Citation Needed - Oceans 91

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

https://www.gq.com/story/91-year-old-bank-robber-jl-hunter-rountree  

Hello and welcome to citation needed. The podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet. And that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnick and I'll be the man in the chair for tonight's foray, but I'll need some other man in chairs. We're all in chairs. We're podcasters. Two men whose roguish good looks would get them booked by the handsome police, Cecil and Noah.

You know, only if I'm in the carpool. with somebody else who is actually handsome. Still undefeated in random listener rankings of our physical attractiveness. Thank you. Yeah, those were rough. Those were rough for me. Those were hard.

And also joining us tonight. Two charming, roguish devils that can both play the face. Tom and he. Yeah, more of a face-off kind of role, but sure. Yeah. All right. Hold on.

Hold on. Am I Hage or Travolta in this scenario? And in which part of the story? Is it better if I'm Cage or is it better from Trilpa? It's never better to be made. He'll obviously start his premise. There's no better.

Obviously clearly start his cage. How do you feel about Zinu? All right. Or your son. Before we begin tonight, I'd like to thank our patrons. Patrons, Patrons, without you, the rest of the cast might be open to my very obvious criminal suggestions for our business.

Thanks to you, we'll never break bad. And if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Noah, what person place thing, concept, phenomenon, or event we'll be talking about today? How we shouldn't dangle meth in front of Eli against Cecil. Come on, come on. What are we saying? What are we said? But after we're done talking about that, we have to talk about Oceans 91. And Tom, this is not the hit 2018 film on which I was the Magic Consultant and became close personal friends with many movie stars. No, it's true. He's in the credits. He's very nearly the first magic consultant name.

We're doing Reverse alphabetical order, which is how in the movies Do it. You never introduced me to Aquafina. Anyways, Tom, are you ready to tell us a story that's almost as good? It'll be hard to top it, but I'll give it a try.

All right, Tom, so tell us, what is? Oceans 91. You know, I'll be recording this episode on the eve of my 48th birthday. I have two kids in college. I've begun doing old people things, like checking my 401k balance, complaining about gas prices,

and noticing my own knees. In short, I've begun thinking in earnest about what life will look like after the intermission of my 40s and the second half of my life story begins to take shape. That's not going to be a second half.

Yeah, right? More like that third. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, good. Thank you. Fucking thank you. I think Tom will make 70 right? That's a terrible thing.

I thought we were friends. That's harsh. Jesus Christ. Fuck you too. Do you know how bad it is to be, Tom? Jesus. As I've gotten older, I found myself looking for new heroes. For a new inspiration on what it means to live a good life.

Gentlemen, I'm not saying that this next article, Ocean's 91 by Jim Lewis from GQ, is the answer. But I'm not entirely sure it's. not at least like answer adjacent. Maybe I won't ever find myself a non-agenarian bank robber, but if there's one thing I know about heroes, it's that they serve to remind us of who we can be if we just have the courage to live our authentic, felonious truths.

This is bullshit. I suggest we do felonies together all the time, and you guys are always like, me and CIS still are going to do some felonies together. I'm excited. What? Yeah. Are they Canadian felonies or U.S.

felonies? Both. What? Yep. Canadian felonies are the funnest. Are you kidding? The girl behind the teller window said to the man standing on the other side of the glass, it was the morning of August of the 12th, 2003.

Soon after the first American bank of Abilene, Texas had opened, and the man had walked in. Crossed the floor to her station and handed her an envelope with the word, Robbery, written on it. in red marker. He was tall. And he was wearing a blue baseball cap and a black long-sleeve shirt. At first, to tell her didn't understand what was happening. What do you mean?

She asked. And the man got irritated and told her to go over to her drawer and put the money in the envelope he'd given her. And that's when she said to him, are you kidding? All right, everyone. Thanks so much for attending. This mandatory robbery is the only thing about our job training training. to a recent incident will be going over

what a robbery is again. Michelle, eyes on me. In her defense, what is this fucking bank robbery minimalism? You can't hand over a fucking note with the crime you want to commit.

You still have to commit the fucking crime. That's fair. Yeah, stop, stop mailing me those murder envelopes, Eli. It's not working.

