Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: This podcast is based on the true story of explorer, inventor, visionary,
Speaker 2: and science pioneer Tom Slick. Some of the story elements, names,
Speaker 2: and characters have been altered for dramatic purposes. Consider using
Speaker 2: headphones to enhance your listening experience. We've created an immersive
Speaker 2: soundscape to tell our story.
Speaker 3: Can't bring over there, do west towards those woods? Following
Speaker 3: you stick, Tom Slick. February fourteenth, nineteen fifty eighth.
Speaker 4: My team and I have been out here in the
Speaker 4: Himalayas for months, fairly surviving on an expedition that's nearly
Speaker 4: hijack my life, bankrupt me. Hell, it's taking everything, But we.
Speaker 2: Just heard it, the sweet, sweet.
Speaker 4: Sound of victory, the proof stop.
Speaker 1: It's closer than I thought, Slick.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna get a better look, Bud.
Speaker 4: Turn the flashlight off.
Speaker 1: You don't run.
Speaker 4: If it knows we're.
Speaker 6: Close, and if we spook it, well, who knows.
Speaker 1: What he'll do?
Speaker 5: All right, Oh god, we're so close. Frank stink Is
Speaker 5: don't hunting me. But in seconds I'll be face to
Speaker 5: face with one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our time. Dad,
Speaker 5: I control the world.
Speaker 1: Yet he is real. It's real.
Speaker 7: Come on, no, no, oh my god.
Speaker 6: Chapter one. This is the mostly true tale of Tom
Speaker 6: Slick mystery Hunter.
Speaker 8: Shut it.
Speaker 7: This is gonna fill seats. What this tape of your
Speaker 7: granddad's nineteen fifty eight yetti hunt, it's a fake. What
Speaker 7: are you doing, live, Blair?
Speaker 9: No, come on, this is an event celebrating my grandfather's
Speaker 9: legacy in science, so.
Speaker 7: We get donations for his institute fighting to keep science
Speaker 7: funded through the twenty first century.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but this yetti hunt or whatever that was that
Speaker 9: we just heard isn't science.
Speaker 7: No, it's a hook to get pressed to the event
Speaker 7: exposure least a funding live I know.
Speaker 9: But even if that was my granddad on the tape
Speaker 9: and he did spearhead some expedition to the Himalayas, this
Speaker 9: tape makes him crazy. The yetti I believe that's why
Speaker 9: you're not wearing a lab coat.
Speaker 10: So where did you find this.
Speaker 7: With the rest of your granddad's research material? Look, most
Speaker 7: of his tapes are a snooze fest that's boring on
Speaker 7: top of boring. But this one, that's my mom. Okay,
Speaker 7: Well we know she's gonna eat up sometimes. So if
Speaker 7: I could just have that tape back.
Speaker 4: Fine, take the tape, thank you.
Speaker 9: Don't do anything with it until we talk.
Speaker 7: We just did you know what I mean? Live. We
Speaker 7: don't have a lot of time to sit on this.
Speaker 7: The event is tomorrow night.
Speaker 2: Oh I know I still have a speech to right.
Speaker 9: Wow, it's gonna get don't worry.
Speaker 7: Well, you better answer that otherwise she's just go We
Speaker 7: keep calling and calling and calling.
Speaker 11: Live.
Speaker 10: Mom. Are you okay? What's going on.
Speaker 11: To the attic?
Speaker 12: God?
Speaker 10: You sound like you're hyperventilating up here.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's for you.
Speaker 7: What is it?
Speaker 11: I don't know and I don't want to touch it?
Speaker 13: Mom?
Speaker 10: Mom, Mom, okay, do you do you have frozen peas
Speaker 10: or something to ice that bruise?
Speaker 7: Just fuck up, I'm moving.
Speaker 11: It's the only thing left in the freezer.
Speaker 1: Do a.
Speaker 7: Live.
Speaker 11: I'm telling you that bad just can't bat me.
Speaker 1: He was mad.
Speaker 11: It almost got me, so I dove for the attic stairs.
