April 12, 2022 • 44 mins
What’s a superhero without sidekicks? David meets the ragtag recruits who became Phoenix’s crime-fighting supergroup, the Rain City Superheroes.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel It's late two thousand and nine, Ben Fodor strolls
into a Seattle comic book store, The Dreaming Comics and Games.
He enters a hidden back room behind a bookcase. When
(00:27):
he emerges from his secret lair, he has no longer
been Photor. As the comic book lovers of Seattle browsed
the shelves stuffed with Nightwing and Batman comics, an actual
costumed crime fighter glides past them and steps out of
the shop. Phoenix Jones has a city to save. A
(00:54):
Few months earlier, before he established his secret changing room,
Phoenix was sitting in the same store or chatting to
the owner, Errand about crime fighting. At that point, he
decided that he wanted to continue fighting crime, but he
realized that he needed a compelling outfit, one that would
make him stand out, and it would take a lot
of trial and error to get there. I had a
(01:19):
pair of jeans, no shirt, and like a ski mask.
Then there was a more ostentatious look. We went all
spandex with the count chocolate hate. Clearly, this was not
a permanent solution. When I first heard about real life superheroes,
I assumed that they modeled their outfits of fictional superheroes
(01:39):
because I thought it was cool, But there's actually a
practical reason for wearing a flamboyant superhero outfit. It distinguishes
you from criminals who might also be wearing a mask.
If a cop gets called out to a crime and
they see a guy in a ski mask, there's a
pretty good chance they'll think this is the suspect. And
as a superhero, that is something you want to have
(02:00):
wit at all costs. So Ben needed a costume that
would distinguish him from the criminals he wanted to take down.
In some ways, I feel like what happened next was
the moment when Ben Fodor really became a superhero. Up
until this point, he was just a guy in spandex
and a goofy hat trying to stop crime. But his
(02:20):
next suit is when he fully embraced superhero image. We
got this replica Batman suit off the internet and like
grinded the nipples off because one of the Batman forever
like grinded the nipples off and being a conversation. And
then we went out there and I had that one
for a while. I spray painted the gold V on it,
and so the newly minted Phoenix Jones, with his freshly
spray painted Nippolis batman Halloween costume, took to the streets
(02:42):
of Seattle, and the comic book version of this story,
Phoenix would instantly start kicking ass. But this was not
a comic book, this was real life. The first six
months was just then expose and stupid for starters. Not
all of Phoenix's gadgets worked the way he hoped. I
(03:03):
was chasing a guy and get broke into a car.
I was like, oh, I'm coming after you. I pulled
out this neck and I just bought and I pop
it off. But I'm running like super warp speed right,
and the neckgun catches wind and blows back and nets
me and rolls up and I land in the side
of like a little gutter ditch right on the side
of the road has been raining, just like two inches
of water in it, right, And I landed belly down,
and I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna drown. So
(03:25):
I'm like rolling up, taking breasts and rolling up and
taking breasts. At this point, Phoenix feels a pair of
hands grabbing his back. He gets forcibly turned over and
they're glaring down at him is the criminal he'd been chasing. Then,
in a decidedly unheroic moment, lying in a ditch and
ensnared in his own net, Phoenix gets mugged. He grabs
(03:47):
my wallet, he punches me in the face. I just
laid belly up in this freaking rain ditch and then
filing the cop show and they're like, what's going on?
So I explained the story doing They're like, oh, we
have to take photos for such as lies. It turns
out crime fighting is tougher than it looks. Everything you
see in a crime fighting magazine. It's the pages between
(04:08):
the panels. You have to learn to live in. You
those little white bars to separate all the comic book panels.
That's where the real crime fighting takes place. That's where
all the superhero work really is. Phoenix explained that in
the comic books, you'll often see a hero on top
of a tall building chasing a bad guy. The hero
might be shown swing on a rope, but what's not
(04:29):
shown is when he's set up where the rope would go.
That's the part the superhero stories leave out. But as
Phoenix was figuring out the hard way, these little details
are crucial. Only weeks into his crime fighting career, Phoenix
Jones was a laughing stock, reliant on friendly members of
the Seattle Police Department to fish him soaking wet out
(04:52):
of the gutter. This would not stand. It was time
to get serious. From the team's at novel and I
heart Radio, This is the Superhero Complex, Episode three, We
Can Be Heroes. Hearing Phoenix tell the story of his
(05:28):
early crime fighting failures made him more endearing to me.
It was nice to hear him deviate from his over
the top proclamations about being the only real superhero and
his claims that he has quote perfect at crime fighting.
I get the sense that his arrogance and his insistence
on being better than everyone around him has been the
source of a lot of the interpersonal conflict in his
(05:50):
superhero life. The night of the disastrous net incident was humiliating,
but one thing that you'll never see a self respecting
superhero do is quit. As soon as he'd waved goodbye
to the police who had rescued him, he dusted off
his dirty Nipolis batman outfit and got back to work.
I stopped my first crime that same night. I hear
this girl screaming, and back in the day there used
(06:12):
to be a really big pickpocket and like grab iPhone
and run scenario kind of deal. This guy's pulling on
this girl's purse and he cuts the purse strap right.
I see him and I come up behind him. And
at that point in time, I was still a catch
phrases too. I'm like, really deep in the stupid and
I roll up and I was like, stop, what are
you doing? You know, kind of like that. It's a
(06:32):
terrible catchphrase, by the way, Hey I do what I can.
You know, you think you have catch phrases until the
moment happens, you know, I say stop. The guy just
turns around. It just straight up stabs me right in
the stomach. And I had no armor. I was in
just bandex, and all of a sudden, I realized, wait
a minute, this isn't a game. You're a professional martial artist, bro,
you have skills. You are three or four time champion
(06:53):
at this point, There's no reason that you should be
out here yelling at ridiculous corny catchphrase. In Spandex and
Phoenix is telling of the event. It's almost as if
he'd forgotten until this very moment that he was a
trained fighter. Immediately I switched to fight stands too, left
jabs in a right hand set the dude down flamingo dim,
which is duct taping your right hand to your left
leg so you can hop around like a flamingo if
you try to run. And I'm sitting next to him
(07:15):
and the girls taken off. At this point, I have
a purse, but I don't know where the girl is.
And all a sudden, like the brightest light shine on me,
and I'm like, what's going on? I look and the
cop who had just got me out of the ditch
like four hours earlier, He's like, no way. He's like,
Phoenix Jones just stopped the crime. And I was like,
I did. I stopped the crime and the girls in
the back of the car and everything, you know, And
the cop comes up goes, hey, if you got caught
(07:37):
by this corneum, motherfucker, maybe crimes not for you. With
his first bad guy in handcuffs, it was time for
Phoenix to level up again. And how does an ambitious
crime fighter stay one step ahead, you might be wondering, Well, trampolines. Obviously.
I went around the city setting areas that I would
have things to make me superhero up and it was
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a calculated, it planned out, orchestrated idea, and it really
really blew some of the criminals minds, you know, like
little things like hiding those little trampolines you can buy,
you know, like hiding them behind dumpsters and where there's fences.
Phoenix told me that he set up these sort of
booby traps around town. Not traps in the sense that
they ensnared criminals, but more like magic tricks that made
(08:20):
it seem like he had superpowers. He would chase unsuspecting
bad guys down Seattle's backstreets. They'd flee in horror, attempting
to scramble over walls, only for Phoenix to sail majestically
into their path, propelled by one of his strategically placed trampolines.
I'm bouncing over the fence, flying and just land. The
(08:40):
dude just stopped and just laid down. He's just like,
it's almost like you are breaking the Magician's rule and
like revealing the trick, you know. Yeah, but I think
that's not the trick, right. The trick is timing, being
effective and actually having the skill to do it. Because
there's no trick to what I've done, Right, I jumped
over that fence, landed in front of a guy with
(09:02):
a knife, and you surrender. No trick. Well, the trick
I think is that you had gone ahead of time
and put a trampoline there, right, But it's not a trick. See.
That's the difference between being a superhero and being something
that's a joke. Right, is because I'm using it as
a tool to get over that fence to cut off
valuable time. I'm just doing it in the mode of
(09:24):
a superhero. Other superheroes are doing things simply as a trick.
I love the image of Phoenix leaping from a trampoline
and soaring through the air to thwart criminals, but I
have serious doubts about the validity of this story. It
just seems crazy to me that you would know where
to place the trampolines and that they would be in
precisely the right spot during what I imagine is a
(09:45):
pretty chaotic chase through darkened streets. But some of Phoenix's
other tactics seem a lot more plausible. I used to
lazer point people all the time. Hilarious at a laser
pointer on the top of my thing, and I just
go stop. People would just stop out. I was thinking,
like buzz Lightyear, kind of like I'm setting my thing
from stunned to kill. Yeah, And I would just laser
point of him and I'd be like, don't make me
(10:07):
a mobilize you and they would just stop, you know
what I mean. So it's like a bluff, but really,
if you came after me, you would get beat up,
So it's not exactly bluff, right. The lasers for your protection.
You get closer to me, you're gonna have a problem.
The laser keeps you at a safe distance from your
own bad choices. Wouldn't it be nice if we all
had lasers that kept us at a safe distance from
(10:27):
our bad choices. Anyways, in between zapping bad guys with
his buzz light here laser and getting caught in his
own net gun and bouncing over fences on miniature trampolines,
Phoenix did manage to stop a few crimes here and there,
and in the process he attracted some followers, folks who
wanted to fight alongside him and, if needed, help him
(10:49):
get out of whatever dumb mess he had made for himself.
