Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck prying over there,
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you know
Speaker 1: all got her red berets on. We're trained up. Ye're
Speaker 1: ready to kick some New York City subway. But I
Speaker 1: got my nun chucks quick. You probably had those when
Speaker 1: you're kids. No, I never did, just throwing stars. I
Speaker 1: had a a mom who cared about me. Okay, who
Speaker 1: allows you to have throwing stars? Throwing stars you can sneak.
Speaker 1: I thought you had throwing stars. Now Tommy Roper had
Speaker 1: throwing he just trained me on. Actually, oh I got you.
Speaker 1: I didn't either, But you could hide a throwing star
Speaker 1: in your bedroom. It's hard to hide those nunchucks unless
Speaker 1: you do it under mattress and you know it's there.
Speaker 1: That's right already. Yeah, you're pretty proud of yourself for
Speaker 1: that one. I was, and then you got no last
Speaker 1: I thought you might like it. It was good. Um.
Speaker 1: So obviously, since we're talking nun chucks and Tommy Roper,
Speaker 1: we're doing an episode Chuck on the Guardian Angels, and
Speaker 1: let me tell you from experience, you probably ran into
Speaker 1: this as well. But researching Guardian Angels on the internet
Speaker 1: brings up a lot of crackpot stuff. Yeah, it's very
Speaker 1: tough to find this stuff I was looking for, but
Speaker 1: I finally did. I hacked through it and I got
Speaker 1: to the actual Guardian Angels stuff. Yeah, and uh, we
Speaker 1: have a special guest at the end of this episode.
Speaker 1: We were going to announce that right Well, you you
Speaker 1: put in the title, didn't you. Yeah, but I just
Speaker 1: want if people don't read the full title, if it
Speaker 1: doesn't display on the your pod player of choice. Our
Speaker 1: old friend John Hodgeman is here in the office today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like right now, he's waiting. He's in Jerry's office right now.
Speaker 1: Is that where you put him? Yeah, we put him
Speaker 1: in Jerry's office so you could have some alone time.
Speaker 1: His suitcases right there. I think it'd be kind of
Speaker 1: hilarious for us to go through it on the air.
Speaker 1: It is. I have that exact suitcase. Oh it's nice.
Speaker 1: Former sponsor of the show. Oh yeah, we didn't get suitcases.
Speaker 1: So I got one not from the show, did you.
Speaker 1: I got one for under the World sponsorship you did.
Speaker 1: I'm so mad if they real cash money, did you
Speaker 1: I got one for free? It's pink. You got the
Speaker 1: pink one? All right, we won't mention the name brand. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have to go listen to Into the World to
Speaker 1: hear that, or they have to advertise again. Yeah. I'm
Speaker 1: so mad because I even asked. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: can't believe can I get one of these bags? And
Speaker 1: they're like, no, they're not going to send him to
Speaker 1: everyone because it's too expensive. Peloton, send us a Peloton,
Speaker 1: a Peloton. We have Pelotons thousands of dollars I know,
Speaker 1: and they advertise for like two minutes. Thanks Peloton. Oh Man.
Speaker 1: So anyway, John Hodgman is here in Jerry's office waiting
Speaker 1: on us to finish recording about the Guardian Angels because
Speaker 1: he's a new book coming out called Medallion Status. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just put that together. That's really coincidental that Hodgman
Speaker 1: showed up to be on the show right before his
Speaker 1: new book comes out. Medallion Status True Story is from
Speaker 1: Secret Rooms that you can pre order now. Have you
Speaker 1: read it? I didn't get a chance to. Did you
Speaker 1: really read it? I really read it. That's because we
Speaker 1: just got him like a few days ago. It's a
Speaker 1: good read. It's it's fun to read. It kind of
Speaker 1: sucks you in, it's great, can't wait. It's a good read.
Speaker 1: So anyway, John will be here and he will talk
Speaker 1: incessantly about medallion status. So we'll just save that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll let it just kind of peter out at the
Speaker 1: jerial like face, and that's how the episode will end.
Speaker 1: I bet he'll have something to say about the Guardian
Speaker 1: Angels too, because John lives in New York City. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I noticed in this article that it was I
Speaker 1: guess assumed that everyone knew what it was because it
Speaker 1: was never even really described what the Guardian Angels is into,
Speaker 1: like the fourth page. Right, That's what I want to say, Like,
Speaker 1: there are probably a significant number of people who think
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about angels looking over your shoulder. No,
Speaker 1: we are talking about in New York City and now
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty other cities and about thirteen countries.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's okay, Yeah, sure. There there is a group
Speaker 1: of U. There are a group of citizen anti crime
Speaker 1: activists some would call the Vigilantes that formed a nonprofit
Speaker 1: under the leadership of Curtis how do you pronounce that? Slewa?
Speaker 1: In February nine. And if you grew up in the
Speaker 1: eighties in the seventies, you saw a lot of Guardian Angels,
Speaker 1: and this dude in particular, on every TV show you
Speaker 1: could imagine, every every non fictional scripted TV show. They
Speaker 1: were maybe like nine tenths is famous as Mr T
Speaker 1: at his peak. They were that famous, and you get
Speaker 1: the feeling that he loved it. Oh yea being famous. Well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you about this guy, because this is
Speaker 1: one really big um accusation that's leveled against the Guardian
Speaker 1: Angels that they were just in it for the PR
Speaker 1: and they definitely did know how to get PR. And
Speaker 1: Curtis Leewa was a PR magnet from his from his
Speaker 1: birth basically it sounds like it. Age six, he makes
Speaker 1: his first public appearance on Romper Room. Remember Romper Room.
Speaker 1: So here's a a guest on Romper Room. Uh. Years later,
Speaker 1: he was a newsboy who got Newsboy of the Year
Speaker 1: because on his route he saved six people from a
Speaker 1: burning building and ended up getting to shake Richard Nixon's
Speaker 1: hand as a result. Okay, it keeps, it keeps going.
Speaker 1: As a younger kid than that. I think he collected
Speaker 1: single handedly five and a half tons of recyclable paper
Speaker 1: to be recycled years before anybody even knew what the
Speaker 1: word recycling meant. He organized trash pickups around the place
Speaker 1: around New York. I should say he was a legit,
Speaker 1: real deal um pr machine who would then also follow
Speaker 1: through and make like an actual impact on the world,
Speaker 1: like a real self starter even as a kid. Yes,
Speaker 1: self starter, also big time self promoter, and that is
Speaker 1: a real big part of the Guardian Angels, so much
Speaker 1: so that, yes, it is a very widespread accusation that's
Speaker 1: level against him, But most people who lived in New
Speaker 1: York in the seventies and eighties would say, so what
Speaker 1: you know, these guys, what you're doing actually is worth
Speaker 1: all that publicity, So leave them alone. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about crime. Because I have a lot of feelings about
Speaker 1: this whole organization too. I was flip flopping all over
Speaker 1: the place. Really Yeah, because when you grow up as
Speaker 1: a kid and you don't know much about him, you're like, oh, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: put on those brats, get on that subway and take
Speaker 1: it into your own hands. You get to be a
Speaker 1: little older person you're like, no, no, no, don't do
Speaker 1: that at all. All right, let's stay out of the
Speaker 1: cops way. Yeah, so here's the deal. In the seventies crime,
Speaker 1: we talked about this, I feel like on something else.
Speaker 1: I no, no, that was on a different podcast. We
Speaker 1: talked about it. We talked about Julian and cleaning up
Speaker 1: New York. Yeah, but I was thinking about a movie
Speaker 1: crush episode on Escape from New York, which sort of
Speaker 1: that movie fed into this, uh hysteria about crime. So
Speaker 1: did Death Wish? Death Wish two? Yes, Death Wish three,
Speaker 1: Death Wish four, definitely, Death Wish five? Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen Death Wish three? I think, Oh, I think I
Speaker 1: only saw the first one. I went on a little
Speaker 1: kick not too long ago where I watched all of
Speaker 1: them really and not the remake. Obviously the the remake too.
Speaker 1: I was on that big of a kid he saw
Speaker 1: Brucellis was it terrible? As it was really bad. It
Speaker 1: was like Eli Roth, you know, of course he's going
Speaker 1: to make this astoundingly nuts, And he didn't. He made
Speaker 1: a real straight for it, like I think he was.
Speaker 1: He was saying like, well, this is going to be
Speaker 1: my entree into main stream Why was this so bad?
Speaker 1: Like how do you mess up? It wasn't It wasn't bad.
Speaker 1: Bad's not the right word for it. It was uh
Speaker 1: it was thin. Fin's a good word. Like it really
Speaker 1: could have been much bulkier and bigger and and just better,
Speaker 1: and it just it just wasn't there. It wasn't enough
Speaker 1: to it. And Bronson, I mean, like he was like
Speaker 1: a walking cardboard stand up in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: especially with his acting and his stuff was more. There
Speaker 1: was more to it. And I think it was because
Speaker 1: they went so far beyond the line in those movies,
Speaker 1: like attacks on women and like it's just incredible like
Speaker 1: violence and and just like the Death Wish moves are
Speaker 1: really violent, like these were a main there were mainstream
Speaker 1: films that came out. But Death Wish three, I think,
Speaker 1: is it just is totally off the rails. The first
Speaker 1: two are at least trying to maintain some sort of
Speaker 1: stuff about a man and his family being attacked and
Speaker 1: like right and he fights back, exploring real tops. That
Speaker 1: definitely ties into this mentality of the Guardian Angels. Death
Speaker 1: Wish three also does in the way that it describes
Speaker 1: this New York where it's just chaos there's no law,
Speaker 1: there's no order, no one's in control. People are shooting
Speaker 1: rocket launchers at each other like gangs, are just doing
Speaker 1: whatever they want. And if you're an honest citizen, you
Speaker 1: have to go murder other people or else you're going
Speaker 1: to be murdered yourself. Well that was how they got
Speaker 1: you to buy into Escape from New York? Was it
Speaker 1: in the year nineteen nine seven, which is hysterical to
Speaker 1: think about. Now, crime got so bad that they shut
Speaker 1: New York down and just made it into a prison.
Speaker 1: They build a wall around Manhattan Island. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of a fun idea. Yeah, it's a great premise, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought. So. Anyway, let's talk about real crime and
Speaker 1: how bad really was it in major metropolitan areas in
Speaker 1: the United States. Uh, And here's some stats for you,
Speaker 1: and the Grabster put this together for us, and I
Speaker 1: think some of the stuff is funny. That Ed said
Speaker 1: more than sixteen hundred homicides in New York and seventies
Speaker 1: six more than eight hundred and eighty one um And
Speaker 1: he said homicide rates vary between nineteen and murders per
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand residents in the seventies and eighties, which
Speaker 1: is I can't make heads their tails of that. It's
Speaker 1: real numbers I need. Well, those are murders, then you've
Speaker 1: got mugging's obviously rape, burglary, vandalism, stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: I did some figuring. They're on pace in New York
Speaker 1: City the year for two hundred and seventy two murders.
Speaker 1: That's actually kind of high. There were eighteen hundred in nine,
Speaker 1: which is, uh, five murders a day. But then you
Speaker 1: think about like, yeah, but you know, New York's a
Speaker 1: huge city. There's five boroughs. That's like one murder per
Speaker 1: borough per day. That's to be expected. Like the idea
Speaker 1: that like you can't walk around without being killed is preposterous.
Speaker 1: You're probably the likelihood is that you're never going to
Speaker 1: be even in the vicinity of a murder, much less
Speaker 1: the victim of one with that kind of population. Um,
Speaker 1: but there were in nineteen seventy eight, there were nine
Speaker 1: murders on the subway in nineteen seventy eight period on
Speaker 1: the subway alone, And in nineteen seventy nine there were
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty felonies a week on the New
Speaker 1: York City subway. Right, So, so it's a real concern
Speaker 1: to ride the subway in the nineteen seventies in New
Speaker 1: York like a legit fear, it really was, right, So
Speaker 1: there was a lot to violence. In addition to violence,
Speaker 1: In addition to violent crime and Robbie robbery and muggings
Speaker 1: and rapes and all like just violence, right, there was
Speaker 1: also this sense of lawlessness on the subways in particular,
Speaker 1: where there's graffiti everywhere and like you could get beat up,
Speaker 1: you could have somebody like shake you down just riding
Speaker 1: on the subway. They were really they just seemed dangerous too.
Speaker 1: In addition to actually being kind of dangerous, especially compared
Speaker 1: to today, they seemed dangerous. So people were freaked out
Speaker 1: riding on two fifty colonies a week on the subways
Speaker 1: a lot, okay. And then on top of that, in
Speaker 1: the seventies, so in New York apparently came just within
Speaker 1: a few hours of going bankrupt and they faced some
Speaker 1: real severe budget cuts, one of which was the transit police.
