0:01

Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's

0:03

select I've chosen our episode on All

0:05

the Golden Fort Knox from November of twenty

0:07

twenty. One of the most surprising things

0:09

we learned to this episode isn't that there

0:11

might not be any gold left in Fort Knox.

0:14

There most likely is plenty in there, but

0:16

that because of the size of our economy, it

0:18

doesn't really matter at this point if it's

0:20

there or not. Hope you enjoy this

0:23

brainbuster of an episode.

0:29

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production

0:32

of iHeartRadio.

0:39

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

0:41

Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck

0:43

Bryant and Jerry's out there somewhere,

0:45

and this is stuff you should

0:48

know. Carrot plated gold

0:50

edition.

0:52

Gold plated.

0:54

Isn't that what happens? Like if you put a bunch of gold together,

0:57

it means more carrots?

0:59

I think so. I'm afraid to doubt

1:01

you, though, because I had a

1:03

movie crusher say that. All I

1:05

do lately is say you're wrong to

1:07

you.

1:08

What do they mean lately?

1:10

I know, I don't know.

1:12

They must be a newcomer to the podcast.

1:15

It's dressing is Josh is all

1:18

the time lately, Josh makes really good points, and

1:20

all Chuck does is pupu it by

1:22

just saying, no, you're wrong. It's

1:25

like, has that even happened once?

1:27

If it makes you I'm sure it's happened more than once.

1:29

But if it makes you feeling better I haven't noticed,

1:32

then that's what really counts, don't you think. Yeah,

1:34

I guess, although there are like

1:36

a million plus people listening, so I guess

1:38

their opinions count as well.

1:40

You're wrong.

1:41

Oh man, you know what's

1:43

funny is I didn't even see that coming, Chuck.

1:46

Oh see there.

1:47

Yeah, that was good, good stuff. And I almost

1:49

just said the ES word. That was good stuff.

1:52

You're wrong, it was mediocre.

1:56

Let's just do this for forty five minutes.

1:58

Yeah, no, let's do a real podcast

2:01

episode. This is interesting.

2:03

All I could think about was heist

2:05

movies.

2:07

Oh really, I don't know what I thought

2:09

about. I think I was kind of stuck in the thirties.

2:11

I just thought of everything's kind of old timey and

2:13

quaint, all right, because

2:16

it's kind of in a way where the story really

2:18

kicks off the story of Fort

2:21

Knox. In case anybody's listening,

2:23

and didn't check the title.

2:25

Oh, I thought we were doing an episode on

2:27

the United States Bullion Depository,

2:30

Buddy.

2:30

That is the same exact thing

2:32

in a lot of ways, but actually they're

2:35

different too. Let's talk about this, right,

2:37

So, for anybody who is outside of

2:39

the United States, and I would wager that a lot

2:41

of you, I'd wager all the golden Fort Knox,

2:44

that a lot of you are very familiar with

2:46

Fort Knox, because it does seem

2:48

to be kind of like this world famous place where

2:50

the United States hoards its

2:53

gold and it's just totally impenetrable,

2:56

so don't even try. But

2:59

there's also like a lot of conspiracy theories too

3:01

that there's no gold in there. And we'll talk about all this

3:03

and why there's golden there too, but I feel like we

3:05

should at least give like a background

3:07

on Fort Knox and the ins and outs of

3:09

it, don't you.

3:10

Yeah. In nineteen oh three,

3:13

this is where it all started. The

3:15

US Army said, you know what, I think

3:17

we need some training ground out

3:19

here in Kentucky, in West Point, Kentucky.

3:21

And everybody said, why, Yeah.

3:24

I don't know good as place as any I guess, okay,

3:27

And they use that area. They got

3:30

a few counties to kindly

3:32

hand them over some land, and

3:35

they use that area for training and stuff.

3:38

Made it a permanent training camp in nineteen

3:40

eighteen, and then named

3:42

it after Henry Knox, a Revolutionary

3:45

War officer, as Camp Knox.

3:48

And someone very quickly said, that doesn't

3:50

sound at all tough. It sounds like children

3:52

belong here and people are roasting

3:55

s'mores.

3:55

So that's always going to say.

3:57

How about Fort Knox.

3:59

It seems like all the best fort started out as

4:01

camps.

4:01

Yeah, so they said short. In nineteen thirty

4:03

two, it became officially Fort

4:06

Canucks.

4:08

Right, nice one. So

4:10

yeah, so it started out as a legit

4:12

army base. But then eventually in the

4:15

thirties, which is why I've been stuck in the thirties because

4:17

so much of the story takes place there, the

4:19

United States Mint said, hey, we

4:22

could use a new spot to

4:24

store some gold, because we got a lot

4:26

of gold and this isn't even

4:28

all of it, but we need a new spot to store some

4:30

gold. And they actually

4:33

took possession of part of

4:35

Fort Knox and built

4:38

what's known as, like you said, the United States

4:40

Bullion Depository there

4:43

in Kentucky, and it is legitimately

4:45

Fort Knox is now not just the Army

4:47

Camp. Even more famously, it is

4:50

really what you officially would call

4:52

the United States Bullion Depository.

4:54

Yeah, and the camp is still there, and some

4:56

say it is

4:58

there as sort of a a means

5:01

of maybe intimidation maybe

5:03

back up, like, hey, there's an army camp right next

5:05

door. But they

5:07

know also asked to borrow that name because

5:10

it sounded tougher than the Bullion

5:12

Depository, and they said,

5:14

sure, you can go ahead and just call that building Fort Knox

5:16

as well. And that's where

5:19

we moved, well

5:21

not all of it, but we had a lot of gold at the time, as

5:23

you were saying, and it was it

5:27

was a little unnerving, I think,

5:29

to have most of the gold and

5:32

the country stored in Philadelphia,

5:34

the mint there and in New York because

5:36

it was so close to the coast, and if some warring

5:40

nation wanted to invade us and grab our

5:42

gold, then they wouldn't

5:44

have far to go to get it onto a boat.

5:47

Yeah, oh truly, which is you

5:49

know, pretty sensible, really, and I never really thought

5:51

about that. But New York's not very far

5:53

from water, and neither is Philly, so why

5:56

not. So they decided to move as

5:58

much as they could, and there was silver moved

6:01

too. There was a lot of stockpiles of silver that we're

6:03

not even going to bother with in this story because silver

6:06

we're talking gold here. Yeah, And they

6:08

moved a lot of it to Denver, and they very

6:10

quickly said, well, the Denver Mint's a great

6:12

place because it's protected from the from

6:15

the Pacific Ocean by the Rocky mountains, which

6:17

make that makes it much

6:19

more difficult for an invading army to

6:21

come in from the Pacific and steal it. But

6:24

we've run out of space and we need some

6:26

more space for all the spill over gold. And

6:28

that's when they decided to build a Fort Knox,

6:30

which in Kentucky is

6:32

protected from the Atlantic

6:35

Ocean by the Appalachian Mountain. So it's pretty

6:37

pretty clever. Why they why they chose Fort Knox.