Even the world's greatest superhero needs a hand sometimes coming up,
I meet Phoenix's original sidekicks. That's after the break on
(11:14):
my first trip to Seattle. When Phoenix stood me up.
I'd been messaging some of his crew from way back
in the day. I'd found Midnight Jack on Facebook. He
and another real life superhero, Ghost agreed to meet me
at the north Gate Movie Theater and the outskirts of
Seattle's city limits. The theater was in an outdoor shopping
center with a few cafes and the Subway sandwich shop.
(11:36):
It was a sunny, clear day in August. As I
stood next to an outdoor fire pit, I noticed that
ash was falling from the sky. I looked around and
saw the alarm on the faces of other people around me.
It felt apocalyptic, not unlike a scene out of a
superhero movie where everyone is confused at the falling ash.
Then we all look up to see a giant explosion
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in the sky m as two masked superheroes battle Royale
and the heavens above our mortal world. But it turned
out it was just a large structure fire about a
mile away. Eventually I smelled the smoke and saw the
plume rising in the distance, and then midnight Jack and
(12:22):
Ghost walked up to me and introduced themselves. They were
not what I expected. I guess I thought they would
be more intimidating. This was during the pandemic, so they
both had masks on. Ghosts looked like he'd just rolled
out of bed, flip flops, jim shorts, and a T shirt.
Midnight Jack at least looked like he'd come from the
gym workout pants coffee in hand, though I remember being
(12:45):
surprised how much skinnier he was than I expected. Hi, good, huh,
I guess you're here to look for a ghost. Yes, Yet,
we decided to walk down some steps away from the
shopping center to a more looted area with a few
tall apartment complexes built around a scenic bike path that
ran alongside a little creek. On that bench over there,
(13:09):
as grandparents pushed strollers and couples walked hand in hand
along the path, midnight, Jack and Ghost regaled me with
wild stories of their past lives. Home was dude almost
ripped Cabby's dick off one time, which is funny. It's
why you don't wear fucking men's leggings to street patrol
duly noted Cavey I'd later learn was a fellow recruit
(13:30):
before becoming one of Phoenix's comrades. Midnight Jack says he
started out in life as a criminal with a superhero
like ability getting away with it. I have no record.
I had a very serious cocaine addiction, specifically a crack
cocaine addiction. If you look back at my personal information,
which I won't give you, I have something crazy like
(13:50):
a hundred and seventy two police contacts in three years,
no arrest, no convictions, which is not necessarily something you
should bring bragging about it. I mean, that's just what
it was. Now. Because Jack won't give me his real name,
I'm not able to verify his claim that he has
something like a hundred and seventy two police contacts without
(14:11):
ever being arrested or charged with a crime. But I
will say that I find it very hard to believe
that someone suffering from a severe crack addiction who claims
to have been a very active criminal and gang member
could have that many encounters with the police and never
get caught. Maybe it's a proof that real life superheroes
have remarkable superhuman abilities, or maybe Midnight Jack is full
(14:34):
of ship. Yeah, I'm curious about your transition, Like, what
made you stop doing crime and start fighting crime. Well,
when you stop doing cocaine, you stop needing to fund cocaine,
and so the need to commit crimes slowly goes away.
So at the end of that I left the crew
I was with. I left the state for a year,
and when I came back, I was sober and I
was looking to fill my time in a positive way
(14:57):
as opposed to being a criminal, bad guy and a buck.
I was twenty two when I got back, and you know,
I had done nothing really in my entire life other
than crime. Jack saw news article about a guy stopping
car breakings wearing what he calls a rubber gimp suit,
but what we know now was actually a Nipolis batman costume.
I was like, well, Ship, I got an little ski
(15:18):
mask that I used to use in a baseball bat.
I'll just start walking around here. So then for the
next six months, I walked around with a bat and
a ski mask and chased off car prowlers. And we
call them baders. It's aggressive homeless drug addicts that we
call invaders. And yeah, that was basically my first six
months of career. Jack was in a park at night,
ski mask on, bat in hand when a cop stopped
(15:41):
him and asked for his name. I was like, uh,
it's Jack. He glanced at his watch eleven fifty three pm.
In a flash of inspiration, his superhero persona came to him,
Midnight Jack, and the names stuck ever since, legends are
born out of necessity, they're not planned out or carefully created.
(16:06):
Now that the legend was born Midnight Jack decided it
was time to join some like minded heroes. He told
me that he fell in with a crew of decidedly
average Seattle superheroes, all fat, out of shape, and they
were so desperate to have somebody with any sort of
skills or no how whatsoever. Jack says they harassed the
odd drug dealer, but they weren't about to save the world.
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Then one day he saw Phoenix Jones crew patrolling in
his part of town. He came up to me and
I was like, hey man, just so you know, like
this crowd down here is more mellow that one down
there is a little routier. We already did two loops
to the block. Most of the cars are parked down here,
and this and that and that you got all this
kind of stuff, and it was he goes, who the
funk are you? And why are you telling me about
(16:48):
my own patrol? How did you even get here? That
was how I met Phoenix Jones. It wasn't exactly love
at first sight, but it was clear to Midnight Jack
that Phoenix Jones was very different from crew he was
running with at the time. Jones was the real deal.
Jack says his work ethic impressed Phoenix, but Phoenix describes
their first encounter a little differently. We found him night
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Jack on the streets. He was out patrolling in a
very stupid way. He was out there just beating up people,
like with no abandoned just you know, I mean, just
like hiding in a bush with two sticks and then
when a crime takes out, just beating someone senselessly. So
we found him and we were like, you should join
our squad and like not go to prison, and then
from there it just kind of built. It might sound
(17:32):
like an odd recruitment strategy to make a guy you
found hiding in the bushes and beating people to within
an inch of their life a member of your crime
fighting crew, but Phoenix spotted a fellow costumed crime fighter
and clearly saw something in Jack. By the time Jack
started hanging out with Phoenix, Ghosts had already been patrolling
with him for a while. In fact, Ghost actually knew
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Phoenix back when he was just Ben Fodor. I came
back from Iraq in two thousand and nine and I
found out that someone I knew from high school, Ben
was doing this crazy shift out in the streets. And
you knew been in high school I did. We ran
in similar circles. I called him, I'm like, Ben, what
the hell are you doing? What are you doing? Man?
And he invited me up to have a chat with him.
(18:15):
We talked about it, and I was like, well, I'm
I'm going now if you don't really have a say
in that. I really wanted to know what Ben had
been like when they were growing up, But Ghost was
not particularly interested in talking. He seemed wary of me
and my microphone. At one point midnight, Jack said that
Ghosts had been freaking out. On the way to the interview.
Jack did almost all the talking. Ghost would stand to
(18:38):
the side, and sometimes he would wander off, like twenty
or thirty yards away from us and just stand there
watching From a distance. I don't trust anyone, like sometimes
I struggle with some post traumatic stress situation and that
doesn't really help things with when it comes to my trust.
But I'm just doing my best. Ghost didn't want to
talk much about the old days, though. Every once in
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a while, night Jack would launch into a story about
a patrol from long ago, and Ghosts would jump back
into the conversation. Apparently, midnight Jack used to carry a
container of baking flower to throw it people. One time,
he was about to douse a local pervert and flower
when Ghosts stepped in. Almost flowered this homeless dude and
a wheelchair. They had one leg, but he had his
(19:21):
dick out and he was following women back from the club,
jacking off, yelling aggressive sexual things. You're talking me out
of flowering that guy because he was in a wheelchair.
I was gonna flower him and then I was gonna
push him over. I got the sense based on this
story and videos I've seen of Phoenix's patrols, the Ghost
often played this role. Phoenix described him as a level
(19:42):
headed analyst rather than a brawler. Ghost as a specific
intel slash observational job, and he's amazing at that. But
Ghost can't run into an altercation and take people out.
These days, Ghost doesn't go out on patrol, but he
continues to fight crime. He says his efforts are now
focused on catching pedophile else online By posing as a
fourteen year old boy, I set up these fake profiles,
(20:05):
and I have at least ten detectives that work with me,
and to any pedophiles out there, it's always me, so
keep that in mind. I came away from my first
encounter with real life superheroes. I'm not really sure what
to make of them. On that first trip to Seattle,
before I met Phoenix, I was skeptical of a lot
of their claims, but I admire their ambition and their
(20:27):
desire to do good in the world, even if a
lot of their escapades seemed a little absurd. I also
got a kick out of all the petty infighting that
seemed to consume a lot of the superheroes time. I
was only just learning what kind of person puts on
a costume and takes the law into their own hands.
But maybe it shouldn't have surprised me that a lot
of them have big egos that can lead to personality clashes.
(20:51):
Despite the bickering, they did seem to have a solid
system in place for organizing patrols and vetting new recruits. Sometimes,
when Phoenix at interviews with the media, he would give
out a phone number that people could call if they
wanted to get in touch with him. That phone number
went directly to Ghost and one day he got a
call from a new guy who said he was interested
(21:13):
in joining the team. We hit it off instantaneously because
we understood that it's not a game, that's not some
kind of trivial thing you could just jump into. The
guy on the other end of the phone was about
to become the latest member of Phoenix's crew and one
of Phoenix's best friends. He called himself El Caballero. Of
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all the real life superheroes I've hung out with, El
Caballero was the one who surprised me the most. Before
I met him, I had formed my opinion based on
videos of him patrolling with Phoenix's team, and to be honest,
I thought he was the most ridiculous of the bunch.