Speaker 1: They laid off fourteen hundred of their thirty six hundred
Speaker 1: cops and they cut off patrols from seven pm to
Speaker 1: I think five am. So the criminals were like, oh,
Speaker 1: just lollas down there, and it really was. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so it was in this context that Curtis slee wah
Speaker 1: Um basically said, hey, you know what, somebody should do
Speaker 1: something about this. The cops aren't doing anything, the city
Speaker 1: is not doing anything. Somebody needs to do something because
Speaker 1: people are getting robbed and mugged in at the very least,
Speaker 1: people are afraid to drive the subway, and we should
Speaker 1: do something. Yeah, he said, I'm a world champion recycler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've met Richard Nixon. Listen to me. So should we
Speaker 1: take a break already? I think we just worked ourselves
Speaker 1: up in the frothy break. I gotta calm down. Let's
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: Sleeve was background right after this. Definite shouldn't know large
Speaker 1: skis watch sky should know it was all right. Curtis Leewa,
Speaker 1: founder of the Guardian Angels, was born in ninety four
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up there. Webster defines
Speaker 1: Curtis Leewaw he uh depending on who you ask, and
Speaker 1: there are there are a lot of like different stories
Speaker 1: about Sleewah. Even within his own story. He has sort
Speaker 1: of varied things over time he either dropped out of
Speaker 1: high school or was expelled for student activism. And he
Speaker 1: has a long life of activists. Uh, of activism. Well
Speaker 1: that's what I was talking for sure. So like he
Speaker 1: never still is today. He never lost that, which is great. Um,
Speaker 1: And his dad said, go get a job, you punk.
Speaker 1: He went to McDonald's and the Bronx got a job there,
Speaker 1: and he basically said this McDonald's was nuts. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever been to McDonald's late night
Speaker 1: in New York City, Like, now, it's nuts. Now I
Speaker 1: don't You're not getting murdered, but it is crazy town
Speaker 1: and McDonald's at two in the morning, and in the
Speaker 1: safest parts of New York City, Yeah, like Midtown Manhattan. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of fun to go and witness actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's like it's never normal. No, No, it's definitely not.
Speaker 1: And it's also it's not really dangerous these days. No
Speaker 1: it's not. But it's never normal. And I've only been
Speaker 1: done this a few times, but there's always been an
Speaker 1: incident or something going on. I think he just came
Speaker 1: up with New York's new tourist Campa. Never normal, never normal.
Speaker 1: So he describes basically this uh working there as a
Speaker 1: nightly battle against gangs. And he said that the people
Speaker 1: that work there kept like a nun chuck's back in
Speaker 1: the back in the kitchen, like a like stash next
Speaker 1: to the fryar. Yeah, and if something happened, uh, which
Speaker 1: things always did, we were ready, right. So apparently one
Speaker 1: night that actually came in handy when some gang came
Speaker 1: in and they were hassling the customers. Slee was was
Speaker 1: the night manager, so it's up to him to do something.
Speaker 1: And he's the kind of guy who feels like you
Speaker 1: should do something about that, you know, especially if you
Speaker 1: feel like the cops aren't going to do anything, which
Speaker 1: is an ongoing theme of slee Waws kind of um rhetoric.
Speaker 1: Yes perfect um. So he jumps over the counter and
Speaker 1: proceeds to get beaten up by this gang well for
Speaker 1: a while. Sure, his coworkers, who had these weapons stashed
Speaker 1: around the friar, grab their weapons and jumped in and
Speaker 1: beat the gang off. And apparently this experience, according to
Speaker 1: Slee Waw, inspired him to say, let's make this particular
Speaker 1: McDonald's a safe place haven from crime by defending it
Speaker 1: ourselves and putting the word out that if you come
Speaker 1: here and try to make trouble, we're gonna beat you
Speaker 1: up with our friar weapons. Yeah, and it's here that
Speaker 1: we should really really emphasize that a lot of this
Speaker 1: is his from his own words, and I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: calling the man a liar, but he he is definitely
Speaker 1: a pr guy and has a bit of P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum to him a little, So these stories should be
Speaker 1: taking a little bit with a grain of salt, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um one big thing that differentiates him in my mind
Speaker 1: from P. T. Barnum is number one, no singing. Number
Speaker 1: two he Um did not view people as suckers or
Speaker 1: chumps to be taken advantage of. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: from everything that I've seen about this guy, say what
Speaker 1: you want about is kind of bravado and grandiosity and
Speaker 1: potential lawlessness. He seems to have been Um very much
Speaker 1: focused on inspiring people to better themselves in their community.
Speaker 1: Like that does seem to be like one of his
Speaker 1: legitimate goals. Yeah, not only making his community safer, but
Speaker 1: the Guardian angels themselves as well. See, some of these
Speaker 1: might have been petty criminals that he's trying to reform.
Speaker 1: So he's done a lot of great things, right, So
Speaker 1: uh he said, all right, we got this McDonald's lockdown.
Speaker 1: Everyone is coming in here and they can eat their
Speaker 1: um happy meals. This might have been pretty happy meal, Leavin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was right around that time. It would have been
Speaker 1: during the time when they were in those awesome phone
Speaker 1: containers that remember those Oh my god, they just make
Speaker 1: my brain following my ear with nostalgia. Yeah, remember the
Speaker 1: mcdealt hot side hot, cool side cool, extra waste of foam.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, and the phone containers who were in atrocity.
Speaker 1: But they were beautiful, I know what you mean. They
Speaker 1: had a shimmer equality to them, and the colors that
Speaker 1: they chose. Everything was so so wonderfully toxic. So uh,
Speaker 1: he said, let's extend this out because it's working so well.
Speaker 1: And McDonald's, let's take it to the streets. Let's take
Speaker 1: it to the Mugger's Express, the four train that he
Speaker 1: had to write to work with. That was particularly dangerous,
Speaker 1: right because again, remember there's no cops at night on
Speaker 1: the subway line, no cops, And so the McDonald's nightshift
Speaker 1: became known as the Magnificent thirteen, and he said, let's
Speaker 1: take it to the streets and let's start recruiting people
Speaker 1: to do this for real. But you know what, we
Speaker 1: need the us. He's a pr guy, very smart to
Speaker 1: do this. He's like, we need a uniform like the
Speaker 1: magniccent thirteen. We're all in our McDonald's uniforms, which was like,
Speaker 1: can you guys not do that? Can you can you
Speaker 1: not bring nunchucks to work? That's sort of in the brochure.
Speaker 1: And so he developed the iconic red beret, red shiny
Speaker 1: red jacket. Yeah, what's that called? Satin? Like a satin jacket? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, a white T shirt with their logo which
Speaker 1: is the eye peering out from the winged pyramid. I
Speaker 1: could not find why he came up with that design.
Speaker 1: I bet he hand drew it. Yeah. So, um, they
Speaker 1: went from this Magnificent thirteen to the Guardian Angels around
Speaker 1: that time, and they started patrolling the subways. Um. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some of their tactics and methods in
Speaker 1: a little bit, but one of the things that first
Speaker 1: struck Sleewa was that he found that they were not
Speaker 1: welcomed by the police. The police in the city didn't
Speaker 1: say this is great. We need a little help, and
Speaker 1: these people are stepping up to help, you know, keep
Speaker 1: their community safer and fight crime. The city did quite
Speaker 1: the opposite. They said, these guys are nuts. Don't listen
Speaker 1: to them. They need to stop what they're doing, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna harass them, even though legally speaking, everything they
Speaker 1: were doing was within their rights. That's right. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons the city wasn't down to begin with
Speaker 1: was there there was a bit of a history here.
Speaker 1: There was a group in nine and the Bronx called
Speaker 1: the Black Spades, and they had the goal of fighting
Speaker 1: racism and keeping the neighborhood safe, sort of sort of
Speaker 1: like Sleewaw and uh. They eventually morphed into a criminal gang.
Speaker 1: And the cops in the city saw this happen. They're like, look,
Speaker 1: the Black Spades were great until they weren't. Like, you
Speaker 1: guys are essentially gang to right, That's what they said.
Speaker 1: This is the same thing. This is the same things
Speaker 1: gonna happen. This is gonna be some vigilante gang that
Speaker 1: turns into an extortion gang and they're gonna be violent.
Speaker 1: They're gonna start selling drugs and it's gonna be a problem.
Speaker 1: I also read as far as the Black Spades are
Speaker 1: concerned Africa, Bombada was a Black Spade member, yep. And
Speaker 1: they credit the Black Spades and some other groups for
Speaker 1: creating hip hop culture, like those block parties they all
Speaker 1: came out of, like these groups getting together and hanging out.
Speaker 1: Is that cool? Can you dig it? Yes? I can?
Speaker 1: Did you not know my right? Reference? That was from
Speaker 1: the Warriors? Right? Okay, gotcha? But wasn't that the respect?
Speaker 1: Did you not see the extended director's stuff? So here's
Speaker 1: some of the rules that he developed early on. And
Speaker 1: this is all Curtis Leewise jam like. He set this
Speaker 1: thing up, He developed all the rules, ran it like
Speaker 1: a you know, with a tight fist, brought all the
Speaker 1: members on, brought him and they were besides their uniforms
Speaker 1: that he would hand you upon joining up. I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess that was a fun conversation. Oh what size
Speaker 1: are you? What size satin jacket do you wear? Exactly?
Speaker 1: Do you like to button it all the way up?
Speaker 1: So you have to you have to be at least
Speaker 1: sixteen not a serious criminal record, because, like we said,
Speaker 1: he kind of liked taking some of these kids that,
Speaker 1: like you know, maybe a shoplifter or a pocket picker
Speaker 1: and reforming them, giving him a second chance to prove themselves.
Speaker 1: And that was a big thing that he did. That
Speaker 1: that the Guardian Angels did. This organization was it said, hey,
Speaker 1: you live in an area where you can go sell drugs,
Speaker 1: you can go rob people, all your friends are doing it,
Speaker 1: or you can come over here and actually combat that
Speaker 1: make your community a safer place to live, get rid
Speaker 1: of that stuff. And right, yeah, and you get the
Speaker 1: free satin jacket. But they they they some people were
Speaker 1: given an option in this neighborhood and some people are
Speaker 1: in these neighborhoods, and some people took that and became
Speaker 1: Guardian Angels and actually like took a different path in
Speaker 1: life because of this guy, a night manager from a
Speaker 1: Bronx McDonald like gave these people who joined this option
Speaker 1: would like to to change their lives. That's that's really
Speaker 1: respectable and commendable. It is. You could be anyone. You
Speaker 1: could be male or female, you could be any religion,
Speaker 1: you could be any race, any sexual orientation. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we should, you know, we should touch on a little
Speaker 1: bit the racial stuff. Um, it's complicated because he if
Speaker 1: you see some interviews, it seems like he's using sort
Speaker 1: of blatantly racist language. He would probably say that he's
Speaker 1: just a realist and he's just talking real yeah, from
Speaker 1: the streets from old Brooklyn. Oh yeah, not New Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: Old Brooklyn. Yeah, he's like, yeah, you know, I go
Speaker 1: to Warby Parka all those places. Right, you will go
Speaker 1: to restoration Hardware, you know, check it out. It's pretty good.
Speaker 1: So uh, it's a complicated thing the way he talks
Speaker 1: and some of these older interviews, right, but if you
Speaker 1: go to where the rubber meets the road, he was
Speaker 1: not only recruiting like black Latino or I should say
Speaker 1: Latin x um men, women, whoever, who whoever wanted to
Speaker 1: be a Guardian Angel and follow the rules and did
Speaker 1: you know guardian angel stuff could join. And these are
Speaker 1: the people he hung he hung out with, spend his
Speaker 1: time with. It wasn't like he was in some ivory
Speaker 1: tower telling everybody what to do and enjoying Boston around
Speaker 1: these other people. These are people he hung out with.
Speaker 1: He made lieutenants out of in chapter, heads out of it,
Speaker 1: leaders out of so um. Like you said, it's complicated,
Speaker 1: but he proved himself to be fairly above racial politics
Speaker 1: as far as his actual practices go. That's right. If
Speaker 1: you hit the streets on patrol, Um, they would go
Speaker 1: out together, usually ten people, but you were never out
Speaker 1: there alone. No. Well that was the thing because they
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to carry weapons. So like had it just
Speaker 1: been one of them patrolling, they would vatinely been beaten
Speaker 1: and put in the hospital. Yeah, so you're not only
Speaker 1: are they not allowed to wear weapons, but they pat
Speaker 1: each other down before they go out on patrol to
Speaker 1: make sure none of them have weapons themselves. And uh
Speaker 1: Sleiwa would basically act as the dispatcher. He would sit
Speaker 1: around and listen to the scanner, the police scanner, or
Speaker 1: he would get telephone calls from a pay phone I
Speaker 1: guess from another angel saying something's going down, and he
Speaker 1: would send people out on these patrols, like to specifically
Speaker 1: go to a crime that had been committed to try
Speaker 1: and help, or or just go on patrol like the
Speaker 1: subway line super get on the four train and walk
Speaker 1: up and down those cars, or go to this neighborhood
Speaker 1: and patrol this block. So this is how their patrols
Speaker 1: would work. On the subway in particular, be eight, ten,
Speaker 1: twelve of them, and they would all show up together.
