Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: all about the Dark Web and all the crazy crazy
Speaker 1: drugs and him men. You can buy on it.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I was still doing my vocal warm ups.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that that helps. What does that help?
Speaker 2: Why twenty dwarfs took turns doing push ups in the lawn.
Speaker 1: I'm ready, okay, okay, Well, so welcome to the podcast, everybody.
Speaker 2: I figured it should start warming up. You know, seventeen
Speaker 2: years into this eighteen? How long you sixteen?
Speaker 1: So yeah, sixteen ish, a little over sixteen coming up
Speaker 1: on seventeen.
Speaker 2: Chuck, just wait till you hear the way my lips
Speaker 2: move in this episode. They're so loose.
Speaker 1: So did you loosen your lips up? Just specifically, because
Speaker 1: the content of this episode is so thrilling.
Speaker 2: I authought you can say something about sinking ships. No,
Speaker 2: I didn't, but this is a good one.
Speaker 1: This.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if everyone heard our episode in the Dark Web
Speaker 2: from twenty twenty, some of this will be familiar. But
Speaker 2: this is just more in depth about the Notoriou. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Silk Road itself, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we were talking about Silk Road for those
Speaker 1: view history buffs Middle Eastern history buffs who were disappointed. Sorry,
Speaker 1: but you should stick around because this is going to
Speaker 1: be a pretty interesting episode.
Speaker 2: I didn't think about that. When are they going to
Speaker 2: talk about cinnamon?
Speaker 1: We did a whole episode on cinnamon, So relax there, guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, we're talking about what is widely considered
Speaker 1: because I think it is the world's first illicit marketplace
Speaker 1: on the Internet that was opened in twenty eleven shut
Speaker 1: down in twenty thirteen. It had a very very brief run,
Speaker 1: was like the Beatles of illicit drug trading websites, and
Speaker 1: it's legend will live on for basically forever because not
Speaker 1: only was it just the most audacious thing anyone had
Speaker 1: ever done on the Internet as far as anyone knew
Speaker 1: up to that point, it created a blueprint for a
Speaker 1: bunch of imitators to come, and also the way everything
Speaker 1: that law enforcement through at this case and the court
Speaker 1: case as well, it was just so nuts that it's
Speaker 1: just a heck of a story. How about that Brownie.
Speaker 2: That's great, boy. There were fifteen filthy jokes. I was
Speaker 2: going to say, when you said the most outrageous thing
Speaker 2: anyone had done on the Internet up and to that point,
Speaker 2: I was like I had a rolling terminator, like scroll
Speaker 2: about all the early internet nasty memes that would go around.
Speaker 1: You couldn't pick any of them.
Speaker 2: No, I just didn't want to say any of them
Speaker 2: out loud because then kids would look them up.
Speaker 1: I gotcha. Yeah, I was wondering, and we probably should
Speaker 1: have talked about this before we recorded. Are we gonna
Speaker 1: like call out any active sites or anything like that? Nah, okay,
Speaker 1: because I know some I looked him up.
Speaker 2: Hey, just Texas.
Speaker 1: To me, it's fine, okay. So let's start from the start, right.
Speaker 1: We're gonna start with a guy named Ross Olbricht, And
Speaker 1: the reason we're introducing him early on is because he
Speaker 1: is the mastermind behind silk Row. It was his idea,
Speaker 1: he built it originally, He ran the thing by hand,
Speaker 1: almost single handedly, for a very long time, and you
Speaker 1: just really can't talk about Silkrow without him, because his
Speaker 1: personality was so wrapped up into the ethos of the
Speaker 1: site that you can't really extract one from the other.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that while he was sitting in federal court.
Speaker 1: He really wished that they would extract one from the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big thanks to Kyle, first of all our friend
Speaker 2: and can tributing writer from across the Pond for his
Speaker 2: work on this. But Kyle's keen to point out just
Speaker 2: a little bit about the dark Web. You know, we
Speaker 2: have a whole episode from twenty twenty if you want
Speaker 2: to go listen to that. But if you don't know
Speaker 2: what the dark web is, it's a part of the
Speaker 2: web where you can go and do things anonymously. And
Speaker 2: that's just a you know, the simplest way to say it.
Speaker 2: It's much more complicated than that, obviously if we did
Speaker 2: a whole episode, but it's where you can go if
Speaker 2: you don't want to be indexed by Google, if you
Speaker 2: don't want your traffic monitored, and if you want your
Speaker 2: anonymity insured. Doesn't necessarily mean you're some awful person doing
Speaker 2: awful things. There's a lot of people there that just
Speaker 2: believe in in the freedom and anonymity that you should
Speaker 2: have on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, yes, for sure, some people are just like,
Speaker 1: there's no reason for you to be invading my privacy.
Speaker 1: While I'm reading The Guardian or something like that.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, just to sell me stuff exactly.
Speaker 1: That's part of it for sure too. And then also
Speaker 1: other people are like they have they might be whistleblowers
Speaker 1: and they have information that they could very easily get
Speaker 1: them thrown in prison. But it's really important to get
Speaker 1: out to the public. There's sites like pro Publica and
Speaker 1: other journalists that have dark web sites to where you
Speaker 1: can submit information, and even Pro public it doesn't know
Speaker 1: who you are. And with silk Roads specifically, there were
Speaker 1: three things that came together that made Silk Road exists,
Speaker 1: and without any of them, I don't think it would
Speaker 1: have ever existed. One was who I already introduced, Ross Olbrick.
