Do Go On - 232 - The Eccentricities of Howard Hughes

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Howard Hughes was the richest man of his day, and also possibly the most eccentric. He spent the first half of his life making billions of dollars, producing films, setting aviation world records and dating half of Hollywood. But for the last two decades of his life he was rarely seen by anyone, becoming a recluse with an obsession with germs.Buy tickets to our four live steamed podcasts (12pm Melbourne time April 11, 18, 25 and May 2). Or buy a discounted season pass:https://sospresents.com/collections/upcoming-live-streamsOur website: dogoonpod.comSupport the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: patreon.com/DoGoOnPod Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/Submit-a-Topic Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader ThomasREFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:Howard Hughes - The Man & The Madness (1999):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ea5gIYfRH4http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553204_2/Howard_Hughes.htmlhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Howard-Hugheshttps://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/history/houston-legends/article/Eccentric-businessman-and-aviator-Howard-Hughes-8328501.phphttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes#Deathhttps://www.biography.com/business-figure/howard-hughes

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenjai Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Do Go On. My name is Dave Warnagie and as always, before me, sitting in some fantastic chairs. It's Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart. Hello, how are you, David? Hello, how are you, Jessica. Dave, we have to answer at the same time. One, two, three, great. Good, thanks.

How are you, Matt? I'm pretty good, thanks. You know, I'm not letting the old COVID get me down. But if I'm being honest, it's been a bit of a bummer. On Friday, there was a tiger in Mexico that was born in a zoo there. No. It was actually... They've named it COVID Warnocky.

Well, it's so cute. You look at it. They have literally named it COVID. No. They named it COVID. Why? So the cutest little creature in the world, What were they thinking?

Tigers have a pretty decent lifespan, don't they? Yeah, that'll live. That's gone for decades, that thing. And it will forget COVID-19, hopefully. And it's just going to sound like a beautiful name. Yeah, that's right. It's not that bad, I suppose. It's like all those kids that got named ISIS before that happened,

and they were like, we better change their names now, but I don't think they need to. Deep down, they'll always be ISIS. They change their name to COVID. How unlucky are we? I can believe it. Well, it's great that we're still able to podcast together and we're still going to put out the episodes every week.

But sadly, at the moment, we're not able to do live shows. And we had a whole bunch coming up this year. It was kind of going to be our year. Yeah. It was all nearly booked in. It was going to be our biggest year of live shows. My biggest year of stand-up touring as well. And that has all been fucked up by a little asshole tiger

named COVID. The freaking Mexican tiger. Which as far as I know now, started a big thing. We were so close to booking in the US too. We had a promoter slash producer. We had venues locked in, dates, penciled in, and a lawyer working towards getting our visa. We were about a week off hitting fire on the application, which means a lot of money would have been spent.

Thankfully, we didn't because you wouldn't get that back. And right now, there's little to zero chance. getting a visa and obviously not very safe to travel the world. And Australians have been locked down in our country. Actually, we can't leave. But that was going to happen in October. And we also were going to hopefully book in a trip to New Zealand as well. Yeah, our first trip to New Zealand was getting really close.

We were looking at locking in a venue there as well. And we're also going to get back to Brisbane, Sydney. We're obviously doing the Melbourne Comedy Festival. And, yeah, that. Well, I forget about. I forget about it till we talk about it. It's a real bummer. If I mention this, this COVID-this COVID-asshole.

We should be four shows in to the comedy festival. And we would have done one podcast. We would have done four of our solo shows by now. Yeah. So that's fun. So, but... As far as I know, though, I'm still doing Edinburgh, my stand-up show, but I have a funny feeling that I have no idea, but that can't.

That can't. Surely. I think officially it's still on. They keep saying it's happening, but really, I don't know. Yeah. But I mean, Comedy Festival. said that for a long time too. Yeah, yeah.

And we're all going, come on. I mean, and also the Olympics has said that for a long time and now they're like, all right, all right, we admit it. It's not happening. Yeah. But there is good news. They've rescheduled the Olympics.

And also, we, instead of doing these big live tours, which we will hopefully get back to next year, hopefully the world gets over this and we can all resume our normal lives and we can come and visit you in your home cities, but we have decided to, try a new thing with the help of our good friends at Stupid Old Studios. Evan.

Good old. From Stupid Old. And Emma. Evan and Emma, the double East. And we have decided to do four live streamed podcasts on Saturday afternoon's Melbourne time, starting this Saturday. And the tickets are on sale now. People have already got really behind us, which is really, really nice. So cool.

And you can buy season passes just like you could have done at the Comedy Festival where you get to see all four streams for the price of three. And they are in Aussie dollars. It's 12 Aussie dollars per podcast, which means it's about 15 US cents because the dollar is. We owe you if you're buying from America. Yeah, so that's going to be sweet. And we're also, we're hoping to do, like, will these episodes be released somewhere or another like the normal live episodes are, except people who hate hecklers won't have to deal with

any of those because I don't think we'll have the technology to be heckled at. But I'll be heckling. Oh, okay, great. Yeah, absolutely. So normal episode. And so that'll be, so people still be able to hear the edited audio versions, but if you want to see the unedited live video streams, plus we're going to have another.

And we probably won't put them all out, will we? Just like we do with live episodes. There's no, we may not put them all out. So if you want to see them all, probably the best way. And also we'll probably do some sort of interactive section at the end of the show as well, which also won't go out. A bit of a chat. So, yeah, tickets are available.

So it's 12 p.m., I believe, on Saturday afternoons. Melbourne Australian time on the east coast of Australia anyway, and which equals to be about Friday night in the US. Yes. And as you go further east in Europe, I think, the later it gets on Friday night. It might be quite late in the UK, but we're going to leave it up for about 24 hours afterwards. So even if you don't want to watch it live in the actual moment, you can go to bed and wake up and the link will be there. Ticket holders will be able to say it for 24 hours.

