April 28, 2017 • 53 mins
For decades, mysterious tiles have appeared in dozens of cities across North and South America, touting a strange -- and strangely consistent -- message. But what are the Toynbee Tiles? What is their purpose and who made them?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers. Since government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show. I was David Bowman, I wasn't
all I think I'm Ben a k the south Side
Stanley Kuper. Yeah still still Uh it's weird. You know,
who really owns a nickname? People just give them to you,
You know when you hear about a lot of people
that have the same ones, but they have to own
it in their own special way. Like all the lives,
you know, everyone everyone's a little something, but yeah really
(00:49):
or a young something, you know. Uh, we're talking today
about a very particular kind of street art. And I
want to see from the top of of of this
episode that for some people who haven't heard this and
seen the title might sound weird for uh, for us
to open up talking about street art, but we we
(01:10):
love so much amazing street art, rilla street art especially, Um,
there are conspiracies in that world. You know, who is
banksy for instances, people that created m hmm. And there's
one idea street art in particular that many of you
ladies and gentlemen for years, even before we had an
audio podcast, have asked us to cover and we received
(01:34):
some inspiration in the form of a friend of the show.
Most recently when we're in New York. Yeah, good friend
of the show and my own personal, longtime good friend,
Matt Riddle, and I were walking around in Manhattan and
he just kind of casually pointed at these odd little
um pieces of text in these kind of colored boxes
(01:57):
randomly along crosswalks and and said, these are blame by blazes.
I'm like, what, lem me blaz lem me blazes, what's what?
What the hell is that? Matt Riddle speak up and
nunciate and he said, there toyinb tiles And it took
me literally nine times of him having to repeat that,
like can you spell it? I'm not getting mess, I
don't understand what this word is, and it's it's They're
(02:19):
basically just these kind of odd little boxes of texts
that are all over Manhattan, and as it turns out, yeah,
they're across dozens of cities, not just on this continent either,
and allah you know the Georgia guidestones. Who the hell
put them there? Right? Right? So these things popularly known
(02:41):
as Toynbee tiles, and it is a tricky name and
spelled t o y in b e e. Uh. They're
made from just just as Noel said, they're they're embedded
into asphalt on the road. Uh. They're made from layers
of linoleum and this crack filling compound that's used to
keep paying want together. People began talking about these tiles
(03:04):
in the nineteen nineties, but you can find some references
that date back as far as the eighties. Still nineteen eighties,
not eighteen eighties. This is not like a it sting situation. Um.
And we can get into the messages too. We're going
to explore, uh, this the story of this. And first
(03:26):
I think I think you're absolutely asking the right question. Noal, Uh,
who is this guy? There's right right. So there's the
most popular guess is that Toynbee is a reference to
a fellow named Arnold J. Toynbee, religious historian UM born
in England in eighteen eighty nine. That's the same year
(03:49):
Hitler was born. Just from our previous podcast, Man, every
time we do a Hitler podcast, it just stays with
us and goes back to Hitler. All goes back to Hitler.
That's that's it, folks, that's the truth. Here's where it
gets crazy to be tiles. Adolf Hitler. We usually save
that for the mid roll break. Oh yeah, no, that's
(04:10):
the show. The rest of this is going to be silence,
and then we'll do an ad and then we'll go
to silence again. We should also do a shout out corner.
I guess, yeah, a shoutout where we shout out to
no one, no, no, yes, Hitler's side. Toy B is
not the only person mentioned in these tiles. Oh no,
specifically Stanley Kubrick, or well just the last name is mentioned.
(04:36):
He's the filmmaker that you may know from the film
two thousand one of Space Odyssey, amongst all of his
other incredible works Orange Lolita, Shut Pads of Glory, The Shining.
I mean, it just goes on. And the man was
was a maverick, I say, a filmmaking maverick and a
personal favorite of our compatriot Casey Pegram. Yes, and uh
(04:57):
not to spoil two thousand one of Space Artists. You
can't spoil that movie. Come on, it's an it's incredible.
You should watch it. If he's seen it in the
end of it, a human man uh seems to be
reborn in some way as a space baby. Okay, yes,
(05:18):
as a space baby whilst on a journey to do
the planet Jupiter. And even if you could spoil two
thousand and one, I think we've agreed that the statute
of limitations on spoilers for two thousands one of space
Honyestly is definitely definitely up. So it is weird to
think that it's sixteen years after those events like would
have taken place. Yes, yeah, that's what I love about
older science fiction two thousands. Yes, yes, everything would be different.
(05:42):
Will all be flying and cars and rocket packs? Like
like a handmade's tale that just premiered recently is set
in two thousand and five, I know, And it looks
more or less like modern day, doesn't it. Yes, that's
I thought that was pretty smart. Yeah, and the four were,
of course. But but the big question people would have
is Kubrick. Right, we got Kubrick. We all know Kubrick. Toynbee.
(06:06):
We're learning about Toynbee today and that weird name. Uh,
what do these folks have in common? That's interesting because
Toynbee was a prodigious writer an alphabet prodigy, if you will,
And they don't really intersect too often. But Toynbee's writings
did mention a man named Zoroaster who conceived the idea
(06:29):
of monotheism, worshiping just one God instead of a Justice
League type pantheon of God's who all have their own
different powers and stuff. Uh. And this name Zoraster also
occurs in the title of the Space Odyssey theme song.
Thus spake Zaraster. There we don't don't, don't, don't don't
(07:05):
monkey hits something that was great. Guys, that was great. Yeah,
And that's that's it. That's perfect. Um. And thus big
Zoraster do get in front of anybody who's about to
write an angry Nietzche and email does come from malcomes
back to Hitler. Nietzsche, yes, and in perhaps that goes
back to Hitler as well. But other than that, other
(07:25):
than that one casual mentioned, the two ostensibly don't have
very much in common. They don't seem to have much
in common. So now we've set up some of the
references here, let's talk about what these tiles actually say.
So they all contain some variation of the following inscription
Um it's it's it's. It means almost like a short
(07:45):
poem or something, or like perhaps a card catalog. Jry.
So you have four lines all caps. First one says
twin bi idea, second one in movie two thousand one,
third line resurrect dead, fourth line on planet Jupiter. What. Yeah,
it's very strange. It Also, when I first learned about these,
which listeners won, one of you emailed me or left
(08:08):
a YouTube comment, and I it was so many years ago.
I don't recall the name, but I was. I was
wrong at the jump. I thought there was this crazy
guy whose last name was Toynbee who felt that Stanley
Kubrick had ripped off this idea that he had. It's
reasonable assumption because I didn't know as much um or
I hadn't dug into it as much. We also know
(08:29):
that there will be variations on the text, like political statements.
Were telling other people to go make their own tiles,
and uh, we have some other messages that they've written.
Here's just a couple of examples. Again, these are all texts,
and many times the eyes are lowercas that's the only
character that is lowercase. Please make and glue tiles as
(08:50):
the American media is working with the Soviet Union, and
it's thousands of fronts in USA. Two and that one
that's just leaves it right there. I feel like it's
can acted to another one. Perhaps right under f O
I a NBC journalist funneled FBI information on me to
Soviet You must make plus glue tiles you and S
(09:13):
media U S S R. Every concept of past five
years don't exist in Christian heaven. They only exist in
Christian hell. Now the cult of the Hellian are now
searching for more than one hell ideologies to get more reward. Well, yeah,
and if this idea survives after all, make those Hellies
are definitely connected to make those Hellian's pay for what
(09:35):
they've done. I'm begging you, thank you, and goodbye. Also,
some shorter ones murder every journalist. I beg you and
I'm only one man. And when I caught a fatal disease,
they gloated over its death. Okay, Now, clearly there's some
absurdism going on here, wouldn't you say? I mean, like
it seems it's almost like these some of these messages
(09:56):
come off as like these hard right wing kind of
political almost reatening sounding. You know, little blurbs, but then
there are things in here that totally derail them in
terms of like, does this person believe any of this stuff?
Is it just sort of like a Mary Prankster kind
of you know trick? Right? Is it an act? Is
there's some sort of mental situation, mental and balance at play.
(10:18):
That's very possible. And they're also asking for other people
to make tiles, so there's no way to confirm that
they're all done by the same person. It's tough. That's
a very important point. They also have footnotes. If you
check out the messages where if you happen to see these,
and we'll call the cities where you can find these. Uh,
you might see the larger one with the you know,
resurrect the Dead two thousand one Jupiter all that stuff. Uh,
(10:42):
you might see a smaller tile piece under it that
has those footnotes. That's where that murder every Journalist thing
came in. And then occasionally diatribes condemning the media, the
mafia or Jewish people. Yep, Hitler, we're back there already.
But there's a there's another. Uh, there's a tile. Some
(11:02):
of these tiles have their own names, right, Well, yeah, well,
some of these names or any name that you're gonna see,
has been ascribed by people who have researched these or
you know, documented them. Uh. Specifically, there are a couple
of message boards back in the nineties that were they
would document every single one. They had like a whole
website that was dedicated to this stuff. Well this one.
(11:24):
There was one in particular that's called the Manifesto Tile,
and it's four panels that are just white with black
text on them, and it's just super long, and it
starts off by talking about John Knight, who is I
guess someone who worked for the government, and it's just
talking about how this guy's out to get him, uh
he send sicking the mafia on him and all these things.
(11:47):
I mean, it's quite rambly if you go through it,
and it's quite frankly tough to read with all the characters. Yeah,
it's very um. The spacing is very tight, and at
times the letters are so dark that it almost looks
like a single line, kind of like look at it. Um.
But it's definitely by someone who feels like they're being persecuted. Right.
(12:10):
Paranoia is a big part of this, and it could
tie into some skizzo effective types of conditions. But again
without knowing the person for sure, we're just sort of speculating,
not even sort of, we're absolutely speculating. But where can
you find these? So Nol, for instance, you went and
(12:32):
actually saw some in real life. Yeah, I mean there
we saw. The thing was we were walking around um Metown, Manhattan,
and happened upon the first one and then saw another
one later and I thought maybe we had backtracked and
it was the same one, but it definitely wasn't the
same one. We've gone a different way. Uh. And they're
pretty randomly scattered all all across New York, but not
(12:54):
only New York. And that's the thing that that starts
the point to maybe who this this person was or
what kind of means you have at They're in Pennsylvania,
New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, d c Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan,
wait for it, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and more. And if
(13:16):
you want to see a complete list of where most
of them are found, go over to archive dot org,
hop on that way back machine and go to toynbee
dot net. Right, So, who made them? Who makes them?