Speaker 1: Each one would get into a car, so there'd be
Speaker 1: a Guardian Angel standing at attention. Yeah, quiet, silent, looking
Speaker 1: very stern and serious, um, not messing aroun out and
Speaker 1: just projecting that that thing. And that's what Sleewa said
Speaker 1: is the basis, like the Guardian Angels show up and
Speaker 1: they're in control of the situation. So they're reassuring the
Speaker 1: people who are worried, and they're showing the criminals like,
Speaker 1: don't try anything because there's ten of us in one
Speaker 1: of you or even two of you, right, And then
Speaker 1: every stop, every all the Guardian Angels would lean out
Speaker 1: and give some sort of hand signal that the coast
Speaker 1: was clear. If somebody didn't lean out of their car,
Speaker 1: all the other angels would converge on that car and
Speaker 1: help out was in trouble. And that's how they patrolled
Speaker 1: the subways, and that's how they still do. Actually, so
Speaker 1: imagine this, my friend, I had this thought while I
Speaker 1: was researching the stuff. Imagine this exact same scenario, but
Speaker 1: they're wearing tights and capes and masks, right, and like,
Speaker 1: imagine how quickly they would be laughed at and ridiculed
Speaker 1: and just laughed off the streets. And they're a guy
Speaker 1: in Mexico City who is doing that? Oh no, there's
Speaker 1: a documentary. There are quite a few people that do this,
Speaker 1: And there's a doctor amentary that follows these real life
Speaker 1: quote unquote superheroes that are trained up and can do
Speaker 1: martial arts, but they like wear a cape in a mask,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's funny to think about the perception
Speaker 1: they could do the exact same thing, and if they're
Speaker 1: wearing a Batman mask, it's likely what are you doing? Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder if any funny. I wonder if anyone who
Speaker 1: used to be a caped crusader is now just a
Speaker 1: regular crusader, because that's more legitimate. Maybe maybe so. Uh,
Speaker 1: here's the thing, Um, they're not just standing there at
Speaker 1: attention to uh intimidate criminals to make sure things are safe.
Speaker 1: They don't just call in to the police when something happens.
Speaker 1: They get involved. We talked about martial arts. They are
Speaker 1: trained up two engage people, physically encouraged to do so. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and if you listen to our July episode on
Speaker 1: a citizen's arrest to make and perform a citizen's arrest,
Speaker 1: which I was trying to think back at in go
Speaker 1: back and listen to it, but I was trying to
Speaker 1: think back of what our overall message wasn't correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, but don't do it. Do not do it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get yourself in trouble. These guys routinely do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think we were just saying, like, hey, if
Speaker 1: you're just an average Joe or Jane on the street,
Speaker 1: don't do that. But if you're if you're trained to
Speaker 1: do so, like a guardian angel, still don't do it.
Speaker 1: But even still they say like they're not afforded any
Speaker 1: special rights or privileges. They're just citizens following the letter
Speaker 1: of the law. But they they don't just call the
Speaker 1: cops and say somebody's getting jacked right now, or um,
Speaker 1: you know, like you said, just stand there. Certainly they
Speaker 1: go beat somebody up. Well, no, they're trained to use
Speaker 1: minimal force, so that can still include beating somebody out.
Speaker 1: They're they're trained to restrain somebody and use force. But
Speaker 1: that's the difference is they're not out there just like
Speaker 1: delivering a beat down because for retribution. Okay, so originally
Speaker 1: from what I read, that is actually how how this
Speaker 1: whole thing started. The people down that um uh sleep
Speaker 1: Curtis Leewa and his friend Don Chin, who was a
Speaker 1: big dude who also worked at the McDonald's with them.
Speaker 1: They started out, um with Slee Wah writing the subway,
Speaker 1: all dressed up with jewelry and everything. They would he
Speaker 1: was a plant, right, and then um, somebody would come
Speaker 1: over and try to rob him, and Chin would come
Speaker 1: out of nowhere and just beat him up. That's a trapman,
Speaker 1: it is like. As a matter of fact, there was
Speaker 1: a quote from the police commissioner at the time I
Speaker 1: read this really awesome New Yorker article from that was
Speaker 1: written by Nicholas Pelleggie, who wrote Wise Guy, which was
Speaker 1: the foundation of Goodfellas, one of the greatest movies of
Speaker 1: all time. He's definitely the greatest gangster movie of all time.
Speaker 1: Get out of here with that Godfather crap. Okay, give
Speaker 1: me Goodfellas. Every day? How many people's heads has popped
Speaker 1: right off of their bodies. They're both great, and my
Speaker 1: head is not popped that I know, yours isn't. But
Speaker 1: somebody out there just like just broke through their desk. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he wrote this article and in it one of the
Speaker 1: police commissioners is like, this is this is awfully close
Speaker 1: to entrapment, dangerously close as a matter of fact, what
Speaker 1: what they were describing. So they stopped doing that, and
Speaker 1: I guess started doing what you were saying, which was
Speaker 1: following the letter law and using minimal force and not
Speaker 1: entrapping people. Yeah, I mean that's the the idea. Into
Speaker 1: his credit, he is changed his methods and what he's
Speaker 1: trained people to do. Over the years. He's tried to
Speaker 1: you know, he's tried to do the right thing. It
Speaker 1: seems like sure. So a lot of people say to like,
Speaker 1: this guy got rich off this thing. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the case. I think he leads a pretty modest
Speaker 1: existence on the Upper West Side. Still, he's a little
Speaker 1: bit rough natorish in that respect. Yeah, and they're nonprofit.
Speaker 1: The members are volunteers. I don't see how he would
Speaker 1: make money unless he's just like selling merch or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was somebody gave him some money to do a
Speaker 1: like basically for his life story, to make a movie
Speaker 1: about it. So he got like ten grade or something
Speaker 1: back in the set. Apparently he used some of the
Speaker 1: money to try to sue the people because the movie
Speaker 1: was so bad that Yeah, so what movie is that?
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I saw it somewhere, but it pretty
Speaker 1: easy to find. But he, um was it? Airwolf was
Speaker 1: a wolf. There's this guy making sweet love to the
Speaker 1: Airwolf helicopter in the backgrounds. It's like that hanged man
Speaker 1: of Oz. You have to like really look forward. Why
Speaker 1: don't you see it? You can't see it anyway? Um
Speaker 1: he But yeah, from what I understand, he made no
Speaker 1: money off of it whatsoever. But some people say he
Speaker 1: didn't care about money, cares about prestige. Yeah, And a
Speaker 1: lot of people say, ah, he's just a blow hard,
Speaker 1: blah blah, this and that. But when you talk to
Speaker 1: these and read interviews with these, uh, because I've talked
Speaker 1: to him, these old former angels, they all talk about
Speaker 1: this family and the fact that he did pull them
Speaker 1: off the streets. Not all. There are some old former
Speaker 1: that are big time critics of him and his Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean that, but a lot of people have
Speaker 1: said that, Like I was going nowhere, he saved me,
Speaker 1: gave me a sense of purpose, taught me how to
Speaker 1: do the right thing in life. And also a lot
Speaker 1: of New Yorkers, just everyday New Yorkers were very supportive
Speaker 1: of the Guardian Angels and what they were doing. I
Speaker 1: would have felt better on it that number four subway train. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of them didn't. So that that New Yorker
Speaker 1: article by Nicholas Pledgie was a hit job. Um, it
Speaker 1: was just meant to kind of make them look bad
Speaker 1: and make Ed Cotch, who, as we'll see, was not
Speaker 1: very happy with the Angels because he was married at
Speaker 1: the time, Um, make a Cottius point look more reasonable.
Speaker 1: But um, if you read the following edition, every single
Speaker 1: one of the letters written in response to that article
Speaker 1: supported the Guardian Angels and basically called out the New
Speaker 1: Yorker for for just kind of convoluting things, for being
Speaker 1: the New Yorker, for basically being the New Yorker being
Speaker 1: pro catch. Well, since you brought him up, he very
Speaker 1: much dismissed them. I called them vigilantes. The police Union,
Speaker 1: the Patrolman's Benevolent Association did yeah right, yeah, well, he
Speaker 1: said him. Some people get lost sometimes. I started talking
Speaker 1: like in New York for all all of a suh,
Speaker 1: the Transit police Union, they all came out against the
Speaker 1: Guardian Angels, saying don't do this. Uh. Phil Caruso of
Speaker 1: the Policeman's Benevolent Association said Mr Sliwa is a publicity
Speaker 1: seeker and he does a good job of it. When
Speaker 1: you start putting authority in an undisciplined group, it's not
Speaker 1: only vigilantium. Vigilantism. It reeks of gestapo is um. He
Speaker 1: not catch dictates who will be an angel and where
Speaker 1: they will work. It's preposterous. We said that last parted Cotch. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that was Phil Caruso. Was he talking about Coch? He's
Speaker 1: talking about Sliwa. But it just hit me today. No
Speaker 1: one says preposterous anywhere. I want to bring that back. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a great word. You may just have, I hope.
Speaker 1: So preposterous. But a lot of people loved him. Governor Cuomo,
Speaker 1: whether or not it was a political thing or not,
Speaker 1: kind of came out in supported them here and there.
Speaker 1: So he had a good quote in that New Yorker
Speaker 1: article which just go read it. What he basically said.
Speaker 1: You know, if these were the children, the sons and
Speaker 1: daughters of white doctors from Long Neck, we'd be giving
Speaker 1: them medals instead. We're just leveling all these accusations of
Speaker 1: vigilanism against him and like totally missing the point that
Speaker 1: these guys are taking care of their community and taking
Speaker 1: up the slack where the cops are leaving off, and
Speaker 1: frankly the city's leaving off because they fired so many
Speaker 1: cops um that. You know, it's it seems a little
Speaker 1: a little racist to me. He didn't put it that
Speaker 1: last part in that words, but it was definitely in there.
Speaker 1: And this is that this guy is saying that so well,
Speaker 1: it seems it seems a legitimate quote. If he was
Speaker 1: taking a shot at ECI disguised it well. So they
Speaker 1: are also supposedly, um, the rank and file cops um
Speaker 1: like the Guardian Angels. I'm sure it just all depends.
Speaker 1: It's hard to make a sweeping statement like that, but
Speaker 1: from what I read, the rank and file were a
Speaker 1: little more like, yeah, these guys are like trying to
Speaker 1: restore some sanity to New York. And it was the
Speaker 1: brass that couldn't really come out and or didn't come
Speaker 1: out and say that they supported them. Because this is
Speaker 1: why the presence, the very presence of the Guardian Angels.
Speaker 1: They weren't doing their job underlying the problem that New
Speaker 1: York had. New York couldn't wash it over because the
Speaker 1: Angels were there, which was another big role that they played,
Speaker 1: kind of this meta role to kind of agitate the
Speaker 1: city to do more, educate, agitate the police force to
Speaker 1: do more, in addition to providing, you know, a feeling
Speaker 1: of comfort to people who were riding the subway. And
Speaker 1: it didn't help that Slee while would go on TV
Speaker 1: shows and champion death Wish and taxi Driver as inspirations
Speaker 1: for starting this out. Taxi driver more so, at least
Speaker 1: in death Wish, this guy was like, you know, getting
Speaker 1: back at people that assaulted his wife and daughter. Yea,
Speaker 1: and taxi driver. He just a sociopath, buddy. I mean
Speaker 1: it all worked out for the best in the end,
Speaker 1: that's right. So Um. As a result of all of this,
Speaker 1: Leewah has long Um accused the cops of harassing him
Speaker 1: in multiple ways. He said he was arrested seventies six
Speaker 1: times while carrying out Guardian Angels stuff. Um he said
Speaker 1: that he was kidnapped not once, but twice by two
Speaker 1: different police forces, one in New York, one in d
Speaker 1: c Um in the New York one I don't think
Speaker 1: he alleged that he was beaten. But in the DC
Speaker 1: one he was beaten, burned with a cattle prod arm
Speaker 1: in a sling, tied up, thrown into a muddy, shallow
Speaker 1: part of the Potomac. They didn't realize with shallow until
Speaker 1: he landed like he thought he was about to be drowned.
Speaker 1: H oops. No, he didn't realize it was it was shallow.
Speaker 1: The cops did. They were messing with him right ed.
Speaker 1: Cosh ordered the d C cops to throw him in
Speaker 1: the Potomac, but he said keep it shallow, keeping muddy.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. And he's he's been attacked by private citizens
Speaker 1: who just like, you know, there's that Guardian angel guy.
Speaker 1: Let me see if I can get one in on him.
Speaker 1: As recently, his last year in Penn Station, there were
Speaker 1: these four kids that looked like they were getting in
Speaker 1: a fight, and one of them like dropped drugs and
Speaker 1: then picked him up, and he kind of went over
Speaker 1: and like, hey, what's going on here? And they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: look who it is. They literally said the words Newark
Speaker 1: in the house. I guess they were from Newark. And
Speaker 1: one of them sucker punches him in the face, and
Speaker 1: knocks out his front tooth front tooth man and he well,
Speaker 1: he said he couldn't afford to get it repaired. That's
Speaker 1: how little money he has. Very Ralph nat he said,
Speaker 1: in insurance won't cover it. They're calling it cosmetic. It's
Speaker 1: so funny. This is in the article even he said
Speaker 1: they're calling it cosmetic. But he said, my nerve is exposed.
Speaker 1: It's very pains totally. That's exactly. That's a Curtess Leewa
Speaker 1: quote if I've ever heard one. It's pretty funny. Following
Speaker 1: up by Wolf for now, I've just kind of pulled
Speaker 1: it up some paper towel to stand in with the
Speaker 1: pictures of him like smiling big missing that front tooth.
