June 19, 2019 • 56 mins
German immigrant John Jacob Astor was the first multimillionaire in the United States, and his descendants would go on to play prominent roles in the country's history -- but how exactly did he get this enormous fortune? According to the official story, he started off in the fur trade and later expanded into real estate. Yet for more than a century people rumors about the real origin of Astor's wealth have been floating around the fringes of conversation -- what if he wasn't a legitimate businessman in the beginning, but instead engaged in less savory endeavors?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt. There's a null
spaced hole to my left, there's an oal hole. Indeed,
they call me Ben. We are joined, as always with
our super producer, Paul Mission Controlled Decans, who has recently
been rethinking his Moniker and maybe going with Paul Hollywood
in a British accent. Most importantly, you are you, You
(00:48):
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. This is a this is a strange
episode for us and uh and an interesting story. There's
a there are a couple of different conspiratorial myths we
run into here, and we also run into the evolution
of media and the great game of telephone that we've
(01:08):
mentioned in previous previous episodes. But before we begin, Matt,
I have to I have to I have to ask you,
do you think this summer will be the summer that
our hometown burns down? Then Atlanta burns again, just from
the heat, this time not from interesting warfare. My goodness.
(01:29):
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. We went out, my
family and I went out to the Candler Park Festival
on Gosh was that Saturday? Yes, it was Saturday. And
just standing outside uncovered was a terrible thing. I would
not recommend it to anyone. Find a tree, get underneath it,
and you'll be okay. The music is still gonna sound great.
(01:51):
There we go. That's the spirit. It's it's a it's
a positive, positive spin on a terrible, terrible thing. I
I just landed back in town late yesterday night or
early this morning, I'm not sure which. And the thing
that hit me immediately was the heat. I'm just everyone
(02:14):
who lives here, uh, enjoy summer and autumn and all
the hits, all the all the slow jazz of the
seasons until summer comes. This is terrible, This is horrific.
Uh have no idea how hot or cold it is,
Uh you know in your neck of the global woods, folks,
but please send us. What do they say on Facebook?
(02:36):
Thoughts and prayers are better yet? Ice cubes or those
um and did you ever have those those weird little
popsicles that came in the plastic tubes when you were
a kid or some of those. I'm I'm burning up
so much. You know, the sun is my ancient nemesis anyway,
Uh that I'm considering ice pops as as a treatment
(02:57):
is hot town, summer in the city, come back, my
cool cat and looking forward, kidding, going to search an
every cold the city, all the bound the people looking
have to walking on the Oh, gonna get sued by
that town by town and that artist. I doubt it.
(03:19):
I doubt it. But that is that is a stone
cold jam for hellishly hot day. So assuming that, assuming
that the studio doesn't melt into one interminable mass of
plastic v O c s that's volatile organic compounds chemicals
a k a. The basis of new car smell, and
(03:41):
what I will slowly kill you along with organic matter
and mortar, we will successfully finish this episode. This is
a story that encounters, as we said, so many different
conspiratorial threads. And while you were listening, we would like
to invite you to participate with us in pseudo real time.
(04:05):
I mean time itself is a pseudo thing anyway, right,
So if the mood strikes you, if the spirit so
moves you as you are joining us today. Don't hesitate,
don't feel like you have to wait till the end
to write an email. You can go ahead and just
give us a call. We are one eight three three
st d w y t K. And if you're like
(04:28):
one of our listeners that we casually mentioned at the
end of the show, and I must say in a
way that I knew that only this listener would understand
that I was talking to her, you will then leave
six more messages over the weekend. She just so, please
feel free to reach out with any kind of questions,
any kind of statements, especially if you come up with
(04:48):
something as we're talking about this episode. Yes, please, so
let us begin to paraphrase Henre Da Balzac. Behind every
great fortune, there is a great crime. It's a thought
that we've we've encountered multiple times, and that you have
probably encountered in your own life in any variety of fronts.
(05:10):
The concept here is that one cannot, regardless of time
and space, one cannot reach, regardless of time and space,
a certain threshold of financial success without somehow purposefully or
unwittingly gaining some part of that fortune through criminal acts.
(05:30):
And it's not. It isn't necessarily criminal acts of that
person by gaining that wealth, because that wealth then many
times is handed down right. So perhaps it's a criminal
act that your grandparents or your great grandparents or even
further back committed right right, So it's it's a known fact,
for instance, that there are people in the world who
(05:54):
still enjoy the benefits their ancestors reaped from things like
the slave trade or colonialism. There's also another case to
be if we want to make a case about people
who are unwittingly perhaps profiting for this, we could look
at Silicon Valley and the technocrats who live there profiting
(06:15):
off of the backbreaking human rights abuses involved in the
mining industry, retaining the things they need to make their
chips right right, right, one way or the other. And
this quickly descends into a very sticky philosophical conversation. Are
you or I if we own a smartphone and we
(06:36):
also benefiting from this? The answer is more or less yes.
But in this case we're talking about the people who
become millionaires, multimillionaires, billionaires in the pursuit of these of
these ambitions. Right in today's episode, we are traveling back
in time fellow conspiracy realists, we are exploring the story
(06:59):
of one of America's earliest tycoons, literally the first multimillionaire
in the United States, or perhaps officially is a better
word than literally, and will along the way dive into
the speculation about just how this one individual arrived at
his fortune and why this speculation continues today. And as
(07:23):
we'll find out in this episode. As many others, these
stories have an official version and not so official version. Yes,
just so, here are the facts. Born Johan jacob Astor
in Germany on July seventeen, seventeen sixty three, John jacob
(07:43):
Astor was the son of a butcher who would go
on to found a financial dynasty that continues in some
ways into the modern day. That's right. When he was,
you know, a young man, around seventeen years old, he
went to London and he started to work with one
of his brother is his older brother, George. And this
this guy, George, made musical instruments, and you know, it's
(08:05):
interesting enough, but he wanted to try something else. So
in seventeen eighty four he left London. He got out
of town. He brought some some of these instruments with
him and just a little bit of pocket money, around
twenty five dollars, and he traveled all the way across
the ocean to the United States to try and find
something fortune right right, to seek his fortune. It's an
(08:30):
American dreams story, right. Let's let's explore the official story
about how this German immigrant came to become America's first
multi millionaire. So, as you said, Matt, seventeen eighty four,
he arrives, he just got some flutes. He's got around
twenty five dollars cash money, as they would say. Uh.
(08:51):
He arrives in Baltimore, and he eventually makes his way
up to New York City. While he is in New York,
he opens his own fur trade shop. In seventeen eighties six,
so about two years after he leaves Germany. He often
at this time travels out into the wilderness, just like
(09:12):
his fur trappers do, and he wants to find news
sources of fur for his shop. This is a huge
industry at this time, and this was before concerns about
preserving species were very widespread. It was a foreign concept
or alien concept to many of these trappers and traders
(09:35):
that there would ever be a day where it was
difficult to obtain as many beaver pelts as one would wish. Yeah,
because the populations I'll start to dwindle, because the fur
trade ends up being a really big thing. Well, and
just one quick thing here with Johan A. K. John
Astor here he when he went to New York, he
(09:55):
met up with another brother, right, and he was working
i think at a butcher shop up for a while
with his brother, and then he ended up trying his
hand at baking, cooking and these kind of things. And
he was totally like, I'm never going to make enough
money just working with my hands at this level, doing
this kind of thing. And that's one of the main
reasons he went out to seek out the fur trade
(10:16):
exactly because he could have easily spent the bulk of
his life laboring as a successful artisan, right, and instead
he wanted something more. So he traveled to what even
today is known as the Land of Excess, and the
fur trade was appealing. It helped him get a start again,
(10:40):
according to the official story, but he saved his he
saved his pennies, he saved his scratch, didn't party too
hard at whatever their equivalent of David Busters was back then,
and so it came to pass that a few years later,
Astor was able to make his first real estate investment,
and as he was diverse fight into real estate, he
(11:02):
was continuing to grow his fur business. Eventually, ASTs Fur
Trading Interest becomes the country's leading for company by by
the turn of the century. He also takes his reach international.
He starts exporting for directly to China. In return, he
is importing Chinese silk and tea, which are you know,
(11:25):
items of luxury right with a with a tremendously high
profit margin. Uh, even counting in all the dangers involved
in international shipping at the time. And yeah, and you
can see how that that also becomes very lucrative just
the the fact that he can ship goods back and
forth into different places and then even to China into
(11:48):
different places in China. I mean, this is a huge deal.
This is how you really really make some money. Yes,
exactly right, you go big, you go international. So all
of asked where was for businesses as different um, you know,
different interests, We talked about this. This occurs in business today.
You may see five different products on the same shelf
(12:11):
in the same section of a grocery store and they're
ultimately all owned by the same place. Fingers on a hand, right,
So he goes public with this. He merges all of
his fur businesses into something he calls in a burst
of creativity, the American Fur Company in a ten o eight.
And we shouldn't be too hard on the guy. I'm
sure you had a lot going on. He just needed
something simple and to the point for the name. Well,
(12:33):
and I think if you can cause something the American
anything like if that name has a been trademarked already,
I mean, go ahead and trade market, that's great because
that's that's similar to you know, I bet you've stumbled
onto an add uh an ad cycle like an AD
copy cycle. Maybe we've mentioned this before, but if you're
(12:54):
listening now, depending on how old or young you are,
you can probably look back in your life and notice
that marketing companies and ad companies go through this sort
of um industry wide trend towards certain phrases. Right. I
think there there are times when everything is organic, or
in the nineties everything was digital. It didn't even matter
(13:17):
if it was an actual digital product, right, And so
maybe American was was one of the first iterations of that.
I think that's I think you're probably right. But regardless
of our theories on the creativity or lack thereof in
the ad community, it turns out that this this was
(13:39):
a very good move on his part and the US.
We have to remember this is just the dawn of
the nineteenth century. The US is still um, still in
its infancy in terms of what will later become the
fifties state behemoth we know today. Lewis and Clark had
(14:01):
just ended their expedition to the west coast of the continent.