Are they still active. Is that one person is more
than one person? Can we find them? Will explore that
(13:38):
question in depth after a word from our sponsors. Here's
where it gets crazy. No one absolutely agrees who created
these things. That's why it kind of reminds me of,
you know, the guide stones in a way because it's
(14:00):
text based. It's sort of an anti guide stone, because
it's much more like you'd stumble across it not even
know you it was there, right, the guys this like
ostentatious giant monument that you can't miss. But the intent
is sort of similar. I mean, it's to convey a
message hidden in plain sight more or less, you know.
And and then the idea is that, like the mystery
is what keeps people interested in seeking these out and
(14:23):
reading them and researching them and finding all about them.
But yeah, nobody knows who this person is that put
them there. Maybe it's a whole cadre. That's the other thing.
It's could be because when you look at them, there's
this consistency in the way they look, and like I said,
with the lower case eyes that you will find across
(14:44):
almost all of them. That makes you think it's you know,
either the same press that's being used to make these
or the same person's hand. You have a style guide,
I mean that's true. Hey, possibly style guide. We should
start writing all of our all of our work stuff
in toynbe style missives missives, yes, our missives and memos
(15:04):
uh and correspondencies. The multiple locations indicating this someth new
we alluded to earlier on indicate someone who, if it's
a single person, has both the means and the time
to travel, because traveling to that many places to do
that very specific thing is a is a tall order
(15:27):
financially and in terms of ours spent, and then to
buy all the materials as well that you need to
create those things, and you'd have to have a place
that secluded enough to create them in secret. Right, So
already we have some some pros and cons lack of
a better dichotomy. We have an argument for it being
one person because of the consistency, but we also have
(15:49):
an argument for being multiple people because the tiles at
times literally invite other people to make tiles. However, we
do know people have made some pretty solid guesses as
to the identity of the titlest the tyler. The tyler. Yeah,
that's how you say, sort of a hamburglar type of figure.
(16:09):
So there's this documentary that you may have seen. It
was on Netflix for a time. I cannot confirm on
my current machine whether it is still there, as Netflix
changes out their material all the time. So it's called
Resurrect Dead The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. It was
created in two thousand and eleven and directed by John Foy.
(16:30):
It features three investigators who have been looking into these
tiles since the nineties. One gentleman in particular named Justin,
who is, for the lack of a better word, obsessed
a bit with the toynbee idea. And then Steve and
Colin are his his buds and co workers. So they're
(16:51):
they're the ones who were visiting toynbee dot net way
back in the day and eventually, through their investigative measures
are all the measures they took, they ended up being
gifted control of that website and they have they've they've
arrived in the in the course of this documentary, which
we do recommend, they've arrived at some clues that have
(17:15):
can have convinced them in a way that they're they
feel like they know who this creator is yes. So
throughout this documentary they they identify three major suspects that
they think could possibly be the tyler. The first one
is a gentleman named Sevy Verna. It's not his full name,
(17:37):
will get into that later. And he's known as the birdman.
That's so cool, let's talk about a nickname. Why is
he called the birdman? Well, he sometimes will take care
of injured birds, and apparently that's one of the main
things that he does. Slightly older, gentleman. He's very intelligent
according to people who live near him the same street,
(17:58):
although he is a very difficult person to get a
hold of to talk to. He's very quiet, he likes
to keep to himself. He doesn't really go anywhere. Um,
he doesn't go anywhere, doesn't really leave his house that often.
Apparently sometimes he does, at least This is all according
to hearsay right people that were interviewed by these people
making the documentary. Um. However, according to a phone call
(18:22):
that the main guy made to this person's one of
their relatives, one of the guy's relatives, he has never
ever been to South America. And as we know, these
toy tiles are in three places and Also they found
out through this relative that he has a terrible lung condition.
And when you think about somebody going out on you know,
(18:43):
hot asphalt or on the street somewhere, even at night,
putting down those tiles, all that manual labor, I don't know,
you feel like maybe that person couldn't do it, or
maybe the lung condition was caused by exposure to all
those toxic chemicals for so many years. Because I mean
it seems to me like these are these what do
(19:03):
we talk about how far they date back? When? Like
do we have we dated them? We know that they
rumors of them first emerged in the eighties, but three
in particulars when Yeah, so this is a long long
time decades plus activity. But we have other we have
other suspects to right, speaking of nicknames that you got
(19:25):
to own railroad Joe love It or Julius Paroli. Do
you think he knew hobo code? I'm your man. So
he worked for the Conrail railroad company. Conrail passes through
every city in the US where the tiles have been found, right,
if you need to travel, Okay, I'm getting more on
(19:47):
board with that one. On board on the railroad Joe
train um so, a giant telescope was being shipped in
sections to Chile, uh and the shipment went through the
railyard where Railroad Joe worked and it was destined for
(20:08):
Lacia Observatory in July. Of course, um his family. I'm
gonna say as many time as I can, the family
of Railroad Shoe worked on creating tombstones. This was their business. Yeah,
so they thought maybe that's how we got access to
some of the tools required, or at least the concept
and the similar Yeah, exactly. But there's a fatal flaw
(20:28):
to this theory. Railroad Joe or Julius Pioli died on
March four, nineteen and seven. That is a fatal flaw, right,
I am assuming, unless he was resurrected on Jupiter and
made it back somehow, and that's what the whole thing
is about. Maybe he was resurrected on so weirdly optimistic
of you, that's you know what that's inspiring. Or maybe
(20:50):
he headed up some kind of twyn Be tile cult
and he laid the groundwork and spread the message far
and wide. Or maybe maybe he did all of it
and people were just finding them later. Because let's not
forget I mean these are in heavily foot trafficked areas,
and well you might argue, well, doesn't that mean it
(21:11):
would be found instantly. They're not that remarkable to look
at right away. And there's a lot of noise, you know, visually,
and you know, literally noise in these areas, and a
lot of you know, just garbage and stuff on the street.
You could pass by this thing and think it was
some kind of city sign for a sewer line or like.
You know, they don't look remarkable at all unless you
(21:33):
really peek down at them. And that was the only
way I would have never noticed them, and they haven't
pointed out to me. That's a great observation. We have
to remember the cities are already filled to the brim.
Was stuff you know that's probably wasn't the only street
art you saw when you were on your walk about.
Actually gets to the point where it's almost sensory overload
where to actually see the good stuff you you may
(21:55):
easily be distracted by some lesser quality stuff that's just
bigger and more Gaudi. Yeah, same reason it's tough to
uh spend all day at a museum and pay the
same amount of attention to everything you know, you can
get lost. We have one other suspect here, uh, fellow
names James Morasco. He started the Minority Association. And there's
(22:20):
a writer named Clark de Leon who interviewed him in
nineteen eighty three, and so we have some information via
this interview. Moresco lived in Fishtown or Kensington. These are
blue collar neighborhoods north of Center City, Philadelphia, and he's
very proud of his education. Matt noted earlier that he
(22:42):
has a soft bass voice. I did not note that
that is the uh, that is the gentleman who interviewed him. Sure,
I promis verbatim soft bass voice? You mean like a
radio kind of like a soft sexy? Does it? Voice?
Like a quiet story? It's a a bowling. It's probably
a bowling. You guys want to have an outlet, You
(23:03):
want to have a soft off soft afraid of doing that?
Come on, now you can do it. I really can't.
Softer naked low Well we uh, you could check out
his voice of the account. The only known record of
James Morasco was found, uh, was that he was found
(23:24):
to live in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, which is a nicer
neighborhood northwest of where those other neighborhoods are so not
so much blue collar. In two thousand one, some more
information was revealed about him. He cannot speak. According to
his wife, he had his voice box removed, and based
on his age, he would have been in his seventies
(23:44):
and eighties when the majority of these titles were thought
to be in place. What do you mean he had
his voice box removed? Yeah, I think it's has something
to do with cancer. I'm not sure. I can't verify that,
but I don't think it's like a creative choice. Yeah, yeah,
highly doubt it. It's a big world. So so we
have these three people, each of whom have some arguments
(24:07):
for and then some very powerful arguments against. Yes, and
just for some context, let's go to that interview that
we're talking about with James Morasco, because it is it
is a little important, and we'll just read this pretty quickly.
This is what they covered in the documentary from this
Are you going to do a bass voice? No? No,
because it's a different guy. This is Clark to Leon's
(24:30):
call me skeptical, but I had a hard time buy
James Morasco's concept that the planet Jupiter would be colonized
by bringing all the people on Earth who would ever
died back to life. Sorry about that. Morasco says he's
a social worker in Philly and he came across this
idea while reading a book by historian Arnold Toynbee, whose
theory on bringing dead molecules back to life was depicted
(24:52):
in the movie two thousand one, A Space Odyssey. That's
why he's contact and talk shows and newspapers to spread
this message. He's even found it a Jupiter colonization organization
called the Minority Association, which he says consists of me,
Eric Eric Sisto, who does the typing. Frank. Anyway, you
may be hearing more from Morasco, then again you may
(25:14):
not well done. Was this guy like a longshoreman or something? No, No,
he sounded nothing like that. He's a very nice gentleman.
It was all in print. So I just, uh, I
like that voice. I I like the idea of hanging
out with someone who always says Jupiter like they're angry
at it. Was he an affleck It's it's a wrong accent.
(25:35):
So that was that was from the article in the
Philadelphia inquirer called theories want to run that would buy
me again? And that's where we get a lot of information.
