Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of shondaland Audio in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeartRadio. The world wants to be deceived, so let
Speaker 1: it be deceived. That quote is attributed to Petronius, first
Speaker 1: century Roman author and satirist during the reign of Nero,
Speaker 1: and at least for this season, he sure was right.
Speaker 1: There are three things to know before we begin this episode. One,
Speaker 1: a gold brick is a thing that looks valuable but
Speaker 1: is in fact a fraudulent, worthless substitute. Two. Gold bricking
Speaker 1: is a term that originates from confidence artists. When a
Speaker 1: gold coating is applied to a brick of worthless metal,
Speaker 1: usually lead, it may appear to be a gold bar
Speaker 1: on the surface, but in reality it's something far less valuable.
Speaker 1: And Three. American read See Bottle is credited with one
Speaker 1: of the most celebrated cons among cons, the gold brick swindle,
Speaker 1: and you can thank his work with that swindle for
Speaker 1: the origin of the term gold bricker, which today is
Speaker 1: frequently used to describe a person who maintains appearances but
Speaker 1: is actually totally lazy or incompetent. Welcome to Criminalia, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about gold. I'm Maria tram Marquis and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry. Reid Sea Waddle was born to Absalom and
Speaker 1: Nancy Waddle in Springfield, Illinois, in eighteen sixty, give or
Speaker 1: take a year. Absalom was a horse dealer and frequently
Speaker 1: entered horses in races and shows around the region, and
Speaker 1: when he died, a brief obituary in the Illinois State
Speaker 1: Journal described him as quote an old and well known
Speaker 1: citizen that sounds pretty benign, But his son was a
Speaker 1: budding criminal, and by the time Reid was seven or
Speaker 1: eight years old, newspapers had already started reporting on his conduct.
Speaker 1: Relieved his misconduct from one report quote, he was known
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of Washington at eleven Streets East as
Speaker 1: about the toughest foulmouthed boy in the section. The gamblers,
Speaker 1: who all knew him did not care to talk to
Speaker 1: a stranger about him. All the men here, who ever
Speaker 1: used to follow the races in the time when the
Speaker 1: elder Waddle was in business, unite in saying that he
Speaker 1: was the meanest man they ever knew. In that line,
Speaker 1: he had not the first redeeming manly quality. The boy, however,
Speaker 1: had he dressed well and could on occasion go into
Speaker 1: any society. But jump ahead a few years and newspaper
Speaker 1: records report Read was indicted at age seventeen in connection
Speaker 1: with a confidence game he ran in Carlinville, Illinois. What
Speaker 1: that game is, though, we don't know, it's lost to history.
Speaker 1: By eighteen eighty, when Waddle was twenty years old, the
Speaker 1: Illinois State Register reported on another of his arrest, this
Speaker 1: time on a gambling warrant out of Tolono, Illinois. Quoting
Speaker 1: from the article, Waddle is notorious among police circles here,
Speaker 1: and they will be glad to hear that he receives
Speaker 1: the full penalty of the law at his trial in Tolono.
Speaker 1: Waddle two is mentioned in the memoir of Illinois State
Speaker 1: Journal history columnist John ey Vaughn, published years later in
Speaker 1: September of nineteen twenty one. Quote Commercial Alley. The alley
Speaker 1: behind the west side of the two hundred block of
Speaker 1: South sixth Street, Harvard public gaming houses and was a
Speaker 1: hangout for confidence operators. Read Waddle, who became internationally notorious
Speaker 1: as a gold brick man, had his training in this environment.
Speaker 1: Waddle enjoyed cards and horses, but he didn't start his
Speaker 1: criminal career as a con artist. He was kind of
Speaker 1: a jack of all trades hustler, and his repertoire included
Speaker 1: things like a rigged form of the dice game Bunco.
Speaker 1: At that time, that was a really popular con, and
Speaker 1: as any good confidence man, Waddle would have taken part
Speaker 1: in Bunko. Sometime in the early eighteen eighties, Wattle moved
Speaker 1: to New York City. He reported they began running scams
Speaker 1: known as green goods scams, which were common cons in
Speaker 1: nineteenth century America. These scams tricked people into paying for
Speaker 1: worthless counterfeit currency and left them literally holding a bag
Speaker 1: containing sawdust and a wad of fake currency on top.
