January 24, 2026 • 29 mins
Today, Isaac Newton is best known for his scientific pursuits -- but he also served as Warden and, later, Master of the Royal Mint. And this wasn't some sort of honorary position, either: Newton took his job of hunting down forgers seriously, and may have even bent (or broken) the law in his quest to arrest and hang his archnemesis, the counterfeiting kingpin William Chaloner.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to our weekly classic episode Ridiculous Historians. Hey, nol
you remember Isaac Newton.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
He's the apple guy, right, figs or something. It's a
fruited cake, cake, fruited cake. But isn't This isn't the
old tale of Isaac Newton discovering gravity when the apple
fell not too far from the tree and conked him
on the knoggin.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
That's the anecdote for sure. And he also did a
lot of other stuff. We know him for his scientific pursuits,
like you were saying, But before we did this episode
in twenty nineteen, we were not aware that he spent
some time as the Master of the Royal Mint.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
He was an absolute salute when it came to spotting
fake currency.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Oh yeah, and unlike some royal positions, this was not ceremonial.
He took the job of bird dogging forgers seriously, and
he was getting a kind of Sherlock holmesy in about it.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
No, there's a bit of a Holmes Moriarty rival in
this story and the Moriart two. Newton's Holmes was a
fellow by the name of William Challoner, a counterfeiting kingpen
and super villain Big Bat of today's tale.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Oh Man, oh Man,
(01:42):
oh Man. Friends and neighbors, Fellow Ridiculous historians, Welcome to
the show. I for one, am excited because today's episode
concerns one of our favorite genres of historical individuals, the con.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Artist flim flat a man, which our last episode did
as well.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
We have we have a preponderance of con artists in
the show, and I have no regrets about it. Who
am I? I'm Ben.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
That's who you are. I'm Nol. This is Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And who's that handsome man outside of the booth? Why
that devil as I live and breathe. That's super producer
Casey Pegram. Oh my goodness, gracious, I love it what
people say as I love it breathe. Well, it's funny too,
because when you said that sound, yes, I do a
lot that expression. But when you said that and then
the sound happened, a beautiful glint on Casey's pearly white,
(02:34):
very straight teeth lit up the room. It's true, It's true.
We off air Nol and I spend a lot of
time just sort of staring at Casey when we think
he's not looking.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
You know, he always sees though.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, I'm sorry I had to find out on air casey.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, that's fine. Though, it's fine. It's endearing, not creepy
at all.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Not creepy at all. Let's make that a T shirt.
We have so many ways to begin today's story. I
guess one of the easiest ways to begin it would
be to give a brief shout out to the King
of Gravity, Isaac Newton.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Can we have an airhorn?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
There we go?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yes, a boy, Isaac Newton invented gravity.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
He did it beforehand. It was pandemonium and it was nuts.
Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, an astronomer, a theologian.
He was described in his day as a natural philosopher,
one of the predecessors to what we would call a
scientist today. He was born in December of sixteen forty two,
(03:47):
the twenty fifth of December, and he lived until the
seventeen twenty seventeen twenty six, seventeen twenty seven. Today's episode
does not concern his many many innovations and his scientific pursuits.
It concerns something much more noir.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Can I also point out that in his day, he
was a dead sexy sob really asexual.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
No way, He's like a sort of a Morrissey figure,
a less problematic Morrissey figure.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It's it's not too controversial to say that a lot
of people are less problematic than.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Morrissey, Right, I think that's very fair.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
So he did. He did, by all accounts, die a virgin.
So maybe it's unfair to give him that term asexual
or ace, but he did divergin.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I put forth that he just didn't have time for
that kind of shenanigans. He was occupying his time with
more important pursuits, celestial pursuits and terrestrial pursuits.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Also true, Yeah, it's it's true. Maybe he was just busy,
sort of a a Tesla figure. We often hear about
Isaac Newton in relation to his many many scientific pursuits
as well as some of his more spiritual or esoteric pursuits.
But what many of us may not know, I'll come
(05:19):
clean what I did not know before we began researching
this episode. He also he also worked as a lawman
of sorts.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, now not only a lawman, like a sleuth, like
a Batman level detective.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's put it. He took his scientific acumen
and his cognitive prowess and he applied it to the
problem of crime. Journey with us back to sixteen ninety five,
England's Royal Mint found out that they had a very,
very alarming problem. They had a bunch of currency in circulation, right,
(06:00):
A large portion of that currency was fake. It was counterfeit,
it was phony, and this is not a good look
for the Royal Mint, it's not a good look for
the economy at large. And the counterfeitting operations were growing
increasingly sophisticated, sort of like in the Terminator franchise, when
(06:23):
the original robots are easily distinguishable from humans, but then
they get better and better and better and increasingly difficult
to identify, unless.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
We forget to mention that the man who discovered this
problem of counterfeit coin was Isaac Newton himself after he
was made the Warden of the Royal Mint. Not to
be confused with like Warden of the North or something,
but it really does carry quite a weighty aura the
term warden, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Oh, and we just got new business cards and I'm
kicking myself. We could have chosen some time. Do you
think they would have led.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Us supervising Warden of Production. That sounds very Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
When I first got business guards here way way back
in the day, because I've been here forever, they allowed
me to choose my own job title. Casey, you remember
this because I was I was pulling everybody, and I
got very close to changing my job titled to a
life coach or the experience like the Edge? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(07:29):
but good.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
This guitartoon is very influential.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I just think meeting someone and having to call them
the Edge, it's a preposterous expectation.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
He also seems like a pretty boring dude, does he
just he's got likes his whole look. He just doesn't
seem I could be wrong.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
I'm sure he's a great guy, but he seems like
the least edgy type of dude, especially when you go
by the name of the Edge.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
You know, nicknames are weird, and he's not hurting anyone.