Speaker 13: Well, I guess it could have been a lot worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I could have broken my hip or my neck.
Speaker 11: Oh there's no way I would have been able to
Speaker 11: move out of this house. Then, honey, I need you
Speaker 11: to clean that that account for me. You know that
Speaker 11: thing your granddad invented that lifted the roof up.
Speaker 1: The left holes in the siding.
Speaker 11: Now it's an open season for bar mets up there.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 10: Wait, you said there was something up there for me?
Speaker 7: What is it?
Speaker 11: I didn't get a good look, So I take this.
Speaker 9: You want some bowlines to go with that vodka?
Speaker 11: Think of this spaghetti strainer as protection. They go for
Speaker 11: the head first.
Speaker 1: Okay, God bless you. Gee?
Speaker 10: Has this place ever been cleaned?
Speaker 1: Never?
Speaker 4: I told you.
Speaker 11: I don't go up there anymore.
Speaker 10: No lights either, if you want to wake them.
Speaker 9: Sure, here's my phone.
Speaker 11: Look to the left, it's in the corner.
Speaker 4: I don't see anything.
Speaker 7: This box.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a box.
Speaker 7: Get it and go, and don't let the bat out.
Speaker 7: I think he's back. Throw the box down, hold it off,
Speaker 7: hold it, get.
Speaker 4: It good, lord?
Speaker 1: Okay, where's the box there?
Speaker 9: So cassette tapes, they're not labeled.
Speaker 1: He's are these?
Speaker 9: Read the box for my grandchild?
Speaker 1: Listen, Granddad's slick. So these tapes are yours?
Speaker 8: All right, Tom Slick May sixth, nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 4: Look a day over seventy.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that much, all right?
Speaker 4: All right, yeah, thank you, I'm just gonna if you
Speaker 4: couldn't tell, it's my birthday, and the scientists around here
Speaker 4: use any excuse for a boozy lunch. But my intoxicant
Speaker 4: of choice is this birthday gift I'm speaking into. It's
Speaker 4: a new prototype we created here at the Institute, a
Speaker 4: portable cassette recorder. Now we're not the first to come
Speaker 4: up with something like this, but this is the sleekiest
Speaker 4: model I've ever experienced. It's about the size of an
Speaker 4: over fed doxin and hold it under one arm, strap
Speaker 4: it to your back, eyed it in a bag to
Speaker 4: catch someone else's secrets, or like me, use it to
Speaker 4: make sense of your own. Yeah, I'm at a turning point.
Speaker 4: There's a big venture I have up ahead, and in
Speaker 4: order to look forward, well, I'm forced to look back
Speaker 4: at what got me here, and that story. It start
Speaker 4: one person, my father, Tom Slick Senior. I never called
Speaker 4: him dad. He was senior and I was junior and
Speaker 4: Slick senior he was at the inception of an American
Speaker 4: revolution in the early twentieth century. Oil was gold men
Speaker 4: chase this tar black American dream to the fields of Texas.
Speaker 4: My father was never one to follow a crowd so
Speaker 4: in nineteen twelve he carved his own path, bowing to
Speaker 4: strike it rich. In oaklahom He convinced a petroleum company
Speaker 4: to back them, secured a lease to dig, set up camp,
Speaker 4: and started a drill. But at two thy eight hundred
Speaker 4: feet there's no sign of oil. He lost a lot
Speaker 4: of money on that dry hole, and against everyone's wishes,
Speaker 4: including my mother's, he kept at it. He drilled nine
Speaker 4: holes in the Oklahoma dirt, all of them dry. In Texas,
Speaker 4: they laughed a dry hold Tom, the dust mining wildcatter
Speaker 4: or chased the unknown to Oklahoma and ended up dirt poor.
Speaker 4: But my father wouldn't quit. He had no money to
Speaker 4: lose at that point, only people he owed. But he
Speaker 4: had a sixth sense. When it came to luck, he
Speaker 4: saw it as an opportunity. It cleaned and he had
Speaker 4: one more hole to dig, So dry Hold Tom, he
Speaker 4: risked it all, his marriage, his reputation, his life to
Speaker 4: try his hand at luck. He set up camp and Cushing, Oklahoma.