Speaker 1: Actually not too dissimilar to the gold brick con. Really, basically,
Speaker 1: the gold brick scam really simply put involved selling a
Speaker 1: tangible good for more than it's worth to a person
Speaker 1: unaware that the item has been switched to one of
Speaker 1: lesser value, and Waddle's marks were usually people on the
Speaker 1: street who just couldn't resist a good deal. We're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors,
Speaker 1: and when we're back we will talk about a man
Speaker 1: named Robert Pinkerton who refused to give credit to Waddle
Speaker 1: for the old brick game, and probably for good reason.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about how the gold
Speaker 1: brick game works and how Waddle convinced his marks that
Speaker 1: his gold was good. Waddle happened to be in the
Speaker 1: gold business at a time when the United States was
Speaker 1: reforming the US Mint, and that meant that there were
Speaker 1: some changes happening with US currency. Here's what was going
Speaker 1: on around eighteen sixty nine. The Mint Act of eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven, which was enacted, of course, before both the
Speaker 1: California Gold Rush and the American Civil War, was determined
Speaker 1: by the federal government to be outdated. Four years later,
Speaker 1: a revised act known as the Mint Act of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, or you'll also see it as the Act
Speaker 1: of eighteen seventy three went into effect, and it was
Speaker 1: a general revision of laws relating to the Mint. When
Speaker 1: it came to gold, it allowed for anyone holding that
Speaker 1: precious metal to continue to have their bullion made into
Speaker 1: money if they desired, and the Act created a gold standard,
Speaker 1: but it did not do the same for other precious metals.
Speaker 1: When silver's market price fell in eighteen seventy six. For example,
Speaker 1: those who brought silver bullion to the mint were turned away.
Speaker 1: The mint, under the new laws, was no longer authorized
Speaker 1: to coin it. While this kicked off some major political
Speaker 1: controversy regarding the gold standard and the belief of free
Speaker 1: coinage for silver, we won't get into that too deeply
Speaker 1: because the important thing to know in waddle story is
Speaker 1: that there was change regarding the United States and people
Speaker 1: who lived there and their money and their medals. Confidence
Speaker 1: artist involved in this game also often tried to best
Speaker 1: each other with stories of how they encourage their targets
Speaker 1: to believe that the tables were turned and that they
Speaker 1: the mark, were actually swindling the sellers into selling something
Speaker 1: for a price far below it's worth. Greed can get tricky,
Speaker 1: can't it. The Gold Brick con had a few moving pieces.
Speaker 1: It involved printing brochures to sparkle mark's interest in the
Speaker 1: sale of what confidence artists would call perfect counterfeit money.
Speaker 1: This really wasn't the kind of con where you would
Speaker 1: go up to a stranger on the street and say, buddy,
Speaker 1: want to buy my gold, But it was the kind
Speaker 1: of Cohn where you wanted to attract some attention to
Speaker 1: your goods. Buy these bricks now at amazingly low prices.
Speaker 1: Take them off my hands. You'll never get a better deal.
Speaker 1: There would be a story too, as to why these
Speaker 1: bricks were for sale and on sale, something legit, of course,
Speaker 1: like someone selling bars that are unable to take on
Speaker 1: a voyage for whatever reason that might have been. But
Speaker 1: this scam all so involved non precious metal bars, usually lead,
Speaker 1: sometimes brass. Wattle fashioned his lead bars into I'm going
Speaker 1: to go air quoted gold, with layer upon layer of
Speaker 1: gold plate coating applied to each bar. His fake gold
Speaker 1: ingot always included small details that could make or break
Speaker 1: the scam. He was known to apply stampings with the
Speaker 1: markings of a bank or the United States government, for instance.
Speaker 1: Assay offices are set up to essay precious metals, and
Speaker 1: they're in place to help protect consumers from buying fake items.
Speaker 1: During successful essays, the assayer typically stamps a hallmark on
Speaker 1: the item to certify its metallurgical content. Wattle included such
Speaker 1: details and that lad Waddle's targets to falsely believe that
Speaker 1: he was offering bricks that had been evaluated by the
Speaker 1: federal government and just in case. Waddle also inserted a
Speaker 1: plug of real gold into the fake bar. One spot
Speaker 1: on the brick was planted with genuine gold that he
Speaker 1: could easily remove an offer as a way for a
Speaker 1: doubting mark to authenticate the bar, like scrape a little
Speaker 1: piece off and go, oh, have this tested. Little did
Speaker 1: the victim know. Waddle always set up an accomplice as
Speaker 1: his assayer with all of the necessary accoutrement of the trade,
Speaker 1: including scales, weights, and chemicals, so everything appeared to be
Speaker 1: on the up and up. The pitch was also aimed
Speaker 1: at gamblers, but they didn't need all the smoke and mirrors.
