Citation Needed - James Hogue

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

James Arthur Hogue (born October 22, 1959) is an American impostor who most famously entered Princeton University by posing as a self-taught orphan. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Hey! Tom, where's my guy? There's my guy. Hey buddy, I got you a present. I got you a present. Hey guys. Hey. Cecil.

Hey buddy. Hey, hold on a second. Let me, I got you guys some gifts. Let me get them out of the bag. No way! This is crazy. I love it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

We all got each other gifts for no reason this week? Like no reason. Yeah. I think we did. I just, you know, each other gifts for no reason this week, like no reason. Yeah, I think we did. I just, you know, I just want to say I'm much I appreciate you guys, you know, I mean, there's just nothing. It just, it's just you guys, you know, is this about this week's episode? What? What? No, no, no, no, no.

This week's subject, James Hogue, who was famously exposed as a fraud who didn't belong in the schools he was in, maybe got in all of us sort of feeling a little underqualified, you know? Oh, yeah, maybe. I guess so. Yeah. Look, guys, here, here, James has a fascinating story and yeah, maybe it makes us reflect a bit on how lucky we've been, but we're not frauds. We don't need to be worried about that. We don't belong. We all deserve to be here. Yeah, okay. Maybe it makes us reflect a bit on how lucky we've been, but we're not frauds.

We don't need to be worried about that. We don't belong, we all deserve to be here. Yeah, okay. That's just, I just love you guys so much. I love you too, I love you here. What's up, knuckle fuckers? That's right, heart and soul of the podcast is here. You're welcome.

I'm gonna take a shit, and then let's capture some more of my genius on the digital record for eternity, huh? Try to keep up this week, okay? Look at it, you bitch tits. Huh? Well, I'm most all of us, right? Yeah. Yeah, that tracks.

You calls me bitch tits. I got some great mustard jokes this week. No, you don't. The joke's about mustard. You don't. You're the worst. Hello and welcome. The citation needed. Podcast where we choose a subject,

we read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Is this the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Heath and I'll be walking the show about the sport of running. And I'm joined by three guys who are not making the track team without lots of help from William H. May Cian, Antbeck Becky and Photoshop.

You lie? Cecil and Tom. Okay, jokes on you, Heath. I was on the track team in middle school of 1986 for one season, field, you were field one season. I watched a track meet once, so yeah, I get it. I don't know. And I didn't understand anything about that intro. I'm Tom

Delos. Operation or a movie to get their kids. Mystery man. Read a book. Lori Loughlin. She's in jail. She's been there. Tom, let's get into it. I guess what person-placed thing concept phenomenon or event? Are we gonna be talking about today? Today, I'm gonna tell you guys the story of James Hogue. Fantastic, and are you ready to do the podcast? I am. And unlike our hero in this story, I'm not lying when I say that I am.

Excellent. So, how did you pick James Hogue as the topic? All right, well, if there's any myth as powerfully American as that of the self-made man, I don't know what it could possibly be. We love this idea. We celebrate it. We fetishize it. We legislate based on it.

And in many important ways, we demand it. Our national heroes may have different stories, but most of them share one common thread that the success of any great man or woman is owed not to their circumstances, but to their self-invented. Liars. No, that's not what they ever do. Whatever.

Don't get lucky. This idea though, pervades nearly every aspect of American media and culture. And for James Hogue, this very American idea of the birth of the self from nothing was seized upon time. And again, this is a story of a thief at a con man, to be sure, but it's impossible not to see in this story

the inevitable result of our national obsession with the idea that who we are can be very literally invented out of whole cloth. That success in America is born from the success of our story as much or more than the truth of our actions. This is the story of James Hogue, but it is also the story of the internalization and institutional deference to this ridiculous myth that makes this story possible.

Okay, new idea for this year's April Fool's Day episode. The whole show is just a Tom essay intro. And then he's like, I don't know, some guy. I love that. Yes. Yes. That's amazing. He's never introduced a character. But Sam, he's lied about some colleges. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, I would the early life of James Hogue appears from every report and article that I read to be wholly unremarkable. Born in 1959 in Kansas City, Kansas to stay at home mom and a father who was a real world

work. James's history and connection with his parents and his sisters seems not to be overly close nor was it tumultuous. He began running cross-country in junior high and he quickly excelled. When he began running in high school, the students in coaching was significantly more competitive and James quickly adjusted and excelled there as well, though he was not without his quirks. When he won a race, he would run immediately out to his father's car where he would change

out of his running clothes and into neatly laundered slacks and a dress shirt before returning to the podium to accept his medal. It was to hide his boner, wasn't it? That sounds like hiding a boner, wasn't it? That sounds like hiding a boner to me. Yeah, you can hide a boner, dress slacks really well. He's awkwardly holding his trophy at the University of Wyoming, clearly hoping to make him name for himself as a runner. And for its part, the University of Wyoming was also hoping to establish itself as a premier

university for competitive distance running. A factor seems in keeping with both the expansive emptiness of Wyoming and the understandable desire to run away. Is that something you can be a premier university? And this is America. We can compete in eating hot dogs at a high level at the collegiate level. Some fat guy sitting in the cafeteria of Harvard, oh, we all know why he's here. We all know why he's here.

