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10ish Cases of Really Bad Luck · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: over there. And this is the Stuff you should Know
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: about people who have really bad luck? Nine of them. Yeah,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: we can't. I don't think we've ever done a full
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: top ten list? Have we? That that that should be
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: our last episode. Yeah, it's like stuff you should know,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: its ten biggest regrets. Right, that's a great idea. Yeah,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: that'll be the last one. All right, let's write that down.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: There's no we don't have ten regrets. Yeah. I guess
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: we couldn't do a full time Actually, we could probably
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: come up with ten. No, we couldn't. Vid con number one.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: That's a big one. This intro is definitely up there
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: to number two. We're on our way, all right, Um,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: how are you feeling pretty good? I'm great? You feel lucky? Punk,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I'm a pretty lucky person. I will say that I
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: would agree with that good fortune. My friends have called
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: me the rabbit's foot over the years. Yeah, that's why
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: they're I was rubbing you. But that's that's mainly for
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: narrowly escaping trouble more than anything. How about a story
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: chuck lay it on us? Oh just I mean I was.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I was very famous among my group of friends for
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: getting pulled over by police and not getting tickets. I mean,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: at one point it was it had literally happened like
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: fourteen times in a row or something over a span
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: of like ten or twelve years. It happened a lot
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: that I never and I didn't get my first ticket
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: until geez, probably my thirties, mid thirties. How did you
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: have what happened? Did you talk your way out of it?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Or yeah, you know what you do? Man? And my
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: brother always gets a ticket and he's much nicer than
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I am. But you just got to be as humble, humble, humble, humble,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: humble as you can be, and if you show the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: slightest bit of attitude, then that police officer, in my experience,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: will delight in writing you that ticket. I mean, even
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: it's if it's a sideways look and I basically just
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: throw myselves at the mercy of the court on the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: side of the road. I'm like, I'm so sorry, officer,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I you were you should have pulled me over. You
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: did the right thing. I was wrong, and I'm sorry.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: There's no excuse here's I was gonna eat these French fries.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: But you should take them. You're the hero here. Think
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: they're always a little disarmed and they're like, oh, oh okay,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: well I guess I can let you off of the warning.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know. That's been my experience. All right, there's
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: chuck advice right there. So you get out of fourteen tickets?
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: So did you forget to the last fifteen time? Did
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: you forget? Did you sneer call them a pig? What? No?
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I think it was just one of those things where
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: like they were writing the ticket even before I had
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a chance to do my little song and dance, and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: they brought me the ticket and I was kind of like, well,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, don't you know who who I am?
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I'm the guy that gets out of tickets. Oh? I
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: thought you were gonna say, I'm Chuck from stuff. You
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: should know that means nothing. That's how you that's how
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: you get out of them these days, buddy. Well, um,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: we're talking today about some people who have very bad luck.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And you know, like a lot of these lists usually
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: are just like uh no to this one. No to
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: that one. No, this is wrong. Um. I think we
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: tried to do a list once where like, oh man,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I can't remember which one it was, but like every
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: single entry was just like just false. Right. That's only
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the case with like three of these this time, which
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty that's not a bad batting average, realistical. Yeah,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and some of these are. The word luck kind of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: bothers me sometimes because as is the case, We'll go
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: ahead and get to the first one, Ron Wayne, who
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: was one of the original three partners of Apple Computers.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: That's not bad luck. Ron Wayne made a board business decision.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Have you. Uh, that's a good point. Have you ever
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: heard of Ron Wayne before? Know you? No? I haven't,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: And had I heard his name, I would have been like,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: he sounds like porn actor, but he's not a peorgn actor.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Oh no, that was That was another guy. I can't
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: say his real name though. Uh who, I demand that
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: you say it. I'll tell you off Mike, Okay. So, um,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: he turns out this guy was not a pornography actor.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: He was one of the three founders of Apple and
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: as far as I had known to this point, there
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: were two founders of Apple. Turns out there were three
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: at the beginning for like the first twelve days. Yeah,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: so go back to nine seventy six in our way
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: back machine and Nerdy Little Jobs and Nerdy Little Wassniak
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: are young guys uh in their twenties and they had
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: this great uh they didn't know it at the time.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Well they may have known it or suspected, but this
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: this great vision for the future. But they were kind
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: of kids and they didn't have any experience. So they
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: looked to a guy named Ron Wayne who was in
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: his forty uh to come in and kind of help
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: what they called with adult supervision, because I mean they
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: were programmers from Atari, but yeah, they didn't have the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: actual business sense or whatever, and it was just a
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: party job at the time, I believe so. But I
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: had no idea how Tari produced Apple though, did you.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I did a bunch of Atari research stuff
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: for my tech stuff guest but oh, okay, cool, Yeah,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: we did a history of Atari two parter. Oh, speaking
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: of guest spots man, let me just also give a
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: shot out real quick. Sorry to interrupt this little entry,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: but I was on um our good friend John go
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Forths and our new friend Brent's podcast Hysteria fifty one recently. Yeah,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: we talked about the family Paradox for like an hour
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and it was awesome. So go check that out Hysteria
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: fifty one. Go check out that out. Okay, so plug
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: out right. So we're in ninety six uhs and Jobs
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: have recruited one one Wayne, Ron Wayne to be the
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: adult in the room to help with engineering documentation. And
