Episode 131: Chaos and Candy
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Transcript
Transcript
Time Crisis, back again. On this week's episode we have two very special guests.
The legend Tom O'Neill, author of Chaos, Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the
60s. Plus, we finally make direct contact with the Hershey/Reese's company. We'll be talking
to Ryan Reese, their director of social strategy. All this, plus marijuana t-shirts and McDonald's.
This is Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
Alright, Time Crisis back once again. How's everybody doing?
Doing pretty well.
Lots been going on. Big news, couple weeks for the TC community. This is the type of stuff I
normally forget, but this one's so big that I was getting tagged and stuff for like three days.
Did you guys see this picture of LeBron wearing head-to-toe Grateful Dead gear before a game?
Yes, I was tagged a few times. You know what's funny on my Instagram? You know Instagram,
there's the one setting, it's all the stuff you've posted, and then there's all the other
setting of stuff that you've been tagged in? Yes.
It used to be everything on my Instagram was pictures of my paintings, you know?
Yeah.
And now it's all very obscure Time Crisis riffs, memes, whatever you want to call it.
So anyway, I think there's at least one image or video clip of LeBron wearing the
Grateful Dead bears shorts and sweatshirt with my name on it.
And don't forget about the Crocs.
Okay, was it also a dead Croc?
He was wearing the dead Crocs. I realize actually as I'm saying this that we never followed up
about the fact that you and I both have received, not Grateful Dead, but Jerry Garcia shoes
recently.
I never got mine. I don't know what happened.
Oh really?
What are they called? The Keens?
Keens. We got to rectify that.
I ended up getting my pair of the Jerry Garcia Keens, which I know they asked for your info as
well, Jake, so you should be getting them. I got those the same day that I unexpectedly got a pair
of the Grateful Dead dunks, which I had very mixed feelings about.
I think I said that I was going to talk about it on TC, but we forgot about it for the last one.
But I've got a $2,000 pair of Grateful Dead dunks sitting in my home.
Is that what they're still going for Seinfeld? A resident sneakerhead?
Oh my God. Let me check. What color, by the way?
I'm gonna go check right now, actually.
While he does that, they are going from $844 to $2,600, depending on the color.
I could do an unboxing video for you guys. It'll become an audio unboxing
little bit for the listeners at home. I'm holding the box. I'm showing the fellas.
These are the Nike SBs. I'm opening. Here, listen to the rustling of the paper a little bit.
That's the paper that is inside the box. Okay, I got the green ones.
So the green ones are sort of the second most valuable. They're right in the middle.
And those range anywhere from, yeah, from about $1,000 to $3,000, depending on the size.
I'm a 10.
10? Then you are sitting on a pair of $1,300 shoes.
Damn. What's for $3,000? What's a rare size?
Your size 14, the biggest size.
Yeah. Yeah. 10's right down the middle.
Well, when I hold it in my hands, it's more attractive than when I just looked at a picture.
Now that you have them, could you ever see yourself wearing them?
Well, I've got a bit of an issue is that I've always been a kind of like one pair of shoes guy.
And it's funny because I'm not like, you know, some like just super down to earth person who
would be like, man, I don't care what I wear. Obviously, that's not me. I put thought into
trying to come up with provocative outfits and trying to stay on trend.
But there's something about shoes for me that's always kind of where the practicality overrode
my sense of fashion and keeping things fresh. I like kind of looking in my closet and,
you know, looking at my different shirts. And, you know, if I have some time in the morning being
like, oh, that'd be cool. I felt good the other day that I put on a pair of khakis and I had this
like a brown Ralph Lauren pocket t-shirt that I bought at Macy's like five years ago and I put
it together. And some people are like, that's a nice color combination. You know, I like to put
together a little outfit here and there. But with shoes, it's always the last thing on my mind. I
like to just put on whatever is right outside the door. And I do have different shoes. Of course,
I have exercise shoes. So anyway, I appreciate shoes and yet I've never felt like I needed a lot
of them, even though, of course, a shoe can tie a whole outfit together. So I don't know if I'm
just lazy or too practical or something. But so basically, it's a long way of answering your
question when you say, could I picture myself wearing them? I'm just like, I have shoes that
I actually bought that I never wear because I basically wear the same pair of shoes every
single day. And occasionally I'll somehow like they'll get out of rotation and I'll just start
wearing another pair every single day. I even remember like being a kid once. There was like
a schoolyard bully who was making fun of another kid. The schoolyard bully was saying to the kid,
you loser, you wore those same shoes yesterday. Somehow I distinctly remember that I wasn't
being compassionate towards the victim. I just have this distinct memory of a kid making fun
of another kid. Maybe even for some reason, I disliked the kid getting made fun of or I thought
that maybe they were the real bully. I don't know. All I knew is that I listened to a kid say, man,
you wore those shoes yesterday. And I just remember like I wasn't even trying to stick
up for anybody. I was just like, what the are you talking about? Who would choose different
shoes every day? Just from a young age, I believe that shoes were in a fundamentally different
category than shirts or pants. I could understand a schoolyard bully coming up to a kid and saying,
you dirty schmuck, you wore that shirt yesterday. You know, at least that would track for me as a
cruel thing for a kid to make fun of. I just remember at this point, it wasn't even for me.
I wasn't even trying to be like, hey, leave him alone. Not everybody has lots of pairs of shoes.
I remember distinctly, I couldn't, my brain couldn't even go there yet because I was just
like, what the are you talking about? I always understood that you had one pair of shoes until
you until there was a hole in them. Then you'd get a new pair of shoes. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. I don't like it when I'm wearing something that catches people's eyes. I don't like that.
Like just going in like the grocery store. And if I'm wearing those green chunky donkeys,
I'm going to feel people like the shoes attracting people's eyes and attention.
And then they're going to look at me and I just don't want to be analyzed by randos
because I'm wearing like funky green shoes. And those are definitely not an everyday shoe.
No. You'd be getting analyzed every which way if you were these to the grocery store,
because you'd be getting people just being like, look at that eye popping color.
You know, you might just get like an old lady or something saying,
look at you with your green shoes. Those are marvelous.
Green's my favorite color. And you just be head down. It's like, not today, man.
I'm busy. And then you probably have some other like deadheads being like, hey, come here. I once
bagged some groceries for Jerry Garcia on the day he died. And you're just like, man, you told me
that last week. Enough, man. I'm just trying to grab a bag of chips and get back to the studio.
And then you'd have another category of people coming up to you uncomfortably being like,
wow, those shoes are worth one to three thousand dollars. Like that's weird, too.
Somebody coming up to you just being like, you have a very expensive item on your person right
now. And I'm aware of it. Just want you to know. And the guys that are just silently watching you
closely, not saying a word. The creepiest of all. You feel their eyes on you. You know,
it's just it seems stressful. And then before you know it, it's the whole grocery store because you
have this whole other category of people who they weren't thinking twice about your green shoes,
but they noticed that weird energy that aura surrounding you. And then they're just they
become looky loose. What's going on with this guy with this guy? This green
pandemonium, pandemonium, just pandemonium at the Mill Valley.
But again, now the stress of knowing that I have this expensive item in my home, can I really wear
it? And then also I do also feel, you know, I've said before, I am a fan of Nike and the fact that
they sent me these out of the blue. Obviously, they're not time crisis listeners. Otherwise,
they probably might have sent me the chunky donkeys instead of these. But either way,
they might know that I'm a fan of the Grateful Dead. Now, even though I've, you know, been
somewhat critical this shoe on the program, as we all have, by the way, I was just going along
with what Jake said. I love him. It's like when you watch that bully on the playground,
you didn't stand up for Nike when I was when I was back. You didn't have the spine to stand up
for that. It's the same thing. I was just so shocked by the premise of your argument. I was
went down an intellectual rabbit hole and I couldn't do the right thing. We can share the
women. We can share the wine. We can share what we got to use because we got to share all the
bad. Keep on rolling. Just to go. Keep on rolling. Much to. So, Nick, you have a pair of the Crocs,
right? Yeah. The Grateful Dead Crocs. So that's Chinatown Market, which is frankly, I think,
you know, Seinfeld might know a bit more about the company, but they're sort of like a
local L.A. I mean, do you call it streetwear? Online online ceramics. Yeah, it's an it's an
L.A. company. Yeah, they're kind of an emerging streetwear brand. They do a lot of collaborations.
And so they released I guess they did their own collaboration with Grateful Dead and sort of I
think their look is a little more like less sort of dark, cool kind of online ceramics. It's like
pretty bright and vibrant and fun. Their logo is like a happy face. And so they did their their
Crocs that they did are like tie dyed Crocs, like tie dyed printed Crocs with the what did you guys
told me what they were called? What are those little like bits that you put on the Crocs?
Giblets? No, they're not called giblets. Well, the official term is giblets.
They got a marching bear giblets. They got some rock climbing, the colorful holes that you hold.
Yeah. And also just people understand if you're not a Crocs wearer giblets are basically flare
for your Crocs because you can picture a pair of Crocs. It has a bunch of holes in it. Right.
So if you want to customize it, you can buy giblets either official or I'm sure unofficial
online. It could be flare that represents your personality. It could be I mean,
Vampire Weekend should probably start making some. I bet we have a lot of fans who wear Crocs.
I've looked through like a big pile of them before where it's like anything you like. So,
you know, if if you know, if I was trying to decorate Jake's Crocs, maybe I'd find a paint
brush or artist palette, maybe a dog because you're a dog owner. Very cool. Maybe a guitar.
This sounds so cool. Actually, if you ever need a cheap gift to give somebody,
but you can't afford to get them a pair of Crocs, just get them like three giblets that reflect
the things that they're into. And if they say, what am I supposed to do with them?
So put them on your Crocs. And if they say, well, I don't have any Crocs, be like, oh,
darn it. I thought you did. I'm on the Crocs giblets website. There are some pretty Jake
centric giblets here. There's a mountain range. I don't even know what Crocs look like. Oh,
come on. That's that's like a Birkenstock. You must know. I mean, they actually feel like a
painter's shoe. It's like a clog. Picture like a clog with like a rounded foot, except it's made
out of a kind of rubbery plastic and there's a series of holes in it. Oh, just look up Crocs
real quick. If you see these right now and say, I've never seen that in my life. This is like
Mariah Carey. All I want for Christmas level of checked out in this. I'll be very impressed.
Oh, no. Yeah. I've seen those. I think of those as like, I'm trying to think like where I've
seen them, like do like people like in ERs wear them or like, no, like nurses.
They might. Yeah. They're really comfortable. I think you're right, Jake. I think it is a
medical community type of shoe and and chefs and I would say painters. It's people that are on their
feet all day. Right. You know what I was thinking of getting, you know, like kitchens and restaurants,
there's they have like those that like thick rubber mat that's like an inch thick. Oh, yeah.
I'm getting some of those because I'm usually standing in the same spot for like hours on end.
So maybe I'll get one of those like inch thick, like kitchen mats and some Crocs.
That's going to be heaven for your knees. Yeah, I find that like after standing for like three or
four hours in concrete wearing like beat up running shoes like and I'm here I am in my mid 40s almost,
you know, the backs are hurt. All of that. Yeah. So just switching gears. What so what do you think
that the backstory is with? So so I think taking a half hour, I think that would happen is that
there's this company Chinatown Market who made the collab, the Grateful Dead collab, Crocs and
gibbets. But they also did the sweatshirt and shorts that he was wearing. So somehow they
reached out to him. So they must have reached out to him. I have to think, though, that having
LeBron James during a finals game, well, yeah, with it all on is got to be one of the biggest
possible things to happen. I can't imagine they expected that they don't have that kind of weight,
you know, so I think that he must have a pair of stuff the way that Ezra gets a pair.
But instead of looking at the green fuzzy chunky donkey going, I don't know if I'll wear this.
He literally must have seen it and go, I'm just going to wear it all. I wonder if LeBron has
talked Grateful Dead with Bill Walton. Well, that's the big question is all these people are
tagging me. And clearly he's making huge waves wearing this outfit. Is there any information
that LeBron wore this outfit for a specific reason? Was he playing somewhere that had like
some Grateful Dead history? Oh, no. All the games are happening in the bubble, right?
Florida.
I mean, the dead played there, but it's not particularly like dead country. I mean,
when did this happen? Yeah, he missed the days between by, you know, a few weeks. So that's
not what it was. So maybe he did just get it in the mail and he just wanted to throw it on. He
thought it looked cool. So yeah, that's a huge look for the, for Chinatown market. It's also
interesting the way that it works now where it's like, so Chinatown market teams up with the
Grateful Dead. Clearly Grateful Dead organization is very into like launching products lately.