6:39

Yeah, So the Treasury, like

6:41

you said, took control of

6:43

that land in thirty six, and then in thirty

6:46

seven they I mean, they started building you

6:48

know there. You know, they couldn't just keep

6:50

it intense even though those intimidating

6:53

Appalachian Mountains were right there. They're

6:55

like, we need a building here. So they

6:57

built a building over just

6:59

a few months.

7:01

It's impressive.

7:01

Yeah, cost about a half a million

7:04

bucks. And in nineteen thirty seven

7:06

they said, we're open for business, bring

7:08

that gold from New York City.

7:11

They didn't. They they did it the way, exactly

7:13

the way that you would think they would do it. They had

7:16

a lot of they had a secret

7:18

location where they were loading it. They sent

7:20

a bunch of trains out that

7:23

were decoys. And

7:25

it didn't all happen at once. It wasn't one

7:28

shipment that made its way

7:30

from New York and Philadelphia over to

7:33

Kentucky.

7:33

It would have been in the movie, I think, exactly.

7:36

Yeah, But it happened like actually

7:39

in many shipments over several

7:41

years. But supposedly they did it like sometimes

7:43

darkness of nights, and there was decoys

7:46

and they were always protected by a

7:49

number of groups from the

7:51

Post Office inspectors

7:54

that are licensed to carry guns. Which

7:57

would I hate to say it, everybody,

7:59

but that's the one that you would try to hijack if

8:01

you were going to hijack.

8:02

Yeah, I mean all the way to be honest.

8:04

I like, yeah, right, yes,

8:07

chuck, all the way to the army,

8:09

you know, which I would I would probably not

8:11

try to hijack that one. If I were

8:13

going to hijack one, which I wouldn't do, it

8:16

would probably be the Postal inspector

8:18

one.

8:19

Yeah, and you know, I'm sure

8:22

that they've someone has written a movie treatment

8:24

at some point for a nineteen

8:26

thirty seven train on the

8:28

way to Fort Knox heist type of thing,

8:31

right, and they surely would have cast

8:34

those poor post office gun slingers

8:36

is the likely train, those

8:41

poor guys.

8:43

So we've got the gold shown

8:45

up at Fort Knox, and the thing

8:47

is is, like this was like people knew

8:49

about this. It wasn't done in secret, Like this this

8:52

is known about and I think

8:54

I get the impression that the reason that it was talked about

8:56

in discussed, and there were like little tidbits

8:58

here there in the in

9:01

the popular media

9:03

to give this idea like Okay, yes we're

9:05

moving this gold, but like, don't

9:07

even try it, Like here's just enough

9:10

that you need to know to not even come

9:12

anywhere near this place. And over the

9:14

years, little tidbits have kind of been

9:16

released here there that give a pretty complete

9:19

picture of what you would be dealing with

9:21

if you did, in fact, try to impregnate

9:25

Fort Knox.

9:26

Oh, pretty

9:28

sexy. So first

9:31

of all, you can't just take a tour, and

9:33

you can tour almost anything

9:36

in this country except for

9:38

Fort Knox.

9:39

Even if you were a sitting congress person,

9:41

the chances are you're probably not going

9:43

to get a tour.

9:45

Yeah, I mean, if ed

9:47

is correct here who helped us put this together? There

9:49

have only been three official tours, Is that right?

9:52

Yeah, that's what I saw. So

9:54

there's there was one from FDR himself,

9:56

which is pretty understandable. Sure, there

9:59

was one in the seventies, which we'll

10:01

talk about, which made sense,

10:04

but it was a congressional delegation. And

10:06

then I think in twenty seventeen,

10:09

Steven Mnusan and a delegation

10:11

toured it. So there's at least

10:14

three, but those are the three that we know

10:16

about. There may have been more, but I

10:18

would think they would kind of publicize that because the whole

10:20

point of being a delegate to

10:22

tour of Fort Knox is to basically reassure

10:25

the public there's a lot of gold

10:27

in there. Don't even worry about. Yes, the gold's there.

10:29

That's pretty much the reason why anybody gets

10:31

a tour of Fort Knox.

10:32

I wonder if they let FDR in just

10:35

to say, hey, you might as well just urinate

10:38

on this golden person, because

10:40

that's what you're about to do with

10:42

policy.

10:44

That's probably what happened.

10:46

We'll get through that later with the gold standard, And

10:49

of course you didn't urinate on it. Even with policy,

10:52

you don't know.

10:52

You can't ever tell what that FDR.

10:55

So here's a bunch of things, and

10:57

this next bit is going to be just sort of

10:59

a lot of the facts and figures that we

11:01

know and we've gleaned over the years.

11:04

Some comes from official releases,

11:06

some comes from an old nineteen

11:09

thirties issue of Popular Mechanics, which

11:11

is kind of cool. But

11:14

should we take a break first?

11:16

Oh? Sure, man, Yeah, I think

11:18

that's a great cliffhanger.

11:19

Right, great, we'll be right back

11:50

alrighty, So we promised

11:52

you stats and figures about Fort Knox.

11:55

And nineteen thirties issues of Popular Mechanics.

11:57

I know, how's this for you?

12:00

The vault requires, of course, multiple

12:02

people to open it up, and each

12:05

person nobody knows the entire combination. Each

12:07

person knows only a part

12:09

of it. And even if you got it

12:12

open, there's a one hundred hour

12:14

time delay lock, so you got to wait.

12:16

If you have them at gunpoint and you all

12:19

force and you force them all to open it, you got

12:21

to sit around and wait for four days, no matter what.

12:23

That's my favorite one.

12:24

It's pretty great, m h.

12:27

That and the fact that it's really just artificial

12:29

intelligence from the future is the only one that

12:32

has the entire combination in its possession.

12:34

What else, Well, let's

12:37

see, the vault

12:39

itself is actually inside a building.

12:41

So you remember in our Alcatraz episode where

12:43

the cell blocks were buildings inside of the

12:45

larger prison building. Yeah,

12:48

that's exactly the same thing, and

12:50

not coincidentally, they were built around the same

12:52

time, so I think

12:54

there was that kind of you know, impenetrable

12:57

building within an impenetrable building in

12:59

the zone geist kind of thing going on. And

13:02

the only way, the only place the

13:04

vault and that building are connected is on the

13:06

floor. But don't even think of coming

13:08

up from under the floor, because the

13:11

flooring is two feet thick of granite,

13:14

which you are not going to get through even if

13:16

you successfully dug under. And

13:19

I'll just go ahead and tell you why you

13:21

would not be able to successfully dig under the building

13:23

from the outside. Is because you have barrier

13:25

after barrier after fence after razor

13:27

wire separating you from the

13:30

building. There's a huge blank

13:32

field around the building, so it's not

13:34

very easy to kind of walk up to it. And

13:39

they apparently have said that the

13:41

field around the building is a minefield,

13:44

which means that they apparently studied

13:46

cartoons to design Fort

13:49

Knox, which I love.