I'm glad he's happy. I hope he's happy with the name.
I hope he doesn't feel trapped in that Moniker.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, I'll tell you who wasn't happy.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
It was Warden of the Royal Mint, Sir Isaac Newton,
in the year of sixteen ninety six when he made
that shocking discovery that twenty percent of the coins that
the Mint was circulating were in fact counterfeits, and he
decided to set out on a fact finding expedition.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Dare we say an investigation?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yes, yes, we dare, because you see, Newton, it turns
out was quite talented as warden of the Mint, and
he was able to catch quite a few counterfeitters. Yet
there was one fellow very high in the world of
forgery and counterfeiting, a man named William Challoner, who kept
(08:48):
escaping Newton's grasp time after time. William Challoner is someone
who could be the subject of Gosh, a multiple episode
series all his own, and.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Much like our friend mister Fritz duff Kine in the
previous episode, this gentleman was also something of a villainous figure,
a villainous renaissance man if you will.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah yeah, A grifter. William Challoner was born sometime in
sixteen fifty to a poor family in Warwickshire, but he
eventually attained a great financial success through his career in
counterfeiting and through his career in con artistry. He started
by forging Birmingham groats. That was a English and Irish
(09:40):
silver coin that was worth fourpence, or it could also
be a Scottish coin originally worth fourpence. And from that
point he moved on to creating counterfeit Guiney's crowns, half crowns, banknotes,
even lottery tickets. There's one side note that we have
to get out of the way. He didn't just uh
(10:01):
make counterfeit currency for a time. Uh, he also made
and sold uh sexual aids.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I'm sorry, sexual coming in aids.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Can we say it on the show?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Come a third time?
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Can we say it on the show?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You think surely we must? Dildosy dildos.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, see, that was such a funny word because to
too many it would be considered a swear.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But it is such a silly, silly word. Yeah, it's you.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Know, it's still somehow sounds less dirty than the phrase dongle.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Dongle's way worse. Oh it's so bad. But yeah, A.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
A false fallus, Yes there you go, Yes, a counterfeit fallus.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Oh my, you know we out there, we know we
talked about this off air, we did, and it's totally true.
So he was counterf not only was he counterfeiting money,
he was also counterfeiting penises.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
So this is this is a a funny episode for
us because we had intended to record it earlier and
before we had to before I had to leave town
for a second, and when we got back together after
I came back, we had an extensive, I think what
(11:17):
over over an hour and a half kind of quest
to figure out if we had recorded this episode or not.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
And I think it was because of the false Fallis discussion,
because we talked about it so much off air that
we were like, I think we maybe did do it,
you know, oh yeah. And then Casey, you know, on
the Case to the Rescue, let us know, to our
delight in fact, that we had not recorded this yet.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And this is what you hear before your very ears.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
It was. It was hilarious because, as we do so often,
the two of us couldn't figure out what we were
supposed to be doing, and so we basically flamed Casey, say,
please tell us what we have or have not done.
In Casey, by the way, thank you so much for
keeping the ship on course my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Casey always on the case, always perpetually on the case.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So here we are William Challoner. He is described as
a wilful youth with dishonest tendencies. He is originally apprenticed
as a nail maker before he begins working in the
thriving counterfeit industry of London. In the sixteen seventies, he
(12:37):
purchased a largest state in the country so he could
move his minting process away from the heat, away from
the heat of London's law enforcement, and he had a
pretty good workflow set down. He would hire middlemen who
would pass the fake coins into circulation, and those guys
(12:58):
had the tough gig in his operation because the middlemen
were the ones who were often caught, and when they
were caught, they were hanged. Yikes, yikes indeed, and because
this was such a risky business, he garnered a reputation
sort of a Moriarty of finance, you know, a shadowy kingpin.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Holy crap, no, you're dead on, because there is like
this kind of Batman and Joker or Sherlock and Moriarty
relationship between these two men. He's sort of like the
one that got away the white whale, you know, for
our buddy Isaac Newton, who this guy was a thorn
in his side, because, like you said, he did a
pretty good job of cleaning up the counterfeit scene, but
(13:44):
this gentleman.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Continued to slip through his fingers.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, and a big part of this comes about because
in the sixteen nineties English currency was moving away from
purely coin based stuff enough to note banknotes and paper money,
and Chaloner, although he had a lot of close calls
for a long time, he avoided the law or the
(14:11):
punishment for his crimes because the development of paper money
was in advance of the laws created to ban forging
paper money. Which sounds a little bit word salady. A
better way to say it is that technology will typically
outpace legislation, where running into it in twenty nineteen will
(14:32):
be running into it in the year three thousand, totally
sixteen nineties no different, because the wheels of justice grind
ever so slowly, while the wheels of commerce and progress
tend to be a little more lightning quick. Yeah, and
his success became as undoing because he got squarely in
the crosshairs of Sir Isaac the Warden himself and Chaloner.