That was in what eighteen o six And after this
Astor when he learned about this expedition, he bought up
some land in Oregon where a fort was built in
eighteen eleven, and he had planned to build a settlement
(14:22):
called a Storia, not the most humble name. But you know,
he was by far not the only person doing this.
Everybody was. Everybody was naming crap after themselves. Yea, and
why not. I mean that's pretty great, Uh, eighteen eleven
building a thing called a story of which sounds I mean,
it actually doesn't sound that bad. Well, it's not like
(14:43):
a story of Astorville or or Fordlandia. But we also
have to consider for being fair that the people who
had lived there for thousands of years earlier probably had
their own name for it. Yeah, that's true. Well, regardless,
the reason he did not end up going through with
(15:03):
this was because of the War of eighteen twelve. He
ended up selling the outpost because Great Britain and the
United States had what people today would call a messy breakup. Yeah.
I believe it was with a Canadian company that purchased
that from him, or Canadian interests at least, right, So
(15:23):
he decided to get out while the getting was good,
you know what I mean? Because if he had if
he had owned that land and the US ended up
losing control over it or serenity over it, would his
deed of ownership still be honored. Yeah. Well, and and
indeed they did take over for like forty years, And
(15:46):
so he appeared to have made uh the right decision.
After the War of eighteen twelve, he made even more scratch,
even more cheddar, even more pony bones, whatever you want
to call it, because he had a bond deal with
the US government at the same time. Is wealth is
compounded by the fact that all the real estate in
(16:07):
New York City he owns begins the skyrocket in value,
and then he ends up getting out of the fur
business around eighteen thirties, and then he's really you know,
he's I guess he's realizing that the true money now
is in the accruede wealth of those those properties that
he owns. So he's spending a lot of time doing
his real estate management and all the estates, the investments. Um,
(16:32):
he's you know, at this point, he owns hotels, he
owns places where other people live, residences where people are
paying rent essentially, and that's where his time is spent
and his money really is made. That's where he sees
his most significant return. It's not it's not to say
that being a landlord is easy by any means, as
(16:52):
I'm sure the landlords listening here kind of a test.
But it is to say it's less work than uh,
sending people out into the wild who tried to capture
dwindling populations of wild animals in the hopes that affer
retains its value, and then sending a lot of the
same people or new other people you're hiring to then
ship it across the world, right and just hope nothing
(17:13):
goes wrong. So that's why he goes into real estate,
and again there's the official story. By the time Astor
dies in eighteen forty eight, he is the most wealthy
man in the country. He has an estimated fortune of
around twenty million dollars. And just let's give a little
bit of perspective here, Uh, Paul, we're going to have
(17:35):
an inflation calculator. Could you throw us a sound queue
somewhere in the middle of this. So, twenty million dollars
in eighteen forty eight is roughly equivalent to six hundred
and forty six million, nine hundred and fifty six thousand,
nine hundred and sixty two dollars and three cents in Yes,
(18:00):
so almost like more than half a billion dollars. Most
of his wealth, the vast majority, goes to one guy,
one of his seven children, William Backhouse Astor. Yes, you
heard that correctly. His middle name is the words back
and house together, William Backhouse Astor. It just feels like
(18:21):
something his friends called him, or like he was a
wrestler do something. It does sound it's one of those yeah,
in joke nicknames. I'm sure it's it's it has a
logic and reason to it, but it sounds like you know,
you know how you meet different friend groups and one
of the members of the friend group just has has
(18:42):
a weird name that no one explains to you and
just have it like like, really, your name's Red Paladin. Sure,
that's pretty okay? Is that whatever you say? Archie your
friends at dragon Con? Is that what's going on? No,
my wife's making me watch Riverdale and it's killing me.
It's a river Dale isn't murder mystery. It is. I can, like,
(19:04):
I survive because it is a murder mystery. But oh
my god, is jug Head the killer? He always struck
me as the most sinison dude. Jug Head and FP
or holding it down? Who's FP? Should I? Should? I?
Just uh read the reviews on vox or something or no,
(19:24):
just know that FP is skei ul Rich and he
makes the show worth it for me, as well as
the late unfortunately Luke Perry, who is also awesome. There
are a lot of great there. There's the cast is wonderful.
The show itself is slightly infuriating. Okay, slightly infuriating, that's
the review. No, not in a bad way, It's just
(19:47):
you can tell it's written for maybe a slightly younger
audience than me. They do. They do reference movies that
came out the year that they were in production, which
is or you know, a couple of years prior to
being in production, which is so interesting to have a
separate universe. But Baby Driver is still a thing anyway,
So is this one real quick? Is this on CW?
(20:09):
I don't even know it's one of the streaming services.
And I just want to play a little gargoyle Griffins
and Gargoyles now, So when you're ready, let's let's throw
down some dice and get the chalcis. Oh god, I
don't know what I'm saying. Okay, Well that's your official story,
and uh it coincides with the official story of John
(20:30):
Jacob ast It's very difficult, I imagine for both of
us not to say John Jacob Jagole Haimer Schmidt every time.
But anyway, Johnny j astor At at this point posthumously,
he looks to be a quintessential example of the American dream.
(20:52):
He has all the essential ingredients. He's a hard working immigrant.
He has risen to the top achelons of society, not
through undeserved and hair atants, not because of who his
parents were, but because he combined hard work with sharp wits,
good old gumption, and no small dose of good luck. However,
(21:15):
for decades and decades, various researchers have proposed another, we
could say conspiratorial narrative, a less inspiring, stranger explanation for
the source of Aster's enormous wealth. What if, instead of
earning it slowly over time, he stolen all in one go.
(21:39):
And we'll learn about that right after a quick word
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. There's an
alternate story about John Jacob Aster's wealth. Let's say that
the story of his arrival to the North American cont
(22:00):
is true up to his early career as a fur trader. Okay,
what if the narrative takes a sharp turn shortly afterward.
What if, instead of continually evolving his business, Astra has
a tremendous amount of help from an unexpected discovery. Could
his fortune be based not on business acumen, but on
(22:22):
the secret discovery of buried treasure. Now, before we get
into this, this is why it's so interesting to me,
because one of the major things you need in order
to make money is to have some money. Right, this
is something we've established throughout all of all of time,
memoriam Um. The connection here is that he just needed
(22:45):
a certain injection of funds early on to be able
to make some of the investments he made and to
grow that into a fortune. That's what everything else we're
talking about. That's what makes it so fascinating to me.
So there's this other person, this other person named William Kidd,
(23:06):
and he had this thing called pirate treasure. Okay, all right,
let's get into his life. So um, this dude was
born William Kidd uh. He was born in sixty five.
He originally had a career focusing on privateering, but eventually
he was hired by European royals to attack foreign ships
(23:27):
that would encroach on land and would be enemies essentially, sure, yeah,
or competitors, because we have to we have to consider
at this point that trade and state craft were very closely,
very closely intertwined, and much of it is happening on
the open seas, and that's where the pirates come in. Yes.
(23:48):
So as so, he was a pirate hunter and he
took the helm of a ship called the Adventure Galley
in six English investors had hired him to be a
privateer to hunt down the foreign vessels that were endangering
there or as you know, his employers international trade deals.
(24:11):
Now hold on, Matt, hold on. Then you might be saying,
as you listen along here, Uh, I'm pretty sure that
Captain William Kidd is one of the world's most notorious
pirates from this era. And you're telling me that he
started out hunting pirates, he became one of the same
monsters he meant to eradicate. Yes, that is exactly what
(24:35):
we're saying. It's like he got bitten by a pirate
and he became a pirate, which is how it works.
That's how it works exactly. So the problem with his
pirate hunting days was that they couldn't He and his
crew didn't really find the ships that were supposed to attack.
(24:58):
They were supposed to attack some ships, and they found
very few of them. And then in January he caught
sight of something called the quig Do Merchant, which was
rounding the tip of India. This was an Armenian ship
weight five hundred tons. It carried gold, silk spices all
the hits. They were owned in part by a minister
(25:21):
at the Indian Grand Moughal's court. Uh. This minister had powerful,
powerful connections and when he learned that his vessel had
been attacked, he complained to the East India Company. Yeah
and uh. Now the East India Company and the Grand
(25:45):
Mogul are saying, this guy is not legit. He's not
a pirate hunter. He's hurting the wrong ships. He is
not a pirate hunter. He is a pirate and so
begins his life on the wrong side of the law.
Turns out being on the wrong side of law did
not suit Kid over the long term, and he eventually
(26:07):
was arrested in Boston. Then he was shipped back to
England for his trial and his court date was May eighth,
seventeen o one, and he was found guilty and unfortunately
for him, uh, he was hanged on May twenty three
of that same year, seventeen o one. And um, again
like one of the one of the big things here,
(26:30):
there are some abhorrent things done to humans and their bodies, um,
you know, within in the past to basically serve as
warnings for other people to not do something. And Captain
William Kidd he was one of these people because his body,
after it was dead and hung, was then put in
a cage and hung up and it was left to
(26:52):
rot there for everyone to see. Everybody who went down
the Thames River, the one that goes through London. So
you know, don't be a pirate. Look at that guy.
He was a pirate. See what happens when you mess
with the the world's most successful corporation. Right, So here's
(27:13):
the thing, he's dead. No one knows how much treasure
he did or did not have, and no one knows
where he did or did not put it. We did
know that there was about ten thousand pounds worth of
treasure that was sent to pay for part of the
(27:34):
trial and a couple of couple of other things, right,
and yes, there's something like that where it was not
a lot of money. I mean, ten thousand pounds at
the time is a lot of money, um, but it
wasn't like the full pirate bounty that you would think of. Right.
We do know that he did possess treasure. He did
deposit some of it on Gardeneer's Island, hoping to use
(27:57):
his knowledge of the treasure as a bar nan chip uh.
He also he also probably put some in other places.