It's really like a lot at once. But anyway, it's interesting that I wonder what the backstory is
that Chinatown market, like maybe they're dead heads or they're fans or whatever. They're like
hit up the dead or the dead hits them up. Like, let's do something together.
You guys make like cool, but then Chinatown market says, yeah, we should do a crock.
So now you're bringing this like third party into it because the shoe is Chinatown market,
ex Grateful Dead, ex Crocs.
Sounds complicated.
They had to broker the deal. Yeah. Like Grateful Dead and Crocs negotiations had broken down many
times over the past five years. And Chinatown market invites them to Camp David to like hash
things out. Like you would think that a Grateful Dead crock would have been way before there's a
Grateful Dead skateboarding Nike dunk. There might've been a Grateful Dead crock and yet
took Chinatown market to put this together. And maybe ultimately Chinatown market is not,
it's just trying to do their own cool line. Cause Nick, you talked about the fact that
some of the gibbets on the Grateful Dead crock are climbing wall holds.
Yes. Climbing wall holds, which I've never seen.
Yeah. Well, that's funny because it's like, it is kind of like a weird crunchy symbol.
Like you can imagine there being like a person who's, oh, I'm a dead head. And it's like,
well, what do you do on the weekends? Like, honestly, man, throwing my earbuds,
I throw on a spring 90 show and I just hit my local climbing wall. And you might be like,
yeah, all right. That all kind of makes sense to me. But there's no direct connection between
climbing walls and the Grateful Dead. No, I appreciate the randomness of it.
Just while we're on the topic, I would do also want to shout out Keen's because I do really
like the brand Keen. I also appreciate that this shoe they said is not Grateful Dead. It's Jerry
Garcia. There's nice attention to detail on the box. The paper inside the box has Jerry's hand
print with the missing finger on it. And this is what the actual shoe looks like. You know,
so Keen's, that's a real outdoorsy brand. They make these kind of also moccasin hiking shoe type
things. I actually, I wear a pair of Keen's every day. I got sent a pair from the Newport Folk
Festival because somebody from the Newport Folk Festival heard me talking on the podcast,
Throwing Fits. Shout out Throwing Fits. That's a fashion podcast. And I was talking a lot about
how I wanted to get a pair of Keen's and this person at the Newport Folk Festival heard it
and was like, you know, we have a custom Newport Folk Festival pair of Keen's. And I was like,
sick. And I wear them every day because you slide them right on. You can wear socks. You don't have
to. You could stomp through some water. They dry nice. It's a great shoe. But so this Jerry
Garcia one, it kind of appears to be tie-dyed. And you see here, you've got Jerry's hand with
the missing finger. I'm sorry, Jerry Garcia is missing a finger. Oh, wow. I had no idea.
Forgive me. No, no, no. That's fine, Seinfeld. We know there's only room for one Jerry in your life.
I don't know what happened to his finger. Was he born without one?
On this show, Jake brought in the dead. You brought in the Seinfeld. So we got two Jerry's.
Nick, you got to find a Jerry to rep. Salt. I do rep a Jerry Salt. Oh, you got Jerry Salt.
And maybe I need a Jerry too. Jerry Heller, former manager of Eazy-E. Jerry Garcia actually
had a very traumatic childhood, Seinfeld. Within a span of, I think, a few years as a kid,
he watched his father drown in the Russian River in Northern California, where the Garcia family
had a kind of a little country house that the whole family would go out to. So he was fishing
with his dad and his father literally drowned in the river. What happened? I don't know if it's
anything other than some getting caught in the water. You don't think of that as a very treacherous
river. It's very placid. Maybe he hit his head. Maybe it was a stone. I don't know. But then
within the same few years, he and his brother, also probably out in the country because they
normally lived in the city in San Francisco at that phase of his life, he and his brother,
who's a little bit older, were horsing around. And the way his brother told the story is that
they were chopping wood and Jerry would put his finger on the stump as a joke and then somehow
through the horsing around, his brother actually cut off the middle finger of his right hand,
right? Of his right hand, which when you think about playing guitar is a way better place to
lose your middle finger than your left hand. If you're right handed. Yeah. If you're right
handed, because, you know, picture somebody playing guitar. If you're not a guitarist,
you know, your right hand just holds the pick. Most people only use their thumb and their
forefinger for the pick anyway. So you really only need two fingers. You can lose three fingers on
your right hand and still be decent at guitar. And then as long as you have access to your whole
left hand, you could be shredding up and down the neck. It would be really crazy if he played the
way he did and he was missing the middle finger on his left hand. You know, it's crazy, man. If
he had lost that finger on his left hand, the Grateful Dead might not exist. It would have
been harder for him to find his voice on the guitar, missing a finger. Goes to show, man,
history and life are super random. And then there would be no Crocs. No Crocs. I mean,
there'd be no time crisis. Let's be honest. It's true. What would this show be about if
the dead never existed? I never started Richard Pictures. Right. Father of the Bride is a
completely different album. You've said so yourself, dude. Richard Pictures was a huge
influence on Father. Absolutely. We would just be a couple boring ass dudes talking about plain Crocs.
Yeah, but think about that. You're just a kid horsing around with your brother who's holding
an axe. What if his hand had been out a little bit further and his whole right hand had been
chopped off? Yep. I don't see him becoming the greatest guitar player of all time that way.
Yeah. Or he's just horsing around the other hand. So many things could have happened.
You know, I went to elementary school with a kid named Lawrence who lost his finger
by sticking it into a bicycle spoke that was moving. A bike had gone by and he stuck his
finger in when he was six or something. No, no, no. Oh my God. Brutal. I'll never forget it.
You knew him before and after. No, I only knew him after. Oh, after. He was on my school bus and I
was like, what happened? And he said, I stuck my finger into a moving bicycle wheel. Oh my God.
It was his baby finger. It was pinky. Oh, is that a Canadian thing? Calling it a baby finger?
I, you know, I don't know anymore. It's a baby toe, right? Yeah, it's a baby toe. But you call
pinky a baby finger? I never heard that. Or maybe I'm conflating it with Trump or something. I don't
know. Maybe it's a Canadian thing. But the last thing I'll say about this pair of Jerry Garcia
Keens is that I said they appear to be tie-dye, but they're not tie-dye. And this threw me for
a loop. And this also, I thought was a kind of a nice detail is that this shoe, I can't tell exactly
what the name is. Maybe it's called the Jerry Garcia Excelsior, but it's actually based on one
of his paintings. So it's not just random tie-dye, it's based on a painting he did. And you know
what this painting is called? In the city? Good guess, Jake, because I have no idea what it is.
It's called New York at Night. Yeah, it looks like a cityscape. Yeah. So it's interesting that
this Jerry Garcia shoe has a weird connection to New York, a city the dead played many times,
but not a city you necessarily associate with him as a person. So this seemingly tie-dye Jerry
sandal has that New York nighttime energy.
I wonder if anything will come of LeBron wearing this other than an uptick in sales for Chinatown
Market. I wonder if anybody's like, "Who are those bears?" I wonder if it gets more people
listening to the dead. Probably slight uptick for, you know, a day or two. And we've talked on the
show before about the fact that more than any other sport, there seems to be a basketball
Grateful Dead connection. Celtics player Jason Tatum has been on that Grateful Dead wave for a
little while. Is he a fan? He's a fan of the merchandising. I don't know about his musical
taste, but he wore the shoes that you have and he wore some jeans six months ago that have the
bears on them too. $1,500 Amiri jeans. Like I've said before, I think it's like silly that there
are people on like comment sections being like, "This shoe is not in the spirit of the Grateful
Dead," when the truth is the Grateful Dead's been making original merchandise forever.
They've never been like crazy purists. I wonder if there's ever been like a successful musician
who was like, "I'm not doing t-shirts, man. I do one thing. Let's make music. You can listen to it
on the record. You can come see me in concert, but I'm not the f***ing Gap, okay? I'm not going to
waste my valuable time creating t-shirts for you to adorn your body with because as soon as you do
that, you're taking the image and you're taking away the beating heart of it, which is the music."
Who would do that? We would never hear of them because you need t-shirts to make it in this town.
I could be wrong here, but I feel like merch was not really a thing in like the 60s and maybe early
70s. Definitely by the late 70s, it was like Kiss and everything. But like, if you felt like the
Doors in 1970, were they selling like Doors t-shirts? I don't know.
That's a great question. By the 70s, you see pictures of kids in parking lots and they're
wearing like the Who baseball t-shirt. It existed, but were they selling it at the concerts in the
same quantities that they were by the 80s and 90s? They definitely made junky merchandise in the 60s.
Go back as far as the early 60s, even the 50s. I think Elvis fans were buying like little plastic
weird things and there's Beatles junk. Yeah, there's definitely like lunch boxes and stuff,
but I don't think the t-shirt had the primacy though of being like the go-to merch item for
music in that era. But couldn't you see Jim Morrison doing that riff that you were doing
on stage? I don't want you to adorn a t-shirt with my image on it. Recently, the record company man
came to me and they said, "Jim, we want to do a t-shirt." And I said, "Excuse me?"
"What is a t-shirt?" Chinatown Market came to me and said, "We want to do a line with you
and we want to make a Jim Morrison croc." And I said, "Why?"
I said, "I'll pass on the crocs and the t-shirt, but I will take you up on the leather pants."
[Laughter]
T-shirt.
I know. It's the reason Jim Morrison pronounces t-shirt very formally and in a very stilted way.
[Laughter]
T-shirts.
It's a new technology, yeah.
I think we're going a tiny bit Keanu. We're turning him into a little bit of like,
"What is this t-shirt?"
That would have been an interesting casting instead of Mal.
Keanu? Yeah, absolutely. Keanu is Jim Morrison. There's always been something
funny to me about solo artists with their merch, which is funny to say now. It's funny to say now
that there's definitely like the solo artist is more like the archetypal artist compared to bands,
which used to be like, "What bands do you like?" Now it's like, "What music do you like?"
But I can imagine there being something awkward about, yeah, if you're like Neil Young and
they're just like, "Here's the designs, Neil, for the tour." And it's just like a picture of
your big-ass face. And it's just like, "Neil Young, 1987 North American tour." I can imagine
just looking at that and just being like, "This is f***ing weird." I think part of the reason that
solo artist merch is so funny to me is that obviously with a band, the fact that the band
has a name and band names tend to be kind of bizarre, it feels more normal. It's just like
a brand. I guess it's the same way that probably back in the day, we take it for granted, but there
used to be so many jokes about designer jeans because people found it so funny. Whenever that
started in the '70s, like Gloria Vanderbilt or something like that, the idea that you would just
walk around with somebody else's name on your ass was so funny to people. I even feel like there's
a... Is that a Run-DMC? Some early rap song. I remember having a line about, "I don't want
nobody's name on my behind." Yeah, just imagine you're somebody who'd never seen that before,
even somebody who's kind of interested in fashion. And suddenly you have commercials
where people are being like, "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." And then just this
big name, Calvin Klein, on the back. We're so numb to it now. When you hear the name Calvin
Klein, you don't even consider the fact that that's a dude from the Bronx. That's the Run-DMC
lyric, "Calvin Klein's no friend of mine. Don't want nobody's name on my behind." Oh, it is Calvin
Klein. So that's Run-DMC. Although they were happy to rep Adolf Dassler, aka Adidas. But of course,
when you wear Adidas, you're not thinking about the fact that there's an old German guy named
Adolf Dassler. Do you remember in Back to the Future? No, is there a joke about that? Yeah,
well, Marty goes back to 1955 and then he gets hit by a car and is knocked unconscious. And then
his mom, who's 17, brings him into the house. She's like, "Calvin, are you okay?" He's like,
"Why are you calling me Calvin?" She's, "Calvin Klein. It says all over your underwear. That's
your name, right?" Oh, yeah, you're right. That's a really good joke. And also, that's some real
s***. That is probably what would happen if you went back in time wearing Calvin Klein underwear
and got hit by a car and your mom found you. Your 17-year-old mom found you. There is one band that
we have found that never made merch, and that's Fugazi. Never made merch? Wait, they didn't even
make T-shirts? Really? Never made merch. So much so, yes, that I've definitely seen a Fugazi T-shirt.