13:51

They're like, what would wile E Coyota do?

13:54

Exactly?

13:56

Yeah, it is, I mean it's it's definitely worth

13:58

googling a like

14:00

an aerial image of this building. It's

14:03

pretty interesting. I mean it does.

14:05

It sits out in the middle of nothing in

14:08

this big flat area, and there's

14:10

like a circular driveway around

14:12

it. And you

14:14

know, it's made of what you think it's made of, which

14:17

is granite and concrete and

14:19

steel. They said that the walls

14:22

are also two feet in thickness, and

14:24

inside those walls are fabricated

14:27

steel coils that are so closely

14:29

smushed together that they say a human hand

14:32

can't even get between them. Right,

14:35

So you need a baby or a child.

14:37

You need a baby in so

14:40

you got to bring a baby. You have to bring diapers

14:42

and food to last the maybe four days until

14:44

the time Locke comes.

14:45

Yeah.

14:46

Of course, don't forget a gun to hold people

14:48

off with. Yeah, and probably

14:50

some people you don't like to send through the minefield

14:52

the clear path for you.

14:53

Yeah, and you got to get one of those diaper genies

14:55

to put the diaper in, otherwise it's smell

14:57

in there.

14:58

Oh man, it would smell so bad in that little

15:00

building.

15:01

Here's another cool thing. Well, the whole building

15:04

isn't huge. I mean it's it's

15:06

not small. It's ten thousand square feet, but it's

15:08

not I don't know. You think of Fort Knox

15:11

and you think of something

15:13

the size of like a maximum

15:15

security prisoner or something like that. It's

15:18

not huge. But the

15:21

building inside the building, so the vault inside

15:24

has an eighteen inch space clear

15:26

on every side, and they have all these mirrors

15:29

everywhere. And of course now they have real

15:32

cameras. I guess this was from the popular

15:34

mechanics pre camera.

15:36

You just use mirrors to make sure that you could

15:38

see every square inch of this thing. Yeah.

15:41

So if you did somehow manage to

15:43

get inside the vault, the people who whose

15:45

job it is is to watch the vault

15:48

would see you immediately, and they

15:50

ostal service workers yeah.

15:52

Yeah, they would just start, you

15:54

know, lobbing dead letter off

15:56

as packages at you until you got annoyed

15:59

and left.

16:00

And of course there's heavy artillery. There are

16:03

four corner machine gun turrets

16:06

essentially on the outer

16:08

building, just looking down.

16:10

So I'm sorry, I was confused. Is that on the

16:12

outer building or is that part of the vault?

16:15

I think that's outside?

16:17

Okay, I don't know. I

16:19

couldn't quite tell, and I didn't see

16:21

it outside. Did you see him outside?

16:23

Well, I mean I saw I mean I didn't see

16:25

any really close ups. Everything was kind of an aerial

16:29

and I did see what looked like corner

16:31

turrets, but maybe they are inside. Okay,

16:33

I don't know if i'd be shooting up machine guns inside

16:36

of granite room.

16:38

Yeah, that's actually probably a pretty bad idea.

16:40

I mean, I've seen Wiley Cody too. Those

16:42

bullets bounce.

16:43

All over the re place. That's right. So

16:46

you've also got a door to contend with. So so

16:48

far you've got two feet thick everything

16:50

to get through, which

16:52

means that your best bet is to go through

16:55

the door because rather than twenty

16:57

four inches, it's only twenty one inches thick.

16:59

But you should probably be dissuaded

17:01

by the fact that it's blast, drill and

17:03

torch proof, said the US

17:06

MINT director from back in twenty sixteen,

17:08

Philip Deal.

17:10

Yeah, and again this is all under the banner

17:12

of don't even think about it, buddy. Right

17:15

between the there's a

17:17

corridor that encircles the vault and

17:20

then the outer wall of the building. They do have some offices.

17:23

I guess that's where Dottie the secretary has

17:25

been since nineteen fifty something, answering.

17:28

For Danny or Danny.

17:29

That's true. I don't think they gave

17:31

jobs like that to Danny in the nineteen fifties.

17:34

Okay, maybe not in the fifties. That's fine. But

17:36

I got called out for letting that stooge's comment

17:38

pass, and I'm not gonna I'm not going on the grill

17:40

again for you, pal.

17:41

What the ladies don't like the Three Stages?

17:44

We got not one, not two,

17:47

but thrice emails about that, and

17:50

most of them were not happy.

17:51

Well, actually two of the three were

17:54

very fun about it and said that they love the three stooges.

17:56

But yes, but they weren't happy.

17:58

One I couldn't tell, and I wrote her back and

18:00

it was like I can't tell if you're really mad. Well,

18:03

and I said, but I

18:05

said, I was just, uh, if you google

18:08

women don't like three stooges, it's a it's

18:10

a trope. I mean, it's a familiar trope. I wasn't

18:13

like inventing some sexist

18:15

thing. I was just kind of funning around with it.

18:18

Yeah, it's like everybody not liking Detroit

18:20

or Kentucky like google.

18:22

That, right, or google women don't like

18:24

Rush the band.

18:26

Hey, hey, hey, let's just let's

18:28

bail out of this while we still have our

18:30

limb.

18:31

No, people can likely like. But trust me, I've been

18:33

to a Rush concert and there was there's

18:35

a lot of masculinity in that room.

18:38

What year was that, because I'll bet

18:40

I was at the same concert depending I

18:42

went to.

18:44

It must have been eighty eight or eighty nine.

18:46

Oh no, I wasn't not that one.

18:48

Okay, yeah you were.

18:49

This would have been maybe

18:51

like ninety two, ninety three.

18:54

We just missed each other.

18:56

Yeah, just by a few years. Had I just hung out

18:58

at the Omni for three or four more years or had

19:00

you, we would have passed EACHO.

19:02

But you're right, Women like all sorts of things, and

19:04

men like all sorts of things.

19:06

That's right. And Danny and Dottie can both

19:08

be secretaries, that's right. And we don't even call

19:10

them secretaries anymore, Chuck, we should just stop

19:12

podcasting altogether. We

19:15

have aged out of it.

19:17

So to me, the only way in would

19:19

be the escape

19:22

tunnel.

19:23

Yes, which they thought of that. They realized

19:26

that. They actually put a tunnel underground

19:29

that you could use to get into the

19:33

depository, the actual vault, which

19:35

they installed in case somebody got locked in

19:37

there, which I'm really surprised they

19:40

even installed that or

19:42

designed that in there. I would think like, if you have people

19:44

guarding it as closely as it's being guarded

19:47

all the time, that if you got locked

19:49

in there, they could let you out. They just

19:52

give you food or something through those those

19:54

slots that for the four days.