His superhero costume was really absurd. He wore a luchador
mask and a purple cape vest thing with a gold
(21:58):
embroidered dragon and l bottoms. He was the guy a
midnight Jack had talked about who nearly got his junk
pulled off on patrol. And of course his name was
El Caballero Gentleman or night in Spanish, which for a
white guy just seemed like an odd choice. Based on
all of this, I had an idea in my head
(22:18):
of who Cabby was, but then I actually met him.
El Caballero agreed to meet me, of all places, at
a Mexican restaurant. He doesn't live in Seattle anymore, and
he asked to keep his exact location a secret. He
says there are a lot of bad dudes he's apprehended
over the years, who he thinks are keen to track
him down and enact revenge. It's peaceful where he lives now,
(22:42):
a small town about an hour and a half outside
of Seattle. He left the city a few years ago
and has settled into a quiet life with his wife.
They live in a trailer park in the forest. Cabby
chose the Mexican restaurant to meet because it was close
to his home. It had nothing to do with his
superhero name. I got there a little early and took
a sea in a booth, Mexican pottery and colorful Spanish
(23:02):
tile line of walls. When he walked into the restaurant,
I didn't recognize him. It came over to me and
introduced himself, and I was immediately entranced by his eyes.
Cabby has hypnotic blue eyes that feel like tractor beams
into your soul. There's a depth to Cabby that totally
surprised me. He's a deeply spiritual person, but also very intimidating.
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He's a big guy, covered in tattoos. He had on
a denim jacket over a brightly colored shirt. His appearance
hides a gentle, thoughtful side that I hadn't expected. We
sat in the restaurant for a while. I ordered some
food and Cabby had a couple of drinks and ordered
a burrito to take home to his wife. Then we
got some beers from the gas station and sat in
my car chatting in the parking lot between the restaurant
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and Cabby's trailer. One of his neighbor's sauce and wandered
over to see what we were up to. Hey, we're
just doing an interview. We're doing an interview for the internet,
all right, it sounds good. All these kids, thank you.
I'm just gonna how should I talk? Is this a
(24:10):
good level to talk in? And talk? When I talk,
I generally talk talk like this, and yeah, sharing the
story and telling the thing about the things of the story.
It sounds good. Cabby has lived all over the world.
His dad was in the U. S Military and worked
for NATO. So Cabby spent part of his childhood living
(24:32):
in Europe. After I saw the Berlin wall fall, it
was like eleventh grade, twelfth grade, and I moved back
to America in small town. I'm a little bit of
a artist and creative person, and growing up in Europe
and then coming to America, whatever, some of my mannerisms
made people think certain things or whatever, and they made
(24:53):
judgments on me. And there was like skin heads and
all this other not traditional skins, but some negative Nazi
white power skins, and like one threw me down the
steps and teachers were like, oh, that's all right, that's
all good or whatever, and so I experienced that, and
I was like, no one should suffer this, like, let
(25:14):
alone myself. And so like I went from someone who
was very sensitive, artistic and still am I believe to
someone who was trained to protect myself and then even
trained to protect other people. I tried to join the military,
but have irregular heartbeats. Even though he couldn't become a soldier,
Katy wanted to be a protector of humanity in some way.
(25:35):
He got into martial arts and pursued a career in
social work. I was doing caregiving and helping developmentally disabled
people and stuff like that. Some of my clients were
really intense, had violent tendencies, and so the company I
worked for sent me to them because I had already
been trained, not with them, but with other things with
(25:55):
martial arts and de escalation and things like that. Cabby
was also an avid reader of history, and in his
studies he came across a template for the type of
heroism that he wanted to emulate, the Knights Templar. It's
an ancient chivalric order dedicated to protecting pilgrims and widows
(26:15):
and orphans and the downtrodden and anyone else. Although the
actual Knights Templar were destroyed around the year seven, the
revivalist group the Cabby was involved with paid homage to
the medieval order and dubbed Cabby their new Knight. I
swore on the Holy Bible in front of legal witnesses,
and they gave me a knighthood. In fact, I have
several knighthoods now, just based on the fact that I've
(26:37):
sworn to protect humans. Cabby took his new role as
a protector of humanity very seriously. He felt a deep
sense of honor and duty as a member of this
historic order. I felt like I wouldn't be living up
to these high honors that these people gave me if
I didn't do something more noble with my skills. I
(26:58):
told Jones, I'm like, hey, it's cool you have your
school buddies, but let's bring on some real heavy hitters.
It was time for Phoenix Jones and the rain City
Superheroes to raise the bar so for a new generation
of aspiring recruits. Things were about to get competitive. After
the break, we sort the superheroes from the sidekicks. Over
(27:31):
the first couple of years of his superhero career, Phoenix
Jones had built a rag tag crime fighting posse through
a bit of luck and some chance encounters with like
minded folks. This motley crew ultimately became the rain City
Superhero Movement, an organization with a mission to strike fear
into the heart of Seattle's criminal underworld. If Phoenix really
(27:56):
wanted to create the Avenger's style supergroup of his dreams,
he couldn't just let anyone in. The movement needed some
professionals like ghost. James Marks is a veteran. He'd worked
in aviation mission planning for the Army and had served
in Iraq after he got out of the service. James
(28:17):
was surfing the internet when he came across some curious
posts about a guy who claimed to be a real
life superhero. His first thought was, Oh, come on, give
me a break, I suspect. His second thought was, is
that a Nippolis Batman costume? But that's more of a guess.
I remember seeing online a couple of posts and screenshots
(28:38):
of some weirdo named Phoenix Jones, and it just seemed
a little larger than life personality, and I thought, it's like,
what a kind of cook is this. James was skeptical
but intrigued, so when he heard the superheroes of Seattle
were holding an event in a bar to meet the public,
he showed up. My expectations were seeing a bunch of
(29:00):
basement dwelling causeplay nerds that put down their dice for
a minute to go patrol the streets or something. And
it was nothing like I'd expected. A lot of the
superheroes James met that day had families and full time jobs.
They didn't seem delusional. It seemed like they genuinely wanted
to help people. After the meet up, James couldn't get
(29:20):
the idea out of his head. He'd given up his
job in the military, but he missed the feeling of
being on a team united behind a cause. I shot
an email to Phoenix shows. He left his email on
the Facebook post, so I'm like, okay, morning, you know,
what's the process, Like, how is this work? If someone
might be interested in joining something like this? And he
(29:40):
he responded right away and his famous caps locked fashion.
Meet us at Second in Jackson on Tuesday morning at
midnight and wear something blue, Phoenix out. So in the
early hours of the following Tuesday, James waited on the
street corner more in kind of like a black hoodie
and pctical cargo pants and have this blue sash kind
(30:04):
of a scarf. I showed up there and found out
there's like eight other people also waiting around kind of
dressed in various dark garb, each with the individual color.
There was green, there was orange, there was me blue,
there was black, there was yellow. The superhero recruits eyed
each other apprehensively. Nobody said much. A couple of other
(30:26):
people started showing up that we're very much decked out
and what looked like kind of superhero gear almost costumes.
Won't look like a Mexican wrestler. There was one guy
looked like Spider Man kind of. That was Midnight Jack. Eventually,
in his very famous late fashion, Phoenix Jones showed up
and greeted all of us, and turns out it was tryouts,
(30:48):
superhero tryouts. If you want to join the gang, you've
got to prove yourself. Phoenix was in his full suit
and body armor and act like his usual cocky self.
He's a very very charismatic, affable guy, clearly very smart,
like just genius smart, and smile like a crack a
(31:12):
camera lens. You could just leap into any room and
be the center of attention and the start of the show.
Before the rookies got the chance to prove themselves to
their magnetic leader, there was a first round. They had
to pass they took us around the corner, one at
the time. Your name, hold up your ready, pulled on
your masks and keep it up, you know, for be
anonymous in this. But okay, now what's your superpower? And yeah, absolutely,
(31:37):
And I just kind of sat there and blinked a
few times. I didn't think of that. He's like, it's okay,
that's all right, that's the right answer. We boot anyone
who thinks they can fly immediately. I'm like, all right, okay,
it's like, all right, you're good to go, you know.
One of the time they let everyone else back, and
at least one person walked away, very dejected, back to
(31:57):
the car and drove off. Reading to James, this part
of the vetting process was essential. There had been one
guy before my time, apparently went by the name the Platypus,
who superpower was poisoned water balloons or something, which turned
out to be full of peace. So suffice to say,
this line of volunteer working activism draws a very particular crowd.
(32:21):
Once the rain City Superheroes were satisfied that the new
recruits were more or less sane, it was time for
the real test. Their first patrol Phoenix Jones had a
very like all right, everyone follow me, do what I do.
Don't hurt anybody, just follow my lead. He just started
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running and everyone's staring blinking at each other. Okay, well
hold up. With the new recruits trailing in his wake,
Phoenix led the patrol squad to Pioneer Square, an old
red brick neighborhood in the city's downtown area, for a Tuesday.