We also have a play the famous playwright that that
enters into the story here. That's right. A short play
(25:55):
by legendary playwright and screenwriter David mamet Uh entitled four Am,
which is from his Goldberg Street collection. It's a one
act play about a radio host and an odd color
who wants to discuss his plan to resurrect the dead
on Jupiter. Sounds familiar and it mentions Arnold Toynbee UM
two thousand one of Space Odyssey and the resurrection of
(26:19):
quote dead molecules on Jupiter. Stupid. Uh. There's also this
is this is a tantalizing breadcrumb here. There's also a
Toynbee tile in Santiago, Chile. It includes an address for
a house in South Philadelphia. Oh, can we read the
(26:42):
address on air? Are you guys? I don't know that.
I was hesitant to include it. The documentary chose to
not put it in there. Okay, Well you can find
it online if you wish. And you know, that's a
good point, Matt. Somebody probably lives there and there, you know,
trying to live their life without inquiries into the toy
B adventure. They did say it's on Seventh Street somewhere,
(27:06):
and they did say that they were also what they
called proto tiles found embedded in the pavement around this address.
These appeared to be test of the tile materials. Some
titles random letters, others were in Spanish. Right, so it
seems like there's something associated. You know, this is somehow
(27:27):
associated with Philly. Okay, So we kind of set the
stage here for information that this team has been gathering
and and again they're gathering the best known information about
the toy be tiles at least that you can find online,
which is pretty cool to follow these guys doing that well.
In early two thousand six, Uh, the guy Bill O'Neil
(27:48):
who was running toy b dot net dot net. Remember
we said that these guys took it over. It's because
he gave it to them and they got access to
hundreds of email messages that had come through. And this
is spanning from two thousand and six, and so that's
just one big thing. So now they're they have all
(28:10):
the information that you can have about the toy. They
have a cash right there they're building this enormous database.
But that's not the only weird thing they had access to.
There was mysterious broadcast. Do you guys remember the story
about the Max Headroom appearance, which is classic We are
(28:31):
because Matt Noel and I are actually friends off air,
we spend way too much time passing each other weird
stuff that we think is either funny or just bizarre,
and this is one. This is one. Um, could you
could you describe it? I think you guys went to
a well, I will I will start off by saying
that UM Chuck from Stuff you should Know did an
(28:53):
episode with our friend em Me Jonathan Strickland on his podcast.
It's text text stuff where they go deep into it. Basically,
it was a signal intrusion, uh, into a broadcast facility
in I can't remember Cacago, Yeah, where UM interrupted regular
(29:14):
broadcast day with this odd looking dude and kind of
like a plastic e face mask thing kind of glitch
video very much associated now the look of it with
like vapor wave community and like the kind of like
you know, weird like kitchy eighties kind of like neo
futuristic kind of vibe, almost plastic, very strange, very very
(29:37):
plastic e and fake looking. Um and what was what
did he hear? What he said? Yeah? He uh. The
person who makes the appearance says a series of bizarre things.
You should tide, I'll get you a hot drink. Yeah
(30:13):
that thing. Yeah, And everybody was every everybody was baffled
beyond words, bugged out, at a loss for words. And
this there's a similar thing that happens um in the
toyb case. In the guy named Joe Raymondo was watching
(30:35):
eyewitness news when a strange broadcast intruded over the air waves.
Someone hijacked the news and sent out the toyn B message. Yeah,
apparently it was just audio of what you would find
on the toy be tiles talking about the toy b
Idea two thousand one resurrected dead on Jupiter. And it
(30:56):
just kind of he said, it came in a wave.
It was like the whole you know, the whole TV broadcast,
Like the picture went away and you saw something. You
just heard the message come through as static gain like
there was gain static and then you hear the message
and then it went away. That's weird. It's really weird,
but it's gonna factor in later in the story, and
(31:19):
this story will continue after a brief word from our sponsors,
and we're back, no delay, as Matt would say, Yes,
we're back, zero delays. Um, so let's jump right into it.
(31:41):
There is a gentleman, now that these guys have access
to toynb dot net, there's a gentleman named Nathan mel
m e h L who wrote in with a story
apparently about a street profit that was given out pamphlets. Yeah. However,
when they contacted the guy, he says that, oh no,
(32:02):
my what I wrote was taken out of context. There
was actually no street profit, but there were flyers that
were just blanketing this area where he was visiting at
the time, and they included this TOYNB idea. There's this
whole thing about public notice, and then it says all
this stuff, and at the very bottom it says tune
(32:24):
six point to five megacycles short wave, which means the
people who are putting out this idea have a short
wave radio show of some sort, or at least a
place where they regularly give out signals. Which is interesting
then because that builds a case that they might have
knowledge related to radio broadcasting or transmissions and in the
(32:45):
course of resurrect the debt. Another thing that happens in
the documentary once again is probably the best source for
any information about the toy Bee tiles. They went to
this convention oriented around shortwave radio and they met a
fellow named John t Arthur who claimed that he communicated
with the toyn BE Tyler. I still like tylist with
(33:09):
the with with the toyn B Tyler, but only through
mail through post. And then when the documentarians prompted this
guy with the name Sevy, remember from our earlier three suspects,
John recalled the last name Verna. Yeah, he said it
out loud without them mentioning that at all. So, Hey,
(33:31):
what do you think, Noel, That's that's kind of crazy
that it that he was able to pop that off
the top of his head after writing to the guy
and getting correspondence back right off the dome. Son and
this this brought him back to Severino Sevy Verna and
revisited this and talk a little bit about his methods
(33:53):
for delivering possibly the tiles. They did another hard look
at his neighbors and friends and people who lived in
the immediate area, and they got a lot more detailed information. So,
according to the neighbors, Sevy had a bit of an
unusual car that might um shed some light on on
(34:17):
how he, if he was the person that did this,
installed these tiles. So this car only had one seat,
um on one side, by the driver's side. Imagine and
wait for it, there was no floorboard. What yeah, so
like Flintstone's mobile style just driving in a city. I
(34:39):
mean obviously they would have to be you know, the
the the what's the word, yeah, the drive train and
the the frame of the car stuff, stuff that's going
on down there. It would be like exactly exactly, so
there there would be like all of these open spaces
where if one were so inclined to do odd little
(34:59):
graffitis all over various cities, he could perhaps take that car,
park it, or even not even park it, maybe even
had a light Oh yeah, reached down pop on the tile,
because it wouldn't take that much time to do. One
of these would be sort of the equivalent of like
putting up a bill with wheat paste or something, you know,
where you just kind of hit it over a couple
(35:19):
of times, make sure it's flat, and then you move on.
You know, I heard them talk about wheat paste in this,
and they said something about wheat paste may have been
away that it was done but with asphalt stuff. So yeah,
let's talk a little bit about the structure of the tiles,
because we said that there's a consistency in their design.
So imagine these layers, right, The bottom layer is a adhesive,
(35:40):
a tar paper, and we talked about how the other
stuff is um a kind of tile, but with a
heavier rubber content and crack filling asphalt compound. So the
brilliant thing about this is when you lay it down,
you know, you would apply some pressure to make sure
it adheres, but as other cars pass over it, each
(36:02):
one of them is helping we paste it. Not to mention,
as the sun beats down on it and starts to
heat up those materials, that just gets more and more
baked into the environment. Yeah, and so this this is
not only an AHA moment, but this is also a
moment that explains a lot of stuff because one thing, um,
(36:26):
one thing that we should emphasize about these tiles is
many of them are found in areas that are so
heavily trafficked there would apparently be no way, you know,
even for somebody really fast to go up on foot
and then you know, one of these down unless it
was a drive by. Just and that's not the only
(36:48):
weird thing about Vernet that the neighbors said. The car
also had a giant antenna that would broadcast the twin
B message. Uh. The signal would interrupt TV and radio
signals as the car drove past. So I guess it's
sort of like a mini mobile pirate radio station that
would just intrude on whatever was available around in its
(37:09):
immediate proximity. Yeah, so really aggressive ice cream truck. Yeah. Yeah,
but he's getting you in your house when you're listening
to the radio or watching TV or something. Now, that's
allegedly sure the you know that the toybe message would
go out with this guy. But according to the you know,
the people who lived around him, they hated that car.
(37:29):
They knew what they knew about it because when it
drove past, they always mess up what they're listening to,
her watching, And he had some disputes with his neighbors.
He was not particularly loved in the community. Was held
at knife point once, apparently because there was an argument
over his loud organ and accordion playing. Yeah, for real
(37:50):
to become He's become a bit of a shut in
at the time documentary. But apply wood over his windows
and he put a lead pipe through his door. Yeah,
and he wouldn't respond to the multiple times these guys
were trying to get in touch with him, both in
person and even the neighbors, the people who knew who
he was. And you know, ostensibly they know he knows them,
(38:11):
but he would never answer his door for anybody. So
let's get weirder with it. Okay, there's another I know
there are a lot of names in this show, but uh,
they should be worth it, hopefully. Uh. Here's another person
named Ulis Fleming, and Ulis says he has a handwritten
letter sent and signed by James Morasco from his Minority
(38:33):
Association radio station, written in the early eighties. Yeah, and
Morasco also sent along a bunch of pages with info
about the project. Inside this letter, Morasco is listed as
the publicity director for the Minority Association, and at one
point in the documents, the author Morasco refers to himself
as Severino Verna. Holy crap, so we might be dealing
(38:58):
with the same. It's like batman, dude, Severino Morasco is
Batman and Severino is who's Batman? Bruce Wayne? Oh, I'm sorry? Oh,
is that a spoiler? Is Bruce Wayne? He's not actually
a bat Also lightweights, But this this is interesting, this
(39:22):
idea that there would be multiple identities, because that's something
that a lot of con artists do. Yeah, or a
street artist or a street artist might do that, like
Banksy or like a graph head is not going to
you know, spray paint Douglas Maroney. Here's my address and
my social Security number, list of my fears and when
(39:43):
I'm usually at home. That well, that was my big
question when when that address shows up in Chile, Um,
excuse me, Chile? Uh, Like, why would you put your
address there? Maybe if you want, if somebody who lives
in sa Thiago wants to write to him about the
toy b idea maybe And the thought is, if you're
(40:06):
in Chiley, you're never gonna actually get in contact with
me personally, Like you're not gonna fly here and find
me at my house. I don't understand the reasoning behind that.