Now to secure their position as a serious school, turning out serious athletes, the University of Wyoming hired a new running coach that same year, a complete fucking sadist named Ron Richardson. Ron's office was no shit, a little shack thingy underneath the actual bleachers by the track. From that office, Richardson leaped through his dog-eared and beloved book about the management techniques of Dengas Khan. Okay. And from there, developed his training process. His training protocols, was it running mostly? You can run faster if possible. Is that the fucking art of war? Can you track, oh, she's saying run faster.

Oh, you have interval trainings, fucking genius. Get outta here. Run, you come to run. Guys, it's not gang is Kant, it's gang is Kant. Come on, you can do it. So one of Ron's beliefs, I love this, was that if runners were somehow able to run faster than they would ordinarily be able to

Their bodies would create and then retain the muscle memory of moving at greater and greater speeds. Okay. Yeah, I know So Ron's notion that was to attach a belt to his runners along with the length of rope airplane. And they put on an airplane. Right? I've been on an airplane. My muscle memory isn't like, I go 500 miles an hour. I feel like that. Well, if you ran behind the airplane, so you would have fixed the other end of the rope and fussed to fix the runner. If you flap your arms, do you fly if you're behind the, because you've never had that.

You just got to get the muscle memory. Yeah, they'll be in weightless muscle memory. Yeah. Once you get it in there. That's actually a university of Kitty Hulk. It's a drag list. They attached the runner to the car with the length of rope and a belt and he would then drive and then kind of toe and drag and pull his runners up and down these high altitude trails.

And they were simultaneously pulled and dragged, but they were racing to keep up pumping their legs faster than they would be able to run not affixed to a car. When his runners once lost a meat to BYU, he picked them all up in the morning, drove them 17 miles from campus, and told them to run home. Fired them out of a cannon. A typical workout for Richardson's runners might include 32, 220 meter sprints, 16 quarter mile runs, and eight half mile runs. And still for all of this madness, James was not only game for the challenge.

He was in many ways living for dragon and blind his car. Is that the Griswold school of training? They also had a square off like an animatronic move set a certain point. Coaches are interesting. There's no way to tell who's a sadistic murderer and who's creating legendary athletes until someone dies. Yeah. And still sometimes you don't know at that point. Yeah, sure. It can be called Nailer. Whiplash. Try as he might. Coach Richardson was unable to mold these fresh face young men into the running machines

that he needed to separate the University of Wyoming from the rest of the collegiate pack. Distance running is actually not best accomplished by men just beginning their foray into adulthood. The peak for a distance runner is the mid to late 20s. It's at this point that not only has the body matured into its peak physical condition, but the mind too has reached a level of maturity and experience that allows it to endure the pain of pushing the body long past sensible and safe levels. So, trying to train kids to push themselves into these deep, almost meditative spaces where they run harder and faster than their bodies really should is actually fantastically difficult.

Halfway through his first year as coach, Richardson solved for this problem by importing a collection of world-class runners from Kenya, including a future Olympian. These men, all in their mid-twenties, quickly dominated meat after meat as their older, stronger bodies and minds left the young man they competed against, including teammate James Hogue, far behind. She builds a wall to stop the immigrants from coming from Kenya and they jump it like it's a horrible thing. Right over. James, who had up until now, differentiated himself from his classmates as a star runner since junior high, found himself not only losing races, but also refusing to give up. As classmate after classmates seated the field to the older dominant athletes, James refused

to give in. He began training in more and more extreme conditions, running in snowy weather along the freeway and construction boots. His younger, less matured and experienced body began to break down. He suffered several injuries, none of which sideline to his training. When he could no longer stand the beating of traditional running, he began running in the pool, grunting and struggling against the implacable watery resistance, alone, and boundlessly determined. Yeah. They would you will about people who quit when they obviously should being happier, healthier people, but

they don't get their own citation needed assays. Also, they're liars. They're not happy. Whatever. They are though. Are they? It's just the thing that people don't win or really happy. They're really happy about that because they quit.

Rudy is about a person who should have quit in his first year. But I'm not in football anymore. I'll start a band. I'm Rudy. I'm going NYU theater school. Exactly. The only thing we know about Rudy is he was bad at football and should have quit. I feel like he wasn't super happy at whatever.

Still for all of his efforts, and by all accounts they were fierce, none of the original trackmates, including James, was able to compete meaningfully again in the program. It was at this point that things began to change, not just for James, but it seems within him. The next year, when a friend visited James at his room in Laramie, he noticed his room full of bike and stereo parts. This is the first sign of a new James, a James no less obsessive and peculiar, but certainly one whose moral compass began to spin wild.

