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Speaker 1: Pushkin. The Story of the Week is Searching for Susie

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Speaker 1: Thunder by Claire L. Evans in The Verge in partnership

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Speaker 1: with Epic Magazine in nineteen eighty four. I was thirteen,

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Speaker 1: and I was a holy terror. Not at home or

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Speaker 1: at school or on the street, but on my computer.

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Speaker 1: I'd sit in my living room, turn on my Apple

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Speaker 1: twoee and fire up my modem, and then I'd log

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Speaker 1: onto Bolden boards, where I was known only as the

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Speaker 1: rap King. I'd interrupt whatever tech conversations the adult nerds

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Speaker 1: were having by insulting them. In these rhymed verses, like

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Speaker 1: some kind of punk Alexander Pope. I'd write things like,

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Speaker 1: you think you're badass with your haze twelve hundred bod,

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Speaker 1: I bet your mom does it with a neutral evil bard.

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Speaker 1: I got kicked off all the time, which thrilled me.

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Speaker 1: It felt like the first kind of danger that was

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Speaker 1: constructed for people like me, but it was actually built

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Speaker 1: for people like Susie Thunder writing his hard Who's got

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Speaker 1: that kind of time when you're already busy trying to

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Speaker 1: be John Stein until it turns on a mic mab

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Speaker 1: it twiddles and knob because a journalist Frand has got

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Speaker 1: in that Jule Jib auditory single story. Just listen to

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Speaker 1: smart people speaking conversation, feeling information is a story of

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Speaker 1: Claire Evans wrote this amazing story about Susan Headley, who

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Speaker 1: was a legendary hacker in the eighties who went by

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Speaker 1: the name Susie Thunder, and her story had never been

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Speaker 1: told until now. I loved this story. It's so nice

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Speaker 1: to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Susie Thunder

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Speaker 1: just completely disappeared, Like for a person who was so

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Speaker 1: online in the nineteen eighties, you cannot find her anywhere online?

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Speaker 1: How'd you wind up tracking her out? I mean it

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Speaker 1: was the height of the pandemic. I mean I spent

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Speaker 1: I spent like most of a year trying to find her.

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Speaker 1: And I probably would have given up fifteen times if

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Speaker 1: I hadn't been locked at home basically with very little

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Speaker 1: else to pursue. And I think probably part of the

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Speaker 1: reason she chose to talk to me is because she

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Speaker 1: was in a similar position where she was, like all

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Speaker 1: of us at that time, a little bit introspective, a

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Speaker 1: little bit stuck, and willing to talk about things that

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Speaker 1: maybe wouldn't normally talk about. I also think I kind

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Speaker 1: of made the case to her that I would be fair.

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Speaker 1: She was sexually abused by her stepfather and left home

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Speaker 1: at age fourteen, and then she moves to Hollywood where

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Speaker 1: she becomes a groupie. And this is at the heart

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Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventies, which seems sort of glamorous but

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Speaker 1: a little sad in the movie, almost famous, but in

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Speaker 1: real life, I imagine it's far darker. We look at

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Speaker 1: it now and it's it's horrifying because what we're talking

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Speaker 1: about is adult men in fourteen thirteen year old girls.

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Speaker 1: But it was really common then, and she was part

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Speaker 1: of a whole scene of these like underage groupies that

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Speaker 1: were kind of the queens of the strip because they

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Speaker 1: were the most desirable and they could get into any club.

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Speaker 1: And you know, there's definitely some dark stuff there. For her,

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Speaker 1: it's a moment of freedom and empowerment. But I think,

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Speaker 1: you know, looking at it now, it's a bit like oh,

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Speaker 1: But I think that part of her life was really

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Speaker 1: really formative to her because it kind of taught her

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Speaker 1: how to be a hacker. Frankly. I mean, she worked

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Speaker 1: as a telephone operator at an answering service, which like

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Speaker 1: in the days before physical answering machines, when people were

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Speaker 1: going to go out for dinner or leave town for

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Speaker 1: a weekend, they would contact this answering service, and the

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Speaker 1: answering service would take their messages and like pass their

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Speaker 1: messages on to where they were staying. So if you

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Speaker 1: worked at the answering service, you would know where everybody was.

