Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's here too, which
Speaker 1: makes this stuff you should know the podcast. Oh you
Speaker 1: know what? Say small talk? While I look up? Who
Speaker 1: gave me this idea? Why do you keep doing this
Speaker 1: to me? I have to like entertain everybody. You once
Speaker 1: did this to me on stage. Get this everybody. We
Speaker 1: were on stage at the Bell House in Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: Chuck said he had to go to the bathroom all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, and I was left on stage, um,
Speaker 1: having to entertain everybody while he just hung out backstage.
Speaker 1: I don't think you even went to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: And long story short, I ended up showing off my moonwalk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I totally went to the bathroom. You think that
Speaker 1: was all a bit. Yeah, maybe you went and took
Speaker 1: some drugs to keep going on stage, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: in the green room you didn't even need to go
Speaker 1: do those in the bathroom. Uh No. I genuinely had
Speaker 1: to pee such that I didn't think I could make
Speaker 1: it through the show. I've I've felt that way before.
Speaker 1: To San Antonio. Um I had to run off the
Speaker 1: stage once because of that. That's right, all right, I
Speaker 1: got you, I got it. Uh, this idea. Initially this
Speaker 1: is on my list, but I forgot about it, but
Speaker 1: then was reminded by Alexander or Alex Ramos and State
Speaker 1: College Pennsylvania. All right, um, well thanks a lot, Alex Ramos.
Speaker 1: This is a great idea. Tiles. Had you ever heard
Speaker 1: of this? Sure? Had you not? Well? No, I just
Speaker 1: said it had long been on my list. Okay, that's right.
Speaker 1: Where did you hear of it? Uh? It just one
Speaker 1: of those things that pops up on the internet and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, let me read about this. This looks
Speaker 1: interesting for sure, and it is definitely interesting, but um
Speaker 1: in it would have been I think even more interesting
Speaker 1: ten years ago before the mystery was virtually solved. True,
Speaker 1: but it's still interesting if you ask me. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think this is one of those where we should
Speaker 1: very clearly tell everyone what we're talking about right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about is a phenomenon called the
Speaker 1: Toynbee tiles where in in the asphalt on the street,
Speaker 1: um on street corners and crosswalks and intersections, all over
Speaker 1: the um the northeast, seemingly concentrated in Philadelphia, but also
Speaker 1: going as far west as I think Kansas City, and
Speaker 1: then also strangely down in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. These
Speaker 1: these tiles bearing some really bizarre messages cut out of
Speaker 1: linoleum and again embedded into the asphalt of the street
Speaker 1: started appearing and have appeared mysterious sleep. No one has
Speaker 1: any idea or any any demonstrable proof of who is
Speaker 1: actually doing this, but they have been doing it since
Speaker 1: at least the mid eighties and conceivably still going on
Speaker 1: today right uh. And they are known as the Toynbee tiles.
Speaker 1: They're about the size of a license plate. And the
Speaker 1: general main message that you see on most of these
Speaker 1: is as follows, and it's in a very distinct script.
Speaker 1: It is generally all caps, cut out letters made of linoleum,
Speaker 1: cut out linoleum, and it says this Toynbee that is
Speaker 1: t O I N B E Toynbee idea. Underneath that
Speaker 1: it says in Kubrick's two thousand one, underneath that it
Speaker 1: says resurrect dead, and underneath that it says on planet Jupiter.
Speaker 1: And then a lot of tiles will have these little
Speaker 1: tags underneath and much smaller script that say all kinds
Speaker 1: of things, and we'll just read a few examples here. Uh,
Speaker 1: media will be reduced to ash. Uh, you must make
Speaker 1: plus place tiles you. I like that one because you
Speaker 1: has three exclamation points after I'm only one man, which
Speaker 1: turned out to be a clue, and when I caught
Speaker 1: a fatal disease, they gloated over its death. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is my favorite. Can I read? Sure? Now? Galileo's Cult
Speaker 1: of the Hell You In is now searching for more
Speaker 1: than one hell ideologies to get more reward, right, and
Speaker 1: then one final one I think because it's instructive to
Speaker 1: the story murder all journalists. I beg you. So these
Speaker 1: are the little smaller messages underneath the main for I
Speaker 1: guess you would call um tenants of this individual and um.
Speaker 1: One thing we should point out and Ed helped us
Speaker 1: put this together is apparently. And this is something I
Speaker 1: didn't even realize until yesterday. When this person refers to
Speaker 1: Hellien's apparently, he's talking about Jewish people. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's proven. I think specifically he's talking about like
Speaker 1: a Jewish conspiracy of Jewish cabal, usually a Jewish media
Speaker 1: conspiracy is seemingly what he's referring to. By Hellian's okay,
Speaker 1: so there is in some of these styles an anti
Speaker 1: Semitic bit to them. Uh. And it also points out that, um,
Speaker 1: this person perhaps may have some sort of mental illness,
Speaker 1: but it's also not right to even say that because
Speaker 1: we don't even know who this person is demonstrably as
Speaker 1: for proof. Like you said, so, it's also not great
Speaker 1: to like project that when you really don't know anything. No,
Speaker 1: And depending on where you look on the Internet, what
Speaker 1: sites you visit, UM, some I think there's one called
Speaker 1: toynb Idea, either dot net or dot com or something
Speaker 1: like that. It's an authoritative site. It's by one of
Speaker 1: the main investigators of these toynb tiles who um ended
Speaker 1: up working on this documentary that basically solved the case. Um.