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: it was actually Ron Wayne who uh who drafted the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: very first Apple contract and said, you know, this is
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: what they agreed on. He did make it up, which
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: said how much everyone is going to get He got
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: ten percent two jobs and wasasniakst And he even created
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: the first Apple logo, which was not the logo we
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: know and loved now. It was a It was like
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: a woodcut um style thing of Isaac Newton under the
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Apple tree. Not that sounds terrible. Yeah, I disagree. I
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: think it sounds ugly. So um Ron Wayne the while
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: he was there, he very quickly was like, I don't
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: know if this is my kind of place. I thought
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: it was a good idea. I like what these guys
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: are doing, but this company in a garage. Steve Jobs
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: keeps taking acid during the middle of business hours. Um
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: did he really? Yeah? Wow, Steve Jobs thought he was
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: pretty cool from what I understand. Um he Uh, Ron
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Wayne was like, I don't I don't think I fit
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: in here. Also, apparently he was worried that he was
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: going to have to pony up for you know, whatever
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: business debts they incurred. I think that was a big deal.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And he was like, all right, I'm out. I'm out.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Because he was an adult and he was like I've
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: got a house and like I'm a real adult human,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Like they're gonna turn to me certainly when they do. So.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: He he cashed out in in twelve days, twelve days
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: after they established their contract, and the contract um was
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: kept by Ron Wayne. Actually we'll get to that in
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: a second. But he cashed out for twenty three hundred
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: dollars two d thirty thousand, you say, no, two thousand,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: three hundred, which is still today worse less than like
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: ten grand um. And he didn't even get it all
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: at once. He got eight hundred right then, and then
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: uh he agreed to take fifteen hundred later. And that
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: was nineteen seventies six, And in nineteen eighty Apple went
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: public and everybody involved came an instant millionaire, and years
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: later it hit the trillion dollar mark for valuation, and
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: all the while, Ron Wayne got to watch this company
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: grow and grow and grow and realized that he'd sold
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: off ten percent of the steak in the company for Yeah,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and apparently if he had held all those stocks, uh,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: he'd be worth close to a hundred billion dollars. So
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: he he takes issue with that. He said, he probably
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: lost out on tens of millions. Yeah, I mean, I
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: guess it depends on what like you can't since you
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: can't go back and do it all over again like
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Eddie Money says, Uh. I guess there's always the thing
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: of like well yeah, but he always maintains I would
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: have gotten out after that before the big cash in anyway, probably,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: so I don't like to look at it. Is that
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: sort of a loss, is what he tells himself basically,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: or else I would have gone totally insane a long
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: time ago. Yeah, but he did apparently. Uh. He wrote
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: a Facebook essay and said, I probably that would have
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: been around in nineteen eighty and gotten some pretty good change,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: and and I think regrets it. Yeah, he said, had
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: he known that, and everybody was going to become a
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: millionaire in four years. He definitely would have hung in there,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: but he just it's hindsight, you know. Yeah, and the
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: cherry on top here is pretty interesting though. He said
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: he kept that contract, that very first Apple contract that
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: he drew up, and he kept it and he auctioned
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: it off in the early nineties four how much five
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: hundred somoleans five dollars and when what happened not bad.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: It was just a piece of paper he had hanging around.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Somebody turned around and auctioned it off years later in
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven four almost one point six million.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Poor Ron Wayne. Now that one's bad luck. I wonder
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: what he did though with his life. He wrote essays
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: on Facebook. I mean I Betty did okay, Yeah, I
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: guess so. I mean Steve jobs okay, but I doubt
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: if you, like you know, got a got a low wage,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: hourly paying job. I don't know. He became Eddie Money's
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: tour manager. Things worked out then, right, And every time
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: any money saying I want to go back in tear
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: down Ron Wayne's face. So, um, I think we should
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: move on. We're gonna leave Ron Wayne because my hat also,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: we should definitely tip our heads to anyone who faced
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: adversity like this and was like as happens and has
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: had tipped to Ron Wayne for that one. Um and
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Hodges did not have that kind of experience. She is
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: the only, person, as far as anyone knows, the only
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: human being in the history and recorded history of humanity
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: to have been hit by a meteor Right, I'm laughing
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: and I shouldn't. Um. Well, actually she didn't get that hurt,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: so that's why I feel okay laughing. It's not like
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: it fell on her head and killed her. It's November
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: thirty in Alabama and eight point five pound a meteorite,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: uh came through her roof, bounced off of a radio
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: and hit her in the hip. Yeah. It makes you
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: wonder like if if she had been you know, where
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the radio was, and this wasn't like a bounced like
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: uh ricochet, Yeah, a ricochet. I mean, how much worse
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: would things have been? Yeah? Probably dead. There's a I
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: saw a picture I'm Reddit of her, just randomly. We
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: had already picked this episode and started researching, and I
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: saw a picture of her bruise on Reddit and it was, um,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: pretty nasty, pretty nasty, little bruise, but that was about
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: as bad as it got physically. Um. So, she was
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: laying on the couch, a meteorite came through her roof,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: hit her radio, hit her, and um she became almost
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: immediately a media sensation because word got out very quickly
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: that a woman had been struck by a meteorite, probably
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: the first and only person ever. Yeah, and and that's
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: super rare. Like, it's rare. It's rare for a meteorite
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to fall just in an urban area where people live
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: or suburban area where people live. Can say, I don't
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: know if I would call Alabama urban. Yeah, I mean,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: it's it's just not usual like usually meteorites, you know,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of water on Earth. Usually they'll just
