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Speaker 1: From the team at news dot Com TODAU. This is

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Speaker 1: the latest from the newsroom.

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Speaker 2: Well, we've got a very special episode for you today.

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Speaker 2: Cut that music for just a second for me. Thank

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Speaker 2: you very much. I want you to have a listen

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Speaker 2: to this.

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Speaker 3: This is the story of one Ossie Man, a secret

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Speaker 3: code he claims to be found buried in the Bible,

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Speaker 3: and forty nine million dollars of investors' money that's gone missing.

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Speaker 2: That voice he just heard his news dot Com dot

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Speaker 2: use Alex Turner Cohen, who has spent months investigating this

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Speaker 2: incredibly bizarre and captivating story. She's going to tell us

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Speaker 2: all about it in just a second ATC thanks so

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Speaker 2: much for joining me. Tell me about this story.

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Speaker 3: So it's a really, really bizarre story, as you've already said,

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Speaker 3: and it's kind of even hard to know where to begin,

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Speaker 3: but let's start it.

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Speaker 1: To boil it down.

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Speaker 3: Basically, this Queensland businessman who's been described as having a

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Speaker 3: silver tongue, managed to convince about six hundred people that

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Speaker 3: he had this amazing product, and they gave him forty

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Speaker 3: nine million dollars of their money.

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Speaker 2: Right, Okay, who is this guy and what timeframe are

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Speaker 2: we talking about?

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Speaker 4: Here.

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Speaker 3: So he's called Alan Metcalf, and he found this discovery

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Speaker 3: that was going to change the technology world.

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Speaker 4: Hello, I'm Alan Metcalf. In nineteen ninety nine, I was

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Speaker 4: fortunate enough to make the breakthrough discovery of the law

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Speaker 4: of thought that in the IT world is called universal logic.

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Speaker 4: Much to the surprise and disbelief of many people, I

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Speaker 4: found the law of thought in the Bible.

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Speaker 3: It sounds silly, right, it's so ridiculous, but you know

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Speaker 3: a lot of the people that he found were highly

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Speaker 3: successful people, people who could put away fifty thousand dollars

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Speaker 3: into this scheme. And it was around the two thousands

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Speaker 3: when he started doing it, when tech companies were the buzz.

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Speaker 3: You know, we're in the tech boom. So people were

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Speaker 3: trying to find the next Google, and he was promising them,

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Speaker 3: this thing is going to be bigger than Google.

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Speaker 1: When you say this thing, So, what exactly was the product.

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Speaker 3: It's actually hard for me to even understand it now,

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Speaker 3: and I've been looking into it for a year. But basically,

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Speaker 3: he claimed that he'd found this code, he'd cracked this

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Speaker 3: code to artificial intelligence, and it was going to make

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Speaker 3: this kind of TV, internet e commerce hub. There was

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Speaker 3: going to be a combination of Amazon, Google, eBay, YouTube,

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Speaker 3: and it was going to be all of that but

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Speaker 3: better because he'd found this AI that was going to

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Speaker 3: make it more user friendly and more targeted.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Safe World's TV. Just like Magic, I'm going

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Speaker 1: to show you the easiest way to make money online. Right.

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Speaker 2: Okay, So he's got this amazing product that he thinks

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Speaker 2: is going to be the biggest thing in the world.

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Speaker 2: He convinces over six hundred people to invest their money

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Speaker 2: to make it happen.

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Speaker 1: It never happened.

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Speaker 3: No, So spoiler alert, it never happened. That's why I'm

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Speaker 3: looking into him now. So he actually died. So he

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Speaker 3: died before I was even a working journalist. But the

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Speaker 3: moment that he died, people were wondering, well, what's going

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Speaker 3: to happen now? What does this mean for me? And

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Speaker 3: so we've been looking into it and no one knows

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Speaker 3: where the money's gone. No one knows what happened to

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Speaker 3: this secret code that he claimed was going to revolutionize

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Speaker 3: the world. And no one's even sure if he's actually dead.

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Speaker 2: Okay, you've been investigating this, as you said, You've done

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Speaker 2: an eight part podcast series. It's called The Missing of

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Speaker 2: forty nine million. It comes out on Monday, July eighth.

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Speaker 2: Tell me about some of the people you spoke to

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Speaker 2: in this podcast.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's definitely some really interesting and bizarre characters

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Speaker 3: that we've comes I think one of the things that

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Speaker 3: stood out to me was a lot of the people

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Speaker 3: we spoke to, a lot of the investors, some of

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Speaker 3: them still believe that something could happen with this product, really,

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Speaker 3: even though he's you know, six feet under right now,

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Speaker 3: and a lot of them believe that maybe he was

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Speaker 3: delusional and he didn't set out to scam people. But

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Speaker 3: when we were looking into his past, it was quite

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Speaker 3: eye opening because he is not a successful businessman like

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Speaker 3: he claims. We've tracked him all the way down from

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Speaker 3: to the nineteen sixties when he was in his late teens,

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Speaker 3: and he's been scamming people since then, since the sixties,

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Speaker 3: and there's been warnings put out about him. But because

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Speaker 3: it was pre Internet, none of these people looked, and

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Speaker 3: a lot of them didn't think to look because they

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Speaker 3: were getting recommendations from people that they trusted. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: probably one of the other interesting characters we've come across

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Speaker 3: was a so called Irish billionaire who claimed he was

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Speaker 3: going to buy everyone out. Who's going to buy out

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Speaker 3: every single person who who put money in and he

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Speaker 3: was going to do that for two point five billion.