(14:57):
Although he had escaped jail for numerous years and had
never had to serve time he had not escaped unscathed.
He had a long paper trail of arrest and accusations,
and this helped paint a picture of a guy who
spent a lot of time on the wrong side of
(15:19):
the law, and he was also a rat. Did you
hear about this?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
No? No, I didn't, but nobody likes a rat.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
He managed to get out of legal trouble multiple times
by selling out other counterfeitters, and so of the counterfeitters
that he had sold out who had been imprisoned or
punished and not killed or not executed, Sir Isaac was
able to question these guys and gather many people who
(15:50):
would say, yeah, I'll go to court. I will point
out that dirty rat Billy Challoner because I want my revenge,
to which Isaac's all right, let's make it, let's make
it official.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Let's do it. Let's make a deal.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
He may have slipped the news spend, but he did
not slip the clink because Newton was able to amass
enough evidence and these witness testimonies to get him locked up.
But it didn't really take did it.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
No, No, he bribed the prosecution star witness, paid the
witness enough money to flee to Scotland, and then Chaloner
was released and he accused Newton of framing an innocent man.
We should step back for a second and say that
Newton knows and despise his challenger at this point, because
(16:40):
earlier Chaloner had appeared before Parliamentary Committee and he said
that Newton was incompetent, terrible at his job and that
the Mint employees were the ones responsible for the epidemic
of counterfeit currency. So this is two strikes against the
guy in Newton's mind, and this attack on his integra
(17:00):
enrages him. So he decides that he is going to
play dirty as well as you will call it an
old dirty pool. He began bribing crooks for information, He
started making threats. He found not only Challoner's associates, but
the wives and mistresses of his associates and started intimidating
(17:23):
and threatening them. In short, as Judy Dutton says in
an excellent article of Mental Floss, Newton became the dirty
Harry of his time.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
I don't understand that reference.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Dirty Harry. Are you serious?
Speaker 2 (17:37):
What is he like? Is he a cop? I don't
know what dirty Harry is, Casey, He's.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
A cop that doesn't follow the rules, doesn't like a
lot of red.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Tape, so he's sort of like a Surpaco type figure.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
He asks punks if they're feeling lucky.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Clint Eastwood, did he have to be at a big
giant gun? Didn't he a big old magnum?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Okay, all right, Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Can we get a do you feel like he punk?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
I know what you're thinking, Bunker, You're thinking did he
fire six?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Shots?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Are only five?
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Now?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I tell you the truth?
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Ever, haud myself and all this excitement, but being this
as a forty four bag in the most powerful handgun
in the world and will blow your head clean off,
you could ask yourself question, do I feel lucky? Well?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Do you punk? Perfect?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So yes, the comparison does hold because he was operating
outside of the law, and he spent two more years
chasing down Challenger, and eventually his ethically questionable methods give
him enough evidence to put Challenger away for good.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
I picture Isaac Newton with his you know, very expertly
quaffed ringlets, you know, and his kind of a ruffel shirt,
you know, in some sort of velvet. Would you call
that a doublet or something like that like waterboarding dudes
and back room you know, dunking their heads and toilets
and stuff like that, just to get to this guy, Chaloner,
(19:13):
you know, and who knows.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
It could have happened just like that.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
This is sterio. But for some reason, I see I
see a dildo with the intimidation tactics. Can we we
should probably cut that?
Speaker 3 (19:25):
No, no, no, okay, let's let's let's get your mind
out of the of the gutter. He clearly would have
used it as more of a blackjack kind of thing.
That's what I'm thinking, because I could probably beat somebody
with a dildo and it wouldn't leave a mark.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I'm not like a sack of oranges. Yeah, I'm not.
I mean, I'm not thinking of something sexual. I'm thinking
of just an intimidation.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I know I was helping you out to thank you, thanks.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
For the safe. On March third, sixteen ninety nine, Challoner
is found guilty of high treason, and he is sentenced
to hang the very next day. Before his sentence is
carried out, several days before, Challoner has written Newton a
(20:08):
long letter proclaiming his innocence, And we have a little
bit we can read an excerpt, but we're not going
to read the whole letter, because he writes them a
series of letters that go on. And here's one example.
I have been close prisoner eleven weeks, and no friends
suffered to come near me but my little child. And
(20:29):
I am not guilty of any crime. And why am
I so strictly confined? I do not know. I doubt sir,
you are greatly displeased with me about the late business
in parliament. But if you knew that truth, you would
not be angry with me, for it was brought in
by some persons against my desire.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
My favorite line exert that was wonderful read Ben, is.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I Am going to be method? It says m u
r t h e r ed, but then later spells
it correctly.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I'm not sure this is a typo on this website,
the Newton Project dot ox dot AC dot UK, but
I like to believe that he chose to spell murdered mirthod.
So he says I'm going to be method, although perhaps
you may think not, but tis true. I shall be
madered the worse of all murders, that is, in the
face of justice with an I. So it's like iftis
(21:22):
and unless I am rescued.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
By your merciful hands. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
One of the very last lines he has is, bras
consider that these persons that those accuse me are those
formerly convicted for crimes, and hope your worship nor the
court will believe the suggestions of such evil persons against me.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
That's a very similar argument to what's going on right
now in the trial of drug kingpin El Chapo. Apparently,
you know, the prosecution had dozens and dozens of witnesses
and El Chapo's lawyer had I think no witnesses, and
El Chopo didn't even take the stand, and his lawyer's
whole defense was, all of these witnesses are scum and
(22:06):
they're just trying to, you know, get out of their
own problems.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Right, get their own plea deals.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
And he signs this lettered y're near murdered, humble sevants
w challoner. It's quite pitiful because he's literally begging this
man for his life. He's been bested by his nemesis,
and now he's behind bars, awaiting the noose.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yep, this did not work. No, Newton felt no pity.