Yes, all homemade. You know, there was a movie that Matthew McConaughey made called Mud. And
the character in Mud, they wanted to have a Fugazi shirt. And so it had to be homemade,
because there were none. And when they called Fugazi to get permission, they never got a call
back, and they couldn't get a shirt because they never made shirts. So there is documented,
Fugazi has never made their own merch, period. That's pretty hardcore.
When we have nothing left to give
There'll be no reason for us to live
When we have nothing left to lose
You will have nothing left to use
We are nothing
You have no control
We are nothing
You have nothing to lose
Well, I'm going to do a hard left turn right now. We talked recently on the program about the TC
Book Club and the TC Book Club Civil War, and how just things really got out of control. But at
least two of us read the same book. And that's me and Jake. We both read Chaos, Charles Manson,
the CIA and the History of the '60s by Tom O'Neill. Jake, I believe you just finished it, right?
I did. I finished it a few days ago.
We both love this book, and we're very lucky to have the author Tom O'Neill on the program.
He's done some really in-depth interviews recently. If you want to hear him talk for a
really long time about the book, he was on Joe Rogan not that long ago. We got so many questions
for him. But above all, as we said last time, just to refresh your memory, one of the things that I
found so fascinating about Tom O'Neill is not just that he wrote a fascinating book. It's not a
conspiracy theorist book in the sense of being like an unhinged person just looking for clues.
It's a very well-written, well-researched, sober analysis of inconsistencies in the official story
of what happened with Charles Manson. He's an incredibly restrained writer, actually.
He refuses to make connections if he can't prove it. It's a very sober analysis of the story,
and you find out so much. But also, an amazing part of it, which I want to ask him about,
is the fact that this is a dude who started writing a magazine article in 1999 that was
supposed to take a couple months and ended up- For Premier Magazine.
For Premier Magazine, which no longer exists. Just trying to write something about the 30th
anniversary of the Manson murders. Well, he got his book out in time for the 50th anniversary
because he spent 20 years doggedly pursuing this story. Anyway, we're very lucky to have him on,
so let's get Tom on the phone. Now, let's go to the Time Crisis
Hotline. Hey, Tom.
Hi, how you doing? Hey, how's it going? Welcome to Time Crisis.
Oh, thanks for having me. How you guys doing? Oh, not bad. I'm Ezra, and that's my co-host,
Jake. Hey. Where are you calling from, Tom? Do you still live out by the beach?
I live in Los Angeles, but I'm in New Jersey right now, South Jersey.
My folks have a house in Cape May, and I'm visiting some of the family here,
sitting out on the deck to try to keep it quiet. Oh, beautiful. Yeah, you grew up in Philly, right?
Yeah, yeah, in Philadelphia. Very cool. Well, so Jake and I are both huge
fans of the book, and I just want to start out by congratulating you on what really is just a
massive achievement. Thank you.
Your incredible research over 20 years. I mean, so many questions. It's hard to know where to begin,
but maybe just for our listeners, we kind of gave them the basic backstory about how you were
contracted to write something about the 30th anniversary of the Madsen-Murgister Premier
Magazine all the way back in 1999. Could you maybe tell us one of the first turning points
in your research where you realized this was more than a magazine article that you'd be able
to hand in after a few months? I guess the first time it kind of occurred
to me that things were a little bit out of whack with the official narrative was my first meeting
with the prosecutor, Vincent Bogliosi, who also wrote the book Helter Skelter about the case,
you know, about the crimes, the investigation and the trial and the aftermath. So he very
graciously invited me to his house, spent about six hours with me discussing the case. And,
you know, I'd read Helter Skelter for the first time. I was never interested in the crimes or the
case. I only did it because, you know, I had an assignment and I had to do some background.
And I knew enough then at the end of that day that he hadn't told me anything, kind of. They
hadn't already told a million times in documentaries and his own book and speaking engagements.
So at the very end of the interview, I did what we call the "Hail Mary" pass, where I said to him,
"Look, I'd love if you could share something with me that's never been reported about this before."
It's 30 years later and I just don't want to do, you know, a rehash here. And we could go off the
record if you'd like. So he thought about it for a minute or two and then he said, "Turn off your
recorder." And he told me an anecdote. Well, he told me about some evidence that had been taken
from the scene that he had represented as something quite different in his book. At the time, it was
salacious and kind of fascinating and also pretty horrible. But I didn't know that it had, you know,
any repercussions except for the fact that it nagged at me that he was kind of acknowledging
that he changed one fact in the case. And that kind of later on in the following weeks, when I
was doing more and more interviews, reading more documents and seeing discrepancies and anomalies
and stuff, I kept going back to that and thinking, "Well, if he changed that, you know, what else did
he change?" And that kind of opened a door into a world of kind of astonishment on my part that
something that everybody thought they knew so well had been actually manufactured significantly.
And the truth was very different than what was told. And it's one thing if you do it in a book,
it's another thing if you do it in a trial where people's lives are at stake. And no matter what
you think about the defendants, Charlie and his followers, they deserve the presumption of
innocence and also a fair trial. And the death penalty was at play. So the fact that he fabricated
evidence, suborn perjury, withheld evidence, and did all these things seemed really important to me.
That kind of sent me off in what became, you know, I had no idea at the time that a three-month
magazine assignment was going to turn into a 20-year odyssey. But that was kind of the first
kind of "Oh, s***" moment where I'm like, "There's something going on here that I got to figure out
what it means."
And that's something that I've been very curious about, because your background at the time,
so most of your adult life until you started this article, you'd been writing a lot about the
entertainment industry. You'd primarily been a magazine writer.
Yeah, I had written mostly about celebrities and film and television production. Before that,
I had done a little bit of kind of general news reporting for the Village Voice and the New York
Daily News. But I kind of had made my mark and made a living in entertainment journalism. And
the magazine I was working for, where I was on the masthead, was called Us Magazine. It still
exists today. But when I worked there, which was until I got shortly before I started this,
it was a monthly magazine. Jan Wenner, the owner of Rolling Stone, owned it.
And we actually did long stories. I was doing 5,000-word pieces. And I started doing
investigative pieces about the entertainment industry, which were a big relief for me,
because I was really getting burnt out on talking to movie stars about their movie
theses and kind of stroking egos and stuff to get information. And then Jan sold the—or he
didn't sell the magazine, but he revamped it and turned it into a weekly, much more tabloidy kind
of thing. So I let my contract go, and a bunch of other people did. And they all went to a film
magazine called Premiere. So this was the assignment I got from them. But in between,
there's a magazine called Details. I did do my first true crime story for them. I reported on
a woman who was murdered in California, who was Miss Hollywood. It was an unsolved murder. It was
a pretty amazing story. - That's Rebecca Schaeffer?
- No, no. I actually done a story. - Oh, that's a different story?
- That was a story about celebrity stalkers. So yeah, I guess actually that was kind of a
true crime story too. But this was about an unknown woman from Michigan who had moved out
to Los Angeles to be the next Madonna, and she just wasn't talented. Got kind of corrupted by
the sleazy underbelly of Hollywood and ended up being stabbed and left in a lot in Fresno.
Wasn't even discovered for two or three days. And the weird coincidence was her body was found
50 years to the day that the Black Dahlia murder occurred in Hollywood. And the parallels between
the two cases were kind of fascinating. And I was really kind of frustrated because I never saw
her murder, and I kept thinking I was onto it. And it began, what I had no idea was going to
become a pattern in my life of going way too deep into a story and letting it take over.
Luckily, that one was only about six months. But after what happened with the next job, I look back
in retrospect and think, "Ah, yeah, that's where it all began when I couldn't solve it." Her name
was Jill Weatherwax. [Music]
[Applause]
One thing that I think is very cool about your writing style is that you deeply are not a
conspiracy theorist. And I've seen in your other interviews, you've referenced the fact that
you've gotten some criticism for it because there's a frustration in this era of so many
true crime docs and podcasts and stuff. A lot of people want to be able to walk away from a book
saying, "And that's what really happened." Because it's become entertainment for people. So it's
really fun the same way that you would watch, you would read a mystery novel. You want to find out
who did it in the end, and that's the satisfaction. But that's not exactly,
you're a little too rigorous for that. Is that fair to say?
Yeah. Well, that's again, it's also why it took 20 years because I did think, I kept thinking
I was just around the corner from finding the truth. And I think like five or six years into
this after I'd already accumulated quite a bit of debt and a number of enemies and stuff. And my
agent just said to me, he goes, "You might never find the smoking gun. You've got a lot of little
smoking pistols." He said, "Just present everything you have that undoes the kind of acceptance story,
and that's enough." And it took me a while to agree to it. And then once I did, another five
years later, probably, then I was able to, well, I had the help of a great collaborator, figure out
how to do it and how to present it without resolution. And a lot of the criticism of the
book is that, but luckily I think a lot of people get it that I could speculate a lot more and be
much more conspiratorial and present something that has a beginning and a middle and an end.
But I think there's just as many people who are happy to be kind of respected enough to not be
spoonfed and let them reach their own conclusions. I'm hoping, and it might be a little grandiose on
my part, but I'm hoping that the stuff that I put out there into the world is followed up with other
people independently or journalists or investigators who take kind of the path I laid and keep going,
and maybe find the answer at some point. Or maybe I kept thinking I was never going to do anything
on this subject after the book came out, but sure enough, I think I'm going to be doing a second book
or something like that. Also about the Manson murders or- A lot of the stuff that didn't end
up in the book, it still kills me because I think a lot of it's real important. That's amazing. So
one of the most fascinating things that, when I'm trying to explain what's interesting about this
book to people, and the first thing I tell them is, first of all, did you know that Charles Manson
and his followers were arrested many times before and after the murders and always seemed to be
let go? Which most people don't know. So that's very strange, right? And the fact that you
diligently uncovered so much of that, at the very least, proves that there was something weird
happening there. But one of the most fascinating things, which the book is named after, is the fact
that CIA had this Operation Chaos, which the public knows some details about, but as you say in the
book, a lot of the files were destroyed. But in the same month, the FBI started their COINTELPRO
program again, and the CIA started Chaos, and they both happened to open their first offices
in San Francisco. You also talk about that it's been widely underreported that Charles Manson and
the family spent a whole year in San Francisco before going down to LA. And you very elegantly
trace his steps and talk about the people he came into contact with, some of whom did have
connections to the CIA, and perhaps to the MKULTRA program. This is just something that I happened to
be thinking, because I was watching this movie, and in some ways I'm just interested in this time
period. So there was the same week that the Manson murders happened, one of the other most infamous
serial killers of all time, the Zodiac Killer, sent his first letter to the San Francisco Chronicle
on August 1st, 1969. At the very least, on this show, we mostly talk about the Grateful Dead and
McDonald's, so we're just about vibes here, to a large extent. I'm definitely not trying to say,
"Prove to me that the Zodiac Killer had something to do with MKULTRA," but I was just curious,
because one thing I love about the book is you just give people an insight into what the vibe
was. This period in American history, this period in California, this period in LA, did that ever
cross your radar that, I mean, obviously August 1969, it's a hell of a month, but Woodstock was
that month too. For some reason, I just suddenly was picturing, you're just somebody living in
California, your local respected newspaper gets sent a cipher from a weird serial killer that
people at home are trying to decode, and they're scared he's going to kill again, and then on
August 8th, a history teacher and his wife crack the code, and you're kind of like, "Okay, maybe
that's going to be the end of that." The next day, you hear about four people ritually murdered in
Los Angeles. Are there any connections to that? I know you don't mention the book, but that must
have felt like a truly psychotic moment in American history, all these things happening at the same
time. Did you have any leads related to that? Are there people who believe there's a connection?
Yeah, yeah. There are people out there who have been spending as much time as I spent on this,
my 20 years, double that on trying to connect the Zodiac to the Manson family. There's a couple of
serious researchers who started writing me probably in the early 2000s when they heard about
what I was doing. Most of them are convinced that Bruce Davis, who was one of Manson's followers,
was a Zodiac killer or was somehow working in tandem with a Zodiac killer. Davis is a really
interesting, strange character. He's actually, I think, the only family member that I interviewed
in prison face-to-face. I didn't ask him if he was a Zodiac killer. I knew going in, I'd learned by
then that it's hard to get them to say anything off script from what they've said in all their
parole hearings. Because if they give you any kind of new information and you publish it, then the
first thing the parole board's going to say, if it's important information, is, "Why did you
withhold that? Because we give you an opportunity." I mean, some of these guys like Tex and he have
had 30 or 40 parole hearings at this point. I looked into it a little bit, and it's one of
those things that I knew that if I looked into it anymore, I'd never finish the book.
