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Selects: All the Gold In Fort Knox: Meh · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's select I've
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: chosen our episode on All the Golden Fort Knox from
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: November of twenty twenty. One of the most surprising things
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: we learned to this episode isn't that there might not
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: be any gold left in Fort Knox. There most likely
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: is plenty in there, but that because of the size
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: of our economy, it doesn't really matter at this point
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: if it's there or not. Hope you enjoy this brainbuster
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: of an episode.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's out there somewhere,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. Carrot plated gold edition.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Gold plated.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Isn't that what happens? Like if you put a bunch
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: of gold together, it means more carrots?
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: I think so. I'm afraid to doubt you, though, because
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: I had a movie crusher say that. All I do
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: lately is say you're wrong to you.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: What do they mean lately?
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I know, I don't know.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: They must be a newcomer to the podcast.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: It's dressing is Josh is all the time lately, Josh
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: makes really good points, and all Chuck does is pupu
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: it by just saying, no, you're wrong. It's like, has
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: that even happened once?
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: If it makes you I'm sure it's happened more than once.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: But if it makes you feeling better I haven't noticed,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: then that's what really counts, don't you think. Yeah, I guess,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: although there are like a million plus people listening, so
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I guess their opinions count as well.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: You're wrong.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Oh man, you know what's funny is I didn't even
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: see that coming, Chuck.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Oh see there.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was good, good stuff. And I almost just
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: said the ES word. That was good stuff.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: You're wrong, it was mediocre.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Let's just do this for forty five minutes.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, let's do a real podcast episode. This is interesting.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: All I could think about was heist movies.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Oh really, I don't know what I thought about. I
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: think I was kind of stuck in the thirties. I
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: just thought of everything's kind of old timey and quaint,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: all right, because it's kind of in a way where
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the story really kicks off the story of Fort Knox.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: In case anybody's listening, and didn't check the title.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, I thought we were doing an episode on the
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: United States Bullion Depository, Buddy.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: That is the same exact thing in a lot of ways,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: but actually they're different too. Let's talk about this, right, So,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: for anybody who is outside of the United States, and
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I would wager that a lot of you, I'd wager
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: all the golden Fort Knox, that a lot of you
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: are very familiar with Fort Knox, because it does seem
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: to be kind of like this world famous place where
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the United States hoards its gold and it's just totally impenetrable,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: so don't even try. But there's also like a lot
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of conspiracy theories too that there's no gold in there.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk about all this and why there's golden
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: there too, but I feel like we should at least
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: give like a background on Fort Knox and the ins
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and outs of it, don't you.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. In nineteen oh three, this is where it all started.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: The US Army said, you know what, I think we
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: need some training ground out here in Kentucky, in West Point, Kentucky.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: And everybody said, why, Yeah.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I don't know good as place as any I guess, okay,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: And they use that area. They got a few counties
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: to kindly hand them over some land, and they use
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: that area for training and stuff. Made it a permanent
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: training camp in nineteen eighteen, and then named it after
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Henry Knox, a Revolutionary War officer, as Camp Knox. And
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: someone very quickly said, that doesn't sound at all tough.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: It sounds like children belong here and people are roasting s'mores.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: So that's always going to say.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: How about Fort Knox.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: It seems like all the best fort started out as camps.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they said short. In nineteen thirty two, it
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: became officially Fort Canucks.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Right, nice one. So yeah, so it started out as
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a legit army base. But then eventually in the thirties,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: which is why I've been stuck in the thirties because
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: so much of the story takes place there, the United
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: States Mint said, hey, we could use a new spot
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: to store some gold, because we got a lot of
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: gold and this isn't even all of it, but we
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: need a new spot to store some gold. And they
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: actually took possession of part of Fort Knox and built
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: what's known as, like you said, the United States Bullion
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Depository there in Kentucky, and it is legitimately Fort Knox
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: is now not just the Army Camp. Even more famously,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: it is really what you officially would call the United
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: States Bullion Depository.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the camp is still there, and some say
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: it is there as sort of a a means of
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: maybe intimidation maybe back up, like, hey, there's an army
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: camp right next door. But they know also asked to
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: borrow that name because it sounded tougher than the Bullion Depository,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: and they said, sure, you can go ahead and just
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: call that building Fort Knox as well. And that's where
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: we moved, well not all of it, but we had
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: a lot of gold at the time, as you were saying,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: and it was it was a little unnerving, I think,
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: to have most of the gold and the country stored
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: in Philadelphia, the mint there and in New York because
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: it was so close to the coast, and if some
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: warring nation wanted to invade us and grab our gold,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: then they wouldn't have far to go to get it
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: onto a boat.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh truly, which is you know, pretty sensible, really,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and I never really thought about that. But New York's
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: not very far from water, and neither is Philly, so
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: why not. So they decided to move as much as
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: they could, and there was silver moved too. There was
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of stockpiles of silver that we're not even
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: going to bother with in this story because silver we're
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: talking gold here. Yeah, And they moved a lot of
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: it to Denver, and they very quickly said, well, the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Denver Mint's a great place because it's protected from the
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: from the Pacific Ocean by the Rocky mountains, which make
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: that makes it much more difficult for an invading army
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: to come in from the Pacific and steal it. But
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: we've run out of space and we need some more
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: space for all the spill over gold. And that's when
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: they decided to build a Fort Knox, which in Kentucky
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by the Appalachian Mountain.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So it's pretty pretty clever. Why they why they chose
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Fort Knox.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Treasury, like you said, took control of