He even adding an insult to injury. Did the ultimate snub.
He did not attend the hanging. He stayed home. I
guess he was busy. Maybe something was on the seventeenth
century netflix, maybe he was you know, it.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Was probably the crown, it was probably the crowd. Maybe
he was at home nursing his ego. But everybody knew
he's guilty. Quick correction is said that he was supposed
to be hanging to the next day. He was sentenced
the day after the trial, and he had a fortnight
in which he wrote those letters.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
What is that two weeks time?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, it's a period of two weeks. And over these
two weeks, that's when he writes these series of increasingly
desperate letters, not just in Newton, but to Justin Railton,
who was the supervising magistrate. And you can see the
stages of grief. They are apparent in these letters.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Let's go through them.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Of course, there are five stages. The first is denial,
which he was obviously doing. Then there's anger, he was
aggressive in these letters. Then there's bargaining, which he had
dubbed before by saying he would name other people. Then
there's depression, which was probably a personal thing for him,
and acceptance, which I don't think he really reached. So
(23:48):
Newton had written during Chaloner's first trial, the one where
he got away, that the counterfeiter had formed a quote
confederacy against the Wold and Chaloner could have lived a long,
honest life had he let the money and the government alone.
After this is very interesting, and this is kind of sketchy.
(24:09):
After Chaloner is executed, Newton takes all the records of
his investigation and burns them. He destroys all records of
his involvement in the investigation, and nowadays scholars believe that
is solely to cover up the ways that he broke
(24:29):
the law in pursuit of this counterfeiter. Jeez, so he
definitely did some dirty cop tactics. He continues working in
law enforcement until seventeen o three, when he turns in
his badge figuratively speaking, and becomes President of the Royal Society,
(24:50):
returning to the world of academia.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah, to live out his twilight years. But man, he
had a stretch there for a while. He was something
of a bad cop. Badass, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Absolutely And there ends the story of the counterfeit Kingpin
William Challoner, who was hanged on the twenty second March
sixteen ninety nine, The Physicist and the Forger, The Physicist
and the Forger. That's wonderful. This also reminds me I
have a great book I would like to recommend, called
(25:23):
The Professor and the Madman. Did we ever talk about
this on air? We had to. We did an episode
related to this guy, The Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Oh okay, it doesn't ring about Ben. It's all a
blur for me.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
It's The Professor and the Madman, a tale of murder,
insanity and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Reminds
me of the strange pairing we have here with Newton
and Challoner. And what, you know, what it inspires me
to think about would be other stories of these great rivalries,
(25:59):
you know what I mean, like the Untouchables and organized crime.
I wonder what other stories are out there. There's something
so compelling, so there's a high drama to it, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Big time. I'd love to see a film adaptation of
this rivalry.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Who would play Newton?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
I'm going to say, I don't know, maybe Benedict Cumberbatch.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Are you are you? Are you getting a Sherlock? I
would be interested to see Steve Buscemi play either of
these characters. I think he would make a fantastic Newton.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
I think you're right, but I honestly think he might
do better as the weird, twitchy villain guy.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Because of his eyes.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yep, those eyes.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Let us know what stories of personal crime rivalries have
captured your attention, and don't just let us know. You
can also let your fellow listeners know by finding us
on Instagram, by finding us on Twitter, or by finding
us on our Facebook community page, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Big thanks to super producer Casey Pegram, to Alex Williams,
who composed our theme, to Gabe, our delightful and talented
research associate, and to you Ridiculous Historians for checking out
the show.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Speaking of checking out, if you want to see our
off air, sometimes non ridiculous history related adventures, you can
follow us on our very own instagrams. I am in
a burst of creativity at Ben Bullen.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
And I am at Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Which I don't think I've ever said this on air.
I don't think i've said this to you in person ever.
We've known each other for years, but I think that's
a cool name.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Oh thanks, man, it's actually it was a name of
a song in a band that I was in, a
kind of a little bit embarrassing, tidbit for my youth,
kind of like a new metal type band that you
cannot find anywhere, so don't even look around for it.
We had a song called Embryonic inside and changed it.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
It goes It's the inside scoop.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Peep Peek behind the Curtain for more inside scoops on
the ridiculous, bizarre and hilarious tales of human History. Stay
tuned for our upcoming episodes, and swing by our website,
Ridiculous Hisstoryshow dot com. We're in the t shirt business,
(28:23):
as I think we've mentioned before, and you know it's
probably time for us to add some new t shirts.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Noll.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
My favorite and our newest is Casey on the Case.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Does it exists?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Yeah, Yeah, it's there. It's really cool. Casey. I don't
think I didn't hear you slip in that other Casey
on the Case sound cute. No, seriously, man, you don't
have to do it every time.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
We say the phrase, but it's fine when he does.
