And That's Why We Drink - E199 The Surgeon Sturgeon Named Spurgeon and Big Bert in the Million Acre Wood

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

Always Christine, never the coroner... this week on episode 199 (wow, so close to 200!) we're still battling side effects of our new medications but are wholeheartedly embracing all the many and varied ways we could feel uncomfortable next! We've also got some big and mysterious stories to distract us this week as Em takes us on an epic Scottish adventure to Loch Ness. That's right, Em is covering the legend of Nessie (and their potential love interest with some Xiinön-level falsies)! Then Christine covers an unsolved mystery that will leave you contemplating chimneys, folded clothes and cabins in the woods in the story of missing Colorado teen Joshua Maddux, also known as the Boy in the Chimney. And do you think Nessie could have been a vacuum cleaner this whole time? Either way, Em may have officially sent Christine over the edge and into the loch... and that's why we drink! Check out the poem Em mentioned in their story that was written in Nessie's very own first language: bit.ly/nessiesongPlease consider supporting the companies that support us! ThirdLove knows there’s a perfect bra for everyone, so right now they are offering our listeners 10% off your first order! Go to THIRDLOVE.com/DRINK now to find your perfect-fitting bra… and get 10% off your first purchase!Check out all the amazing shoes, bags and masks available right now at rothys.com/DRINK. That’s Rothys.com R-O-T-H-Y-S.com/DRINK. Style and sustainability meet to create your new favorites!Simply visit athleticgreens.com/DRINK and join health experts, athletes and health conscious go-getters around the world who make a daily commitment to their health. Go to athleticgreens.com/DRINK and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today.Take control of acne, dark spots, breakouts or whatever your unique concerns may be with a powerful skincare treatment made for YOU today! Go to Curology.com/drink for a free 30-day trial, just pay for shipping and handling! See Curology.com for all the details.

i didn't know we were recording okay and neither i think sam is uh getting real comfortable letting us say whatever we want well i mean it wouldn't be the first time that we said stupid shit on air the last time when he was like oh you're recording he said it after i was talking about how i was sobbing from my medication sorry oh good times hello everyone welcome i know you probably just heard us say we said stupid things on air uh we didn't we're not putting this in the up that in the episode but you can hear us talk about how we said stupid things we sure we certainly did say stupid things and uh our our lovely uh tech guy at cast is in charge of letting me know when i'm recording and he likes to tell me i'm recording after i've said something wild so they wait they wait yeah uh just just to close out that story real quick

yes i'm still figuring out my adhd medication and the side effects every day are brand new so yesterday's was so fun just sobbing for no reason. Allison was like, you need to tell me what your feelings are. And I was like, I don't have any. I don't understand. I don't have any feelings. The tears just keep coming. Tears keep coming. Anyway.

Well, good for you. I'm so excited for your journey. Me too. It's good. I guess I'll just announce as well, while we're being open about our medication, that I also just started Lexapro and calls me Lexapro now which I'm really fond of you're my Lexapro oh my gosh how's it going do you want to talk about it well I'm only three days in and uh no no you know intense sweating like you're having yet sorry to call you out but no I was the poor Christine and Eva had to watch me earlier because we were getting ready to record and I was like fanning myself because I was having a hot flash.

And five seconds later, I was freezing cold. And now I'm having a hot flash right now, actually. So well, OK, they said it takes a couple of weeks to like kick in. So I'm like crossing my fingers and toes and hoping. But I've heard good things because I already took Wellbutrin and they were and I was like, my anxiety is constantly to seven. And they were like um really we should give you something to balance it out so that's what they said we'll see what happens um we're on a journey yes okay apparently they're a very good combo i googled it too to make sure because you know the internet

knows i googled i googled side effects of stratera which which I'm on, and then I texted Christine all night about the worst of the worst side effects that are possible. And I was like, oh, my God. One of them was like pain in eyeballs. And I was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I was like, okay, just please be careful. Stay indoors. Give me the hot flash.

That's all I need. I'm fine. The hot flash is enough and the sobbing. Oh, my God. Anyway, welcome to episode 199. We're so close. we're so close to 200 and uh we're going out with a bang i guess just making this the most obscenely and that's why we drink episode of all time um talking about ourselves and our crying and our medication

um and uh we are so close to 200 we're very excited yes for 200 it's coming up way soon way soon we should uh well we should have a moment of uh silence oh that's impossible of remembrance of try to reflect on our favorite moments of 200 episodes but wow there's just so many i will remember okay no we're not gonna do that we're not gonna do that that's not fun for anyone okay uh i also want to want to announce that we are doing something super fun i know i feel like every week we're coming in with some like ridiculously new like xenon information for patreon but we do have one which is that uh we're doing a patreon secret santa which i'm so amped about like so i'm very excited about it i we're gonna be part of it we're gonna be out of it so you could potentially get involved yeah well i know watch i was saying earlier can you

imagine if like em and even i somehow got masked matched with each other for this thing that would be precious that would be very sweet our lovely pal jess who who does like our newsletter and the xenon gazette which is our patreon newsletter um was like, hey, let's do a Secret Santa. I'll like help organize it, which is just amazing. So we don't have like all the full details yet, except that it's for Patreon. And we're going to just force our way into it and join it as well. I'm very excited. So that'll be really fun. And then also, speaking of, I just want to give like a first a quick shout out to my pal ck our pal ck classic kevin because a lot of people have been joining patreon and being like who is ck and i'm like hello he touched the death chair like yeah way a long time

ago and he's still alive those are the people who are probably starting like present day and working backwards and don't know who ck is yet but ck is a very very very lovely man he was one of our very first fans just like a dear supporter yeah he like supported us so much in the beginning and still does yeah oh my gosh they're really after me today huh they are after you this is another episode where we joke where we joke about the ambulance in the background okay dad joke uh ck has um bonus listener stories on patreon every month and they're very and he has a scottish accent so don't even worry about it it's amazing um i think people have requested that he just do our episodes

which might happen someday we'll see uh if we ever if one of us ever is in a pinch i'll we'll reach out to ck to cover for us it might be but we might never come back people might be like no don't i'd be like oh wait i actually i'm fired got it okay you're you're gone you took my um yeah so but ck create like we i think eva or ck somebody came up with this idea and i think it's brilliant there's a special inbox now uh that he made called ck atwwd at gmail.com where you can send your listener stories to be read specifically by ck on patreon um and obviously like we can't like i'm sure like a lot of people will be sending them in so i don't know how many are gonna get you know picked or whatever but um that's like an

inbox especially for ck to filter through stories and find ones um for his his bonus episodes so so a lot of things if you would like the sound of a a very uh a burly scotsman to to read your spooky stories listen he he's the man he's the one for it so there's that is there anything else we need to those were my big announcements i wanted to shout into the void so i apologize for talking so much and so fast um but that's all i have um why do you drink this week oh i guess i know why because of you know your meds my meds wow i've i immediately became that person where like i can't stop talking about myself when it comes to like the fact that i'm like i'm officially diagnosed i know i talked about it last week but i still am just so excited that someone

listened to me if you are part of the american health system and uh you suffer from mental illness in any way um you know how difficult it is and so i've been trying all quarantine to get anyone to give me five seconds and so i'm just really grateful and even though the side effects are kind of gnarly right now i don't care i've like i today you can attest to this. I woke up on my own without an alarm at 8.45 AM. I thought something was wrong. What the fuck is that? I was very worried. I was like, cause Em texted me and it was 11.45.

And I was like, Em doesn't usually text me before like 1 or 2 PM my time, which is fair. Like I also sleep in. But yeah, I was just like, what's wrong? And I was like, it happened on its own. Like I also sleep in. But yeah, I was just like, what's wrong? And I was like, it happened on its own. Like it was so wild. Also like,

it was like not even like you're sleeping and then like, you're kind of like, and like your eyes kind of open. I was like a robot. I just went like, and I was like, I'm awake now. Wow.

It was really wild. And I, I got, I was exhausted by midnight midnight which was wild because usually midnight is when like playtime starts like i get the zoomies and like i'm up until minimum three in the morning usually i don't go to bed till four or five a.m and then i wake up because i have to around 10 and then i just run on like those five hours of sleep and that's just my sleep schedule and last night I was exhausted by midnight and woke up on my own for no reason at 8 45

it's crazy so I'm so excited for you and happy I'm just so happy for you I was just telling you I got breakfast with Allison I was like oh my god is this what normalcy is like I can have breakfast with my girlfriend that's crazy I can't even even answer that because I just like lay in my bed forever. But that sounds great. I'm so proud of you. Happy for you. If you all are suffering from mental health or just even experiencing mental health, I feel like suffering makes it gives it a, you know, rougher connotation.

But it's tough. If you're going through it, if you're going through it, we get it. Clearly, we like to yell about it. So certainly support you and i hope uh you can find the help you're seeking because m did it i did it and so it's it really sucked so please keep keep fighting to be heard because eventually it'll happen yeah and i'm apparently now on lexpro so we'll see if my anxiety diminishes i still have very sweaty palms so i don't think so yet. My watch still tells me to breathe like every 45 minutes. It's like, literally, it's so annoying. It's like, maybe you should breathe. And I'm like, maybe you should

breathe. Then I'm like, you're right. I haven't breathed in six hours. You're right. You're right. Watch. My heart is just like stopping because I'm not breathing. So do you have a reason why you drink besides probably that your phone screaming or your wall your watch screaming at you all the time um it's not even that it screams it like says it's so passive aggressively it's like hey have you thought about breathing oxygen and i'm like hey have you thought about shutting the fuck up um you're like big words for someone who can't fight like like try me it's actually very problematic i do yell at my watch a lot when i'm home alone um no i mean we have a kitten and he's a pain in my ass but he's so cute and he just sits on your face and like breathes at you all night and who have

you learned anything more about his personality like is he oh my god what's going on friendly like everyone else at our house geo and jun and Juniper, get their anxiety, speaking of which, from me. And they like hide. Well, Gio barks. They are assholes. I love them. They are assholes.