Oh there was no internet, or there was, but it
was very very very young in the eighties. Crude, Yeah, right,
he has more more um I r C like message
(40:28):
boards a blunt instrument into Internet. Yes, yes it was.
It was a series of rocks. But yeah, I guess
you just wouldn't have that fear of having your address
out there in another country that's you know, across the world.
The idea of like doxing wasn't even like a twinkle
in the eye of the zeitgeist, right yeah, and like
maybe some black box government agency could do it. But
(40:50):
that's it. So let's not leave that. The play that
we mentioned earlier unexplained from that same letter U, there's
this quote that Arnold Toynbee's conception of the colonization of
outer space, as depicted in the movie two thousand one
of Space Odyssey, was first explained according to the letter
writer in a call in on Larry King Show in
(41:11):
February of nineteen eighty. WHOA, that was back when Larry
King was only a hundred Yeah, have you ever? No,
I don't mean this in a disrespectful way. I don't
want to body shame anyone or whatever the correct term is.
But he has a very large head, Like if you've
seen him when he's not sitting at his desk, in
(41:33):
his the environment where you think you're supposed to encounter him.
If you saw him walking down the street and you
had never seen the Larry King Show, he would still
be like, my God. That paired with the increasing curvature
of his spine and his tiny hands, he kind of
resembles a t Rex. Yeah. Yeah. So the reason this
(41:54):
is significant, the writing about this in February is because, uh,
David Mammott didn't write his piece until I think eighty three,
and then it officially came out in eighty four. Um.
And there's an excerpt from David Mammott discussing four Am
(42:14):
his play where he said, quote, yeah, this play is
an homage to Larry King the days when I used
to listen to him on the radio in the middle
of the night, which means this play that he wrote
is quite literally. Whoever this Tobe person was just like
calling up Larry Ins and saying these things to him.
(42:36):
And if you guys want to read an excerpt from
the play, h Greg, we need you to help to
publicize our play. We've been trying to get our organization
together to raise money to be able to hire republic
relations from like Wells and Jacoby to publicize organization. When
are we going to get the money I I don't
(42:57):
know to publicize. Yeah. In the movie Too Without and
the one based on the writings of Arnold Toynbee, they
speak of the plan. Excuse me, excuse me. But the
movie two thousand one was based on the writing and
the old human life is is is made of molecules
based on the writing of Arthur C. Clark All human, No, Greg, Look,
(43:17):
if you examine what it was based on the writings
of Arthur C. Clark, Greg, no, we have the well
go on, Greg. In the writings of Arnold Toynbee, he
discusses a plan whereby all human life could be easily
reconstituted onto the planet Jupiter. So you see here the
(43:38):
whole idea is right there. And David Man his play, no,
I mean clearly based on the chronology of events here
that this little play snippet was the influence for whatever
odd human did these things. Well, no, no, the play
was based on the actual guy who called in. He
called in Larry King apparently in the early eighties, and
(43:59):
then even'am it heard it and then wrote something very
similar to it, if not almost verbatim to what ma'am
It says that he made the whole thing up with
his brain mind, and that there was no actual call
that described the contents of his play. Be that as
it may. We just read an excerpt of the actual play.
(44:20):
But maybe, ma'am, it's full of it. I mean, maybe he's,
you know, based on like if he wrote this in
eighty THREEES in mid eighties, and isn't like that when
the first tiles started popping up the call, the Larry
King call comes from nineties, so this would be around
this time. And yeah, this is and ma'am it said,
(44:42):
it's when he used to listen to Larry King late
at night. So it's probably one of those things like,
you know, half half awake, half asleep, he's like listening
to Larry King falling falling asleep to it. It's like, oh, man,
I don't know where I'm getting these crazy thoughts about
Jupiter and Toynbee, but this is great. I'm gonna write.
This thing's just so speci scythic. Yeah, you know what
I mean. If it's if it was something a little
(45:03):
more stylized, whereas like people are being reincarnated or being
reborn in space yeah, you know, but Jupiter, it's Arnold Toynbee,
who is not commonly referenced in most day to day
associated with this kind of thing. Yeah, you know, it's
the old question which came first, the moment player the
(45:24):
Tobe title. Yep, yep, that's the original version. The world
may never know, but we have some conclusions here. So
the person who created these titles, whoever it was or is,
believed that Toynbee provided the instructions to resurrect a deceased person,
and that these instructions were the key to rebirth, not
(45:45):
just for that individual, but for every single human being
on this happy little planet of ours. Well, yeah, and
they at least believed it enough to spend a whole
lot of time and energy. I would say a good
amount of their life's energy is obsessive. Yes on on
that singular idea um, And we're the documentary pulls a
(46:07):
quote that we're going to quote here from Toynbee, and
it comes from his writings and experiences, and it says,
when after death the body dissolves into its physical elements,
these elements themselves are not annihilated. They are continuing to
exist as parts of the physical universe though no longer
(46:27):
in this form, which makes sense right, yeah, sort of
we are made of star stuff. Yea, your carbon breaks down,
but that carbon is still there. So the people who
created the documentary, which again is excellent and worth well
worth watching. Uh, they end with a conclusion where wherein
they are convinced that they have solved the mystery of
(46:48):
the toy be tiles um And I'm not completely I'm
not utterly convinced yet, because I would want to. I
would to have it either completely confirmed or to the
earlier point from the guide stones. Let the mystery be
a mystery. It's pretty cool, and I don't think I
don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that other people,
(47:11):
perhaps some of you listening today, would start making your own.
And not only that, he also or this person or
this group of people also believe that Stanley Kubick and
Arthur C. Clark then took these instructions and used them
to inform the plot, specifically the ending like the last
ten or eleven minutes of two thousand and one A
(47:32):
Space Odyssey, which you know what an idea? I mean,
you can't come up with this kind of stuff, well
said and we hope you enjoyed this exploration. We'd also
like to thank the illustrious Matt Riddle. Thank you Matt
Riddle and everybody else who wrote into us about these
tiles for finally for finally getting us to do this.
(47:54):
We have a long list of things that we want
to cover and uh we we try to get to
it all eventually. And speaking of listeners, just like you,
it sounds like it's time for shout at corners. Yes,
shout out corner, and our first shout out of the
day goes to Ryan Penn and Josh Brumbaugh, who visited
the office yesterday from Maryland. Ryan made us sign his
(48:17):
shirt that's true, tested that and he took a selfie
with Scully. Uh. And Josh was also cool. They were
he was super cool, fellows. Yeah, super cool. Thanks for
thanks for dropping by, guys, um and we did we
did check in advance before before they left, uh, to
make sure we could use their last names on the air,
because ordinarily, you know, we're not going to compromise somebody
(48:40):
that way unless you're cool with it. Our second shout
out comes from Christopher W. Who says, good afternoon, gentlemen,
just a quick note regarding why Stalin had such a
huge badger in his bag? How did that become the
catchphrase about Hitler and wanting him alive? Shortly after consolidating
his power, Hitler approached Stalin with a non agg ushing
pack and a plan to divide Eastern Europe up between
(49:03):
them once Germany conquered Europe. As long as Stalin didn't
have it didn't interfere. Stalin, for some reason trusted Hitler,
signed the pack and assumed he could sit back and
watch the capitalist world burn. But when Hitler launched Operation Barbarosas,
Stalin was infuriated. Not only had Hitler lied to him,
but he had believed him. That's why U S British
forces were ordered to stay back and allow the Soviets
(49:24):
to take Berlin. Stalin insisted upon his retribution. Who wanted
Hitler captured alive and having brought to the USSR to
face Stalin's wrath personally. And there's a conspiracy theory that
holds this actually happened, and Stalin kept Hitler alive for years,
torturing him. A very well researched, yet sadly out of
print novel called The Burkoot explores the theory quite well,
(49:45):
even though it goes down a little off the rails
at some points, and I think that's a great recommendation.
Christopher also asked, what's the deal with Plumb Island off
the tip of Long Island. There's definitely stuff there they
don't want us to know. Thanks so much for writing, Chris.
I'm going to look into finding a copy of that
(50:06):
book because it sounds pretty interesting, And honestly, Stalin sounds
like the type of DUDEY would be into that. Wasn't
that the island that Hannibal Lecter wanted to live on
in Silence of the Lambs? Is it Plumb Island? So?
I don't I don't know that. That's interesting. It's been.
It's been featured on several popular conspiracy shows. Yeah, he
has Plumb Island, that's what he says, Plumb Island. No, yes,
(50:35):
that's where as a term of his helping the FBI
and their investigation, he gets them to agree to relocate
him to Plumb Island, where he will be able to
have a window but he can see a tree. Oh
I remember that. So was it a like a prison? No? No,
it's just a weird little island. Oh God that he
(50:56):
that there's like an inhabited or something. That was the point.
And our last shout out comes from Reese, who says, Hi, guys,
I love your podcast. You're awesome. Thank you very much
for saying that, and I'm really happy that you're starting
to do live shows. I would suggest coming to Wisconsin,
particularly Milwaukee or Madison. Thanks and keep it up, or
(51:17):
as the Algonquins called it, millie Wauque, which means the
good land very nice. I learned that from Alice Cooper
in Wayne's World, the movie. Well, we would love to
visit you in Milliwaukee. That would be that would be fun. Yeah,
and we want to thank everybody's been sending in suggestions
of places to go. We've got our eyes on it,
(51:40):
so keep letting us know where you would like to
have us visit. Next This concludes ours, but not our show.
We're heading off to dig deeper into more conspiracy theories.
We will be back next week in the time. Let
(52:00):
us know what you think about the Toynbee tiles. Do
you think the mystery solved? Are you the creator? Are
you in the minority Association? Were you a longtime member?
Like what are the dues like for the Minority Association,
Are you the person who had to do the typing?
Let us know? Yes, do, please let us know. You
(52:22):
can find Matt Nolan myself on Instagram. You can find
us on Facebook. You can also find us on Twitter.
We are a conspiracy Stuff and Conspiracy Stuff show. And
if you have an idea that you think your fellow
listeners would love to hear, dare I say need to hear,
then we are all ears and you don't have to
just stick to social media. You can write to us directly.