Speaker 1: He refers to the the toynbetiles is like an art
Speaker 1: project basically, So it could be the ravings of a
Speaker 1: madman or the ongoing project of an artist, or it
Speaker 1: could be somebody who legitimately wants to make a crazy
Speaker 1: idea happen. There's a lot of different interpretations, and like
Speaker 1: you said, because we can't say for sure who it
Speaker 1: is that is doing this. You can't really get to
Speaker 1: the genuine like you can't prove oh, well, this person
Speaker 1: is is has a mental illness that there, this is
Speaker 1: how they're they're communicating that mental illness like you just
Speaker 1: you just can't say that, but it is worth putting
Speaker 1: in the back of your mind as you kind of
Speaker 1: hear the rest of it, you know. Yeah, and that documentary,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's called Resurrect Dead uh um. It
Speaker 1: is available on YouTube. But the recent I mentioned YouTube
Speaker 1: is I didn't find that you could pay for it
Speaker 1: anywhere and watch it. But that's right, you can pay
Speaker 1: for it. I did pay for it like a chump.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it on YouTube. What I was trying
Speaker 1: to do the right thing? Where did you find it?
Speaker 1: Voo voodoo? See? I looked all over. I used my
Speaker 1: handy app that tells you where you can stream stuff,
Speaker 1: and it was unlisted. And then I looked on a
Speaker 1: few streamers and it was unlisted. So I went to YouTube,
Speaker 1: and it's just sitting right there, so I'll watch man.
Speaker 1: I looked at YouTube and all I could find were
Speaker 1: those stupid previews. Did you type in twin be titles documentary. Yes,
Speaker 1: I typed in the name of it resurrect Dead. It's weird,
Speaker 1: it's the first hit. I don't know what happened. Well, regardless,
Speaker 1: it's about an hour and a half long and it's
Speaker 1: worth watching. I think it's a good, good doc It's
Speaker 1: not great, but I think for when it was made,
Speaker 1: I think I think that they did a pretty good
Speaker 1: job of it. Yeah. I think it's got like a
Speaker 1: six plus maybe even a seven on AMDB, and I
Speaker 1: would agree with that it was worth the four dollars
Speaker 1: I paid to rent it. I I'm I'm fine with that.
Speaker 1: Uh So we should talk a little bit about the message,
Speaker 1: I think, and break down what that means, because there's
Speaker 1: a there are a lot of components to this mystery,
Speaker 1: um from what the message means, where it came from,
Speaker 1: to who is doing this, how they're doing it, and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty interesting, little multi pronged mystery, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And thanks to those three investigators who worked on the documentary,
Speaker 1: who are kind of portrayed on the documentary, we basically
Speaker 1: understand everything there is to understand about what the Toynbee
Speaker 1: tilemaker's ideas are and what they mean. But that's fairly new.
Speaker 1: I mean for years, basically from the advent of the
Speaker 1: Internet to the toy Be tiles were taken up as
Speaker 1: like a something to commemorate and discuss and talk about
Speaker 1: from from the very beginning, and so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of time for this mystery to brew, and it was
Speaker 1: fairly recent that it kind of been settled. But what
Speaker 1: they figured out is um from the outset. The Toynbee
Speaker 1: that was discussed or mentioned in the tiles is Arnold J. Toynbee,
Speaker 1: who was kind of a popular historian. He wrote about
Speaker 1: civilizations and the history of civilizations and the history of
Speaker 1: politics and how it all kind of banded together, and
Speaker 1: how the civilizations that rose and fell over time we're
Speaker 1: all part of the same kind of current, that they
Speaker 1: were all related to one another, and that they rose
Speaker 1: and fell in predictable ways. Usually they would rise when
Speaker 1: a group of very smart, creative people would kind of
Speaker 1: lead the charge and creatively addressing a problem, and civilizations
Speaker 1: would fall when people stopped responding creatively two problems and
Speaker 1: were overwhelmed by those problems. And he was really really
Speaker 1: popular for a while, but then he started to really
Speaker 1: kind of take an increasingly christian view worldview of history
Speaker 1: and politics and placed a greater emphasis on the role
Speaker 1: of religions and Christianity, I believe in particular than historians
Speaker 1: in general were comfortable with and his his views kind
Speaker 1: of fell out of favor. Suffice to say, he was
Speaker 1: a genuine, um original thinker who who is definitely worth
Speaker 1: you know, reading about, if not reading directly. And it's
Speaker 1: a good thing his name was Toynbee. Yeah, it really
Speaker 1: made it a lot easier to narrow down the first
Speaker 1: mystery basically definitely, which is who is Toynbee? Uh, if
Speaker 1: it was the smith tiles a lot harder, But that
Speaker 1: is certainly the Toynbee. And it seems like the idea
Speaker 1: that uh, and we'll refer to the person as the
Speaker 1: tilemaker as it does Um toynbees book experiences seems to
Speaker 1: be uh, the centerpiece of the crux of the idea
Speaker 1: that the tilemaker is. Uh, let's just say fixated on um,
Speaker 1: the concept of the soul and the possibility that you
Speaker 1: could resurrect after death down to the molecular level. UM,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of what you know, what resurrected dead
Speaker 1: means in this case. And then as far as on
Speaker 1: planet Jupiter that comes it seems like at least and
Speaker 1: again they were piecing this people of pieces together because
Speaker 1: they've never interviewed the tilemaker. But there it looks like
Speaker 1: that's from Stanley Kubrick's two thousand one of Space Odyssey,
Speaker 1: because it mentions Kubrick and in that novel they are
Speaker 1: as you know, the star child is reborn on Jupiter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where the astronauts are being dispatched too, is
Speaker 1: Jupiter to figure out what's going on with some weird
Speaker 1: signal coming from that planet. Right, that's right. So if
Speaker 1: you put all those things together, then these four ideas
Speaker 1: as the toy b idea makes sense. It does, it
Speaker 1: does kind of make sense. And and like toynb died
Speaker 1: the you cannot say, like the tilemaker does that Toynbee
Speaker 1: had the idea of resurrecting the dead on Jupiter um,
Speaker 1: and that two thousand one was about that Toynbee idea.
