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The Saga of Silk Road · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
0:14
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know,
0:17
Speaker 1: all about the Dark Web and all the crazy crazy
0:21
Speaker 1: drugs and him men. You can buy on it.
0:25
Speaker 2: Sorry, I was still doing my vocal warm ups.
0:31
Speaker 1: I didn't know that that helps. What does that help?
0:33
Speaker 2: Why twenty dwarfs took turns doing push ups in the lawn.
0:37
Speaker 1: I'm ready, okay, okay, Well, so welcome to the podcast, everybody.
0:43
Speaker 2: I figured it should start warming up. You know, seventeen
0:46
Speaker 2: years into this eighteen? How long you sixteen?
0:49
Speaker 1: So yeah, sixteen ish, a little over sixteen coming up
0:52
Speaker 1: on seventeen.
0:53
Speaker 2: Chuck, just wait till you hear the way my lips
0:56
Speaker 2: move in this episode. They're so loose.
1:01
Speaker 1: So did you loosen your lips up? Just specifically, because
1:03
Speaker 1: the content of this episode is so thrilling.
1:06
Speaker 2: I authought you can say something about sinking ships. No,
1:10
Speaker 2: I didn't, but this is a good one.
1:12
Speaker 1: This.
1:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, if everyone heard our episode in the Dark Web
1:14
Speaker 2: from twenty twenty, some of this will be familiar. But
1:17
Speaker 2: this is just more in depth about the Notoriou. Yeah,
1:20
Speaker 2: Silk Road itself, Yeah for sure.
1:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we were talking about Silk Road for those
1:25
Speaker 1: view history buffs Middle Eastern history buffs who were disappointed. Sorry,
1:30
Speaker 1: but you should stick around because this is going to
1:32
Speaker 1: be a pretty interesting episode.
1:34
Speaker 2: I didn't think about that. When are they going to
1:35
Speaker 2: talk about cinnamon?
1:39
Speaker 1: We did a whole episode on cinnamon, So relax there, guy.
1:41
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:43
Speaker 1: So you know, we're talking about what is widely considered
1:47
Speaker 1: because I think it is the world's first illicit marketplace
1:52
Speaker 1: on the Internet that was opened in twenty eleven shut
1:56
Speaker 1: down in twenty thirteen. It had a very very brief run,
2:00
Speaker 1: was like the Beatles of illicit drug trading websites, and
2:05
Speaker 1: it's legend will live on for basically forever because not
2:09
Speaker 1: only was it just the most audacious thing anyone had
2:12
Speaker 1: ever done on the Internet as far as anyone knew
2:15
Speaker 1: up to that point, it created a blueprint for a
2:19
Speaker 1: bunch of imitators to come, and also the way everything
2:23
Speaker 1: that law enforcement through at this case and the court
2:29
Speaker 1: case as well, it was just so nuts that it's
2:33
Speaker 1: just a heck of a story. How about that Brownie.
2:35
Speaker 2: That's great, boy. There were fifteen filthy jokes. I was
2:39
Speaker 2: going to say, when you said the most outrageous thing
2:42
Speaker 2: anyone had done on the Internet up and to that point,
2:44
Speaker 2: I was like I had a rolling terminator, like scroll
2:48
Speaker 2: about all the early internet nasty memes that would go around.
2:53
Speaker 1: You couldn't pick any of them.
2:54
Speaker 2: No, I just didn't want to say any of them
2:56
Speaker 2: out loud because then kids would look them up.
2:59
Speaker 1: I gotcha. Yeah, I was wondering, and we probably should
3:01
Speaker 1: have talked about this before we recorded. Are we gonna
3:04
Speaker 1: like call out any active sites or anything like that? Nah, okay,
3:11
Speaker 1: because I know some I looked him up.
3:14
Speaker 2: Hey, just Texas.
3:15
Speaker 1: To me, it's fine, okay. So let's start from the start, right.
3:19
Speaker 1: We're gonna start with a guy named Ross Olbricht, And
3:22
Speaker 1: the reason we're introducing him early on is because he
3:25
Speaker 1: is the mastermind behind silk Row. It was his idea,
3:29
Speaker 1: he built it originally, He ran the thing by hand,
3:33
Speaker 1: almost single handedly, for a very long time, and you
3:39
Speaker 1: just really can't talk about Silkrow without him, because his
3:41
Speaker 1: personality was so wrapped up into the ethos of the
3:45
Speaker 1: site that you can't really extract one from the other.
3:48
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that while he was sitting in federal court.
3:51
Speaker 1: He really wished that they would extract one from the other.
3:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, big thanks to Kyle, first of all our friend
3:59
Speaker 2: and can tributing writer from across the Pond for his
4:02
Speaker 2: work on this. But Kyle's keen to point out just
4:06
Speaker 2: a little bit about the dark Web. You know, we
4:07
Speaker 2: have a whole episode from twenty twenty if you want
4:09
Speaker 2: to go listen to that. But if you don't know
4:11
Speaker 2: what the dark web is, it's a part of the
4:13
Speaker 2: web where you can go and do things anonymously. And
4:16
Speaker 2: that's just a you know, the simplest way to say it.
4:19
Speaker 2: It's much more complicated than that, obviously if we did
4:21
Speaker 2: a whole episode, but it's where you can go if
4:24
Speaker 2: you don't want to be indexed by Google, if you
4:26
Speaker 2: don't want your traffic monitored, and if you want your
4:30
Speaker 2: anonymity insured. Doesn't necessarily mean you're some awful person doing
4:34
Speaker 2: awful things. There's a lot of people there that just
4:37
Speaker 2: believe in in the freedom and anonymity that you should
4:41
Speaker 2: have on the Internet.
4:43
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, yes, for sure, some people are just like,
4:45
Speaker 1: there's no reason for you to be invading my privacy.
4:48
Speaker 1: While I'm reading The Guardian or something like that.
4:50
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, just to sell me stuff exactly.
4:53
Speaker 1: That's part of it for sure too. And then also
4:56
Speaker 1: other people are like they have they might be whistleblowers
5:01
Speaker 1: and they have information that they could very easily get
5:03
Speaker 1: them thrown in prison. But it's really important to get
5:05
Speaker 1: out to the public. There's sites like pro Publica and
5:08
Speaker 1: other journalists that have dark web sites to where you
5:13
Speaker 1: can submit information, and even Pro public it doesn't know
5:15
Speaker 1: who you are. And with silk Roads specifically, there were
5:20
Speaker 1: three things that came together that made Silk Road exists,
5:24
Speaker 1: and without any of them, I don't think it would
5:27
Speaker 1: have ever existed. One was who I already introduced, Ross Olbrick.
5:31
Speaker 1: The second is Tour, the Tour network, which basically when
5:35
Speaker 1: you go onto the dark web using Tour, the first
5:38
Speaker 1: thing it does is route you through three different random servers,
5:41
Speaker 1: and each one encrypts your information and gives you a
5:43
Speaker 1: new IP address, so no one can figure out who
5:47
Speaker 1: you are, including the website you visit. And then the
5:50
Speaker 1: third thing is bitcoin. There's just no way you could
5:53
Speaker 1: have made transactions on drug deals over the Internet without
5:57
Speaker 1: untraceable currency that doesn't involved like a central bank or
6:01
Speaker 1: some other third party like.