Speaker 4: That drill went down three thousand feet into the chalky soil,
Speaker 4: and the only thing that came back up was black soot.
Speaker 4: His men begged him to stop. At that point they
Speaker 4: were exhausted and broke, working for nothing but the promise
Speaker 4: of a dream. It said one of them put a
Speaker 4: pistol to my dad's head, thinking that would be the
Speaker 4: only way.
Speaker 1: To end it.
Speaker 4: Then a spurt, then another, then.
Speaker 1: A gusher.
Speaker 4: That oil went one hundred and fifty feet in the air,
Speaker 4: took nine days to cap and seven men to restrain,
Speaker 4: but only one man was laughing. Now that's the day
Speaker 4: my father earned a nickname that stuck Lucky Tom. That
Speaker 4: was the first well in an oil field that produced
Speaker 4: three hundred and thirty thousand barrels every day for thirty
Speaker 4: five years, making my father the king of the Wildcatters
Speaker 4: and one of the richest men in the world. With
Speaker 4: that dream realized, another took its place, and it was
Speaker 4: just as seductive. My father left us for pretty long
Speaker 4: stretches at a time to explore parts of the globe
Speaker 4: many Americans had never heard of. He'd come home with
Speaker 4: epic tales of the mysteries of the world, mummified Egyptian
Speaker 4: kings preserved in coffins of gold stone walls with no entry,
Speaker 4: mysteriously surfacing in Jordan, and one that still haunts me,
Speaker 4: The King of the snow who roams the roof of
Speaker 4: the world. The Yetti my white whale to me. My
Speaker 4: father was a legend. But when you live your life
Speaker 4: like a god, you still die like a man. The
Speaker 4: doctor said it was a thyroid disease that killed my father,
Speaker 4: but mother said he lived too hard. His body just
Speaker 4: couldn't keep up with his spirit. When he died, I
Speaker 4: was fourteen, forced to be the senior when all I
Speaker 4: knew was how to be his junior. My father taught
Speaker 4: me about luck, but when he died, leaving a seventy
Speaker 4: five million dollar estate, I didn't need it. Who needs
Speaker 4: luck when you have money?
Speaker 2: What his father left him?
Speaker 10: How much?
Speaker 11: I think it was close to one point five billion today?
Speaker 4: Where is that money?
Speaker 10: Now?
Speaker 4: My name?
Speaker 11: I'm afraid those tapes of the gold your grandfather left behind?
Speaker 6: What do you mean you never knew him?
Speaker 7: I barely did.
Speaker 11: But from what I know about these tapes he made,
Speaker 11: there probably is a wealth of secrets buried on them,
Speaker 11: and he wanted you to find them.
Speaker 4: What have preferred the real gold?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 13: The money my father left me, well, it gave me
Speaker 13: influence at Yale. It secured my seat and skull and
Speaker 13: bones and chased off loneliness by landing me a date
Speaker 13: and more.
Speaker 8: Any night of the week.
Speaker 13: Ooh ugh, and it gave me access to the cryptozoological mysteries.
Speaker 7: My father teased me with.
Speaker 4: Oh God, here we go with the Yedi.
Speaker 11: The Yetti was Dad's true love, but he had a
Speaker 11: couple of flames before.
Speaker 4: In the spring of nineteen thirty seven, I was seduced
Speaker 4: by NeSSI, the prehistoric lizard of Lockness. So I lured
Speaker 4: two of my brothers from scull and Bones and Dulles. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he went to Princeton but was always looking for a
Speaker 4: free ride. Dulles's first name was Allen, but to attract
Speaker 4: the fair Sex, he went by Dulles thought it made
Speaker 4: him sound more authoritative. It definitely got him into bed
Speaker 4: with the government. He's now the director of the CIA.