Speaker 1: So I think he took, as always the opportunity to
Speaker 1: be like, hey, I'm still out there, I'm still getting punched,
Speaker 1: look at me. And also, my insurance company is really
Speaker 1: a bunch of dead beats. So there was another incident
Speaker 1: where there was a guardian named Frank Melvin. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is a big one. Heard about this incident going on,
Speaker 1: rushed to the scene. And as he's rushing to the scene,
Speaker 1: this is the this is the cops version. There's someone
Speaker 1: on the roof, A cop on the roof, cop on
Speaker 1: the ground, and they say, this guy comes rushing up.
Speaker 1: I guess they didn't see his red beret and red
Speaker 1: satin jacket and ordered him to halt. He didn't halt.
Speaker 1: The cop on the roof shot and killed him. Twenty
Speaker 1: six year old father of three, Sleewat says, this is
Speaker 1: not what This is a big cover up. That's not
Speaker 1: what happened at all. He said a sergeant on the
Speaker 1: street stopped him dead in his tracks. He opened his
Speaker 1: jacket and said, you know, I've got no weapon, there's
Speaker 1: no reason to shoot. And they shot him anyway, And
Speaker 1: as he was dying on the ground, they prevented other
Speaker 1: angels from giving him CPR, which is a very specific claim.
Speaker 1: It is pretty specific to make. So we held a
Speaker 1: press conference alleging all this stuff. Like immediately afterward, he's
Speaker 1: very agitated, very upset. Um And this is a I
Speaker 1: guess you could say this is the low point of
Speaker 1: police Guardian angels relations. They want a guardian Angel has
Speaker 1: been shot and killed by the police. Um. But from
Speaker 1: that point on, I think that was in That was
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end of nineteen eighty From that
Speaker 1: point on, it just started to change and improve, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden the cops kind of got on
Speaker 1: the Guardian Angels side. Should we take a final break? Yes, alright,
Speaker 1: final break that sounds so cryptic. We're gonna come back
Speaker 1: and talk about, uh, the great eighties right after this
Speaker 1: s k as sks kay, Chuck, We're talking about the gradies.
Speaker 1: The grades are happening. The Guardian Angel she's listening for
Speaker 1: once because Hodgeman is coming in, so she's so the
Speaker 1: Guardian Angels are at their peak. Um supposedly topped a
Speaker 1: thousand members and this is from courteously was recollection for
Speaker 1: his numbers. Yeah, they're getting good publicity, so much so that, uh,
Speaker 1: these budget cuts are going on and the crime rates
Speaker 1: still sky high. Mayor ed Cotch has no recourse but
Speaker 1: to luke warmly embraced them publicly. And that's the best
Speaker 1: way to describe that. I think it was like, okay,
Speaker 1: there he described them as chicken soup? Have they no
Speaker 1: who said that? Cotton mayor of New York City at
Speaker 1: this time, So he did. So this is a huge
Speaker 1: turnaround from These guys are vigilantees and they need to
Speaker 1: stop what they're doing. So this is a big deal
Speaker 1: and it actually I don't know how much it had
Speaker 1: to do with the real rise of the Guardian Angels,
Speaker 1: but they they definitely saw their their membership swell, like
Speaker 1: you said, their patrols. There was the height of the
Speaker 1: Guardian Angels were the early early to right in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties. Yeah, when we were kids and it was
Speaker 1: just all over the place. Yeah, I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: that they have a Saturday Morning cartoon or something, because
Speaker 1: some part of my brain is like, dude, they may
Speaker 1: have been on like Scooby Doo or something when they
Speaker 1: did those years where they had all those weird guests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jerry Lewis there, Jerry Lewis and Jerry Reid. Oh was
Speaker 1: he on? Oh he was on a bunch of times,
Speaker 1: really smokey. Yeah, he would sing pretty merry Sunlight or
Speaker 1: Sunshine Man so they could find him through the duct
Speaker 1: work or something that was bizarre. But he was on
Speaker 1: a few times. Remember Batman and Robin the campy version
Speaker 1: we're on. Yeah, Harlem Globe Trotter, Yeah, yeah, yeah, don
Speaker 1: not don k nots of course I could do this
Speaker 1: all the three Stooges, right, Oh, yeah, with Curly Joe. Okay,
Speaker 1: they had their own cartoon for a little while, and
Speaker 1: I suspect that that's why they were on Scooby Doo
Speaker 1: is to kind of launch the cartoon version of themselves.
Speaker 1: I definitely have a memory of seeing a cartooned Guardian
Speaker 1: Angel too something. Yeah, I know, I'm agreeing. Okay, just
Speaker 1: just me mayor ed catch agreeing with you. Podcaster Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: thank you. So they developed a system. They're like, all right,
Speaker 1: if we're all going to work together, let's get these
Speaker 1: guys an I D card at least not a badge.
Speaker 1: He called it a badge, Slee. I did, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a badge. It was a It was an I
Speaker 1: D card that was official, and they a sort of
Speaker 1: a detent and said, hey, let's all quit giving each
Speaker 1: other hard time. We're all after the same thing here. Um,
Speaker 1: And he said this all allowed me to open up franchises.
Speaker 1: Did you say the badge was issued by the cops.
Speaker 1: Though I don't think it was issued by the cops,
Speaker 1: but I think it was agreed upon that will have
Speaker 1: an official designation and an official I D card that
Speaker 1: you recognize the part of getting that. I d card
Speaker 1: was submitting as a Guardian Angel applicant to a police
Speaker 1: background check. So there was this rout of legitimacy that
Speaker 1: was that came from the police force. But whether the
Speaker 1: police force wanted to be friends with the Guardian Angels
Speaker 1: or not, Sleewa made a very um, a very purposeful
Speaker 1: decision that the Guardian Angels would have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the cops. And he said later on in an
Speaker 1: interview the reason why, it's because it would delegitimize the
Speaker 1: Guardian Angels in these neighborhoods, that these people would be
Speaker 1: seen as basically knarcs or snitches or you know, cops
Speaker 1: um in neighborhoods where they didn't like cops very much.
Speaker 1: But since the Guardian Angels were separate and had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the cops, they had their own legitimacy
Speaker 1: that would have just been completely ripped away had they
Speaker 1: been associated with the cops. Get that. So they started
Speaker 1: popping up all over the country, Sacramento, l A, Buffalo, Cleveland,
Speaker 1: Tyler Dirton at this point he was but he would
Speaker 1: come in and uh, he would not bring maybe he
Speaker 1: would bring some people to train them up momentarily, but
Speaker 1: then they would go back home, and the idea was
Speaker 1: that they would run it themselves under his direction. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so like the city officials who heard the Guardian
Speaker 1: Angels were coming town, we're worried that a bunch of
Speaker 1: New Yorkers were moving here to basically patrol this other
Speaker 1: city streets. And it was never that. It was like
Speaker 1: you were saying, they'd train local leadership. Um, just like
Speaker 1: a dunkin Donuts. Yes, exactly like that run by Mary Coach.
Speaker 1: So I saw somewhere, Chuck, that Cleveland actually invited the
Speaker 1: Guardian Angels to open a chapter there. Yeah. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't all like, you know, get out of here, We're
Speaker 1: gonna kidnap you and throw you in the Potomac. Some
Speaker 1: cities were like we need this, actually can come breathe
Speaker 1: some life back into or downtown or whatever. Well, I
Speaker 1: remember in nine one when the Atlanta child murders were happening,
Speaker 1: they came to Atlanta to help out here, and I
Speaker 1: remember very much that being on TV. Oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the that whole investigation by the FBI or the g
Speaker 1: b I into the KKK as the suspects in the
Speaker 1: atlanticial merders. The media found out about that because Spin
Speaker 1: magazine reported on it. It's been magazine heard about it
Speaker 1: from the Guardian Angels who have come to Atlanta, so
Speaker 1: they technically broke that that story. Are you watching mind Hunter? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's part of the new season, is it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just medium good. That's my review. That's why I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want medium good. Yeah, I'll get you. When's
Speaker 1: the last time you want to watch a death wish
Speaker 1: one through five? In the remake, I'm just punishing myself
Speaker 1: until until something really great comes along. Sure, I hear
Speaker 1: you that. In riff tracks, I just watch death So
Speaker 1: let's talk about vigilantism for a second. In Bernie Gets,
Speaker 1: I think we should do a whole episode on the
Speaker 1: Bernie Gets It incident. Um, so should we not talk
Speaker 1: about it at all? Really? No? No, we can't. All right, So,
Speaker 1: the brief version is is Bernard Gets the subway shooter
Speaker 1: was on a subway one night. These four African American
Speaker 1: youths utes approached him and one of them said, hey,
Speaker 1: give me five dollars. That was the extent of it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no weapons. I mean, there's a lot of different versions
Speaker 1: of this story that came out in court, but apparently
Speaker 1: did not brandish any weapons. Later on, he said, like,
Speaker 1: one of them opened their coat and I thought he
Speaker 1: had a weapon, but he very quickly and he even
Speaker 1: described it as a quick draw, and he had it
Speaker 1: all planned out. He said he had a sequence of
Speaker 1: shots in his mind, ready to go left or right,
Speaker 1: one shot each, and he shot these four kids and
Speaker 1: it was a very complex case. Shot him without warning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a quick draw. But he didn't say like
Speaker 1: stand back or don't come near. He just quick draw
Speaker 1: and started shooting. Yep, quick drew quick He quick drew
Speaker 1: and shot. Um. He said that he was in physical
Speaker 1: danger and that one of might have had a weapon
Speaker 1: everyone else or not everyone else was for the courts
Speaker 1: to decide, but that he was not in immediate physical danger. Um.
Speaker 1: And then and then there's this whole disputed fact about
Speaker 1: whether or not he went up to one of them
Speaker 1: that was slumped it down kind of on a seat,
Speaker 1: walked up to him and said, you seem okay, here's
Speaker 1: another bam. Later on he said, no, I probably just
Speaker 1: thought that I didn't say it out loud. And then
Speaker 1: there's a dispute about whether or not that shot even
Speaker 1: landed and like if he was actually shot a second time,
Speaker 1: So I really need to dig into this if we're
Speaker 1: gonna do it for real. Well, but the long and
Speaker 1: short of it is, there was a vigilante shooting on
Speaker 1: the subway. Half of New Yorkers were like, good for you,
Speaker 1: Bernie Gets, and half of New York said, no, don't
Speaker 1: pull out a gun and start shooting people. And the
Speaker 1: Guardian angels said, we're in the Bernie Gets camp. That's right,
Speaker 1: so my so that that in Nive on the one
Speaker 1: year anniversary of that shooting, they held a ceremonies celebrating,
Speaker 1: celebrating Bernie Gets in the subway where the shooting took place,
Speaker 1: in which you just don't celebrate people being shot. But
Speaker 1: they really cast their lot behind Bernie Gets, and it
Speaker 1: really damaged their credibility as upholders of you know, law
Speaker 1: and order in the minds of a lot of everyday
Speaker 1: New Yorkers. Yes, another thing that damaged the reputation of
Speaker 1: the Guardians is when slee Wa was kind of forced
Speaker 1: to admit later that, you know, early on, we faked
Speaker 1: some of these things entirely. Talk about damaging your credibility.
Speaker 1: There was one one of the first promotions that they
Speaker 1: may have even still been the Magnificent thirteen was them
Speaker 1: returning a wallet uh that had three hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: it to like a parish priest or something like that.
Speaker 1: And um, they drummed it up. They cooked the whole
Speaker 1: thing up. They told the media about it and and
Speaker 1: got a lot of press, a lot of early press,
Speaker 1: and slee Wah says he regrets doing it, but also
Speaker 1: it really helped, and that either he said it or
Speaker 1: one of the early founders co founders said, have we
Speaker 1: not done this, the organization probably never would have taken off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of the other things supposedly faked. One of them
Speaker 1: doused themselves in gasoline and said that you know a
Speaker 1: criminal had done this, Yeah, because there had been another
Speaker 1: crime where somebody had doused or set a ticket booth
Speaker 1: operator on fire in their ticket booth at the subway,
Speaker 1: and so they were basically capitalizing on that like it
Speaker 1: was gonna happen again, and they stopped it. Another one
Speaker 1: where you see these angels are all bruised up and bleeding. Uh.
Speaker 1: Turns out that one of them had like fallen down
Speaker 1: the steps and gotten bruised. The other one picked off
Speaker 1: a scab and made it bleed again. Yeah, so gross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this did not help their reputation, but you know
Speaker 1: he's acknowledged being a big PR guy. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: that's the thing. If you read those those replies in
Speaker 1: the to that New Yorker article, they're like, basically, all
Speaker 1: you've done is demonstrate that their PR hounds, but also
Speaker 1: that they're actually good at what they're doing. So you know,
Speaker 1: that's fine. That is a real, a real dat in
Speaker 1: their legitimacy for sure that they faked it, Because then
Speaker 1: you're like, how many did they fake? Which is in
Speaker 1: dispute too. Yeah, um, what is not as in dispute
Speaker 1: that we should cover quickly. As on June n Slee
Speaker 1: was kidnapped and shot after entering a fake taxi or
Speaker 1: I guess a stolen taxi. Uh, And it was supposedly
Speaker 1: at the hands of John Gotti Jr. Because Sleewa went
Speaker 1: on the radio show I think he still has a
Speaker 1: show w a BC, Yeah, talking about you know Gott
Speaker 1: he's just a drug dealer, he's a serial killer. And
Speaker 1: John Gotti Jr. Didn't like that and was charged with
Speaker 1: this crime but got off three different times. Three different trials, Yeah,
Speaker 1: including one in when was the most recently in two
Speaker 1: thousand five and all the juries, um said, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna know. All three juries were unable to agree to
Speaker 1: convict him of these charges for that reason. No, you
Speaker 1: never know, I'm not you know. Remember they used to
Speaker 1: call John Gotti's senior the teflon Don Yeah, should do
Speaker 1: you want on him too? Nothing sticks the eighties or
Speaker 1: a gold mine for episodes? Okay, what a decade. So
Speaker 1: the Guardian Angels still around. They came back again in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, although Curtis Lee Wat during publicity said
Speaker 1: we didn't go anywhere. We've been doing patrols every night,
Speaker 1: which may or may not be true. But you could
Speaker 1: still find him if you look hard enough, or if
Speaker 1: you go watch videos from two thousand eighteen. That's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about the Guardian Angels,
Speaker 1: well go meet one. They'll tell you all about it.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, it's time for it's time for
Speaker 1: our friend John Hodgeman. Did you see that signed on
Speaker 1: the back of the I'm ac you appreciate that? Mike
Speaker 1: from a bow Jack Horseman. I was wondering if that
Speaker 1: was a bow Jack. I have not watched that show.
