed files. Yeah yeah, um yeah. So they literally will have thousands of players in these battles. And the reason why it's making headlines though, is because of the cost of these battles because the economy. So that cost well yeah and no, uh so let's take a look at the economy will come back. Here's the cost of these battles. Many young men aren't getting married anymore. Look at the social cost. That's the true cost of video games is the young uns aren't reproducing anymore and there are a thousand years you know. Okay, so the economy, this is the economy. And this is crazy because the whole thing is played a run. So most games you play, if you wanted to do anything, you're engaging with other with like NPCs that which are not player controlled. Um, and it's like non player characters. I'm not an idiot. Yeah, you're good. Uh, and it's stuff where the developers had set specific prices for items, created quests that you're supposed to go on and mission doesn't happen. Yeah, all this stuff is because it's it's pre assigned. Well, in this every step of the road is done by players through the economy down to the entire supply chain. So there are people who their job is to go out and mind the materials who then they sell it to or they ship it somewhere. That's their whole job. Yeah, what do you do? Every day? I go mind things so that my friend can go to war. Yeah, every day I mind stuff and I go back to my computer wife, Um, who's actually my real wife and real life she's upstairs. That's my wife. That's my life wife. And then my Yeah we're married in the game too. And uh what I would I have chosen something different shirt? You know, but I didn't know when my characters run at the beginning, I was gonna be stuff like this forever. Yeah, I mean like when I got a college, sure, I got a lot of MYSTA made a lot of mistakes. You know that everyone's born rich, Like my buddy who was able to start, he selected rich. What would you like to do? Would you like to be a potter? Do you want to be a woodcutter? Or do you want to be rich? And I chose rich. You know who's gonna fop me for that? And now the porores want to say I didn't earn it? You know, what do you mean? There's people who mind there is there's a job where they go to the asteroids and they mind stuff off the asteroids and then they pass us off to shippers who ship it off to a marketplace where people who run What if shipper people are no? What if no one wanted to be wanting they are? Well, actually there was an issue. There was an issue about this firing signs within the game. We could actually touch on that in a second, but let's go through the full supply chain first. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you like this podcast you want more of it, please leave a review. That's super helpful to let others know who are searching for a podcast. And if you're new around here, we've been doing this for several years and there's plenty of episodes to check out. One of my personal favorites is Agent garbo Is a guy who went to the government during World War Two and was like, hey, let me be a double agent and they were like no, and then he was like, well, I'm gonna and so he kind of went off on his own did the thing. And it's also got some crazy details about World War Two about how the US used inflatable tanks to trick Germany. All kinds of fun stuff. But if you want to go check that out, you can. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So they actually have there's a full on supply chain. Yeah. There, you're cruise ships too, they've traveled, they get stuck in the canal, let's space canal. They really do? You have people who are mining stuff off the and then shipping it to a marketplace where the marketplace is selling those goods to refinement companies that are refining those minor materials companies. Yeah, and those they refine the stuff ship it off to a marketplace where it's purchased by a CEO refinement company. Yeah, oh really, like you guys, it's it's an e commerce, it's an eve commerce thing commerce and and then they the refiners ship it off to a marketplace. The marketplace then sells it to manufacturers. You manufacture goods for end users, and then that gets ships to actual marketplaces where people purchase all sorts of different goods their bots in this game. No, it's all player. It's all there should be. There should be. There should be bought miners who pass it off to boss shippers. So all this stuff is not player. That's what I'm saying. There's no way someone logs in every day and it's I got a mine so my friends can go to war to work, Cutty, I played a crucial role in the war. Really, what you do? I made the materials, I refined it. We're talking about I mean logically with that, that means someone plays this game and chooses to be a mid level HR executive that just makes decisions on like payroll. Yeah, somebody plays the game and chooses to sit there at a table and mix a podcast and then chime out every once in a while. That was their choice at the beginning. That's somebody's life choice. This is really far down in the street, like drop down then, and they don't get paid for it. I mean they have paid, but not alone, not enough just to his life life life life. So there is that's got to be an hr. There is someone just literally pushing paper in a what is the thing? Because there's full nations that have boundaries of and they call them alliances, and they have boundaries of their territory inside this universe and within yeah, and within those they have elected officials, they have laws, they have leaders through a text based game. I think there's Mike's there's Mike. You think someone is just powerful enough they're like, hello, I will lead you. And there's a bunch of twelve year olds, you know, they're like, okay, like my mom cuts my steak, you know whatever they say. Twelve year olds roll. They're out there like I guess this guy will lead us because he's old. Sir, can you cut your own steak? Yeah? Wow? But it's just it's just a it's another twelve year old going yeah, this is what I sound like because I'm an old man. Yeah, I got my stick all the time. Uh. And so these nations is so stupid, and inside them our corporations that live within these nations, and those corporations have specific tasks like refining materials and manufacturing slowly over time. So what the game developers did is they built this universe with all these kind of parameters around it and then just let the players run wild and do whatever they did. And this is of future second life similar, I guess, but it's much more it's much more realistic. Their full time job is to be in this game now. So that's that's the issue. Which, uh, that's the issue. The issue is that some of these people are devoting fifty hours a week to this and then they have another job and then they're like, oh my gosh, me and my job is just not fulfilling cause I'm a minor. There are people who are to stick at it for another fifteen years. I'll get my pension. The problem is, I don't know if you're making this joke about the person's real life or the game. It's both great. Every day was that every day on mine? And then I go home and mine, Um yeah, so to a wife that's mine and then in my dreams. I that's what I meant when I signed up. But the M and the IN are too close to each other. I said, I don't want to be a mine. I want to be a Space five so bad? Where would it be? We should we should do a mind podcast where we just released a forty minute blocker silence every week the mind gast. I mean, it wouldn't go on Spotify because they check for that. Now, someone released an album that was like an hour of silence and they just told all their fans like, hey, listen to this while you sleep, and it paid royalties and Spotify got mad. Well, we would we would do all the hand motions. Yeah we could. He yes, my mar Wow, that killed me. That was like wheezing over here. I can't breathe. Okay, okay, So where was I your lungs away from the mind, from the So there's a whole I mean. So it got set up slowly over time, slowly over time. Um, and it's it's similar to Second Life, but a little different because of a couple of things. The biggest one being is you can spend real life dollars to get game dollars. They they're called issk, and the exchange rate is uh. It's about six U S dollars for one billion esk. Uh. So geez. So I mean that they're spending the buying power isn't great, so six six dollars gets you a billion ESK. The problem is you can't go from in the game out where a second life you could in this well you can go from in the game out, but not by the rules. Yeah, there are like um like yeah, websites where you can there's paces for rinscape where you could buy a hundred thousand gold coins for or whatever, but they exchange rate is not as good. Like if you're gonna sell on those and you're selling a billion disk, you're not gonna get six dollars back for it. You're gonna get like two or three. Okay, So the exchange rates not the same when you're if you're trying to go from game to real life money. Um, but it's possible. Game doesn't want you to do it. They've talked about maybe doing that in the future, but it's a gray area. But it would just make our economy too shaky. Well, they're they're concerned is that there's I mean, the game has been around since two, doesn't three, and so there's some people who earned a lot of money in this game, and if they all just mad rush to get rid of all their money to get real money. That one, there's the logistical issue of the the publisher having to try to pay out that money. There's a lot, but also, yeah, there's no economy. What about the economy. It's a it's a real thing. Um. And so a few things have happened in this game that are very unique. The first one was casinos, uh space casinos. So a few of these corporations got together and they opened up casinos which worked exactly like casinos. You go in there, you gamble. You maybe making money made the mechanics the games to gamble, while gambling was a mechanic in the game. These people were like, we're corporatizing it, making a casino making a big thing. Hey, but as you know, the house always wins. And so these people made a stupid load of money off of them, um, and a lot of them. By the way, a video game casino a river over here with a speakeasy inside the speakeasy Cassini pouring out cocktails every night. Did you see it was I can't remember what the context of it was, but I texted you and I texted the pouring out drink, pouring out drink, and I don't texted me something. It was an emoji, but it was a drink getting poured out, and there was that reference. And I was like, how is there an emoji for this? There's there's an emojis search emojis poured out. There's one, and it's it's great for referencing this really niche joke in this niche podcast. If you ever need it, it's there. So there's all your friends thanks to the drink. No. So, the casinos were huge profitable, and the casino owners they some of them were getting into that underground a stage world, like taking real money out. Um, because they're making millions of dollars a day this game, this game, the game developer said, right now they are processing within the game's marketplaces over million transactions a day. Uh. It's a massive economy of just stuff getting around currently a million a day. Um. And where is the game based on the internet space? Um, I don't know, let me look, Uh Iceland? Oh Iceland. Yeah, yeah, they're from Uh don't don't don't do this to yourself, Ricky Vick. I gave you the outvick Iceland. Um. Yeah, so yeah, I vacation there last year. I'm very rich. I chose rich at birth. Uh. And so the the casino operators they started actually money laundering within the game. Uh. And so they shut it down. They were like, no more casino casinos aren't allowed. How are they money laundering? I think I think it was legitimate money laundering where they were putting taxes in the game. What do you mean they were money laundering? No, no, no, no, I think it was legitimate money laundering. They were taking real life money, dropping it in the game, cleaning it the casinos in the game, and then pulling it back out and selling it out and pull the money out. So it's like legitimate and Mondey laundering. Not we mean pulling it back out and selling the same thing where we talked about a second ago, where you could you can sell the disk and then get the money out. So they were putting it in to buy disk in the game, cleaning it in the casino, and then pulling that clean cash out back out by selling it in another marketplace. Okay, which is just I don't start a real casino man. And so the game company, you only got six dollars. I need the launder these six dollars. Hey, you're a guy, can help me a laundry six six million, six hundred thousand. So I need the launders seven dollars. Since I think at that point the guy just walks over to a vending machine, puts a dollar and hits coin return and clean the money. That's clean. You just throw that zip lock bag of quarters. Now. Yeah. So it's the some people started buddy lundering and they were like, yeah, we need to shut this down. Casinos all got shut down, and that led to a bunch of issues. Riots in the streets where the casinos in the space streets. Uh so, uh so, here's here's the issue. Number one was the casinos died. Issue Number two that started forming in the game was the game does have taxes. Um, there's a couple. There's a couple of forms of taxes in the game. One there is like a state tax for whatever nation or they call alliance you're a part of, uh and so you pay like a one person tax of your income to these alliances. How do they know to these alliances? They operate these taxes, And what they do is with when you're within their borders. They have their military, which is just other players that friskers. They protect anything that happens within their boundaries. So if you're running a company, if you're mining, they're protecting your company. They're protecting Yeah, it's just like in the other country. Sure, but how do they know how much money you're making? I don't know. They can just r s they have. I don't know. They don't know who the profit is on your corporation. I think they do. I think there is you have to. I think all that stuff gets reported in game, just like it doesn't realize. Again, someone shows middle management for their online game, I guess someone's just a real rule follower. I mean they've got them, They've got the rules in it. I'm a miner. Do you hear my voice crack? It wasn't because it's because I didn't mean like a minor. There are children in the game. So the uh, the tax to the alliances is not that big of a deal for the players. It's like one percent. It's not a huge deal. The sales tax, on the other hand, was a big deal. If you selling it within our alliance would tax you. Yeah, So there was, and when the game first started, there was you could go approach any other player and sell to another player just like, hey, you want to buy this thing? Like you can't? Now, there was this thing do you need invented trade? Like there's this thing where like you could just go up to somebody and be like, hey, you want to buy something, and it's like totally revolutionized the way the real economy works. You can't do that real life. You can't just walk up to someone like, hey, you want to buy something? No one, No one will say yes, they will be They will be like, which one of those you steal it? You steal that? Where did you get it? Should I buy that? Sorry? Do you take cards? Which one of those? Do you think? It's sells things better if we had if we had square card readers, maybe card readers selling the card reader? What are you talking about? What carries cash anymore? Sure? Yeah? I mean yeah, so we would need a card reader agree to buy something without actually selling it. Also, your car today, whether you like it or not, I don't think you you you know I could? Yeah, you can't even open the door. You wanna for a test drive? Yeah? You get to crawl on the passengers? Oh, give me one second, hold on, hold on, reach over there. I'm doing the thing where I'm putting my foot on the door and trying to pull the door, trying to pry it open. Yeah, nick open? Okay, So no that originally you could sell player to player anywhere just by striking a conversation and saying, do you want to buy something? Um, But there were specified market places built by the game within specific locations where you could go there was a major marketplace. Yeah. Within those there was a five percent sales tax. And there's a few reasons the game did that. The biggest one was to take money out of circulation to keep things from getting yea um. But obviously if you're selling a billion dollars for six dollars, so the obviously the ultra rich in the game, we're like, I gotta find a way to get out of this, and so they did. They started building these tax havens, which were marketplaces that these players built inside the bounds of their own nation where they could set the sales tax rate because it was their own marketplace, and then they could with them and all their players and allies, they could come there and do their their business there and get the one percent sales tax instead of the five percent sales tax. Uh. This became a very uh interesting event in the game because once this was figured out, a bunch of people started trying to do it, and then there was this huge competition for these marketplaces, which sparked a lot of war because there were certain marketplaces that were more valuable than others, that either had better tax rates or more customers than others, and everybody wanted to be able to sell their product from there. And so so what product, I don't know, that's their minds. Just like Etsy, you want to buy like Disney ears for your character, we mean their product. It's still part of the game. Yeah, they're just making something up. Yeah, I guess I'm selling this bronze sword that I found and I want to make sure I get the best tax break on it. Were you talking about? And it probably these huge wars UM, Where can you show me a picture of what just gameplay looks like? Yeah, so I can get a better better idea of what this is. Not that picture, tim oh. I also I do have this is UM. In the main markets in the game, they have logs of pricing for everything UM, and so it keeps track of uh, real time prices. So this is a medium, and so it keeps shock of what is happening in the economy and how valuable the goods that you have are. And so it was almost like a stock market where you could get goods escape had the grand Yeah, so yeah, they had the same thing. Great, it's the same game Escape, except run Escape was set in BC. I was gonna set in medieval times, which, depending on what you think about history, may or may not have happened. Let's see here. Um, I don't think history happened, man, you don't know. The more I think about it, I go before I was here, nothing was here, you know, that was none of this existed. There's no way any of this was real before me. So here's here's someone flying through space in the game. Oh, this is like pretty huh. Yeah, it's like good graphics and there this server is big enough to handle all this. Yeah, it's kind of insane. Um okay, yeah, so it's a it's a big game, man, big game. It's crazy. Some people are wanting to fly through space and other people are just sell eliminated on the side of the space rock. There's gonna be someone who's cleaning up the space rock. There's gonna be a janitor. Yeah, there are there are somebody's gonna do it. I was listening to it, and there is. Uh. There was a common tactic in Battle where they would blow up entire moons to create an artificial asteroid belt, so that way reinforcements would have a harder time getting into the combat. That though, it's kind of cool, so, but then the man ensure that moon, my moon, my moon, my space moon. One of the moon is there, Tim, go ahead, Okay, so they're all space moons. I know that's jokey. Hey, thanks again for listening to this episode. If you like our show, make sure you follow us on social at Tilling podcast, or subscribe anywhere where you're listening to right now, whether that's YouTube, Spotify, or Apple podcast, whatever it is. And if you want more, we do have a Patreon you can support us on. In there, you get all sorts of perks like add three episodes, early access to our content, and even a discord with our hosts and producers. So we'd love for you to check that out. All you gotta do is text till into six six six. That's Till into six six six six. But thanks again for checking us out. So these tax havens pop up and these special wars, and what happened was there wasn't specific before the tax havens, the five nations lived at the peace. Is that what you're saying? Kind of there was these specific tax havens. It was safe nations alliances. Are there dozens but the most prominent ones. There's about eight prominent ones. But it really does reflects the world. Yeah yeah, um. But it got to the point where with these tax havens where marketplaces. Um, these wars uh made it to where it was only safe or profitable to use specific ones. So a bunch of other ones they couldn't afford the upkeep, and they fell into disrepair and basically disappeared. Um. I mean they're still floating through space. But how do you how do you fire something in this world? There you go? Hey man, I know, I know this is what you chose at the start. Hey man. Sorry, UM, I asked my mom how to run this business and she said that our revenue is too low and will you you are I'm really sorry about this. To protect the company, and it's just I think that you're fired. They'm ruth sorry about it. What are I supposed to do? I got an eve life? I'm sorry, I'm twelve. I don't have a life. Wife alred eve wife. I don't even know if I want one. Last last time this happened, I applied for the deployment that they didn't grant it. Well, did you? You don't know what unemployment is. My mom's calling. I gotta go. I got homework, managin getting fired by somebody and then they leave to do homework. Hey, lawyers, I know you did accounting for our alliance real quick? Could you help me with my math homework? Are you lead this? Yeah? I am the leader who needs help with thisth homework. This is stupid. Yeah, so so yeah, so that was a big deal, right, the tax havens. And then there was this season in the game where there was just this over abundance of goods because players were playing a lot and then a bunch of goods entered into the economy. But there was more than purchased um and pop yes, shut. And so what was happening was there was just so much out there that it kind of became there was no point to the game because anybody could go get whatever good they wanted. They could mind it, they could get it, and then they could go upgrade shipping within the game. What's the point of it? Got kind of boring, and so what the I'm so rich, you know, and I sit here and like, you know, and now my goal was kind of shifted. I want to give that money back. You know, I would love to. I would love for you to be rich one day. It's very far in the future, so I have you can watch my course yeah on how I got very rich. You can also buy my protein powder mix, rich mix, ch mix. Drink it once a day and you'll get rich one scoopid day. It's more about the mindset of the rich. Yeah, you'll get rich and jacked. Uh So, the developers created an artificial recession. And the way they did that was one they crunched the supply of goods in the universe. So they took how much you could get from mining, and they crunched it down a lot. And so that was it was not as easy to get materials, which over time shrunk the amount of goods in the universe. They also increased the amount of materials you needed to produce anything. Uh so, for whether that was ships or weapons or make a bigger Yeah, yea, I get you. And this created this big recession in the game. Uh And so these three factors, the casinos getting crushed, the tax havens becoming this kind of choke point, and then this artificial recession sparked this massive war in the game where there was now specific regions in the universe where they see each other out in public. That space Imperium one too, and he's like, I should slap that guy. Yeah he's a mom um. This man's being mean to me in the store. Brian, this is awkward. I fired you last week. Visit me alone. I gotta go to practice. Yeah you did. It's a twelve year old, that's what idiot. So I like the idea that was a grown man showing up to a middle school with the stand outside and confront confront the kid. Fired. Honey, I gotta go to Indiana. You know, it looks like I go to Indiana. It's just you know, one time when my spats out, there was a guy this is my my town was there was a guy with a monkey outside our middle school. Just was there a reason or yeah, he's picking up his kid and had a monkey, and all the kids were coming over and like they're like, oh my gosh, she's a cute little monkey, right and uh and then someone called the cops and they were like, this guy is trying to lure Well it's Mount Vernon, dude. Yeah, everyone knew who this guy was. He knows all the teachers. He's not. He's like, he's the guy that owns half the town. Someone was like, oh, that's creepy. He took an ad out in the paper. It was like, hey, guys, that was just me. Sorry that for all the confusion. Did he take an ad out to say? Sorry? That was me? Yes, because he just tell someone? What do you mean tell someone? He told them when the police showed up, they were like, oh yeah, but you said, there's what like, how many people were in your town, like four thousand people? Sure that he could have just talked to everyone individually. Sorry, that was me. Yeah, he's been doing that every day since. He has a coffee with one person a day, you know, someone whom died for ever. That time ten years ago, there was a guy outside the middle school really fast too that time, Remercible, the marketing and that's called the const paper. I was like, hey, that was me. That was me. I'm sorry about it, Like, okay, all right, I'm twelve. I was too a time. Thanks for telling me. He took an ad out on the paper because it's it's a well known person in our town, and anybody in the town knows who it is, but one parent didn't know and made this whole fiasco. Yeah, so then he took on the paper. It was like it was just me and my monkey. I'm safe. So this recession prompted a massive war where you might call it a world war or a universe war, um, where all the alliances in the game started vying for these areas. They have uniforms, colors like how do you know when when you're seeing somebody who's in your alliance, Well, I mean you've got your ships all have like their insignia and stuff like that. Um. And they would have those massive battles like the one that I showed you, and that's where they were getting the screenshots because these were getting financed by in game players who are obviously like they earn a lot of their money and game they probably did put some real money towards it, but the value, like an exchange rate of these battles was in the millions of US dollars, but it was game dollars, you know. So there were these massive because because in the game, like if you die or your ship gets destroyed, it's gone, like you don't get it back and you don't get your life back. Well, I don't know if you get your life back. I'm not sure about that, but I do know any good that you use is gone. So your amm o, your shields, your ship, your citadel's, your marketplaces, like if they get destroyed, they're gone for good. Um and so you're totally out that investment. And so these were massive people were losing a lot of money. They're losing a lot and it's not that that matters a time because there's not a good way to pull that money out. Yet there could be in the future talks of that, but there's peoples have been ruined by this thing, right probably, I would think. So. I mean, there are there are people in here who are like political