It's so good. See you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to our weekly classic episode Ridiculous Historians. Hey, nol
you remember Isaac Newton.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
He's the apple guy, right, figs or something. It's a
fruited cake, cake, fruited cake. But isn't This isn't the
old tale of Isaac Newton discovering gravity when the apple
fell not too far from the tree and conked him
on the knoggin.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
That's the anecdote for sure. And he also did a
lot of other stuff. We know him for his scientific pursuits,
like you were saying, But before we did this episode
in twenty nineteen, we were not aware that he spent
some time as the Master of the Royal Mint.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
He was an absolute salute when it came to spotting
fake currency.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Oh yeah, and unlike some royal positions, this was not ceremonial.
He took the job of bird dogging forgers seriously, and
he was getting a kind of Sherlock holmesy in about it.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
No, there's a bit of a Holmes Moriarty rival in
this story and the Moriart two. Newton's Holmes was a
fellow by the name of William Challoner, a counterfeiting kingpen
and super villain Big Bat of today's tale.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Oh Man, oh Man,
(01:42):
oh Man. Friends and neighbors, Fellow Ridiculous historians, Welcome to
the show. I for one, am excited because today's episode
concerns one of our favorite genres of historical individuals, the con.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Artist flim flat a man, which our last episode did
as well.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
We have we have a preponderance of con artists in
the show, and I have no regrets about it. Who
am I? I'm Ben.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
That's who you are. I'm Nol. This is Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And who's that handsome man outside of the booth? Why
that devil as I live and breathe. That's super producer
Casey Pegram. Oh my goodness, gracious, I love it what
people say as I love it breathe. Well, it's funny too,
because when you said that sound, yes, I do a
lot that expression. But when you said that and then
the sound happened, a beautiful glint on Casey's pearly white,
(02:34):
very straight teeth lit up the room. It's true, It's true.
We off air Nol and I spend a lot of
time just sort of staring at Casey when we think
he's not looking.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
You know, he always sees though.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, I'm sorry I had to find out on air casey.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, that's fine. Though, it's fine. It's endearing, not creepy
at all.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Not creepy at all. Let's make that a T shirt.
We have so many ways to begin today's story. I
guess one of the easiest ways to begin it would
be to give a brief shout out to the King
of Gravity, Isaac Newton.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Can we have an airhorn?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
There we go?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yes, a boy, Isaac Newton invented gravity.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
He did it beforehand. It was pandemonium and it was nuts.
Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, an astronomer, a theologian.
He was described in his day as a natural philosopher,
one of the predecessors to what we would call a
scientist today. He was born in December of sixteen forty two,
(03:47):
the twenty fifth of December, and he lived until the
seventeen twenty seventeen twenty six, seventeen twenty seven. Today's episode
does not concern his many many innovations and his scientific pursuits.
It concerns something much more noir.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Can I also point out that in his day, he
was a dead sexy sob really asexual.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
No way, He's like a sort of a Morrissey figure,
a less problematic Morrissey figure.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It's it's not too controversial to say that a lot
of people are less problematic than.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Morrissey, Right, I think that's very fair.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
So he did. He did, by all accounts, die a virgin.
So maybe it's unfair to give him that term asexual
or ace, but he did divergin.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I put forth that he just didn't have time for
that kind of shenanigans. He was occupying his time with
more important pursuits, celestial pursuits and terrestrial pursuits.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Also true, Yeah, it's it's true. Maybe he was just busy,
sort of a a Tesla figure. We often hear about
Isaac Newton in relation to his many many scientific pursuits
as well as some of his more spiritual or esoteric pursuits.
But what many of us may not know, I'll come
(05:19):
clean what I did not know before we began researching
this episode. He also he also worked as a lawman
of sorts.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, now not only a lawman, like a sleuth, like
a Batman level detective.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's put it. He took his scientific acumen
and his cognitive prowess and he applied it to the
problem of crime. Journey with us back to sixteen ninety five,
England's Royal Mint found out that they had a very,
very alarming problem. They had a bunch of currency in circulation, right,
(06:00):
A large portion of that currency was fake. It was counterfeit,
it was phony, and this is not a good look
for the Royal Mint, it's not a good look for
the economy at large. And the counterfeitting operations were growing
increasingly sophisticated, sort of like in the Terminator franchise, when
(06:23):
the original robots are easily distinguishable from humans, but then
they get better and better and better and increasingly difficult
to identify, unless.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
We forget to mention that the man who discovered this
problem of counterfeit coin was Isaac Newton himself after he
was made the Warden of the Royal Mint. Not to
be confused with like Warden of the North or something,
but it really does carry quite a weighty aura the
term warden, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Oh, and we just got new business cards and I'm
kicking myself. We could have chosen some time. Do you
think they would have led.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Us supervising Warden of Production. That sounds very Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
When I first got business guards here way way back
in the day, because I've been here forever, they allowed
me to choose my own job title. Casey, you remember
this because I was I was pulling everybody, and I
got very close to changing my job titled to a
life coach or the experience like the Edge? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(07:29):
but good.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
This guitartoon is very influential.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I just think meeting someone and having to call them
the Edge, it's a preposterous expectation.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
He also seems like a pretty boring dude, does he
just he's got likes his whole look. He just doesn't
seem I could be wrong.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
I'm sure he's a great guy, but he seems like
the least edgy type of dude, especially when you go
by the name of the Edge.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
You know, nicknames are weird, and he's not hurting anyone.