Speaker 1: Don't tell it's not I've not seen an episode. You
Speaker 1: should totally sign them back, though, Yeah, I'd love to.
Speaker 1: That would be ironic. Get it for for the elderly.
Speaker 1: Sure that a nordeck that you're wearing. This is not
Speaker 1: a nord I know, I've yet to look to look
Speaker 1: it up online, but I wondered. I was like, that's
Speaker 1: not so bad. You're referring, of course, to the chapter
Speaker 1: of my new book, Medallion Status, entitled Extinct Talkie about
Speaker 1: the only sport that I like being. I was following
Speaker 1: the logos of extinct talky teams. Northampton Nope, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: you'll never get it. Is it an n and an
Speaker 1: h it is? Okay? Yeah, I don't have any other guesses.
Speaker 1: Let's try all the age towns with north and then
Speaker 1: go through and start over with It's not, it's not
Speaker 1: a town, okay, is it a bill so something? Hockey?
Speaker 1: It's not, it's not and it's not the trick of it.
Speaker 1: There is a guy who would come to my events
Speaker 1: once I started talking about my fascination with the Hartford
Speaker 1: Whaler's logo bestogo in sports. It's pretty great and the
Speaker 1: Quebec Nordek's logo worst logo in sports, like an actively
Speaker 1: aggressively bad design choice, Like it slams the door in
Speaker 1: your face and you're like, I wasn't even going to knock.
Speaker 1: Why are you doing this to me? I'm sorry, I'm listening.
Speaker 1: I just have to find that. You need to look
Speaker 1: it up. I know it the Quebec Nordeck's hockey hockey.
Speaker 1: What would you say that is? Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: get the hockey stick and puck part, but I don't
Speaker 1: know what the other part the hockey stick so so
Speaker 1: so it it It is supposed to be a blood
Speaker 1: red iglue bisected by a hockey stick that does not
Speaker 1: come through with a very large puck. But and the
Speaker 1: and the angle at which the hockey stick bisex the igloe.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to sort of suggest an end for Nordics.
Speaker 1: I had always most people considered to be a form delephant.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say. I had always taken it as
Speaker 1: like I've seen this before. I just didn't realize what
Speaker 1: it was. I thought it was some sort of Republican logo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks because it is red, white and blue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the only thing that you can't really account for is
Speaker 1: the puck, which really is just a circle. Is it's um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a confusing piece of design. And there
Speaker 1: was a guy who would come to my shows uh
Speaker 1: in New York and and still does, name Geene Montroselli,
Speaker 1: but for a long time I didn't know his last name,
Speaker 1: so I just referred to him as mysterious Gene. Because
Speaker 1: at the end of every show, Yeah, you're looking at
Speaker 1: the Hartford Whaler's logo, so smooth, so so so, I
Speaker 1: mean the beauty of the beauty of the Hartford Whalers logo,
Speaker 1: of course is not only does it have that beautiful
Speaker 1: whale's tail and the W, but the two together form
Speaker 1: a negative space h for Hartford. All of this has
Speaker 1: gone on ad nauseum in the book, by the way,
Speaker 1: and now this is what you can read in Medallion status.
Speaker 1: You never do it? What No, No, he'd never noticed.
Speaker 1: I gotta keep things going here, so right now, John
Speaker 1: is y. Yeah, isn't that amazing. There's this trick that
Speaker 1: John really design that you describe in the book, where
Speaker 1: you show people that and you claim that some people
Speaker 1: have gasped when you've pointed, everybody sees the w I
Speaker 1: don't know if I picked up on a gas, but yeah,
Speaker 1: Chuck was impressed. That's like the arrow in FedEx FedEx,
Speaker 1: the negative Space arrow and fed You know that one,
Speaker 1: of course. And you also had a new eight band
Speaker 1: in the eighties called Negative Space. I did in the
Speaker 1: early eighties, and from that mistaken right, well, I did
Speaker 1: as a child. I thought you did know that someone
Speaker 1: I was on tour with the Thompson Twins. I was
Speaker 1: in Boston recently with another another Monster of podcaster, Nick Wiger,
Speaker 1: who's one half of the Dough Boys. If you don't
Speaker 1: know those guys, they feel the feel the breath, feel
Speaker 1: their hot breath on your next They're coming for you.
Speaker 1: Boys are coming. Everybody knows. Nick Wiger and I were
Speaker 1: walking through Boston. My hometown ish from Brookline, and I
Speaker 1: was like, there is the Boston Common. They used to
Speaker 1: concerts on the Common and I said, that's where I
Speaker 1: saw my first concert. Said oh wow, what was it?
Speaker 1: I said, well, it was the Thompson Twins and he goes,
Speaker 1: who are They just silently walked into traffic. That was fine.
Speaker 1: My first is Halling Notates Hall of Notates till Tuesday opening.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Friend Amy Man, I would say, a friend
Speaker 1: of friend of all, friend of all people. My experience
Speaker 1: was cheap trick first show. And my experience with Amy
Speaker 1: Man is I've met her a couple of times, briefly
Speaker 1: as she's fleeing the room because more than five people
Speaker 1: have showed up at the party. Hey man, it's very social.
Speaker 1: And she goes on the Jonathan Colton cruise, which really, yeah,
Speaker 1: could have been on right, you should never been invited.
Speaker 1: Really we haven't. But we can buy tickets. I think
Speaker 1: it's what John saying. No, I think, well, I'm selling tickets.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm here. Let me get my cigar box.
Speaker 1: I'll write out some write out some tickets for you.
Speaker 1: So so anyway, Mysterious Jean would show up to my
Speaker 1: shows and at the foot of the stage. After every
Speaker 1: show he would be standing there, and I considered a
Speaker 1: mysterious Geene because I hadn't bothered to learn his last
Speaker 1: name and be he was acting mysteriously. He would just
Speaker 1: lurk at the foot of the stage and bestow upon
Speaker 1: me a new extinct hockey hat that he had found somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like multiple times so like the Vancouver Millionaires who were
Speaker 1: who were the became the Vancouver Canucks, the Montreal Wanderers
Speaker 1: who were the English language community team hockey team in Montreal,
Speaker 1: you know, because the Canadians were there, and are the
Speaker 1: French now that the only hockey team. Why am I
Speaker 1: talking about sports as we're talking, because you're know you've
Speaker 1: traped out of extinct hockeing into like real hot Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it's I'm act become infected with a certain
Speaker 1: amount of actual sports knowledge. You're done with big hockey.
Speaker 1: Well that's the beauty of like as a as a
Speaker 1: non I never under I never got into sports because sports,
Speaker 1: as I discussed in the book, sports tends to be
Speaker 1: about um winning. It seems like winning is the point
Speaker 1: of their sports. And that's and I am only I've
Speaker 1: only ever been a fan of an underdog like and
Speaker 1: so I could get with. Growing up in Boston, I
Speaker 1: could talk I'll be fine with the Red Sox because
Speaker 1: they losers for so long and they were in this
Speaker 1: constant battle against the quintessential bullies of sports, the Yankees,
Speaker 1: and then they would they would fail. What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Because when I was going up the Red
Speaker 1: Sox were like Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens, and they
Speaker 1: were not losing, No, they weren't losers, but they wouldn't
Speaker 1: make it. They would lose to New York, but they
Speaker 1: beat everybody else and there listen to New York either.
Speaker 1: It was just it was always a there was always
Speaker 1: the curse, right right, yeah, like, oh yeah, that was
Speaker 1: probably the World Series between the New York between the
Speaker 1: Mets and uh right, yeah, the Miracle Mets. But you're
Speaker 1: talking why are we talking about this? I thought the
Speaker 1: Miracle Mets was six. It could be, I can't. But
Speaker 1: you're talking about the curse, which is the fact that
Speaker 1: the Boston Red Sox traded away Babe Ruth forever cursed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were right, and they were cursed, and they
Speaker 1: were and they were never they couldn't win. They couldn't
Speaker 1: win the World Series and they couldn't They didn't go
Speaker 1: to the World Series for a long time. And when
Speaker 1: they did, the ball went right through Bill Buckner's legs
Speaker 1: um and that, you know, I could get behind that
Speaker 1: because they were these consistent underdogs. When they won the
Speaker 1: World Series, I was like, you guys are dead to me.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't handle that. I can't handle that.
Speaker 1: So the hockey is always underdog no matter what, even
Speaker 1: at the highest level, because it's the least. It's the
Speaker 1: minor ist of the major league sport. Yeah, and everyone
Speaker 1: everyone who is a hockey fan in the United States,
Speaker 1: you know, is some is to some degree a man
Speaker 1: or woman without a country, and that country is Canada.
Speaker 1: Like you just don't have it's you know, their teams
Speaker 1: are constantly failing and moving and renaming. I mean they
Speaker 1: have hockey in Phoenix, in Las Vegas. Yeah, it's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: but you will. You make the point in the book
Speaker 1: that like, even in a big city, it's still like
Speaker 1: the little brother to the you know, baseball or basketball
Speaker 1: or football or something. And hockey fans are They're true.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're true fans. But I don't want to
Speaker 1: give away too much, but I I do. After my
Speaker 1: fascination with extinct hockey takes root. I talked in the
Speaker 1: book about I wonder whether I would like actual hockey,
Speaker 1: and I go to an actual hockey game, and for
Speaker 1: the most part, I found it be awesome, charming, it's
Speaker 1: nice that that cool air. It's just so bizarre to
Speaker 1: be in a building and cold like, and it's a
Speaker 1: certain kind of cold that feels good, make a lot fun.
Speaker 1: It's it's the one sport that seeing it live really like,
Speaker 1: even if you're not a fan, you could probably enjoy
Speaker 1: a three hour experience. Yeah, well, what hockeyists are amazing?
Speaker 1: You know. Ice skating alone is impossible enough, you know,
Speaker 1: just to prevent yourself from falling down all that time,
Speaker 1: never mind doing it backwards. And then someone hands you
Speaker 1: a stick and says, now, hit that piece of hard
Speaker 1: rubber into that tiny hard Yeah it's I I can't
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it's it's so it's so challenging that you,
Speaker 1: you know, the tension of the hockey games. You're waiting
Speaker 1: for this almost impossible event of getting a goal. It's
Speaker 1: like waiting to see a quantum event. So there's all
Speaker 1: that's built up tension, and there's massive reliefs when it happened.
Speaker 1: But it happened so quickly, like usually you look away
Speaker 1: for a second and uh, and then you miss it.
Speaker 1: But you know, I I enjoyed. I enjoyed. The hockey
Speaker 1: itself was very charming because it was a Pittsburgh Penguins
Speaker 1: game for whatever reason and against the Tampa Tampa bad guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lightning right. I was. I was a Penguins person because
Speaker 1: Ron Frans Ron Francis went from the went from the
Speaker 1: Whalers to play for the So there was a whaler's
Speaker 1: legacy there. And I stuff at the Penguins. Well no, no,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, I no, no, no, no. People are really
Speaker 1: into Whalers merchandise now, I think largely because of my
Speaker 1: personal lobbying for the amazing, the amazing sports design. Uh
Speaker 1: the logo by Peter Good and West Hartford, Connecticut. Um.
Speaker 1: But before I went to this game, I called a
Speaker 1: hockey blogger that I know, Greg Wushninsky, and uh, of
Speaker 1: course he's a hockey blogger. And I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of wharing my my whaler's hat to this hockey game.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I don't want anyone to hit me.
Speaker 1: I don't want I figure it's fine, but I just
Speaker 1: wanted to double check that there are no deep rivalries
Speaker 1: or thing that I'm going to be you know, triggering
Speaker 1: among the And he said it was it was probably
Speaker 1: people have a lot of fondness for the Whalers, and
Speaker 1: that was fine, but I didn't I decided not to.
Speaker 1: I bought a penguin's hat, and I wore the penguin's hat.
Speaker 1: And the thing about extinct talky that is that is
Speaker 1: so that is different from the thing about real hockey.
Speaker 1: Actual hockey is different. Extinctalky is extinct talky. The outcome
Speaker 1: is known. They lost, you know what I mean. You
Speaker 1: just feel sad. You think about it, right, and actual
Speaker 1: hockey is out it's unfolding in front of you. Don't
Speaker 1: know the outcome. And as you know, I cannot tolerate ambiguity.
