Episode Transcription

Hey, man. Happy to be here. Crackin' a cold one. That's Celsius. Yeah, no, it's a forced light for audio listener. That's what we're doin'. It's not, I feel like maybe we have to clarify it because someone's like, this is their first time here. We, you know. Our first studio used to have course lights everywhere. We'd come in and say, we share it with a bunch of comedians and it smelled like weed and cores. And literally they would just leave cans. Yeah, they'd leave it around. Well, I remember that. Now we leave cans of Celsius around. Yeah, I actually, the very first space tin was one of those cans of course light. I picked it up and talked into it. I don't think so. I was like, use cans of course light. It was not, that sounds coarse, no. That's not true. And I don't, I don't want people to think that about you. I don't want people to think that you would pick up a used course light came for a bit. What's the episode about today? Use course. I am happy to be. $3.00, O.B. Stop talking. Sorry. And now I'm not happy to be doing it. Hey, when does this episode come out? Oh gosh, I'm gonna be honest with you. I have not even a slight idea. It's like sometime in June. Great. I think it's the third week of June if I'm guessing. All right. This is a ballpark. Anyway, now our Patreon is cheaper. Oh yeah. Yeah, we made the change. There's one tier. Instead of doing like two tiers or whatever, you can't pay more. Yeah, we had three tiers. There's just one tier. And so we just have million dollars a month. No, I wanted to make a solid point. If you want to be quiet. I agree. I hate that I got like three different emails in the last year from Netflix that are like, hey, we, it's going up a dollar. Yeah, the straighter he moves made it. So it's difficult to send you your Netflix. Like that's so stupid. So I hate how everything else in the world is so expensive. And we want to make sure that we're not one of those things. And we, and we want you to join it. So we made it, we made it one, one flat price. And I hope they. $40 a month. Oh my gosh. It's just like, oh no, I hate it. We need to do that, don't do that. I go, I want to do what you say. All right, Blair, we gotta talk business. Should we pay Blair or should we cut her paychecks in half? We should probably cut it in half. You do do do. She has no idea. Go over there. Ah. Things I learned last night. Did we say $6.99? Yeah, we did $6.99. OK, great. For one swap price of $699 a month. See, it's not a good bit, is it? It's not really funny. Everything is so expensive in this world. It was funny. I laughed at it. $6.99, which is the cost of a subway sandwich in 2009. So for the low, low cost of one subway sandwich of 2009, you can support this by far long. I have been thinking, like, we should launch this. We should be posting this on substackers or something. I just want to think of different ways where people are able to support the show, where they support other things. You know? Yeah, we can do that. I don't remember what I was going to try. Yeah. Have you ever heard of Howard Hughes? Yes. Yeah. Hot. Yeah. Broom. Broom. This is a double disagree. Yeah. Yeah, I'll show you another one. Oh, Howard Hughes. Yes. He's like, he honestly looks so much like the second Spider-Man. He looks a lot like... And Jim McGuire's up there. But he also looks like what American Psycho would be based out of first. I... Yeah, I could see that. I could see that. I know who Howard Hughes is, but I'm just not putting it together. Is that plane having a oil leak? It does look like... Probably just washed. Probably just washed. I had a dream last night. This is crazy. I had a dream last night. Dream last night, we... Trove out to sea, Las Vegas. Here's the thing, Alex isn't here. So I'm just alone in this, just so you know, Alex isn't here today. It's kind of sad. He, well, we should have him record a couple little, like... Yeah. Just to throw in... A couple little... You know? But he's not here, and I feel weird. And now there's no one for me to look at to be like, am I dumb? Am I dumb? Am I, you know? Plans here. Yeah, but she's dumb. So now I feel like I'm the only one who's like, All right, you guys are just dumb. You guys are just dumb together. Don't get mad, I'm not wrong. So anyway, I'm really funny because she's on the box, man. Yeah. Stay. Go ahead with who Howard Hughes is. Howard Hughes, I won't bear the lead. Howard Hughes is like a... I don't know if successful is the right term. He is a prominent, we'll use the term prominent. I mean, I guess he was successful. He made a lot of money. But depending on how you quantify success, but he was a film producer in like the 30s, 40s. Oh, yes. Okay, okay, okay, okay. That's where it is. I do know this. But he has a pretty storied... Story. Okay. I think I think the best place to start is to start with his background, where he comes from. Yeah. His dad also named Howard Hughes, but he goes by Bo. And he was kind of... Wait, what are the Howard Hughes movies? Films? What's his work? We'll get through this. We'll go through them kind of one by one. Yeah. They're interesting stops. When it count his many blessings, name them one by one. What? Oh, he didn't go to real church, did you? No. You only grew up singing... You didn't go to real church. What does that mean? Oh, did you never open a hymn when you were a kid? No, we didn't. You didn't do hymn those at my church. Yeah, that's why you're bad theology, dude. Actually, we did for a minute when I was really young and then we moved away from him. Many blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings, see what God has done. Interesting. Yeah, it was cool. Yeah, you know, I can't hear... And there was a Chris Tomon version that would... We're going, count your many blessings, name them one by one. Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, see what God has done. It was just a weird thing in the middle for nobody really. You know. I was my wife, flag. Hey, speaking of this is month's late by the time this comes out. I forgot to tell you this morning, did you see the newsboys press release last night? No. They filed a lawsuit and they named a lot of people. Oh, I did see them post about it. And I downloaded it to search if Shama or myself were mentioned. Were they? No. not big enough to have been sued. Is it just like a, like, hey, you're making fun of us lawsuit? No, they're suing for defamation. They're saying that none of this stuff happened. Oh, because they're asking for it. Is there a lie? What do they do? Michael Tate, you know, abused people on the road. Interesting. And there's like, it's pretty verifiable. And so, oh, I think they're suing for defamation because they're saying that the rest of the band didn't know, which is, and this is, this is so true. False, they, they knew the entire, like everyone knew, everyone knew. It is like hard to believe that you could be in that close of quarters with people for that long and not know what to say. I'm saying, but they're suing people. So maybe we shouldn't, oh, allegedly, they didn't know because they want you to think you're, they want you to think you're, they think you're dumb. They're suing us. What do we care? We don't have nothing to lose. Please don't. They do seem pretty sue happy. They're going to make a whole movie about it too. God's not dead. Seven newsboys versus the world. God's, yeah, nevermind. All right. So his dad, Bo, Bo is described as, God knew, Bo, you didn't want to go down that path? No, his father, Bo, is described as a scoundrel. That's the word that's just to describe him. His early life, he lived in Joplin, Missouri in the late 1800s and he was literally run out of town by a girl's father with a shotgun. I don't know if it was a shotgun, but he was run out of town because he was like making advances on this guy's daughter and he was like, get out of here and they like chase him out of town. Yeah. Yeah. So he left Joplin and he goes to Houston and he gets to Houston. I like you editing the fly because you were about to say something and you were like, which, and then your brain was like, that's not interesting enough and you kept going and I'm very proud. That's growth. Thanks. So. Bo gets to Houston in 1901 right at the beginning of