They are real just not fun. I wouldn't invite them to a party if they were humans. No. Juni hides in the vents, as we know, and like lives there for the time being until he decides on his own to come out. And then so apparently we had people come and help with like fix our vent something's always broken and um they were playing with mooney and i was like oh my god like he was like playing with them and he he carries around this little toy and he brought it to them like a puppy i was like this

this cat is like the friendliest sweetest cat especially for being found behind a dumpster i'm like you deserve anxiety more than these other two. Yeah, you've actually had a pretty rough life, guy. Yeah, I'm like, they live the life of spoils, but they hide in the vents and complain. But anyway, he's very sweet. I wish you were here to meet him. I would love to meet a friendly cat. Oh, my gosh.

That like almost never happens. I never meet cats, period. It'll change your life. But the ones that think they're dogs and like the the sociable way it always gets very cute feeling real cuddly so he's a babe very excited i can't wait to love him more than the others which seems impossible but anyway um yeah uh happy 199 i'll see you next week on the 200. Until then, let's crack into it. Yay.

One more time. One more time. Why do I keep singing? I don't know. Maybe that's a side effect of Lexabro. You know what's so weird? As I used to sing through my apartment all the time, and apparently that was like a sign of like,

it was like a quote hyperactivity kind of thing that I was doing gosh and i since i've been taking my medication for the last few days i haven't been singing around the apartment oh no it's like a bird that's been silent a beautiful songbird is what i call our generation but by the way by singing through the apartment i don't mean like singing actual songs i mean like making up my own song, like freestyling nonstop. It's incredibly annoying to even me. So to yourself, I'm sure both of my roommates are like, thank God. I literally just said I get into arguments with my own watch. So it's like, don't worry about it. I get it.

Okay, well, this story, speaking of CK, this is from Scotland. Oh, it's the story of ShK, this is from Scotland. Oh. It's the story of Shrek. I'm kidding. But also I should cover that at some point. Please don't. Okay. So this is, I'm surprised I haven't covered it.

This is the story of the Loch Ness Monster. Whoa, that just took me by surprise. It was my goal. I don't even know how I didn't guess when you said Scotland, but we haven't covered this yet. That's what I thought. Well, I don't,

we haven't, we haven't, I checked, but I know, I feel like maybe I'm just imagining we did. Cause it's such a big story. It feels like, Oh,

if I've covered Mothman and Bigfoot and all that, like, of course I would have covered this. But I also think the reason that we thought that I covered it is because instead of Nessie, I covered Chessie. That's what it was. And I've also covered Peppy from Lake Pepin. Yes. There was something in a lake.

Okay. That makes sense. Many, many are in lakes. This one especially. Many are in the lakes. So, or in this case, Locke. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So, this is a story of nessie oh i'm freezing cold right now give it oh it's happening as long as i don't start singing then we're all okay it's it's just a constant battle these days of just feeling uncomfortable in different ways okay so oh no oh no it's fine so here's the story of the loch ness monster so the first sighting was actually in year 565 yeah i remember it well look it's just another one of those things where i had to double take because i was like again that is not a real year um so it was in aug 22nd, 565. And the first sighting was by St. Columba,

who was a missionary introducing Christianity to Scotland. Oh, fun. I know, yikes. So St. Columba went to see the king of the Northern Picts. And apparently in a biography written later about him, the saint had to cross the river or block Ness. It was referred to as a river then, but I guess now it's a lake. He had to cross the Ness and was grabbed and bitten by a beast.

Oh, no. And had to be rescued by a few men that were nearby. Oh, no. And here's a few men that were nearby. Oh, no. And here's a quote from that biography. But the monster lurked in the depth of the river. Feeling the water above disturbed by the swimming, the beast suddenly swam up there. Or the beast suddenly swam up there and they were struck down and was struck down with extreme terror um saint colombo

raised his holy hand and drew the saving sign of the cross in the empty air and then invoking the name of god he commanded the savage beast and said you will go no further do not touch the man turn back speedily and then hearing this command of the saint the beast fled so apparently oh my goodness so nessie started as the antichrist, I think. I mean, literally, I was going to say I was judging him, but then I'm like, M literally says the Our Father the second something moves in the apartment or like the second, like M just starts crossing themselves

and it's a whole thing. I watch the Duggars as a backup plan in case something real demonic happens. I know what's going on. I can do the cliff notes of the Bible if I get in a pinch. Okay. So apparently this story should be in the Bible. It feels like it should because it sounds like a saint blessed a beast away and saved people.

It sounds like it should be a Bible story to me. But anyway, it's just a biography. So that was the first sighting um theories ever since because loch ness uh the loch ness monster is still according to some a real thing and throughout according to me yes according to only christine and maybe saint columba same thing the theories uh have are very widespread but people seem to think that the monster is either a sturgeon fish a seal a mythical creature okay a whale a shark a whale shark a dinosaur a salmon a large eel an otter a sunfish a sea serpent from the middle ages that's specific

whoa or a massive drifting soil oh which seems like a little island seems the most likely yeah just kind of moves around floating lump yeah and uh but yeah so those are the main theories basically it's some sort of aquatic animal. The main theories. Okay, you went like from like anchovy to like dinosaur. It was like quite an array you gave me just now. It's either a salmon or it's a mythical creature. It's really a, right? It's magic.

Narrow margin there. So a couple of fun facts for you about lock ness um which is i keep having to like manually tell myself to say lock and not lake so is that what that means i'm so dumb so lock is gaelic for lake so like how did i not know that uh i'm surprised i i'm surprised i knew this before but usually i would be right on par with you. I think I only knew about it because I've looked up Nessie before. Okay, that makes sense. But so the Loch Ness monster is actually Lake Ness monster.

The monster from Lake Ness. That makes sense. Yeah. And so another fun fact is that out of all the lochs slash lakes in Scotland, there are 31 are 31 000 in scotland alone oh my and uh lock ness is the largest body of water in the entire uk is 23 miles long it's uh officially 750 feet deep although other people with like sonars have said that they've found deeper um but it's officially 750 feet deep it is officially officially unofficially i think it was like another hundred feet officially shut up i'm just i wasn't grossed out by that i was grossed out by i didn't catch it

i was gonna say it i was not gonna say it and then you said officially like two more times and i just couldn't hold it in any longer. I'm so sorry. No, it was deserved. You did a good job there. You told me what's what. So it is, yeah, so 23 miles long, 750 feet deep, and it is 263 billion cubic feet of water. Oh my gosh. That sounds like a lot.

Another fun fact is for some reason it never gets hotter or colder. It is always exactly five degrees Celsius, which is 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, that's chilly. It's chilly, but also like that's odd that it doesn't change. It is very odd. Maybe the Loch Ness Monster has something to do with it. Another fun fact. Like it's a thermostat also and a salmon and a thermostat.

According to like maybe a dad, like maybe it's a thermostat and when the water goes up according to like maybe a dad like maybe it's a thermostat and when the water goes up one degree hill oh right right then we're all in trouble so uh another fun fact is that loch ness uh whenever rain falls in the area um it the the lake is covered by a bunch of surrounding hills and so all the dirt will go it'll start picking up soil as it goes down into the actual lake and i guess the soil there is particularly rich or nutrient dense or something but excuse me but so when um the rain falls and the soil collects and it all ends up in the lake for some reason there's something about that soil where the lake um like Loch Ness is actually pitch black oh dear it's not oh no at all it's like something about the soil and light reflecting

from the sun or I'm not a scientist but you're not can you tell um but the lake is pitch black so that makes it extra spooky that is creepy yes and it's so deep and dark that plants can't grow in it oh oh really yeah um so odd okay so Loch Ness is one of the four locks in this uh valley called the Great Glen so it's only one of them um but underneath the Great Glen, underneath this valley, there is the Great Glen Fault, Fault Line. And it was formed sometime between 430 and 390 million years ago. Oh, good. And it's big enough that you can see it from space, which is also fun. Oh, my God.

This is the wildest thing ever. I've thrown a lot of fun facts at you right away. Yeah, you're blowing my mind. thrown a lot of fun facts that you right away but like blowing my mind i i i felt like it needed to be said like oh well from space you can basically figure out where the loch ness monster lives it's pretty special okay yeah i think so so um anyway after the saint columbus account uh where he maybe got attacked and then saved sure jesus saved him or something um yep there were no official sightings of nessie for over a thousand years so i don't know why they say like that must have been nessie when it's like clearly nessie's like great great great great great great grandpa

well maybe like the power of christ compelled him to be gone for a thousand years and then he like to time travel that's what happened oh sure let's go he was spiritually be gone for a thousand years. And then he like research. To time travel. That's what happened. Oh, sure. Let's go. He was spiritually banished for a thousand years and then magically came back. It could be.

Wait a minute. Is he a time traveler? He's also a salmon. He's a salmon too. And a thermostat. It's very confusing. He's a salmon dinosaur whale shark. Why don't you get that?

I don't understand. I get it. I'm just saying it's uh i know that we're scientists and not everyone is so keep up you know what you've made uh you've made a point which i'm gonna have i i'm not gonna say it's a good point i'm just gonna say a point was made i'm just gonna stop talking i'm sorry so a thousand years later when nessie time traveled uh back onto earth thank you to you know his exile from jesus uh 1930 happened and in 1930 this was um the this was the first time that the creature was ever referred to as a monster so i think that's where this is when the loch ness monster was coined um so in 1933 fishermen in loch ness heard a terrible noise and they saw

uh the water moving weirdly as something approached their boat and it was so massive that it caused a wave that rocked their boat and they almost fell out oh so they were like okay what is going on here what little dinosaurs growing out of this water um and so here is a quote from that experience a wave of two and a half feet high was caused by some unknown monster monster that presumably inhabits lock nests the wash was sufficient enough to cause our boat to rock violently we have no idea what it was but we are quite positive it could have not been salmon. Okay, so we can crash that off the list. Oh, well, come on.

That was my theory. Literally, you gave me like 40 options and I went with salmon and now we're saying it's not a salmon? You ran with it. You know what? It could have turned into a salmon at this point. It's a mythical creature.

So who's to say? My one shot. I'm going to go with it being a seal because that seems the most obscure. And I like being on the fringe of it all. I just want to say dinosaur, I guess. I don't know.