I'm fine. He wasn't kidding at all. Fine. Okay, it's hurting. Yeah. It feels like it's working. He wasn't kidding at all. His name was J.L. Hunter Roundtree, and he pointed at her station and demanded again that she put the money in the envelope.

Still, the teller couldn't quite believe it. She turned to another teller who was standing nearby and said, I'm getting robbed. Is he kidding? The other girl told her to go ahead and put the money in the envelope. Twenties, tens, fives, and ones, plus a little bait money. Mark said it could be traced back to the bank. It came to just under $2,000.

As the teller tripped the silent alarm, the robber turned and walked out of the bank, got into a white Buick century, and drove away. They gave him a bag with $2,000 in a note that just reads, alarm. Okay, that was so fucking easy. Today I learned there should be way more bank robberies than they're actually on. Let's see how this works out for him. Here's what made the teller bulk. The scalp around his cap was bald and liver spotted. The body under his shirt was...

The perfect crime, Heath will never be caught. The body under his shirt was thin and stooped. One of the other tellers would tell the police that he looked to be in his 70s or 80s. The teller he robbed thought he was about 80. They were off by at least a decade. Roundtree, known as Red, to almost everyone who knows him, was born in 1911. Just one year after Bonnie and two years. after Clyde. He was married at 20, a millionaire at 50, bankrupt at 60, widowed at 70,

and only then, when most men are luxuriating in the relief of their retirement in Red Roundtree begin his second career. He began robbing banks in his 80s. He was finishing up a three-year sentence in a federal prison in Florida when he was 90. And when he walked out of the bank in Abilene with an envelope full of cash and the cops already alerted, he was a full 91 years old. He was a full 91 years old and he was not kidding not at all you that's how the paragraph

before this one started you can't do that twice okay did Werthers get more expensive since last we checked the butterscott things did those okay I get it with this guy though it's kind of like I want my last check to bounce like I want my last crime

to be pending prosecution do a crime right I mean also there's a point in life where like a stiff fine is worse than a life sentence, right? Like, I guess so have that it. I got about $2,000 to pay this fine, just under, actually. Also, take it from my father's son. If your last check bounces, so do a bunch of other fucking ones.

You don't get. Nobody does just the one. You didn't do the last step in the process. I was born a farmhouse about seven miles south of Brownwood, Texas. This is Red speaking. Ancient history told by one who lived it. And the doctor didn't get there for two days.

And when he showed up, he was drunk as a buggy. I'm sorry, Pops. We don't measure things in buggies. That's how the thing we do. For buggies. He spent the night and he circumcised me the next day. Now that's measurable. We can measure that.

He's sitting on a metal folding chair in a cinder block room in the Dickens County Correctional Center in Spur, Texas. Dick off. I like it. A tiny little town on the edge of the planes. He's six foot tall and 160 pounds And time has bleached all the color out of him His skin is pale to the point of translucence His beard is white and he walks to the metal cane

He stares through thick glasses Not maliciously But with the fixed uncertainty of the aged Stupid slack-jawed open-mouthed old people Am I right? Jesus Christ I don't know man I feel like fixed uncertainty of the age

is the politest possible way to say 90% sure he doesn't know where the fuck he is right now. Yeah, I'm going to use the phrase fixed uncertainty. Yes, yes. Instead of I don't know, I'll be like, you know,

I have a fixed uncertainty. I'm not political. The fixed uncertainty of the podcaster. Let's see if that worked. Even in a gray prison jumpsuit, he looks like someone's favorite great uncle. He looks incongruously enough like Pete Sig,

and he speaks with a thick East Texas accent. He's explaining how he became quite likely the oldest bank robber in U.S. history, and as befits his achievement, he's taking the long way. Yeah, let's hope he behaves himself. Otherwise, he could end up in Solitarity Forever. It's a Pete Seeger song called Solidarity Forever. Oh, okay.

That could not have landed worse. But your OOK was so harsh. What other Pete Seeger songs be like? Oh my God. Yes, that's fine. Book of love. Moving on. I lived on this farm until I was six years old.