figures, like they know who they are. There's one nation in there where they have their leader of their nation is like a um hm, like a celebrity because he'll do I mean they all all of the leaders will do speeches and they will have like big like press conferences where they meet with the people in the nation. Because these nations are these alliances, some of them have in for a couple of days. Everyone's like, what happens if the leader dies in real life? Yeah, I don't know, and the word just has to my sudden. One day they will get a message that's like, hey, guys, he wanted me to get on his computer and let you guys know that this was his passion in his life. What it's like an encrypted message on his website. That's what I'm saying. That was the joke. Yeah, that's what I was hoping you were doing. Didn't There wasn't a clear hook, so I wasn't. I was supposed to be good enough that only the real listeners got it. But then you were like, oh, it's like a callback told me quiet pills. So, uh these trying to do art over here, dude, Oh, it's like a colla. Uh So, because these these nations, they are made up of literally thousands, you could have stopped. You could have stopped thousands of people. Um, and they all have roles. So there's been nations who are just gonna obliterated. They're just done. Yeah, they get wiped out pretty quickly because I mean there's a few thousand versus tens of thousands, a bunch more money. Honest, what do you do? Do you just join one of the other ones if your nation dies? I don't know, I don't know. It's probably pretty similar to whatever happens in the real world. You just kind of get assimilated. I guess, um, your culture gets taken over. Uh. But the I watched a gameplay video. Actually it's interesting, like some of the players who've been in the game longer are like the commanders of armies now, and it's very interesting watching it because they I don't know, I feel like you get in most video games and you hear people on the chat and it's just kind of absurd. But in this one, like the yeah, the commander and they know that country, they I know, they're fighting style. Yeah, the commander was on there and he's like he's like, all right, recycle hypercanons one, two, six on this target and then like naming it. And then he's like he's like fire, fire, fire, and he's like hold, He's like all right, and then what a recycling? Just one fire? And yeah, It's like it was very Do you think they practice they have to, because it was like watching it was it was honestly like it was methodical. It was very smooth. Um, do you recruit do you have to try out? You start as a minor and then you get in there where they go to the high school, the space high schools. How many push ups can you do? Run the forty? You know, they do typing tests well to all the characters run the same speed. It's like, well, if you have that mentality, you're not fit for our military. Uh yeah, it looks like you're gonna be a miner. Uh yeah. So it's a studying school. Kids work hard. Otherwise you'd be a miner for your whole life. Um yeah. So it's it's a wild game with an economy that's ridiculously accurate to the real world. They modeled it off the after the NASDAC and it's economists. There's a lot of economists who look at it because that's what's interesting is you'll see these headlines pop up in gaming like websites. But you'll also see these headlines pop up in these like economy and uh yeah about like this economy in this video game is so it goes Nasdack Dow Jones. Let's see what's going on in this Um. Yeah, they're having these recessions and these crashes and the havings. You know, I guess since ever since the war, Oh honey, I haven't been the same since Castle fired me yesterday. That's his real name. Um. They they even Imperium is one of the nations, is the biggest one in the game. During that big war, they even sold war bonds to their people to finance the war. What are you spending on your money on war bonds? Virtual war bonds? Hey, do your thing man? Whatever? Yeah, So, I mean it's a super realistic game. There's a possibility in the future that they opened it up where there's an exchange taking your money out of there. And if there is, there's some people who are very, very rich from the amount of hours that they put into this game. Um, but I guess I should go see if Rinscape has a trade out. I put a lot of time into that game. How much money do you think you could have earned, like you ballpark through the lifetime or how much are I have in my account right now? Yeah? How much? How much money if you could go pull it out right now? How much money do you think you could get? What is the what is I don't know what the question is the money that how many old pieces do I have in my account versus like and then what do I think the exchange rate is? What look up, look up RuneScape GP to U S dollars. Let's see what it is right now? I have probably six point two mill six point two million, Yeah it says right now it is about thirty six U S. Dollars per one hundred million. Don't you got a few bucks to one? Wait? Wait? Wait, wait? Can you buy hard million dollars? There's just a couple of things that I've wanted to buy in the game. And if it's six bucks, man, you're gonna be rolling. I'm gonna drop two hundred dollars rolling. I'm gonna roll into RuneScape with six hundred million dollars. Make a four. Just be a billionaire. I've always wanted to be an Escape billionaire. Well, there's just a couple of items that I've always wanted that has just been out of reach. You know, let me let's do this later. I'm might row I'm might log into all right, Yeah we can, I mean we can fiddle this off. You can go to some pounder Escape a l No, that's okay. Things on the Last Night is a production of Space tim Media produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by Alas Garnett, Video by Connor Bets. Social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg. Our host or Jarren Meyers and Tim Stone. Please follow us on social media at tilling podcast. That's t I l o in podcast, Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you for listening to Things on the Last Night

Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Hey Man, oh, nothing much. God, I hate it when you do that. Well I do too. Uh have you ever heard of DASHCN DASHCN DASHCAN are you just saying Dash Cam wrong? Oh? Yeah. All of my Tiktok is just Dash Cam car accidents. I don't know how I got on that, but they are progressively worse. It started with like, you know, a little bumper things, and people have been like Oh and now it's like full on, like pretty bad accidents, you know, like I don't want to watch this stuff that or I started getting my pilots license, and then all of a sudden it was just footage of plane crashes. Yis they're like you you fly alive? Well, and like yeah, not even small planes, like like all the airline incidents. It's like the Microsoft flight simulator, like they're recreating recreating the crash. Yeah, it's terrible. It's like, Oh, yeah, why why is this what you want to do with you spent three hours making his video making this crash, you've spent three hours flying to the location where this crash happened just in anticipation, just just what do you say that again? What in anticipation? Like they flew there, well, they had to because if they're in Microsoft flight simulator, you can't just spawn at some random point. You have to take off, fly, so they took the three hour trip to where that crash happened. You can't just choose which airport you start at. I mean you can I guess, I guess you could choose a closer airport. That's true, you could choose a closer airport. Okay, that's what I was thinking. Simulator. You think they're like, no, well, where are my schools to set up my my grain? This grain? I got six trailers outside. I got a grain train in the parking lot. You're right down. It's funny, and it's like, Oh yeah, they are not qualified to run this conference. Things I learned last night. Have we haven't told this story about the time I raised your flight on this podcast? No? I think we told the story about the time you tried to hijack my flight. That was interesting. We were on the same southwest airlines flight and Tim's nott allowed to fly Ahmore. That's why he uses flight SIMULA. I popped in and you're like, what are you doing on this? He was in my car. I was like, how do you get there? And he was like, I'm taking over. It's a stick up. Uh No. I did fly to Atlanta once and you were like what times you're flight? You were texting me like twelve times. You're like, what time do you guys have? Okay, what kind of flight are you? And I was like, I'm gonna southwest seven forty seven. I guess okay, I'm gonna race you. It was like text me when you started taxiing and we raced and uh you beat me by about twenty minutes to southwest. Pilots beat you. I didn't do anything. I also I also crashed on the landing and you're violet slanted right. It was raining that day. I hadn't done a rain landing yet. That was my first brain landing. It was also my first I fr landing. I've been doing a lot of VFR flights. Did you it was the video on Tiktok because I might have seen it. Okay, let me tell you about dash cod. I've maybe this is the benefit of what we're doing right now because I haven't had a chance for my day to start. So we're shooting this early in the morning right now, which we've never done. We've done some late nights pretty early. You know, Tim just woke up. But like, my brain isn't confused yet, so I think right now, like it's every day around noone. My brain just it's like seven Bro, every day I have that at two o'clock, two PM. My brain is just like we're done. It is true, yeah, because it's all the carbs in lunch. Right, well, I haven't carbs in eight years, so I don't know. Okay, so before we get going, this was recommended by a couple of patrons. Actually two different patrons had recommended this, and both of them when they recommended, a bunch of other patrons were like, Oh yeah, we need to do this. And so those two are Bo Dalla was first, treg was t came in second, and then Bodalla came back and was like, oh I second this, but I also first did this first. That that's what your dad. So, okay, dash conduct it's a conference. I'm guessing yes, no, it's a it's a con is it though? No? Well it kind of actually yeah, actually it's both. Okay, there's a ven diagram, it's a convention. It's a convention and Chicago, Illinois. Um, you can't even fault the people who put it together, like guys, con is in the name, in the name, what did you expect? Yeah, what did you expect? What? A friend gave you a card and was like can you keep a secret, and you're like, yeah, you know what, this is going to be totally legal, legit. Oh my gosh, so this this uh we need to start at the birth of DASHCN UH oh. So there was a movement called Tumbler. I don't know if you've heard of it, um, but in the early days of Tumbler, Tumbler was a different world than seven like two thousand, two thousand, tens ish, early twos. In the early days, it was different than what it is now. Um, is it now? Is it still? Is it still now? Is what I'm saying. I'm pretty sure that it is now. I thought it died. I'm pretty sure it's still around. I thought Tumbler and vine were casualties of two thousand fourteen. Yeah they're still around. I mean they definitely were casualties. But what it is now is it's it's kind of almost like a four Chan now, like it's just a mess just land of Internet. But but in its early days, it was a like your stereotypical social media platform. But for some reason, and I don't really know exactly what about it made this happen, but in those early days, it was a place where if you really liked something, Tumbler was where you went to talk about it all the time and find out also really like I've never got into Tumbler. All I think of it is like the tumbler girls, right, that became a stereotype thing. And it's like those emo kids and the yes the pop punk subculture was thriving on Tumbler. Honestly, I would say, because there was kind of like your first wave think about a lot, but I think about this a lot, like you know, like I know, I say that about a lot of things, but this is probably one that consumes me a lot. Is like the romance on a rocket ship guy, you know, roar romance the rocket ship right near a rocket ship, like was a musician for those weird kids. Okay, I've never heard of that, or like the yeah, like that scene kind of like they had the checkered belt and they were not in the belt loops. You just you know, put it over your and hope it doesn't slid. Yeah, and like the you know, always wear the converse and all that stuff. It made sense to me that like thirteen and fourteen year olds were doing that, but they were doing that emulating the grown adults doing that's what I'm saying, like, you are you with me now? Like there was romance on a rocket ship if you spell it out. Roar was this dude's band's name, and he's like thirty making music and it's like, came from you. No, you're thinking raw, which is r a W R, which is a little dinosaur drawing kind of thing. This is like deep tumbler dive right now. But I'm saying I only know this much about this because there were plenty of them at my high school. Yeah and so, and like not that they were weird kids. Hey, if you're into it, you're into it. I think it's weirder that there were adults. That's where I'm trying to see, yeah, you're not weird for being a weird fourteen year old, weird thirty year old who's WHO's leading the culture creating content. And I guess I say that as a person who does youth conferences and stuff, and you should start wearing those belts. I'm having an existential crisis. As I'm doing this episode right now, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Like that never shot Never Guy Christopher drew was you know, at least he was at least he was like nineteen doing it. Yeah, I mean that's a good point. This is an interesting point anyway. So that's what was on tumbler was there was some yeah, they were huge fandoms and like and for some reason that I've never quite understood. Um Well, I mean, I guess it does make a little bit of sense. But if you like something like a lot, it gets really weird. Maybe it's that obsession factor. Unless you're like one of our Patriot supporters. That's totally is so normal. That is, that's the most normal thing you could do. But it is kind of it is kind of strange that loving something so much makes you weird. You have to like something just the appropriate amount to not be weird. But once you start being like, Oh, yeah, I love this, like, I love this a lot. I love this so much that I dressed up like it and I've got tattoos of this thing and I post about it on this obscure website with no vowels, then people are like, that's weird, that's weird that you like this. I don't know. Anyways, a bunch of people would retreat to this place because they make it their personality. Yeah, and and because of that factor, it did attract a lot of people who didn't have a ton of friends in real life, but they had these relationships in the tumble verse. Um, do you think there's a link between Tumbler people and like conspiracy people? This is kind of a real munder because like that obsession factor, that part of you, that's just like the desire for online community, that's what drives things like human it could have been anyway, um anyway, so that's that's the stage of what Tumbler look like in that era, um a little a little different than it does now. Um. And there was a community in there that was so excited and invested in the Tumbler community that they would always talk about like two like trending things on Tumbler all the time, pretty much where Tumbler University and Tumbler Island, which were these mythical experiences where all these tumbler kids could come together and go to school together in their own university or live on an island together and just exists together with all their tumbler friends. Um, they had virtual versions of it club peg. I was gonna say tuned town. So we had the same thought on that that was good. I like that. I like that. That was good. Uh So uh, everybody just kind of dreamed about it and we post about it like yeah, we'll do this on tumbler island. Um. But it was like, this is never gonna happen until one fifteen year old girl was like, I'm gonna make it happen. Uh, and so she started like putting these plants together on facebook marketplace for islands. You know, she started kind of dreaming. She's like, she's like, okay, we probably couldn't put together university can afford an island, but a conference that seems easy and doable. Um, fifteen year old girls planning this, yeah and so and she's out here like okay, so because they all have the hair over their one eye, like they're freaking like Emo pirates. Yeah, she wipes it in like her hands pink after movings. Many of these girls, do you have crushes? Oh? All of them? But I was one of these girls. Would you let me ask you this way if one of these girls were to paint an elephant on a sweater, would you you? Would you buy that? And then excitedly UNWRAPID and noticed the card and it says, Tim Norris, is that is that real? I'm sorry that happened to you? headsucks? I was like, okay, cool whatever. I guess for people who don't know. Tim had this big crush on the weird scene girl that came to college dress like that, and she leveled that she became normal. Yeah, but yeah, but I was too nervous to talk to her. I never never. She did these sweaters where she painted an elephant for her fundraisers for her trip to Africa, and he bought one and was like, she's going to notice that I bought it, and then we're gonna well. It was. It was more just an end. It was like, this gives me a chance to talk to her about something. And then he wore it every day and then I really, honestly do like the way that I wear my like hope Hoodie that I've got. I wear it too much, honestly, like it's cool, it's it's a cool switcher. It was. It was that moment when I unwrapped it and saw the wrong name on the car, and I was like, Oh, this isn't gonna happen. But the Sucher was cool, so I wore a lot. I like it anyway. Anyway, so she was we're gonna make this happen. And so she starts putting all these planes together and for some reason, like twenty I believe Um for some reason, and I don't understand why. Actually I can't understand why it's tumbler. Uh. This all of her plans attract the attention of three grown adults, uh by the name of Meg with two g's Um obvious, rock, sane, and a guy goes roxy, a guy that goes by Kane, but his name is locane and has spelled L O C H I a n Uh and he for a while was trying to convince everyone his birth name is Loki. Uh. So, yeah, I think you have an idea of how this is going to go. He's a tumbler guy. And so they she attracts the attention to these adults, and these adults are like, great, idea, we're going to help make this possible because you're fifteen, um, and so yeah, we're kind of well, here's the thing. Uh, Meg and Kine were thirty, rock sand was nineteen. For some reason, rock sand was friends with meg and Kane because a tumbler adults had weird boundary. Yeah true. Uh, and so they reached out and they were like, Hey, you want to be the Admin. will put this together as like an actual company and build this tump our conference. Okay, and they called the tumble con Um and Tumbler was like, you can't call it that. And then they were like, we'll call it DASHCN and name it after the dashboard because that's what they call it. It's like it would be like calling it your timeline connor feed con or something like that, because that was what they called that, the dashboard Um feed con feed. It was like a bunch of farmers who show up and like, well, what I'm looking for grain? It's just a guy's got a sack of grain. He's like, well, where am I supposed to set up my my grain to sell this grain? I got six trailers outside, I got a grain train in the parking lot. You need to get this somehow of your brain. I'm trying to sound great, well, what am I gonna do? I got a big online following. They bought tickets to the wheat and green it. I was trying to get that joke out when you did it. That's a good one. Wheat Great Um so Kane and Roxanne and meg they go and they organize as an actual company an L LP NOT ENOUGH L C, but they and they say, okay, we're gonna build this conference. They started indiego go uh to fundraise for it, where they raised six thousand dollars uh to kind of get the ball for yeah, not even close to enough, but they did say that that wasn't going to that was just gonna get the ball rolling. Help them build a website, start selling tickets and things like that and get in the door. And they reached their goal. Tumbler was hyped about it. They got all these three blogs. Where were they trying to do it? CHICAGO, right? Yeah, Chicago, hamping in like where were no? It was this convention center. Yeah, it was an actual hotel and it's like a hotel and convention center. How many did they hope we're going to show up to this thing? Well, based on the engagement on Tumbler, they expected to have around seven thousand people show up because that was how many people like, there was a people are under sixteen? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so I know where the story goes in. Yeah Great. Uh so they expected out with Loki in Chicago and FREAKING HOLLY XX is like, well, you know, Hollis, what is this? Yeah? What what am I supposed to call you? Now? Uh so they put together this website. They started selling tickets. It was sixty five dollars for the weekend. It's really cheap. Yeah, uh six dollars for the weekend. You can pay in additional twenty dollars to get access to this concert um or you can pay just twenty dollars to just go to the concert Um. But that did not include it was steam powered giraffe. Have you ever heard of them? No, apparently you could have made you could have made that up and looked me straight in the face and said steam powered GIRAFFE. It sounds like I made it up. That's what I was thinking. I was. I thought I was gonna be like, you've heard of him? Oh, it's kind of I made it up. It was would have been funny. It was backstreet plays, steam power ser draft. I was kind of impressed when I looked it up there decently large. They've got they have a quarter million month of listeners, Um and like twenty million listens. I'm their songs on spotify. I checked them out. So they seem like I listened to a bunch of tracks in the way here, Um, not my cup of tea? Uh? Is it like pop punk with but I was gonna say, like with like a techno element in it, like not even it's kind of like, uh, it feels like you're listening we play five seconds without ginding in trouble. I want to his eyes got so big on that, like like you you looked like I asked if we can get away with murder for a second. Here's the thing, playing five seconds of a song does not give you a good picture on these guys, because it's it felt like I was listening to the like I listened to one of their albums and it felt like I was listening to the soundtrack of the musical because every track was a totally different style. All right, I'll check it out. And they but they were all kind of like yeah, they were all like that kind of stuff. Though it was like like saloon music or like wild west or like ragtime like it was all like over the place, but all like older like Elvis Rock, older styles, and like it all told the story of the steam powered Giraffe. Who did what? Who did the original? When I say the original Tiktok Song? Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you know what I'm talking about? The like when Tiktok was musically uh, and there was these weird kids on on that APP doing the ladies. I know what you're talking about, know what you're talking about? What the crap was that? Um? Yeah, I haven't got no idea. I don't think it was them, because I would expect that would be the number one song, and I listened to the number one the number one song was actually kind of good, like the rest of their stuff. Not A fan. Their number one song was kind of like an acoustic like Indie rock song, and it's actually kind of good. Um, the rest of it I wasn't a fan of. But steam powered Um uh but yeah, so so they were gonna headline this concert. They were going to headline the concert. Um, and they were a big selling factor of the conference. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you liked it would really help us out if you leave a review or a comment on Youtube if that's what you're watching on and if you want to check out another episode, I recommend Julianne Kopki. That was an episode all about a woman who survived a ten thousand footfall from a plane without a parachute, landed in the Amazon absolutely bonker's story. Uh, and it was pretty fun. We had a lot of fun jared and I in that episode. Uh. So you should check it out. It's one of my favorites right now. But thanks so much for being here. That a few things scheduled for this that we're actually like, Hey, you guys did a pretty good job like booking this, like this is someone interesting, like the same para of the draft. That was a pretty big band to bring in for your first year. Uh. They also alright, they also had Doug Jones, who was one of the doctor who's Alex's brother. Okay, we can get out my brother, hug, you're going to these fruit fruit conventions. Uh No, Doug Jones. He was one of the doctors on doctor who, which is a pretty big name. They also had the podcast welcome to Night Vale, which I don't know if you've heard of that they were one of the biggest podcasts in very early podcasts. And I hope we get booked for a weird convention that if you're putting together a weird convention that you think is gonna Collapse, call us. We want to be a part of it. Tilling live. We do podcast conventions, ministry conventions, reptile conventions was surreptiles. I'll tell you about that. The so my agency also reps a BMX group that you know when they you know, they go to churches and they rap over cars and they do all this stuff and at the end they're like, you could do this with the Lord or whatever. Um. They're actually really good guys. I love them all. But we're at this convention and apparently next door there was a reptile convention happening, and one of those BMX guys went next door and bought an alligator. And then it was just sitting underneath our table in a tub, but like not an alligator tub, like in a clear just bought from Walmart, you know Tub. There's just an alligator underneath our convention table. And they drove they drove eight hours to get to that convention, which means they had to drive eight hours back. What if you were in a van with a group of friends going to a convention and then someone at that convention buys an alligator, and then you now have to drive eight hours back with an allegat alligator. And it's like, Hey, man, I'm gonna running side of the bathroom at this gas station. Will you walk my gator? Can You keep an eye on my gator? Like well, can you imagine a guy at the pump just be like, Hey, can you watch my gator while I'm in the bathroom for me if he gets a little anty? Sure? Anyway, so they built a real convention, that's what you're saying. Kind Yeah. The podcast welcome to Night Vale was was early podcast. It was actually ranked one on apple podcasts for a little while. Um. Um, it's still active today. There's actually a TV series being like made in honor of it. The show was here. Let me show I actually pulled this down for you. You've probably recognized the logo. Oh Yeah, I've seen this around. Um. They were pretty big. They at that time they were pulling about half a million downloads a month, so a pretty big podcast. Um. And then they uh they had this other podcast. UH, the Baker Street Babes, which was a podcast about Um the street that they left Sherlock coms Um. And then they had like all these like Comic Book Authors and like Book Authors and Artists. They had like this, they're gonna have this whole vendor section where you could get art from you could do art if you and so like they actually and they had all these different Um panels that they put together that we're honestly the type of stuff that people were talking about having happened at Tumbler University. And so they it was kind of clever, like they did their research, they're like, what do the people want? And then they made panels about that stuff. And so they kind of went back to all that stuff and did that Um. And so they expected that this was gonna go pretty well. They had some pretty decent name people. They had um a great venue for this Um and then they went and they got a bunch of volunteers there. They had their team of three, they had an Admin, they hired a couple of people for like staff, and then they had on their website a volunteer page where you could volunteer and get perks for volunteering Um and the request on the website. So if you volunteer for one to eleven hours, you receive our undying gratitude. So Red Flag Number One. Volunteer for twelve to nine teams, if you'vevolunteer for one to eleven years, you get our undying gratitude, and some free shirts along the way, actually not discounted shirts. Shirts five percent off and it really aren't that they don't give you a margin on it. Um. If you're twelve the nineteen, you will see the refund for your badge cost, which is like your ticket. Um Twenty plus hours, you received the refund for your badge and your hotel room will be camped for Friday and Saturday night. Um, so it's just a weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday was event. So it was a pretty good deal to to volunteer this thing. And a bunch of kids who were like all my parents, they don't they're not gonna buy my ticket. But I can go volunteer for this event. If I volunteer twenty hours, I can go for free. Uh so a bunch of kids volunteer is what happened. Um, I've been to a wedding like this where the groom was like, I bet I can get a bunch of middle school wers to do all this stuff for me. You know. Uh, so, are you gonna like hire a catering company. No, I'm a youth pastor. I was gonna have a bunch of middle schoolers hand out food on my wedding. I'll just have a make sandwiches. That's gonna know. Well, yeah, there's a kid in my scroupoo knows how to make Spaghetti. I'll just have he says. He says, I'm at Grace Spaghetti. Everybody just gets these kids noodles and noodles. Halfway there's still kind of crunchy here. That's the day. And he's just going table to table spaghetti forgets the sauce. He's like, oh shoot, I forgot the sauce. Oh we got catch up in the D he's like, well, my mom says that I can come to your wedding, but I can't pay to come to your wedding. But she said I can't bring, but I'll volunteer. She said, I can't bring seven gallons of face fasta kid. You got a kid that is uh it's Dj and the wedding got a little child Dj over there. He's playing the kids Bob version of everything. I want to have a kid's both wedding. They'd sponsor it. I mean, Bro, what if my wedding if I had like Celsius, get them as a sponsor. I hate you because this is literally my idea, what to get Celsius to sponsor my wedding. Not Celsius, but I told you this. At my wedding, pretty shot it down so hard to try to get bang energy drinks. So I was gonna get sponsors for my wedding. I was gonna, literally I said. I was like. I was like, I'll get sponsors and don't have like title sponsors. They could get big chest, like we'll sew it on my suits. I wanted to know the arm. I got an email from a streaming company that was like, sell tickets to your wedding, like they and I emailed back and I said, this is the grossest thing I've ever seen in my life. Who would do this, sell live stream tickets to my wedding? I mean the Queen? UH, the Queen? All Right? So uh here's the thing about Tash Com and this was Alex wrote it down. I was waiting, I was waiting at the corner of my eye. I was like, he's gonna write it down. Our lawyer told us to say, we have nothing to do with it and hasn't happened. Please help me find the death threats I sent to her, though, oh no, I just said her like two emails that say to you, Miss Diana the Queen Gmail Dot Com. She didn't get it my emails Queen Elizabeth. She emailed Queen Elizabeth, the Queen, Queen, Queen Lizzie. That's terrible. So the thing about dash con and the people who were running dash con is they had literally zero experiences. How many signed up? You're saying like a bunch of kids signed up. How many volunteers they have signed up? I don't know an exact number. I asked. I would estimate a couple of dozen just based on the stories. Um Uh, but yeah, these people they had no experience running conferences. Um The experience we do not that they had. Well I shouldn't say, do know the experience that is rumored that they had. Um Is Roxanne just graduated from High School. That's her experience. Uh. Meg and Kane had been working like minimum wage jobs. Meg Actually UH, applied for bankruptcy like three years before this. Um, so a lot of probably good experience with handling major events like this. Ah Uh. So the deal that they had arranged with UH everybody was payment after the event, and I know how that goes. And so because they genuinely anticipated, based on Internet, seven thousand people and a ticket. Yeah, so, I mean it was you know, they're looking at three and what they arranged with the hotel. The hotel was like, no, we're not going to do that. But what they got a a verbal agreement with the hotel Um to do a UM basically like a payment every hour as the conferdence went on, so that way, as more people were checking in, they'd have more cash to give hotel Um. And part of the deal with the hotel was, hey, we're giving we're bringing in seven thousand guests, so we're basically filling your hotel for the weekend, and so is there a way we can get it give everyone off everyone a discount of the rooms, and the hotel was like sure, yeah, yeah, Um. And so all these arrangements were made. The conference begins and day one, everyone shows up um at like five o'clock in the evening on Friday. The first events were supposed to happen that night, Um, and everyone just kind of stood around for a few hours. Everyone how many people showed up? Oh about okay, which you know, not terrible, not not terrible, but when you're expecting seven thousand, yeah, everyone's kind of stowed around. Yeah, because there wasn't a thing to do. This is a lot like I did an event like this in two thousand seventeen. Um where I booked it. It was a winter conference, three day winter conference. Yeah. Uh. He booked lacre and for King and country, so he was gonna do an arena, you know. Uh, and so all these youth groups started buying tickets and then uh, it ended up being it was in San Antonio at the Weirdest Hotel I've ever been to my entire life, in their weird conference room, a conference room with a low ceiling. Right. Obviously lucre and for King country had backed out at this point, and there ended up being three fifty people there and there was me, there was brock Gil who was a Christian illusionist who was pretty big in two thousand seven, and then being in Bailey, who is like Cheesy Dad Comedians who are pretty decent for adult crowds, horrible for youth audiences. And then the speaker didn't get paid. I don't think he spoke the whole sessions. And then they had a weird wolt international guy who came out and was like sponsored kids, but it's like it's like youth groups, and so these kids were expecting lacree and for King and country. Food was terrible. It really was. The it was the holy firefest holy fireft. It was terrible. That is really rough. You hate to see it. Um, I don't think I got paid for that. Oh I did get paid for that, but I got paid two thirds of what I was supposed to get played. He was like, he was like, Hey, I'll pay you this amount, which was not a lot. And then that that, you know, the night after the second day he was like, Hey, you know, like can I can I give you this now and I'll give you this later. And I don't think I ever got the thing later. I don't know what that guy's doing now, but probably not that. Yeah. So yeah, kind of a similar situation. They at least were in the same venue they planned, Um, but uh, seven show up. They didn't have a plan for what they were going to do in the beginning of this event until like eight o'clock. So everyone's just kind of here and there, just like what do we do now, and just kind of like hanging around this conference room, and so people are sitting in there for hours. Meanwhile, one of the managers of the Brank Bank Bank hotel, bake manager was there. The hotel manager, there's not seven thousand people here. Well, the hotel manager pulls aside their admin. Who was this now sixteen year old girl who, by the way, this is a really weird side to this story. Um Uh no, she's seventeen at this point. Um. She actually graduated early because she was able to claim credits for her work on Dash Kn uh as like like job experience type stuff. Apparently you can do I didn't know those an options. So she graduated early for this, which in Chester they will probably like, you know, we see what you did, and like that was really bad. Yeah, you did not pass. So the manager of this hotel of this convention center holds the seventeen year old admin aside it was poor high schooler and says, Hey, you guys are us seventeen thousand dollars and she's like what and he's like, you guys always sear. The contract was you pay seventeen up front so that way you can get this block rate and use the convention center the room that you're using. And then she goes, she goes, I have thirteen dollars in a big macket. Well, she says, she says, I thought they arranged with you to do like this payment terms and he was like, no, they didn't. She he was like, look at the contract, like you o Seventeen Tho up front and so then she breaks down and they're like, they're like, your your whole. You have until ten PM tonight to come up with the money or were kicking everybody out. And people have traveled for this. There are people who came from Australia for this, which is absurd Um. And so she goes back to the team and they say, well, Hey, figuring out. Yeah, they tell her, hey figure out se so her and roxand the seventeen year old in the nineteen year old, they're like, okay, guys, listen, we need a lot of money from all of you. They said. They put a thing up on the website and on Tumblr and they posted it and basically, they said, Hey, uh, the hotel decided they don't like us. They want to kick us out unless we give them seventeen thousand dollars. The hotel decided they don't. What did it actually say? That's exactly what they said. No, did not. That's not word for war. But the premise was they don't. You've been informed by the hotel that they don't like our crowd and they us to go or unless we give them put this donate button up on the website. Guys, I showed up here and they were like, we don't like you. All right. Here's the thing. I booked this hotel room. I showed up, didn't pay for it yet, right, and when they were like you have a card for incidentals, I was like, why don't you like me? And they were like, well, you gotta pay for the room. You don't like me. I'M gonna blast you on the Internet, like can you believe that this hotel doesn't like me? This persecution? Okay, and I'M gonna put a donate on my website. In you do, you should see the yelper view. I'M gonna leave. Wow, you don't like me. I don't like you either, what they don't like our crowd, so tumbler because there's a bunch of they don't like our rout and they're charging us all inconvenience fee for having to put up with these weird kids, which also makes sense that yeah, they do suck. I agree with this. So they put the bust up on Tumbler and there's all these people who wanted to go but like didn't and they're like, oh no, the hotel doesn't like our friends at Dash Con, and so they do. So they donated and then they went. They gathered everybody in the main conference hall and this teenager goes up on stage to say, Hey, so we've just been informed that unless we can raise seventeen thousand dollars to give to the hotel, they're going to kick us out because they don't like any of us. And some adults in the crowd were like, that's extortion. They can't do that. Uh, and she was like, I have this paper bag. Well that's extortion, they can't do that. And you're like, where are you from? Like I traveled to be here, actually, dude, no, no, no, no, tumbler adults pretend to be from somewhere. Yeah, that's pretty fair. Yeah, they're from just like four minutes. They can't do that. You're like, what do you hey, thank you again for listening to this episode. Making sure that you don't miss one in the future. Go ahead and subscribe to this podcast, whether that be on apple podcasts, spotify youtube. You'll get it alert when we drop a new episode. And if you want more, if you want something a week early, you want to be part of our discord more access to us as creators. You can support this show on patreon. It helps us go a long way. Nothing that we're doing is possible without our patreon supporters. If you want more information about that, please text tilling to six six eight six six. Thank you so much for being here. Dude, that's you. You Hunter knew a kid in your high school who thought their accent was good. Yeah, like they thought. They're like I go places and people ask me where I'm from. I talked to servers like this, Goly Dude, I'm so afraid of having a weird kid like that. They're like, we go out to dinner and I'm like, yeah, you know, we just want this and this and then whatever and rigging orders her stuff and then our kid is just like haddy chicken strips. Then they look at us and I'm like, yeah, that's our foreign exchange student who is I don't know, definitely looks just like us. But you know, we wanted it that way. We got to shoot, here's a picture for me, find a kid in your country. It didn't even sign up for the program. I'll take a foreign exchange, but I'm not gonna ruin my Christmas pictures over it. All right. They're locking around the wall with the polaroid of you, like, looking at kids, and they're like, Hey, you want to make seven fifty seven? Even it makes seven dollars seven? All Right? Then stupid. So the adults are like, well hold on, yeah, they're like that. And she's like, I'm missing prom for this, you know or whatever. Her seventeen year old self says. Uh. But the crowd bands together and they all start donating. I'd be so annoyed. And Kane comes out. He takes the bag. It was literally a paperback. He takes the bag and he looks in the bag and uh, he says, we did it. We beat him, and like the crowd just abrupts. Everybody's cheering, like they start singing we are the champions. Um. Honestly, the vibe in this room during this whole event here, I need to show you a picture. This is probably my favorite part of this whole conference. Someone in solidarity before they figured out that they were going to raise enough money, uh to fight back against the Mean Hotel Hotel manager, Dude, hold on Wa wait wait, hold on it, can I do it real quick thing? Yeah? Bank of America says, I owe thirteen thousand dollars on my Honda Civic. And I think that that's they don't like me. They just don't like and can you believe that it's absurd? Would you please donate? We can do this, we can fight back against the man. Yeah. You can't let them belittle you. You can't let it. I mean, is it extortion? I don't know, but listen, Bank of America's bullying me right now. They're like, well, you agreed to pay it, and I'm like, well, I thought Joey B was gonna do that, you know, and so I elected a president that would make me not pay for anything, and here we are, like America still be jerks about it. Yeah, so donate now, donate today, donate now, don't send you holy water. This is the K love pledge drive, and the pledge goes to paying off my vehicle. Um. So in this room, I don't know who does it, who starts this, but someone in solidarity to the moment and to fight back against the man in the situation. I'll show that holiday in manager, they're like counting the money. He's just laying in the old Bernie's dead four rooms please. I know, someone does the hunger games thing and everybody joins, and you just have this whole conference room full of kids doing the hunger games little whistle. Look that blue dress there, you know I'm talking about like the Tumbler kids of the boots on the girl next to her, yeah, it's yeah. So they all do the like they get on stage like we gotta get seventeen thousand dollars to pay off our debts, and someone goes exactly, and the guy's up there like he's going to pay her bag and he's like that's great, but we still did seventeen thousand dollars and they go, Um. And so I watched I watched a story or a video from the admin girl and she said that, uh, do we have a picture of the admin girl. She look like what I think she looks like probably yeah, Um. And so she said that Um Kane, when he got that bag, he didn't count it. Uh, he just said we did it. We beat them. And then she said after the fact she counted that, and she said they brought in about three thousand dollars and she said the website brought him maybe fift and so it wasn't even close. And so what she things happen is later that night everybody went back to the rooms and was locked out of their rooms. And so what they did is they negotiated with the hotel and said, okay, get rid of the block, right, Um, all of the rooms that we comped for, all of our panel speakers, all of our volunteers, all of our talent, all of our vendors, get rid of the camp. Make them pay for the room. But they didn't notify it. And so all these people had a room with all their stuff in it, and they got locked out because the old keycards. Because the managers were like, Hey, here's three grand, how do we make up the other fourteen? And he didn't even care. He hands a bag of CRUMB, this should be enough. Take that Brian, you should have you should have allowed to because one of them said, uh that when they had that bag with three grand, they're like, this is more money than I've ever handled in my life, and it's like, Oh yeah, they are not qualified to run this conference, and so they gave that three grand shut down everybody's room. Um, and then from this point on it was just dumpster fire after dumpster fire after dumpster fire of Um the uh the band dropped out. The band was like, Oh, yeah, you're never gonna pay us, so we're not Um. The pop ball podcast, steamboat orchestra or whatever they were called. You know, they were at least good business people. Both the podcast dropped out, and then what happened on Saturday is all the vendors started leaving because they realized, Oh, all these guests spent all their money on that donation yesterday. They keep this event open, we're not making any money. And so as the vendors started pulling out, it became this snowball effect because the more vendors that left, the less interest. There wasn't going down where they were selling anything, and so nobody was selling anything. All the artists, all the vendors started pulling out until eventually this conference ended up having like four panels the whole event, and the panels that they did have they had tables that weren't long enough for all the panelists. They forgot to get chairs for some of the panelists, and like just absolute insanity, to the point where the last panel there was like thirteen people in the audience. Two days before the thing, they were like, let's do a podcast table. Yeah, pretty much. Um. But probably the best part about the story is after Um the big PODCAST UH canceled what we they're called, Um the welcome to Night Vale. That was like kind of the big everybody wanted to see them, so they came in at the panel room where that was supposed to happen. They're waiting for an hour and a half. Nobody shows up until eventually the organizers come out and they say, Hey, they go guys, the podcast host decided they don't like us, and it's probably because you're weird, and it's definitely your fault and you should probably go home and think about what you've done. What you've done, and they said that, uh, we owe them seventeen dollars to so you dig deep in your pockets step. That's just the amount of two lattes for each of you. So have you buy two lattes a week? You as? Uh? So No, they the lady comes out. This was Roxanne. At this point, there was some internal strife between Roxanne and Kane and meg because can and they had done basically think they weren't saying solidarity thing like these hold hands and they go, you have to weather the stones is going to work. Cane and meg had done basically nothing for this event. Roxanne like months before, I was like, okay, these people aren't doing anything. So she kind of just stepped at the plate and tried to pull it off. But she's nineteen. She doesn't know what she's doing. Yeah, and so uh and it got so bad to where cane and meg or Canan Meg and this is this is kind of a rabbit trail with this funny can and Meg. They before the event, they they planned on paying for everything after the event, after everybody paid them, which is never gonna work. And so what they did is they went and they got a lawyer, and the lawyer dropped them because he's like, you're not paying me, and so then they went and you're trying to get out of paying other people. Okay, I hear what you're trying to do. And for that reason, I uh yeah. So the lawyer dropped them. And so what they did is they like for things. Their privacy policy on the website is an exact copy of legal legends privacy policy. What it's a word for words? What stuff like that is happening. And so the day of the event, the day of the day, the day it was supposed to start, meg and kine show up to the event with a document and they started pressuring Roxanne to sign it. And what it was was this poorly word worded legal agreement that pushed her out of the company and made her the secretary. And she was like, I'm not gonna sign that, and they got real mad that she wanted to sign it because they were like, don't read it, just sign it. Like, is it just something no that's gonna put all on me right, well, no, it's they were trying to kick her out of it so she couldn't get any money because she was a part owner. Kane actually wasn't in a y. It was Megan and Roxanne at first. Kane was meg's boyfriend and said they tried to push her out and have kane take her spot as an owner. Um. And she was like no. And so then they were super distant. They weren't involved in much until the money was happening, and then they would show up when the money was happening and disappear again. Um. And so Roxanne comes out to this, to this crowd that's expecting to watch the welcome to night veil like live session or whatever, with two hidets. She's like, hey kids, hey man, what's up? Oh? Nothing much? Can we get puppets of us? Puppets of yourself? Probably decent bit to get puppets, not much, but to get puppets of yourself. There is a place in town that does that. I'm looking to the way you ended that sentence was there is a place in town that doesn't. I've looked into it. Okay, no, no, so Roxy Meg, and you know know why did you look into it? For you? And No? I was a kid's past you. Counseling's like, what if you guys spoke to each other with puppets instead speak for you? I feel he has a life size puppet. He's a puppet. Your counselor is brief, he's laid down in the couch and he's like rustled his couch. He reaches up in this puppet so we can't see him but his feet. This is what connects with people. And he's like, but he noticed that people can't really hear well, so he cut a mouth hole out of the couch and to see his mouth. So I hit my mouth really hard with the MIC. Just now, I'm not bleeding. We're fine. So you're saying that he cut a hole where his mouth is so you can see his mouth moving in the couch. But it's like by the puppets feet. Understand that he's in the chair. Yeah, I understand that he has built a custom puppets puppet puppet couch. That's great. Uh So don't you want the puppets to look like at your church? Well No, I was going to get just puppets in general for an event. And then I was like, I like toward the facility and they're like, yeah, we can do custom stuff, and I was like, I need to file that away. You do need to file that away. I know exactly where it is. Um. So there's a puppet tier, a puppet tier on Patreon, pay fire puppets a puppet tier. Yeah, I got it. That was good. It was good. It was clever. I laughed. Okay. So Roxanne, uh, she comes out, and she was like, where are you going? He said, if you're listening, jared's just crawled under the table and stuck his hand up to the MIC. Can you say something? Yeah, such a dumb bit, yeah, pull the MIC down. So anyway, all right, so rock she walks out this crowd of people who's been waiting for like an hour and a half of this yeah, and they she comes out. She says, Um, so, I'm sorry to tell you guys this, but Night Vale just dropped. Uh. And she said, I know, it's really sad. She said, I've been sighing backstage a lot about this, sighing. Yes. So she's I've been backstage, guys. I've I've done all I can. I've walked around back there. Just it's just a really funny bit. Dude, I thought you were gonna Fizzy sit down there. So she says, she says, I think it would be appropriate if we all just side together to get it out. And she said on three one three, no, this is serious. Is One to three, and most of the crowd joins her, and they're all just like Ah, and one guy is like, I want my money back. In this room full of people just side this is a joke though this is isn't this suck? It looks like a moment and just sigh and they all went, I can't do the whistle. I was gonna do that with you. Um Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what happened. So then she says, to make it up to you, because I know this is a pretty big inconvenience, we're gonna give we're gonna give you ten of your hotel room, she said. She said, uh, we're gonna give you. I think they did, say, like a five percent refund for the value of whatever this part of the event was going to be. And an extra hour in the ball pit, which is a part of this event I haven't told you about yet. One of the biggest dreams for this event. From the very beginning, this admin who was fifteen dreamed about a giant ball pit, like a giant conference hall size ball pit, and it was one of the main attractions. Everyone was so excited for the ball pit. Well Day of the event. Wrong, I'm not making any noise because my mouth is just my jaws on the floor right now. Day of the event, the company that they rented, giant, showed up and they're all right, we got this ball pitture and they were like, yeah, we'll pay you after. And they're like, no, you gotta pass before. And they're like, what, we'll pay you after. They're like, well, if you're gonna pass after, we've got a different ball pit for you. And so this was the ball pit for this event. For those listening, it looks like a life raft like it in it's in a gigantic room. It was so bad that the event actually went and they rented another bounce house to put in the room. There are kids in the ball pit still. That's what's amazing that they still used it. Yeah, and she's wearing what is going on with this picture. The thing about this is that Haley Williams. The thing about this is there wasn't a time limit on the ball pit. She said, an extra hour. Look at someone. It's a cardboard cut out that they put in there. Shut up, yeah, that's a cardboard cut out they put up in there. No it's not, yeah it is. That's a cardboard cut out. No it's not. It is it is a cardboard cut out they put up in there, UM and so. And the thing is, there wasn't a time that cat years that makes sense. It wasn't like you had to go like rent time and you got an hour in it, like she said, you have an extra hour. It's like, well, yeah it is. What do you mean with an extra hour? We have