So there's some validity to Davis's kind of, some of the stuff he was up to, and none of it's in the
book. At the time, he was suspected in a couple other murders. I didn't get enough kind of
documentation that any of it was valid enough to pursue, but I did keep in touch with a couple of
the researchers, and I shared information with them. I actually, it occurs to me now, I haven't
heard from them since the book came out. I'm curious if they've read the book and if it's
helped or hurt. I think if it helped, I would have heard from them, but, or they could be dead,
because they've been doing it a long time. A lot of these people died.
- Right, that's what I'm talking about.
And also, one question, and Jake, you brought this up when we first talked about the book,
is were you at all thinking or haunted by the figure of Robert Graysmith, who was portrayed
by Jake Gyllenhaal in the Zodiac movie, who also ended up writing a big book and uncovering a lot
of information? He was a cartoonist in San Francisco who ended up also dedicating a lot of
his life to writing about an infamous serial killer. - Yeah, that did haunt me. I didn't know
a whole lot about Zodiac until I started getting these, you know, correspondences. So I read the
book and then I saw David Fincher's movie, which was fantastic. And what was interesting is David
Fincher's parents are very close to Roger Smith. If you remember, Roger Smith was Manson's federal
parole officer in San Francisco. - Wait, they knew him personally?
- Yeah, yeah. In fact, Roger Smith told me that in one of my first meetings with him. I can't
remember how it came up, but he talked about knowing them back then. And he wanted to know
if I knew David Fincher, 'cause I lived in LA. And I said, "No, I never met him or anything."
I almost called not him, but his parents, because I think they were even friends with
Smith around the time he was supervising Manson. And I didn't, you know, it just seemed out of line
at the time. Actually, it's one of those things now I should now go back and look and see exactly
what Roger said to me. And maybe, I don't know if Fincher's parents are still alive. I have no
idea if David Fincher's even aware of that or aware of my book. But yeah, I'm sure his parents
probably told him, 'cause he's the kind of guy who's probably curious about something like that
in their history. So I'd love to hear what he thought of his parents' relationship.
- That must've been trippy for you, 'cause Zodiac, when did that come out? Like 2007?
- Yeah. - Something like that?
So I'm just picturing, here you are eight years deep on this book,
like smack in the middle of this journey. And as you talk about in the book, a lot of times
you're questioning yourself, if you were making the right decision by doggedly pursuing it.
And eight years deep, a movie comes out directed by a guy whose parents were friends with Charles
Manson's parole officer. That's about a guy whose life gets crazy as he writes a book about the
Zodiac killer. - Exactly.
- That must've been wild to see that at that moment in your life.
- Yeah, I remember being kind of awed by the movie, 'cause the movie was so well done,
but also being horrified by it. I kept saying, "Everything doesn't have to be about me."
Stop being so self-centered and just enjoy the movie. But yeah, it was a weird kind of coincidence.
The same thing happened when I read Michelle McNamara's book. I still haven't seen the
documentary, which I heard is pretty good. But I think I read that before my, I think her book
came out shortly before mine. I'm still not sure how she died, but I think she just got so caught
up in the horror of what happened to all these women and trying to nail down who did what,
who was the killer. So I see myself in all those kinds of people and get scared.
And a couple of times, I can't remember examples right now, but there were other books and movies
similar to that, kind of that genre. - I can only imagine. And also,
I was really struck by one part of the book, because I think one thing that's so cool about
your book is that it's so, like we said, rigorously researched. And then there's a
tiny bit about your own life. Just maybe like 0.5% of the book is about what was happening with you
in your life. But it's the story of what you uncovered, but it's also the story of a person
who pursued something for 20 years. And there's one brief moment where you talk about this Don
DeLillo, 1988 novel, Libra, and you talk about this character, Nicholas Branch, a retired CIA
analyst, and how the agency paid for him to build a home office, which he described as the book-filled
room, the room of documents, the room of theories and dreams. And he says that he realizes that as
he's researching Lee Harvey Oswald, his ultimate subject isn't crime or politics, it's men in small
rooms. And you say you really identified with this character, the guy in the small room, just
keesing through endless documents, looking for the truth. And I mean, it is funny. I'm sure this is,
you've probably talked about this before, that as somebody who missed their deadline by 20 years,
you still weirdly, you know, talking about something that happened 50 years ago,
you still weirdly managed to get your book out in a moment when a story about somebody
pursuing the truth for 20 years has like this deeper resonance, you know, like,
look how much the world has changed in the 20 years you wrote that book. Like,
I imagine even your methods of research changed dramatically from 1999 till 2019 with access to
the internet and stuff. So I guess I'm also, this is maybe kind of a weird question, but
in the 20 years you spent researching something, thinking about various connections and the way
the world works, questioning if you're on the right path, but realizing how much time it takes
to sometimes uncover connections in the truth. Did you learn anything about the meaning of life?
Wow. Nobody's asked me that before. I got to think about it a second. I mean,
yeah, maybe that's too deep, but yeah.
Well, no, no, it's a good question. I mean, believe me when I get something like that,
that I haven't thought about. I mean, I do write, I think, in the book about a really low moment in
my life when my first book publisher canceled the deal. And then they sued me for the return
of the advance, which was such a tremendous, not only setback, but crush to, you know,
it was just a blow. Cause I thought that the real reason they were canceling the book wasn't
because it was late, but because they thought I'd gone crazy or had lost faith in me. And I was
walking down the street with a friend and I really couldn't have been any lower. And he asked me if I
thought it was all worth it. And at that point it was 2013, I think. So I was like 14 years in
and I said, I wouldn't have traded those 13 previous years for the world because they were
the most exciting 13 years of my life because I was chasing something that I believe was important.
And I had validation, but I kept finding stuff. It just took forever to find. Well, I think the
lesson, yeah, as perseverance pays off, if you trust your gut, but I sacrificed a lot, you know,
I missed so much in my life. Well, but the question about that specifically,
that's also interesting is that, so you were roughly 40 when this whole journey started,
right? Yeah, I was turned 40 the day, the day after my 40th birthday, I got the call
from premier magazine asking me to do this story. I guess it's also interesting too,
that, that you had described the, even though obviously it's tremendous ups and downs,
but there's very few people from any walks of life who described age 40 to 53 as the 13 most
exciting years of their life. And when you were in the previous year, you were doing stuff that
some people would think was very glamorous, like, you know, interviewing celebrities and stuff.
And yet the next 13 years, it seems like you spent a lot of time taking old people to Denny's
and asking them questions, driving to God knows where middle of nowhere to find people. And yet
you found this purpose in middle age that ultimately you wouldn't have traded for anything
that kind of elevated your life in a sense. Yeah. And ironically, I was miserable most of
those 13 years. And I had, you know, so many moments where I questioned my sanity
and my reasons for doing it. But it's also in the book, I carried a list in my pocket of the
important fines I had. And, you know, nothing in, again, it sounds kind of presumptuous of me to
say, but nothing I had ever done prior to this book was important. I mean, relatively speaking,
I mean, I wrote really good stories, I think, especially some of the investigative pieces about
the industry. I wrote about sexism at Saturday Night Live, and I won a bunch of awards from a
bunch of women's organizations. That was all important. But there was nothing that, nothing
seemed, I mean, this was about the government and it was about malfeasance by people who were
supposed to trust, you know, law enforcement, the judicial system, you know, the people who
are supposed to protect us. And that was another life lesson. I mean, I naively went into this,
you know, I was raised by pretty left wing democratic parents and pretty open minded
and skeptical, but I was nowhere near skeptical enough when I encountered the cops and the
corruption in the courts and the cops and even the judges in this case to really believe it
could have happened because I did have a naivety that I don't have anymore. I'm much more
suspicious and cynical. So I guess that was a life lesson too.
Just to keep the population down. That would lead you now. And that's why I'm hanging around.
So you'll be good to me, and I'll be good to you. And in this land of conditions, I'm not above
suspicion. I won't attack you, but I won't bash you. Tom, there was a really interesting
short section of the book that I wish I could read more about sometime,
which is when you hired a PI to help you track down former members of the family that were
changed their name and were living in obscure places in the Pacific Northwest. What was that
like when you would show up at their house and knock on the door? What was going on with these
people? That was probably among the most fun, but also kind of scary. It wasn't just former
family members. It was also cops who were kind of living off the grid and people who were private
investigators, people who I knew I couldn't call and get to talk to me or talk honestly to me. I
had to show up. So I mean, a couple of the Manson women who I think really got off easy, that I
think they were much more involved in the murders and they were accessories. Two or three in
particular were kind of scary when I showed up at their house. One of them had some scary sons who
were all tatted up. And I already knew about them because the sons had been in prison and they were
white supremacy guys and those gangs. And then Steve Grogan, who was the only Manson family
member to be convicted of a murder who got paroled, Clem or Scramblehead as they called him.
He married his prison psychiatrist, changed his name to hers and had never been found since he
was released from prison. And I think it was like 79 or 80 until I went to his house and knocked on
his door. And I mean, he bounded down the stairs and I said, "Mr." I can't remember what his fake
name was, his wife's name. He said, "Yeah, that's me." I said, "Well, I'm here to talk to you about
your previous wife as Steven Grogan." And he just went white and he goes, "I don't know what you're
talking about." And I said, "Come on, Clem. I know who you are." He denied that he was Steve Grogan.
And he was a very important family member. If you saw the Tarantino movie, he was the one that Brad
Pitt kicked the out of at Spahn Ranch after he had fled his car or something. He was based on Clem.
I started pulling out my documents because I got court records and birth dates. And he kind of told
me to leave the property or he was going to call the police. And I said, "But the police have,
I don't think they're going to be too aggressive with me, but I don't want you to do that. So I'll
leave, but I'm coming back tomorrow to see if you change your mind. So I'll come back around this
time." And I said, "Here's my number. Here's a hotel I'm staying in. If you can call me." And
I mean, two hours later, I got a cease and desist letter from his attorney. And I went back the next
day and he wouldn't talk to me. So yeah, there were a lot of people like him that I think are
what I call the secret keepers, Linda Kasabian, other family members who I think know the truth
of this, but they'll never tell it because it's going to implicate them in crimes that have no
statute of limitations, which is one crime, murder. - Right. That's incredible.
(soft music)
So Tom, you alluded to the fact that you're probably going to do another book. Do you have
a sense of what else comes next? In the book you talked about, you'd had offers maybe to
do some type of TV series, which you'd passed up. - Yeah. The filmmaker, Earl Morris, wanted to do
a documentary on the book and a little bit about it's in the book, but I don't think I named him.
He shot a, what do they call it? A teaser. He spent like two or three days filming me at my
house with a big crew and sold it to Netflix. And then long story short, he and I had a falling out
kind of creative differences and he ended up doing Wormwood. I don't know if you guys saw that.
It was on Netflix. - Right. Which is similar subject matter or related. - Yeah. It evolved
out of the project he and I were doing. He actually, I was talking a lot about the Frank Olson
death and Eric Olson, the son. And he asked me to put them in touch with Eric to see if he could get
Eric to talk a little about it in the film he was doing on me. And then all of a sudden he wanted
to do both our stories together. And I just, my book wasn't published then. I was still getting
sued. I didn't know if I was going to be able to resell it. And I said, "Earl, I'm not going to,
as much as I love Eric and it's a great story, I don't want to share my information with another
story because I need to be the dedicated subject. So do Eric and I'm going to walk away." And that's
what I did. But there is a deal that Amazon optioned the book and there's a screenwriter who
has just finished the script. And I heard last week, they're sending it out to directors
and it's going to be for better or worse, I'm the protagonist in this thing. So it's going to be
about me chasing the story. But I'm just a little worried because once Hollywood gets their hands
on something like this, then they start to change things. And I'm dreading reading the script when
I finally get it, but I hope it gets made because I'm still- - Yeah, we got to get Fincher on it.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, who knows? But it'll help me because I'm still really in debt from
all the lawsuits. - Oh my God, that's amazing, man. What a journey. Well, I guess just the last thing,
and thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. We've referenced a lot and we've
talked about it in previous episodes, but in our conversation with you, we've talked a lot about
MKUltra and you talked about your interest in Frank Olson. And we don't want to give away too
much because we really recommend people read the book and experience this information that way.
But in the course of your research, you became very familiar with this idea or with this project,
MKUltra. And I've just noticed more and more people referencing it. You see more and more
people using the phrase "PSYOP" all the time these days, which it's funny. Actually, I learned this
from your book. You talk about the fact that brainwash, that phrase didn't exist in the
English language until the Korean War. And you say that it actually comes from a Chinese phrase.