It was the sorriest farm I have ever heard of. We had cotton, we had corn, we had turkeys in quantity. We had sheep. We had milk cows. And when I was a three-year-old, they went to milk the cows every night and every morning. I'd a tin cup and I'd follow them and I'd get that hot milk and drink it. If you know anything about cows and how covered in shit they are at all times, that is a horrifying it's good. If you bring Ovaltine powder, it's just a nice, you get a hot cocoa.

You got to go out and get it shirtless but wearing jeans. That's actually what helps to get the milk. He tells the story and his eyes glows if he can still taste it. My long term memory is good, he says, and you believe him. No, no, you believe him. My short-term memory, I don't have, he says, and you believe that too. Why, though? Why are you doing these things?

This guy wouldn't even remember. He just told you that. No fooling at times I can't hardly remember my name. Okay, see, that's a long-term one. You're foolish. Yeah. But he can recall a time so distant that an automobile was an uncommon site. my father's father had a dryage company what that's like a trucking company but with horses big horses

admittedly it's difficult for them to turn the wheel with those hooves though it was so hard let alone get him to double clutch hey well look at back on it we probably should have used small horses at least a big horse's big horses was a dumb idea smart yeah horse power steering though

so he talks He tells a near Centuries worth of stories He tells them as much it seems To keep the tales alive As to convey anything to his visitor They might as well be legends Ballads, bedtime stories

There is no one to confirm them No one left in this world Who knows red Roundtree well Or knows very much about him Everyone he's ever been close to his dead His parents, his wife, his stepson His brothers, his in-laws, his friends He's been orphaned by time

And it's as if he's recreating a world by remembering it out loud. And he writes it out one word at a time and he hands it to a disinterested bank telling. That's how he tells everybody. Listen. No, you listen. Farmers in Brownwood had an account at the grocery store and an account of the dry goods store. And they charged things. And at the end, when they sold the crops and got some money, they went and got paid.

Didn't have a very good crop one year. So J.L. Hunter Roundtree is my name. J.L. King was the dry goods man. Hunter was the grocer. I used to work for J.L. on Saturdays when I was going through high school. Sorry. Is the implication of that sentence that because of a bad crop year, his mother named him after a grocer? Yeah. Okay. Well, after his dad, yeah. It was some sort of credit deal very clear.

He talks. The 20s worked for the Santa Fe Railroad, College, then back to the farm to, weighed out the depression. In the early 30s, one of his brothers got him a job working in the oil fields at Duval County. It was around then that he met his first wife, Fay, a waitress with a young son named Tom. Less than a year later, we got married. That boy was four years old and he become my boy. This was 1933. Red Roundtree was a fortunate man. It was a 50-year love affair, he says. He was lucky in business, too. After the war, he started Round Tree machinery, company, and soon he was wealthy.

Buddy Roundtree, Redd's nephew, now 74 years old, remember seeing the couple on those few occasions when they came by to visit the rest of the family. Faye was a nice lady, a real sophisticated type person, he says. God, I can't stand the South. Red gave her everything she wanted. He had a big business and a lot of money. She came to a family reunion a time or two,

but she didn't mix very well. She was just a different kind of person. Some people mix and some don't. Round trees, we get by and do what we have to do, but she liked nice things and fine jewelry and clothes. Yeah, indoor toilets and wiping paper from the big city. Jesus fucking Christ. That was a good life, a good time.

But Sophocles had it right. Okay. Count Nomad, Four. until he has died and Red Roundtree had a long time left to live. First, his stepson was killed in a car accident in Galveston. Then Red sold Roundtree machinery and put a million dollars in the bank. Played a little golf, did a little fishing. But retirement didn't agree with him.

And in time, he took out a bank loan and bought a shipyard down in Corpus Christi. I was stupid, he says. It costs more to build the ships than you could sell them for. We were selling for about $750,000. and it costs about a million dollars to build them. Each one. So, yeah, I pivoted to ships plus bank robbing, and then I was in the black.

Then the damn bank pulled the note on me. I could have made the payment. I could have complied with my obligations to the bank. The lawyer for the bank, I hated him. The judge just said, pay up. He was cruel. The bank called in the note. Now I had to go bankrupt.