Speaker 1: The second is Tour, the Tour network, which basically when
Speaker 1: you go onto the dark web using Tour, the first
Speaker 1: thing it does is route you through three different random servers,
Speaker 1: and each one encrypts your information and gives you a
Speaker 1: new IP address, so no one can figure out who
Speaker 1: you are, including the website you visit. And then the
Speaker 1: third thing is bitcoin. There's just no way you could
Speaker 1: have made transactions on drug deals over the Internet without
Speaker 1: untraceable currency that doesn't involved like a central bank or
Speaker 1: some other third party like.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, for sure. And you know, Bitcoin was huge
Speaker 2: because it was they were good for each other, Like
Speaker 2: Ross Olbricht sort of embraced bitcoin in a big way,
Speaker 2: which even though it was on the dark web, and
Speaker 2: even though Silk Road was you know, as you'll soon learn,
Speaker 2: dabbling and illegal drug trading, they use bitcoin exclusively. So
Speaker 2: the rise of bitcoin and the rise of you know,
Speaker 2: things on the dark web kind of go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. And this is also a time where,
Speaker 1: like the early twenty ten, this was in like disruptive
Speaker 1: technology was just coming out left and right from Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: whereas like well, say goodbye to newspapers, say goodbye to
Speaker 1: printed books, say goodbye to music. And I mean, it
Speaker 1: did have disruptive effects, but as we've seen, it still
Speaker 1: kind of mellows out. It's not like the original thing
Speaker 1: just totally goes away. But this was that same time.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people have likened ross Olbricks to
Speaker 1: basically a darker version, if there is such a thing
Speaker 1: of some of those Silicon Valley bros who started up
Speaker 1: a lot of those disruptive tech companies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know what, I think we need to
Speaker 2: add a fourth on our Silk Road Mount Rushmore, because
Speaker 2: we have to mention Adrian chen who in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: when the Silk Road went live, wrote for Gawker and
Speaker 2: wrote this big expose on the Silk Road just a
Speaker 2: few months later, including like how to get there, what
Speaker 2: you can do there? And it would have been a
Speaker 2: thing anyway, but the fact that it was kind of
Speaker 2: exploded on Gawker made it bigger quicker than it would have.
Speaker 1: Been, I think, right, And that also brought it to
Speaker 1: the attention of the authorities pretty quickly. Chuck Schumer, Yeah, Chucky.
Speaker 1: He basically came out against it first, I think so
Speaker 1: now the Senate was against it. He said it was
Speaker 1: a certifiable one stop shop for illegal drugs that represents
Speaker 1: the most brazen attempt to pedal drugs online that we
Speaker 1: have ever seen.
Speaker 2: And they went, yeah, exactly, Yeah, you nailed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah right. And so because of that tour network, and
Speaker 1: because of just the anonymity of bitcoin and the fact
Speaker 1: that people were drug dealers and drug users engaging in
Speaker 1: illicit crime over the Internet, like there was a sense
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter, like the government can't find any
Speaker 1: of these people. If they do, it's just random luck,
Speaker 1: like say intercepting a drug shipment in the mail. But
Speaker 1: if you're really trying to track somebody down who's a
Speaker 1: user of Silk Road, You're just not going to be
Speaker 1: able to do it. There was just a sense of
Speaker 1: security and safety that people had when they were using it,
Speaker 1: including Ross Olbricht.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they also were pretty smart early on. Our
Speaker 2: guess Olbricht was by making it a familiar shopping online
Speaker 2: shopping experience. It I mean I never saw it. I
Speaker 2: think I managed to find some like screenshots and stuff,
Speaker 2: but it supposedly looked and operated much like any other
Speaker 2: e retailer. You would go on there and you would
Speaker 2: have your little shopping basket and you would have your
Speaker 2: items that you could you know, are all categorize and
Speaker 2: listed that you could sip through, and you could look
Speaker 2: at customer reviews and uh, you know, I'm sure there
Speaker 2: were bad deals that went down, but supposedly it was.
Speaker 2: It worked because the people selling the drugs believe that
Speaker 2: you should really sell the thing that you're trying to
Speaker 2: sell and you'll stay in business.
Speaker 1: Right just like if you're a a like you have
Speaker 1: terrible customer service and you're selling like.
Speaker 2: Which it's sure.
Speaker 1: I was thinking like some sort of sown strawberry potholder,
Speaker 1: something in the shape of a strawberry, so much better
Speaker 1: than a wedget. But you tell all of your customers
Speaker 1: who say, like it's the the stitchings coming loose, that
Speaker 1: they can go to hell and die. Yeah, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a bad rating and people are gonna stop buying
Speaker 1: from you, especially if there's other people selling sewn strawberry potholders. Right,
Speaker 1: same thing, if you're selling drugs on Silk Road. There
Speaker 1: were a ton of people selling pot and acid and
Speaker 1: ecstasy and heroin and cocaine that like, you just didn't
Speaker 1: have to rely on just one dealer. So the dealers
Speaker 1: were competing with one another, and to compete they just
Speaker 1: tried to keep their user rating up as best as
Speaker 1: possible and that kept them honest. It's just nuts, Like
Speaker 1: this whole thing in theory should have collapsed on day one.
Speaker 1: It just should never have worked out because it was
Speaker 1: just based on so many faulty assumptions that just happened
Speaker 1: to come together and support this site until the FED
Speaker 1: shut it down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had a seller's guide where if you're going
Speaker 2: to sell your drugs. They would say, hey, here's how
Speaker 2: to do that. Here's how you can ship drugs through
Speaker 2: the mail, you know, pretty safely, vacuum ceiling and all,
Speaker 2: you know, all kinds of tips and tricks, and not
Speaker 2: that many packages supposedly were intercepted, a very small percentage
Speaker 2: of them. But you mentioned some of the things in
Speaker 2: your I thought you were singing that Queens of the
Speaker 2: Stone Age song there for a second.
Speaker 1: Which one when you heard that.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they had that one song that
Speaker 2: was I thought it was not so great. Cocaine and
Speaker 2: ecstasy and blah blah blah blah blah, and they were
Speaker 2: just like rattling off drugs or whatever.
Speaker 1: That didn't sound very great.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't one of their best songs. I was
Speaker 2: into them for a minute.
Speaker 1: I'd like that one hit song of theirs. It's really good.
Speaker 1: No one knows maybe yes, yes, the one man, I know.
