Speaker 1: What's syphilitic? My eighteen seventies sailors, I'm Robert Evans hosted
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards. That introduction had really nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the topic today. But I mean, sailors in the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies had a hell of a lot of syphilis.
Speaker 1: You can't argue that that's just that's just fact, that's
Speaker 1: just science. Here with me to talk about syphilis a
Speaker 1: little bit more is my once and current and probably
Speaker 1: future boss Jack O'Brien. Actually it ends after after this,
Speaker 1: after that one more time over swan song. Yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: pleasure to be here, Pleasure to just be on a
Speaker 1: zoom with both of you, Robert and Sophie. It's good.
Speaker 1: What is more the American way than syphilis? You know?
Speaker 1: It is, it is. It is the most American disease,
Speaker 1: and I think one we ought to bring back. Let's
Speaker 1: bring back everybody slowly losing their minds as worms eat
Speaker 1: their brains. It's good for you. It brought us. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of art we got because of syphilis. You know, what,
Speaker 1: what are we what are we losing now that we've
Speaker 1: cured it? A lot? Is my contention, We're losing a
Speaker 1: lot and possibly a Hitler too. Yeah, we might be
Speaker 1: losing exactly, we're losing a Hitler or two and maybe,
Speaker 1: uh well, okay, probably has nothing to do with what
Speaker 1: we're talking. It really doesn't. It really doesn't, Um, Jack
Speaker 1: O'Brien attack Jacktoberfest. This is every time I do this.
Speaker 1: I'm continuing a series of jokes that are our colleague
Speaker 1: Dan O'Brien did when I was like seventeen. It's funny
Speaker 1: the things that stick with you, Um, Jack, how do
Speaker 1: you funny? The things that stick with you? Like that
Speaker 1: being a thing that everybody says to me. Also, people
Speaker 1: thinking that I am a fictional character created by Daniel O'Brien,
Speaker 1: aren't you. I did think that right up until you
Speaker 1: called me about the internship when I was I just
Speaker 1: I'm just somebody who saw a branding opportunity and reached
Speaker 1: out to Daniel and said, Hey, I want to occupy
Speaker 1: this character of Jack O'Brien that you invented. We should
Speaker 1: really be nicer to Jack. He employed both of us.
Speaker 1: He's employed me virtually my entire adult life. Jack saved
Speaker 1: me from the tech world. He saved me from very
Speaker 1: lucky and a teacher. Well, you're still still teaching people stuff.
Speaker 1: I would feel more bad about that, but I feel
Speaker 1: like you do a good job teaching people stuff, so
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Well, Jack, how do you feel about AMI?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know a ton about it, and
Speaker 1: that's good. I know it as a like door to
Speaker 1: door sales thing, and I know it as sort of
Speaker 1: the uh grandmother of multi level marketing that which has
Speaker 1: turned into a massive thing. Now, yeah, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the basics, And the most important thing to know about Amway, Jack,
Speaker 1: is that it is not legally a pyramid scheme, as
Speaker 1: in never legally not a pyramid scheme. And the fact
Speaker 1: that we have to say it's legally not a pyramid
Speaker 1: scheme does say all that you should know about the
Speaker 1: kind of business Away is as and it's the kind
Speaker 1: of business where you have to specifically note that legally
Speaker 1: it's not a pyramid scheme. A lot of lawyers. They
Speaker 1: have a lot of lawyers and a lot of money.
Speaker 1: If there's like a mathematical equation you can do based
Speaker 1: on like the the amount of money you have and
Speaker 1: then how much of that money you spend on lawyers
Speaker 1: that just like attack people on your on your behalf. Um. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: and so it is. It is not legally a pyramid scheme. Um.
Speaker 1: But the Consumer Awareness Institute has calculated that Amway's loss
Speaker 1: rates for distributors exceed ninety nine point nine percent, which
Speaker 1: means virtually all of the people who are kind of
Speaker 1: sort of employees of a way, of course, legally they're
Speaker 1: not employees. They're independent, you know, distributors, um make zero
Speaker 1: money or lose money. And and nearly all of the
Speaker 1: profits that am Way makes come from its distributors and
Speaker 1: are funneled up to a tiny group of people at
Speaker 1: the top, while the vast majority of people at the
Speaker 1: bottom make nothing. You can visualize the shape of that
Speaker 1: arrangement in your head. But it's legally not a pyramid scheme. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now the ninety nine point nine is not not great.
Speaker 1: It would be a really different podcasting industry if well,
Speaker 1: I guess that is like if you look at podcasting
Speaker 1: as a whole. But that's not you know, a company. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying most podcasts are are are like my
Speaker 1: favorite ever tell you about my favorite podcast? Jack? What's that?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? I came across this before I ever
Speaker 1: gotten to podcasting. But when people started talking about it
Speaker 1: as a thing, I think around and I fell in
Speaker 1: love with it because it was the most tasteless, tactless
Speaker 1: thing I have ever encountered in my life. It was
Speaker 1: a vaping podcast by like four four kind of chetty
Speaker 1: dudes in South Carolina, and the name they picked for
Speaker 1: their podcast was the Serial Vapists. Yeah, they shaped it
Speaker 1: did um and the content was exactly what you'd expect
Speaker 1: it was. It was horrible, but it was very funny.
Speaker 1: I don't think they am fairly certain. They never made
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan bucks off of that show, but it was
Speaker 1: very funny to me. I was really hoping you were
Speaker 1: going to name drop one of your own podcasts that's
Speaker 1: your favorite. Were you were that that guy? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't listen to podcast Sophie, I just make them um.
Speaker 1: I've actually never time to listen in my life. Exactly
Speaker 1: tubiously making that Cassy making them um um. It's like
Speaker 1: Dan Acroyds never seen one of his own movies. You
Speaker 1: know that that can't be possible. Dan was the only
Speaker 1: man who hasn't watched Ghostbusters. Probably watched that one, you'd
Speaker 1: have to think. But he claims he doesn't watch his
Speaker 1: own movies. Yeah, I mean that would be did you
Speaker 1: did you just when you were discovering, uh, the Cereal vapists?
Speaker 1: Did you just put is there like some cereal? It
Speaker 1: was like really cereal and it was whenever whatever. Years
Speaker 1: the first serial came out, So I was looking for
Speaker 1: Cereal and I saw underneath it like and I had
Speaker 1: to listen, um and it was amazing. Like one of
Speaker 1: the episodes, the first like twenty minutes, was just a
Speaker 1: guy talking about taking a ship at a vape store
Speaker 1: and the fact that they were cool with the fact
Speaker 1: that he took a giant ship in their bathroom. Like
Speaker 1: it was an incredible moment in content history. If someone
Speaker 1: can find their old episodes by all means do um.
Speaker 1: It was amazing, So Jack, The first important thing to
Speaker 1: know about Amay is that it's legally not a pyramid scheme.
Speaker 1: The second most important thing to know about am Way
Speaker 1: is the history of pyramid schemes, because once you learn
Speaker 1: the history of pyramid schemes, why am Way isn't legally
Speaker 1: one makes somewhat more sense. Now if you go into
Speaker 1: this line of research, if you google for first ever
Speaker 1: pyramid scheme, you will generally be directed towards the tale
Speaker 1: of Charles Ponzi, who we've discussed a couple of times
Speaker 1: on the show. In brief, he was an immigrant from
Speaker 1: that perfidious peninsula, Italy who in nineteen nineteen hatched a
Speaker 1: scheme involving what we're called international Postal Reply cupons. These
Speaker 1: were essentially stamps that had been created for small international transactions,
Speaker 1: and they were redeemable at post offices in the United
Speaker 1: States for real stamps, which obviously have a cash value.
Speaker 1: Ponzi got one of these international Postal Reply coupons from
Speaker 1: a friend in Italy while he was in Boston, and
Speaker 1: he realized that the coupon he had gotten had been
Speaker 1: purchased in Spain because they were cheapest there um and
Speaker 1: because of basically, to make a long story short, because
Speaker 1: of how much stamps were worth in the US, and
Speaker 1: how cheap these things were to get in Spain, you
Speaker 1: could make a profit just buying these in Spain and
Speaker 1: redeeming them for stamps. It was kind of a loophole
Speaker 1: in the system. So Ponds he hatches this that that
Speaker 1: sounds like basically the most honest way that somebody could
Speaker 1: make a living today. At like a hedge fund or
Speaker 1: like that just sounds like it's every financial job in existence. Well,
Speaker 1: this is not what he actually does, um, but this
Speaker 1: is how he justifed. Like So, his initial plan was
Speaker 1: to do this at a huge scale, like getting a
Speaker 1: bunch of basically giving getting people to give him money
Speaker 1: to use to buy these international coupons that he would
Speaker 1: then redeem for stamps which he would sell for cash
Speaker 1: and then just redistribute the profits. That was the idea
Speaker 1: on paper cover story. Yes, so he founds a company,
Speaker 1: the Security and Exchange Company, which was not He wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to do a thing with the SEC. The SEC
Speaker 1: did not exist at this point, so he just came
Speaker 1: up with the same name they did, which think of
Speaker 1: that what you will. Um. So he comes up with
Speaker 1: the SEC to facilitate this scheme, and he promises a
Speaker 1: return to investors in ninety days, which is obviously bullshit.