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Speaker 2: Dollars, So he was going to pay everyone back who invested,

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Speaker 2: and then he wanted the products just for himself.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well he was planning to sell it to the

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Speaker 3: Chinese government or something strange. But when we looked at

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Speaker 3: him up, there was no billionaire who existed under that name.

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Speaker 2: So do you think it was the guy who created

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Speaker 2: the product just trying to get hype about it or

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Speaker 2: well it was.

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Speaker 3: It was just very strange because all the investors thought

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Speaker 3: they were going to get this big payday and we

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Speaker 3: ended up tracking this guy down. All I can say

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Speaker 3: without spoiling is that he was very far from a billionaire,

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Speaker 3: and he's very old now and he's in a nursing home.

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Speaker 2: Well, if he's rich, he sounds like my kind of guy. Well,

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Speaker 2: it is a fascinating story. You're going to stick around

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Speaker 2: and tell us a bit more about it. In just

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Speaker 2: a moment, I'm chatting to news dot com dot to

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Speaker 2: use Alex Turner cor when he's got a new podcast

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Speaker 2: coming out on Monday, July eighth, called the Missing forty

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Speaker 2: nine million.

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Speaker 1: It is is truly wild.

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Speaker 2: You obviously spoke to a lot of people who invested

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Speaker 2: and haven't got their money back. Are any of them

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Speaker 2: like live it with this guy who's allegedly dead.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a lot of really angry people out there.

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Speaker 3: That's how we heard about it. We received a tip

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Speaker 3: off from someone who'd been trying to chase down their

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Speaker 3: money for ten years, and they'd put in their life

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Speaker 3: savings into this, so they've got no retirement funds now.

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Speaker 3: And this person had tried to sue Alan and tried

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Speaker 3: to get money back from the company, but just didn't

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Speaker 3: have the money to do that. So their next step

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Speaker 3: was to take it to the media. But there's been

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Speaker 3: some other really interesting links that we've found too. So

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Speaker 3: there was some strange links to Donald Trump that we found. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: So Alan Metcalf, the guy we're looking into, seems to

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Speaker 3: have been trying to get some kind of deal underway

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Speaker 3: with Trump before he died, and we're trying to find

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Speaker 3: out if it ever got to Trump, you know, and

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Speaker 3: potentially some of the investors' money was spent on all

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Speaker 3: these trips to the US to get these deals going,

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Speaker 3: and we're also looking at the possibility that maybe some

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Speaker 3: of the money was put in to help Trump get

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Speaker 3: into power as well.

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Speaker 1: It's crazy this story.

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Speaker 2: Now, you mentioned something particularly fascinating just before, that he

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Speaker 2: may not be even dead.

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Speaker 5: There's somebody else involved in this. Potentially is the other person,

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Speaker 5: the spider at the center of the web. The only

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Speaker 5: other alternative is that he's not dead and that he's

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Speaker 5: in fact living off the money.

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Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So it was just a convenient timing, a lot

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Speaker 3: of people say, because he was being investigated by our

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Speaker 3: corporate regulator ASSEK and the Australian Federal Police had actually

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Speaker 3: raided his home and his officers, and just a month

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Speaker 3: later he had died suddenly of a heart attack. Just

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Speaker 3: three days before his death, actually he had sent an

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Speaker 3: email to us sick. We don't know the contents of

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Speaker 3: that email, but it was literally just three days beforehand. So,

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Speaker 3: you know, there have been cases in the past where

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Speaker 3: there's been questions and then even some proof that maybe

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Speaker 3: they're still alive. Melissa Caddick, We're not sure about you know,

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Speaker 3: the foot washing up. The jury's out on that.

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Speaker 1: It's a dead giveaway.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, good one, thank you. But then some other people,

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Speaker 3: like you know, there was this Russian guy who faked

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Speaker 3: his own death and everyone thought he was dead, and

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Speaker 3: then like eight years later they found him. He popped

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Speaker 3: up in the background picture of someone's social media posts,

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Speaker 3: so he was alive and well, living in Thailand.

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Speaker 2: Well, I honestly hope that your podcast, The Missing forty

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Speaker 2: nine Million, which comes out on Monday, July eighth, ends

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Speaker 2: with you chatting to mister Allen Methalf.

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Speaker 1: I know you can't give away too much at the moment.

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Speaker 3: Alan, if you're listening, my door's always open at.

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Speaker 2: It sounds like a nabsolutely Bonker's ride that you've been on,

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Speaker 2: and I can't wait to listen to it when it

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Speaker 2: comes out.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for telling us about it.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Bucky,