September 5, 2024 • 47 mins
Fact is separated from Fiction in this episode about the true story of Tom Slick Jr. Hear from those who knew him, knew of him, and who carry on his legacy._____
“Tom Slick: Mystery Hunter” Stars Owen Wilson, Sissy Spacek and Schuyler Fisk
Written and Directed by Caroline Slaughter
Story Edited by Jeb Stuart
Produced and Assistant Directed by Emilia Brock
Original Score, Sound Design, Mixing and Mastering by Jesse Nighswonger
Executive Produced by Owen Wilson, Sissy Spacek, Schuyler Fisk, Jeb Stuart, Caroline Slaughter, Brian Lavin, L.C. Crowley, Brandon Barr and Virginia Prescott
Special thanks to historian Catherine Nixon Cooke whose expert advice on Tom Slick Jr. and book – “Tom Slick, Mystery Hunter!” – served as inspiration for the show.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
School of humans.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Came from over there, due west towards those woods, following
you Slick. Tom Slick, February fourteenth, nineteen fifty eight. My
team and I have been out here in the Himalayas
for months, rarely surviving on an expedition that's nearly hijack
my life. Hell, it's taken everything, but we just heard it.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
The proof.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
To track the Ltty is an expedition of life and death,
mister Slick.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
It's some mystery that does not want to be sogged.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
That's why I'm here.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
That's second something to the explode.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Slick cut the brown wire. What if I told you
I just cut the red one. We're gonna die Dulles
when chance arrives at at.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
God, But blood pressure checked after that.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Mom, you don't have to listen to this.
Speaker 6 (01:06):
If it's too much. These are my father's untold stories.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I am listening.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
This is the mostly true tale of Tom Slick, the
most interesting man you've never heard of.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Welcome to chapter eight. Fact verse fiction. The director John
Ford is credited with saying, when the legend becomes fact
print the legend. This podcast follows the remarkable exploits of
(01:48):
a real man who lived a legendary life. In this
bonus episode, we'll separate the facts from fiction. I'm Caroline Slaughter,
the writer and director of Tom Slick Mystery Hunter. I
spoke with Tom Slick's descendants and those who are carrying
on his legacy to reveal the real Tom Slick. Thomas
(02:11):
Slick Junior was born in Clarion, Pennsylvania, on May sixth,
nineteen sixteen. As depicted in the podcast. His father, Tom
Slick Senior, was known as the King of the Wildcatters
due to the large fortune he made mining the fields
of Oklahoma for oil before his death in nineteen thirty
at only forty six years old. Tom inherited millions after
(02:33):
his father's death and used that inheritance to fund institutes
dedicated to cutting edge scientific research, some of which still
exist today. Slick also funded multiple expeditions to track down
the Eddy. We'll get into all of that and more,
but first things first. Did Tom Slick leave behind lost
tapes documenting his exploits.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
There were no tapes in the archive. I found, just
wonderful letters.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
This is Tom Slick Junior, historian and his niece Catherine
Nixon Cook.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
I discovered in a shed in one of his scientific institutes.
All of his letters written between nineteen forty one and
nineteen sixty two, the year that he died.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
These letters served as research for the two biographies Catherine
wrote about her uncle, including one titled Tom Slick Mystery Hunter.
But unlike our podcast series, her books are composed of
only facts.
Speaker 6 (03:32):
These letters of Tom Slick were deep. They talked about feelings,
they talked about new ideas. They were a real treasure trove.
There were stories of breeding the Brangus cattle. There were
stories about the Yetti. There were stories about corresponding with
Albert Schweitzer about birth control. He invented a hair dryer
(03:53):
that we now would think of as a hooded hair dryer.
He started an Institute for peace. Just really too many.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
To me, Catherine's right. Our podcast series covers only a
portion of Tom Slick's unique and ambitious pursuits, and some
of those escapades, as you'll find out in this episode,
are largely dramatized, but they are based on truth. Though
Tom Slick played many roles in his life as an explorer, inventor,
(04:21):
and pioneer of science, the role he revered the most
was being a father.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
My brother, tom, My, sister Patty, and I would spend
the entire summer with Dad in San Antonio. Our times
with him were really fun.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
That's Tom Slick Junior's youngest son, Charles urschel Slick, known
to friends and family as Chuck. In the podcast, Tom
Slick's story is told true tapes found by his supposed
descendants Live and Claire Slick. Both are fictional characters I
created for the podcast, but Chuck and his two siblings
(04:57):
had first hand experience with Tom's as a devoted and
engaged father.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
He was a really fun person and that, along with
his interests in his enthusiasm for whatever his projects were,
the fun part brought people along with him, even people
who would have said, you know, oh my gosh, the yetie,
it's crazy, but his enthusiasm was infectious.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Chuck was four or five when his parents divorced. His
mother moved them from San Antonio to New Jersey, but
his father remained very involved in his children's lives.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
He took us traveling to a lot of places. We
went to Bermuda, we went to Nassau, we went to Acapulco, Disneyland.
But we didn't always go in the normal fashion. One
time when we were driving to the Grand Canyon, he
bought Volkswagen bus from his step brother Charles Erschel, but
it didn't have air conditioning because it's nineteen fifty eight
(05:55):
or nine. But that didn't slow him down. He got
some of the engineers from Southwest Research Institute, one of
his institutions, to come to his house and put a
room air conditioner on the roof and pipe it into
the bus, and we were just as cool as we
could be.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
It seems like he had a childlike spirit.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, he did. He was very interested in just all
sorts of things. His mind was kind of wide open
and very optimistic. He sort of thought, well, anything can happen.
He thought nothing was impossible.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
It was this spirit that motivated his ambitious pursuits and
just one of the many truths Slick bestowed on his children.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
He was big on aphorisms. Whenever we would complain about something,
which was often, he would say, you have to be adaptable,
or you'll become extinct like the dinosaurs. And when we
were scared to do something like dive off the diving board,
he would say, a coward dies a thousand deaths, A
brave man only one.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
You may recognize this aphorism from episode four, when Owen
Wilson's Slick tells the character Bud about his drive to
find the Eddy. According to Chuck, it was an adage
instilled in his father and childhood.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
The story was that they were out in the woods
and there was some like a log bridge that you
had to cross to get over the creek, and he
was scared to do it, and either his father or
his grandfather said that to him, a coward dies a
thousand deaths, a brave man only one. And of course
later on in his life, with all the things that
he did, including in places like Brazil and the Amazon
(07:31):
and the Himalayas, it certainly he took it to heart.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
This was one of the many things young Tom garnered
from a pivotal figure in his life. Catherine Nixon Cook explains.
Speaker 6 (07:43):
Tom Slick was greatly influenced by his dad and did
inherit that spirit of adventure and curiosity.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
While in the podcast we depict Slick Junior as having
a competitive urge to escape living under the shadow of
his father, that was an embellishment I set up to
motivate him. According to Catherine, Tom respected and adored his father,
and even though that contentious dynamic is dramatized in the series,
(08:12):
there was a truth Slick Junior touched on in his
speech to Bud that his father's fascinations inspired his own.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
Tom Slick Senior was away a lot looking for oil,
but when he was home he was very tender, and
his three children adored him. He read them stories. I
love to talk about the Man of snow Lome Denege
in the mountains, which started Tom's curiosity about the snow man,
(08:41):
which would become the Yeti.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
So Slick Junior did, in fact, first hear about the
Yeti from his father, a cryptozoological mystery that he would
later pursue on multiple expeditions to the Himalayas. But this
was just one of the influences his father had on him.
The stories about Tom Slick Senior from episode one are
(09:04):
largely true. I'll fill you in on that and more
after the break.
Speaker 7 (09:21):
My father used to tell me a coward dies a
thousand discs, brave man only one, and he lived by
that motto, which made him a legend.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Millie Kerr is an historian of Tom Slick Sor. She's
also his great great niece, making her Tom Slick Junior's
great niece. Millie says Tom Slick Sr. Was indeed the
first lucky Tom Slick.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
What I love about Tom Slick Sr. Was that he
really did make his own luck. His brother and father
worked in the oil industry, but in sort of low
level positions, and he was just determined to make it
in this field. So he moved around a bit, and
then he moved down to Oklahoma to find the big one,
as he put it. And at that point he had
(10:12):
actually been very unlucky, and he had earned the nickname
dry hole Slick because everywhere he drilled it came up dry.
But then he happened to discover the Cushing oil field,
which was one of the most important and large oil
fields in the US, and he essentially became an overnight millionaire.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
When Tom Slick Senior died, his estate was valued at
somewhere between seventy five and one hundred million dollars in
today's terms, that's between six hundred and fifty nine million
and one point eight billion. He was reputed to be
the wealthiest independent oil man in the world.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
And he ultimately became extremely successful. After a period of
very bad luck, where a lot of people would have
just thrown in the towel and said this is not working.
But he was just determined to push on and find
that big one. So his legacy was vast, and he
really was a true wildcatter in that he was operating
on his own and looking for his own luck and
(11:12):
making it.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Unfortunately, Slick Senior died young, at only forty six years old.
