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Tom Slick: Not the Cartoon · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
0:14
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us today and we know from
0:17
Speaker 2: experience that that's just fine. And this is stuff you
0:20
Speaker 2: should know. This guy had his finger in a lot
0:24
Speaker 2: of different pies. That stuff you should know s ten
0:26
Speaker 2: episodes on edition.
0:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean this is a interesting one because our
0:35
Speaker 1: friend Chad, Chad did our TV show, and Chad is
0:42
Speaker 1: doing a or has done a podcast, a highly fictionalized
0:47
Speaker 1: scripted podcast. Yeah, for our company, for iHeart you know,
0:52
Speaker 1: the company we own. Sure about Tom Slick. And when
0:56
Speaker 1: he was telling me about this, Owen Wilson is voicing it,
0:59
Speaker 1: and Sissy's is in it. I have a small part.
1:02
Speaker 2: Uh oh really, I didn't know that.
1:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'll get to that.
1:05
Speaker 2: I also read that Carlton Fisk is in it.
1:08
Speaker 1: Uh, I don't think so. The baseball player.
1:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's Sissy's basics daughter.
1:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, Skyler Fisk.
1:15
Speaker 2: Skyler Fisk guy always confused with Carlton Fisk, the old
1:19
Speaker 2: white Sox player exposu.
1:21
Speaker 1: I have white Sox, I think, among others. Uh, okay,
1:24
Speaker 1: but anyway, Chad was like, Dude, this guy, like he's
1:27
Speaker 1: the most interesting man that you've never heard of. And
1:31
Speaker 1: I found when I was online researching, like outside of
1:34
Speaker 1: San Antonio and maybe Texas in a broader sense, like
1:39
Speaker 1: there aren't a ton of people who don't think that
1:42
Speaker 1: Tom Slick is just the name of a cartoon that
1:44
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with this guy.
1:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you ever watch Tom Slick when you were younger?
1:50
Speaker 1: Oh? The cartoon?
1:51
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, I never did. Yeah, I watched a lot
1:55
Speaker 2: of Rocky and Bullwinkle, but I'd never heard of Tom
1:57
Speaker 2: Slick until I started researching this cat.
1:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like a Georgia of the Jungle Partner
2:02
Speaker 1: right show. But yeah, I just I mean it was
2:05
Speaker 1: even I mean, it wasn't hard to find information online,
2:07
Speaker 1: but it wasn't as easy as a lot of people.
2:10
Speaker 1: And considering all the like kind of crazy extraordinary things
2:13
Speaker 1: he did in his life.
2:15
Speaker 2: I ran into the exact same issue where like, there's
2:18
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff, I don't even want to say
2:20
Speaker 2: a lot, but there's a substantial enough amount of articles
2:23
Speaker 2: and sources about him online, but they all contain just
2:28
Speaker 2: basically like one off anecdotes. Yeah, and it's like, wait,
2:31
Speaker 2: I don't quite understand, like how did this incident like
2:35
Speaker 2: help form his outlook on life, Like there's not a
2:38
Speaker 2: complete picture of that dude. It drives me crazy, Yeah,
2:41
Speaker 2: because I like to understand the whole thing, you know.
2:45
Speaker 2: I love how the parts kind of make up a whole,
2:47
Speaker 2: and I feel like with this guy, largely just have parts,
2:51
Speaker 2: even though you know, if I put him together, he's
2:54
Speaker 2: like a jigsaw with a bunch of missing places. But
2:59
Speaker 2: I still can kind of see the picture, and it's
3:02
Speaker 2: that he was a pretty cool and interesting dude and
3:04
Speaker 2: seems to have been a genuinely good dude too.
3:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. Had Nicholas Cage pulled off the film adaptation of
3:12
Speaker 1: his life, all your prayers may have been answered, my friend.
3:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard that that one was canceled because he
3:18
Speaker 2: was doing it so weird. Every time Tom Slick ran
3:20
Speaker 2: into a problem or an issue and was upset, Nicholas
3:24
Speaker 2: Cage would just go for like five minutes and it
3:31
Speaker 2: took up. It added like a good forty five minutes
3:33
Speaker 2: to the film. Oh and he refused to let them
3:36
Speaker 2: cut a second of it.
3:37
Speaker 1: I remember one of the funniest parts of the when
3:40
Speaker 1: Andy Sandberg was doing Nick Cage on SNL.
3:44
Speaker 2: One of the.
3:44
Speaker 1: Lines really got me one week was he was on
3:47
Speaker 1: the Weekend Update and they were talking about some movie
3:50
Speaker 1: that came out that he was in, you know, and
3:51
Speaker 1: he's in like fifteen movies a year, and it had
3:54
Speaker 1: all the elements of the Nick Cage movie number one
3:57
Speaker 1: it existed.
4:00
Speaker 2: Also, Yeah, yeah, I like that guy a lot. Samberg,
4:06
Speaker 2: Nick Catche Yeah, and Andy Samberg is great too. And
4:09
Speaker 2: Tom Slick, Yeah, for sure. I like Andy Samberg, but
4:13
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen I never really watched Brooklyn nine nine.
4:17
Speaker 2: I saw the most work he did in That's My Boy,
4:21
Speaker 2: which I actually loved. Like, I don't think there's a
4:24
Speaker 2: Sandler movie out there that I don't at least.
4:26
Speaker 1: Like I did not see that, And there are many
4:29
Speaker 1: many Adam Sandler movies that have not seen.
4:32
Speaker 3: I know.
4:32
Speaker 2: It's the shame of the podcast.
4:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I did watch the first couple of seasons
4:36
Speaker 1: of Brooklyn nine nine and it's great.
4:38
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, Adam Sandler wasn't on that as far as
4:40
Speaker 2: I know, so that doesn't.
4:41
Speaker 1: Count, I don't think. So.
4:43
Speaker 2: So let's talk about Tom Slick.
4:45
Speaker 1: Huh, Yeah, I mean one of the problems with Tom
4:48
Speaker 1: Slick is separating fact from fiction because he's one of
4:51
Speaker 1: these guys that lives sort of an extraordinary, curious, filled
4:54
Speaker 1: adventurous life. And right off the bat, the fact that
4:58
Speaker 1: he was born on either May six and I'll so
5:00
Speaker 1: I saw May ninth. It just may have been the
5:02
Speaker 1: way things were back then. This is in nineteen sixteen,
5:06
Speaker 1: and he was a junior to Thomas Baker Slick Senior,
5:10
Speaker 1: who was a guy that really rubbed off on his
5:13
Speaker 1: son because he had the same sort of adventurous spirit
5:16
Speaker 1: as an oil man.
5:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tom Baker Slick Senior was king of the wildcatters,
5:22
Speaker 2: and a wildcatter is somebody who goes around just drilling
5:25
Speaker 2: oil wells in places where it's not at all clear
5:28
Speaker 2: that there's going to be oil. They're just very hopeful prospectors, right, Yeah,
5:32
Speaker 2: And that's how he spent like his early career and
5:35
Speaker 2: then finally he just hit pay dirt. It was called
5:39
Speaker 2: I think the Wheeler Won Well in Bristol, Oklahoma, and
5:43
Speaker 2: it became one of the most productive wells in America
5:46
Speaker 2: that was pumping out like over three hundred thousand barrels
5:50
Speaker 2: a day.
5:51
Speaker 1: I got another stat for you at the time, what
5:53
Speaker 1: would become Cushing oil Field was responsible for two thirds
5:57
Speaker 1: of the oil production in the Western Hymn sphere Man.