It was a busy night. People from the bars were
spilling out onto the streets, and the motley crew of
(33:02):
want to be superheroes attracted a lot of attention. Just
a lot of cars honking as they drove by, or
you know, waving of people. A couple of other security
guards on parking lots, Hey, p j what's up. It
was like everyone seemed to know this guy, Phoenix was
in his element. He must have stopped for thirty photo
ops by the time we made it around the block.
All the women, so many women would want selfies with
(33:25):
him or take pictures, or he did this thing where
you carry women like a bride to get a picture.
I mean, that was a workout in itself. But it
wasn't just a photo op. The recruits got to see
some action too. There was a couple of people who
had clearly gotten kicked out of the club but weren't
leaving yet, clearly being too intoxicated, and one of the
telltale signs that she's about to go down as you
(33:45):
see someone pull off their shirt, they're like ship shortless mail,
shirtless mail Phoenix leapt into the middle of the fray.
We just kind of stood back and watch him get
in there and talk people down. He pulled up pepper
spray at one point, didn't deploy, but just laid in faces.
You know, back up or else are you gonna get it?
A full year of patrolling later, James and three other
(34:07):
battle hardened recruits who had been at the tryouts were
inducted as full team members of the rain City Superheroes,
and by this time James had a new superhero name,
being a history nerd and uh loving a lot of
things Latin. I kind of went down the path of
the Roman Army and shows evocatus. It means veteran in Latin,
(34:28):
and UH usually just got chopped down to EVO for short.
Evo is the one I told you about before who
wears a full faced helmet a bit like daft punk
and motorcycle leathers with thick protective gloves. With a team
that now included train warriors like Evo, the Rain City
Superheroes were ready to take Seattle by storm. Phoenix even
(34:50):
had his girlfriend along for the ride, Purple. Rain Purple
focused mainly on supporting victims of domestic violence. El Caballero
remembers the heyday of the Ray City Superheroes. Well, we
were really hitting the pavement. We were really doing some stuff,
from felons who would stabbed people, hardcore drug dealers like
the cocaine and the cartel stuff, to identity thieves like
(35:14):
we hit the ground running. The team held practices in
the middle of the night at gas Works Park. It's
on the shores of Lake Union, a freshwater lake in
the middle of Seattle. The rusting remains of an old
gas plant still stand there late at night by the
metal ruins. The superheroes would trade skills. Phoenix taught them
(35:35):
m A moves, and Evo taught knife disarms and other
techniques he picked up in the military, and these turned
out to be necessary. According to Midnight Jack, things could
get pretty gnarly out on patrol. We go to crazy
ass light. We were going to work with fucking bruises
and black eyes from fistfights, broken thumbs, taped up toes,
(35:57):
washing the mace off your body at the end of
a long nighte so you can get two hours sleep,
and going in stock shelves at the target. That's the
kind of life that we lived. The stakes were hot.
I had to look out for each other. Like Phoenix says,
this wasn't a game. I end up getting stabbed and
(36:19):
Cabby was there and he's like, oh, it's all good, man,
don't even stress about that. So we're talking and we're
getting dress at getting stad Oh yeah, it's like everything's fine.
We're talking about our way to the car. We're driving
back to the hospital or whatever, right, and before I
get in, I like can't stop tearing up, right, And
I'm like, man, I can't get in the hospital like this,
Like there's cameras, people might see it. We are tearing up,
(36:40):
like I can't stop crying, like a stabbed Yeah, I
just can't stop and get my ship together and I
wake up. But I'm in the hospital bit and I'm
like what the cat was like, don't worry, boss, I
choked you out. I was like, thanks, man, you're a
genius choking your buddy unconscious so he doesn't freak out
getting stabbed. That's true friendship. And it's just as well because,
(37:04):
as you might have gathered, Phoenix has a lot of
stabbing stories. He got the chance to repay Cabby. On
another patrol in Belltown, Cabler and I see this person
and the guy's got a knife and he's yelling at
this guy and this girl, and Cabby runs in and
the guy turns around and reaches out and grabs Elkaboler
straight in the crotch and starts grabbing his junk. Cabby
(37:25):
at instinct grabs the guy's arm right, So the guy's
arms kind of grabbing his junk like that, and he's
got his arm around it like this and like this
back is for on the side of the street. And
then I come through. When I put the guy down
and Cabby steps back, he's like he's holding himself and
he goes, you know what, man, I forgive you. So
the guy he was grabbing his nuts. It was just
(37:46):
one of those moments. It looked like I was gonna
get his junk pulled off. It was hilarious. I love
Cabby that way. Until I met Cabby, I never imagined
that superhero work would put your groin in so many
high risk situations. Anyway, flash forward to today. Of the
individuals who made up the rain City superhero movement in
two thousand and eleven and two thousand and twelve, none
(38:08):
of them are on speaking terms with Phoenix Jones, literally
not one. We'll get into the drama of all that
fallout later, but despite the fracture of the group, speaking
to me one, it was clear that they missed each other.
Just kind of the calm, cool demeanor that Jones had
at that time, where it was like, I'm gonna take
(38:29):
care of business and fight some crime, but I'm not
gonna be scared about it. That was always impressive with me.
Cabby is this mix of like skilled negotiator right and
tactical fighter. Is a tactical monster, so he'll come in
and just do something and hit somebody one time or
take them down the right way, and by the time
(38:49):
they got something to do, they're just they're in the
wrong position. I can't tell you enough about that guy.
When you're risking your lives together, you get close and
evil got to know the rest of the team, particularly well,
a lot of the people on the team would just
kind of naturally talk to me because I kind of
accidentally wound up as like the entire HR departments. Evo
had many roles in the rain City Superhero movement. Turns
(39:11):
out being a superhero comes with a lot of admin
In addition to running Phoenix is social media, filling out
endless paperwork, and managing the patrol schedule. Evo was also
the rain City Superhero's main chauffeur. I would leave up
to an hour and a half early before a patrol
to start picking up team members, and I was driving
a tiny Forward Focus at the time, and I would
(39:31):
have it packed like a clown car full of these
superheroes who couldn't drive. So I would be listening for,
you know, two to three hours a night of these
people just kind of venting and unwinding about everything going
on in their personal lives before we hit the street
and put on the mask. If there's one thing I've
learned in my time in the world of real life superheroes,
(39:51):
and so they have a lot of car trouble, Phoenix
seems to learn from one car crisis to the next,
both with me and with his former crew members. Over
the course of many many car pools with Phoenix, Evo
begin to notice a pattern that made him uneasy. I
guess one of the unintended consequences of me driving him
absolutely everywhere is that he would tell me these stories about,
(40:14):
you know, what's going on, Oh my god, you won't
to believe what she told me this time, or something
like that. But he tells this story to so many
people that he kind of forgets who he's already told.
Phoenix would reel off stories to people on the phone
as they cruised around in Evo's car. Evo would also
drive Phoenix to speaking engagements at summer camps and colleges,
where he'd tell wild tales of his crime fighting capers.
(40:38):
Evo started noticing that the details and these familiar stories
started shifting. He would just hop on his phone and
you know, start telling different team members different versions of
the same story as well, seemingly kind of forgetting like
I'm in the car or that I've already heard this.
As well as having concerns about the truth of Phoenix's
claims evil, it was starting to have doubts about Phoenix's
(41:00):
leadership style. Behind the scenes, it wasn't very communicative. If
it wasn't like on stage or if it was in
front of a crowd or anything like that, he didn't
talk much, or he didn't tell a lot of people
like what was going on or what's the next step.
It's kind of like, if you want to be in this,
you gotta follow my every word and lead. In a
team full of aspiring superheroes, there was always going to
(41:22):
be some friction, but Evo says things got particularly bad
between Phoenix and Midnight Jack. They would bud heads like
an old married couple and just end up getting in
yelling fights, and more than one patrol, you know, one
would just like funking, I'm out and they would just
leave the patrol, leaving a bunch of people in line,
kind of like, uh, what what do we do? When
(41:42):
I spoke to him, Phoenix didn't deny that there had
been clashes, but to him, that misses the point. Every
one of those guys didn't no ship before they met me,
and I taught every single one of them how to
fight crime. So people can kind of say with a
will from personality conflicts, but when it comes to just facts,
half of those guys would be nowhere without my crime fighting.
(42:03):
Any group of people is going to have its personality conflicts,
and for a group like the Rain City Superheroes, with
it's larger than life personalities undergirded by a sense of righteousness,
I'm sure it was even harder to keep everyone in agreement.
And then throwing the high stakes nature of their mission,
the possibility of death or injury, and top it off
(42:24):
with an arrogant, charismatic leader. And it's a wonder they
were able to work together at all. But somehow they
did it, and maybe they could have kept at it.
But then they started to get attention, first from the
citizens of Seattle, then the local and eventually national news media.
Phoenix and his gang were about to hit the big time,
(42:47):
and the fragile alliance they had with each other would
finally start to buckle under the weight of their growing fame.
That's coming up next time. The Superhero Complex is hosted
(43:20):
and written by Me David Weinberg and reported by Me,
Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham. Production from Amalia Sortland and
Caroline Thornham. Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David Waters are
executive producers, fact checking by Andrew Schwartz, Production management from
Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing
(43:42):
and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision
by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is composed
by Paul Housden. Special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton,
Matt O'Meara, Katrina Norvelle Beth and macalou so or In Rosenbaum,
Shelby Shenkman and all the team at U t A.