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: that land in thirty six, and then in thirty seven
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: they I mean, they started building you know there. You know,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: they couldn't just keep it intense even though those intimidating
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Appalachian Mountains were right there. They're like, we need a
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: building here. So they built a building over just a
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: few months.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: It's impressive.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, cost about a half a million bucks. And in
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven they said, we're open for business, bring
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: that gold from New York City.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: They didn't. They they did it the way, exactly the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: way that you would think they would do it. They
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: had a lot of they had a secret location where
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: they were loading it. They sent a bunch of trains
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: out that were decoys. And it didn't all happen at once.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: It wasn't one shipment that made its way from New
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: York and Philadelphia over to Kentucky.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: It would have been in the movie, I think, exactly.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But it happened like actually in many shipments over
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: several years. But supposedly they did it like sometimes darkness
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: of nights, and there was decoys and they were always
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: protected by a number of groups from the Post Office
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: inspectors that are licensed to carry guns. Which would I
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: hate to say it, everybody, but that's the one that
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: you would try to hijack if you were going to hijack.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean all the way to be honest.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I like, yeah, right, yes, chuck, all the way to
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the army, you know, which I would I would probably
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: not try to hijack that one. If I were going
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: to hijack one, which I wouldn't do, it would probably
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: be the Postal inspector one.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I'm sure that they've someone has
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: written a movie treatment at some point for a nineteen
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: thirty seven train on the way to Fort Knox heist
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: type of thing, right, and they surely would have cast
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: those poor post office gun slingers is the likely train,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: those poor guys.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: So we've got the gold shown up at Fort Knox,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: and the thing is is, like this was like people
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: knew about this. It wasn't done in secret, Like this
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: this is known about and I think I get the
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: impression that the reason that it was talked about in discussed,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and there were like little tidbits here there in the
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: in the popular media to give this idea like Okay,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: yes we're moving this gold, but like, don't even try it,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Like here's just enough that you need to know to
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: not even come anywhere near this place. And over the years,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: little tidbits have kind of been released here there that
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: give a pretty complete picture of what you would be
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: dealing with if you did, in fact, try to impregnate
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Fort Knox.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, pretty sexy. So first of all, you can't just
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: take a tour, and you can tour almost anything in
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: this country except for Fort Knox.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Even if you were a sitting congress person, the chances
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: are you're probably not going to get a tour.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if ed is correct here who helped
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: us put this together? There have only been three official tours,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I saw. So there's there was one
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: from FDR himself, which is pretty understandable. Sure, there was
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: one in the seventies, which we'll talk about, which made sense,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: but it was a congressional delegation. And then I think
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, Steven Mnusan and a delegation toured it.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: So there's at least three, but those are the three
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: that we know about. There may have been more, but
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I would think they would kind of publicize that because
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: the whole point of being a delegate to tour of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Fort Knox is to basically reassure the public there's a
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: lot of gold in there. Don't even worry about. Yes,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: the gold's there. That's pretty much the reason why anybody
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: gets a tour of Fort Knox.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: I wonder if they let FDR in just to say, hey,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: you might as well just urinate on this golden person,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: because that's what you're about to do with policy.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: That's probably what happened.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: We'll get through that later with the gold standard, And
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: of course you didn't urinate on it. Even with policy,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: you don't know.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: You can't ever tell what that FDR.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: So here's a bunch of things, and this next bit
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: is going to be just sort of a lot of
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: the facts and figures that we know and we've gleaned
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: over the years. Some comes from official releases, some comes
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: from an old nineteen thirties issue of Popular Mechanics, which
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: is kind of cool. But should we take a break first?
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Oh? Sure, man, Yeah, I think that's a great cliffhanger.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Right, great, we'll be right back alrighty, So we promised
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: you stats and figures about Fort Knox.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: And nineteen thirties issues of Popular Mechanics.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: I know, how's this for you? The vault requires, of course,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: multiple people to open it up, and each person nobody
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: knows the entire combination. Each person knows only a part
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: of it. And even if you got it open, there's
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: a one hundred hour time delay lock, so you got
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: to wait. If you have them at gunpoint and you
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: all force and you force them all to open it,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: you got to sit around and wait for four days,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: no matter what.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: That's my favorite one.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: It's pretty great, m h.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: That and the fact that it's really just artificial intelligence
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: from the future is the only one that has the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: entire combination in its possession. What else, Well, let's see,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the vault itself is actually inside a building. So you
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: remember in our Alcatraz episode where the cell blocks were
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: buildings inside of the larger prison building. Yeah, that's exactly
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the same thing, and not coincidentally, they were built around
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the same time, so I think there was that kind
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: of you know, impenetrable building within an impenetrable building in
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the zone geist kind of thing going on. And the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: only way, the only place the vault and that building
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: are connected is on the floor. But don't even think
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: of coming up from under the floor, because the flooring
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: is two feet thick of granite, which you are not
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: going to get through even if you successfully dug under.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: And I'll just go ahead and tell you why you
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: would not be able to successfully dig under the building
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: from the outside. Is because you have barrier after barrier
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: after fence after razor wire separating you from the building.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: There's a huge blank field around the building, so it's
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: not very easy to kind of walk up to it.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: And they apparently have said that the field around the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: building is a minefield, which means that they apparently studied
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: cartoons to design Fort Knox, which I love.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: They're like, what would wile E Coyota do?