That's cool. Yeah, yeah. So get involved. The ticket link is in the. description of this episode. Depending on where we're at in Australia, the original plan was we're going to do it at the studios, but it's looking more and more likely that we're going to be coming to you live

from our relative lounge rooms, which is kind of fun as well. You'll see, it'll be interesting to see us all side by side, David sitting in his ivory tower chair. Tower chair, that's what he calls his throne. Jess, what are you going to be sitting on? Probably the bathroom.

It's got the best reception. I hadn't thought about that. I could do it from the bath. I would love that. The water starts very bubbly. And as it dissipates, we lose viewers. Oh, can we get some pixels? Anyway, we should get into the show, but I'm really excited about it.

I'm so glad that stupid old have been able to help us out to do that. We should also say that our good friend Josh Earl, who hosts one of our favorite podcasts, also on Planet Broadcasting, don't you know who I? am he's also doing two of the Saturdays and I'm definitely going to be watching his stuff because I love it and tickets are on the same website the stupid old website in the description so yeah it's I think it's SOS presents saucepresents.com I think but yeah if you go to that and I think there's there's semi plans on the works to get other things going including some stand-up specials they've recorded in the past but never released and a few other bits and pieces so yeah so if

you're if you're missing out on live comedy that might be one of the cool places you can go to get your fix. It might also be worth mentioning too that a stupid old are going to be launching their own Patreon very soon. It's either out now or it's coming very soon. And they're the people that, I mean, make this

podcast very possible and produce amazing content for themselves as well. So, you know, if you love gamey, gamey game and you love, I don't know, Australian comedy, then, you know, get around it. Yeah, for sure. They are fantastic people and included in that is our very

and Matt Stewart. That's right. I'm blushing you guys. You think we're great people? We think you're great people. I think Kevin's great. Yeah. Okay.

No, I understand. There's six of us involved. Five out of six ain't bad, man. Yeah. Pretty good odds. I reckon five out of six of you are fantastic. And I'm not naming names.

Okay. But it's... You got beef with Alistair Trumbullet, absolutely not. No. Andy Matthew? No, Andy's an angel. Oh, Beck portrayed us.

No, one of my closest friends. Oh, okay. Well, I'm assuming you must be talking about Evan Munra Smith. Nope. Love him to be. Emma Sharp. I'm starting to feel a little. I'm miscounted here.

Anyway, we should get on with the show. The way this one works is Jess is the best at explaining it. I really am. May I? Yes. So, one of the three of us does a report about a topic, usually suggested by a listener, and they present that topic to the other two,

being the two of the three of us. Fantastic. Two thirds. Two thirds of us. I don't know what it is. I am in the third that do know what it is. So I'm going to ask you that question to get us onto topic. And that is one of my all-time favorite Simpsons quotes is,

Hop in the Spruce Goose. I said, hop in. And that is a parody of which eccentric billionaire? The Aviator. It is the Aviator. His name is Leonardo DiCaprio. I forget what his. His first name is Howard.

Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes. just looks amazed that Matt got this so strongly. Honestly, I'm amazed Matt gets out of bed most days. Sorry, I've gone hardily. The only reason I know things from culture. Well, I'm using broadly. Excentric billionaires.

Yeah, I know them from The Simpsons. I wouldn't have got that reference at all as a kid, but I did see the aviator. And the only thing I can really remember is that it was really hard on them making the pop rivets flat. And there was like a montage where they'd keep coming back. This flat?

No. I want them to be smooth. And they'd come back and go like this. No, damn it. It was making myself at that point. Yeah. Come on, Leo. Well, he actually did do a lot of stuff like that, making his own stuff.

Oh yeah, you're going to talk about it. Yeah. Well, I know the name, but I could not have placed Howd Hughes in history. So I know nothing. Fantastic. Well, let me just tell you, it's a crazy story. Awesome. I love crazy story.

And the Aviator is a great film, so Monscorsese picture, and that sort of documents sort of the first sort of two-thirds-ish of his life. So like the me and Jess section. Yeah, but then... And you're going to do the Dave third. The Dave third, and that is when things get at their most crazy. That's when he becomes Mr. Burns. Yeah.

There's a bit of that. There's a bit of that. Was that the casino episode? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She gets a little addictive. I call him gambler.

So Patreon's photo. on three people who lived eccentric lives. I put up three. Can you tell us who lost? Was one of them Don Bradman? Slightly lunia. Okay. I don't want to, I would like to do them in future.

One of them was an artist and the other one was someone who inherited a lot of money. Okay. That's how I'd like to get wealthy. Well, let me just tell you that this guy is probably both of those combined. Great. A bit of an artist, bit of a man who inherited a lot of money. but I think they voted for the most eccentric of the three so I think they chose well

I wanted to do this topic for ages because I used to be well into reading Wikipedia and this was one of my favourite articles was about this guy because he had so many strange things happened in his life and so I put it up because I wanted three eccentric people and then I was like I checked the hat and only one person has vaguely suggested it

and that is Steve from Adelaide-ish who said we should do more topics about casino heists and then listed a few and one of them vaguely mentioned Howard Hughes because as you're about to discover he bought a casino which is why his parody on the Simpsons. Interesting, why does Steve not want to give his location away? What's he been doing?

Adelaide-ish. And then in the topic or the section where you ask what your Twitter handle is, he's just written hashtag don't have Twitter. Thank you for letting you. us no. I added that a long time ago. That's absolutely useless information for us. Yeah. I should take that part out of the hat form. That's all good. But thanks to Steve, for kind of, he's from Adelaide-ish and he kind of suggested ish this topic.

Great, is. All right. So, Howard Rabard Hughes Jr. Yes. He is eccentric. And I love a junior. He certainly is a junior. He was born in Houston, Texas on Christmas Christmas Eve 1905. That sucks. Christmas birthdays. Yeah, you want to spread the joy. Yeah, and then you never get the attention that you need for a birthday. No way.

People are like, shut up on baking of cake. Yeah. I'm stressed. Grandma's coming tomorrow. Happy birthday, whatever. You know, it's a nightmare. Clean out the attic. What?