I personally, if, if, if Loch Ness monster, if the Loch Ness monster were to exist, I would love for it to be a dinosaur. Truly. Like if Nessie were a dinosaur,

I might, I would be more excited than if it were like a mythical creature. I think like that would be so cool. I think that would be the, my favorite, uh, discovery of all of them. If I found it it was an otter i'd be like what a waste of everyone's time then but like if it's a dinosaur i'm like now that was worth the research um so so that was the first time that the creature was called a monster and then three years later this was when um a huge spike in uh nessie sightings came out because a new road was completed right next to the shore.

So it gave drivers a really clear view of the lake. And since so many people were now able to see the lake while they were driving by from like a high view, a lot of them were now a new vantage point. Yes. So now they were all able to get a better look and people were reporting seeing this thing floating around all the time. Interesting. So that's tied with another event that happened, but I'm going to say this first. So that was in 1933. The new road was built.

road was built and in april 1933 that same year um only a couple months after the road was built the there was a woman named mckay aldi and she was driving when she glanced out and she saw something in the water she says it was uh very large it was black and wet and water was rolling off of it and it was a whale-like fish um And so she reported it to the local paper, and this was considered the very first modern sighting because three years ago they knew that there was a story kind of floating around like, oh, something could be in the water, but it was more conjecture, like no one was really taking it seriously. But this woman reported this to the paper,

and only three days after this report came out uh king kong the original movie came out oh and in that there's a scene of a brontosaurus attacking people in the water oh good timing lady yeah so i think the one from three years ago where the fishermen saw something no one really like they're like oh that's a fun like story someone sent in but this this new story that mckay wrote in only three days later everyone like kind of was reinforced to see it again in a movie and so it just kind of built up this rumor or kind of built up this uh trend that people should be looking for things in the it's in the media yeah so like a mob mentality kind of formed um i don't know if i'm saying that right but it was like just kind of like a group think situation so yeah um uh let's see okay so right after the movie came out um a man named George reported seeing the same creature

that McKay described to the newspaper. Because I guess he read that story. He said, oh, I saw that exact same thing. But then he drew a sketch to confirm it. And it looked exactly like the one from King Kong. I thought you meant the one from her story. No, no, no. The one from King Kong. Got it. The one from king kong so now there's getting i thought you meant like the one from her story no no no one from king kong got it the one from king kong so now it's like there's all this like you know these cross points of like okay well who are you what are you seeing that's making you believe this or what's um priming you to think you saw something in the water i see um

and reports like that started coming in a lot where people were like okay well where did you know what's going on uh-huh um but george did say this was a quote from george when he sent in the drawing i saw the nearest approach to a dragon or prehistoric animal that i've ever seen in my life um and then he said that it was carrying a small animal of some kind so oh that made him feel like it must be really large um versus like it was carrying it to eat it or like as a ride like a for a ride that'd be precious but i think it was probably to eat it oh i really was confused okay it's like and then i and then a little turtle was on his head and they just floated around together i thought it was like the salmon finally back and now he's riding on a dinosaur i was very excited about this whole i wish that was the direction this was going let's just say

that's what happened actually that's so much sadder all right but so i think that made them think like okay size wise if it's carrying a small animal and this thing is huge in the water um so only a couple months later there was the first documented picture of nessie and although it's considered authentic it's still really blurry and kind of ambiguous but it is that the famous one no that one actually comes out a year later oh that's the next one that i'm gonna say so the first one um i would say it's still pretty popular but it's not like the black and white one that you're imagining um but so the first documented one it's considered the first authentic one but you can't really tell what the creature is but the photographer says that it was floating two or

three feet above the water or its head was so just to like confirm that it was pretty big um and uh and also in a newspaper called nature that same month, it was reported that quote, several observers have seen an eel like monster with humps upon its back. And it's a creature with a small head, a long neck attached to its enormous body. And, um, and something like an upturn and something, the size of something like an upturned boat so um that was the same time that that picture came out so i think that's why they consider it the first authentic picture just because a description from other people came out at the same time got it but then uh so at this point everyone like kind of knows like okay nessie's a thing

like people are seeing things in the water people are now getting pictures of it and then the famous picture that you're thinking of um is in april 1934 so this is the most famous picture of nessie it was dubbed the surgeon's photo because a surgeon took the picture which is kind of egotistical now a surgeon or a sturgeon because remember that was one of the sturgeon was one of the options so i'm just saying you're a little close don't worry it psyched me out too because i was like this it seems weird that this wouldn't be just like the sturgeon photo if they're thinking like maybe this is a surgeon in the water or something but no it could be a sturgeon fish but a surgeon took the picture got it got it What if you were a surgeon and your last name was Sturgeon? I mean, then you'd have to be a surgeon.

You have no other option. What if you were a sturgeon and your name was Sturgeon? You know, one of the Duggars, they named their son Spurgeon. No, they didn't. Yeah, they did. Are you making that up? With a P, Spurgeon. Nope.

Spurgeon. Are you sure you're not making that up? I swear on everything. I thought they all were named J or D or something. Okay, so the main, all 19 kids and counting, they were all named Js. But then, you know, as they're getting older, they're getting married and having their own kids. So one of the Duggar grandkids is named Spurgeon. Spurgeon?

Like, what? I've never even heard that. It's apparent. So they, I think their family went with a theme as well. But instead of going with, like, letters, they're naming all their kids after, like, biblical heroes or whatever. And so Spurgeon. Sorry, is that a biblical hero? Spurgeon. I only know this because of how, like, grossly obsessed I am with them.

Spurgeon is the last name of. It's the last name of a guy who like like traveled around and like taught everyone about jesus or something oh so it's not in the bible it's a uh like a specific reverend or something he's a baptist preacher from okay well what the hell spurgeon that's his last name yeah that they chose it for this kid's first name okay anyway so like if you're a surgeon if you're a surgeon or if you're no no more of this giving me so much anxiety i need my lexabro to kick in okay so let's let's call this episode the surgeon sturgeon named spurgeon and sends me over the edge into the lock it

finally happened we almost got to 200 so um anyway so the it's called the surgeon like doctor surgeon's photo yeah i get it now thanks i'm just i we've said a lot of things surgeon okay i can't hear that word anymore after this photo came out the popularity for nessie went fucking bananas because it was less blurry of a picture it clearly was something in the water and nobody could figure out what it was so all of a sudden there was this real intrigue to it because people had heard stories and people saw king kong and they're like maybe you're making it up and like all the sketches kind of look like the king kong thing but now we've got like an actual hard-hitting photograph that you don't you don't know what it is um and so uh the and so officially loch ness became

arguably the most closely researched stretch of water on earth um and one thing that people notice in the picture is that there's actually a little flipper and so that people were like okay well now it kind of fishes this because it looked almost like a floating dinosaur which is which would make sense to me which is what i want it to be right that's why i desperately wanted to be a dinosaur but they're like okay we've got a flipper and that was basically the only information they could go off of at this point they're like something there's something've got a flipper. And that was basically the only information they could go off of at this point. They're like, there's something there, and that's all I can tell of. Okay. They also saw that there were waves created by the body,

so they knew it was able to swim instead of it just floating somewhere. Interesting. And that's all they could really piece together at the time. And this picture, actually only only recently only a couple years ago time magazine selected it as one of the 100 photos project which collected the top 100 most iconic pictures in the world that's so cool nessie was one of them um you're famous netzy you're famous oh my god you made it you know, big monster in a little lake, and now you're a little monster in a big magazine.

So that being said, and remember, Time Magazine came out with this recently. So they were aware of the fact that this picture ended up not being confirmed. It was, they said it was a hoax. They found out it was a hoax. Wait, what? Yeah, so the surgeon's photo was proved to be fake by two zoologists named Alistair Boyd and David Martin. Why would you do that?

And it was actually, they found out it was a model of a, quote, clockwork submarine with a 12-inch wooden head. And someone had stuck it together and then gave it to their stepbrother as a present. Oh, cool. Thanks, stepbrother. Thanks for your weird tchotchke that you built in the garage. Thanks for this creepy gift. With this clock submarine and a head on top of it. But it has a head don't you see yeah

i see thanks i love it so then the stepbrother who was gifted to went to the lake one day and uh and took a picture of it and then that's how like he wanted to see if it would float and took a picture of it and that's how this came to be, the most famous picture. And he was a surgeon. So he wasn't a surgeon. This random surgeon guy, his name was Robert Wilson. Was that his name? I want to make sure I said it. Yeah. So there was a surgeon named Robert Wilson who claimed that he took the picture.

What an asshole. And gave it out and said, this is Nessie. This is the Loch Ness Monster. But really, I don't know how he got a hold of the stepbrother's picture, but he's the one that sent it into the newspapers and got the credit for it. Jerk.

I mean, can you imagine you open the newspaper and you're like, wait, I gave that to my stepbrother and he re-gifted it to some surgeon. That's my beautiful tchotchke. Wait, that's my shitty present

that I put in the water. Wait. Oh boy, now it's famous. Can you imagine, can you imagine if you're a stepbrother number one who made it and you're like, I built the Loch Ness monster. Yeah, I know.

That's amazing. Actually. It's kind of cool. Um, so the, so Robert Wilson, the doctor who claimed that he took the picture actually felt so guilty for creating a conspiracy that he fled to Papua New Guinea.

Is that what you do when you're i feel like if you're guilty you like admit that you did something wrong but i feel like if you're guilty of i feel like if you're guilty of murder you flee to another country but like yeah this seems a little but you know i guess i feel like he's uh he'd probably be a very hated man i mean i'm not very happy with him right now i I'll admit. Like, if you admitted that. I guess not. Well, also, like, maybe he did a lot more awful things, and he's just, like, hoping this is the one that sticks and no one investigates him any further. I love that this was the, like, line that he crossed, where he's like, now my empathy, my, like, empathy's kicking in, and now I feel like an asshole.