I'm glad he's happy. I hope he's happy with the name.
I hope he doesn't feel trapped in that Moniker.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, I'll tell you who wasn't happy.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
It was Warden of the Royal Mint, Sir Isaac Newton,
in the year of sixteen ninety six when he made
that shocking discovery that twenty percent of the coins that
the Mint was circulating were in fact counterfeits, and he
decided to set out on a fact finding expedition.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Dare we say an investigation?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yes, yes, we dare, because you see, Newton, it turns
out was quite talented as warden of the Mint, and
he was able to catch quite a few counterfeitters. Yet
there was one fellow very high in the world of
forgery and counterfeiting, a man named William Challoner, who kept
(08:48):
escaping Newton's grasp time after time. William Challoner is someone
who could be the subject of Gosh, a multiple episode
series all his own, and.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Much like our friend mister Fritz duff Kine in the
previous episode, this gentleman was also something of a villainous figure,
a villainous renaissance man if you will.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah yeah, A grifter. William Challoner was born sometime in
sixteen fifty to a poor family in Warwickshire, but he
eventually attained a great financial success through his career in
counterfeiting and through his career in con artistry. He started
by forging Birmingham groats. That was a English and Irish
(09:40):
silver coin that was worth fourpence, or it could also
be a Scottish coin originally worth fourpence. And from that
point he moved on to creating counterfeit Guiney's crowns, half crowns, banknotes,
even lottery tickets. There's one side note that we have
to get out of the way. He didn't just uh
(10:01):
make counterfeit currency for a time. Uh, he also made
and sold uh sexual aids.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I'm sorry, sexual coming in aids.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Can we say it on the show?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Come a third time?
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Can we say it on the show?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You think surely we must? Dildosy dildos.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, see, that was such a funny word because to
too many it would be considered a swear.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But it is such a silly, silly word. Yeah, it's you.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Know, it's still somehow sounds less dirty than the phrase dongle.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Dongle's way worse. Oh it's so bad. But yeah, A.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
A false fallus, Yes there you go, Yes, a counterfeit fallus.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Oh my, you know we out there, we know we
talked about this off air, we did, and it's totally true.
So he was counterf not only was he counterfeiting money,
he was also counterfeiting penises.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
So this is this is a a funny episode for
us because we had intended to record it earlier and
before we had to before I had to leave town
for a second, and when we got back together after
I came back, we had an extensive, I think what
(11:17):
over over an hour and a half kind of quest
to figure out if we had recorded this episode or not.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
And I think it was because of the false Fallis discussion,
because we talked about it so much off air that
we were like, I think we maybe did do it,
you know, oh yeah. And then Casey, you know, on
the Case to the Rescue, let us know, to our
delight in fact, that we had not recorded this yet.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And this is what you hear before your very ears.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
It was. It was hilarious because, as we do so often,
the two of us couldn't figure out what we were
supposed to be doing, and so we basically flamed Casey, say,
please tell us what we have or have not done.
In Casey, by the way, thank you so much for
keeping the ship on course my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Casey always on the case, always perpetually on the case.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So here we are William Challoner. He is described as
a wilful youth with dishonest tendencies. He is originally apprenticed
as a nail maker before he begins working in the
thriving counterfeit industry of London. In the sixteen seventies, he
(12:37):
purchased a largest state in the country so he could
move his minting process away from the heat, away from
the heat of London's law enforcement, and he had a
pretty good workflow set down. He would hire middlemen who
would pass the fake coins into circulation, and those guys
(12:58):
had the tough gig in his operation because the middlemen
were the ones who were often caught, and when they
were caught, they were hanged. Yikes, yikes indeed, and because
this was such a risky business, he garnered a reputation
sort of a Moriarty of finance, you know, a shadowy kingpin.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Holy crap, no, you're dead on, because there is like
this kind of Batman and Joker or Sherlock and Moriarty
relationship between these two men. He's sort of like the
one that got away the white whale, you know, for
our buddy Isaac Newton, who this guy was a thorn
in his side, because, like you said, he did a
pretty good job of cleaning up the counterfeit scene, but
(13:44):
this gentleman.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Continued to slip through his fingers.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, and a big part of this comes about because
in the sixteen nineties English currency was moving away from
purely coin based stuff enough to note banknotes and paper money,
and Chaloner, although he had a lot of close calls
for a long time, he avoided the law or the
(14:11):
punishment for his crimes because the development of paper money
was in advance of the laws created to ban forging
paper money. Which sounds a little bit word salady. A
better way to say it is that technology will typically
outpace legislation, where running into it in twenty nineteen will
(14:32):
be running into it in the year three thousand, totally
sixteen nineties no different, because the wheels of justice grind
ever so slowly, while the wheels of commerce and progress
tend to be a little more lightning quick. Yeah, and
his success became as undoing because he got squarely in
the crosshairs of Sir Isaac the Warden himself and Chaloner.
(14:57):
Although he had escaped jail for numerous years and had
never had to serve time he had not escaped unscathed.