Speaker 1: That's a that's the tilemaker's interpretation of all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: But Toynbee was talking about scientifically resurrecting people or whether
Speaker 1: it was possible, and the tilemaker took that idea and
Speaker 1: ran with it and basically came to believe that the
Speaker 1: that science was meant to carry out the project of
Speaker 1: creating the afterlife that God promised, and that to resurrect
Speaker 1: everybody um who had ever lived, you would need a
Speaker 1: plan at the size of Jupiter, which is a huge, huge,
Speaker 1: it's a gas giant um that you would need a
Speaker 1: plan at the size of Jupiter to fit all those people.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense in all sorts of different ways
Speaker 1: once you understand all of it. But even still, if
Speaker 1: you step back and think about what what they're what
Speaker 1: they're saying, the tilemakers saying, it's a genuinely bizarre idea,
Speaker 1: especially if you stop in realize that they legitimately we're
Speaker 1: trying to make this idea happen. Well, and again that's
Speaker 1: an assumption in and of itself. Like one day the
Speaker 1: tilemaker could come out and say, hey, this was all
Speaker 1: a joke, and basically banks he meets the Max Headroom incident,
Speaker 1: and uh, I've been meets Andy Kaufman and I've been
Speaker 1: punking you guys all these years. Of course I know
Speaker 1: that that's not possible, but yeah, I don't know it
Speaker 1: seems like this is something that this person believes and
Speaker 1: that they're trying to get this message out, because another
Speaker 1: way that this message was gotten out is in a
Speaker 1: neighborhood in Philadelphia, and I guess the nineteen eighties was
Speaker 1: when people would be watching television and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden their signal would be interrupted by this toyn B
Speaker 1: message coming through the TV. Uh and they figured out
Speaker 1: that it was and I hope I'm not getting too
Speaker 1: far ahead, but we'll keep the mystery intact. But it
Speaker 1: was coming from someone driving around their car with a
Speaker 1: high powered antenna that could cause us kind of interference.
Speaker 1: And this was pre tile, so this would have been
Speaker 1: the very early eighties, because they think the first tiles
Speaker 1: that were laid down where laid down in the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: and then even before the first tile, so basically around
Speaker 1: the time now, I think even before the UM the
Speaker 1: driving around interrupting people's TV watching, there were posters around
Speaker 1: Philadelphia that were placed up that had very um odd
Speaker 1: messages on them UM and then but they were all
Speaker 1: generally like the same stuff the tiles we're talking about,
Speaker 1: which again was the idea of resurrecting the dead on
Speaker 1: Jupiter that was a toybee idea that was depicted in
Speaker 1: two thousand one. That's generally the bulk of the message,
Speaker 1: but also there's a weird, little kind of side tangent
Speaker 1: that happened. Um. David Mammitt plays a role in this
Speaker 1: because in three moment wrote a play called four Am
Speaker 1: and he said later that it was an homage to
Speaker 1: Larry King, who back in the early early eighties was
Speaker 1: a late night radio talk show host, but long before
Speaker 1: he had his TV show before Yeah and ma'am it
Speaker 1: used to listen to that, uh, and he wrote a
Speaker 1: one act play based on it. And in the one
Speaker 1: act play, the caller who calls into this this radio
Speaker 1: show talks about resurrecting the dead on Jupiter and how
Speaker 1: people are dead molecules that you could bring back to life,
Speaker 1: and uh, ma'am it basically said, I guess this guy
Speaker 1: got the idea from me. But if you step back
Speaker 1: and look at the timeline of everything, that call apparently
Speaker 1: went in in nineteen eighty and ma'ma didn't write the
Speaker 1: play for three years later, So David Mammitt probably wrote
Speaker 1: a play based on a call he heard of the
Speaker 1: tilemaker who called into Larry king In to explain his
Speaker 1: views on resurrecting the dead on Jupiter right, and everywhere
Speaker 1: I've looked, I haven't really seen that anyone is accusing
Speaker 1: Mamot of being dishonest. I think the general all consensuses
Speaker 1: if that were the case, that he probably didn't realize
Speaker 1: that he had heard it and probably remembers it as
Speaker 1: an original idea, and not that he just stole the
Speaker 1: thing and lied about it. No, but it is impossible
Speaker 1: that it's a coincidence because of the language that's used
Speaker 1: in the one act, like resurrect dead molecules, um just
Speaker 1: resurrect him on Jupiter two thousand one has mentioned, TOYNB
Speaker 1: has mentioned, it's just not possible that it's a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Somebody influenced somebody else. But yeah, it does seem to
Speaker 1: be honest from what I can tell to. All Right,
Speaker 1: good time for a break. I think I think the
Speaker 1: mysteries mounting. I think so. I think people have their
Speaker 1: popcorn out and they're ready for part two. Okay, well
Speaker 1: let's give it to him. We'll be right back, all right.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned at the beginning, Uh, Philadelphia is the centerpiece,
Speaker 1: and it is I mean, I feel like we can
Speaker 1: almost certainly say that the tilemaker lives or lived in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: perhaps still does and because they were not only did
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia have the most concentration of tiles, and then
Speaker 1: it sort of spread from there Boston, d C. Maryland,
Speaker 1: New York again some sort of on a direct westward
Speaker 1: band out to Kansas City, like through Cincinnati, but never
Speaker 1: anything south. Um, there are in this one neighborhood where
Speaker 1: they end up thinking they pinpointed the tilemaker. There are
Speaker 1: they found all these little test tiles all over the place.