In 1979, James left the University of Wyoming without finishing his studies and moved to Texas. There, he enrolled in a local community college before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin, where he pursued a degree in chemical engineering. He dropped out a few credits shy of earning his degree who's arrested for the first time at that point for possession of stolen goods. Can I help you, officer? What this bag of stolen money, oh, that must have gotten caught on my boot strap.

I'm sorry. I think it's good things, a grant. Would you believe that I need this sack of gold bars for my track trading regimen? So I'm going to pull, gonna, I'm in a pool, right? I'm in a pool. I need the muscle memory of drowning. I don't know. The muscle memory of being rich.

Look at all the money I have in my hands now. No. And we're gonna flash forward a couple of years here to 1985. James Hogue was struggling. A drift from his family, not a terrifically socially connected person, and bereft of anything substantive to dream about after his failures in college, James decided he needed a fresh start. To write his story a new, begin a new chapter. So, at the age of 26, he walked up to the front

doors, the Palo Alto High School, and enrolled in that school as 17 year old orphan, Jay Huntsman. Hey, do you guys do Mulligan's here at this high school? I'd like a moment. Oh, Jay Huntsman wasn't just a name that James dreamed up. Jay Huntsman was a real name, and that guy had a real birth certificate, which is how James was able to claim his identity. Problem was that in addition to having a birth certificate, the real James Huntsman also had a death certificate. They did only two days from that of the birth

certificate. No matter, this was the 80s. So the majority of all important records were stored on paper and the world was basically a nuclear powder keg in probably operating on the honor system. As an experienced 26 year old athlete, James Hogue, running and living and attending high school as Jay Huntsman, was straight crushing it. Just as he was unable to compete with the older, more powerful Kenyans when he was but a fresh faced teen. So two were the high school kids unable to compete with James.

I looked at it if I did this, I'd still fail. I'd still go right, I mean still fail. I mean, so bad. Yeah. So by these kids, they, they have to start calling leaks peewee before we're winning again. We couldn't feel the decent tea ball team. Now that's, that's a fair truth. At the Stanford Invitational Cross Country Meet in 1985, James easily won it, clocking the best time by far that race had ever seen. 21 long jump street. That's a track shot.

He's back in high school. It's the plot of that. So despite his record time, high school track star Jay Huntsman didn't approach the judges table to claim his metal, trophy or wreath of roses or whatever prize you get for being fast for a long time. This unusual refusal to accept awards and attention. Struggle reporter watching the invitationals rather unlike the typical behavior for high school athletes.

And so he began to investigate the mystery orphan who showed up unannounced to enroll himself in high school one day. Sorry guys, I take your trophy, but I left my slacks at home. You see my dilemma. I just can't just go on. Yeah, I can see your boner. We can see it.

I knew it. I knew it. Now, James's cover was quickly blown and he was confronted where upon a quickly admitted his deception and left Palo Alto high school. From there, he was briefly in trouble with the law for a check forgery charge and James left California for Colorado. Here, he claimed to have a doctorate from Stanford and that he was a faculty at the university. This lie enabled him to secure a position at a sports training camp in Vale as a trainer, spending his days working alongside actual professionals and world-class athletes, including Olympian marathoner Frank Short, does Stanford not have a phone number at this point?

Maybe it's what happened. Checking records would have solved a lot of these problems. He's, for his part, James' training recommendations and behaviors were somewhat unorthodox. James' drink and recommended fueling up with a mixture of mustard and peri-a during his race. I can't imagine how bad it would be. Must after mustard and bone water. I like mustard and peri-a, but yeah, that's not a peanut butter and chocolate. After crossing the finish line, rather than run out to his dad's car to get some clean clothes,

James now just immediately lit up a celebratory cigarette. Right. And he's as a trainer for other. It's amazing. And he also did see with his image. Fuck yeah college. And he got one of those long urban bands. I want to shoot up with heroin real quick.

I love being 21. And he also didn't seem to have any place to live. Oh, sleeping off and in the parking lot of the facility in his truck. In short, his behavior didn't precisely match that what you might expect from someone with a PhD in sports stuff from Stan. Yeah, but with those kind of accommodations, he'd have been more likely been like a public school teacher than Stan for PhD. Also, Tom, if we're-

They can't afford Perry. Also, Tom, if we're doing citation needed essays on people who failed at their dreams and then lied their way into a better job while still obviously being mentally ill, I would like to call dibs on me. Just no one else has allowed you to name me. I'm saying that now. So, his trainer gig was eventually cut short when he was discovered as a fraud there as well.