Speaker 2: It's a good song. Uh yeah. So you could buy
Speaker 2: anything you want. And it wasn't just like, hey, here's
Speaker 2: some cocaine if you're interested in this upper. It was
Speaker 2: very very specific stuff like a very specific strain of
Speaker 2: Colombian cocaine or a very specific strain of heroin, the
Speaker 2: tar heroin that you could find, you know, if you've
Speaker 2: ever been to a legal cannabis shop in any of
Speaker 2: the states that allow that here in the US, it
Speaker 2: was sort of like that. You know, you get very
Speaker 2: detailed descriptions of stuff, and you know, you could have
Speaker 2: a customer service representative help you find what you wanted,
Speaker 2: and it was like, if you were into that kind
Speaker 2: of thing, it was probably pretty great for you and
Speaker 2: probably much safer than going to some drug dealer's house. Maybe,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's a big deal. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: was touted by supporters of ross Olbrichton Silk Road was
Speaker 1: that it was a site for harm reduction. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: it was so vastly safer than buying drugs on the street,
Speaker 1: often from some randow you don't even know, or at
Speaker 1: a club or something like that. Oh, yeah, I state
Speaker 1: that it just yeah, that it was actually providing a
Speaker 1: service that actually made the world safer. It didn't fly
Speaker 1: very well, as we'll see, but that was that was
Speaker 1: a big, a big talking point for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't want anyone to misinterpret that. I'm
Speaker 2: saying that, like, hey, you should just be able to
Speaker 2: buy drugs in the mail and it's totally safe and
Speaker 2: you should trust that. But they seem to be setting
Speaker 2: up a situation where they were trying to ensure that
Speaker 2: there was a lot of trust between buyers, sellers, everybody. Like,
Speaker 2: a situation like this doesn't happen if there's not trust
Speaker 2: between all the participating parties.
Speaker 1: Precisely, Yeah, for sure. I Yeah, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: crazy to me that it ever worked. Should we take
Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, let's take a break and we'll come
Speaker 1: back and talk about some of the nuts and bolts
Speaker 1: of the whole thing.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll be right back. So you've mentioned this guy,
Speaker 2: Ross Olbrecht, the founder and creator. We need to talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about this dude. He went by the
Speaker 2: alias dread Pirate Roberts, even though later in his defense
Speaker 2: that would be it would be brought up that there
Speaker 2: were like many dread Pirate Roberts over the years, and
Speaker 2: that he sold it at one point and wasn't even
Speaker 2: involved anymore. If you follow the court case, it gets
Speaker 2: really really in the weeds.
Speaker 1: Yes, quote in court was do you not know the
Speaker 1: dread Pirate Roberts reference?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, they were like, why would you name yourself that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And he said, have you never seen the Princess Bride?
Speaker 1: Yes, for the people who haven't seen the Prince's Bride,
Speaker 1: number one, go see the Prince's Pride, and number two,
Speaker 1: dred Pirate Roberts was the name of a well pirate
Speaker 1: who was essentially like a character that different people over
Speaker 1: the years and generations inhabited. So say, dread Pilot Roberts
Speaker 1: was two hundred years old because he was made up
Speaker 1: of successive pirates who wore that mask and used that name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So Ulbrich had a very very smart guy.
Speaker 2: As a very smart guy, he had a Bachelor of
Speaker 2: Science in physics, got his master's in material science and engineering,
Speaker 2: and was in Austin, Texas in two thousand and nine
Speaker 2: when he tried a few different initial companies. Basically he
Speaker 2: had a video game company tried. He found the most
Speaker 2: success with a second hand book retailer called good Wagon Books,
Speaker 2: where he kind of learned how to do web development
Speaker 2: and inventory management and e retailing, kind of a starter
Speaker 2: kit for what he would need to start Silk Road,
Speaker 2: but it still wasn't making the kind of dough he
Speaker 2: wanted to make I think they were pulling in maybe
Speaker 2: low six figures in a year.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And he had like five employees sorting like
Speaker 1: fifty thousand books and not bad. They were selling them
Speaker 1: on Amazon like you do, like you can buy use
Speaker 1: books on Amazon. That's just what they did. But his
Speaker 1: heart wasn't in it. And after the show elves that
Speaker 1: he had built in this warehouse to hold the books
Speaker 1: all collapsed.
Speaker 2: He was like, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Going to pick those up. I'm just gonna set this
Speaker 1: warehouse on fire and walk away.
Speaker 2: That's really funny. That sounds like something.
Speaker 1: I would do. I would do the same thing.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it on fire and walk away, but
Speaker 2: I just walk away.
Speaker 1: So he One of the other reasons he was keen
Speaker 1: to walk away is he'd been already thinking about Silk
Speaker 1: Road for close to a year by now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that really kind of spurred
Speaker 1: his interest in creating something like an online illicit drug
Speaker 1: sale website is that he became interested in libertarian theory,
Speaker 1: specifically libertarian economic theory, which is basically that if you
Speaker 1: don't have economic freedom in particular, you're going to be
Speaker 1: a slave to the grind. They've got you essentially, and
Speaker 1: that to you can either get rich and remove yourself
Speaker 1: from that game or that rat race, or you can
Speaker 1: try to change the rule of the game and make
Speaker 1: it much more fair and equitable and get rid of
Speaker 1: coercion and all that stuff. And it's all based on
Speaker 1: the libertarian philosophy of self ownership, which essentially explains itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he I don't know, explain it.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, you own yourself. So any kind of laws
Speaker 1: or prohibitions of anything that say you do to yourself, say,
Speaker 1: taking drugs, is just completely outrageous and immoral and is illegitimate. Okay,
Speaker 1: So drug laws specifically are illegitimate and terrible to libertarians
Speaker 1: because you're taking the drugs for yourself, and that's your choice, right,
Speaker 1: It's personal choice. So that really kind of explains a
Speaker 1: lot why he was like an illicit drug website. It
Speaker 1: was a thumb in the eye to the drug laws
Speaker 1: that he and other libertarians feel were illegitimate.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm glad asked Yeah, I'm glad.