Speaker 1: He's just a little bits of tile, little letters here
Speaker 1: and there, but the same script and the same technique.
Speaker 1: So uh, it was it's pretty obvious that this is
Speaker 1: where it originated. Yes, I mean that to me is like, well,
Speaker 1: there's there's your answer right there. So um. They they
Speaker 1: also like the people who were were reporting having their
Speaker 1: TV interrupted by somebody driving down the street with their
Speaker 1: shortwave radio. That happened in Philadelphia, in the same neighborhood
Speaker 1: where those test tiles were later found by the documentary investigators,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't a mystery, right They like they were like,
Speaker 1: we know who that is. Stopped doing it. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that became clear once those investigators visited that neighborhood and
Speaker 1: started talking to neighbors. UM And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: they were able to think it was because the radio
Speaker 1: broadcast that was coming through their TVs from the guy
Speaker 1: driving down the street was talking about resurrecting the dead
Speaker 1: on Jupiter, an idea of Arnold Toynbee's that was depicted
Speaker 1: in two thousand one. So basically, this tilemaker got this
Speaker 1: idea starting about nine They've pinned down and was trying
Speaker 1: to figure out creative ways to spread this publicity um as.
Speaker 1: And one of the first ways that they tried to
Speaker 1: do it was to turn to the press, and they
Speaker 1: called the Philadelphia Inquirer and tried to relate their um
Speaker 1: their ideas to one of the journalists. They're a guy
Speaker 1: named Clark day Leon and um in very much the
Speaker 1: same way that that they called Larry King three years before.
Speaker 1: Clark Day Leon took the call and then wrote up
Speaker 1: a very unflattering piece about the idea, and UM I
Speaker 1: think kind of set off that that disdain for the
Speaker 1: media that the tilemaker displays in some of the additional tiles. Yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely so, at some point there was a group formed
Speaker 1: by the t m H called the Minority Association. Upon
Speaker 1: further investigation in this documentary, it seems that it was
Speaker 1: not a group or an association at all. It was
Speaker 1: just this one person. Uh. And there are some little
Speaker 1: clues that will get too later on about that. Uh,
Speaker 1: But that was this group that was formed and there
Speaker 1: were these radio broadcast where the tile maker would say,
Speaker 1: I will send information if you want it, uh to
Speaker 1: anyone who wants it, and someone did because they had
Speaker 1: this stuff twenty years later, all these materials sent from
Speaker 1: the quote unquote Minority Association that uh, the the documentary
Speaker 1: filmmakers eventually got their hands on, which was a big,
Speaker 1: big find for them. Yeah, and it was really interesting,
Speaker 1: like to watch it in the documentary how they managed
Speaker 1: to come across that. It was actually I was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is some really weird filler that they're using.
Speaker 1: And it finally like led to to finding these documents
Speaker 1: and turning up them. You know, people who knew this
Speaker 1: guy um back in the day. Um. But when they
Speaker 1: got these documents, that's when a lot of the questions
Speaker 1: were filled in because um, it was that that minority
Speaker 1: associations like press materials and it explained everything, like anything
Speaker 1: you had a question about before was basically answered in
Speaker 1: this and there was most of the documents were signed
Speaker 1: by somebody named James Morosco, um, which, like you were saying, uh,
Speaker 1: they believe now that the minority associate was was just
Speaker 1: one person, the tilemaker, and that the tilemaker was using
Speaker 1: aliases to make it seem like they were more than
Speaker 1: more people than just one and James Morosco was one
Speaker 1: of those aliases. It just so happens there was a
Speaker 1: James Morosco in Philadelphia who um seems to have had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with this. It was just again an alias, right,
Speaker 1: so that was a bit of a red herring. But
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the document there was only one other name
Speaker 1: mentioned and and you know these people, these these three
Speaker 1: dudes basically that became um, I don't know about obsessed,
Speaker 1: but it became like a fixation for them to solve
Speaker 1: this mystery. And this was at the very beginnings of
Speaker 1: the internet. Is when they started off, Like you know
Speaker 1: that there was there was no information when they first
Speaker 1: started looking on the internet about the toy Bee tiles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should say their names because they really did some
Speaker 1: good detective work Justin, Dr Steve Weinick, and Colin Smith,
Speaker 1: the three investigators, and then John Foy made the documentary
Speaker 1: and they all seem to have worked together for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this. These guys did not know each other previously.