He had a long paper trail of arrest and accusations,
and this helped paint a picture of a guy who
spent a lot of time on the wrong side of
(15:19):
the law, and he was also a rat. Did you
hear about this?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
No? No, I didn't, but nobody likes a rat.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
He managed to get out of legal trouble multiple times
by selling out other counterfeitters, and so of the counterfeitters
that he had sold out who had been imprisoned or
punished and not killed or not executed, Sir Isaac was
able to question these guys and gather many people who
(15:50):
would say, yeah, I'll go to court. I will point
out that dirty rat Billy Challoner because I want my revenge,
to which Isaac's all right, let's make it, let's make
it official.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Let's do it. Let's make a deal.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
He may have slipped the news spend, but he did
not slip the clink because Newton was able to amass
enough evidence and these witness testimonies to get him locked up.
But it didn't really take did it.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
No, No, he bribed the prosecution star witness, paid the
witness enough money to flee to Scotland, and then Chaloner
was released and he accused Newton of framing an innocent man.
We should step back for a second and say that
Newton knows and despise his challenger at this point, because
(16:40):
earlier Chaloner had appeared before Parliamentary Committee and he said
that Newton was incompetent, terrible at his job and that
the Mint employees were the ones responsible for the epidemic
of counterfeit currency. So this is two strikes against the
guy in Newton's mind, and this attack on his integra
(17:00):
enrages him. So he decides that he is going to
play dirty as well as you will call it an
old dirty pool. He began bribing crooks for information, He
started making threats. He found not only Challoner's associates, but
the wives and mistresses of his associates and started intimidating
(17:23):
and threatening them. In short, as Judy Dutton says in
an excellent article of Mental Floss, Newton became the dirty
Harry of his time.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
I don't understand that reference.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Dirty Harry. Are you serious?
Speaker 2 (17:37):
What is he like? Is he a cop? I don't
know what dirty Harry is, Casey, He's.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
A cop that doesn't follow the rules, doesn't like a
lot of red.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Tape, so he's sort of like a Surpaco type figure.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
He asks punks if they're feeling lucky.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Clint Eastwood, did he have to be at a big
giant gun? Didn't he a big old magnum?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Okay, all right, Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Can we get a do you feel like he punk?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
I know what you're thinking, Bunker, You're thinking did he
fire six?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Shots?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Are only five?
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Now?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I tell you the truth?
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Ever, haud myself and all this excitement, but being this
as a forty four bag in the most powerful handgun
in the world and will blow your head clean off,
you could ask yourself question, do I feel lucky? Well?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Do you punk? Perfect?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So yes, the comparison does hold because he was operating
outside of the law, and he spent two more years
chasing down Challenger, and eventually his ethically questionable methods give
him enough evidence to put Challenger away for good.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
I picture Isaac Newton with his you know, very expertly
quaffed ringlets, you know, and his kind of a ruffel shirt,
you know, in some sort of velvet. Would you call
that a doublet or something like that like waterboarding dudes
and back room you know, dunking their heads and toilets
and stuff like that, just to get to this guy, Chaloner,
(19:13):
you know, and who knows.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
It could have happened just like that.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
This is sterio. But for some reason, I see I
see a dildo with the intimidation tactics. Can we we
should probably cut that?
Speaker 3 (19:25):
No, no, no, okay, let's let's let's get your mind
out of the of the gutter. He clearly would have
used it as more of a blackjack kind of thing.
That's what I'm thinking, because I could probably beat somebody
with a dildo and it wouldn't leave a mark.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I'm not like a sack of oranges. Yeah, I'm not.
I mean, I'm not thinking of something sexual. I'm thinking
of just an intimidation.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I know I was helping you out to thank you, thanks.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
For the safe. On March third, sixteen ninety nine, Challoner
is found guilty of high treason, and he is sentenced
to hang the very next day. Before his sentence is
carried out, several days before, Challoner has written Newton a
(20:08):
long letter proclaiming his innocence, And we have a little
bit we can read an excerpt, but we're not going
to read the whole letter, because he writes them a
series of letters that go on. And here's one example.
I have been close prisoner eleven weeks, and no friends
suffered to come near me but my little child. And
(20:29):
I am not guilty of any crime. And why am
I so strictly confined? I do not know. I doubt sir,
you are greatly displeased with me about the late business
in parliament. But if you knew that truth, you would
not be angry with me, for it was brought in
by some persons against my desire.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
My favorite line exert that was wonderful read Ben, is.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I Am going to be method? It says m u
r t h e r ed, but then later spells
it correctly.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I'm not sure this is a typo on this website,
the Newton Project dot ox dot AC dot UK, but
I like to believe that he chose to spell murdered mirthod.
So he says I'm going to be method, although perhaps
you may think not, but tis true. I shall be
madered the worse of all murders, that is, in the
face of justice with an I. So it's like iftis
(21:22):
and unless I am rescued.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
By your merciful hands. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
One of the very last lines he has is, bras
consider that these persons that those accuse me are those
formerly convicted for crimes, and hope your worship nor the
court will believe the suggestions of such evil persons against me.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
That's a very similar argument to what's going on right
now in the trial of drug kingpin El Chapo. Apparently,
you know, the prosecution had dozens and dozens of witnesses
and El Chapo's lawyer had I think no witnesses, and
El Chopo didn't even take the stand, and his lawyer's
whole defense was, all of these witnesses are scum and
(22:06):
they're just trying to, you know, get out of their
own problems.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Right, get their own plea deals.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
And he signs this lettered y're near murdered, humble sevants
w challoner. It's quite pitiful because he's literally begging this
man for his life. He's been bested by his nemesis,
and now he's behind bars, awaiting the noose.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yep, this did not work. No, Newton felt no pity.