Speaker 1: You asked too, because I really wanted to get that
Speaker 1: off my chest.
Speaker 2: So Silk Road grew. He started. It was not just
Speaker 2: a one person operation. It was too big for that,
Speaker 2: so he needed some employees. These people all went by
Speaker 2: these kind of fun little nicknames, including Variety Jones and
Speaker 2: Nigo Oh also from Princess Bride. Yeah, didn't notice that
Speaker 2: libertas Smed and then another one chronic pain one word
Speaker 2: the first sea's capitalized, and that person's name was Curtis
Speaker 2: Green and he was the first person that would be
Speaker 2: arrested in the Silk Road operation. And so you'll just
Speaker 2: you know, sort of put a pin in that.
Speaker 1: Guy, Yes, for sure. So he gets the website launched
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven around the beginning of twenty eleven, and
Speaker 1: to get things kicked off, he started growing psilocybin mushrooms
Speaker 1: so that there was something somebody was selling on Silk Road,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon other people were like, wait, this is
Speaker 1: you're really doing this, Like this is for real? I
Speaker 1: want to I want to make money selling drugs online,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of took off from there. Again,
Speaker 1: without cryptocurrency, there just wouldn't have been a Silk Road.
Speaker 1: And this is actually pointed to you by some people
Speaker 1: as like an early proving ground that showed like yep,
Speaker 1: bitcoin works, it does exactly what it says it can
Speaker 1: do and it could completely revolutionize global the global economy.
Speaker 1: This was the first chance for it to really kind
Speaker 1: of show it stuff, and it really did because it worked.
Speaker 1: And one of the other reasons it worked too, is
Speaker 1: because ross Oldbert was honest. He hand I guess hand
Speaker 1: transacted every transaction between seller and buyer on the site
Speaker 1: for a while, and at that point he would hold
Speaker 1: the money in escrow and then when the whole thing was,
Speaker 1: when the deal was done and everybody was satisfied, you
Speaker 1: would release the money to the seller. At any point
Speaker 1: in that string, he could have been like, thanks for
Speaker 1: the money, chumps, Thanks for the money, chumps, Thanks for
Speaker 1: the money, chumps, and just taking off with the bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and he didn't. And the reputation that that helped give
Speaker 1: that site was another reason it started to grow and flourish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So as the site is, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of going along and it's making all kinds of
Speaker 2: money and getting more and more popular or as popular
Speaker 2: as something is on the dark web, he started getting
Speaker 2: a little more political. Under his moniker DPR dread Pirate,
Speaker 2: Roberts started making these big statements about just sort of
Speaker 2: his philosophies about politics. He would say things like stop
Speaker 2: funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your
Speaker 2: productive energies into the black market. So it started sort
Speaker 2: of bordering on manifesto kind of stuff. I think they
Speaker 2: would have shut it down anyway, just because they were
Speaker 2: dealing in illegal drugs. But the US government definitely hates
Speaker 2: it when they don't like the word manifesto. So I
Speaker 2: think I think all this other political stuff definitely drew
Speaker 2: even more attention and ire maybe than it would happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think so. Like I said, it was
Speaker 1: a thumb in the eye, and I think it kind
Speaker 1: of felt like that to the government and the powers
Speaker 1: that be, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thought he kind of thought, and he kind of
Speaker 2: was leading a revolution in a lot of ways, because,
Speaker 2: as we'll see later on, a lot of more sites
Speaker 2: like this were born in its wake.
Speaker 1: Right, So it's interesting to see too, the evolution of
Speaker 1: him going from a libertarian idealist to what the Fed's
Speaker 1: eventually described as like the kingpin of a global drug cartel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really overblown, as we'll see. Yeah, but in the beginning,
Speaker 1: he even as a libertarian, said dump there's limits here,
Speaker 1: Like this is not just a free for all. You
Speaker 1: can't have child pornography. You can't try to sell weapons
Speaker 1: of mass destruction, you can't offer hitman services, sell stolen
Speaker 1: credit cards or personal information, like, you just can't do that.
Speaker 1: And if you scam anybody, we're gonna boot you off
Speaker 1: the site and we're gonna hunt you down and sick
Speaker 1: dogs on you or something like that. He said, basic
Speaker 1: rules are to treat others as you would wish to
Speaker 1: be treated, and don't do anything to hurt or scam
Speaker 1: someone else. So that was like the whole idea. And
Speaker 1: then the fact that his moniker was dread Pirate Roberts
Speaker 1: and everybody loves like, there's no one who's seen the
Speaker 1: Princess Briden doesn't love it. Prove me wrong. I will
Speaker 1: prove you wrong. So all that kind of combined almost
Speaker 1: a cult of personality grew up around dread Pirate Roberts
Speaker 1: and attracted more and more people to Silk Road. And like,
Speaker 1: I think I get the impression, like you were, like
Speaker 1: you felt cool to be a user of Silk Road.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he created a kinder, gentler drug trade in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways. Yeah, if you're wondering, like, yeah, but
Speaker 2: this guy could get shut down in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways that don't have anything to do with the government,
Speaker 2: like a denial of service attack or something like that.
Speaker 2: Supposedly he was paying a lot of money for protection
Speaker 2: for this kind of thing, maybe up to fifty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a week. Wire did a really great and I
Speaker 2: remember reading this back then. I didn't go back into it,
Speaker 2: but a big two part report on this, and they
Speaker 2: had it up to fifty grand per week in protection.
Speaker 2: But considering they ended up making about a billion dollars
Speaker 2: over what two years or so, that's you know, pennies
Speaker 2: in the fountain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But protection is in quotes like that
Speaker 1: was from the very hackers who are like, we're gonna
Speaker 1: shut your site down if you don't get it, like
Speaker 1: any other protection exactly for sure. Yeah, so yeah, he
Speaker 1: would get blackmailed all the time. People were trying to
Speaker 1: shut down the site like it was a They're like
Speaker 1: criminals were attracted as silk Road, and there's plenty of
Speaker 1: criminals who they're like speculators, So blackmailers are you know,
Speaker 1: they're not actually doing anything product if they're just making
Speaker 1: money off somebody else's work, right, Yeah, So yeah, I
Speaker 1: kind of attracted that stuff. So in addition to dealing
Speaker 1: with all of that, he was dealing with customer service.