6:02
Speaker 2: So, yes, I guess it goes without saying that Tom
6:06
Speaker 2: Slick Senior made himself and his family rich beyond their
6:10
Speaker 2: wildest dreams. And so Tom Slick Junior grew up a
6:15
Speaker 2: rich kid, and that's a huge thing. That was a
6:19
Speaker 2: huge like part of his formative upbringing. He was extraordinarily wealthy,
6:26
Speaker 2: but he was a rare rich kid that took that
6:29
Speaker 2: wealth and put it to good use and also used
6:32
Speaker 2: it to just totally free himself from, you know, the
6:34
Speaker 2: pursuit of making a profit or turning a dollar or whatever.
6:37
Speaker 2: He did things because he was curious about stuff, and
6:40
Speaker 2: because he wanted to help humanity.
6:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, when you're working that much, obviously
6:44
Speaker 1: you're not going to be around your family as much.
6:48
Speaker 1: Tom had a couple of siblings, and you know, Dad
6:50
Speaker 1: just wasn't around because they lived in Pennsylvania as a family. Obviously,
6:53
Speaker 1: the oil is out west, so Pops was in Oklahoma
6:56
Speaker 1: and Texas most of the time working these long hours,
7:00
Speaker 1: and those long hours did him in when he died
7:02
Speaker 1: at only forty six years old. Of a stroke, which
7:06
Speaker 1: was a you know, a huge loss for young Tom
7:08
Speaker 1: because he even though Dad wasn't around that much, I
7:11
Speaker 1: get the feeling that he kind of idolized him and
7:13
Speaker 1: really revered him.
7:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, he definitely followed in his footsteps too in a
7:17
Speaker 2: lot of ways.
7:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he was fourteen years old at the time,
7:20
Speaker 1: and you know, it was a huge loss.
7:24
Speaker 2: It was. I also saw that he'd become so revered
7:27
Speaker 2: and respected in Oklahoma that when he passed away, the
7:32
Speaker 2: oil derek's in the Oklahoma City field, which is one
7:35
Speaker 2: of the biggest fields in the country, they went silent
7:39
Speaker 2: for an hour. So every oil man in Oklahoma who
7:42
Speaker 2: had a Derek in this field stopped making money for
7:46
Speaker 2: an hour out of respect for Tom Senior. I think
7:48
Speaker 2: that says an enormous amount about him. Or maybe they
7:51
Speaker 2: were just hungry, could have been I guess sure.
7:55
Speaker 1: So after Dad dies, a mom did something that was
7:59
Speaker 1: you know, pready common back then, or you know, not
8:01
Speaker 1: more common than it feels like it is now, which
8:03
Speaker 1: is marrying your dead spouse's brother or sister. Her brother
8:10
Speaker 1: in law was Charles Erschall because he was married to
8:14
Speaker 1: Tom's sister, Flow, who also died around the same time.
8:19
Speaker 1: This is all just bad luck. Of course, nothing weird
8:21
Speaker 1: went on, and they got together and got married.
8:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had elaborate marriage, like we talked about in
8:28
Speaker 2: the Widow's episode. So from what I can gather, Charles
8:31
Speaker 2: Erschall was a good stepfather to Tom, and Tom was
8:35
Speaker 2: happy to have him. I mean it was his uncle already, right,
8:38
Speaker 2: so he was quite concerned. When he was seventeen, he
8:42
Speaker 2: was home from Exeter, the boarding school for the summer
8:46
Speaker 2: back at Oklahoma City. By this time, the whole family
8:49
Speaker 2: had moved to Oklahoma City and was living in a mansion,
8:52
Speaker 2: the slick Erschel family. And in July twenty second, nineteen
8:56
Speaker 2: thirty three, while everybody's just kind of hanging out, machine
8:59
Speaker 2: Gun Kelly came knocking on the door with a few
9:02
Speaker 2: of his cronies and said, we are taking Charles Erschel
9:06
Speaker 2: with us. Which one of you, two men is Charles
9:09
Speaker 2: Erschael and Urschel's friend Walter Jarrett was did one of
9:13
Speaker 2: the most stand up things a frank can do when
9:15
Speaker 2: you're being kidnapped.
9:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, he just stood silently and sort of nudged his
9:20
Speaker 1: nose over towards Erschel.
9:23
Speaker 2: His eyes are going like way left over here.
9:27
Speaker 1: No one picked up on that, now I'm kidding. He
9:29
Speaker 1: Neither one of them said anything. And you know, I
9:30
Speaker 1: guess they were sort of together in this, and so
9:33
Speaker 1: they took him both and that, you know, that's what happened.
9:36
Speaker 1: They kidnapped both these guys. They would eventually find Jarrett's ID.
9:40
Speaker 1: So they dumped him on the side of the road
9:43
Speaker 1: and took Erschel to rural Texas, to a ranch and
9:47
Speaker 1: demanded two hundred grand in ransom, which is close to
9:50
Speaker 1: five million bucks today.
9:52
Speaker 2: Yes, this was a hugely consequential event, right, so that
9:59
Speaker 2: Tom Slick Junior tangentially involved in because when Charles Ershall
10:04
Speaker 2: was being held, he really kept his head about him
10:08
Speaker 2: and depending on who you ask e there, he noted
10:10
Speaker 2: the time of day, the times of day that a
10:14
Speaker 2: train passed by nearby, or that planes flew overhead to
10:18
Speaker 2: try to get an idea of where he was. He
10:21
Speaker 2: put his fingers on everything he could to leave fingerprints,
10:25
Speaker 2: and he also counted the steps anywhere he went when
10:27
Speaker 2: he was blindfolded. So when he was released, and thankfully
10:32
Speaker 2: he was released unharmed for a two hundred thousand dollars ransom,
10:37
Speaker 2: he was able to tell the FEDS like, hey, here's
10:41
Speaker 2: everything you need to know about going and finding this
10:43
Speaker 2: ranch where they took me, and they did. They found
10:45
Speaker 2: it rather quickly.
10:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was also timing how long the trains were
10:50
Speaker 1: and if you know how many trains are passing in
10:53
Speaker 1: a sort of general area, how big these trains are.
10:56
Speaker 1: I think that allowed them to literally go to train
10:59
Speaker 1: schedules in that part of Texas and figured this thing out.
11:02
Speaker 1: So he was he was a very smart guy. And
11:06
Speaker 1: there were you know, they arrested Machine Gun. Kelly fled,
11:09
Speaker 1: but they arrested the other guys. They were able to
11:11
Speaker 1: track down Kelly in Memphis and he went to Alcatraz
11:15
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life.
11:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, so not only did he go to Alcatraz, Machine
11:19
Speaker 2: Gun Kelly did. But this is where we talked about
11:22
Speaker 2: in the jaeg Or Hoover episode where G Men was
11:25
Speaker 2: coined because they went to come get him and when
11:28
Speaker 2: they busted in the door, he said, don't shoot g Men,
11:31
Speaker 2: And that's where their nickname came from. Just like we
11:32
Speaker 2: talked about in the Hoover episode, that happened from this.
11:36
Speaker 2: So this is what I'm saying, Like Tom Slick, his
11:38
Speaker 2: life really spreads out into a lot of different stuff
11:42
Speaker 2: you should know episodes, and yet we'd still never ran
11:45
Speaker 2: across him in our research, which is strange to me.
11:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a big backer of science. That's something
11:51
Speaker 1: that you're gonna see that kind of pops up again
11:52
Speaker 1: and again in his life right stemming from his just
11:56
Speaker 1: natural curiosity. And he was a very very smart dude.
11:59
Speaker 1: He went to Yale and was into genetics and was
12:02
Speaker 1: really and this was a time when you know, in
12:05
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties Repolice Believe it or Not magazine and
12:09
Speaker 1: the idea of like cross breeding animals and cryptids and
12:14
Speaker 1: all these things were just it was sort of big news,
12:16
Speaker 1: or if not big news, something people were kind of
12:18
Speaker 1: into at the time. And he supposedly kept a list
12:22
Speaker 1: of like animals that he wanted to try and cross breed.
12:26
Speaker 1: When he read about a hog goat that was a
12:29
Speaker 1: hote that was living in Arkansas, he drove to Arkansas
12:33
Speaker 1: and bought whatever it was. I don't even know if
12:37
Speaker 1: it was like poor things or what he ended up with,
12:40
Speaker 1: but whatever he brought home, he tried to breed it
12:42
Speaker 1: on his own farm with no luck.
12:44
Speaker 2: It was definitely not a hog goat because it's physically
12:48
Speaker 2: and genetically and biologically impossible for them to reproduce. So
12:52
Speaker 2: I didn't see what it was either, just that that
12:54
Speaker 2: didn't exist. But that didn't stop him from trying.
12:56
Speaker 1: Did you really look that up?
12:58
Speaker 2: I mean, I was like, I got to see this
13:00
Speaker 2: thing and there was nothing. Nothing hope, hog goat, hog
13:04
Speaker 2: goat cross breeding, I know, but I thought like, surely
13:09
Speaker 2: there's there's something that this way. I couldn't find any
13:12
Speaker 2: reference to it. I also saw in some places that
13:16
Speaker 2: he basically like went to go buy it and realized
13:19
Speaker 2: that these people didn't even exist, and certainly the hope
13:21
Speaker 2: didn't exist, but he went and tried it anyway because
13:24
Speaker 2: he really liked the idea of it. And this was
13:26
Speaker 2: when genetics was really new and cutting edge, and this
13:30
Speaker 2: guy's into it while he's still at Yale, you know.
13:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. So one of the things he successfully does cross
13:36
Speaker 1: breed is cattle. He looked at the Scottish angus, which
13:41
Speaker 1: is you know, prized for its excellent quality beef. They're very,
13:46
Speaker 1: very fertile. And then he looked at the Brahmin cattle
13:49
Speaker 1: from India and he was like, these things are great.
13:52
Speaker 1: They're disease resistant, they're pest resistant, they are they do
13:56
Speaker 1: well in drought, and they're very very maternal, much more
13:58
Speaker 1: maternal than the angus. So let's get them together. Put
14:03
Speaker 1: three aids Brahmin with five eighths angus. And this was
14:06
Speaker 1: one of his big noted early successes. When he was
14:09
Speaker 1: in his early twenties. He created the Brangus cattle breed
14:13
Speaker 1: that is still around today and like highly sought after.
14:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I saw that that. People still love that,
14:20
Speaker 2: and it helped introduce the angus cattle into Texas where
14:24
Speaker 2: they would not have done very well before.
14:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. But here's the thing though, Like this sounds cool
14:29
Speaker 1: like and you think, oh, this guy's like a cattle guy.
14:31
Speaker 1: Now he's a rich kid looking to make more money
14:33
Speaker 1: on this cattle deal. He was doing it because he
14:36
Speaker 1: wanted to introduce a breed of cattle that did better
14:40
Speaker 1: in places where there was drought and there were pests
14:43
Speaker 1: and disease. So one of his business partners was like,
14:46
Speaker 1: he didn't care about making money on this. He just
14:48
Speaker 1: he hoped it would help people in hot countries.
14:50
Speaker 2: Not just he didn't care. He didn't give quote hoot
14:53
Speaker 2: and hell about making money on brangus.
14:55
Speaker 1: Well, I wasn't gonna say it.
14:57
Speaker 2: I say, we take a break and come back, and
14:59
Speaker 2: you meant and he's into cryptids. Let's talk about that
15:02
Speaker 2: in a second.
15:02
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, we'll be right back.
15:26
Speaker 2: So I don't know if we said or not, but
15:28
Speaker 2: Tom Slick got he developed a love of cryptids, with
15:33
Speaker 2: that he shared with his father. His father passed on
15:35
Speaker 2: like a love of stories about Locknus Monster, the Abominable Snowman,
15:39
Speaker 2: all sorts of adventurous stuff like that, and like you said,
15:42
Speaker 2: it really rubbed off on Tom Junior, and so at
15:45
Speaker 2: a pretty early age I think. Yeah, he was still
15:47
Speaker 2: at Yale and with some of his buddies, he packed
15:50
Speaker 2: his red Buick onto a steamership and went to Europe
15:55
Speaker 2: for a summer where they drove around Europe and one
15:58
Speaker 2: of the top things on his list was to go
16:00
Speaker 2: look for the Lochness Monster. And one of the things
16:03
Speaker 2: you'll kind of notice about Tom Slick is that when
16:06
Speaker 2: he's doing these things that today in retrospect seemed very
16:09
Speaker 2: weird and flaky, at the time there was like a
16:13
Speaker 2: lot of evidence that these things existed. This was nineteen
16:19
Speaker 2: thirty seven. The next year, the Celacanth would be rediscovered.
16:23
Speaker 2: Like it was just kind of in the air that
16:25
Speaker 2: there were things out there that Sidnce hadn't identified yet,
16:28
Speaker 2: and perhaps the Lockness monster was one of them.
16:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the very very famous picture of supposed NeSSI
16:35
Speaker 1: was just three years prior to that, so it was
16:37
Speaker 1: all the rage at the time. Personally, he got married
16:42
Speaker 1: pretty quickly after Yale and got divorced even quicker to
16:47
Speaker 1: his first wife, Betty. I guess long enough to have
16:49
Speaker 1: a son named William, but really took after his dad
16:52
Speaker 1: more ways than one because he was a very busy guy.
16:55
Speaker 1: He was a workaholic. He did spend more time around
16:59
Speaker 1: his family get the idea that his father did. But
17:02
Speaker 1: if you know, the YETI came calling, he would go
17:06
Speaker 1: find the yetti or try to find the yetti, or
17:09
Speaker 1: if he wanted to open up a new scientific research center,
17:13
Speaker 1: of which he opened geez, how many like five of
17:16
Speaker 1: him while he was alive. Yes, then he would spend
17:19
Speaker 1: his time doing that because it was he thought it
17:21
Speaker 1: was very worthwhile and it.
17:23
Speaker 2: Was the call of the Yetti. By the way, is er.
17:29
Speaker 1: Nicolas Cage he played the Yetti and dump slick and
17:32
Speaker 1: the singer right Yeah, it would have been like adaptation.
17:36
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly. So you said that he was a little
17:40
Speaker 2: closer with his kids than his father. I think one
17:43
Speaker 2: of the ways he did that was on a lot
17:45
Speaker 2: of his adventures, he'd bring his kids along with him,
17:48
Speaker 2: and I know, at least his son Charles Chuck, even
17:53
Speaker 2: Chuck like has very fond memories of going on adventures
17:57
Speaker 2: with his dad. So yeah, he was definitely closer to
18:01
Speaker 2: his kids, at least experience wise, than he was with
18:03
Speaker 2: his father.
18:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. So one big foray into the scientific side of
18:08
Speaker 1: his life was Science City. It was this dream project
18:14
Speaker 1: that he had had for a long time. It's very
18:16
Speaker 1: sort ofeen mid nineteen thirty's name, I guess. So he
18:20
Speaker 1: opens up Science City, gets the ball rolling. By nineteen forty,
18:25
Speaker 1: they had moved to San Antonio, which is where you'll
18:28
Speaker 1: find Tom Slick Park and Tom Slick Everything basically, which
18:32
Speaker 1: includes a little NeSSI statue which is kind of cool.
18:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you can totally tell it's fake.
18:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, not the real thing. So he bought sixteen
18:40
Speaker 1: hundred and two acres about eight miles west of San
18:43
Speaker 1: Antonio that would eventually grow to about four thousand acres
18:48
Speaker 1: for the S. Eessar Ranch, which is just a long
18:53
Speaker 1: way of saying SR for scientific research. And he was
18:57
Speaker 1: twenty four years old, and this is where all that
18:59
Speaker 1: brang is stuff happen.
19:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you said that he founded five research facilities
19:03
Speaker 2: in his twenties. Three of them are still around. One
19:06
Speaker 2: of the first ones he established was the Foundation for
19:10
Speaker 2: Applied Research far Faar or Fayre, depending on how you
19:15
Speaker 2: say it, and that is still around. That's now the
19:19
Speaker 2: Texas Biomedical Research Institute. And as we'll see, these things
19:24
Speaker 2: have had like significant contributions to science in the world
19:29
Speaker 2: since they've been around.
19:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And we're all those in his twenties.
19:34
Speaker 2: From what I understand, this is all over like a
19:37
Speaker 2: few year period.
19:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, jeez, that's incredible. He tried to enlist in the
19:42
Speaker 1: Navy after Pearl Harbor in nineteen forty one, but he
19:45
Speaker 1: didn't have good eyesight, so they said, you are not
19:47
Speaker 1: fit for wartime duty. So they commissioned him in nineteen
19:51
Speaker 1: forty two as a lieutenant and right away said, all right,
19:56
Speaker 1: you know what you're good at is running big operations.
20:00
Speaker 1: Why don't you go work for the War Production Board
20:02
Speaker 1: and kind of help this idea that we have of
20:06
Speaker 1: changing over factories for making whatever they're making to helping
20:09
Speaker 1: out with wartime production. From there, he went to DC
20:13
Speaker 1: working for the Board of Economic Warfare, which was actually
20:17
Speaker 1: in Santiago, Chile. And this is where things get a
20:21
Speaker 1: little like who knows what happened because his letters and
20:26
Speaker 1: diaries weren't around. The records from what he did in
20:31
Speaker 1: Chile were destroyed, and we'll never know if or not
20:35
Speaker 1: he was like a spy in South America, which a
20:38
Speaker 1: lot of his family and other people said they thought
20:41
Speaker 1: he was.
20:42
Speaker 2: I think we know one hundred percent that he was
20:44
Speaker 2: a spy in Chile at the time. Oh really, just
20:48
Speaker 2: from the circumstantial evidence.
20:51
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, I thought you meant you found something
20:53
Speaker 1: better a man.
20:54
Speaker 2: You could write a book if you found that. But yes,
20:57
Speaker 2: the family lore is that he was working in South
20:59
Speaker 2: America as basically a Nazi catcher, helping local governments and
21:05
Speaker 2: the US catch Nazis who'd escaped, which happened there. Yes,
21:10
Speaker 2: that's the thing. It happened while he was there. That's
21:13
Speaker 2: one of the operations that was going on in South America.
21:17
Speaker 2: And he was just an American businessman, but he was
21:20
Speaker 2: also in the Navy, and no one knows why he
21:24
Speaker 2: was stationed there. He never talked about it or told anybody.
21:27
Speaker 2: I would say that that's pretty much certain, because if
21:31
Speaker 2: you combine that with another thing that he may have
21:34
Speaker 2: been operative for or at least related to some operatives,
21:38
Speaker 2: I think that it's pretty certain he was. That's my
21:41
Speaker 2: two cents at least.
21:42
Speaker 1: All right, So he got married again, this time in
21:46
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven to a woman twelve years younger. She
21:50
Speaker 1: was eighteen at the time, and they had three kids.
21:53
Speaker 1: They also got divorced. You know, again, he's not around
21:57
Speaker 1: a lot and probably not the most attentive husband when
22:00
Speaker 1: he has all these things going on, and he had
22:04
Speaker 1: he you know, he's somebody I'd look up to in
22:05
Speaker 1: a lot of ways after sort of finding out how
22:07
Speaker 1: he worked, certainly not as a husband, but how he
22:11
Speaker 1: worked as a curious person. He seems like the kind
22:15
Speaker 1: of guy that he would read and read and read
22:18
Speaker 1: just about everything that he could and just soak up
22:20
Speaker 1: as much knowledge as he could. And when he came
22:23
Speaker 1: across something that piqued his interest in a particular way
22:26
Speaker 1: or that he couldn't figure out, he had the resources
22:30
Speaker 1: and the money and the time to you know, if
22:32
Speaker 1: not solve it, try to solve it by just saying like,
22:34
Speaker 1: all right, pick up the phone, let me call whoever
22:38
Speaker 1: I know, or write a letter to whoever I know
22:40
Speaker 1: who might be able to help out with this. And
22:42
Speaker 1: then depending on what they say, I might hire some
22:44
Speaker 1: people to go to work and try and figure this
22:46
Speaker 1: stuff out. I might work on it myself and whatever
22:49
Speaker 1: the outcome. He was just about trying. He wasn't afraid
22:52
Speaker 1: of failing. He was just trying to find out stuff
22:56
Speaker 1: and made his best efforts to even if it didn't
22:58
Speaker 1: work out.
22:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, just finding out that no one seemed to know
23:01
Speaker 2: the answer that was enough for him. You know, of
23:04
Speaker 2: course he wanted to find the answer to the question
23:06
Speaker 2: he was looking for. But yeah, he said, I don't
23:08
Speaker 2: believe in failure, only outcome, like he said, And that's
23:10
Speaker 2: just what a great motto, you know. I mean that
23:12
Speaker 2: just ye completely transforms your outlook on life.
23:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's to be clear, it is a
23:19
Speaker 1: motto that you can afford when you have that kind
23:21
Speaker 1: of privilege, when you can just be like, hey, I'll fail,
23:24
Speaker 1: Like what's the big rub? Sure, and he had that privilege,
23:27
Speaker 1: but he you know, in his favor. He didn't use
23:30
Speaker 1: that privilege to sit around on a beach and drink
23:32
Speaker 1: coconut drinks like he was trying to better humankind.
23:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, like, yes, that's a great point,
23:39
Speaker 2: but I also think that you can apply it to
23:41
Speaker 2: all sorts of different things in life, you know, not
23:43
Speaker 2: necessarily just your success or your wealth or anything like that.
23:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
23:48
Speaker 2: So there were a lot of things that he used
23:52
Speaker 2: this technique for that came to fruition. Some things may
23:56
Speaker 2: or may not exist, We're not one hundred percent sure.