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: land in the ocean somewhere. Um So it's big news
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: if a meteorite hits anywhere near people, much less hitting
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: a person. Right. There's a meteorologist named Michael Reynolds who
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: told National Geographic get this. He said, you have a
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: better chance of being hit by a tornado, bolt of
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: lightning and a hurricane at the same time than you
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: do a meteorite. I'm not sure how he actually quantified that,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: but that's one of the better quotes I've read in
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, and this is where it gets this
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: is just so America in USA is there was a
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: court battle between her and her landlord because her landlord
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: was like, that's my space rock because it's my house
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and she and and Hodges is like, no, that's my
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: space rock because it hit me and the hip. And
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: they went to court and Hodges actually won and got
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: to keep that uh sadly ultimately valueless meteorite. Yes, she's
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: she's settled. Actually, she ended up paying the landlord five
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: bucks for the right to the rock. But by the
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: time this was finally settled two years later, they found
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: out that nobody cared any longer. There was old news,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: so nobody wanted to buy the meteor right. And you
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: might think, well, okay, it's not clear that anyone would
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: ever wanted to buy the meteor right to begin with.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Not true. They have a neighbor just down the road
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: who had just the tiniest little piece of that space
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: rock and sold it. At the time, this thing was
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: a big media sensation and was able to buy a
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: new house and a new car from the proceeds. So
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the Hodges were like clearly we've got the space rock.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: We're gonna cash in. We're gonna buy the state of
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Alabama with the proceeds. But two years later it was
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: totally valueless, and Um and Hodges actually had a just
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: just kept taking turns for the worst and ended up
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: dying in a nursing home at age forty nine after
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: having a nervous breakdown from the the whole ordeal. Yeah,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: it's very sad, um, but that meteorite is on display
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: at the Alabama Museum of Natural History. And I hope
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: that there is at least a small plaquard that memorializes her.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Surely there is, right, I would, I would hope so, yeah,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: which that that would be a nice thing after a
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: string of bad luck. That's pretty bad luck. Should we
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: take a break? I think we should. All right, We're
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: gonna take a break and talk about the unluckiest person
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: in the music industry right at of this Chuck, Chuck.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: I have a tad bit of anxiety because beats No,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: No No. I have anxiety about this one just because
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: it's so rotten and rough. I feel so bad for
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: this guy. Well, here's the thing. Before the break, I
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: called former First Beatles drummer, not former first, but former
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: and first Beetles drummer Pete Best, the unluckiest man of music.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: He's been called that. Uh, that's not true either. Pete
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Best didn't have bad luck. Pete Best didn't have good chops.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Oh is that what it was? Yeah? So okay, wells okay,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: that's totally different. I thought it was. I I didn't
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: think it was bad luck necessarily obviously didn't jibe with
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the group. But I thought maybe it was like he
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: had to walk around being like I have a terrible
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: personality and that's why I'm not a Beatle or whatever.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Now we'll we'll get to that. So let's go back
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: in time. Pete bess Uh in the very early days
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: of the Beatles in the nineteen fifties when they were
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: known as the Quarryman Um. His mom. He was a
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: drummer and his mom had the he owned something called
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the Kasbak Coffee Club in Liverpool, and she was she
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: was cool and she was very like ahead of her
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: time as far as um the Liverpool music scene very
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: much out in front of it. So it's the kind
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: of deal where like well, pizza drummer and his mom
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: owns a place where we can play. So he's in
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the band, and it's good because now we got a
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: place where we can gig and we got a drummer
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: that that can play. Okay, he's handsome. That was a
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: big part of it, was he Yeah, that was a
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: big thing over the years. What that that was rumored
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: that he was kicked out because Paul said he was
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: too handsome and he didn't want any competition. Are you
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Is he still around? Yeah, he's alive. Okay, well I'm
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: not gonna say the next part then, so um, he
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: he was enough. So I guess at the time the
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Beatles by by the time Pete Best was kind of
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: brought on, he wasn't like officially brought on as as
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: like the Beatles Beatles as we think of them today,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: where there was like four of them. There was like
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: a rotating bunch of drummers, and Pete Best was one
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: of those drummers, right, Yeah, but he played, I mean
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: he was he kind of It was sort of like
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: when I rotated and stuff. You should know early on
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit like there was still a rotation going
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: for a short time and I think and then everyone
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: else just went away, like Pete best played like eighty
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: something gigs with the Beatles pre Hamburg, I think, okay,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And then they took him to Hamburg, which apparently was
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: a big, big turning point for everybody. They paid eighty
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: shows a week in Hamburg. I saw a great quote. Um,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: they said that, So in Hamburg is where the Beatles
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: like really started to become like the Beatles, like, are
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: they coalesced into a band? I saw that they arrived
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: wearing lilac sports jackets and trousers and left wearing black
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: leather jackets and jeans. That's where they learned sex, drugs
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: and rock and roll. Yeah, Pete Bess wasn't into the
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: drugs though, like the other three guys, so that was
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: a problem. Sure, that's a buzz kill when the one
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: guy in the room is just sitting there staring at
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: you judge. Yeah, well I would. I mean, that's kind
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: of a buzz kill, I would guess, right, Yeah, yeah, probably.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: So I think they were all like doing speed back then.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Oh sure, because they were playing literally like six or
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: seven shows at night. Were they really playing that many? Oh?