Speaker 1: They met online through their individual interest in the toy
Speaker 1: Bee tiles and got together and seemingly became friends, you
Speaker 1: know as they investigated this, which I think could have
Speaker 1: they could have flushed out a little more in the documentary,
Speaker 1: but that's fine human element to it. Sure. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they seemed to really focus on Justin, Yeah, they did.
Speaker 1: He seems to be the guy that sort of h
Speaker 1: ran with it the most. But the only other name
Speaker 1: in this minority association uh set of documents was Severino Verna,
Speaker 1: a k a. Sev sev y Verna. And they tracked
Speaker 1: sevy Verna down um to this neighborhood and phil Ladelphia,
Speaker 1: and they said, well, sevy Verna is the guy that
Speaker 1: rode around in the car broadcasting these ideas. And they
Speaker 1: were like, well, that's got to be him then, uh,
Speaker 1: And they were like he was. He's a recluse. He
Speaker 1: never you don't see him much. He does his shopping
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. Uh, there was this
Speaker 1: incident where because all this stuff happened, Uh, some people
Speaker 1: broke in, like held a knife to his throat, were like,
Speaker 1: you know, because he was interrupting everyone's TV and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, And especially after that, it seemed like he
Speaker 1: became even more of a recluse. And they said, but
Speaker 1: he had this old car with this huge antenna and
Speaker 1: didn't have a passenger seat and had a big hole
Speaker 1: on the floorboard, and it was just a mess. And
Speaker 1: they're knocking on this guy's door in the documentary and
Speaker 1: he's just not coming to the door. And in the meantime,
Speaker 1: they're they're exploring these other side roads, uh, either figuring
Speaker 1: out the deal with Morosco or there was another candidate
Speaker 1: name was it Railroad Jim, which had a little bit
Speaker 1: of I mean, I could see why they went down
Speaker 1: that road, but it became pretty clear that it wasn't
Speaker 1: Railroad Jim. Yeah. And then same with James Morosco. He
Speaker 1: lived in Philadelphia at the time, but he died in
Speaker 1: like I think two thousand three, and some of the tilemakers,
Speaker 1: a lot of the tilemaker's tiles continued on after that time.
Speaker 1: That can be pointed as like, no, these are definitely
Speaker 1: the original tilemakers tiles. Because one of the things that
Speaker 1: clouds this mystery is there have been plenty of copycats.
Speaker 1: Some of them are just kind of following up, like
Speaker 1: picking up what the tilemakers laying down kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Other people seem to be actually trying to actively confuse
Speaker 1: people by making tiles that look as as much and
Speaker 1: seem as much like the tilemaker's tiles. But these three
Speaker 1: investigators among others, have gotten so good at examining the
Speaker 1: tiles they can they can tell what's the tilemakers and
Speaker 1: what's not, and have even pointed to like like change
Speaker 1: like different periods. You know how artists like Picasso at
Speaker 1: a blue period and all that, Like the tilemakers had
Speaker 1: periods over the years, and some of them are so
Speaker 1: different that it wasn't until years later that these investor
Speaker 1: gets have gone back and been like, actually, that was
Speaker 1: the tilemakers. We thought he stopped for a while and
Speaker 1: this was a copycat. It was actually him all along.
Speaker 1: So um, it definitely was not James Morosco. His widow says,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what you guys are talking about
Speaker 1: with Jupiter or two thousand one. My husband had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with any tiles, please stop calling um. And
Speaker 1: then same thing with Railroad Jim. He died and the
Speaker 1: tiles continued on, So it couldn't have been him either.
Speaker 1: So it definitely seems to be Severino verna Um and
Speaker 1: that that's been He's There's just so many things that
Speaker 1: that point to him. It's it's pretty much conclusive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there was we also should mention beyond the regular
Speaker 1: kind of license plate size tiles, there was one sort
Speaker 1: of massive uh information dump, uh tile set of tiles
Speaker 1: that just had a bunch of like I mean, you
Speaker 1: can go online and read this one. It's really long. Uh.
Speaker 1: They talked about a lot of things from there. Seems
Speaker 1: to be an obsession with the Soviet Union, which you know,
Speaker 1: during the Cold War, it sort of makes sense that
Speaker 1: this might be a thing um the media. Again. The
Speaker 1: tilemaker talks about the mafia breaking into his house to
Speaker 1: kill him, which is probably a reference to the people
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood who broke in to threaten him. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's just sort of a long rambling uh info
Speaker 1: dump that is. I think when you talk to these
Speaker 1: three investigators or anyone that's in the twin be tiles.