How huge you was the only child? I thought you fumbled on something there. That's fantastic. How do you? Well, I hadn't written it down, so I just sort of had to try and work it out as it came out. I'm happy with my effort. How Hugh Drew? He was the only child of Aline Stone Garno and Howard Rabard Hughes Sr.

Fantastic. His father, How Hugh Sen, was an inventor and businessman from Missouri who found great success by founding the Hughes Tool Company and for patenting a Rotary Rock Drill Bit, nicknamed the Rock. Eater. Ooh. I'm num, num,

num, num, num, I'm a rock eater. Make your chump rock. Make your chump rock. Make your chump rock. All day long. Well, it did. I had a really good battery life.

We should talk to them about an ad campaign. Yes. Yeah. Great. In one form or another. It completely revolutionized oil well drilling, penetrating hard rock with 10 times the speed of any form a bit. So every company needed one.

Every company. no matter what they did accountants. They needed one. Every ambulance had one. Just in case. You're a good salesman. You are. Now there's never been a better time to bar.

You are good. Well, every oil company needed one and oil was really taking off. So this made Howard Hughes, Sr. A very, very wealthy man. Fantastic. His father was frequently away on business. So young Howard was raised mostly by his mother, Aline, who was a socialite who had a parallel.

fear of germs and illnesses, particularly polio, something that she imparted onto her son and would affect him throughout his life. And I mean the fear, not polio, just the way that came out. But a specific fear of polio. Because, well, to be fair, back then, if you got it, it was pretty bad news. Yeah. And a lot of people would get it. Right. What is polio? This is not for me. This is for listeners who might not know. It affects your legs.

Okay. Eventually, I think you become wheelchair-bound. Oh, right. Yeah, often for life. Yeah, okay. So if you got it, yeah, and it was very common before people were inoculated against that kind of stuff. So you can see why you would be cautious about with your child, but I think she was very much talked about germs to the point that he thought about germs all the time himself. Yeah, right.

Come on, Eileen. Knock it off. That's good stuff. According to the Houston Chronicle, Aline kept Hughes close, refusing to allow him to run. roam with neighborhood children. If Hughes grew even the slightest bit sick, multiple physicians were summoned to the family's home to examine the young boy. So he became very, very afraid of germs and illness.

Real hypochondriac. Real hypochondriac. I am a bit, but he made me feel like it's okay. This definitely stages. I think I'm too relaxed. Really? I think so.

I feel any pain and I think I'm going to die. Nah. Why do I feel a pain on my back? I don't think I've got a sore back. I think cancer every time. I can go between the two. But yeah, there's a stereotype men don't go to doctors. If I'm like, I'm not sure about this, I'll go to a doctor.

Good. But I, yeah, which is like it just feels, they put your mind at ease. The most part, you're like, they're like, yeah, you'll be right or whatever. And sometimes they're like, oh, I'm glad you came here. You were about to die. That was the time that I had a bullet hole in my. chest. I was bleeding out.

You're slightly worried. I'm like, just... If they've got an appointment, I'll pop in. Did you start with an apology? This is probably nothing. Sorry to waste your time. Like, no, no, this is worth seeing us about. I did start with an apology at the GP recently because I had to go in just for a prescription

for migraine drugs and COVID-19 is happening. And I walked in like, I'm so sorry to bother you. Just some admin. How are you? I checked in on her, which I think more people. people should do. You take her temperature? Of course.

She was fine. Good. Good to hear it. I said, just keep up your fluids. Yeah. You know, you'll be right. And she said, thank you so much. I was so worried.

So, you know, hero, I don't know. Doctors make the worst patients. Patients make the worst doctors. Are you doing that right? I'm a doctor. According to the BBC, his father in an attempt to balance her Molly coddling, as they put it, packed him off to a string of boarding schools,

bypassing their academic requirements by writing colossal checks. Take my boy. Not big amounts, but just large checks. Novelty checks. I think you'll find this is more than enough. So this is for $10. Yeah, but that check, that's huge.

That's a huge check. Deny me that. You can't. But for the most part, Hughes lived in an isolated world of his own, and some say this paved the road for a success. but he was a very intelligent and inventive young lad. He's on his own, he's got to, you know.

Make up friends. Yeah, do things for himself. And at just 11 years old, Hughes built the first wireless radio set in all of Houston. Wow, can you believe that? No one else had one, and he built one at 11. That's where NASA is. Probably not yet, but still. Did he just Google how to build it?

I would have YouTube it for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But you start by Googling it, so there's instructions, and then you read the instructions while watching a video. and eating pasta. Of course, that you also made from a YouTube video. How to buy pasta. Go to supermarket.

Uh-huh. Okay. Let's rewind. How do I? How does one go to? Okay, I need another video. I need to go on dictionary.com supermarket. So you built this at 11 years old,

and he used it to talk to ships captains in the Gulf of Mexico. Probably being like, this is a secure line. I'm a little boy. Hello. My dad could buy. Oh, you! A year later, he designed a built and motorized bicycle. Basically, a motorbike.

At the age of 14, he took his first flying lesson, and he fell in love with the relatively new mode of transport. Yeah, he's a rich kid. Yeah. Flying lessons at 14. Daddy! Come on, mate. Now that would be extravagant, but...

Oh, yeah. When I'm guessing he was flying the one plane, the world shared... Yeah. Daddy. Daddy, I want to have a go. Call up Charles Lindbergh and make him drop it off. All right. Tragedy first struck the family when in 1922,

at the age of just 16, Howard's mother died from complications from an ectopic pregnancy. So she was just 39 years old. Okay, he was 16. Oh, yes, he was 16. Yeah. She was very young.

And remember, she was always feared medical stuff. Yeah. So she was proven right in the end. Yeah. Without her final words, they're told you. Told you. Don't get polio.