The thing is, no one knows exactly where that would
be no one date has found this huge treasure trove.
(28:19):
Before he was hanged in seventeen oh one, he allegedly
buried some of his lute in the Caribbean. This is
This was the popular theory at the time. And despite
the generations of treasure hunters who have attempted to verify
his claims more or less in the over the past
(28:42):
three centuries, uh, nothing has been recovered that would equal
the rumors, because the rumors are kind of like um
like smugs horde of gold level treasure trove, you know
what I mean, not just a box with some emeralds.
(29:03):
This brings us background. So we've the life and times
of William Kent. He did get treasured, we don't know
how much. He put it in a few places and
then he died, and then he died, and we don't
know where those places are. So the Astore connection. Could
John Jacob Astore have somehow located a piece of kids treasure?
(29:24):
We will tell you the actual answer after a word
from our sponsors, and we're back. There's more to this
story than one might think at first blush. It all
traces back to a fellow named Franklin Harvey Head yes,
(29:47):
this gentleman, Mr Head. Uh. He was a lawyer. He
was born in New York and he worked in all
over like really all over the place, Wisconsin, California, Utah,
and he ended up in Chicago. He was a director
and president of this place called the Chicago Malleable Iron Company,
another one of those awesome company titles or names that
(30:09):
is just if it's not there, will take it. But
in this case they added malleable just to let you
know that iron was going to be shaped and changed,
which is pretty cool because again it's so it's so funny.
Sometimes we forget that shaping iron into things and then
cooling it off was such a major advancement in human history. Uh,
(30:32):
there was a big deal and we need still they
needed a ton of iron to be produced. Um. So
this guy, uh, Franklin Harvey Head he Um. He's the
kind of guy that has some wealth and he also
likes to show it off a little bit and also
socialize with other people that have some wealth. He's a
social climber, yes exactly. And you know one of the
(30:56):
things that he likes to do was right and publish
the humorous tales that he would use to try and
impress his wealthy friends. Yeah. Yeah, So the kind of
people that he wants to hang out with are not
the novo reiche. There there is new money, got it. Uh,
(31:17):
they're the kind of people that he wants to hang
out with are the equivalent of American aristocrats. Their idea
of success is to not be associated with earning money,
and indeed to look down at times upon people who
do work for a living. Even if they're working for
(31:38):
a living, is just them owning a company? Uh? You know,
let's not forget this is the country where someone wants
famously derided the Hilton family by saying, oh, the Hilton's
are they still letting rooms to people? And uh and
and for many of us listening, of course, that is
that is a surree ill and cartoonish concept that you
(32:02):
would be condescending for to someone for being good at something.
But uh, this was the case. These were the sorts
of groups with whom had aspired to be associated. And
you can see why he is a person between two
worlds because he still has to work for a living.
(32:25):
The shame, right, the egnomy, and just the last the
thing that's most important in in order to feel as
though he's included with those groups the way been talking
about here. It's very important to note that the stories
he was talking about would make reference to historical figures
that those people would recognize and know, but they are
made up or or pander a bit to his friends.
(32:49):
I would say, more importantly, pander a bit to his
friends by mentioning their ancestry or the the land that
their families got back when, you know, back when out
of them had a job. So the most important thing
that you just point out there, Matt, is that these
stories which were whimsical, satirical, Uh, they were made up.
(33:12):
They were made him up seats and they were to
quote Jonathan circulent a k. The Quister, and they were
meant to uh, they were meant to ingratiate him within
these circles. They were also not meant to be widely
published outside, because you know, the more people have access
to a thing, the less interesting or valuable it becomes.
(33:33):
In this in again, in this mindset, that's not how
the world should work, but that's how their mindset was functioning.
We have some examples in a in a work of
his work of heads called Shakespeare's Insomnia and the Causes thereof.
He claims that newly discovered correspondence between Shakespeare, Sir Walter Rawleigh,
(33:53):
an actor named William Kemp, and a money lender with
a tremendously offensive name Mordecai Shylock all show that Shakespeare
had difficulty with money and marriage and that this led
to chronic insomnia, and that his chronic insomnia manifests itself
in many of his works because various characters, uh talked
(34:14):
about sleeping or not sleeping. Yeah, they need to get
some rest. Finally they can be okay, Yeah, fascinating and
it's funny in a way. I've not read the book,
but just that concept alone is humorous to me. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean, I get where he's going with it. One
of his books is the actual and only source, only
(34:40):
primary source for this story about Astor and William Kidd.
And here's how it happens. So Harvey Head is having
dinner with the daughter of a landscape architects named Frederick
Law Olmstead, and the subject of some property in Maine
comes up, and this is this is a place called
(35:02):
Deer Island. Olmstead owns land there, and he spent maybe
like a summer there before he passed away, and based
on this conversation, Head decides he's going to have a
little fun ah ha. He thinks it's time for one
of my classic moves, one of my in joke books.
I'm I'm I'm gonna absolutely kill it with this crowd.
(35:25):
What does he do? Man with the olmstaid Uh? Okay, Well,
and just another little footnote here about Frederick Law Olmstead, Uh,
the architect who moved there to Deer on Mains Deer Island. Um.
It really was so soon before his death. He ended
up being put in a I guess a facility because
he was on his way out almost immediately after moving
(35:47):
there ended up being a little tragical story there about him.
Um you can read more about in other places. But
had thought it would be hilarious if he came up
with the backstory as to how one of Olmstead's um,
I guess ancestors helped John Astor, who was one who's
(36:11):
known widely known as one of the most wealthy people
in the world. All these people know who the Astor
family is, and John Astor came up with this idea
of maybe here's this secret little this tale about how
your ancestor helped this guy become the wealthiest person in
the world. Right, he writes a book called Studies in
(36:32):
Early American History, a notable lawsuit, and in this in
this story, in this work he what you can read
online by the way, he describes how Olmstead's descendants sued
the Astor family to recover William Kidd's pirate treasure. According
to this account, one of one of Astor's agents, or
(36:54):
perhaps asked for himself, a fur trapper discover a buried
treasure chest um the pirate William Kidd on land that
Olmstead's ancestors owned on Dear Aisle in Maine. This trapper
stole the chest, but for some reason did not know
its actual value, so he sold the chest to John
(37:16):
Jacob Astor, and it became the entire basis for the
Astor family fortune in heads account. Generations later, the Olmsteads
somehow discover this theft, and they decided to sue the
Astor clan for compensation, including back rent on all his
Manhattan real estate that you know, because he had purchased
(37:38):
it with this pirate treasure and the stick there, you know,
you see how it's almost like an onion article. It
just continues to escalate. But the book itself is full
of these nods and these winks and these tongues in
these cheeks. It's full of tipoffs that it is not
a work of fact, including references to ancestors that don't exist,
(38:02):
like god Mather Olmstead or Oliver Cromwell Olmstead, Uh, neither
of whom are real. But it's just throwing Olmstead on
the bottom of other important figures, right exactly, William Shakespeare Olmstead.
So maybe the the biggest indicator that this story is
completely fictional was that there is no lawsuit. The book
(38:24):
mentions a lawsuit the and bases itself on this lawsuit,
but the lawsuit does not exist. It is not a thing.
It's not real at least, it's not written about in
any papers and any ledgers and anything that has been
kept over all the years, in any legal documents, legal proceedings.
It's not cited as precedent for anything. It doesn't exist. Well,
(38:44):
and in the account of Head there's it's a very
specific claim of asking for five million dollars or the equivalent, Yeah,
five million dollars roughly, or just you know, control over
all of John Astor's property in Manhattan, which everyone was
easier essentially. Yeah, and it was like minus a couple
of cents for some other thing. I mean, it's very
(39:07):
very specific. So this is a little bit of conspiracy
busting here. This story was published in eighteen nine two,
and again it was originally known to be fiction. The
Olmsteads knew it was fiction. The guy who wrote it
head knew it was fiction. It was just funny. But
(39:27):
the problem is that people at that time, in the
late eighteen hundred's early nineteen hundreds, were very very similar
to people in the nineteen fifties or nineteen or we
can go ahead and reasonably assume people in twenty fifty
They were desperate for news of the world's wealthy and
had a difficult time separating fact and fiction, differentiating between
(39:51):
you know, one news report on on Facebook and then
the piece of fake news on Facebook. Right. Well, and
let's talk about fact checking in the eighteen hundreds, late
eighteen hundreds, how would you verify, Well, just how difficult
it would be to have correspondence between some like some
law office somewhere else, let's say in Maine, even if
(40:12):
you're in New York or something, just making that happen
and trying to get um any kind of correspondence back
and forth in a timely manner to write or report
on something. If let's say, in New York City or Chicago,
you came upon a copy of this this work and
you were unsure of it's you know, um it's veracity
(40:33):
or it's the truth behind any of the stuff. But
it looks real, and it's talking about people that you
you know, the name Cell sound familiar. It looks all
familiar and who knows, Hey, that reminds me. I can't
remember if I told you, because we this this is
the first time this week we're hanging out. Uh. I
went to Maine this weekend. Oh you mentioned that? Was
(40:55):
that the jumping off point to the other place you went? No, No,
it was actually I had to go to Maine to
make it back here. Oh, okay, it was. It was
kind of sketchy. I was in Maine. Uh and and
on disclosedly cation on a ramp for two hours or so. Yeah,
(41:17):
because I went wrong with the plane. That's how I
ended up in Maine. I don't know if it counts.