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Speaker 1: You would know exactly how to reach them and where

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Speaker 1: to be and like what they needed or wanted in

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Speaker 1: any specific moment. So she used all of that information,

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Speaker 1: like she essentially cased the entire scene and used it

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Speaker 1: to get what she wanted, which was to get close

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Speaker 1: to it, to get close to people who she wanted,

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Speaker 1: to get close to me, and to get access to

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Speaker 1: places that nobody else could get access to, which is

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Speaker 1: basically what packing is all about. Is this where she

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Speaker 1: picked up her nickname Susie Thunder No, her grandmother gave

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Speaker 1: her that nickname, but she used it from the age

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Speaker 1: of about fourteen. It was her grouping name. Actually, she

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Speaker 1: had a groupie friend named Elaine Lightning. Then they would

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Speaker 1: like gat around town as Thunder and Lightning. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: straight out of Happy Days. Thunder and Lightning was I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's that's another story of its own. I'm sure it

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Speaker 1: could be developed into a TV show or something. But

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Speaker 1: you know, the thing which that Susie told me was

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Speaker 1: that Elane Lightning was had a great body, but wasn't

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Speaker 1: wasn't too smart, and Susie was the one that could

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Speaker 1: get them anywhere. And with the two of them together,

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Speaker 1: they could really get anywhere because they had like the

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Speaker 1: killer combo of brains and beauty. She is the brains

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Speaker 1: and she is the body. Fun during Lightning, I know,

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, we should pitch that right to um

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Speaker 1: Stars the Stars Network will be all into them. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's lots of great stories from those from those group

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Speaker 1: of years that I mean this it's like lost to

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Speaker 1: the mist of time. But she had her own fan club,

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Speaker 1: like she was a well known groupie on the SPEs

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Speaker 1: had fan clubs, Yeah, because they were famous. They were like,

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Speaker 1: you know, they weren't as famous as the rock stars,

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Speaker 1: but they were known because they would follow the bands

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Speaker 1: and they would be the ones who would know where

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Speaker 1: the bands were, and they had access to, you know,

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Speaker 1: the bands. If you wanted to get close to a

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Speaker 1: rock star, it was much easier to get at them

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Speaker 1: through the groupies than it was to get at them

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Speaker 1: through the label or through some institution. Like the groupies

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Speaker 1: could kind of move back and forth through different social

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Speaker 1: medias and be the intermediaries. So she's fourteen, but she's

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Speaker 1: she's very tall, right, she's just like six six two

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Speaker 1: sixty three. Yeah, she's awkwardly tall, awkwardly tall, long blonde hair,

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Speaker 1: very very much like what you picture a team group

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Speaker 1: you looking like. Yeah, totally. I mean, hot pants, gold, lamme,

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Speaker 1: you name it, the whole nine. She claimed to have

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Speaker 1: slept with all four Beatles. I believe, yes, yeah, she

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Speaker 1: claims that. Obviously, guy can't verify that. But I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I think it's it's believable. What percentage of the stuff

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Speaker 1: she told you? Do you not believe? M? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I think a lot of things everything

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Speaker 1: is she's I don't I really don't know. It's I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's crazy to say this because it's a reported piece.