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: It was ridiculous? Wow? Yeah, So, um, he was in
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: a group called the Black Jack's before that though, went
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: to Hamburg, Hamburg with the Beatles, and then right after
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: that the Beatles go back to England in Nino and
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: they were just about to go into the studio to
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: record their first singles for E M. I and UH.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Legendary manager Brian Epstein called up and said, sorry, bloke,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: the boys want you out and it's already been arranged, yeah,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: meaning like don't even bother it's done, which is sad
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: um and Pete Best took it pretty hard, from what
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: I understand for horrible. In a horrible twist of iron,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: he ended up working at the unemployment office, but working
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: there now, hanging out there. Um and by this time
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: like he had made a name for himself around Liverpool
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: as as a musician in a beatle. Um. The reason
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: why he's called the Unluckiest man of music is not
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: because he was a Beatle at one point in time,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: but that he was a Beatle at one point in
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: time and was kicked out of the band a few
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: weeks before the Beatles blew up, and um, it almost
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: makes you wonder like did they blow up because they
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: moved on to Ringo or was it like that was
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: just bad timing? Well, I mean, here's the deal. Uh.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: There are interviews out there with both Um John and Paul.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: There has always been the rumor, like I said that
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Pete's handsomeness threatened the band. Um that is not true.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Paul was on record of saying, like, you know, it's
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: just something that happens. Early in the days of bands
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: like ring we were just really struck by how great
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Ringo was. Pete Best sat out one gig because he
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: was sick or something, Ringo sat in and they were
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: all just like wow, like they all felt it, and
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: it was just sort of that magic happening where they're like,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: oh boy, I know what's got to happen. Um John,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: for his part, said, you know, it had nothing to
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: do with his looks. He said he was just kind
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of a crap drummer. I mean he was. John was
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: not the nicest guy in the world. So he really
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: kind of threw through it all on the table and
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: was like he wasn't a good drummer. He just wasn't.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: He was a good first drummer, and clearly it was
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: time to move on from him. Uh. And it was
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: mainly because his mom owned a place where we could play.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Not very nice gotcha. No, but I mean that doesn't
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: make him unlucky. No, he didn't have the chops, and
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: you know he, I mean, he's he's reckoned with it.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I saw an article from last year where he was
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: like he never spoke to the other three guys again,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: and he was like, yeah, I mean and Paul, I'd
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: love to sit down and like have a scotch and
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: talk about it. And he's like, the doors open. Oh really, Yeah.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know if Paul's going to do that though,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: maybe not. Uh. He was on Howard Stern. Paul was
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: and Howard was like, are you ever just gonna write
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: him a check just out of guilt? He's just like, no, no, No.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: He did get royalties though later on when the Beatles
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: anthology came out, because that included stuff from Pete Best,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: so he ended up getting some money. He made out. Okay, Yeah,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I think the lesson here is don't ever get Yeah,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: that's the key, everybody, that's right. So we're gonna go
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: from nineteen sixties Liverpool too over to the New Orleans
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: area where they have hurricanes. Supposedly they have a hurricane
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: party every time the wind blows have heard, but they
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: actually do have legitimate hurricanes, and those hurricanes can do
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of damage, as we saw in two thousand
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: and five with Hurricane Katrina. By the time Hurricane Katrina
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: rolled around, a woman named Melanie Martinez was on her
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: fourth house having been destroyed by a hurricane. Um previously
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: George one and n and Betsy in nineteen sixty five
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: had destroyed her house by the time Katrina came around.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: But after Katrina, everybody really learned their lesson. They're like, Okay,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: we've been taking this way too instusition ly, like we
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: need to really actually like protect New Orleans from flooding
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: from hurricanes. And so the federal government stepped in, the
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: government Louisiana stepped in, and they really fortified New Orleans
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: so that years later, seven years later actually to the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: day of Katrina making landfall, when Isaac made landfall, New
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Orleans held up. It was a pretty big hurricane, but
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: it weathered. New Orleans weathered it. Unfortunately. In little tiny
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: town of Bathwaite, just a little south of New Orleans,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: which I thought south of New Orleans was like the
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Caribbean or the Gulf. I guess um. There's a little
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: town called Bathway they did not fortify this town, and
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: it just so happened that there's where Melanie Martinez built
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: another house that proved to be her fifth one that
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: was destroyed by a hurricane. Yeah, this is truly bad luck. Um.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Granted all of those houses were in the same floodplain,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: but it's like it's not like everybody's house was destroyed
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: every time. Like, this was truly bad luck to have
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: five houses lost, and this last one before Isaac, she
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: was selected for an A and E reality show, Hideous Houses,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: got a twenty dollar makeover, brand new kitchen, new appliances,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: in a new sewing room. Uh. And apparently that episode
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: air just a few weeks before Isaac came around. Destroyed
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: that house too. And you know when they asked her
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and twelve, like why do you keep
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: building here? You know, it's like everyone else, She's like,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: it's this is my home. It's like I want to
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: live where I was born and raised and this is
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: my home. Yeah. Can you imagine what that phone calls like,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: It's like, hey, I'm a producer with Hideous Houses, and
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: your house has been selected to be on Hideous Houses.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: She probably applied and how it works. No, I think
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: they just go scout your house and it's really like, no,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you apply that. I think it carries from