I guess I can't say I went to Maine because
I wasn't allowed outside of the plane. But I'm still
going to count it and one day I'll one day
I'll walk in Maine as a freeman. But uh, today,
with this weekend, was not that weekend. Uh So yeah,
(41:40):
if you're listening, you're in Maine, tell me what it's
like outside outside of a vehicle. I want to check
it out out here. Now is a good time to
visit Maine as well, because it's not you know, Snowden
and Stephen Kingy. Al Right, well, definitely, do you want
to go to Maine. Sometimes, let's go to Maine, Paul,
Do you want to go to Maine, Paul Hollywood. He's
(42:02):
given us a nod. Definitely, that was an enthusiastic nod. Well, yes,
you're you're absolutely right it. It's easier now to differentiate
between fact and fiction. But then it took a lot
of legwork. Right. The problems start to compound when a
magazine called Liberty publishes an account of this story as
(42:25):
though it is fact. And this is for comparison, This
is the very similar to the Internet rumors about celebrities
that will uh that will still make the rounds today
like what's that? What's that one? Uh Um, Richard Gear
and the Gerbil remember that that old chestnut. I have
(42:47):
no idea what you're talking about. Okay, good, because we
still want this to be a family show. Google it,
but not on your work computer. This this was presented
as though it were factual, when it was literally the
equivalent of a mad magazine for insiders or an onion newspaper.
And then it gets even worse. It gets codified into
(43:10):
history when a historian in California presents this story as
though it is true, and everyone essentially falls for it.
It's published. Not just in papers in California do they
say this, historian figured this out. Not just in papers
in New York do they say this, historians figured it out?
And not just in Maine do they say this. They
say it around the world. And now people continue to
(43:36):
believe it, and you'll hear it floated as some sort
of historical conspiracy, right that that not only is it
true that at the heart of every great fortune lay
a great crime, but that we know the great crime
of John Jacob Astor, which is stealing from pirates and
(43:59):
escape architect. Well there's even an I think it's a
History Channel show I don't even know if it's in
production right now, called Unearthed, where at one point they
you know, they craft this whole episode about how this
guy finds out that there's a secret number of correspondence
in within this book that was written by head that
(44:23):
basically translates or represents the coordinates to this place on
Deer Island where the treasure still remains. And they apparently
they go throughout the entire episode just pretending like it's
real until they end up, you know, discussing at the
end and finding out, oh, this was all just an
historical fiction account. Oh, America Unearthed, that's what's the name. Yeah,
(44:45):
So a bit about that genre of show, um, that
you and I have had run ins with creators of
shows like this, not not specific the America on Earth.
I don't want to degon them. I haven't watched the show,
but I am aware of what you're talking about. Uh.
(45:06):
What what we have seen is that the companies creating
these shows have a propensity to prize you know, what
they see as as a click baby headline and the
broadcast equivalent thereof over facts and investigations. So we've been
(45:29):
in situations where and not not to brag about us
or anything or this show, but we've been in situations
where we have just walked away from offers to collaborate
on these sorts of projects because we feel that they
are at the very least wildly misleading. Yes, am, I
(45:51):
am I being diplomatic enough when I say that, I
think I think at the heart of it, you would
say that sensationalism is paramount because it will get eyeballs
on the screen on the correct channel configuration that you're
looking for. I mean, I mean, I guess, but but
that leaves but that leaves people in such a lurch,
(46:14):
you know when when you see this kind of uh
whack of do presentation of things, and at the very
end someone says, you know, it's like at the very
end of a pharmaceutical commercial, which is a crazy thing anyway,
or the very end of a car commercial where the
fine print person comes in and they say, you know.
(46:36):
The following account is based on a satirical fictional work
published in the late eighteen hundreds by Franklin Head, which
has little or nothing to do with the facts of
the matters. You know what I mean. That's and I
get I get it that it's entertainment, but it should
not be entertainment disguised as you know, disguised as some
sort of factual investigation. I always think about the Mermaids show. Yeah,
(47:01):
have we mentioned that on air? And we have, right,
I think we did podcast episode on it, but we
definitely did a video on it. Yeah. So, uh, years
and years back, Matt, you and I were asked to
participate in something between um participating something that was again
(47:24):
wildly misleading him not a not a small bit exploitative. Uh.
Someone had put out this documentary's documentary that was purporting
to be a documentary about the discovery of Mermaids. Mermaids
have finally been discovered. They were real. Here they are,
And we were asked to I think we talked about
(47:47):
this on our Facebook group earlier. Here's where it gets crazy.
As our Facebook group, we were asked to dive into,
dive into this documentary and present our take on it
as though it were true. We refused. This was also
I think one of the only times anyone had ever
(48:09):
specifically asked us to do something right. And it's also
wide Discovery sold the whole company because they were like
Ben Matt, Nope, won't play ball, right, we were the
mice that right in the elephant that's that's also wrote that. Yeah.
(48:30):
So so if anything, this is a cautionary tale. It
is virtually certain that more myths like this propagate. Mas
grading is fact in your day to day experiences, uh,
for your entire life, you know what I mean. There
there are tons of things that the equivalent of three
(48:52):
kids in a trench coat pretending to be an adult,
which I'm just that's just a great image. That's why
I'm putting that in there. So the good news is
that armed with this information, more and more people are
not wasting time trying to trying to find some kind
(49:12):
of uh William kid treasure in Maine instead, because even
in that story, that's the weird thing about dear Alien.
Even in that story, the treasure is taken. But more
and more people are searching for kids treasure in other
places that are based on their understanding his actual voyages,
and oddly enough, more and more people claim to find
(49:34):
his treasure with each passing decade. There's a recent example
which makes a lot more sense from Madagascar in twenty fifteen,
and the title of it, get this you're gonna love this.
How many times are we gonna find Captain Kid's treasure? Right? Uh?
So the first line is from New Jersey to Vietnam.
(49:56):
There's barely a swatch of the world left untouched by
the swashbuckling pie. Right, Captain Kids invasive legacy in and
explorer named Barry Clifford says he's discovered a sunken treasure
at the bottom of the Indian Ocean off the coast
of Madagascar. He found a one hundred pounds silver bar
with strange markings on it, and he said, this is
(50:18):
a remnant of the pirates wrecked ship, because he did
wreck a ship in Madagascar. So the thing is that
there's so many shipwrecks throughout these oceans of hours. Uh.
Finding something is one thing, but then proving its providence
is another, and it's more difficult, perhaps than you might think.
(50:40):
So Kids treasure may have been discovered. It leads us
to a larger question, though, do you think that there
is still buried treasure out there that remains undiscovered? Where
could it be located and all? And I know this
episode may have been a bit of a bummer because
we did bust a conspiracy kind of, but this leads
(51:01):
us to I would argue more important conspiracy for our
day and age. Do you think that someone could pull
off something like Franklin Head did who and like make
up a story and then a modern day make everyone
think he's real? Uh? Yeah, for sure. Think about some
(51:24):
of the viral videos that have occurred where it's one
of these um small groups of video audio video professionals
that are making fake things about a bear attack or
like an almost bear attack or I'm trying to think
of some of the exact examples, right, And if you
know some of these, or give us a call. But
there's somewhere it's been absolutely proven to be false. Oh
(51:46):
the one there was like Justin Bieber eating a burrito
like from the Middle or something like that, where it
became a national news story in all these places, but
it was just these guys. Somebody dressed up like Justin
Bieber and ada burrito from the center and it became
a thing. I I think it's probably pretty easy now
because of the the rapid rate that everyone wants to
(52:08):
pick up a story and you kind of have to
in order to be relevant. You've got to get it
in your feed somehow, so I think it's I bet
it's easier. Now it's interesting. We should do an episode
on deep fakes in general. Right, yeah, yeah, So let
us know what your examples are or if you were
to perpetuate a myth of this nature, what would it
(52:31):
be and why? There's one example at Someone recently posted
on Here's where it gets Crazy that I would like
to read because it just sounds like a great time.
You want to hear it? Yes? Please? This comes from
Wayward Son, who said in the latest episode who Fellas
posed the question what mystery would you like to leave
(52:51):
the world trolling? Of course, I want to rob a house,
he says, Stay with me. I want to steal someone's
entire house. This would take a lot of resources, but
the mechanics are pretty straightforward. It would have to be
a rural area where there are less neighbors and they
are farther between. Wait for some poor, unsuspecting family to
go on a long vacation, then hire a house moving company.
(53:14):
Of course, there would have to be planning a fluid
capital to a swash the house movers from spilling the beans.
Then you simply jack the house up and off we
go with everything inside. The family comes home to an
empty space. Disbelief and hilarity ensue, and then we go
down in historical anonymity is the unknown perpetrators of the
greatest unsolved mystery of all times. Step Aside, go Backley
TEPPI Wow, um. I want to say, I'm on board,
(53:39):
but it's you're still stealing a house, even even jokingly. There,
I'm on board. I'm on board if through some ridiculous
series of circumstances they get their house back. Yes, so
I think it's more of a troll move for the
house to show show up later all their stuff. I
think it's way funnier if it's moved only slightly. Maybe
(54:02):
it's only a couple of feet over, like beyond a
gate or something. Now it's behind the gate and it
used to be on the other side of the gate. Yeah. Yeah,
David Cope says, break into a house and move everything
over two to three inches. There you go. Uh and
then you know. Also I add this idea to uh,
why not don't why not replace the house? Don't just
(54:25):
steal it, replace it with a nicer house. But all
the stuff is still in All the stuff is still
in the house, All the same stuff, and then have
one empty room that doesn't exist in the in the
old house, and in there leave leave the room absolutely
blank except for a Manila envelope on the floor, and
it has a VHS tape of the barren steam bears right,
(54:51):
But see, you're just describing the Netflix revival of Queer Eye.
Really just put a whole new house there, happens new everything.
I've watched it. All your facial facial care products are replaced.
I don't know how it works. My wife makes me
watch a lot of TV. I see, I see. Well,
I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying some of it.
I really am. So we want to hear. We want
(55:14):
to hear your your ideas for phenomenal pranks or trolling.
And we want to hear whether you think there is
legitimate buried treasure out there remaining to be found. And
if you if you really think you have a lead
and you want it, to tell us about it. But
you don't want us to spill the beans, let us know,
(55:35):
will make sure not to accidentally give anyone a headstart.
That's right, that's right, So again, find us on all
the socials. You can give us a call. Our number
again is one H three three st d w y
t K. Please please refrain from fiddle rock usage before
giving us a call. It just really helps me out um.