He even adding an insult to injury. Did the ultimate snub.
He did not attend the hanging. He stayed home. I
guess he was busy. Maybe something was on the seventeenth
century netflix, maybe he was you know, it.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Was probably the crown, it was probably the crowd. Maybe
he was at home nursing his ego. But everybody knew
he's guilty. Quick correction is said that he was supposed
to be hanging to the next day. He was sentenced
the day after the trial, and he had a fortnight
in which he wrote those letters.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
What is that two weeks time?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, it's a period of two weeks. And over these
two weeks, that's when he writes these series of increasingly
desperate letters, not just in Newton, but to Justin Railton,
who was the supervising magistrate. And you can see the
stages of grief. They are apparent in these letters.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Let's go through them.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Of course, there are five stages. The first is denial,
which he was obviously doing. Then there's anger, he was
aggressive in these letters. Then there's bargaining, which he had
dubbed before by saying he would name other people. Then
there's depression, which was probably a personal thing for him,
and acceptance, which I don't think he really reached. So
(23:48):
Newton had written during Chaloner's first trial, the one where
he got away, that the counterfeiter had formed a quote
confederacy against the Wold and Chaloner could have lived a long,
honest life had he let the money and the government alone.
After this is very interesting, and this is kind of sketchy.
(24:09):
After Chaloner is executed, Newton takes all the records of
his investigation and burns them. He destroys all records of
his involvement in the investigation, and nowadays scholars believe that
is solely to cover up the ways that he broke
(24:29):
the law in pursuit of this counterfeiter. Jeez, so he
definitely did some dirty cop tactics. He continues working in
law enforcement until seventeen o three, when he turns in
his badge figuratively speaking, and becomes President of the Royal Society,
(24:50):
returning to the world of academia.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah, to live out his twilight years. But man, he
had a stretch there for a while. He was something
of a bad cop. Badass, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Absolutely And there ends the story of the counterfeit Kingpin
William Challoner, who was hanged on the twenty second March
sixteen ninety nine, The Physicist and the Forger, The Physicist
and the Forger. That's wonderful. This also reminds me I
have a great book I would like to recommend, called
(25:23):
The Professor and the Madman. Did we ever talk about
this on air? We had to. We did an episode
related to this guy, The Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Oh okay, it doesn't ring about Ben. It's all a
blur for me.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
It's The Professor and the Madman, a tale of murder,
insanity and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Reminds
me of the strange pairing we have here with Newton
and Challoner. And what, you know, what it inspires me
to think about would be other stories of these great rivalries,
(25:59):
you know what I mean, like the Untouchables and organized crime.
I wonder what other stories are out there. There's something
so compelling, so there's a high drama to it, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Big time. I'd love to see a film adaptation of
this rivalry.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Who would play Newton?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
I'm going to say, I don't know, maybe Benedict Cumberbatch.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Are you are you? Are you getting a Sherlock? I
would be interested to see Steve Buscemi play either of
these characters. I think he would make a fantastic Newton.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
I think you're right, but I honestly think he might
do better as the weird, twitchy villain guy.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Because of his eyes.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yep, those eyes.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Let us know what stories of personal crime rivalries have
captured your attention, and don't just let us know. You
can also let your fellow listeners know by finding us
on Instagram, by finding us on Twitter, or by finding
us on our Facebook community page, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Big thanks to super producer Casey Pegram, to Alex Williams,
who composed our theme, to Gabe, our delightful and talented
research associate, and to you Ridiculous Historians for checking out
the show.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Speaking of checking out, if you want to see our
off air, sometimes non ridiculous history related adventures, you can
follow us on our very own instagrams. I am in
a burst of creativity at Ben Bullen.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
And I am at Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Which I don't think I've ever said this on air.
I don't think i've said this to you in person ever.
We've known each other for years, but I think that's
a cool name.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Oh thanks, man, it's actually it was a name of
a song in a band that I was in, a
kind of a little bit embarrassing, tidbit for my youth,
kind of like a new metal type band that you
cannot find anywhere, so don't even look around for it.
We had a song called Embryonic inside and changed it.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
It goes It's the inside scoop.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Peep Peek behind the Curtain for more inside scoops on
the ridiculous, bizarre and hilarious tales of human History. Stay
tuned for our upcoming episodes, and swing by our website,
Ridiculous Hisstoryshow dot com. We're in the t shirt business,
(28:23):
as I think we've mentioned before, and you know it's
probably time for us to add some new t shirts.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Noll.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
My favorite and our newest is Casey on the Case.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Does it exists?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Yeah, Yeah, it's there. It's really cool. Casey. I don't
think I didn't hear you slip in that other Casey
on the Case sound cute. No, seriously, man, you don't
have to do it every time.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
We say the phrase, but it's fine when he does.
It's so good. See you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics
Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.
iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Milan Cortina Winter Olympics
The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina are here and have everyone talking. iHeartPodcasts is buzzing with content in honor of the XXV Winter Olympics We’re bringing you episodes from a variety of iHeartPodcast shows to help you keep up with the action. Follow Milan Cortina Winter Olympics so you don’t miss any coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics, and if you like what you hear, be sure to follow each Podcast in the feed for more great content from iHeartPodcasts.