Speaker 4: So I lured the boys and Dulles to the highlands
Speaker 4: of Scotland and hooked them on NeSSI, the Lockness Monster.
Speaker 4: Before starting any scientific investigation, you need intel. At the time,
Speaker 4: I was an amateur and nineteen so I found what
Speaker 4: I was looking for at a pub. The locals I
Speaker 4: interviewed said Essie was spotted for the first time in
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty three, when the A eighty two Highway was
Speaker 4: reconstructed in the Highlands. They said the dynamite that blasted
Speaker 4: open the rock walls woke something from its depths, a
Speaker 4: creature they believed had inhabited the lock for centuries. The
Speaker 4: locals warned us not to go out on the still
Speaker 4: water at night. That's when NeSSI prays, So obviously we
Speaker 4: went in the inky darkness. Nothing was visible. I had
Speaker 4: to trust my instincts. But againness kept flowing, and when
Speaker 4: dawn broke we woke up passed out on the shore.
Speaker 4: Our boat was gone, and so was any hope of
Speaker 4: finding NeSSI my first fling with cryptozoology, and I didn't
Speaker 4: even get to first base. So just stroked my bruised ego.
Speaker 4: I went back to the States and performed a cryptozoological miracle.
Speaker 4: I frankenstein my own monster by breeding a hog and
Speaker 4: a goat. That's right, a hog and a goat. The
Speaker 4: offspring idious. He had the swine face of his father
Speaker 4: and the hairy rear of his mother, never a great combo,
Speaker 4: and his hoofs well, I'll never forget what those horns
Speaker 4: felt like when he first jumped on my lap Oh.
Speaker 4: Some people say crossbreeding is playing God, but only a
Speaker 4: human would willingly create the devil's doppelganger and name him
Speaker 4: Sweet William. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. I
Speaker 4: was abusing my money, squandering it because I could. My
Speaker 4: father wasn't around to give me validation, so I let
Speaker 4: his money do it. But all of that changed summer
Speaker 4: day in nineteen thirty eight when I saw a gun
Speaker 4: press to my mother's temple. I remember that day being
Speaker 4: just unbearably hot, the air stiff with humidity. Mother had
Speaker 4: all the windows open in the drawing room, where my
Speaker 4: sister Betty was playing the piano, which was being recorded
Speaker 4: on their new Western Electric That's why you can hear
Speaker 4: pieces of this horrific scene play out.
Speaker 14: Stop that screaming or up blow your head off, lady.
Speaker 4: I had made the trip home to Oklahoma City that
Speaker 4: summer to tell my stepfather, Charles Erschall, I was planning
Speaker 4: to enlist in the Office of Naval Intelligence to assist
Speaker 4: Europe in what would become World War Two. My stepfather
Speaker 4: called me a hero. But when that hellion walked in
Speaker 4: the front door that afternoon, grabbed my mother by her
Speaker 4: hair and pressed the mouth of his machine gun to
Speaker 4: her temple.
Speaker 1: Up.
Speaker 4: I knew my stepfather was wrong. I was no hero.
Speaker 4: I wasn't even in the room. Please don't hurt her,
Speaker 4: but I heard everything.
Speaker 7: Look, we'll give you whatever you want.
Speaker 4: My stepfather was pistol whipped, took him out with one blow.
Speaker 4: I didn't know it then, but this man holding my
Speaker 4: family hostage was the notorious machine gun Kelly, the bank
Speaker 4: robber is infamous as he was deadly.
Speaker 2: How are you doing this?
Speaker 1: Why us?
Speaker 14: You made headline news with those millions you got.
Speaker 4: The week my father died, news of the seventy five
Speaker 4: million dollars stead he left us was posted all over
Speaker 4: the papers. Little did I know it had marked us
Speaker 4: as fresh meat for vultures like Kelly to feed on later.
Speaker 2: Okay, just take me. Don't touch my children, this real
Speaker 2: little thing.
Speaker 7: Stop it, Betty, go on, Darling, play something for me.
Speaker 2: Please, please don't hurt her.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 14: She's why I'm here.