23:58
Speaker 2: But one thing that he definitely did in coinvent that
24:02
Speaker 2: did have some consequence to it was what's called a
24:04
Speaker 2: lift slab method of basically creating a concrete roof. Those
24:09
Speaker 2: are very expensive to make. That's very difficult to create
24:12
Speaker 2: them in place on the roof, and he basically figured
24:16
Speaker 2: out a technique to make it on the ground and
24:18
Speaker 2: then lift it into place. Sounds kind of basic and
24:21
Speaker 2: low hanging, but apparently it saves a lot of cost
24:24
Speaker 2: and it works. So that's a pretty good example of
24:26
Speaker 2: him just kind of putting his mind to figuring a
24:29
Speaker 2: better way out. It's boring, but it's still a good example.
24:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that wasn't just for roofs. It was
24:36
Speaker 1: I mean feeble to ten story building. He would build
24:38
Speaker 1: all ten floors on the ground and then hydraulic those
24:43
Speaker 1: suckers up there.
24:44
Speaker 2: That's man, what can't you do with hydraulics?
24:48
Speaker 1: And we should also mention the lift slab. It was
24:51
Speaker 1: simultaneously developed by another guy named Philip Utes. Tom Slick
24:55
Speaker 1: got the patent and you know, gets all the glory
24:57
Speaker 1: for that, but a lot of people still call it
25:00
Speaker 1: the Ute's Slick method.
25:02
Speaker 2: Beautiful.
25:03
Speaker 1: He developed a breed of mice. This was early in
25:06
Speaker 1: chemotherapy treatments that were very useful in testing. We mentioned
25:11
Speaker 1: that Brangus. I think my favorite is that he had
25:16
Speaker 1: a thing against cowls in your hair, so he invented
25:19
Speaker 1: a hair tonic that could supposedly reverse those calys.
25:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, in particular Brangus Cowlyx give me her cal stinkless skunks. Apparently.
25:28
Speaker 2: Did you see anything about this? I couldn't really find
25:30
Speaker 2: anything on that.
25:32
Speaker 1: I found nothing on that.
25:33
Speaker 2: I don't know if it just went beyond the idea stage.
25:35
Speaker 2: One thing that definitely happened was one of his institutes.
25:38
Speaker 2: It might have been the Southwest Research Institute or the
25:41
Speaker 2: Texas Biomedical Institute, had a huge role in producing some
25:44
Speaker 2: of the first oral contraceptives. That's fairly world altering, sure.
25:49
Speaker 2: And then another one that did not come to fruition
25:52
Speaker 2: was called We're artificial pecans pecans however you want to
25:56
Speaker 2: say it. He decided that the trees were way too
26:00
Speaker 2: water intensive, especially from the perspective of Texas, and so
26:04
Speaker 2: he wanted to find a way to create pecans that
26:06
Speaker 2: did not need to grow on trees. And like I said,
26:10
Speaker 2: it didn't get anywhere. I cannot, for the life and
26:12
Speaker 2: me find what the heck he made the artificial pecans
26:15
Speaker 2: out of. But he definitely gave it a try.
26:18
Speaker 1: So we've talked a lot about his, you know, work
26:21
Speaker 1: as a funder of science and a believer in science
26:25
Speaker 1: kind of maybe not weirdly, but he was also a
26:28
Speaker 1: guy that really loved the unexplained and the mystical and
26:32
Speaker 1: was not although he believed in science, he wasn't he
26:37
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily think that those walls couldn't be explored beyond,
26:42
Speaker 1: you know. So he went to India, as a lot
26:45
Speaker 1: of people did in those days who were seeking enlightenment
26:48
Speaker 1: in the fifties, saw people walking on hot coals, supposedly
26:54
Speaker 1: saw Lamas and Tibetan monks levitating off the ground. This
26:58
Speaker 1: is one of his claims.
27:00
Speaker 2: He basically went to a Tony Robbins convention.
27:04
Speaker 1: Does he levitate lamas?
27:05
Speaker 2: He does all sorts of stuff like this that, yes,
27:08
Speaker 2: he does pseudo scientific things like.
27:10
Speaker 1: This, or maybe a David Blaine performance.
27:13
Speaker 2: Yeah.
27:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I tried to learn that method, but I did
27:17
Speaker 1: it okay for a little while, but it wasn't great.
27:20
Speaker 1: What levitating, well, the illusion that you're levitating, which is
27:24
Speaker 1: what David Blaine did. It's a trick obviously, isn't it.
27:27
Speaker 2: Essentially you're basically standing on your toes.
27:31
Speaker 1: You're standing on one toe. You have people at a
27:34
Speaker 1: certain angle where when you're raising all of your body
27:37
Speaker 1: weight up on the one toe, you're blocking it in
27:41
Speaker 1: with your other foot and like pant leg and so
27:44
Speaker 1: it's all about the angle at which you see it.
27:45
Speaker 1: So you can't see that that one toe is on
27:47
Speaker 1: the ground, but it looks great if you can, if
27:50
Speaker 1: you can do it well.
27:51
Speaker 2: So I don't understand why you call it levitating. I
27:53
Speaker 2: think you could just get as much awe out of
27:57
Speaker 2: people as saying like, I'm standing on one toe right now. Everybody,
28:01
Speaker 2: how nuts is that?
28:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a a tow bodybuilder. I've got the strongest
28:06
Speaker 1: tow right.
28:08
Speaker 2: So this is a really consequential time in Central Asia,
28:14
Speaker 2: East Asia. In Tibet, the Dalai Lama had been oh,
28:21
Speaker 2: I don't know the word, but basically found and identified
28:24
Speaker 2: just several years before. This is the Dalai Lama as
28:27
Speaker 2: we know him today. And around this time, he was
28:29
Speaker 2: about twenty one, and China had invaded Tibet, and all
28:33
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the Dali Lama found himself is like
28:35
Speaker 2: the head of the Tibetan government. Everybody said, you're the guy,
28:39
Speaker 2: what are you going to do about this? And there
28:41
Speaker 2: was almost nothing he could do. There were Tibetan freedom fighters,
28:45
Speaker 2: Tibetan resistance rebels, and they were just getting crushed left
28:50
Speaker 2: and right by China. And Tibet was a place where
28:54
Speaker 2: China had invaded. And so now anytime you saw an
28:57
Speaker 2: American you can pretty much guess that if they were CIA,
29:01
Speaker 2: they were backed by the CIA. They were giving information
29:03
Speaker 2: to the CIA. The CIA had like a twenty year
29:06
Speaker 2: program in Tibet, and one of the things they did
29:09
Speaker 2: was help get the Dali Lama out when it became
29:11
Speaker 2: clear that the Dalai Lama needed to get the heck
29:14
Speaker 2: out and create a government for Tibet in exile, which
29:17
Speaker 2: he still runs today. The CIA helped that happen, and
29:22
Speaker 2: so did in some way, shape or form, Tom Slick
29:25
Speaker 2: had some sort of hand in it.
29:27
Speaker 1: All right, maybe we should take a break and sounds
29:29
Speaker 1: like a good little cliffhanger and come back and talk
29:32
Speaker 1: about why he may have been over there in the
29:35
Speaker 1: first place. Right after this, all right, So where we
30:00
Speaker 1: left off was a little tease about Tom Sluck potentially
30:03
Speaker 1: maybe helping to get the Dali Lama out of Tibet.