19:56

Yeah, or.

20:00

That's an even better idea, actually, now that you

20:03

mentioned it, but now they didn't do that. They actually

20:05

put an escape tunnel in so that you can

20:07

crawl out. It's not like a pleasant walk

20:09

or anything. You crawl like through this tunnel

20:12

and then out into the minefield basically, but

20:14

the door that you reach that lets you outside

20:18

only opens from the inside. It's

20:20

impossible to open from the outside, which I

20:22

take to mean it doesn't have a doorknob

20:24

on the outside, and then it's

20:28

guarded twenty four to seven by people who are

20:30

ready to just shoot you up if you

20:32

try to approach this door with your own doorknob

20:34

that you brought to open it from the outside.

20:37

Right, because you're not going to come in here with

20:39

a presumably a freight train

20:42

to steal all this gold.

20:44

Where are you going to put the tracks? You can't do it?

20:47

Are you going to get that gold out of there?

20:49

I just love the fact that we're trying

20:51

to you know, we're doing a podcast in twenty twenty

20:54

explaining and dissuading people

20:57

from trying to get into

20:59

Fort Knox. I mean, it's just so like

21:01

seventies to me, or thirties or fifties,

21:03

you know. I love it.

21:04

The other cool thing is is that it can go

21:06

off grid, has its own water

21:09

and power. So if you

21:11

you know, in the movie version, of course,

21:14

once again I would think you would try

21:16

and knock it off the line somehow

21:19

get those cameras down, but they say, no, no, no, we

21:21

have those generators. We can

21:23

live off grid. There's a gun range

21:25

in the basement, So if you want to brush up on your

21:27

machine gunning down there, you can do that.

21:29

No, that's kind of like a little line

21:32

yap to the whole thing. Like, by the

21:34

way, these guys are training with

21:37

guns downstairs in the basement for fun

21:39

because they've got nothing else to do. They're

21:41

just waiting for you to come.

21:43

Now.

21:43

Who is guarding it though, from what

21:45

I understand their treasury agents?

21:46

Right, yeah.

21:47

The army can be called in if needed,

21:49

because again it's like right there.

21:52

Yeah, the US Mint Police Force. Yeah,

21:54

which I imagine is it's

21:57

probably a pretty cool gig to have.

22:00

I don't know where they would have come up, but I swear

22:02

we've mentioned that they exist before.

22:05

It seems familiar to me. Have we done this all

22:07

before?

22:08

No, we haven't done this one, but we have talked about money

22:10

and currency before. Yeah,

22:12

And I feel like where that's

22:15

where we're at. Don't you like that? Maybe

22:17

we should talk about the gold itself, because

22:20

I mean, yes, it's cool that there's a twenty one inch

22:22

blast door and there's a door that only opens

22:25

from the inside and the escape

22:28

tunnel. But I think what everybody's really fascinated

22:30

with as much as anything, is the fact that there is a

22:33

lot of gold inside

22:35

of four knox.

22:36

Yeah, and this will kind

22:38

of hit home too. If you've ever seen movies where

22:40

you're bringing gold out of a place in a duffel

22:42

bag, those gold bars

22:45

weigh almost twenty eight pounds apiece, just

22:48

one, Yeah, just one of those things.

22:50

So if you see people throwing them

22:52

around in a movie or putting

22:55

ten of them fifteen of them in a duffel

22:57

bag and slinging it over their shoulder, that

22:59

is not realistic at all. They're seven inches long,

23:02

three and five eighths inches wide, one in

23:04

three quarters inches thick, and weigh twenty

23:06

seven point five pounds.

23:07

Each, yeah, or four

23:09

hundred troy ounces. If you know what

23:11

that means. I have no idea, and

23:14

I think it's what about ten

23:16

twelve kilos a piece

23:18

for those of you who aren't listening in the US

23:21

and the weird thing, I didn't realize this, but as

23:24

far as the Treasury is concerned, and to

23:26

me, this really kind of goes to demonstrate

23:28

like how little the actual

23:31

value of maintaining this

23:33

gold horde is that, just for bookkeeping,

23:36

they assign like an arbitrary

23:39

value the statutory value of gold.

23:41

It's what it's called at forty two

23:43

dollars and forty four cents an ounce, so

23:46

that they can keep track using

23:48

that dollar amount of how much gold is

23:50

in Fort Knox, rather

23:52

than you know, tracking it as it as it

23:54

relates to like the international gold

23:56

market.

23:58

Yeah, and so I did the math this time.

24:00

I did two. Let's see if we came up with

24:02

the same figures.

24:03

So the supposedly there are forty six hundred

24:05

metric tons of gold, which

24:07

by the way, is about two point five percent of all

24:09

the gold ever mined in the world

24:12

in human history.

24:13

That's pretty impressive.

24:14

And if we're just going I want to make sure we use the

24:16

same numbers here forty six hundred metric

24:18

tons. Can use that forty

24:21

two point four to four cents

24:24

per ounce.

24:25

Okay, I did it differently, But let's see if we came up with

24:27

the same figure.

24:28

Well, what value did you use?

24:30

Like, no, you go first, mister, you're

24:32

wrong guy.

24:35

So using the statutory value of

24:37

gold that the US is set, I

24:40

came up with six point eight billion dollars worth

24:42

of gold.

24:43

Close for mine. Close for mine.

24:45

I used a different method, and this is one of

24:47

the great joys of math? Is there a different approaches

24:50

to the same proble?

24:51

What did you do?

24:52

I took that forty six hundred metric tons

24:55

of gold and divided

24:57

it by pounds twenty

25:00

seven point five pounds, so I came up with

25:02

the number of individual

25:04

bars. Then I multiplied that number of

25:06

individual bars, which is three hundred and

25:08

sixty eight thousand and seven hundred and seventy

25:11

three bars. Uh huh, by that

25:13

sixteen thousand, eight hundred

25:15

and eighty eight dollars per bar. Okay,

25:17

I came up with in the neighborhood of six

25:20

point twenty five six billion dollars worth

25:22

of gold.

25:23

Well, first of all, there's a

25:25

psychologist that's listening to this that is really

25:29

yeah, looking at what that means for both of

25:31

our personalities.

25:32

For sure, it's gotta say a lot.

25:34

You know, did you use Are you sure you used

25:36

metric tons and not just tons?

25:39

Yeah? I did a

25:41

pound to metric ton conversion. You know how

25:43

you can go on the internet and just say pound

25:46

metric ton and like it brings up a little

25:48

conversion thing for you.