Spindletop, which I don't know if you know what that means. Okay. Spindletop was this event in 1901. Let me guess what it is. Spindletop. Yeah. It feels like it's probably something sweetish. I feel like there's a lot of blonde people in Houston just doing Spindletop. Hey, it's just Spindletop. Like I can't do it like a, you know, like a SV to say, you know, like it's Spindletop. And it's like they have a lot of brats and a lot of, you know, that's a little more German, I guess. Well, both. They got a lot of brats and beers and, and, and it's a big festival. Yeah. Pretty close. And they, they sacrifice stuff. They do sacrifice stuff in a sense. Okay. I know as January 10th, 1901, just outside Beaumont, Texas, which is like a little outside of Houston. And a little more, a little more Bayoui, a little more Bayoui for sure. Is that what it is? A guy drilling for oil. Oh, okay. Hit oil big in the Spindletop. Oh, is this Lucas oil? I think, yeah, I think this is where Lucas oil comes from. And so Spindletop gothure also known as the Lucas gothure, which I guess is Lucas oil came from this. I haven't researched heavily what Spindletop gothure. He goes to a thing. He goes to Houston and he gets to Houston, like just before Spindletop. Spindletop. And Spindletop was the discovery of this well as well was literally they tapped the well and they hit it. They didn't know how much oil was in there. And it just started gushing over 100,000 barrels of oil a day. So this was like an unbelievably like fruitful oil deposit. Sure. And so. So now he's rich. So he sees this happen and he immediately goes and starts buying up acres of land for a handful of dollars, like literally like single dollars of for land. And he turns around months later and sells them for hundreds. And so this is a, he makes a moderate fortune. Sure. It's not you're never working a day again in your life, but it is your wealthy now. Yeah. And so he takes that fortune and he reinvests it, starts opening up wells and doing digging operations. And he becomes kind of like an oil magnate. And so this is how he's father bow. And he is living that lifestyle. Howard Hughes is born in the middle of the in the middle of this whole, this whole event. Let's see. He's born 1905. So his dad is building his oil empire. Howard Hughes is born and his mom, uh, they're living this wealthy lifestyle and his mom's kind of watching what's going on in the world. And she's got this paranoia about just like sickness and disease because she's seeing major sicknesses move around the world. Did you, did you turn me up? Yeah, because you were being really loud. And I truly, like, maybe I could hear himself while I was trying to turn myself down because you're being really loud. And then I was like, well, maybe I can get him to be less loud if he can hear himself a little better. No, just hurt my ears. You were yelling into the microphone for a second. I wasn't yelling in the microphone for a second. Listener, put it in the comments, say, quiet down to him, say, speak up. Can you speak up? Say, can you speak up? Oh, it's a power. That's a power to do to people. Yeah. It immediately puts you in a position of power and you go, can you speak up, please? I can't hear you. Can you speak up? Yeah. And it also, I think it does work in the inverse though. If you say, can you speak down, please? Hey, can you be a little bad? It's a lot more rude. You be a little quiet. Can you speak up? Can you speak up? It makes it be like, maybe this is a bolt of us problem. You're speaking too quiet. I can't hear. If, hey, can you be quiet? Can you be quiet, please? It's just me. So yeah, so comment one of those below. But can you be quiet? The quicker. If there was a lot. So howard is bored in Act205000. It is a good level. In the middle of like... The oil boom. In the middle of the oil boom. Yeah. So dad's business is growing, making a lot of money. trump go Aloo. SchMienleague. Sp Davidson Top. You don't even know what that's from. Is that from something? Yeah. and educated smart listeners. We'll know what that's from immediately. Okay, well, I feel like you're making that up. I'll get rich off of you. I really feel like you're making this up. Spend the top. I need to have a little guitar. I'm engaged. I'm engaged to somebody, but then this new, you know, nanny shows up and she's so much prettier and with her short hair and her singing. And I've got a hundred kids. And so spend a little top, spend a little top. And the girl I'm engaged to has got a crazy. Yeah. She's cheaper, right? That does it. That's Steve Martin version. Because there's cheaper, rather than Steve Martin, and then there's your smiling hours, Dennis. What's his name? Dennis Quaid. Yeah. Dennis Wack. Dennis Hocknelson. Oh, yeah. Hocknelson is in that. Yeah, really weird. Same movie. Yeah. It's exactly the same movie. So, so. This is what's his name. Dennis Quaid. Yeah. So, so this is the turn of the 20th century. pneumonia. The flu. Sure. tuberculosis. A bunch of other diseases are like all over the place. Everyone's getting sick. No one really knows why. Yeah. They don't really know why. But it's just that's spreading really quickly. Sure. And his mom is so paranoid about sickness and disease. Yeah. And they're pretty well. And she washes her hands all the time. She never shakes anyone's hand. She only fist bumps. And she invented that. She started that. She's still or no deal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got that. So, she literally every day would wake him up. And she would check his entire body for like hives. And like listen to his breathing. To like see if he had like any sort of sickness. Yeah. Every single day. Just a good mom. So far. So far. Good mom. So, he kind of grows up in this world where he's kind of taught like, oh, like at any moment you can get sick and die. And your mom's really afraid that that's going to happen to you. And so, he's going up in this, in this world. His dad is becoming a noial financier. And he's on a train one day. And he meets a guy on this train. And the guy is like, hey, you're the owner of that, that oil company, right? And he's like, no, that's my dad. Because he's like a kid. No, he's talking to Bo is dad. Howard is not a, Bo is on the doing business. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, he's traveling for business on a train. And the sky approaches him. And he's like, he's like, hey, I'm an engineer. And I work in one of the oil fields. And I've been getting frustrated because they use these drills. And they were, I think they called them fish hook drills or something like that. I think I figured this out too, by the way, while you're so out of breath right now. Because you put the mic down and you talk like this. I talk like this. And you're hunched over. I'm out of breath because I don't breathe when I talk. Let's put the mic up. Look, chest out. I know it's really hard for you to do. And there you go. I run out of breath because I'm still got to. I run out of breath because it's not pointing down. It's pointing up. What are you talking about? I'm saying it's still point. Like it's, you got to be, you got to be loud mouth level. Yeah, but I got to look, I got to look at this. You can't see over it. No, I don't know. No. All right. I was just trying to help you be out of less out of breath. You're really worth pressing. You're stressing me out. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Let me check your body for sickness. Yeah, listen to me. Listen for a wheeze. I am the little sick, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. That's probably more of the problem. Dad bow is on the train. And the guy approaches him. He's in. Yeah, he's like, I'm frustrated in the field. He's like, I'm frustrated with the drills. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I'm frustrated in the field. He's like, I'm frustrated with the drills. Because they had a drill system. And the way it worked is it was the long pole. And then it was like, it fanned out in both directions. Like a 90 degree angle, the drill. And the way it worked is it just kind of chipped at the rock. And so the best oil work is oil just down there. Yeah. Yeah. There's just deposits of oil. It's kind of like an aquifer. But of just, of just oil. Oh, yeah. Okay. Way down there. And so you got a drill. And the problem with these is they, they described them kind of like chisels. And so they would kind of like batter against the rock. But the system, like when you hit rocks that were like stronger, not surface level rocks, they would constantly break those drill bits. And you're drilling down thousands of feet. And so that was like the process to get it all the way back up. Change the bit. And then you break it into the break. And so it was very inefficient. And this guy showed him a design. And he essentially designed this new drill bit that there's actually three of these heads on it. And they are, I'm trying to think of a way to describe it. If you just think of like, you know, at the end, you know, at the end of the Incredibles, when they introduced the mole, Dylan, and he's got that giant drill. Yeah. So it's three of those drill heads. And they all come into a point facing each other. It'd be like, you're having an automatic like a shaver. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of like the mole at the end of the Incredibles movement. If you put that on the end of an automatic shaver, then instead of pointing out there is pointed together. Okay. And so the way he described it is like. But how big is this? Do you know? I mean, it's big. It's, it's a girthy, girthy drill heads. And so like the way they described it is it's like it, it chews up the rock. Because it all lines together. And so it was less likely to overheat, less likely to break. And because it was like teeth like that, even if you had chips. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so he takes this and he starts the Hughes tool company, which goes and starts manufacturing these drill bits. This changes the oil industry basically overnight. Right. Now oil companies through this whole time, like this was every time a drill that would break it was hours of lost time, which was thousands of barrels, which was thousands of dollars, right, of lost revenue. And so this was something that these companies were like, yes, yes, we need this. We did spills. Maybe we lose it. They, they wouldn't lose it. But they weren't pulling it. Yeah. If you weren't pulling it, you weren't making money. Right. But you started to pay all the operation of everything. Right. And then you lost a bit too. So you have to buy a new bit. And so you're just burning resources. Sure. Instead of making money. And so the whole oil industry is fucking to him to get these tools. And he sees an opportunity. That sucks. And so what he says, as he says, you see this bit, this is the best drill bit the oil industry has ever seen. And I want to give it to you. But I'm not going to. I'm not going to sell this. I'll lease it to you. Smart. And so he leases the drill bits. And so they sell a single bit. This company only leases them. And so they become unfathomably extraordinarily wealthy. Right. They are making money hand over fist. Huge, hugely, hugely successful people. And so his dad is like, I want to, I want to make a life for you. And so he tries to send them. Who's dad? Howard's dad. Just talk about both. Bow. Bow is wildly wealthy. Bow goes to how he and Bow is like how he I want you to be successful. Okay. I want to send you to college. So how he he sends how he off to college. Howard. Yeah. And he doesn't really do great in school. Okay. He ends up transferring him from Harvard. So he sent him to Harvard at 14. Which I think this was a different time. So that was like Harvard in Boston. Iowa. Is it in Boston? Tonight. Harvard's not. Don't look at me like that. Yes, he is. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. No, it's. It's. I. It's in Cambridge, which is basically Boston. Right. Cambridge, Iowa. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things on the last night. If you like this show, we would love to see it on our Patreon. It's a great way to financially support the show. We don't make money from this. It just helps us to pay the people who do make money from this. Like Alex and Robert are editor and maybe one day, one day me and Tim. Maybe one day. You know, but only if you join. Only if you join. We can't wait. We can't get paid. Until you pay. We can't feed Tim's kid until you join. He's okay. He's okay. The arms of the angel. The arms of the angel. The arms of the angel. I like for the second you believe. I did not think it was Iowa. I did. It was not a second. I thought it was Iowa. But I did. I can't be like maybe it's not Boston. You go, I guess. I did Brad Garrett's comedy club all week. And Brad Garrett. Brad Garrett is. Oh, who is Brad Garrett? I guess I asked him that and he crumbled. He went. Oh, how do I describe? Who is Brad Garrett? No, he's the brother in everybody loves Raymond. Yes. And so which he loves that that's what you know him from. He's actually so nice. He's great. But the other comic. So Brad would go up and do either 15 minutes or 40 minutes. Didn't you know the however long you wanted. And then you bring me up. I do 10. And then I come off stage and he would do another 15 or an hour. And then he'd bring up the other guy to do 25 minutes. And so like that was the whole thing for the whole week. And so the one of the nights. We're backstage during the other guys 25 minutes being Brad. The guy comes off stage and Brad just goes, are you done? Are you joking? And he's like, what? He goes, you only did six minutes. And I was like, no, I didn't. And I said, I said, dude, you went up there at 915. It's 920 right now. He did five minutes on stage. And he was like, you guys are messed. No, shut up. No. And Brad's like, Brad's like, dude, you've got to do the time you're paid for. And like, you know when you can see someone's eyes be like, did I do this? It's the same look that you have. He is Harvard in Iowa. It's like there's a lot. There's enough doubt that it's like this is clearly absurd. Yeah. Yeah. It was because it was a really tough crowd. All of us hated that crowd. Sorry if you were there on Wednesday, April 20 something. We all hated you. Brad came back and was like, oh my gosh. And I was like, I know. We all hated you. So anyways, he goes to, he goes. Harvard doesn't work out. His parents then send him to Caltech, which is in Iowa. All colleges are in Iowa, by the way. So he goes to Caltech where he's actually studying math and aeronautical engineering as well. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, he's next to that plane while he's there. He's 16 years old. And his mom tragically dies in what they think. And we don't know for sure there's not like clear details. But what sounds like it was an ectopic pregnancy. Okay. But she suddenly dies. There was no sign of anything was going to happen. Yeah. And this kind of crushes him. Right. And so he leaves school. He quit school. He goes back home. And two years later, 1924, he's 18 years old. His dad suddenly dies of a heart attack in a business meeting. And his dad was only like 55 years old. So very quickly in the matter of two years, both of his parents are dead. He has no siblings. Right. And he was raised in this world where his mom basically, without ever actually saying it to him, was like, at any moment, you can get sick and just die. And then that kind of happened to both of his parents. And so this is important to know about the story of Howard Hughes. Okay. His dad though, hadn't updated his will since his wife had passed. And so he was the next akin who was just going to get everything. Which included his entire, their entire estate. But also the controlling shares of the Hughes tool company. Right. But at 18 years old, this is interesting. I don't know if this is like the way the law worked back then. But at 18 years old, he couldn't control this company because he was technically still a minor. I think that the law at some point changed from 20 years. I don't know, dude, because they still let kids go to work. I in 1924. Though, yeah, kids could work. You could work the oil field at seven, but you can't own it. Yeah. Yeah. I genuinely think what happened. And I don't know if this is true or not. So don't quote me. But because he wasn't 21 is why he couldn't own it. Yeah. And I think that World War II, they were like, we need more adults