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Exactly?
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, I mean it's it's definitely worth googling
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: a like an aerial image of this building. It's pretty interesting.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: I mean it does. It sits out in the middle
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: of nothing in this big flat area, and there's like
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: a circular driveway around it. And you know, it's made
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: of what you think it's made of, which is granite
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: and concrete and steel. They said that the walls are
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: also two feet in thickness, and inside those walls are
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: fabricated steel coils that are so closely smushed together that
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: they say a human hand can't even get between them. Right,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: So you need a baby or a child.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: You need a baby in so you got to bring
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: a baby. You have to bring diapers and food to
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: last the maybe four days until the time Locke comes.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Of course, don't forget a gun to hold people off with. Yeah,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and probably some people you don't like to send through
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the minefield the clear path for you.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you got to get one of those diaper
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: genies to put the diaper in, otherwise it's smell in there.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Oh man, it would smell so bad in that little building.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Here's another cool thing. Well, the whole building isn't huge.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: I mean it's it's not small. It's ten thousand square feet,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: but it's not I don't know. You think of Fort
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Knox and you think of something the size of like
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: a maximum security prisoner or something like that. It's not huge.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: But the building inside the building, so the vault inside
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: has an eighteen inch space clear on every side, and
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: they have all these mirrors everywhere. And of course now
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: they have real cameras. I guess this was from the
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: popular mechanics pre camera. You just use mirrors to make
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: sure that you could see every square inch of this thing. Yeah.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: So if you did somehow manage to get inside the vault,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the people who whose job it is is to watch
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the vault would see you immediately, and they ostal service
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: workers yeah. Yeah, they would just start, you know, lobbing
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: dead letter off as packages at you until you got
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: annoyed and left.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: And of course there's heavy artillery. There are four corner
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: machine gun turrets essentially on the outer building, just looking down.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, I was confused. Is that on the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: outer building or is that part of the vault?
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: I think that's outside?
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know. I couldn't quite tell, and I
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: didn't see it outside. Did you see him outside?
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean I saw I mean I didn't see
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: any really close ups. Everything was kind of an aerial
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: and I did see what looked like corner turrets, but
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: maybe they are inside. Okay, I don't know if i'd
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: be shooting up machine guns inside of granite room.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's actually probably a pretty bad idea.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've seen Wiley Cody too. Those bullets bounce.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: All over the re place. That's right. So you've also
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: got a door to contend with. So so far you've
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: got two feet thick everything to get through, which means
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: that your best bet is to go through the door
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: because rather than twenty four inches, it's only twenty one
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: inches thick. But you should probably be dissuaded by the
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: fact that it's blast, drill and torch proof, said the
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: US MINT director from back in twenty sixteen, Philip Deal.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and again this is all under the banner of
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: don't even think about it, buddy. Right between the there's
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: a corridor that encircles the vault and then the outer
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: wall of the building. They do have some offices. I
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: guess that's where Dottie the secretary has been since nineteen
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: fifty something, answering.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: For Danny or Danny.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: That's true. I don't think they gave jobs like that
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: to Danny in the nineteen fifties.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, maybe not in the fifties. That's fine. But I
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: got called out for letting that stooge's comment pass, and
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not going on the grill again
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: for you, pal.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: What the ladies don't like the Three Stages?
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: We got not one, not two, but thrice emails about that,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and most of them were not happy.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Well, actually two of the three were very fun about
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: it and said that they love the three stooges.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: But yes, but they weren't happy.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: One I couldn't tell, and I wrote her back and
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: it was like I can't tell if you're really mad. Well,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: and I said, but I said, I was just, uh,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: if you google women don't like three stooges, it's a
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: it's a trope. I mean, it's a familiar trope. I
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: wasn't like inventing some sexist thing. I was just kind
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: of funning around with it.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like everybody not liking Detroit or Kentucky like google.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: That, right, or google women don't like Rush the band.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Hey, hey, hey, let's just let's bail out of this
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: while we still have our limb.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: No, people can likely like. But trust me, I've been
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: to a Rush concert and there was there's a lot
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: of masculinity in that room.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: What year was that, because I'll bet I was at
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the same concert depending I went to.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: It must have been eighty eight or eighty nine.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Oh no, I wasn't not that one.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah you were.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: This would have been maybe like ninety two, ninety three.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: We just missed each other.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just by a few years. Had I just hung
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: out at the Omni for three or four more years
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: or had you, we would have passed EACHO.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: But you're right, Women like all sorts of things, and
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: men like all sorts of things.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: That's right. And Danny and Dottie can both be secretaries,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: that's right. And we don't even call them secretaries anymore, Chuck,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: we should just stop podcasting altogether. We have aged out
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: So to me, the only way in would be the
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: escape tunnel.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, which they thought of that. They realized that. They
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: actually put a tunnel underground that you could use to
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: get into the depository, the actual vault, which they installed
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: in case somebody got locked in there, which I'm really
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: surprised they even installed that or designed that in there.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: I would think like, if you have people guarding it
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: as closely as it's being guarded all the time, that
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: if you got locked in there, they could let you out.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: They just give you food or something through those those
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: slots that for the four days.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: That's an even better idea, actually, now that you mentioned it,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: but now they didn't do that. They actually put an
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: escape tunnel in so that you can crawl out. It's
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: not like a pleasant walk or anything. You crawl like
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: through this tunnel and then out into the minefield basically,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: but the door that you reach that lets you outside
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: only opens from the inside. It's impossible to open from
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the outside, which I take to mean it doesn't have
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: a doorknob on the outside, and then it's guarded twenty
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: four to seven by people who are ready to just
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: shoot you up if you try to approach this door
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: with your own doorknob that you brought to open it
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: from the outside.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Right, because you're not going to come in here with
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: a presumably a freight train to steal all this gold.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Where are you going to put the tracks? You can't
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: do it?