Speaker 1: He was trying to keep the site running. Something to
Speaker 1: know about ross Oldberg too, He was a self taught coder,
Speaker 1: so he was teaching himself how to keep this massive
Speaker 1: website going as he went along, and keeping himself totally
Speaker 1: anonymous to everybody, including all of the people he worked
Speaker 1: with who were de facto employees basically, so it was
Speaker 1: a lot of stress after a little.
Speaker 2: While, totally. And besides the drugs, he also had a
Speaker 2: team of crocheters making those strawberry elements.
Speaker 1: Lots keep up with for sure.
Speaker 2: So how did it all go bad? Well, it's because
Speaker 2: again the government was very very keen on getting this
Speaker 2: thing shut down as fast as they could. But like
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier, the very way this thing was built
Speaker 2: made it really really hard, almost as impossible but clearly not,
Speaker 2: but really really hard to find out any real information
Speaker 2: about who these people were, where they were, where those
Speaker 2: their computers were. So the FBI got involved initially in
Speaker 2: trying to take down tour. It was called Operation Onion
Speaker 2: Peeler and I'm pretty sure we talked about that in
Speaker 2: the Dark Web app but they in twenty thirteen, there
Speaker 2: was an agent named Chris Tarbell that identified secret server
Speaker 2: at a data center, a tour data center in Iceland.
Speaker 2: And this is really what got the ball rolling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is the official line of the FBI.
Speaker 1: The way that they finally discovered the actual IP address
Speaker 1: of Silk Road was that Tarbell was sitting there analyzing
Speaker 1: the traffic going to and from the site while he
Speaker 1: was like sending in bad information at it, like bad
Speaker 1: passwords and stuff like that, and then tracking what IP
Speaker 1: addresses came back. And then he copied the IP addresses
Speaker 1: and he put him into a browser URL and do
Speaker 1: that over and over again, and eventually he struck gold
Speaker 1: and stumbled onto the real IP address of Silk Road,
Speaker 1: which was then traceable to that server data center in Iceland.
Speaker 1: And from there they then had a copy of the
Speaker 1: Silk Road website including all administration access and privileges, and
Speaker 1: they started to set up their case from that point on.
Speaker 2: That's right, That was the FBI's line. If that seems
Speaker 2: a little hard to believe that they would just sort
Speaker 2: of get lucky, You're not the only person who thinks that.
Speaker 2: None other than oh geez is he billed Bill Bill
Speaker 2: Alex Winner from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and don't.
Speaker 1: Forget he was a vampire and Lost Boys too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a good point. He made a film called Deep
Speaker 2: Web that jeez, was that out this year?
Speaker 1: I think so or last year? Very recent?
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty recent film I think twenty four where he
Speaker 2: you know, he doesn't he didn't like create this contention,
Speaker 2: but he basically brought to light like, hey, a lot
Speaker 2: of people say that, no, no, no, that's not how
Speaker 2: you found out. What you did was trampled on Oldbrick's
Speaker 2: Fourth Amendment rights and that you hacked Silk Road, you
Speaker 2: didn't have a warrant to do so, and you had
Speaker 2: some sort of you know, mass scanning going on on
Speaker 2: the Internet for passwords, and you lied about all this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The idea is that the NSA was involved helping
Speaker 1: in this investigation, using their crazy, terrible powers to basically
Speaker 1: find passwords to that site and they used it to
Speaker 1: hack in and there. Well you were like, okay, whatever,
Speaker 1: they're trying to take it on the site. It's the FBI. Well,
Speaker 1: the gist of that is is that they did that first,
Speaker 1: then got the evidence that they then went and got
Speaker 1: a search warrant for and then everything started to get
Speaker 1: legitimate from that point on. So that's the contention about
Speaker 1: his Fourth Amendment rights to against search, illegal search, and
Speaker 1: seizure were violated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if it's all just sounds like weird and
Speaker 2: screwy because it's online, it would be no different than
Speaker 2: if they broke into someone's house, took some evidence and
Speaker 2: then said, now that we have the evidence, we're going
Speaker 2: to get a search warrant to go legally back into
Speaker 2: that house.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, And you mentioned Tarbell, he was an FBI agent.
Speaker 1: He and the FBI were just one of multiple agencies
Speaker 1: from Department of Homeland Security to the DEA to the IRS.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all working like each one had a task
Speaker 1: force trying to take down this website, competing with one
Speaker 1: another in a lot of cases to take down this
Speaker 1: website and catch this big fish that Chuck Schumer didn't like.
Speaker 1: And like, finally, Tarbell was the one who gets the
Speaker 1: credit not just for finding the actual life addressed and
Speaker 1: then the server for Silk Road and all of the
Speaker 1: evidence that that yielded, but he was there on the
Speaker 1: day and helped orchestrate this guy was a cyber crime
Speaker 1: FBI agent. So again this is the official line, and
Speaker 1: it's very thrilling in the Wired article how they describe it.
Speaker 1: But he helped orchestrate, or oversaw the actual arrest of
Speaker 1: Ross olbrit which in and of itself was just fantastically amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. All right, So the FBI gets that
Speaker 2: copy of the server contents from Iceland. They look at
Speaker 2: all the traffic and they found traffic to the administrator's
Speaker 2: log in and then narrowed that down to the most
Speaker 2: recent traffic was in San Francisco at a place called
Speaker 2: Cafe Luna on Sacramento Street. They did some more investigation
Speaker 2: through the IRS chipping in this time, Like you said,
Speaker 2: so many agencies involved, and they matched the San Francisco lead.