He's like, this is the one. Like, yeah, I committed a lot of, you know, other crimes. But hopefully people will just see this one and I think it's my ticket out. I've grown a conscience. So Robert Gould published a book called The Loch Ness Monster and Others. And this was the very first book

that was dedicated to solving the mystery, which kind of reamped interest after people found out this picture was a hoax. So which kind of re-amped interest after people found out this picture was a hoax um so it kind of goes through these waves where it's like oh people really care now people don't people really care now they don't it's i feel like every time there's any new evidence it gets kicked aside and then people get discouraged but then someone finds something new and then it reminds me of like i mean this is just such a random thing but it reminds me of like amelia erhart like when last year the year before there was like a photo that came out and like all of a sudden every newspaper online was publishing

like yeah find amelia erhart and then it probably for another 10 years it won't you know be on your radar it's yeah it's my first thought which is so stupid stupid, is it was the NASA broom thing where like it's that trend that goes around every so many years where it's like. That we get tagged in a million times. Today's the only day where your broom will stand upright. Wait, Em. It's the fucking Roomba on the Ouija board. Oh, yeah.

Sometimes we'll get like 40 Roomba on a Ouija board memes. And then that's what this is. Become. That's what this is. That's we'll get like 40 Roomba on a Ouija board memes. And then those people get. That's what this is. This has all been about. That's what this is. That's the Loch Ness Monster for sure. Everyone's talking about it. And then nobody does for six months.

And then it comes back. So it's been a vacuum cleaner this whole time? Wait a minute. That's why they can't find him. OK. Because he's in my apartment right now, actually. OK. Oh, he's not in mine.

Don't look at my floors. Oh, my god. This is terrible. Okay. Oh, he's not in mine. Don't look at my floors. Oh, my God. This is terrible. I'm, like, really not with. I'm making some bad jokes today, I got to say. What are you talking about? You're hysterical. Thanks.

So in the late 30s, this is how. So once that book came out and interest was hyped up again, it got so hyped up that the Scottish Secretary of State had to make a statement. So it goes from zero to 100 every time. It's just like, I don't give a shit. Now I must know everything. Now I live in Papua New Guinea. So the Scottish Secretary of State, they were asking him, what has been done about this creature in the lake that everyone is seeing? And this was his statement so first he said he was in a conversation with the chief

constable um quote who already had five constables stationed at different places on the lock uh none of whom have seen the monster but it is guaranteed protection should it appear and be threatened lieutenant commander rt gould who oh rupert gould the guy who literally wrote this fucking book oh my god okay commander gould uh who has taken much trouble to examine the evidence considers that the creature is a specimen of one of the rarest and least known of all living creatures so the secretary of state is like i don't know what's going on this is weird but it's protected if it decides to show up um and that's all i can say like okay i have men on the lake watching over

it trying to find this thing but i don't know what it is oh my goodness so for the next two decades reports start to fade again um this time i'm gonna blame it on world war ii people were probably a little preoccupied um yeah and then in 1960 we resurfaced with interest again because this one guy named tim dinsdale which makes me think of timmy turner oh my god tim dinsdale okay yikes like timmy turner sorry i just think like he could have the same name tim like my stepdad also yeah i guess i don't know well dinsdale like that's where timmy turner's from oh i didn't know that oh doug dibbadoe home with the dinsdale dibbadoe you didn't watch the grandparents cincinnati there you go the crimson chin so uh in 1960 tim dinsdale reignited interest because he actually got real footage this time and it was 15 minutes long um and it was footage of not only the monster but a boat

behind it so now there was a size reference ah so now you could see like okay well if the boat is this big and that thing is this big we can guess and um basically he was able to compare the sizes and determine that the loch ness monster is probably 12 to 16 feet long three feet high and six feet wide and travels 12 miles an hour it's very slow though very slow just likes to take a it's a hmm a saunter is what he likes to do in the water. Just kind of. Saunter. Like a moseying.

Doddle around. Doddle, yeah. So this footage, actually, he was able to sell it and make so much money that he got to retire and just become the first ever monster hunter. What? So he, Tim Dinsdale is on it. So now he's the first ever monster hunter and he just dedicated the rest of his time trying to figure out who or where Nessie was.

Wow. Because of this, because of the footage that Tim Dinsdale got, the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau was able to be built and they set up camp on the edge of the lake. So they're called the LNIB, the Investigation Bureau was able to be built and they set up camp on the edge of the lake. So they're called the LNIB, the Investigation Bureau. And they were able to, so they set up camp and they put people like basically on 24 hour watch of the lake.

And they gave whatever footage they could find to the Royal Air Force. to the Royal Air Force and they the Royal Air Force said that the object could be seven feet long at the surface and uh could be going at around five miles an hour so kind of half the amount that Tim Dinsdale suggested but still close enough where they're like okay so this thing is big and it moves really slowly extra dawdling just dilly-dallying yeah um so with all that information the uh investigation bureau felt like they at least had enough corroborated uh information between the royal air force and all this footage they felt like the loch ness monster probably existed at that point because so many people high up were taking it seriously and so they decided that the next thing was obviously to go hunting for this thing for a tissue sample so uh-huh now they're trying to kill it even though the whole

point was for it to be protected if it got threatened how human of them how human um so they ended up trying many expeditions all they ever got were really poor quality photos or you know bare minimum evidence um so nothing really came from that. But in 1965, nine different people all at once came forward and said that they were all at different angles, all in different spaces around the lake. And they all saw Nessie at the same time and watched Nessie swimming around for an hour. Ooh, an hour? Oh, my goodness.

So it was just hanging out for at least an hour and nine different people from nine different areas all saw it from different angles so one of those people his name was ian cameron and he was actually a skeptic before that day now he swears by it and says that nessie's real he was also a former. And so he knew that in court, if you had nine witnesses, that was enough for substantial evidence. So he was like, you know, by law, this thing exists. He's like, I have no choice but to believe it, I guess. Yeah, exactly. So a few years later, a submarine called Pisces led the first real exploration. Before that, the Investigation had um done

like solo explorations or like had people kind of go out into the water and see what they find but this is the first time a submarine is getting involved and uh they the u.s actually sent cryptozoologists over to scotland to help with the investigation so um and one of the cryptozoologists from the u.s his name was roy mccall and he thought that originally the animal is probably syrenian which is actually a basically the aquatic version of an elephant what which i did not know even existed. That's fun. But so that's his best, his best guess. He's like, we're dealing with a Cerinean. So that's all I know. I should have done a deep dive on that or tried to find a picture or something.

But that's his best guess. It would make sense because it looks kind of like a little elephant nose sticking out. And it's underwater. Like a trunk? Yeah. An elephant nose. What is the wrong thing? I was just going gonna let that one go

whatever um but so that's america's best guess as of the 60s so this is just weird in 1973 a scottish poet named edwin morgan wrote a poem called the loch ness monster song i'm only mentioning it because everyone should go Google it and try to listen to this thing because it's the weirdest thing I've ever heard in my life. It's, it's, uh, uh,

fuck, what's the word? It starts experimental. Apparently it's an experimental poem. Oh dear. And experimental indeed, because he wrote it. There's no English translation.

There's no human translation he wrote he wrote a poem in the language of the loch ness monster stop it so literally the lyrics are like stop does he know what it means or is he just like nope it's a mystery you know what he he could say yes and i'd have to believe him but i don't know it's literally just wrote a bunch of letters down and was like oh the loch ness monster song that's wild and if you go look up loch ness monster song there are people who like literally try to recite it and so you can listen to someone saying it but it's literally someone just going and that's beautiful i love

your rendition thank you i'm actually bilingual so um finally english is not your first language finally actually nessie is my first language so uh this is just like a fun fact two years later after that poem came out uh a couple people decided that the monster must be male i don't know what made them decide that must be and in heteronormative fashion they decided that the monster must be male. I don't know what made them decide that. It must be. And in heteronormative fashion, they decided that they would try to bait the monster out by creating a fake female monster. Stop it.

And so they built a 309-foot-long paper mache, quote, lady monster with falsies. They put falsies on it. They put full makeup makeup i like how they think that this is the shit that's gonna attract fish like they put like an anvil on top of it it sounds like a fucking cartoon it just can you imagine if you're trying to like uh like get like an otter to mate and you're like oh let's let's put on a let's do a fake otter and put a full face of makeup. That'll be what gets them. Some contouring.

If the female otter doesn't have eyeshadow on, it's a no-go. Oh, my God. She has to try a little bit. So they put falsies on this thing. They put full makeup. And they made a mating call, which, again, both of you to assume you know what that mating call sounds like because no one even knows that this thing exists no one's heard it like

glurglurglurg or whatever the hell you were just saying i think okay you know what never mind people have heard the loctus monster oh my god but then i found out that their pre-recorded mating call that they attached this thing was of a walrus who was male so like oh well okay which like if you're really trying to go the heteronormative route where like he's only going to be a trip he's only going to be attracted to a woman a woman uh monster who is in falsies and also has the voice of a male walrus wow that's my new orientation actually changed my mind oh my god i don't know how to even like get it out it's just so bananas oh my god um and then surprise like loch ness monster like obviously sensed their ways and was like i'm not about that and never showed i don't blame you buddy but they're in their defense they said oh the loch ness monster

never showed because when we put the paper mache monster in the water it got damaged so that's why he wasn't attracted to it why he loved the walrus sounds though he loved he saw the falsies from a mile away but when she when he saw the the paper mache melting off that was when he turned around when the falsies and their face melted off yeah it wasn't very attractive i bet um that same year by the way it was proposed that the loch ness monster species would actually have its own like scientific name um which would be Nessaterus Roboterix. Oh, goodness. With its common official name being Nessie or the Loch Ness Monster. The generic name, Nessaterus, is a combination of the lake Ness and the Greek word terris meaning marvel or wonder. Oh.

So the wonder or the marvel of the lake and then that's nice the specific name is rhomboterics it combines the greek word ramos which means a diamond or lozenge shape and the greek word terryx meaning a fin or a wing so when you combine all of that together um what is it uh nesseteris roboterix it actually means the the lock nest marvelous lozenge captain marvelous lozenge um it's uh the wonder of ness with a diamond fin because that was the only okay that's much prettier than mine yeah the only proof they ever saw in that fake picture but that's what they based their scientific name off of oh sure okay great um it was later realized though that nesseteris roboterix is actually an

anagram for monster hoax by stop it but it's so i don't know who this fucking person is but they like they put their name in it so it's an anagram monster hoax by sir peter s and so one of two things could have happened sir peter s is real and someone figured this out or like they're reaching and like they just had the leftover letters they're like sir peter s so i don't know like if it's if they found out that this was a legitimate anagram made by someone or if they're really trying to like just make the letters fit into a sentence so that's a good point it's just it's just a fun theory fact conspiracy kind of thing of like oh well i love that though yeah well so now we're in the 70s almost in the the 80s. In 1979, remember I told you that the most famous picture was debunked by two zoologists. Yes, Archibald or something.