So how was, father took him out of school and moved him to California where he took further flying lessons and fell in love with a glitz and glamour of Hollywood. Tinsletown. He loved it. Who doesn't? These two things as well as fear of germs would go on to define the man. Hollywood. Aviation

germs. Got it. They're the big three in his life. Fair enough. Hughes and his father then moved back to Houston where the junior of the two started university before tragedy again struck the family. Oh no. Howard Hughes Sr. died of a heart attack in

1924, leaving only child Howard Hughes an orphan at the age of 18. Oh my God. This also meant he inherited the majority of his father's multi-million dollar company. Howard received a 75% stake, but because he was under 21, he was considered a minor and wasn't allowed to make any decisions. So, on his 19th birthday, he went to... Can fly a plane. Can't make decisions, though.

That's a funny dichotomy, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, you can fly, you can make, but don't make any decisions up there. Can I land it? Well, that's not up to you, mate. You'll have to stay up there until you turn 21 and then you can land. On his 19th birthday, he went to court and had himself declared to be an emancipated minor, meaning he could take control of his life and the family business.

He also bought out his relatives who had inherited the other 25% stake in the business, meaning the 19-year-old was now fully in charge. Far out. That seems like a bad idea. Well, actually, he's quite intelligent. I'm thinking of myself at 19, and that wouldn't have ended well. But he's naturally intelligent, but he hasn't done a lot of schooling on university. He's sort of done a bit here, a bit there, a bit there, but he's just a very naturally clever and interested guy. He taught himself a lot of things.

So the Howard Hughes Tool Company, which is the company, paid Hughes an annual salary of $50,000, which is the equivalent of $750,000 today. That's pretty good money. I reckon that's pretty good. Yeah. I reckon you could live pretty comfortable. comfortably on that. Yeah, if you got that in your life of work.

And you can become even more comfortable if you have that to spend, but then also get your money's worth by charging all major expenses such as planes, automobiles and even houses to the company. So he was very rich. That was just spending money, basically.

That's great. But he didn't want to just be a tool man. Sure. Oh? No. Bannam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Bamb. Oh.

So the next year in 1925, Hughes Jr. appointed Noah Dietrich as CEO of Hughes Tool Company, while he himself left for California to pursue his two passions, filmmaking and aviation. This turned out to be a very wise move because Noah Dietrich was a great businessman and took the tool company from strength to strength, profiting over $50 million a year in the 1920s. Whoa. Holy shit. Which these days is three quarters of a billion US profit. Whoa.

Far out. Does that, do companies do that today? Very rarely. Right. It was one of the most successful companies. Yeah. The biggest of the biggest companies today might, maybe? Yeah.

Would like Apple at their peak, maybe? I don't know why you don't know. I think Google is like a trillion dollar company. Whoa. Don't even know what that means. Yeah. I don't know how many zeros is. But basically, he's given the family business to this other genius and said,

take care of that. I'm going to Holy World. it. And so now he's just got money for life rolling in the background. And he's not even 20 years old yet. Oh. Is that a recipe for success or disaster, do you think? Disaster.

Yeah, that does sound like, that would be very few people would do well with that, I think. It's just, it's crazy money. Yeah, but I think. I'd hate that. There's got to be like a period of failure and normal life before you get to that to appreciate. to appreciate it and for it to not fuck you up. I would have thought. But no.

And that's why I've been preparing my whole lot for. Yeah. For wealth. I'm preparing for wealth. Yes. I think I'm almost ready. If anyone wants to benefact me, that could be the name of our new podcast.

Benefact me. And it's just I was begging for benefactors to give us millions. Please. Millions. Yeah. I'll take nothing less. Yeah, you're full. Don't patronise us.

Oh my God. And while we wait, we say facts. Millions, please. Three million would be good. Three million. Then we get a mill each. Every three million dollars will give you one fact. I think that's reasonable, but it'll be a really good fact.

Oh, yeah. So he's moved to Hollywood and he has a lot of ambitions. This is what Howard Hughes said when he moved to Hollywood. I intend to be the greatest golfer in the world, the finest film producer in the world, the greatest pilot in the world and the richest man in the world. And he said that at 19. It's pretty interesting because I've been watching Tiger King and one of the people in that, she says, I believe that people should only have one thing they're good at,

which I thought was quite sad. That was quite a bleak outlook on the world. They're like, I make a really good spaghetti and that's all I, you know. So I imagine your thing is spaghetti. Damn it. Yeah. You only got one thing that you've got to. I've watched the whole series.

I can't remember. Carol says that in like the first episode. And obviously she's talking about, you know, saving big cats. But so she's like, this is like you only have one thing. Which I was like, well, I don't know if that's, I agree with that. But this guy going, I'm going to be the greatest at four or five things. Yeah, so he said, greatest golfer, finest film producer, greatest pilot and richest man in the world. Which four things.

Sounds a little bit crazy, but he did most of those things. Right. There is a difference between being good at something and being the greatest in the world too, right? Yeah. So there's a big difference between what Carol's outlook. I think somewhere in between is true. Yeah. You know?

I want to be the greatest in the world at one thing and good at two things. Oh, I don't want to be the greatest in the world at anything. That's a lot of pressure. I just want to survive. I just want to be the greatest of the world of making spaghetti or whatever you said before. Well, I'd keep working because I've had your spaghetti. And it's pretty great. Yeah, it's pretty great.

It's not the best of the world. It's not how Mama used to make it. It's still pretty good, though. Well, I am actually 1-8 Swiss-Italian, so. 16th, man. Come on, get the maths right. I know your life better than you. So, yeah, that sounds crazy.

He did do most of these things, except golf, which he later gave up. All right. But the other stuff, that's definitely on the table at this stage. How good at golf did he get? He got good, he got very good. He'd often play with a lot of the famous pros of the day. Greg Norman? Yes.

He gave Greg his nickname the shark. Really? Because he used to cheat. You bloody shark, Greg. You are a fucking shark. Sharks obviously notorious for cheating at poker. Yeah, absolutely. They can only cheat forwards.