Speaker 1: Any what time someone tells you unless it's drugs. If
Speaker 1: someone's telling you that they're gonna if they're gonna do
Speaker 1: that with your drug money, that might be real, but
Speaker 1: you know it's it's drugs. So um. It did well
Speaker 1: for a few months, but Ponzi never really went through
Speaker 1: like he got a bunch of investments, but he never
Speaker 1: did the international cupon thing. Instead, he just lived the
Speaker 1: high life for months, uh and would repay early investors
Speaker 1: with money from new investors, which is obviously an unstable
Speaker 1: situation that can't last forever. And eventually the Boston Post
Speaker 1: found out what he was up to. They wrote a
Speaker 1: bunch of expose a s on it, and the District
Speaker 1: Attorney of Boston got all aggro about the whole thing.
Speaker 1: In the end, Pond Ponzi was arrested and his name
Speaker 1: went on to adore and countless other similar schemes. So
Speaker 1: that's where we get the Ponzi scheme from you like
Speaker 1: Bernie made Off did that and kind of over time,
Speaker 1: the term pyramid scheme became the catch all term to
Speaker 1: refer to a wide variety of cons that were all
Speaker 1: descended from Ponzi scheme. So Ponzi generally seen as like
Speaker 1: the first pyramid scheme, um but all. It's also worth
Speaker 1: note that he wasn't the first pyramid scheme as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, if you want to look at the
Speaker 1: real originator and maybe the person Ponzi was copying, um
Speaker 1: as best we can tell, it was a woman named
Speaker 1: Sarah How in Boston in eighteen seventy nine. So the
Speaker 1: first pyramid scheme properly may have been the invention of
Speaker 1: a of a lady in Boston in the eighteen seventies.
Speaker 1: She just very rarely gets the credit for this um.
Speaker 1: But but we're all about, you know, giving credit to
Speaker 1: the women grifters, So I'm gonna talk about Sarah How
Speaker 1: for a little bit. She created a con called the
Speaker 1: Ladies Deposit Company, and the Ladies Deposit Company was ostensibly
Speaker 1: a bank run by women, women and exclusively for women.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen seventies, women weren't allowed to have bank
Speaker 1: account open bank accounts on their own, Like if you
Speaker 1: had a bank account as a one was because like
Speaker 1: your husband or your dad had opened one for you,
Speaker 1: and like they were would would have like a co
Speaker 1: you know whatever on it. Um. So it was a
Speaker 1: fairly huge deal that Sarah was creating a bank that
Speaker 1: was like four women and specifically, Sarah's bank only accepted
Speaker 1: deposits from women who were what she called unprotected i e.
Speaker 1: They did not have a male guardian in charge of
Speaker 1: their finances. So this was like a big deal, but
Speaker 1: of course it was. It was a giant scam, right um.
Speaker 1: So Sarah promised that an exchange for investments from these
Speaker 1: unprotected women, she would give them an eight percent interest
Speaker 1: on their like eight percent return on any money they invested.
Speaker 1: So if you deposited a hundred dollars at the end
Speaker 1: of the year, you'd have a hundred nineties six bucks
Speaker 1: in your account. Um. And she was also giving out
Speaker 1: the first three months of interest in advance to women
Speaker 1: who started accounts with her. So even the day that
Speaker 1: would sound like a scheme, right um, And it was
Speaker 1: definitely a scheme back then. Um. So people at the
Speaker 1: time asked how this could work, how the bank could
Speaker 1: possibly profit doing this, and Shara Sarah ashared them it's
Speaker 1: because it was not a for profit endeavor. She claimed
Speaker 1: that her bank was funded by Quaker philanthropists, um, which
Speaker 1: was a lie. Um. But it was a very successful
Speaker 1: con And you can see why she picked this population
Speaker 1: to con The fact that these women are unprotected means
Speaker 1: like were they going to go to right, like they
Speaker 1: don't have like they don't Presumably these are like kind
Speaker 1: of these poor women, right if you're an independent woman,
Speaker 1: you don't have like a man, either a father or
Speaker 1: a husband. You're kind of in the least protected segment
Speaker 1: of society. So she's going after these people in part
Speaker 1: because she she figures they're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to do anything right. Um. And the con is very
Speaker 1: successful because there was a huge need for a bank
Speaker 1: that would actually serve these women. And in short order,
Speaker 1: Sarah gathered between two hundred and fifty thousand and five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars in eighteen seventies money from close to
Speaker 1: a thousand people. Um a local paper. Yeah, she made
Speaker 1: a lot of money off of that. That was millions
Speaker 1: and modern dollars. Was just the first one to get caught. Basically, No,
Speaker 1: she gets caught before him. But she's a woman, so
Speaker 1: they're not going to name it a Sarah scheme. You
Speaker 1: know that literally does seem to be like why um
Speaker 1: so a local Also, I mean Ponzi scheme was larger,
Speaker 1: but Sarah scheme was not small. This is not a
Speaker 1: low level con. You know, you're making a quarter of
Speaker 1: a million dollars or more in the eighteen seventies, you
Speaker 1: have you have pulled off a good scheme. Um, as
Speaker 1: with Ponzi, A local paper exposed this as a scam.
Speaker 1: Sarah had been a fortune teller in the past, so
Speaker 1: that was a big part of like the reporting on
Speaker 1: her that like, this is not a banker, This is
Speaker 1: like a person who you know, told fortunes and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: I picked all my financial advisors, is making sure that
Speaker 1: they have a background and fortune telling. You could argue
Speaker 1: that that's what any stockbroker is. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just don't want to admit it. But yeah, there is
Speaker 1: that fun article about how there's that hamster that has
Speaker 1: outperformed the vast majority of humans in the crypto industry, um,
Speaker 1: which I I do love. Um. They even made acute
Speaker 1: little desk um. So yeah, and the the articles also
Speaker 1: exposed that, in addition to having a background that maybe
Speaker 1: was not the most credible basis for a someone who
Speaker 1: founded a bank, she had uh you know, essentially created
Speaker 1: I mean, she didn't create a Ponzi scream. She created
Speaker 1: a house scheme, and Pondsi created a house scheme. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from a write up on long
Speaker 1: Reads here, when a new depositor arrived, how would use
Speaker 1: their money to pay out older clients. So the whole
Speaker 1: scheme required a constant influx of new depositors to pay
Speaker 1: out the old ones. Like every other Ponzi fraudster, House
Speaker 1: Bank would have eventually run out of new money. The
Speaker 1: run of stories in the Boston Daily Advertiser instilled enough
Speaker 1: fear in the banks investors that they began to withdraw
Speaker 1: their money, and eventually there was a run on House Bank.
Speaker 1: It took two weeks in five days from the first
Speaker 1: story published in the Advertiser uncovering house fraud before she
Speaker 1: was arrested. The press extended her victims a modicum of sympathy,
Speaker 1: describing their plights will also reminding the reader that they
Speaker 1: deserved their pain for trusting a woman with their money.
Speaker 1: I put every dollar I had into the bank, and
Speaker 1: if I lose it, I am a beggar. One depositor
Speaker 1: told the Boston Globe at the time. I wanted the
Speaker 1: interest so badly that I placed a mortgage on my
Speaker 1: furniture to secure the principle to deposit. Oh I wish
Speaker 1: I hadn't now, for I shall have my goods sold
Speaker 1: from under my head, said another. Those characters were made
Speaker 1: up by writing that story because they yeah, yeah uh.
Speaker 1: Also to a woman, I'm a journalist. Also, isn't it
Speaker 1: true that women couldn't women couldn't have credit cards until
Speaker 1: like the nineteen seventies, Like yeah, it's like a very
Speaker 1: uh DP entrenched sort of myth about women. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: um it's it's like there's a lot of fund up
Speaker 1: stuff about like what women were and weren't allowed to,
Speaker 1: uh to do financially, but in the eighteen seventy it
Speaker 1: was basically nothing. So she was going after the most
Speaker 1: desperate people. Um. And it says a lot about society
Speaker 1: that they were just like, well they trusted a woman
Speaker 1: with that money, you know, even though like well they
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to trust a man with their money, like
Speaker 1: they legally couldn't. What were they supposed to do? Um? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean that's also probably why I got picked up.
Speaker 1: And like we still know the story is because it
Speaker 1: like goes to prove a thing that every buddy, all
Speaker 1: the white men in existence wanted to believe. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny, um and by which I mean it's sucked up.
Speaker 1: So and I guess I mean it should be a
Speaker 1: house scheme, we should call them house schemes and fairness,
Speaker 1: but also a Ponzi scheme. Is just a great name.
Speaker 1: Ponzi did have a better name objectively, for for calling
Speaker 1: a scheme. Um, it's funny, it's Italian. We all know
Speaker 1: the Italian scampie trusted. You know, it's just good. So
Speaker 1: Sarah how and Charles Ponzi were the first of what
Speaker 1: would become an American institution. Confidence games of one sort
Speaker 1: or another have existed probably as long as economies have existed.