Alistair, close though. Close. So one was Alistair and one was David. So Alistair in 1979, even though he was the skeptic who like figured out it was a hoax, he had his own experience with nessie just like total plot twist what he was just like oh that's not real and that was in 1934 the that picture came out and in 1979 so like almost 50 years later he was like oh my god there i actually have a nessie experience now so uh apparently this is a quote from Alistair.

I have had a very convincing sighting of what I believe was a large unknown animal in the lock. I saw what was obviously a very large, powerful creature turn around just under the surface, and then a large dark hump came out of the water rolling forward, very much like a whale. It was there for several seconds. Neither my wife nor i saw it actually submerged because we had turned around to look for our camera but when we turned around again the water was totally flat oh that must be so frustrating like you got the camera can you imagine if you're the one that debunked the famous picture and you were only seconds from taking the

actual official picture actual photo to replace it man so i feel like if you're by that like you have to have your camera like just fucking on every ready to go if i knew that there's a like an apparition that so many people see all the time in one park every time i go near that park the camera is filming like i have a gopro everything gopro yes exactly who knows what i'm gonna see like why would i why would i risk not taking the pictures, you know? Exactly. Why didn't he put on a GoPro in 1979? That's what I want to know.

He should have. He knew better. He just wants the credit now. I see. So a couple years later, the Loch Ness Project, which is a thing now, they also added sonar underwater radar for their investigations. And so now people in Loch Ness are sending out over 150 experts underwater for like 1500 hours to get as much information as they can to map out the entire lake to try to figure out where the hell this thing lives. Oh, my God.

With sonar. Holy shit. sonar holy yeah and they had they actually um found over 40 promising large objects of what it could have been but there's no official confirmation just finding large objects they're like well that's a big fucking thing that's a big fucking thing five years later quote operation deep scan was green lit which was led by the loch ness project and it was a fleet of boats that were equipped with sonar and moved through the ocean for two days and this is when they really like really crunched out the numbers and mapped out the whole floor of the lake uh-huh um and on the first day they actually found two really large unidentifiable objects um but then the second day when they went out they were

completely gone so they were like those things had to be those things moved around where are they five miles per hour but they got somewhere they got somewhere they did a dilly-dally all the way to across the lake well unfortunately they never found anything concrete. But between that time, 1982 and 1992, there were so many unofficial sightings and so many pictures that were taken and so many reports that that was when the Loch Ness Monster officially became a cryptid. Because there was just so, I mean, there were literally like sonar projects coming out. And like, you know, like it's the real deal the secretary of state had to make a statement a few years ago and somehow that wasn't enough for it to really land as a cryptid but now that we're like bringing science into it and really trying to discover this that's when it officially became this uh this big trend you said like in the 90s the 82 to 92 okay 80s yeah um in 1992 actually uh my favorite year um then the real uh then the

real cryptid appeared it was born um there was uh uh the daily mail printed a potential new picture um that was taken by a reader and it was this uh one of the daily mail readers and it was a really long eel with a weird looking head protruding out of the lake and nothing really came out of it but i just wanted to tell you about it because i want to read the headline to you oh yes please do the headline daily mail headline the daily mail headline was ness it was like weirdly roasting nessie for no reason while they do that nessie rears her ugly head again but don't forget it is the silly season i don't know what that means oh my god someone translate please the best the best guess is uh

the edinburgh uh fringe festival was happening at that time that has comedy. I don't really know. It's the best guess. It's a lot of improv happening. Maybe somebody was just feeling silly. I don't know. I don't know. That's very nice to call Nessie ugly, but, you know. Wow, she's still ugly, but then again, it's silly season.

So maybe she's, like, just, like, being silly. Like, without her falsies. She just took her falsies off. Yeah. Wait, so is it a girl now or is it a boy? I always thought Nessie was a a girl but a lot of people i feel like it's because the name is nessie like it sounds you know yeah it sounds more feminine but then again i guess maybe we're all we're all definitely misgendering uh the monster because we don't have a definite uh understanding of the gender there

but we could call it a sand monster again like you call beach wait a minute listeners it fits except it's a lake monster so it's kind of like the inverse they are probably mortal enemies oh well that would make sense yes like a yin and yang thing like one has the earth one has the water they just need like they just need the fire monster and the air monster and then you've got basically captain planet um i'm now i'm lost okay okay so uh in 2019 uh which is one of the most recent developments is that professor neil gamel led a project to catalog all living species in loch ness using dna analysis and uh, out of 500 million DNA sequences that they looked through in the water of 250 samples, none of them were DNA matches for dinosaur, Jurassic.

Oh, no. Jurassic reptile, catfish, or sturgeon. What about salmon? We don't know about salmon. My first theory is back. Okay, I can land back on my first theory. That's fine. I'll do that.

But Gamal did find significant amounts of eel DNA. So his best guess is that is eel. Ugly eel, like the Daily Mail said. But it's silly season. That's true. Silly me. Don't mind me. So far, there have been over 1400 sightings.

There have been eyewitnesses that have said that scientists really need to take this more seriously. Tim Dinsdale, the OG monster hunter. He has since since when he got that footage of the monster himself, he has interviewed over a hundred eyewitnesses and says that about 43% of people say that the Loch Ness monster, 43% of the people who have seen the monster say that it had a horse-like head with a long neck and humps on its back. And one of the eyewitnesses said, quote,

it was like looking at the top half of a tire inner tube. You could just see the water running right off of its back. Cool. Today, there are around 10 to 20 Loch Ness monster sightings every year. And one theory, which I love and would explain a lot too, is like explaining, assuming that the Loch Ness monster is real, it would explain why you don't see the monster all the time. One of the theories is that there's actually a tunnel that leads out to other lakes,

and so Nessie comes and goes as they please. Ooh! Or that there's more than one Nessie, and it's like an actual whole species that sometimes surfaces, but then goes into a tunnel and goes into other species. I love that. I love it, too. And it would make more sense if there were more than one.

That's how they're still breeding and still seen. Yes, yes, yes. Great-grandfather Nessie. Great-grand yes great grandfather nessie great great grandpapa nessie yes um believers say that nessie should be part of the conservation of wild creatures and wild plants act in 1975 um this act protects any animals whose survival is threatened but only if the animal has a scientific and common name which is why they really fought for a scientific and common name so it could be registered um the nowadays most scientists don't pay really any mind to nessie that all research has been wildly underfunded um any videos that have come out claiming to be evidence have been debunked for being too ambiguous or inconclusive

and realistically nessie doesn't actually exist but is in fact one of one or many of the known species that's just too far away enough for your eyes to understand um google says that there's like around 200 000 searches per month for nessie still so people are still looking it up i was probably one of those two probably 50 of those 200 000 yeah there was a a big tick in it because i researched it um and it apparently nessie still brings a lot of tourists to scotland so it's really good for their economy um and there is also uh uh the air the loch ness area now hosts nessie uh boat trips they also do a lochess exhibit that shows the history of the Loch Ness monster through, like, geology and folklore and research. And the exhibit also runs cruises on the boats that were used for Operation Deep Scan.

So you can be on the same boats that actually were researching for Nessie. And the area has something called nessie land which is it has life-size models of nessie a dinosaur themed cave and a nessie themed adventure playground and then uh nessie now or nessie at one point also had a macy's thanksgiving parade float from 1978 to 1981 which was sponsored by Bush Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, which is where I used to go every weekend in college. And then another last fun fact is that on Loch Ness, there's a house called the Bowlskin House, which was home to the famous occultist Alistair Crowley.

So he lived on loch ness um and jimmy page from led zeppelin who was a big fan of alistair crowley ended up buying the house later and it recently got destroyed in an unexplained fire oh no so that's well that's a weird twist yeah yeah something magical about it strange the last thing i'm going to say and my favorite thing i'm going to say is that in 2019 pre-covid uh you know how there was a storm area 51 and the catchphrase was they can't stop all of us right uh so apparently there was another event that was uh had at least 60 000 people saying that they were going to either come or they were interested in the event called Storm Block Ness. And the quote was, she can't hide from all of us.

Oh, my God. She's like, please, I don't have my makeup on, remember? I need my falsies. Wait a minute. And in the info, it was like, all right, everyone, time to find that big boy. Oh, my God. i don't know apparently uh 60 000 a user said they might come and it was meant for exactly 24 hours after the storm on area 51 oh goodness so they're just like it was gonna be a busy weekend it was gonna be a busy weekend

anyway uh i don't know if that happened probably not i feel like i would have seen it when i was looking this up but that is uh the loch ness monster yay wow i can't believe so i realized why i thought you had covered it it's because ck covered it in one of his first episodes on merson monsters which i meant to shout out earlier anyway when we were talking about him yes everyone go listen to that podcast it's a great it's a great show and um it was i just checked the second episode um and i think we get a shout out in that one or i think so or maybe he's such a lovely man i know he really is um but anyway so yay thank you m that was fun all righty so folks i have something for you today what is it i gotta know tell me tell me you have been watching on the youtube i

just lowered my ring light because i was being blinded um so that's why i suddenly look different okay it's a darker for a darker tone yes we've just brought down the mood okay this is the story of joshua maddox oh i don't know this at all okay it was one of those where the name sounded really familiar and i was like oh i probably know it and then i looked it up and went nope no clue so i am very interested to tell you this it's a wild story okay is it a is it a popular story or is it like have we just missed it or is this like kind of under the radar no i think i've gotten quite a few requests for it but i just never looked it up i don't think it's very famous or anything. I think it's just one of those names that I remember Joshua Maddox and it stuck with me, but I didn't know the details until now. And I'm going to tell them to you. Okay. August 6th, 2015 in Woodland Park, Colorado,

a CEO of a local construction company named Chuck Murphy headed over to a cabin that the company had purchased on Meadow lark lane uh they had purchased this cabin in the 50s but now they were demolishing it to put in uh like a new development of houses basically okay so they went to this cabin um and according to denver post uh this is what happened an earth mover peeled back a steel fireplace insert within the chimney to their shock they found a mummified body in the chimney oh my gosh can you imagine no they so in uh so at my school right when i so i was a freshman and across the street there was these apartments, like these apartment buildings that our school bought. And we were turning them into Greek housing and we were turning them into dorms.