Yeah, the bank note was just a piece of paper with the word ship written on it. So it was like a whole, it was a whole thing. So to be super clear here, like, no the fuck he couldn't. Right? Right. So the first half of this thought is, well, I was losing a quarter million dollars to sale, but the next sentences, I couldn't have made that work, though?

No, the fuck you couldn't. How are you? Unless Robin Banks was already in the prospectus. Okay. He's losing money, but he can make it up in volume. If he loses money a lot, it'll come around. We can grow our way out of the recession. It's going to get a spaghetti.

Bankrupt. And then his wife got lung cancer. It was the roughest year I spent in my life. The last year she was alive. I didn't get 20 feet from her. I didn't try to do any business. I spent all my time with her. I missed a bunch of podcast records. Jesus, dude. Red was 75. Widowed. Alone. Restless. What's a man to do. He leans into tell this part. Half, proud of the memory. It is, after all, where the road to notoriety begins. He falls over from leaning too much. And dies. I went crazy, he says. I did crazy thing.

First among them was marrying a 31-year-old woman who'd picked him up in a bar in Houston, an act so benighted that these days Red can't remember her name. Before I matter, he says, I thought the way you got drugs, was he went to the doctor and got a prescription, went to the drug store and got drugs. She taught me different. She had a bad drug problem. After six months of being with her,

I started doing drugs with her. I did marijuana, cocaine, rock. I smoked crack. I never did do much heroin. I was afraid I'd get strung out. Okay, pretty sure he just started doing drugs and now he's pretending he was married to the dealer, right? I mean, he didn't do enough drugs to know that Rock,

and crack are the same thing. About a year and a half later, I divorced her. Okay, kids, how do you like your new mom besides the burns on her lips? Is that a good question? Judging. So there he was. Broke, burned old and ornery with nothing it seemed left to lose. In 1998, at the age of 87, Red Roundtree robbed his first bank.

All right. Well, we've got to put in some just-in-case calls to all the banks around Tom's house, and while we do, we'll take a quick break for some apropos of nothing. Red? Red, is that you? I'm here, darling. Oh, Red. I'm getting tired now, I think. I think it's best I sleep for a spell. Of course, my angel.

Sleep. I'm red. Before I do, I want you to be happy. You made me happy, darling. That's all I. ever needed. Yes, but Red, I want you to be happy when I'm gone. Hell, Red, I want you to love again. All I'll ever need is you. No, Red, promise me. Promise me you'll leave your heart open to that possibility of a new... I mean, of a time, no, fine, I will marry a 31-year-old. I'm telling you, sorry, what? Damn it, I said I'd do anything for you when we stood at the altar 50 years ago. And if, if you need me to smoke a little crack with somebody

substantially younger than our son, I am ready to do that. I'm going to do that. That is not what I said. You didn't have to, darling. You didn't have to say anything. Just real quick, I can feel that I'm actively dying, but I feel they need to clarify now.

At this point, my angel, sleep now. If I could just set a few boundaries. Crack cocaine. But they didn't back the lady who did the stances? No, I think people weren't Really into her. I liked her. Really?

I'm an ironclad guy. Sure, ironclad is great. Hey, fellas. Have you met? Jingle, Jangle, a new girlfriend? Oh. No, I don't think we've had the pleasure. Well, get used to it because you're going to be seeing a lot of each other.

We are in love. In love, huh? 100%, Tom, love. If you love your money, you should try. Mint Mobile. What? Cecil, maybe. Maybe let the lady have a point.

You say what's Mint Mobile with a pause like? Are we talking about this? Remember the point thing I'm saying? Okay. I wish you would listen to the stuff that I think is important. Cecil, it's fine.

You can go ahead. You sure? I mean, if Changley wants to... It's jingle, jangle. Just go. Just go, Cecil. Sorry. Okay. What's Mint Mobile?

Mint Mobile is here to rescue with premium wireless plans starting at $15 a month. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Okay, okay, okay, baby. Okay. Well, I'm almost done. And then we will go to Orange Julius, absolutely. Cool. Cool.

I love you. But, Heath, do I have to change my number? Nope. Bring your own phone and number. Activate with ESIM in minutes and start saving immediately. No long-term contracts, no hassle. Like a brand new, awesome girlfriend. Jesus, something's wrong with you, dude.