25:49

Yeah, I was. I was just making sure because at

25:51

first I didn't do metric ton, and that was different

25:54

and did a short ton that is a short ton,

25:56

and that came to about six closer to your

25:58

number.

26:00

Oh okay, yeah, no, I and I actually rounded

26:02

a little bit because I was like, E, what

26:04

the heck is that when the total

26:07

came up, So I went back and redid it.

26:09

And I didn't feel like plugging in all the same numbers

26:11

that I rounded it.

26:12

What I wonder what I did was I just

26:14

took how

26:16

many ounces or in forty six in

26:19

a metric ton, multiplied that

26:21

by forty six hundred, and then multiplied that

26:23

by forty two forty four.

26:26

Well, I proposed that move along because I

26:28

just suddenly rose. There's probably people who's

26:30

like their fingertips are dug under

26:32

their eyeballs. They're so they're

26:34

in such agony hearing us discuss math

26:37

like this.

26:38

Well, what's what's important is that the

26:40

FED in New York actually has more gold

26:43

in their Manhattan vault, which was in a movie

26:45

six thousand tons of Gold. That

26:48

would have been die Harder, Die

26:50

Hard three. I believe it may die

26:53

another day. I don't know, but it was a good one.

26:55

That was the one with Sam Jackson.

26:57

Yeah, that was pretty good. And

27:00

by the way, I need to say something. I realized

27:02

that. I said, Event Horizon is a

27:04

good movie and holds up. I

27:07

went back and saw it again again,

27:09

huh, and I was like, this is way jokier

27:12

than I remember from last time. Oh really,

27:14

Yeah, And sadly there's a there's a sheen

27:17

or a coating of hokiness that

27:20

I guess maybe they brought in somebody to punch up

27:22

the script or something and that was their contribution.

27:25

But it's not so it doesn't hold up anymore.

27:27

No, and it's a great

27:30

galactic, love crafty and

27:32

horror movie in concept and

27:34

in some parts, but no, it's

27:36

unfortunately rather hokey. I'm

27:39

a little gutted to say that. As our British friends

27:41

would say.

27:41

Maybe you should watch it again in like three years

27:43

and it might be back on track.

27:45

Were you, well, maybe, you know, maybe it's

27:47

me that's the problem.

27:49

Well, you know, taste waxes and wains.

27:51

Yeah, that's true. It's true.

27:54

There's another there's some other stuff in Fort

27:56

Knox, and there has been other stuff through history

27:58

in Fort Knox, because it's just it's a great place to

28:00

keep stuff if you don't want to lose it or have

28:02

it stolen. They have some rare

28:05

coins in there. These are coins

28:07

that were not released to the public. They

28:10

may have been promotional coins or test pressings,

28:13

and so there's some of that stuff, including the

28:17

Chicago Way dollars coins that flew in

28:19

the Space shuttle. Is that funny?

28:22

Yeah, that's sokka juweah.

28:24

Yeah, that's like the American

28:26

bastardization. It's Chicago Way.

28:29

Oh well, maybe we should keep this in, Okay,

28:32

because I've never heard

28:34

anybody say that. I really thought you'd just mised

28:36

pronounced it. Other people say it like that.

28:39

Yeah. I think it's one of those things where like

28:41

the native pronunciation is Chicagoway

28:43

and Americans were like saka Jowellah.

28:46

No, oh my god, I've got

28:48

so much egg on my face. Maybe we won't keep this

28:50

part in. You have to say it you said it

28:52

wrong, though, you have to be like that's wrong, that's

28:56

wrong. Okay, thank

28:58

you. So it is Chicagoway. Huh? Is

29:00

it icagaweya?

29:01

I think it's just Chicagaway. And I only learn

29:03

that from Ken Burns.

29:06

God bless Kim America's teacher cut

29:09

and you man, thank you for setting

29:11

me straight in front of a million people.

29:13

Let me see here at nineteen thirty three

29:16

gold double eagle twenty dollars

29:18

coin. That's kind of cool.

29:20

Yeah. Sure there's an aluminum dime, no

29:22

penny, an aluminum penny from nineteen

29:24

seventy four.

29:25

Which I'd love to see that thing.

29:27

I would too, but it just strikes me as a little sad.

29:30

Sure

29:31

there've also been because

29:34

Fort Knox is just so well known as this impregnable

29:36

place, and it really is, you know, legitimately, you

29:39

cannot get into it no matter how hard you try.

29:42

It's actually served as the site the storehouse

29:44

for some like truly valuable stuff like

29:47

the Declaration of Independence,

29:50

the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg

29:52

Address, a Gutenberg Bible, the

29:56

Magnet cart. Actually during World War Two, England's

29:58

like, hey, can you hang on to this four because the Germans

30:00

are really like up our butts right now? That's kind

30:03

of cool, yeah, they So

30:05

we held that at Fort Knox during World

30:07

War Two, which is I mean,

30:09

that's just fascinating to the idea

30:11

that some apparently some secret

30:14

service agent traveled secretly

30:17

with a bunch of these documents from Washington,

30:19

d C. And put them on a train out

30:21

to Kentucky to go to be held in Fort

30:24

Knox during World War Two.

30:25

I love it. That's really cool. And that was temporary.

30:28

I think. Didn't they return them right afterward?

30:30

Oh yeah, for sure. Apparently they dedicated

30:32

the Jefferson Memorial in nineteen forty three and they're

30:34

like, we need to get the Declaration

30:37

of Independence out there.

30:38

And they found out that the guards were using

30:40

it as a place mat to eat their dehydrated

30:43

foods.

30:44

You know, they'd swapped it with something

30:47

that they only used cryon to forge,

30:50

kept the original themselves.

30:52

So should we break now before conspiracies

30:55

or weight and break before gold standard?

30:57

We'll break now. And I'm not one hundred percent sure I'm going

30:59

to be able to come back from that Chicago Way thing,

31:01

Okay. So it might just be you and we come back

31:04

from brain No never, okay,

31:35

Chuck. So one of the things, one of the favorite

31:38

things Americans love to do is

31:40

to suggest, quite seriously in a

31:42

lot of cases that there is no such

31:44

thing as a

31:47

gold in Fort Knox, and that there hasn't been

31:49

golden there for a very long time. And if you went

31:51

there and you saw gold, well you're a fool. Because

31:53

the best thing. The best possible scenario

31:56

is that you saw something like tungsten

31:59

that was spray painted or plated

32:01

in gold, and that the golden Fort Knox is

32:03

not there and hasn't been there for a very long time,

32:06

and not only that it was

32:08

sold for the most nefarious, outrageous

32:11

purposes we can possibly come up with.

32:14

Yeah, so they audit

32:16

Fort Knox and they count the gold

32:19

allegedly supposedly, Dottie

32:21

and Danny get in there with their adding

32:24

machine and they type everything

32:26

out. And I

32:28

love how Ed put this. He said that all the conspiracy

32:31

theories rely on quote,

32:33

some fundamental misunderstanding of how currency

32:35

works, how the gold standard worked, or

32:37

just outright nonsense. But

32:39

it's kind of true.