to fight in this war. And so I think they shifted that back to 18 as my guess. I didn't look that up. Don't quote me. That's my guess. I'm going to tell you right now, that's for sure not what. Okay. So didn't he just lose the company then? What happened? So he goes. And because he can't own the company, he inherits the controlling shares. Right. But they're like, oh, you can't have it. Sorry, man. You can't have this because you're like, but what happens to him is what I'm saying. We're having a lot of shares. So he goes. And he goes. Lee changes his age. So he goes and he. He goes through the court system to become emancipated. And so he goes through this emancipation process, which allows him, even though he's technically still a minor, he can say, I can take care of myself and I'll be a legal adult. Okay. And though I'm technically. I'll be a real big man. And so he goes. And he actually successfully pulls this off. It takes a little bit. But at 19 he ends up pulling this off, but comes emancipated. Marches. Marches in to the Hughes tool company. And he now owns 75% of the company. Right. So a controlling share of the company. And he, what he does is he says, okay, I'm the boss. I'm in charge now. Everybody in all the VP trying to get the company. And they were so mad that he pulled this off. He's a little kid. And he says, okay, this is my company now. And he says, my company now. But he says, but I own it. This is mine. He says, but I am not interested. And he says, but I want the money. And so he hires this guy by the name Noah Dietrich, who is an accountant. Okay. He says, this is Noah. Noah's going to run the day to day of the business. And he's just going to report how everything goes back to me. He says, I'm moving to Hollywood. And so he literally completely steps out of the business, leaves the company on its own in Houston. Right. And hires someone to run it. And basically just send them checks for profits. And so he's just making literal millions a year for absolutely nothing. Yeah, that is the American dream. It's just to make a lot of money for doing absolutely nothing. It is. Absolutely. And so he moves to Hollywood. And isn't that, isn't this this is true too? All right. People like NEPO babies. Hollywood has been rich kids forever. It's true. Yeah, that's. It's just rich kid moves to Hollywood. Yeah. So he moves to Hollywood. Fat bag of cash from the inheritance. Yeah. And then also money coming in from the business. Regular. Regular fat bags of cash. Yes. Yes. He marries Ella Rice. Hot. And then he says, I'm going to pursue a career in film. I want to be a movie producer. Okay. And so he produces his first film. It's a silent film called Everybody's Acting. And this is a silent film. And I just want to read to you the plot. Real martial kneeling production. Yeah. Okay. And so this is the plot of Everybody's Acting. Doris Pull, whose parents were theatrical people, was orphaned as a child. And four members of the troupe adopted and raised her. When grown, she became the leading lady in a San Francisco stock company. She meets and falls in love with Ted, the millionaire son of a rich widow. But she thinks he is only a taxi cab driver. His mother objects to the romance and looks into Doris's past. She learns that her father had murdered in a fit of jealousy, her mother, and tells Doris what she has found out. The four actors who had raised her had never told her what happened and what happened to her family to become an orphan. They persuade Ted's mother to send him on a voyage to China in order to get him away from Doris. But they neglected to tell the mother they had also booked passage for Doris on the same ship. And this is a silent film. And so this is like a really complex plot for a movie that you can't hear. Do you not know how silent films work? Yeah, there's like subtitles. What are you stupid? Are you a dumb guy? Yeah, there's like a thing. It's like this is something that's happening. It's like it's like a stage directions. What are you looking at? It's a whole art. You know what? It's a whole art form. And I'm not going to argue with his body. Oh, yeah, it's too complex. People are so stupid that they can't understand your stupid little TikTok brain. Can't understand art. But go ahead. So they pre-screened this. And it was so bad that he burned every copy of it. Because it was like, oh, the acting is awful. The story doesn't make any sense. The production value is awful. He's a taxi driver. No, he's rich. He's like a thing, you know. Maybe if you could hear this. You're not going to get a TikTok brain. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. You're stupid little book brain can't understand movie. There's money. There's money in pictures. And so this is like he. For most people, this would have ruined them. Because the this. He tried to. You guys can hear it, right? Just to be clear. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Just freaking. To be clear, he tried to go the traditional route. He tried to go to producers, tried to get. He's so trying. He's trying. So hard. Not the type of microphone. Trying to get brought on at a major studio to produce a movie. But everybody's shooting them down. Everybody's like, we don't want anything to do with you. Because they were like, this is just another rich kid from Texas. He's trying to spend that his money to make his dreams come true. Yeah. We're not going to be a part of this. And so he's from Texas. Trying to spend that his money. I can be a country star. It's really not that difficult. No, it's not. Um, you see some of the people they're making country stars now. And you're like, that's the other thing I think I'm mad about too. It's not looking at stuff. And I go, these people aren't working that hard to become this level of fame. Like their agents are doing all of it. Yeah. Right. And I go, hey, do that for comics. Yeah. You're making us do sketches. We don't want to do that crap. Yeah. I want to get on stage and sing a song and then make a bunch of money. That's a sample. Send that over to my agent. Okay. So he. He's just spending his day. It's money. Do do. I won't do the. That's like the guitar part. I won't sing that. I won't sing that. You know, I won't be like, do do. But you could. Maybe that's the point that I couldn't do it. I'm just spit. And my, my, you know, do the steel guitar part. I want to. Wow. Wow. There we go. Here's the 90s country music was really good. And I'm not embarrassed to say that. Keep sending me stuff from 90s country music. Like you remember this one. And I'm like, no, I don't. It's so good. I'm learning the not everyone know it. Yeah. Do you love me? Do you want to be my friend? And if you do, you don't know that. No. Well, then don't be afraid to take me by the hand. If you want to know. I think this is how love goes. Check. Yes or no. That's good. It's like it's not even like I heard that in like a Texas roadhouse growing up. Like I. I didn't. I didn't even hear that in a Texas roadhouse. It's not even like I overheard that in Texas roadhouse once. What are you talking about? Do you think I'm sending you stuff that's like this? And you're like, yeah, from the Texas roadhouse. You think I just turned on the Texas roadhouse playlist. Texas roadhouse with the early two. I hate this. The player. You know, I'm talking. You don't even know songs. You don't even listen to music. Yeah. She can't hear music. It's like a thing. Like she music. She can hear talking. She can hear noise. But was music starts. She can't hear that. It's something about. As a reaction. You want to take that. All right. I mean, we're building a character in the show. And now you've introduced this lore. She can't hear music. And it's not a volume thing. It's a melody thing. When Mel, if it's melodic, she can't hear. And when we need to tell secrets, we tell it melodically. And she's like, oh, no. I hate it when you do that. Don't do that. I go, I want to do what you say. All right, Blake. We got to talk business. Should we pay, Blake? Boy, should we cut her paychecks in half? We should probably cut it in half. Do do do do. She has no idea what she said. Congrats. It's Zane is. And there's not even a side of cars that help her. So do you believe here? Is it like the, okay, that's a weird lore. But it's true. It's true. It's true. And we shouldn't make fun of her because, yeah, that's pretty able to live there. If we can make fun of her, we have a girl who's worked for us. She can't understand a word I'm saying. She's so mad right now. It's like we're speaking a different language. Okay. So this is a moment that would wreck most people. Yeah, but he's not most people. But he's got money coming in who cares. And so he burns. That's the whole thing about, that's what I said a couple episodes ago about like the comic whose dad is a billionaire, where it's just like, yeah, who, I mean, like you have the freedom to try stuff. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so I think art needs, yeah, I need the ability to fail. Yeah. And we live in a culture where you can't. It's true. So it kind of set it up. It's kind of difficult. So he, you know, he gathers every copy of this film that was produced burns it in a big bonfire. And then he says, my failure here was I hired people who weren't good enough. And so I need to hire better talent, sure, better video, ever introspection, always outrospection. I love outrospection. So then he comes back with a second movie, yeah, first one for as far as I've all alone, first release. He puts together two Arabian nights and this ends up being a smash hit. It wins an Oscar. He wins the Oscar for best producer that year. And so this becomes like it puts him on the map as like an actual movie producer, right? And so now all of Hollywood's kind of shaking their, in their boots, they're like, oh, this guy's out shaking in their boots. This guy actually can do this stuff. And so then he, he goes back to produce next to the movie Hell's Angels. And this is a significant film for a lot of different reasons. But probably the biggest one is because the concept of this movie was it was like a World War One dogfight movie. Remember, he loves planes. He's like a plane nerd, big plane nerd, and a plain old nerd, plain old nerd. And he says, I want to make a dogfight movie, but everybody in Hollywood, when they make movies with scenes like dog fights, what they do is they take miniatures and they film the miniatures. They make models. He's like, he's like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to get real planes, so he goes and he buys planes. He spends $13 million, amassing this fleet of planes, getting this group of pilots to be his stunt pilots for it. And he films a movie reenacting dog fights from World War One. And it's actual literal dog fights. They take Zeppelin's up to film this stuff from the Zeppelin's. What's crazy is he would hold off production. They would literally sit out in their trailers for months on end because they'd wake up in the morning. The barometric pressure would be right. Maybe we can't film today because the clouds aren't going to look good. Or they would film a shot and they'd be like, that shot was perfect, like the stunt pilot nailed it. Everything was exactly the way they wanted it, but it's like, but that cloud was in the wrong spot. So we're going to shoot it again. Sure. And if you have unlimited money, why not? Why not? And yeah, so this was kind of a production where they were burning through so much cash that any, any normal studio would have killed this project so early because it's burning so much money. But he just had the money to spend. And he also a side note of that, you really pioneered this genre of movies. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because these are now, I mean, through World War two, and you know, maybe that's a problem. I feel like we don't have, yeah, maybe I'm wrong on this. As I'm saying, I can think of a couple like, you know, how World War two veterans would just sit around and watch black and white movies about world, like, reenactments of World War two. There's so many world, like every old guy you knew when you were growing up, yeah, I was watching World War two movies. Was watching World War two movies living room all day? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I watched World War two movies in the living room all day. Right. Yeah. And like, while it was the last war that like, I think we glorified, I think glorified this. We won others. But I think it was the last one we glorified in World War two war on terror, which one do we win? We won all of, I mean, we won all of them. We won all of them. We said we won all of them. Yeah, I guess you're right. But it was the last one that was like very cut and dry. There was glory. Good guy bad guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, until the war on terror. And then the war on terror, we saw a bunch of movies again. Oh, that's what I'm saying. That's true. Yeah. But like, but like you're not more. What I'm saying is like, are the veterans of Iraq? Are they watching? I don't think so. I think I'm saying. I don't know. Yeah, maybe that's a generational thing. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. I'm not. Yeah. I don't know. He's uncomfortable. Howard. Though he, he's a pilot. Yeah. We haven't covered this yet. But when he was a kid, his dad took him, I think to Coney Island was where this happened. I don't remember for sure. But he took him on a vacation. I will. And on this vacation, there was like, it was like a super, like a, not a souvenir, like carnival ride was the airplane rides. Yeah. It was a little 15 minute ride you land. Right. Right. And they captivated him. He's like, I love planes. I got to do this right in my life. And so he learned to fly, became a pilot. And on set at this movie, he had like stunt pilots. So this is what they do for a living. They do tricks in their planes. And they would go out. They would do a thing. He's directing this film. Not just producing. And he'd be like, hey, this was close. Let me show you how to do that. And so he would go out and do the stunt. And be like, this is what I wanted to look like. And then he'd come back. Well, one day he was doing this stunt, like showing them how to do one of the flights. And he just knows dies right into the ground. Walks away without a scratch somehow. But he was like, okay, so do that except for the last part. He's having the last part where I know stuff into the ground. But he had bought so many planes that that wasn't a big deal. Because he had, at this point, a fleet that was larger than most air forces in the world. Because he had bought so many planes for this movie. And so he finishes this movie. It's ready to release it. They're putting together their marketing packages. And then this thing comes out. And it is audio for movies. And he's like, oh my gosh, you can hear it now. And so he goes back. He scraps the majority of the movie. And makes it now using this actual audio technology. Sure. Recast a bunch of roles because he realizes some of his actors, like you're not very good at talking. Your voice sucks. Yeah, you're not very good if you have to talk. And so then finally, releases this movie, Hell's Angels, to massive critical acclaim. Which go back to that. Very cool that this movie theater is still here. It's so, like I like that. Yeah, I agree, I agree with you. I like it. I also love that they actually, like the signs that they put up for the movie is really cool. Yeah. Anyways. So they release Hell's Angels. And this was, this was an interesting movie. What I should say is it from a plot and like Howard Hughes thrilling multi million dollar air spectacle. Yeah. It wowed audiences made a lot of money, but did not recoup the investment in the close. But it wowed audiences and it like kind of captivated the world of like what a movie could be. Yeah. And so it really kind of up to the Annie for Hollywood because it's like you got to like make this good. But from like critical audiences, it wasn't seen as that great because the acting wasn't great. Okay. A lot wasn't great. The air, the dog fights were crazy cool. Yeah. But everything else was just kind of like, yeah, it's like fast and furious. Yes. Yeah. There's a lot to be desired outside of this. It's like that though. Yeah. The acting and the story isn't the point. Yeah. The point is like the point is car goes under truck. Car truck under truck under room room. You understood that but she doesn't