unlimited hours in there? Until you guys take it away, like what are you talking about? But it's it. It looks like and this is not a joke. It's like the size of my inflatable hot it really is that amazing. And so the event ends, they had like four or five different panels. Um, we're going to sigh in the ball pit if you want to sigh in the proof side, which is also what Kansas City we did as a city after the super bowl loss. Was Patrick Mahomes came back. was like, guys, that was a big bomber. Well gathered in their own headed side the loudest signed history. I mean for a sigh, I mean not a lot of deciples, but for a side, it sounded like a real strong wind, you know, just like a people walking by were like, well that was quite the gust. I heard that gust yeah, so to the event ended. Um. Afterwards, uh, Meg had the audacity to put up an article on the website about how none of it was really her fault, but she apologized anyways, and actually everyone who came it turned out didn't like us. And she said, and this was on July eighth, she posted this, and she said, if you want to refund, you haven't till to claim your refund. In the middle of the event, they did go and change too that there was uh no refunds for cancelations of talent and a thing like League of legends is not responsible for responsible for uh yeah, so uh and then uh, rumors after the event say that Meg uh just went and got another job. Roxane apparently is pretty successful, UM, which I don't know if that's true. Apparently low ki or Kane uh he got arrested for shoplifting out of Walmart. And so yeah, they did promise to do it again the next year, and then that didn't happen. They started because everyone was like, no, we're not going to come to that. They fart of the seventeen year old girl they put together in a moticon that was supposed to happen the next year. Um, and it was the same. It was Megan Kane together. Um what happened to the thing that never happened? She just went on with her life. She went to college, Um, got a job, she went to trump university, and she fell for scheme after scheme after scheme for as long as she's currently an airborne salesman. But she uh. But Um, some people say that this was the shifted tumbler that made everyone better because during that whole thing, tumbler was a part of it, and they were just making fun of it like crazy and like memes of that. UH, like one next hour in the ball pit became like a huge me with the picture and it would say, what do you think that Z? It could have I doubt it, but it could have. It could be a contributing factor. Um, that just made him really negative. So would you say, this is Gen z's Pearl Harbor right down? It's funny. Oh my God, sneak that in there. Well, mom looks like I'm going to war. That's what I'm saying though, is that like Pearl Harbor changed the you know, the greatest generation whatever. That's hilarious. So yeah, it was a massive disaster. Everything fell apart in the end. Um. Very few people actually got a refund. No one really knows what they did with the money, a bunch of people trying to I think that they I think they maxed out and paid everyone that they could. Well what it does sound like there is a rumor that to cover some of that cost whenever the hotel was coming after them, that they they had all their volunteers Max other credit cards to pay for it. Because these people that have credit. Um, so it is just a disaster all around. Um, but made for some funny content. Imagine that some of those kids that Max other credit card are like making monthly payments on that still. Yeah, and they're like, yeah, it's like, freaking I got a lot of old navy points once I got some sweet jeans out of desk. You gotta Spencer's Gifts Credit Card that you're freaking charging. I don't know, Work Tumbler kids shop. Um. Yeah. So anyways, at the end of the event, they said, hey, we need a good way to wrap this up. Uh so what if we hire a puppeteer, a very talented puppeteer from Kansas City before we leave. I think we should all, I'm in backstage signing a lot. MM HMM. Everyone gets one hour and forever allowed. Two things that the last night is a production of space tim media, produced by Christian Taylor, audio by Alice Garnett, video by Connor Betts, our graphics and our logo by Kleb Goldberg, and our social media is run by Kayla Barker. Our host are jereed meyers and Tim Stone fallow. US on your favorite social media platform at tilling PODCAST IS T I L L and podcast. Remember to tell all your friends about us and we'll see you next to day for another episode of things I have bearned last night. m

Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Hey Man, oh, nothing much. Oh, let the much. I don't know how to respond when you do it, unless I say okay, well, Hey man, all right about have you ever heard of, uh, the Isabel Stewart Gardner museums theft? The Isabel Stewart Gardener Museum theft. Yeah, we could refer to it as a shortened name, the Gardener Museum theft. Okay, because that is a mouthful. I thought you were gonna be like the bell start, just take off the s. We canna go by the shorter version, named the Bello Stewey, just short every the Bella Stewey Guardi Muse Um. Okay. So is it a museum about gardeners? It's lows. It's lows, it's still, it's lows. Yeah, imagine walking into a lous and the employees are like, welcome to our exhibit. But they don't talk that loud, though. No one of museums talks about enough for you to understand word they're saying. I don't understand welcome, like. What do you think the paintings are gonna be like in here? I can't be beautiful EXEC that's how I feel around my neighbors, though, when I'm son tanning outside. I saw you know, when I'm out there, like, I can't be beautiful with as much noise around. You know, everyone shut up so I can be pretty. Why do you gonna be quiet? Museums and libraries, people are at least reading. Libraries make sense. People are reading museums. Museums and people are just looking at stuff, like. Yeah, it would make more sense if you had to try to not be seen by anybody. Like I just creep around museums and if you got spotted, he shot on the spot due to the museum. Remember. So season you die. No Tim I was way too loud. Welcome to the museum. Remember. If somebody sees you, you die and you're like I just heard like ten people say that. Where are they quit looking around. They're doing it right. Can you play the theme song, but play it real quiet. The Uber drives like so you can't duct tape your head in my car. Dude, if I was uber driving and somebody trying to get in my car looking like that, as long as I'm here, it's mine. I want my cut of the crime. gave all these todd they have a lot of it hitting everybody. Yeah, things last night. So the Bella Stewie Gardner Museum theft? Uh So, this is where is the is the Gardner Museum? Yeah, okay, Isabella Stewart, Isabella Gartner Museum. That's the that's the Isabel Stewart Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as a museum in Boston Massachusetts. Sure. Uh. So this was a heist on. I thought you were gonna say Boston market. It's a museum inside the Boston market. Would you guys like a new corn bread? Goodbye, that figure shot. That's a weird museum. This is good. So far, so, except for my brother got shot. If he could leave a review, he'd probably give it, but he can't leave a review. So this is the largest art heist in modern history. This is an art museum. If, yeah, you're the heist happen? Um, it is, thirty years on, still unsolved. Okay, so the arts stolen in this heist? Um, the pieces. Yeah, I mean, I know that you're uneducated, but that's fine. Yeah, so the arts stolen in this heist at the time, our value that two million dollars in the nineties. Yeah, today, Um, detectives. Detectives and art enthusiasts, uh, say that they think they would estimate it to be worth around seven million today. Hey, you're really close. Yeah, I know are. I own like several pieces in art. Name in art, Name and art, Name and art. Okay, I don't actually treat art that way, you know. I let it tell me what its name is, and that's how I've accrued over one point three billion dollars in art, people, three billion dollars in in an pieces. You know, asked me if I can name an art. Can you name an art? Finger painting, Arthur Reid. Yes, I hate you. Keep whatever. What do you think? So what do you think? Do you okay, I'm not wearing a watch. I keep feeling how naked my wrist is, but yeah, man, put some clothes on. Yeah, I know, it's just what those things where my arm feels super light? From the listeners. He says he feels naked because he's not wearing to watch. He's also also complete leave naked. It is really hot the office. Yeah, we can't post the video of this episode. You know, youtube bone allow it. Okay, so this heist up and that's art. That's what I'm saying. You know, it's doing this. Our podcast is okay. So here's he's a little bit of background. We gotta lay a foundation. Isabelle Stewart Gardner. She was a woman alive in the eight hundreds. She was art enthusiast. I don't know why this is so hard for me to not laugh while saying this, because she was dead. People make you giggle that people are funny, man. Okay, that's not all right. Is the Stewart? She she she was a famous art collector in the eighteen hundreds and she opened up an art museum in nineteen o three to show off her art. Right. No, it was her collections, her collection of art. She doesn't do art. Yeah, she's not an artist. She would never go somewhere and say let's do art, she would say. She would go somewhere and say thanks for doing art, for me to see art. That's all, and that's a good one. Uh So, uh. She opened up this museum in nineteen o three, this curated collection. She had spent her whole life curating Um, and then she died a little while after that and she left three point nine million dollars, or three point six million dollars, and that that day to curate and continue to operate her, her museum, which ran out of what was her home, and so this is like a historic building in Boston. Um. But again, I wish that I was rich enough in my part would be. What if I had one point three billion dollars of art in my apartment in my Kansas City two bedroom, not the best apartment, you know. Yeah, that's pretty hilarious. Um, okay. So, so how much is like the Mona Lisa? Worth a lot. Oh yeah, but I'm wondering what's the dollar amount on it right now? Let's see, Lisa Vallewo. Could somebody buy it? In theory, I mean I don't think that. You know who owns it. Who owns? So current estimate is fifty three million at the three point seven million dollars. I would imagine it's worth more than that. But I mean, like, let's say that in in nineteen two it was assessed at one hundred million. So this is conflicting. The current assessments conflicts the painting. Who Owns Leonardo de Vin diesel's? Who Owns Mona Lisa? He didn't laugh, but that was a good one. Yeah, I don't recognize this guy. I'M gonna put this picture on the street. I don't know, I don't want to see. Okay, we could move one. So okay, but stop. He actually owns the N F T version. That's what I was trying to I was gonna make a joke about Da Vinci's n F T. I think Bluuve owns it. Okay, yeah, I was acquired by King Francis, who he died and you know, like three years ago. Um, and now the French Republic owns which is kind of dumb. Like. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like there are certain pieces that are like that's got to be owned by a government. You know, French Republic debt. I'm just curious if they could get out of debt by selling. Hi, Dave, how are you better than I deserve? What can I help you with that? We're trying to get out of a little bit of debt situation currently, where three million dollars in debt. Um, oh, but there was something like that. We're trying to get that out of a little bit of debt situation and currently million dollars in debt. But we have the Mona Lisa. Well, I think you should sell that Mona Lisa. UH, that's part of Abe's deep number one. It's actually with three. I did not notice till the very end what that bit was. I just thought you didn't get it at better than I deserve. Yeah, I just assumed they were calling some dude from the US, somebody from the US, to be like we are wondering about some financial advice, and you were like, all right, he's just gonna do some dude from the US. I got a call from the French last week and they asked me how to do text. Would you like to buy? They're trying to sell it through cold calls right now. They're like, Hey, we had this half sling shot. Would you like to purchase it? All Right, okay. So this museum. Yeah, she set it up and she she left it to run it, but there was some strict stipulations. It was one of no renovations of the building. Keep it the same. It's my house. Don't change it to too, don't buy art, don't sell art, don't move art, leave everything exactly how it is. If any if you don't follow an you my rules. Yeah, what do you do? Like what? She can't stop me. Yeah, she's like, I'll take the money away and I'll take your soul. Yeah. So, yeah, so it's pretty strict stipulations on. So she's definitely haunting whoever stole this stuff. We'll get there. So in the eighties, this museum had been operating for eight years. is running out of money. Um. Well, yeah, so they've got three point six million dollars that they've just kind of had on operating expenses. I don't know where their finances right at the time, but they upgraded their security system and so what they said was they installed a bunch of cameras to the outside of of the facility and some motion sensors on the inside and then created like a police switch where they could call the police when at the touch of a button, you know, Um, kind of like McDonald's. Um. But eight after they had installed all this stuff, um, that they had like an independent security revere. You or show up. It's like a consultant. Okay, yeah, it okay, uh. And so he came and he said your security is really bad. It was. It was. It was that discovery. It's the staples easy button. It's like, whoever sold this? Do you scammed you? And like yeah, it was this company called staple. You get scammed. So, uh, it was that discoverych other show. It takes a thief, remember that show? Oh, and they try to break in its people's they do break in, they steal all your stuff and then they give it back and then they set up your house security, but they don't fix your broken doors. Um. And so, uh, it was basically that, but without the show part. So it's just kind of like this is uncomfortable. Um. So this guy broke into the museum and told them all the stuff that they did wrong. Um, and he had a couple of big notes, he said. One he said, you've got all these cameras outside. You got all these cameras outside, no cameras on the inside. He's like, so, if I can get inside, I'm pretty much home free until I gotta leave, until I have to walk out all this art, I mean inside, inside, I could do whatever, whatever I want. Yeah, but you just need to get cameras inside. That's what he said. I'm gonna tell you what, though, if that guy hadn't carried it all out the front door, we wouldn't even he wouldn't have got caught, you know, if he would have held onto it and he would have lived the rest of his game inside, if he would have the rest of his life. You just walk around museum every night. So do you work here kind of like that? Yeah, you can't see me on the camera, so I guess what you could call what I do work. It is a labor of love. You see all this, it's mine. I'm the captain. Now you're like, okay, I stole all the art in here. Know you did. It's still here. Yeah, but I stole it. Yeah, but I'm still here. It's like it's slave here. It's fine, okay, quiet down or you're gonna get shot because I'm here. It's fine, keep your voice down. This is so stupid. So and then he said. He said, okay, you've got no cameras in the inside, only on the outside. Get some cameras on the inside. Then he said here's another big problem. Um, there's only one place in the whole facility where you've got a police button. You need to have these police buttons all over the place, because what happens if your security guard isn't in the security booth to push the police button and he needs to push the police button button and near it gets some more police buttons. Uh. And then and then he said okay. Also, a lot of other art museums at the day, or just museums in general at the day, they had this policy which one hour every night they turn all the cameras off and all the police buttons off and they just let it be. Let's see what happens if you do that. They do this. Every museum does this. I'm a so this guy tells him what all these the museums do is every hour overnight, the security at museums will call the police and say, Hey, we're okay, and then every hour, every hour. Dude, I would hate to be the nine one one operator near a museum. You're like hey, now, moment, wants your emergency. Oh, this is just the museum. There's no no one. What is your emergency? Hey, this is just the museum, just calling to say everything's good. How are you okay? Can you please keep your voice down? Sorry, this is the museum. Just call it us. Everything is good. I'm fine. Thanks. Sorry. Listen, I told you, we can only I just need a update on how the museum is going. We can't keep doing this. Okay, but I just I broke things off two weeks ago. You have to quit calling. Yeah, but I have to. I know it's part of your job, but we can call, you can tell me how things are and then we have to hang on. I don't understand why we can't be friends. I just want to see you again. You know the rules. We're not allowed to see anybody. Click. I don't know. I like the idea of them, because they got to talk every hour. There's how to be romance. Oh sorry, Um, are you not operator? Um, UM, nine one one. Uh. Why? Why do you've got a relationship, you're broken up and you refer to them as nine one one. You gotta keep it appropriate. Um, okay, nine one one. I would just I would really appreciate it if next time I whispered you wis back. I wasn't worth it. Okay, so he said, he said, unless her name is Alexa, unless the nine on one operator's name is Alexa. Al Right, so he's saying call cops every hour on the hour. Yeah, he said you should do that, because then if they didn't call in the hour, then the police something's up. Let's go check it out. Is that a real thing? Museums do? I don't know if they do that anymore. I'm sure by now there's some technology that just does it for them. Um, there's a there's a room that calls every hour. I'm curious about that. That's interesting. So he recommended that they do that as well. Um, and then he said he's also another thing that a lot of uh museums do is they've installed turrets all in every room. She didn't. They didn't say that. But he gave all this advice, told them all the stuff that they should do and they just said yeah, they said that sounds like a lot of work. Yeah, they said, that's that's a lot of money. We've got the cameras outside. He's what they said. They said. They said one, that's a lot of money and we only have three points six million dollars too. They said, uh, uh, uh, Isabelle, she told us not to do any renovations and she's pretty scary. So No. So they just didn't. So they said no to everything. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you like this podcast you wanted more of it, please leave a review. That's super helpful to let others know who are searching for a podcast. And if you're new around here, we've been doing this for several years and there's plenty of episodes to check out. One of my personal favorites is agent Garbo, is a guy who went to the government during World War Two and was like hey, let me be a double agent and they were like no, and then he was like well, I'm gonna and so he kind of went off on his own did the thing, and it's also got some crazy details about world war two, about how the US used inflatable tanks to trick Germany, all kinds of fun stuff. But if you want to go check that out, you can. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. They didn't do anything, uh, they just left it how it was and they said Hey, thanks for the review, and so that guy left in two years later. It's like families who go to counseling and they're like yeah, we do are a lot of problems. Yeah, you're right, hey, here's some solutions. You guys just start Tom that's okay. It's just good to be aware. I don't know. Yeah, we just really want to know what's happening and then, Um, yeah, and that way we're on the front new front yard in the news. We can be like, you know, we always we knew why she didn't know. You know, we understood, we went to counseling, we did our our due diligence and so we know. Um, anyways, uh, two years later, uh, March Eighteenth, security guard Rick Abbeth, aged twenty three. Um, was also they shouldn't let young people be security guards, you know. Yeah, that was actually another thing that this reviewer said. He said, well here, because has let babies secure the villain, that there's no way they don't do anything right. gave all these todd they have a lot of it, everybody. Yeah, burglar or not. You know, that's why they thought they'd be go at the job. And it's like, well, you know, you need to descritch. Child Labor. Laws were different when Izzy stew was alive, you know, but she left the stipulation in her will that babies have to secure the building. Babies. Only she had some weird thing where she always pronounced a baby lawn and she thought that a powerful nation in the biblical times was baby lawn. You know, incredible. She wasn't Sparta. Yeah, anyways, so the Rick Abbath was on security and yeah, and he after the fact, he told the news that he was not excited to work that day because Um, he was hungover from, uh, the night before, which was Patty's St Patrick say, I was going to say that. Yeah. So, UM, he was really upset that he had to work that day, um, the overnight shift. Uh. So he had the whole day to rest, but I don't know. anyways, and so he came and worked the overnight shift, like he came in the night of the eighteenth. Yeah, so he drank all slept, had all day. It was like so hungover. And you know what, that's what I get mad at when people are like kids these days. You know, it's like no, no, no, no, kids all days, kids, kids at any time. I have never wanted to do with job. So he he clocks in for his security being. Um, yeah, and he is. He's a the nighttime security guard with a new ninetime security guard. He had this guard had security there before, but just not at night. This is his first night shift. His name was Randy Hesstand. His age M Oh, I was I was saying this the second gup, but that the reviewer are. One of the things he said was, hey, we need you need to pay your security guards more, so that way you could attract better security guards because they were paying just a touch over minimum wage. They said if you pay your security guards a little better, you get security guards that are good better. Um, and these guys don't know how to use a taser like that's bad advice. Don't bring up that up to me right now. Did you know? We hit a hundred patrons on Patreon? And Uh, that means I'M gonna pay a minimum wage twenty three year old to taste him. It's not gonna be now, it's not gonna be good, but you're gonna get tasted. Jared's been hanging around them all and been like, Hey, want to make seven fifties, seven just at the Independence Mall too dude. So hand around, lurking around, just behind forever, twenty one, and just like hey, you want to make seven dollars and fifty seven cents. No, it'll only be an hour. Yeah, yeah, you to commute to our office. You also have to provide a Taser and then just taste the guy. Yeah, what I've been doing at him all we could have been sending him Amazon tasers. They're pretty good. Yeah, if you don't know, if you just started listening recently about I don't know, what like three seasons ago before my brain was fully developed. Yeah, we made this plan, made this joke, this joke that I would get tasted if we had a hundred patients, at which time we would at the time, there was never a possibility of hitting a hundred. Yeah, we just didn't think we were ever going to get there. Yeah, and I don't know if you can hear in the background of this episode, we're currently building a vault Um to store my art and also to taste him. We're gonna taste me that they're gonna lock me then. Yeah, so I'm really sad about that, getting taste. So, and we're going to hire these people who do it. So the reviewer said pay more, pay, pay your security guards more, because your security guards are bad. And then he said they were bad like they just didn't catch him or what. Well, he didn't go rob the place. That was a joke, but he thought he said that your security guards are minimum wage security guards. You pay more, YOU'RE gonna get hired more qualified security guards, maybe someone who was like a Navy sealer or something, and they're like no, I'm gonna do security, someone who's just passionate about protecting art. Yeah, you never know. Uh. So, anyways. But instead they got a guy who shows up the day after St Patty's, almost twenty four hours after partying on St Patty's, and is complaining about plenty of a hangover. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so, Um, he's like, I can't believe they've made me work during the month of St Patrick. It's my birthday, but that's a big brother reference every Um. So, uh, rick out of his his behavior this night. It was a little hot. Um. So, which one of us is? Which one of us is the suspect here? Richard or Randy? Are we saying, Richard, there's no suspects. Yet, this rick. Yet, this is the this is the so rick is is. He's hung over. He's Hungover, he doesn't want to be here, but he's doing a security thing. And so the policy was one guard stayed in the cards room, Um, while the other guard did the rounds. Okay, so that way, because of the way the security system set up, someone always was able to push the button if he had to, and then they had walking, played video games. I want to walk route. Yeah, so he's walking his route with his with his flashlight, and something strange happens while he's on his round. Um, a bunch of their fire alarms start going off in different rooms. Um and so, me, me, me, he's like, is that it's still a fire alarm? Is it a fire alarm? Perfect, I can call that one one. It's been on. Oh, exactly, he pulls it. He pulls the Fire Alarg I missed you. Okay. So he's doing his rounds and he's going in these rooms with the alarms are going off and he's like. He's like, I can't find any fire, and he's like, I can't smell any smoke, and so he keeps going on all these rooms. He's like, must be a malfunction. So he goes back to the guard's booth and he turns off the alarms and says there's nothing to it. Continues his rounds and Richards still in the guard booth. Yes, yeah, so he goes back and he's still in the guard so rick goes back and Randy is still there and Randy's like what's going on, and Rick is like it's fine. He's like, the firearms are going off but it's there's no fire. So it's okay, and so he turns it off. He's probably smoking in the rooms. Is probably what happened? Honestly, most likely the nineties. So, Um, so he could continues his round. He's, you know, doing his rounds. Um. Most sensors are catching him going in just about every room as sensors. Yeah, okay. And so they're catching him going just about every room, as you would expect, because he's on his rounds. Uh. And then at one point during his rounds, without notifying his partner, Um, he just goes to one of the back doors and opens and shuts it a couple of times, uh, and then just continues his rounds, which is something that he didn't do another rounds. Well, it's something that he claims he did, but it doesn't seem like you normally did it. So anyways, that's an important thing. Just in that remember that he did that might be suspicious. Might be might be suspicious calling Um, I mean while there was a hatchback out front for about an hour that a bunch of other people noticed as they were leaving a party that night, like a super U. Yeah, yeah, back, just part parked out front and sitting in the front seats were two police officers really, yes, and a bunch of people just as soon like those police just got off their shift or something and they're in their super just just chilling outside the Isabel Stewart Gardener Museum. And so these police officers hung out in the super. Rot Back for me back there and they're like, everything's fine, I don't know what you're doing. They eventually they got out of there. Hatchback. Okay, we got this on camera right because it's outside. Yeah, they walked up to the front door, they buzzed in and they said, hey, we got calls of a disturbance in the area. Can we come in and check it out? And at this point we had calls to the servants in the area and it's lucky that we've been sitting outside for three hours. We just happened to be here in the area. Could you let us in? Yeah, and so Randall Randy at at this point. Randy's now on his rounds Rick is in the Guard booth and Rick says okay, which was not their policy. Normally, if police officers would show up, they would call the police look a little different to their their pants are really short, like those wearing short, short police outfits, really tight down. We gotta call of, you know, some activity over here, and we got sit here by and ricks. She said You, yeah, she did. All right. Well, I guess we'll let you in. Just like clearly not not police officers. I'm just picture like the wrong com where the dude falls in love with the nine and one operator. Oh I love this. Yeah, we did a bit about the phone Gal. Oh, yeah, that's that's a good okay. So Rick let him in, which was not their policy. Normally the policy was called the police and be like hey, there's some police here. Are they police or are they police? And then they would make a decision. But he was just like come on in, and so then they come in and they're talking to him through the Little Guard booth window. Right, and Rick, in his report I was talking about it said one of them was a shorter man, one of them was a taller man. The Taller man had a mustache that seemed pretty fake. Um, did you say that? Yeah, and the that's what I'm saying, like there's weird fake mustaches and like the chip here, two of the microphone. This is chaos today. So that's what I'm saying. It's like they're just wearing party city police uniforms. Yeah, uh so, and I'm like hey, we're the cops. Yeah, they're like like is it cool if we look around at the disturbance? And he's like yeah, I'm sure, whatever, I'm coming over and so and then they're sitting there and one of the cops he says one of the cops just kind of looked at me reard for a second and then it was like hey, can you come out here? And he was like okay, and so he walks out. He's like you look a lot like a guy that we've got a worn out for and he's like turn around, and he makes him turn around and he handcuffs him and then earlier used. What I'm worried about if we hire a minimum wage security guard to taste you, is that you would just be able to talk your way out of it. What's the idiot who is the security guard would be like yeah, and then like yeah, I guess you have. You look like you don't have any cuffs. I've got something. I guess I like this guy. Look, it might have been me last I was crazy. I'm still hungover. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, what uh? When the police first showed up, he'd called Randy was like hey, the police are here, you should come back and so as rick is getting handcuffed, randy comes up and they're like hey, turn around, like turn around, we got a few too, and he's like, he's like Oh, okay, and he like starts putting his hand in the back there and he says, he says to them, he says, he says, am I under arrest too? And the police officer was like no, you're being robbed, which is the most the freaking coolest thing in the world. And so, uh, the other I was like no, you're just stupid. So what? So they then shoot. Dude, you're short and I'm tall. Do we match the description? We were born four years after this, but who knows, I could just be an alibi. We could be able to my alibi. Thought I was born officer. It couldn't be mean I was born too late. No, you weren't reborn. Check my baptism certificate. Everything behind that is covered by the blood. Dude. I'm telling you, there was a kid in my youth group who, at a church camp, was like cussing up a storm and like he was. He was kind of like a I don't know. He wasn't the bully, he was definitely a kid who was getting bullied Um and I was one of the leaders. I tried to do my best or whatever, but like to bully Um Um, like I was trying my best to really, I get on, you know, really build up some confidence in the holies and yeah, uh, you know, build up some resilience in him. No, no, no, but he strained up. was like, you know, custom a lots, saying just horribly inappropriate things. And then later that night, after the evening service, got onto somebody and was like they don't talk like that and I was like, Hey, earlier today you said something way worried for that, and he literally went yeah, but I got safe tonight and I was like all right. It was like all right, yeah, am, I am, I saved. No, you're being robbed. So they duct taped their heads together. Why are you doing this? handcome tests. That's what I'm thinking that. What do you mean? They duct tape their heads to take their whole eyes and their mouths and stuff so they couldn't talk. And then what's interesting is they escorted them to the basement. Do this. We're not allowed to talk in the museum anyway. We have to be the basement, in the basement. What's interesting an interesting tidbit is they didn't ask for directions. They went directly to the basement. Um. So these people took them to the basement, handcuffed them to some pipes. Um when they were found. This is how they found them. So they actually like, oh, that's the way they taped their face is awful and totally unnecessary. Like they've got like a strip over their eyes and their mouth, but then they've just like wrapped it around his head like a few times, like, what are you doing? This is what he was just wearing as a security guard, though, I don't be honest, like, first of all, this is a terrifying picture. I also love that the matches are right Roy Pants. I'm saying, if I showed to a museum and the security guard is wearing red corduroy pants, I would be like, we don't even need to handcuff them. Yeah, just let him continue guarding that. I'm continue guarding, you know, and just tell him we're you know, my e might as well tell him where the gray and sons of easy stew and she wants us to come and take smart. Oh Yeah, she just called and said I need to come to they don't even know who she is. They don't know she's gone. Of course this guy, I don't this is victim blaming, but of course he got rocked, you know, because they're in the dark, like they're sitting in the dark. Yeah, they said they were stuck down there, which sucks. Um. So, yeah, bummer for them. And they couldn't talk to each other. Yeah, they were just tied up, Um and so, uh, what's very interesting is for thirteen minutes the security system, like the motion sensors, didn't pick up any motion in the building. Uh. And so what the police think is they were waiting to see if the police got called, Um, to see if they like still for thirteen minutes. Yeah, that'll just sat there in the basement completely still. A right. I think we're I think we're clear. You guys didn't call the police. Do Too. How are you going to answer? Their heads? Their head there's dictape together. They're trying to signal. Hey, thanks again for listening to this episode. If you like our show, make sure you follow us on social at tilling podcast or subscribe anywhere where you're listening to right now, whether that's Youtube, spotify or apple podcast, whatever it is. And if you want more we do have a patreon you can support us on. In there you get all sorts of perks like add three episodes, early access to our content and even a discord with our hosts and producers. So We'd love for you to check that out. All you gotta do is text till into six, six, six, six. That's till into six, six, six, six. But thanks again for checking us out. So then, after thirteen minutes, the first room picked up motion Um and then they went room to room and what they did is they took the the frame off the wall, which set off an alarm. But that alarm, all the alarm did, was set off an alarm that the security guard would then say, Oh hey, it sounds like something's happened. They were in the basement like something's going on, because the idea for all it did was make a sound. So then the security guard but pushed the button to call the police, but they knew that. They knew the button was only in that room. So when that alarm went off, the robbers did yeah, so when that alarm went off, they knew no one was gonna call the cops. They just smashed the alarm and then just kept working. And so for eighty one minutes. They went room to room, took frames off the motion detector. Doing that, we had no camera footage. Correct, no camera footage, but they went room to room taking frames off the wall, smashing the alarms and then cutting the painting out of the frame and rolling it up. Uh, and then, uh, after eighty one minutes, they left and you see them on camera and their little police uniforms walking out with all of these rolled up paintings and the what? This is a really weird thing that they took hold on. Let me get that name of this right. Is there like an image of them walking out? Um, I don't know. Actually, UM, they took a French Imperial Eagle, finial. Um. Let me actually throw this up so you know what this is. Um, which is weird because this is like literally zero value. Um. But it was in the museum because it was on a flag that Napoleon dynamite owned, sorry, Bonaparte, uh, owned, uh, and they sold this, but it had zero value. It's just one of those things that sticks at the top of the flag. So it was like, hold on, let me see. It was one to three, four, six, seventy nine h eleven paintings that thing and then, like a candles, a Chinese candlestick, Um, one minutes to take eleven paintings. Yeah, uh. And then, uh, yeah, they walked outside, got in their hatchback, their super rout back. What kind of vehicle was it is a red hatchback. That's got. We don't have any images of that, though. Let me see. So this is a picture of, uh, the security footage painting of the robbers in the middle. There they convincetioned a really good painting. Shoot, Dude, look at that top corner. Tell me that's not my dad. Oh No, oh no, I mean I gotta find a picture of my dad in the nineties and you're gonna be like, Oh, crap, um. So, yeah, so, I mean you see him walking out there, but you can't tell anything. Yeah, it might as well be the ghost of of Isabella. Yeah, uh. And so, uh, what paintings did they take? They took hold on, let me pull it back up. They took what I mean like so, you you steal a painting, you can't sell it. Yeah, so they took a bunch of paintings that you've probably never heard of. Um, there are one, two, three, uh four rembrandts. The most important one in there, though, is the storm on the Sea of Galilee, which is the only ocean scape he had ever done and it was a one of one. So that was really the most valuable steel on there. There's also a manet, a couple of Degas, money, m a n et not money, Um, and Vernier, um. So there's a lot of a lot of just random arts. Um. So, yeah, this value was valued at two at what's strange is they left a lot of much more valuable pieces in the museum. Okay, so I was wondering. So they didn't know what they were taking? Yeah, they didn't. They didn't have a concept of how much all this stuff was worth. They were just nabbing what they could and they left. UH, they put the frames back on the walls and because of the stipulations from Isabella, they've just got them sitting there because they can't remodel. So they just got these empty friends of them mop that is to this day. And so anything that was stolen is still the frames up on the wall and it's got his little placard on it telling you what it is, but it ain't there. Um. So yeah, so the police Um the next morning, the next shift of security guards show up to do security, Um, and they buzz in and nobody answers, and so they're like well what? And so they one of them had a key, so he keys him, goes to the security booth and nobody's there. So then he calls the cops and he's like it's the button. He's like hey, nine, one, one, and she'said. Not Again. He's like no, it's serious, I think something's happening. And so then they hang out outside because you know their children and they don't. So police show up, they find all these these empty frames on the wall and then they find those the security guards in the basement. They have been there all night. Um. I think it was eight fifty one in the morning when they found him. Um, and they're like, oh my gosh, did you get arrested? And we got robbed. Did you guys get arrested? MM HMMM. They got a tape over their mouth. They get um. So there was a couple of immediate persons of interest. Number One, Rick Abbeth. His behavior was very odd that night. Opening the door, clearly drunk, tape yourself, let the let the police in. Um. Very odd behavior and very vocally hated his job was was the experienced security guard on the shift. The other guy was not, and so he was immediately like target number one of person who probably did this or at least was connected to it in some way. The police took him in to interview him, Um and uh, and he was like it might be the real like he's never gonna Trust the police again. First of all, this question for am I being robbed? You're being arrested? No, yeah, sorry, I just I have trauma. You're being robbed. Uh. And so the police bring him in for questioning and they interview him and they do the interrogation, they ask him all the questions, they go through all this stuff and they end up, uh ruling that he could not be a part of it and rolling out of the case for the express reason of him and and Randy, the other guy as well, where too incompetent to pull us. Not Smart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, and like no, there's no way. Yeah. So they got ruled out of this Um and so they said, well, that's what sucks about being smart. You know, people thinking crimes. That's exactly what you know. You're smart enough to commit a major crime. Don't ever put that on me. The next big, big target for who this might be was a guy named Whitey bulger. Um, okay, who was? He went by Whitey. Uh. Yeah, I don't know if that was his name or a nickname. A nickname. Actually, I can find out pretty quickly. Let's find out. Um, it honestly, could be witty. No, it's Whitey. His name is James. Went by Whitey. That's a criminal. Yeah, yeah, so he was the, uh, the leader of a crime syndicate in Boston known as the Winter Hill Gang. Um, and they were like, it's most likely, he's most likely connected to this, because he does, he doesn't, he does tons, tons of crimes. I hear criming. And so they took him in and they asked him for quite all these questions and he said no, but you tell me when you know who did this, because they owe me money. They did this in my turf, like they owe me money, they owe me, and they're like yes, Mr White telling the police, like no, I didn't do it, but tell me, when they mind, who did, because I want my cut, and you're like what? I want my cut of the crime? Why? You know who we are? Yeah, I know who you think I care? I got a million robbers who look like you. Well, that was one of the that was one of the reasons why they was bold to tell the police. I want to know because they owe me money. And then the police are like yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, yes, you can go down. Actually, thank you for coming in today. And they pay him, like what are you doing, like here's said of fifty seven. This is all, like I said, seven dollars. Thank you for UH. So one of the reasons. Obviously, he was like the leader of the big syndicate in the area. But there's a couple of things that were interesting because, one, he had a lot of dirty cops, and so they said that one makes sense if he was able to get some cops to come do crime. Um. Also, uh, he had a wasn't that be weird to be on a police force that you're like, I know some of these comps are dirty. Yeah, yeah, that would be like sketchy. That's difficult. Um, and he was also connected. It's I mean it's hard enough to be a co host of a podcast knowing that my co host is compromised. You know. Anyways, Um, he was also connected to the IRA UM and the I R S, but mostly the IRA, the independent regulators of agriculture. It was like a called back. I know, it's Food and Drug Administration, guys. Okay, you didn't. I didn't whatever. Uh, the Irish Republican Army, which apparently is like a sketchy organization. Um, and so he was connected the IRA and the calling card of the IRA was setting off fire alarms, Um, when there wasn't a fire, and so they would do that when they times. But it's odd that the fire alarms went off before anyone else was in the building, and so that would make you think that rick has to be connected to the to the IRA and to the event. If that. If that. Yeah, but they did the interview. Why? He refused to take a lot of detective test he said, I'm not involved and I'm not going to take a lot of tective tests. Give me my money when you find it, and they said yes, sir, and so they ruled him out of the case. Another, another suspect was Brian McDevitt. Um, uh, he was a suspect because, um, he was a Boston man who in Glen Falls, New York, Auston man's kind of Boston. If you know how they are. This happened in Boston round all the men. I don't know about the Boston man. We're not gonna leave here until one of you tells us who did it. Who did it? I'm covering the Harvard molasses. So, uh, this guy, Brian McDevitt. UH, nine years before this had attempted an art heist in Glenn Falls, New York, and the heist has some similarities. So what he did is he dressed up as a fedex driver, he carried handcuffs and duct tape and he planned to steal a rembrand painting. That was his goal. His target was a ram brand. Um. He also loved flags, and so it makes sense that he would take the little pull at the top of the fire. Loves flag. Don't know. Everybody loves imagine that on your dating profile you're swiping tender and someone's like, I love flags. What, Dude, flag day. He gets so high about flag day. Why don't we have any songs Friday? Like what? No, we didn't, you because you made plants on flag day. I'm not going to work on flag day. You guys. Yeah, it should be. It's I can't believe I'm even schedule to work the day after flag day, I would be so hungover. It's like the beginning of June. He's out there just hand all these flags from his gutter. We mean he's into flags, and they were like yeah, well, he likes flags, so he's probably a he just really like flags. Um. And he fit the description of the larger robber, like he looked similar to the larger robber and he's actual in the case. Um, the only problem was with the hide collection. Was the collect he tried to Robbin. Uh. Well, he dressed up as a fedex driver, did all the stuff, Um, and he stole a Fedex truck, went to go do it, got caught up making deliveries, you know, pretty close, got stuck in traffic and by the time he showed up the museum was closed and he couldn't get in. Rats. I thought you would saying he took the Fedex truck. He was like he don't need their packages first and then just started living out and he's been a fax driver ever since, driver, ever since. It's like there's a guy. Did you see the news story of the Guy who just drives a city bus who like just goes and steals busses and then just drives the route? No, or maybe it's trains. Does he do the train? Does he do with the train? I think it's the train. I saw an art of Cole and it was the busses too. Have to look it up, and something like that. There's a guy who took the took the train and then just, you know, took it to the stations. That's so funny. Um. So they interviewed this guy and they deemed that, no, he didn't do this, Um, because he was stuck in traffic, in trouble, I think, thirty months, Um, just for stealing the Fedex car though. Yeah, yeah, for stealing, for it was like stealing a FEDX car and and conspiracy to commit oh interest. So they didn't know that. When he just he was like yeah, he's always trying to do yeah, they don't give him that. The security guards were hanging out in their corduroys out front, like what are you doing, man, and he's like I'm here to rob you, and they're like you mean arrest us? Like, Dude, we're we closed four hours ago, blumber. Yeah, they weren't closed. That was just what they tell people. Yeah, that are trying to rob them. Yeah, they're consultant. We're closed. Funny. So uh, yeah, they ruled him out. The other UH big turning event was in a letter shows up to the museum. It's like your suspects have been born. Happy Birthday. Rely suspect Jeremyer's and timstone. They don't know each other yet, but they did this crime. One day a time machine and there. Cut that out out, take that out, sleep it. One day they're gonna one day they're gonna get a time macheet and at least give a little bit of context. So so this letter comes and basically this person was saying hey, museum. It was a letter of the museum and it was like hey, museum. UH, they're like, Hey, we know who who did the crime. We don't know them, but we've been talking to them more pen pals and they're ready to send the art back for a small feet. But yeah, what they want is they want the reward that you're offering at this point. They're offering a ten million dollar reward for anybody who can find the art, because they're like, we miss our our owls, and so they're like they'll, they'll send that to you if you wire the money. To this offshore account. Don't worry, they've got them in a climate control space in a country that doesn't have any laws. This is a noncommon law lunch country, lunchry, non uncommon law country. Uh, it is what they said. They're like they got a climate control safe. It's safe, okay, but sending the money to an offer account and then write something? uh, write a note, a coded note, in the Boston Globe, on the May first edition of the Boston Globe, so we know it's you, and say hey, we were doing it, and then we'll send this to your door via Fedex. There's a great deliver and you can have your art back. And the FBI was like sending back a letter, tell me we're doing it, and the fbis they did, and then they never heard from him again. Um, so they sent the money? Yeah, well, I think the rehearsal got a little too real for him and so then he just didn't show up anymore after that. They send the money, though? They didn't send the money. So they sent the letter back to say okay, we'll do it, and they actually printed the thing in the Boston Globe, I think. But then they never heard from the letter writer again. So Um. After that the police were basically just like, we're pretty sure it was someone from the Boston Mafia, but we don't know who. All right, in nineteen the FBI was like we know who did it, but they said we're not gonna tell you. We know who did it, Dude. They're like the caddy little mom at church WHO's like, Oh, I you know, I saidn't unspoken prayer request. The FBI was like, we haven't spoken suspect, I don't ask me who. They came forward and said they knew, knew who did it, but they said, but the suspects are dead. Both of the suspects are dead, and they said we don't want to reveal their names because we don't want to reveal our informant because we have ongoing investigations that they're still informing us about. Um, and we're still trying to find the art. The prevailing theory is that it was a Boston mob member, Um, who had uh stolen these things, attempted to sell it multiple occasions but they couldn't get it off their hands. Um. And there is a member of a BOPs, a son of a member of the Boston mob, who said that they had a false bottom in their shed and under that false bottom he said he never got to see what was in there. But he said what? One day there was this flood and it ruined whatever my dad had in the bottom of that and he lost it. Um, and he says, UH, his dad died in the men two thousands. He went in there to see what was in don't know it was. There was nothing in there. And so the prevailing theory is that that guy was flooded it and those are gone. Yeah, and they're gone forever. And Isabella, that Ghost killed that Guy's dad. You ruined my paintings. Well, and flood of the base. She's like, if I can't have it, no one can. Flip. Um, that's spooky. There's just empty frames at the yeah, and so, yeah, they've just left the empty frames up there. Um, I am, at this point, honestly very confident that uh rick had something to do with us. Yeah, I think he. I think he got lucky because he's done and the police were just like, oh, yeah, he didn't do anything, he's too dumb. But I don't think he masterminded any of it. But I do think that the mob approached him and was like hey, we'll give you, like if you just get arrested tonight, you want to make seven dollars and video seven sins. Yeah, yeah, sure, I opened this door when the coast is clear a couple of times and then we'll come in and when the ghost is clear. Yeah, in the coat. You know what? Sure know when the ghost is clear. What do I do when the ghost is cleared? Because there's a ghost in there? You're perfect for this, exactly who we're looking for. Yeah, sweet calls, mom. I got a new job. I don't even have to quit my current job. I need to go to ripe man. Do you any like hangover tips? Yeah, very hungover. Sorry, mom, didn't mean to tell you that. He did find out, though, if you duct tape your whole face shut, that cures your hangover pretty quick. It's like he's like every time he drink everything, HEC Gosh, I'm not feeling great today, Grena Gard still at the club. Back to your u. The Uber drive is like, so you can't duct tape your head in my car. If I was Uber Driving and somebody trying to get in my car looking like that signy cancel trip. Can you imagine doing at Uber X and one of the other passengers. Soul ends just it's like, Bro, why did you do that? Help my hangover and hungover. Okay, all right, the other guy's just drinking anti freeze, like I've heard. I heard it freeze, so I thought maybe backwards. Yeah, you know, give me toothpicks for the sandwich. Uh. Wow. So that's the that's the I think he's got it. He's he's still alive, though. He's still alive. Yeah, I mean he's got to be. I don't know. We got to interview, but yeah, he would be. What if he was twenty three? Then it's been three years, mid fifties. We gotta try to interview. Yeah, that's find him lovel with us. Rick, one part of this. Do you think he knows how to log in the Internet? He's dumb. I don't know how, Tom you know. Yeah, I mean, yeah, he thinks every female and now when one operators his girlfriend. It's been a long time. I have no idea. Who is this? Who is this? Don't play that. Don't play games. You know who it is. Okay, where's your emergency emergencies? In my heart, I miss you. There's no fire, but there's a passion that's burning. Okay, all right, passion cat am I being ARRESTA right now? No, you're being fiddled off. Things on them last night is a production of space tim media, produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by Alice Garnett, video by Connor beat social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg, our host, or Jarren Meyers and Tim Stone. Please follow us on social media at tilling podcast. THAT'S T I L O in podcast. Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you for listening to things on the last night.

Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Hey, man, what's going on? Oh, not much. How was California? Oh, I'm a blue haired hippie liberal. Now you know. I went. Yeah, the audio listeners. I have a lot of piercings on my face now you know. Um, no, it was great. I had a good time. I feel like trash because I did. It was nine days of vacation. We did two days in Vegas, two days of a family wedding. Oh Gosh. Have you ever had a Disney corn dog? Oh Gosh, I'm not joking. I'm not joking to Disney. Have you ever had you've had a fair grown court dog, court dog, corn dog, like a fairground, but that's like gross. I mean it's it tastes amazing. Taste amazing. No, no, no, here's what I'm saying. Taste amazing, but you know that the hygiene of the corn dog trailer at a county fair is probably a bar. Yeah, I ordered something that drive through the other day and it was early, like probably ten am, and the guy handed me and my food and his fingers looked like he had been changing oil all day and I was like you can keep it, you can keep my kee, keep my money, keep that belongs to you now oil hands. All right, that guy's name is court dog. So Um, no, you don't talk about like the deliciousness of a good county fair corn dog's tasty. Add Disney money behind that so that you trust the hygiene of it. So there's like that layer of like am I gonna die when I eat this is gone. So now you're just enjoying a corner and now it's just good and I ate quite a few. I'm jealous of that. That sounds great. Oh, what a good time. I feel. I feel disgusting. I've had milkshakes and Burgers and pizza and now that was my nine days of vacation and this morning I just breathed real heavy for unch for the week and I was like wow, I was thinking about health advice because I've been getting a lot of like tiktoks of like, you know, here's, here's how to eat healthy, whatever, and it is all over the place. Yeah, we we, we need to call this out, because we're not. We can leave it in, I guess. Uh, we're just doing tangents and I feel like you're gonna be like so, anyway, have you heard of aliens? Anyway, Oh, I saw it in your eyes. Godly, let's just get to it. Alright, roll the theme. Tim Texts me no context and just said I'm about to fight ever one of our Patriot supporters, and it was the Eiffel Towers. There's two of them. There's a sing shot, which is fitting because that was exactly a hundred years after France. Real, happy, okay, happy, okay. Things I learned last night. Okay, health stuff, okay. There's these dudes out here who are just like, every morning I eat eight Burger patties with the alvida cheese poured all over it, Bacon. The only thing is just don't eat the Bun. You know, you can like and like. That's their health advice. But the next video was a girl who was like yeah, I had four raspberries and for dinner I'm gonna eat a tic TAC and like that's what and he's just like this is so polar opposite. It's because nobody knows what they're doing. That's what I'm saying. It's all made up, like nothing real, but it is insane to me that like those, you know, big macro kind of guys that are just like yeah, it's all about getting the macro's Hi fat, like the Keto stuff, is just disgusting food, and they're just like, yeah, this is healthier than's like yogurt and for you. Yeah, yeah, but there. So my diet, you know, I have lost a hundred pounds. I don't know if I've talked about it before. Um, but if you eat, don't eat county fair corn dogs, but Disney corn dogs dogs. My Diet is whatever you want. Whatever you want. Makes some NACHOS, put some Mac and cheese on your nachos with a little bit of Cholula hot sauce. But the key, here's the here's the key. If you want to lose weight, listen to till, the podcast while you eat. Helps you digest differently, moves it through your system, cleans it out. The cleanest way to eat. Yeah, and we're just allowed to say it because all of it's made up. Anyway, what we're talking about? Have you ever heard of the Panama Canal? What have you heard the Panama Canal? Yeah, I guess. Is that what we're doing? Yeah, okay, yeah, don't worry, I can work aliens into there. They the idea. Okay, they said, you know what, this stretch of land needs river, river. The other English isn't great. Yeah, they're still learning. Uh. No, okay. So the Panama Canal, uh, you've probably heard of it. It's a canal that runs through Panama right here. Yeah, I love, love how we're saying Panama. How would you say Panama, Panama? How would you say Panama? Panama, Panama, Panama. We're saying that. Whatever. It's fifty miles long. Basically, there's a stretch of Panama where, uh, right there in the middle, the continents really really short earthan and Um, somewhere along the line of history, someone was like hey, this would be a great way to get through the country if the country wasn't there, UM, like for sailing. And that person was Charles, the fifth in four. He had this dream of turning part of this literal continent into a river so he could take his boats through it. So they were like, all right, let's dig it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he had this dream, and so he actually like contracted some of his like engineers and architects to figure out if it was possible, and they said there's not a prince in the world who has the resources to pull this off, and he was like yeah, but what about a kick a thing? I'm not a prince. Prince, you losers. And for uh, really like two hundred years there had been dreams. One guy out there with a shovel. Two Hundred Years. Really, for about two hundred and fourteen years, there was Daniel Mayan, Daniel out there in the Panama Canal. Charles was like, you don't we'll pay you a lot if you did it, and he did it. The six will follow up with it. Don't worry, because they'll all be there will always be a Charles Um to pay you out there wasn't um so. And then there's just this long line of people who had this dream. Thomas Jefferson was one of them. In seventeen sixty eight he said it would be really nice if this country wasn't um and we could just take our boats through there, and that was a direct quote. It would be really nice if this country wasn't I want to take our boats directly through it. Signed Thomas Jefferson. He signed everything he said. Signed. Yeah, what if we did that too? Yeah, that's a great idea. Signed Jared Myers. Yeah, WE'RE gonna sign the end of a campaign video. So so what? What was with Charles the eighth or whatever, Charles the Um, Charles the fifth, in what year, was like let's cut this thing in half. Four, and then two years later, Tamis Jeffersone's like that. It was a good idea. Yeah, continually people just kept saying, Hey, like remember what Charles said, we should do that. But then everyone was like yeah, but remember all the people who paid to figure that out, and they said we can't do that, so we can't do it. And so they kept like sending surveyors and people to try to figure this out. But in Um eighteen, just off the whim of one guy who was like yeah, I bet we could cut that place in half pretty much nice. Uh. In the forties there was this thing called the gold rush and everybody was going across the continent to California to get some gold. Here's the problem. If you looking for last week, you know in some in some neighborhood in L A, just digging. I'm looking for gold, for gold. Um. Here's the thing. If you successfully, I don't know if you know this, if you successfully made it across the organ trail, Um, you're probably the last one you know that made it. If you succeed everybody died if you got gold. Here's the here's this rough part about this scenario, that you have to get there. You gotta take it back to sell it, and getting across, back, across, that's a tall order. I know. I played the game. And so there was this issue with the gold rush where everybody who was finding gold was struggling to sell their goal because they only had each other. Yeah, and there I got all those gold and I was like yeah, yeah, I don't want to. We're the only two people who made it. We both have yeah, well, you want to buy some. What do you wanna do with this gold? Well, one day I'd like to cut a country in half. To be honest, it's actually pretty close. UH, they said. They said, you know, traveling all the way across America is tough. Um, even today it's still tough. It's the worst bad drive. Um, but imagine doing that in in the freaking forties. And so someone was like, you know what, it would be easier to sail to the east coast through through the Panama Canal. But but there was the isthmus of Panama. But you ever named that? I hate them. Isthmus, Isthmus Isthmus Isthmus I need to bring something up. Um, please do I don't know. You've been distant because of your vacation, which is great. Enjoy your vacation. Disconnect, it's fine. Remember the last nine days. Yeah, were you talking about distant? You've been distant, or you really discord crap, Oh man, there has been a full war in the discord since you've been gone. Um, you just don't we got to book that out, uh, by the time this episode comes out. A few weeks ago there was an episode where I used the phrase white rabbit. Um, what you meant was red herring. No, I met white rabbit. Um. Our patrons seems to think that a white rabbit and a red herring are different concepts, but they are the same. Um, there's a there's a ven diagram, there's a there's a red herring. I want you to know, listen, that Tim texts me no context and just said I'm about to fight every one of our patron supporters and I thought, Tim, this is it, this is Tim's Day of reckoning. They found an old tweet. You know he's going down and uh, nope, Sir enough, it's just Tim's pride getting in the way here's the there's a thing, there's a D it's just a red herring. There's a diagram for red herrings, right, and you got the red herring and that is here, and then you've got the they overlap. There's a moment where, if they're different, if something's a red herring, it's throwing you off the scent, but if you don't follow it, it stays a red herring. It's just a red herring. A white rabbit is when you've chased the rabbit, and so a red herring becomes a white rabbit when you begin to follow that trail, even though it's false. Um, a white rabbit and be true, though a white rabbit can be just a waste of time. That's true, but not like doesn't get you where you need to go. I'm pretty sure the white rabbits. The thing that would make a difference is that the red herring is a true thing, but it has no relevance to the topic at hand. The white rabbit is a false trail that you followed. Yeah, may be right. Even still, all this, everything we've gone through, you pausing an episode to discuss the red herring white rabbit debate and me calmly explaining. Here's the small difference, and you win. I guess we should cut it out. But here's the thing. So now we have a new threead and we have a new thing. I started this morning. I don't know. That's what I'm saying. You're so into this. Yeah, I've changed my user name in the discord to the Lord of the rabbits. Yeah, and I declared up. You don't at Gmail Dot Com, Lord of the rabbits at Gmail Dot Com. Do you know what I have that? That's pretty crazy. It's only I wanted to meet the Lord of the rabbits. Oh well, here I am. Science seal delivered. So so, basically, you need to decide which party are you and are you a herring or are you a rabbit? I'm part of the hair and herd. H You, and you have to throw. You have to throw your Emoji in your user name so we can identify you in the discord Um anyway. So there's a full war. I don't know how it's gonna Resolve, but I'm losing a lot of money. I'M gonna I'm drunk for power right now. All right, if you're interested in the Panama Panama Canal. I'm really sorry that you've listened to all this. Sorry, sorry, we followed that White Rabbit speaking of the drug for power. Um, these people wanted to sell their gold and be really rich. Uh. So what they started doing is they took their boats for in California and they rode them across the ocean to Panama, to the Isthmus of Panama. And what they said is there's a port on both sides of this isthmus. If we it's easier for us to travel across. Yeah, it's a it's a fifty mile trip across. So they'll port, get everything out, take the fifty mile trip, hit the other part, take another boat up to new with all their stuff, make a bunch of money. That sounds like a bottleneck for gold thieves. Oh yeah, that's a good place to hang out if you want to rob people. Oh Yeah, if you want to get some t VP. Where is it now? Just curious. I don't know. When I was we were driving, I used to tell people that, well, that's a great place to hanging out if you're trying to rob people. We were driving around. Oh yeah, there's the West Toronto building, there's the World War One real that alleyway, great place to hide out. Yeah, that's my that's my rob stop right there. So pretty good. Oh my God. Okay, Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you like this podcast you wanted more of it, please leave a review. That's super helpful to let others know who are searching for a podcast. And if you're new around here, we've been doing this for several years and there's plenty of episodes to check out. One of my personal favorites is agent Garbo. Is a guy who went to the government during World War Two and was like hey, let me be a double agent and they were like no, and then he was like well, I'm gonna and so he kind of went off on his own did the thing. It's also got some crazy details about world war two, about how the US use inflatable tanks to trick Germany, all kinds of fun stuff, but if you want to go check that out, you can. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. But here's the thing. Uh, it was still I think. Here's the thing that here's what happens when you get a lot called. Here's what happens when you become really rich overnight, but you can't spend your money, yet you begin to taste or your mouth salivates with the dreams of what the life you're about to have it. Oh, dude, yeah, me, as soon as I stepped on the Delta Sky Club, like I'm not, like, I'm not like rich, but like I get up there and I go, Oh, yeah, you're said, this is an unlimited buffet. Yeah, I'm pretty I'm pretty sure you texted me a picture of your food and you said this is why the rich are so disconnected from all of us Poors. Yes, because they get tacos. And I showered at the airport. They get tacos in the shower at the dude, I was in the airport taking a shower and for a moment I thought, oh, man, like I can, I can never go back, you know, and that's that's that's how it must have felt have a boat full of gold rolling up to Panama. Yeah, so they roll in their boat and then I can get it. And I'm making fun of the hold the Panama. You say Panama the way George W Bush says nuclear. Say Panama, Normal Panama, Panama, Panama. We're saying it the same way. There's a venn diagram a Panama, Panama. So you got your gold, you poured it one side of Panama. Yeah, and then they said it would be really nice this fifty mile walk, we have to do gold, if we could just not have to walk that, because they are already getting used to not walking. Um. And so what they did is they paid locals to carry them. Is they got the United States to build a railroad. You just went on without it. I was like really, I was like, okay, how many golds would you need? Come here across the isthmus? And it's still Daniel who was sent back in time from quick books. He's now he's a carrier. You know he's freaking did you say it from quick books? Remember that. It's a call back, but that's fine. Yeah, your brains dumb. So, anyway, there's our listeners got it because they're intelligent. Well, joined the rabbit. Um. So they build a railroad. Do you guys built the railroad. Um, and things went great, because now the US did it, because they were like, we can get all that gold money. Yeah, great, they wanted the gold money and they said we're powerful than you, so we can just put a railroad in your country and you can't stop us. Um, what it really what really happened, was more of a hey, this is good for your nation, because now a bunch of stuff is happening here. Um, yeah. So they were like, we'll build the railroad if you let us do it, and you got they're like, no more gold robbery. Um. So they built the railroad, but here's the problem. They built that railroad and then they realized, man, this is still pretty inefficient, because we're docking, we're unloading, loading the train, riding the train just to load another ship. And then they're like, man, Charles was right, this should be cut in half. We should just cut this country in half. And so a lot of people were floating the ideas back and forth, Um, and someone called this dude in France. He was like, Hey, cut it in half, and then someone was like no, no, they can have it. That's that's the Rema, that's the Panama. That's another Bible joke. Sorry, guys. So somebody called Ferdinand de lesseps. He's a French dude, Um, most known for building the Suez Canal, and he succeeded at that and got a little too confident. Um, he was like, he's like pick some land, I'll turn it into a yeah, yes, we canal. Did you say? I can? Now? I can, I can. Uh. And so he was really confident that he could turn this into a canal. Um, here's the issue about Um, the difference between the Suez and the Panama Canal, though, are the isthmus of Suremou at this point. Um, Panama. Uh, it was a very mountainous region with thousands of feet in elevation. Raised between this fifty Mile Span, Suez is just an empty desert, and so they just dig. It was flat. You do straight through desert. There's no elements, no climate, is just kind of hot. Um, Panama, rainforest, uh, mountains, bugs, snakes, bugs and snakes and stuff. Yeah, it's it's different. It's a different scenario. But he was confident. He was like, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna come here and we're just gonna dig straight to sea level through all these mountains and then we're gonna have ourselves a canal. And Uh, what year was this? Eighteen eighty one was when he started. So they I mean so in the eighteen forties of the gold rush. This whole time, how soon did the gold rush. Did they start running things around down through Panama? I don't know how soon they started running them. I know they they built the railroad in eighteen fifty. Okay, so it's been by thirty years of the railroad doing its job. And they're like, guys, this is like this is fine, but you know, it could be fine. You know, it could be there. Guys, this is big, but it can be bigger. Yeah, I have more, we could have more. And so uh lisps is like taking tiggle through the mountains all the way to the bottom, just a lot. Just take a dig and really get his hands in the dirt, just dig, digging all the way down there, getting all the way down to the sea level. And Stop. Eiffel. You might know him from his tower, the Statue of Liberty. Oh, no, yeah, you're right, Eiffel Tower. No, yeah, he built the Eiffel Tower. He built it. Yeah, well, he designed it. He was like, what if we, the people who get named after they don't do the work? They what if we built the tower? And they were like, he said, what would that do for tourist attraction? It was two sides of where the canal would be and it was the Eiffel Towers. There's two of them. There's a sling shot. He's like, we sling shut the boat across the the guy who made the eiff what about giant sling shot? No bad idea, and he said, I still built one and I guess we'll put it in France. I'm already halfway down with those projects. I'm already halfway done. You can't build the rest. And so that's it's just one side of a sling shot. The Eiffel Tower is half a slingshot. Is What your theory is. That was his idea. It was a little bit better. It was. It was the fifties, though. You know, you can't fault him, and you can't fault him. It was a little mouse in his hair. It was building. No, Eiffel was like. was like, bro He told Lips. He said, lesps, you're gonna try to dig through the mountains to sea level, like that's it's like literally ten thou feet of digging Um for fifty miles. And he's like this is gonna take forever and probably work. Well, Um, he's like. He's like he said what you need to do is you need to bring the ocean up the mountains and liceps was like, you idiot, do you hear what you're saying? You can't take the ocean up. He's like, we need to bring the land to the ocean. You can't take the ocean up. So you didn't listen to him. Um. So they started digging and uh, it took a while. They spent, uh, let's see here, um, eighteen years spent digging. Um, they didn't finish. They spent two and eighty seven million dollars in that day's money and equivalent of ten point two billion dollars today, just digging to not finish. Here's the problem. Here's the problem. It failed because, um, they were digging through these mountains and so they were regularly um having these mud slides that were literally filling it back in. Um. They're also because what happened is it's in the middle of a room. I told you, so I can start second tower. We can do we can begin step shot fools pride. I guess we we so the other issue was because they were in the rainforest. What was happening was they would have these big mud floods and then the bottom of these ravines would get very moist and then a bunch of mosquitoes would come and bite the workers and give them Hillaria, and so it became this rampant issue among the workers. They're dying. Yeah, by the end of the project, due to one malaria, two heat exhaustion and three getting buried in these mud floods, two workers died. Holy Cow. So a massive like over how long we're eighteen years, eighteen years, and it feels like a thousand people a year. It feels like somewhere along those lines somebody should have said hey, this isn't going well, this isn't going great, guys, Um. Well, that's what I'm saying. It is like the pride gets in the way of this. It has to work, and there is there is too, like once, once something like that happens, like once you cross a certain thresholds, like we got to do it for them, we have to make it worth then they died in vain if we don't do this. Yeah, and so really they did. That's so annoying. Well, not really. I mean there's so the French ended up pulling the plug and actually took liceps and a bunch of his organization. They made them