30:07
Speaker 1: Why was he there? He had met him already, so
30:10
Speaker 1: that was a you know, before the break, we were
30:12
Speaker 1: talking about a trip that he took over there. Tossed
30:15
Speaker 1: that one aside. He goes home, starts living his life,
30:17
Speaker 1: feels a little bit more enlightened, he can meditate a
30:19
Speaker 1: little bit. Sure, worthwhile trip, but he, just like his father,
30:24
Speaker 1: was fascinated by the idea of the Yeti, the Abominable Snowman,
30:29
Speaker 1: and the Himalayas, And like you mentioned earlier, like this
30:33
Speaker 1: was a time when you know, it's kind of right
30:35
Speaker 1: in the middle of all these yetti sidings, there were
30:37
Speaker 1: new species being discovered. And so he was like, hey, listen,
30:42
Speaker 1: I'm not some some wacko who just you know, believes
30:46
Speaker 1: in these weird cryptis he cryptids? He said, I think
30:50
Speaker 1: there's something out there that maybe like the link between
30:53
Speaker 1: man and animal. And I think there are at least
30:56
Speaker 1: two species. There are the big, tall eight footers with
30:59
Speaker 1: black hair. There were smaller red haired guys. And I
31:04
Speaker 1: think it's like a pre human man that's been basically
31:07
Speaker 1: hidden for thousands of years in the Himalayas.
31:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean Westerners have been trying to climb
31:14
Speaker 2: the Himalayas for decades by this time, and as they
31:17
Speaker 2: came back, they would bring stories from the locals about
31:19
Speaker 2: the YETI, the abominable snowman, and so, like you said,
31:23
Speaker 2: like it wasn't just totally like off the charts or
31:25
Speaker 2: super fringe to mount an expedition for this, and he did,
31:30
Speaker 2: and like he was looking for a missing link, remember
31:33
Speaker 2: his fascination with hybridization. He felt like that that's what
31:38
Speaker 2: those things were. They were a missing link out there.
31:40
Speaker 2: They weren't some undiscovered animal. They were some human relative
31:44
Speaker 2: that had somehow survived in the wilds of the Pacific
31:47
Speaker 2: Northwest or the wilds of the Himalayas, and he wanted
31:52
Speaker 2: to find one. I don't know if he wanted to
31:54
Speaker 2: kill and stuff it because he was a hunter, but
31:57
Speaker 2: he definitely wanted to at least or meet one, shake
32:01
Speaker 2: his hand, buy him a steak dinner. I'm not sure,
32:03
Speaker 2: buy him a Brangus steak dinner.
32:06
Speaker 1: Pretty good. He actually did change the way that those
32:10
Speaker 1: expeditions went down, because most of those had been kill
32:16
Speaker 1: and catch or catch and kill expeditions for kind of
32:19
Speaker 1: anything like that, and he changed it to more research
32:23
Speaker 1: base and hey, let's see if we can get something alive.
32:25
Speaker 2: Good. I'm glad so he did. He mounted three different
32:28
Speaker 2: expeditions I think the first one was in the winter
32:31
Speaker 2: of nineteen fifty six, which you're gonna go to the
32:33
Speaker 2: Himalayas in the winter seems like poor planning to me.
32:37
Speaker 2: And while he was there, he found a footprint thirteen
32:42
Speaker 2: inch long, bare footprint, and he made a plaster cast
32:46
Speaker 2: of it and became one of his prize possessions. He
32:48
Speaker 2: actually kept it on his dining room table and like
32:51
Speaker 2: if somebody wouldn't bring it up when they were a
32:53
Speaker 2: guest at his house. He would just kind of quietly
32:56
Speaker 2: nudge it over toward them until it was like in
32:59
Speaker 2: their face, on their plate even sometimes, and they'd be like, oh, okay,
33:03
Speaker 2: what is this? If I may ask, and he'd say, oh, well,
33:06
Speaker 2: funny you should ask. Let me tell you about this
33:08
Speaker 2: abominable snowman footprint.
33:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, he actually got a few footprints, and a couple
33:14
Speaker 1: of them were very noteworthy. I mean, they weren't yetty,
33:18
Speaker 1: but they were noteworthy, and that every other footprint had
33:20
Speaker 1: been snowfootprints, and he got a couple out of the mud,
33:24
Speaker 1: which was I guess sort of a bigger deal, and
33:27
Speaker 1: also supposedly brought back some hair samples. Again not a
33:31
Speaker 1: yetty because there's no YETI but he didn't know that
33:34
Speaker 1: at the time. No, give the guy break. He's trying
33:37
Speaker 1: to find what's true and what's not true, just like us.
33:40
Speaker 2: So two years after the first one he launched a
33:42
Speaker 2: second expedition. This one was like fully kitted out. He
33:47
Speaker 2: and a friend spent plunk down thirty grand in I
33:49
Speaker 2: guess nineteen fifty eight money to fund this expedition. There
33:53
Speaker 2: was a photographer, a documentary filmmaker. There were professional trackers.
33:58
Speaker 2: They brought in a recons since plane. They had tranquilizer guns,
34:02
Speaker 2: which supports your idea that this was not a catch
34:04
Speaker 2: and kill. And then also he brought three blue tickhounds
34:08
Speaker 2: tick bloodhounds, which are really well known as tracker dogs,
34:12
Speaker 2: and he even put little snow boots on them to
34:15
Speaker 2: help them through the snow, which I thought was very conscientious.
34:19
Speaker 1: Totally, he didn't go on this one. He just you know,
34:22
Speaker 1: helped fund it because he had bailed on a bus
34:27
Speaker 1: on the previous expedition that had lost its breaks and
34:31
Speaker 1: pretty much tore up his knees permanently from that point.
34:34
Speaker 1: So there are some great pictures of him with his
34:37
Speaker 1: knees all bandaged up, but he's still, you know, smiling away,
34:41
Speaker 1: looking like he stepped out of a Banana Republic ad.
34:44
Speaker 2: Is he giving the thumbs up?
34:46
Speaker 1: There was no thumb when he had a cane in
34:47
Speaker 1: his hand.
34:49
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that second expedition was there for nine months,
34:54
Speaker 2: came home empty handed, obviously, or else we would all
34:56
Speaker 2: know that there was such a thing as the Yetti.
34:59
Speaker 2: And the third and last expedition, this is where the
35:02
Speaker 2: CIA business kind of comes in. He funded two brothers,
35:07
Speaker 2: Peter Burn and Brian Burn, and Peter was a well
35:11
Speaker 2: known outdoorsman hunter and he'd been searching for the Yetti
35:15
Speaker 2: for a couple of decades by this time. So Tom
35:18
Speaker 2: Slick financed a third expedition with these two brothers. And
35:22
Speaker 2: here we come to yet another stuff you should know
35:24
Speaker 2: episode I guess, the one on the Yetti or the
35:27
Speaker 2: Abominable Snowman, where we talked about this story where a
35:32
Speaker 2: Yeti thumb that was being on being displayed at Pangbosh Temple,
35:39
Speaker 2: the Buddhist monk temple, was stolen, and it turns out
35:43
Speaker 2: it was Peter and Brian Byrn who stole it on
35:46
Speaker 2: behalf of Tom Slick, who asked them to steal it
35:49
Speaker 2: on behalf of doctor Osmond Hill, a primatologist from the UK.
35:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is this is probably the most famous
35:56
Speaker 1: story about Tom Slick because of a certain coken sp
36:00
Speaker 1: here that we're going to introduce. But he it was
36:04
Speaker 1: actually a finger and a thumb. They gave these guys,
36:09
Speaker 1: these brothers, like another finger to trade, or not trade,
36:13
Speaker 1: but to swap out and hope no one would notice.
36:15
Speaker 1: I guess and said here's you know, here's a thumb.