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Speaker 1: It's thoroughly fact checked. Obviously, I mean, everything in the

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Speaker 1: piece that as as it ran, is true as far

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Speaker 1: as I know, But there are certain things where it's

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Speaker 1: it just sounds so incredible, Like she she told me

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Speaker 1: that she broke into Area fifty one, which, if you

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Speaker 1: don't know, is a very very very protective military base

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Speaker 1: in the desert. I believe that she knows how to

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Speaker 1: do a lot of things, and has probably done most

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Speaker 1: of those things. Susie wound up having some struggles with addiction,

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Speaker 1: and in order to get herself out, she left the

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Speaker 1: groupie life, and then she found a new subculture, a smaller,

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Speaker 1: more obscure and weirder one. Computer hackers back then, in

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Speaker 1: order to hack, you wound up having to make these

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Speaker 1: weird noises with whistles or your mouth into a pushbuttoned

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Speaker 1: phone in order to make that AOL dial up sounds

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Speaker 1: that would trick a phone into thinking that you were

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Speaker 1: a computer, and then you could break into anywhere. The

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Speaker 1: people who did this were called freakers, which is spelled

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Speaker 1: with a pH as in phone. In the late sixties

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Speaker 1: early seventies, Los Angeles was really like the center of

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Speaker 1: the universe of telephone culture, which is something that's a

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Speaker 1: bit lost to us now, but there was hundreds of

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Speaker 1: these conference lines and chat lines and joke lines. For

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Speaker 1: a while in the late seventies, the most dialed private

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Speaker 1: telephone number in the world was an answering machine on

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Speaker 1: the floor of a shoe closet in West Los Angeles

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Speaker 1: that just played recordings of jokes when you called. It

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Speaker 1: was called the Z line. Now here's the Z thought

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Speaker 1: of the week. Remember, a healthy home is a happy home,

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Speaker 1: So send your home to the doctor twice a year.

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Speaker 1: Why would Susie be any good at this. She's not

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Speaker 1: a nerd. Her life is hanging out with rock stars.

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Speaker 1: Susan kind of existed between the kind of phone culture

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Speaker 1: teenage kicks scene and the hardcore freaker scene because she was,

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Speaker 1: you know, had already kind of developed these hacker skills

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Speaker 1: as a groupie. She became really useful to people in

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Speaker 1: that technical side because she knew how to manipulate the

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Speaker 1: human side of the system, the human points of the system.

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Speaker 1: She was really good at. She was really good at

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Speaker 1: pretending to be someone she wasn't and getting information out

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Speaker 1: of people, and that became a really valuable skill if

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Speaker 1: you were trying to understand how the phone system worked.

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Speaker 1: And she started running with a bunch of people in

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Speaker 1: LA who were you know who became some of the

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Speaker 1: most famous hackers of the nineties. So she bands together

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Speaker 1: with these two other freakers, these guys Louis Depaine and

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Speaker 1: Kevin Mitnick. What were some of the hacks that they

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Speaker 1: pulled off. I do know that they would do stuff like,

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Speaker 1: you know, try to shut down an entire area code,

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Speaker 1: or try to send all of the three one one

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Speaker 1: calls in the LA area into a loop so that

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Speaker 1: whenever you called through and one, it would just call

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Speaker 1: through one one and call through one one again and

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Speaker 1: you would never be able to get through. You know,

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Speaker 1: stuff where it's like, how can we use what we've

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Speaker 1: learned about this telephone network through all kinds of different

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Speaker 1: methods like dumpster diving at phone company offices. Love that

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Speaker 1: they would get stuff that people wouldn't think to shred

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Speaker 1: her office memos about Julian accounting. They could call and

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Speaker 1: pretend to be Julian accounting and that would be true,

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Speaker 1: that they would be a Julian accounting stuff like that,

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Speaker 1: you know. Or they would get manuals for just how

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Speaker 1: to use company systems. I mean they didn't. They would

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Speaker 1: get things that people didn't realize were important and try

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Speaker 1: to figure out even just like one little shred of

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Speaker 1: internal lingo could be really useful to them. This was

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Speaker 1: out the phone companies. Basically, Yeah, the phone companies. They

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Speaker 1: would go they called it garbology, and they would go

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Speaker 1: to the dumpsters outside of the phone companies late at

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Speaker 1: night and steal whatever they could and then use all

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Speaker 1: that information to get more information about how the phone