What? What? I'm just saying. But Heath, have you actually tried it? I sure have. Switch to Mint Mobile when they become a sponsor. Because there was an incident where someone had blocked my number, but I needed to speak to them.

That's why I, Heath Henwright, personally, endorsed Mint Mobile. All right, Heath, I'm sold. Where do I sign up? Do you like your money? MintMobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash citation. That's mintmobile.com slash citation. Up front payment of $45 for three-month,

five-gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes and Vs extra. See MintMobile. details. All right, Heath, thanks.

So you guys want to come with us to Orange Chulius? Jingle Jongle loves the mall. Wait, I'm sorry, didn't you say jingle jangle?

Ah, yeah, right, no, totally. Yep. I'm good. I'm not gonna go. Podcasting. We were in love.

Yeah, no, you said. Yeah. This message is sponsored by Raycon. And then, as you said, just wanted to give things

a chance with her ex. I'm really sorry to hear that, buddy. Hey, dude, what's wrong with Heath? Jingle, jangle, jangle broke up with him. Ooh. Over Facebook, Messenger, Cecil, over Facebook. How long has this been going on, Noah?

Oh, about two hours, I guess. Oh, my God, two hours, really? How can you stand it, man? Well, I've got the Raycon's everyday earbuds classic. The active noise cancellation helps block out background noises so I could stay locked in whether I'm listening to music, catching up on podcasts, or taking calls. Everything sounds clear and immersive,

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Go to buy Raycon.com slash citation to get 20% off. Thanks, Raycon, for sponsoring. I'm going to call her. I think I'm going to call her. Give me that phone. Give me that phone. No. Get off me.

And we're back. We left off, Red decided to spend his latter years as everyone from Heathenize hometown. What happened next, Tom? Well, he can't remember where he got the idea or what he was thinking, and he'll be the first to tell you he was a little bit stupid about it. He just marched into a bank in Biloxi, Mississippi, and demanded some money. A customer at the drive-thru window saw him, dialed the police on his cell phone, and that was that.

And they caught me real quick, says Red. Oh, man, back to the drawing board, I guess. So, look, I got to get a drawing board. I didn't believe. I was given a three-year sentence, and it was suspended, and I was banned from the state of Mississippi. But while he was locked up, he learned a thing or two. I stayed in jail before I had my trial,

and one of the world's most famous bank robbers was in that jail. He taught me how to rob banks. It's the easiest thing in the world. Yeah, it turns out you just have to write the name of a crime on an envelope. Do you think the state of Mississippi thinks they're punishing people when they're like, you can't come back here? I was going to say, no. I went back to Houston after I got banned from the state of Mississippi, and I found myself

a girlfriend. I sent her to a teller's school in Houston with a tape recorder in her purse. And one of the things they tell the girls is that if somebody tells you they're rob in the bank, do exactly what they tell you to do and don't get hurt. Okay, but he needed to confirm, like, for himself with secret audio. I also love the idea of teller's school. Like, that's not the thing. Teller's school. He never even needed a gun.

All he had to do was walk in and pass a note and walk out again with a few thousand dollars. So he robbed some more. He won't say how many or how much money he got away with, but he's happy to share a couple of tips. One of the things that you do to rob a bank is pick a place a long ways from where you live. When you successfully rob a bank, don't ever go back to that town, never.

And don't ever tell anybody that you robbed a bank. Hey, everybody, I know we're having fun time today here on Citation Needed, and I don't want to march all over everyone's fun. If anyone ever tells you about all the secret crimes they got away with before they got caught. They're lying. They did one crime and then they got caught. Yep. Yep.

I don't want to say how many banks I robbed because it actually might make me look too cool. I don't want to look too cool. Still, he got caught again a year after the arrest in Biloxi, this time in Florida. And he served three years, age 87 to 90,

as the oldest prisoner in the state's system, bring him a certain local celebrity that he seems to to enjoy a great deal. Okay, Florida gets it. They're like, you stay here now. You never saw anybody like me, did you?