Tom Slick Junior was just fourteen at the time. Losing
your father is hard enough, but there were other consequences
of his death on the Slick family too.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Tom Slick sor hated publicity, hated the press, only gave
one interview, I believe in his entire career, and part
of that was his concern about how his wealth and
or his children's wealth might impact the family in the future.
But when he died, he couldn't control the fact that
(11:52):
his death was widely reported in the papers, and a
lot of those articles referenced his net worth. And then
several years later, when his widow, Bernice, married Charles Erschel,
they tried to keep their wedding completely private, but it
got picked up in the press and so the public
(12:12):
and criminals like machine Gun Kelly discovered the immense wealth
of this family, and that made the surviving family members
really vulnerable because at the time, kidnapping became sort of
the new trend in criminal activity. After the end of Prohibition.
Criminals who had been bootlegging were trying to figure out
(12:33):
new ways to make money, and so they began kidnapping
wealthy individuals for ransom, and Machine Gun Kelly and his
wife Catherine decided to kidnap a family member.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
That's right, machine Gun Kelly, not the rapper, but the
infamous bank robber, really did kidnaps like junior stepfather Charles Erschel.
According to Millie, that target was originally supposed to be
Tom's sister Betty.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Apparently they thought for quite a while about kidnapping my grandmother,
who I believe was about fifteen at the time, But
in the end, when machine Gun Kelly and his accomplice
came to the family home in Oklahoma City, they took
my step great grandfather Charles Erschel, and this ended up
(13:20):
being one of the most highly publicized notable kidnappings in
American history.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
In episode two, Tom Slick Junior figures out from a
ransom note where Charles Erschel is being held hostage, but
that didn't really happen. First of all, at the times,
like Junior was in boarding school at Exeter, so he
didn't face off with machine Gun Kelly as I depicted
in the podcast. And second of all, my.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Great grandmother Bernice paid the ransom, and at that time
it was the highest kidnapping ransom that had ever been paid,
and because of that, Charles Erschel was released by the crimine.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
But there is a really remarkable element of this story
that is true. While kidnapped, Charles Erschuel did keep track
of the plane routes, and after he was released, Ursul
provided that and other information to authorities in order to
help track down Machine Gun Kelly's location.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
While he was held hostage, he noted everything he could,
including the times of the day when planes would fly overhead.
He just used his bodyclock to estimate what time that was.
He also worked out where approximately the kidnappers had taken him,
just based on things like sounds and smells and how
(14:39):
long they'd been on one road before they turned and
he essentially gave this investigation over to j Edgar Hoover
on a silver platter.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
In the podcast, this occurs in the late thirties, not
long before World War Two, but Charles Ersul's kidnapping actually
happened earlier, in nineteen thirty three. After the Lindberg ab
kidnapping in nineteen thirty two, which was a case the
FBI flubbed, President Herbert Hoover needed a win, so he
(15:08):
was determined to track down Machine Gun Kelly and his accomplices, which,
with Charles Urschel's help, he did.
Speaker 8 (15:15):
So.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
It was Ursul, not Tom Slick, who was by their
side when the FBI rated Machine Gun Kelly's farm Don't
You gam It, Don't You, and after a highly publicized trial,
Kelly was imprisoned in Alcatraz. For the show, we moved
the kidnapping back a couple of years so that our
(15:36):
hero Tom Slick would be old enough to assist the
FBI in tracking down his stepfather. This also works so
that his Road to Damascus moment would land right before
World War Two, when Alan Dulles, who at the time
was an OSS secret agent, could theoretically recruit Slick for
a more substantial mission.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
But in real life, Allan dllis is an interesting character
to place in the podcast, but the relationship is fictional.
He was old enough to be Tom's father, and he
went to Princeton.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Tom Slick went to Yale, which, as Catherine points out.
Speaker 6 (16:10):
Yale was a big recruiting ground, first for the OSS
and then for the CIA. So that connection, that link,
that possibility is in the true Tom Slick story.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
So most of you probably know about Yale's notorious secret
society Skull and Bones, which was prime recruitment for the OSS,
which became the CIA, and there is an air of
mystery about Tom Slick's potential involvement with the society when
he went to school there. So while we don't know
that Dulles and Tom Slick ever knew each other, the
(16:44):
idea that our hero might have cross paths with the
longest serving director of the CIA could have happened later.
As the threat of World War II loomed. In nineteen
forty one, Tom Slick did volunteer for naval duty, but
was disqualified due to poor eyesight. So, as was depicted
in the podcast, Tom Slick was sent to Santiago, Chili
(17:06):
by the War Production Board.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
When Tom Slick was working as a dollar a year
man at the beginning of World War Two, he was
mysteriously posted to South America.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
At the time, a Nazi spirring was operating in Chile,
and there was in fact a German mission to bomb
the Panama Canal called Operation Pelican. When I found out
that Tom Slick was in Chile at the same time
that this operation was underway, I connected the two.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, I just pulled up declassified files released in twenty seventeen.
They're all about a Nazi spiring headquartered in Chile. Nazi
spiring headquartered in Chili, and Dad was there, yep.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
But as far as we know, Tom Slick had no
involvement in sabotaging the Nazis diabolical plan. That said, government
files about Nazi activity in South America during World War
II are now being to classify, so who knows what
might turn up about Tom Slick Junior.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
There were rumors within the family and with close friends
who knew him, that perhaps Tom Slick was involved in
espionage during the war.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
In the podcast in Awestruck, Claire played by Sissy Spask,
finally remembers her father laughing off these accusations.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
I was always a rumored that he was some sort
of secret agent, but he just laugh at all.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
Well, now you know.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
And indeed his reaction was to just laugh it off,
and none of us ever really knew the truth.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Along with this fact, there is another one I wove
into episode two in.
Speaker 6 (18:43):
The Panama Canal Caper, Tom says, when chance arrives act
that's a very Tom Slick saying something his father taught
him when he was a little boy, and certainly he
would have said it over and over again to whomever
he was working with in South America Dallas.
Speaker 7 (19:02):
Chance arrived at.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Tom Slick's fortitude is what led me to connect him
to another clandestine mission. His assistance in helping the mysterious
and mystical Lama X escape Tibet.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
We all could guess that Lama X is loosely based
on the Dali Lama. There are very interesting stories about
how the Dalai Lama was rescued from Tibet. When the
Chinese were moving in in nineteen I want to say
nineteen fifty seven, might have been nineteen fifty eight. It
was the same time that Tom Slick was on expedition in.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Nepal, one of his Yetti Hunt expeditions.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
So there were always very remote rumors that perhaps he
and Peter Burn helped with that.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Remember in episode six when Jimmy Stewart's character meets Bud
at the airport and almost calls him Peter. That's because
even though Bud is completely made up, I was inspired
by the real man Peter Byrne, who is one of
Tom Slick's lead guides on his yetty expeditions. The Bud
character is a composite of a handful of Slick's expedition
(20:11):
team members, but Burne's tenacity and experience with big game
hunting was a significant influence on Bud's character. Additionally, the
Chilean spy Dominique pure fiction, but who doesn't love writing
a fearless and savvy female operative.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yes, that's how I get my secrets.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Catherine is all in for that.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
She did not exist that I know of, But every
story needs romance.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
So Tom Slick's involvement and the Dalai Lama's escape from
Debet is rumored. There's no solid proof, but it's not
all made up. Tom Slick did really meet the Dali Lama,
and there's one scene in the podcast about that interaction
that's true. Katherine Nixon Cook explains.
Speaker 6 (20:57):
In the podcast, Tom Slick asks the if he can
have a crash course in enlightenment, and in fact, he
really did ask the Dali Lama that very question. When
he met the Dali Lama in nineteen fifty seven, Tom
was very interested in cosmic consciousness, something that would later
translate to his institute, the Mind Science Foundation. He asked
(21:21):
his Holiness if he could attain cosmic consciousness. The Dali
Lama replied, well, yes, that's possible. How long do you have?
Tom Slick replied, I've got one week.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
Tom Slick might have had limited time due to an
expedition that, unlike the CIA missions, was quite true. His
hunt for the yetty Slick launched multiple Yetti expeditions in
the Himalayas throughout the nineteen fifties. His fascination with cryptozoology,
which is known as the science of hidden animals, is
(21:55):
well documented and started as early as his college years,
when he per just a hote, allegedly a cross between
a hog and a goat. He didn't crossbreed the animal himself,
but tracked it down after reading about it and Ripley's
Believe It or Not and Believe It or Not. He
did actually name it Sweet William. This was followed by
(22:20):
his real hunt for the Lognus monster in nineteen thirty seven,
an adventure he embarked on with his fraternity brothers during
a summer break from Yale. According to Catherine Nixon Cook,
unlike what we depicted in the podcast, Slick took this
expedition very seriously, and though he didn't find NeSSI on
this trip, he did discover that science and fun can coexist.