6:03
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, for sure. And you know, Bitcoin was huge
6:06
Speaker 2: because it was they were good for each other, Like
6:09
Speaker 2: Ross Olbricht sort of embraced bitcoin in a big way,
6:13
Speaker 2: which even though it was on the dark web, and
6:16
Speaker 2: even though Silk Road was you know, as you'll soon learn,
6:19
Speaker 2: dabbling and illegal drug trading, they use bitcoin exclusively. So
6:25
Speaker 2: the rise of bitcoin and the rise of you know,
6:28
Speaker 2: things on the dark web kind of go hand in hand.
6:31
Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. And this is also a time where,
6:35
Speaker 1: like the early twenty ten, this was in like disruptive
6:40
Speaker 1: technology was just coming out left and right from Silicon Valley,
6:45
Speaker 1: whereas like well, say goodbye to newspapers, say goodbye to
6:47
Speaker 1: printed books, say goodbye to music. And I mean, it
6:51
Speaker 1: did have disruptive effects, but as we've seen, it still
6:55
Speaker 1: kind of mellows out. It's not like the original thing
6:57
Speaker 1: just totally goes away. But this was that same time.
7:00
Speaker 1: So a lot of people have likened ross Olbricks to
7:04
Speaker 1: basically a darker version, if there is such a thing
7:09
Speaker 1: of some of those Silicon Valley bros who started up
7:13
Speaker 1: a lot of those disruptive tech companies.
7:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know what, I think we need to
7:17
Speaker 2: add a fourth on our Silk Road Mount Rushmore, because
7:22
Speaker 2: we have to mention Adrian chen who in twenty eleven,
7:26
Speaker 2: when the Silk Road went live, wrote for Gawker and
7:31
Speaker 2: wrote this big expose on the Silk Road just a
7:34
Speaker 2: few months later, including like how to get there, what
7:37
Speaker 2: you can do there? And it would have been a
7:40
Speaker 2: thing anyway, but the fact that it was kind of
7:43
Speaker 2: exploded on Gawker made it bigger quicker than it would have.
7:47
Speaker 1: Been, I think, right, And that also brought it to
7:50
Speaker 1: the attention of the authorities pretty quickly. Chuck Schumer, Yeah, Chucky.
7:56
Speaker 1: He basically came out against it first, I think so
8:01
Speaker 1: now the Senate was against it. He said it was
8:02
Speaker 1: a certifiable one stop shop for illegal drugs that represents
8:06
Speaker 1: the most brazen attempt to pedal drugs online that we
8:09
Speaker 1: have ever seen.
8:10
Speaker 2: And they went, yeah, exactly, Yeah, you nailed it.
8:13
Speaker 1: Yeah right. And so because of that tour network, and
8:17
Speaker 1: because of just the anonymity of bitcoin and the fact
8:20
Speaker 1: that people were drug dealers and drug users engaging in
8:23
Speaker 1: illicit crime over the Internet, like there was a sense
8:28
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter, like the government can't find any
8:32
Speaker 1: of these people. If they do, it's just random luck,
8:35
Speaker 1: like say intercepting a drug shipment in the mail. But
8:39
Speaker 1: if you're really trying to track somebody down who's a
8:42
Speaker 1: user of Silk Road, You're just not going to be
8:45
Speaker 1: able to do it. There was just a sense of
8:46
Speaker 1: security and safety that people had when they were using it,
8:50
Speaker 1: including Ross Olbricht.
8:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they also were pretty smart early on. Our
8:55
Speaker 2: guess Olbricht was by making it a familiar shopping online
8:59
Speaker 2: shopping experience. It I mean I never saw it. I
9:02
Speaker 2: think I managed to find some like screenshots and stuff,
9:06
Speaker 2: but it supposedly looked and operated much like any other
9:11
Speaker 2: e retailer. You would go on there and you would
9:13
Speaker 2: have your little shopping basket and you would have your
9:16
Speaker 2: items that you could you know, are all categorize and
9:18
Speaker 2: listed that you could sip through, and you could look
9:21
Speaker 2: at customer reviews and uh, you know, I'm sure there
9:25
Speaker 2: were bad deals that went down, but supposedly it was.
9:31
Speaker 2: It worked because the people selling the drugs believe that
9:35
Speaker 2: you should really sell the thing that you're trying to
9:37
Speaker 2: sell and you'll stay in business.
9:40
Speaker 1: Right just like if you're a a like you have
9:44
Speaker 1: terrible customer service and you're selling like.
9:47
Speaker 2: Which it's sure.
9:50
Speaker 1: I was thinking like some sort of sown strawberry potholder,
9:54
Speaker 1: something in the shape of a strawberry, so much better
9:56
Speaker 1: than a wedget. But you tell all of your customers
9:59
Speaker 1: who say, like it's the the stitchings coming loose, that
10:01
Speaker 1: they can go to hell and die. Yeah, you're gonna
10:05
Speaker 1: get a bad rating and people are gonna stop buying
10:07
Speaker 1: from you, especially if there's other people selling sewn strawberry potholders. Right,
10:12
Speaker 1: same thing, if you're selling drugs on Silk Road. There
10:15
Speaker 1: were a ton of people selling pot and acid and
10:18
Speaker 1: ecstasy and heroin and cocaine that like, you just didn't
10:21
Speaker 1: have to rely on just one dealer. So the dealers
10:24
Speaker 1: were competing with one another, and to compete they just
10:27
Speaker 1: tried to keep their user rating up as best as
10:30
Speaker 1: possible and that kept them honest. It's just nuts, Like
10:34
Speaker 1: this whole thing in theory should have collapsed on day one.
10:40
Speaker 1: It just should never have worked out because it was
10:43
Speaker 1: just based on so many faulty assumptions that just happened
10:48
Speaker 1: to come together and support this site until the FED
10:51
Speaker 1: shut it down.
10:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had a seller's guide where if you're going
10:55
Speaker 2: to sell your drugs. They would say, hey, here's how
10:57
Speaker 2: to do that. Here's how you can ship drugs through
10:59
Speaker 2: the mail, you know, pretty safely, vacuum ceiling and all,
11:03
Speaker 2: you know, all kinds of tips and tricks, and not
11:06
Speaker 2: that many packages supposedly were intercepted, a very small percentage
11:10
Speaker 2: of them. But you mentioned some of the things in
11:13
Speaker 2: your I thought you were singing that Queens of the
11:15
Speaker 2: Stone Age song there for a second.
11:17
Speaker 1: Which one when you heard that.
11:18
Speaker 2: I don't know if they had that one song that
11:20
Speaker 2: was I thought it was not so great. Cocaine and
11:23
Speaker 2: ecstasy and blah blah blah blah blah, and they were
11:25
Speaker 2: just like rattling off drugs or whatever.
11:28
Speaker 1: That didn't sound very great.
11:29
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't one of their best songs. I was
11:31
Speaker 2: into them for a minute.
11:32
Speaker 1: I'd like that one hit song of theirs. It's really good.
11:36
Speaker 1: No one knows maybe yes, yes, the one man, I know.