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Are you going to get that gold out of there?
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I just love the fact that we're trying to you know,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: we're doing a podcast in twenty twenty explaining and dissuading
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: people from trying to get into Fort Knox. I mean,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it's just so like seventies to me, or thirties or fifties,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: you know. I love it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: The other cool thing is is that it can go
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: off grid, has its own water and power. So if
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: you you know, in the movie version, of course, once
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: again I would think you would try and knock it
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: off the line somehow get those cameras down, but they say, no, no, no,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: we have those generators. We can live off grid. There's
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: a gun range in the basement, So if you want
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: to brush up on your machine gunning down there, you
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: can do that.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: No, that's kind of like a little line yap to
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the whole thing. Like, by the way, these guys are
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: training with guns downstairs in the basement for fun because
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: they've got nothing else to do. They're just waiting for
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: you to come.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Who is guarding it though, from what I understand their
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: treasury agents?
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: The army can be called in if needed, because again
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: it's like right there.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the US Mint Police Force. Yeah, which I imagine is
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: it's probably a pretty cool gig to have.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know where they would have come up, but
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I swear we've mentioned that they exist before.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: It seems familiar to me. Have we done this all before?
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: No, we haven't done this one, but we have talked
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: about money and currency before. Yeah, And I feel like
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: where that's where we're at. Don't you like that? Maybe
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: we should talk about the gold itself, because I mean, yes,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: it's cool that there's a twenty one inch blast door
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: and there's a door that only opens from the inside
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and the escape tunnel. But I think what everybody's really
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: fascinated with as much as anything, is the fact that
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: there is a lot of gold inside of four knox.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this will kind of hit home too. If
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: you've ever seen movies where you're bringing gold out of
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: a place in a duffel bag, those gold bars weigh
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: almost twenty eight pounds apiece, just one, Yeah, just one
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: of those things. So if you see people throwing them
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: around in a movie or putting ten of them fifteen
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: of them in a duffel bag and slinging it over
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: their shoulder, that is not realistic at all. They're seven
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: inches long, three and five eighths inches wide, one in
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: three quarters inches thick, and weigh twenty seven point five pounds.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Each, yeah, or four hundred troy ounces. If you know
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: what that means. I have no idea, and I think
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: it's what about ten twelve kilos a piece for those
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: of you who aren't listening in the US and the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: weird thing, I didn't realize this, but as far as
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the Treasury is concerned, and to me, this really kind
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: of goes to demonstrate like how little the actual value
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: of maintaining this gold horde is that, just for bookkeeping,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: they assign like an arbitrary value the statutory value of gold.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: It's what it's called at forty two dollars and forty
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: four cents an ounce, so that they can keep track
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: using that dollar amount of how much gold is in
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Fort Knox, rather than you know, tracking it as it
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: as it relates to like the international gold market.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I did the math this time.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I did two. Let's see if we came up with
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the same figures.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: So the supposedly there are forty six hundred metric tons
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: of gold, which by the way, is about two point
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: five percent of all the gold ever mined in the
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: world in human history.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: That's pretty impressive.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: And if we're just going I want to make sure
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: we use the same numbers here forty six hundred metric tons.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Can use that forty two point four to four cents
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: per ounce.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, I did it differently, But let's see if we
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: came up with the same figure.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Well, what value did you use?
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Like, no, you go first, mister, you're wrong guy.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: So using the statutory value of gold that the US
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: is set, I came up with six point eight billion
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: dollars worth of gold.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Close for mine. Close for mine. I used a different method,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and this is one of the great joys of math?
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Is there a different approaches to the same proble?
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: What did you do?
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I took that forty six hundred metric tons of gold
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: and divided it by pounds twenty seven point five pounds,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: so I came up with the number of individual bars.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Then I multiplied that number of individual bars, which is
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty eight thousand and seven hundred and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: seventy three bars. Uh huh, by that sixteen thousand, eight
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: hundred and eighty eight dollars per bar. Okay, I came
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: up with in the neighborhood of six point twenty five
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: six billion dollars worth of gold.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, there's a psychologist that's listening to
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: this that is really yeah, looking at what that means
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: for both of our personalities.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: For sure, it's gotta say a lot.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: You know, did you use Are you sure you used
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: metric tons and not just tons?