Speaker 1: One could argue that most states and corporations are just
Speaker 1: confidence games on a very grand scale, but I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna get into that right now. What made the schemes
Speaker 1: that how in Ponzi started different was the fact that
Speaker 1: they were built to masquerade within the facade of reputable institutions, banks,
Speaker 1: and other like financial investment companies. By the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: capitalism was a very solid concept for most Americans, and
Speaker 1: inequality was soaring. People were enticed by a scam that
Speaker 1: seemed to offer them away out of wage slavery by
Speaker 1: doing what looked on the surface to be the same
Speaker 1: thing that all of the rich people around them were doing. Right,
Speaker 1: They weren't promising anything like new and fantastic. They were saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know all those bankers are rich because of interest.
Speaker 1: Here's a way you can get interested, you can get
Speaker 1: out and like move up into the middle class and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Right not, this is a you know, fanciful scheme. This
Speaker 1: is an investment in its investment that unlike the other
Speaker 1: investments that you know, the rich people are in, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm letting you win on this, right. We talked about
Speaker 1: this a little bit with a nessarist scheme. Um. It's
Speaker 1: a big part of just saying like, hey, this, if
Speaker 1: you frame your scheme as we're giving regular people a
Speaker 1: chance to do the stuff rich people do all the time,
Speaker 1: that's the best kind of financial scheme because you're building
Speaker 1: it on a basis, well, people know there's some way
Speaker 1: to make money with interest. People know some people get
Speaker 1: rich off of investments. Why couldn't it be me this
Speaker 1: one time? Haven't I worked hard enough? You know? Um?
Speaker 1: And then kids of Bernie made off. He did it
Speaker 1: to the people who were the financial inst which is like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, nobody knows what how any of this
Speaker 1: ship works. And that's why we're you're never going to
Speaker 1: hear about made off on behind the bastards because I
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with ye oh of course, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: avenging angel. I mean, I'm sure he did a lot
Speaker 1: of but like, I don't give a shit. Um, his
Speaker 1: victims were people like whatever. Um. So in Sarah's day,
Speaker 1: for impoverished single women. Um, it's like the thing that
Speaker 1: she was promising this downtrond group of people was like,
Speaker 1: you know that rich people have number one, have bank
Speaker 1: accounts and make interest. I'm going to give you that opportunity.
Speaker 1: So it didn't see these were people weren't making a
Speaker 1: dumb decision. They thought they were getting a chance to
Speaker 1: do the thing that the people who have money have
Speaker 1: been doing forever. In Ponzi's day, investments like the stock
Speaker 1: market was starting to get to be a huge deal
Speaker 1: and and he made people feel like, well now you
Speaker 1: can get in, get in on that thing. Um. Both
Speaker 1: schemes work because most of the targeted people sign tutaneously
Speaker 1: misunderstood the real thing the scams were pretending to be,
Speaker 1: but also knew enough about that real thing to know
Speaker 1: that something like what the scammer was promising was how
Speaker 1: all of the rich people they knew had gotten that way. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's why these things work. Now, the exact origins
Speaker 1: of the term pyramid scheme are unclear, but the term
Speaker 1: certainly seems to have come into widespread use during the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies thanks to a scam cosmetics company named
Speaker 1: Holiday Magic Um, which if if you listen to the
Speaker 1: podcast The Dream, which is a very good podcast, they
Speaker 1: go into a lot of detail about this. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna give you the cliffs notes. So Holiday Magic had
Speaker 1: started in the mid nineteen sixties the project of a
Speaker 1: man named William Penn Patrick, and he old Billy was
Speaker 1: a real character. He had he had had a bunch
Speaker 1: of failed businesses. He apparently came upon he was like
Speaker 1: walking past and smelled like or like solid like cosmetics,
Speaker 1: stacked up in some guy's garage and bought the business
Speaker 1: off of him. It was very like sketchy story. Um.
Speaker 1: William Penn Patrick is a fascinating guy. He unsuccessfully ran
Speaker 1: against Ronald Reagan from the right as governor of California. Um.
Speaker 1: He was a one time vice presidential nominee of a
Speaker 1: party called the California Theocratic Party, which just seems like
Speaker 1: it's straight up fascism. And of course he was a
Speaker 1: member of the John Birch Society. So yeah, you know
Speaker 1: this guy. Right, everybody's got a picture of William Penn
Speaker 1: Patrick in their hair in their head. Now, Holiday Magic
Speaker 1: sounds like a like a name you would give to
Speaker 1: actual snake oil, like that you would run that, you yeah,
Speaker 1: Whereas like we're I feel like we're learning the importance
Speaker 1: of names because like with Ponzi and uh am Way,
Speaker 1: sounds like you know that they build fucking trucks or something.
Speaker 1: You know, like it's like yeah, yeah exactly, or or
Speaker 1: at the very least like a place to buy sturdy
Speaker 1: groceries or something like that. You know. Um So, Holiday
Speaker 1: Magic was a multi level marketing company. It was not
Speaker 1: the first. In fact, by the time William Pennpatrick started it,
Speaker 1: there was Avon, am Way, Mary Kay, a bunch of
Speaker 1: other MLMs existed. We'll talk about what maybe the first
Speaker 1: was in a little bit, but Holiday Magic was probably
Speaker 1: was within the first generation of such companies, and it
Speaker 1: was by far the scammiest. The basic idea behind Holiday
Speaker 1: Magic was that women would become distributors and buy makeup
Speaker 1: kits that they could then throw parties where they did
Speaker 1: the makeup for their friends and they would sell them
Speaker 1: makeup via this. The makeup was terrible and it was
Speaker 1: so heavily marked up that you know, number one, it
Speaker 1: was very much impossible for distributors to make money off
Speaker 1: of it. And number two, William Pennpatrick made a shipload
Speaker 1: of money off it. He was a very short order,
Speaker 1: making like six million dollars a month um. He had
Speaker 1: quite a few mottos for his distributors. One was tell
Speaker 1: recruits that going to be happier, healthier, wealthier and receive
Speaker 1: what they went out of life with the Holiday Magic Program.
Speaker 1: Any person who fails in the Holiday Magic Program must
Speaker 1: fall into one of the following categories lazy, stupid, greedy,
Speaker 1: or dead. Yeah he's the best. Also is he a
Speaker 1: time traveler from the nineteen twenties? Who? Okack? You know that? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: this is happening in the seventies though right the voice, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is happening in the seventies. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: voice that I pitched behind the bastards to you. One
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about like Jack, We're gonna talk about Saddam.
Speaker 1: Who's saying it was because you were doing it all
Speaker 1: with while doing a soft shoe and like taking your
Speaker 1: hat top hat on and off, juggling a little Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the guy. So his personal motto was those who
Speaker 1: condemn wealth are those who have none and see no
Speaker 1: chance of getting it. Uh So again you see the
Speaker 1: eye that he is. Um. Now, as I said, there
Speaker 1: were other m l m s out there at the time.
Speaker 1: What made William Pennpatrick special, and you really have to
Speaker 1: say all three names, is that he was very astutely
Speaker 1: married the kind of American dream style grift of the
Speaker 1: pyramid scheme with cultic influence techniques. So he was kind
Speaker 1: of the first to like, I'm not just gonna have
Speaker 1: a money grift to get money out of people. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep them there by kind of making my grift
Speaker 1: into a cult. Right, because if you're just taking people's
Speaker 1: money in a scam, eventually they'll figure it out and leave.
Speaker 1: If you get them to like believe that they're getting
Speaker 1: them getting scammed is like makes them morally superior, like
Speaker 1: keys them in spiritually to something as part of some
Speaker 1: sort of sacred you know thing, then you can keep
Speaker 1: them forever. Right, Like that's the Church of scientology, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the way to to really make a grift last.
Speaker 1: And William Penn Patrick is kind of the first MLM
Speaker 1: dude to get it right. Well sort of, he went
Speaker 1: a little far. I was gonna say that Holiday Magic
Speaker 1: is too stupid a name for a cult, and then
Speaker 1: you immediately disproved that by saying scientology. Uh, well of,
Speaker 1: and you know the cult. He had another organization that
Speaker 1: was the cult, and this was called It was a
Speaker 1: series of course is called Leadership Dynamics, which were build
Speaker 1: is like a training conference for Holiday Magic and other
Speaker 1: MLM distributors. So like on paper, leadership Dynamics is of
Speaker 1: course that you take in order to learn how to
Speaker 1: run your own business selling MLM products. The reality of
Speaker 1: the program is that people would pay like a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and again seventies money to hang out in a
Speaker 1: horrible hotel getting locked in coffins and mentally abused. Like
Speaker 1: it was all these like weird power games and ship
Speaker 1: like quasi torture of people. Um. It involved a lot
Speaker 1: of we've talked about sinning on and Chuck de Eric.
Speaker 1: It involved a lot of the game where like you'll
Speaker 1: sit around in a circle and everyone in the group
Speaker 1: will harass one person for a period of time and
Speaker 1: insult them. Like it was a lot of like fucked
Speaker 1: up cult ship, you know, yeah, yeah, next Sea Vibes.
Speaker 1: Everything that came after Nexium is very much descended from
Speaker 1: this cult, from this cult pyramid scheme too. Now again,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn a lot more detail about this,
Speaker 1: because I'm really breathing over a lot, the podcast The
Speaker 1: Dream has done an excellent series of episodes on this.
Speaker 1: For our purposes, what you need to know is that
Speaker 1: Chuck's Dream fell apart as a result of the fact
Speaker 1: that he was just promising way too much and it
Speaker 1: wasn't really a product he was selling. He was just
Speaker 1: getting money straight from distributors to sell the product, and
Speaker 1: like that's that. That was too much of a scam.