(22:44):
In fact, if you visit Tomslick Park in San Antonio, Texas,
there's a metal sculpture of NeSSI submerged in the park's lake,
another thrilling adventure that adds to the legend of Tom
Slick Junior.
Speaker 7 (22:58):
My first fling with crypto's zoology. I didn't even get
to first base.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Look, it's important to note that at the time, cryptozoology
was thought of very differently than it is today. Chuck
Slick explains.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
If you think about it in the nineteen fifties, in
a sort of pre GPS and Google Earth world, that
it might perfectly been reasonable that some creature like the
Yeti could exist in a place like the Himalayas, which
was almost completely undiscovered by Western scientists and geographers, and
there was sort of the theory that it was possible
(23:34):
that the Yeti was some sort of a missing link
in the evolutionary chain between apes and men, and that
would have been quite a scientific find.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
So, as we make clear in the podcast, Slick's interest
in the Yetti was grounded in science and because of
a handful of cryptozoological discoveries made in the early twentieth century.
Slick wasn't the only one to mount to hunt in
the Himalayas. Sir Edmund Hillary, most widely known as the
first Western explorer to climb Everest, led an expedition in
(24:05):
search of the Yeti with Sherpa mountaineer tin Zang Norgay
around nineteen sixty one, but Slick pioneered the quest for
the legendary creature.
Speaker 6 (24:15):
Before that, Tom Slick went on three different Yetti hunts
in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Catherine Nixon Cook covers the specifics of each of these
expeditions in her book In Search of Tom Slick, and
it's thanks to Catherine's research that I slipped another fact
into the podcast. Tom Slick did meet the Maharaja of
Baroda before heading out on his first expedition.
Speaker 7 (24:41):
My Roger listen, I'm not hunting the Yeti to kill it.
I'm a man of science.
Speaker 8 (24:45):
But those in your rent don't believe what they can see.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
Yeah, I agree, some don't, but I'm not one of them.
Science is about exploring the unknown.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
And though Slick did in real life tell the Maharaja
about his quote snowman hunt, the Maharazon never warned him
about tracking down the Yetti, so Slick dove in full force.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
With true adventuresome spirit. He lined up all kinds of
things to help the hunt, including tracking dogs, which did
not work. They wore special boots in the snow. He
had the idea of a plane that would hover and
look for a Yetti in the hills. He added all
sorts of scientific components to these hunts. He took along
(25:32):
the Burn brothers, Peter Burn being one of those who
were known for their hunting and tracking abilities, and was
sure that he had found evidence of the Yeti several times.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
Those Slick never found the Yetti. There were two discoveries
he made on these tracks.
Speaker 6 (25:51):
There's the story of the Yeti footprint, which came back
to Texas as a plaster cast and sat on his
dining room table. When I was a little.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Girl, Catherine's biography of Slick traces his discovery of the
footprint in the snow at about ten thousand feet in
a mountain range bordering the Rune Valley in the Himalayas.
It was approximately thirteen inches long and was similar to
tracks Peter Byrne found at eight thousand feet, which were
the five toed footprints of a bipedal creature, one that
(26:26):
walks on two legs, not four, of considerable weight.
Speaker 5 (26:31):
Holy Holy how released this?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
This footprint must be around thirteen inches long five inches wide.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Yes, we posted some of the photos from the expeditions,
including the footprint and other historical documents, on the School
of Humans Instagram page, so go check it out. Chuck
Slick was a very young boy when his father embarked
on his Yetty expeditions, but he did get a kick
out of these initial discoveries.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Oh did give him plaster casts of Yetty footprints, which
was a great thing to talk about at cocktail parties. Somewhere.
It's just disappeared over the years.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
Slick's next discovery will not be a new one to listeners,
even if it could have been ripped from a movie script.
Speaker 6 (27:17):
The Jimmy Stewart smuggling story in the podcast is mostly
true and it sounds totally made up. Tom Slick did
meet during his life all sorts of fascinating people, some
of them movie stars like Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
According to Catherine and a handful of sources, Jimmy Stewart
did in fact smuggle a Yetti appendage from Calcutta to
London in nineteen fifty eight. Catherine shares details there.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
Were rumors that a Yetti hand was in a monastery
high in the mountains of Nepal. If this was true,
it could help prove the existence of the Yetti. Tom
Slick asked one of his expedition members ud in the podcast,
Peter Byrne in real life, to go to the monastery
(28:06):
and acquire just the thumb of the hand. That is
what was needed for the scientific study, since it would
be an opposable thumb if indeed it was a primate.
Peter Burn did a very delicate operation of removing the
thumb and sewing in its place a human thumb that
he had brought with him on the expedition. It was
(28:29):
not a paw but a thumb, and instead of going
through glorias Stewart's Laingerie.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
After fondling your unmentionables.
Speaker 6 (28:38):
I do hope the creature's fingers are still intact. Although
I love that story. It was actually in a film
canister in the days when we carried little canisters for
our film, and it got to London where it mysteriously
disappeared from the lab a few years later.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
So that whole daring museum heist when Slick steals the
Yetti Paul before it's exposed to the masses. Well, I
wish I could say that it's the reason the Yeddi
appendage vanished in real life. But that caper was pure fiction.
That said, the Yeti thumb did disappear, so maybe the
truth is stranger than fiction.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
It's another unsolved Tom Slick mystery.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Tom Slick took his Yeti expeditions very seriously, as was
noted in an editorial in the San Antonio Express in
nineteen fifty six, which is featured in Catherine Nixon Cooke's
biography In Search of Tom Slick. In the article, he
told a friend about his belief in the Yetti. When
his friend expressed doubt, Slick said he would donate one
(29:44):
thousand dollars to his friend's favorite charity if the Yetti
was not found before the end of nineteen fifty eight.
Then followed that up in the article by saying, quote,
before any mistaken conclusions are drawn, let me emphasize that
this does not signifying that I take the matter lightly
far from it. Indeed, it indicates how nearly positive I
(30:08):
am in my own mind that the Yeti exists as
a humanoid creature. The search for it is surely a
scientific project of major importance, which could add immeasurably to
our knowledge of mankind.
Speaker 7 (30:23):
As a man of science, I will not hunt down
some fantasy, but I will expose one of the greatest
mysteries of our time.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Those Slick's dedication to this cryptozoological pursuit was real. Chuck
Slick wants to make one thing very clear.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
He was never obsessed with the Yeti. It was just
one more thing, was the next challenge that he was
looking into. I'm sure he spent plenty of money on it.
I know he did, but it never would come anywhere
near depleting his assets. He never almost bankrupted him like
in the Podcas.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
But it sure makes for higher stakes in the show.
While his YETI expeditions might be Slick's most entertaining pursuit.
They can't compare to the real story of Slick's impact
on science, innovation, and the world. We'll hear all about
Tom Slick's legacy after the break in the nineteen forties,
(31:29):
when Tom Slick was a young man, he used his
inheritance to establish scientific research institutes, and they're some of
his most enduring and impactful accomplishments.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
We were instrumental in bringing the Pfizer vaccine to the
FDA for clinical trials.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
This is Larry Schlessinger, President and CEO of Texas Biomedical
Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. He's speaking about the
COVID nineteen vaccine, which we're all familiar with. Texas BioMed
was on the front lines of bringing the vaccine to
the masses.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Estimated to have saved over twenty million lives as a
result of having those vaccines come so quickly.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Texas BioMed was established in nineteen forty one, when Tom
was only twenty five years old. It is one of
the five institutes Tom Slick Junior founded and one of
the three that are still thriving today.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
Texas biomgal Research Institute has a mission, and that's protecting you,
your families, and the global community from the threat of
infectious diseases. You know, we say that cancer affects one
in three people, which is an astounding number, but I
like to say infection affects one in one. No one
(32:47):
escapes and infection in their lifetime.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Texas BioMed has been at the forefront of combating infectious diseases, which,
along with advancing the first COVID nineteen vaccine, also resulted
in the first bullet treatment, the first hepatitis C therapy,
and extensive research around HIVAS, along with many more developments,
most notably the high frequency neonatal ventilator, which provides breathing
(33:13):
support for infants and children who are too ill or
premature to breathe on their own. And as we depict
in the podcast, Tom Slick did believe that non human
primates could serve as a prime model of human health.