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Speaker 1: companies worked. It's pretty amazing. I mean, Susie would Susie

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Speaker 1: had her own ways of doing it. She liked to

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Speaker 1: sort of dress like she was homeless essentially, and bring

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Speaker 1: a big drash bag of cans with her so that

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Speaker 1: if she was questioned, it would just look like she

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Speaker 1: was a homeless person looking for cans and not know

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Speaker 1: a hacker looking for inside information. So Susie's hanging out

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Speaker 1: with these guys Lewis and Kevin all the time, and

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Speaker 1: she actually starts dating Lewis. But she has this secret

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Speaker 1: life that they don't even know about. She's a dominatrix

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Speaker 1: in this place in the valley. Yeah, a place called

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Speaker 1: the Leather Castle. Sounds nice in Van Nuys. Oh, it's

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Speaker 1: a castle. And she made good money and for her

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Speaker 1: that was great because then she could buy all this

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Speaker 1: cool hacker gear that she wanted to buy, Like, she

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Speaker 1: could buy all these manuals and you know modems and

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Speaker 1: set up a little hackerdan for herself and do her

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Speaker 1: little She had her own conference phone line that she ran,

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Speaker 1: and she was living the dream for her because she

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Speaker 1: would just work nights, and then she would work nights,

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Speaker 1: and then she would just hang out on her phone

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Speaker 1: conferences all day and do hacking. Eventually, Susie and Lewis

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Speaker 1: break up. And breakups are always destructive, but there are

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Speaker 1: a lot worse when it happens in a group of

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Speaker 1: people who love to destroy things, and now they were

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Speaker 1: going to destroy each other. But before we get to that,

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Speaker 1: our sponsors are going to sell you your own high

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Speaker 1: tech bywear, because honestly, all technology now on you. When

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Speaker 1: you make a hacker mad, they're gonna hack you. Lewis

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Speaker 1: and Kevin used a pre internet trick on Susie. They

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Speaker 1: trailed her car, which led them to her workplace, the

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Speaker 1: Leather Castle. Lewis and Kevin have figured out that Susie

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Speaker 1: works as a dominatrix at the Leather Castle, and then

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Speaker 1: what do they do with that information? They found the

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Speaker 1: phone number for the Leather Castle where she worked, and

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Speaker 1: allegedly her voice was on the answering machine of the

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Speaker 1: leather Castle, listing the various services that were provided by

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Speaker 1: the Leather Castle and prices, and they got a huge

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Speaker 1: kick out of that, and they tape recorded it, and

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Speaker 1: then they used this against her on the Bolden boards

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Speaker 1: where they all hung out, which were like the original

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Speaker 1: chat rooms, and then they essentially disseminated that recording across

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Speaker 1: the entire own Freaker Underground, where they basically said, you know, hey,

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Speaker 1: call this number and we'll play you this recording. And

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Speaker 1: if you want more information about, you know, how this

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Speaker 1: woman is a lying whatever, contact me and I'll send

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Speaker 1: you scans of groupie magazines that prove that she's she

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Speaker 1: was a groupie and that she's you know, that she

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Speaker 1: got around town and I'm essentially tried to try to

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Speaker 1: shame her for her past. How ugly does it get

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Speaker 1: between them on these Balden boards. If you go, there's

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Speaker 1: a really amazing archive of the direct language that was

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Speaker 1: used in this particular flame war, and it was really

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Speaker 1: extensive and really quite violent and so all encompassing that

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Speaker 1: all the other hackers on the board are like, please stop,

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Speaker 1: Like we don't care anymore, we don't want to take sides.

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Speaker 1: My favorite horrible thing that they wrote about her on

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Speaker 1: these Balden boards was your report in all the caps

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Speaker 1: she was unsuccessful at getting Donny Osman to lay her. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which she met Donny Osman when she was like twelve,

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Speaker 1: So also i've met Donny Osman. He is as pretty

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Speaker 1: straight ahead Mormon scary dude like that. That's not He's

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Speaker 1: not an easy target. Yeah. Um no, they were really

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Speaker 1: mean about it, and he gets violent, like Lewis is

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Speaker 1: threatening her. He says, keep it up, you'll be eating

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Speaker 1: molars and incisors for lunch, your own, specifically your own.