But they can't stop cheating. No. Once they start, they can't go back. So the very young and very wealthy Howard Hughes moved to Hollywood, where his uncle Rupert Hughes was an Oscar-nominated screenrun. and novelist, his father's brother. And Howard wasn't alone at this time. He just married his first wife, Ella Rice,

who also came from a very wealthy family from Texas. They moved into the ambassador hotel in L.A., which would be the first of many hotels that Howard lived in throughout the rest of his life. He rarely lived in a home. It was nearly always hotels. Yeah, right. I don't mind staying in hotels,

but I don't know if I'd want to live in one. I love a breakfast buffet, as long as they've got one. I love a buffet. But I mean, if you're living there and you're living in like a penthouse. You're not going to the breakfast buffet. But surely you're enjoying some of the other perks. Certainly not if you're a germaphobe like this guy.

Yeah, he's not touching the spoon for the baked beans. But I am. Oh, yeah. I'm licking that spoon, which is why he's not touching it. I keep people off that spoon. Keep him for me. During this time, you also learned to fly a Waco aeroplane and put his money to use producing and funding his first film,

which was called Swell Hogan. Well, Hogan. Predictions, what do you think? Good or bad? Well, swell. So good. Okay. Yeah.

Swell's a great word. I'm, because I've never heard of it, I'm going to say really good. I'm saying good. It was a dismal flop. Nah. Costing double what Hughes had anticipated. He reportedly watched it back and decided that no one should ever see the film. It was that bad.

He's a perfectionist. And I like that about him. But it was invaluable to him as he had demanded to be on set to see how the film was made at every stage. and edited and stuff like that. So it became sort of a film boot camp for him. He knew what not to do next time, every step of the way. Everything this director did. I'm not doing that.

Despite the flop, he was embraced by Hollywood High. Flops are fun. It is funny. Despite his flop. Despite flop in the shop. Well, you know. He was arrested. He was embraced by Hollywood High Society,

but behind his back, they referred to him as, quote, the sucker with the money. Oh, fine. They did not respect... They did not respect him as new money. They did not respect him at this date. But he kept investing and his next two films were hits.

The second was 1927's Two Arabian Nights. Which sounds like a porno. Yes. And it won the first Academy Award for Best Director of a Comedy Picture. Right. Wow. Two Arabian Nights. Yeah, at least think about two Best Director Awards.

Okay. That was the first ever Academy Awards. He's filmed one one. Why'd they give out two? Because it was best drama and best comedy. comedy director. Yeah. At this point in his life, Howard stopped wearing a watch and recognizing day and night.

Yes. I don't recognize you. Dark sky. What is this? What is it? It could be, this is the morning. Someone turn the light on. Turn off the dark.

Someone turn off the dark. He actually coined that phrase. Hey, so that makes sense to me. They should go back to that best director for comedy and drama. Yeah, great. Yeah, because a comedy film never has a shot in that category anymore. It's just because they don't, I mean, yeah, I don't know, it's interesting, but it feels like they're very different skills and both equally difficult,

although I've heard some say, and I kind of agree with it, it's, you can, a comedian can act in drama, but often drama actors can't do comedies. Comedy is the hardest skill. Which is exactly what comedians would say. Yeah. But I do agree. Think of like the big, how many, I guess there are examples both ways, but you think of big comedy actors who you'd never guess could do well in drama like Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler.

Like the absolute sort of almost jockey goofball actors. Robert Williams. Who do amazing straight drama roles. And there's, there wouldn't be anywhere near as many examples going the other way, I don't think. Maybe Robert De Niro, he's done, I mean, his comedies haven't been, but he's funny. Michael Kane was he He sort of started drama And he's quite funny

There's probably Probably some examples I think Steve Martin's probably another one Who could do drama okay But yeah I reckon I was the first time I heard that I thought the same thing I'm like oh that sounds like

Self-serving comedian talk But I think there's something in it But is it also a lot of the time That these dramatic actors don't really Are they interested in doing comedy Yeah maybe that's a point But I do think it is a harder skill. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely see. I can't do both. Even in theatre. I've even, I've done like sketches and stuff for filmed sketches and stuff working with serious actors who are doing comedy and you can see them struggle. But that's just, that's down to the individual. But I think it is a harder thing to do. But yeah, they're sort of like, uh, and they're working with comedies.

and it's like, you've got no fucking chance here. That's not true. I'll shut up. No, no, cancel them. Name names. Name and shame. Were you in a sketch with Meryl Streep? Yeah.

She can't be funny actually. Yeah, she's funny. Yeah, she's right. She's good. She could do anything. Damn you, Merrill, would she play Jessica Lovejoy on the Simpsons? She played a child on The Simpsons and was probably one of the best guest stars I've ever had. Oh my God.

That was Meryl? Jessica Lovejoy, yeah, but it's crushed. That's Meryl Streep. What do you mean? She's so good of being a child. What do you mean? She can do anything.

Helen Mirren's another one. She's funny. Yeah. She can be funny. All right. Maybe there is as many it can do both ways. I also think the director plays such a huge role. You know,

you see every great actor's had horrible movies. And I think that's mainly down to the direction and editing, right? They make them look good or bad. So I think a lot of it is the... Anyway, this is a weird. You're really hating on actors here. No, I just, I'm sort of backing them up for their, when they have had flops or whatever.

Oh, yeah, I don't really think it's on them. Well, Hughes has moved on from the flop to do success, and this is where he stops wearing a watch. He just started working incessantly. Sometimes he would work for up to 40 hours straight, only breaking to eat a can of beans or a bacon and avocado sandwich. You're listening to out of your day. This guy is taking a break for some beans.

That's why I put that in. Love this guy. Love that energy. Not that I could ever work for 40 hours straight, but... I don't even work 40 hours a week. I don't reckon I do it fortnightly. You don't... Sure, you do 20 hours a week.

What? What do I do? You work on yourself. Yeah, I do work on myself. That's 24-7. Let me tell you. Even in my dreams, I'm like, all right, now, let's reflect them today. Hey, Dave, you know how you said... So he stopped wearing a wristwatch after the flop.

Did you know... that one of the most famous dick tricks is the wristwatch. So maybe, did he flop the chop onto the, do the wristwatch? And then somehow that... Yeah. He started wearing a watch on his chop. Oh, he got a tattoo. Yeah, and that's why I didn't respect day and night,

because even a cock watch is right twice a day. You just point to and say, it's always five o'clock somewhere. Even a cocked, that's so close to something real good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even a cocked watch is correct twice a day. I want to tweet that later. Yeah, okay. If everyone listening, go back to last week and like that tweet.