(52:43):
We are conspiracy at how stuff Works dot
From UFOs to psychic powers. Since government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show. I was David Bowman, I wasn't
all I think I'm Ben a k the south Side
Stanley Kuper. Yeah still still Uh it's weird. You know,
who really owns a nickname? People just give them to you,
You know when you hear about a lot of people
that have the same ones, but they have to own
it in their own special way. Like all the lives,
you know, everyone everyone's a little something, but yeah really
(00:49):
or a young something, you know. Uh, we're talking today
about a very particular kind of street art. And I
want to see from the top of of of this
episode that for some people who haven't heard this and
seen the title might sound weird for uh, for us
to open up talking about street art, but we we
(01:10):
love so much amazing street art, rilla street art especially, Um,
there are conspiracies in that world. You know, who is
banksy for instances, people that created m hmm. And there's
one idea street art in particular that many of you
ladies and gentlemen for years, even before we had an
audio podcast, have asked us to cover and we received
(01:34):
some inspiration in the form of a friend of the show.
Most recently when we're in New York. Yeah, good friend
of the show and my own personal, longtime good friend,
Matt Riddle, and I were walking around in Manhattan and
he just kind of casually pointed at these odd little
um pieces of text in these kind of colored boxes
(01:57):
randomly along crosswalks and and said, these are blame by blazes.
I'm like, what, lem me blaz lem me blazes, what's what?
What the hell is that? Matt Riddle speak up and
nunciate and he said, there toyinb tiles And it took
me literally nine times of him having to repeat that,
like can you spell it? I'm not getting mess, I
don't understand what this word is, and it's it's They're
(02:19):
basically just these kind of odd little boxes of texts
that are all over Manhattan, and as it turns out, yeah,
they're across dozens of cities, not just on this continent either,
and allah you know the Georgia guidestones. Who the hell
put them there? Right? Right? So these things popularly known
(02:41):
as Toynbee tiles, and it is a tricky name and
spelled t o y in b e e. Uh. They're
made from just just as Noel said, they're they're embedded
into asphalt on the road. Uh. They're made from layers
of linoleum and this crack filling compound that's used to
keep paying want together. People began talking about these tiles
(03:04):
in the nineteen nineties, but you can find some references
that date back as far as the eighties. Still nineteen eighties,
not eighteen eighties. This is not like a it sting situation. Um.
And we can get into the messages too. We're going
to explore, uh, this the story of this. And first
(03:26):
I think I think you're absolutely asking the right question. Noal, Uh,
who is this guy? There's right right. So there's the
most popular guess is that Toynbee is a reference to
a fellow named Arnold J. Toynbee, religious historian UM born
in England in eighteen eighty nine. That's the same year
(03:49):
Hitler was born. Just from our previous podcast, Man, every
time we do a Hitler podcast, it just stays with
us and goes back to Hitler. All goes back to Hitler.
That's that's it, folks, that's the truth. Here's where it
gets crazy to be tiles. Adolf Hitler. We usually save
that for the mid roll break. Oh yeah, no, that's
(04:10):
the show. The rest of this is going to be silence,
and then we'll do an ad and then we'll go
to silence again. We should also do a shout out corner.
I guess, yeah, a shoutout where we shout out to
no one, no, no, yes, Hitler's side. Toy B is
not the only person mentioned in these tiles. Oh no,
specifically Stanley Kubrick, or well just the last name is mentioned.
(04:36):
He's the filmmaker that you may know from the film
two thousand one of Space Odyssey, amongst all of his
other incredible works Orange Lolita, Shut Pads of Glory, The Shining.
I mean, it just goes on. And the man was
was a maverick, I say, a filmmaking maverick and a
personal favorite of our compatriot Casey Pegram. Yes, and uh
(04:57):
not to spoil two thousand one of Space Artists. You
can't spoil that movie. Come on, it's an it's incredible.
You should watch it. If he's seen it in the
end of it, a human man uh seems to be
reborn in some way as a space baby. Okay, yes,
(05:18):
as a space baby whilst on a journey to do
the planet Jupiter. And even if you could spoil two
thousand and one, I think we've agreed that the statute
of limitations on spoilers for two thousands one of space
Honyestly is definitely definitely up. So it is weird to
think that it's sixteen years after those events like would
have taken place. Yes, yeah, that's what I love about
older science fiction two thousands. Yes, yes, everything would be different.
(05:42):
Will all be flying and cars and rocket packs? Like
like a handmade's tale that just premiered recently is set
in two thousand and five, I know, And it looks
more or less like modern day, doesn't it. Yes, that's
I thought that was pretty smart. Yeah, and the four were,
of course. But but the big question people would have
is Kubrick. Right, we got Kubrick. We all know Kubrick. Toynbee.
(06:06):
We're learning about Toynbee today and that weird name. Uh,
what do these folks have in common? That's interesting because
Toynbee was a prodigious writer an alphabet prodigy, if you will,
And they don't really intersect too often. But Toynbee's writings
did mention a man named Zoroaster who conceived the idea
(06:29):
of monotheism, worshiping just one God instead of a Justice
League type pantheon of God's who all have their own
different powers and stuff. Uh. And this name Zoraster also
occurs in the title of the Space Odyssey theme song.
Thus spake Zaraster. There we don't don't, don't, don't don't
(07:05):
monkey hits something that was great. Guys, that was great. Yeah,
And that's that's it. That's perfect. Um. And thus big
Zoraster do get in front of anybody who's about to
write an angry Nietzche and email does come from malcomes
back to Hitler. Nietzsche, yes, and in perhaps that goes
back to Hitler as well. But other than that, other
(07:25):
than that one casual mentioned, the two ostensibly don't have
very much in common. They don't seem to have much
in common. So now we've set up some of the
references here, let's talk about what these tiles actually say.
So they all contain some variation of the following inscription
Um it's it's it's. It means almost like a short
(07:45):
poem or something, or like perhaps a card catalog. Jry.
So you have four lines all caps. First one says
twin bi idea, second one in movie two thousand one,
third line resurrect dead, fourth line on planet Jupiter. What. Yeah,
it's very strange. It Also, when I first learned about these,
which listeners won, one of you emailed me or left
(08:08):
a YouTube comment, and I it was so many years ago.
I don't recall the name, but I was. I was
wrong at the jump. I thought there was this crazy
guy whose last name was Toynbee who felt that Stanley
Kubrick had ripped off this idea that he had. It's
reasonable assumption because I didn't know as much um or
I hadn't dug into it as much. We also know
(08:29):
that there will be variations on the text, like political statements.
Were telling other people to go make their own tiles,
and uh, we have some other messages that they've written.
Here's just a couple of examples. Again, these are all texts,
and many times the eyes are lowercas that's the only
character that is lowercase. Please make and glue tiles as
(08:50):
the American media is working with the Soviet Union, and
it's thousands of fronts in USA. Two and that one
that's just leaves it right there. I feel like it's
can acted to another one. Perhaps right under f O
I a NBC journalist funneled FBI information on me to
Soviet You must make plus glue tiles you and S
(09:13):
media U S S R. Every concept of past five
years don't exist in Christian heaven. They only exist in
Christian hell. Now the cult of the Hellian are now
searching for more than one hell ideologies to get more reward. Well, yeah,
and if this idea survives after all, make those Hellies
are definitely connected to make those Hellian's pay for what
(09:35):
they've done. I'm begging you, thank you, and goodbye. Also,
some shorter ones murder every journalist. I beg you and
I'm only one man. And when I caught a fatal disease,
they gloated over its death. Okay, Now, clearly there's some
absurdism going on here, wouldn't you say? I mean, like
it seems it's almost like these some of these messages
(09:56):
come off as like these hard right wing kind of
political almost reatening sounding. You know, little blurbs, but then
there are things in here that totally derail them in
terms of like, does this person believe any of this stuff?
Is it just sort of like a Mary Prankster kind
of you know trick? Right? Is it an act? Is
there's some sort of mental situation, mental and balance at play.
(10:18):
That's very possible. And they're also asking for other people
to make tiles, so there's no way to confirm that
they're all done by the same person. It's tough. That's
a very important point. They also have footnotes. If you
check out the messages where if you happen to see these,
and we'll call the cities where you can find these. Uh,
you might see the larger one with the you know,
resurrect the Dead two thousand one Jupiter all that stuff. Uh,
(10:42):
you might see a smaller tile piece under it that
has those footnotes. That's where that murder every Journalist thing
came in. And then occasionally diatribes condemning the media, the
mafia or Jewish people. Yep, Hitler, we're back there already.
But there's a there's another. Uh, there's a tile. Some
(11:02):
of these tiles have their own names, right, Well, yeah, well,
some of these names or any name that you're gonna see,
has been ascribed by people who have researched these or
you know, documented them. Uh. Specifically, there are a couple
of message boards back in the nineties that were they
would document every single one. They had like a whole
website that was dedicated to this stuff. Well this one.
(11:24):
There was one in particular that's called the Manifesto Tile,
and it's four panels that are just white with black
text on them, and it's just super long, and it
starts off by talking about John Knight, who is I
guess someone who worked for the government, and it's just
talking about how this guy's out to get him, uh
he send sicking the mafia on him and all these things.
(11:47):
I mean, it's quite rambly if you go through it,
and it's quite frankly tough to read with all the characters. Yeah,
it's very um. The spacing is very tight, and at
times the letters are so dark that it almost looks
like a single line, kind of like look at it. Um.
But it's definitely by someone who feels like they're being persecuted. Right.
(12:10):
Paranoia is a big part of this, and it could
tie into some skizzo effective types of conditions. But again
without knowing the person for sure, we're just sort of speculating,
not even sort of, we're absolutely speculating. But where can
you find these? So Nol, for instance, you went and
(12:32):
actually saw some in real life. Yeah, I mean there
we saw. The thing was we were walking around um Metown, Manhattan,
and happened upon the first one and then saw another
one later and I thought maybe we had backtracked and
it was the same one, but it definitely wasn't the
same one. We've gone a different way. Uh. And they're
pretty randomly scattered all all across New York, but not
(12:54):
only New York. And that's the thing that that starts
the point to maybe who this this person was or
what kind of means you have at They're in Pennsylvania,
New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, d c Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan,
wait for it, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and more. And if
(13:16):
you want to see a complete list of where most
of them are found, go over to archive dot org,
hop on that way back machine and go to toynbee
dot net. Right, So, who made them? Who makes them?