36:18
Speaker 1: Take it over there, see if you can swap them out. Supposedly,
36:22
Speaker 1: the Burn brothers talked about giving a big donation to
36:26
Speaker 1: the temple. No one knows exactly what went down, but
36:29
Speaker 1: they left with that yetti thumb and finger and what
36:33
Speaker 1: they were told was a YETI scalp was another piece
36:36
Speaker 1: of piece of YETI. I guess that they got. So.
36:40
Speaker 1: I've seen this a couple of ways and stories. I've
36:43
Speaker 1: seen that a certain Hollywood actor was in on this
36:46
Speaker 1: from the beginning and it was all part of the plan.
36:48
Speaker 1: And then I've also seen that after this happened, the
36:51
Speaker 1: Burn brothers went to Calcutta and just had dinner with
36:56
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart and his wife at the Grand Hotel and
37:00
Speaker 1: were it from there got on board and just said,
37:03
Speaker 1: and my best Jimmy Stewart, if you need help getting
37:07
Speaker 1: the thumb across the border, I can. I can put
37:10
Speaker 1: it in my wife's underwear bag.
37:12
Speaker 2: That was great. I was really hoping you're gonna do
37:14
Speaker 2: something like that.
37:15
Speaker 1: It's okay. I used to do a decent one, but
37:17
Speaker 1: it's been a while.
37:18
Speaker 2: It's good, especially for being rusty. I think the way
37:23
Speaker 2: we told it was that he happened to be there
37:25
Speaker 2: and offered I don't remember knowing that he was supposedly
37:29
Speaker 2: part of the whole thing.
37:30
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter, honestly.
37:32
Speaker 2: No, he definitely smuggled what was thought to be a
37:35
Speaker 2: Yetti thumb across the border out right out of India
37:39
Speaker 2: and his wife's lingerie case back to the UK, where
37:42
Speaker 2: he gave it to doctor Hill, and doctor Hill promptly
37:46
Speaker 2: just stopped talking about it. I guess he probably did
37:49
Speaker 2: some sort of examination and was like, yeah, this is
37:52
Speaker 2: not a Yetti thumb and filed it away in the
37:55
Speaker 2: archives of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, where
37:58
Speaker 2: it was lost until I leave the twenty first century.
38:02
Speaker 2: And then finally in twenty eleven, Edinburgh Zoo researchers did
38:06
Speaker 2: a DNA test on it and they said this is
38:08
Speaker 2: a human finger and thumb, and they made the little
38:12
Speaker 2: finger gun for the photo that was published all over
38:16
Speaker 2: the world.
38:17
Speaker 1: Why do I get the feeling at the time if
38:20
Speaker 1: they would have found that thing and thumb in the
38:23
Speaker 1: wear bag at the airport, that she could have just
38:26
Speaker 1: been like, stay out of that, that's my thumb, that's
38:29
Speaker 1: my finger. Stay out of my underwear. They would have
38:31
Speaker 1: just been like, oh my god, I'm so sorry, and
38:33
Speaker 1: like just giving it back to her.
38:35
Speaker 2: I can't remember where I read it. It was years
38:37
Speaker 2: and years ago. We may have talked about it. But
38:39
Speaker 2: when there's when there's a personal massager found in luggage
38:45
Speaker 2: that's being searched in front of the person, like, I
38:48
Speaker 2: think the TSA is instructed to just pretend it doesn't exist,
38:52
Speaker 2: like they didn't see it.
38:55
Speaker 1: I can't remember where we are, surely I definitely remember
38:58
Speaker 1: us talking about that.
38:59
Speaker 2: That was a while ago, so yeah, I think back
39:01
Speaker 2: in the late fifties you could have done the same
39:04
Speaker 2: thing with a yetti finger, considering it was in her
39:07
Speaker 2: underwork case.
39:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other thing that they brought back was that
39:11
Speaker 1: YETI scalp. Obviously not a YETI scalp. It was a
39:14
Speaker 1: type of Himalayan goat. So they struck out on all fronts.
39:19
Speaker 1: Too bad, But perhaps perhaps and I saw definite confirmation
39:27
Speaker 1: that Peter Burn at the very least was helping the
39:30
Speaker 1: CIA get people in and out of Tibet. There was
39:33
Speaker 1: a guy named George Patterson that was doing work like
39:37
Speaker 1: undercover work, and he helped get him in and out.
39:40
Speaker 1: So the idea is that sort of kind of closing
39:43
Speaker 1: the loop on the Dali Lama. Is that because of
39:45
Speaker 1: Peter Burn's work with the CIA getting people in and
39:48
Speaker 1: out that the New York Times even wrote a story
39:51
Speaker 1: in April of fifty seven called Soviet Cy's espionage in
39:55
Speaker 1: US snowman hunt this YETI I don't know if it
39:58
Speaker 1: was a complete front. I think the are also looking
40:00
Speaker 1: for the Yetti, but they were like, well, since they're
40:02
Speaker 1: over here, we'll do a little bit the CIA work
40:04
Speaker 1: for the guys right exactly?
40:06
Speaker 2: And I guess it's not definite. But I did see
40:08
Speaker 2: in at least one source that Peter Burn had a
40:13
Speaker 2: real hand in getting the Dolly lam out.
40:16
Speaker 1: I love that maybe he offered him his literal hand.
40:19
Speaker 2: He offered him a YETI thumb, come with me, big guy.
40:23
Speaker 1: So YETI eventually became a bigfoot as far as Tom
40:27
Speaker 1: Slick's passions went, because a little closer to home he
40:30
Speaker 1: could take take the kids on that trip, didn't have
40:32
Speaker 1: to go to the Himalayas. So he became a serious
40:36
Speaker 1: bigfoot hunter, including like hooking up with people who are
40:41
Speaker 1: until very recently, we're still big and noteworthy big foot hunters.
40:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of them was Peter Burn. Peter Burn went
40:49
Speaker 2: on to be one of the big well known big
40:53
Speaker 2: foot hunters. When he went with Tom Slick, that's kind
40:56
Speaker 2: of where he got the taste for it. And he's like, hey, Tom,
40:58
Speaker 2: you go back home. I'm gonna to stay here. And
41:01
Speaker 2: he even wrote a book called The Search for Bigfoot
41:04
Speaker 2: Monster myth or Man. So I think that's a great
41:09
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six in particular title for a book on bigfoot.
41:13
Speaker 1: Oh totally. So back to his private life, you know,
41:17
Speaker 1: he got divorced that second time, and after that he
41:20
Speaker 1: was like, you know what marriage is not for me,
41:23
Speaker 1: but what is for me is being a millionaire playboy
41:27
Speaker 1: and you know everything I saw said that he was
41:30
Speaker 1: very upfront with the women that he coborted with and
41:36
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I'm out to have a good time.
41:38
Speaker 1: This is not going to get serious. It's kind of
41:41
Speaker 1: a sort of a touchy way of saying. He had
41:42
Speaker 1: a lot of girlfriends. At the same time, his niece
41:47
Speaker 1: wrote a book about him and knew a lot about him,
41:49
Speaker 1: and she said that at one point I found a
41:52
Speaker 1: Christmas list from nineteen fifty eight and he would get
41:54
Speaker 1: these lists together, like, hey, get these gifts for these
41:58
Speaker 1: very specific women, send it to Nikit Neman Marcus and
42:02
Speaker 1: like take care of him. So on the fifty eight
42:05
Speaker 1: list he had Annette, Kathy, Cheryl, Cynthia, Irene, Jane, Jerry, Mary,
42:09
Speaker 1: Nancy Nell, Sandra, Silvia, Tony, Topsy, and three Hellens, So
42:15
Speaker 1: seventeen women scattered all over planet Earth. He was, you know,
42:18
Speaker 1: he was having a good time.