Speaker 2: So they are like, this is all up, you guys.
Speaker 2: There was an IRS agent named Gary Alford who saw
Speaker 2: post about Silk Road on forums in I think a
Speaker 2: couple of years twenty eleven and twenty thirteen from a
Speaker 2: user name altoid, and the email in the post history
Speaker 2: said ross Olbricht at gmail dot com. They found out
Speaker 2: that he lived near that cafe, and all roads all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, we're pointing to Ross Olbrecht.
Speaker 1: And then supposedly on the really damning piece of evidence
Speaker 1: was that that user altoid quickly changed their user name
Speaker 1: to Frosty, and Frosty was the main user account that
Speaker 1: ran silk Road. Yeah, that was the name of the
Speaker 1: main central user account. Right. So, like all of these
Speaker 1: things just falling into place, it was just almost almost
Speaker 1: too good to believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it went down like a movie. And
Speaker 2: you know what, maybe that's a great time for a
Speaker 2: little cliffhanger. Huh oh boy, all right, we're gonna see
Speaker 2: what movie we're talking about right after.
Speaker 1: This, Chuck, I'm gonna guess the movie is Old Yeller?
Speaker 1: Is it? Am? I right?
Speaker 2: You nailed it?
Speaker 1: Okay, poor Old Yeller. I hate how this goes.
Speaker 2: I was gonna spoil Old Yeller, but I decided not
Speaker 2: to watch it that that dog may live. You never know.
Speaker 1: Good for you for not spoiling a sixty year old film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the book, I think.
Speaker 1: Too, right. Yes, although there was a sequel, it wasn't
Speaker 1: very well.
Speaker 2: Received Old Yeller two.
Speaker 1: Really, it turns out the little kid missed the first
Speaker 1: time he did this in the second can film.
Speaker 2: Them and now hold Eller's back for revenge? Yeah, write
Speaker 2: that down. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: Okay. So okay, what movie are we talking about that?
Speaker 1: How about what type of movie are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Well, we're talking about probably some sort of a courtroom thriller,
Speaker 2: because what happened was they went to a library and literally,
Speaker 2: and this is what the prosecution said, literally caught him
Speaker 2: with his fingers at the keyboard running Silk Road. They
Speaker 2: were in the library, they had an agent, you know,
Speaker 2: chatting with him and obviously surreptitiously undercover. And while this
Speaker 2: was happening, they drew his attention away by starting a
Speaker 2: little like quarrel among some other people also, you know,
Speaker 2: FBI actors or whatever. And there was a woman, another
Speaker 2: FBI agent, sitting across from Olbrich at the time when
Speaker 2: this happened, and Olbrich turns around, it is like, what's
Speaker 2: going on over there? She grabs that laptop. And because
Speaker 2: he could probably in a single swipe of a key
Speaker 2: stroke or something like encrypt everything on his laptop if
Speaker 2: he saw somebody coming at him, so they knew that
Speaker 2: could happen, they diverted his attention just long enough for
Speaker 2: this agent to grab his computer and that was it.
Speaker 1: And boy, Oh boy, did they find some just damning evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It turns out Ross Olbrich kept a diary of his
Speaker 1: like ideas and growth and like administration and all the
Speaker 1: problems he had to deal with for Silk Road. Those
Speaker 1: were found diary chronic pain. Really hurt my feelings today.
Speaker 1: Those were found on his laptop, logs of chat logs
Speaker 1: that he had between him and other administrators about running
Speaker 1: the site. He was logged in as the main user Frosty,
Speaker 1: the person who was actually running the show when they
Speaker 1: stole it or grabbed his lap book. No, stole it.
Speaker 1: He had spreadsheets like tracking silk Road. I mean just yeah.
Speaker 1: It's if a prosecutor could be like, I want this, this,
Speaker 1: and this for evidence. It couldn't get any better than
Speaker 1: what they found on Ross Holbrick's laptop.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What so they also traced about eighty million dollars
Speaker 2: in profit to him. This is a dumb question that
Speaker 2: I'm just now thinking of. But what did he just
Speaker 2: take a cut from every transaction? Was it that simple? Yes, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's what I figured. I just didn't know for sure, and.
Speaker 1: I think it was a reasonable cut. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was some massive take or anything like that, and
Speaker 1: he would only he would just transfer it like once
Speaker 1: a week, like his his accumulated cuts from that week.
Speaker 1: He was very honest in that sense.
Speaker 2: So he would get his small percentage, a bottle of
Speaker 2: Delauded and a strawberry even met yeah, for every transaction.
Speaker 1: Every Saturday night.
Speaker 2: So we mentioned early that as part of his defense.
Speaker 2: They were like, you know what, he may have started
Speaker 2: silk Road, but he sold it, and there were many
Speaker 2: dread pirate Roberts and one of the other ones framed him.
Speaker 2: All of this stuff was just a small part of
Speaker 2: his defense. It was not an easy cell. It did
Speaker 2: not work. He was convicted for creating an operating silk
Speaker 2: Road and got five sentences, got a twenty year sentence,
Speaker 2: a fifteen year sentence, a five year sentence, two life
Speaker 2: sentences with no chance of parole. And the judge said
Speaker 2: it was your opus. You wanted it to be your legacy,
Speaker 2: and it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The judge mentioned harming the fabric of it was
Speaker 1: very destructive to the fabric of society. And when your
Speaker 1: judge is pulling out fabric of society and your sentencing,
Speaker 1: you're screwed. You're in big trouble. And so he was
Speaker 1: effectively handed a death sentence, like you don't outlive a
Speaker 1: sentence like that, and it was just totally out of
Speaker 1: portion to the charges he was facing, like conspiracy to
Speaker 1: commit like drug trafficking and fraud and just I mean,
Speaker 1: it was some hardcore offenses, but non violent offenses, and
Speaker 1: he was given the kind of sentence that you would
Speaker 1: give like a multiple killer or a mass killer or
Speaker 1: something like that, right, And the reason why is because
Speaker 1: he was there was evidence found of five to six
Speaker 1: murder for higher schemes that he had ordered or agreed
Speaker 1: to as dread pirate Roberts to kill like a blackmailer,
Speaker 1: a witness, some other people. And even though he was
Speaker 1: never charged in federal court for this, even though they
Speaker 1: couldn't prove any of those cases, and the prosecutors in
Speaker 1: this case even said to the jury like, we're not
Speaker 1: saying like this is not part of his his his charges,
Speaker 1: we're not prosecuting him for that, but seriously, let me,
Speaker 1: let us just tell you about that. And so they're
Speaker 1: like they he was tainted by the media. He had
Speaker 1: a bad reputation from that point, because that's totally different
Speaker 1: from setting up a libertarian illicit drug marketplace. Now you're
Speaker 1: ordering hits on people to keep your drug enterprise going.