(44:05):
For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio m
Novel It's late two thousand and nine, Ben Fodor strolls
into a Seattle comic book store, The Dreaming Comics and Games.
He enters a hidden back room behind a bookcase. When
(00:27):
he emerges from his secret lair, he has no longer
been Photor. As the comic book lovers of Seattle browsed
the shelves stuffed with Nightwing and Batman comics, an actual
costumed crime fighter glides past them and steps out of
the shop. Phoenix Jones has a city to save. A
(00:54):
Few months earlier, before he established his secret changing room,
Phoenix was sitting in the same store or chatting to
the owner, Errand about crime fighting. At that point, he
decided that he wanted to continue fighting crime, but he
realized that he needed a compelling outfit, one that would
make him stand out, and it would take a lot
of trial and error to get there. I had a
(01:19):
pair of jeans, no shirt, and like a ski mask.
Then there was a more ostentatious look. We went all
spandex with the count chocolate hate. Clearly, this was not
a permanent solution. When I first heard about real life superheroes,
I assumed that they modeled their outfits of fictional superheroes
(01:39):
because I thought it was cool, But there's actually a
practical reason for wearing a flamboyant superhero outfit. It distinguishes
you from criminals who might also be wearing a mask.
If a cop gets called out to a crime and
they see a guy in a ski mask, there's a
pretty good chance they'll think this is the suspect. And
as a superhero, that is something you want to have
(02:00):
wit at all costs. So Ben needed a costume that
would distinguish him from the criminals he wanted to take down.
In some ways, I feel like what happened next was
the moment when Ben Fodor really became a superhero. Up
until this point, he was just a guy in spandex
and a goofy hat trying to stop crime. But his
(02:20):
next suit is when he fully embraced superhero image. We
got this replica Batman suit off the internet and like
grinded the nipples off because one of the Batman forever
like grinded the nipples off and being a conversation. And
then we went out there and I had that one
for a while. I spray painted the gold V on it,
and so the newly minted Phoenix Jones, with his freshly
spray painted Nippolis batman Halloween costume, took to the streets
(02:42):
of Seattle, and the comic book version of this story,
Phoenix would instantly start kicking ass. But this was not
a comic book, this was real life. The first six
months was just then expose and stupid for starters. Not
all of Phoenix's gadgets worked the way he hoped. I
(03:03):
was chasing a guy and get broke into a car.
I was like, oh, I'm coming after you. I pulled
out this neck and I just bought and I pop
it off. But I'm running like super warp speed right,
and the neckgun catches wind and blows back and nets
me and rolls up and I land in the side
of like a little gutter ditch right on the side
of the road has been raining, just like two inches
of water in it, right, And I landed belly down,
and I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna drown. So
(03:25):
I'm like rolling up, taking breasts and rolling up and
taking breasts. At this point, Phoenix feels a pair of
hands grabbing his back. He gets forcibly turned over and
they're glaring down at him is the criminal he'd been chasing. Then,
in a decidedly unheroic moment, lying in a ditch and
ensnared in his own net, Phoenix gets mugged. He grabs
(03:47):
my wallet, he punches me in the face. I just
laid belly up in this freaking rain ditch and then
filing the cop show and they're like, what's going on?
So I explained the story doing They're like, oh, we
have to take photos for such as lies. It turns
out crime fighting is tougher than it looks. Everything you
see in a crime fighting magazine. It's the pages between
(04:08):
the panels. You have to learn to live in. You
those little white bars to separate all the comic book panels.
That's where the real crime fighting takes place. That's where
all the superhero work really is. Phoenix explained that in
the comic books, you'll often see a hero on top
of a tall building chasing a bad guy. The hero
might be shown swing on a rope, but what's not
(04:29):
shown is when he's set up where the rope would go.
That's the part the superhero stories leave out. But as
Phoenix was figuring out the hard way, these little details
are crucial. Only weeks into his crime fighting career, Phoenix
Jones was a laughing stock, reliant on friendly members of
the Seattle Police Department to fish him soaking wet out
(04:52):
of the gutter. This would not stand. It was time
to get serious. From the team's at novel and I
heart Radio, This is the Superhero Complex, Episode three, We
Can Be Heroes. Hearing Phoenix tell the story of his
(05:28):
early crime fighting failures made him more endearing to me.
It was nice to hear him deviate from his over
the top proclamations about being the only real superhero and
his claims that he has quote perfect at crime fighting.
I get the sense that his arrogance and his insistence
on being better than everyone around him has been the
source of a lot of the interpersonal conflict in his
(05:50):
superhero life. The night of the disastrous net incident was humiliating,
but one thing that you'll never see a self respecting
superhero do is quit. As soon as he'd waved goodbye
to the police who had rescued him, he dusted off
his dirty Nipolis batman outfit and got back to work.
I stopped my first crime that same night. I hear
this girl screaming, and back in the day there used
(06:12):
to be a really big pickpocket and like grab iPhone
and run scenario kind of deal. This guy's pulling on
this girl's purse and he cuts the purse strap right.
I see him and I come up behind him. And
at that point in time, I was still a catch
phrases too. I'm like, really deep in the stupid and
I roll up and I was like, stop, what are
you doing? You know, kind of like that. It's a
(06:32):
terrible catchphrase, by the way, Hey I do what I can.
You know, you think you have catch phrases until the
moment happens, you know, I say stop. The guy just
turns around. It just straight up stabs me right in
the stomach. And I had no armor. I was in
just bandex, and all of a sudden, I realized, wait
a minute, this isn't a game. You're a professional martial artist, bro,
you have skills. You are three or four time champion
(06:53):
at this point, There's no reason that you should be
out here yelling at ridiculous corny catchphrase. In Spandex and
Phoenix is telling of the event. It's almost as if
he'd forgotten until this very moment that he was a
trained fighter. Immediately I switched to fight stands too, left
jabs in a right hand set the dude down flamingo dim,
which is duct taping your right hand to your left
leg so you can hop around like a flamingo if
you try to run. And I'm sitting next to him
(07:15):
and the girls taken off. At this point, I have
a purse, but I don't know where the girl is.
And all a sudden, like the brightest light shine on me,
and I'm like, what's going on? I look and the
cop who had just got me out of the ditch
like four hours earlier, He's like, no way. He's like,
Phoenix Jones just stopped the crime. And I was like,
I did. I stopped the crime and the girls in
the back of the car and everything, you know, And
the cop comes up goes, hey, if you got caught
(07:37):
by this corneum, motherfucker, maybe crimes not for you. With
his first bad guy in handcuffs, it was time for
Phoenix to level up again. And how does an ambitious
crime fighter stay one step ahead, you might be wondering, Well, trampolines. Obviously.
I went around the city setting areas that I would
have things to make me superhero up and it was
(07:59):
a calculated, it planned out, orchestrated idea, and it really
really blew some of the criminals minds, you know, like
little things like hiding those little trampolines you can buy,
you know, like hiding them behind dumpsters and where there's fences.
Phoenix told me that he set up these sort of
booby traps around town. Not traps in the sense that
they ensnared criminals, but more like magic tricks that made
(08:20):
it seem like he had superpowers. He would chase unsuspecting
bad guys down Seattle's backstreets. They'd flee in horror, attempting
to scramble over walls, only for Phoenix to sail majestically
into their path, propelled by one of his strategically placed trampolines.
I'm bouncing over the fence, flying and just land. The
(08:40):
dude just stopped and just laid down. He's just like,
it's almost like you are breaking the Magician's rule and
like revealing the trick, you know. Yeah, but I think
that's not the trick, right. The trick is timing, being
effective and actually having the skill to do it. Because
there's no trick to what I've done, Right, I jumped
over that fence, landed in front of a guy with
(09:02):
a knife, and you surrender. No trick. Well, the trick
I think is that you had gone ahead of time
and put a trampoline there, right, But it's not a trick. See.
That's the difference between being a superhero and being something
that's a joke. Right, is because I'm using it as
a tool to get over that fence to cut off
valuable time. I'm just doing it in the mode of
(09:24):
a superhero. Other superheroes are doing things simply as a trick.
I love the image of Phoenix leaping from a trampoline
and soaring through the air to thwart criminals, but I
have serious doubts about the validity of this story. It
just seems crazy to me that you would know where
to place the trampolines and that they would be in
precisely the right spot during what I imagine is a
(09:45):
pretty chaotic chase through darkened streets. But some of Phoenix's
other tactics seem a lot more plausible. I used to
lazer point people all the time. Hilarious at a laser
pointer on the top of my thing, and I just
go stop. People would just stop out. I was thinking,
like buzz Lightyear, kind of like I'm setting my thing
from stunned to kill. Yeah, And I would just laser
point of him and I'd be like, don't make me
(10:07):
a mobilize you and they would just stop, you know
what I mean. So it's like a bluff, but really,
if you came after me, you would get beat up,
So it's not exactly bluff, right. The lasers for your protection.
You get closer to me, you're gonna have a problem.
The laser keeps you at a safe distance from your
own bad choices. Wouldn't it be nice if we all
had lasers that kept us at a safe distance from
(10:27):
our bad choices. Anyways, in between zapping bad guys with
his buzz light here laser and getting caught in his
own net gun and bouncing over fences on miniature trampolines,
Phoenix did manage to stop a few crimes here and there,
and in the process he attracted some followers, folks who
wanted to fight alongside him and, if needed, help him
(10:49):
get out of whatever dumb mess he had made for himself.