And so this whole apartment complex, they were tearing down different parts of it to make parking space. And I remember knowing someone who was like working security when they were demolishing it and i don't know if it's true or not but they certainly spread the rumor around that there was a story of someone being found in a wall in a wall in one of the apartments yeah oh so i don't know if it's real but that always stuck with me and i was like i kind of want to tell people that because it's like a wild story but also like maybe I'm just like spreading misinformation you should google it and check maybe there's like old news reports or something maybe I all I know is I that was like the story when I got to school that year where they were like oh they found dead people in the walls and I was like oh my god and then I

ended up living literally on that property junior year and I was like it's haunted anyway um yes so they peeled back a steel fireplace insert and in the chimney they found a mummified body uh the body was in a fetal position and it was upside down so the legs were above the head which is kind of a scary grotesque thought so i'm thinking like it was thrown down the chimney instead of shoved up the chimney um potentially i don't know i just i feel like even if it's a dead body it would still go head first for some reason i don't know why it being upside down is so wild to me yeah no it's it's a very weird part of the story uh you are correct so officials were soon able to identify the body uh they used a combination of dental records uh gender analysis

um whatever that is uh forensics and the fact that the body was missing the tip of the right index finger um and they found out that seven years after he disappeared it was the body of 18 year old joshua maddox oh no okay i know it's just fucking sad um so joshua vernon maddox he was born in woodland park colorado uh on march 9th 1990 um his parents divorced when he was young so he grew up with his father mike and his two sisters kate and ruth and um very cliche. He was well liked. He was easygoing, like lit up a room, you know, the deal was just like a good kid. So I listened to a podcast called the dark histories podcast that covered the story, did a really good job of it. And they described him as something of a creative mind and a free spirit. And later, somebody calls him kind of a hippie,

like one of his classmates. So he's got long long hair he's just kind of like a free spirit played instruments that kind of thing gotcha um okay so he uh his childhood was pretty happy although he had this bicycle accident where he lost the tip of his right index finger when he was a kid and that's how they kind of as part of the way they identified the body gotcha um so apparently josh uh was also kind of a class clown he would interrupt class president debates um at at his high school and declare himself a candidate uh he also like snuck into the school choir in a robe to sing you know just very like classic high school type pranks. Yeah. So when he was 16, unfortunately, things got pretty dark for him. On June 1st, 2006, Joshua's 18-year-old brother, Zachary, died by suicide after a battle with depression the week of his high school graduation.

And it was just obviously very awful for the whole family. And Joshua really looked up to his brother they were only two years apart in age so it's just a really horrible time for him right um so let's see according to daily mail speaking of oh it's silly season nessie reared her ugly head again uh no i'm just kidding um okay so according to daily mail joshua's father mike said that um josh had experienced two difficult years uh between 2006 and 2008 due to the suicide of his older brother zachary and on may 8 2008 which was two months after his own uh 18th birthday josh Joshua left his home to go for a walk.

Now, this is like not a weird thing. He was one of those people that just went on walks regularly. I go on walks because I have to because I have a dog. Otherwise, I would literally never leave my house. But I guess some people walk for fun. Allison walks for fun. I don't understand it. Oh, dear. No, no. She told me today. She was like, I'm going to go on a walk. Do you want walks for fun. I don't understand it. Oh, dear.

No, no. She told me today. She was like, I'm going to go on a walk. Do you want to come? And I was like, no. No, I do not. I need like a destination, preferably with food at it. I'm like, what's the point?

I'm like, are we walking to Starbucks? Like, what's going on here? I'm not sure. I'll get some steps in and then drink a Frappuccino. That's fine. But otherwise, I'm not interested. Yeah. So apparently apparently he went on walks pretty regularly, which I will say, to be clear, I wish I were a person who liked to go on walks for fun, but just not really. RJ likes to wake up at 4 a.m. for fun. That's true. Some people have issues, yeah.

Yes, thank you. I wasn't going to say it. Mostly me, but also sometimes RJ. yes thank you i was mostly me but also sometimes rj so he left home to go for a walk he was uh nearly after his 18th birthday um so that was normal so the family was not concerned they were concerned however when joshua did not come home that night he also did not come home the following day and so that's obviously when they started to get really worried until five days later on may 13th when josh's father mike reported his son missing to police um i know five days seems like a long time but i feel like josh was the kind of kid that would just kind of go like hang out with people maybe go to a friend's house you know

what i mean like a wanderlust kind of thing. Yeah. He just kept walking, I guess, you know? Never stopped. He saw the Starbucks and kept going. Oh, my God. Oh, the oasis. Yes.

So his father reported him missing in May of 2008. And over the next couple months, they did multiple searches around Woodland Park and the surrounding pike national forest area didn't find anything the denver post said quote mike maddox searched homeless shelters in colorado springs scoured camp campgrounds in the pike national forest and scanned strangers faces on the street so his dad was like desperately looking for him yeah um the family couldn't figure it out they thought like maybe since he had just turned 18 he had just decided to like start a new life somewhere else um and i you know i think the fact that the family thought that was a possibility means like maybe that was just in his character and you know he'd had a really hard time those last two years maybe he just wanted to go live a new life yeah yeah

exactly now that he's 18 um so but they did say like the weird thing is that he seemed like really happy and calm and content and untroubled is the word they used uh leading up to his disappearance so it was like still a little bit odd um and scary sure um but according to a blog called better with crime which i love the name of i love that that. Okay. I know. I thought it was pretty clever. Pike National Forest is a 1.1 million acre woodland. A million acre woods. Okay. Anyway. Wait a minute. That's almost like Winnie the Pooh, but a thousand times bigger. But a little bigger. Yeah. So searching the entirety of the forest was like an impossible task. And the searches eventually stopped because they just couldn't find anything so there was however a cabin that was a quarter mile from the maddox's family home that was and i i looked that up and i wrote the point something kilometers is this the same cabin

that we end up finding him in yes okay got it yes sorry i don't i didn't mean to jump no no it is the it is the mystery cabin so the cabin was only a quarter mile from the maddox's family house and that cabin had never been searched because it just was someone else's property got it um so the cabin was previously known as the thunderhead ranch and in the past it had been an infamous drinking and dining establishment owned by a guy named big bert bergstrom you know your food and your drinks are going to be great when someone goes by like an adjective it's like yeah big bert is so good big bert bergstrom um and it was also uh infamous according to daily mail who loves these rumors uh infamous for illegal

gambling and wild parties they had can-can girls too big bert doesn't mess around no no big bert's here for the entertainment value um according to dark histories uh big bert bergstrom had come to america from sweden in 1912 so you have to imagine he also had a cool accent on top of his cool name oh hell yeah with some can-can girls by his side this guy is just larger than life he's just hanging out in the woods and like has a whole little drag show going on over here or something in the million acre i'm so stupid i was like oh it's the same as winnie the pooh like not even not even the numbers close i think also earlier i said it's like 10 000 times it's like 10 or it's like a thousand times bigger it's like 10 000 times bigger right it's a lot bigger i'm not

gonna pretend like i know the math okay um you can do that part uh so um let's see he had created this after the end of prohibition um but he also at the on the side used the ranch as an illegal gambling den and was rumored to offer sex workers as well. He was arrested by the FBI, but the jury promptly found him not guilty. One of the theories being that they were, they didn't want to see his establishment go, which- No, I was going to say, I was like, well, he probably, like, they're probably like regular guests of his. I wasn't going to go well for the FBI, I guess.

Right, right. exactly i wasn't gonna go well for the fbi i guess right right according to a um biography about former colorado governor daniel thornton and i just want to say the name of it because it's just so wild it was called stetson pipe and boots colorado's cattleman governor he even sent his attorney general there to take quote take whatever action was required to stamp out gambling so big bird was making like waves in this tiny town with his big cabin. He sounds like he's a big fish in the woods. He's a big Bert in this small town. A big Bert in the hundred acre wood or whatever.

In the million acre woods. Big Bert in the million acre woods. That's my children's book. It's very bad. It's all about, it's all about sex work and gambling and the prohibition, but don't worry about it. Maybe don't read it uh so this cabin anyway the point is this cabin uh which used to be this crazy like gambling den was only a quarter mile from uh josh's house so that i did write down

0.4 kilometers if anyone is interested in that information so very close um and it hadn't been searched so uh at the top of the story i mentioned chuck murphy who's the ceo of this construction company and he was the one who was demolishing this place to put in um new house like a development housing development got it and that's when they found a body so his brother had actually lived in the cabin and had moved out in 2005 so that's why he like had the property that's why he owned the property um and since his brother had moved out in 05 uh the cabin was basically just like a decaying storage facility that chuck owned but didn't do anything with so

it was like abandoned essentially like a random shed with that has like stuff that they just don't ever you just ignore it exactly okay yeah you just ignore it and uh he did certainly and uh he rarely visited it um so nobody ever searched that spot so uh during one of his rare visits over the next 10 years he checked on the vacant property occasionally um the daily mail reported that he said the place was damp it smelled like hell there was raccoon poop all over the place oh so gives you a good description i guess for your nose yeah for my nose only yes for only and maybe your anxiety if you're me okay oh wait a minute actually yeah my stress smells it also oh my god okay um so fast forward to 2015 now it's been seven years since joshua's disappearance there still

has not been a sign of him his family's just hoping at this point that he's like has a family somewhere else and is living on his life um his father stayed this is pretty sad his father stayed in the family home in woodland park even though he really wanted to move because he just kept telling himself like if he returns this is where he knows to go to go to see us like this is where if josh ever comes home this is where he's going to be so even though he wanted to move he never left the family house i know it's really sad so um you know it's also horrifying to think too of like all those years and he was just a quarter mile away that's yeah i didn't even think about that yeah the whole time he was like basically in your backyard yeah and you're like hoping he has like a whole life

elsewhere that's just so sad also was it um so hold on i confused myself so his his family owns the shed or the cabin no that sorry chuck murphy is a ceo of a construction company who's building like a development and he owns the shed oh okay but it's only a quarter mile from the maddox from where josh lived so it's just uh it's just a neighboring property basically that nobody ever searched because it was owned by this chuck fellow who never showed up like he's just it's wild like imagine if like someone you love went missing and it's just like in the weird house down the street like yeah you pass it like you probably pass it on your walks that everybody seems to love so much on the way to starbucks like they're just on the way to starbucks oh my gosh yeah exactly it's just

pretty horrific if i go missing check all the starbucks first because maybe i went on a walk yeah i'm not gonna look in a chimney i'm gonna look in a starbucks maybe i went on an actual maybe i want to drive down the block because i didn't even want to walk that truly you're probably walking through the drive-through of the starbucks oh boy okay so josh's father is still in the house because he's like if he comes home this is where he's gonna be so chuck murphy our local contractor is now the ceo's family company murphy constructors and he is getting ready in 2015 to demolish his cabin to make room for new development. And this is when they find the body in the chimney. So Chuck was like, clearly had no idea who it was or how long the body had been there.