He asks. Yeah, most people, like, put down roots and spend their final years surrounded by loved ones, not eating state-supplied mashed potatoes, and falling asleep to the masturbation sounds of a guy named Big Tony, but your thing's fun, too. Jesus Christ. I'm not really specific. No, there is no one like,

like him. So why did Red Roundtree turn to felony at an age when most men spend their afternoons nodding off happily in an armchair? He told a reporter in Florida that he did it for the money. Now he says, I didn't necessarily need the money. I was getting over $1,000 a month from Social Security and I can't spend $1,000 every month. Oh, okay. Here's an idea. Maybe sell boats at a giant loss. He could probably write to something. He told the police. who picked him up after the Abilene robbery that he did it out of hatred for the bank that put him out of business.

And now he has a different reason. Hey, he says, when I rob a bank, when I walk out the front door, I get a rush, just like I'd taken a shot of cocaine. And it lasts a whole lot longer. I like to rob banks. As hobbies for the elderly go, this has its charm,

but their reasons for it are more elaborate than that. The fact is that no one plans to live to be 90. How could you plan for such a thing? It's actually super simple. I was planning on. I was planning for all the other. I am definitely not in planning on. Do some very basic choices.

To last everyone you ever loved to live into a new world, to be that deeply and irredeemably alone. And to have it go on and on and on until your Rip Van Winkle, a castaway in the future, a prisoner of your preposterous longevity. Who among us has any idea how to prepare for such a circumstance? Love people again later.

Most of us would doubtless feel surpassingly ancient, a stranger in a strange land. Yeah, speaking of which I actually read that book when it came out in 1961. I was 50 years old. I was thinking about robbing a bank on Mars. That's far away from my...

That's right. Anyway, who are you? He said to me. Red Round Tree seems to have felt brand new, reborn, utterly free and unfettered, beyond obligation, beyond law, outside of time. If it was age that liberated the old man,

it was age that got him locked up again. After his release from prison in Florida, he came up to Goldwaith, Texas, to live near his nephew, Buddy, and Buddy's wife, in a trailer on some land they owned. Red seemed happy there. He talked about buying a little piece of property,

said he wanted to spend the rest of his life in Goldwaite. And then, a little more than a year later, he drove two hours up to Abilene and robbed another bank. Yeah, you hear about elderly people starting to wander, but never into felonies. It was his practice to cover his license, plate with packing tape so his car couldn't easily be identified. I had case this bank the evening before, he says, and the next morning I had the tape in my car

to put on the license plate, and the traffic was a little heavier than I thought it would be around the bank. I kept looking for a place where I could put that tape on where no one would see me, but it was getting a little late in the morning, and so I thought, well, I'll just hide the car, but I didn't hide it successfully. Man, can't imagine why this guy's business failed. He seems so doggedly competent. That's amazing.

I'm dying to know what Incompletely hiding his car Look like, right? Trying to set it up The middle of it was reading a newspaper Put a fucking A tablecloth in a vase on it or something I don't

He just put an envelope on it It says Not a car Hidden Yeah I put a leash on it tied it to a telephone pole It's just peeking out from behind a tree trunk

It's just perfect Also too much traffic And he couldn't get a spot? Just wait. You weren't going to a shift at the bank. You're robbing it whenever you walk. Well, I didn't want to miss the early bird breakfast. The Rudy-Tootie Fresh and Frutie's half off on Thursdays if you get there before 11.

That's the real highway. Okay, Tom actually made a really good point just now. I withdraw what I said. Actually, he didn't hide it at all. He seems to have had a brain fog, what he calls a little spell. and instead of taking pains to cover his tracks, he blithely parked outside the bank, went in, held the place up,

walked out to his car, and drove away, his license plate in plain sight. He told me he actually walked up to the camera and put tape over it, but that's actually, that's nothing. So, yeah, he got caught pretty easily. A bulletin went out on the police radio, and he was spotted on a road leading out of town. He was going 90 miles an hour,

heading south on Highway 83 when they caught up with him, and he pulled over and surrendered without a fight, quickly admitting his guilt. See, nowadays a guy like Red would just be posting racist stuff on Facebook that really embarrassed his family. What I'm saying is I like the bank things better. It's a better time. Festive.