know a lot of things, but she does know what you're saying. Sorry. We were making money. Room room. Was that too high? Was that almost. If you do too much inflection with your voice, it starts to clip. So he moves on 1932. He is just finished his, at this point, he's only 28. He was born in 1905, so yeah, yeah, no, 27, 27 nailed it. So he puts out his third, his third release, I shouldn't say third release, third major release. There's a couple of other movies in here that weren't as. This sucks. I'm so far behind. This guy's five years younger than me. I know. On his third theatrical release. Yeah. He also is like hundreds of millions ahead of him. And his dad was rich. I'm so mad at my dad for not being rich. Oh my gosh, I'm so, I'm so mad at my dad. So he puts out what will be his third major success story. But he runs into a real block because this movie was Scarface, the 1932 Scarface. So this is a story about Al Capone. And he wanted this to be a like accurate story of what his life was like. The problem was, at that time, there was legal and like cultural rules around what you could put in a movie. And so like there was a lot of censorship of not just like language, but content. Yeah. And even down to things like you couldn't glorify a criminal. Like that was against the law in a movie. And so he puts this movie together. He puts it before screening boards to like rate it. Yeah. And they're like, you can't release this. It breaks every rule. And he was furious. And so they come back with all the edits he has to make and it's like basically the whole movie. Yeah. And so he goes and he sues the editing board. He goes and he enters into this massive legal battle and he changes a bunch of laws around it. But then even though he successfully changed a lot of the laws around censorship, no theater was picking it up. They're like, we're not going to run this. This is not okay. And so he then says, fine, I'll run it myself. And so he just goes across the country and finds all these independent theaters that will run this this movie. Sure. And so this kind of turned him into like the scandalous producer. It's like, oh, this is something you can't see anywhere. It's violent. It's vulgar. It's dirty like in every way. Sure. So this got him a lot of, I don't know if I would say underground audience, but a lot of attention in a different way. And then he puts out what I would say is his last like really huge, successful movie, which is the outlaw. And the outlaw is a similar story because this is, he discovered a young actress named Jane Russell. This is her first role. Yeah. And this is a story, a western. And he's similar to the Scarface story. He wanted to make a scandalous story in the western setting. But for this one, he, I would, I think I would go as far as to say like he changed Hollywood with this release. And I think he changed Hollywood with each of these releases, but I think the knock on effects took a few years to like catch up with what he was doing. So this is scandalous. He puts out the outlaw and what he does with this movie where Scarface like objectified criminal culture of silence, the outlaw objectified women. And he, oh boy, am I sick? I sure do need Tim Stone's get well, quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow, I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. But do your part, get this shirt shop.tillum.com. He films this movie. And in a lot of the scenes, he's like, our costume designer is dropping the ball. They're not doing what they need to do. So he designs new outfits to accentuate his actress more. And again, the censors are like, you can't put this out, man, like this is insane. And so he just enters the legal battle with them. He sidesteps the industry as a way and produces this movie and this movie becomes a commercial success. Again, like most of his movies, critics at the time did not like, yeah, over time critics began to, I don't want to say they thought they were good, but they see it for like the influence and like the value had on Hollywood. For his production style. So meanwhile, he is still producing movies. This is kind of the end of his time. We're stopping me a lot. Don't look at the clock. Meanwhile, he's still producing movies. But he's like, I want to pursue my other passion, which is I want to make airplanes. So he starts a, a research and airplane development, this is great, don't want you try to figure that out. So he starts, I was going to say aerospace, I was going to say aerospace, but then I was like, that's not a cool air, I was like, is that aerospace, yeah, so it can be that. But in the early days of World War II, he's like, our airplanes are not fast enough. And he's like, I want to plane this so fast. And so he looks at all these jets, or I guess they were jets yet, but all these planes and he's like, the problem is we have all these rivets all over the planes. And he said, once try to hit fast speeds, those rivers are small, but it's enough to slow your aerodynamics and slow your planes down. So he actually develops in engineers this plane, which inset all of the rivets on the plane. And it also, for the first time ever, he designed retractable landing gear to make the plane more dynamic. And he builds this plane with huge aircrafts, what the company's called. And he takes it on its main voyage and breaks the airspeed record, flies it 350 miles an hour. Okay. Like 1937. And so most air forces in the world copy his designs for World War II. And it becomes a major invention. And going into World War II, when the US started to get involved, they tapped his shoulder. They were like, hey, we want to build a spy plane. Can you help us build a spy plane for the war effort? And so he starts putting together the XF-11, which ended up crazy. Yeah. He starts building this in the middle of the war, but runs into a lot of technical problems during development. So it doesn't actually like hit the quote unquote market until 1946. Right. Right. But he takes it perfect timing. Perfect. I mean, he takes it on his first flight, though. Test flight. And here's a thing about Hughes throughout his whole film career, he became a little bit of a control freak. Yeah. And so he would have to take over on things all the time and he would have to insert himself into the process, even when he hired people who knew more than him. He would step in. He'd be like, you're doing this wrong. Let me show you how this works. And so for the XF-11, he said, I'm going to fly this plane. OK. I'm going to be the one to do this. I'm going to test this. So he takes it on his first test flight. And while I'm the test flight, one of these engines, there was a mechanical failure that caused the prop to actually invert and start rotating opposite direction. So he's got two props rotating opposite ways. And he, for reasons that don't make a lot of sense, was testing this just over Los Angeles. And so he crashes this plane and flies through three homes in Los Angeles. Oh my gosh. Test flight. And this is a just extreme crash. He survives, but he has third degree burns all over his body. He breaks, he breaks multiple ribs as a serious head injury, like just incredible injuries. And he's in, he's in the hospital for a long stint. While he's in the hospital, the doctor's prescribing with morphine, which becomes a crippling addiction that he never recovered from. Continues making movies, continues developing airplanes. Also around the same time he was working on the XF-11, the army tapped him to build the H-4, I think is what it's called, H-4 Hercules, which they wanted basically in aircraft carrier. Is this going someone? Yes. Yes. They wanted to build an aircraft carrier of the sky. So hold on, before we get to it, this is what I'm talking about, Tim. This is a good story. The whole thing is a good story. Hold on. It's a good story. Tim, why did we spend 20 minutes on bow? Because it's important to find out how he got his money and it's interesting to say his dad was a real tycoon. We didn't spend 20 minutes on it. Go back and count the time I talked about it. We spent five minutes on it. And then we spent like 20 minutes talking about a bunch of other stuff that I've breathed too much. You say you keep saying that you're so defensive right now because