Speaker 1: They're like, this is the real sort of uh magna carta,
Speaker 1: I guess of the tilemaker, and this this has the
Speaker 1: most clues in it. Uh. And and I think we
Speaker 1: also forgot to mention that the reason they even found
Speaker 1: Verna was I think it was one in Brazil had
Speaker 1: an actual street address in Philadelphia that turned out to
Speaker 1: be Verna's address. Okay, I thought the address turned out
Speaker 1: to be a dead end, but there was definitely one
Speaker 1: of the earliest tiles. Maybe the earliest tiles were those
Speaker 1: with the address in Philadelphia, so it turned out to
Speaker 1: be his huh. Yeah, but I think that the only
Speaker 1: place that was was on one tile in Brazil. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got you. But so those were those were tiles
Speaker 1: from the mid eighties, and they think that those tiles
Speaker 1: were put down before even one started appearing in Philadelphia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of like one of the mysteries of
Speaker 1: the of the documentary is that they eventually talked to you, Uh,
Speaker 1: Sevy's Verna's mom because he's not answering the phone or
Speaker 1: the door, and she was like, it's it's Sevy doesn't
Speaker 1: like travel. He's got a lung condition and he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have traveled to South America or even outside of Philadelphia
Speaker 1: really because of this condition. Yeah, that's a puzzler because
Speaker 1: if you look at those tiles and the fact that
Speaker 1: it's a Philadelphia address in the same neighborhood at least
Speaker 1: as as um Sevy Verna like it's it's definitely one
Speaker 1: of Vernon's stiles. So what I guess? So for sure? Um,
Speaker 1: And they also say, like, why South America. There's apparently
Speaker 1: something in that book experienced by Arnold Toynbee. Um. It's
Speaker 1: a bit of an autobiography as well, and he talks
Speaker 1: about going to these places that these tiles appeared in
Speaker 1: the eighties. So I guess it's possibly could have had
Speaker 1: a proxy do it, right. But here's the thing, and
Speaker 1: we'll leave you with this before our break. Uh, it
Speaker 1: seems very much short Sevy. But no one has ever
Speaker 1: seen this happen, these tiles that are embedded in the asphalt.
Speaker 1: So the question for a long time remained still, how
Speaker 1: was this happening without How are these hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of tiles getting embedded in the street without anyone ever
Speaker 1: seeing this guy do it? Then we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: right after this okay, Chuck, that was quite a cliffhanger, right, So,
Speaker 1: no one's ever seen sevy Verna do this. No one's
Speaker 1: ever seen anybody do this. Um, And it was thanks
Speaker 1: to the Three Investigators, which, by the way, did you
Speaker 1: ever read those Alfred Hitchcock books? The three Investigators. One
Speaker 1: of them was like Hitchcock's nephew, and Hitchcock would make
Speaker 1: a cameo every once in a while, but they would
Speaker 1: remember what you're talking about. But I didn't read them,
Speaker 1: kind of like a hardy boys type thing. They were great,
Speaker 1: And every time I say three investators, I keep thinking
Speaker 1: of that. It's very nostalgic for me. Um. There's like
Speaker 1: a little portion of my brain that's really enjoying things
Speaker 1: right now. Um. Not to say the rest of my
Speaker 1: brain isn't, but it's enjoying it in a different way.
Speaker 1: I think I did too. Um. But these three investigators,
Speaker 1: I can't even remember what I was talking about. I
Speaker 1: was talking about. We were talking about the fact that
Speaker 1: he had never been found doing this. Oh yes, these
Speaker 1: three investigators down how this actually happened, and then further
Speaker 1: they pieced together how sevy Verna in particular would have
Speaker 1: done it. Too, and it's pretty ingenious. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: way they figured out how it was happening was a
Speaker 1: near miss, which was the and this is crazy coincidence,
Speaker 1: but the lead investigator, guy Justin, was in Philly looking
Speaker 1: around doing investigating and a lot of this investigation at
Speaker 1: the time was literally walking around city streets looking down
Speaker 1: for these styles. It was like, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the hard way before the Internet was truly like filled
Speaker 1: up with information about this, and there's some of the
Speaker 1: first guys that filled the Internet with the stuff. But
Speaker 1: he happened upon a fresh tile that had just been
Speaker 1: laid down that he said was not there when he
Speaker 1: passed by before, and he was like, it happened within
Speaker 1: minutes of when I was there, And it's in the documentary.
Speaker 1: It's pretty thrilling that this guy, like he starts yelling
Speaker 1: around and and saying that he's you know, I believe
Speaker 1: then TOYNB ideas where are you come out? Come out?
Speaker 1: And it's like, oh my god, this guy is just
Speaker 1: like almost solved the case. But what they found was
Speaker 1: these tiles were and this is really pretty ingenious actually
Speaker 1: how it's done. Uh, they use like asphalt crack filler
Speaker 1: like this black tari stuff. And the key though, is
Speaker 1: the tile is wrapped in roof paper tar paper, which
Speaker 1: is black, so it's laid down and it just looks
Speaker 1: black on top. And then over time this thing is
Speaker 1: run over by cars and walked over and gets embedded
Speaker 1: further and further, and eventually the tar paper just wears
Speaker 1: a way to reveal the tile. Yeah, isn't that amazing.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. So over the course of weeks, maybe even months,
Speaker 1: as this is being pushed down and melting into the asphalt,
Speaker 1: apparently I'm of the tiles where he instructs people on
Speaker 1: making more tiles to do it themselves. He says, put
Speaker 1: him lay him in the in the summertime so that
Speaker 1: the sun will bake him into the asphalt. Um. But
Speaker 1: he never provided any other really detailed destruction instructions aside
Speaker 1: from that, and said use asphalt crack filler and then
Speaker 1: that's it. So these guys managed to piece this together
Speaker 1: from that that one tile, that fresh tile they found.
Speaker 1: But even still the mystery remained on how they were
Speaker 1: appearing in some really strange places like the middle of
Speaker 1: the street, like a busy street, um, the middle of
Speaker 1: a highway. Uh. The entrance of the hall and tunnel.