declare bankruptcy and actually put him on trial. For it because they said that they weren't truth. Yeah, they didn't think this through, Um, but there was one guy in their organization, organization by the name of Philippe, but now of Aria, who didn't get in trouble, I don't know why, Um, and he stayed there and he said, you know what, I believe in this canal and I think this canal can now, uh canal, and the can in canal. So he was like, he was like, I cannot give up on this canal. I'm sticking, sticking back here and making sure it happens. So he started like digging by himself, day in, day out, nonstop. Still out there. He's predicting to this day. Uh No. So he started devising a plan of how he was going to make this happen. Meanwhile, the whole time that's going on, the US is like the friends are gonna pull this off. That's not good. We need to pull this off. Eighties still right. Yeah, who's WHO's in charge? I mean right now it is still kind of a hodgepodge. Like the U S has their independence, but they haven't rose to the prominence that are about to rise to Um. So, like they're still like climbing. There is a hodgepodge of European nations that have a lot of power. The U S has a lot of power. Um. That's kind of where all the power lies. Um. And so the US is like, we need that canal because if we control that, we control a lot of shipping across the planet and we'll get really rich. And so they defies the plan to build Nicaragua Canal. And so there's a stretch of land and their thought was through Nicaragua it's a much larger stretch of land, but it's not as mountainous, so there's a much more flat land through it. There are mountains that they have to do through, but much less mountains. There was also a giant lake in the middle of this stretch. So if they could just make it to the lake and then get on the other side of day can make it across to the ocean, then it would be theoretically smooth ceiling. Um. Okay. So they said we need to build the Nicaragua Canal. So they have been doing all their surveying, doing all the research, doing all our studies, sing out their plan right. They're making it pretty far in the process and then Nicaragua. was like, Philip, you a US Nicaragus, like we're right here, like we would say no to this. So long ago, you would have just asked what. We would have told you know, hey, I was just planning on digging a river in your backyard. Already, got all the things priced out, got a contractor they're actually here to get started. Um. And you're like you're excited about that or not? No, uh. And so Philippe, he says, so Philippe. Philippe says the US is our last chance of pulling off the Panama Canal. And he says we gotta get them off this Nicaragua idea. And so he goes. He calls it the president and he says, Hey, I see you thinking about the president of the time. I don't know, I don't know. I don't remember anybody before Georgia. I'm pretty sure it was Roosevelt all that. Uh. I'm like, Oh, mckinney, okay, McKinley, McKinley, I was gonna say it's not. He's from Ohio. Um, so so he so, Philip. Yes, so phelipe calls up, the president is like Hey, you think about this Nicaragua Canal? Thing. Cool idea, great idea, but he's like, but have you guys noticed all the volcanoes? Who just thought about the it's really bad there, you know. Have you thought about the real estate there? Have you talking about who long term investment? Like, yeah, you're not gonna get a lot in your won't get a big return. About you are? Oh, I thought. Have you seen him? Nicaraguan rivers in Zillo Lake? Think about it. You've seen a lot in Panama. Hey, thanks again for listening to this episode. If you like our show, make sure you follow us on social at tilling podcast or subscribe anywhere where you're listening to right now, whether that's Youtube, spotify or apple podcast, whatever it is. And if you want more, we do have a patreon you can support us on. In there you get all sorts of perks like add free episodes, early access to our content and even a discord with our hosts and producers. So We'd love for you to check that out. All you gotta do is text till into six, six, six six. That's till into six six eight six six. But thanks again for checking us out. So phelipe was like, Hey, McKinley, you're trying to build this canal through Nicaragua. What if he said, have you guys thought about the volcanoes? And they said no, and he said, yeah, there's a lot of volcanoes over there. I didn't need to blow up a bunch like you need to watch out for them. Sure, and so like this is like whenever one of our female friends will start dating some dude heart volcanoes, though, like somebody yould go to his living room. He's just got a bunch of paper mache volcanoes, like hundreds of people like you as volcanoes, though. That's a red flag, you know. You go to you go to somebody's house and they's got paper mache volcanoes over lots of but have you considered the volcano? He's got a room full of volcanoes. And so this guy, you would like, this guy. Um, he starts because he wasn't sure if, like, they were convinced yet. So he starts sending a bunch of letters to just different officials in the government that were like involved in the volcanoes, photoshops pictures of their volcanoes and their families and just trying to make it a letter from the volcano. Don't build them. Don't come into Karagua. You know what to do. That's what it says. It's really threatening letters from volcano. It is volcano in Nicaragua has been threatening me, like me and my family. Yeah, I can't fly. The volcano knows my kid's names. I'm a volcano. My Dad was a volcano, his dad was a volcano. All hailed a volcano. Okay, so you know he's much more subtle. So he would send these letters like of like honest communication type letters. Right, sure, but he I don't know where he found these, but he found Nicaragua had a set of stamps that had volcanoes on them, and so he would send these letters to like with these its just like hey, happy birthday, oh my God, volcanoes in Nicarag wouldn't you see the stamp? Have you seen the stamps? Nicarag was stamps volcanoes on them. So eventually, man, Hey, McKinley, what even thinking about lately? This is just thinking about volcanoes. He's dreaming about him. He's wake up a mill of night and so he started having the conversations. He's guys. You know, they're famous for him. It's almost already built. The volcanoes they're almost already erupt um the earth. Already built the volcane. You haven't even started building your river. We've got a river almost done. Half, yeah, we just see the other half ship. Or we also we have half a river and half a sling shot. Whichever was so many ideas. whichever. What do you want? You can have and build that. And so eventually he convinced the US, and the US was like, okay, how do we pull this off? And he said, don't worry, let me go talk to the Pandemonians. I hate how smooth you said it. That's what got me. I need to go talk to the Pandemonians. Okay, ahead. So he calls him up and shows up there and he starts setting them stamps book he does on them, and they're like, I don't understand the context of this job. Okay, he said, I'm just trying to get rid of stamps now, I go too many of them. At the time, Panama was in his own country. There was the WHO who ruled it. There was the Panamanian people, Um, and they what are they called? I'm really I'm pretty sure Panamanian. Okay, Panamese. Panamanian. I'm like Panamanian Um. Pandemonium. Dude, this is just one of his educated guesses. This is like really, it's just a Greek God statue. He's pretty confident. It's Panamanian Um. They were a people that were there and then Colombia was like hey, you're us now, and they're like no, we're not, and they're like yes, you are, and so then they're so this at the time was like my mom asks, you're one of us. How much do I have to pay you for you to be my girlfriend for this wedding? You know, I mean we have another island. I mean, yeah, we have a whole other people group. They're on another island. You would theresa. It's going really well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're happy. Uh, Huh, great, this is awful. So the someone says they're happy, late, really happy. Okay, happy, okay. It was like like what do you guys been up to lately? Just being happy, just love. It's very happy. Yeah, we're never going to see her again, are we? It's a Panama's bitter about the whole work Columbian now things, uh, and columbmonium. I'm I'm pretty positive. And so felippe shows up to the Panamanians. What if we could get you to where you were Panamanian and not Columbimonian, and they were like that would be great, like that would bring Pantamonia. This just did. Bantamon is seceded from club parmonium. This okay. So they said that would be awesome, but we don't know how we're gonna do that because Colombia has a military we do not. And he said, Hey, guess what, you know the United States. And they were like, like that really big country. They're like yeah, they want to help you, and they're like no way, and he was like way. He said Hang Out, wait for my signal, and they were like deal, and so then he went to the US and he said okay. The panamins said their mom said that. If your mom says yes, then you can say the night were there, they said he said, Hey, look the Pantom Pana Panamanians. They said, you can build the canal, the catches. They want to be their own country and so they're gonna revolt from Colombia. They need you to stop them from getting reinforcements to Panama. And they're like, we can hang, we can handle them in our country. We just can't handle their reinforcements, and so the US was like, yeah, that'll be easy, and so they take their gun ships and just park it outside of Panama. And then Philippe caused the Panamanians. He sends them one stamp with a volcano and then they revolt. They do the thing to get back to Colombia. Columbia is like, Oh, we need to go to reinforcements. They take their boats, they see the American gun ships and they said, hey, we don't care that much, it's fine. Yeah, no, yeah, I was. I was driving over here anyway. We were just looking at in the neighborhood. That's wild. Yeah, yeah, no, I was just I was door dashing. Yeah, sorry, sorry, we're I'm heading home. Yeah, I gotta get out here here. Yeah, that's UH. So. Yeah, Panama became a country. The United States with the first country to recognize them as a country. Um, and then the United States was like cool, build the canal now, and they're like cool, yeah, I do that, and then they built the canal. UH, they finished it in nineteen fourteen, Um, and it was very disappointing for the canal people because the canal people. Yeah, well, right before the war, right before World War One, all these people just started coming out of the canal. They called the Canal People's. No one knows where they came from. The yeah, well, wear one was canal people's Um. Now the canal people uh, like, who built it? They planned this big ceremony where they're gonna in fine. Also, at this point it's who has built it? This is the American government's paying for it. Yeah. Yeah, so they the United States and they hired Felipe Felippe, and Phelippe actually called his old friend lecepsceps this time was like yeah, maybe we should do that thing where you was like, Oh, yeah, I'm actually in prison for killing two people. So I don't think my ideas are the best. Yeah, and the the US was like we got gunships, we can get you out of in Um, and I don't know how that happened, but anyways. Yeah, so he came in. Well, he didn't actually come, he just kind of from France told everyone what to do. Um, but anyways, they he said Look, sea level rivers dumb, uh, mountain level rivers cool, and so he built these locks, which, do you know how the Panmic now works? It's you're saying that like you do know, I'm serious. It's pretty smart. So what they do is they bring the boats in and there is the calm locks and it's almost like an air lock, and so it locks in and then what happens is there is another lock that is a higher level water and it drains in and then matches the level of the water and then the gate opens and it goes through and closes and it just repeats this over and over as it raises the sea level of the canal until they understand. Okay, let me explain it again. Do you have a visual I'm kind of serious. Do you have a visual? Um, let me grab one. Essentially, what they're doing is, have you ever had like two cups and you like poured from one cup and made them the same height? Yes, that's what they're doing over and over again until they get up to the highest height in the mountain and then they've got a canal all the way across that highest height. Then they get to the other side and they reverse the process. Okay, but how do they get the water up there? So here, let me get you get your graphic, because it didn't fill with the rain. Now there's a lake at the top. Is that real? I'm having trouble picturing this. Let me get you. Let me get your graphic. I need to get one that's a little bit more this show was hosted by two idiots. Okay, so boats come in, this thing shuts off the water. Yeah, so there's there's a gate on both sides something. Yeah, it was finished. They started in one. So there's two gates. The gate that they came in from closes behind them. The Gate in front of them is already closed, and then they get in there. And then what happens is, if you're well, start at the left. You're coming from the Atlantic Ocean. You go through the Gaton locks, and so that first one is the same level as sea level. You get in there, the gate closes behind you and it goes up really high, and then the next level, the water lower. Water level lowers to where the water levels even, but it's higher than what it was before, and so it lifts the boat up and once it's even, then they open up that gate and then the boat goes through, the gate closes and then they repeat this process over and over again. So you're raising an altitude just a little bit every time you're going through until you're at the altitude of this Gattoon Lake and then it goes all the way through and then reverses the process where now it's descending the water level. So that's empowered by how are you doing with gates? It's just pumps, so they're just pumping the water through. So there's like underground pumps that are pumping water through the next gate and there's a guy, there's a there's they got a troll that was probably steam powered. Steam was the thing at the time. That's very interesting. Okay, it's pretty crazy, and this is still functions today. There's a lot more like like electricity and computers and stuff now, but it's the same concept in the water. Yeah, they get shocked. This one was super electric. Okay, yeah, it's pretty smart Um. And so that was the idea to go up the mountain instead of dig to sea level, because you can see in this graphic, if they dug to sea level there's still a lot more dirt to dig out. That would take some time. It's really, really clever, and so the people who built it were super proud of it. This is honestly one of the most impressive engineering marvels in recent hits. That's what I'm saying, that it's pretty crazy, really, really, very, very impressive. I think why? There's a lot. I thought on this day hotel the other day if, like, if civilization fell apart. I mean I know how wheels work, you know, but I don't know how like axles. I couldn't like yeah, yeah, it's like there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff like, oh my gosh, yeah, that's how the bronzes claps happened. I was thinking about you know what I thought about it. I was looking at as in the hotel and I was like, how is this elevator working? I was like, because it's it's doing different weights. But like, anyway, that's impressive. People are smarter than us. People are smarter than us. Man, so stupid. But so they play in this big event, right, and they were. They invited every nation in the world to come look at the cool thing that they built and they had a really fancy boat that they were going to take the whole trip on and everyone was gonna be like a parade. Everyone's gonna be on the side with their flags and their cigarettes and their fireworks. Uh, just like celebrating the whole thing right the day that they planned. It was literally, gives you not like two weeks after World War One started. And so people were like, I don't want to go. If they're going, you tell me they're gonna be there. No, yeah, so they canceled it. And so, because this happened, it wasn't the first ship that traveled through. Wasn't this like pretty boat. It was like a United States warship. Um, Nice. So, which is pretty fitting given how they got the United States. Yea. Um. And so they built that. Uh. And then the Panama Canal since then has had a pretty rocky history. Uh. The US, after they built that, was like this is now the canal zone and that's a part of our country, and Panama was like that wasn't the deal. They're like this is Panama, and they like no, this is the canal zone, and they set up all these like I love canal zones. Whoever decided to just fold it over on itself, whoever decided to a four and a half canal? You know what I love is that? Okay, so, like let's say you got the Pepperino, the cheese right, the canal thing pops up and then like the cheese melts into the other canal area and all of a sudden you got a raised up. Honestly, the science behind its incredible. Pretty it's a modern engine canal zones. So they said this is the canal zone, and what they did is they built this city just kind of all along the canal zone. Um, that was in America. Yeah, it was. They did this in the ninet twenties and it was what you'd see in the US. They built these schoolhouses, everybody there spoke English, they put up American flags and like it was the US right. And then just along this river, and Panama was like, Hey, this is a raw deal. We got here because they built this giant canal. Yeah, they're operating it, they're getting all the money from it, and the people who are traveling through it sometimes they'll stop, but they never go into Panama City or any outside of the canal zones. They're spending all our money and stuff where in the U s area, not where we benefit from it. So we're not benefiting from this at all. We literally cut US IN HALF and we're getting we've got nothing to show for it. Um, and they actually became like this big division of people who live in the canal zones with people who are out and it became like this big Um, just a big cultural in the canal zone. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, Kansas City, Missouri and Johnson County. Yeah, the Canal Zone. Uh. And so it all kind of erupted in uh when the US sent common nineteen, yeah, eighty nine, common nine team, which is fitting because that was exactly a hundred years after France was born. Okay, so are wrong. I mean I guess. I think Taylor Swift is responsible for the paramount canal conflict. So the US sent ten thousand troops to just kind of occupy, uh, and it turned into this pretty long war. Um, that resulted in two thousand uh in January, first two thousand. The US was like fine, it's yours, Panama. Um. And so now they own the canal and they've done a bunch of stuff, like improvements and stuff to it. They've widened it, wid didn't it? Now you can fit fatter boats, you can turn your boat around, it won't get stuck. Um. That Suez. Uh. So Um. Yeah, it all began literally five years ago with a dream from a guy who had honestly no right dreaming about that. He was just like, oh my gosh, that'd be cool. It would be so cool. No need for it, just kind of like literally on the other side of the planet, like he never would go over there pull up a map. I want to. I kind of want to dream for a little bit. You know, two white guys of the PODCAST. Let's pull up and figure where we're going to conquer. Yeah, where can we? where? We can now plant my flag? You know what I'm talking about. Where can I? Yeah, can it now? The new TIKTOK series can now now? I don't know. I'm not interested down here. I'm interested in like the other part of the world. What if we I wonder if there's a spot in Missouri can we put a canal in Kansas City? Can we build a Kansas City Canal? Surely Is there a spot right here? That can't be too long. That's a lot. No, I ride that on my bike. That's not too long from Lake Wakamas to the river. Maybe right here and you gonna cut it all the way where to downtown. No, I'm saying like just right here in this a spot where we could buy a small plot of land and just dig a canal for the joke. Yeah, support of my patreon. So we can make canal to here. Mm Hmm, Yep, right here, wanted't it be so much faster if we could sail at thistle, because right now it's too sharp of a turn. We want to build it like what is it like? A yeah, Oh, yeah, that's the river. Yeah, that's just so stupid. What a dumb bit. Let's get out of this I'm looking at now. Yeah, there we go, keep going, keep going, keeps me. Okay, that's all right. Yeah, that's a good spot for a canal. That's interesting. So anyways. Yeah, that's uh, that's the Panama Panama Canal, crazy history. Um, my favorite part of the stamps. Yeah, I love the that's super passive aggressive. I enjoy that. Yeah, it's great. It worked. It worked. To think the Panama can now would never exist if it wasn't for some guy's stamp choice. Yeah, that's good, butterfly. Do you think if we put the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty next to each other, because they're both from France, right? Yeah, yeah, I think I think you could loop something around the torch and build a sling shot. Sling shot. Yeah, Oh, what would you sling? Well, what I sling then this Jick eatic sling shot. This feels like a weird, like street interview question. What would you sling if the Eiffel Tower and statue liberty would next to each other? But it's like a riddle for some reason and it's like I don't know anyway fiddle off. Things on the last night is a production of space tim media, produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by alace Garnett, video by Connor Betts. Social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg, our host, or Jarren Meyers and Tim Stone. Please follow us on social media at tilling podcast. THAT'S T I L O in podcast. Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you for listening to things on the last night.

Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Man, why did you breathe? Welcome to welcome to tilling. What's what's up? Oh, not much. I was just wondering. Have you uh, have you ever heard of five thirty six a d? Five Thirties six a d? Yeah, like the restaurant, yes, really does, selling a restaurant where they just serve food and they're it's like a caveman themed yeah, because they don't understand when Caveman's existing. I was thinking five BC still still wouldn't be caveman. How many restaurants, how many restaurant tours do you know that are just like, you know, historically accurate people. I mean, have you been to a dinosaur themed restaurant? No, those things are not historically accurate. It's pretty accurate to me. Did get to you, I guess the form to the right, like I could do your job if it was fast and air conditioning. Okay, that's my mentality for anything. Do you think we would still do our podcast the world isn't Ingham and son didn't come out anymore? Is that your nose at the plague? Throw up with the river. You're not gonna see the sub ten years, Bro Years. Things I learned last night anybody works at rainforest cafe knows what a rainforest looks like. They could have a point one on a map because they've seen the rainforest cafe. Five thirty six a d what happened in that specific year? Oh, Um, a bunch of scientists think it was the worst year to be alive. Oh, I don't know. You know, we've, we've, we've been alive the last couple on. Let's the last couple of ones. Let's well, I mean, if you want to, let's take a deep dive. Let's take a look here, could we? I wonder if we could put a chart up on the screen here. Yeah, what do they call it back then? What they call it in like year twelve? They're like it's twelve. I actually don't know that. It's happy year. You know, it's it's you. Yeah, how are they doing it? Yeah, it's just a two and a zero. Yeah, yeah, that'd be rough. No, so the year five, D uh, it was. There's a few things going on. Okay, we'll start. We'll start from the top. It was an interesting era for Rome because about a hundred years before that, uh, the capital of Rome, Rome was sacked. The Rome capital was Rome, Rome, Rome Rome, Rom. Welcome to Rome Room. It's like New York, New York. That's where New York got the idea from. From Rome Rome did it? Like we're New York, New York, like Rome, Rome, Rome, Rome. Actually, I'm not certain that the capital was Rome, but I'm we're going with it. Rome Rome. Neither is the restaurant tour who owns five. Welcome to roam Rome. That's what they call the little robot surfer they've got that goes around. That's Rome Rome. Yeah, you don't notice he's got Rome built on his back. It's a Roomba, ro Ro, rolling around the room. And this is my son, Roman Rome. Okay, I died of this, so don't good. Um, somebody stacked Rome. Uh. And then, uh, Constantine happened. You know, Jesus into Noble, all that story. If you don't know it, it's in the Bible. She's not in the Bible. Don't try to look it up. Um. And they slowly bounced back and it became the Byzantine Empire. They were like it's not room anymore. Name is something very different, um, but it's still wrong. And then so the realm's like, we're still alive. We're crawling back for life, but it's really fractured. There's shirts to say Rome will rise again. You know, they can't take us out, they can't. They can't take us down. They can sack room Rome, but they'll never sat constantinoa. Somebody pronounces roam. Yeah, this is that Um, but it was fractured. So the businestine empire was a bunch of like little almost city states that were like, we're Rome and everyone's like, but that guy's not room Um. You know, this is starting to feel really familiar. I was track. And so they're in a rough political climate. Um, and then the year five thirty six happens and some interesting things happened. Uh, and it's been a long road to get here, for us to understand what's going on. Um. Yeah, I mean years there was a lot of uh, there was a lot of writings and archaeological finds, but up until the nineties nobody paid much attention to how they connected the story. Like nineties, yes, sorry, the five nineties. No one. No one paid attention to how they connected the story. Yeah, because so there's a bunch of fractured archaeological evidence that pointed to the story of five and why it was the way it was up until the nineteen nineties. It was so disjointed that no one connected those dots of all this evidence year. Yeah, this is all one year. And so in the nineties, uh, things started to come together because there was a group doing core samples of the ice in the Arctic and they pulled out this core sample and it looked like this and they're like that's weird. Um. Why? Why is it so pixelated? It is very pixelated. Weird. Um. No, if you're listening, basically they took this giant core sample of ice that goes down like a hundred feet and it's just a bunch of normal ice and then all of a sudden, Um, it's just this really dark dirty ice and then like some dim, dim, dark dirty ice, very dark dirty ice, and then some dim dirty ice and then like a little ring, yeah, of of just black, yeah, of ice. It was bad ice. It was the Ice Goth era, Um, and uh, the scientists were like, well, that's peculiar that that would happen. So then they started digging more of these cores all around the Arctic and they kept seeing the same results. So it wasn't like a localized the ice just got really dirty there for a little bit. Um, there was something pretty widespread. So it wasn't happened in the art and artic. Yeah, but they didn't have an explanation for this, and so all these theories started to abound, like comets and volcanoes and tidal waves and Um, vacuum cleaner that. Yeah, you know, the normal scientific theories when they find something weird. Um. Meanwhile, at the same time there was this dude at Harvard who really likes trees. Why? That was so funny to be and I gotta hold on. Am I am I right? Oh, I did realize in the Oregon episode that I said the F D A was the federal department agriculture. It's not. It's the Food and Drug Administration. Yeah, I'll let you have it. Yeah, I was dumb. I realized that later, like almost immediately after he recorded. I was like, Oh, stupid. Anyway, Um, uh, he's really into trees. Is that? Oh Gosh, is that harbor? Are Wrists? Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Okay, Arbor is Arbor, and Arbor at Harvard trying to say Harvard Arbor, Harvard Arbor. The Harvard Arbor was telling his barb the Harvard ar the Harvard Arbor was telling his barber. Yeah, there you go, we just meane. Okay. So, uh, he was looking at a bunch of tree rings. Um. I literally was about to make a tree ring joke when I saw that ring of the dirt and I was like yeah, well, he was looking at tree rings and he found Um, there was this period uh, dating back to the same time as those ice rings, where the trees, uh, we're really upset. That's how he said it, that's the words he used. The trees were really upset, Um, and so he studied all of this conversation so far sounds like something I would see on twitter in someone was just like the trees are sad. If everyone could just like get it together, the trees are like depressed, so sad. There were no happy little trees. Only. Why did you desert your dog? First of all, I didn't desert my dog. Okay, I tied it around that tree because that tree needed it as a support, because the tree was sad. Support the trees. Yeah, same thing where I did with my firstborn kid, labradoodles for trees. Wait, what? The tree was sad and I was like you know, what you need is a child's son. Yeah, I've read the book. Are you the giving tree? Are you the giving tree? Here's a child, here's this child, here's this okay. So he noticed that the trees were sad and so he started taking a hole batch of trees and looking to see if all the trees were sad. And what he realized was it wasn't just in Europe, it wasn't just in Greenland, it was worldwide. Wherever he found a tree, um, whenever he stumbled across, just planted limb. He just walked around with his axe. I'm sure that contribute to their sadness at all. He said, this tree I cut down was sad like years ago and also now. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you liked it, would really help us out if you leave a review or a comment on Youtube, if that's what you're watching on, and if you want to check out another episode, I recommend Julianne Kopki. That was an episode all about a woman who survived a ten thousand footfall from a plane without a parachute, landed in the Amazon. Absolutely bonkers story, uh, and it was pretty fun. We had a lot of fun jared and I in that episode. Uh. So you should check it out. It's one of my favorites right now. But thanks so much for being here. Well, what he was doing was he was looking at Um, because here was one thing I thought, Um was, where is he finding all these trees that lived years ago, like still, that are still alive, because trees, you don't know how old trees are. Yeah, trees aren't years old. Some are, some are. Yeah. So I looked at that. So, UH, most trees don't live past a hundred but there are. Most species of trees can have the potential to live a thousand plus years. YEA, most of them. Most of them don't. Most of them don't, but they can't. But there's some people, some freaking freaks out there. I mean I'm really old, I'm very old, um, but some this. So he was cutting down pretty big trees. Then to figure that out, he had to be cutting redwoods and stuff. Yeah, this is Bristle colmb pines. They can exceed three thousand years. Yeah, that I was saying. Like I went to the like, we went out to uh, General Sherman, like the largest living tree on earth in California, and you think it's like when you're driving up there, you're like this thing is not gonna be worth it because you're wined and round around. It's pretty stinken worth it really, oh dude, to stand in front of this ridiculous creature that is I mean the base of it is wider than our whole back wall. Really, Oh gosh dude, it's bonkers. This is saying that. Well, I don't know how old that thing is. How old was that thing? Like over two thousand years old? Thing to look at it and go this thing, it was like this tall when Jesus was here. How does it feel to be so little? What Jesus was rare? Um, this thing is saying that, you know. Oh, yeah, like, what's this one called? Uh, that's in California too. Yeah, this one is the oldest confirmed age. Yeah, and it says it's years old. Yeah, it's old, Dude. That's like older than Egypt. Yeah, and it looks like it. It looks older. This looks like an art installation. Yea, if that tree could talk, it would go so healing. I don't want to please, please, just chop me down. I was five. I'm a SAGURY. Please take me out. Chop me down. This harvard armor is going around cutting up trees and realizing they're all really sad california anymore. They sticking limps, limps thee. What if the tree keeps up with politics? Years Old freaking boomer the trees? I don't know. So I think a year old person would sound like. Would sound great. Probably Fair. Fair. What do you think that year old? Hundred, forty eight year old hundred trees. That's different. Do you think you could kill that? One Tree or trees? Okay, this anyway. He's chopping down trees. He's finding out a different thing too. He's bringing his own hatchet everywhere. He's just chopping down trees. Yeah, like, what do you do? But he he got a lot of data together, got thousands of little trees and say they're all sad and all the trees. was like, we gotta Trust You, I guess. And so, uh, this group of Harvard Arborists and Uh Ivy League ice diggers. I was trying to find a way to do that. When it was tougher, Ivy, the Ivy sers Um, they got together, they joined leagues and they figured out, Hey, I think this is connected, because it's you know the same time. You got dirty ice. Yeah, you got dirty ice, we got dirty trees, trees, trees, dirty ice. What else can be? Fine, so they started. They called the archaeologists and they're like, Hey, what happened in five thirty six? You got any evidence? They guess you would have to look in the caves. Why? Because that's the next oldest thing I could think is, like that would be there would be evidence in caves, right, because caves are obviously been around forever. Yeah, but five six, it's not like people were living in caves then. No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not saying for evidence of people, I'm saying like for other confirmation of nature of damage. Yeah, yeah, Um, so they yeah, they said. They said, how are we going to figure out what happened here? Um, and then so they called the archaeologists. They said you see anything, uh, in find six a D and they're like yeah, not only was the ice dirty and the trees sad, but the people were dead. Um what they were like, yeah, that so here's what happened. So they found some letters. There was a historian who was even D and uh, a few years after the fact he was writing about that. His experience at D and here's a direct quote. He said the sun gave, gave forth its light without brightness. It was like the moon during the whole year. Um. And then there was another quote that said that the sun was like a light blue shade in the sky. Um. And then there was another one, another letter somewhere where, that said that it was it was noonday and we we couldn't see our shadows and we marveled at the fact that we couldn't see our shadows. And it was like this for over a year. It was just dark. Yeah, it was. It was remember that eclipse that we had. It did that, but it stopped. It just froze. It was like a disc. That was so are they are they suggesting that the something blocked out the sun for a year, essentially, and so this, this really stumped scientists because they were like what, what happened? Yeah, what's going on? And so a lot of theories started to come up, everything from volcanoes to comic strikes to tidal waves. I think I mentioned all these earlier. To See people, to see people's Um. What they ended up landing on was there was a volcanic eruption in Iceland and it was so severe that it spewed so much action to the sky that it literally blacked out the sun for eighteen months, um. And worldwide, worldwide, there was a fog around the whole planet because this, this was so severe and it's evidenced by Um. Worldwide, the rings on the trees and the ice sheets on both Poles were covered in like this layer, layer of what. Okay, it's just dirty Um. And then then everybody in these like the archaeologists, they had these writings, but they never thought much of it because they didn't connect the dots. Like they it was, oh hey, this person studying round found this letter about it was really dark months, someone running in China who was like yeah, this guy talked about it being really dark months. And then they connected them all together and like Oh, this was all the same time, um. And so what they think happened was obviously like that eruption happened and it created this fog that made it dim. But as a result the temperature in the summers dipped by thirty six degrees. Fair Knight. So Uh wow. Needless to say, crops struggled, everything struggled because they didn't have so the trees weren't the only thing that was sad. Yeah, the corn was sad. Gets Sad, little corns. Um. Yeah, that's when baby corn was invented. It was invented. Yeah, they were like, Hey, we could just make it small. So I just want to confirmed that. You think that people were like we should just make small corn. Yeah, well, they were growing cords, normal corns, corns that year they couldn't grow all the way because it was too cold. So they just grew little baby corns and they're like, you could still eat them, and they're like, Hey, that's not half bad. Let's make those again next year when it's a warm again. Only it wasn't warm again for another like fifteen years, but years. Yeah, so there was so here was it was exasperated because it wasn't because of all their cars. There's so much of missions. Uh. Yes, this, this guy, has exasperated because there was that eruption right overnight. Overnight it stopped. It never ended, the nights didn't there's no more day. Uh. And then the fog was worldwide. Dipped the temperatures and then it took a long time for things to spipe back. Even as the fog began to clear, well, what they discovered is that years later, umve forty four years later, there was another volcanic eruption in Europe. Kids break, and then a bunch of fog close to as severe as the other one, and then seven there was another volcanic eruption in Europe, I believed, and because of that it just kind of left the climate in this what do you think I would do to us today? It would be pretty cold. Well, I mean like yeah, but I mean like, do you think we've got the equipment technology to like purify air or like, because people not clear away. But I'm saying that people had couldn't live in that. People just live with it being yeah, they did. They just let they just lived in volcanic ash and they's breathed it in. Yeah, I know what I'm saying, but I was surely that killed them. I mean, yeah, surely a lot of them? Yeah, for sure. Um, some people who are just tough like just make it through. But yeah, I mean it, we did out the week ones, for sure. What are you talking about? Like, I don't know. Do we have any writing about the people living there? I mean a lot of people have survived it. I guess maybe they wear masks. I don't know, like I don't know. I haven't thought about that. Hey, thank you again for listening to this episode. Making sure that you don't miss one in the future. Go ahead and subscribe to this podcast, whether that be on apple podcast, spotify youtube. You'll get an alert when we drop a new episode. And if you want more, if you want something a week early, you want to be part of our discord, more access to us as creators, you can support this show on patreon. It helps us go a long way. Nothing that we're doing is possible without our patreon supporters. If you want more information about that, please text tilling to six six eight, six six. Thank you so much for being here. I mean, we've probably all wear masks. Do you think we would still do our podcast if the world was ending in the sun didn't come out anymore? I mean we would have to China light in the darkness. What is this? Is My flashlight. I thought you were going to give me nuxt and so I know what happened to me the other day and I was really mad about where was I? Oh, I did a show. Afterward, went to go shape the guy's hand as he's coming up to the stage and he just didn't do it. So, in front of everybody, I got snubbed. Did He? Did he see it? I think so. I think he saw it and went. I just kept going, you know, and I was like all right, man slashes tires from the parking on that. Before I left. I was like, I'm not gonna let you treat me like that in front, in front of everybody, in front of over, in front of everybody. Come, I filled his car with volcano ash. You're not gonna see the sun from ten years. Broy is this volcanic ash? Where did you get this? Oh, there's an Amazon seller who sells it at the five gallon bucket. Yeah, I mean I think it'd be pretty severe today still. Yeah, I would think so. So there was obviously the crop failure problem. So people were hungry, people were starving and I'm sure you're probably right, there's probably a lot of people who were dying of like respiratory stuff, respiratory stuff. Yeah, there was also a war that was going on in the middle of this. That continued. Um, so that was pretty bad. Um, so this this whole season, was a war happening. Yeah, there was a war. was just one of the sides of the war being like we're gonna make this really inconvenient. The other side it was like the United States Army. Yeah, like we figured out how to make volcanoes erupped. Yeah, we didn't figure out how to make it just affect you, though. So it's gonna be all of us, sorry to the fog of warry trees. That's why they were sad. They felt betrayed. They're like this was our own, our own army. Um, and so the volcano has made it a pretty bad situation. Um. There was obviously yes, Um, and then yeah, so then it was the first bubonic plague. happened. Um, it was a plague, volcano, war going on, a war going on, and I don't know if you remember learning about the bubonic plague. It was serious. I'm so serious. They named it after the emperor Um Justinian. Um, so that's a good thing to be remembered for. Um, they're called the justinian plague, uh, and the estimate is that a third to half of the population died in this plague. Um, and it was pretty peculiar because the way it always earth. Yeah, and it's peculiar because the way it started is you would get like this lesion on your palm in your hand, and then within a few days you'd be covered in them and then you die. Um, and so it's like very severe, highly contagious, and they didn't understand germs yet, and so everyone was just carrying around all these plagued bodies after they died and like throwing them into like the rivers and stuff. It was like get rid of them, and then they go drink that water and then go hang out shake hands with people after their sets. I bet that's why he didn't do it. Which one of us do you think has the plague? Do you think he thought I had it, or do you think he knows he's got it? He saw your palm and he's like that Palm Looks Pretty Babonic. That guy's got a bubonic palm. Got A plaguey palm. If you're plague palm away for me. Um, and it spread super fast. And so it was. It was as if the situation wasn't bad enough already. Well, I mean like you couldn't tell if someone had sores on the dark outside. That's why we got that's why it spread so fast. Is that a bump on your palm? Oh shoot, is that your nose at the plague? Throw him in the river. Okay, uh. And so then, I mean, when you have a situation where a third to half the population dies in a short period of time, um, that's not good for the economy. Won't somebody think of the economy? It's hard to do business in the dark. It's already hard enough. Yeah, I can't hold it, can't sign a contract from my hand hurts from all these sores. I can't get the trees to do anything the time. You know how hard it is to be around with his passive, aggressive trees, like there's creating oxygen and they're just like you're like, oh my gosh, dude, it's like having a teenager in the backseat who's like the trees are just begging you to ask what's wrong. They just want you to listen. Yeah, they just want you to listen, and they're like that's the lesson for today. If you're a walk maybe just go why don't you go listen to a tree today? What are you doing, man? Yeah, just listening to how are you feeling? You know, it's really m are you being a tree right now? Both people. I tried. I'm I'm a passer. You chopped down the tree to put it out of its misery? Yeah, do you? What do you do? You Chop it down, or do you water it? I don't know, like, how do you help a treat I don't know. We're not arborists inside this bit. So much so the trees are said. There's a war going on, the sky is dark and the people are dying from the plague and the economy and shample and the economy, because you got you got bad crops, you gotta go, you got a war, you got the plague, a death rate. Yeah, what's your UN employment? Of just of just the people who definite play, but you've got people who, I'm sure you're right, I'm sure there's people who were having respiratory problems. I'm sure there was people who are dying in the war. Um, and so it was. And then I'm sure there's people are dying in starvation. And so then you have all these people dying, which meant there was less people to crop stuffs. People. Look, there's people to farm, less people to build, less people to do everything. There's people to food, we're talking about, and so so so the economy completely installed. Um and a lot of historians say that this was the shift from, UH, the era of antiquity to the medieval era and maybe the dark ages, because all of a sudden pretty much every major dark ages. Ah, this sounds so. They the historians, say this was the end of the world for a little bit, at the end of the known world there. Yeah, at that time, because every major society had historians who talked about how the cops failed, the economy has failed, the government's failed and uh, then it almost went into this kind of tribalistic mentality, just like you would expect. Um. Honestly, I feel like this is probably a very similar to the situation to what we talked about a few weeks ago in the Bronze Age collapse, where there was this kind of series of factors that in a relatively short amount of time, kind of destroyed everything. Yeah, because what happens is you build a system and you're like this system works, but you don't design the system to work when, like, it relies too heavily on itself and then with minor disruptions, all of a sudden the whole thing falls apart. You know, like the same thing with the supply chain issue. We've had the past couple of years which all of a sudden these supply chain issues are crippling certain sectors of our economy. Yeah, exactly. And you had, um, they started finding, especially in Europe, there would be in these like River deltas, on the little island portion in the river in the Delta, there would be these forts that people built and they would build these wood spikes sticking out of the sides of the forts and they'd have like a camp that they put in that fort because all these people, um, we're so used to relying on farming, when farming didn't exist, they couldn't figure out how to get through the winter, and so what they found was there was a lot of bodies that they suspect were buried during winter seasons because people were starving in the winters. Um, because they were able to grow a little bit during the spring, in the summer, but once they went to the winter, they were relied almost completely on hunting and they didn't know what they were doing and they couldn't keep up with it, and so they would build these little fortresses, Um, and it seems like the reason why that happened is because people were out there see people in Um, and and and and. Uh, it seems like that gave birth to that medieval era. Um, was that society worldwide? Um also. I mean, yeah, people build strongholds and then they, you know, because you gotta, you find a place to crop. Then you build walls around that croppage. We were really stretching the word crop today. Yeah, well, you know, and then, uh, you know, and then you build a little bridge over your you know, you build your little crop top, right, and so it goes over that and then, uh, speaking of crops, remember. Yeah, what, what could possibly bring up for you? Yesterday, where at the office and the Youtube that we use for tilling. Oh Yeah, did you play that farming game? I haven't yet. Okay, UH, yeah, for it recommended some farming game and so Jaran pulls it up to kind of make fun of it, and I was like look how stupid this is. Tim was like, well, let's watch it, though. It's just a it's just a farming simulator. It looks pretty fun. You're literally driving combine back and forth. Yeah, it looks pretty good. Uh, don't you have a yard when that's so not fun, like doing in real life. Yeah, it's hot and slow okay, farming citulator. It's pretty fast and it's in the air conditioning. So like, I could do your job if it was fast and air conditioned. Okay, that's my mentality for anything. So people were just dying because they couldn't figure out how to store crops from the spring and summer in Laska. Winter. Yeah, more than that, it was just they couldn't even grow enough because it was thirty five degrees colder in the summer. I mean your average summer is like eighty something throughout the majority of the world and now it's fifties like that's that's a supery. That's a severe dip. And so the crops and the trees and plants and the animals all sad and it made everybody else starve Um. So you can't hunt when the animals are sad. It just feels that feels, you know. You just see a deer out there, just just mop it through the ones and you're like empathizing with the deer, like I can't. I can't kill a sad deer. Can't. Does even taste as good. Yeah, everybody knows sad deer tastes bade. That's why you've got to kill the ones with families. You know, the happier than happier deer, the meat. That's I mean, that's why, you know, that's why you always ask like did this cow have a good life? That's why at bass pro shops they sell dear lottery tickets, so you can go give the deer a lottery ticket, an extra large check. You can hand the deal. My favorite dear decoy is the one where the deers on one knee proposing right and so like this female deer is having it's like what killed it? Yeah, that's gonna be a good yeah, they call it the dear dear. You know it's good. You can buy the bass pro. That's a dark joke. I hate that a lot. So Um, yeah, so, anyways, uh, most historians say probably the worst time in history to be alive, and then definitely opened up one of the worst, one of the most prolonged seasons of just because too many factors made it almost impossible to like you can't form a society in there. And it was still in a spot too, where, for the most part, Rome was the only real superpower of the day and they had just gone through upheaval and been put into a pretty rough situation, and so this really sped up the actual complete collapse of Rome. But because of this, there wasn't really Um, any nation on earth that was very strong and stable Um, and so because of that, without the any stability, they couldn't weather. And we got all that from a ring in the ice. Yeah, these guys found just some dirt in the ice and then they were like, what happened? We know how terrible the world was back then. He's some dirt in the ice. You're like, Whoa, what happened that year? Yeah, so basically, here's where we're at. We have to decide what look like five what's worse? What's where? If we get a volcano in the next couple of years, might beat it. Yeah, we're on a we're on a hot street right now. We're coming in. If you're listening in the middle of Your River bunker right somehow you're still getting podcasts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're you know, uh, sorry that we predicted that. I'm sorry we spoke that in the world. Apologize to the trees for me. Yeah, tell the trees we're sorry. Yeah, why don't you lean into a tree? Would you lean right up there? And they just whispered to it off. Please just love me remember things on them last night. is a production of space tim media, produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by Alas Garnett, video by Connor Bets. Social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg, our host, or Jarren Meyers and Tim Stone. Please all US on social media at tilling podcast. THAT'S T I ll in podcast. Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you for listening to things on the last night. m