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: show to show. So for that last time, with Hurricane
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Isaac in two twelve, she and her husband and their
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: pets and um, Melanie Martinez is elderly mom barely escaped
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: with their life. They had to hammer through their roof.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: They were trapped in the attic with the floodwaters rising.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: They had to hammer a hole into the roof and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: climb out where they were rescued. Yeah. Man, I mean,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: she's at least they got out. They did. But even so,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the thing that makes it really bad luck real quick, chuck,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: is that Melanie Martinez said she would never have stayed
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: around for that hurricane. She because of her elderly mother.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: She she she wouldn't have risked her her health. Um, they
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: got stuck there because her van broke down. Well, but
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: she got out, okay there, you know, I mean she
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: couldn't save the house. So it's true. It's very sad,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: all right. So this next one is this is pretty
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: remarkable whenever I hear about people that are and I've
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: heard stories like this over the years where people were
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: had the bad luck to be in UH various places
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: where like terrorist attacks have happened more than once. UH.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: And this couple, this British couple, Jason Cairn's Lawrence and
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: his partner Jenny, they had this happened three times. UH.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: They were in New York City on nine eleven on
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: a just a regular holiday there, so that's number one. UM.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: A few years after that, they went vacationing in UH
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: in their very own London in July two thousand five,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: and just a day into that trip was when the
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: suicide bombers attacked the London Underground, which was horrific. They
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: don't think they're in the underground at the time, but
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: I imagine at this point they're like, all right, what's
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: going on here. A few years after that, in two
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight, they're like, all right, we're gonna get
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: out of town again and this time we're going to Mumbai,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: India and another terrorist attack when the Luxury hotel was
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: was attacked in the railway station and a hundred and
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: seventy four people died there. They were all three of those,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: all three the three biggest terrorist attacks I guess in
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: the West, in the in the twenty one century. They
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: were there for yeah, the deadliest ones at least, and
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: they thankfully survived all three of those. But I imagine
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: after those three trips they're probably not going on vacation
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: very much anymore. They built a pool in their backyard
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: and they're like, this is what we're doing from now on. Man,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine. I really can't either tell you the truth.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break. Let's take a break, and
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: we're gonna come back and talk about some more hard
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: luck cases after this. Okay, okay, Chuck, So this one,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: I can't quite put my finger on whether this is
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: whether Alexander Graham Bell is a no good thief or not.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know, because I think I saw some more
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: recent stuff and I think that his image has been
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: a little more reformed. Well we'll get to that. But
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: if you're in Italy and you're a little kid and
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: you are taught who invented the telephone, they do not
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: teach you that it was Alexander Graham Bell. As a
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: matter of fact, they may spit when they say they
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: name Alexander Graham Bell because they very much believed that
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Alexander Graham Bell stole the idea for the telephone from
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Antonio Maucci, who was an Italian inventor who seemed to
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: have invented something very telephone like, um, at least a
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: few years before Alexander Graham Bell supposedly invented his. Yeah,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: he actually filed a patent preliminary patent that is in
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: the US, five years before Bell, for what he called
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the tele trophone though, which is a much better name
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: than telephone. Do you think so? I would love it
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: if people were like, can I borrow your teletrophone? Oh,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: let me see your troll bro let's see there? Right?
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I love that so um Antonio Miucci, Uh, he definitely
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: realized that you could send sound over electrically activated copper
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: wires back in like the eighteen thirties. He knew this
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: um and he started kind of messing around with it
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: in one at one time he created basically a telephone
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: between his workshop and his his wife's bedroom because his
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: wife had been stricken with some sort of paralysis and
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: to be able to communicate with her without having to
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: go in and check out her all the time, he
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: basically rigged up a telephone. This was in the I
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: think the eighteen eighteen sixties, Um in New York, right,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Um and even debuted this invention to the press. But
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: he didn't speak English, and the English speaking press in
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: New York didn't speak Italian, so it was really just
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: covered by the Italian press. But this guy in in
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty gave a demonstration of his telephone and Um again.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until eighteen seventy six at Alexander Graham Bell
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: got his patent, and like you said, Meyuchi, he filed
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the preliminary patent and I looked into this. You know
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: what those are. So the preliminary patent is basically this.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: You pay a much lower fee to basically put a
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: hold on your invention. You say, this thing is coming.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: If anybody else starts sniffing around with their own invention,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: you let me know, and then the patent office will
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: give you will give you three months to file a
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: formal patent, which is again more expensive. So the the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: idea is that Meyuchi didn't have enough money to file
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: a full patent, so he placed a preliminary patent and
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: didn't have enough money to renew it. You have to
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: renew it annually. And Alexander Graham Bell swooped in. Yeah,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: and here's the thing I thought, Well, I mean, there
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: have been plenty of inventions where people working in a
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: vacuum came up with a similar idea with similar technology.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: But Miyuchi actually shared a space with Bell. And that's
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: when I was like, uh, okay, it's not a good
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: look for Bell for sure. Yeah, And then I did
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: a little more research. I was like, did Alexander Graham
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Bell steal the telephone? And this was this is not news?