The facility owner received a tip that Stanford didn't employ anyone named James Hogue and never had. The owner confronted James on his deception, was shocked at his response. James didn't deny the lie, but he also didn't see him at all upset or phased by having been found out. He simply shrugged and moved on. This time not back to high school though. James Hogue has said his sights unlawftier goals. All right, well, it looks like James is about to dominate a ball pit at McDonald's. I'm going to take a quick break for some op-op of not. Okay, everyone. Really excited to introduce you all to the new coach this year. He comes from the Harvard School of Stanford.

What? Wait, that can't be right. Huh? Anyway, anyway, he has a doctorate in running and jumping. I guess they have those. So everyone give a big welcome to coach. I said a big welcome to coach. Well, I'm not loitering.

I'm picking up my daughter. I'm picking up my daughter. This one here. No coach, coach. This is a team the team But for you to train you have to train them. That's yeah, yep. Ah, ha well, hey, fellow Youths where all you this has a gun on your new coach

What is in my name was James Hogue James Hogue nice. He's just remember this time. Yep, that's me and This year we're gonna take it to the top. You can run fast, you drink mustard, you tie yourself ski lift, sing the name of everyone you ever fucked right now during that you sing it. But by the end of it, you're gonna be the best damn tennis players this middle school has ever seen. Coach? give you the best damn tennis players at this middle school has ever seen. Uh, coach? Yeah, red. You're red. I'm calling you red.

What about bread? This, this is a college track. What do you want? And did you say something about tying us to a ski lift? Ah, I don't know. Did I say that? Yeah, you did. You did say that.

Did you very much did? I heard good. Good. I meant say that. That was my first test. Guess what You passed now. I'm gonna pretend to fall asleep But first one of you back here with a big and egg cheese is my favorite three two one go I quit the team. Yeah me too. I kind of like him. I don't know what you guys talking about Give me a sandwich.

And we're back when we left off. Games Hogue was setting up another Adam Sandler movie premise I think to be his new life. That's next. Our James Hogue was again without home and without vocation. And he again, instead of solving that problem by simply starting over, re-entering the world and reinventing himself as a high school athlete, hadn't worked. But perhaps you just set the flux capacitor touch too far back. What if instead of restarting his life as a high school student with a bullshit backstory,

he reset himself back to college, not as a returning adult student and not as James Hogue, but as Alexi Centena. What? Flamenco dancer. Alexi Centena. Flamenco dancer. Just as believe some worst name. That's amazing. He actually picked that name.

I didn't put in here. He actually picked that name. It's like the first name of some bicycle brand and the last name of some famous owner. So it's he just was looking at Facebook's porn name. It's like your yeah, right. It'd be like me looking around and being like, my new name is Zoom mixer peri-a-muster. Because I saw those things.

Window of porn, sad photos of my dead dad. I was playing too. Jesus Christ. What happened next to the essay, Tom? Fuck. And James or Alexi wasn't to be placated with a fresh start from just any old school. For Alexi, it was the Ivy League or bust Princeton in particular. To understand how this next part of the story

could even happen, you have to understand something about Princeton and how Princeton operates versus how Princeton wanted to portray itself. In 1992, 14,000 students applied to Princeton to try to secure one of only 1200 available spots. This makes Princeton one of the most selective schools in the country to be sure,

but even that 1200 is a bit of a bullshit number. See, Princeton doesn't just take the 14,000 applications, apply like a predetermined impartial rubric to each application, then sort the spreadsheet and pick the top 1200 names. Instead, Princeton gives weight to legacy applicants. Fully 20% of their incoming freshman class were kids whose parents went to Princeton, even though those students often had lower overall SAT scores than the rest of the student body. Most of all the kids that would be accepted to Princeton in any given year came not from diverse backgrounds, but from fairly uniformly rich backgrounds.

Princeton was and likely still is an institution that perpetuates wealth from wealth, class from class, and power from power. Okay, but I mean, we all got into college because our mom knew a professor at the school and they gave us a private interview the year before we applied, right? Like we all know that's not how I got to college. No, absolutely did not happen. Yeah, me neither. I was just one.

Yeah, so that was not. So that was not. It's none of us. Yeah, me neither. I was just, I was just one. Yeah, I was like, hypothetical. It's not, it's not of us. Yeah, it's just, it's just not of us. Okay, so that's really specific. I thought, go ahead. It's important though. I've got the story that Princeton tells itself and indeed the story that Princeton tells the world

is different. When interviewed about who the ideal applicant to Princeton would be, the admissions director said, Huck Finn, you. Huck you. Yeah, I know. This answer was notable because it revealed that Princeton believed, at least narratively, if not numerically, that the ideal candidate for Princeton wasn't the clean cut Tom Sawyer, but rather the ragony at the term in self-made man.

So stupid. So fucking. Huck Finn. They wanted to be the Huck Finn self-made man. So they so fucking so thin they wanted to be the fucking self made man. Yeah, typical self made adult man. Fuck them. They wanted to be the institution that accepted a boy who learned about the world floating down the river, taking life on its own terms. At least on a way they were selling worse. Such a bad analogy. You didn't learn about things. It's fine.