Speaker 4: You her sleep, Junior.
Speaker 14: You're all worked around twenty five thousand dollars ahead. You
Speaker 14: can't expect me to turn that kind of money down, nap,
Speaker 14: can you? The savior has reasen Take me stay on
Speaker 14: the ground or all blast your sculling. And now before
Speaker 14: I shoot her.
Speaker 2: They don't have the money you're after.
Speaker 14: You expect me to believe that. Look at this house,
Speaker 14: that baby grand these earrings she's wearing.
Speaker 6: When I'm married Bernice, I took control over their estates.
Speaker 7: So all that money, it's mine.
Speaker 1: Women.
Speaker 7: You don't get to keep nothing, do you.
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 7: Looks like this is goodbye, sweetheart.
Speaker 14: The gentleman has one. I got my gun right here
Speaker 14: at your back.
Speaker 1: You feel it? Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was then as they were leaving that I heard
Speaker 4: my father's voice in my hand. I'm urging me to
Speaker 4: be a man of the family. How do you on
Speaker 4: this money as a form of luck? Now I was
Speaker 4: time to try my hand at the real thing. So
Speaker 4: I left my hiding spot and quietly approached Kelly as
Speaker 4: he dragged my stepfather out of the room. When he
Speaker 4: turned to face me, I treated him like I would
Speaker 4: any formidable creature. I met his eyes first, trying to
Speaker 4: form a connection.
Speaker 7: But in that moment, what your kid?
Speaker 4: I froze. I couldn't speak, move, breathe. Kelly rolled his eyes,
Speaker 4: then spit a watt of tobacco in my face, or
Speaker 4: at least I think he did. All I remember is
Speaker 4: how my stepfather, who had called me a hero just
Speaker 4: seconds before, couldn't meet my eye as he was viciously
Speaker 4: dragged out the front door. That was one of the
Speaker 4: lowest moments of my life. It's also when everything changed now,
Speaker 4: when danger taunts me, I don't freeze, I chase it
Speaker 4: and machine gun Kelly. Well, he didn't see me coming.
Speaker 7: Wait, that's it.
Speaker 6: There's a whole box of tapes there.
Speaker 10: But you know what happens, right.
Speaker 11: I know what side of the story Mom told me,
Speaker 11: but I never heard it from Daddy, So.
Speaker 7: Got's let him tell us then.
Speaker 6: Tom Slick Mystery Hunter is a production of School of
Speaker 6: Humans and iHeart Podcasts, starring Owen Wilson as Tom Slick,
Speaker 6: Cissy Spasick as Claire Slick, Skyler Fiske as Livslick. Written
Speaker 6: and directed by Caroline Slaughter, story editor Jeb Stewart. Executive
Speaker 6: produced by Owen Wilson, Sissy Spasic, Skyler Fiske, Jeb Stewart,
Speaker 6: Caroline Slaughter, Brian Lavin, L. C. Crowley, Brandon Barr, and
Speaker 6: Virginia Prescott. Produced and assistant directed by Amelia Brock. Original score,
Speaker 6: sound design, mixing and mastering by Jesse Niswanger, Casting by
Speaker 6: Daisy Church and Caroline Slaughter sag coordination by Daisy Church
Speaker 6: and Julia christ Gaw, Promo and trailers by Carl Catel.
Speaker 6: Special thanks to Catherine Nixon Cook. Recording engineers are Tyler
Speaker 6: Klang and Casey Pegram.
Speaker 12: For iHeartMedia Episode one, cast Ian Shaw as bud Ava,
Speaker 12: Davis as Blair, Jackson Beals as Machine Gun Kelly, Tiffany
Speaker 12: Morgan as Bernice Fratis, Lowry Brown as Charles Ursul, Mike
Speaker 12: Shotts as the Voice of God in the introductory voiceover,
Speaker 12: with additional roles voiced by David Devrees, Michael Mao, and
Speaker 12: Phil Clark.
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Speaker 2: your most thrilling adventure stories