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: And I saw an article that was like, yes, he
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: stole it from Elisha Gray and I was like, who, Well,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: he's the one who supposedly went to the patent office
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: the same day, within hours of Bell, to file a
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: patent on the phone and lost out. Yea, So there
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: are several people that claimed that Bell it was not
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: his original idea. Well. Mayucci actually sued Bella and the
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: case made it all the way to the Supreme Court,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: but then Mayuchi died before it was resolved and they
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: threw the case out. Very sad, but the House of
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Representatives in two thousand two voted on a resolution to
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: say yes, Antonio Meuci is the inventor of the telephone
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: as far as we in the US are concerned. Um,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: what I saw, what I referred to earlier, that that
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I was wondering if his image had been reformed. He
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: has his extensive notes about his invention that he would
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: have had to have falsified and that apparently have been
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: scrutinized by historians. So if he was a fraud, he
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: was a really methodical frauds. Well, that's one of the
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: complaints with Elisha Gray is that the uh, the sketches
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: were like virtually identical to Graze. Yeah, so you know, wow,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: well we I think we need to do at least
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: the short stuff in Alexander Graham Bell. Yeah, I think
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: that could be a full EPI okay EPI, yes, full
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: EpiPen right in your thigh, all right, like the time
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: you got stung by that be you remember that was harrowing?
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: All right? So this one's uh, this one is actually
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: kind of fun, um because I like it when the
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: bad luck isn't like super like devastating to someone's life
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: and that they kind of roll with it, you know
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, Costas Mitzo Takas definitely rolls with it. Yeah,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: not nothing bad happened here. Uh. There's a an annual
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: lottery in Spain that dates back to eighteen twelve called
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: El Gordo. It's a Christmas lottery and it's a big,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: big They call it El Gordos the Fat one because
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: it's a big, big, fat payout and it's a very,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: very much a tradition in Spain. And in two thousand eleven,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: the jackpot was at the time the biggest ever, close
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: to a billion dollars nine fifty million bucks. And there's
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: this little town called a Sodetto and people in this town.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Is that Italian? Huh? No, I didn't say Soday it
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: though it was close. No, that's just a little flair.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: So in Sodetto, residents there would pull money together sometimes
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: by their lottery tickets because it costs twenty six bucks apiece.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: It's not like going down and buying like the I
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: don't even know how much blotto costs in America. Is
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: in like a dollar? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh. We did
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of episode back in the day, didn't we.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: I think we talked about El Gordo in the lot
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: of episode because I think I recognized the name. Yeah, yeah,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: El Gordo. Um. So the tickets were twenty six bucks
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: at least in two thousand eleven. And this town pulls
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: their money together. Seventy different families all chipped in because
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: times were tough and they didn't spring for their own ticket,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: and they won. They did win. Um, this town of
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: like simple farmers whose backs were kind of up against
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the wall from the economic downturn you referenced. Apparently they
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: were also experiencing a prolonged drought. To everybody's a little
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: tents overnight, had all of their money troubles just go away? Um,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: every single household in the town one minimum of a
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty U s. Dollars a hundred thirty thousand,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, up to millions, right, like if they bought
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: like full full chunks of the tickets um from this lotto.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: And so all these people like rode their tractors into
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: town on Christmas Day to celebrate that they had all
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: just won the lottery, all except one guy, Costas Mitsotakas,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: whose house was not visited by the people selling the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: lottery tickets for the town fundraiser and who didn't buy
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: a ticket as a result. Right, he lived a little
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: bit on the outskirts of town um with a woman,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: his romantic partner at the time, and she actually bought
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: in and one a hundred thousand American dollars. No, I
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: guess it was a hundred thousand euros Okay, so yeah,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: it was about a hundred and thirty thousand American dollars. Yeah,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: So she won and he did not. They're not together now.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that had anything to do with it.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying it does. I think they had already
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: split up, okay, but at any rate, he didn't win
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: any money. But he's a filmmaker, and he was like,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: his quote was, it was really a gift from heaven,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: as if someone had given me the perfect script. So
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: he decided to make a documentary about this town and
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: about this loto in and about these villagers who apparently
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: did not change their way as much. They all still
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: lived very simply, and they all still shared, how you know,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: like lots of family in the single house, and it
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: was really kind of heartwarming. And I read an article
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: from just like a year and a half ago where
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: he was supposedly finishing it up, but then I never
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: saw anything about the actual documentary, so I don't know
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: if it was ever released or finished. Fully. I also
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: read that he made out okay. He'd been trying to
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: sell his property there for a while, but because of
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: the economic downturn, he couldn't get rid of it. And
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: right after somebody bought it from him. Well that's good,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: hopefully at full l asking price, you know. Yeah, And
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: he seems like a guy. He was kind of like,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: you know, I didn't buy a ticket. Yeah, what are
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: you gonna do? Make a film about it? I guess
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: as happens. That's right. So hat tip to uh Costas
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Mitsotakas too. That's right. Um, so chuck, we're moving along.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: We're going from Spain to right here in Atlanta. Yeah.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Do you remember the Olympics. I do, because I was