32:41

Yeah, No, it totally is, because there's

32:43

this call for which we'll talk about the

32:45

gold to be used again the way originally

32:48

was, which is the back our currency. If

32:51

that's the if that's really the basis

32:53

of your problem with the idea that the gold was

32:55

secretly sold off in Fort Knox, then

32:58

then yeah, you misunderstand and how

33:00

currency works or how economies work, and you probably

33:03

don't fully understand how the gold standard

33:05

was not really great and that America

33:08

actually blew up, and the whole

33:10

world blew up after we switched off

33:12

of the gold standard. That's how the global

33:14

economy really started to take off, was

33:17

when we decoupled our currency from being

33:19

pinned to gold. So that's another It seems

33:21

to be another factor in

33:24

kind of banding about conspiracy theories about

33:26

Fort Knox gold too.

33:28

Yeah, and a lot of these conspiracy theories are

33:30

anti Semitic. Yeah,

33:32

there are, believe it or not. There are some really

33:34

smart people who think who

33:37

may or may not believe in some of these theories,

33:40

and some that believe we should go back to the gold

33:42

standard, including Alan Greenspan,

33:46

a woman named Judy Shelton who Trump

33:48

tried to push for appointment to the FED to

33:51

the Federal Reserve. And

33:53

I'm not sure if she believes in the conspiracy

33:56

theories or she just wants to go back to the gold standard.

33:58

Yeah, they're not. I mean, it's not hand in hand.

34:00

It's just if you do think we should go back

34:02

to the gold standard, it's

34:04

basically impossible for your attention not

34:06

to fall on Fort Knox. And then you may

34:08

be like, well, is there even gold there?

34:11

Yeah? True, But there are some truly

34:13

wackado things out there. This

34:16

Peter Better guy.

34:18

Oh is that how you're saying his name?

34:20

What is it better? Better?

34:22

If his name's not Peter Beeter,

34:25

then I'm sad.

34:26

I am too. Peter Beeter, the

34:29

et e r. That's what I'm going to call him, at least.

34:31

Yeah, it's like Peter with a bee. Yeah,

34:33

but his first name's Peter. It's magnificent,

34:36

it's perfect.

34:37

So he has thrown

34:40

a lot of conspiracies out there since the seventies,

34:43

including a popular one that we sold off

34:46

all the gold to these global elites

34:48

for next to nothing so they

34:50

could hoard that gold and then

34:53

one day just destabilize the economy

34:55

of the world and you

34:57

know, ascend to power basically.

35:00

Yeah, because they would

35:02

have all the money and they sunk the

35:04

value of the money so they could buy everything else

35:06

at rock bottom prices like they bought the gold.

35:09

Apparently this involves the Rothschilds,

35:11

which automatically makes the whole thing anti

35:13

Semitic, because the roth Childs

35:15

started out and you know, are still around as

35:17

far as I know, as a Jewish

35:20

banking family many many

35:22

centuries ago and rose

35:24

to power and wealth pretty quickly, and actually

35:26

had a huge role

35:29

in a lot of world affairs, like were

35:31

able to bail out entire nations

35:34

like France after they went into debt

35:36

over war, like this family could

35:38

do that, and it started a lot of conspiracy

35:41

theories. So they're kind

35:43

of like one of the og conspiracy

35:45

theories. And usually it was based

35:47

on a combination or it was based

35:49

on suspiciousness of a combination of them

35:51

being Jewish and them being extraordinarily

35:54

wealthy.

35:55

Yeah, there's this other guy. Is his

35:58

name is Yan even Huis.

36:01

I'm sure that's wrong. He had

36:03

an alias named kus Janssen Koos

36:07

And I listened to and read some

36:09

interviews with this guy and

36:12

he did you check into him? He seems he

36:15

seems like a pretty level headed economist,

36:17

right that just seems to think that these

36:20

audits aren't correct and there

36:22

is something kinky going on. He didn't seem

36:25

really out there though.

36:27

No, but it seems like

36:29

a case of paying too much attention

36:31

to details and starting to

36:33

see things that aren't necessarily

36:35

there. Or if you do turn up a discrepancy,

36:38

assuming that it does reveal some larger

36:40

plot rather than just being a mistake

36:42

or an accounting error or somebody forgot to carry

36:45

the one. That's my impression. I could

36:47

be wrong. I don't know much about kus Jansen.

36:49

Yeah, but the interview just seemed very

36:51

level headed. He wasn't talking

36:54

about robotoids,

36:56

which is what Peter Peter talks about,

36:59

right, literally talks

37:02

about stuff like that.

37:03

Well, that's what makes it believable is the OIDs

37:05

on the end. If there were just robots, it would just seem

37:08

rather far fetch.

37:09

What about Ron Paul, His is a little out there. He

37:11

thinks it's all fake, right.

37:13

So Ron Paul. I can't tell if Ron Paul

37:15

is the source of a lot

37:17

of this or was an amplifier for

37:19

a lot of it, But he's tapped into

37:22

or is part of one of the larger

37:26

kind of followings of conspiracy

37:29

theories as far as Fort Knox is concerned, which

37:31

is that either like I was saying

37:33

earlier, there's either no gold there

37:36

really, or the goal that is there is fake

37:38

and the real gold has been sold, and

37:41

that the US has been doing this for a

37:43

very long time for all sorts of

37:47

uncertain reasons

37:49

like that, and that usually these days that China's

37:51

been the big recipient of cheap gold, and maybe

37:54

we've been doing that because if we sell

37:56

China a bunch of cheap gold, it will actually

37:58

keep the dollar low and we'll strengthen

38:00

our exports. I'm not quite

38:03

sure how that works. There

38:05

also seems to be a certain amount of like national

38:08

pride associated with it, where

38:10

like, no, that's our goal, that's the people's

38:12

goal. That can't be sold off secretly by the government.

38:15

And here's to me where it's like, even

38:18

if there isn't any gold in Fort Knox

38:21

at some point in the not too

38:23

distant past, but the past,

38:25

for sure, we've gone so far

38:28

beyond that having any

38:30

importance whatsoever. Yeah, based

38:32

on the dollar value of the golden Fort Knox

38:34

that it legitimately doesn't

38:36

matter. But that's why I think some people

38:39

are like, no, it does matter. That is our goal, that's

38:41

America's goal. I've seen

38:43

it referred to I think Ed said somebody referred

38:45

to it as the equity of our national wealth.

38:48

And there seems to be like a certain amount of like American

38:51

pride or patriotism in

38:53

being really mad about the idea that Fort

38:56

Knox doesn't have any gold anymore, that

38:58

the American people were duped by

39:00

you know, whatever elites are running the show

39:02

at the behest of whatever. Jewish people

39:04

are running the elites.