(55:56):
But mostly just say whatever you want and have fun
with it. If you don't want to do any that stuff,
you want to stay away from the computers and all
the socials, you can always write us a good old
fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com.
(56:28):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of i Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt. There's a null
spaced hole to my left, there's an oal hole. Indeed,
they call me Ben. We are joined, as always with
our super producer, Paul Mission Controlled Decans, who has recently
been rethinking his Moniker and maybe going with Paul Hollywood
in a British accent. Most importantly, you are you, You
(00:48):
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. This is a this is a strange
episode for us and uh and an interesting story. There's
a there are a couple of different conspiratorial myths we
run into here, and we also run into the evolution
of media and the great game of telephone that we've
(01:08):
mentioned in previous previous episodes. But before we begin, Matt,
I have to I have to I have to ask you,
do you think this summer will be the summer that
our hometown burns down? Then Atlanta burns again, just from
the heat, this time not from interesting warfare. My goodness.
(01:29):
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. We went out, my
family and I went out to the Candler Park Festival
on Gosh was that Saturday? Yes, it was Saturday. And
just standing outside uncovered was a terrible thing. I would
not recommend it to anyone. Find a tree, get underneath it,
and you'll be okay. The music is still gonna sound great.
(01:51):
There we go. That's the spirit. It's it's a it's
a positive, positive spin on a terrible, terrible thing. I
I just landed back in town late yesterday night or
early this morning, I'm not sure which. And the thing
that hit me immediately was the heat. I'm just everyone
(02:14):
who lives here, uh, enjoy summer and autumn and all
the hits, all the all the slow jazz of the
seasons until summer comes. This is terrible, This is horrific.
Uh have no idea how hot or cold it is,
Uh you know in your neck of the global woods, folks,
but please send us. What do they say on Facebook?
(02:36):
Thoughts and prayers are better yet? Ice cubes or those
um and did you ever have those those weird little
popsicles that came in the plastic tubes when you were
a kid or some of those. I'm I'm burning up
so much. You know, the sun is my ancient nemesis anyway,
Uh that I'm considering ice pops as as a treatment
(02:57):
is hot town, summer in the city, come back, my
cool cat and looking forward, kidding, going to search an
every cold the city, all the bound the people looking
have to walking on the Oh, gonna get sued by
that town by town and that artist. I doubt it.
(03:19):
I doubt it. But that is that is a stone
cold jam for hellishly hot day. So assuming that, assuming
that the studio doesn't melt into one interminable mass of
plastic v O c s that's volatile organic compounds chemicals
a k a. The basis of new car smell, and
(03:41):
what I will slowly kill you along with organic matter
and mortar, we will successfully finish this episode. This is
a story that encounters, as we said, so many different
conspiratorial threads. And while you were listening, we would like
to invite you to participate with us in pseudo real time.
(04:05):
I mean time itself is a pseudo thing anyway, right,
So if the mood strikes you, if the spirit so
moves you as you are joining us today. Don't hesitate,
don't feel like you have to wait till the end
to write an email. You can go ahead and just
give us a call. We are one eight three three
st d w y t K. And if you're like
(04:28):
one of our listeners that we casually mentioned at the
end of the show, and I must say in a
way that I knew that only this listener would understand
that I was talking to her, you will then leave
six more messages over the weekend. She just so, please
feel free to reach out with any kind of questions,
any kind of statements, especially if you come up with
(04:48):
something as we're talking about this episode. Yes, please, so
let us begin to paraphrase Henre Da Balzac. Behind every
great fortune, there is a great crime. It's a thought
that we've we've encountered multiple times, and that you have
probably encountered in your own life in any variety of fronts.
(05:10):
The concept here is that one cannot, regardless of time
and space, one cannot reach, regardless of time and space,
a certain threshold of financial success without somehow purposefully or
unwittingly gaining some part of that fortune through criminal acts.
(05:30):
And it's not. It isn't necessarily criminal acts of that
person by gaining that wealth, because that wealth then many
times is handed down right. So perhaps it's a criminal
act that your grandparents or your great grandparents or even
further back committed right right, So it's it's a known fact,
for instance, that there are people in the world who
(05:54):
still enjoy the benefits their ancestors reaped from things like
the slave trade or colonialism. There's also another case to
be if we want to make a case about people
who are unwittingly perhaps profiting for this, we could look
at Silicon Valley and the technocrats who live there profiting
(06:15):
off of the backbreaking human rights abuses involved in the
mining industry, retaining the things they need to make their
chips right right, right, one way or the other. And
this quickly descends into a very sticky philosophical conversation. Are
you or I if we own a smartphone and we
(06:36):
also benefiting from this? The answer is more or less yes.
But in this case we're talking about the people who
become millionaires, multimillionaires, billionaires in the pursuit of these of
these ambitions. Right in today's episode, we are traveling back
in time fellow conspiracy realists, we are exploring the story
(06:59):
of one of America's earliest tycoons, literally the first multimillionaire
in the United States, or perhaps officially is a better
word than literally, and will along the way dive into
the speculation about just how this one individual arrived at
his fortune and why this speculation continues today. And as
(07:23):
we'll find out in this episode. As many others, these
stories have an official version and not so official version. Yes,
just so, here are the facts. Born Johan jacob Astor
in Germany on July seventeen, seventeen sixty three, John jacob
(07:43):
Astor was the son of a butcher who would go
on to found a financial dynasty that continues in some
ways into the modern day. That's right. When he was,
you know, a young man, around seventeen years old, he
went to London and he started to work with one
of his brother is his older brother, George. And this
this guy, George, made musical instruments, and you know, it's
(08:05):
interesting enough, but he wanted to try something else. So
in seventeen eighty four he left London. He got out
of town. He brought some some of these instruments with
him and just a little bit of pocket money, around
twenty five dollars, and he traveled all the way across
the ocean to the United States to try and find
something fortune right right, to seek his fortune. It's an
(08:30):
American dreams story, right. Let's let's explore the official story
about how this German immigrant came to become America's first
multi millionaire. So, as you said, Matt, seventeen eighty four,
he arrives, he just got some flutes. He's got around
twenty five dollars cash money, as they would say. Uh.
(08:51):
He arrives in Baltimore, and he eventually makes his way
up to New York City. While he is in New York,
he opens his own fur trade shop. In seventeen eighties six,
so about two years after he leaves Germany. He often
at this time travels out into the wilderness, just like
(09:12):
his fur trappers do, and he wants to find news
sources of fur for his shop. This is a huge
industry at this time, and this was before concerns about
preserving species were very widespread. It was a foreign concept
or alien concept to many of these trappers and traders
(09:35):
that there would ever be a day where it was
difficult to obtain as many beaver pelts as one would wish. Yeah,
because the populations I'll start to dwindle, because the fur
trade ends up being a really big thing. Well, and
just one quick thing here with Johan A. K. John
Astor here he when he went to New York, he
(09:55):
met up with another brother, right, and he was working
i think at a butcher shop up for a while
with his brother, and then he ended up trying his
hand at baking, cooking and these kind of things. And
he was totally like, I'm never going to make enough
money just working with my hands at this level, doing
this kind of thing. And that's one of the main
reasons he went out to seek out the fur trade
(10:16):
exactly because he could have easily spent the bulk of
his life laboring as a successful artisan, right, and instead
he wanted something more. So he traveled to what even
today is known as the Land of Excess, and the
fur trade was appealing. It helped him get a start again,
(10:40):
according to the official story, but he saved his he
saved his pennies, he saved his scratch, didn't party too
hard at whatever their equivalent of David Busters was back then,
and so it came to pass that a few years later,
Astor was able to make his first real estate investment,
and as he was diverse fight into real estate, he
(11:02):
was continuing to grow his fur business. Eventually, ASTs Fur
Trading Interest becomes the country's leading for company by by
the turn of the century. He also takes his reach international.
He starts exporting for directly to China. In return, he
is importing Chinese silk and tea, which are you know,
(11:25):
items of luxury right with a with a tremendously high
profit margin. Uh, even counting in all the dangers involved
in international shipping at the time. And yeah, and you
can see how that that also becomes very lucrative just
the the fact that he can ship goods back and
forth into different places and then even to China into
(11:48):
different places in China. I mean, this is a huge deal.
This is how you really really make some money. Yes,
exactly right, you go big, you go international. So all
of asked where was for businesses as different um, you know,
different interests, We talked about this. This occurs in business today.
You may see five different products on the same shelf
(12:11):
in the same section of a grocery store and they're
ultimately all owned by the same place. Fingers on a hand, right,
So he goes public with this. He merges all of
his fur businesses into something he calls in a burst
of creativity, the American Fur Company in a ten o eight.
And we shouldn't be too hard on the guy. I'm
sure you had a lot going on. He just needed
something simple and to the point for the name. Well,
(12:33):
and I think if you can cause something the American
anything like if that name has a been trademarked already,
I mean, go ahead and trade market, that's great because
that's that's similar to you know, I bet you've stumbled
onto an add uh an ad cycle like an AD
copy cycle. Maybe we've mentioned this before, but if you're
(12:54):
listening now, depending on how old or young you are,
you can probably look back in your life and notice
that marketing companies and ad companies go through this sort
of um industry wide trend towards certain phrases. Right. I
think there there are times when everything is organic, or
in the nineties everything was digital. It didn't even matter
(13:17):
if it was an actual digital product, right, And so
maybe American was was one of the first iterations of that.
I think that's I think you're probably right. But regardless
of our theories on the creativity or lack thereof in
the ad community, it turns out that this this was
(13:39):
a very good move on his part and the US.
We have to remember this is just the dawn of
the nineteenth century. The US is still um, still in
its infancy in terms of what will later become the
fifties state behemoth we know today. Lewis and Clark had
(14:01):
just ended their expedition to the west coast of the continent.