It's fine. The reality was that if you actually looked at who they accepted and broke it down demographically, Princeton was admitting a hell of a lot more Tom Sawyer's with trust funds than they were. How do things? Oh, and they also disproportionately favored students from schools in Nevada, Montana, and Wyoming when they were done filling their legacy spots, of course, because no shit, they could be well assured that those students would be white, but would

not in fact be Jewish. Well, I love it. Someone from New Jersey preferred people who dropped N-bombs and wasn't a Jew. This is the least surprising part of the story. Yeah. So by the way, you know, who else was at Princeton in 1992 besides Huck fucking fan apparently. You know, who else was there?

Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz was where they wanted at Princeton. I'm sorry. Literally, class of 92. I just feel like they really need to re-read Huck fan. Thank you. I was like saying, right here, we want crime solving detectives for our law school like scout from to kill a mockingbird

She did great, right? Bradley, I don't know for bad books a James Hogue knew all of us and so he carefully crafted his new persona Alexi Santana Alexi was a self-made man from Wyoming. He hadn't gone to high school like the fat cat kids. Alexi had grown up living and working on the lazy T ranch in Wyoming, roaming the thousand miles of open country with his horse. Good enough as it sounds like a bunch of made up details.

Clear lies. And that one sentence there There, under the stars, Alexi taught himself, reading Plato by the light of the campfire. This is real shit he wrote. And of course, eventually taking up running as a way to pass the time. Princeton, for their part, they were primed in every way to believe this story. And as bonkers as it was,

it solved the problem of not having any transcripts. James, as a Lexi Santana, took the SATs and admittedly, he scored a 1430, which is more than high enough to qualify for any school, and he sent in his application. Okay, but we all cheated on the SATs, though, right? We all did that. No, I did not. No, I'm either. Again, not. I also didn't. No, stop confessing to somehow being less likable than you already are, I'm either again, not. I also didn't know stop confessing to somehow being less likable than you already are, Eli. You stop. You are. Stop it. Reporting this to the ETS. Don't you call them? So Princeton jumped all over it. And why you? This is why you so

why so Princeton jumped all over this application everything about the story of Alexi Santana was everything they needed here was a student who fit their bullshit story a student who could act as a token to principles that would allow them to maintain the fiction of their meritocracy Alexi was swiftly flown to Princeton to tour the school, and of course, meet the running coach, a man named Larry Ellis. Larry, this is Alexi, his dad is a lion and he lives in a wardrobe. Anyplace real water polo.

This is him on a horse next to the water polo. Okay. I realized it's just my dog polo, it's already a horse. We should have just done polo. Real polo. Picture. The yellow Marco before. That's how you know it's legit.

You just do broad, regular broad. Just do really. Really is going badly. Larry is a little skeptical about the story. Here's some kid from out of nowhere. His father, dad, his mother, a European artist. Him, self taught, not just as an outstanding student with impressive SAT scores, but also self coached as a runner.

I mean, if this was true, this would be one of the most remarkable stories ever told. And he would have a hell of an honor in coaching this kid. Okay, but self coached as a runner, I run. I coached myself for run. I'm going to auto-didactic runner. That's nothing. That's nothing. Now, Larry asked a senior member of the track team to meet with Alexi and run with him,

instructing him, quote, I want you to run as hard as you possibly can every day the entire time he's here. And I want you to come back Monday and report to me exactly what you think. Okay, ho, I'm back. So you know mustard the condiment. Alexie could not be beaten reporting back about Alexie the student recalled quote, I couldn't

crop him couldn't really even tire him out the guys for real. End quote. Impressed by his scores, his story and his running ability, Rincid accepted Alexie Santana to his freshman class and offered him an extremely generous $22,000 scholarship. James Hogue had just reinvented himself again. Except one minor problem. Soon after receiving his acceptance letter and scholarship offer, James was arrested. Before inventing the character of Alexi Santana, James Hogue had been working for a time for a bicycle builder named Dave Tash. Dave Tash built custom bicycles. When you bought one, it was a Tash bike. Tash's stuff

said, Tash, right on it. This will be important. One fine day, Dave arrived at his shop to discover that someone had broken in and stolen about $20,000 worth of bikes and parts and tools. Since the custom bike market in California was at that time, I guess extremely small and even more competitive, Dave and the police figured that the robbery had been committed by a rival bike shop owner. Yeah, man, shady bike shops, always trying to pedal stolen goods, pedal.