Even the world's greatest superhero needs a hand sometimes coming up,
I meet Phoenix's original sidekicks. That's after the break on
(11:14):
my first trip to Seattle. When Phoenix stood me up.
I'd been messaging some of his crew from way back
in the day. I'd found Midnight Jack on Facebook. He
and another real life superhero, Ghost agreed to meet me
at the north Gate Movie Theater and the outskirts of
Seattle's city limits. The theater was in an outdoor shopping
center with a few cafes and the Subway sandwich shop.
(11:36):
It was a sunny, clear day in August. As I
stood next to an outdoor fire pit, I noticed that
ash was falling from the sky. I looked around and
saw the alarm on the faces of other people around me.
It felt apocalyptic, not unlike a scene out of a
superhero movie where everyone is confused at the falling ash.
Then we all look up to see a giant explosion
(11:58):
in the sky m as two masked superheroes battle Royale
and the heavens above our mortal world. But it turned
out it was just a large structure fire about a
mile away. Eventually I smelled the smoke and saw the
plume rising in the distance, and then midnight Jack and
(12:22):
Ghost walked up to me and introduced themselves. They were
not what I expected. I guess I thought they would
be more intimidating. This was during the pandemic, so they
both had masks on. Ghosts looked like he'd just rolled
out of bed, flip flops, jim shorts, and a T shirt.
Midnight Jack at least looked like he'd come from the
gym workout pants coffee in hand, though I remember being
(12:45):
surprised how much skinnier he was than I expected. Hi, good, huh,
I guess you're here to look for a ghost. Yes, Yet,
we decided to walk down some steps away from the
shopping center to a more looted area with a few
tall apartment complexes built around a scenic bike path that
ran alongside a little creek. On that bench over there,
(13:09):
as grandparents pushed strollers and couples walked hand in hand
along the path, midnight, Jack and Ghost regaled me with
wild stories of their past lives. Home was dude almost
ripped Cabby's dick off one time, which is funny. It's
why you don't wear fucking men's leggings to street patrol
duly noted Cavey I'd later learn was a fellow recruit
(13:30):
before becoming one of Phoenix's comrades. Midnight Jack says he
started out in life as a criminal with a superhero
like ability getting away with it. I have no record.
I had a very serious cocaine addiction, specifically a crack
cocaine addiction. If you look back at my personal information,
which I won't give you, I have something crazy like
(13:50):
a hundred and seventy two police contacts in three years,
no arrest, no convictions, which is not necessarily something you
should bring bragging about it. I mean, that's just what
it was. Now. Because Jack won't give me his real name,
I'm not able to verify his claim that he has
something like a hundred and seventy two police contacts without
(14:11):
ever being arrested or charged with a crime. But I
will say that I find it very hard to believe
that someone suffering from a severe crack addiction who claims
to have been a very active criminal and gang member
could have that many encounters with the police and never
get caught. Maybe it's a proof that real life superheroes
have remarkable superhuman abilities, or maybe Midnight Jack is full
(14:34):
of ship. Yeah, I'm curious about your transition, Like, what
made you stop doing crime and start fighting crime. Well,
when you stop doing cocaine, you stop needing to fund cocaine,
and so the need to commit crimes slowly goes away.
So at the end of that I left the crew
I was with. I left the state for a year,
and when I came back, I was sober and I
was looking to fill my time in a positive way
(14:57):
as opposed to being a criminal, bad guy and a buck.
I was twenty two when I got back, and you know,
I had done nothing really in my entire life other
than crime. Jack saw news article about a guy stopping
car breakings wearing what he calls a rubber gimp suit,
but what we know now was actually a Nipolis batman costume.
I was like, well, Ship, I got an little ski
(15:18):
mask that I used to use in a baseball bat.
I'll just start walking around here. So then for the
next six months, I walked around with a bat and
a ski mask and chased off car prowlers. And we
call them baders. It's aggressive homeless drug addicts that we
call invaders. And yeah, that was basically my first six
months of career. Jack was in a park at night,
ski mask on, bat in hand when a cop stopped
(15:41):
him and asked for his name. I was like, uh,
it's Jack. He glanced at his watch eleven fifty three pm.
In a flash of inspiration, his superhero persona came to him,
Midnight Jack, and the names stuck ever since, legends are
born out of necessity, they're not planned out or carefully created.
(16:06):
Now that the legend was born Midnight Jack decided it
was time to join some like minded heroes. He told
me that he fell in with a crew of decidedly
average Seattle superheroes, all fat, out of shape, and they
were so desperate to have somebody with any sort of
skills or no how whatsoever. Jack says they harassed the
odd drug dealer, but they weren't about to save the world.
(16:27):
Then one day he saw Phoenix Jones crew patrolling in
his part of town. He came up to me and
I was like, hey man, just so you know, like
this crowd down here is more mellow that one down
there is a little routier. We already did two loops
to the block. Most of the cars are parked down here,
and this and that and that you got all this
kind of stuff, and it was he goes, who the
funk are you? And why are you telling me about
(16:48):
my own patrol? How did you even get here? That
was how I met Phoenix Jones. It wasn't exactly love
at first sight, but it was clear to Midnight Jack
that Phoenix Jones was very different from crew he was
running with at the time. Jones was the real deal.
Jack says his work ethic impressed Phoenix, but Phoenix describes
their first encounter a little differently. We found him night
(17:12):
Jack on the streets. He was out patrolling in a
very stupid way. He was out there just beating up people,
like with no abandoned just you know, I mean, just
like hiding in a bush with two sticks and then
when a crime takes out, just beating someone senselessly. So
we found him and we were like, you should join
our squad and like not go to prison, and then
from there it just kind of built. It might sound
(17:32):
like an odd recruitment strategy to make a guy you
found hiding in the bushes and beating people to within
an inch of their life a member of your crime
fighting crew, but Phoenix spotted a fellow costumed crime fighter
and clearly saw something in Jack. By the time Jack
started hanging out with Phoenix, Ghosts had already been patrolling
with him for a while. In fact, Ghost actually knew
(17:53):
Phoenix back when he was just Ben Fodor. I came
back from Iraq in two thousand and nine and I
found out that someone I knew from high school, Ben
was doing this crazy shift out in the streets. And
you knew been in high school I did. We ran
in similar circles. I called him, I'm like, Ben, what
the hell are you doing? What are you doing? Man?
And he invited me up to have a chat with him.
(18:15):
We talked about it, and I was like, well, I'm
I'm going now if you don't really have a say
in that. I really wanted to know what Ben had
been like when they were growing up, But Ghost was
not particularly interested in talking. He seemed wary of me
and my microphone. At one point midnight, Jack said that
Ghosts had been freaking out. On the way to the interview.
Jack did almost all the talking. Ghost would stand to
(18:38):
the side, and sometimes he would wander off, like twenty
or thirty yards away from us and just stand there
watching From a distance. I don't trust anyone, like sometimes
I struggle with some post traumatic stress situation and that
doesn't really help things with when it comes to my trust.
But I'm just doing my best. Ghost didn't want to
talk much about the old days, though. Every once in
(18:59):
a while, night Jack would launch into a story about
a patrol from long ago, and Ghosts would jump back
into the conversation. Apparently, midnight Jack used to carry a
container of baking flower to throw it people. One time,
he was about to douse a local pervert and flower
when Ghosts stepped in. Almost flowered this homeless dude and
a wheelchair. They had one leg, but he had his
(19:21):
dick out and he was following women back from the club,
jacking off, yelling aggressive sexual things. You're talking me out
of flowering that guy because he was in a wheelchair.
I was gonna flower him and then I was gonna
push him over. I got the sense based on this
story and videos I've seen of Phoenix's patrols, the Ghost
often played this role. Phoenix described him as a level
(19:42):
headed analyst rather than a brawler. Ghost as a specific
intel slash observational job, and he's amazing at that. But
Ghost can't run into an altercation and take people out.
These days, Ghost doesn't go out on patrol, but he
continues to fight crime. He says his efforts are now
focused on catching pedophile else online By posing as a
fourteen year old boy, I set up these fake profiles,
(20:05):
and I have at least ten detectives that work with me,
and to any pedophiles out there, it's always me, so
keep that in mind. I came away from my first
encounter with real life superheroes. I'm not really sure what
to make of them. On that first trip to Seattle,
before I met Phoenix, I was skeptical of a lot
of their claims, but I admire their ambition and their
(20:27):
desire to do good in the world, even if a
lot of their escapades seemed a little absurd. I also
got a kick out of all the petty infighting that
seemed to consume a lot of the superheroes time. I
was only just learning what kind of person puts on
a costume and takes the law into their own hands.
But maybe it shouldn't have surprised me that a lot
of them have big egos that can lead to personality clashes.
(20:51):
Despite the bickering, they did seem to have a solid
system in place for organizing patrols and vetting new recruits. Sometimes,
when Phoenix at interviews with the media, he would give
out a phone number that people could call if they
wanted to get in touch with him. That phone number
went directly to Ghost and one day he got a
call from a new guy who said he was interested
(21:13):
in joining the team. We hit it off instantaneously because
we understood that it's not a game, that's not some
kind of trivial thing you could just jump into. The
guy on the other end of the phone was about
to become the latest member of Phoenix's crew and one
of Phoenix's best friends. He called himself El Caballero. Of
(21:36):
all the real life superheroes I've hung out with, El
Caballero was the one who surprised me the most. Before
I met him, I had formed my opinion based on
videos of him patrolling with Phoenix's team, and to be honest,
I thought he was the most ridiculous of the bunch.