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Speaker 1: It's an even creepier threat without the year own. It's

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Speaker 1: creepy either way. Feed her other people's teeth. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how much of that stuff is like just grand deliquent,

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Speaker 1: like teenage exaggeration. I mean even Susan kind of downplayed

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Speaker 1: some of that language because it was just kind of

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Speaker 1: the like the sort of bellicos, a lot of fronting.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of fronting in this scene. And then

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Speaker 1: at some point she gets so annoyed with this that

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Speaker 1: she goes to the FBI and turns both of them

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Speaker 1: in for hacking. Yeah, basically, I mean, he had been

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Speaker 1: so abusive to her and the situation to become untenable,

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Speaker 1: and she decided that she was sick of it, and

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Speaker 1: she had enough evidence to, you know, maybe get him

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Speaker 1: in real trouble with the police, and she sent it

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Speaker 1: to the Feds and eventually testified against them. This seems

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Speaker 1: like tattling on someone should be against the freaker code

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Speaker 1: or something, but it's not right. There's no honor amongst freakers,

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Speaker 1: I guess not, at least not among these freakers. Don't

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Speaker 1: like that. So this case was one of the very

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Speaker 1: first cyber crimes ever prosecuted in California, and it puts

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Speaker 1: Susie in the spotlight. There's this amazing twenty twenty segment

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Speaker 1: with a fully molded Heraldo Rivera interviewing her. Here in

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Speaker 1: Los Angeles. One computer gang actually got a hold of

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Speaker 1: enough information and know how to shut down the entire

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Speaker 1: phone system for the greater Los Angeles area. What's the motive?

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Speaker 1: The motivation wanted to see what could really be there.

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Speaker 1: I was getting off an a power to it too.

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Speaker 1: It's amazing. There's scenes where he's like standing in front

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Speaker 1: of a dumpster saying like these electronic delinquents are going

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Speaker 1: through our troush and they're gonna, you know, shut down

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Speaker 1: phone service for the entire city of Los Angeles. And

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Speaker 1: they would have gotten away with it if not for

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Speaker 1: this this woman, you know, And she's amazing in the

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Speaker 1: interview because she's just got this kind of like beatific

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Speaker 1: calm about her. What have you just done? And to

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Speaker 1: a network? This is a list of other computers ana

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Speaker 1: particular network. Susie looked nothing like a hacker and totally

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Speaker 1: what everyone thought Los Angeles looked like at the time.

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Speaker 1: She was tall and skinny, with blonde hair and blue

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Speaker 1: eyes and this disaffected manner, and she's talking about, you know,

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Speaker 1: stuff which I think to a mainstream audience at that

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Speaker 1: time was probably really mind blowing, which is that, you know,

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Speaker 1: teenagers could cause really significant chaos just by messing around

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Speaker 1: with the phones, and they could do all kinds of things.

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Speaker 1: And what does she look like in the twenty twenty piece. Amazing.

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Speaker 1: She's she's got like peroxide blonde hair, she's wearing like

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Speaker 1: these star earrings and I think like purple eyeshadow, and

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Speaker 1: she's like sitting on she's got this um snoopy telephone handset,

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Speaker 1: but she's using I own that Snoopy phone as a teenager,

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Speaker 1: classic phone, great phone, super cool. She's like showing Heraldo

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Speaker 1: how to hack using a Snoopy phone handset. It's amazing.

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Speaker 1: Is there any system that can't be gotten into? I've

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Speaker 1: got an old thing. If there's a world, there's a way.