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: on a road trip out west, my friend and I.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: That's when we took our like two and a half
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: month trip and then Volkswagen van and we're like, we're
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: getting out of Atlanta for the Olympics. You did not
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: miss much. Yeah, I remember everybody in Atlanta who owned
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: a business sunk tons of cash into their business to
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: revamp it for Olympic fever, and no one left downtown, nobody.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: They just stayed downtown. But one of the other things
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: about the Olympics, aside from like one of the most
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: mediocre maybe actually just outright bad opening ceremonies, pretty bad.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Just remember being on the road and and a cheap
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: hotel room in New Mexico and seeing uh, stainless steel
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: pickup trucks and I was just like, oh my god,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: what's going on. That's so Atlanta, that's hot landa right there. Um.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: In addition to that, the Olympics is also remembered as
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: the Centennial Olympics, is a hundred years after the first
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: modern Olympic Games. But really more than anything, it's remember
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: for the Olympic Park bombing, which is a huge deal.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: And this is I mean it was memorable because it
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: was a big deal like that, this was an act
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: of domestic terrorism here in the United States and it
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: was at the Olympics, and it actually could have been
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: way worse than it was. One one poor woman from
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: I believe Albany or Leesburg, Georgia died. Um I think
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: a cameraman from Turkey died from a heart attack running
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: to the scene. But like a hundred people were injured.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: But right before that bomb went off, it was a
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: forty pound pipe bomb filled with um screws and nails
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: and all sorts of projectiles. Um. There are a lot
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: of people standing around it watching a concert by Jack
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: MC and the heart attack at like one am in
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Olympic Park. Um. And had they not been moved by
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: a security guard named Richard Jewell, surely more people would
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: have died. Yeah. So Jewel sees this backpack again. This
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: is now a backpack on the ground. Like everyone would
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's that thing doing there?
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: See something? Say something, see something, say something? Yeah, ninety six.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: It was just a year after the Oklahoma City bombing.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like this was on everyone's mind at the time.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: And uh, Jewel said, hey, I think we should get
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: out of here. There's a backpack on the ground. Something
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: smells fishy um. And I don't think he meant there
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: was literal fish in the backpack. Sorry. That was terrible.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: And he got people out of there and alerted authorities
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: and they started clearing the area pretty heavily and very quickly.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Richard Jewels on the news as a local hero, national hero. Yeah,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: national hero, and uh, everything was going great until all
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the next day he was looked at as a person
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: of interest. Like the next day, apparently the a j
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: C got a scoop from the Atlanta p D that
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: the FEDS and everybody were starting to wonder if Richard
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Jewel wasn't the type of guy who would plan a
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: bomb in order to put himself in a position of
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: being a hero. Yeah, they were like, he fits the profile.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: I remember all that stuff going down. Yeah, And it's
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: crazy how you can see somebody differently when people like
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: paining him a certain way, you know, and like, like
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: he just looked like he had that mustache. What's he
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: hiding with that mustache? Or his eyes are a little beady,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: aren't they? And he had been charged with um impersonating officers,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: so he's clearly like I want to be cop kind
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: of thing, and um he looked really bad. And then
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: finally in October, the FBI was like, Richard Jewel, now
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: now we cleared him. He's not a he's not a
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: person of interest. It was surely somebody else. But by
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: this time, Richard Jewell's name had been drugged through the
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: mud associated with a major act of terrorism at the
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Olympics in the United States. UM for months before he
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: was cleared, and it was the damage was was very
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: much done. Yeah, of course everyone knows the real bomber
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: was Eric Rudolph uh And again, you know, those four
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: months were really rough on Jewel and his family. And
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: even after he was cleared in October, it's like like
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: everyone knew he was cleared, but it's still one of
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: those things where like it's attached to his name, you know. Oh, yeah,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: he entered. He went from the suspect phase to the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: late night talk show monologue joke phase. Yeah, that's not
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: a good transition. It isn't very Sadly he died in
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: two thousand and just the young age of forty four
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: from complications of diabetes. Yep, so he had it rough.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: He got like a settlement from CNN in New York
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Times for I guess over zealous and unfounded reporting maybe,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: but um it was it was. He did not have
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: like a great last part of his life, all right,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: the last one folks breaking news. Josh emails me about
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: thirty minutes where we record or so and said, by
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: the way, the number one guy on the list is
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: a fraud. I said he maybe a fraud. I thought
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: you said he was a fraud. I'm trying to see
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: you away here. Okay, Sorry, it's not proven that he's
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: a fraud, because well, well let's just get into all this. Okay, Yeah,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: what's his name? Selac, front A Selac, everywhere else I
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: saw at F A, R and E. I don't know
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: what to believe anymore. I know, we've just lost touch
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: with reality. Charles So he has been dubbed the luckiest
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: man in the world for supposedly surviving seven brushes with death,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: ranging from a train going into an icy river, two
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: cars going off of cliffs again into icy rivers. Uh,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: cars catching on fire, cars plunging off of cliffs, like
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: so much stuff that you're like, can this be true?