That was in what eighteen o six And after this
Astor when he learned about this expedition, he bought up
some land in Oregon where a fort was built in
eighteen eleven, and he had planned to build a settlement
(14:22):
called a Storia, not the most humble name. But you know,
he was by far not the only person doing this.
Everybody was. Everybody was naming crap after themselves. Yea, and
why not. I mean that's pretty great, Uh, eighteen eleven
building a thing called a story of which sounds I mean,
it actually doesn't sound that bad. Well, it's not like
(14:43):
a story of Astorville or or Fordlandia. But we also
have to consider for being fair that the people who
had lived there for thousands of years earlier probably had
their own name for it. Yeah, that's true. Well, regardless,
the reason he did not end up going through with
(15:03):
this was because of the War of eighteen twelve. He
ended up selling the outpost because Great Britain and the
United States had what people today would call a messy breakup. Yeah.
I believe it was with a Canadian company that purchased
that from him, or Canadian interests at least, right, So
(15:23):
he decided to get out while the getting was good,
you know what I mean? Because if he had if
he had owned that land and the US ended up
losing control over it or serenity over it, would his
deed of ownership still be honored. Yeah. Well, and and
indeed they did take over for like forty years, And
(15:46):
so he appeared to have made uh the right decision.
After the War of eighteen twelve, he made even more scratch,
even more cheddar, even more pony bones, whatever you want
to call it, because he had a bond deal with
the US government at the same time. Is wealth is
compounded by the fact that all the real estate in
(16:07):
New York City he owns begins the skyrocket in value,
and then he ends up getting out of the fur
business around eighteen thirties, and then he's really you know,
he's I guess he's realizing that the true money now
is in the accruede wealth of those those properties that
he owns. So he's spending a lot of time doing
his real estate management and all the estates, the investments. Um,
(16:32):
he's you know, at this point, he owns hotels, he
owns places where other people live, residences where people are
paying rent essentially, and that's where his time is spent
and his money really is made. That's where he sees
his most significant return. It's not it's not to say
that being a landlord is easy by any means, as
(16:52):
I'm sure the landlords listening here kind of a test.
But it is to say it's less work than uh,
sending people out into the wild who tried to capture
dwindling populations of wild animals in the hopes that affer
retains its value, and then sending a lot of the
same people or new other people you're hiring to then
ship it across the world, right and just hope nothing
(17:13):
goes wrong. So that's why he goes into real estate,
and again there's the official story. By the time Astor
dies in eighteen forty eight, he is the most wealthy
man in the country. He has an estimated fortune of
around twenty million dollars. And just let's give a little
bit of perspective here, Uh, Paul, we're going to have
(17:35):
an inflation calculator. Could you throw us a sound queue
somewhere in the middle of this. So, twenty million dollars
in eighteen forty eight is roughly equivalent to six hundred
and forty six million, nine hundred and fifty six thousand,
nine hundred and sixty two dollars and three cents in Yes,
(18:00):
so almost like more than half a billion dollars. Most
of his wealth, the vast majority, goes to one guy,
one of his seven children, William Backhouse Astor. Yes, you
heard that correctly. His middle name is the words back
and house together, William Backhouse Astor. It just feels like
(18:21):
something his friends called him, or like he was a
wrestler do something. It does sound it's one of those yeah,
in joke nicknames. I'm sure it's it's it has a
logic and reason to it, but it sounds like you know,
you know how you meet different friend groups and one
of the members of the friend group just has has
(18:42):
a weird name that no one explains to you and
just have it like like, really, your name's Red Paladin. Sure,
that's pretty okay? Is that whatever you say? Archie your
friends at dragon Con? Is that what's going on? No,
my wife's making me watch Riverdale and it's killing me.
It's a river Dale isn't murder mystery. It is. I can, like,
(19:04):
I survive because it is a murder mystery. But oh
my god, is jug Head the killer? He always struck
me as the most sinison dude. Jug Head and FP
or holding it down? Who's FP? Should I? Should? I?
Just uh read the reviews on vox or something or no,
(19:24):
just know that FP is skei ul Rich and he
makes the show worth it for me, as well as
the late unfortunately Luke Perry, who is also awesome. There
are a lot of great there. There's the cast is wonderful.
The show itself is slightly infuriating. Okay, slightly infuriating, that's
the review. No, not in a bad way, It's just
(19:47):
you can tell it's written for maybe a slightly younger
audience than me. They do. They do reference movies that
came out the year that they were in production, which
is or you know, a couple of years prior to
being in production, which is so interesting to have a
separate universe. But Baby Driver is still a thing anyway,
So is this one real quick? Is this on CW?
(20:09):
I don't even know it's one of the streaming services.
And I just want to play a little gargoyle Griffins
and Gargoyles now, So when you're ready, let's let's throw
down some dice and get the chalcis. Oh god, I
don't know what I'm saying. Okay, Well that's your official story,
and uh it coincides with the official story of John
(20:30):
Jacob ast It's very difficult, I imagine for both of
us not to say John Jacob Jagole Haimer Schmidt every time.
But anyway, Johnny j astor At at this point posthumously,
he looks to be a quintessential example of the American dream.
(20:52):
He has all the essential ingredients. He's a hard working immigrant.
He has risen to the top achelons of society, not
through undeserved and hair atants, not because of who his
parents were, but because he combined hard work with sharp wits,
good old gumption, and no small dose of good luck. However,
(21:15):
for decades and decades, various researchers have proposed another, we
could say conspiratorial narrative, a less inspiring, stranger explanation for
the source of Aster's enormous wealth. What if, instead of
earning it slowly over time, he stolen all in one go.
(21:39):
And we'll learn about that right after a quick word
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. There's an
alternate story about John Jacob Aster's wealth. Let's say that
the story of his arrival to the North American cont
(22:00):
is true up to his early career as a fur trader. Okay,
what if the narrative takes a sharp turn shortly afterward.
What if, instead of continually evolving his business, Astra has
a tremendous amount of help from an unexpected discovery. Could
his fortune be based not on business acumen, but on
(22:22):
the secret discovery of buried treasure. Now, before we get
into this, this is why it's so interesting to me,
because one of the major things you need in order
to make money is to have some money. Right, this
is something we've established throughout all of all of time,
memoriam Um. The connection here is that he just needed
(22:45):
a certain injection of funds early on to be able
to make some of the investments he made and to
grow that into a fortune. That's what everything else we're
talking about. That's what makes it so fascinating to me.
So there's this other person, this other person named William Kidd,
(23:06):
and he had this thing called pirate treasure. Okay, all right,
let's get into his life. So um, this dude was
born William Kidd uh. He was born in sixty five.
He originally had a career focusing on privateering, but eventually
he was hired by European royals to attack foreign ships
(23:27):
that would encroach on land and would be enemies essentially, sure, yeah,
or competitors, because we have to we have to consider
at this point that trade and state craft were very closely,
very closely intertwined, and much of it is happening on
the open seas, and that's where the pirates come in. Yes.
(23:48):
So as so, he was a pirate hunter and he
took the helm of a ship called the Adventure Galley
in six English investors had hired him to be a
privateer to hunt down the foreign vessels that were endangering
there or as you know, his employers international trade deals.
(24:11):
Now hold on, Matt, hold on. Then you might be saying,
as you listen along here, Uh, I'm pretty sure that
Captain William Kidd is one of the world's most notorious
pirates from this era. And you're telling me that he
started out hunting pirates, he became one of the same
monsters he meant to eradicate. Yes, that is exactly what
(24:35):
we're saying. It's like he got bitten by a pirate
and he became a pirate, which is how it works.
That's how it works exactly. So the problem with his
pirate hunting days was that they couldn't He and his
crew didn't really find the ships that were supposed to attack.
(24:58):
They were supposed to attack some ships, and they found
very few of them. And then in January he caught
sight of something called the quig Do Merchant, which was
rounding the tip of India. This was an Armenian ship
weight five hundred tons. It carried gold, silk spices all
the hits. They were owned in part by a minister
(25:21):
at the Indian Grand Moughal's court. Uh. This minister had powerful,
powerful connections and when he learned that his vessel had
been attacked, he complained to the East India Company. Yeah
and uh. Now the East India Company and the Grand
(25:45):
Mogul are saying, this guy is not legit. He's not
a pirate hunter. He's hurting the wrong ships. He is
not a pirate hunter. He is a pirate and so
begins his life on the wrong side of the law.
Turns out being on the wrong side of law did
not suit Kid over the long term, and he eventually
(26:07):
was arrested in Boston. Then he was shipped back to
England for his trial and his court date was May eighth,
seventeen o one, and he was found guilty and unfortunately
for him, uh, he was hanged on May twenty three
of that same year, seventeen o one. And um, again
like one of the one of the big things here,
(26:30):
there are some abhorrent things done to humans and their bodies, um,
you know, within in the past to basically serve as
warnings for other people to not do something. And Captain
William Kidd he was one of these people because his body,
after it was dead and hung, was then put in
a cage and hung up and it was left to
(26:52):
rot there for everyone to see. Everybody who went down
the Thames River, the one that goes through London. So
you know, don't be a pirate. Look at that guy.
He was a pirate. See what happens when you mess
with the the world's most successful corporation. Right, So here's
(27:13):
the thing, he's dead. No one knows how much treasure
he did or did not have, and no one knows
where he did or did not put it. We did
know that there was about ten thousand pounds worth of
treasure that was sent to pay for part of the
(27:34):
trial and a couple of couple of other things, right,
and yes, there's something like that where it was not
a lot of money. I mean, ten thousand pounds at
the time is a lot of money, um, but it
wasn't like the full pirate bounty that you would think of. Right.
We do know that he did possess treasure. He did
deposit some of it on Gardeneer's Island, hoping to use
(27:57):
his knowledge of the treasure as a bar nan chip uh.
He also he also probably put some in other places.
The thing is, no one knows exactly where that would
be no one date has found this huge treasure trove.