- Yeah. Well, they were the first ones that were actually experimenting with it during the Korean
War and previously. And they invented, I don't know if they invented the word for it or I don't
know enough about Chinese language, but yeah, it came from them. - So basically, there's one part
of the book that we don't have to go too into detail about, but it's the story of Jimmy Shaver.
- Yeah. - Can you just summarize what MKUltra was and maybe tell like the real quick version
of the Jimmy Shaver story? - Yeah. Well, the ultimate objective of MKUltra was to create
programmed assassins, people who could be either using drugs or hypnotism, sensory deprivation,
whatever. The CIA was trying to figure out how they could take control of people's minds and
get them to do acts that were against their moral code, including all kinds of things,
but most importantly, to kill somebody without any recollection of being programmed to do it.
And oftentimes they hoped that they could create it so that they wouldn't remember having done it
after they'd done it. And there was a famous book from the late 50s called "The Manchurian
Candidate," which later became a movie in the early 60s and then was remade, I think like 10
years ago, which is based on, I mean, that guy that I can't, what's the name of the guy, I forget
the name of the author who wrote the first book, but I'm convinced and a lot of people are convinced
he was actually part of the program and it was kind of, he was putting out a little information
there. I don't think with the agency's knowledge. So Jimmy Shaver was convicted of killing a three
year old girl, two and a half year old girl named Sherry Horton. And he was found in a gravel pit
in Texas in 1953, wandering around dazed with, his shirt was off and there were scratches on him.
This little girl had been missing for about three or four hours. There had been a search party.
He was taken into custody and they found the little girl's body and he admitted that he
probably killed her, but he had no recollection of doing it. He didn't know how he got to where he
was. It was a sensational story in the state of Texas. It didn't really have national coverage,
but what I found out was that Jimmy Shaver was, well, he was an airman at Lackland Air Force Base
in 1953 and 54 when this happened. And Jolly West, who was a central figure in my book,
was the psychiatrist who examined him for the trial and extracted a confession from him and
was able to make him remember killing this little girl. I present a case in my book
that this was all part of the experiments Jolly West was conducting at Lackland Air Force Base
at the time to try to get people to go and commit acts against their moral codes. I don't think he
had ever wanted to program Shaver to commit this murder. I think it was something that went wrong,
but I had found letters and it's a big section of, I think, chapter 11 of the book showing that this
Jolly West had been a part of the MKUltra program starting in 1952, 53, was at Lackland Air Force
Base experimenting on airmen to achieve just this kind of thing, the erasure of memory,
the implantation of false memories. And I think that Jimmy Shaver was an MKUltra
experiment gone very wrong. And I think if your listeners read the book, they'll get a clear
picture of what I'm trying to say here because it's hard. But yesterday I did a podcast with
the niece of a little girl who was killed. So Sherry Jo, yeah, so Sherry Jo was turning three
when she was murdered in 1954. And her older brother was with her when she was abducted.
And he was about seven. He died a few years ago, but his daughter and her husband have a podcast.
And they reached out to me and said, we want you to come on our podcast and talk about
the death of my aunt, Sherry. It's actually how they pronounce it. I didn't know that.
And I was a little worried about it because it's such a sensitive subject and it impacted their
lives. But they're convinced that the evidence I present shows that everything they thought
about the death of this little girl for her family for 60, 70 years was wrong and was part of a
cover-up by the government. And they want to pursue it now. And that's gratifying to me in the end.
And I was actually happy to honor the girl's memory by talking to her family. So it went
pretty well. I think it's going to go up in a few days, but that's an important story.
I think in my book, I don't get asked about it a lot. It's a horrible story. I mean, in the end,
it's difficult to read when you see what happened to her, but it's fascinating. And I think really
kind of important in the timeline of the evolution of MKUltra and what they were doing.
Right. Well, thanks so much, Thomas. It's been great talking to you.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I encourage everybody to read Chaos, book of the year.
Thank you. Thank you.
Have a good one, man.
All right, guys. I enjoyed it. All right. Bye-bye.
Bye.
Looking through a telescope At a letter in an envelope I can't make out what she wrote I guess I will never know Like a precious stone, I'm swimming in a pond Eyes on the
ground, I'm drowning in a pond
Time crisis
Well, Tom O'Neill, what a legend. I like that he's just such a nice guy, too.
I'm also glad to hear that there's a script being worked on where he's the protagonist.
Yeah.
I think for both of us, that was a really appealing side of it. In fact, when you first told me about
it, I think you specifically said, "He's this dude. He's taking these random old cops to Denny's to
try to get information about them." And there's a part of that that's just as appealing as what
he uncovers about the deception and the connections between local law enforcement and the CIA and
Charles Manson. That stuff's cool, very fascinating. But also just like he's the perfect person to take
you on this journey.
Oh, absolutely. And of course, I feel like we got fresh research done on this interview.
David Fincher's parents were friends with Charles Manson's parole officer. That is a big get.
Yeah, I'm going to do some original research because that's pretty wild because I didn't
want to bore him with too much Zodiac stuff. But this morning when I knew we were having him on
the show, I actually sat down with a pad and paper. I wrote a little timeline out just so I'd
know what I was talking about. That's where I was like, "August 1st, 1969, Zodiac Killer sent..."
Because basically, in that time period, the Zodiac Killer sends his letter to the San Francisco
Chronicle. They publish his cipher. A week later, the Manson murders happen. A week after that,
the Zodiac Killer strikes again in the city of San Francisco. Then he kills again in September
and October. They finally get Charles Manson in December 1969. Just imagine that whole time
period after the Tate murders. There are these murders going on up north by the Zodiac Killer.
All this stuff happening together is crazy. And we talked about when Death Spot was on the show,
and I was actually texting Alec because he talked about this, that there's always been a theory that
Ted Kaczynski could have been the Zodiac Killer. I don't know if that's true, but one thing is true
is that a lot of people think that Ted Kaczynski was at least partially a product of MKUltra.
Oh, sure.
I don't know if there's hard documentation that he was part of MKUltra. He definitely was part
of psychological experiments when he was an undergrad at Harvard that some people thought
went too far. That's for sure. Whether there was a CIA link to those projects or those experiments,
who's to say? But it is weird as hell just to imagine that in the summer of '69, which was a
very positive summer for Bryan Adams, but not for many people. In the summer of '69, you had the
Manson murders, the Zodiac Killer, and Ted Kaczynski being a professor at Berkeley all there.
CIA has a secret office in San Francisco, so does the FBI. Got the Black Panthers,
Ronald Reagan, California summer of '69. That is some crazy [beep]
Hetty Brew. I think we should do a rewrite of summer of '69.
I worked for MKUltra. I dosed Charles Manson.
Just a song that has the same vibe as the film Zodiac or Tom's book.
Wait, what if we take 20 years to write the song?
It's like, we both had music projects. JK Moundries, I had Vampire Weekend. We started
the song as a lark. We figured we could probably get it done in a couple of weeks,
maybe play it on the show. Next thing you know, we actually stopped doing the show.
Research for the song became a passion of ours, and it took us 20 years. We're both deeply in
debt, but now it's 2040, and we'd like to present to you our... The song is four hours long,
and it's called Summer of '69.
Crickets.
Also, just the last thing I'll say, there's a line somewhere in Dark Star,
that Jerry Garcia book I keep referencing, where somebody's talking about how many great musicians
just happened to be growing up in the Bay Area, Palo Alto area, SF area in that time.
Obviously, a lot of people moved to SF once it became known as the hippie town.
Sure.
But even before then, a lot of people just happened to be there. There's a quote from
somebody who's like, "Oh, and by the way, Robert Hunter, he did acid experiments. He was part of
MKUltra." So there is something crazy to imagine that weirdly there are connections between the
CIA, the Grateful Dead, Charles Manson, Ted Kaczynski, the JFK assassination, all this sh*t.
But there's a line somewhere in Dark Star where somebody says something about the fact that all
these interesting people came together who created cultural products that changed the world, or at
least changed America. And somebody says, "I don't know, man. There must have just been
something in the air."
Something in the water.
Something in the water. And somebody even says, "Well, you know, Stanford Research Institute was
around there." And that's this famous research institute that worked on everything from, I think,
like atomic bombs to marketing. But a lot of secretive sh*t was happening there. And somebody
says, "I don't know, man." They made some joke about maybe Stanford Research Institute was
pumping some chemicals up into the air out there in Palo Alto because there was something happening
there, man, in the '60s and that era. And it really made me think, "I don't know. Maybe there
was." Wouldn't that be crazy if there's some weird byproduct of CIA experiments made everybody in the
peninsula lightly dosed? Like a young Steve Jobs, Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia.
There is something about the Bay Area being the center of culture, tech, and apparently
secret intelligence operations. Talk about a heady brew.
You know what's crazy thing about, just by chance, if Jerry Garcia, Charles Manson, and Steve Jobs
were all sitting in the same Indian restaurant in The Hate in 1968, and they obviously didn't
know who each other were. Or Manson probably knew who Garcia was.
But like-- - No, first of all, I don't know how--
Steve Jobs, he would have been like a teenager or something. Garcia and Manson, there's no way
those dudes did not walk past each other on the street at least once. Hate Esprit is not a big
neighborhood. - No.
- The central area, there's no way that Manson and Garcia probably weren't even at the same party at
some point. That absolutely happened. - They were probably shopping in The
Gap at the same time, right? - I think The Gap opened August '69.
How crazy is that? - Are you serious?
Because I was joking. - In SF.
- Definitely not in The Hate. I was just joking about like--
- I know it's 1969. What months did The Gap open?
- Now, now, now, now, now, now, let's get a number crunch. Brought to you by Seinfeld 2000.
- The Gap opened its first store August 21st, 1969.
- Oh my god. - Whoa.
Ezra, if we had a time machine, I swear to god, you and I, like Bill and Ted style, we would have
to go back to San Francisco on August 1st, 1969. - Well, we want to go earlier. We want to go like
'68. - Yeah, '68.
- We don't want to rip down to LA maybe. - Yes.
- That's actually an interesting question. You're not talking about like going back like
thousands of years, but you know, people always talk about like, would you stop Hitler? Well,
you know, Hitler and the wars he caused that killed millions and millions of people.
Most people would say, well, that's a lot of lives to save. But then you get into some weird
(beep) like, what if you could go back in time and stop the Manson murders? Like morally, you'd
save the lives of four people, a pregnant woman, you know, of course, but then you really do get
in some weird butterfly effect (beep). You know what, I would do it. Even if that meant that like,
all you guys had never been born, I'd really hate to see you go, but I would go back in time.
Then I'd come back. I'd be so curious to see how different the world might be
if the Manson murders never happened. That'd be crazy. It would definitely suck if I'm like,
yo Jake, I just got back. And it's like, this number doesn't exist. I'm like, what the (beep)
and I'm like looking up the long stretch, like somehow you didn't get born because I stopped the
Manson murders. That's a Twilight Zone episode. - Dude.
- That's a black mirror. - I like this idea of us doing like a Bill
and Ted. Like we could go back to '68 and find Manson in the heat and just follow him
and see if he like met Jolly West. See if like, just like be a fly in the wall and just track.
- Oh yo, that's good. Or we're just like, if we don't change history, we lay real low,
but we have like one iPhone with us and we're just like filming all this (beep)
Oh, and like, maybe like the charger breaks at some point and we have to go find like young
Steve Jobs and we're like, bro, can you figure out? And he's like, what the (beep) is this (beep)
We have like one iPhone with us and we go down and we're like filming it and we kind of film
all of it. And we're just like, got it. And then we come back in time and we show people
all this footage and we're just like pariahs. People were like, you filmed the murders and
you didn't stop it. We're like, well, if we stopped it, all this crazy (beep) like we all
might, you might not even be alive. People are like, you guys are despicable. And we're like,
call Tom and they were like, Tom, we got the footage, man. Yeah. The CIA does Manson.
We figured it out. And everybody just (beep) hates us. It's kind of lose, lose in a sense,
but I like, I don't want to film the murders. I want to just go to a year before the murders
and follow Manson for like a week. Yeah. Like we follow his parole officer and we go to,
we kind of, yeah, solve some of this (beep) Yeah. If we stopped the murders.
And then also catch a dead show while we're that, you know, back there.
We see the dead at the film art.
Easy win, going across the bayou today. There's a whole lot of women,
are out dressed in red on the streets today.