That judge hasn't sentenced Red yet, but it's unlikely he'll ever be free again, and he knows it. Still, jail's not so bad. I tell you, they've been good to me here, he says. and he'll probably be moved to a special federal facility for elderly prisoners up in Fort Worth. Red Roundtree, farm boy, husband, businessman, bank robber. I'm genuinely worried that Tom's takeaway from this is like, yeah, once I'm old, it's probably pretty cool to go.

Your takeaway is different then. Okay, all right, we'll have to talk after this record. His race is pretty much run now, but he doesn't seem unhappy about it. When he dies, he says, I'm going to be buried next to Faye and Tom in Houston. I've owned that plot for 50 years. I want the cheapest box they can buy. What's more? Although the Baptist boy has turned into a somewhat less devout man, he still believes in heaven.

He believes he's going there. I can't find a place in the Bible. It tells me it's wrong to rob banks. Haven't looked very hard. Now shall not steal? Okay. It's stealing, he says. and then his eyes light up again.

But it's fun stealing. Don't have fun is also in there. Like a lot. Like a whole bunch. So, yeah, when I'm out of prison, I'll go to a bank, and I will flip over one of their tables with those check slips on it. So that's Jesus there. But I'm taking a pen.

Those are free. They have to let you take the pen. Red has been having a lot of fun these past 15 years, and it's hard not to admire him for it. That was easier for some than other side. How bad is your life that you're like 90-year-old man and Mexican security? That's the life. We're not all putting away on the 401K, you know, like markets down.

Everyone you love is dead. Yummy. The banks don't like him and his nephew's little irked at him. But even the cops who arrested him and the FBI agent who made the case against him speak of him as an interesting old guy. He says he's had a hell of a good life. And it seems appropriate to ask him, how? How do you live that long?

What is the trick to keeping happy? Be mean and contrary, he says slowly. And then he laughs because after all, he's only kidding. He has dementia. Okay, so if you'd like to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? And contrary. Age is just a number. Sometimes it's an inmate number,

but it's still just a number. And are you ready for the quiz? I am. Okay, Tom. What is the best heist caper in the Bible? A, the doubting Thomas Crown Affair. We, we three kings, C, pulp crucifixion,

or D, the Italian Job. The Italian Job! The Italian Job! Oh, that's good. It's good. But I'm going to go with the doubting Thomas Crown Affair. Correct. Yes. Nailed it by guessing.

Okay. So Thomas, as appealing as robbing banks are as a retirement plan, it won't really be viable for us because the banks won't last that long. So given the current trajectory of American society, what would be our best retirement plan option? A, mastering a Walker-based martial arts for the breadline rock. That's a good one. B. Learning to use dentures like ninja stars. C. Personal experience.

Befriending unhealthy preppers or D. High cholesterol. High cholesterol is my plan. Bacon to the rescue bitches. Here we go. hacking Bitcoin wallets. Also, I'm thinking about becoming a prepper. So there you go, everybody.

How's your health? Not great. Not nice. Noah, we got our first one. Your first. one. Yeah. All right,

Tom, one more for you. So if red doesn't steal Ocean's 91, like he fucking steals everything else, what's the title

of his memoirs? A, heist on a cracker. Because, you know, crack and white. B, great grand

larceny, or C, by gone in 60 seconds. Nice. I like heist on a Cracker, I prefer a joke that needs to be explained a little. You are correct about that and you're correct about the answer. That's a super cool Pete Seeger reference.

Then you fucking clam right up. Irish part. Tom wins. What did I say? Tom wins. All right. Heath, we'll get an essay from you next time. All right. Well, for Tom, Noah, Cecil, and Heath. I'm Elon Bosnick. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, Heath, we'll be an expert on something else.

between now and then you can listen to our shows and the other podcast places and if you'd like to help keep the show going you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes connect with us on social media or check the show notes.

Be sure to check out citationpod. All right, you guys ready to watch me jump the dirt bike over the crick? Fuck yeah, baby. Show me what you can fucking do. Are you sure this is what mom wanted instead of a funeral? I mean, that's what dad said. I guess. Let's fucking do this thing.

Fuck yeah! Yeah!