Speaker 1: They were interested in the bricks because they wanted to
Speaker 1: be using phony money or they wanted to use it
Speaker 1: up to cover their previous losses. In that scenario, the gamblers,
Speaker 1: just as other targets, never got the gold. But for
Speaker 1: them it wasn't like they could turn to the police
Speaker 1: for help. Some reports suggest that Waddle was able to
Speaker 1: sell his gold bricks for thousands of dollars apiece, the
Speaker 1: first for four thousand dollars. According to some reports, selling
Speaker 1: gold plated lead bricks for prices ranging from five hundred
Speaker 1: to seventy five hundred per bar, made Waddle more than
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million dollars by the end of
Speaker 1: the decade, and that is not adjusted for today's values.
Speaker 1: Waddle ran his gold brick con for years, and no
Speaker 1: one debates his success using that game. Some people say
Speaker 1: that Waddle invented it, but others disagree with that. Robert
Speaker 1: Pinkerton was the son of Alan Pinkerton, who was the
Speaker 1: founder of Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, and Robert was reluctant
Speaker 1: to credit Waddle with its invention. In the May twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen o one edition of the Los Angeles Herald, he
Speaker 1: was quoted saying, and bear with me, it's a long quote,
Speaker 1: so here we go. The gold brick business is an
Speaker 1: American institution, but its earliest promoters were Spaniards and Italians.
Speaker 1: About forty years ago, the game was played with gold
Speaker 1: dust or gold filings. Among the pioneers were Emil Rodriguez
Speaker 1: and Adolph Superbello. Their game was to find some man
Speaker 1: who had a few thousand dollars and then tell him
Speaker 1: about their having a bag full of gold filings or
Speaker 1: gold dust which had been stolen. They must get rid
Speaker 1: of the property and would be willing to sell it
Speaker 1: at a great sacrifice. After getting him interested, they would
Speaker 1: take the intended victim to an essay office, which was
Speaker 1: a bogus concern, and then they would receive the assurance
Speaker 1: that the yellow metal was all that was claimed for it,
Speaker 1: and the man who gave this information would usually make
Speaker 1: the owner a liberal offer for his plunder. The bag,
Speaker 1: securely sealed, was then sold to the victim, who received
Speaker 1: strict instructions to say nothing about his purchase for a
Speaker 1: little while until the loss of the gold was less
Speaker 1: fresh in the minds of the people. In order to
Speaker 1: be perfectly secure, some of the victims packed up and
Speaker 1: went abroad, and only when they were ready to enjoy
Speaker 1: their new wealth they discovered that the treasure bag contained
Speaker 1: base metal and not gold. I arrested these men in
Speaker 1: Cincinnati more than thirty five years ago, and they were
Speaker 1: tried in Chicago and convicted. So there's a long winded
Speaker 1: way of saying that. Back in eighteen sixty six, Robert
Speaker 1: Pinkerton apprehended two swindlers who gave the names of H.
Speaker 1: Welton and Richard Bishop, trying to run the gold brick
Speaker 1: game on banks and brokers in Ohio. His point Waddle
Speaker 1: ran green goods scams and gold brick swindles, but he
Speaker 1: did not do it. First, we are going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break for a word from our sponsors, and
Speaker 1: when we're back we will talk about forres, the world's
Speaker 1: second oldest profession and an argument that led to the
Speaker 1: death of a con artist. Welcome back to Criminalia. Before
Speaker 1: the break, we were talking about a man who insisted
Speaker 1: Read Waddle could not have invented the gold brick swindle.
Speaker 1: So now let's talk about a guy who disagrees with him.
Speaker 1: A man named Herbert Asbury disagrees with Robert Pinkerton's assessment
Speaker 1: that Waddle couldn't be the origin of the gold brick swindle.
Speaker 1: In his research and study of the New York City
Speaker 1: Underworld while writing the nineteen twenty eight book Gangs of
Speaker 1: New York and Informal History of the New York Underworld,
Speaker 1: Asbury gives Waddle credit for inventing the scam. But he's
Speaker 1: kind of the only one though. See Waddle became famous
Speaker 1: because of this con game, and it's highly likely that
Speaker 1: he really popularized it. Perhaps he was the first to
Speaker 1: bring the game to New York. Perhaps he was great
Speaker 1: at this swindle so great it was hard for any
Speaker 1: of his contemporaries to remember anyone else ever doing it.