Well, it was a very heady time, San Francisco in the late sixties, but there's another town
in America. That's also full of mystery, a place that's just teeming with conspiracy theories.
And that's Hershey, Pennsylvania. We haven't talked about it in a minute, but similar to Tom
O'Neill and his dogged research, we doggedly pursued this story about whether or not Hershey's
changes the formula for Reese's peanut butter cups between the winter and the summer. We've
gotten a lot of people writing in, we've got some interesting leads. We've had some, you know,
heartbreaking failures as we've tried to crack the case. But finally we have somebody directly
from the Hershey company, their director of social strategy and content and the creator of C-Suite,
Hershey's in-house agency, Ryan Reese. So maybe we can finally get some answers.
Hello. Is that Ryan? Yeah. How are you guys? Oh, not bad. Thanks for calling. Where are we
talking to you from? Is it Hershey PA? Hershey PA, sweetest place on earth. Okay. That rules.
I wondered if you'd be like, you could kind of picture sometimes with these big companies,
they might spin off their agency somewhere else. You're just like, I'm in downtown Chicago right
now. I'm talking to you from the 80th floor of a... Okay. So you're in Hershey PA. That's where
your office is. Are you from Pennsylvania? No, I grew up in Florida. Basically after I got my MBA,
I came to Hershey because of the Hershey company. Like it wasn't like I had any like
friends, relatives, anyone. So when my wife and I moved here, I got married a week before my
internship. And like when I picked my wife up from like the airport, cause you know, I started
like two weeks after the honeymoon, you know, she on the way just started crying and was like,
I don't know anyone here. I hate everything here. And I was like, well, you've actually never been
here. So it makes sense that you don't have any friends here and that you don't know anyone.
But now, you know, we've kind of fallen into the two kids living the dream with no traffic
lifestyle. That is Hershey, Pennsylvania. So what's the town of Hershey like? Are there
any unusual things about it? Or obviously there's a big chocolate factory, huh?
It's one of those things that I don't think my kids will ever realize necessarily that it's not
normal. You know what I'm saying? Cause this is their normal. But like, like when you're driving
in downtown Hershey, which, you know, is like a block and a half, you know, in a one story building,
the streetlights are Hershey kisses. And then, you know, you're driving by and you know, you have a
big chocolate factory and it'll smell like chocolate or smell like Reese's. It smells
more to me like Reese's when they're roasting the peanuts. And it's like, these things are not like
normal, but like, if you only have grown up there, you think it's kind of normal. And then there's
the giant Hershey park, right? Which is like big park. Yeah. It's a big amusement park. So we would
have season passes and you know, if you have a season pass, like after work, Hey kids, do you
want to go to Hershey park? You know, it's like, yeah, let's just go for a couple hours. Right.
So they grew up like going to like Hershey park and like smelling roasted peanuts, driving on
street with Hershey kiss lights. And then to them, that's like nothing, right? This is like,
yeah, yeah. That's totally normal. So I guess one of my first questions is,
so you're talking about the smell when they're roasting the peanuts. Does that vary when they
switch to the winter formula from the summer formula? Oh God. I heard, I, okay. This, yeah,
this is like, I was just waiting for this. I was like, what? I wanted to know the theory behind
this. Cause you guys all seem like bright guys. You know, I read, you know, a couple of like your
CVs. I actually am curious as to the Genesis, the Epic of Gilgamesh part of the story of how this
came about, this theory. So you read our CVs. We know a little bit about you. You said you have an
MBA, but you're the director of social strategy and content at Hershey. So you're, you're kind of
like a spokesperson. You're all about projecting the image of the brand, right? That's your job.
Definitely not. No, that is definitely not my job. What I do is, well, I guess, I don't know.
It depends on how you're defining it, but like, yeah, I'm in charge of the creative,
right? So in terms of a lot of advertising, yeah. So all the posts that you'll see,
like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest for the majority of the brands, like,
C-Suite Studio is our internal agency. And that's kind of the, you know, we started that about two
years ago, you know, because obviously the need for content is higher than it's ever been. And so,
yeah, that's kind of what my team does. I respect all that, but I just want to
understand something on a day to day, in terms of operations, how often are you interacting
with the chemists who are specifically work on Reese's? Not often, but okay.
Throughout my 11 years, I have worked with them on various occasions, tested it, right.
Tasted it right from the line, tasted it, you know, in a jar. I once asked them just on the
side to make me a jar of it just because it's like just the center of the cup, just like that.
And they did it. It was great. What time of year was that?
All right. You gave us some background. So I'll give you some background on Jake. You said you
checked out our CVs. I believe Jake and I both have BAs. Jake, you have an advanced degree.
Yeah, I do. I have an MFA.
Yeah.
I have a very strong CV.
Oh, no, I was thoroughly impressed.
So the way that we first got, you know, we got tipped off on this from a friend of mine I grew
up with. And basically he used to work at a bike shop in Brooklyn and he would run errands for his
boss. And his boss was a lover, like many of us, of Reese's peanut butter cups. And he'd often send
them to the corner store to go grab one. And he would give it to his boss. And sometimes the boss
would eat one and say, you know, you can have the rest. And it would always confuse my friend. He'd
say, well, why? You're such a Reese's nut. And he'd say, because that one's the winter formula.
I only like the summer formula. And this guy had a very advanced palate. He's a successful
businessman. He owned a bike shop in Brooklyn. So it's fair to say that this guy knew what was up.
And he had a very advanced palate. He could tell when it was one or the other. And sometimes he'd
get and say, that's great. And we got some emails from other people who said, yes, this is true.
People also with advanced palates.
Yeah.
And we look, we've had internal debate on the show about whether or not it's true. We had somebody
who noticed like the number of grams of potassium was different between different
Reese's that they'd collected over the years. I don't know if that's part of it, but
yeah, we've just been trying to get some verification.
Yeah. You're looking for answers. No, I can respect that. I mean,
Thank you.
This is kind of an investigative report. And I appreciate that. That shows the passion and love
for our brand. And I, you know, nothing but respect from my side.
Thank you.
The winter formula.
Okay.
Just to get down to it. It's quite similar to the summer formula. Some would even say it
is the exact summer formula. Some, you know, I happen to be one of that some
that say it's the exact same formula, but I'm wondering, I'm just saying it could be, you know,
a lot of different factors, you know, but there's different ratios of peanut butter.
Was he always getting the same one? Because there's different ratios of peanut butter,
which obviously provide a different experience, you know,
Wait, what do you mean?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
That's where I thought this was going, you know,
Wait, there's different ratios of peanut butter in the summer and the winter?
No, not, no, not true, but there are different ratios across the product line.
You know, like when you think about the various sizes, I looked at your CVs, I looked at my own,
I don't think any of us have advanced degrees in physics, but I think we can kind of understand
that to get the shape of the peanut butter cup, you know, some of the small ones are, you know,
Oh yeah, of course.
Vertically oriented.
Different amount of surface area. Yeah, yeah, sure.
Yeah. So, you know, some of those will have less peanut butter to chocolate.
Let's make it more general. Is it unprecedented in the history of the company?
Or in the sweets industry to obviously summer is the enemy of chocolate to some extent, right?
S'mores. I mean, people, it's a nice s'mores. It can kind of help the melting process already.
He's dodging.
I mean, it's, you know, no, these are tough questions. I was told this was a,
you know, a great group of guys had some, you know, pretty softball questions.
I didn't realize this was, this was going to be so intense.
No, this is hard hitting.
Yeah, no.
Well, you gotta, you gotta understand that the guest we had on before you was this guy,
Tom O'Neill, who wrote this great book. He spent 20 years investigating the Manson murders and
he uncovered all sorts of stuff that nobody had before.
Yeah.
So we're a little bit fired up after that, but.
Yeah.
So the official line is that the formula stays the same.
That is correct. The formula does stay the same.
G's up, rev them V's up, federally trying to reach us to keep us
flooded pieces, diamond sized pieces, pieces. You know who he is,
looking talk show like Regis, King Push flow prestigious, hustle with me like leeches.
X and O's, tic-tac-toe, up 'em, duck 'em, let them go.
On to the next, knock us in the decks of them Cali Lolos. Houston,
Candy Paints, screwed up vocals, New York, Range Road, sit on momos.
Future in that Bentley, GT, oh no. Float chameleon, worth by the million.
Sell Bolivian, feds in oblivion. Zooty, zillion, purse reptilian.
Took 'em from off, off island like Dillard.
I want to ask you a Tom O'Neill style question. Okay. So maybe we're wrong about it.
Can you tell us anything that people don't know about Reese's Peanut Butter Cups?
Anything that you think has been left out of the official narrative?
It could be off the record.
It could be off the record. No, sorry. Actually, it can't be. It just, that's not the nature.
I think it's all very much on the up and up, but I do think on a serious note that
it's one of those things that because people love it so much and right. And there's like so many
different forms and there's so many different ways that you're getting it like from the plant
through the system to the retailer. There's like, it's changing hand that I'm sure there is
absolutely different tastes when you will get it. Right. You know, like if it was like,
sometimes if you cycle through heat, you know, then it's not good. Right. You don't want to like,
if the store decides that like, Hey, our bills are too much and we're going to turn off the air
conditioning in the summer and it gets cold and then add, you know, that's not really right because
you know, peanuts and the oils and it's going through the surface. So there, I'm sure there's
a lot of variation, like, um, not a lot of variation, but I'm sure there is variation
for those people that like love peanut butter cups and eat them all the time, you know?
But yeah, that's a skunk Reese's cup. You know, when you leave beer out in the sun, it gets skunked.
I'm a teetotaler. So not really. I lost 15 years. Yeah, no, I think that was a younger man.
That was, that is not the new man, but yeah, no, I, I, I think that's a fair point is that
at some mom and pop corner store somewhere. Yeah. Maybe it's sweltering New York city summer.
It turned the AC off at night. By the time you're purchasing that peanut butter cup,
it may have melted a little bit, froze back up seven times or something. And it probably tastes
weird. So I guess one question I have for you then is working at the company and living in Hershey,
PA, is there like a company store or can you like literally roll, roll down to the factory and get
one? Like before it even goes in the wrapper. Oh yeah. When I was on the brand team, like I've
been on the brand team a couple of times. You always know if someone goes to the factory,
any factory, it's like, Oh, bring stuff back. Right. And so Reese's like, it became this cool
thing. So Reese's started doing fresh from the factory cops, you know? So like where we just
kind of bypass like all the traditional kind of sell direct, even before like selling direct was
like the thing, you know, like now obviously a lot of companies like sell direct, but you can
get it, you know, and I've had cups like directly, like, I don't know that I'm like a week old,
you know, something like that. And you, it's funny because they do. I don't know if it's like
psychosomatic, but like the notion of like, I drove to the factory, I smelled the roasted peanuts.
Now I'm eating it like in my car. I can't even make it back to the office. It is like, it is a
special experience. I mean, it's awesome. A fresh cups got to taste different than a week old.
Essentially. I mean, you guys are obviously aficionados. Like I will get some fresh from
the factory, send them your way so that you guys can do your own kind of experimentation as to.
Oh, so I got a question for you. So we're, this might be like, not the type of thing
we're dealing with in the course of your job too often, but just maybe you have a sense of it. So
that'd be amazing. Thank you for the offer. If you send us some Reese's fresh from the factory,
we're all here in LA by the time it got to us, you know, let's say we get it within 48 hours
or something. Let's say I walked to like a seven 11 somewhere in LA and I buy a Reese's peanut
butter cup. Do you have a sense of how long it took to get from the factory to me at the seven
11? I'm kind of always amazed by how fast it is, but I think with like modern transportation,
I mean, it's days and weeks. I mean, it's not like months, right. It's a pretty like fast,
like situation, but it would be weeks, um, you know, and the price stays fresh for a very,
very long time. So, no, but even then weeks versus two days is dramatic as a dramatic.
In fact, that's what I'll do when we receive the fresh from the factory ones, I will walk down to
a seven 11, grab some and taste it. Maybe it'll be a dramatic difference. And suddenly it'll say,
Oh, well, if I tasted these two things back to back, I might think they had different formulas.
Yeah, no, definitely. The other thing that's funny is like, um, we always like, whenever we're doing
new innovation, like, as you can imagine, like, we get to try like everything. It's like, Oh,
we're trying this out. Like, do you like this? Oh, we're trying this. Do you like this? Right.