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I did a pound to metric ton conversion. You
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: know how you can go on the internet and just
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: say pound metric ton and like it brings up a
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: little conversion thing for you.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I was just making sure because at
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: first I didn't do metric ton, and that was different
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: and did a short ton that is a short ton,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: and that came to about six closer to your number.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, no, I and I actually rounded a
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: little bit because I was like, E, what the heck
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: is that when the total came up, So I went
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: back and redid it. And I didn't feel like plugging
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: in all the same numbers that I rounded it.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: What I wonder what I did was I just took
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: how many ounces or in forty six in a metric ton,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: multiplied that by forty six hundred, and then multiplied that
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: by forty two forty four.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I proposed that move along because I just suddenly rose.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: There's probably people who's like their fingertips are dug under
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: their eyeballs. They're so they're in such agony hearing us
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: discuss math like this.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Well, what's what's important is that the FED in New
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: York actually has more gold in their Manhattan vault, which
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: was in a movie six thousand tons of Gold. That
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: would have been die Harder, Die Hard three. I believe
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: it may die another day. I don't know, but it
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: was a good one. That was the one with Sam Jackson.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty good. And by the way, I
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: need to say something. I realized that. I said, Event
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Horizon is a good movie and holds up. I went
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: back and saw it again again, huh, and I was like,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: this is way jokier than I remember from last time.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, And sadly there's a there's a sheen
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: or a coating of hokiness that I guess maybe they
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: brought in somebody to punch up the script or something
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: and that was their contribution.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: But it's not so it doesn't hold up anymore.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: No, and it's a great galactic, love crafty and horror
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: movie in concept and in some parts, but no, it's
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: unfortunately rather hokey. I'm a little gutted to say that.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: As our British friends would say.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Maybe you should watch it again in like three years
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: and it might be back on track.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Were you, well, maybe, you know, maybe it's me that's
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the problem.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, taste waxes and wains.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. It's true.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: There's another there's some other stuff in Fort Knox, and
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: there has been other stuff through history in Fort Knox,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: because it's just it's a great place to keep stuff
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: if you don't want to lose it or have it stolen.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: They have some rare coins in there. These are coins
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: that were not released to the public. They may have
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: been promotional coins or test pressings, and so there's some
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: of that stuff, including the Chicago Way dollars coins that
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: flew in the Space shuttle. Is that funny?
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's sokka juweah.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like the American bastardization. It's Chicago Way.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Oh well, maybe we should keep this in, Okay, because
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: I've never heard anybody say that. I really thought you'd
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: just mised pronounced it. Other people say it like that.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's one of those things where like
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: the native pronunciation is Chicagoway and Americans were like saka Jowellah.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: No, oh my god, I've got so much egg on
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: my face. Maybe we won't keep this part in. You
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: have to say it you said it wrong, though, you
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: have to be like that's wrong, that's wrong. Okay, thank you.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: So it is Chicagoway. Huh? Is it icagaweya?
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: I think it's just Chicagaway. And I only learn that
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: from Ken Burns.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: God bless Kim America's teacher cut and you man, thank
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: you for setting me straight in front of a million people.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Let me see here at nineteen thirty three gold double
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: eagle twenty dollars coin. That's kind of cool.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure there's an aluminum dime, no penny, an aluminum
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: penny from nineteen seventy four.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Which I'd love to see that thing.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: I would too, but it just strikes me as a
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: little sad. Sure there've also been because Fort Knox is
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: just so well known as this impregnable place, and it
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: really is, you know, legitimately, you cannot get into it
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: no matter how hard you try. It's actually served as
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: the site the storehouse for some like truly valuable stuff
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: like the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Gettysburg Address, a Gutenberg Bible, the Magnet cart. Actually during
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: World War Two, England's like, hey, can you hang on
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: to this four because the Germans are really like up
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: our butts right now? That's kind of cool, yeah, they
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: So we held that at Fort Knox during World War Two,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: which is I mean, that's just fascinating to the idea
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: that some apparently some secret service agent traveled secretly with
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: a bunch of these documents from Washington, d C. And
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: put them on a train out to Kentucky to go
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: to be held in Fort Knox during World War Two.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: I love it. That's really cool. And that was temporary.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: I think. Didn't they return them right afterward?
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure. Apparently they dedicated the Jefferson Memorial
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: in nineteen forty three and they're like, we need to
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: get the Declaration of Independence out there.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: And they found out that the guards were using it
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: as a place mat to eat their dehydrated foods.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: You know, they'd swapped it with something that they only
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: used cryon to forge, kept the original themselves.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: So should we break now before conspiracies or weight and
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: break before gold standard?