Speaker 1: When it comes to its origin, though, there are reports
Speaker 1: of the first known use of the term gold brick
Speaker 1: in a fraudulent way dating back to eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen sixty five, Waddle was still just a
Speaker 1: kid growing up in Illinois. While he may have been
Speaker 1: in the first generation of confidence artists to employ the
Speaker 1: gold brick game, Waddle worked on and off with four
Speaker 1: other older and more experienced men who all worked the
Speaker 1: same scam. They were William Emory Train who went by Bill,
Speaker 1: John Leary, who went by Red van Buren, Triplet, and
Speaker 1: Tom O'Brien. The first known published mention of the swindle
Speaker 1: dates to a newspaper clipping from eighteen seventy nine where
Speaker 1: the Khan was conducted in Chicago and possibly Kansas City
Speaker 1: by two men calling themselves Walker and Thomas A. Lewis,
Speaker 1: and it is highly likely that these were aliases of
Speaker 1: one or two of the men Waddle worked with who
Speaker 1: we just mentioned previously. So, whether you believe Pinkerton or
Speaker 1: you believe Asbury, we know this one thing from history.
Speaker 1: It's assumed that gold and silver coinage was invented around
Speaker 1: six to fifty BC, and pretty much ever since it
Speaker 1: appeared it has been tampered with and fake, and as
Speaker 1: far as we could tell, it was probably the very
Speaker 1: next day that counterfeit coins were passed on the streets.
Speaker 1: Real gold bars and coins are made from pouring molten
Speaker 1: gold into molds. Ancient counterfeiters, just like today's, would use
Speaker 1: a base metal core such as lead, and then cover
Speaker 1: it with a thin layer of precious metal such as gold.
Speaker 1: This all sounds very familiar so far, and then they
Speaker 1: would strike it between engraved dyes. A counterfeitter who could
Speaker 1: produce works with seamless coding and who used dyes of
Speaker 1: good quality could produce lookalike fakes that felt real in
Speaker 1: terms of their size and their weight. These types of
Speaker 1: fake coins, which could often pass as genuine, are known
Speaker 1: as ferrets, which comes from a French word meaning stuffed.
Speaker 1: The idiom, world's second oldest profession, is often used in
Speaker 1: reference to counterfeiting, and it indeed has been going on
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Historians have founded base metal
Speaker 1: bars made to imitate gold ingots that were used as
Speaker 1: currency before the introduction of coins, counterfeit precious metals were
Speaker 1: hardly new to nineteenth century America. They were an international problem. Wattle,
Speaker 1: of course, did not invent any of this, although he
Speaker 1: may have told a good story or two that he did.
Speaker 1: Of course, at the end of the day, it's really
Speaker 1: not about who invented this type of counterfeiting and when,
Speaker 1: but rather how much money you could get from a
Speaker 1: mark who was willing to hand it over. So in
Speaker 1: March of eighteen ninety five, Waddle was working with one
Speaker 1: of his New York mentors, a Nanuel recognized from earlier
Speaker 1: in the episode, Tom O'Brien. Tom had made an estimated
Speaker 1: half million dollars over a five month period using the
Speaker 1: gold brick game at the Colombian Exposition. The Exposition was
Speaker 1: a world's fair held in Chicago in eighteen ninety three
Speaker 1: to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher with US's
Speaker 1: arrival in the New World. The fair ended in tragedy
Speaker 1: when a cold storage structure dubbed the Greatest refrigerator on
Speaker 1: Earth went up in flames and claimed sixteen lives. But
Speaker 1: for the con artists who had descended upon the crowds
Speaker 1: of the expo before the accident, it was an opportunity
Speaker 1: to make a whole lot of money. Anyway, back to
Speaker 1: reading Tom. Two years later in France, the men were
Speaker 1: running cons in Paris when they had a falling out.
Speaker 1: There are three versions of this story, so it may
Speaker 1: have been jealousy over a love interest but probably not.