And he apparently said, according to the Gazette, quote, the knees of the body were above its head. God, the legs devoid of flesh were dislodged from the body a hand was raised to its face the other hand was unseen oh it's just so creepy um yeah it's just like a gruesome picture um the coroner al his name is al born stated that the hard tissue showed no signs of any trauma so there were no broken bones there were no knife marks or bullet holes um and the tissue itself showed no sign of drug use of like drugs which is fascinating that you can still see that so many years later i was thinking i would think like by seven years it's like oh well there's

i can't tell you anything like what's left Like, what's left, right? Yeah. Exactly. Apparently, they can, I guess if they have dinosaur DNA, like, they can probably do anything. Apparently, yeah. According to your story, so. They can do everything except find Nessa, you damn. Well, right, exactly. So, the coroner went on to confirm to Huffington Post, quote, it was not an instant death. How they died is only a matter of speculation, but we know they did not starve to death because that takes many weeks. But no matter what, it was probably painful and awful.

Yes. So he said he believed it wasn't like a sudden death. Like it was, you know, not like a sudden traumatic death. It was like a longer drawn out process, which is just awful. And now something even stranger. Another even stranger part of this story that nobody can explain is that they found a pile of clothes folded neatly at the opening of the fireplace. And they were Joshua's clothes. What?

And they had been folded and placed in front of the fireplace. Ew. Yeah, ew. It's such a creepy story um all the clothes he had been wearing that day were in the pile except for a light thermal shirt which he the body still had on it so he was had been basically naked except for his light thermal shirt and then all his other clothes were like folded neatly in front of the fireplace just so creepy yeah do we do we ever get an explanation for that unfortunately no oh my god i wish um i wish but no it's not even because my thought is like oh if it were hypothermia like i know a lot of people who die from hypothermia are found naked because they

actually think they're like on fire because they're so hot that's it's so hot right that's like you wouldn't but then his like clothes would be scattered everywhere not folded you wouldn't like fold weird okay whatever i mean maybe you would list dear listener i wouldn't i don't in fact even without type a enough no no even without hypothermia i can't manage to fold my own clothes i was gonna say i have three baskets of laundry that are not in my closet right now. They're still in the hamper. Oh, gosh. Yeah, me too.

How fun. Mine are still in the dryer, so those are going to live there. I at least pulled them out. Oh, boy. Okay. So it's just very weird, this pile of clothing, obviously. Adds to the mystery. His family, obviously, was devastated. very weird this pile of clothing obviously adds to the mystery um his family obviously was

devastated um joshua's sister kate said on um the local town's website quote sometimes in life our stories don't have happy endings i'm sorry to say this is one of those stories since josh was 18 it has been reasonable to assume he may have decided to leave town to start a new life as one of his two older sisters i've always chosen to believe that this was the case i've expected josh to return home to my father's house at any time with a wife and small children so they can meet their grandparents and two aunts josh has always been known for his musical and literary talent so maybe we would find him playing music with a band on tour or catch him writing successful novels under a pen name so he could keep his preferred lifestyle of solitude in the woods so that was like what they had hoped for basically and obviously this brought that to a crashing halt yeah um his it's just so sad to be waiting for him to walk through the door

every day i mean imagine like what seven years of like just any second now any second now yeah and the dad like couldn't even move because he was like, this is, I have to stay here and wait, which is just awful. His sister Ruth also commented, this is certainly not the outcome that the Maddox family and my brother Josh's many friends and loved ones were hoping for. We are, however, eternally grateful for the opportunity to finally provide Josh with the

proper memorial service he deserves and to lay him to rest. So at the very least they got answers, not the answers they wanted obviously but you know they got an answer to the mystery in that regard but also not quite yet about how this happened um so at the time uh the coroner al al born and the contractor chuck Murphy, had conflicting theories as to how Josh's body ended up mummified in a chimney seven years after he had disappeared. Yeah. Which I love that, like, Chuck's theory is up with the coroner's theory. Like, the coroner and this guy, Chuck, have differing theories. I'm like, I guess Chuck can have his own theory.

It's his cabin. I guess you can have a million theories. I feel like I would trust the professional, but okay. Yeah. I'm like i'm like i mean i have theories that doesn't they don't mean anything to anybody but uh yeah so chuck i mean i guess he knows construction probably and knows more about fireplaces than i ever will so maybe he you know he's probably more qualified to have theories than i am but basically these were their conflicting theories so the coroner believed that josh who was six feet tall and 150 pounds had tried to climb down the chimney um and if he got stuck in there he would have been too far away for anyone to hear his cries for help right which

sounds alarmingly similar to the story that story we covered with the the gym mat yeah um it's just like yeah oh god what's his full name kendrick what the fuck see now i'm like i already i thought you covered nessie and now i'm forgetting my i literally i'm i'm so i keep wanting to say kendrick lamar and i know that's i know that's the problem kendrick didn't start't it start with a J? Kendrick Johnson? Kendrick. Is it kind of? Hang on. Oh, fuck.

Kendrick. I think it is. Yes, it is Kendrick Johnson. Is it? Oh, Kendrick Johnson. Okay. Kendrick Johnson. Just like Kendrick Johnson.

I'd like we like, but also like interesting because both of them were upside down. And yes, they both fell into something where they couldn't really scream for help or that's. Or it's like still. Yeah. Or it's still unclear like how they ended up upside down. But then. So then how would he have folded the clothes? Yes.

So. So these this is the coroner's theory. Basically, the hold up to that or like the counter to that is like why on earth A are the clothes folded and B like he wasn't on drugs. Why is he climbing into a chimney? And also like he was a class clown type, but like it's not like he had maybe he did have an audience. So like you think if you were doing something stupid, you'd be doing it with like a buddy or a friend and but then like if he was why didn't they call for help or get somebody yeah odd and also like what weird dinner party are you going to where your your your your party trick is that you're gonna climb through a chimney and then none of them are gonna help you okay but it's like it's like it when i forgot it i hate that we always do this but when michael scott gets himself in that straightjacket and he's like nobody helped me and they're like okay

we won't help you okay so maybe there was like a million gym helpers in the room and then they all just went home they were like fine good luck no yeah so that was the weird thing is like if does that mean there was someone with him but then like why wouldn't they have called for help yeah i feel like if you wanted to like if you were cold and wanted to break into a room, you just do, like, a window, right? Right. Well, and also the clothes were already in there. So, like, they'd already gotten in. Somebody had gotten in.

Maybe he left his clothes folded on the floor. He was in the middle of laundry. Then he got outside, locked himself out, and then went up the chimney to get back in? I don't know. He did laundry in this abandoned cabin. He did laundry without any water or soap and then also folded them on the floor. Wait. I don't know.

I just had a thought. What? What if he was like, had hypothermia or something, pulled all his clothes off, climbed up and was trying to break into this cabin or something, and then somebody later like spotted those clothes and like folded them up and put them inside thinking like, oh, dropped these i don't know that's maybe extreme i feel like if i saw random clothes in an abandoned house though i would think someone was squatting in there and like race out and like i mean like i mean outside like if he was outside and he was cold and he was trying to get in the chimney or something i don't know that doesn't make any sense never mind none of it makes sense

to be fair i'm no chuck so to be clear my theories are not up here with chuck in the corner i'm just down here oh so sad um always christine never the coroner is what i always say always christine never chuck never chuck it's the saddest truth of my life okay Okay. So anyway, let's get back to the actual story. So according to the Gazette, there was a wood burning insert in the chimney. And so if someone climbed in from above, they wouldn't have been able to crawl back up, which does make sense that he would have gotten stuck. But like, why?

Again, why would he have gotten stuck willingly in there? So Chuck, on the other hand, believed that someone had stuffed Joshua inside the chimney. And if that's the case, it probably would have taken two people to position him with his legs that way. Nevertheless, he would have had to enter the chimney head first. So it's still hard to kind of fathom. Maybe he got in with the wrong crowd and, like, owed someone money. And then, like, that was how they, like like got rid of him you know yeah but it's just weird like i guess the logistics of it are just weird because you'd have to it was definitely down so like he was it went in head

first but the way his legs were folded above him was just like how would that have maybe he went in and tried to get out and he got stuck i don't know how badly do you struggle to get out of the chimney though like if you like like i'm trying to think like if you like junie got stuck in the chimney and you went to like go fish him out like i don't think you'd accidentally end up upside down inside the chimney you know like unless like junie's really like have you like met me okay i think that's like nice try but that's i mean judy's also down the chimney all the time but that's a different story well but he would have been put in head first i don't know i don't know man okay well anyway um so essentially chuck's theory involves foul play

and the coroner says he thinks it was an accidental death. But so there are a couple signs of foul play that kind of aid in Chuck's theory here. So he had installed a steel rebar, like reinforcement steel, on the chimney to avoid problems with animals and debris. However, when the body was found, the cabin was a construction zone and the rebar was gone. So some people think, well, maybe it was already demolished and taken away but he seemed to think that like it had been removed by somebody else the like steel had been removed so okay that's another weird thought that goes to foul play and secondly a large wooden breakfast bar in the cabin's kitchen had been ripped from a wall and placed in front of the fireplace huh but like why it's just so weird huh okay and then obviously there's the problem of the folded clothing the fully like that that one i'm just never gonna figure out