39:06

Right, because here's the deal, and this

39:08

is where we kind of get in more to the of

39:10

the gold standard, and we

39:12

talked about this in currency and how both of us

39:14

are kind of consistently blown away that money,

39:19

all money is is just something that everyone

39:21

is agreed on has value. Yeah,

39:23

and that's what we've been doing forever. But yeah, since

39:26

there has been little ingots

39:28

and trinkets, Yes, as long as

39:30

you agree, I mean, it could be a well,

39:33

it could be a stick. It has to be something

39:35

that you can't just go out and forage,

39:37

although you can with gold, which is a problem you

39:39

can.

39:39

I mean, like think about wampum that was extensively

39:42

used and I believe the Pacific Northwest by

39:45

more than one tribe

39:47

and nation. Wampam

39:49

was They were like little little seashells

39:51

that you could go and collect if you wanted to, and

39:53

they were considered valuable currency

39:55

and were for a very long time too. So it could

39:58

conceivably be a stick as far as you may he's.

40:00

Concerned, right, But in our case, and in

40:02

the case of paper money these days, it

40:05

is we've had to make it incredibly

40:08

hard to recreate and counterfeit. You

40:10

can also listen to our counterfeiting episode. But

40:13

what really struck me kind of with

40:15

that thought experiment this time is

40:17

that gold really doesn't have much value

40:19

either as a commodity. It's

40:22

it's nice for making pretty trinkets,

40:24

but and they use it in some electronics

40:27

and stuff like that. But we've also just sort of

40:29

agreed that gold is valuable, and

40:31

the only thing that really has

40:33

true value is food,

40:36

air, and water, if

40:39

you think about it, and love, and

40:41

the irony is is that we're doing our best

40:43

to kill all that stuff away,

40:45

you know, the stuff that really

40:47

matters.

40:48

Man, Bravo, Bravo.

40:51

I want to give you a hand to help you down from your

40:53

soapbox, and I'm going to put a king robe around

40:56

you. Okay, okay?

40:57

Is it?

40:58

It's gold flecked and it's got like the little white

41:01

leopard like.

41:02

Yeah caller, yeah, yeah,

41:04

whatever that is.

41:05

You look great in it. That was wonderful.

41:07

No, it's just it's just so funny. These things that we've

41:09

agreed have value really don't. And the

41:12

things that really truly have value are

41:14

really just the things that keep people alive.

41:16

Right, right, But even like taking

41:18

that hippie stuff out of the equation, there was

41:20

a time where people said,

41:24

no, gold, gold actually is valuable. People

41:26

have value gold for eons now,

41:28

like it's one of the first things humans agreed

41:30

had inherent value, even though it doesn't

41:32

really have inherent value because it was yeah,

41:35

and so it made sense that

41:37

we we would say, Okay, gold's

41:40

really hard to lug around, and like it's

41:44

you just you don't want to actually trade gold.

41:46

How about we make paper that represents

41:48

a certain amount of gold. And

41:51

so that's kind of where we got paper currency

41:53

in the world, and that's what we've been using for a

41:55

very long time. But over time, the

41:58

problems, the issue that can arise

42:00

from pinning your currency to gold,

42:05

they became apparent. For one,

42:07

you're you're limited to the amount

42:09

of gold that exists in the world, which is substantial.

42:11

I mean, all the golden Fort Knox is

42:14

only two and a half percent of all

42:16

the gold that was ever mined. So there's a lot of gold

42:18

in the world, but that's a finite amount,

42:20

which is why some people are like, yeah, that's

42:22

why we should pin our currency to gold. It

42:25

prevents it from getting out of hand, and you can't just print

42:27

however much you want. The

42:30

problem is, it's like you were saying, like with a

42:32

stick, you can go in the forest and go get a bunch

42:34

of sticks. Conceivably, you

42:36

a private company could go mine

42:39

a bunch of gold that you found. You found a

42:41

horde, and you

42:43

can mine it, and that will affect the

42:47

value of not just gold, but of entire national

42:50

economies in the global economy as a whole,

42:52

if everybody's pinning their currency to gold.

42:55

Yeah. And the thing is it also like,

42:58

if your economy is backed only by gold,

43:00

it's really tough to make adjustments to

43:03

the economy as a government, which is something

43:06

as things have become more complicated

43:08

over the years with finance throughout the world

43:10

we've relied upon and

43:13

I don't eve think we even mentioned that. The reason we did

43:15

this to begin with is because when we first

43:18

had the idea of paper currency, people

43:20

are like, I don't trust that at all,

43:23

Like coins that people were kind of used to

43:26

because they've been using trinkets and gets and coins

43:28

for many, many years. But when they brought

43:30

out paper dollars, and part of this was understandable

43:34

because private banks and I think we talked

43:36

about this in currency, and

43:38

especially in the South pre Civil

43:40

War South, there were all kinds of

43:42

values for their paper

43:44

currency, so none of it really meant anything.

43:47

Yeah, a bank, a company,

43:49

a town could print their own money. There

43:51

was no federal monopoly on printing money

43:54

in the United States until some time after

43:56

the Civil War, I think.

43:57

So people just said, yeah, we don't like this paper

43:59

current. So we came along said all right, well,

44:01

what if we back it by gold and in theory

44:05

all the money as a real gold

44:07

value attached to it, and you can even come trade

44:09

it in for gold if you want.

44:10

To, right. So that's that's

44:13

how we went forward for a very long time,

44:15

and then kind of slowly but surely we started

44:17

to move away from it, particularly

44:19

starting in nineteen thirteen

44:22

where the Federal Reserve was established,

44:26

which a lot of people, especially ones who think

44:28

we should go to the gold standard and people who think

44:30

that we shouldn't have or that there's no golden

44:32

fort Knox believe kind

44:34

of ruined the world when

44:37

we established the Federal Reserve, and

44:41

one of the first steps that said was like, okay,

44:43

we need to maintain forty percent

44:46

of the value of all of our currency in

44:48

circulation in gold as

44:50

a country, which was a lot

44:53

different from one hundred percent. That's a huge

44:55

amount of money that can can now

44:57

be printed, and more money that's out

44:59

there, more things can be bought because

45:01

that money can be traded for services

45:04

and goods, and you can employ people with it, and

45:06

all of a sudden, your economy can start getting bigger

45:08

and bigger and bigger. And that's exactly what happened.

45:10

And as that became more and more evident,

45:13

we started moving further and further away from from

45:16

the gold standard.