That vision led to pioneering advancements for humanity in both
science and medicine. Since then, Texas BioMed has enhanced their
(33:37):
National Primate Center, which was originated by Tom Slick. As
committed as the institute is to fighting infectious diseases that
afflict us today. They also have an eye on the
future and are training the next generation by providing STEM education,
which in the past year around ten thousand youth have
engaged in.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Tom had a guiding principle in his life, and that
god in principle was that the welfare of humankind is
advanced through scientific research. He wasn't a scientist himself, but
he definitely had this spirit of one and as a
result of what he created in the nineteen forties, he
left an enduring legacy.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Schlessinger explains where that legacy originated.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
Tom Slick Junior was a twenty five year old young
man who had a vision, and that vision was that
the advance of a human health would occur through biomedical
research and in vision San Antonio as a city of science.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
And this in and of itself was both innovative and risky.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
In nineteen forty one, in the wild west of Texas,
where there was no graduate education, no medical school, he
thought about building these nonprofit research institutes that would focus
on science, and so with inheritance he he purchased sixteen
hundred acres of a cattle ranch in San Antonio, Texas,
(35:05):
and he started to build a science infrastructure on that campus,
and he titled the portion of the land that he
purchased through inheritance the SR ranch EESSAR, which is phonetic
for S and R for scientific Research. And in the
nineteen fifties he developed what is our current site of
(35:26):
Texas Biomedical Research Institute. What is fascinating about this is
that in his twenties, Tom Slip Junior traveled the world
and he had this notion about innovation and science. He's
been called a true visionary, But really what compels me,
since I meet a lot of so called visionaries in
(35:47):
my career, is that he actually executed on that vision,
forming these biomedical research institutes.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Tom Slick's dream was to establish a city of science
in San Antonio, and he did it mid twenties when
most of us are still figuring out what we want
to do with our lives. The names of the institutes
may have changed over the years, but Slick's intention has
endured to implement the machinery of science towards the advancement
(36:16):
of humanity.
Speaker 8 (36:17):
Well, at any given day, we typically have about four
thousand active research projects.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
That's Adam Hamilton, the President and CEO of Southwest Research Institute, which,
as I'm sure you've guessed, is another one of Tom
Slick's prosperous scientific research institutes.
Speaker 8 (36:36):
We're also able to focus our research on topics that
range from anything deep sea to deep space and practically
everywhere in between. Selfist Research Institute itself is one of
the largest applied R and D organizations that's independent and
nonprofit in the country and also in the world.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
Hamilton ran down an extensive list of what the institute
is working on.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Now.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
There's the Lucy Mission, which, on an expedition to the
Trojan asteroids in Jupiter's orbit, made the accidental discovery of
an asteroid that had its own moon. They're also working
on a multimillion dollar project with the Department of Energy
on modifying traditional combustion engines so that they run on
one hundred percent hydrogen. Not a small feed, but I
(37:25):
don't think Tom Slick would expect anything less from one
of his institutes. Tom Slick Junior was serious about his
scientific pursuits, but as Chuck mentioned earlier, he also knew
how to have fun, and, as Hamilton notes, the Southwest
Research Institute mixes that element of playfulness into their culture.
Speaker 8 (37:45):
So we have a Yeti in our newsletter that's hidden
every month, and staff members have the opportunity to win
a prize if they're the first one to find the Yeti.
And we also have large yettis that we hide at
various places on our fifteen hundred campus. But we also
then celebrate excellence. We have Yety awards here on campus
(38:07):
for safety and for other things like that. It's a
part of our culture that I hope represents Tom Slick
in a very positive light.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Slicks Institutes are keeping his spirit alive in more ways
than one.
Speaker 6 (38:21):
I've called him a pioneer of the possible.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
In addition to being his biographer, Catherine Nixon Cook served
as the president of Tom Slick's Mind Science Foundation.
Speaker 6 (38:32):
When he was in the Himalayas, he met lamas who
seemed to defy Western science. He saw monks levitate, and
by that it's not the levitating you see in movies.
It was more of a jumping just a few feet up,
but nonetheless quite humanly impossible for you or me to do.
(38:53):
He saw them raise and lower body temperature at will
or simply through meditation. Saw feats of psychokinesis where things
seemed to move without explanation, and came back and started
his last institute, the Mind Science Foundation, to study these phenomena,
(39:13):
wanting to study them though from a scientific.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Point of view. Though Tom Slick did study these mystical,
unexplained occurrences. That is Mind Science Foundation Today. It's primary
focus is on neuroscience research, using the technology and tools
available to us in the twenty first century to explore
the vast potential of the human mind.
Speaker 6 (39:36):
Although the Mind Science Foundation focuses now on the neurosciences,
not long ago it still studied a few of these
mysteries that fascinated Tom Slick. Back in the nineteen nineties,
we took a trip to Indonesia to study a keygong
healer named Dynamo Jack. I personally saw him light a
(39:56):
fire with his hands and pass a chopstick through a
solid wooden table. We took the wooden table back to
another of Tom's institute's, Southwest Research Institute to see if
the table had been tampered with. It had not. The
scientists there said, we simply don't understand energy.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Catherine told me the story when I was writing the
scripts and the enigma surrounding Dynamo Jack and his mystifying
capabilities informed the character of Lama as.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Lightning.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Wow, this is unbelievable lighting when there's nothing around.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
But from what I've learned about Tom Slick, examining phenomenas
like Dynamo Jack was less about exploring the mystery for
him and more about a search for scientific understanding.
Speaker 6 (40:48):
He saw these as examples of human potential. Tom Slick
believed that the human mind is the greatest unexplored frontier
of all.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
For most of Tom Slick's life, the world was his
frontier and science was his compass. And even after everything
we've covered in this episode, there's still more we only
touched on, like how he developed a new breed of
cattle by crossbreeding the heat and insect resistant Indian Brama
with the tastier Scottish Angus. Obviously, he named it the
(41:20):
Brangus cattle. Or the construction method he innovated called the
Lifts Lab, which was utilized to build Trinity University in
San Antonio, a college he had a significant role in establishing.
Tom Slick also had a great interest in understanding women's
reproductive medicine and did pioneering research toward the creation of
birth control and IVF, and in the nineteen fifties he
(41:44):
launched an expedition to find a diamond pipeline in the
Amazon and studied alternative medicine in the use of medicinal
plants with shamanic healers oh An. Slick also had an
extensive art collection which included Picasso, Joe O'Keefe and other
prolific modern artists, which was an art form ahead of
(42:05):
its time. Like the collector Tom Slick himself and we
can't forget Slicks hunt for Bigfoot. He partnered on this
expedition with his Yeti Hunt collaborator Peter burn and journeyed
out west and through British Columbia. Burne pursued this mystery
until his death in twenty twenty three. But Tom Slick's
last big pursuit was so extraordinary it's hard to imagine.
(42:30):
Here's Chuck Slick again.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
He became very interested in what was probably the biggest
challenge he could ever take on world peace in the
time of the Cold War. He wrote two books about it.
One was called The Last Great Hope and the other
one was called Permanent Peace, and he spent a lot
of time and money creating these peace conferences. They would
(42:56):
have these experts in foreign affairs and diplomats and so
on would come together and talk about how we could
achieve world peace. And when he died, he left most
of his estate to the foundations, but there was a
proviso in his will that said some of his assets
were supposed to be used quote to achieve world peace.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Tom Slick Junior died on October sixth, nineteen sixty two,
on his way back from a pheasant hunt in Calgary, Canada.
He was a passenger and a Beachcraft Bananza thirty five
that crashed in the mountains of Montana. Catherine Nixon Cook's
book explains that the plane appeared to have gone to
pieces in flight, possibly as a result of an explosion
(43:42):
or lightning. Wreckage was strewn over a three quarter mile area,
and Slick's body was found nearly a mile from the
center of the crash site. Like his father, Tom Slick
was only forty six when he died, but even death
couldn't stop the great Tom Slick Junior.
Speaker 9 (44:03):
Catherine, you help me come up with this idea of
Slick living on another plane and being able to communicate
with his granddaughter live in the podcast, who is a
fictional character. But would the real Slick have believed this
was possible working from the other side.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
He did say often to people that he thought he
might find a way to work from the other side
those very words. But remember he was a man who
believed in science and the scientific method. So in the podcast,
Tom Slick says to his granddaughter.
Speaker 7 (44:35):
Does believing in something make it real?
Speaker 4 (44:38):
I think it does.
Speaker 6 (44:41):
Do you live in real life? Tom Slick did not
think so. He was an optimist. He was a possibilist.
He believed in possibilities and potential, but he had to
see the scientific proof to know something was real.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
Though Slick valued science and fact over a blind belief,
he still pursued the unknown, hunting down answers to unexplainable mysteries,
and even after everything we now know about Tom Slick,
he still remains a bit of a mystery himself.