like whether it's murder or not the folded clothes are just a strange mystery it's just super eerie too because it's like it is like to me folding clothes is like something you do slowly with patience so either yes so like you can't do that in the middle of like urgently frantically trying to escape from your death but then someone else couldn't have possibly like taken their leisurely time to do that without knowing he was in there and then didn't right Right. Like to take the care and time. Yeah. It adds so much creepiness to it either way. So initially the coroner ruled Josh's death accidental, but then he listened to Chuck

and he actually reopened the case only three days later. Chuck convinced Chuck is a very convincing man, I suppose. During the reexamination, however, they couldn't find enough evidence. So the case was then reclassified as an accidental death so uh better with crime points out that under the coroner's ruling josh would have broken into the cabin stripped himself down to just a shirt climbed the roof of the cabin unnoticed then would have lowered himself headfirst down the narrow shaft of the chimney leaving enough room to pull his legs up to his chest which again doesn't account for the missing steel and the moved breakfast bar so it's just a wild

thought like that's kind of the theory that the coroner went with because like what else are you gonna do and there's no way that he could have like fallen in and then just like kind of like somersaulted enough that he ended up upside down like there's well i don't think it's a very big chimney because he was just jammed in there you know what i mean like his body was like just pretty jammed in there figure this out they called it narrow so um yeah and they said he had had to have gone head first so it's not like he was walking and then like tripped into it like his whole body went in starting with the head which is much harder than maybe like i don't know i don't know i don't know let's solve this today okay i was

trying to think like what if people what if like there was like someone was trying to do like something like him and his buddies were trying to do something like goofy and like you know how like there's like parkour people and people who like doing kind of like dangerous stuff like what if they like thought it'd be funny like trying to like hold them upside down and then they slipped and then they got scared and ran off or something yeah but don't you think they would have been so specific i don't know i have no no no i know but don't you think they would have been like hey we should tell somebody or like he's screaming for help i don't know maybe they were friends who also hated him i have no i have no clue so anyway they were parkour they were only parkour friends not real friends okay

um so since the ruling some other theories have popped up online largely thanks to reddit surprise surprise um on october 29 2015 um reddit user flip lock 89 posted a thread called people who have known murder serial killers etc how did you react when you found out how did it affect your life afterwards and so this thread was actually only posted two months after josh's disappearance so this is way back in 2015 so then uh the day after that after the thread was posted a user named there's no way for me to get around this, Genta Mangina posted on the thread. And they said, I went to high school with this skinny, dorky hippie named Andy who played guitar in a band. I was never good friends with him or anything.

But a year or so after I graduated, one of my good friends friends josh started hanging out with him and then went missing last i heard andy was telling another friend yeah me and josh have been spending a lot of time together we're planning a trip to new mexico so this hippie named andy was actually a real person so andy was this guy named andrew richard newman who was indeed a friend of joshua's from school and has since become like the unofficial suspect crime suspect in josh's death um so other reddit users who claim to have also known andrew newman at school also found him strange another user s7ub55 said andy was fucking weird josh was just the type of person to hang out with anybody so when they started hanging out it was just j Josh being a friendly guy. Relationship was only kids that went to the same school until they started hanging out shortly before this happened.

I think Andy was into some heavy shit, though. Josh was just a stoner as far as I knew. But Andy liked to get way too messed up. I'm pretty sure he did meth. too messed up i'm pretty sure he did meth so if that is the theory that they became friends like yeah you're like maybe this kid was on meth and like that you know fueled the weird behavior and yeah the violence i don't know um but the coroner said that they didn't find any any drug stuff right i mean like the friend like if the friend did meth or something and then oh and like his own friend or something got it okay yeah but you're right i mean like the friend like if the friend did meth or something and then oh and like his own friend or something got it okay yeah but you're right i mean that makes sense that could

that could very easily be i feel like it at least meth explains some of the strange behavior yeah it's like folded close in the breakfast i don't i really hope you i really hope nobody was on meth but like right so like i can't figure out a different explanation so yeah it's it's it's odd uh so andrew just like josh was also an aspiring musician there's this website called unsigned that's like um a website for aspiring musicians and andrew's profile said the following he says he began his musical career in the bombers b, B-A-U-M-E-R-S, a local rock and roll group that achieved a large local following in their hometown, Woodland Park. In May 2006, the Bombers broke up and Andy began his solo career. You must become the change you wish to see in the world, said Gandhi.

Andy Newman is a lover and a fighter he enjoys the recreational use of drugs and despises the political state of affairs in modern day america he would like to see the war in iraq come to a close and he's also very unsatisfied with the amount of power the average street cop has over a civilian interesting point he is an anarchist at heart and abhors any form of control social or personal he's a big supporter of the arts and is a frequent practitioner of creative writing. This is the best part. He is also a sexually fierce man. Oh.

And enjoys the physical act of love immensely. Oh. He is a damn madman from the second he sets foot on stage to the moment he steps off. So, like, this is his weird musician bio which i don't know why warner brothers needs to know about like your sexual fierceness but you know whatever can we should put that on our on our podcast we're like not sexually fierce yeah oh boy so um obviously this guy's kind of weird you know in general but the weirdest thing is that the police never questioned him, never brought him in because they couldn't place him in town at the time of Josh's disappearance. But after high school, Andy's character gets even murkier.

So he actually did go to New Mexico in 2009, the year after Joshua disappeared. And he stayed with a friend of his named James Walitoito who was a caretaker of a man with disabilities and um apparently james had become friends with andy and told him like oh if you come to town you can stay with me and so i guess james left andy with the man he was taking care of yeah yeah and went to go literally just went to go take a shower. And when he returned, the man he took care of was dead on the couch from a stab wound. Oh my God. And Andrew was gone. Like Andy literally murdered this man.

Holy shit. Okay. Well, in my mind, he did it. Right. Exactly. He's like, basically becomes like Andy did it. Yeah. What does Chuck think?

Wait, let him chime in. Chuck. I know. I'm not good enough. Somebody bring Chuck on the show to explain this. So yikes. That's just terrible. So apparently months later, according to Medium,

Andrew was taken into custody after he was reported wandering around Texas County, knocking on doors and asking for water and food. After processing his fingerprints, it was revealed he was wanted for the stabbing in New Mexico and also a burglary in Washington, but he was never formally charged with either one um and he's currently apparently fighting extradition to new mexico uh also he apparently confessed to killing a woman and stuffing her in a barrel in taos new mexico what but police had already arrested someone and uh said like, this other person did it, not Andrew.

So either way, if he did it, obviously that's fucking horrible. If he confessed to doing it and didn't do it, that's also, like, a huge red flag. It's also, like, I mean, at the very least, either way, he's unstable. Either way. Yes. There's something wrong. Either he killed someone or he, like, wants people to think he did. Yeah. Or he wants people to think he did yeah or he wants

people to think he stuffed someone in a barrel exactly so it's like something's going on um so apparently he now has a criminal record in at least six states um and a lot of those were in florida uh and back on this reddit thread so we're back to mangina uh who says i missed him i know he even he has more fucking authority than i do right chuck man is on top of it yeah seriously so uh mangina says several of us went to the cops saying yo josh who went missing was last seen with andy who's a murderer maybe you should check it out despite a fair amount of pestering nothing really came of it and by nothing i mean the police didn't even return our calls and once accidentally canceled the bulletin on Josh because, quote, he's alive and well and living in the next town over. He wasn't.

In addition to Josh having last been seen with Andy immediately before his stabbing spree, people called in to report having heard rumors that Andy was bragging about having put Josh in a hole. Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay. Apparently, this guy's still running put Josh in a hole. Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay. Apparently, this guy's still running around in the ocean. Still? Yes. Even with all of this at least suspicious information?

No, the cops are not even trying to track this guy down? No, he hasn't been charged with any of it. Even the stabbing of the guy at the his friend's house cal surprise cal surprise another theory recently emerged also i love that this guy's like oh i don't like the power cops have and then i'm gonna like stab a bunch of people it's like okay that's not how this works okay right um another theory recently emerged from reddit uh a username train in the distance uh basically says maybe someone broke in with andy or other users to smoke meth freaked out like undressed and stuffed him in the chimney and maybe the

other persons freaked out and put the furniture in front of the fireplace and like he just contorted like struggling in the fireplace um so that was one theory which i think makes some sense that there were multiple people and they were doing meth. They didn't want to tell the police. They panicked, whatever. So the death, unfortunately, still remains officially categorized as accidental. And Andy Newman is still apparently believed to be living in the Florida area. So look out.

Wow. Joshua Maddox was only 18 when he passed away and was only discovered seven years after his disappearance. As his sister Ruth remembers him, quote, he was my best friend and he always inspired me to strive for greatness. Joshua would tell me that one should never say anything bad about anyone else ever. And I tried to be more like him. And that is a story of Joshua Maddox or the boy in the chimney, as he is sometimes called. Wow. Wow. Just horrific stuff that's infuriating that like this guy's just waltzing around right now yeah it's not good

for anyone really wow that's the the most frustrating part imagine being um josh's parents or like josh's family and like no one's like yeah there's a chance there's a large chance in my opinion and like this guy's just hanging out doing especially if he's like running around bragging about it and still they haven't even questioned him it's like hmm oh my gosh i can't know about this process that okay well anyway thank you for uh uh just another reason to to drink i guess that's what this whole podcast is about. You are so welcome. Sorry, we thought this would be a shorter episode, and it's literally been just as long as the last one, I think, or close.

I don't know. Oh, well. I just like hearing you talk, so I just allowed it. I was like, ah, keep going. Aw, thanks. The soothing, sultry sounds of Christine, but never Chuck. Never Chuck. Always Christine, never Chuck. Anyway, thanks, everybody, for listening. soothing sultry sounds of christine but never chuck so never chuck always christine never chuck

um anyway thanks everybody for listening um you can check out our website and that's what you drink.com we're on social media at atwwd podcast and we have merch at atwwd merch.com i think the last day for march sale is tomorrow because this comes out that's sunday cyber monday is tomorrow so last day of sale yay all right all right well and that's why we drink beautiful