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: We'll break now. And I'm not one hundred percent sure
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be able to come back from that
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Chicago Way thing, Okay. So it might just be you
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: and we come back from brain No never, okay, Chuck.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: So one of the things, one of the favorite things
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Americans love to do is to suggest, quite seriously in
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of cases that there is no such thing
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: as a gold in Fort Knox, and that there hasn't
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: been golden there for a very long time. And if
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: you went there and you saw gold, well you're a fool.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Because the best thing. The best possible scenario is that
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: you saw something like tungsten that was spray painted or
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: plated in gold, and that the golden Fort Knox is
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: not there and hasn't been there for a very long time,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and not only that it was sold for the most nefarious,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: outrageous purposes we can possibly come up with.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they audit Fort Knox and they count the
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: gold allegedly supposedly, Dottie and Danny get in there with
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: their adding machine and they type everything out. And I
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: love how Ed put this. He said that all the
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theories rely on quote, some fundamental misunderstanding of how
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: currency works, how the gold standard worked, or just outright nonsense.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: But it's kind of true.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it totally is, because there's this call for
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: which we'll talk about the gold to be used again
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: the way originally was, which is the back our currency.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: If that's the if that's really the basis of your
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: problem with the idea that the gold was secretly sold
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: off in Fort Knox, then then yeah, you misunderstand and
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: how currency works or how economies work, and you probably
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: don't fully understand how the gold standard was not really
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: great and that America actually blew up, and the whole
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: world blew up after we switched off of the gold standard.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: That's how the global economy really started to take off,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: was when we decoupled our currency from being pinned to gold.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: So that's another It seems to be another factor in
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: kind of banding about conspiracy theories about Fort Knox gold too.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of these conspiracy theories are anti Semitic. Yeah,
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: there are, believe it or not. There are some really
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: smart people who think who may or may not believe
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: in some of these theories, and some that believe we
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: should go back to the gold standard, including Alan Greenspan,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: a woman named Judy Shelton who Trump tried to push
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: for appointment to the FED to the Federal Reserve. And
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if she believes in the conspiracy theories
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: or she just wants to go back to the gold standard.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not. I mean, it's not hand in hand.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: It's just if you do think we should go back
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: to the gold standard, it's basically impossible for your attention
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: not to fall on Fort Knox. And then you may
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: be like, well, is there even gold there?
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah? True, But there are some truly wackado things out there.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: This Peter Better guy.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Oh is that how you're saying his name?
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: What is it better? Better?
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: If his name's not Peter Beeter, then I'm sad.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: I am too. Peter Beeter, the et e r. That's
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: what I'm going to call him, at least.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like Peter with a bee. Yeah, but his
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: first name's Peter. It's magnificent, it's perfect.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: So he has thrown a lot of conspiracies out there
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: since the seventies, including a popular one that we sold
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: off all the gold to these global elites for next
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: to nothing so they could hoard that gold and then
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: one day just destabilize the economy of the world and
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: you know, ascend to power basically.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because they would have all the money and they
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: sunk the value of the money so they could buy
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: everything else at rock bottom prices like they bought the gold.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Apparently this involves the Rothschilds, which automatically makes the whole
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: thing anti Semitic, because the roth Childs started out and
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: you know, are still around as far as I know,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: as a Jewish banking family many many centuries ago and
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: rose to power and wealth pretty quickly, and actually had
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: a huge role in a lot of world affairs, like
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: were able to bail out entire nations like France after
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: they went into debt over war, like this family could
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: do that, and it started a lot of conspiracy theories.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: So they're kind of like one of the og conspiracy theories.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: And usually it was based on a combination or it
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: was based on suspiciousness of a combination of them being
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Jewish and them being extraordinarily wealthy.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this other guy. Is his name is Yan
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: even Huis. I'm sure that's wrong. He had an alias
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: named kus Janssen Koos And I listened to and read
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: some interviews with this guy and he did you check
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: into him? He seems he seems like a pretty level
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: headed economist, right that just seems to think that these
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: audits aren't correct and there is something kinky going on.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: He didn't seem really out there though.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: No, but it seems like a case of paying too
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: much attention to details and starting to see things that
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: aren't necessarily there. Or if you do turn up a discrepancy,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: assuming that it does reveal some larger plot rather than
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: just being a mistake or an accounting error or somebody
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: forgot to carry the one. That's my impression. I could
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: be wrong. I don't know much about kus Jansen.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the interview just seemed very level headed. He
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: wasn't talking about robotoids, which is what Peter Peter talks about, right,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: literally talks about stuff like that.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what makes it believable is the OIDs on
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the end. If there were just robots, it would just
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: seem rather far fetch.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: What about Ron Paul, His is a little out there.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: He thinks it's all fake, right.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: So Ron Paul. I can't tell if Ron Paul is
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: the source of a lot of this or was an
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: amplifier for a lot of it, But he's tapped into
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: or is part of one of the larger kind of
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: followings of conspiracy theories as far as Fort Knox is concerned,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: which is that either like I was saying earlier, there's
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: either no gold there really, or the goal that is
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: there is fake and the real gold has been sold,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: and that the US has been doing this for a
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: very long time for all sorts of uncertain reasons like that,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and that usually these days that China's been the big
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: recipient of cheap gold, and maybe we've been doing that
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: because if we sell China a bunch of cheap gold,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: it will actually keep the dollar low and we'll strengthen
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: our exports. I'm not quite sure how that works. There
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: also seems to be a certain amount of like national
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: pride associated with it, where like, no, that's our goal,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: that's the people's goal. That can't be sold off secretly
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: by the government. And here's to me where it's like,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: even if there isn't any gold in Fort Knox at
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: some point in the not too distant past, but the past,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: for sure, we've gone so far beyond that having any
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: importance whatsoever. Yeah, based on the dollar value of the
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: golden Fort Knox that it legitimately doesn't matter. But that's
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: why I think some people are like, no, it does matter.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: That is our goal, that's America's goal. I've seen it
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: referred to I think Ed said somebody referred to it
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: as the equity of our national wealth. And there seems
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: to be like a certain amount of like American pride
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: or patriotism in being really mad about the idea that
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Fort Knox doesn't have any gold anymore, that the American
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: people were duped by you know, whatever elites are running
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: the show at the behest of whatever. Jewish people are
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: running the elites.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Right, because here's the deal, and this is where we
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: kind of get in more to the of the gold standard,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: and we talked about this in currency and how both
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: of us are kind of consistently blown away that money,
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: all money is is just something that everyone is agreed
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: on has value. Yeah, and that's what we've been doing forever.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: But yeah, since there has been little ingots and trinkets, Yes,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: as long as you agree, I mean, it could be
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: a well, it could be a stick. It has to
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: be something that you can't just go out and forage,
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: although you can with gold, which is a problem you can.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, like think about wampum that was extensively used
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: and I believe the Pacific Northwest by more than one
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: tribe and nation. Wampam was They were like little little
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: seashells that you could go and collect if you wanted to,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: and they were considered valuable currency and were for a
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: very long time too. So it could conceivably be a
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: stick as far as you may he's.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Concerned, right, But in our case, and in the case
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: of paper money these days, it is we've had to
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: make it incredibly hard to recreate and counterfeit. You can
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: also listen to our counterfeiting episode. But what really struck
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: me kind of with that thought experiment this time is
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: that gold really doesn't have much value either as a commodity.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: It's it's nice for making pretty trinkets, but and they
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: use it in some electronics and stuff like that. But
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: we've also just sort of agreed that gold is valuable,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: and the only thing that really has true value is food, air,
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: and water, if you think about it, and love, and
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: the irony is is that we're doing our best to
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: kill all that stuff away, you know, the stuff that
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: really matters.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Man, Bravo, Bravo. I want to give you a hand
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: to help you down from your soapbox, and I'm going
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: to put a king robe around you. Okay, okay?