Speaker 1: It would be like really dangerous for a person to
Speaker 1: be squatting down like trying to install one of these tiles.
Speaker 1: And they pieced together by something. One of the neighbors
Speaker 1: told them that you had mentioned earlier that Sevy Verna
Speaker 1: had a car that didn't have a passenger side seat
Speaker 1: and that had no floorboard or a huge hole in
Speaker 1: the floorboard. But they figured out once they found this
Speaker 1: fresh tile, is that he might pull up to a stoplight,
Speaker 1: might stop in the middle of the road, put his
Speaker 1: hazards on, who knows, but he could lay down one
Speaker 1: of these pre made tiles with asphalt filler crack filler
Speaker 1: on the bottom and tar paper on top, smooth it
Speaker 1: down and then drive off and just wait for it
Speaker 1: to be revealed, you know, over the coming weeks or months.
Speaker 1: I this this is the part that I love more
Speaker 1: than any other part of this whole mystery is the ingenious,
Speaker 1: elegant yet simple way that this tilemaker would do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it would just and didn't even necessarily have
Speaker 1: to stop for too long. Like I get the impression
Speaker 1: that this thing is tarred on the bottom such that
Speaker 1: you can just kind of drop it there and it
Speaker 1: will stay in place, drive over it with that back
Speaker 1: tire and it's it's in there. Yeah, And the idea
Speaker 1: that it's like slowly really it's protected until it's revealed,
Speaker 1: like people walking on it, people having on it, not
Speaker 1: paying any attention to it whatsoever, and then in doing
Speaker 1: so they're actually helping UM anchor this this piece UM.
Speaker 1: I just find that just just like Chef's kiss, you know.
Speaker 1: And then the other part of it too is it's ephemeral,
Speaker 1: like these things are made of linoleum, embedded in the
Speaker 1: asphalt there, and they're being driven over there, being walked
Speaker 1: over even after the tar papers gone. So they're not
Speaker 1: meant to last very long. I saw like a lifespan
Speaker 1: of usually about a year. And yeah, and that's him.
Speaker 1: That's if the UM, if the like the road cruise
Speaker 1: don't happen to be repaving that street in the meantime.
Speaker 1: In some cities they actually go dig these things up
Speaker 1: when they're reported in Chicago and New York do that,
Speaker 1: But for the most part, they tend to just kind
Speaker 1: of linger along until they slowly like kind of get
Speaker 1: trashed and then are eventually repaved over. So it's an
Speaker 1: ephemeral project as well that he's just constantly updating and
Speaker 1: doing and has been since the mid eighties. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you get a sense of the real delight from the
Speaker 1: people from these three guys and then just other people
Speaker 1: in general of finding these and like it's almost like
Speaker 1: a like a scavenger hunt, and then when they find them,
Speaker 1: like then assessing and appreciating and reveling in its condition, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this one's pretty new, it's still in pretty good shape.
Speaker 1: Or look, they're only fragments of this one left. Um,
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. I mean, I'm going to New York
Speaker 1: in two days for the first time in two years,
Speaker 1: and uh, you can bet your bottom dollar I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be trying to find one of these and get in
Speaker 1: a picture. Well, you'll probably find there's a lot of
Speaker 1: copycats these days. Some, like we said, are trying to
Speaker 1: confuse the issue. Others are just kind of vibing on
Speaker 1: the tilemaker's vibe. Um, the moment will be suckered by
Speaker 1: any copycat. The most prolific is House of Hades. Um.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to care at all about resurrecting the
Speaker 1: dead on Jupiter, but they really like the idea of
Speaker 1: like like um, reducing all media and journalists to ash um,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a side thing. Like we said,
Speaker 1: the Toynbee tilemaker is into UM, so there's you. There's
Speaker 1: a good chance you will see some, but there's it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a tilemaker unless you actually go actively seek
Speaker 1: them out. And you can find that on Toynbee idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: dot com or dot net whatever it is. Um, they
Speaker 1: they have them like archives, so you could you could
Speaker 1: go look for sure. Yeah, I mean that's I'm gonna cheat.
Speaker 1: I'm not just gonna randomly walk around three days trying
Speaker 1: to find tiles looking down the whole time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got other stuff to do, but people to see. But um.
Speaker 1: The other thing I want to mention too before we
Speaker 1: close is just I found myself watching this documentary and
Speaker 1: sort of exploring the idea of anonymity and how I
Speaker 1: feel about that in a case like this where you
Speaker 1: have someone who, uh, let's let's say this person is
Speaker 1: has some sort of mental condition and this is their
Speaker 1: outlet and uh, instead of you know, standing there with
Speaker 1: a bullhorn on a street corner, this may be their
Speaker 1: their messaging system. And like when I saw these guys
Speaker 1: banging on the door, uh and making phone calls to
Speaker 1: his mom. I was like, leave him alone. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they even talk about that, and they they're trying
Speaker 1: to be respectful, but they do talk about the fact that,
Speaker 1: you know, they think they saw someone upstairs clearly at home,
Speaker 1: not answering the door. When it sort of hit them
Speaker 1: that like, this person may be up there, really scared Uh.