I'm going to tweet it right now. That doesn't make sense, though, without a picture. Okay, let me take a quick... No, no, I've had a think about this. Howard Hughes produced his most ambitious film Hells Angels in 1930. A film that he also chose to direct himself, Well, he chose to do that after he fired three other directors who weren't achieving his vision. Oh, wow.

Yeah, he sounds like a real cuck. So it was a World War I aviation film with a lot of flying involved. Is that where the term Hell's Angels came from? I'm actually not sure, no. I imagine that predates the bikey gang. Yeah, 1930. Yeah, I would reckon. Yeah, interesting.

It's a great term, Hell's Angels. It is a fantastic term. And the film used upwards of 50. aircraft, nearly half actual World War I aeroplanes, and Hughes hired every single pilot in Hollywood to fly the aerial sequences and pilot the camera planes. Wow. The lead stunt pilot, Paul Mance, considered the final scene in which an aircraft had to make a steep pull-out after a mission too dangerous and reported that his pilots wouldn't be able to do the

manoeuvre safely. Wow. He said, we're not doing it. Can't do it. Determined to show the stunt pilots working on the film how they should be doing it. And at the same time, what a hot shot pilot he was. No. Howard Hughes took off to do the scene by himself.

No. It required him to pilot an actual World War I aeroplane, an airplane that would be a challenge for any new pilot. No. And he's got the best stuntman in the country saying it's too dangerous. He's like, I'll do it. So Hughes took off, but as Mance had predicted, he failed to pull out, crashed, and was seriously injured with the skull fracture.

Fortunately, he survived and recovered, leading the crew to joke, quote, at least he hasn't heard his check riding arm. We're still getting paid. So he was just a lot of money for a lot of people. But three other pilots did crash and die whilst making the film, which went millions of dollars over budget in a time when most films didn't even cost one million dollars to make. Wow. He just kept throwing money at this thing.

It was shot without sound at first. It was a silent. picture. But it took so long to make the film by the time it was done, Hughes discovered that the talkies were all the rage, so people had started talking in movies. So we had to reshoot the whole thing with sound. Oh my God. The lead actress, Norwegian Greta Nissen, who was in the silent era one of the biggest stars in the world, but she had a Norwegian voice rather than American one. So she was recast by Hughes, who replaced her with then unknown actor, Harleen Carpenter, who rebranded as Jean Harlow. Oh, wow. One of the most successful.

actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Despite dying at 2016, do you know that? No, I didn't know that. Yeah. She's on the 26th Club. Yeah, 26th Club. The film was a huge box office success, but despite this, it did not recoup its costs. So it was a hit, and it still didn't make enough money.

Because it had two budgets. Yeah. I think it ended up costing $4 million at the time. At the time. At the time, which is tens and tens of millions of dollars. So it all indie flick these days. Yeah. Far out.

It's still considered a hit because people loved it and lots of people saw it. It did make half. the original platinum blonde bombshell, a huge star, and gave Howard Hughes the reputation that he'd been looking for. He was no longer just the wealthy boy from Texas. He was now a real Hollywood player. Aw. Because he made a good film.

It was around this time that his first wife, Ella, filed for divorce. After she moved back to Houston, and whilst she was back in Houston, he had dated many of Hollywood's most famous leading ladies. So it's little surprise that she divorced him. He reportedly dated. Some of the most famous women of the era. He dated Billy Dove, Betty Davis, Ava Gardner, Catherine Hepburn,

Hedy Lamar, Ginger Rogers, Janet Lee, Rita Hayworth and many, many, many more. That's a who's who's list. Yeah, right? NAYCAD all do comedy or drama. They were the best. But yeah, isn't that? And Ginger Rogers could do what Fred Astaire was doing backwards. Oh, geez, tell you what.

What was he doing? That's what people say. People say that. Z. Why? Because everyone talks about how Fred was such an amazing dancer. And everyone goes, well, yeah, Jim is doing it backwards? Wait, is it the expert?

Because she's dancing with him, Dave. Oh, right. I'm with you now. I'm with you now. Yeah, but it's good that I had to explain it. Are you trying to do the alphabet backwards still? I think there's seven. Is that in there somewhere?

No. Round it up. Hashtag. Yes, hashtag is in there, obviously. So he dated a lot of very, very, very famous women. That's only a very short list. But he was rich, powerful. and handsome by many accounts.

Dave, you're allowed to say he was handsome. Why did you have to put that on a word? To me, he looks a little bit creepy to you honest, but I've only seen, there's only still photos. Any photo of someone back in the day, I'm always like, eh. That's what I mean, it's hard to say. It really is.

You can look him up if you like. At the time, people thought he was a babe. Yeah, yeah, he was considered very, very attractive. To me, he looks a little bit like... Oh, yeah. He looks. Yeah, he's pretty. Does he not look like, like Patrick?

Like Patrick Bateman or a serial killer to you. Yeah, those eyes are a bit dead. I reckon he's got a bit of a... Yeah, like he's... He's not photogenic. Every photo is... Looks like they got him seconds after he thought they were taking the photo. Are there any smiling photos?

That can really change your face. I did not see a smiling photo. No, that one I showed was the smiling. He was a pretty serious man. Okay. But my sentence was... He was rich, powerful and handsome by many accounts. Yes.

But other... but also by many accounts, a terrible person when it came to women. Great. He would sign young, hopeful, beautiful women to exclusive binding contracts, give them a free place to live only for them to never hear from him again or for him to sell their contract to a bidding studio. What do you mean? He'd give them somewhere to live.

Yeah, he'd be like, come to Hollywood, I'll make you a star, put him up, and then they'd never hear from him again. Or he'd sell their contract for more money to another. Oh, shit. And sort of not do very well. Often, it was implied in a documentary that I made that he slept with them off. A documentary you made? Yeah, you did.