you know that I'm right. So much. Why is this guy breathing so much? Dude. Okay. So get to where it's going then. So he he worked the Air Force to build a airborne aircraft carrier essentially. Yes. But it was supposed to be able to hold boots and tanks and and cars. And so that way you could fly into the battlefield land is this floating in the water? Yeah, it's floating. This is a sea plane. All right. Well, Tim, go a little slower. Okay. Sorry. So this is a sea plane. This is a sea. So the H4 Hercules, there are a couple of things happened here that were pretty significant. One, it needed to be able to land on the ocean. This is why. Two, this is the wingspan is longer than a football field. This was until 2019, the largest wingspan on a plane ever. Which is crazy. And the other thing about this that's insane is because this was during World War II that they contracted them for this, they had a steel shortage because they were building so much stuff for the war. So they said, you've got to be able to figure out how to do this with wood as this is a wooden plane. No, it's not. Yeah. Yeah. It's coated and they coated it in steel so that way it could like take hits in war. But this was was the body of it like the interiors were all wood. Which is crazy. That's insane. So this was a, here's the thing about this though. This plane never saw any combat. This plane was never really used. It was kind of impractical. It could take off. It could fly around a little bit, but it did not have, yeah, it could not fly to an actual destination. Yeah. And so now this is sitting in a museum. This was never an actual six. Where is it at? I want to go see it. I'm pretty sure it's in California. I'm saying. It's like an aeronautical. Probably an Iowa. Probably an Iowa. So all this to say, he's doing film stuff. He's still making money from the oil company, the tool company. Yeah. He is doing aerospace engineering now for the United States government. He through this whole time had been slowly acquiring shares in TWA and eventually took a controlling share of TWA and started designing the planes for them and creating commercial airliners. He also bought RKO and this was after his addiction, but RKO was one of the five major film studios. And he gutted the staff. That one was kind of a loss. He kind of drove that company into the ground. All of this is happening and towards the end of his life in the fifties, he starts becoming a little bit disheveled and he's very clearly addicted to morphine. Sure. An important thing about him is he was always hot, always was careful to be seen. He divorced after four years his wife had multiple different wives dated basically every movie star. He was very careful to be seen with all these people, but he would go to gatherings and parties and be just kind of sitting in the back of the round. Like he wasn't like, he wasn't a engaging person to be around. He was kind of a recluse and as serious as he progressed further in life, he kind of leaned into that a little more. And then suddenly in the sixties, he goes into this weird stand where he just goes to one of his assistants and he says, Hey, reserve me one of the screening rooms that are office. I want to watch a movie. So they reserve the screening room and he doesn't come out for four months and he stays in the screen room and he survives off chocolate and milk, literal candy bars and milk. And he watches is watches every movie. Like literally all of the movies for like four months. That's all he does. And and reports are that he was just hanging out in the screen or naked eating chocolate and milk and watching movies and he comes out of that and he's like, that was the best I'm going to do this forever. And so he leaves Hollywood and he secretly takes a train. That was awesome. That was awesome. I've been working my whole life and it turns out that and I've had enough money to do this the whole time, but it turns out that doing nothing is awesome. Nothing is so much better. So in in on Thanksgiving day, 1966, he takes a train to Vegas, arrives in Vegas secretly and he goes to let me see what's the hotel called. The desert in and he takes the penthouse suite at the desert in and Thanksgiving. And he does the same thing. He just locks himself into the suite. Yeah. He he hires and this is crazy. The Mormon mafia. Right. Right. Because he says that he says, well, there are Mormons are heavily religious so they're going to do what's right. So to be his like personal assistance in Vegas, he's like, you guys are my personal assistance. And this is like, dude, this Vegas looks great. This, you know, I was just in Vegas this week. It does not look good anymore. Well, it's interesting. You say, that's great. It's just that you say that because he's there for over a month, right? New Year's Eve is coming. But here's the thing. He's just locking himself in his room. He's not going down the casino floor and gambling at all. Yeah. So the casino owners are like, hey, you got to go. Like we don't want you here anymore. Like we're not making money off you. Yeah. Yeah. You're renting the room, but we could make so much more money off someone who's going to rent this penthouse because those people are our whales. Right. And New Year's Eve is coming up. This is a big travel time. You got to get out of here. You got to go. And he's fighting hotel staff hotel management on this because he thinks this is ridiculous. Meanwhile, something something happened very significant right before this TWA forced him out because he had made a bunch of bad decisions in that force out. The company basically buys back all his shares and he gets what at the time was the largest single check any humans ever received, which was over $500 million. And so he has $500 million liquid cash now. And so he's sitting in this and the casino is like, you got to go. And he's like, no, I'm not going to go. I want this. But I want to stay in this penthouse. He's like, what do I got to gamble? So then they're like, yeah. And he's like, okay. I'll gamble. No, he instead, he figures out who owns the hotel and he gives them $18 million buys the hotel. And he says, hey, I live here now. All right. And he's like, he's like, he's like, I'm going to stay all just buy it. Okay. So this becomes his hotel. And he was like, he's like, hey, it's kind of cool to just buy stuff you want. So then he goes and he buys the landmark hotel, which I'm pretty sure was the inspiration for the stratosphere. They're like, what if it was like this, but way bigger? Sure. And then he's like, oh, this is sweet. And so he's like, I'm just going to buy like Vegas. And so he just starts buying Vegas. Right. And this is a very important moment in Vegas's history because Vegas was at that time run by the mob. Yeah. And like, it was a very underground, like kind of black market casino industry. And he was like, I'm going to buy this all up. And so he basically bought the mob out of Vegas and corporatized Vegas. And with his lawyers, he ruined this kind of this guy ruined. I mean, I don't know if I would say run Vegas. It's a little bit of a gray area because he, yeah, he changed, he corporatized it, but he also made it to where if you lost someone didn't come cut your leg off, you know, like true. So like it's trade offs. Well, like if you lost, how are you going to get your legs cut? Like, why were you getting your legs cut? Well, if you owed the mob a bunch of money and if you had a bunch of gambling debts to the mob and you couldn't get your debts, then they kill you. But now, like if you owe NGM a lot of money, they take you to court and they financially kill you, but they don't kill you. Who's getting in the gambling debt that keep people addicted to gambling gambling Alex, not I. And so he stays here in Vegas for four years. Who's, who's loaning you the money to gamble it? How is it? That's what I'm saying. How are you in debt to him? Like, I guess you're not in debt to NGM. You won't never be in debt to NGM because they're not, but the mob, like they would loan money out to people to keep you here. Yeah, here you go. And you go home. Yeah, you home. You kind of get into this vicious cycle and then they kill you. Well, yeah, I understand how that works. Anyways, so he stays, I don't want to