Speaker 1: I dislike it very much. And I came down to
Speaker 1: sudden death and I got really, really really nervous. And
Speaker 1: Greg Greg had told me that Greg had told me that,
Speaker 1: you know, when he would get nervous growing up watching hockey,
Speaker 1: he would drink pink lemonade as a as a young person,
Speaker 1: and that would that would help the team win. And
Speaker 1: I was offended by that because I don't love sports,
Speaker 1: but I have appreciation for athletes than what they're doing
Speaker 1: is the the product of hard work and training and
Speaker 1: and and physics and physical space. And you probably don't
Speaker 1: believe in superstition either, Yeah, I believe in science, and
Speaker 1: I think It's an insult to athletes for Greg to
Speaker 1: think he can control their bodies with his mind and beverage.
Speaker 1: To see a kid. He was a kid at the time,
Speaker 1: but you know, there's plenty of adult plenty of supermissions.
Speaker 1: And of course, in that moment in sudden death, after
Speaker 1: you know, three periods and a couple of overtimes or whatever,
Speaker 1: however was there has been a lot of hockey. I
Speaker 1: was like tired and cold, and I had loved the hockey,
Speaker 1: but I was ready for hockey to be over. But
Speaker 1: I wanted my my team to win, the Penguins. Let's
Speaker 1: go Pens. And at that moment of sudden death, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna put on my heart for
Speaker 1: whale ers at because it's going to help them win.
Speaker 1: Like science was abandoned, and all of a sudden I
Speaker 1: was I was not really superstitions. I was convinced that
Speaker 1: my my putting on a different hat was going to
Speaker 1: affect the outcome of what was happening on the ice.
Speaker 1: And when you think about it makes sense. Whalers penguins,
Speaker 1: they're both marine animals. They're gonna work for each other,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And of course I put
Speaker 1: on the whaler's hat. Within a seven seconds, Penguins lose,
Speaker 1: really Penguins lose, and just like the whole the whole
Speaker 1: arena went dark. I felt like, and only I knew
Speaker 1: that I had caused it to happen. Did you keep
Speaker 1: it to yourself? Of course I did not tell anyone.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry everybody, I that I forced the outcome. The
Speaker 1: Penguins did not win. Was it a playoff game or anything?
Speaker 1: Or just a playoff game? But I think that that year, don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think they were eliminated. It was fine. They went.
Speaker 1: They went on to do some more good hockey. So
Speaker 1: what's the h on your head? Oh? So Jean would
Speaker 1: bring right, mysterious Jean would mysteriously like would mysteriously appear.
Speaker 1: He would operate Harry Potter style to the stage with
Speaker 1: a new hat and the right and then oh, there
Speaker 1: is one the Brooklyn Americans, which is a wait, wait,
Speaker 1: just keep keep staying with mysterious change. No, that was
Speaker 1: another he gave. There was a hockey team that played
Speaker 1: for one season and then he started running out of
Speaker 1: hockey teams, and he gave me this hat, which is
Speaker 1: his really cool hat. It is not a hockey hat however,
Speaker 1: and it is an existing sports team, but it is.
Speaker 1: It is. It is a sports team in Japan. Okay,
Speaker 1: is it a baseball team? It is a baseball team
Speaker 1: and it is. Do you want to? I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it before. Baseball teams in Japan are
Speaker 1: often organized around corporations. I don't know whether the corporations
Speaker 1: formed the teams or sponsor the teams. But this is
Speaker 1: a longstanding Japanese baseball team, like the Zerox Tigers or
Speaker 1: something like the equivalent. Yeah, this is the company. The
Speaker 1: NH is Nipon hamm Yeah, and these are the Nippon
Speaker 1: ham Fighters, So it's the Nippon ham Fighters. That's a
Speaker 1: crazy great hat. Yeah. I mean the logo doesn't really
Speaker 1: get that across that their Ham or Fighters no in Japanese.
Speaker 1: But the story behind it's pretty great. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: good it's a pretty good looking logo and anyone can
Speaker 1: look it up. It's the old fashioned one. If you're listening,
Speaker 1: it's no hard Ford Whalers logo. But that I'll tell
Speaker 1: you something that you know. I was I was in Boston,
Speaker 1: um doing doing another podcast, The Doughboys, podcast. Sorry, who
Speaker 1: are breathing down our next? Yeah, they're coming for you,
Speaker 1: don't boys are coming in no small part because you're
Speaker 1: aiding them apparently. I'm no, I'm just I'm what. What
Speaker 1: is it when you are on the highway and you
Speaker 1: drive real, real close to the back of a truck
Speaker 1: back draftingrafting right? Yeah, that's how you you get mileage right,
Speaker 1: because you're not you're reducing wind shear against you. You're
Speaker 1: you're riding in their wake. That's what I'm saying. They
Speaker 1: do that I'm doing with you guys, is what I'm
Speaker 1: doing the dough boys. It's a way to go. You're drafting.
Speaker 1: Just I'm just grabbing on and hanging on. I hope
Speaker 1: you guys will bring me, but you don't need any help.
Speaker 1: You have your own podcast, Judge John cult Classics. I
Speaker 1: think it's bigger than ever too. It's doing very well.
Speaker 1: I'm amazed, and you know doing it not quite as
Speaker 1: long as you guys have been doing. But it's been
Speaker 1: on for a long time. And I know people who
Speaker 1: point to judgments that you've made to settle other disputes,
Speaker 1: like no hodgement rule, that hot dog is not a sandwich,
Speaker 1: hot dog is not a sandwich. People like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's okay. I'm not going to get in. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it is not a sandwich at all. I don't
Speaker 1: understand how that's true. Do you think it's a sandwich.
Speaker 1: I it's not that I think it's a sandwich. It's
Speaker 1: more I realize I'm inviting Hodgman to explain, and I'm refusing.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I don't see how it has how
Speaker 1: they I just think I have to go listen to
Speaker 1: that episode because I'm more aware of the cultural aspect
Speaker 1: of your ruling then I am with the actual episode.
Speaker 1: Actually wasn't It wasn't an episode. I also write a
Speaker 1: little column net in the New York Times magazine called
Speaker 1: Judge John Hodgman. No one who reads the magazine knows
Speaker 1: that there is a podcast called Judge John Hodgman. I
Speaker 1: thank you, Josh. You are of course the exception proves
Speaker 1: every rule, and no one, no one who listens to
Speaker 1: the podcast ever reads the New York Times magazine, and
Speaker 1: I do once again exception. But someone had written in
Speaker 1: uh that he and his buddy were having a fight
Speaker 1: where the hot dog was a sandwich. I had to
Speaker 1: think about it. For a long time because I appreciate
Speaker 1: why you would sort of say, well, of course it is,
Speaker 1: but there is something weird and different about it that
Speaker 1: makes the question sticky, right, I mean, like, and I
Speaker 1: was trying to think, you know, what would be the
Speaker 1: disqualifying factor? What would be the trait? Because there are
Speaker 1: many traits that hot dogs and a typical sandwich you know,
Speaker 1: your class and a sandwich nip on Ham go fighters
Speaker 1: uh having common in terms of bread and and filling,
Speaker 1: proportion and style whatever condiments, especially like Chicago style. It's
Speaker 1: a sandwich. He as a hot dog, and it's obviously shaped.
Speaker 1: It's obviously shaped different than a classic nippon Ham sandwich,
Speaker 1: like straight up square cutting triangle with bread that's not
Speaker 1: connected right, No, I think that's a big one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so is that the disqualifying thing that it's shaped
Speaker 1: and it has connected bread. Well, I would say, I
Speaker 1: would never strike me to say that a sub or
Speaker 1: a HOGI or a hero is not a sandwich. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a great point. Hero ain't nothing but a sandwich.
Speaker 1: According to young adult literature, I don't know that that's
Speaker 1: an old goose bumps reference or even before then, Remember,
Speaker 1: how are you boys, It's like a Thompson Twins era thing. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm older. I'm older. I'm not young like you guys,
Speaker 1: you're my same exact age. I'm two months older than you.
Speaker 1: But finally, the thing is that true March your June right,
Speaker 1: I'm June. Yeah? Oh yeah, happy birthday, old man, you're
Speaker 1: young a hard Happy birthday to you both. So hot
Speaker 1: dogs so that you didn't want to explain this again,
Speaker 1: but now it happened, So I said, what what is
Speaker 1: the what is the other trait that hot dog? What?
Speaker 1: What is is there any disqualifying trait that would that
Speaker 1: a hot dog would have that a sandwich wouldn't, or
Speaker 1: vice versa. And then I realized, like, well, yeah, ahogia hero,
Speaker 1: sub grinder, wedge sandwich they call those wedges and buffalo
Speaker 1: you you you you would cut those in half and
Speaker 1: share them. Any sandwich, anything that I consider a sandwich,
Speaker 1: you cut it in half and share. Like soup and
Speaker 1: a half sandwich, that's a thing. You never get soup
Speaker 1: and a half hot dog. That'd be weird. Would you
Speaker 1: cut in foot long in half? Well, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you physically can't. No, you would never. I would never ever, ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever cut wouldn't have I love. It's like to appease
Speaker 1: an extremely not extremely pigy job, but a child. Sure
Speaker 1: what I mean? Right? You just made me physically high.
Speaker 1: You did something in my brain with that disqualified. Plus,
Speaker 1: the hot dog Bun has that that metal door hinge
Speaker 1: on the bottom. Pokey can too. Yeah, they don't have
Speaker 1: a metal door hinge. Yeah, alright, you get settle door hinge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what the hot dog bun. That's how it fits together, right, metal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got that metal door hinge. That's what happened to
Speaker 1: your teeth? H's what happened. I was doing a bit guys,
Speaker 1: so sorry, sorry, So I've read this book of yours.
Speaker 1: This is what your fifth book. This is my fifth book.
Speaker 1: Medallion Status do out October, hardcover. I believe you you
Speaker 1: in hardcover, also electronic printing pre ordered. It's available for
Speaker 1: pre order and audio book also all available on oct
Speaker 1: and depending on when you hear this, you may either
Speaker 1: order or pre order it at bit dot lee Slash.
Speaker 1: Medallion Status all one word, all capital letters, and I'll
Speaker 1: take you to your anywhere you buy books, including indie bound.
Speaker 1: If you want to connect with your local two ells
Speaker 1: in medallion these days? Two ells in medallion? Did I
Speaker 1: spell it wrong in my mind now or on my book?
Speaker 1: Is that one of the typos you found? So they
Speaker 1: in this book. It is dripping with nostalgia. And one
Speaker 1: of the things you're kind of famous for on our
Speaker 1: podcast these Days is for considering nostalgia to be utterly toxic. Toxic.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember coming on a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. I remember very much, and nostalgia is
Speaker 1: a toxic impulse. Is also so how do you become
Speaker 1: a man? A meaningful point of settled law? And Judge
Speaker 1: John Hodge where people are trying to erase progress and
Speaker 1: believe it can be done, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: a terrible social movement. And culturally, when we get too
Speaker 1: fond over fond of the past and just want to
Speaker 1: live in it and live in it, living it, you've
Speaker 1: got a culture where they're making Battlestar Galactica again, right, No,
Speaker 1: I mean just today you know they're they're rebooting Battlestar
Speaker 1: Galactica a third while now a second I hadn't heard that.
Speaker 1: Is there a one? I don't know, just because just
Speaker 1: because I believe that it's a piece of toxic nostalgia
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I don't need a job. I had one.
Speaker 1: I had a bit role. I had a bit role
Speaker 1: on on the On the two thousand three to two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, Ronald D. Moore David like show run Battlestar
Speaker 1: Galactic sci. I was in the fourth season, and um,
Speaker 1: I did not do a good job and it's not
Speaker 1: worth watching. What was your big line? These pretzels are
Speaker 1: making me thirsty. It really is a very I think
Speaker 1: I was referring to a guy's brain scan and I
Speaker 1: was a brain doctor Space brain doctor, right, and I
Speaker 1: was like, it really is a very lovely image. All
Speaker 1: I care about is how how crazy. All I care
Speaker 1: about is how uh perfectly this bullet got lodged in
Speaker 1: his main character's brain and his wife Starbuck, is like
Speaker 1: freaking out because he can't speak anymore because he's gotten,
Speaker 1: um what, he's shot in the brain. He's been shot
Speaker 1: in the brain and it's it's effective, you know, but
Speaker 1: like we call it word salad, but it has a
Speaker 1: a term. A brain a brain injury that causes you
Speaker 1: to be able to and aphasia. Yeah, yeah, so he's
Speaker 1: going into a phasia fugue States, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called words out, it happens. But anyway, this is
Speaker 1: really amazing. I thought Starbuck was the name of the
Speaker 1: robot and Buck Rogers. Know you're talking about tweaking tweaky.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need a little more nostalgia. Maybe I'll prescribe
Speaker 1: a little bit for you. I've been avoiding it ever
Speaker 1: since you came on last time, so I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: if it is, I feel bad if you interpreted that is,
Speaker 1: I think. Never think about that, really, John, I was
Speaker 1: just going through here looking for something, something that Joshy
Speaker 1: Sandbag is known for. So this book actually made me
Speaker 1: laugh out loud multiple times. Thank you very much, Like
Speaker 1: I can't remember last time I read something that made
Speaker 1: me laugh out out. Did you not read Vacation Land,
Speaker 1: my previous book. I actually did not. He didn't know
Speaker 1: I haven't read. Well that's interesting because yeah, this is
Speaker 1: my fifth book. But for the first three, obviously or
Speaker 1: perhaps not so obviously, were were compendiums of fake triviua
Speaker 1: of fake facts, and yeah, I loved I loved making them,
Speaker 1: although by the third one I was like, I cannot
Speaker 1: come up with a a Zeppelin joke. Anymore, like like,
Speaker 1: this is not what I want to be doing anymore.