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Especially the plane crash that went down where he supposedly
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: was sucked out of a door and landed on a haystack. Yeah,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: before the plane crashed. Is this real? So here's the thing.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: All of the starts in um I believe two thousand five.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: He buys a lottery ticket, wins like a million dollar
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: or a million euro lottery and that happened. That definitely happened.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: And he was interviewed by the Scotsman the newspaper the
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Scotsman and in this article he's like, Oh, you think
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: it's lucky that I won a million dollars, let me
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: tell you about some of the unlucky things that have
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: happened to me. And he starts reeling off these stories
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: of like just narrowly escaping death, and the Scotsman's like, wow,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: that's fantastic. We're gonna print this, And the Scotsman printed it,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden and started getting picked up
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: by other news outlets, another news outlets, another news outlets,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and then finally and one of these articles there was
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a commenter um who identified himself as Friday Selec's son,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: who said, hey, um, not one single journalist has ever
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: independently verified a single one of these stories. This guy
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: is actually my father and he has always wanted to
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: be famous, so when he was interviewed for winning the lottery,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: he saw his chance and he made all of this up. Well,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: if it was an internet comment or, it must be
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: true exactly. That's why I was c o A because
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: it's like, is that the only place you found that? Yes,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: but the point remains correct. It has never been and
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: none of it has ever been independently verified so it's
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: not entirely it's it's entirely possible that there he wasn't
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: on um any plane or in in a bus accident,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: or that his car crash. It's not verified that he
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: has been. It hasn't been clearly shown that he hasn't been.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: It's just this guy makes a really good point that
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: this dude who everybody says is the luckiest man in
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: the world, it's possibly made it all up. How can
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: we not get to the bottom of this? M What
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: do you mean? Well, I mean we found out the
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: world is flat and that they fake the moon landing
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: through research. Why can't we find out what happened with
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Frande Selak like you and me specifically or immediate? Surely
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: this you could find this out right? Yeah, I guess
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: you could. I think no one's going to the trouble
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: of doing it. It's a good story that everybody likes.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: It's not really hurting anything for him to be lying
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: and for the lie to be perpetuated. Um, it's more
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: just this is kind of laziness among journalism, I guess,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: including us, because I didn't go get to the bottom
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: of it. I didn't go independently verify any of his claims. Well,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: I did see an article that uh. Is that where
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: you saw it at all? That's interesting dot com? No,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: I didn't see it on there, don't worry. I don't
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: remember where I saw the article of the look go ahead. Well,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: there was an article that talked about the fact that
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: UM that mentioned the comment or whatever and the doubts. Yeah,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I think that's become kind of thing because there was
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: a viral um, a viral uh video that UM that
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: made the rounds that was really really interesting, UM because
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: it's just this cute little animation of this guy's story
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: in his life. And UM, I guess I saw the
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: thing about him being being a possible hoax on BBC.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: So if you put BBC together and all that's interesting,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: you have legitimate fact. Right. And I apologize for looking
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: at my phone right now, but I'm doing a real
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: time investigation. And apparently some people have googled and these
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: plane crashes and things aren't documented, so it sounds like
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: it might be it might be false names. I don't know, Okay,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: but even still, it's a great story. I mean, just
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: the fact that this guy made up all of this
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: load of bs during an interview it's pretty la. It's
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: one of the great improv comedians of all time. Right,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: it's a good way to end things too, don't you think. Well,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: thanks for joining us, everybody. Thanks for putting on your
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: smoking jacket and your house slippers, um, putting on a
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: nice um Berry white record, and uh, relaxing with us.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: I hope you feel relaxed. Now, do you feel relaxed?
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Chuckers and Jerry does obviously, Jesus I know. Um. Well,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the unluckiest people
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: in the world, just go look at stuff on the internet,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: may or may not be true. Who really cares? Right? Uh?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: And since I said that it's time for a listener mail,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: I'm going to call this one a sort of an
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: older one that I forgot about. So apologies to Jessica
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Breslyn because I told her I would read this a
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: month ago. Hey, guys, love the recent episode on rape
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Kits that wanted to make a tiny correction about how
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: the Golden State Killer was called. Although there was a
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: time that the Golden State Killers DNA was part of
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: the backlog, the DNA had actually been identified and linked
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: to his crimes since the nineties. The problem was they
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: had no person to compare it to. This change in
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen when they compared it to DNA submitted
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: to a familial DNA base. When a relative submitted their
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: DNA to the familiar DNA site, they were able to
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: see that the DNA was related and from there were
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: able to narrow down their suspects to two likely family members.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: After narrowing it down to those two, they're able to
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: identify their suspect collect a sample of his DNA to
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: compare it to the Golden State killers. However, still good
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: proof on my testing backlog. KITS is still so important. Uh.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: You never know what sort of technological breakthroughs will help
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: law enforcement catch the perpetrators even when you don't have
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: a suspect. I love the podcast, guys, appreciate all the
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: hard work and keeping entertaining and respectful even when it's
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: such sensitive subject matter. And that is Jessica Breslin. I
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: guess that I was going up there at the end,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: wasn't I? Yes, indeed you did go up there, Chuck.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: It was kind of a nice little flourish. Well. Thanks
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: a lot, Jessica. We appreciate the email, um and if
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: you sorry, for being a month later and reading it.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: That was all chuck um. And if you want to
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: get in touch with this, like Jessica did Um, you
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: can go to stuff you Should Know dot com check
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: out our social links. You can in touch with us
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: that way, or you can send us a good old
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: fashioned email to stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com.
• 49:32
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• 49:34
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• 49:39
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