That's how I allege things. I'm like, well, I made the documentary, but in the documentary that I made, it implied. It implied. The documentary I made. So the podcast I'm recording is implying. Yeah, you slept with him.

That he was sleeping with lots of women and sort of using his importance. When Billy Dove, who was very famous, broke out with him, he reportedly took all the furniture that he'd bought her, packed it into a truck, and then set the truck on fire. It's so unnecessary.

He had a flare for the dramatic and by many accounts didn't seem to be treating people very well. He was also a great promoter of his work. In 1932 he produced a film called Scarface based on the life of El Capone. Whoa, right. In 32.

1932, yeah, but it's not the same film as Scarface. But yeah, it was full of violence and shocked to the senses and Hughes used the controversy to turn the film into an audience hit. Wow. So they tried to stop him from releasing it and he actually turned that into publicity. They tried to stop us. Yeah, but we did it anyway.

Wow. He would do the same thing in 1943 when producing the outlaw about Billy the Kid. The film featured a new star by the name of Jane Russell who played a love interest who wore highly provocative clothing. Hughes became obsessed and this is what you were talking about, Matt. He had an eye for detail when it came to certain things and only wanted it a certain way. fanatical. Well, it sounds like that was the same with his filmmaking. He became obsessed with showing off Jane Russell's breasts in a certain way.

Okay. He kept sending the costume back. And it got to the point where he designed a new bra using his engineering background so that her breasts would pop in a certain way. Apparently... They should not pop. Yeah. Well...

As a breast owner, they shouldn't pop at any point. You got a... I own some. You got a pair. Yeah, I got some breasts. Pop them. You shut. You shouldn't be popping him.

Apparently the brari invented was too uncomfortable even to wear. Jane Russell recalled in their book. When I went into the dressing room with my wardrobe girl and tried it on, I found it uncomfortable and ridiculous. Believe me, he could design planes. But Mr. Platex, he wasn't. The film was very controversial because of this, because he was basically showing up her boobs a lot.

Right. And the senses didn't like that again. And in a certain way, you said. Yeah, he just kept saying, no, that's not right. That's not right. It's almost like shave those sideburns. I said shave the, they keep coming out with a top slightly different. Him going, no, is not right.

Are you listening? And they're like, I don't know what you want. And then he designs this weird bra. So he was very specific. And it's basically a top with the boob area cut out. That's what I want to see. You wanted to see the nipples. But again, this film was a huge hit because there were all these controversial articles

was written about how she was nude in lots of scenes and stuff like that. Yeah. So he loved Hollywood. He loved treating women badly, but his other love was aviation, and he was desperate to get more experience. So he took up a job under the name of Charles Howard. What do you mean? Now we...

Oh, my God. Okay. So he went undercover for $250 a month as an assistant for American Airlines, just so he could learn more about airplanes. Wow. He went undercover. Two months later, he quit, and he and Glenn Ode Kirk formed the huge...

Hughes Aircraft Company. Oh my God. I've got enough experience, so I'm going to make my own airline. Two months. Two months later, he made his own airline. Ah, that's amazing. So, yeah, so we basically,

I wonder if that's even legal to go in and kind of steal. Yeah. Info like that, is it? It's undercover boss. He was undercover boss for another company. That's wild. Undercover Future boss. And he, at the end, did he take off his mustache?

It was I all along. I'm like, who, Sherry? Sorry what? I'm a big, Director? Sorry. Has Angels ever heard of it? I actually don't see many films.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Do you want me to bring someone else in? Maybe they'll recognise you. No, that's okay. It's okay. Thank you, though.

Thanks for your time. Bye Charles Howard. It's Howard Hughes. Okay. Of course it is, mate. Bye, Charles. I'm one of the richest man in the country. Sure you are, mate.

Okay, Charles. See ya. We'll send that 250 bucks in the mail. I don't need it. Sure you don't, mate. All right, mate. So he formed the Hughes Aircraft Company. The aim was to build the world's fastest air racer, which he called the H-1.

Howard Hughes designed and built the plane himself. So this is what we're talking about. Stop it. The rivets being so specific. On September 13 to 1935, Hughes, flying the H-1, set the land-plane airspeed record. No. Wait, well, okay, let me get mad around this. Land-plane air speed.

Break that down. That's as opposed to a sea plane. Okay. Which apparently at the time could go faster. Ah. So, yeah, it was taking off from land. It was measured at 352 miles an hour or 566K an hour. This was the last time in history that the world airspeed record was set in an aircraft built by a private individual.

Wow. So he built it himself and then set a world record, which is crazy. In 1937, he set a new transcontinental airspeed record by flying nonstop from Los Angeles to Newark. in seven hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. No one day, so the fastest time to fly from one end of the US to the other. He broke that world record. And then the next year, 1938, he set his sights on the record time for the fastest flight around the world.

He took off from New York, dipping his wings over then girlfriend Catherine Hepburn's house. No. She was in the aviator as well, Kate Blanchett. The only person to ever win an Oscar for playing another Oscar winner. Oh, wow. That's cool. That's a great fact.

Three million dollars, please. Yes. Oh, yay, we've got a million bucks. So, yeah, she's featured heavily in that film. I'm going to buy Skittles. How many? Just a little pack. You're not ready for wealth.

I don't want to go overboard. Gold Skittles, please. This is how rich that he was. Apparently, he never carried money, and often would be out, and he'd have to ask to borrow money, because he just never thought about money. And then people would ask for cash, and he'd think, oh yeah cash like he just didn't have it because usually to have like assistance and things to get

things for him so he'd have to be like sorry can you spot me 50 bucks and you're you're the richest man I'll ever meet yeah that's wild yeah no I don't have a spare 50 yeah sorry I don't have money another time someone said so he apparently used to drive a pretty shit car didn't have a radio or air conditioning or things like that at the time did they have those things at the time we'd have radio. I don't know about air conditioning, but it wasn't like a top model. Didn't even have like electric windows. Didn't have power steering you believe it? Yeah, didn't even have Bluetooth.