Speaker 1: And by that time, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: were venturing into fake facts as a as a cultural
Speaker 1: and political tool, and I wanted to get away from that.
Speaker 1: And so you took a long break though between writing these, said, Well,
Speaker 1: it was a couple of years when I was just
Speaker 1: going up on stage in in Brooklyn, just telling whatever
Speaker 1: stories I could tell to make people engaged and laugh ideally,
Speaker 1: and then collecting extinct hockey caps from mysterious gene at
Speaker 1: the end of the night. And then I finally compiled
Speaker 1: those what I was trying to figure out what I
Speaker 1: still had to say, and what I realized about those
Speaker 1: stories were they were all true. They weren't dissembling, they
Speaker 1: were an arch they weren't absurd as humor. They were
Speaker 1: just sort of first person stories from my life in
Speaker 1: vacation land as I was transitioning um from one geographical
Speaker 1: place to another, from Brooklyn, New York to rural Maine,
Speaker 1: where we spend a lot of time now and from
Speaker 1: and traveling through a different wilderness of middle age, and
Speaker 1: sort of adjusting to the fact that I was The
Speaker 1: time does move forward and I'm not. I'm not staying
Speaker 1: the same age. Well, the book makes it sound like
Speaker 1: you're well, thank you very much. Well, so medallion status
Speaker 1: is not, you know, it is stories from the same
Speaker 1: period of time. But rather than talking about the time
Speaker 1: that I spent in the in the cold, painful beaches
Speaker 1: and cold painful water of Maine, back on the road,
Speaker 1: working on various television shows and all the various weird jobs.
Speaker 1: Because you talk about the Coolidge Corner movie house, I
Speaker 1: talked about all the weird jobs that I've always had,
Speaker 1: including the weirdest job you know that was the most
Speaker 1: recent one, which was this unexpected experience of being on
Speaker 1: television and being somewhat famous, and then the experience of
Speaker 1: sort of losing that job, not completely just did it.
Speaker 1: Just did a two episode arc on the unnamed television program. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really maddening just how little you actually name in here.
Speaker 1: You don't name drop almost at all. Oh, well, that's true,
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess. I don't know why I did that,
Speaker 1: because you could probably figure out all the different shows
Speaker 1: and I'm referring to. But it's just if you don't
Speaker 1: do that, it becomes this kind of ongoing saga, what
Speaker 1: show is he talking to? I'm here too, I'm here
Speaker 1: to unload. Killed a couple of times. Yeah, what shows
Speaker 1: were you killed on? I was killed on UM. I
Speaker 1: just remembered another one. That's why I paused, because the
Speaker 1: two that I always remember are The Nick and blind Spot.
Speaker 1: But I was also killed on John Glaziers Do Located.
Speaker 1: But that's a different story. My main deaths. We're on
Speaker 1: NBC thriller blind Spot. Did not see that. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you're one of a few people in the world because yeah,
Speaker 1: is a huge internationally. It's well, not so great because
Speaker 1: I got killed. Is it the one where you were
Speaker 1: a bad FBI agent? I was an evil FBI, evil
Speaker 1: FBI agent who was a meanie to every all the
Speaker 1: nice people. I also was killed off screen in The Nick,
Speaker 1: which did the Soderberg's thing, um, but the blind The
Speaker 1: blind Spot death was particularly frustrating because the show was
Speaker 1: was created by a friend of mine who had been
Speaker 1: UM a producer and writer on Board to Death, which
Speaker 1: is a HBO, was one of my faiths me too,
Speaker 1: and I really missed that and everybody Martin created at
Speaker 1: this new show, which is this thriller that is very
Speaker 1: smart and fun, and and a second bunch of puzzles
Speaker 1: and visually very distinctive and and it was very proud
Speaker 1: to be I was very proud to be asked to
Speaker 1: be a small part of it. But you know, all
Speaker 1: those things are great. But the really great thing about
Speaker 1: blind Spot is, and I'm not sure everyone who watches
Speaker 1: it around the world appreciates this, particularly great thing about
Speaker 1: blind Spot is that it shoots at Steiner Studios, which
Speaker 1: is a twenty minute drive from my house. That's it
Speaker 1: was the greatest. It was like going like as a
Speaker 1: person who has held tons and tons of different weird,
Speaker 1: oddball jobs from literary agent to uh cheesemonger, to traffic
Speaker 1: counter to famous minor television personality to podcast or to whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. It's a it's a wonderful, itinerant experience where
Speaker 1: you learn a lot and you get to meet a
Speaker 1: lot of people. But at you're hustling all the time, hustle, hustle,
Speaker 1: hustle to just drive to my job and park at
Speaker 1: this video and then go in and then have a
Speaker 1: little breakfast and then say my words and make my faces,
Speaker 1: which is what acting is, and then drive home like
Speaker 1: a straight up dad the greatest board to death was
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood too, right, Board to death shot there,
Speaker 1: a lot board to death shot all over the all
Speaker 1: over Brooklyn, however, but blind s about a lot of it.
Speaker 1: She's just right in that studio and it was just
Speaker 1: this controlled, comfortable environment and they have snacks for you.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is I'm ready, like I'll do
Speaker 1: this for the rest of my life. I'll cancel everything else.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna blind spot it till the end. And then
Speaker 1: Martin goes, did you read the next script? And I'm
Speaker 1: like no. He's like, oh, you don't like it? And
Speaker 1: I did like it because it turned out my character
Speaker 1: was a monster, But then that monster got put down.
Speaker 1: Rather than being a monster for years on the show,
Speaker 1: I was a monster for a second on the show.
Speaker 1: And I got and I and I got the evil
Speaker 1: FBI agent got shot dead by the nice by the
Speaker 1: nice ees, and and I was like, I don't want
Speaker 1: that to happen. And I said to and many times like,
Speaker 1: is there any you know I know this? A lot
Speaker 1: of people who die on the show come back as
Speaker 1: like a flashback or a hallucination. And he goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that happens like what what if? What if I what if?
Speaker 1: What if I come back as a hallucination or a flashback.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's really gonna have an idea. How
Speaker 1: about I come back as my own twin, except instead
Speaker 1: of as an evil twin plot line, is a good twin.
Speaker 1: I'm a good twin and I don't and I am
Speaker 1: not mean to everybody, and they make me part of
Speaker 1: the good guy club and he's like, Matt will never
Speaker 1: never ever happen. But it was the show that sort
Speaker 1: of started the maximum in my career. And I would
Speaker 1: say to show runners whenever I would hire, be hired
Speaker 1: in the guest role or whatever, I'd be like, you
Speaker 1: gotta kill me. You gotta kill me in the show,
Speaker 1: because every show that I that I am killed in
Speaker 1: becomes a huge commercial and critical success, and every show
Speaker 1: that I live in gets kimped. Yeah, and you almost, um,
Speaker 1: this is a part that you would have gotten killed
Speaker 1: in but did not. Was breaking bad? You almost played
Speaker 1: Gabe was a Gabe? Which one was Gabe? I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't. It was a major character in the second
Speaker 1: or third season. I remember the actor who was cast,
Speaker 1: David Costabile or David Costable is how he pronounces his name.
Speaker 1: I always thought it was costabile. But he's an incredible actor,
Speaker 1: Okavid Constable, And you've seen him in everything from the
Speaker 1: Wire Too uh to Fly to the Concords. I think
Speaker 1: he's on billions or something now. He's a constantly working
Speaker 1: actor and entirely appropriately and frankly did a much better
Speaker 1: job than I could have done in that role. But
Speaker 1: I had been offered that role. And this is a
Speaker 1: role of um waltz uh assistant after he and Jesse
Speaker 1: part who gets killed? Who does get killed? Spoiler for
Speaker 1: those of you who have not watched all the Breaking
Speaker 1: bed and um and I was afraid to take the
Speaker 1: job because it meant going and spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time in Albuquerque, and I was just made me scared,
Speaker 1: like I'm leaving my family behind and being Albuquerque. And
Speaker 1: it was a terrible mistake for me. I mean it
Speaker 1: was it like, yeah, I should have left my family behind.
Speaker 1: They would have handled it. It would have been incredible
Speaker 1: learning opportunity for me and an incredible experience. Um and
Speaker 1: so it was a terrible mistake for me. A great
Speaker 1: outcome for Breaking Bad, but you because they got David
Speaker 1: Constable to do it, and I'm sure, I'm I mean,
Speaker 1: what he brought to that, and I'm sure his role
Speaker 1: got much bigger because of what he was doing. I'm
Speaker 1: sure if I had gotten that role there would like,
Speaker 1: can we kill him sooner? Let's not, let's not draw
Speaker 1: this out, Let's just have this happen right away. And
Speaker 1: I saw him uh at at a coffee shop in
Speaker 1: New York, Eisenberg's my favorite old timy coffee shop, and
Speaker 1: he was there and I just said, I'm I'm really
Speaker 1: glad you got that role. He's like, it's actually it's
Speaker 1: pronounced constable, he said, I always thought it was Costa bile.
Speaker 1: How does it? How is it pronounced? On the audio
Speaker 1: version of Medallion Status, I don't know his I did
Speaker 1: not mention his name. I didn't really. I only told
Speaker 1: that story and in reflection in Medallion's Yeah, because in
Speaker 1: the book you say um like go to say yes,
Speaker 1: which I thought was really it's a good it's good advice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I was asked the subtitle of the book
Speaker 1: is True Stories from Secret Rooms. Because I've always been adept,
Speaker 1: even before I was whatever, I am famous of sort
Speaker 1: of getting getting into getting into rooms that I wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily invited into UM and I loved peering into secret
Speaker 1: societies of different kinds. And you know, when you when
Speaker 1: you were on TV a little bit, you get invited
Speaker 1: into gifting lounges at the Emmy's and into private parties
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then I than but on my own
Speaker 1: without and I guess because I had a little bit
Speaker 1: of Famale house, I was able to weasel my way
Speaker 1: into a dinner at Yale University of a secret society.
Speaker 1: They're called booking Snake and the secret societies at Yale
Speaker 1: University are you in into Yale and Yales a very
Speaker 1: old college. It predates frats, so they had to come
Speaker 1: up with other systems for young men to hang around
Speaker 1: each other and lived together. So they're like they were
Speaker 1: still figuring it out. So they're like they had two experiments.
Speaker 1: One was uh, secret societies, which are these senior societies
Speaker 1: about fifteen to twenty seniors originally all men at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, but a book Skull and Bones is the
Speaker 1: most famous ones. And snake, um Scroll and Key or
Speaker 1: some of the other ones. And they inhabit these these
Speaker 1: windowless these beautiful but looks like like beautiful old municipal buildings,
Speaker 1: architecturally very significant, built in the nineteen winnies or so,
Speaker 1: and often as ignated landmarks. And they have no windows,
Speaker 1: and they're just clubhouses for seniors. It's like it's they're
Speaker 1: they're like tomb they're called tombs, and they're you know,
Speaker 1: sort of museums of white privilege that you wander. And
Speaker 1: then the other thing that the other idea they came
Speaker 1: up with was like how many acapella How many acapella
Speaker 1: singing groups can we have? Thirty five? It's like there's
Speaker 1: more acapella per per capita in New Haven than anywhere
Speaker 1: else on the earth, and no one's doing anything about it,
Speaker 1: was shutting it down. So I had wanted to go
Speaker 1: into Book and Snake. This is part of the reason
Speaker 1: I maybe the reason I apply to Yale, because I
Speaker 1: was fascinated by these clubs, and I had gotten invited
Speaker 1: to go to one um as a freshman, a party
Speaker 1: at Book and Snake, and I was so excited that
Speaker 1: I got ruinously drunk. As soon as I was in there,
Speaker 1: I fell down the stairs, hit my head, woke up
Speaker 1: in the hospital. I was very lucky that nothing has happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty lucky. And you could have been an offering
Speaker 1: that evening. Maybe that was what was supposed to have happened.
Speaker 1: But they found somehow, they found me screaming the New Haven,
Speaker 1: bloody wearing wearing nothing but a but a loincloth and
Speaker 1: a goat mask. I don't know what happened. It was wild,
Speaker 1: but like all of them, and I tried to remember.
Speaker 1: All I wanted to do was see inside this building.