Are they still active. Is that one person is more
than one person? Can we find them? Will explore that
(13:38):
question in depth after a word from our sponsors. Here's
where it gets crazy. No one absolutely agrees who created
these things. That's why it kind of reminds me of,
you know, the guide stones in a way because it's
(14:00):
text based. It's sort of an anti guide stone, because
it's much more like you'd stumble across it not even
know you it was there, right, the guys this like
ostentatious giant monument that you can't miss. But the intent
is sort of similar. I mean, it's to convey a
message hidden in plain sight more or less, you know.
And and then the idea is that, like the mystery
is what keeps people interested in seeking these out and
(14:23):
reading them and researching them and finding all about them.
But yeah, nobody knows who this person is that put
them there. Maybe it's a whole cadre. That's the other thing.
It's could be because when you look at them, there's
this consistency in the way they look, and like I said,
with the lower case eyes that you will find across
(14:44):
almost all of them. That makes you think it's you know,
either the same press that's being used to make these
or the same person's hand. You have a style guide,
I mean that's true. Hey, possibly style guide. We should
start writing all of our all of our work stuff
in toynbe style missives missives, yes, our missives and memos
(15:04):
uh and correspondencies. The multiple locations indicating this someth new
we alluded to earlier on indicate someone who, if it's
a single person, has both the means and the time
to travel, because traveling to that many places to do
that very specific thing is a is a tall order
(15:27):
financially and in terms of ours spent, and then to
buy all the materials as well that you need to
create those things, and you'd have to have a place
that secluded enough to create them in secret. Right, So
already we have some some pros and cons lack of
a better dichotomy. We have an argument for it being
one person because of the consistency, but we also have
(15:49):
an argument for being multiple people because the tiles at
times literally invite other people to make tiles. However, we
do know people have made some pretty solid guesses as
to the identity of the titlest the tyler. The tyler. Yeah,
that's how you say, sort of a hamburglar type of figure.
(16:09):
So there's this documentary that you may have seen. It
was on Netflix for a time. I cannot confirm on
my current machine whether it is still there, as Netflix
changes out their material all the time. So it's called
Resurrect Dead The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. It was
created in two thousand and eleven and directed by John Foy.
(16:30):
It features three investigators who have been looking into these
tiles since the nineties. One gentleman in particular named Justin,
who is, for the lack of a better word, obsessed
a bit with the toynbee idea. And then Steve and
Colin are his his buds and co workers. So they're
(16:51):
they're the ones who were visiting toynbee dot net way
back in the day and eventually, through their investigative measures
are all the measures they took, they ended up being
gifted control of that website and they have they've they've
arrived in the in the course of this documentary, which
we do recommend, they've arrived at some clues that have
(17:15):
can have convinced them in a way that they're they
feel like they know who this creator is yes. So
throughout this documentary they they identify three major suspects that
they think could possibly be the tyler. The first one
is a gentleman named Sevy Verna. It's not his full name,
(17:37):
will get into that later. And he's known as the birdman.
That's so cool, let's talk about a nickname. Why is
he called the birdman? Well, he sometimes will take care
of injured birds, and apparently that's one of the main
things that he does. Slightly older, gentleman. He's very intelligent
according to people who live near him the same street,
(17:58):
although he is a very difficult person to get a
hold of to talk to. He's very quiet, he likes
to keep to himself. He doesn't really go anywhere. Um,
he doesn't go anywhere, doesn't really leave his house that often.
Apparently sometimes he does, at least This is all according
to hearsay right people that were interviewed by these people
making the documentary. Um. However, according to a phone call
(18:22):
that the main guy made to this person's one of
their relatives, one of the guy's relatives, he has never
ever been to South America. And as we know, these
toy tiles are in three places and Also they found
out through this relative that he has a terrible lung condition.
And when you think about somebody going out on you know,
(18:43):
hot asphalt or on the street somewhere, even at night,
putting down those tiles, all that manual labor, I don't know,
you feel like maybe that person couldn't do it, or
maybe the lung condition was caused by exposure to all
those toxic chemicals for so many years. Because I mean
it seems to me like these are these what do
(19:03):
we talk about how far they date back? When? Like
do we have we dated them? We know that they
rumors of them first emerged in the eighties, but three
in particulars when Yeah, so this is a long long
time decades plus activity. But we have other we have
other suspects to right, speaking of nicknames that you got
(19:25):
to own railroad Joe love It or Julius Paroli. Do
you think he knew hobo code? I'm your man. So
he worked for the Conrail railroad company. Conrail passes through
every city in the US where the tiles have been found, right,
if you need to travel, Okay, I'm getting more on
(19:47):
board with that one. On board on the railroad Joe
train um so, a giant telescope was being shipped in
sections to Chile, uh and the shipment went through the
railyard where Railroad Joe worked and it was destined for
(20:08):
Lacia Observatory in July. Of course, um his family. I'm
gonna say as many time as I can, the family
of Railroad Shoe worked on creating tombstones. This was their business. Yeah,
so they thought maybe that's how we got access to
some of the tools required, or at least the concept
and the similar Yeah, exactly. But there's a fatal flaw
(20:28):
to this theory. Railroad Joe or Julius Pioli died on
March four, nineteen and seven. That is a fatal flaw, right,
I am assuming, unless he was resurrected on Jupiter and
made it back somehow, and that's what the whole thing
is about. Maybe he was resurrected on so weirdly optimistic
of you, that's you know what that's inspiring. Or maybe
(20:50):
he headed up some kind of twyn Be tile cult
and he laid the groundwork and spread the message far
and wide. Or maybe maybe he did all of it
and people were just finding them later. Because let's not
forget I mean these are in heavily foot trafficked areas,
and well you might argue, well, doesn't that mean it
(21:11):
would be found instantly. They're not that remarkable to look
at right away. And there's a lot of noise, you know, visually,
and you know, literally noise in these areas, and a
lot of you know, just garbage and stuff on the street.
You could pass by this thing and think it was
some kind of city sign for a sewer line or like.
You know, they don't look remarkable at all unless you
(21:33):
really peek down at them. And that was the only
way I would have never noticed them, and they haven't
pointed out to me. That's a great observation. We have
to remember the cities are already filled to the brim.
Was stuff you know that's probably wasn't the only street
art you saw when you were on your walk about.
Actually gets to the point where it's almost sensory overload
where to actually see the good stuff you you may
(21:55):
easily be distracted by some lesser quality stuff that's just
bigger and more Gaudi. Yeah, same reason it's tough to
uh spend all day at a museum and pay the
same amount of attention to everything you know, you can
get lost. We have one other suspect here, uh, fellow
names James Morasco. He started the Minority Association. And there's
(22:20):
a writer named Clark de Leon who interviewed him in
nineteen eighty three, and so we have some information via
this interview. Moresco lived in Fishtown or Kensington. These are
blue collar neighborhoods north of Center City, Philadelphia, and he's
very proud of his education. Matt noted earlier that he
(22:42):
has a soft bass voice. I did not note that
that is the uh, that is the gentleman who interviewed him. Sure,
I promis verbatim soft bass voice? You mean like a
radio kind of like a soft sexy? Does it? Voice?
Like a quiet story? It's a a bowling. It's probably
a bowling. You guys want to have an outlet, You
(23:03):
want to have a soft off soft afraid of doing that?
Come on, now you can do it. I really can't.
Softer naked low Well we uh, you could check out
his voice of the account. The only known record of
James Morasco was found, uh, was that he was found
(23:24):
to live in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, which is a nicer
neighborhood northwest of where those other neighborhoods are so not
so much blue collar. In two thousand one, some more
information was revealed about him. He cannot speak. According to
his wife, he had his voice box removed, and based
on his age, he would have been in his seventies
(23:44):
and eighties when the majority of these titles were thought
to be in place. What do you mean he had
his voice box removed? Yeah, I think it's has something
to do with cancer. I'm not sure. I can't verify that,
but I don't think it's like a creative choice. Yeah, yeah,
highly doubt it. It's a big world. So so we
have these three people, each of whom have some arguments
(24:07):
for and then some very powerful arguments against. Yes, and
just for some context, let's go to that interview that
we're talking about with James Morasco, because it is it
is a little important, and we'll just read this pretty quickly.
This is what they covered in the documentary from this
Are you going to do a bass voice? No? No,
because it's a different guy. This is Clark to Leon's
(24:30):
call me skeptical, but I had a hard time buy
James Morasco's concept that the planet Jupiter would be colonized
by bringing all the people on Earth who would ever
died back to life. Sorry about that. Morasco says he's
a social worker in Philly and he came across this
idea while reading a book by historian Arnold Toynbee, whose
theory on bringing dead molecules back to life was depicted
(24:52):
in the movie two thousand one, A Space Odyssey. That's
why he's contact and talk shows and newspapers to spread
this message. He's even found it a Jupiter colonization organization
called the Minority Association, which he says consists of me,
Eric Eric Sisto, who does the typing. Frank. Anyway, you
may be hearing more from Morasco, then again you may
(25:14):
not well done. Was this guy like a longshoreman or something? No, No,
he sounded nothing like that. He's a very nice gentleman.
It was all in print. So I just, uh, I
like that voice. I I like the idea of hanging
out with someone who always says Jupiter like they're angry
at it. Was he an affleck It's it's a wrong accent.
(25:35):
So that was that was from the article in the
Philadelphia inquirer called theories want to run that would buy
me again? And that's where we get a lot of information.