11:41
Speaker 2: It's a good song. Uh yeah. So you could buy
11:45
Speaker 2: anything you want. And it wasn't just like, hey, here's
11:48
Speaker 2: some cocaine if you're interested in this upper. It was
11:52
Speaker 2: very very specific stuff like a very specific strain of
11:55
Speaker 2: Colombian cocaine or a very specific strain of heroin, the
12:01
Speaker 2: tar heroin that you could find, you know, if you've
12:04
Speaker 2: ever been to a legal cannabis shop in any of
12:08
Speaker 2: the states that allow that here in the US, it
12:10
Speaker 2: was sort of like that. You know, you get very
12:12
Speaker 2: detailed descriptions of stuff, and you know, you could have
12:16
Speaker 2: a customer service representative help you find what you wanted,
12:19
Speaker 2: and it was like, if you were into that kind
12:21
Speaker 2: of thing, it was probably pretty great for you and
12:24
Speaker 2: probably much safer than going to some drug dealer's house. Maybe,
12:27
Speaker 2: I don't know.
12:28
Speaker 1: That's a big deal. So one of the things that
12:31
Speaker 1: was touted by supporters of ross Olbrichton Silk Road was
12:34
Speaker 1: that it was a site for harm reduction. Yeah, that
12:37
Speaker 1: it was so vastly safer than buying drugs on the street,
12:40
Speaker 1: often from some randow you don't even know, or at
12:42
Speaker 1: a club or something like that. Oh, yeah, I state
12:45
Speaker 1: that it just yeah, that it was actually providing a
12:49
Speaker 1: service that actually made the world safer. It didn't fly
12:53
Speaker 1: very well, as we'll see, but that was that was
12:55
Speaker 1: a big, a big talking point for them.
12:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't want anyone to misinterpret that. I'm
13:00
Speaker 2: saying that, like, hey, you should just be able to
13:02
Speaker 2: buy drugs in the mail and it's totally safe and
13:04
Speaker 2: you should trust that. But they seem to be setting
13:08
Speaker 2: up a situation where they were trying to ensure that
13:10
Speaker 2: there was a lot of trust between buyers, sellers, everybody. Like,
13:16
Speaker 2: a situation like this doesn't happen if there's not trust
13:19
Speaker 2: between all the participating parties.
13:21
Speaker 1: Precisely, Yeah, for sure. I Yeah, it's just it's just
13:27
Speaker 1: crazy to me that it ever worked. Should we take
13:29
Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, let's take a break and we'll come
13:31
Speaker 1: back and talk about some of the nuts and bolts
13:33
Speaker 1: of the whole thing.
13:33
Speaker 2: All right, we'll be right back. So you've mentioned this guy,
14:00
Speaker 2: Ross Olbrecht, the founder and creator. We need to talk
14:04
Speaker 2: a little bit about this dude. He went by the
14:07
Speaker 2: alias dread Pirate Roberts, even though later in his defense
14:12
Speaker 2: that would be it would be brought up that there
14:15
Speaker 2: were like many dread Pirate Roberts over the years, and
14:17
Speaker 2: that he sold it at one point and wasn't even
14:20
Speaker 2: involved anymore. If you follow the court case, it gets
14:23
Speaker 2: really really in the weeds.
14:25
Speaker 1: Yes, quote in court was do you not know the
14:28
Speaker 1: dread Pirate Roberts reference?
14:30
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, they were like, why would you name yourself that?
14:33
Speaker 1: Right?
14:34
Speaker 2: And he said, have you never seen the Princess Bride?
14:37
Speaker 1: Yes, for the people who haven't seen the Prince's Bride,
14:40
Speaker 1: number one, go see the Prince's Pride, and number two,
14:43
Speaker 1: dred Pirate Roberts was the name of a well pirate
14:46
Speaker 1: who was essentially like a character that different people over
14:50
Speaker 1: the years and generations inhabited. So say, dread Pilot Roberts
14:53
Speaker 1: was two hundred years old because he was made up
14:55
Speaker 1: of successive pirates who wore that mask and used that name.
15:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So Ulbrich had a very very smart guy.
15:04
Speaker 2: As a very smart guy, he had a Bachelor of
15:06
Speaker 2: Science in physics, got his master's in material science and engineering,
15:10
Speaker 2: and was in Austin, Texas in two thousand and nine
15:13
Speaker 2: when he tried a few different initial companies. Basically he
15:18
Speaker 2: had a video game company tried. He found the most
15:21
Speaker 2: success with a second hand book retailer called good Wagon Books,
15:27
Speaker 2: where he kind of learned how to do web development
15:30
Speaker 2: and inventory management and e retailing, kind of a starter
15:34
Speaker 2: kit for what he would need to start Silk Road,
15:37
Speaker 2: but it still wasn't making the kind of dough he
15:39
Speaker 2: wanted to make I think they were pulling in maybe
15:42
Speaker 2: low six figures in a year.
15:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And he had like five employees sorting like
15:49
Speaker 1: fifty thousand books and not bad. They were selling them
15:52
Speaker 1: on Amazon like you do, like you can buy use
15:54
Speaker 1: books on Amazon. That's just what they did. But his
15:57
Speaker 1: heart wasn't in it. And after the show elves that
16:00
Speaker 1: he had built in this warehouse to hold the books
16:02
Speaker 1: all collapsed.
16:04
Speaker 2: He was like, I'm not.
16:05
Speaker 1: Going to pick those up. I'm just gonna set this
16:07
Speaker 1: warehouse on fire and walk away.
16:09
Speaker 2: That's really funny. That sounds like something.
16:11
Speaker 1: I would do. I would do the same thing.
16:14
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it on fire and walk away, but
16:15
Speaker 2: I just walk away.
16:17
Speaker 1: So he One of the other reasons he was keen
16:20
Speaker 1: to walk away is he'd been already thinking about Silk
16:22
Speaker 1: Road for close to a year by now.
16:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.
16:26
Speaker 1: And one of the things that really kind of spurred
16:28
Speaker 1: his interest in creating something like an online illicit drug
16:33
Speaker 1: sale website is that he became interested in libertarian theory,
16:38
Speaker 1: specifically libertarian economic theory, which is basically that if you
16:44
Speaker 1: don't have economic freedom in particular, you're going to be
16:48
Speaker 1: a slave to the grind. They've got you essentially, and
16:52
Speaker 1: that to you can either get rich and remove yourself
16:56
Speaker 1: from that game or that rat race, or you can
16:58
Speaker 1: try to change the rule of the game and make
17:02
Speaker 1: it much more fair and equitable and get rid of
17:04
Speaker 1: coercion and all that stuff. And it's all based on
17:07
Speaker 1: the libertarian philosophy of self ownership, which essentially explains itself.
17:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, he I don't know, explain it.
17:15
Speaker 1: Oh, well, you own yourself. So any kind of laws
17:18
Speaker 1: or prohibitions of anything that say you do to yourself, say,
17:24
Speaker 1: taking drugs, is just completely outrageous and immoral and is illegitimate. Okay,
17:31
Speaker 1: So drug laws specifically are illegitimate and terrible to libertarians
17:38
Speaker 1: because you're taking the drugs for yourself, and that's your choice, right,
17:42
Speaker 1: It's personal choice. So that really kind of explains a
17:46
Speaker 1: lot why he was like an illicit drug website. It
17:50
Speaker 1: was a thumb in the eye to the drug laws
17:52
Speaker 1: that he and other libertarians feel were illegitimate.