Speaker 1: And I had, I had been in there, but all
Speaker 1: of my memory of the inside had been erased. I
Speaker 1: could not remember what had happened. I remember the last
Speaker 1: thing I remember was walking up to the door. I'm like, blood,
Speaker 1: these secrets, societies, No, they're stuff. He really came out
Speaker 1: or erase a mind, Just get somebody liquored up and
Speaker 1: push him down the well. And I think, I think
Speaker 1: I did it myself. But when I got when I
Speaker 1: got a little bit of renown and was would tell
Speaker 1: this story on stage, and it was getting around. I
Speaker 1: was I was contacted by a couple of booking snakes,
Speaker 1: yeah snaky's. I won't say their names. It was a
Speaker 1: man and a woman. We'll call him booker and snake. You,
Speaker 1: and they said, why don't you come to dinner, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I want to come to dinner in
Speaker 1: this clubhouse. And I went and it was so weird
Speaker 1: and exciting too, and like, you know, life, life doesn't
Speaker 1: offer perfect circles very often. And the the image as
Speaker 1: on the cover of the book by Aaron Rapplin of
Speaker 1: the the logo of Book and Snake is a book
Speaker 1: and a snake an Ora boros a snake eating its
Speaker 1: own tail. So it's like this perfect Like that's a
Speaker 1: that's a symbol of eternity and also a symbol of
Speaker 1: the dumbest snake in the world. Maybe I like that
Speaker 1: snake was about to eat my own butt by going
Speaker 1: back in. But we had a wonderful time, and you know,
Speaker 1: they were really nice, young young people. Um, there was
Speaker 1: some older alumni who would come in, Like there was
Speaker 1: one guy, James, who's in his early thirties and he
Speaker 1: just told me he'd just been appointed. Public transportations are
Speaker 1: for New Haven. I'm like, you know, if there any
Speaker 1: Alex Jones people out there who are wondering, is the
Speaker 1: is the public transportation of uh some some small southern
Speaker 1: Connecticut cities run by secret societies. The answer is, yes,
Speaker 1: Illuminati is real. If they're they're running your public buses
Speaker 1: in Haven and um, it was just we had a
Speaker 1: fun time. We're hanging out and at some point the
Speaker 1: the young people, out of politeness, said, you know, well,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the what what would you say as
Speaker 1: a secret to your success such as it is? You know,
Speaker 1: and you can keep secrets, you know, that's right. The
Speaker 1: answer was go on television that the advice, the advice
Speaker 1: that I gave them was, first of all, don't get
Speaker 1: drunk and fall down the stairs. Please, don't get drunk
Speaker 1: and fall down the stairs. Don't, you know, don't think
Speaker 1: that you're immortal, you know, don't especially you know, white
Speaker 1: white guys truly don't understand that they're breakable until until
Speaker 1: they get older. You don't grow up with the sense
Speaker 1: of my body can be harmed or taken at any moment,
Speaker 1: m by another figure of authority or another person in
Speaker 1: the way non white guys feel every day, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Like, so they do things like jump
Speaker 1: off cliffs in Hawaii, climb up mountains and fall downstairs
Speaker 1: because they think they're immortal. But you're not. You can
Speaker 1: fall down you can break your neck and die. So
Speaker 1: don't do drunk and stay down the stairs. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is the secret of my success. It's the
Speaker 1: same secret for what brought me to the Secret Society,
Speaker 1: which is someone invited me to do something and I
Speaker 1: said yes, and you know, don't say you know if
Speaker 1: if you're not If you're invited to do something interesting
Speaker 1: and it's not going to hurt you or somebody else,
Speaker 1: you should say yes. You should see what happens. That's
Speaker 1: I mean, that's so much harder to to to do
Speaker 1: sometimes than than is said. But it's it is just
Speaker 1: that it's core good advice. Well, I'm an incredibly smart person.
Speaker 1: These kids, these kids I'm sure have thrived in my wake.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's like I didn't say yes to
Speaker 1: that job in Albuquerque, and I regret it. I could
Speaker 1: have easily said yes. But people asking you to do
Speaker 1: interesting things is also it's it means sometimes having to
Speaker 1: leave a job, but means sometimes having to tell someone
Speaker 1: you care about you're gonna be away for a while.
Speaker 1: It means your comfort change and your and what time
Speaker 1: you wake up, you know what I mean. And it's
Speaker 1: really easy to come up with a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: why you would say no. But if it's it's better
Speaker 1: to just say yes and see what happens. And I haven't,
Speaker 1: I've hardly I've certainly failed in that a lot. But
Speaker 1: take that, Nancy Reagan. Yeah, just say just say, just
Speaker 1: say yes. Do you have any tour dates that you
Speaker 1: want to plug? Yeah? So, uh, all all of my
Speaker 1: I'll just preface this by saying all my tour dates
Speaker 1: are available at John Hodgman dot com slash tour Beautiful.
Speaker 1: The Medallion Status tour is going to be taking me
Speaker 1: to famous John Hodgman stomping grounds like Brookline, Massachusetts, Symphony
Speaker 1: Space where I'll be talking with our friend Elizabeth Gilbert.
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, where I'll be talking with our friend Damie Mann.
Speaker 1: Uh San Francisco. We're I'll be talking with my friends Linus,
Speaker 1: the Corgy and Choppers, the Corky too famous Corgies of Instagram,
Speaker 1: who figure prominently in this book. They are too famous Corkies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're on the cover. Look, I want the book to sell,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And I put to two
Speaker 1: quaries on the cover. I'm guaranteed a ten percent bump
Speaker 1: in the sales. But when I One of the stories
Speaker 1: I talked. One of the secret rooms that I got
Speaker 1: into was a party at during San Francisco Sketch Fest
Speaker 1: at Adam Savage's workshop, the MythBusters. Adam Savage plows all
Speaker 1: of his myth sister's money into his deep, deep, and
Speaker 1: rewarding hobby of proper replication. Have you been to his workshop?
Speaker 1: I have not. We should we should go there. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I would look to it sounds amazing like he just
Speaker 1: he makes things from the movies. So he'll make a
Speaker 1: perfect replica of Tom Scarrett space suit from Alien or
Speaker 1: that Blade Runner. Yeah, he's made this. Making making Harrison
Speaker 1: Ford's blaster from Blade Runner has been this lifelong pursuit
Speaker 1: that he's perfected and perfected. I mean he he's made
Speaker 1: I think six for other people and six more for
Speaker 1: himself or something like that, like just in case it
Speaker 1: goes down and there's and there or do they actually function? No, no,
Speaker 1: no they don't. And he's got he's got like a
Speaker 1: Han solo and carbonite hanging up in there, and he's
Speaker 1: got a full size Admiral lack Bar that Admiral Ackbar
Speaker 1: is dressed at dressed up in uh Napoleonic War era
Speaker 1: naval uniform that is a perfect replica of Mastering Russell
Speaker 1: Crowe's causton and Mastering Commander. And I wasn't this party enjoying,
Speaker 1: this exclusive invitation only party with all these other comedians
Speaker 1: enjoying which just watching and enjoying nerd minds exploding. And
Speaker 1: I see these two dogs in there, and I'm turning
Speaker 1: to Kevin Murphy and like who invited the people with
Speaker 1: the dogs? And he goes, Oh, the people weren't invited.
Speaker 1: The dogs were invited. Like what he says, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the line is the Corgy and Choppers of the quarter
Speaker 1: to famous corgies of Instagram. My friend Connor Lestoca is
Speaker 1: a huge fan of theirs and invited to the party.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, wait a minute, I just I just
Speaker 1: performed comedy on stage in English that I speak on
Speaker 1: two legs, not four, and I can sweat all over
Speaker 1: my body. I don't have to have to pant. And
Speaker 1: these guys are getting invited to my exclusive party because
Speaker 1: they're dogs. They probably don't even know what planet Admiral
Speaker 1: Lackbar is from. Answer is mom, Calamari, there you go, dogs?
Speaker 1: It real, mon, Calamari, Mom Calumar. It is a dumb, terrible,
Speaker 1: dumb star. That's terrible. So anyway, yeah, Lionus and Shoppers
Speaker 1: are going to be there in San Francisco or no,
Speaker 1: we're gonna final. We've become friends now and basically I'm
Speaker 1: draft I'm I'm I'm draft back drafting them. You don't
Speaker 1: want to You don't want to back draft a dog
Speaker 1: too closely, but especially tales. Yeah, exactly, you can't get
Speaker 1: pretty close. And then uh, and then we're I'll be
Speaker 1: in Minnesota and Chicago, and then in November we're gonna
Speaker 1: hit a bunch of other cities. Um, Jesse Thorn and
Speaker 1: I as a Judge John Hodgman tour, You're coming here
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, coming here to Atlanta, the Variety looking forward
Speaker 1: to that. It'll be a lot of fun. Um Washington,
Speaker 1: d C, Toronto, Portland, Maine, and Durham, North Carolina. So
Speaker 1: and all of those those will be Judge John Hodgman shows,
Speaker 1: but Medallion Status will be available for purchase. And whether
Speaker 1: it's a Judge Sean Hodgen show or a Medallion Status event,
Speaker 1: I'll be hanging around signing everything, hanging out or whatever.
Speaker 1: And you're big at that I will say you know,
Speaker 1: I will say this again, dot Lee slash medallion status.
Speaker 1: Sorry in this in this crowded culture, you gotta hashtag
Speaker 1: always be plugging. That link is the preorder link um,
Speaker 1: and I ask people to consider buying it that way
Speaker 1: because getting a Russian preorders right at the top is
Speaker 1: really really helpful to the launch of the But I
Speaker 1: don't want to punish people who have pre ordered and
Speaker 1: then come to the book and then come to the
Speaker 1: book tour, because some of these events, not all of them,
Speaker 1: you have to buy a book to get in. So
Speaker 1: what if you've already bought one, right, and then you
Speaker 1: got to buy another one to come in and see me?
Speaker 1: You're gonna blow me off or feel like a jerk.
Speaker 1: Is there like a coupon they can print out? We're
Speaker 1: get him a little treat, aren't you? I give him
Speaker 1: a little treat. Everyone who comes and gets a book
Speaker 1: on the book Tour or the Judge Sean Hodgment tour
Speaker 1: gets an Aaron Draplin designed enamel lapel pin that has
Speaker 1: a picture of a Corgy on it and it says
Speaker 1: famous Coregy. Hang on a second, pretty nice, right? What
Speaker 1: if you pre ordered the book as a hardcover, I
Speaker 1: an e book as an audiobook, and then you get
Speaker 1: a copy of the book at the event you get us,
Speaker 1: you get an upgrade, you get a new pen. Does
Speaker 1: it have a twenty dollar bill that it's stuck into.
Speaker 1: But this is only for people who buy two copies
Speaker 1: of the book and can show me the in the
Speaker 1: signing line that they've got two copies of the book
Speaker 1: in any format for whatever reason. Double corgy, double corgy,
Speaker 1: because I've got all about medallion status. This is all
Speaker 1: about upgrades systems, loyalty systems. I've got two of all
Speaker 1: your books because I always buy one and then you
Speaker 1: always give me one. Well, certain there are there are
Speaker 1: even even higher levels of status that you can achieve,
Speaker 1: and and you both have earned for your for your very,
Speaker 1: for your long term kindness to me and excellence to everyone.
Speaker 1: You both get a triple corgy elape badge. Man, and
Speaker 1: there is there are triple corky elape badges. And when
Speaker 1: I was suggesting this scheme to the publisher, I had
Speaker 1: a fair I had this criteria for our criterion for
Speaker 1: triple corgy Elite that I have now forgotten. So I
Speaker 1: think it's just gonna be a little bit, a little
Speaker 1: bit discretions. I think that's good though. You should be
Speaker 1: able to be discretionary. And the Triple Corgy Elite badges
Speaker 1: is and it's all. They're all beautiful enamel pins designed
Speaker 1: by Aaron Drappling you. I can't wait to get mine.
Speaker 1: And uh and uh I think I have I think
Speaker 1: I have one for you in my bag. Okay, great, well, John,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming. Thank you very much for being
Speaker 1: your John Hodgeman dot com slash tour bit dot lea
Speaker 1: slash medallion status. You want my newsletter, it's bit dot
Speaker 1: lea slash hodgemail H d G M A I L.
Speaker 1: It's a very fun newsletter. Yeah really, hey, thanks. Medallion
Speaker 1: status is all capital letters, all one word. When medallion
Speaker 1: says lea slash hodgemail, it's all small letters, all one word.
Speaker 1: Because why be consistent. Also check out my new every
Speaker 1: now and then mid day Instagram live show Get Your Pets,
Speaker 1: where I interviewed dogs and cats on Instagram. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me, John, anytime, we
Speaker 1: can do this every week if you want. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I would love to you come down. We'll put you on.
Speaker 1: Why don't you come on the Judge John Hodgman podcast too.
Speaker 1: I've been on before. I know, let's do it again
Speaker 1: across the streams. All right, I gotta do something to
Speaker 1: fight against these dough boys. Okay, you got it? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with this, you
Speaker 1: can get touch with Hodgeman. What's your website? One more time?
Speaker 1: That's the home of John Hodgman, John Hodgman dot com,
Speaker 1: at Hodgeman on Twitter, at John Hodgman on Instagram, their
Speaker 1: Facebook group pages for Judge John Hodgman and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: We don't care about us, and yeah but dot lee
Speaker 1: slash medallion status okay, And then for us, you can
Speaker 1: just go to stuff you should Know dot com and
Speaker 1: find all of our social links on their simple or
Speaker 1: you can email us. You can wrap it up, spank
Speaker 1: it on the bottom, and send it off to stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at I Heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of I Heart Radios. How stuff
Speaker 1: works from more podcasts for heart Radio, visit the i
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows. M h m hm