So like, we try a lot of products before they ever come out. And it's like, Hey, what do you think
about this formulation? I'm like a horrible taste tester. Like I have like the worst palate, like I,
you know, to the point where it's like, it's ridiculous, but we do have people that are like
super tasters. Yeah. And go through the training and then are able to like, you know, basically
help the scientists say, Oh, this one's a little bit oaky. Can we take down this note? Oh, can we
do that? Whoa. And then like, if there's ever a need to like change a formula or even not even a
formula, but even like a supplier, you know, say, Oh, well, we want to start getting this person
going out of business. We need to get a new manufacturer for this element of the formula.
Like, right. They will just test it rigorously. And it's kind of amazing. Like those people exist
because I, I'm like the worst. If it was like a job requirement, I would not be a part of it. So
you'll find out amongst yourselves, probably some of you will taste the difference. Some of you
might not taste any difference at all. Interesting. Well, thanks so much for taking time. I got one
more question for you. Of course, like any red blooded American I'm familiar with Hershey's
love Hershey's peanut butter cups. And I'm sure. Yeah. Like almond Hershey's kids. I got like
everybody got my faves, but also like a lot of people, my memories of like the big products are
so rooted in my own childhood. Cause the older you get, it's not that you don't stop eating candy,
adults eat candy too, but you just go for the stuff, you know, you're probably not following
all the new innovations and stuff. So I'm curious in recent history, what are some of the Hershey
companies like greatest hits of like, say the 2010s? Yeah. So I'll give you like, there was
two products that I helped develop, which is kind of like, so I have a bias right toward them, but
I think they're wonderful. And I, you know, you know, you guys as Reese's lovers, hopefully we'll
try them. So the transparency, yeah, it is a little biased, admittedly. Okay. The first one was
Reese's pieces cup, which, you know, basically I was on a train coming back from New York. I got a
call from one of our vice presidents and sales saying, Hey, we really need a new innovation
that kind of close out the year. Like they were worried about making their number for convenience.
She's like, do you have anything? And I said like, no, but you know, this guy had always done well
by me for my career. And, you know, you always want to like take care of those people. So I said,
let me just, I go, I'm literally on a train. I can at least give you the amount of time on the train
to think about it. So when I was, I launched this product called the Hershey spread a while ago.
And during that testing, they had once put Reese's pieces in the jar of peanut butter.
And for whatever reason, just that little bit of texture and the inside of a Reese's pieces
is called panichi. It's kind of like a form of like peanut butter. I know it's very classy.
Is that an Italian word or something that you guys made it up?
It's a word. It's a word. I don't know, but it is a word. And it's, it's like a type of
peanut buttery.
Next time you're talking to somebody and you're saying like, well, I like Reese's peanut butter
cups because of the combination of the chocolate on the outside and the peanut butter on the inside.
Would it be appropriate to say, hold on dummy. I think you mean the panichi on the inside.
The panichi is only on the inside of Reese's pieces.
Inside the Reese's peanut butter cup is still the peanut butter.
Oh, it's not the same thing.
Oh no.
They're two different things. Two different formulas.
One's a winter formula and one's a summer formula because obviously like Reese's pieces,
those are great for the summer because they don't melt. So I think we, that's when we use the summer
formula, obviously. But so yeah, so inside the Reese's cup is like peanut, like the traditional
peanut butter, but inside Reese's pieces is this panichi, right. And like the combination of those
two different peanut buttery flavors was like amazing. Right. And so I just said, Hey, I don't
know why we've never done this. Let's like, what's the most Reese's thing we can do. Let's just put
Reese's pieces inside the peanut butter cup. And so I do know some of the scientists at the tech
center. And I basically just called them and said, Hey, is this even like possible? And they said,
I don't know why it wouldn't be, let me just make some tonight. So basically he just made like 10
of them and we tried them the next day and we're like, damn, this is amazing. I mean, like you get
that little bit of crunch and then it's like smashed up Reese's pieces inside the peanut
butter cup. They're whole pieces. Oh, it's whole pieces. Yeah. Whoa. And it was also like super on
brand, right. It was literally like the brand on brand. It was like, what's the most kind of like
fun Reese's thing you could do. And you had the, like the equity colors inside the cup.
You never knew like what colors you were going to get. Like some were broken, some were like
totally intact. It was just fun. And so to me, that was one of the ones that I thought was a
really, if you're a Reese's lover to get both Reese's pieces and Reese's cups in the same bite
was cool. Yeah. That's a good one. The other one was like the next year they, you know, basically
we're like, okay, what's a new innovation. And have you guys ever had nutrageous to me? It's like
the most underrated bar ever. It's like delicious. It's the solid bar. Yeah. Is it chocolate covered?
Yeah. Is it a payday covered in chocolate? Is that a fair? That's a thing. Yeah. But it's,
it's different because it's, you know, payday has that thick caramel. This one has more peanut
butter. I don't know if I've ever had a softer caramel. It's delicious. It's like, yeah, amazing.
So we just said, Hey, if people like the pieces cup, let's just replace all the nuts
and put Reese's pieces in that. And so we called it the outrageous. Oh, and to me, I mean,
it's indulgent, right? I mean, it's like, you got chocolate, caramel, the pieces,
it's a pretty delicious eat.
Slender on wrap paper tie
lifting up his head. He feels the sunlight in his eyes.
Grasp the kettle top and shoot the breeze. Please ramble while slopscraper side
tossing in his bed. Can I make one comment? I don't think you should ever change the logo of
Reese's. It's a great logo. And I feel like legacy brands feel a need to modernize.
And I respect that. It's still that, that nice kind of wax paper, orange. And I feel like the
Hershey's logo also similar, very classy. Don't succumb to that pressure to modernize, please.
Great. I agree with you. I agree with you. Okay, cool. I agree with you.
Both on all the front. I mean, you're, we have an expression like us.
What happens is like brand people see their brand all day, every day,
they get bored of it much faster than the consumer. And then you also want to get promoted.
Right. So it's like, well, what did you do? It's like, I kept everything the same.
Yeah. It's like kind of a weird way to get promoted. So I think sometimes marketers,
whether they want to change like an ad campaign, or they want to change packaging,
it's like to put their stamp on it when sometimes the smartest thing is to respect
what the tradition is. And I feel like what's happened with Mountain Dew and Taco Bell logos
in the last 20 years is an absolute travesty. So that's my two cents.
Can I ask one question?
Yeah.
If you were in charge of having Reese's do one sort of collaboration with another brand,
maybe a clothing brand, what would be the sort of perfect collab?
Yeah. So for me, love the question. I also love what you said about the color palette. To me,
I think a lot of these collabs go wrong in the sense that they want to like logo slap everything.
And to me, that's just not very exciting or original. I think with Reese's, you know,
when you think about like, when people refer to like, oh, the Oreo colorway,
Oreo didn't need to even do anything for it to be like an Oreo colorway. So to me,
like when you see orange and yellow together, and you throw in maybe even a little bit of
hint of brown, you're thinking Reese's. So to me, besides just like who I want to do the collab with,
I'd want it to be like, oh, is that a Reese's collab? Like kind of like that,
the subtlety versus the like, oh, let me throw my box logo right next to your logo,
you know, with an X and say like, oh, look, we did a collab. I wanted to like have a little bit
of that subtlety where you had the colorway. And you're just like, dude, is that a Reese's
collab? So I don't know. For me, like I kind of like high and low. So I think it'd be fun to do
something with like Gucci or like Louis Vuitton or yard, the one that you can only buy in stores.
But like, I like high low. So I think that would be like, really rad to have like a Reese's colorway
kind of thing is like, oh, that Reese's.
That's sick. Hey, Ryan, did you work on the Travis Scott Reese's cereal collaboration?
Was that?
No, like, and I wish I did. So Reese's, that was General Mills did that. And it was funny because
like, if you're not like I think someone sent us a box and we have to approve everything and someone
sent us something and they're like, hey, like you, like, which is sad, right? Like that I might be
the one that might be most knowledgeable of the coolest. But that's like that comes with the
territory of like being in Central PA and Hershey PA where it's like, hey, our best guess of like,
maybe someone knows what's going on with me. But you know, like when those boxes came out,
they're like, is this like this looks like someone like a like a child drew this,
is this like going to be okay? You know, and we're like, Oh, this is so rad. This is awesome.
But like that, that was a General Mills Reese's Puffs thing, which I thought was really cool
and really fun. But it's like, I would love to do one that is even like more subtle, right?
That you don't really even necessarily know. I mean, to me, just because the colorway is so strong,
maybe a pair of Crocs that are two different colors. Absolutely not. Where one is. Hold on.
Or maybe it's like a whole. That was unfair of me. That was unfair. It's a pair of Crocs.
One's orange and one's brown. And Ryan, do you know what gibbets are? No. You know how
now people can put kind of flare on the holes of their Crocs? Yes. And then the gibbets are yellow.
So between the two shoes, you get all three colors of Reese's pieces and you can move the
yellow gibbets around as you see fit. Yes. So you're a part of the collab. So it's you,
Crocs and Reese's. Honestly, you could just do Reese's gibbets and then you put them on just a
pre-existing pair of Crocs. Yeah. I mean, that could really freshen up a pair, you know? Well,
anyway, thanks so much. Please. We'd love to talk to you again, because I feel like actually,
the more we talk to you, the more questions come up. I think we barely scratched the surface.
So hopefully you'll come back. And thanks so much. Thanks, guys. I'll work to get you guys
a care package. Terrific. Can't wait for that. And I'll tell you what, as soon as we get that
care package, we'll absolutely drop the investigation because it's gone on too long.
Too many lives have been ruined. That's a fair trade. Because I can talk to the plant, which
formula did you guys want for the care package? Because even though it is, we're kind of in that,
we're in that transitional period right now, where I'd love to go either way. So I didn't
know which one you guys wanted. I'd love to get a jumpstart on winter just so I can flex
other people in the neighborhood. So like, yeah, walk by. Oh, you guys still need that summer
formula? Oh, I agree. All right. Well, thanks so much, dude. Thanks, guys. Have a great night
or day. You too.
Another great call. This has really been a fascinating investigative
TC. Also, I don't know if we said it on the show, but Ryan Reese, his last name is spelled R-I-E-S-S.
Just a weird coincidence that he works for the company that makes Reese's, R-E-E-S-E.
Because we had two guests and we've enjoyed talking to them so much, I don't think it makes
sense to do a top five this one. I think we're a little short on time. I think we're a little
short on time. And also, speaking of investigative journalism, there's something we wanted to get to,
because actually, Seinfeld, another thing, I would say over the past two weeks, the top two things
that I was getting tagged on, people texting me, all this stuff, were LeBron wearing the Grateful
Dead outfit and the other one was Travis Scott doing a collab with McDonald's. All I know is
that something happened. I literally don't know what they did together. So Seinfeld, we got you
on the case. We got you to Tom O'Neill this sh*t. What did you find out? Let me start off by asking
you a question, Ezra. Yeah. Do you have a go-to order for McDonald's? I haven't gone to McDonald's
in a long time, but I don't exactly have a go-to, but this comes up in conversation a lot where
people say, "What was your favorite extra value meal?" And for me, a long time, I was a Big Mac
extra value meal guy, but eventually, I became a two cheeseburger guy, because I just thought that
was fun that you got two cheeseburgers, you unwrap one, then you unwrap the other. There was something
about the ceremony, the presentation of it. It felt like you were getting more bang for your buck
getting the two cheeseburger meal. So whatever, I'll stand by that. I'm a two cheeseburger extra
value meal guy. You know what? I feel you on that. I will still go to McDonald's from time to time,
and I do get the two cheeseburger meal as well. What I like about it is that the burgers are not
too heavy either. And if you don't want to finish the second one, you don't really feel too guilty
about it. But I digress. Travis Scott has a go-to, and he's had it since he was a child growing up in
Houston. And his go-to is a quarter pounder with lettuce, pickles, onions, ketchup, mustard cheese,
and bacon. And then he gets medium fries, and he gets a side of barbecue dip.
Okay. Sorry. That was a lot to take in. So you got a quarter pounder and you add all this.
Slow down. Wait. Did it even occur to me that you could like, customize anything at McDonald's? I
know you could ask for like, "Yo, can I get some barbecue sauce?" Whatever. But when you described
the burger, you said it was a quarter pounder with ketchup. Yeah, mustard, cheese.
Are all those things just part of a quarter pounder?
So everything there is part of a quarter pounder except for bacon. So Travis likes to customize
his quarter pounder by adding bacon. I think everything else is part of the regular quarter
pounder. Whoa. So he was like, seven years old. Just like, his mom's like, "What do you want?"