His superhero costume was really absurd. He wore a luchador
mask and a purple cape vest thing with a gold
(21:58):
embroidered dragon and l bottoms. He was the guy a
midnight Jack had talked about who nearly got his junk
pulled off on patrol. And of course his name was
El Caballero Gentleman or night in Spanish, which for a
white guy just seemed like an odd choice. Based on
all of this, I had an idea in my head
(22:18):
of who Cabby was, but then I actually met him.
El Caballero agreed to meet me, of all places, at
a Mexican restaurant. He doesn't live in Seattle anymore, and
he asked to keep his exact location a secret. He
says there are a lot of bad dudes he's apprehended
over the years, who he thinks are keen to track
him down and enact revenge. It's peaceful where he lives now,
(22:42):
a small town about an hour and a half outside
of Seattle. He left the city a few years ago
and has settled into a quiet life with his wife.
They live in a trailer park in the forest. Cabby
chose the Mexican restaurant to meet because it was close
to his home. It had nothing to do with his
superhero name. I got there a little early and took
a sea in a booth, Mexican pottery and colorful Spanish
(23:02):
tile line of walls. When he walked into the restaurant,
I didn't recognize him. It came over to me and
introduced himself, and I was immediately entranced by his eyes.
Cabby has hypnotic blue eyes that feel like tractor beams
into your soul. There's a depth to Cabby that totally
surprised me. He's a deeply spiritual person, but also very intimidating.
(23:26):
He's a big guy, covered in tattoos. He had on
a denim jacket over a brightly colored shirt. His appearance
hides a gentle, thoughtful side that I hadn't expected. We
sat in the restaurant for a while. I ordered some
food and Cabby had a couple of drinks and ordered
a burrito to take home to his wife. Then we
got some beers from the gas station and sat in
my car chatting in the parking lot between the restaurant
(23:47):
and Cabby's trailer. One of his neighbor's sauce and wandered
over to see what we were up to. Hey, we're
just doing an interview. We're doing an interview for the internet,
all right, it sounds good. All these kids, thank you.
I'm just gonna how should I talk? Is this a
(24:10):
good level to talk in? And talk? When I talk,
I generally talk talk like this, and yeah, sharing the
story and telling the thing about the things of the story.
It sounds good. Cabby has lived all over the world.
His dad was in the U. S Military and worked
for NATO. So Cabby spent part of his childhood living
(24:32):
in Europe. After I saw the Berlin wall fall, it
was like eleventh grade, twelfth grade, and I moved back
to America in small town. I'm a little bit of
a artist and creative person, and growing up in Europe
and then coming to America, whatever, some of my mannerisms
made people think certain things or whatever, and they made
(24:53):
judgments on me. And there was like skin heads and
all this other not traditional skins, but some negative Nazi
white power skins, and like one threw me down the
steps and teachers were like, oh, that's all right, that's
all good or whatever, and so I experienced that, and
I was like, no one should suffer this, like, let
(25:14):
alone myself. And so like I went from someone who
was very sensitive, artistic and still am I believe to
someone who was trained to protect myself and then even
trained to protect other people. I tried to join the military,
but have irregular heartbeats. Even though he couldn't become a soldier,
Katy wanted to be a protector of humanity in some way.
(25:35):
He got into martial arts and pursued a career in
social work. I was doing caregiving and helping developmentally disabled
people and stuff like that. Some of my clients were
really intense, had violent tendencies, and so the company I
worked for sent me to them because I had already
been trained, not with them, but with other things with
(25:55):
martial arts and de escalation and things like that. Cabby
was also an avid reader of history, and in his
studies he came across a template for the type of
heroism that he wanted to emulate, the Knights Templar. It's
an ancient chivalric order dedicated to protecting pilgrims and widows
(26:15):
and orphans and the downtrodden and anyone else. Although the
actual Knights Templar were destroyed around the year seven, the
revivalist group the Cabby was involved with paid homage to
the medieval order and dubbed Cabby their new Knight. I
swore on the Holy Bible in front of legal witnesses,
and they gave me a knighthood. In fact, I have
several knighthoods now, just based on the fact that I've
(26:37):
sworn to protect humans. Cabby took his new role as
a protector of humanity very seriously. He felt a deep
sense of honor and duty as a member of this
historic order. I felt like I wouldn't be living up
to these high honors that these people gave me if
I didn't do something more noble with my skills. I
(26:58):
told Jones, I'm like, hey, it's cool you have your
school buddies, but let's bring on some real heavy hitters.
It was time for Phoenix Jones and the rain City
Superheroes to raise the bar so for a new generation
of aspiring recruits. Things were about to get competitive. After
the break, we sort the superheroes from the sidekicks. Over
(27:31):
the first couple of years of his superhero career, Phoenix
Jones had built a rag tag crime fighting posse through
a bit of luck and some chance encounters with like
minded folks. This motley crew ultimately became the rain City
Superhero Movement, an organization with a mission to strike fear
into the heart of Seattle's criminal underworld. If Phoenix really
(27:56):
wanted to create the Avenger's style supergroup of his dreams,
he couldn't just let anyone in. The movement needed some
professionals like ghost. James Marks is a veteran. He'd worked
in aviation mission planning for the Army and had served
in Iraq after he got out of the service. James
(28:17):
was surfing the internet when he came across some curious
posts about a guy who claimed to be a real
life superhero. His first thought was, Oh, come on, give
me a break, I suspect. His second thought was, is
that a Nippolis Batman costume? But that's more of a guess.
I remember seeing online a couple of posts and screenshots
(28:38):
of some weirdo named Phoenix Jones, and it just seemed
a little larger than life personality, and I thought, it's like,
what a kind of cook is this. James was skeptical
but intrigued, so when he heard the superheroes of Seattle
were holding an event in a bar to meet the public,
he showed up. My expectations were seeing a bunch of
(29:00):
basement dwelling causeplay nerds that put down their dice for
a minute to go patrol the streets or something. And
it was nothing like I'd expected. A lot of the
superheroes James met that day had families and full time jobs.
They didn't seem delusional. It seemed like they genuinely wanted
to help people. After the meet up, James couldn't get
(29:20):
the idea out of his head. He'd given up his
job in the military, but he missed the feeling of
being on a team united behind a cause. I shot
an email to Phoenix shows. He left his email on
the Facebook post, so I'm like, okay, morning, you know,
what's the process, Like, how is this work? If someone
might be interested in joining something like this? And he
(29:40):
he responded right away and his famous caps locked fashion.
Meet us at Second in Jackson on Tuesday morning at
midnight and wear something blue, Phoenix out. So in the
early hours of the following Tuesday, James waited on the
street corner more in kind of like a black hoodie
and pctical cargo pants and have this blue sash kind
(30:04):
of a scarf. I showed up there and found out
there's like eight other people also waiting around kind of
dressed in various dark garb, each with the individual color.
There was green, there was orange, there was me blue,
there was black, there was yellow. The superhero recruits eyed
each other apprehensively. Nobody said much. A couple of other
(30:26):
people started showing up that we're very much decked out
and what looked like kind of superhero gear almost costumes.
Won't look like a Mexican wrestler. There was one guy
looked like Spider Man kind of. That was Midnight Jack. Eventually,
in his very famous late fashion, Phoenix Jones showed up
and greeted all of us, and turns out it was tryouts,
(30:48):
superhero tryouts. If you want to join the gang, you've
got to prove yourself. Phoenix was in his full suit
and body armor and act like his usual cocky self.
He's a very very charismatic, affable guy, clearly very smart,
like just genius smart, and smile like a crack a
(31:12):
camera lens. You could just leap into any room and
be the center of attention and the start of the show.
Before the rookies got the chance to prove themselves to
their magnetic leader, there was a first round. They had
to pass they took us around the corner, one at
the time. Your name, hold up your ready, pulled on
your masks and keep it up, you know, for be
anonymous in this. But okay, now what's your superpower? And yeah, absolutely,
(31:37):
And I just kind of sat there and blinked a
few times. I didn't think of that. He's like, it's okay,
that's all right, that's the right answer. We boot anyone
who thinks they can fly immediately. I'm like, all right, okay,
it's like, all right, you're good to go, you know.
One of the time they let everyone else back, and
at least one person walked away, very dejected, back to
(31:57):
the car and drove off. Reading to James, this part
of the vetting process was essential. There had been one
guy before my time, apparently went by the name the Platypus,
who superpower was poisoned water balloons or something, which turned
out to be full of peace. So suffice to say,
this line of volunteer working activism draws a very particular crowd.
(32:21):
Once the rain City Superheroes were satisfied that the new
recruits were more or less sane, it was time for
the real test. Their first patrol Phoenix Jones had a
very like all right, everyone follow me, do what I do.
Don't hurt anybody, just follow my lead. He just started
(32:41):
running and everyone's staring blinking at each other. Okay, well
hold up. With the new recruits trailing in his wake,
Phoenix led the patrol squad to Pioneer Square, an old
red brick neighborhood in the city's downtown area, for a Tuesday.