We also have a play the famous playwright that that
enters into the story here. That's right. A short play
(25:55):
by legendary playwright and screenwriter David mamet Uh entitled four Am,
which is from his Goldberg Street collection. It's a one
act play about a radio host and an odd color
who wants to discuss his plan to resurrect the dead
on Jupiter. Sounds familiar and it mentions Arnold Toynbee UM
two thousand one of Space Odyssey and the resurrection of
(26:19):
quote dead molecules on Jupiter. Stupid. Uh. There's also this
is this is a tantalizing breadcrumb here. There's also a
Toynbee tile in Santiago, Chile. It includes an address for
a house in South Philadelphia. Oh, can we read the
(26:42):
address on air? Are you guys? I don't know that.
I was hesitant to include it. The documentary chose to
not put it in there. Okay, Well you can find
it online if you wish. And you know, that's a
good point, Matt. Somebody probably lives there and there, you know,
trying to live their life without inquiries into the toy
B adventure. They did say it's on Seventh Street somewhere,
(27:06):
and they did say that they were also what they
called proto tiles found embedded in the pavement around this address.
These appeared to be test of the tile materials. Some
titles random letters, others were in Spanish. Right, so it
seems like there's something associated. You know, this is somehow
(27:27):
associated with Philly. Okay, So we kind of set the
stage here for information that this team has been gathering
and and again they're gathering the best known information about
the toy be tiles at least that you can find online,
which is pretty cool to follow these guys doing that well.
In early two thousand six, Uh, the guy Bill O'Neil
(27:48):
who was running toy b dot net dot net. Remember
we said that these guys took it over. It's because
he gave it to them and they got access to
hundreds of email messages that had come through. And this
is spanning from two thousand and six, and so that's
just one big thing. So now they're they have all
(28:10):
the information that you can have about the toy. They
have a cash right there they're building this enormous database.
But that's not the only weird thing they had access to.
There was mysterious broadcast. Do you guys remember the story
about the Max Headroom appearance, which is classic We are
(28:31):
because Matt Noel and I are actually friends off air,
we spend way too much time passing each other weird
stuff that we think is either funny or just bizarre,
and this is one. This is one. Um, could you
could you describe it? I think you guys went to
a well, I will I will start off by saying
that UM Chuck from Stuff you should Know did an
(28:53):
episode with our friend em Me Jonathan Strickland on his podcast.
It's text text stuff where they go deep into it. Basically,
it was a signal intrusion, uh, into a broadcast facility
in I can't remember Cacago, Yeah, where UM interrupted regular
(29:14):
broadcast day with this odd looking dude and kind of
like a plastic e face mask thing kind of glitch
video very much associated now the look of it with
like vapor wave community and like the kind of like
you know, weird like kitchy eighties kind of like neo
futuristic kind of vibe, almost plastic, very strange, very very
(29:37):
plastic e and fake looking. Um and what was what
did he hear? What he said? Yeah? He uh. The
person who makes the appearance says a series of bizarre things.
You should tide, I'll get you a hot drink. Yeah
(30:13):
that thing. Yeah, And everybody was every everybody was baffled
beyond words, bugged out, at a loss for words. And
this there's a similar thing that happens um in the
toyb case. In the guy named Joe Raymondo was watching
(30:35):
eyewitness news when a strange broadcast intruded over the air waves.
Someone hijacked the news and sent out the toyn B message. Yeah,
apparently it was just audio of what you would find
on the toy be tiles talking about the toy b
Idea two thousand one resurrected dead on Jupiter. And it
(30:56):
just kind of he said, it came in a wave.
It was like the whole you know, the whole TV broadcast,
Like the picture went away and you saw something. You
just heard the message come through as static gain like
there was gain static and then you hear the message
and then it went away. That's weird. It's really weird,
but it's gonna factor in later in the story, and
(31:19):
this story will continue after a brief word from our sponsors,
and we're back, no delay, as Matt would say, Yes,
we're back, zero delays. Um, so let's jump right into it.
(31:41):
There is a gentleman, now that these guys have access
to toynb dot net, there's a gentleman named Nathan mel
m e h L who wrote in with a story
apparently about a street profit that was given out pamphlets. Yeah. However,
when they contacted the guy, he says that, oh no,
(32:02):
my what I wrote was taken out of context. There
was actually no street profit, but there were flyers that
were just blanketing this area where he was visiting at
the time, and they included this TOYNB idea. There's this
whole thing about public notice, and then it says all
this stuff, and at the very bottom it says tune
(32:24):
six point to five megacycles short wave, which means the
people who are putting out this idea have a short
wave radio show of some sort, or at least a
place where they regularly give out signals. Which is interesting
then because that builds a case that they might have
knowledge related to radio broadcasting or transmissions and in the
(32:45):
course of resurrect the debt. Another thing that happens in
the documentary once again is probably the best source for
any information about the toy Bee tiles. They went to
this convention oriented around shortwave radio and they met a
fellow named John t Arthur who claimed that he communicated
with the toyn BE Tyler. I still like tylist with
(33:09):
the with with the toyn B Tyler, but only through
mail through post. And then when the documentarians prompted this
guy with the name Sevy, remember from our earlier three suspects,
John recalled the last name Verna. Yeah, he said it
out loud without them mentioning that at all. So, Hey,
(33:31):
what do you think, Noel, That's that's kind of crazy
that it that he was able to pop that off
the top of his head after writing to the guy
and getting correspondence back right off the dome. Son and
this this brought him back to Severino Sevy Verna and
revisited this and talk a little bit about his methods
(33:53):
for delivering possibly the tiles. They did another hard look
at his neighbors and friends and people who lived in
the immediate area, and they got a lot more detailed information. So,
according to the neighbors, Sevy had a bit of an
unusual car that might um shed some light on on
(34:17):
how he, if he was the person that did this,
installed these tiles. So this car only had one seat,
um on one side, by the driver's side. Imagine and
wait for it, there was no floorboard. What yeah, so
like Flintstone's mobile style just driving in a city. I
(34:39):
mean obviously they would have to be you know, the
the the what's the word, yeah, the drive train and
the the frame of the car stuff, stuff that's going
on down there. It would be like exactly exactly, so
there there would be like all of these open spaces
where if one were so inclined to do odd little
(34:59):
graffitis all over various cities, he could perhaps take that car,
park it, or even not even park it, maybe even
had a light Oh yeah, reached down pop on the tile,
because it wouldn't take that much time to do. One
of these would be sort of the equivalent of like
putting up a bill with wheat paste or something, you know,
where you just kind of hit it over a couple
(35:19):
of times, make sure it's flat, and then you move on.
You know, I heard them talk about wheat paste in this,
and they said something about wheat paste may have been
away that it was done but with asphalt stuff. So yeah,
let's talk a little bit about the structure of the tiles,
because we said that there's a consistency in their design.
So imagine these layers, right, The bottom layer is a adhesive,
(35:40):
a tar paper, and we talked about how the other
stuff is um a kind of tile, but with a
heavier rubber content and crack filling asphalt compound. So the
brilliant thing about this is when you lay it down,
you know, you would apply some pressure to make sure
it adheres, but as other cars pass over it, each
(36:02):
one of them is helping we paste it. Not to mention,
as the sun beats down on it and starts to
heat up those materials, that just gets more and more
baked into the environment. Yeah, and so this this is
not only an AHA moment, but this is also a
moment that explains a lot of stuff because one thing, um,
(36:26):
one thing that we should emphasize about these tiles is
many of them are found in areas that are so
heavily trafficked there would apparently be no way, you know,
even for somebody really fast to go up on foot
and then you know, one of these down unless it
was a drive by. Just and that's not the only
(36:48):
weird thing about Vernet that the neighbors said. The car
also had a giant antenna that would broadcast the twin
B message. Uh. The signal would interrupt TV and radio
signals as the car drove past. So I guess it's
sort of like a mini mobile pirate radio station that
would just intrude on whatever was available around in its
(37:09):
immediate proximity. Yeah, so really aggressive ice cream truck. Yeah. Yeah,
but he's getting you in your house when you're listening
to the radio or watching TV or something. Now, that's
allegedly sure the you know that the toybe message would
go out with this guy. But according to the you know,
the people who lived around him, they hated that car.
(37:29):
They knew what they knew about it because when it
drove past, they always mess up what they're listening to,
her watching, And he had some disputes with his neighbors.
He was not particularly loved in the community. Was held
at knife point once, apparently because there was an argument
over his loud organ and accordion playing. Yeah, for real
(37:50):
to become He's become a bit of a shut in
at the time documentary. But apply wood over his windows
and he put a lead pipe through his door. Yeah,
and he wouldn't respond to the multiple times these guys
were trying to get in touch with him, both in
person and even the neighbors, the people who knew who
he was. And you know, ostensibly they know he knows them,
(38:11):
but he would never answer his door for anybody. So
let's get weirder with it. Okay, there's another I know
there are a lot of names in this show, but uh,
they should be worth it, hopefully. Uh. Here's another person
named Ulis Fleming, and Ulis says he has a handwritten
letter sent and signed by James Morasco from his Minority
(38:33):
Association radio station, written in the early eighties. Yeah, and
Morasco also sent along a bunch of pages with info
about the project. Inside this letter, Morasco is listed as
the publicity director for the Minority Association, and at one
point in the documents, the author Morasco refers to himself
as Severino Verna. Holy crap, so we might be dealing
(38:58):
with the same. It's like batman, dude, Severino Morasco is
Batman and Severino is who's Batman? Bruce Wayne? Oh, I'm sorry? Oh,
is that a spoiler? Is Bruce Wayne? He's not actually
a bat Also lightweights, But this this is interesting, this
(39:22):
idea that there would be multiple identities, because that's something
that a lot of con artists do. Yeah, or a
street artist or a street artist might do that, like
Banksy or like a graph head is not going to
you know, spray paint Douglas Maroney. Here's my address and
my social Security number, list of my fears and when
(39:43):
I'm usually at home. That well, that was my big
question when when that address shows up in Chile, Um,
excuse me, Chile? Uh, Like, why would you put your
address there? Maybe if you want, if somebody who lives
in sa Thiago wants to write to him about the
toy b idea maybe And the thought is, if you're
(40:06):
in Chiley, you're never gonna actually get in contact with
me personally, Like you're not gonna fly here and find
me at my house. I don't understand the reasoning behind that.