17:57
Speaker 2: All right, I'm glad asked Yeah, I'm glad.
18:00
Speaker 1: You asked too, because I really wanted to get that
18:02
Speaker 1: off my chest.
18:03
Speaker 2: So Silk Road grew. He started. It was not just
18:07
Speaker 2: a one person operation. It was too big for that,
18:08
Speaker 2: so he needed some employees. These people all went by
18:12
Speaker 2: these kind of fun little nicknames, including Variety Jones and
18:18
Speaker 2: Nigo Oh also from Princess Bride. Yeah, didn't notice that
18:24
Speaker 2: libertas Smed and then another one chronic pain one word
18:29
Speaker 2: the first sea's capitalized, and that person's name was Curtis
18:33
Speaker 2: Green and he was the first person that would be
18:35
Speaker 2: arrested in the Silk Road operation. And so you'll just
18:40
Speaker 2: you know, sort of put a pin in that.
18:41
Speaker 1: Guy, Yes, for sure. So he gets the website launched
18:47
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven around the beginning of twenty eleven, and
18:50
Speaker 1: to get things kicked off, he started growing psilocybin mushrooms
18:55
Speaker 1: so that there was something somebody was selling on Silk Road,
18:59
Speaker 1: and pretty soon other people were like, wait, this is
19:02
Speaker 1: you're really doing this, Like this is for real? I
19:04
Speaker 1: want to I want to make money selling drugs online,
19:07
Speaker 1: and it just kind of took off from there. Again,
19:11
Speaker 1: without cryptocurrency, there just wouldn't have been a Silk Road.
19:16
Speaker 1: And this is actually pointed to you by some people
19:18
Speaker 1: as like an early proving ground that showed like yep,
19:22
Speaker 1: bitcoin works, it does exactly what it says it can
19:25
Speaker 1: do and it could completely revolutionize global the global economy.
19:30
Speaker 1: This was the first chance for it to really kind
19:32
Speaker 1: of show it stuff, and it really did because it worked.
19:35
Speaker 1: And one of the other reasons it worked too, is
19:37
Speaker 1: because ross Oldbert was honest. He hand I guess hand
19:44
Speaker 1: transacted every transaction between seller and buyer on the site
19:50
Speaker 1: for a while, and at that point he would hold
19:53
Speaker 1: the money in escrow and then when the whole thing was,
19:57
Speaker 1: when the deal was done and everybody was satisfied, you
20:00
Speaker 1: would release the money to the seller. At any point
20:04
Speaker 1: in that string, he could have been like, thanks for
20:06
Speaker 1: the money, chumps, Thanks for the money, chumps, Thanks for
20:08
Speaker 1: the money, chumps, and just taking off with the bitcoin,
20:10
Speaker 1: and he didn't. And the reputation that that helped give
20:14
Speaker 1: that site was another reason it started to grow and flourish.
20:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So as the site is, you know,
20:21
Speaker 2: kind of going along and it's making all kinds of
20:24
Speaker 2: money and getting more and more popular or as popular
20:27
Speaker 2: as something is on the dark web, he started getting
20:30
Speaker 2: a little more political. Under his moniker DPR dread Pirate,
20:34
Speaker 2: Roberts started making these big statements about just sort of
20:38
Speaker 2: his philosophies about politics. He would say things like stop
20:42
Speaker 2: funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your
20:46
Speaker 2: productive energies into the black market. So it started sort
20:50
Speaker 2: of bordering on manifesto kind of stuff. I think they
20:54
Speaker 2: would have shut it down anyway, just because they were
20:56
Speaker 2: dealing in illegal drugs. But the US government definitely hates
21:00
Speaker 2: it when they don't like the word manifesto. So I
21:04
Speaker 2: think I think all this other political stuff definitely drew
21:08
Speaker 2: even more attention and ire maybe than it would happen.
21:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think so. Like I said, it was
21:14
Speaker 1: a thumb in the eye, and I think it kind
21:16
Speaker 1: of felt like that to the government and the powers
21:18
Speaker 1: that be, right.
21:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, thought he kind of thought, and he kind of
21:21
Speaker 2: was leading a revolution in a lot of ways, because,
21:23
Speaker 2: as we'll see later on, a lot of more sites
21:28
Speaker 2: like this were born in its wake.
21:30
Speaker 1: Right, So it's interesting to see too, the evolution of
21:36
Speaker 1: him going from a libertarian idealist to what the Fed's
21:41
Speaker 1: eventually described as like the kingpin of a global drug cartel. Yeah,
21:46
Speaker 1: really overblown, as we'll see. Yeah, but in the beginning,
21:51
Speaker 1: he even as a libertarian, said dump there's limits here,
21:54
Speaker 1: Like this is not just a free for all. You
21:56
Speaker 1: can't have child pornography. You can't try to sell weapons
22:00
Speaker 1: of mass destruction, you can't offer hitman services, sell stolen
22:05
Speaker 1: credit cards or personal information, like, you just can't do that.
22:09
Speaker 1: And if you scam anybody, we're gonna boot you off
22:11
Speaker 1: the site and we're gonna hunt you down and sick
22:12
Speaker 1: dogs on you or something like that. He said, basic
22:15
Speaker 1: rules are to treat others as you would wish to
22:17
Speaker 1: be treated, and don't do anything to hurt or scam
22:20
Speaker 1: someone else. So that was like the whole idea. And
22:23
Speaker 1: then the fact that his moniker was dread Pirate Roberts
22:27
Speaker 1: and everybody loves like, there's no one who's seen the
22:29
Speaker 1: Princess Briden doesn't love it. Prove me wrong. I will
22:32
Speaker 1: prove you wrong. So all that kind of combined almost
22:36
Speaker 1: a cult of personality grew up around dread Pirate Roberts
22:39
Speaker 1: and attracted more and more people to Silk Road. And like,
22:43
Speaker 1: I think I get the impression, like you were, like
22:46
Speaker 1: you felt cool to be a user of Silk Road.
22:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, he created a kinder, gentler drug trade in a
22:55
Speaker 2: lot of ways. Yeah, if you're wondering, like, yeah, but
22:58
Speaker 2: this guy could get shut down in a lot of
22:59
Speaker 2: ways that don't have anything to do with the government,
23:02
Speaker 2: like a denial of service attack or something like that.
23:06
Speaker 2: Supposedly he was paying a lot of money for protection
23:11
Speaker 2: for this kind of thing, maybe up to fifty thousand
23:14
Speaker 2: dollars a week. Wire did a really great and I
23:18
Speaker 2: remember reading this back then. I didn't go back into it,
23:20
Speaker 2: but a big two part report on this, and they
23:23
Speaker 2: had it up to fifty grand per week in protection.
23:26
Speaker 2: But considering they ended up making about a billion dollars
23:29
Speaker 2: over what two years or so, that's you know, pennies
23:33
Speaker 2: in the fountain.
23:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But protection is in quotes like that
23:37
Speaker 1: was from the very hackers who are like, we're gonna
23:39
Speaker 1: shut your site down if you don't get it, like
23:41
Speaker 1: any other protection exactly for sure. Yeah, so yeah, he
23:45
Speaker 1: would get blackmailed all the time. People were trying to
23:47
Speaker 1: shut down the site like it was a They're like
23:50
Speaker 1: criminals were attracted as silk Road, and there's plenty of
23:53
Speaker 1: criminals who they're like speculators, So blackmailers are you know,
23:58
Speaker 1: they're not actually doing anything product if they're just making
24:00
Speaker 1: money off somebody else's work, right, Yeah, So yeah, I
24:05
Speaker 1: kind of attracted that stuff. So in addition to dealing
24:08
Speaker 1: with all of that, he was dealing with customer service.
24:11
Speaker 1: He was trying to keep the site running. Something to
24:14
Speaker 1: know about ross Oldberg too, He was a self taught coder,
24:17
Speaker 1: so he was teaching himself how to keep this massive
24:20
Speaker 1: website going as he went along, and keeping himself totally
24:25
Speaker 1: anonymous to everybody, including all of the people he worked
24:28
Speaker 1: with who were de facto employees basically, so it was
24:32
Speaker 1: a lot of stress after a little.
24:34
Speaker 2: While, totally. And besides the drugs, he also had a
24:37
Speaker 2: team of crocheters making those strawberry elements.
24:43
Speaker 1: Lots keep up with for sure.
24:46
Speaker 2: So how did it all go bad? Well, it's because
24:52
Speaker 2: again the government was very very keen on getting this
24:56
Speaker 2: thing shut down as fast as they could. But like
24:59
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier, the very way this thing was built
25:03
Speaker 2: made it really really hard, almost as impossible but clearly not,
25:08
Speaker 2: but really really hard to find out any real information
25:10
Speaker 2: about who these people were, where they were, where those
25:13
Speaker 2: their computers were. So the FBI got involved initially in
25:18
Speaker 2: trying to take down tour. It was called Operation Onion
25:24
Speaker 2: Peeler and I'm pretty sure we talked about that in
25:26
Speaker 2: the Dark Web app but they in twenty thirteen, there
25:31
Speaker 2: was an agent named Chris Tarbell that identified secret server
25:37
Speaker 2: at a data center, a tour data center in Iceland.
25:40
Speaker 2: And this is really what got the ball rolling.
25:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is the official line of the FBI.
25:47
Speaker 1: The way that they finally discovered the actual IP address
25:52
Speaker 1: of Silk Road was that Tarbell was sitting there analyzing
25:56
Speaker 1: the traffic going to and from the site while he
26:01
Speaker 1: was like sending in bad information at it, like bad
26:04
Speaker 1: passwords and stuff like that, and then tracking what IP
26:07
Speaker 1: addresses came back. And then he copied the IP addresses
26:09
Speaker 1: and he put him into a browser URL and do
26:12
Speaker 1: that over and over again, and eventually he struck gold
26:14
Speaker 1: and stumbled onto the real IP address of Silk Road,
26:20
Speaker 1: which was then traceable to that server data center in Iceland.
26:24
Speaker 1: And from there they then had a copy of the
26:28
Speaker 1: Silk Road website including all administration access and privileges, and
26:32
Speaker 1: they started to set up their case from that point on.
26:35
Speaker 2: That's right, That was the FBI's line. If that seems
26:39
Speaker 2: a little hard to believe that they would just sort
26:41
Speaker 2: of get lucky, You're not the only person who thinks that.
26:45
Speaker 2: None other than oh geez is he billed Bill Bill
26:49
Speaker 2: Alex Winner from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and don't.
26:53
Speaker 1: Forget he was a vampire and Lost Boys too.
26:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, a good point. He made a film called Deep
27:00
Speaker 2: Web that jeez, was that out this year?
27:03
Speaker 1: I think so or last year? Very recent?
27:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty recent film I think twenty four where he
27:10
Speaker 2: you know, he doesn't he didn't like create this contention,
27:13
Speaker 2: but he basically brought to light like, hey, a lot
27:16
Speaker 2: of people say that, no, no, no, that's not how
27:18
Speaker 2: you found out. What you did was trampled on Oldbrick's
27:20
Speaker 2: Fourth Amendment rights and that you hacked Silk Road, you
27:25
Speaker 2: didn't have a warrant to do so, and you had
27:27
Speaker 2: some sort of you know, mass scanning going on on
27:30
Speaker 2: the Internet for passwords, and you lied about all this.
27:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. The idea is that the NSA was involved helping
27:38
Speaker 1: in this investigation, using their crazy, terrible powers to basically
27:43
Speaker 1: find passwords to that site and they used it to
27:46
Speaker 1: hack in and there. Well you were like, okay, whatever,
27:48
Speaker 1: they're trying to take it on the site. It's the FBI. Well,
27:51
Speaker 1: the gist of that is is that they did that first,
27:55
Speaker 1: then got the evidence that they then went and got
27:58
Speaker 1: a search warrant for and then everything started to get
28:01
Speaker 1: legitimate from that point on. So that's the contention about
28:04
Speaker 1: his Fourth Amendment rights to against search, illegal search, and
28:08
Speaker 1: seizure were violated.
28:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if it's all just sounds like weird and
28:13
Speaker 2: screwy because it's online, it would be no different than
28:15
Speaker 2: if they broke into someone's house, took some evidence and
28:20
Speaker 2: then said, now that we have the evidence, we're going
28:22
Speaker 2: to get a search warrant to go legally back into
28:24
Speaker 2: that house.
28:25
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, And you mentioned Tarbell, he was an FBI agent.
28:30
Speaker 1: He and the FBI were just one of multiple agencies
28:34
Speaker 1: from Department of Homeland Security to the DEA to the IRS.
28:38
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all working like each one had a task
28:42
Speaker 1: force trying to take down this website, competing with one
28:45
Speaker 1: another in a lot of cases to take down this
28:48
Speaker 1: website and catch this big fish that Chuck Schumer didn't like.
28:53
Speaker 1: And like, finally, Tarbell was the one who gets the
28:56
Speaker 1: credit not just for finding the actual life addressed and
29:00
Speaker 1: then the server for Silk Road and all of the
29:03
Speaker 1: evidence that that yielded, but he was there on the
29:07
Speaker 1: day and helped orchestrate this guy was a cyber crime
29:10
Speaker 1: FBI agent. So again this is the official line, and
29:13
Speaker 1: it's very thrilling in the Wired article how they describe it.
29:17
Speaker 1: But he helped orchestrate, or oversaw the actual arrest of
29:21
Speaker 1: Ross olbrit which in and of itself was just fantastically amazing.
29:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. All right, So the FBI gets that
29:30
Speaker 2: copy of the server contents from Iceland. They look at
29:34
Speaker 2: all the traffic and they found traffic to the administrator's
29:38
Speaker 2: log in and then narrowed that down to the most
29:41
Speaker 2: recent traffic was in San Francisco at a place called
29:44
Speaker 2: Cafe Luna on Sacramento Street. They did some more investigation
29:50
Speaker 2: through the IRS chipping in this time, Like you said,
29:53
Speaker 2: so many agencies involved, and they matched the San Francisco lead.
29:58
Speaker 2: So they are like, this is all up, you guys.