Oh, it's spelled different. Oh, it was actually very good. Paddle, but it wasn't a rival bike shop owner. As you might surmise, the thief was James, and he was eventually suspected because he openly used tools that had the name Tesh, written on the goddamn tools, causing someone familiar with the robbery to report him. This led the police to a storage locker, which when they open it was not only full of

all of Dave Tessia's shit, but also had clearly been someone's home. It was James's home. I've been inside Heath's crazy, undecorated, single guy apartment. I get it. Okay. It's decorated. I have chairs, for example, do they come with place though? It's irrelevant whether I have chairs is for example. Did they come with place though? It's irrelevant whether I have chairs

is the point, there's chairs that they didn't think they'd decorated. It's decorated. Do they have folds? Seeding are they? Always chairs. You could, are they dressed from a chair? Because those don't count as chairs.

There's bag. It doesn't matter. You wouldn't say you fold a bean bag. That doesn't make sense. So I wouldn't be the word for that. Stupid doesn't even make sense, which is said. But the locker also contained a bunch of weird shit that made the detective working the case curious.

Among the stolen goods and sleeping bag were a series of trophies and doctor newspaper clippings, all the necessary rudiments that James had been using to fabricate the backstory for Alexi Santana. And it was also obvious that James had been using this fake identity to apply not just to Princeton, but also to Stanford and Brown. The detective who worked the stolen goods case and who found the evidence to create an identity did not, it appears, alert the folks at Princeton. Good.

Fuck Princeton. I'm glad that he's here. Yeah. They should be able to figure that shit out. That was obvious. Make your call. Assholes. You're like an eight-jillion dollar endowment. You can't make two phone calls. Fuck you. Hey, do you have an artist there in Europe? Fire your fucking registrar, man. What the fuck? But James ended up leading guilty to theft and was sentenced to one to five years in prison.

A sentence which would be a total bummer since he had a fuel recall just been accepted at Princeton as a Lexi Santana. No trouble. James simply requested a deferred admission to Princeton. His mother, you see, ailing European artist was dying in Switzerland and he needed to be at her side. It feels like an obvious adversity. Eager to keep their cross country cowboy scarred. Apple allowed the deferment.

Yeah, my mom's like, really sick. She's going to be sick for like one to five years. So unless I be a good news, she might die early for good behavior. And listen guys, thank you to the deferment. Unless I be a good news, she might die early for good behavior. And listen guys, thank you to the deferment. I will be wearing Princeton orange the whole time to stay ready. There's loyalty and tiger. So Joe served his year and upon his release made his way very happily to his new digs of Princeton.

While the Princeton he ran for the track team, of course, but he actually sustained an injury fairly early on and ended up being for the second time in his college running career, nothing to really get excited about. Still, he made the best of his time since his backstory made no fucking exciting. Sorry, the story of running, it doesn't matter how good you get out of here. None of this is in the most boring, possible sport, a subset of other sports, really. None of this is more than boring, possible sport, that's a sub-side of other sports, really. He did make the best use of his time. Since his backstory made no sense, he adopted a studiously aloof and taciturn persona

among his classmates, neither friendly, nor particularly ornery. He was quiet and mysterious, and rumors about who he was circulated with no real help from Alexi. Soon, I love this, Alexi was hosting very exclusive and very private wine and cheese parties in his room, not allowing any other men to attend. And this earned him the nickname,

sexy Alexi. Yeah, I actually did that too when I was in college. So it was drugs and cheese. And I was chunked, not sexy. yet. And no women were allowed either. That was just a big thing. We're like, it was in a rule. If we wanted them there, we would have invited them. We didn't though. We chose not to have them. Little bit of green, little bit of coke, little bit of coke.

And we know some. I guess you know, I saw. I applied Didn't get in. Well, you wish. Oh, Jesus Christ. No, it's not. Stay in it. Stay in it. I prefer it. Okay. James also didn't feel overly compelled to study while at Princeton. Though he did earn all A's in all of his classes, taking six or seven at a time, and he openly mocked and belittled the efforts of those who hadn't already been through college twice

before this, saying, they baby you here at Princeton. He wasn't there, he said to learn, he was only there to find a wife. His mysterious demeanor and celebrity backstory earned him admission to the Ultra Elite Eating Club, the Ivy Club. In short, this third college experience and second complete self fabrication was to this point. Going great.

I'm sorry, sorry Tom, there are college eating clubs. The one school sport I would have killed it in, can you even tell me? Yeah, go where you're Jewish. This was not available. You at Princeton. Oh, this is so long. Yeah.

How to go to kosher restaurants if there was a Jew wine? These were all jokes. I'm doing Eli. We're Josh Nietzsche. Sat time. We're not that close. I have no idea why you're attacking me. I'm doing a person.

Persona of somebody who's anti-Semitic, like at Princeton. Their mask that comes out for the Jewish eating club is a big connition. He's like, don't mishpoigal my menorah. I'll be the mascot guys. Just let me have the left over and everyone. Yeah. A things were going great until he was again outed. His downfall coming from the track again. One of the students who had known him from his brief stint of Palo Alto High was now herself a student at Princeton.