happen to Bruno Mars, I don't know, I don't know. So he stays at this pet house for four years. He's doing nothing. Teap in addiction. Yeah. Watching movies all the time. He designed a special spoon so he could pick up a piece one by one. Count your many blessings, name them one by one. And he, he becomes this like aggressive germafob, he completely lets go of himself. He stops cutting his fingernails, stops cutting his hair, stops cutting, trimming his beard. He becomes so concerned with the cleanliness of the floors that he starts wearing tissue boxes on his feet. And here's a photo of him staying in the hotel where he just completely loses it. And you can see his fingernail on one of his fingers, that's like a box. And so he becomes this like little definition of a recluse. Yeah. Meanwhile, from this hotel, he's calling his Mormon mob advisors or writing notes to them. Okay. Buying all of Vegas, including at this time, he starts to develop a bit of insomnia. And so he's getting really fired up that every night at midnight, the TV just starts off. It stops running stuff. So he buys the local TV station and is like, okay, we're going to keep running stuff. And then all the time throughout the day, people throughout Vegas at that time would report, you'd be watching a show and it would just change or it would rewind because he would call the studio and be like, hey, I missed that. Could you rewind that? Or hey, I don't like this show. I don't like this show. Could you change it? Does something else? What? This was just the way he lived his life. He just took over Vegas and just like, he had something to say. And then he'd be like, hey, say that again. He'd say that when we call into the morning news and be like, just make something up. Just make something up. And so he's in Vegas for four years. And then after that, he kind of starts to bounce around doing very similar thing. He would stay in hotel suites for years on end. And he did this in Vegas. He did this in France. He did this in Mexico. He did this. Okay. He in places, whatever, long story short, eventually on a flight back from Mexico. Long story short. It worked out. We're into this short story. Long story long. Yeah. Way back from Mexico. He gets into his third plane crash and this one kills him. And he dies and in the in 1976 and time puts out this magazine cover on scramble for the billions. Here's the thing. Oh, he doesn't have any kids. Here's the thing. So yeah, he has no heirs. And he doesn't have a will, but he has like $600 billion. And all of this. No way. 600 million. I was going to say, no, he did. Well, actually, I should say, he, I think he's got like four or five billion. Sorry. Yeah. Four or five billion dollars. And so he, all this money's left and everyone's like, who's going to get it? Well, the like executor of his estate gets a letter one day. And this letter basically outlines, it's like, hey, this is like the uncovered will of Howard Hughes. Like we found it. Sure. And in this will, it is a bunch of organizations. There's one more point in his life where he sets up the Howard Hughes Foundation, which is like a medical research foundation that he used for tax evasion, right? But it's still now a very esteemed foundation, but it was tax evasion. So they get a bunch of it. The Mormon church was supposed to get a bunch of it. And then a bunch of his businesses were supposed to have different investments, different people he worked with throughout his life. And then the interesting thing is a completely unknown gas station manager outside of Vegas, who allegedly was driving in a Vegas one day and just saw a man bloodied on the side of the road in outside of Vegas. And he picked him up, drove him to Vegas. And when he dropped them off, the guy said, hey, I'm Howard Hughes. And he said, he said, I'll pay you back for this. And he left him one-sixteenth of his state, his random gas station manager, which seemed very odd. And so this goes to court. And in the legal proceedings, they're like, we got to figure out what to do with this guy's money. There's a lot of it. And in the legal proceeding, the defense, which is this gas station owner now, they were able to find that the pen used, this was a handwritten well. The pen used in this well was a very unique pen. That was only in circulation for five years that we have written testament that this was Howard Hughes' favorite pen ever created. And so they're like, this is his favorite pen, this must be him. Furthermore, there's a bunch of stuff in that well that shows intimate understanding of Howard Hughes' life. But the other side of the coin, they did some research and they managed to find a figure print on the inside of the envelope that was sent, that matched that gas station owner, as well as they found evidence that he had checked out a bunch of books from the local library on Howard Hughes, like right after Howard's death. And so they were able to basically, the jury unanimously decided that this whole thing was a fraud that this guy had came up with as well and left money to all these different organizations that would seem like something he would do, like Howard Hughes would actually want to do, and then left a sixteenth to him. So he would walk out with like 300 million or something like that. Right, right, right. They determined it was a fraud. Here's the interesting thing about this story though. There is a pretty credible reason to believe that Howard Hughes didn't die in 1976 because since the 40s, he had worked very closely with the CIA and the United States government. And we actually do know that he had a body double. I swear, Tim, if in the hour into this, you're now going to be like, here's a conspiracy that the CIA covered up his death, uh, he had a body double. Which was him and he's the guy sitting in the desk, no, it's pretty clearly the FDR funny little bit that I was doing. So he worked with this. It's a funny joke. So I'm legitimately annoyed again throughout his life. He worked on like black projects with the CIA crazy, dude, yeah, oh my gosh, I was a conspiracy. They never really died. Well, here's the thing, he had a body double through like from the 40s through the end of his life. Okay. And at one point, someone tried to assassinate them. They shot him the back of the head and he survived, but it wasn't him. It was the body double. And so they say that this was the body double. And so there's everything that was happening in Vegas, all this that was happening, he was legitimately investing in all these companies, right? But the body double was losing his mind and was living as him in Vegas. And this was like a cover for the black projects he was working on for the CIA. Right. And then the CIA, this guy started getting really crazy and so they were like, yeah, this cover isn't really working for us. So the story is that he died, the body double. And then they conveniently moved Howard Hughes overseas. And he continued working for the CIA until his eventual death. We don't know when he would have eventually died. And the story was still alive. That inheritance was the CIA trying to funnel money to him through a bunch of different movements. But the law stopped it. Yeah. His inheritance ended up getting spread to 24 different cousin, distant cousins he had that he has never, like I shouldn't say never seen, but hasn't seen for decades because he cut his whole family out. Right. Right. Right over the tool company because our own and his family thought they should get a piece of that too. Wow. So Howard Hughes, really the first eccentric billionaire, weird film career, weird real estate career, weird CIA black ops projects career. And then he did this thing. All right. Well, you know why it's fingers are that long. Why? So you can play the fiddle. Hey, there's another rich person who was a kind of a recluse her name was Ida Wood. I think you'd like that episode we covered her a couple years ago. So also our picture on his cheaper now and not like a cheaper, but like, hey, we've made it one price. We want everyone to be able to be involved in it. We do monthly hangouts. We'd love to see you there. Please join it. It helps us grow the show. It helps us keep doing this thing. So we'll see you next week on another things that one last night.