Speaker 6 (45:19):
When the bio containment lab opened at Texas BioMed more
than a decade ago, there was silence as his sister,
who was still alive, cut the red ribbon to the
door of the bio containment lab. All of a sudden
in the silence as the audience sat there, you heard
a low hum of an airplane. Everyone looked up in
(45:45):
the sky and there, flying low and slow was a
vintage Beechcraft Bonanza, Tom Slick's type of plane, and I
personally thought he was there celebrating the legacy of science
that he saw living on.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Thank you for listening to Tom Slick Mystery Hunter, a
podcast about the most interesting man you've now heard of,
A real man who lived a legendary life.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
I don't know if it really happened, but that's what
they say. What a tale, that's right.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
This final episode of Tom Slick Mystery Hunter fact Verse
Fiction was written and hosted by Me Caroline Slaughter, with
production assistance from Amelia Brock, audio and score assembly by
Noah Kamer. Were grateful to our guests for their perspectives,
Charles Chuck, Slick, Catherine Nixon, Cook, Billy Kerr, Larry Schlessinger,
(46:56):
and Adam Hamilton. Executive producers for the series include Owen Wilson,
Sissy Spasic, Skuyler Fisk, Jeb Stewart, Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley,
Brandon Barr, Virginia Prescott, and Me Caroline slaughter,
School of humans.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Came from over there, due west towards those woods, following
you Slick. Tom Slick, February fourteenth, nineteen fifty eight. My
team and I have been out here in the Himalayas
for months, rarely surviving on an expedition that's nearly hijack
my life. Hell, it's taken everything, but we just heard it.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
The proof.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
To track the Ltty is an expedition of life and death,
mister Slick.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
It's some mystery that does not want to be sogged.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
That's why I'm here.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
That's second something to the explode.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Slick cut the brown wire. What if I told you
I just cut the red one. We're gonna die Dulles
when chance arrives at at.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
God, But blood pressure checked after that.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Mom, you don't have to listen to this.
Speaker 6 (01:06):
If it's too much. These are my father's untold stories.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I am listening.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
This is the mostly true tale of Tom Slick, the
most interesting man you've never heard of.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Welcome to chapter eight. Fact verse fiction. The director John
Ford is credited with saying, when the legend becomes fact
print the legend. This podcast follows the remarkable exploits of
(01:48):
a real man who lived a legendary life. In this
bonus episode, we'll separate the facts from fiction. I'm Caroline Slaughter,
the writer and director of Tom Slick Mystery Hunter. I
spoke with Tom Slick's descendants and those who are carrying
on his legacy to reveal the real Tom Slick. Thomas
(02:11):
Slick Junior was born in Clarion, Pennsylvania, on May sixth,
nineteen sixteen. As depicted in the podcast. His father, Tom
Slick Senior, was known as the King of the Wildcatters
due to the large fortune he made mining the fields
of Oklahoma for oil before his death in nineteen thirty
at only forty six years old. Tom inherited millions after
(02:33):
his father's death and used that inheritance to fund institutes
dedicated to cutting edge scientific research, some of which still
exist today. Slick also funded multiple expeditions to track down
the Eddy. We'll get into all of that and more,
but first things first. Did Tom Slick leave behind lost
tapes documenting his exploits.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
There were no tapes in the archive. I found, just
wonderful letters.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
This is Tom Slick Junior, historian and his niece Catherine
Nixon Cook.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
I discovered in a shed in one of his scientific institutes.
All of his letters written between nineteen forty one and
nineteen sixty two, the year that he died.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
These letters served as research for the two biographies Catherine
wrote about her uncle, including one titled Tom Slick Mystery Hunter.
But unlike our podcast series, her books are composed of
only facts.
Speaker 6 (03:32):
These letters of Tom Slick were deep. They talked about feelings,
they talked about new ideas. They were a real treasure trove.
There were stories of breeding the Brangus cattle. There were
stories about the Yetti. There were stories about corresponding with
Albert Schweitzer about birth control. He invented a hair dryer
(03:53):
that we now would think of as a hooded hair dryer.
He started an Institute for peace. Just really too many.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
To me, Catherine's right. Our podcast series covers only a
portion of Tom Slick's unique and ambitious pursuits, and some
of those escapades, as you'll find out in this episode,
are largely dramatized, but they are based on truth. Though
Tom Slick played many roles in his life as an explorer, inventor,
(04:21):
and pioneer of science, the role he revered the most
was being a father.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
My brother, tom, My, sister Patty, and I would spend
the entire summer with Dad in San Antonio. Our times
with him were really fun.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
That's Tom Slick Junior's youngest son, Charles urschel Slick, known
to friends and family as Chuck. In the podcast, Tom
Slick's story is told true tapes found by his supposed
descendants Live and Claire Slick. Both are fictional characters I
created for the podcast, but Chuck and his two siblings
(04:57):
had first hand experience with Tom's as a devoted and
engaged father.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
He was a really fun person and that, along with
his interests in his enthusiasm for whatever his projects were,
the fun part brought people along with him, even people
who would have said, you know, oh my gosh, the yetie,
it's crazy, but his enthusiasm was infectious.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Chuck was four or five when his parents divorced. His
mother moved them from San Antonio to New Jersey, but
his father remained very involved in his children's lives.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
He took us traveling to a lot of places. We
went to Bermuda, we went to Nassau, we went to Acapulco, Disneyland.
But we didn't always go in the normal fashion. One
time when we were driving to the Grand Canyon, he
bought Volkswagen bus from his step brother Charles Erschel, but
it didn't have air conditioning because it's nineteen fifty eight
(05:55):
or nine. But that didn't slow him down. He got
some of the engineers from Southwest Research Institute, one of
his institutions, to come to his house and put a
room air conditioner on the roof and pipe it into
the bus, and we were just as cool as we
could be.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
It seems like he had a childlike spirit.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, he did. He was very interested in just all
sorts of things. His mind was kind of wide open
and very optimistic. He sort of thought, well, anything can happen.
He thought nothing was impossible.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
It was this spirit that motivated his ambitious pursuits and
just one of the many truths Slick bestowed on his children.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
He was big on aphorisms. Whenever we would complain about something,
which was often, he would say, you have to be adaptable,
or you'll become extinct like the dinosaurs. And when we
were scared to do something like dive off the diving board,
he would say, a coward dies a thousand deaths, A
brave man only one.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
You may recognize this aphorism from episode four, when Owen
Wilson's Slick tells the character Bud about his drive to
find the Eddy. According to Chuck, it was an adage
instilled in his father and childhood.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
The story was that they were out in the woods
and there was some like a log bridge that you
had to cross to get over the creek, and he
was scared to do it, and either his father or
his grandfather said that to him, a coward dies a
thousand deaths, a brave man only one. And of course
later on in his life, with all the things that
he did, including in places like Brazil and the Amazon
(07:31):
and the Himalayas, it certainly he took it to heart.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
This was one of the many things young Tom garnered
from a pivotal figure in his life. Catherine Nixon Cook explains.
Speaker 6 (07:43):
Tom Slick was greatly influenced by his dad and did
inherit that spirit of adventure and curiosity.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
While in the podcast we depict Slick Junior as having
a competitive urge to escape living under the shadow of
his father, that was an embellishment I set up to
motivate him. According to Catherine, Tom respected and adored his father,
and even though that contentious dynamic is dramatized in the series,
(08:12):
there was a truth Slick Junior touched on in his
speech to Bud that his father's fascinations inspired his own.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
Tom Slick Senior was away a lot looking for oil,
but when he was home he was very tender, and
his three children adored him. He read them stories. I
love to talk about the Man of snow Lome Denege
in the mountains, which started Tom's curiosity about the snow man,
(08:41):
which would become the Yeti.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
So Slick Junior did, in fact, first hear about the
Yeti from his father, a cryptozoological mystery that he would
later pursue on multiple expeditions to the Himalayas. But this
was just one of the influences his father had on him.
The stories about Tom Slick Senior from episode one are
(09:04):
largely true. I'll fill you in on that and more
after the break.
Speaker 7 (09:21):
My father used to tell me a coward dies a
thousand discs, brave man only one, and he lived by
that motto, which made him a legend.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Millie Kerr is an historian of Tom Slick Sor. She's
also his great great niece, making her Tom Slick Junior's
great niece. Millie says Tom Slick Sr. Was indeed the
first lucky Tom Slick.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
What I love about Tom Slick Sr. Was that he
really did make his own luck. His brother and father
worked in the oil industry, but in sort of low
level positions, and he was just determined to make it
in this field. So he moved around a bit, and
then he moved down to Oklahoma to find the big one,
as he put it. And at that point he had
(10:12):
actually been very unlucky, and he had earned the nickname
dry hole Slick because everywhere he drilled it came up dry.
But then he happened to discover the Cushing oil field,
which was one of the most important and large oil
fields in the US, and he essentially became an overnight millionaire.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
When Tom Slick Senior died, his estate was valued at
somewhere between seventy five and one hundred million dollars in
today's terms, that's between six hundred and fifty nine million
and one point eight billion. He was reputed to be
the wealthiest independent oil man in the world.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
And he ultimately became extremely successful. After a period of
very bad luck, where a lot of people would have
just thrown in the towel and said this is not working.
But he was just determined to push on and find
that big one. So his legacy was vast, and he
really was a true wildcatter in that he was operating
on his own and looking for his own luck and
(11:12):
making it.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Unfortunately, Slick Senior died young, at only forty six years old.
Tom Slick Junior was just fourteen at the time. Losing
your father is hard enough, but there were other consequences
of his death on the Slick family too.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Tom Slick sor hated publicity, hated the press, only gave
one interview, I believe in his entire career, and part
of that was his concern about how his wealth and
or his children's wealth might impact the family in the future.