42:20
Speaker 2: It sounds like it sounded just now like you were
42:23
Speaker 2: halfway through a shell Silverstein poem, especially when Topsy makes
42:27
Speaker 2: an appearance.
42:28
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, who's Topsy.
42:30
Speaker 2: There's one other thing we need to mention about him
42:33
Speaker 2: is that he wrote not one, but two books arguing
42:36
Speaker 2: and laying out plans for world peace, which you know,
42:41
Speaker 2: not everybody's got those under their belt. So I read
42:43
Speaker 2: at least one review of it from the fifties and
42:47
Speaker 2: they were like, this is actually pretty good.
42:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean again doing like the good work. Sadly,
42:54
Speaker 1: that good work in that life was cut very short
42:58
Speaker 1: in a tragic way when a night teen sixty two,
43:01
Speaker 1: he was coming back in a little plane after a
43:03
Speaker 1: peasant hunting in Calgary with some friends and their plane
43:08
Speaker 1: basically disintegrated in mid air and bad weather over Montana.
43:13
Speaker 1: And he died at the same age as his father,
43:16
Speaker 1: at just forty six years old, and is buried at
43:19
Speaker 1: Mission Burial Park there in San Antonio.
43:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like we said, those science foundations that he
43:27
Speaker 2: created went on to do some pretty amazing things. In
43:30
Speaker 2: addition to oral contraceptives, vaccines for hepatitis A through c HIV, AIDS,
43:37
Speaker 2: ebola virus. They had a big role in the COVID vaccine.
43:42
Speaker 2: And they also another one develops things for NASA electric cars,
43:47
Speaker 2: the oil and gas industry. They're the kind who, like
43:50
Speaker 2: they don't make the stuff, they help other people make
43:53
Speaker 2: this stuff through their research.
43:55
Speaker 1: They make this stuff better.
43:56
Speaker 2: What company is that, BASF. That's exactly what it is,
44:00
Speaker 2: thinking you.
44:01
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also again as another coda, he was a great
44:05
Speaker 1: patron of the arts, one of the great art collections
44:10
Speaker 1: of a private American citizen, most of which is at
44:14
Speaker 1: the McNay Art Museum. And like we said, that movie
44:18
Speaker 1: with Nick Cage didn't happen, But the podcast Tom Slick
44:23
Speaker 1: colon Mystery Hunter is out now with Owen Wilson, Yeah,
44:28
Speaker 1: playing Tom Slick and Skyler Fisk and Skyler Fisk and
44:32
Speaker 1: her mom says he's basic, and Chad sent me a list.
44:35
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just sort of a murderer's row of
44:37
Speaker 1: great actors. And this was literally yesterday, and I was like, huh,
44:41
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have done a voice. So he, yesterday,
44:45
Speaker 1: like an hour after that, said he felt bad, and
44:48
Speaker 1: I was like, oh man, I mean, don't feel bad.
44:50
Speaker 1: I was just kidding, but I always want to do
44:51
Speaker 1: dumb voices. And he about an hour later he said,
44:55
Speaker 1: I got something for you. I was like, really. He
44:57
Speaker 1: was like, can you do it today? He said you're
45:00
Speaker 1: opposite Sissy Spacek and I was like, are we going
45:02
Speaker 1: to zoom together? And he no, you just record your
45:04
Speaker 1: lines and we marry them to hers. But technically I'll
45:08
Speaker 1: be in a scene with Sissy Spacek playing seventy year
45:13
Speaker 1: old former governor of Texas, Governor Nielsen, not a real person.
45:19
Speaker 1: A lot of this is highly fictionalized. It's a you know,
45:22
Speaker 1: it's a fun podcast. It's not like they stick to
45:25
Speaker 1: the facts when they can, but it's it's an entertaining
45:28
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So if you've never listened to a
45:30
Speaker 1: scripted fictional show, give it a shot, because I listened
45:33
Speaker 1: to a couple of episodes, and it's super cool. And
45:36
Speaker 1: you can hear me doing my best kind of old
45:39
Speaker 1: old school levon helm accent.
45:41
Speaker 2: Can we hear it?
45:42
Speaker 1: Yeah? I guess we could play a clip. Yeah, let's
45:45
Speaker 1: do that, all right, here's a little clip of me,
45:48
Speaker 1: you guys, finally, Governor Chlier. It's so lovely of you
45:55
Speaker 1: to come to this little she big for dad.
45:58
Speaker 3: Little I heard there might be some reveals about the
46:01
Speaker 3: mysterious Tom Slick. As a kid, I always thought your
46:05
Speaker 3: father lived a double life. Oh yeah, Claire, remember when
46:09
Speaker 3: we had those sleepovers at your house, Sure and your dad.
46:13
Speaker 3: He'd tell us these wild tales about mysteries the world
46:16
Speaker 3: and never known holy men who could levitate a tunnel
46:21
Speaker 3: on the Amazon line with diamonds, the abominable snowman that
46:25
Speaker 3: he said roam the.
46:26
Speaker 1: Roof of the world.
46:29
Speaker 3: He told those tales like he lived them, So I
46:32
Speaker 3: guess I thought he always.
46:34
Speaker 2: Had way to go.
46:35
Speaker 1: Chuck, Thank you. He was an old Texas guy like that.
46:40
Speaker 2: Get off my claim, you varmit awesome? So where where
46:45
Speaker 2: can you find this, Chuck? Where can you find this
46:47
Speaker 2: podcast that you're starting in?
46:49
Speaker 1: I mean, anywhere you can get your podcast.
46:52
Speaker 2: I guess that's right, isn't that what they say? That's right,
46:55
Speaker 2: it's called Tom Slick mystery Hunter. Right, yeah, awesome, Well
47:00
Speaker 2: Duck I said, yeah, I was just mentioning a podcast
47:02
Speaker 2: that he started in and we've fallen backwards into listener mail.
47:09
Speaker 3: All right.
47:09
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this random fact because that's what Adam
47:12
Speaker 1: called it when he wrote in in the subject line,
47:15
Speaker 1: Hey guys on your Luddites episode, you mentioned some places
47:19
Speaker 1: like Lancaster. Sure, that's the origin of the term sheriff.
47:24
Speaker 2: I love this or this email?
47:26
Speaker 1: Sure or Shire, I guess, just like in Lord of
47:28
Speaker 1: the Rings County Reeve. So the county sheriff was originally
47:33
Speaker 1: the shire reeve and was shortened to shere reef or sheriff.
47:39
Speaker 1: All this info was bestowed upon me by a professor
47:41
Speaker 1: of criminal justice at Atulmuss University in the early two thousands.
47:44
Speaker 1: Go Rebels, I've been listening for several years. Look forward
47:46
Speaker 1: every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Keep it cool, guys. That's
47:49
Speaker 1: from Adam.
47:50
Speaker 2: All right, thanks a lot, Adam. That's a great one.
47:53
Speaker 2: I'd never heard that before in my life, and now
47:55
Speaker 2: I know. And if you want to be like Adam
47:57
Speaker 2: and let us know something we never knew before in
48:00
Speaker 2: our lives but would be happy to know. Please send
48:03
Speaker 2: it to us via email. It's stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
48:07
Speaker 2: dot com.
48:10
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
48:13
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
48:15
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48:19
Speaker 3: your favorite shows.