Speaker 1: Or it may have been over a loan or loan
Speaker 1: repayment for reported ten thousand dollars that sounds plausible, or,
Speaker 1: and this is the most popular telling, it was most
Speaker 1: likely overshares of a bunko swindle. Heated words were exchanged,
Speaker 1: things got physical, and while the men fought in the cafe,
Speaker 1: American Waddled hit O'Brien over the head with a bottle
Speaker 1: and fled. The next day, March twenty seventh, O'Brien encountered
Speaker 1: Waddle at the Gausdun train station and shot him several times,
Speaker 1: including twice in the back and chest. Waddle died of
Speaker 1: his wounds. O'Brien was arrested by French authorities, but his
Speaker 1: trial was temporarily postponed when the United States Department of
Speaker 1: State requested that he be extradited to the US. During
Speaker 1: his subsequent trial, which was held in France. O'Brien testified
Speaker 1: that he'd killed Waddle, yes, but that it was in
Speaker 1: self defense. O'Brien's attorney, identified as French jurist Metre Edgar Damanes, argued,
Speaker 1: according to The New York Times quote that there had
Speaker 1: been an exchange of shots, which was an ordinary way
Speaker 1: of settling quarrels in America. Famous former New York police
Speaker 1: detective Thomas F. Burns had referred to O'Brien as quote
Speaker 1: king of the Bunkomen in his book Professional Criminals of America,
Speaker 1: published in eighteen eighty six, nine years before the argument
Speaker 1: that ended with Waddle dead and O'Brien in prison. Burns
Speaker 1: claimed that O'Brien had been apprehended in almost every city
Speaker 1: across the United States, and he had spent at least
Speaker 1: twenty years on and off in prison during his criminal career. Also,
Speaker 1: according to Burns, O'Brien was perhaps most infamous as a
Speaker 1: bunco steerer, not as a gold brick swindler. So a
Speaker 1: bunco steerer is someone who entices a mark into the swimmle.
Speaker 1: O'Brien could not, no matter how good his acting, smooth,
Speaker 1: talk himself out of his sentence, though he died in
Speaker 1: prison in France. By the time he was gunned down
Speaker 1: in Paris, Waddle had become one of the best known
Speaker 1: confidence artists of the late nineteenth century. Nancy Waddle had
Speaker 1: her son's body returned to Illinois, where he is today
Speaker 1: buried next to his parents in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.
Speaker 1: Like a little scam sauce, so we can raise a
Speaker 1: glass to read, I suppose scammer extraordinaire. If we want
Speaker 1: to toast to him. His demise was terrible, let's toast
Speaker 1: to him. I went with a very obvious name. But
Speaker 1: I'm just calling this one the gold brick. But there's
Speaker 1: a trick to it. It may not be what it
Speaker 1: initially appears. And this kind of becomes also a combination
Speaker 1: of a few drink ideas. It shares DNA with various ones.
Speaker 1: But the bass drink I wanted to reference the French
Speaker 1: finish of his life. And the bass drink is similar to,
Speaker 1: but not exactly the same as, a drink called a
Speaker 1: monkey gland, which was invented in France in nineteen twenty.
Speaker 1: Why do I feel like we've had a conversation about
Speaker 1: the monkey gland before? Maybe not on the show. Mine
Speaker 1: is a little different, but that was the drink I
Speaker 1: started thinking about as a base, and then I went
Speaker 1: from there. This involves several steps, none of them are hard,
Speaker 1: but just be ready. There are a few different things
Speaker 1: going on here. The main drink itself is an ounce
Speaker 1: and a half of orange juice, an ounce and a
Speaker 1: half of gin, a splash of simple syrup to taste
Speaker 1: a little to like half an ounce. You don't need
Speaker 1: a ton. It depends on the acidity of your orange
Speaker 1: juice and what you like. That is going to get
Speaker 1: shaken with ice so it's nice and cold. Then you
Speaker 1: are going to take a quarter of an ounce I
Speaker 1: would say, of absinthe and another quarter of an ounce
Speaker 1: of simple syrup, and you're just going to combine those
Speaker 1: and then pour them into your pre chilled glass and
Speaker 1: glaze the glass with it. So that also is you
Speaker 1: know how sassare has often made, so you're similar to that,
Speaker 1: but you just want to get that flavor shift that
Speaker 1: happens from the absinthe. Then you'll put your ice in
Speaker 1: strain that drink over it. The third step though, and
Speaker 1: also I will tell you at the end, I recommend
Speaker 1: if you really want to buy into the storyline of
Speaker 1: it not using a glass but using some vessel that
Speaker 1: is not clear, like a mug or a like a
Speaker 1: carved cocktail glass or something. Because your third thing that
Speaker 1: you're gonna do is take about two ounces of heavy
Speaker 1: cream and I don't know, like a half teaspoon of turmeric,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna blend those together. Like if you have
Speaker 1: a blendy thing, great, you could throw in turmeric until
Speaker 1: you get it nice and spoon that on top so
Speaker 1: it looks like a golden yummy delicious, like perhaps creamy drink.