But when he died, he couldn't control the fact that
(11:52):
his death was widely reported in the papers, and a
lot of those articles referenced his net worth. And then
several years later, when his widow, Bernice, married Charles Erschel,
they tried to keep their wedding completely private, but it
got picked up in the press and so the public
(12:12):
and criminals like machine Gun Kelly discovered the immense wealth
of this family, and that made the surviving family members
really vulnerable because at the time, kidnapping became sort of
the new trend in criminal activity. After the end of Prohibition.
Criminals who had been bootlegging were trying to figure out
(12:33):
new ways to make money, and so they began kidnapping
wealthy individuals for ransom, and Machine Gun Kelly and his
wife Catherine decided to kidnap a family member.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
That's right, machine Gun Kelly, not the rapper, but the
infamous bank robber, really did kidnaps like junior stepfather Charles Erschel.
According to Millie, that target was originally supposed to be
Tom's sister Betty.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Apparently they thought for quite a while about kidnapping my grandmother,
who I believe was about fifteen at the time, But
in the end, when machine Gun Kelly and his accomplice
came to the family home in Oklahoma City, they took
my step great grandfather Charles Erschel, and this ended up
(13:20):
being one of the most highly publicized notable kidnappings in
American history.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
In episode two, Tom Slick Junior figures out from a
ransom note where Charles Erschel is being held hostage, but
that didn't really happen. First of all, at the times,
like Junior was in boarding school at Exeter, so he
didn't face off with machine Gun Kelly as I depicted
in the podcast. And second of all, my.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Great grandmother Bernice paid the ransom, and at that time
it was the highest kidnapping ransom that had ever been paid,
and because of that, Charles Erschel was released by the crimine.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
But there is a really remarkable element of this story
that is true. While kidnapped, Charles Erschuel did keep track
of the plane routes, and after he was released, Ursul
provided that and other information to authorities in order to
help track down Machine Gun Kelly's location.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
While he was held hostage, he noted everything he could,
including the times of the day when planes would fly overhead.
He just used his bodyclock to estimate what time that was.
He also worked out where approximately the kidnappers had taken him,
just based on things like sounds and smells and how
(14:39):
long they'd been on one road before they turned and
he essentially gave this investigation over to j Edgar Hoover
on a silver platter.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
In the podcast, this occurs in the late thirties, not
long before World War Two, but Charles Ersul's kidnapping actually
happened earlier, in nineteen thirty three. After the Lindberg ab
kidnapping in nineteen thirty two, which was a case the
FBI flubbed, President Herbert Hoover needed a win, so he
(15:08):
was determined to track down Machine Gun Kelly and his accomplices, which,
with Charles Urschel's help, he did.
Speaker 8 (15:15):
So.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
It was Ursul, not Tom Slick, who was by their
side when the FBI rated Machine Gun Kelly's farm Don't
You gam It, Don't You, and after a highly publicized trial,
Kelly was imprisoned in Alcatraz. For the show, we moved
the kidnapping back a couple of years so that our
(15:36):
hero Tom Slick would be old enough to assist the
FBI in tracking down his stepfather. This also works so
that his Road to Damascus moment would land right before
World War Two, when Alan Dulles, who at the time
was an OSS secret agent, could theoretically recruit Slick for
a more substantial mission.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
But in real life, Allan dllis is an interesting character
to place in the podcast, but the relationship is fictional.
He was old enough to be Tom's father, and he
went to Princeton.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Tom Slick went to Yale, which, as Catherine points out.
Speaker 6 (16:10):
Yale was a big recruiting ground, first for the OSS
and then for the CIA. So that connection, that link,
that possibility is in the true Tom Slick story.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
So most of you probably know about Yale's notorious secret
society Skull and Bones, which was prime recruitment for the OSS,
which became the CIA, and there is an air of
mystery about Tom Slick's potential involvement with the society when
he went to school there. So while we don't know
that Dulles and Tom Slick ever knew each other, the
(16:44):
idea that our hero might have cross paths with the
longest serving director of the CIA could have happened later.
As the threat of World War II loomed. In nineteen
forty one, Tom Slick did volunteer for naval duty, but
was disqualified due to poor eyesight. So, as was depicted
in the podcast, Tom Slick was sent to Santiago, Chili
(17:06):
by the War Production Board.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
When Tom Slick was working as a dollar a year
man at the beginning of World War Two, he was
mysteriously posted to South America.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
At the time, a Nazi spirring was operating in Chile,
and there was in fact a German mission to bomb
the Panama Canal called Operation Pelican. When I found out
that Tom Slick was in Chile at the same time
that this operation was underway, I connected the two.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, I just pulled up declassified files released in twenty seventeen.
They're all about a Nazi spiring headquartered in Chile. Nazi
spiring headquartered in Chili, and Dad was there, yep.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
But as far as we know, Tom Slick had no
involvement in sabotaging the Nazis diabolical plan. That said, government
files about Nazi activity in South America during World War
II are now being to classify, so who knows what
might turn up about Tom Slick Junior.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
There were rumors within the family and with close friends
who knew him, that perhaps Tom Slick was involved in
espionage during the war.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
In the podcast in Awestruck, Claire played by Sissy Spask,
finally remembers her father laughing off these accusations.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
I was always a rumored that he was some sort
of secret agent, but he just laugh at all.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
Well, now you know.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
And indeed his reaction was to just laugh it off,
and none of us ever really knew the truth.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Along with this fact, there is another one I wove
into episode two in.
Speaker 6 (18:43):
The Panama Canal Caper, Tom says, when chance arrives act
that's a very Tom Slick saying something his father taught
him when he was a little boy, and certainly he
would have said it over and over again to whomever
he was working with in South America Dallas.
Speaker 7 (19:02):
Chance arrived at.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Tom Slick's fortitude is what led me to connect him
to another clandestine mission. His assistance in helping the mysterious
and mystical Lama X escape Tibet.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
We all could guess that Lama X is loosely based
on the Dali Lama. There are very interesting stories about
how the Dalai Lama was rescued from Tibet. When the
Chinese were moving in in nineteen I want to say
nineteen fifty seven, might have been nineteen fifty eight. It
was the same time that Tom Slick was on expedition in.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Nepal, one of his Yetti Hunt expeditions.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
So there were always very remote rumors that perhaps he
and Peter Burn helped with that.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Remember in episode six when Jimmy Stewart's character meets Bud
at the airport and almost calls him Peter. That's because
even though Bud is completely made up, I was inspired
by the real man Peter Byrne, who is one of
Tom Slick's lead guides on his yetty expeditions. The Bud
character is a composite of a handful of Slick's expedition
(20:11):
team members, but Burne's tenacity and experience with big game
hunting was a significant influence on Bud's character. Additionally, the
Chilean spy Dominique pure fiction, but who doesn't love writing
a fearless and savvy female operative.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yes, that's how I get my secrets.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Catherine is all in for that.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
She did not exist that I know of, But every
story needs romance.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
So Tom Slick's involvement and the Dalai Lama's escape from
Debet is rumored. There's no solid proof, but it's not
all made up. Tom Slick did really meet the Dali Lama,
and there's one scene in the podcast about that interaction
that's true. Katherine Nixon Cook explains.
Speaker 6 (20:57):
In the podcast, Tom Slick asks the if he can
have a crash course in enlightenment, and in fact, he
really did ask the Dali Lama that very question. When
he met the Dali Lama in nineteen fifty seven, Tom
was very interested in cosmic consciousness, something that would later
translate to his institute, the Mind Science Foundation. He asked
(21:21):
his Holiness if he could attain cosmic consciousness. The Dali
Lama replied, well, yes, that's possible. How long do you have?
Tom Slick replied, I've got one week.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
Tom Slick might have had limited time due to an
expedition that, unlike the CIA missions, was quite true. His
hunt for the yetty Slick launched multiple Yetti expeditions in
the Himalayas throughout the nineteen fifties. His fascination with cryptozoology,
which is known as the science of hidden animals, is
(21:55):
well documented and started as early as his college years,
when he per just a hote, allegedly a cross between
a hog and a goat. He didn't crossbreed the animal himself,
but tracked it down after reading about it and Ripley's
Believe It or Not and Believe It or Not. He
did actually name it Sweet William. This was followed by
(22:20):
his real hunt for the Lognus monster in nineteen thirty seven,
an adventure he embarked on with his fraternity brothers during
a summer break from Yale. According to Catherine Nixon Cook,
unlike what we depicted in the podcast, Slick took this
expedition very seriously, and though he didn't find NeSSI on
this trip, he did discover that science and fun can coexist.
(22:44):
In fact, if you visit Tomslick Park in San Antonio, Texas,
there's a metal sculpture of NeSSI submerged in the park's lake,
another thrilling adventure that adds to the legend of Tom
Slick Junior.