Speaker 1: When the documentary came out, there was a lull and
Speaker 1: activity um from the tilemaker. So but then I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, but then why are you going out and
Speaker 1: putting these things all over the place and seemingly trying
Speaker 1: to start a movement or attract attention? Although I don't
Speaker 1: know about to start a movement because it's not like
Speaker 1: that ever genuinely was the goal. I don't think. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It didn't feel like it to me, because
Speaker 1: it seems like if that would have been the case,
Speaker 1: it would have been here's who I am and here's
Speaker 1: where we'll meet. And uh, I don't know, I never
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced that this person wanted other people involved.
Speaker 1: What but that that's so imagine if you felt like
Speaker 1: you were the only person who understood what God wanted
Speaker 1: science to do, and you were a recluse who could
Speaker 1: not it was not at all comfortable interacting with other people.
Speaker 1: What would you do, well, you would when when someone
Speaker 1: came knocking in your door saying, hey, listen, I think
Speaker 1: you're a great, brilliant thinker, and I believe in this movement.
Speaker 1: I can help you get your word out. Then you
Speaker 1: then you take them up on it. Like, it seems
Speaker 1: like this person did not want to be discovered and
Speaker 1: thus did not want to start a movement to be
Speaker 1: at the center of Yes, I don't think that he
Speaker 1: wanted to be at the center of it. I think
Speaker 1: he wanted this movement to start. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I agree with that. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that that was in that um that press kit that
Speaker 1: the the guy wrote off for in the early eighties
Speaker 1: and still kept for like twenty or so years, it
Speaker 1: says as the most unusual scientific movement in the USA,
Speaker 1: the group wants the world to put all other affairs
Speaker 1: aside in order to scientifically colonize the planet Jupiter. So
Speaker 1: like if if if he believed that, and that's what
Speaker 1: his genuine aim was, but he felt totally ill equipped
Speaker 1: to actually publicize it himself, like making tiles and and
Speaker 1: embedding them in a clever way and asphalt actually kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense to me. See, I think that's the
Speaker 1: final mystery. Is the purpose of this to begin with? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you take it on face value, then then he
Speaker 1: was trying to make resurrection happen, knowing he couldn't do
Speaker 1: it himself. He needed science to do it, but he
Speaker 1: had to rouse everybody to do it on his half. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: who knows, Maybe it is just the ongoing art project.
Speaker 1: Who knows. I don't know. I think that's the mystery
Speaker 1: will never solve. Uh. In the documentary there, it sort
Speaker 1: of closes on an interesting thing where I think the
Speaker 1: main guy tells the story of I think he was
Speaker 1: it on a bus or something. He thinks they're on
Speaker 1: a bus together, and it's sort of a mutual acknowledgement
Speaker 1: and eye contact of I know who you are. You're
Speaker 1: the guy that's been knocking on my door that did
Speaker 1: the documentary, and I know that you're the tilemaker. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there were but no words are exchanged, no, and
Speaker 1: he's like he concludes, like I need to leave this
Speaker 1: guy alone forever. He just like I just have to
Speaker 1: accept it and move on that he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: be a part of this. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. Um, well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the Toynbee tiles,
Speaker 1: there is a lot on the internet that you can
Speaker 1: read about it. You can watch Resurrect Dead. It was
Speaker 1: pretty good documentary. Definitely worth four dollars um and uh,
Speaker 1: since I said definitely worth were dollars this time for
Speaker 1: a listener mail, I'm going to call this phantom kidney. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you've been my go to for audio entertainment since twelve
Speaker 1: when I was working to finish my forensic science graduate research.
Speaker 1: I finally have something to email about though. Four years ago,
Speaker 1: this may had donated a kidney to my friend's mom technically,
Speaker 1: and my kidney went to someone else directly because we
Speaker 1: were in the appaired exchange program, which I learned about
Speaker 1: from you guys, and I actually experienced phantom kidney sensation.
Speaker 1: I know, right. Luckily, the phantom sensation was not painful,
Speaker 1: but almost a weird specific awareness and feeling. I mean,
Speaker 1: because who can actually feel their kidneys? Right? But it
Speaker 1: was on the same side of the one that I
Speaker 1: lost and lower back who knows it could have been
Speaker 1: placebo because they warned me that it was possible. But
Speaker 1: it was fascinating to learn of phantom organ pain firsthand
Speaker 1: and from you guys. Just figured that was unique enough
Speaker 1: and it's sort of a fun learning experience. If you
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to emphasize the Paired Exchange program, please
Speaker 1: add it in again. Just by me jumping in to donate,
Speaker 1: three transplants were able to be performed. While every donation
Speaker 1: program was different, my experience was absolutely wonderful and I
Speaker 1: would gladly do it again if I had another despair,
Speaker 1: and if anyone were interested in more information, I would
Speaker 1: gladly share it with them. I love what you guys do.
Speaker 1: It's been fun going through life alongside you both. That
Speaker 1: is Mackenzie from Maine, currently in Pennsylvania with one kidney
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, definitely check out the Paired Kidney Exchange
Speaker 1: program if that's something that you are able to do.
Speaker 1: If you have a good, healthy kidney that you can
Speaker 1: healthily donate, then someone would be glad to take it
Speaker 1: off your hands. Emphasis added Also Mackenzie, I mean hats
Speaker 1: off to you for doing that. That's an amazing thing
Speaker 1: that you did, and you deserve to be canonized, so congratulations. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you want to be like Mackenzie and basically say, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to hear about this cool thing I did,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
Speaker 1: it on the phantom kidney, and send it off to
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