Speaker 1: Holiday Magic generated enough complaints that it kept coming up
Speaker 1: in the House of Representatives, and eventually the FTC took
Speaker 1: him to task for being a pyramid scheme. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote from the excellent book Cultish by Amanda
Speaker 1: Montel here. Patrick's behavior was unhinged from all angles, But
Speaker 1: when the FTC brought him to court, their most compelling
Speaker 1: argument against him, and what eventually allowed them to shut
Speaker 1: down Holiday Magic, was their points about his speech. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the court ruled that Patrick's deceptive, hyperbole, loaded buzzwords, and
Speaker 1: gas lighting to guysed as inspiration were what defined him
Speaker 1: as a pyramid schemer. This makes sense because in every
Speaker 1: corner of life, business, and otherwise, when you can tell
Speaker 1: deep down that something is ethically wrong but are having
Speaker 1: trouble pinpointing why, language is a good place to look
Speaker 1: for evidence. This is where the FTC turned to squash
Speaker 1: Holiday Magic, and over the next few years, it's attorneys
Speaker 1: sited the same kind of outlinedish, fraudulent messaging as they
Speaker 1: prosecuted a litany of mL ms, including the biggest one
Speaker 1: they went after, am Way. Now am Way, as we
Speaker 1: started the podcast by stating, is legally not a pyramid
Speaker 1: scheme um And to explain why the FDC blasted William
Speaker 1: Pinnpatrick Scam scam to hell, but did not do that
Speaker 1: to am Way, we have to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the men who founded am Way. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: veering back and forward in time here so they can
Speaker 1: we cut in some of Cody's time machine noises here. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: did you say no, No, it's horrible. Let me try.
Speaker 1: Oh right, right, Okay, I know what you're talking like.
Speaker 1: I think he'd be proud, Um, I feel smiling up,
Speaker 1: smiling upon me from heaven. By the way, so you know,
Speaker 1: I host the show The Daily Zy, So I'm not
Speaker 1: just putting that in there as a plug. But we haven't.
Speaker 1: We have been covering Um co host with Miles Gray,
Speaker 1: former guest on the show. We've been covering a lot
Speaker 1: of Amazon lately. And they also have coffins and like
Speaker 1: scream at each other until they start weeping at work,
Speaker 1: Like did you know about the about them? We're doing
Speaker 1: this the holiday Magic scheme Amazon Amazon booths, which are
Speaker 1: just these like booths I haven't heard and like they
Speaker 1: are like you're good, you aren't worth it. It's basically
Speaker 1: like a place you can a coffin you can cry
Speaker 1: in for like fifteen minutes. That's God as hell, Jack, Yes,
Speaker 1: I love it. I love to see a company respecting tradition.
Speaker 1: You know exactly what it's all about. To me, embraced tradition,
Speaker 1: reject modernity. Put your employees and coffins and scream at them.
Speaker 1: Speaking of that, Jack, do you know who else puts
Speaker 1: their employees and coffins and screams at them. I mean
Speaker 1: it's going to be like an accidental Amazon at like
Speaker 1: there's a decent JA that's a non zero. What happened
Speaker 1: might be Chevron, you know, I really hope not. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Look, I think one of the great things
Speaker 1: about this country is that we all have a sacred
Speaker 1: right to force our employees into coffins and scream at them.
Speaker 1: It's the American way. It's the American way. It's the
Speaker 1: am way. Yeah, that's what comes from right, Yes, yeah, well, yes,
Speaker 1: the dead actually does. We'll be talking about that briefly,
Speaker 1: but first products, Ah, we are bad. I don't know, Jack,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's my connection slower and split out.
Speaker 1: We've been casting too many pods lately. I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the amount of content of it. No, I
Speaker 1: get it, man, I'm right there with you. We just
Speaker 1: recorded our thousandth episode of Daily's Guys Jesus clost on
Speaker 1: a cracker. But we realized that because somebody wrote it
Speaker 1: into an a k Otherwise, Yeah, you never. I have
Speaker 1: no idea how any podcasts I've done other than far
Speaker 1: too many. Uh. But you know the nice thing about this, Jack,
Speaker 1: is when we're both dead teenagers a hundred years from now,
Speaker 1: we'll be able to make us say literally anything. There's
Speaker 1: there's plenty of our voices. Yeah, we can finally immortality Jack. Yes,
Speaker 1: and then my kids will finally be able to hear
Speaker 1: me speak to them because uh yeah, yeah, you're famously
Speaker 1: have never never speak around your children. Um, I only
Speaker 1: speak cling on to my children. You're doing like a
Speaker 1: Star Trek version of the experiment that one PopEd it.
Speaker 1: There's actually a psychologist who did did a klingon thing
Speaker 1: to his children. Don't only spoke cling on around them.
Speaker 1: That's that's this hard, this beautiful mix of like kind
Speaker 1: of abusive and also kind of mad. Like it's a
Speaker 1: really unique area. Um okay. So am Way got its
Speaker 1: start thanks to a company called neutral Light, which was
Speaker 1: a dietary supplement business founded in nineteen thirty four. And
Speaker 1: I think from the name Neutralite, you know it's a scam.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, yeah, Now the founder was an American businessman
Speaker 1: named Carl F. Rainberg, who, as far as I can tell, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know the degree to which this guy was
Speaker 1: a total con artist. Neutralite definitely sounds like a scam.
Speaker 1: By some accounts, it maybe the first MLM company, but
Speaker 1: also I think it was m l m's were not
Speaker 1: quite as much of a of a bald faced at
Speaker 1: that point because it was really just like a modification
Speaker 1: of door to door salesman. Right. That was a big
Speaker 1: thing at the time. The fact that the idea that
Speaker 1: like someone would buy products and then go to door
Speaker 1: to door selling them was like not weird, um like
Speaker 1: it is now. Um So, I don't know. Rainboard had
Speaker 1: been working for the steel industry as well as Colgate
Speaker 1: and China when the Chinese Civil War forced him to flee,
Speaker 1: and he claimed that seeing so much poverty and starvation
Speaker 1: convinced him of the value of vitamins, and so he
Speaker 1: got into the dietary supplement business next again. Neutralite maybe
Speaker 1: the first MLM company. It's unclear to me how scammy
Speaker 1: it was. Um. He sold his products wholesale to distributors
Speaker 1: who eventually formed their own companies to sell it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And two of the people who became independent distributors of
Speaker 1: Neutralite where j Van Andel and Richard divorce They got
Speaker 1: involved in nineteen forty nine. Yeah, we all know that
Speaker 1: last name, yep. For the first men. Oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a big old divorced. I feel like we need like
Speaker 1: a horrifying sound effect. Yeah, let's uh hear no, not
Speaker 1: that one. That's the good that's that's the Divos sound
Speaker 1: was appropriate. So they become independent distributors in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 1: And there is not a tremendous amount that I found
Speaker 1: of reputable information about these men's early lives. They both
Speaker 1: did kind of write memoiry books, but there again mainly
Speaker 1: existed to sell you on amways, so not the best sources.
Speaker 1: Jay was born on June third, nineteen thirty four, which
Speaker 1: is the same year that neutral It was founded. He
Speaker 1: was the grandchild of Dutch immigrants um His parents were
Speaker 1: extremely religious and members of the Christian Reformed Church. He
Speaker 1: attended a Christian high school, and when World War Two
Speaker 1: broke out, he joined the Air Force and trained bomber crews.
Speaker 1: After the war, he became a door to door salesman,
Speaker 1: where he met his wife. Jay had met Richard Divos
Speaker 1: back in high school. They both went to the same
Speaker 1: Christian academy. Now Richard DeVos will call old Dickie D.
Speaker 1: Was born on March fourth, nineteen in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Speaker 1: He was a true child of the twenties, by which
Speaker 1: I mean his mother was named Ethel and his father
Speaker 1: was Simon Cornelius, which I know it's a name you
Speaker 1: just have to punch. So his family, I think we're
Speaker 1: fairly He would later say that like they had hard
Speaker 1: times during the depressions, that was difficult for them. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it was tighter than other times where they also
Speaker 1: paid to go to a private school. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was like like my grandpa had to leave the
Speaker 1: family when he was seventeen because they didn't have enough food.
Speaker 1: I don't think they were that kind of poor. But
Speaker 1: he makes a lot out of how poor they were
Speaker 1: there in depression. I don't know. I wasn't there. Um,
Speaker 1: his family and Jays seemed to have been, you know,
Speaker 1: more comfortable than most in this period of time. Again,
Speaker 1: they're able to send their kids to a private school.
Speaker 1: There is fairly little about the early lives of either
Speaker 1: men and sources that are particularly trustworthy. When he was
Speaker 1: eighty eight, Rich wrote a memoir where he described his
Speaker 1: grandfather as a huckster um, but he meant that in
Speaker 1: a positive sense and from a it up in Politico here.