Speaker 7 (22:58):
My first fling with crypto's zoology. I didn't even get
to first base.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Look, it's important to note that at the time, cryptozoology
was thought of very differently than it is today. Chuck
Slick explains.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
If you think about it in the nineteen fifties, in
a sort of pre GPS and Google Earth world, that
it might perfectly been reasonable that some creature like the
Yeti could exist in a place like the Himalayas, which
was almost completely undiscovered by Western scientists and geographers, and
there was sort of the theory that it was possible
(23:34):
that the Yeti was some sort of a missing link
in the evolutionary chain between apes and men, and that
would have been quite a scientific find.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
So, as we make clear in the podcast, Slick's interest
in the Yetti was grounded in science and because of
a handful of cryptozoological discoveries made in the early twentieth century.
Slick wasn't the only one to mount to hunt in
the Himalayas. Sir Edmund Hillary, most widely known as the
first Western explorer to climb Everest, led an expedition in
(24:05):
search of the Yeti with Sherpa mountaineer tin Zang Norgay
around nineteen sixty one, but Slick pioneered the quest for
the legendary creature.
Speaker 6 (24:15):
Before that, Tom Slick went on three different Yetti hunts
in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Catherine Nixon Cook covers the specifics of each of these
expeditions in her book In Search of Tom Slick, and
it's thanks to Catherine's research that I slipped another fact
into the podcast. Tom Slick did meet the Maharaja of
Baroda before heading out on his first expedition.
Speaker 7 (24:41):
My Roger listen, I'm not hunting the Yeti to kill it.
I'm a man of science.
Speaker 8 (24:45):
But those in your rent don't believe what they can see.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
Yeah, I agree, some don't, but I'm not one of them.
Science is about exploring the unknown.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
And though Slick did in real life tell the Maharaja
about his quote snowman hunt, the Maharazon never warned him
about tracking down the Yetti, so Slick dove in full force.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
With true adventuresome spirit. He lined up all kinds of
things to help the hunt, including tracking dogs, which did
not work. They wore special boots in the snow. He
had the idea of a plane that would hover and
look for a Yetti in the hills. He added all
sorts of scientific components to these hunts. He took along
(25:32):
the Burn brothers, Peter Burn being one of those who
were known for their hunting and tracking abilities, and was
sure that he had found evidence of the Yeti several times.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
Those Slick never found the Yetti. There were two discoveries
he made on these tracks.
Speaker 6 (25:51):
There's the story of the Yeti footprint, which came back
to Texas as a plaster cast and sat on his
dining room table. When I was a little.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Girl, Catherine's biography of Slick traces his discovery of the
footprint in the snow at about ten thousand feet in
a mountain range bordering the Rune Valley in the Himalayas.
It was approximately thirteen inches long and was similar to
tracks Peter Byrne found at eight thousand feet, which were
the five toed footprints of a bipedal creature, one that
(26:26):
walks on two legs, not four, of considerable weight.
Speaker 5 (26:31):
Holy Holy how released this?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
This footprint must be around thirteen inches long five inches wide.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Yes, we posted some of the photos from the expeditions,
including the footprint and other historical documents, on the School
of Humans Instagram page, so go check it out. Chuck
Slick was a very young boy when his father embarked
on his Yetty expeditions, but he did get a kick
out of these initial discoveries.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Oh did give him plaster casts of Yetty footprints, which
was a great thing to talk about at cocktail parties. Somewhere.
It's just disappeared over the years.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
Slick's next discovery will not be a new one to listeners,
even if it could have been ripped from a movie script.
Speaker 6 (27:17):
The Jimmy Stewart smuggling story in the podcast is mostly
true and it sounds totally made up. Tom Slick did
meet during his life all sorts of fascinating people, some
of them movie stars like Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
According to Catherine and a handful of sources, Jimmy Stewart
did in fact smuggle a Yetti appendage from Calcutta to
London in nineteen fifty eight. Catherine shares details there.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
Were rumors that a Yetti hand was in a monastery
high in the mountains of Nepal. If this was true,
it could help prove the existence of the Yetti. Tom
Slick asked one of his expedition members ud in the podcast,
Peter Byrne in real life, to go to the monastery
(28:06):
and acquire just the thumb of the hand. That is
what was needed for the scientific study, since it would
be an opposable thumb if indeed it was a primate.
Peter Burn did a very delicate operation of removing the
thumb and sewing in its place a human thumb that
he had brought with him on the expedition. It was
(28:29):
not a paw but a thumb, and instead of going
through glorias Stewart's Laingerie.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
After fondling your unmentionables.
Speaker 6 (28:38):
I do hope the creature's fingers are still intact. Although
I love that story. It was actually in a film
canister in the days when we carried little canisters for
our film, and it got to London where it mysteriously
disappeared from the lab a few years later.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
So that whole daring museum heist when Slick steals the
Yetti Paul before it's exposed to the masses. Well, I
wish I could say that it's the reason the Yeddi
appendage vanished in real life. But that caper was pure fiction.
That said, the Yeti thumb did disappear, so maybe the
truth is stranger than fiction.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
It's another unsolved Tom Slick mystery.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Tom Slick took his Yeti expeditions very seriously, as was
noted in an editorial in the San Antonio Express in
nineteen fifty six, which is featured in Catherine Nixon Cooke's
biography In Search of Tom Slick. In the article, he
told a friend about his belief in the Yetti. When
his friend expressed doubt, Slick said he would donate one
(29:44):
thousand dollars to his friend's favorite charity if the Yetti
was not found before the end of nineteen fifty eight.
Then followed that up in the article by saying, quote,
before any mistaken conclusions are drawn, let me emphasize that
this does not signifying that I take the matter lightly
far from it. Indeed, it indicates how nearly positive I
(30:08):
am in my own mind that the Yeti exists as
a humanoid creature. The search for it is surely a
scientific project of major importance, which could add immeasurably to
our knowledge of mankind.
Speaker 7 (30:23):
As a man of science, I will not hunt down
some fantasy, but I will expose one of the greatest
mysteries of our time.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Those Slick's dedication to this cryptozoological pursuit was real. Chuck
Slick wants to make one thing very clear.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
He was never obsessed with the Yeti. It was just
one more thing, was the next challenge that he was
looking into. I'm sure he spent plenty of money on it.
I know he did, but it never would come anywhere
near depleting his assets. He never almost bankrupted him like
in the Podcas.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
But it sure makes for higher stakes in the show.
While his YETI expeditions might be Slick's most entertaining pursuit.
They can't compare to the real story of Slick's impact
on science, innovation, and the world. We'll hear all about
Tom Slick's legacy after the break in the nineteen forties,
(31:29):
when Tom Slick was a young man, he used his
inheritance to establish scientific research institutes, and they're some of
his most enduring and impactful accomplishments.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
We were instrumental in bringing the Pfizer vaccine to the
FDA for clinical trials.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
This is Larry Schlessinger, President and CEO of Texas Biomedical
Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. He's speaking about the
COVID nineteen vaccine, which we're all familiar with. Texas BioMed
was on the front lines of bringing the vaccine to
the masses.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Estimated to have saved over twenty million lives as a
result of having those vaccines come so quickly.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Texas BioMed was established in nineteen forty one, when Tom
was only twenty five years old. It is one of
the five institutes Tom Slick Junior founded and one of
the three that are still thriving today.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
Texas biomgal Research Institute has a mission, and that's protecting you,
your families, and the global community from the threat of
infectious diseases. You know, we say that cancer affects one
in three people, which is an astounding number, but I
like to say infection affects one in one. No one
(32:47):
escapes and infection in their lifetime.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Texas BioMed has been at the forefront of combating infectious diseases, which,
along with advancing the first COVID nineteen vaccine, also resulted
in the first bullet treatment, the first hepatitis C therapy,
and extensive research around HIVAS, along with many more developments,
most notably the high frequency neonatal ventilator, which provides breathing
(33:13):
support for infants and children who are too ill or
premature to breathe on their own. And as we depict
in the podcast, Tom Slick did believe that non human
primates could serve as a prime model of human health.
That vision led to pioneering advancements for humanity in both
science and medicine. Since then, Texas BioMed has enhanced their
(33:37):
National Primate Center, which was originated by Tom Slick. As
committed as the institute is to fighting infectious diseases that
afflict us today. They also have an eye on the
future and are training the next generation by providing STEM education,
which in the past year around ten thousand youth have
engaged in.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Tom had a guiding principle in his life, and that
god in principle was that the welfare of humankind is
advanced through scientific research. He wasn't a scientist himself, but
he definitely had this spirit of one and as a
result of what he created in the nineteen forties, he
left an enduring legacy.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Schlessinger explains where that legacy originated.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
Tom Slick Junior was a twenty five year old young
man who had a vision, and that vision was that
the advance of a human health would occur through biomedical
research and in vision San Antonio as a city of science.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
And this in and of itself was both innovative and risky.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
In nineteen forty one, in the wild west of Texas,
where there was no graduate education, no medical school, he
thought about building these nonprofit research institutes that would focus
on science, and so with inheritance he he purchased sixteen
hundred acres of a cattle ranch in San Antonio, Texas,
(35:05):
and he started to build a science infrastructure on that campus,
and he titled the portion of the land that he
purchased through inheritance the SR ranch EESSAR, which is phonetic
for S and R for scientific Research. And in the
nineteen fifties he developed what is our current site of
(35:26):
Texas Biomedical Research Institute. What is fascinating about this is
that in his twenties, Tom Slip Junior traveled the world
and he had this notion about innovation and science. He's
been called a true visionary, But really what compels me,
since I meet a lot of so called visionaries in
(35:47):
my career, is that he actually executed on that vision,
forming these biomedical research institutes.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Tom Slick's dream was to establish a city of science
in San Antonio, and he did it mid twenties when
most of us are still figuring out what we want
to do with our lives. The names of the institutes
may have changed over the years, but Slick's intention has
endured to implement the machinery of science towards the advancement
(36:16):
of humanity.