45:17

Yeah. And like I said earlier, kind of joke

45:20

that Roosevelt they allowed him to urinate

45:22

in person on the gold He

45:24

really led the charge

45:26

in the thirties because of World War One

45:28

and the Great Depression, and said,

45:30

you know what, we really kind of need to get away from this gold

45:32

standard officially, and I'm going to take

45:34

a series of actions weakening

45:37

that link between gold

45:40

dollars being backed by gold, and

45:42

you can't exchange it anymore. Everyone,

45:44

so don't even think about that. And

45:47

not only that, you can't hoard gold, like

45:49

we basically want all the gold

45:52

and they all want to hang on to it.

45:54

Yeah, And so for a very long time. The

45:56

only reason people maintain gold,

46:00

or countries maintained gold, or the United States

46:02

maintained gold, was to pay

46:05

off foreign debts if need

46:07

be. And then Nixon said

46:09

nuts to that in nineteen seventy one, and

46:12

from that moment on, the United States

46:14

currency and economy was decoupled

46:17

from gold and has been ever since. And

46:20

you again, you can look, I'm

46:22

not a wroth child robot

46:24

oid. I just believe in progress,

46:27

basically. And if you go back and look at

46:29

the world economy, in the United States economy since

46:31

nineteen seventy one, it's made some pretty impressive

46:33

gains since then, and that's

46:36

largely due to decoupling from

46:38

gold and being able to print money. Now

46:40

that said, and this is an entirely different podcast

46:43

that I think we need to do sometime. There are massive

46:46

problems with paper

46:48

money, paper currency what's called fiat

46:50

currency or a fiat system

46:52

of currency, where by fiat by

46:55

proclamation, we say our currency

46:57

is worth this amount, and that's what we do

46:59

now, which is totally made up and totally in

47:01

the air. But as long as people have faith

47:03

in the government and the economy and

47:05

the workforce, we

47:08

can survive those ups and downs through

47:10

that that that sense of faith not

47:13

just among our

47:15

citizens, but also people around the world

47:18

understand.

47:20

Yeah, I mean, let's let's just all keep

47:22

agreeing. Let's keep that pinky squear going exactly.

47:25

So why do we still have value? Why

47:28

do we still have Fort Knox? And if we don't

47:30

need the gold, well,

47:32

I mean they're not just gonna

47:35

give it away. You still got to keep it in one

47:37

in a couple of places, right.

47:40

That's I mean, that's one thing I think there is

47:42

a certain amount of that national pride to even among

47:44

the governments. Yeah, we got we got a bunch of gold,

47:46

and it's in Fort Knox, and it's almost like symbolic

47:49

of America's wealth and strength. One

47:51

thing I did see is there are like lots

47:53

of other countries have lots of other gold

47:55

hords themselves. And although

47:58

the gold market is basically separate,

48:00

it's like its own thing. That's you know, it

48:04

responds and reacts to the stock

48:07

exchanges and other markets,

48:09

but it's not it's not you know, entangled

48:11

with it's its own thing. So really, if

48:13

you released a bunch of gold, you're

48:16

really going to mess with the gold market. But it's going to have

48:18

a ripple effect through the through the world,

48:21

in the other markets, in the

48:23

global economy. So it would

48:25

be really foolish to release a bunch of

48:27

gold onto the market for the US

48:29

to sell, or any country to sell its gold hoards

48:32

off. It would be a real big problem

48:34

that you don't need to have. It's easier to just keep

48:36

the gold in Fort Knox instead,

48:39

agreed, that's

48:41

why it's still around.

48:42

You're not.

48:42

This turned out to be a pretty good aside from

48:44

soaka juwiyah and now I'm wondering

48:47

if I even pronounced wamp them correctly.

48:50

Well, how humiliating, chuck.

48:52

Wampum was the real thing? You know?

48:54

Uh, if you want to know more about Fort

48:56

Knox and start looking at pictures of it, you'll you'll

48:59

see what we're talking about. And since I said you'll

49:01

see what we're talking about, it's time for listener mail.

49:06

I'm gonna call this Wetlands

49:08

follow up from Donna.

49:10

Hey, guys, been listening for many years and always enjoy

49:12

the shows in the banter. Today,

49:14

out of my morning walk, I was listening to Wetlands,

49:17

Wetlands, Wetlands, and serendipitously

49:20

came upon Cattails just as

49:23

you brought them up. Wow, we

49:25

love this stuff, these little coincidences.

49:28

She's like, now, I'm listening to the four Knox episode,

49:30

so lay.

49:31

It on me. I'm tunneling

49:33

in as we speak. It

49:35

was one of those weird coincidence moments that I just

49:37

had to record. I walked off the path

49:39

into the grasses and took a quick cattail

49:41

selfie, which I included in this email. Lovely

49:44

picture. Growing up in New Jersey

49:46

in the eighties, cattails were called

49:49

punks, and my dad would take the dried

49:51

out plants and light them to

49:53

keep away mosquitoes. That's what

49:55

a punk is. Yeah, I've never heard of that. Have you heard

49:57

of that? Uh huh, never heard

49:59

of that. Back then, it seemed like a normal

50:02

thing to do. But having grown up and moved away

50:04

from New Jersey, who I have

50:06

never come across anyone that ever partakes

50:08

in this practice anymore. With such a huge

50:10

part of my childhood summers, I'd forgotten about it until

50:13

now until listening to the episode, and

50:15

then I happen to walk

50:17

upon some in the adjacent marshes

50:19

in that moment truly delighted me. Mosquito

50:22

season is over, where I live now in DC. But

50:24

on next summers to do list is to

50:26

cut some cat tails from the Parkland and

50:28

introduce my two teen sons to

50:31

that distinctive punk smell.

50:33

That made me against federal law. Now

50:35

though, oh, really taking

50:37

punks from the Parkland,

50:40

it seems like against the law.

50:41

Well, I'll tell you what, Donna H. Look

50:44

into that. We don't want you to get in trouble, that's

50:46

right, or to do anything you shouldn't do. But

50:49

I get the urge to want to introduce things

50:52

to your children that you did back then that weren't

50:54

necessarily proper.

50:56

Yes, but the nanny state will say

50:58

no and throw you in jail. Try

51:00

it, Donna.

51:00

Yeah, maybe, I mean where I saw the wetlands

51:02

recently where I was hiking here in Arabia Mountain.

51:04

You can't beautiful granite outcroppings

51:07

part of Stone Mountain actually, and you

51:09

can't. My daughter wanted to take those rocks.

51:11

If you can't take the rocks, you go

51:13

get thrown in jail by the nanny state.

51:15

You can't do it. You gotta leave those rocks.

51:19

What else did Donna say anything else?

51:20

No, that's it. That's from Donna H.

51:22

That was great, Donna, thank you very much. Be careful

51:24

with the cattails. We won't tell if you do,

51:26

but we just don't want you to get in trouble. We're

51:29

no snitches. If you want

51:32

to get in touch with us, like Donna did, we

51:34

want to hear from you, and you can send us an email

51:36

to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio

51:39

dot com.

51:42

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51:45

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51:50

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