Oh there was no internet, or there was, but it
was very very very young in the eighties. Crude, Yeah, right,
he has more more um I r C like message
(40:28):
boards a blunt instrument into Internet. Yes, yes it was.
It was a series of rocks. But yeah, I guess
you just wouldn't have that fear of having your address
out there in another country that's you know, across the world.
The idea of like doxing wasn't even like a twinkle
in the eye of the zeitgeist, right yeah, and like
maybe some black box government agency could do it. But
(40:50):
that's it. So let's not leave that. The play that
we mentioned earlier unexplained from that same letter U, there's
this quote that Arnold Toynbee's conception of the colonization of
outer space, as depicted in the movie two thousand one
of Space Odyssey, was first explained according to the letter
writer in a call in on Larry King Show in
(41:11):
February of nineteen eighty. WHOA, that was back when Larry
King was only a hundred Yeah, have you ever? No,
I don't mean this in a disrespectful way. I don't
want to body shame anyone or whatever the correct term is.
But he has a very large head, Like if you've
seen him when he's not sitting at his desk, in
(41:33):
his the environment where you think you're supposed to encounter him.
If you saw him walking down the street and you
had never seen the Larry King Show, he would still
be like, my God. That paired with the increasing curvature
of his spine and his tiny hands, he kind of
resembles a t Rex. Yeah. Yeah. So the reason this
(41:54):
is significant, the writing about this in February is because, uh,
David Mammott didn't write his piece until I think eighty three,
and then it officially came out in eighty four. Um.
And there's an excerpt from David Mammott discussing four Am
(42:14):
his play where he said, quote, yeah, this play is
an homage to Larry King the days when I used
to listen to him on the radio in the middle
of the night, which means this play that he wrote
is quite literally. Whoever this Tobe person was just like
calling up Larry Ins and saying these things to him.
(42:36):
And if you guys want to read an excerpt from
the play, h Greg, we need you to help to
publicize our play. We've been trying to get our organization
together to raise money to be able to hire republic
relations from like Wells and Jacoby to publicize organization. When
are we going to get the money I I don't
(42:57):
know to publicize. Yeah. In the movie Too Without and
the one based on the writings of Arnold Toynbee, they
speak of the plan. Excuse me, excuse me. But the
movie two thousand one was based on the writing and
the old human life is is is made of molecules
based on the writing of Arthur C. Clark All human, No, Greg, Look,
(43:17):
if you examine what it was based on the writings
of Arthur C. Clark, Greg, no, we have the well
go on, Greg. In the writings of Arnold Toynbee, he
discusses a plan whereby all human life could be easily
reconstituted onto the planet Jupiter. So you see here the
(43:38):
whole idea is right there. And David Man his play, no,
I mean clearly based on the chronology of events here
that this little play snippet was the influence for whatever
odd human did these things. Well, no, no, the play
was based on the actual guy who called in. He
called in Larry King apparently in the early eighties, and
(43:59):
then even'am it heard it and then wrote something very
similar to it, if not almost verbatim to what ma'am
It says that he made the whole thing up with
his brain mind, and that there was no actual call
that described the contents of his play. Be that as
it may. We just read an excerpt of the actual play.
(44:20):
But maybe, ma'am, it's full of it. I mean, maybe he's,
you know, based on like if he wrote this in
eighty THREEES in mid eighties, and isn't like that when
the first tiles started popping up the call, the Larry
King call comes from nineties, so this would be around
this time. And yeah, this is and ma'am it said,
(44:42):
it's when he used to listen to Larry King late
at night. So it's probably one of those things like,
you know, half half awake, half asleep, he's like listening
to Larry King falling falling asleep to it. It's like, oh, man,
I don't know where I'm getting these crazy thoughts about
Jupiter and Toynbee, but this is great. I'm gonna write.
This thing's just so speci scythic. Yeah, you know what
I mean. If it's if it was something a little
(45:03):
more stylized, whereas like people are being reincarnated or being
reborn in space yeah, you know, but Jupiter, it's Arnold Toynbee,
who is not commonly referenced in most day to day
associated with this kind of thing. Yeah, you know, it's
the old question which came first, the moment player the
(45:24):
Tobe title. Yep, yep, that's the original version. The world
may never know, but we have some conclusions here. So
the person who created these titles, whoever it was or is,
believed that Toynbee provided the instructions to resurrect a deceased person,
and that these instructions were the key to rebirth, not
(45:45):
just for that individual, but for every single human being
on this happy little planet of ours. Well, yeah, and
they at least believed it enough to spend a whole
lot of time and energy. I would say a good
amount of their life's energy is obsessive. Yes on on
that singular idea um, And we're the documentary pulls a
(46:07):
quote that we're going to quote here from Toynbee, and
it comes from his writings and experiences, and it says,
when after death the body dissolves into its physical elements,
these elements themselves are not annihilated. They are continuing to
exist as parts of the physical universe though no longer
(46:27):
in this form, which makes sense right, yeah, sort of
we are made of star stuff. Yea, your carbon breaks down,
but that carbon is still there. So the people who
created the documentary, which again is excellent and worth well
worth watching. Uh, they end with a conclusion where wherein
they are convinced that they have solved the mystery of
(46:48):
the toy be tiles um And I'm not completely I'm
not utterly convinced yet, because I would want to. I
would to have it either completely confirmed or to the
earlier point from the guide stones. Let the mystery be
a mystery. It's pretty cool, and I don't think I
don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that other people,
(47:11):
perhaps some of you listening today, would start making your own.
And not only that, he also or this person or
this group of people also believe that Stanley Kubick and
Arthur C. Clark then took these instructions and used them
to inform the plot, specifically the ending like the last
ten or eleven minutes of two thousand and one A
(47:32):
Space Odyssey, which you know what an idea? I mean,
you can't come up with this kind of stuff, well
said and we hope you enjoyed this exploration. We'd also
like to thank the illustrious Matt Riddle. Thank you Matt
Riddle and everybody else who wrote into us about these
tiles for finally for finally getting us to do this.
(47:54):
We have a long list of things that we want
to cover and uh we we try to get to
it all eventually. And speaking of listeners, just like you,
it sounds like it's time for shout at corners. Yes,
shout out corner, and our first shout out of the
day goes to Ryan Penn and Josh Brumbaugh, who visited
the office yesterday from Maryland. Ryan made us sign his
(48:17):
shirt that's true, tested that and he took a selfie
with Scully. Uh. And Josh was also cool. They were
he was super cool, fellows. Yeah, super cool. Thanks for
thanks for dropping by, guys, um and we did we
did check in advance before before they left, uh, to
make sure we could use their last names on the air,
because ordinarily, you know, we're not going to compromise somebody
(48:40):
that way unless you're cool with it. Our second shout
out comes from Christopher W. Who says, good afternoon, gentlemen,
just a quick note regarding why Stalin had such a
huge badger in his bag? How did that become the
catchphrase about Hitler and wanting him alive? Shortly after consolidating
his power, Hitler approached Stalin with a non agg ushing
pack and a plan to divide Eastern Europe up between
(49:03):
them once Germany conquered Europe. As long as Stalin didn't
have it didn't interfere. Stalin, for some reason trusted Hitler,
signed the pack and assumed he could sit back and
watch the capitalist world burn. But when Hitler launched Operation Barbarosas,
Stalin was infuriated. Not only had Hitler lied to him,
but he had believed him. That's why U S British
forces were ordered to stay back and allow the Soviets
(49:24):
to take Berlin. Stalin insisted upon his retribution. Who wanted
Hitler captured alive and having brought to the USSR to
face Stalin's wrath personally. And there's a conspiracy theory that
holds this actually happened, and Stalin kept Hitler alive for years,
torturing him. A very well researched, yet sadly out of
print novel called The Burkoot explores the theory quite well,
(49:45):
even though it goes down a little off the rails
at some points, and I think that's a great recommendation.
Christopher also asked, what's the deal with Plumb Island off
the tip of Long Island. There's definitely stuff there they
don't want us to know. Thanks so much for writing, Chris.
I'm going to look into finding a copy of that
(50:06):
book because it sounds pretty interesting, And honestly, Stalin sounds
like the type of DUDEY would be into that. Wasn't
that the island that Hannibal Lecter wanted to live on
in Silence of the Lambs? Is it Plumb Island? So?
I don't I don't know that. That's interesting. It's been.
It's been featured on several popular conspiracy shows. Yeah, he
has Plumb Island, that's what he says, Plumb Island. No, yes,
(50:35):
that's where as a term of his helping the FBI
and their investigation, he gets them to agree to relocate
him to Plumb Island, where he will be able to
have a window but he can see a tree. Oh
I remember that. So was it a like a prison? No? No,
it's just a weird little island. Oh God that he
(50:56):
that there's like an inhabited or something. That was the point.
And our last shout out comes from Reese, who says, Hi, guys,
I love your podcast. You're awesome. Thank you very much
for saying that, and I'm really happy that you're starting
to do live shows. I would suggest coming to Wisconsin,
particularly Milwaukee or Madison. Thanks and keep it up, or
(51:17):
as the Algonquins called it, millie Wauque, which means the
good land very nice. I learned that from Alice Cooper
in Wayne's World, the movie. Well, we would love to
visit you in Milliwaukee. That would be that would be fun. Yeah,
and we want to thank everybody's been sending in suggestions
of places to go. We've got our eyes on it,
(51:40):
so keep letting us know where you would like to
have us visit. Next This concludes ours, but not our show.
We're heading off to dig deeper into more conspiracy theories.
We will be back next week in the time. Let
(52:00):
us know what you think about the Toynbee tiles. Do
you think the mystery solved? Are you the creator? Are
you in the minority Association? Were you a longtime member?
Like what are the dues like for the Minority Association,
Are you the person who had to do the typing?
Let us know? Yes, do, please let us know. You
(52:22):
can find Matt Nolan myself on Instagram. You can find
us on Facebook. You can also find us on Twitter.
We are a conspiracy Stuff and Conspiracy Stuff show. And
if you have an idea that you think your fellow
listeners would love to hear, dare I say need to hear,
then we are all ears and you don't have to
just stick to social media. You can write to us directly.
(52:43):
We are conspiracy at how stuff Works dot
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