Speaker 1: That is a whole different kettle of fish in the
Speaker 1: public's mind. So his reputation was smeared from the outset.
Speaker 1: The jury was tainted with this information and the idea.
Speaker 1: Oh and the judge referenced it in explaining why the
Speaker 1: sentence was so harsh. And so all of that is
Speaker 1: generally considered illegal, like in illegitimate, And he tried to
Speaker 1: appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: hear it, and that was that. So his last chance
Speaker 1: is some president coming along at some point and saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know what, you're not so bad, presto change, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're no longer a felon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was actually would likely have been indicted for
Speaker 2: a murder in Maryland. It was dropped because he got convicted,
Speaker 2: you know, for whatever life and beyond. It was dropped
Speaker 2: because he was, you know, convicted on the other charges
Speaker 2: for you know, a gazillion years or whatever with no
Speaker 2: chance in parole. But it was a pretty interesting situation
Speaker 2: with what ended up being a corrupt dea agent and
Speaker 2: a secret service agent and a in a sting operation basically, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the guys who was really pursuing him from
Speaker 1: the outset was a guy named Carl Force, a DEA
Speaker 1: agent and posed. Yeah, he posed as a gangster named
Speaker 1: nob who basically became a confidant of dread Pirate Roberts,
Speaker 1: and it went so far out of undercover that he
Speaker 1: became a criminal himself. He posed as another user to
Speaker 1: sell tips and stuff about the investigation against Silk Road
Speaker 1: to dread Pirate Roberts for like one hundred grand. He
Speaker 1: stole three hundred and fifty grand and bitcoin, which was
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why dred Pirate Roberts ordered to
Speaker 1: hit on one of the people because he thought that
Speaker 1: other person had stolen it. This guy was dirty as
Speaker 1: the day is long. And they say in part because
Speaker 1: a lot of the charges, including that extra murder for
Speaker 1: hire that was in Maryland, was arranged by this crooked
Speaker 1: Dea agent. They're like, we're we're not even gonna try
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I guess there's no point at that point,
Speaker 2: especially because it's not like it was carried out. If
Speaker 2: there was like a you know, if it had been
Speaker 2: carried out and there was a murder victim or something
Speaker 2: like that. They probably would have, but right, yeah, there
Speaker 2: were never any just to be clear, you know, no
Speaker 2: murder for hires ever took place, But it was just
Speaker 2: the hint that that was going on really influenced the
Speaker 2: judge and the sentencing and everything he was, I believe.
Speaker 2: In Alex Winner's documentary, he points out that a lot
Speaker 2: of the people that were also brought to trial for
Speaker 2: this got very including some of the drug sellers, people
Speaker 2: that ran Silk Road two point zero after this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they got sentences of like six years on average, and
Speaker 2: so there's been a lot of calls for clemency that
Speaker 2: it was, you know, it was too stiff of a sentence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were clearly. I think the judge also referenced,
Speaker 1: like this is a huge like everybody's watching this case.
Speaker 1: Everybody's following this, you know, and I want to send
Speaker 1: a message to anybody who would follow in your footsteps
Speaker 1: that we're going to basically give you a death sentence
Speaker 1: if you if you try it. They just didn't follow
Speaker 1: through on that, which makes his sense all the more unfair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like had they handed down sentences similar to his for people,
Speaker 1: you know, like setting up illicit drug marketplaces. There's some
Speaker 1: sort of like legitimacy to it just because of the
Speaker 1: precedent and then the custom that developed. Yeah, just doing
Speaker 1: that to one person and then not following up, that's
Speaker 1: just that's just wholly unfair and again possibly a violation
Speaker 1: of his sixth Amendment rights to a fair trial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the idea may have been to send
Speaker 2: a message like, hey, this will never be tolerated. This
Speaker 2: is the first example of this, and we're gonna throw
Speaker 2: you know, ten books at them. But it you know,
Speaker 2: it didn't stop anything. Like I just mentioned, there was
Speaker 2: a silk Row two point zero that was closed in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, along with twenty six other sites doing similar things.
Speaker 2: So silk Row definitely opened that whole door. And it's
Speaker 2: it's I don't know if they can shut them down
Speaker 2: as fast as they can be born. At this point, probably.
Speaker 1: It seems like the kind of thing like mushrooms just
Speaker 1: cropping up, like you pluck one and two more bow
Speaker 1: in its place, essentially, like there's just nothing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not just American kids doing this. They're like the
Speaker 1: Russians are like I'm sure the North Koreans are doing
Speaker 1: it like everybody's doing it, like you just can't. It's
Speaker 1: impossible to stop now so much so that almost makes
Speaker 1: you wonder if somebody else would have come up with
Speaker 1: this concept head.
Speaker 2: Oh sure first, you know, yeah, yeah, I'm sure someone
Speaker 2: would have come along.
Speaker 1: There's a free raws dot org website which his supporters
Speaker 1: created that's still around. And if you're asking, like, we
Speaker 1: wait a minute, how can everybody support him if he's
Speaker 1: ordered like five or six murders for hire, their position
Speaker 1: is that like that was the other dread pirate Roberts
Speaker 1: who set him up, whoever that was, that ross Olbrich
Speaker 1: did not order those hits. That he's a good guy,
Speaker 1: a humane guy. He would never do something like that.