Speaker 1: Grand pod Decker had been an immigrant from the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: Dutch in origin, like the word huckster itself. During the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, he sold freshly farmed vegetables door to door
Speaker 1: in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Rich Divos used to tag along,
Speaker 1: noting the way the old man's neighborly demeanor and good
Speaker 1: humor gave him an instant rapport with customers. At the
Speaker 1: end of the usual roots, young rich had the chance
Speaker 1: to peddle the leftover vegetables. The first thing to Voss
Speaker 1: ever sold was a bag of onions. His father let
Speaker 1: him pocket the profit. So that's apparently how Richard Divoss
Speaker 1: claims he got and that may very well be a
Speaker 1: lie because it's a very folksy story, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: But rich is very very bullish about the trade, the
Speaker 1: craft of being a salesman. He kind of builds his
Speaker 1: whole life around that. Um. The official away account of
Speaker 1: both men's life from the website Amway Global dot Com
Speaker 1: runs just a few paragraphs long. They stayed up front
Speaker 1: quote the founders of Amway, Rich DeVos and j Van
Speaker 1: Andel first became friends in high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Speaker 1: They had no way of knowing that their individual lives
Speaker 1: would become forever entwined, or that their combined would change
Speaker 1: the landscape of business for good. But they don't give
Speaker 1: a lot of detail about these guys. Again, it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to nail down on a whole lot about
Speaker 1: their early lives. So, as I stated, Richard and j
Speaker 1: started as independent Neutral Life distributors in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: right after World War Two. Direct sales were a big
Speaker 1: deal at the time, and the concept of people going
Speaker 1: door to door to sell things was still fairly common
Speaker 1: and not really weird, right. Part of what's weird about
Speaker 1: m l m's now is that like business doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way anymore, where like a salesman just like buys
Speaker 1: a bunch of products wholesale and like goes around selling them.
Speaker 1: That did used to be a kind of normal. When
Speaker 1: J and Rich got involved in Neutral Life, it was
Speaker 1: fighting off an attack by the f d A who
Speaker 1: accused the company of false advertising. So again I think
Speaker 1: that their vitamin things were kind of a scam um.
Speaker 1: J and Rich were very good salesman, but the blu
Speaker 1: Ha hall with the FDA concerned them. So after ten
Speaker 1: years as Neutral Life distributors, they quit and they spun
Speaker 1: off their own company to sell different household products. They
Speaker 1: called it the American Way, or am for short. Now.
Speaker 1: A few short years later, Von Andelen Divos would buy
Speaker 1: Neutral Life from Carl Rainberg, and it today remains one
Speaker 1: of the staples of their product line. But the first
Speaker 1: Amway product was a type of highly concentrated organic detergent
Speaker 1: which they bought as a patent from a Detroit area
Speaker 1: scientist who had fallen on hard times. The organic home
Speaker 1: cleaner was called Frisk, and the men liked it because
Speaker 1: it was the kind of product that they claimed anybody
Speaker 1: could sell. Amway was successful early on offering Americans during
Speaker 1: an unprecedented economic boom, the chance to quote own a
Speaker 1: business of their own. And this is from the beginning
Speaker 1: a huge part of the pitch, right, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are getting rich. This is the biggest economic expansion
Speaker 1: in history, and they're like, am Way is a chance
Speaker 1: to own your own business. So you're not our employees.
Speaker 1: You're starting their own business to sell these great products,
Speaker 1: and like, that's how you're going to get your piece
Speaker 1: of of the American Dream. That was the m Way
Speaker 1: pitch from the beginning, and am Way wrapped itself in
Speaker 1: the cult of the American Dream. Rich and Jay's most
Speaker 1: quoted line on modern a Way company websites is quote,
Speaker 1: we were just two guys from Ouda, Michigan, USA who
Speaker 1: wanted to have a business of our own. The Amway
Speaker 1: slogan is you can do it too, right, And you
Speaker 1: see the the I mean the this is a little
Speaker 1: bit of the evolution of the grift, right, these ponzi
Speaker 1: and how these first schemes. It's you know, how rich
Speaker 1: people are making their money, you can do that too.
Speaker 1: And this is more of like a a an intimate
Speaker 1: sort of thing. We're just two regular guys who started
Speaker 1: a business and it got us rich, and you can
Speaker 1: do that. They're selling entrepreneurship as a brand, right, Like
Speaker 1: you two could be your own entrepreneur. You could start
Speaker 1: your own business, be your own business owner, because that
Speaker 1: is what all the rich people that you've read about
Speaker 1: have always done. Like they really are like basically selling
Speaker 1: the American dream, like the American way. Like that they
Speaker 1: tell you in the title exactly what they're going to
Speaker 1: do to you. Yep, that's exactly right now. Rich Divos,
Speaker 1: I think was more than driver of the duo um
Speaker 1: and he was first and foremost a salesman. He wrote
Speaker 1: in a nineteen book quote. My own particular thing has
Speaker 1: always been salesmanship. I am always amazed to see how
Speaker 1: many people look down their noses at salesmanship as a
Speaker 1: worthy occupation. Now to sell am Way, Rich had to
Speaker 1: sell his own lifestyle, the fact that he was rich,
Speaker 1: big house, nice cars, and he'd all learned it through
Speaker 1: am Way. And if Rich could do it, you could
Speaker 1: do it too. He would warn his new distributors that
Speaker 1: A Way wasn't about making a quick buck. It was
Speaker 1: about making your own slice of the American dreamer reality
Speaker 1: through hard work from Politico quote. He helped his distributors
Speaker 1: along the way with guidelines and best practices, but he
Speaker 1: mostly saw himself as a cheerleader for people to realize
Speaker 1: their own capabilities and to expand their ideas of what
Speaker 1: is possible, all while undergirded by specific political and spiritual ideas.
Speaker 1: He saw is fundamental to the American Way. And this
Speaker 1: is again what separates this from these early pyramid schemes
Speaker 1: are promising d return, you'll get rich. You know, you
Speaker 1: do nothing but handing your money, you get rich. The
Speaker 1: much more durable version of the grift is it's gonna
Speaker 1: be hard work. It's gonna you'll get rich, sure, but
Speaker 1: you have to do you know, you have to put
Speaker 1: in this work. This is the you know you can.
Speaker 1: This is your own business. This is not like a
Speaker 1: quick return thing you'll get you'll be a millionaire if
Speaker 1: you follow these steps. But you have to follow these
Speaker 1: steps and it's gonna be hard. And that's a lot
Speaker 1: more durable. And it also means if all you're doing
Speaker 1: is handing in money being promised to return when the
Speaker 1: return doesn't come, it's pretty easy to figure out who
Speaker 1: to blame. If you have to do put in the
Speaker 1: hard work quote unquote um, then if it doesn't work out,
Speaker 1: because maybe it's close to impossible for it to work out,
Speaker 1: the blame is on you, which is a much smarter grift.
Speaker 1: You know, right, you're and like your family as you're
Speaker 1: you know, taking out a second mortgage on your house
Speaker 1: to buy like wheelbarrows full of fucking cleaning solution that
Speaker 1: doesn't really work in your family is like don't do this.
Speaker 1: You're like, don't you trust me? Like I'm going to
Speaker 1: I Am going to make this happen because just through
Speaker 1: sheer tyranny of will, because like that's what America it
Speaker 1: treats teaches us as possible, and then you know, when
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen, you're kind of fucked because you already
Speaker 1: like kind of put it on your own shoulders. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right, and that's brilliant. It's much smarter than
Speaker 1: what Ponzi and how we're doing. But it's very evil,
Speaker 1: but it's also legally not a scam. Yeah. So, for Divorce,
Speaker 1: the American Way meant a country that embraced the free
Speaker 1: enterprise system, exalted God, and held true to the conservative
Speaker 1: Christian principles. This country was built on a religious heritage,
Speaker 1: he wrote in his book Believe and We'd better get
Speaker 1: back to it. It meant a country where the only
Speaker 1: limit to what one could achieve was how hard one worked.
Speaker 1: I think being poor is something many people do, he
Speaker 1: said in a nineteen sixties six speech. It sort of
Speaker 1: has to do with being poor by choice. And it
Speaker 1: meant a country where personal responsibility and belief in yourself
Speaker 1: were two sides of the same coin. In the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, Divorce believed that those values were under
Speaker 1: threat from the rise of the welfare state, that a
Speaker 1: client of religion to the Soviet threat and the spread
Speaker 1: of Communism in Southeast Asia. At the time, Conservative Christians
Speaker 1: hadn't become yet a potent political force, but the makings
Speaker 1: of the movement were there. The sexual Revolution, the Supreme
Speaker 1: Courts rov Wade ruling, the pornography wars, the white backlash
Speaker 1: to desegregation, the backlash to the women's lib lib movement,
Speaker 1: the rise of the silent majority in quoth. It's all
Speaker 1: from Politico's obituary of the Man, and it makes a
Speaker 1: good point about like where where this guy is situating
Speaker 1: himself very consciously, So he's from the beginning not just
Speaker 1: a businessman, and from the beginning doing the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that that William Pennpatrick did. This isn't just a
Speaker 1: money making scene. This is wrapped up in in in
Speaker 1: this cult of Americana, and it is wrapped up in
Speaker 1: Christianity and this this religious belief in the free market um.