And he's like, "Don't know what a quarter pounder, but to add bacon." Okay. No problem.
I just felt like if you asked for that s*** at McDonald's, they'd just be like,
"The quarter pounder does not come with bacon." No, I'm asking you to add bacon.
"Sir, if you want the extra bacon burger, I can get you that." No, I want the quarter
pounder with bacon. Sir, all of the bacon is in the walk-in
freezer because breakfast ended three hours ago. But now they do breakfast all day. You know,
it's funny. I was just having a conversation with somebody about the fact that it used to be such a
big deal. Sorry to digress for a second, Seinfeld, but remember it used to be such a big deal that
breakfast ended at McDonald's at 1030? Yep.
People would be so angry. People would be f***ing yelling, "It's 1032. Tell me you don't still have
that s*** on deck. Tell me you don't have it there." The classic scene in Falling Down.
Oh, right. Yeah, the Michael Douglas film. Michael Douglas film. Anyway, yeah.
And then we were talking about that McDonald's knew they had this interesting obsession in the
culture with their breakfast menu. And then they made a big hoopla a few years ago.
For all I know, it might've been like 10 years ago. I don't remember. They made this big hoopla
about now they have breakfast all day. And it was this big deal. Remember, it used to roll up and
it was 1030 and it was so dramatic. Now you guys wanted this s***. Now you can have it. Right?
Does this sound familiar? They did breakfast all day.
Yes. And talking about it the other day,
we were like, "They f***ed up." They had something very special that people coveted, that people
talked about, that people fought about, and they just threw it in the dumpster. And so I was
thinking, "All right, if I was McDonald's and let's say I was like the Ryan Reese of McDonald's
and my boss calls me and is like, 'We need something special, man. Breakfast sales are
flagging. What do we do?' And this is my solution." Rather than say, "Well, let's make it all day
because then you'll have some people coming in for lunch, some people still want breakfast,
double the sales." No, that's not how it works. This is what my thing would have been.
I would have made a giant campaign, get Bruno Mars to write a song, make this giant hoopla
that we're going to do a f***ing huge announcement. And then we f***ing do this crazy media blitz.
And the whole campaign is about that McDonald's breakfast is now served until 1045. And we make
all these songs about 15 minutes. And we make the most expensive commercial in history where literally
Jesus Christ comes back to earth. The president, we get everybody, Beyonce. And it's this huge
announcement, like a full, the council of the most important people throughout history. And
that's all they announce that it's 15 minutes. And Seinfeld, you'll come up with a catchy slogan
or something about the most important 15 minutes in history or some s***. I don't know, whatever.
And let's Bruno Mars do the song. And we just make this huge thing about that, this extra 15
minutes. Now that's exciting. That's a cultural reset. You know what I mean?
Yeah, it's a movement. I'm picturing the commercial, a family piles into a minivan.
Dad's like, we got to go. We got to go. Mom's like, hurry it up, hurry it up. Baby wearing
like half a diaper, you know, like all that. The whole family gets in the minivan. They screech
off. They're like running red lights. They get to McDonald's. It's like 1032. They're like so mad.
They're like, oh, the dad rolls up. He's like, you know, can I? I know it's two minutes late.
And then the person behind the counter is like, don't worry about it. Now breakfast is served
until 1045, you know, and then it's the Bruno Mars kicks in. You know, this is still a work
in progress pitch on the way there. The wife is like, so help me God, Larry, you lost your job.
You don't take care of your family. And I swear to God, if you don't get us there in time to give
your family egg McMuffins, I will divorce you. I will take the kids. I will leave you. And he's
just like, it's like a full action movie. Then he screeches up and it's like, that's another campaign.
That's like later. It's like very serious black and white talking heads. What a 15 minutes mean
to you? 15 minutes saved my marriage. 15 minutes saved my life. 15 minutes helped me win the game.
15 minutes. Let me graduate high school. And then at the end, it's like, you know, McDonald's,
what will you do with the new 15 minutes? I love it. It does beg the question though,
of like, what kind of like family with children is serving their kids breakfast at 1030. Maybe
it's a Saturday. I think it's after church. I think it's Sunday. It's a post church tradition.
It's a Christian family. True. I like that. That could be another one for religious people.
And this could be the one that has Jesus Christ in it. Is that preachers going a little bit long
with the sermon? Oh, look at the watch. And just like, dude, everybody in the pews is just like
looking at their watch, like tapping their foot, like pulling their collar. Yikes. Oh, come on,
wrap it up. And then he's just like, and furthermore, he was like, no. And then one guy's
like, I'm going to hell. I don't care. And he like jumps in his car and leaves. And then everybody's
like freaking out. And then the priest looks at the camera and is like, what are they freaking
out about? McDonald's serves breakfast until 1045 now. Just to build on that too. Yes. I was
going to suggest that in the rush to get to McDonald's, the person behind, you know what,
this is too dark, actually. I'm not going to say it. Oh, no. Too dark for TC. Oh, Lord. Well,
I was going to say, OK, that the person in the rush to McDonald's hits somebody. And then when
we do Ezra's like kind of somber, like alternate version, it's like that person who got hit was
just like, if only the paramedics had been here 15 minutes sooner, you know, like you do an
alternate, you like cut to that person, you follow their narrative anyway. Oh, yeah. Wow. No, no. But
that's another type of ad, like the really weird sanctimonious one where it actually could have
nothing to do with it, where it's just like, what is 15 minutes mean to you? And a surgeon is like
another 15 minutes. I could have saved that man's life. What a 15 minutes mean to you? Another 15
minutes. I could have told grandma that I loved her. What a 15 minutes mean to you? It's like
what's the name? Bill Buckner, some another 15 minutes. We could have won the World Series.
What a 15 minutes mean to you? And it's like a general. I could have saved 500 American lives.
And then it's like, what a 15 minutes mean to you? And it's like at McDonald's, we know how
much 15 minutes. It like never even shows the product. It's just like black, like the black
and white and the arches come up at McDonald's. We know the 15 minutes could change the world.
That's the Super Bowl ad. But yeah, that's the really serious Super Bowl ad
with everything. Soldiers, doctors, all the serious professions.
Last time I wrecked it. Last time I whipped around. Last time I did the whippers. Last time
I live reverse. Porter Brown hit the reverend. Last time I hit your crib. Last time it was
your tennis. I done went back in my cell. Felt like hell. I risked it, pace yourself. How you
living? Know you thrilling, off the center. How I got my choice in fitness. Back in the house,
in the street. Run this wild, let it be. Rage is how I got it. Eat. Not a vibe, but a way.
With the sound, by the way. Count it down by the days. To myself, know they fuck it with the moves.
I'm drunk off the juice. No, I'm drunk off this mood. And I lose it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So as part of this collaboration, Travis and McDonald's have like branded that meal. So for
$6 until October 8th, you can order the Travis Scott meal and you can get the classic Travis
Scott quarter pounder with bacon, the medium fries with barbecue sauce and a medium spread.
Sounds pretty good.
And this collaboration is actually the first time that McDonald's has put a celebrity's name
on a product since 1992 with the McJordan burger after Michael Jordan.
Wow.
So this is a big deal. It's been 30 years since McDonald's has done a move like this
and who better to do it with than the innovator himself, Travis Scott. But I would say the more
interesting part of this collaboration is actually the merchandise.
Oh yeah, there it is.
I was kind of waiting if you were going to be like, and that's it.
That's like, that's kind of interestingly subtle.
It's no, it's way more. That's just the tip of the iceberg. That's just the loss leader.
Travis Scott, under his Cactus Jack brand, has created with McDonald's 59 pieces of merchandise.
Oh my God.
Everything from a plain T-shirt with the McDonald's logo, but instead of McDonald's,
it says Cactus Jack all the way to their most adventurous item, which is a chicken nugget
body pillow for $90. That's a hyper-realistic,
large body pillow that looks exactly like a chicken nugget that you can sleep with at night.
See, this is kind of interesting. It's like, we've definitely reached this point where
the same way that like American industry was like destroyed because we don't make anything anymore.
And our factories have all been outsourced and we're basically just a whole country of ideas,
people guilty as charged. On the one hand, you know, two brands can come together to make something.
We were talking about like how Chinatown market, though, you need this third party to bring
Grateful Dead and Crocs together. And like, surely McDonald's could just team up with a
body pillow company to make something. But it's like, it's not even like McDonald's and
Travis Scott team up for like, I guess in the past it would have been like a rap song about
McDonald's or like a McDonald's product, like a Big Mac box with Travis Scott on it.
Things that are just direct. Now there's this weird third party stuff that's just like
Travis Scott, you know, like you said, he's a huge innovator. He was brought in,
not just as a celebrity, but as like a Ryan Reese, like a strategy guy. And Travis Scott said,
well, you know, I'm happy to brand a meal with my name, but I also just want to help you create
products that are meaningful to people. And I'm going to help you make a chicken McNugget body
pillow. You know what I mean? It's not a direct collab. He's like McKinsey or something. He's a
consulting agency being like, you guys should be in the body pillow business. That's right.
He's it's almost like a creative director capacity beyond just because he's an artist. So they want
to mine his beautiful brain for, for some of these more adventurous ideas, like the CJ arches, uh,
jorts that he's selling. These are denim jean shorts that are being sold for $250.
And they have the McDonald's, the golden arches with some sort of like French fry,
like cactus Jack flares. But so it's Seinfeld, you being a bit of a hype beast,
would you cop any of this stuff? Well, I'm so glad you asked Ezra because, you know,
I will say that like a few of these shirts of which there are so many, I'm counting about
30 different t-shirt options here. You know, some of them are kind of jazzy and there's one with
like the Travis Scott, like custom action figure and some real like nineties style, like almost
like what looks like a Nike kind of retro kind of design from like 1996, like just a real loud,
loud sort of print. And there's some tie dye stuff in there. But you know, the thing that was a real
deal breaker for me, because I thought, Oh, this might be a cool thing in 20 years. Oh, this was
like a weird thing that McDonald's did. And now it's like got some value or some cachet to it,
but wearing clothing with the McDonald's logo on it. That's like a deal breaker for me. And Jake,
I don't know if you remember, but I, at one point on our text thread, I was like, I think this was
months ago, but I was like, I was like, I don't understand Coca-Cola as like a thing that people
want to wear on their clothes. Do you remember that? I was like, yeah, what is the, what's the
appeal of wearing a big ad for Coca-Cola? Like I see no, I see nothing cool about that. And I got
the same vibe from this collaboration, which is like, regardless of how much of Travis is like
design instincts or whatever, you still walking around with a big McDonald's ad on your shirt,
which to me, I think the interesting part of this collaboration is that try as they might to make
McDonald's, the logo seem cool. It's a bridge too far. I just can't go there. You know, I can't go
all the way with you, Travis. It's also cool if it's vintage, like, well, I guess you could debate
it, but I have at times, mostly just on stage. There's a while where I had this, I don't know
why, but in the eighties, there was this thing where they made Coca-Cola rugby shirts. And
obviously I've always loved rugby shirts. It's been like part of my early look. And I actually
felt like it's cool. And I've, and I always see those at vintage stores and I'm always like kind
of charmed by them, but that feels a little different than buying like a brand new Coca-Cola
t-shirt. And it's funny, as we've been talking about this, I was starting to remember, like,
I feel like in the nineties, marijuana parody shirts was like a huge thing.
Yes.
So I've been looking some up, like there's vegan ones that just say McMurder. That's pretty harsh
to wear. But the really funny ones, it's just the McDonald's golden arches M and then it says
marijuana. I feel like that's like a classic. That's a classic. That's like a classic boardwalk.
Yeah, definitely. And I guess there's some that were sold as like tourist things in Mexico.
Like I'm seeing, you know, that kind of like, they call it a hoodie. I've always heard it
called a Baja, you know, like the Mexican pullover. So this is a white Baja with the
marijuana on it. It just says marijuana over 1 billion stone Mexico.
I'm like, this is kind of cool.
The first time I ever saw those McDonald's marijuana shirts was in Mexico when I was a kid.
Oh, really?
And being like, oh, that's so bad ass. Yeah.
Yeah. I think I'd wear a marijuana McDonald's parody long sleeve t-shirt.
Let me see if I can find one. So anyway,
This episode is ending with Ezra just like browsing for like McDonald's parody shirts.
That's right. I'm going to find a bunch. I'll give you guys some too. All right. Well,
I'm just going to keep browsing. I got to get my head back into the into the browsing game.
That's it for TC. See you guys in two weeks.
Peace.
Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig
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