30:01
Speaker 2: There was an IRS agent named Gary Alford who saw
30:04
Speaker 2: post about Silk Road on forums in I think a
30:08
Speaker 2: couple of years twenty eleven and twenty thirteen from a
30:10
Speaker 2: user name altoid, and the email in the post history
30:15
Speaker 2: said ross Olbricht at gmail dot com. They found out
30:19
Speaker 2: that he lived near that cafe, and all roads all
30:22
Speaker 2: of a sudden, we're pointing to Ross Olbrecht.
30:25
Speaker 1: And then supposedly on the really damning piece of evidence
30:28
Speaker 1: was that that user altoid quickly changed their user name
30:31
Speaker 1: to Frosty, and Frosty was the main user account that
30:36
Speaker 1: ran silk Road. Yeah, that was the name of the
30:39
Speaker 1: main central user account. Right. So, like all of these
30:43
Speaker 1: things just falling into place, it was just almost almost
30:47
Speaker 1: too good to believe.
30:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it went down like a movie. And
30:53
Speaker 2: you know what, maybe that's a great time for a
30:54
Speaker 2: little cliffhanger. Huh oh boy, all right, we're gonna see
30:58
Speaker 2: what movie we're talking about right after.
30:59
Speaker 1: This, Chuck, I'm gonna guess the movie is Old Yeller?
31:29
Speaker 1: Is it? Am? I right?
31:31
Speaker 2: You nailed it?
31:32
Speaker 1: Okay, poor Old Yeller. I hate how this goes.
31:36
Speaker 2: I was gonna spoil Old Yeller, but I decided not
31:38
Speaker 2: to watch it that that dog may live. You never know.
31:41
Speaker 1: Good for you for not spoiling a sixty year old film.
31:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the book, I think.
31:47
Speaker 1: Too, right. Yes, although there was a sequel, it wasn't
31:50
Speaker 1: very well.
31:51
Speaker 2: Received Old Yeller two.
31:54
Speaker 1: Really, it turns out the little kid missed the first
31:58
Speaker 1: time he did this in the second can film.
32:00
Speaker 2: Them and now hold Eller's back for revenge? Yeah, write
32:05
Speaker 2: that down. That's a good one.
32:07
Speaker 1: Okay. So okay, what movie are we talking about that?
32:11
Speaker 1: How about what type of movie are we talking about?
32:13
Speaker 2: Well, we're talking about probably some sort of a courtroom thriller,
32:16
Speaker 2: because what happened was they went to a library and literally,
32:22
Speaker 2: and this is what the prosecution said, literally caught him
32:25
Speaker 2: with his fingers at the keyboard running Silk Road. They
32:29
Speaker 2: were in the library, they had an agent, you know,
32:34
Speaker 2: chatting with him and obviously surreptitiously undercover. And while this
32:38
Speaker 2: was happening, they drew his attention away by starting a
32:41
Speaker 2: little like quarrel among some other people also, you know,
32:44
Speaker 2: FBI actors or whatever. And there was a woman, another
32:48
Speaker 2: FBI agent, sitting across from Olbrich at the time when
32:51
Speaker 2: this happened, and Olbrich turns around, it is like, what's
32:53
Speaker 2: going on over there? She grabs that laptop. And because
32:57
Speaker 2: he could probably in a single swipe of a key
33:00
Speaker 2: stroke or something like encrypt everything on his laptop if
33:03
Speaker 2: he saw somebody coming at him, so they knew that
33:06
Speaker 2: could happen, they diverted his attention just long enough for
33:09
Speaker 2: this agent to grab his computer and that was it.
33:13
Speaker 1: And boy, Oh boy, did they find some just damning evidence.
33:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
33:20
Speaker 1: It turns out Ross Olbrich kept a diary of his
33:25
Speaker 1: like ideas and growth and like administration and all the
33:30
Speaker 1: problems he had to deal with for Silk Road. Those
33:33
Speaker 1: were found diary chronic pain. Really hurt my feelings today.
33:40
Speaker 1: Those were found on his laptop, logs of chat logs
33:45
Speaker 1: that he had between him and other administrators about running
33:48
Speaker 1: the site. He was logged in as the main user Frosty,
33:54
Speaker 1: the person who was actually running the show when they
33:57
Speaker 1: stole it or grabbed his lap book. No, stole it.
34:00
Speaker 1: He had spreadsheets like tracking silk Road. I mean just yeah.
34:05
Speaker 1: It's if a prosecutor could be like, I want this, this,
34:09
Speaker 1: and this for evidence. It couldn't get any better than
34:12
Speaker 1: what they found on Ross Holbrick's laptop.
34:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. What so they also traced about eighty million dollars
34:19
Speaker 2: in profit to him. This is a dumb question that
34:23
Speaker 2: I'm just now thinking of. But what did he just
34:26
Speaker 2: take a cut from every transaction? Was it that simple? Yes, Okay,
34:30
Speaker 2: that's what I figured. I just didn't know for sure, and.
34:32
Speaker 1: I think it was a reasonable cut. I don't think
34:36
Speaker 1: it was some massive take or anything like that, and
34:39
Speaker 1: he would only he would just transfer it like once
34:41
Speaker 1: a week, like his his accumulated cuts from that week.
34:45
Speaker 1: He was very honest in that sense.
34:47
Speaker 2: So he would get his small percentage, a bottle of
34:51
Speaker 2: Delauded and a strawberry even met yeah, for every transaction.
34:56
Speaker 1: Every Saturday night.
34:58
Speaker 2: So we mentioned early that as part of his defense.
35:02
Speaker 2: They were like, you know what, he may have started
35:04
Speaker 2: silk Road, but he sold it, and there were many
35:07
Speaker 2: dread pirate Roberts and one of the other ones framed him.
35:11
Speaker 2: All of this stuff was just a small part of
35:13
Speaker 2: his defense. It was not an easy cell. It did
35:17
Speaker 2: not work. He was convicted for creating an operating silk
35:21
Speaker 2: Road and got five sentences, got a twenty year sentence,
35:25
Speaker 2: a fifteen year sentence, a five year sentence, two life
35:28
Speaker 2: sentences with no chance of parole. And the judge said
35:33
Speaker 2: it was your opus. You wanted it to be your legacy,
35:37
Speaker 2: and it is.
35:38
Speaker 1: Yeah. The judge mentioned harming the fabric of it was
35:42
Speaker 1: very destructive to the fabric of society. And when your
35:45
Speaker 1: judge is pulling out fabric of society and your sentencing,
35:48
Speaker 1: you're screwed. You're in big trouble. And so he was
35:51
Speaker 1: effectively handed a death sentence, like you don't outlive a
35:55
Speaker 1: sentence like that, and it was just totally out of
36:00
Speaker 1: portion to the charges he was facing, like conspiracy to
36:04
Speaker 1: commit like drug trafficking and fraud and just I mean,
36:08
Speaker 1: it was some hardcore offenses, but non violent offenses, and
36:13
Speaker 1: he was given the kind of sentence that you would
36:15
Speaker 1: give like a multiple killer or a mass killer or
36:18
Speaker 1: something like that, right, And the reason why is because
36:23
Speaker 1: he was there was evidence found of five to six
36:28
Speaker 1: murder for higher schemes that he had ordered or agreed
36:32
Speaker 1: to as dread pirate Roberts to kill like a blackmailer,
36:38
Speaker 1: a witness, some other people. And even though he was
36:43
Speaker 1: never charged in federal court for this, even though they
36:48
Speaker 1: couldn't prove any of those cases, and the prosecutors in
36:52
Speaker 1: this case even said to the jury like, we're not
36:55
Speaker 1: saying like this is not part of his his his charges,
37:01
Speaker 1: we're not prosecuting him for that, but seriously, let me,
37:04
Speaker 1: let us just tell you about that. And so they're
37:06
Speaker 1: like they he was tainted by the media. He had
37:09
Speaker 1: a bad reputation from that point, because that's totally different
37:12
Speaker 1: from setting up a libertarian illicit drug marketplace. Now you're
37:17
Speaker 1: ordering hits on people to keep your drug enterprise going.