It was a busy night. People from the bars were
spilling out onto the streets, and the motley crew of
(33:02):
want to be superheroes attracted a lot of attention. Just
a lot of cars honking as they drove by, or
you know, waving of people. A couple of other security
guards on parking lots, Hey, p j what's up. It
was like everyone seemed to know this guy, Phoenix was
in his element. He must have stopped for thirty photo
ops by the time we made it around the block.
All the women, so many women would want selfies with
(33:25):
him or take pictures, or he did this thing where
you carry women like a bride to get a picture.
I mean, that was a workout in itself. But it
wasn't just a photo op. The recruits got to see
some action too. There was a couple of people who
had clearly gotten kicked out of the club but weren't
leaving yet, clearly being too intoxicated, and one of the
telltale signs that she's about to go down as you
(33:45):
see someone pull off their shirt, they're like ship shortless mail,
shirtless mail Phoenix leapt into the middle of the fray.
We just kind of stood back and watch him get
in there and talk people down. He pulled up pepper
spray at one point, didn't deploy, but just laid in faces.
You know, back up or else are you gonna get it?
A full year of patrolling later, James and three other
(34:07):
battle hardened recruits who had been at the tryouts were
inducted as full team members of the rain City Superheroes,
and by this time James had a new superhero name,
being a history nerd and uh loving a lot of
things Latin. I kind of went down the path of
the Roman Army and shows evocatus. It means veteran in Latin,
(34:28):
and UH usually just got chopped down to EVO for short.
Evo is the one I told you about before who
wears a full faced helmet a bit like daft punk
and motorcycle leathers with thick protective gloves. With a team
that now included train warriors like Evo, the Rain City
Superheroes were ready to take Seattle by storm. Phoenix even
(34:50):
had his girlfriend along for the ride, Purple. Rain Purple
focused mainly on supporting victims of domestic violence. El Caballero
remembers the heyday of the Ray City Superheroes. Well, we
were really hitting the pavement. We were really doing some stuff,
from felons who would stabbed people, hardcore drug dealers like
the cocaine and the cartel stuff, to identity thieves like
(35:14):
we hit the ground running. The team held practices in
the middle of the night at gas Works Park. It's
on the shores of Lake Union, a freshwater lake in
the middle of Seattle. The rusting remains of an old
gas plant still stand there late at night by the
metal ruins. The superheroes would trade skills. Phoenix taught them
(35:35):
m A moves, and Evo taught knife disarms and other
techniques he picked up in the military, and these turned
out to be necessary. According to Midnight Jack, things could
get pretty gnarly out on patrol. We go to crazy
ass light. We were going to work with fucking bruises
and black eyes from fistfights, broken thumbs, taped up toes,
(35:57):
washing the mace off your body at the end of
a long nighte so you can get two hours sleep,
and going in stock shelves at the target. That's the
kind of life that we lived. The stakes were hot.
I had to look out for each other. Like Phoenix says,
this wasn't a game. I end up getting stabbed and
(36:19):
Cabby was there and he's like, oh, it's all good, man,
don't even stress about that. So we're talking and we're
getting dress at getting stad Oh yeah, it's like everything's fine.
We're talking about our way to the car. We're driving
back to the hospital or whatever, right, and before I
get in, I like can't stop tearing up, right, And
I'm like, man, I can't get in the hospital like this,
Like there's cameras, people might see it. We are tearing up,
(36:40):
like I can't stop crying, like a stabbed Yeah, I
just can't stop and get my ship together and I
wake up. But I'm in the hospital bit and I'm
like what the cat was like, don't worry, boss, I
choked you out. I was like, thanks, man, you're a
genius choking your buddy unconscious so he doesn't freak out
getting stabbed. That's true friendship. And it's just as well because,
(37:04):
as you might have gathered, Phoenix has a lot of
stabbing stories. He got the chance to repay Cabby. On
another patrol in Belltown, Cabler and I see this person
and the guy's got a knife and he's yelling at
this guy and this girl, and Cabby runs in and
the guy turns around and reaches out and grabs Elkaboler
straight in the crotch and starts grabbing his junk. Cabby
(37:25):
at instinct grabs the guy's arm right, So the guy's
arms kind of grabbing his junk like that, and he's
got his arm around it like this and like this
back is for on the side of the street. And
then I come through. When I put the guy down
and Cabby steps back, he's like he's holding himself and
he goes, you know what, man, I forgive you. So
the guy he was grabbing his nuts. It was just
(37:46):
one of those moments. It looked like I was gonna
get his junk pulled off. It was hilarious. I love
Cabby that way. Until I met Cabby, I never imagined
that superhero work would put your groin in so many
high risk situations. Anyway, flash forward to today. Of the
individuals who made up the rain City superhero movement in
two thousand and eleven and two thousand and twelve, none
(38:08):
of them are on speaking terms with Phoenix Jones, literally
not one. We'll get into the drama of all that
fallout later, but despite the fracture of the group, speaking
to me one, it was clear that they missed each other.
Just kind of the calm, cool demeanor that Jones had
at that time, where it was like, I'm gonna take
(38:29):
care of business and fight some crime, but I'm not
gonna be scared about it. That was always impressive with me.
Cabby is this mix of like skilled negotiator right and
tactical fighter. Is a tactical monster, so he'll come in
and just do something and hit somebody one time or
take them down the right way, and by the time
(38:49):
they got something to do, they're just they're in the
wrong position. I can't tell you enough about that guy.
When you're risking your lives together, you get close and
evil got to know the rest of the team, particularly well,
a lot of the people on the team would just
kind of naturally talk to me because I kind of
accidentally wound up as like the entire HR departments. Evo
had many roles in the rain City Superhero movement. Turns
(39:11):
out being a superhero comes with a lot of admin
In addition to running Phoenix is social media, filling out
endless paperwork, and managing the patrol schedule. Evo was also
the rain City Superhero's main chauffeur. I would leave up
to an hour and a half early before a patrol
to start picking up team members, and I was driving
a tiny Forward Focus at the time, and I would
(39:31):
have it packed like a clown car full of these
superheroes who couldn't drive. So I would be listening for,
you know, two to three hours a night of these
people just kind of venting and unwinding about everything going
on in their personal lives before we hit the street
and put on the mask. If there's one thing I've
learned in my time in the world of real life superheroes,
(39:51):
and so they have a lot of car trouble, Phoenix
seems to learn from one car crisis to the next,
both with me and with his former crew members. Over
the course of many many car pools with Phoenix, Evo
begin to notice a pattern that made him uneasy. I
guess one of the unintended consequences of me driving him
absolutely everywhere is that he would tell me these stories about,
(40:14):
you know, what's going on, Oh my god, you won't
to believe what she told me this time, or something
like that. But he tells this story to so many
people that he kind of forgets who he's already told.
Phoenix would reel off stories to people on the phone
as they cruised around in Evo's car. Evo would also
drive Phoenix to speaking engagements at summer camps and colleges,
where he'd tell wild tales of his crime fighting capers.
(40:38):
Evo started noticing that the details and these familiar stories
started shifting. He would just hop on his phone and
you know, start telling different team members different versions of
the same story as well, seemingly kind of forgetting like
I'm in the car or that I've already heard this.
As well as having concerns about the truth of Phoenix's
claims evil, it was starting to have doubts about Phoenix's
(41:00):
leadership style. Behind the scenes, it wasn't very communicative. If
it wasn't like on stage or if it was in
front of a crowd or anything like that, he didn't
talk much, or he didn't tell a lot of people
like what was going on or what's the next step.
It's kind of like, if you want to be in this,
you gotta follow my every word and lead. In a
team full of aspiring superheroes, there was always going to
(41:22):
be some friction, but Evo says things got particularly bad
between Phoenix and Midnight Jack. They would bud heads like
an old married couple and just end up getting in
yelling fights, and more than one patrol, you know, one
would just like funking, I'm out and they would just
leave the patrol, leaving a bunch of people in line,
kind of like, uh, what what do we do? When
(41:42):
I spoke to him, Phoenix didn't deny that there had
been clashes, but to him, that misses the point. Every
one of those guys didn't no ship before they met me,
and I taught every single one of them how to
fight crime. So people can kind of say with a
will from personality conflicts, but when it comes to just facts,
half of those guys would be nowhere without my crime fighting.
(42:03):
Any group of people is going to have its personality conflicts,
and for a group like the Rain City Superheroes, with
it's larger than life personalities undergirded by a sense of righteousness,
I'm sure it was even harder to keep everyone in agreement.
And then throwing the high stakes nature of their mission,
the possibility of death or injury, and top it off
(42:24):
with an arrogant, charismatic leader. And it's a wonder they
were able to work together at all. But somehow they
did it, and maybe they could have kept at it.
But then they started to get attention, first from the
citizens of Seattle, then the local and eventually national news media.
Phoenix and his gang were about to hit the big time,
(42:47):
and the fragile alliance they had with each other would
finally start to buckle under the weight of their growing fame.
That's coming up next time. The Superhero Complex is hosted
(43:20):
and written by Me David Weinberg and reported by Me,
Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham. Production from Amalia Sortland and
Caroline Thornham. Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David Waters are
executive producers, fact checking by Andrew Schwartz, Production management from
Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing
(43:42):
and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision
by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is composed
by Paul Housden. Special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton,
Matt O'Meara, Katrina Norvelle Beth and macalou so or In Rosenbaum,
Shelby Shenkman and all the team at U t A.
(44:05):
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com