(28:19):
Before he was hanged in seventeen oh one, he allegedly
buried some of his lute in the Caribbean. This is
This was the popular theory at the time. And despite
the generations of treasure hunters who have attempted to verify
his claims more or less in the over the past
(28:42):
three centuries, uh, nothing has been recovered that would equal
the rumors, because the rumors are kind of like um
like smugs horde of gold level treasure trove, you know
what I mean, not just a box with some emeralds.
(29:03):
This brings us background. So we've the life and times
of William Kent. He did get treasured, we don't know
how much. He put it in a few places and
then he died, and then he died, and we don't
know where those places are. So the Astore connection. Could
John Jacob Astore have somehow located a piece of kids treasure?
(29:24):
We will tell you the actual answer after a word
from our sponsors, and we're back. There's more to this
story than one might think at first blush. It all
traces back to a fellow named Franklin Harvey Head yes,
(29:47):
this gentleman, Mr Head. Uh. He was a lawyer. He
was born in New York and he worked in all
over like really all over the place, Wisconsin, California, Utah,
and he ended up in Chicago. He was a director
and president of this place called the Chicago Malleable Iron Company,
another one of those awesome company titles or names that
(30:09):
is just if it's not there, will take it. But
in this case they added malleable just to let you
know that iron was going to be shaped and changed,
which is pretty cool because again it's so it's so funny.
Sometimes we forget that shaping iron into things and then
cooling it off was such a major advancement in human history. Uh,
(30:32):
there was a big deal and we need still they
needed a ton of iron to be produced. Um. So
this guy, uh, Franklin Harvey Head he Um. He's the
kind of guy that has some wealth and he also
likes to show it off a little bit and also
socialize with other people that have some wealth. He's a
social climber, yes exactly. And you know one of the
(30:56):
things that he likes to do was right and publish
the humorous tales that he would use to try and
impress his wealthy friends. Yeah. Yeah, So the kind of
people that he wants to hang out with are not
the novo reiche. There there is new money, got it. Uh,
(31:17):
they're the kind of people that he wants to hang
out with are the equivalent of American aristocrats. Their idea
of success is to not be associated with earning money,
and indeed to look down at times upon people who
do work for a living. Even if they're working for
(31:38):
a living, is just them owning a company? Uh? You know,
let's not forget this is the country where someone wants
famously derided the Hilton family by saying, oh, the Hilton's
are they still letting rooms to people? And uh and
and for many of us listening, of course, that is
that is a surree ill and cartoonish concept that you
(32:02):
would be condescending for to someone for being good at something.
But uh, this was the case. These were the sorts
of groups with whom had aspired to be associated. And
you can see why he is a person between two
worlds because he still has to work for a living.
(32:25):
The shame, right, the egnomy, and just the last the
thing that's most important in in order to feel as
though he's included with those groups the way been talking
about here. It's very important to note that the stories
he was talking about would make reference to historical figures
that those people would recognize and know, but they are
made up or or pander a bit to his friends.
(32:49):
I would say, more importantly, pander a bit to his
friends by mentioning their ancestry or the the land that
their families got back when, you know, back when out
of them had a job. So the most important thing
that you just point out there, Matt, is that these
stories which were whimsical, satirical, Uh, they were made up.
(33:12):
They were made him up seats and they were to
quote Jonathan circulent a k. The Quister, and they were
meant to uh, they were meant to ingratiate him within
these circles. They were also not meant to be widely
published outside, because you know, the more people have access
to a thing, the less interesting or valuable it becomes.
(33:33):
In this in again, in this mindset, that's not how
the world should work, but that's how their mindset was functioning.
We have some examples in a in a work of
his work of heads called Shakespeare's Insomnia and the Causes thereof.
He claims that newly discovered correspondence between Shakespeare, Sir Walter Rawleigh,
(33:53):
an actor named William Kemp, and a money lender with
a tremendously offensive name Mordecai Shylock all show that Shakespeare
had difficulty with money and marriage and that this led
to chronic insomnia, and that his chronic insomnia manifests itself
in many of his works because various characters, uh talked
(34:14):
about sleeping or not sleeping. Yeah, they need to get
some rest. Finally they can be okay, Yeah, fascinating and
it's funny in a way. I've not read the book,
but just that concept alone is humorous to me. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean, I get where he's going with it. One
of his books is the actual and only source, only
(34:40):
primary source for this story about Astor and William Kidd.
And here's how it happens. So Harvey Head is having
dinner with the daughter of a landscape architects named Frederick
Law Olmstead, and the subject of some property in Maine
comes up, and this is this is a place called
(35:02):
Deer Island. Olmstead owns land there, and he spent maybe
like a summer there before he passed away, and based
on this conversation, Head decides he's going to have a
little fun ah ha. He thinks it's time for one
of my classic moves, one of my in joke books.
I'm I'm I'm gonna absolutely kill it with this crowd.
(35:25):
What does he do? Man with the olmstaid Uh? Okay, Well,
and just another little footnote here about Frederick Law Olmstead, Uh,
the architect who moved there to Deer on Mains Deer Island. Um.
It really was so soon before his death. He ended
up being put in a I guess a facility because
he was on his way out almost immediately after moving
(35:47):
there ended up being a little tragical story there about him.
Um you can read more about in other places. But
had thought it would be hilarious if he came up
with the backstory as to how one of Olmstead's um,
I guess ancestors helped John Astor, who was one who's
(36:11):
known widely known as one of the most wealthy people
in the world. All these people know who the Astor
family is, and John Astor came up with this idea
of maybe here's this secret little this tale about how
your ancestor helped this guy become the wealthiest person in
the world. Right, he writes a book called Studies in
(36:32):
Early American History, a notable lawsuit, and in this in
this story, in this work he what you can read
online by the way, he describes how Olmstead's descendants sued
the Astor family to recover William Kidd's pirate treasure. According
to this account, one of one of Astor's agents, or
(36:54):
perhaps asked for himself, a fur trapper discover a buried
treasure chest um the pirate William Kidd on land that
Olmstead's ancestors owned on Dear Aisle in Maine. This trapper
stole the chest, but for some reason did not know
its actual value, so he sold the chest to John
(37:16):
Jacob Astor, and it became the entire basis for the
Astor family fortune in heads account. Generations later, the Olmsteads
somehow discover this theft, and they decided to sue the
Astor clan for compensation, including back rent on all his
Manhattan real estate that you know, because he had purchased
(37:38):
it with this pirate treasure and the stick there, you know,
you see how it's almost like an onion article. It
just continues to escalate. But the book itself is full
of these nods and these winks and these tongues in
these cheeks. It's full of tipoffs that it is not
a work of fact, including references to ancestors that don't exist,
(38:02):
like god Mather Olmstead or Oliver Cromwell Olmstead, Uh, neither
of whom are real. But it's just throwing Olmstead on
the bottom of other important figures, right exactly, William Shakespeare Olmstead.
So maybe the the biggest indicator that this story is
completely fictional was that there is no lawsuit. The book
(38:24):
mentions a lawsuit the and bases itself on this lawsuit,
but the lawsuit does not exist. It is not a thing.
It's not real at least, it's not written about in
any papers and any ledgers and anything that has been
kept over all the years, in any legal documents, legal proceedings.
It's not cited as precedent for anything. It doesn't exist. Well,
(38:44):
and in the account of Head there's it's a very
specific claim of asking for five million dollars or the equivalent, Yeah,
five million dollars roughly, or just you know, control over
all of John Astor's property in Manhattan, which everyone was
easier essentially. Yeah, and it was like minus a couple
of cents for some other thing. I mean, it's very
(39:07):
very specific. So this is a little bit of conspiracy
busting here. This story was published in eighteen nine two,
and again it was originally known to be fiction. The
Olmsteads knew it was fiction. The guy who wrote it
head knew it was fiction. It was just funny. But
(39:27):
the problem is that people at that time, in the
late eighteen hundred's early nineteen hundreds, were very very similar
to people in the nineteen fifties or nineteen or we
can go ahead and reasonably assume people in twenty fifty
They were desperate for news of the world's wealthy and
had a difficult time separating fact and fiction, differentiating between
(39:51):
you know, one news report on on Facebook and then
the piece of fake news on Facebook. Right. Well, and
let's talk about fact checking in the eighteen hundreds, late
eighteen hundreds, how would you verify, Well, just how difficult
it would be to have correspondence between some like some
law office somewhere else, let's say in Maine, even if
(40:12):
you're in New York or something, just making that happen
and trying to get um any kind of correspondence back
and forth in a timely manner to write or report
on something. If let's say, in New York City or Chicago,
you came upon a copy of this this work and
you were unsure of it's you know, um it's veracity
(40:33):
or it's the truth behind any of the stuff. But
it looks real, and it's talking about people that you
you know, the name Cell sound familiar. It looks all
familiar and who knows, Hey, that reminds me. I can't
remember if I told you, because we this this is
the first time this week we're hanging out. Uh. I
went to Maine this weekend. Oh you mentioned that? Was
(40:55):
that the jumping off point to the other place you went? No, No,
it was actually I had to go to Maine to
make it back here. Oh, okay, it was. It was
kind of sketchy. I was in Maine. Uh and and
on disclosedly cation on a ramp for two hours or so. Yeah,
(41:17):
because I went wrong with the plane. That's how I
ended up in Maine. I don't know if it counts.
I guess I can't say I went to Maine because
I wasn't allowed outside of the plane. But I'm still
going to count it and one day I'll one day
I'll walk in Maine as a freeman. But uh, today,
with this weekend, was not that weekend. Uh So yeah,
(41:40):
if you're listening, you're in Maine, tell me what it's
like outside outside of a vehicle. I want to check
it out out here. Now is a good time to
visit Maine as well, because it's not you know, Snowden
and Stephen Kingy. Al Right, well, definitely, do you want
to go to Maine. Sometimes, let's go to Maine, Paul,
Do you want to go to Maine, Paul Hollywood. He's
(42:02):
given us a nod. Definitely, that was an enthusiastic nod. Well, yes,
you're you're absolutely right it. It's easier now to differentiate
between fact and fiction. But then it took a lot
of legwork. Right. The problems start to compound when a
magazine called Liberty publishes an account of this story as
(42:25):
though it is fact. And this is for comparison, This
is the very similar to the Internet rumors about celebrities
that will uh that will still make the rounds today
like what's that? What's that one? Uh Um, Richard Gear
and the Gerbil remember that that old chestnut. I have
(42:47):
no idea what you're talking about. Okay, good, because we
still want this to be a family show. Google it,
but not on your work computer. This this was presented
as though it were factual, when it was literally the
equivalent of a mad magazine for insiders or an onion newspaper.