37:21
Speaker 1: That is a whole different kettle of fish in the
37:23
Speaker 1: public's mind. So his reputation was smeared from the outset.
37:27
Speaker 1: The jury was tainted with this information and the idea.
37:31
Speaker 1: Oh and the judge referenced it in explaining why the
37:35
Speaker 1: sentence was so harsh. And so all of that is
37:38
Speaker 1: generally considered illegal, like in illegitimate, And he tried to
37:42
Speaker 1: appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. They wouldn't
37:44
Speaker 1: hear it, and that was that. So his last chance
37:46
Speaker 1: is some president coming along at some point and saying, like,
37:49
Speaker 1: you know what, you're not so bad, presto change, Oh,
37:53
Speaker 1: you're no longer a felon.
37:54
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was actually would likely have been indicted for
37:59
Speaker 2: a murder in Maryland. It was dropped because he got convicted,
38:04
Speaker 2: you know, for whatever life and beyond. It was dropped
38:09
Speaker 2: because he was, you know, convicted on the other charges
38:11
Speaker 2: for you know, a gazillion years or whatever with no
38:13
Speaker 2: chance in parole. But it was a pretty interesting situation
38:18
Speaker 2: with what ended up being a corrupt dea agent and
38:22
Speaker 2: a secret service agent and a in a sting operation basically, right, Yeah.
38:28
Speaker 1: One of the guys who was really pursuing him from
38:30
Speaker 1: the outset was a guy named Carl Force, a DEA
38:33
Speaker 1: agent and posed. Yeah, he posed as a gangster named
38:37
Speaker 1: nob who basically became a confidant of dread Pirate Roberts,
38:41
Speaker 1: and it went so far out of undercover that he
38:45
Speaker 1: became a criminal himself. He posed as another user to
38:50
Speaker 1: sell tips and stuff about the investigation against Silk Road
38:54
Speaker 1: to dread Pirate Roberts for like one hundred grand. He
38:57
Speaker 1: stole three hundred and fifty grand and bitcoin, which was
39:01
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why dred Pirate Roberts ordered to
39:04
Speaker 1: hit on one of the people because he thought that
39:06
Speaker 1: other person had stolen it. This guy was dirty as
39:09
Speaker 1: the day is long. And they say in part because
39:14
Speaker 1: a lot of the charges, including that extra murder for
39:17
Speaker 1: hire that was in Maryland, was arranged by this crooked
39:21
Speaker 1: Dea agent. They're like, we're we're not even gonna try
39:24
Speaker 1: this one.
39:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I guess there's no point at that point,
39:28
Speaker 2: especially because it's not like it was carried out. If
39:30
Speaker 2: there was like a you know, if it had been
39:33
Speaker 2: carried out and there was a murder victim or something
39:35
Speaker 2: like that. They probably would have, but right, yeah, there
39:37
Speaker 2: were never any just to be clear, you know, no
39:40
Speaker 2: murder for hires ever took place, But it was just
39:42
Speaker 2: the hint that that was going on really influenced the
39:45
Speaker 2: judge and the sentencing and everything he was, I believe.
39:50
Speaker 2: In Alex Winner's documentary, he points out that a lot
39:53
Speaker 2: of the people that were also brought to trial for
39:55
Speaker 2: this got very including some of the drug sellers, people
40:00
Speaker 2: that ran Silk Road two point zero after this. Yeah,
40:03
Speaker 2: they got sentences of like six years on average, and
40:06
Speaker 2: so there's been a lot of calls for clemency that
40:09
Speaker 2: it was, you know, it was too stiff of a sentence.
40:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were clearly. I think the judge also referenced,
40:14
Speaker 1: like this is a huge like everybody's watching this case.
40:17
Speaker 1: Everybody's following this, you know, and I want to send
40:21
Speaker 1: a message to anybody who would follow in your footsteps
40:24
Speaker 1: that we're going to basically give you a death sentence
40:26
Speaker 1: if you if you try it. They just didn't follow
40:29
Speaker 1: through on that, which makes his sense all the more unfair. Yeah,
40:33
Speaker 1: Like had they handed down sentences similar to his for people,
40:36
Speaker 1: you know, like setting up illicit drug marketplaces. There's some
40:42
Speaker 1: sort of like legitimacy to it just because of the
40:44
Speaker 1: precedent and then the custom that developed. Yeah, just doing
40:49
Speaker 1: that to one person and then not following up, that's
40:53
Speaker 1: just that's just wholly unfair and again possibly a violation
40:57
Speaker 1: of his sixth Amendment rights to a fair trial.
40:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the idea may have been to send
41:02
Speaker 2: a message like, hey, this will never be tolerated. This
41:05
Speaker 2: is the first example of this, and we're gonna throw
41:07
Speaker 2: you know, ten books at them. But it you know,
41:10
Speaker 2: it didn't stop anything. Like I just mentioned, there was
41:13
Speaker 2: a silk Row two point zero that was closed in
41:17
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, along with twenty six other sites doing similar things.
41:22
Speaker 2: So silk Row definitely opened that whole door. And it's
41:27
Speaker 2: it's I don't know if they can shut them down
41:29
Speaker 2: as fast as they can be born. At this point, probably.
41:32
Speaker 1: It seems like the kind of thing like mushrooms just
41:34
Speaker 1: cropping up, like you pluck one and two more bow
41:37
Speaker 1: in its place, essentially, like there's just nothing. I mean,
41:40
Speaker 1: it's not just American kids doing this. They're like the
41:43
Speaker 1: Russians are like I'm sure the North Koreans are doing
41:47
Speaker 1: it like everybody's doing it, like you just can't. It's
41:50
Speaker 1: impossible to stop now so much so that almost makes
41:53
Speaker 1: you wonder if somebody else would have come up with
41:55
Speaker 1: this concept head.
41:56
Speaker 2: Oh sure first, you know, yeah, yeah, I'm sure someone
41:59
Speaker 2: would have come along.
42:01
Speaker 1: There's a free raws dot org website which his supporters
42:04
Speaker 1: created that's still around. And if you're asking, like, we
42:08
Speaker 1: wait a minute, how can everybody support him if he's
42:11
Speaker 1: ordered like five or six murders for hire, their position
42:14
Speaker 1: is that like that was the other dread pirate Roberts
42:17
Speaker 1: who set him up, whoever that was, that ross Olbrich
42:20
Speaker 1: did not order those hits. That he's a good guy,
42:22
Speaker 1: a humane guy. He would never do something like that.