Speaker 1: But he's still in prison. I saw a tweet from him,
Speaker 1: I don't remember when, but he was saying the thing
Speaker 1: he misses the most is not being able to see
Speaker 1: the night sky anymore, which is somehow like the saddest
Speaker 1: thing you could say as a prisoner. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there here like that kid
Speaker 1: is never getting out. He just puts such a thumb
Speaker 1: in the eye of the US government and law enforcement
Speaker 1: that I don't know, I don't know if he'll ever
Speaker 1: get clemency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the night sky thing, it's definitely better than saying
Speaker 2: olive garden get more sympathy.
Speaker 1: Oh no, man, never any breadsticks.
Speaker 2: That's true. I think that. Uh oh never mind.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go get some breadsticks after this.
Speaker 2: Okay, that'd be great. Oh boy, remember that time we
Speaker 2: went to Red Lobster and yeah, and Silver Spring. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I had never really eaten their much. And that
Speaker 2: was one of your special things as a kid, right,
Speaker 2: eating those cheddar biscuits or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kid, an adult, I love those things. Yes, I
Speaker 1: introduced you to them, is what you're saying, right.
Speaker 2: I think so. I may have had one when I
Speaker 2: was a kid, but we just didn't go out to
Speaker 2: eat a whole lot, and Red Lobster was like far
Speaker 2: fancier than we could even afford on special occasions. So, yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Always make me feel so bad about my upbringing, which
Speaker 1: was not wealthy or well produced.
Speaker 2: Silver spoons Are you kidding.
Speaker 1: Me that silver spoons? Red lobster?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's fine. Red Lobster was a very I
Speaker 2: imagine is a very duble, fancy dinner. We just didn't
Speaker 2: go out to you much. Don't feel bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the fancy part also is really largely marketing, Chuck.
Speaker 1: I think when you see the actual product in front
Speaker 1: of you, it's not not super fancy. Yeah. Although, did
Speaker 1: you hear I think they filed bankruptcy because of endless Shrimp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a disaster. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine? That's like it's like an onion headline.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I read quite a bit about that for some
Speaker 2: reason because it was just so interesting to me. It's sad,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's an American icon. Yep, who knew?
Speaker 1: Well, since we talked about Red Lobster, of course, that
Speaker 1: triggered listener mail everybody.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this the Stuff you Should Know, Bump. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: longtime listener, first time caller, love the show. I'm curious
Speaker 2: if you've ever tracked the Stuff you Should Know, Bump?
Speaker 2: Does it even exist? I know that every time you
Speaker 2: mentioned a documentary with more info or something like that,
Speaker 2: my wife and I end up coming through our streaming
Speaker 2: services to find it and learn more. Most recently, we
Speaker 2: watched tread after the Killdozer episode. Now I'm teeing up
Speaker 2: American Anarchist. After swatches, he said, oh wait, I may
Speaker 2: have mixed that up with the Anarchist cookbook episode. Anyway.
Speaker 2: And by the way, everyone, we forgot to mention the swatchguards.
Speaker 2: I feel so bad about that. We heard from a
Speaker 2: lot of people on that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot all about that.
Speaker 2: I totally forgot about swatchguards.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, swatchguards are little rubber things that went over the glass,
Speaker 2: not the bezel. I was wrong about that. The bezel
Speaker 2: is the ring that holds the glass.
Speaker 1: So, man, I understood it before, but not now.
Speaker 2: You know, you look at a watchface and I said,
Speaker 2: I think I said the glass was the bezel. I
Speaker 2: just misspoke. The bezel is the ring that holds that
Speaker 2: glass in place.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think I got it that second time around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, back to the email anyway, guys, it
Speaker 2: made me think that other viewers like me, If there
Speaker 2: were other viewers like me, there could be a noticeable
Speaker 2: bump in views or listens every time a documentary or
Speaker 2: song or something gets mentioned creating your own version of
Speaker 2: the cold Bear bump. We need statistics or get meta
Speaker 2: and do a SYSK episode about the st SK bump.
Speaker 2: I think you just gooped up on that last part.
Speaker 2: That's Andy from Baltimore. Andy. We don't have data on this,
Speaker 2: but we definitely had people send in. I can't remember
Speaker 2: what song it was that you referenced, but it ended
Speaker 2: up like ranking in Spotify or something, and we like
Speaker 2: to think that was because of us.
Speaker 1: Well we know it was because remember we conducted in
Speaker 1: an experiment and talked about Barry Manilow now in Black
Speaker 1: Sabbath's War Pigs. Yeah, yeah, they showed up in the
Speaker 1: top form of Spotify's are just that's right.
Speaker 2: So hey, I guess we should plug Silverspoons. Then that
Speaker 2: Josh Clark Life Story, and we'll see if that gets
Speaker 2: a bump on wherever that's streaming.
Speaker 1: Speaking of bumps and plugs, there is one other podcast
Speaker 1: I'd like to plug. Chuck. You know, our friend and
Speaker 1: colleague Daniel Whitson from Daniel and Jorge explained the Universe podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so the their podcast just came to an end.
Speaker 1: But ever the productive person, Daniel came up with another
Speaker 1: one that just launched, called Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 1: He said, new podcasts, same universe. So if you're into
Speaker 1: all the stuff that is very interesting, like space and
Speaker 1: time and aliens and black holes and philosophy and just
Speaker 1: the whole coolness of the universe we live in. Then
Speaker 1: go check out Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe podcast for
Speaker 1: a recommendation.
Speaker 2: Sounds great, good people.
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to be like who is that,
Speaker 1: that's send us the stsk.
Speaker 2: Ama Andy from Baltimore.
Speaker 1: All right, If you want to be like Andy from
Speaker 1: Baltimore and get in touch with us, then we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can wrap it up,
Speaker 1: spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.