Speaker 1: And again that makes it all much more durable because
Speaker 1: it's not just a matter of well, if this doesn't work,
Speaker 1: maybe it was a scam. It's a matter of like, well,
Speaker 1: this must work, and so if it's not working, it's
Speaker 1: on me, because this is what God wants you know now,
Speaker 1: the religious right in the nineteen seventies, which is when
Speaker 1: Amway really starts to make serious money, was not yet
Speaker 1: an organized factor in US politics. That didn't come around
Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy nine. But Richard knew the future was
Speaker 1: in marrying conservative electoral politics with Christian fundamentalism and free
Speaker 1: market ideology. By the early nineteen seventies, he was wealthy
Speaker 1: enough to start spreading some of his money around to
Speaker 1: deserving causes. He founded the Christian Freedom Foundation, which he shaired.
Speaker 1: Now today there's an organization by this name that comes
Speaker 1: to be an apostolic law ministry UM, but that is
Speaker 1: not the the the CF that existed at his time.
Speaker 1: According to a Mother Jones report from one the purpose
Speaker 1: of the CF was quote was as stated by a
Speaker 1: member during one meeting to elect conservative Christians to Congress.
Speaker 1: Shortly after giving it twenty five thousand dollars, Richard Vos
Speaker 1: took divorce, took control of the board of the CF,
Speaker 1: and ran it. He used funds from the organization to
Speaker 1: funnel money into yet another right wing theocratic organization, Third
Speaker 1: Century publishers. These fund folks published a guide book for
Speaker 1: conservative Christians who wanted to win local elections. They framed
Speaker 1: this as returning to America quote as it was when
Speaker 1: first founded a Christian Republic. Now, during the same period,
Speaker 1: j Van Andel, the co founder of Amway, organized the
Speaker 1: Chamber Citizens Choice Lobby, which agitated against government regulations that
Speaker 1: he claimed reduced choice and that other people said reduced
Speaker 1: the ability of corporations to like crush workers with factory equipment.
Speaker 1: So both of these guys are are are seeing both
Speaker 1: like the fight for deregulation and whatnot, in the fight
Speaker 1: for um, you know, corporate rights as the same as
Speaker 1: like fighting for a Christian republic, because obviously a Christian
Speaker 1: republic would have no limitations on what capital can do. Now,
Speaker 1: the Amway co founders established the Center for Free Enterprise
Speaker 1: and Ada, Michigan as the and this is like kind
Speaker 1: of like a museum, it sounds like. The lobby of
Speaker 1: this building featured life size bronze statues of both men.
Speaker 1: Mother Jones described the it has quote one of many
Speaker 1: displays in the saucer shaped building that illustrate the rewards
Speaker 1: of a capitalism stewarded not by the federal government but
Speaker 1: by God fearing tycoons themselves. It's like a propaganda outlet
Speaker 1: right this like this, this this museum dedicated to the UH,
Speaker 1: the wonderful history of free enterprise and all that goes
Speaker 1: great when the government stays out of the way of
Speaker 1: Richmond and its first full year of business nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: a Way had made just half a million dollars. By
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, the company was selling more than three
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars in products per year, mostly to its
Speaker 1: own distributors. While Amway had started off as a multi
Speaker 1: level marketing company, the focus was initially on selling products
Speaker 1: to actual customers. It quickly became clear that this was
Speaker 1: not the best way to make a fortune. If you
Speaker 1: relied on selling products the normal way, you had to
Speaker 1: worry about whether or not they worked oral marketed well
Speaker 1: to customers. Instead, DeVos and Van Andel created a modified
Speaker 1: cult dedicated to convincing people to buy more Amway products
Speaker 1: in the guise of independent businesses that they would ostensibly sell,
Speaker 1: but in most cases would just kind of accrue in
Speaker 1: their house because they were unable to move them. Um
Speaker 1: Mother Jones lays it all out quote. Am Way measures
Speaker 1: a distributor success by how many products the person sells
Speaker 1: and by the size of their distributors downline. Each time
Speaker 1: the distributors get a new recruit, they add to their
Speaker 1: personal salesforce and elevate their own position, increasing the amount
Speaker 1: of money they get from people below them, while acquiring
Speaker 1: ever loftier titles first Direct than Ruby, Emerald, Diamond and
Speaker 1: so on. So you can are technically make money by
Speaker 1: selling the products, but the real way to make money
Speaker 1: is by selling Amway to new people, right, because then
Speaker 1: you get a and in order to stay in it,
Speaker 1: you're you're pressured to buy a certain amount of the
Speaker 1: products a month. Most of most of what's bought is
Speaker 1: distributors buying it just so that they can say that
Speaker 1: they're continuing to quote unquote cell products. And if there's
Speaker 1: people are in your downline, you get a chunk every
Speaker 1: time they buy more Amway stuff, so they pressure them
Speaker 1: to buy more Amway stuff. And if you have a
Speaker 1: lot of people in your downline, you make a shipload
Speaker 1: of money. You know, down means like so you get
Speaker 1: somebody to join an Amway who like answers to you,
Speaker 1: and then they get people to join them. All those
Speaker 1: people are in your downline, their their money is rolling
Speaker 1: up flowing as they buy the products too, then yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And again you don't if you can think about the
Speaker 1: shape that that would be if you were to dry
Speaker 1: out the way that arrangement works. Um. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all we can say on the matter. So triangular, definitely,
Speaker 1: like a triangular is shape to the way the money
Speaker 1: would be flowing. Um. Yeah. Now. William Campbell, a distributor
Speaker 1: for the company, explained the traditional Amway sales pitch this
Speaker 1: way for when he was interviewed for a nineteen seven article.
Speaker 1: Ama is just the good old American dream. Everybody has
Speaker 1: the idea to open their own business and see it
Speaker 1: go and wait lets you And of course most AMIA
Speaker 1: distributors either made nothing or lost money. This discrepancy between
Speaker 1: the wealth made by Amway and the poverty of many
Speaker 1: AMIA distributors lead to Vos and van Handle to earn
Speaker 1: the nickname the gold Dust Twins. Um. I don't know
Speaker 1: who gave him that nickname, but that's what people. I
Speaker 1: am pretty sure they gave themselves that. Yeah, it does
Speaker 1: sound like a nickname, give yourself. Despite all of their
Speaker 1: growing propaganda operations, de Vos continued to prefer to deliver
Speaker 1: his sermons on capitalism and Christianity in person to wrapt
Speaker 1: audiences of Amway distributors. His speeches at regular Amway events
Speaker 1: were said to drive the audience into a quote near
Speaker 1: frenzy and always ended in a chorus of weepy God,
Speaker 1: bless America's from the mostly husband and wife teams who attended.
Speaker 1: And we purchased its own radio broadcasting system. In one interview,
Speaker 1: Devas explained that purchasing the media directly was important to
Speaker 1: Amway so that, quote, we can expose to a broader
Speaker 1: audience the things we feel are important in the future
Speaker 1: of this country. Keep that in mind, because that's gonna
Speaker 1: come up again soon. Am We also increasingly published its
Speaker 1: own cartoons, films, booklets, and audio cassettes. Many of these
Speaker 1: were geared at training people to sell, but more were
Speaker 1: pure ideology, aimed towards in their war words, objectively fighting
Speaker 1: the unfair scapegoating of the profit motive by the left now.
Speaker 1: DeVos and Van Andel also took the fight directly to
Speaker 1: politicians in Washington, generally by you know, buying them out right.
Speaker 1: When Gerald Ford took office in nineteen seventy three after
Speaker 1: some unpleasantness with his old boss, the Amway founders had
Speaker 1: been shotgunning money his direction and towards the Republican Party
Speaker 1: for years, and so they quickly became regular guests at
Speaker 1: the White House. This came in really handy for them
Speaker 1: because in nineteen seventy five am we fell under a
Speaker 1: Federal Trade Commission investigation to determine whether or not they
Speaker 1: were a pyramid scheme. Um, but beyond speaking terms with
Speaker 1: the president, when the FTC starts looking into whether or
Speaker 1: not you're a grifter, but Jack, you know who the
Speaker 1: FTC never looks into as far as we know, as
Speaker 1: far as far yeah is it is it? The product
Speaker 1: is the products products ever never EC isn't even aware
Speaker 1: of them. We fly right under the FDCs right our baby,
Speaker 1: that's the promise behind. The bastards didn't even know what
Speaker 1: we're doing. We use a VPN. It's fine. Um, here's
Speaker 1: ads Okay, These these are returns from Adverick sir. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've never won anything. Yeah, we've I've never won an
Speaker 1: award and never will not not not not a one.
Speaker 1: We're you know awards, Jack, We're back. Uh you know what, Robert,
Speaker 1: you just reached my Ruby level of podcast hosts. So
Speaker 1: you you get that reward, You're you're certified Ruby, thank you?