42:25
Speaker 1: But he's still in prison. I saw a tweet from him,
42:28
Speaker 1: I don't remember when, but he was saying the thing
42:32
Speaker 1: he misses the most is not being able to see
42:33
Speaker 1: the night sky anymore, which is somehow like the saddest
42:37
Speaker 1: thing you could say as a prisoner. But yeah, there's
42:41
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there here like that kid
42:43
Speaker 1: is never getting out. He just puts such a thumb
42:45
Speaker 1: in the eye of the US government and law enforcement
42:48
Speaker 1: that I don't know, I don't know if he'll ever
42:50
Speaker 1: get clemency.
42:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, the night sky thing, it's definitely better than saying
42:55
Speaker 2: olive garden get more sympathy.
42:58
Speaker 1: Oh no, man, never any breadsticks.
43:01
Speaker 2: That's true. I think that. Uh oh never mind.
43:04
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go get some breadsticks after this.
43:08
Speaker 2: Okay, that'd be great. Oh boy, remember that time we
43:10
Speaker 2: went to Red Lobster and yeah, and Silver Spring. Yeah,
43:13
Speaker 2: and I had never really eaten their much. And that
43:16
Speaker 2: was one of your special things as a kid, right,
43:18
Speaker 2: eating those cheddar biscuits or whatever.
43:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, kid, an adult, I love those things. Yes, I
43:27
Speaker 1: introduced you to them, is what you're saying, right.
43:29
Speaker 2: I think so. I may have had one when I
43:31
Speaker 2: was a kid, but we just didn't go out to
43:32
Speaker 2: eat a whole lot, and Red Lobster was like far
43:34
Speaker 2: fancier than we could even afford on special occasions. So, yeah, you.
43:39
Speaker 1: Always make me feel so bad about my upbringing, which
43:41
Speaker 1: was not wealthy or well produced.
43:44
Speaker 2: Silver spoons Are you kidding.
43:46
Speaker 1: Me that silver spoons? Red lobster?
43:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's fine. Red Lobster was a very I
43:52
Speaker 2: imagine is a very duble, fancy dinner. We just didn't
43:56
Speaker 2: go out to you much. Don't feel bad.
43:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the fancy part also is really largely marketing, Chuck.
44:02
Speaker 1: I think when you see the actual product in front
44:04
Speaker 1: of you, it's not not super fancy. Yeah. Although, did
44:08
Speaker 1: you hear I think they filed bankruptcy because of endless Shrimp.
44:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a disaster. Yeah.
44:15
Speaker 1: Can you imagine? That's like it's like an onion headline.
44:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. I read quite a bit about that for some
44:21
Speaker 2: reason because it was just so interesting to me. It's sad,
44:24
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's an American icon. Yep, who knew?
44:28
Speaker 1: Well, since we talked about Red Lobster, of course, that
44:30
Speaker 1: triggered listener mail everybody.
44:35
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this the Stuff you Should Know, Bump. Hey, guys,
44:39
Speaker 2: longtime listener, first time caller, love the show. I'm curious
44:43
Speaker 2: if you've ever tracked the Stuff you Should Know, Bump?
44:46
Speaker 2: Does it even exist? I know that every time you
44:48
Speaker 2: mentioned a documentary with more info or something like that,
44:51
Speaker 2: my wife and I end up coming through our streaming
44:53
Speaker 2: services to find it and learn more. Most recently, we
44:55
Speaker 2: watched tread after the Killdozer episode. Now I'm teeing up
44:58
Speaker 2: American Anarchist. After swatches, he said, oh wait, I may
45:04
Speaker 2: have mixed that up with the Anarchist cookbook episode. Anyway.
45:09
Speaker 2: And by the way, everyone, we forgot to mention the swatchguards.
45:11
Speaker 2: I feel so bad about that. We heard from a
45:12
Speaker 2: lot of people on that.
45:13
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot all about that.
45:16
Speaker 2: I totally forgot about swatchguards.
45:18
Speaker 1: Yeah.
45:18
Speaker 2: Anyway, swatchguards are little rubber things that went over the glass,
45:22
Speaker 2: not the bezel. I was wrong about that. The bezel
45:24
Speaker 2: is the ring that holds the glass.
45:27
Speaker 1: So, man, I understood it before, but not now.
45:31
Speaker 2: You know, you look at a watchface and I said,
45:33
Speaker 2: I think I said the glass was the bezel. I
45:34
Speaker 2: just misspoke. The bezel is the ring that holds that
45:37
Speaker 2: glass in place.
45:38
Speaker 1: Okay, I think I got it that second time around.
45:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, back to the email anyway, guys, it
45:42
Speaker 2: made me think that other viewers like me, If there
45:44
Speaker 2: were other viewers like me, there could be a noticeable
45:46
Speaker 2: bump in views or listens every time a documentary or
45:49
Speaker 2: song or something gets mentioned creating your own version of
45:52
Speaker 2: the cold Bear bump. We need statistics or get meta
45:57
Speaker 2: and do a SYSK episode about the st SK bump.
46:02
Speaker 2: I think you just gooped up on that last part.
46:04
Speaker 2: That's Andy from Baltimore. Andy. We don't have data on this,
46:08
Speaker 2: but we definitely had people send in. I can't remember
46:13
Speaker 2: what song it was that you referenced, but it ended
46:17
Speaker 2: up like ranking in Spotify or something, and we like
46:21
Speaker 2: to think that was because of us.
46:22
Speaker 1: Well we know it was because remember we conducted in
46:25
Speaker 1: an experiment and talked about Barry Manilow now in Black
46:30
Speaker 1: Sabbath's War Pigs. Yeah, yeah, they showed up in the
46:33
Speaker 1: top form of Spotify's are just that's right.
46:36
Speaker 2: So hey, I guess we should plug Silverspoons. Then that
46:39
Speaker 2: Josh Clark Life Story, and we'll see if that gets
46:41
Speaker 2: a bump on wherever that's streaming.
46:43
Speaker 1: Speaking of bumps and plugs, there is one other podcast
46:47
Speaker 1: I'd like to plug. Chuck. You know, our friend and
46:50
Speaker 1: colleague Daniel Whitson from Daniel and Jorge explained the Universe podcast.
46:54
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so the their podcast just came to an end.
46:59
Speaker 1: But ever the productive person, Daniel came up with another
47:02
Speaker 1: one that just launched, called Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
47:06
Speaker 1: He said, new podcasts, same universe. So if you're into
47:10
Speaker 1: all the stuff that is very interesting, like space and
47:13
Speaker 1: time and aliens and black holes and philosophy and just
47:16
Speaker 1: the whole coolness of the universe we live in. Then
47:19
Speaker 1: go check out Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe podcast for
47:23
Speaker 1: a recommendation.
47:25
Speaker 2: Sounds great, good people.
47:27
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to be like who is that,
47:29
Speaker 1: that's send us the stsk.
47:30
Speaker 2: Ama Andy from Baltimore.
47:32
Speaker 1: All right, If you want to be like Andy from
47:34
Speaker 1: Baltimore and get in touch with us, then we would
47:37
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can wrap it up,
47:39
Speaker 1: spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
47:40
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
47:46
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
47:49
Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
47:54
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.