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Is it?
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: It's gold flecked and it's got like the little white
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: leopard like.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah caller, yeah, yeah, whatever that is.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: You look great in it. That was wonderful.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: No, it's just it's just so funny. These things that
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: we've agreed have value really don't. And the things that
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: really truly have value are really just the things that
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: keep people alive.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Right, right, But even like taking that hippie stuff out
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: of the equation, there was a time where people said, no, gold,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: gold actually is valuable. People have value gold for eons now,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: like it's one of the first things humans agreed had
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: inherent value, even though it doesn't really have inherent value
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: because it was yeah, and so it made sense that
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: we we would say, Okay, gold's really hard to lug around,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: and like it's you just you don't want to actually
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: trade gold. How about we make paper that represents a
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: certain amount of gold. And so that's kind of where
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: we got paper currency in the world, and that's what
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: we've been using for a very long time. But over time,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: the problems, the issue that can arise from pinning your
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: currency to gold, they became apparent. For one, you're you're
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: limited to the amount of gold that exists in the world,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: which is substantial. I mean, all the golden Fort Knox
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: is only two and a half percent of all the
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: gold that was ever mined. So there's a lot of
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: gold in the world, but that's a finite amount, which
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: is why some people are like, yeah, that's why we
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: should pin our currency to gold. It prevents it from
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: getting out of hand, and you can't just print however
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: much you want. The problem is, it's like you were saying,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: like with a stick, you can go in the forest
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: and go get a bunch of sticks. Conceivably, you a
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: private company could go mine a bunch of gold that
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: you found. You found a horde, and you can mine it,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and that will affect the value of not just gold,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: but of entire national economies in the global economy as
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: a whole, if everybody's pinning their currency to gold.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the thing is it also like, if your
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: economy is backed only by gold, it's really tough to
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: make adjustments to the economy as a government, which is
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: something as things have become more complicated over the years
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: with finance throughout the world we've relied upon and I
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: don't eve think we even mentioned that. The reason we
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: did this to begin with is because when we first
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: had the idea of paper currency, people are like, I
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: don't trust that at all, Like coins that people were
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: kind of used to because they've been using trinkets and
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: gets and coins for many, many years. But when they
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: brought out paper dollars, and part of this was understandable
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: because private banks and I think we talked about this
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: in currency, and especially in the South pre Civil War South,
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: there were all kinds of values for their paper currency,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: so none of it really meant anything.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a bank, a company, a town could print their
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: own money. There was no federal monopoly on printing money
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: in the United States until some time after the Civil War,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: So people just said, yeah, we don't like this paper current.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: So we came along said all right, well, what if
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: we back it by gold and in theory all the
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: money as a real gold value attached to it, and
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: you can even come trade it in for gold if
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: you want.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: To, right. So that's that's how we went forward for
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: a very long time, and then kind of slowly but
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: surely we started to move away from it, particularly starting
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: in nineteen thirteen where the Federal Reserve was established, which
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of people, especially ones who think we should
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: go to the gold standard and people who think that
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't have or that there's no golden fort Knox
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: believe kind of ruined the world when we established the
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Federal Reserve, and one of the first steps that said
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: was like, okay, we need to maintain forty percent of
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: the value of all of our currency in circulation in
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: gold as a country, which was a lot different from
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent. That's a huge amount of money that
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: can can now be printed, and more money that's out there,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: more things can be bought because that money can be
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: traded for services and goods, and you can employ people
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: with it, and all of a sudden, your economy can
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: start getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's exactly
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: what happened. And as that became more and more evident,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: we started moving further and further away from from the
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: gold standard.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And like I said earlier, kind of joke that
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: Roosevelt they allowed him to urinate in person on the
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: gold He really led the charge in the thirties because
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: of World War One and the Great Depression, and said,
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: you know what, we really kind of need to get
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: away from this gold standard officially, and I'm going to
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: take a series of actions weakening that link between gold
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: dollars being backed by gold, and you can't exchange it anymore. Everyone,
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: so don't even think about that. And not only that,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: you can't hoard gold, like we basically want all the
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: gold and they all want to hang on to it.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so for a very long time. The only
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: reason people maintain gold, or countries maintained gold, or the
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: United States maintained gold, was to pay off foreign debts
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: if need be. And then Nixon said nuts to that
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, and from that moment on, the
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: United States currency and economy was decoupled from gold and
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: has been ever since. And you again, you can look,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not a wroth child robot oid. I just believe
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: in progress, basically. And if you go back and look
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: at the world economy, in the United States economy since
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, it's made some pretty impressive gains since then,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: and that's largely due to decoupling from gold and being
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: able to print money. Now that said, and this is
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: an entirely different podcast that I think we need to
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: do sometime. There are massive problems with paper money, paper
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: currency what's called fiat currency or a fiat system of currency,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: where by fiat by proclamation, we say our currency is
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: worth this amount, and that's what we do now, which
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: is totally made up and totally in the air. But
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: as long as people have faith in the government and
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: the economy and the workforce, we can survive those ups
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: and downs through that that that sense of faith not
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: just among our citizens, but also people around the world understand.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, let's let's just all keep agreeing. Let's
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: keep that pinky squear going exactly. So why do we
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: still have value? Why do we still have Fort Knox?