I was watching a track meet went to a complete shock. She saw James Hogue, who she had known as Jay Huntsman. This time playing a role of Jay Sexy Alexi Santana. Just trotting on by. She immediately called her high school track coach who called the reporter who broke the story from his far at the high school who in turn called Princeton. Yeah. This was also the year they perched all those people that lied and really didn't find all that volunteer work in high school moving and rewarding. He liked Cheetah. Yeah, say T's.

So Princeton was not at all amused. They had been bamboozled and they weren't going to take it lying down. So they had James, aka Alexi, arrested while he was sitting in his geology class. Like the cops in suits just walked up to him, seriously, in the middle of geology 316, read him his rights and hurt him out the door. Hold on, did they take him to the rock? Her jail.

But. The frown. The mattress. This is jail. The geology class. So it's the rock, right? Cecil. Wait, Johnson.

I'm with you, bro. I'm with you. I got you. I got you. He was charged with theft by deception and three counts of forgery. James Hogue again admitted everything without compunction or remorse, saying only that he had wanted to start over without the burdens of his past. Cops are just like, oh, you're just, you're just going to confess.

Okay. Well, I guess we don't need a bad cop then. Hey Larry, Larry, he confessed. You can just come in, but you don't have to do the hard, coffee thing. He confessed. One of James' professors from Princeton took pity on James and he visited him several times while he was in jail. This professor believed that James had made a mistake,

but he hadn't really done anything that egregious. He had been at most careless about the consequences of his actions. When James made bail, this professor helped James relocate to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where James took classes at Harvard's extension school. Eventually, James was given a second chance, earning a job working part-time,

cataloging the university's collection of precious metals and gems. It's like he's going to steal those. James stole them. Yeah, he's got to steal them. Along with an expensive microscope and a chair that said Harvard. Oh, he's got to stop doing that. Yeah. Yeah.

All of these items were discovered in Hoag's room, presumably under his bed in a box marked do not look in here. All right, presumably under his bed in a box marked, do not look in here. All right. Well, that didn't work out. I guess it's time to get a job cataloging nuclear codes. The Pentagon is probably the next thing, right? So once more, James was back in jail, but once again, nothing really happened.

He was sentenced to less than a year, some community service who's ordered to pay restitution. After serving 270 days, James neither paid anyone back nor did he perform any community service. Instead, he was immediately re-arrested for the gem theft and he served 17 months after which he was released again and promptly disappeared. Just at the doors of the prison, I'm just a man who wants a new life and a clean slate. Just as soon as I steal this slate from staples. Now it's 1997. In Aspen, Colorado, James was caught with a stolen high-end bicycle, arrested again, and he was arrested again in 1998, stealing Rogane. What? He disappeared from public and criminal

view until 2006, where he was again arrested. This time, James had been stealing from the mostly unoccupied vacation homes of the wealthy, accumulating over 7,000 stolen items that he had secreted in his home and further filling a horse trailer and yet another storage locker with just random stolen shit, including among the items, MOOC Santlers, Rare Wood, Copper Pans, Teddy Bears, and Red Silk High Heels. Yeah, that was for the costume for his next fake identity though, Natasha Bullwinkle. I don't think he's aware of the part where you make the profit at the end. You steal things and then you take them. You don't just have them in a fucking way. He just keeps hoarding his feet. the part where you make the profit at the end, you steal things and then you take you have

them in a fucking way. He keeps hoarding his everything is his precious. It's like crazy. He's the muscle memory of Pawning. So in 2016, workers spotted an extremely well concealed shack in this picture. So it is very, very well concealed that have been erected on the roof of mountain top condos in Aspen, Colorado. Concerned police approached the shack and knocked on the door from within came the calm, pleasant voice of James Hogue, who called out,

quote, I'll be there in a minute. Whereuponnie jumped out the back window and ran swiftly and confidently into the mountain wilderness. Peering through the window, please notice an unusual clutter of what appeared to be stolen goods. Tom, I don't want to question your language. Why did they appear stolen from the window?

Like, maybe someone just has a cabin full of shit. How does stuff look stolen through window? It also had Harvard and Tess on the side. It was that'll do it. That Harvard and Tess on the side. It was that we'll do it. Ask the answer with Sean. We people probably don't need like 25 of the same car stereo. You know, that's usually that giveaway. A police return the next day with a warrant to search the shack only to find that it was not really empty, but the James had swept it clean for them. The shack expertly built was insulated, had a window

and a heavy duty door with two locks and a two by four beam that also held it securely in place. All the materials used to build the shack had been recently reported stolen from local construction sites. The police, they took the shut apart, but they left the materials in place since they were too cumbersome to remove

down from the side of the mountain. He left a note that said, catch me if you can, which would be pretty easy because I'm like 55 and a smoker. So you can probably catch me no problem. A few weeks later, James was spotted in the same area again, digging a new foundation to rebuild his home, just a hundred feet from where he had built the previous one. He had again stolen tools and materials from nearby construction sites and was running electrical cords up the mountain from

the nearby condo. Man, see if he was if he was Tom Sawyer instead of Huffinnie when I got somebody else to do that work for. You know what I mean? And it will work. And the police didn't actually arrest him this time, but they confiscated the tools and they told him to beat it. The ski patrol followed him to his car, a Nissan Xtera, which had a ski patrol parking pass hanging from the rear view despite Hogue most assuredly not being in the ski patrol. Once more, another day he was spotted by police on the mountain in the same area building and was told over loudspeaker to come down and talk. And once more, Hogueran off into the mountain.