Speaker 1: Does that? Does that come with a car? Do I
Speaker 1: get the Do I get the Cadillac? Yeah? Yeah, of
Speaker 1: course the red, the red Cadillac, the bright red Cadillac.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna man go cruising in the main drag. So
Speaker 1: just a question on kind of what we've covered so far,
Speaker 1: because they're you know, they have these people who are
Speaker 1: like the foot soldiers, Like are they rewarding those people
Speaker 1: based on how enthusiastically they like sing the praises of
Speaker 1: Amway because that that does seem to be like part
Speaker 1: of it, right, is Like I'm assuming they think by
Speaker 1: kissing us and saying his uh speeches like throw them
Speaker 1: into like you know, orgasms of fucking capitalist joy, that
Speaker 1: they are then like kind of finding favor in the
Speaker 1: Amway world. Yeah. I mean, obviously you have to praise
Speaker 1: the boss, but also the people. Thank you, Sophie was
Speaker 1: what I was getting it, and I appreciate it. The
Speaker 1: people who like get to give talk for Amway are
Speaker 1: going to be other successful distributors. So you do have
Speaker 1: you have the people who are actually trying to run
Speaker 1: a business and like sell Amway products who uh don't
Speaker 1: make money uh and wind up broke uh and and
Speaker 1: dying on the street. And then you have the people
Speaker 1: who are really good at getting people to be that person,
Speaker 1: and those people do make money. There's not a lot
Speaker 1: of them, but those are the people who get to
Speaker 1: like who when you go out for quotes and whatnot,
Speaker 1: are representing Amway. Right, these big distributors who are not
Speaker 1: Amway employees. Often we'll talk a little bit about that,
Speaker 1: but like, that's um like it in A big part
Speaker 1: of it is like building this this cult of personality
Speaker 1: around the founders and around the successful distributors, And it's
Speaker 1: this huge part of what works about Amway is the
Speaker 1: worship of success. So when somebody does make money, you
Speaker 1: put that person in front of crowds, you have them
Speaker 1: deliver these and the kind of people who are capable
Speaker 1: of making money at Amway are going to be good
Speaker 1: public speakers because they're kind of people who are charismatic. Right,
Speaker 1: They're good at getting people to buy in people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't think. I don't think that audience is
Speaker 1: faking it. That audience is cheering and losing their minds
Speaker 1: because they desperately want to believe in what Amway promises
Speaker 1: because it's the only hope they have of living a
Speaker 1: life that isn't wage slavery. Um. And so they they
Speaker 1: they they want the promise that Amway is making them um.
Speaker 1: And so when they hear someone tell them it's possible
Speaker 1: you can do this. You know, you can succeed, you
Speaker 1: can have the big house and the boats and everything, um,
Speaker 1: they don't question it. Uh. And instead they find it
Speaker 1: like inspiring. Um. And I'm sure when they get home
Speaker 1: that night to their house full of unsold Amway products, UM,
Speaker 1: there's there's a crushing feeling of inadequacy and failure. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's it's maybe even made worse than it otherwise
Speaker 1: would have been because they've convinced themselves, well, this guy
Speaker 1: was able to do it. And so as the Amway
Speaker 1: motto goes, I can do it too. You know, it's
Speaker 1: if I haven't done it, there must be something wrong
Speaker 1: with me. Um. It's I mean, it's it's how America
Speaker 1: talks about homeless people and poor people. Right. It's just
Speaker 1: like a company that's bottled that that discussion of like,
Speaker 1: if you're not succeeding under this system, it's because there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with you. Yeah, Now, in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: as I stated, and we the FTC is like this
Speaker 1: might be a pyramid scheme. Holiday Magic had just been busted,
Speaker 1: and the FTC was at this point kind of going
Speaker 1: bullish lee after other MLMs. Their argument against Amway seemed
Speaker 1: pretty strong, despite Richard divorces strident claims that Amway was
Speaker 1: a good way to build an independent business and get rich.
Speaker 1: The average gross monthly income of distributors with sixty seven
Speaker 1: dollars a month. Now, and you have to consider that's
Speaker 1: average when you consider guys like Von ANDL and Divorce,
Speaker 1: who are making millions of dollars a month. Right, that's
Speaker 1: the average when you include the people who are getting
Speaker 1: rich off of this stuff, which means the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the seven and fifty thousand away distributors were making
Speaker 1: nothing or loo using money. Right. I mean didn't you
Speaker 1: say at the top the independent distributors lose ninety nine
Speaker 1: point nine percent of their Yes, yeah, that's a more
Speaker 1: recent number, but yeah, like that, this was the number
Speaker 1: back then, right, with sixty seven dollars a month was
Speaker 1: the average in nineteen seventy five. Um, we now know
Speaker 1: based on again that when I started the episode with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ninety percent of people lose money. Um, you know the
Speaker 1: data on am Way obviously it's different throughout the years,
Speaker 1: and you know, we know more now than we did
Speaker 1: at that point. Um. So that same year, nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: Van Andel and Richard de Vos met with President Gerald
Speaker 1: Ford in the Oval Office for forty three minutes. The
Speaker 1: same year that like this, this investigation gets underway. Next
Speaker 1: from the Washington Post. A month later, Van Andel was
Speaker 1: quoted in a Michigan newspaper is saying that Ford was
Speaker 1: aware of em Ways travels with the FTC. Later, Warren
Speaker 1: rustan director of fords scheduling office, and William Nicholson, his assistant,
Speaker 1: were listed as stockholders in a Nebraska insurance company being
Speaker 1: formed by Van Andel and Divos Wrestling. Nicholson dropped doubt
Speaker 1: of the venture, despite White House approval of their participation.
Speaker 1: Nicholson was later hired in Amia's government affairs office. You know,
Speaker 1: there's ways of greasing things. Um. In nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: the FTC ruled that Emily was not a pyramid scheme,
Speaker 1: but that the recruiting strategy. Yeah, amazing, a true underdog story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have a forty three minute meeting with the
Speaker 1: president of the Oval Office. You two can make court stuff.
Speaker 1: Maybe not not continue. Yeah. Devas's picture on Wikipedia is
Speaker 1: him standing next to ford and at the White House
Speaker 1: holding up what appears to be the Constitution, like I
Speaker 1: don't know what, well, I don't know exactly what they're holding.
Speaker 1: It's like a single page documents. Yeah. Interest very funny
Speaker 1: and not at all corrupt. In nineteen seventy nine, again
Speaker 1: the FTC rules and is not a pyramid scheme, but
Speaker 1: the FTC the judge did note that the recruiting strategy
Speaker 1: had the capacity to deceive spective marks because it heavily
Speaker 1: implied they'd get rich, they were fine, and am we
Speaker 1: had to agree to change their ads to more accurately
Speaker 1: reflect what people could actually make. The reality is that
Speaker 1: they just got slightly more cunning it promising the same
Speaker 1: things to people while skirting right up to the legal line.
Speaker 1: I found a book, Merchants of Deception, published by a
Speaker 1: former am WI distributor named Eric schlib Scheibler. Uh. He
Speaker 1: came into Amway well after the FDC case, and he
Speaker 1: explains how it was sold to him. So this is
Speaker 1: kind of how they've modified things since the case to
Speaker 1: not make fraudulent claims so to speak. Quote. One of
Speaker 1: the many analogies used by am Way distributor leaders to
Speaker 1: illustrate this was a reference to the McDonald's franchising scheme.
Speaker 1: Would you rather own one McDonald's or be Ray Kroc
Speaker 1: and have the right to franchise or duplicate your efforts?
Speaker 1: Isn't it far better to have ten percent of a
Speaker 1: hundred businesses than a hundred percent of one. By helping
Speaker 1: many people succeed in owning their own franchise, so to speak,
Speaker 1: you could literally work yourself out of a job and
Speaker 1: live comfortably on the residual income generated by the businesses
Speaker 1: you started. This regidual income stream could even be passed
Speaker 1: onto your children as part of your estate. There was
Speaker 1: no way to lose money, that's end quote. As it
Speaker 1: was the perfect business opportunity with no employees or overhead
Speaker 1: because again, the people sales and no sales. When we
Speaker 1: questioned them about the apparent pyramid nature of the business,
Speaker 1: we were advised, no one makes more money off your
Speaker 1: business than you. Carry later informed us this is a
Speaker 1: legal requirement that keeps this business from being an illegal pyramid.
Speaker 1: Am Way claimed that the worst deception found in their
Speaker 1: marketing strategy was the fault of rogue distributors, individuals who
Speaker 1: had made their own money signing folks up for Amway
Speaker 1: and who had started posting, like pushing motivational tapes and
Speaker 1: pamphlets at conferences to teach people how to become super salesman.
Speaker 1: And this is not entirely untrue. All these things are
Speaker 1: hallmarks of Amway today, but they actually started as independent
Speaker 1: from the main Amway business. So all of again, everybody
Speaker 1: an ami Way, These are all independent little companies, and
Speaker 1: some of them are independent large companies. The people who
Speaker 1: are really successful, the guys who are good at getting
Speaker 1: people to buy an ami Way, those guys start selling
Speaker 1: books and pamphlets where they're talking about how rich you
Speaker 1: can get, and am Way claims like, well, that's that's
Speaker 1: a big part. That's that's what the FTC had an
Speaker 1: issue with. It wasn't what we were doing. We just
Speaker 1: weren't keeping enough of an eye on these distributors, you
Speaker 1: know of like gig workers almost like all the massive
Speaker 1: like tech companies built on gig workers who are not
Speaker 1: actually employees. It does seem a lot like what Uber
Speaker 1: is doing. Um Uber the company that a lot of
Speaker 1: people got rich for starting and has never made a profit,
Speaker 1: which is fun um It's neat. So as I noted,
Speaker 1: the way this worked in the beginning is that am
Speaker 1: Way sold products to distributors, who often started their own
Speaker 1: companies to sell said products, much in the same way
Speaker 1: as to Vos and van Andal got into the business.