Speaker 8 (36:17):
Well, at any given day, we typically have about four
thousand active research projects.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
That's Adam Hamilton, the President and CEO of Southwest Research Institute, which,
as I'm sure you've guessed, is another one of Tom
Slick's prosperous scientific research institutes.
Speaker 8 (36:36):
We're also able to focus our research on topics that
range from anything deep sea to deep space and practically
everywhere in between. Selfist Research Institute itself is one of
the largest applied R and D organizations that's independent and
nonprofit in the country and also in the world.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
Hamilton ran down an extensive list of what the institute
is working on.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Now.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
There's the Lucy Mission, which, on an expedition to the
Trojan asteroids in Jupiter's orbit, made the accidental discovery of
an asteroid that had its own moon. They're also working
on a multimillion dollar project with the Department of Energy
on modifying traditional combustion engines so that they run on
one hundred percent hydrogen. Not a small feed, but I
(37:25):
don't think Tom Slick would expect anything less from one
of his institutes. Tom Slick Junior was serious about his
scientific pursuits, but as Chuck mentioned earlier, he also knew
how to have fun, and, as Hamilton notes, the Southwest
Research Institute mixes that element of playfulness into their culture.
Speaker 8 (37:45):
So we have a Yeti in our newsletter that's hidden
every month, and staff members have the opportunity to win
a prize if they're the first one to find the Yeti.
And we also have large yettis that we hide at
various places on our fifteen hundred campus. But we also
then celebrate excellence. We have Yety awards here on campus
(38:07):
for safety and for other things like that. It's a
part of our culture that I hope represents Tom Slick
in a very positive light.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Slicks Institutes are keeping his spirit alive in more ways
than one.
Speaker 6 (38:21):
I've called him a pioneer of the possible.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
In addition to being his biographer, Catherine Nixon Cook served
as the president of Tom Slick's Mind Science Foundation.
Speaker 6 (38:32):
When he was in the Himalayas, he met lamas who
seemed to defy Western science. He saw monks levitate, and
by that it's not the levitating you see in movies.
It was more of a jumping just a few feet up,
but nonetheless quite humanly impossible for you or me to do.
(38:53):
He saw them raise and lower body temperature at will
or simply through meditation. Saw feats of psychokinesis where things
seemed to move without explanation, and came back and started
his last institute, the Mind Science Foundation, to study these phenomena,
(39:13):
wanting to study them though from a scientific.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Point of view. Though Tom Slick did study these mystical,
unexplained occurrences. That is Mind Science Foundation Today. It's primary
focus is on neuroscience research, using the technology and tools
available to us in the twenty first century to explore
the vast potential of the human mind.
Speaker 6 (39:36):
Although the Mind Science Foundation focuses now on the neurosciences,
not long ago it still studied a few of these
mysteries that fascinated Tom Slick. Back in the nineteen nineties,
we took a trip to Indonesia to study a keygong
healer named Dynamo Jack. I personally saw him light a
(39:56):
fire with his hands and pass a chopstick through a
solid wooden table. We took the wooden table back to
another of Tom's institute's, Southwest Research Institute to see if
the table had been tampered with. It had not. The
scientists there said, we simply don't understand energy.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Catherine told me the story when I was writing the
scripts and the enigma surrounding Dynamo Jack and his mystifying
capabilities informed the character of Lama as.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Lightning.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Wow, this is unbelievable lighting when there's nothing around.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
But from what I've learned about Tom Slick, examining phenomenas
like Dynamo Jack was less about exploring the mystery for
him and more about a search for scientific understanding.
Speaker 6 (40:48):
He saw these as examples of human potential. Tom Slick
believed that the human mind is the greatest unexplored frontier
of all.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
For most of Tom Slick's life, the world was his
frontier and science was his compass. And even after everything
we've covered in this episode, there's still more we only
touched on, like how he developed a new breed of
cattle by crossbreeding the heat and insect resistant Indian Brama
with the tastier Scottish Angus. Obviously, he named it the
(41:20):
Brangus cattle. Or the construction method he innovated called the
Lifts Lab, which was utilized to build Trinity University in
San Antonio, a college he had a significant role in establishing.
Tom Slick also had a great interest in understanding women's
reproductive medicine and did pioneering research toward the creation of
birth control and IVF, and in the nineteen fifties he
(41:44):
launched an expedition to find a diamond pipeline in the
Amazon and studied alternative medicine in the use of medicinal
plants with shamanic healers oh An. Slick also had an
extensive art collection which included Picasso, Joe O'Keefe and other
prolific modern artists, which was an art form ahead of
(42:05):
its time. Like the collector Tom Slick himself and we
can't forget Slicks hunt for Bigfoot. He partnered on this
expedition with his Yeti Hunt collaborator Peter burn and journeyed
out west and through British Columbia. Burne pursued this mystery
until his death in twenty twenty three. But Tom Slick's
last big pursuit was so extraordinary it's hard to imagine.
(42:30):
Here's Chuck Slick again.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
He became very interested in what was probably the biggest
challenge he could ever take on world peace in the
time of the Cold War. He wrote two books about it.
One was called The Last Great Hope and the other
one was called Permanent Peace, and he spent a lot
of time and money creating these peace conferences. They would
(42:56):
have these experts in foreign affairs and diplomats and so
on would come together and talk about how we could
achieve world peace. And when he died, he left most
of his estate to the foundations, but there was a
proviso in his will that said some of his assets
were supposed to be used quote to achieve world peace.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Tom Slick Junior died on October sixth, nineteen sixty two,
on his way back from a pheasant hunt in Calgary, Canada.
He was a passenger and a Beachcraft Bananza thirty five
that crashed in the mountains of Montana. Catherine Nixon Cook's
book explains that the plane appeared to have gone to
pieces in flight, possibly as a result of an explosion
(43:42):
or lightning. Wreckage was strewn over a three quarter mile area,
and Slick's body was found nearly a mile from the
center of the crash site. Like his father, Tom Slick
was only forty six when he died, but even death
couldn't stop the great Tom Slick Junior.
Speaker 9 (44:03):
Catherine, you help me come up with this idea of
Slick living on another plane and being able to communicate
with his granddaughter live in the podcast, who is a
fictional character. But would the real Slick have believed this
was possible working from the other side.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
He did say often to people that he thought he
might find a way to work from the other side
those very words. But remember he was a man who
believed in science and the scientific method. So in the podcast,
Tom Slick says to his granddaughter.
Speaker 7 (44:35):
Does believing in something make it real?
Speaker 4 (44:38):
I think it does.
Speaker 6 (44:41):
Do you live in real life? Tom Slick did not
think so. He was an optimist. He was a possibilist.
He believed in possibilities and potential, but he had to
see the scientific proof to know something was real.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
Though Slick valued science and fact over a blind belief,
he still pursued the unknown, hunting down answers to unexplainable mysteries,
and even after everything we now know about Tom Slick,
he still remains a bit of a mystery himself.
Speaker 6 (45:19):
When the bio containment lab opened at Texas BioMed more
than a decade ago, there was silence as his sister,
who was still alive, cut the red ribbon to the
door of the bio containment lab. All of a sudden
in the silence as the audience sat there, you heard
a low hum of an airplane. Everyone looked up in
(45:45):
the sky and there, flying low and slow was a
vintage Beechcraft Bonanza, Tom Slick's type of plane, and I
personally thought he was there celebrating the legacy of science
that he saw living on.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Thank you for listening to Tom Slick Mystery Hunter, a
podcast about the most interesting man you've now heard of,
A real man who lived a legendary life.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
I don't know if it really happened, but that's what
they say. What a tale, that's right.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
This final episode of Tom Slick Mystery Hunter fact Verse
Fiction was written and hosted by Me Caroline Slaughter, with
production assistance from Amelia Brock, audio and score assembly by
Noah Kamer. Were grateful to our guests for their perspectives,
Charles Chuck, Slick, Catherine Nixon, Cook, Billy Kerr, Larry Schlessinger,
(46:56):
and Adam Hamilton. Executive producers for the series include Owen Wilson,
Sissy Spasic, Skuyler Fisk, Jeb Stewart, Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley,
Brandon Barr, Virginia Prescott, and Me Caroline slaughter,
Host
Owen Wilson
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
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!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.