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: And if we don't need the gold, well, I mean
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: they're not just gonna give it away. You still got
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: to keep it in one in a couple of places, right.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's one thing I think there is
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of that national pride to even among
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: the governments. Yeah, we got we got a bunch of gold,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: and it's in Fort Knox, and it's almost like symbolic
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: of America's wealth and strength. One thing I did see
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: is there are like lots of other countries have lots
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: of other gold hords themselves. And although the gold market
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: is basically separate, it's like its own thing. That's you know,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: it responds and reacts to the stock exchanges and other markets,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: but it's not it's not you know, entangled with it's
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: its own thing. So really, if you released a bunch
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: of gold, you're really going to mess with the gold market.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: But it's going to have a ripple effect through the
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: through the world, in the other markets, in the global economy.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: So it would be really foolish to release a bunch
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: of gold onto the market for the US to sell,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: or any country to sell its gold hoards off. It
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: would be a real big problem that you don't need
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: to have. It's easier to just keep the gold in
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Fort Knox instead, agreed, that's why it's still around.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: You're not.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: This turned out to be a pretty good aside from
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: soaka juwiyah and now I'm wondering if I even pronounced
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: wamp them correctly. Well, how humiliating, chuck.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Wampum was the real thing? You know?
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Uh, if you want to know more about Fort Knox
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: and start looking at pictures of it, you'll you'll see
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about. And since I said you'll see
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about, it's time for listener mail.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this Wetlands follow up from Donna. Hey, guys,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: been listening for many years and always enjoy the shows
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: in the banter. Today, out of my morning walk, I
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: was listening to Wetlands, Wetlands, Wetlands, and serendipitously came upon
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Cattails just as you brought them up. Wow, we love
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: this stuff, these little coincidences.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: She's like, now, I'm listening to the four Knox episode,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: so lay.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: It on me. I'm tunneling in as we speak. It
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: was one of those weird coincidence moments that I just
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: had to record. I walked off the path into the
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: grasses and took a quick cattail selfie, which I included
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: in this email. Lovely picture. Growing up in New Jersey
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: in the eighties, cattails were called punks, and my dad
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: would take the dried out plants and light them to
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: keep away mosquitoes. That's what a punk is. Yeah, I've
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: never heard of that. Have you heard of that? Uh huh,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: never heard of that. Back then, it seemed like a
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: normal thing to do. But having grown up and moved
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: away from New Jersey, who I have never come across
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: anyone that ever partakes in this practice anymore. With such
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: a huge part of my childhood summers, I'd forgotten about
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: it until now until listening to the episode, and then
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: I happen to walk upon some in the adjacent marshes
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: in that moment truly delighted me. Mosquito season is over,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: where I live now in DC. But on next summers
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: to do list is to cut some cat tails from
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: the Parkland and introduce my two teen sons to that
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: distinctive punk smell.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: That made me against federal law. Now though, oh, really
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: taking punks from the Parkland, it seems like against the law.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what, Donna H. Look into that.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: We don't want you to get in trouble, that's right,
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: or to do anything you shouldn't do. But I get
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: the urge to want to introduce things to your children
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: that you did back then that weren't necessarily proper.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, but the nanny state will say no and throw
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: you in jail. Try it, Donna.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe, I mean where I saw the wetlands recently
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: where I was hiking here in Arabia Mountain. You can't
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: beautiful granite outcroppings part of Stone Mountain actually, and you can't.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: My daughter wanted to take those rocks.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: If you can't take the rocks, you go get thrown
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: in jail by the nanny state.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: You can't do it. You gotta leave those rocks.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: What else did Donna say anything else?
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: No, that's it. That's from Donna H.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: That was great, Donna, thank you very much. Be careful
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: with the cattails. We won't tell if you do, but
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: we just don't want you to get in trouble. We're
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: no snitches. If you want to get in touch with us,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: like Donna did, we want to hear from you, and
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.