Speaker 1: But under it is this like whamity lamb in an absence.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing though, So I was a little worried.
Speaker 1: I was like, always this gonna work. Is this I'm
Speaker 1: gonna play nice together? And you can also, depending on
Speaker 1: your flavor desires, add a little bit of simple syrup
Speaker 1: to that heavy cream and turmeric mixture if you want
Speaker 1: it to really be whip creamy. But if you then
Speaker 1: just stir it all together in the glass after your
Speaker 1: moment of presentation, what no one can tell is the
Speaker 1: look on her face. Delicious. It becomes like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a creamsicle has a baby with the absinthe Green Fairy.
Speaker 1: It's just delicious. It's so delicious, it is unconscionably delicious.
Speaker 1: I don't even know that maybe my favorite drink description
Speaker 1: of ever. I loved this drink. It's oh man, now
Speaker 1: I'm like. My brain immediately was like, we should start
Speaker 1: working on absentthe milk. I had never really thought about
Speaker 1: combining absinthe and a cream in quite that way. There
Speaker 1: are some absinthe and milk drinks, but like that heavy cream,
Speaker 1: I didn't know if the cream was going to play
Speaker 1: nice with the acidity of the orange juice and gin,
Speaker 1: which sometimes they can bite each other. Dairy doesn't always
Speaker 1: love all these things. But oh mamma, yeah no, I'm
Speaker 1: coming over for the absence milk chair. Holy Moses. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'll space it out so it's not too absence in
Speaker 1: a row. But to make the mocktail, this is super easy.
Speaker 1: You're gonna use an Anna set syrup in lieu of absinthe.
Speaker 1: If you do that, you don't really have to combine
Speaker 1: it with simple syrup. You can just use the syrup
Speaker 1: itself and put glass to make the glaze, and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna skip the gin and you can sub that
Speaker 1: out with any of the things we've talked about using
Speaker 1: for gin, like a camomile tea there with some pepper
Speaker 1: in it, or you could do another juice. I actually
Speaker 1: think it would change the flavor profile so much, but
Speaker 1: it would also be delicious. If you did pineapple juice
Speaker 1: and an orange juice with that subtle and a set
Speaker 1: flavor of the glaze and then the termuric cream on top,
Speaker 1: that would be like making a tropical like lookout people,
Speaker 1: this will replace it. Yeah, And that's how I would
Speaker 1: do the mocktail on this. And that is called the
Speaker 1: gold brick because it's not quite what you think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be, but in this case, it's quite delicious and
Speaker 1: not oh man, I got this instead. I hope, I
Speaker 1: hope it's not a bait and switch. I'm gonna bait
Speaker 1: and switch myself some more of it. This is very yummy.
Speaker 1: It's so yummy like the Shamrock shake except for adults. Yes,
Speaker 1: absentthe does sometimes have a subtle mint note, but the
Speaker 1: licorice flavor is really driving the bus. But I do
Speaker 1: know from a bar that I love to go to,
Speaker 1: they took their absentthe cocktail which was kind of a
Speaker 1: signature when they opened off the menu. You can still
Speaker 1: get it, but people that go there will order it
Speaker 1: thinking it's gonna taste minty, and when it tastes of liquorice,
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't want this. And they were having
Speaker 1: to throw out hundreds of dollars of absinthe every day.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people don't like a liquorice too.
Speaker 1: So if you get it and you weren't surprised and
Speaker 1: you're surprised that it's there, you may actually not like
Speaker 1: it as well. And I wish I could just hang
Speaker 1: out and be like, I'll drink your drink to all
Speaker 1: of those people, because I love absence, love it. I
Speaker 1: do want to make an absence milkshake. We can workshop
Speaker 1: that on the side, and somehow we will make it.
Speaker 1: We will also make more episodes. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: here next week to share them with you and subsequent weeks,
Speaker 1: and we are so thankful that you spent this time
Speaker 1: with us, so we will see you soon with more
Speaker 1: scam sauce and more scammers. Criminalia is a production of
Speaker 1: Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: Shondaland Audio, Please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.