Right, but not before he chugged an entire bottle of friendship. So... That's some point, and I apologize, because this part of the timeline isn't clear from the many articles I read about this guy, but he was again confronted by police at a new home, this time in O'Fear, Colorado. When police entered the home,

they found sticky notes written in Russian, and badly photoshopped images of James and a striking blonde woman. They found dozens of medical textbooks, and based on an investigation of other items and interviews with those who knew him, it appears that James was working on yet another reinvention. This time, his plan was to go to Russia and get a medical degree, which he believed he could do for $5,000, whereupon he would return to the States, also now with a Russian bride, and come back to pose as a physician. He was finally nabbed by federal marshals and Tucson at a bookstore, with $1200 in cash, a stolen laptop, and CDs of medical instruction on anatomy, clinical consultation, and principles

of internal medicine along with the past. Okay, just circling back, why would see photo shopping himself with a Russian bride if he was going to do, like, to get a Russian med school degree, he would need to already be with a Russian bride. Or was he just making, like, a vision board for himself? Right? He was just, like, really sure he was going gonna fail at getting a Russian bride.

I can't find anything past that final arrest really. And I don't honestly know how this story ends, but something about this story feels so perfectly keeping with our times I had to tell it. James is no hero, but he is only possible because we want so desperately to believe that a man is not just what he makes of himself, but that he is who he makes of himself. The story of duplicity and reinvention isn't just a story of the man who's doing the lying, but it is the story of those who are only too primed to believe that lie, who make the lies possible in the first place.

Perhaps the story is in fact over, but if I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet that James will be done running while he still has breath in his body. All right, and if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, did you learn something? What would that be? We're all lying and hoping not to get caught. Are you ready for the quiz? Yes, let's do it. All right, Tom, based on today's essay, what important lessons that we shouldn't forget, have we learned?

Hey, Eli was totally kidding about that SAT thing. I'm not even on. B, it wasn't an interview. It was just like a casual lunch meeting I had with a existing professor. And then I was able to skip the interview because I'd already met with them it was just like a casual lunch meeting I had with an existing professor. And then I was able to skip the interview because I'd already met with them. It's not like I was an official. It was just a friend of my mom.

See, I talk about clones and having a bomb guy in this show, but nobody in the right mind would take my joke seriously. D, so you can buy a pre-programmed calculator online that'll do the math part of it for you. You just put them in, this is like a little computer. On time, they didn't know that there was a bunch of memory on those like graphing calculators where you could just put anything,

like the answers to anything. Including all your formulas for your physics classes. For example, they let you do that eventually. They were just like, yeah, you can do that if you want. We still have to do that. Program. Sleagal now. It's secret answer.

E. I've already called the police. No. You'll never catch me alive. We'll follow the trailer shit and lost her. The jokes on you. That's just more shit. Oh, there's blood. Moving on, Tom, I got one for you too.

All right, which of the following is the best name for the movie about James Hogue? Hey, junior varsity blues. Run, frat boy, run, or see the picture of Dorian Gray, Pupon. Oh, so we got to see it all day. See that's so good. That is so good. All right. All right, Tom.

James has caught again in person and in a sports personality, what will the name be? A, tail sares, b. Fony hawk. More or lessy Owens or D. You fein bolt. Oh fantastic. It's it's got to be you fein bolt and the spelling in it guys is it's it's spot out you spot out. Yeah. Fain.

But no, it's I'm sorry. It's more or lessy Owens more or lessy Owens. Yeah. I thought I was going to get it right, but I didn't. No, you did not. No, you sleep. Dumped him. Well done.

So here's what I want. Very specific, I would like, know what to write an essay, but Tom to read it. Very specific. Very specific. Ooh, I like that. You're right. We'll see what we can do.

Well, for Tom, Noah, Cecil and Eli. I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, Noah Slash, Tom Combo will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear Tom and Cecil on cognitive distance, and you can hear Eli knowing myself on God off movies, skating atheist, skeptic rat, and D&D minus.

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And up, down, wax on, wax off for high team, good stuff. Take any taking everyone proud of you. Coach, nobody's here. Or are they here? No, you're not. No. Gives sandwich. Hey, here. No, you're not. No.

Gives sandwich. Can I tell you to get me a sandwich?