Speaker 1: The money was in selling the products to distributors, and
Speaker 1: the smartest Amway distributors made money by promising the good
Speaker 1: life too smaller fish and getting them to buy a
Speaker 1: bunch of Amway products. Thanks to a nineteen eighties court case,
Speaker 1: we have a memo Richard DeVos wrote in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies as FTC scrutiny of his company reached a height.
Speaker 1: In it, he very bluntly laid out what the FTC
Speaker 1: would later say was true and weight distributors were being
Speaker 1: lied to quote and this is Richard devas widespread illegalities
Speaker 1: inherent and am Way distributor designed systems of tapes, books
Speaker 1: and rallies. While most of these systems were conceived of
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, is
Speaker 1: genuine support programs to help and Way distributors developed their
Speaker 1: Amway business entrepreneurial higher higher pins discovered and developed programs
Speaker 1: for substantial, separate and additional income under the Amway umbrella. Again,
Speaker 1: he was very aware of what was going on. Richard
Speaker 1: outlined these support systems as a threat to the future
Speaker 1: security of the Amway Corporation. He acknowledged to his subordinates
Speaker 1: that the disproportionate to Amway sales, intensity and solicitation of
Speaker 1: these tools systems are illegal per se under several US
Speaker 1: federal and state laws. So he's aware and like the
Speaker 1: early seventies, that a lot of his distributors are breaking
Speaker 1: the law, but he he can't really like he's there's
Speaker 1: not He's not going to do anything about this, because
Speaker 1: those people are how Amway makes money, right, those big
Speaker 1: fish distributors who are all breaking the law and the
Speaker 1: promises they're making are also where his money comes from,
Speaker 1: because they all have a bunch of people in their
Speaker 1: down line. Um, but they're not Amway employees and they're
Speaker 1: not uh yeah, none of them. Yeah, And he's not
Speaker 1: the one doing the lying. So it's exactly feels like
Speaker 1: he's good, yeah, yeah, he I mean legally he was good.
Speaker 1: Um So, after the FTC decides that Amway is not
Speaker 1: a pyramid scheme, a bunch of different state attorneys general
Speaker 1: start investigating Amway to like try to figure out if
Speaker 1: there's anything else they're doing illegal that they can because
Speaker 1: you know, they're getting a lot of complaints. People who
Speaker 1: like come out of the Amway culture like, well, I
Speaker 1: lost a bunch of money. Something seems like they'd be
Speaker 1: wrong here. Uh. In Wisconsin, the state attorney general sent
Speaker 1: people into Amway meetings and he found these shady distributors
Speaker 1: running conferences and hawking tapes that made promises about wealth
Speaker 1: that am Way absolutely could not back up up. The
Speaker 1: state filed civil complaints against Amway, which sent journalists undercovered
Speaker 1: to poke around, which is when Richard DeVos finally started
Speaker 1: to care. He proposed a number of possible solutions, perhaps
Speaker 1: the funniest of which was to create what he called
Speaker 1: a truth squad to ferret out big distributors who were
Speaker 1: lying in their supplemental materials. But the very quickly realized
Speaker 1: there was nothing am We could actually do without harming
Speaker 1: like his ability to make money. As doctor Carol Juth,
Speaker 1: a sociologist who studies Direct Marketing, wrote, the entrepreneurs of
Speaker 1: the Amway Corporation, perhaps unwittingly, created an organizational structure which
Speaker 1: evolved into two powerful symbiotic organizations. The survival of the
Speaker 1: corporation and the distributor organizations are now dependent on and
Speaker 1: constrained by the other. The Amway Corporation is constrained and
Speaker 1: instability to garner desired profits because of the amount of
Speaker 1: money it must allow for distributor incentives and the fact
Speaker 1: that distributors are more inclined to sponsor rather than to
Speaker 1: sell retail. After the FTC find a way for false advertising,
Speaker 1: the company was forced to make change. Is since am
Speaker 1: we couldn't actually do without these big distributor organizations, they
Speaker 1: brought them in their propaganda into the whole deal. So
Speaker 1: they actually like kind of merge these two. They bring
Speaker 1: a lot of these distributors into like uh where, and
Speaker 1: particularly the propaganda they're they're making, they just start selling
Speaker 1: that as part of Amway um. These big distributors with
Speaker 1: ranks like double Diamond became a key part of the
Speaker 1: internal Amway business, and their motivational speeches and books were
Speaker 1: rolled into the product line. The grift got slightly smarter.
Speaker 1: Instead of saying this book or conference will teach you
Speaker 1: to be a millionaire, it became if you want to
Speaker 1: grow your business, this mentoring can help. I found one
Speaker 1: story and a mother Jones article from nineteen ninety six
Speaker 1: that relates the tale of two Amway distributors, Karen and
Speaker 1: Craig Jones, and I think this illustrates that where am
Speaker 1: Way moves after nineteen seventy nine in terms of like
Speaker 1: how these promises are made to people. After paying about
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars for a starter kit, the Joneses started
Speaker 1: buying motivational audio tapes recorded by such Amway leaders as
Speaker 1: Divorce Yeager and Bill Britt and other well known district eater.
Speaker 1: Before long, am we pressured them to place a standing
Speaker 1: order for new tapes, which cost six dollars a piece.
Speaker 1: They tell you that the people who are serious about
Speaker 1: their future in the business do this, Craig says. Soon
Speaker 1: the Joneses were receiving two tapes a week by mail,
Speaker 1: and we also expected them to buy at least two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in Amway products each month. You start believing them,
Speaker 1: says Karen. You want to do what they did to
Speaker 1: get to where they are. Karen quit her cleaning business.
Speaker 1: The couple sold their three bedroom home in Charlotte and
Speaker 1: moved their three young children an hour north to Concord
Speaker 1: to be closer to their upline. They contacted every acquaintance
Speaker 1: they could think of, trying to recruit new distributors. It
Speaker 1: didn't work, Karen said, They lost friends and within a
Speaker 1: year we're broke. We would eat beans all week long.
Speaker 1: We sold our living room furniture and our TV. As
Speaker 1: Craig lost interest in Amway, Karen says she received a
Speaker 1: less than Christian response from her sponsors, who implied she
Speaker 1: should file for divorce. They tell him, they tell me,
Speaker 1: flush him, flush my husband, says Karen. If he's not
Speaker 1: doing his part, then flush him. After Karen stopped showing
Speaker 1: to meetings in April ninet, Craig returned to work full
Speaker 1: time as an architectural engineer. And we'll squeeze the jones
Speaker 1: is out. I know, right, business and architectural engine These
Speaker 1: people had real jobs, like but it's again, a real
Speaker 1: job is like hard and you yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: do it for years. Maybe you get to retire today
Speaker 1: and get rich. Yeah, like three kids eating means like
Speaker 1: for every meal, because they wanted to live closer to
Speaker 1: the person that they bought their giant boxes of soap
Speaker 1: from that they would just end up storing at their
Speaker 1: basement because they couldn't sell them to anyone because nobody
Speaker 1: wants this ship. Yeah, their business peaked at revenues of
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars a month um. And the couple claims
Speaker 1: that A Way cost them fifty dollars in nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: money and four and a half years of their lives.
Speaker 1: And having people who are struggling financially who just keep
Speaker 1: spinning their wheels blaming themselves. Uh, and than a group
Speaker 1: of people in power also blaming them is the most
Speaker 1: American thing that I can possibly imagine. Like, this is
Speaker 1: just I mean, couldn't be a better metaphor for everything
Speaker 1: about our country. Yeah, it's um, it's perfect, Jack, It's perfect.
Speaker 1: Well that's gonna be the end of part one. A
Speaker 1: A what A I don't know I was being Italian
Speaker 1: Jack wildly offensive. You're the co host of the Daily Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: That's one of the geist. You can also find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Jack Underscore Old Brian Uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's those are the kind of the two man places awesome. UM.
Speaker 1: I want to end this with a little plug for
Speaker 1: something cool that a fan is making. Um. Those of
Speaker 1: you who listened to our episode, our Christmas episode on
Speaker 1: Nestor mack No, who is an anarchist warlord in a Ukraine. Um,
Speaker 1: this is about a different anarchist revolutionary guy who actually
Speaker 1: knew mock No and fought during the Spanish Civil War,
Speaker 1: a guy named Buena Ventura. Do Rudy. Um, there's uh.
Speaker 1: The Ringo Award nominated comic creator Brenton Lingle is creating
Speaker 1: a new comic series called Drudy's Shadow of the People,
Speaker 1: and he's looking for people to back it on Kickstarter.
Speaker 1: Do you go to Kickstarter and you search for d
Speaker 1: U r r U t I d Rudy. Um, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to find it if you're back at the
Speaker 1: book level or higher and comment bastards. He'll send you
Speaker 1: a unique signed print free. It's a cool product. Uh,
Speaker 1: do Rudy at Kickstarter. Um, and you'll find Brenton's Brenton's project.
Speaker 1: So I think it's Nate. Check it out. Um anything else? Jack,
Speaker 1: nothing for me, Robert, nothing from you. Well that's all
Speaker 1: for me. Also, all right, I can't wait until next episode.
Speaker 1: I I can I can't. I can't. Let's wait. Let's
Speaker 1: wait like a day, Let's wait like okay. Okay, sounds good.
Speaker 1: All right,