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Speaker 1: There's always a way. Like many hackers, Susie got a

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Speaker 1: job as a white hat consulting for companies about how

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Speaker 1: to protect themselves from people like her. She testified at

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Speaker 1: the US Senate about the dangers of electronic intrusion in

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, but she wasn't fully white hat. Like

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Speaker 1: any heist movie, Susie had one last big crime she

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Speaker 1: wanted to pull off. Some people requested not to be

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Speaker 1: in the phone book, and the phone book company kept

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Speaker 1: a list of those people. It was called the non publist,

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Speaker 1: and it was full of celebrities. Everyone wanted that list,

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Speaker 1: especially Susie. This is kind of like the apotheosis of

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Speaker 1: all of her interests in a way, because it was hacking,

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Speaker 1: it was it was also celebrity, and it was also phones.

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Speaker 1: It was a lot of things. This is like the

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Speaker 1: most treasured non publist in the world. The Los Angeles nonpublist.

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Speaker 1: It's got obviously the most celebrities, and they kept it

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Speaker 1: on microfiche. The Phone Companies building in East LA. How

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Speaker 1: did she get it? She cased the joint for many months.

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Speaker 1: She dug through the dumpsters at night trying to find

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Speaker 1: any cast off microfiche, but she never was able to

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Speaker 1: find any. She knew she had to get into the

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Speaker 1: physical building, and after all of her prep work, she

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Speaker 1: actually just walked into it late at night and told

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Speaker 1: the cleaning staff that she worked there and that she

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Speaker 1: needed to get some copies. And she's found. She found

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Speaker 1: the file cabinet they were stored in. She found the

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Speaker 1: non pub and she and she took it. Yeah, in

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Speaker 1: your story, she comes home, feels incredibly guilty, sorry for

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Speaker 1: what she did, but then sells it for a lot

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Speaker 1: of money to a tabloid. She needed the money. You

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Speaker 1: would assume that Susie would go on to a successful

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Speaker 1: career in computer security. That's what happened to her former

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Speaker 1: freaker buddies Lewis and Kevin and all these kind of guys, Like,

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Speaker 1: what did Susie go into? She did a lot of

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Speaker 1: other things after all of this that don't seem to

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Speaker 1: add up and yet somehow do like she was a

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Speaker 1: professional poker player for some years in Vegas. She was

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Speaker 1: the city clerk of California City for a while, California City.

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Speaker 1: It's an elected position in the city of California City.

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Speaker 1: None of those words seemed right. There's a there's a

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Speaker 1: there's a city called California City. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this city called California City. It's sort of it's out

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Speaker 1: in the desert. It's where her mom lived, I think

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Speaker 1: for a while. But she was very involved in the

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Speaker 1: coin collecting world. She was actually the editor in chief

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Speaker 1: of like the about dot com dot coins in the nineties.

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Speaker 1: How is she not involved in crypto? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I think she's not very computer anymore. Frankly,

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Speaker 1: I think she kind of checked out from the tech

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Speaker 1: world after the eighties. She's very much like a landline gal.

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Speaker 1: What do you think her place in hacker history is. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I think it's really important. Historically speaking, in tech, people

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Speaker 1: who are interested in people are marginalized and undervalued. But like,

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Speaker 1: at the end of the day, if you want to

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Speaker 1: do a hack, you absolutely cannot do it without manipulating

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Speaker 1: some human element because the way that systems work is

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Speaker 1: you know, like people are actually much easier to crack

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Speaker 1: than passwords, especially with encrypotion now, So if you want

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Speaker 1: to gain access to a system, it's best to do

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Speaker 1: it through the person that has access to that system.

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Speaker 1: That's what hacking is. It's really like a human game.

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Speaker 1: And I think Susie is sort of emblematic of that craft.

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Speaker 1: She was doing it decades before modern day hackers we're

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Speaker 1: doing it. She did it very well, and she wasn't

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Speaker 1: taken seriously because she was a woman and because she

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Speaker 1: was a sex worker, and because she was um, you know,

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Speaker 1: perceived as not being technical or not understanding the systems.