And then it gets even worse. It gets codified into
(43:10):
history when a historian in California presents this story as
though it is true, and everyone essentially falls for it.
It's published. Not just in papers in California do they
say this, historian figured this out. Not just in papers
in New York do they say this, historians figured it out?
And not just in Maine do they say this. They
say it around the world. And now people continue to
(43:36):
believe it, and you'll hear it floated as some sort
of historical conspiracy, right that that not only is it
true that at the heart of every great fortune lay
a great crime, but that we know the great crime
of John Jacob Astor, which is stealing from pirates and
(43:59):
escape architect. Well there's even an I think it's a
History Channel show I don't even know if it's in
production right now, called Unearthed, where at one point they
you know, they craft this whole episode about how this
guy finds out that there's a secret number of correspondence
in within this book that was written by head that
(44:23):
basically translates or represents the coordinates to this place on
Deer Island where the treasure still remains. And they apparently
they go throughout the entire episode just pretending like it's
real until they end up, you know, discussing at the
end and finding out, oh, this was all just an
historical fiction account. Oh, America Unearthed, that's what's the name. Yeah,
(44:45):
So a bit about that genre of show, um, that
you and I have had run ins with creators of
shows like this, not not specific the America on Earth.
I don't want to degon them. I haven't watched the show,
but I am aware of what you're talking about. Uh.
(45:06):
What what we have seen is that the companies creating
these shows have a propensity to prize you know, what
they see as as a click baby headline and the
broadcast equivalent thereof over facts and investigations. So we've been
(45:29):
in situations where and not not to brag about us
or anything or this show, but we've been in situations
where we have just walked away from offers to collaborate
on these sorts of projects because we feel that they
are at the very least wildly misleading. Yes, am, I
(45:51):
am I being diplomatic enough when I say that, I
think I think at the heart of it, you would
say that sensationalism is paramount because it will get eyeballs
on the screen on the correct channel configuration that you're
looking for. I mean, I mean, I guess, but but
that leaves but that leaves people in such a lurch,
(46:14):
you know when when you see this kind of uh
whack of do presentation of things, and at the very
end someone says, you know, it's like at the very
end of a pharmaceutical commercial, which is a crazy thing anyway,
or the very end of a car commercial where the
fine print person comes in and they say, you know.
(46:36):
The following account is based on a satirical fictional work
published in the late eighteen hundreds by Franklin Head, which
has little or nothing to do with the facts of
the matters. You know what I mean. That's and I
get I get it that it's entertainment, but it should
not be entertainment disguised as you know, disguised as some
sort of factual investigation. I always think about the Mermaids show. Yeah,
(47:01):
have we mentioned that on air? And we have, right,
I think we did podcast episode on it, but we
definitely did a video on it. Yeah. So, uh, years
and years back, Matt, you and I were asked to
participate in something between um participating something that was again
(47:24):
wildly misleading him not a not a small bit exploitative. Uh.
Someone had put out this documentary's documentary that was purporting
to be a documentary about the discovery of Mermaids. Mermaids
have finally been discovered. They were real. Here they are,
And we were asked to I think we talked about
(47:47):
this on our Facebook group earlier. Here's where it gets crazy.
As our Facebook group, we were asked to dive into,
dive into this documentary and present our take on it
as though it were true. We refused. This was also
I think one of the only times anyone had ever
(48:09):
specifically asked us to do something right. And it's also
wide Discovery sold the whole company because they were like
Ben Matt, Nope, won't play ball, right, we were the
mice that right in the elephant that's that's also wrote that. Yeah.
(48:30):
So so if anything, this is a cautionary tale. It
is virtually certain that more myths like this propagate. Mas
grading is fact in your day to day experiences, uh,
for your entire life, you know what I mean. There
there are tons of things that the equivalent of three
(48:52):
kids in a trench coat pretending to be an adult,
which I'm just that's just a great image. That's why
I'm putting that in there. So the good news is
that armed with this information, more and more people are
not wasting time trying to trying to find some kind
(49:12):
of uh William kid treasure in Maine instead, because even
in that story, that's the weird thing about dear Alien.
Even in that story, the treasure is taken. But more
and more people are searching for kids treasure in other
places that are based on their understanding his actual voyages,
and oddly enough, more and more people claim to find
(49:34):
his treasure with each passing decade. There's a recent example
which makes a lot more sense from Madagascar in twenty fifteen,
and the title of it, get this you're gonna love this.
How many times are we gonna find Captain Kid's treasure? Right? Uh?
So the first line is from New Jersey to Vietnam.
(49:56):
There's barely a swatch of the world left untouched by
the swashbuckling pie. Right, Captain Kids invasive legacy in and
explorer named Barry Clifford says he's discovered a sunken treasure
at the bottom of the Indian Ocean off the coast
of Madagascar. He found a one hundred pounds silver bar
with strange markings on it, and he said, this is
(50:18):
a remnant of the pirates wrecked ship, because he did
wreck a ship in Madagascar. So the thing is that
there's so many shipwrecks throughout these oceans of hours. Uh.
Finding something is one thing, but then proving its providence
is another, and it's more difficult, perhaps than you might think.
(50:40):
So Kids treasure may have been discovered. It leads us
to a larger question, though, do you think that there
is still buried treasure out there that remains undiscovered? Where
could it be located and all? And I know this
episode may have been a bit of a bummer because
we did bust a conspiracy kind of, but this leads
(51:01):
us to I would argue more important conspiracy for our
day and age. Do you think that someone could pull
off something like Franklin Head did who and like make
up a story and then a modern day make everyone
think he's real? Uh? Yeah, for sure. Think about some
(51:24):
of the viral videos that have occurred where it's one
of these um small groups of video audio video professionals
that are making fake things about a bear attack or
like an almost bear attack or I'm trying to think
of some of the exact examples, right, And if you
know some of these, or give us a call. But
there's somewhere it's been absolutely proven to be false. Oh
(51:46):
the one there was like Justin Bieber eating a burrito
like from the Middle or something like that, where it
became a national news story in all these places, but
it was just these guys. Somebody dressed up like Justin
Bieber and ada burrito from the center and it became
a thing. I I think it's probably pretty easy now
because of the the rapid rate that everyone wants to
(52:08):
pick up a story and you kind of have to
in order to be relevant. You've got to get it
in your feed somehow, so I think it's I bet
it's easier. Now it's interesting. We should do an episode
on deep fakes in general. Right, yeah, yeah, So let
us know what your examples are or if you were
to perpetuate a myth of this nature, what would it
(52:31):
be and why? There's one example at Someone recently posted
on Here's where it gets Crazy that I would like
to read because it just sounds like a great time.
You want to hear it? Yes? Please? This comes from
Wayward Son, who said in the latest episode who Fellas
posed the question what mystery would you like to leave
(52:51):
the world trolling? Of course, I want to rob a house,
he says, Stay with me. I want to steal someone's
entire house. This would take a lot of resources, but
the mechanics are pretty straightforward. It would have to be
a rural area where there are less neighbors and they
are farther between. Wait for some poor, unsuspecting family to
go on a long vacation, then hire a house moving company.
(53:14):
Of course, there would have to be planning a fluid
capital to a swash the house movers from spilling the beans.
Then you simply jack the house up and off we
go with everything inside. The family comes home to an
empty space. Disbelief and hilarity ensue, and then we go
down in historical anonymity is the unknown perpetrators of the
greatest unsolved mystery of all times. Step Aside, go Backley
TEPPI Wow, um. I want to say, I'm on board,
(53:39):
but it's you're still stealing a house, even even jokingly. There,
I'm on board. I'm on board if through some ridiculous
series of circumstances they get their house back. Yes, so
I think it's more of a troll move for the
house to show show up later all their stuff. I
think it's way funnier if it's moved only slightly. Maybe
(54:02):
it's only a couple of feet over, like beyond a
gate or something. Now it's behind the gate and it
used to be on the other side of the gate. Yeah. Yeah,
David Cope says, break into a house and move everything
over two to three inches. There you go. Uh and
then you know. Also I add this idea to uh,
why not don't why not replace the house? Don't just
(54:25):
steal it, replace it with a nicer house. But all
the stuff is still in All the stuff is still
in the house, All the same stuff, and then have
one empty room that doesn't exist in the in the
old house, and in there leave leave the room absolutely
blank except for a Manila envelope on the floor, and
it has a VHS tape of the barren steam bears right,
(54:51):
But see, you're just describing the Netflix revival of Queer Eye.
Really just put a whole new house there, happens new everything.
I've watched it. All your facial facial care products are replaced.
I don't know how it works. My wife makes me
watch a lot of TV. I see, I see. Well,
I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying some of it.
I really am. So we want to hear. We want
(55:14):
to hear your your ideas for phenomenal pranks or trolling.
And we want to hear whether you think there is
legitimate buried treasure out there remaining to be found. And
if you if you really think you have a lead
and you want it, to tell us about it. But
you don't want us to spill the beans, let us know,
(55:35):
will make sure not to accidentally give anyone a headstart.
That's right, that's right, So again, find us on all
the socials. You can give us a call. Our number
again is one H three three st d w y
t K. Please please refrain from fiddle rock usage before
giving us a call. It just really helps me out um.
(55:56):
But mostly just say whatever you want and have fun
with it. If you don't want to do any that stuff,
you want to stay away from the computers and all
the socials, you can always write us a good old
fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com.
(56:28):
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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