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Speaker 1: But she was absolutely like a force to be reckoned with.

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Speaker 1: And what did she think of it? I was so

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Speaker 1: scared that she wouldn't like the piece, but she did.

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Speaker 1: I got a really sweet email from her, like, you know,

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Speaker 1: the day after it dropped, basically like she's really grateful

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Speaker 1: that Mostly she's really grateful that I that I took

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Speaker 1: the time to like to do it right, you know.

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Speaker 1: But I think ultimately for her it's you know, all

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Speaker 1: of her contemporary's got to have their moment in the sun.

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Speaker 1: They they got to work high profile security jobs. There's

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Speaker 1: all these people that she ran with who I think

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Speaker 1: she was just as good as you know in terms

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Speaker 1: of doing what they did. That just got to be hero.

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Speaker 1: So I think for her just getting to be, you know,

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Speaker 1: remembered in the same kind of light, to be to

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Speaker 1: be like a complex character like they got to be,

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Speaker 1: and to like to be fully portrayed with all of

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Speaker 1: her past and all of her baggage and all of

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Speaker 1: her motivations and all of it. I think that was

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Speaker 1: more important to her than any anything else. And she

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Speaker 1: thought that. Claire l Evans story searching for Susie Thunder

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Speaker 1: is in The Verge. She's also the author of the

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Speaker 1: book Broadband, The Untold Story of the Women who made

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Speaker 1: the Internet. Claire, it was so cool to meet you.

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Speaker 1: I'm a fan. Sad because we're not talking anymore, so

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Speaker 1: thanks for doing this. Oh oh, don't be a stranger.

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Speaker 1: I'm around. I never got to be a hacker, or

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Speaker 1: a groupie or the city clerk of California City, California.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I would have liked any of that,

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Speaker 1: but I'm jealous of being the kind of person who

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Speaker 1: would want those things. But that's why I like reading

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Speaker 1: these stories because when they're written this well, I get

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Speaker 1: to see what it's like to be Susie Thunder and

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Speaker 1: it seems exciting as hell and definitely not for me.

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Speaker 1: I'm more of an Elane Lightning type. At the end

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Speaker 1: of the show, what's next for Joel Stein? Maybe he'll

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Speaker 1: take a nap poke around online. Our show today was

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Speaker 1: produced by Lydia Gencott, Kate mccauliffe, and Nishave Ncutt. It

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Speaker 1: was edited by Robert Smith. Our engineer is Amanda kay

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Speaker 1: Wang and our executive producer is Katherine Girardol and our

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Speaker 1: theme song was written and performed by Jonathan Colton and

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Speaker 1: a special thanks to my voice coach Vicky Merrick and

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Speaker 1: my consulting producer Laurenzi last Nick. To find more Pushkin podcasts,

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Speaker 1: listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

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Speaker 1: listen to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein and this is

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Speaker 1: the story of the week. You're in cool places. You're

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Speaker 1: like Susie Thunder. I'll never run into you anywhere you

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Speaker 1: live in LA. I live in LA but you do

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Speaker 1: cool LA, right. I don't know what's cool LA. I

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Speaker 1: don't even know that's the thing. That's how I know

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Speaker 1: about cool La coming up on Story of the Week.

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Speaker 1: The story is about these two chess players, Magnus Carlson

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Speaker 1: and Hans Nieman. There's a rumor that spreads. I think

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Speaker 1: it starts as a joke, like all good conspiracy theories do,

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Speaker 1: that Hans Nieman was getting this information about where to

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Speaker 1: move through vibrations in anal beads. This is a big

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Speaker 1: rumor that a lot of people are talking about, Like

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Speaker 1: I hear it on Joe Rogan. It was kind of everywhere, right,

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Speaker 1: it was everywhere, and Elon must tweeted his right. So

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Speaker 1: that might explain three times the part of the every

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Speaker 1: awareness