So just imagine a Toyota camera if you will, which we have been shitting on lately on this podcast. Not shitting on. Just be... He's driving a Toyota camera in one of his... It would be a huge step up for me. I want to make that clear if the good people at Toyota Camry are listening. One of his like managers or something

said to him, mate, why don't you drive a Rolls-Royce? and he said to him, why would I need to? Who have I got to impress? Oh, I'm the top dog. Yeah, what about it? I don't give a shit about it. What is if you think? People know how rich I am.

It doesn't matter. But yeah, I love the idea of not carrying money, and then you are so rich, but still having to borrow money. It's so stupid. Anyway, so he took off on the trip around the world. It wasn't smooth sailing. He nearly flew into a mountain range in Siberia that someone had apparently forgot to put on the map.

He was busy tipping his wings to another hole. Hot bird. How are you? Oh, shit. Dips me wings. But on July 14th, 1938, he returned to New York, just 91 hours after setting off, meaning he'd beaten the old world record by four days.

91 hours. Like, there was another pilot and they did tag teaming or whatever? Well, this is a guy that works for 40 hours at a time. I reckon he just did it all. No, there was a co-pilot and, I believe, a navigator on board. And they had to stop 17 times to refuel. Yeah, they stopped. I think it was at least six times, yeah.

But, yeah, he beat the old record by four days. You've got to stop, you know, stretch the legs. Well, that's something like halving the time almost. Yeah. But it's taken a big chunk off. Wow. I think it's better than half, yeah. Why do I know nothing about this guy?

91 hours, and he took four days off. So he took 96 hours off. Wow. Which is... That's wild. Crazy. So he built his own plane, set the fastest speed record, then he got the record for one side of the country to the other.

Now he's got the record for around around the world. Previously, he'd really been only known for his wealth and relationships. So his girlfriends were usually more famous than he was, Catherine Hepburn and people like that. But now he was celebrated as an American hero receiving multiple parades in his honour. Oh my God. Like the older days was such a funny time. Can you imagine now someone does something fast like flies a plane?

Would you even know about it? No, you wouldn't. Would you go to a parade about it? No. What do you get parades for these days? The AFL grand final. Yeah, well, all right. That's culture, though.

But that's the only parade I can think of. Mumba? Is there a parade? Yeah, the Mumba Parade. The King and Queen wasn't... Naz. I think, yeah. Maybe he's a multi-millionaire we know.

Nizim Passain. Yeah, I mean, it's the king of Mumba. Yeah, surely that comes with a big old check for multiple million dollars. And not just a novelty check, like a lot of money we mean. Yes. But on a novelty check also. Yeah, best of both worlds The following year

Howard Hughes combined his love of aviation with business when he bought a share of trans-world airlines, TWA. Eventually he acquired 78% of its stock, so he just bought an airline. Holy shit. He conceived the original design for a Lockheed constellation, which is a 40-passenger transcontinental airliner with a range of 3.5,000 miles or 5,600K

that could fly easily from one side of the US. say to the other, with 40 passengers on board, which at the time wasn't a very common thing. So that was a huge success for trans world airlines. Did they have stewards serving snacks? I think it was a much more glamorous affair back in the day. People would wear suits and things like that to go travelling. People would dress up. Yeah.

I picture people wearing suits just day to day. But I see people fairly dressed up on planes sometimes, and I'm so perplexed by it. I don't like long haul flights how dressed up do you mean like I've seen like women in high heels and men in suits and stuff I'm watching Lost and a few of them I'm like you were wearing that on a plane

like one woman's just in like a holter neck like dress and I'm like oh you'd be so cold on the plane wearing that yeah maybe she was going straight to the opera at the other end yeah that's true I mean I don't I mean you do you but I'm always in trackies like you gotta be comfy you know what are you doing

Dave always wears tailored jeans. I do not wear a tractsuit pants in public, I'm afraid. I will not stoop. That's why Matt and I are way more comfortable on our long haul flights. That's true. Although Dave's little legs don't hit the floor, so... Yeah, that's true. We're sort of more comfortable than other ways.

He can lie down. He just curls up in a little ball like a cat on the seat. I don't even recline to lie down. I lean forward. Have you got a smaller chair? You got to boost a seat back there? Sometimes I put him in my pocket. Yeah, and it gets real snug.

It's so cute when you put him in there and he's just all snuggled. It's like, oh, there he is. But we have lost him a couple of times. That's true. People are always surprised when I see photos that you're like the same heart as me and Jess. Hey, you really make him out to seem smaller. But I fully picture you to be small. Apart from when I'm standing next to you, I picture you to be pocket size.

I picture you like living in a little can of beans. Hello? An empty can or a full can of beans? Half full. Oh, thank goodness. So there's still beans to eat. Yeah. But there's room to breathe.

Yeah. Best of both. Yeah, so best of both. Would you live in beans, Dave? I could. I could. Okay. If you want an update on this cock watch tweet, five likes.

Okay. What was the wording that you went for? Well, this is the thing. I didn't really put any time on that. I said, even a cock watch is right twice a day. And then I realized. that that doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, what's a cock watch?

People don't know. So I replied to myself and said, for this one, imagine a cock with a tattoo of a watch on it. And that's also got five last. That's good stuff. Good, good, good. It's good when the explainer gets more,

or the same or possibly more. I think later on I might need to add a little more info, one more round. Guys, it's so hard to tweet in podcasts at the same time. But I make it work. Yeah. Somehow I still came up with a Peabody Award-winning tweet. Well, that's a little prediction, but obviously with COVID,

tweet quality has dipped, and I reckon I'm up for a Peabody this year. Which I don't know what it is, but it sounds cool. Peabody. It's fun to say. Yeah. It was funny. All right. During World War II, Howard Hughes focused turned to military aircraft and he began designing planes,

many of which were under government contracts. Okay. The first he designed, but not under one of these contracts, Because the bomber called the Hughes D2. Of course. It had to be abandoned after lightning hit the hangar that it was stored in and everything burnt down. That is unlucky.

Not a good start. Another one that didn't go so well was the amphibian aircraft Sikorski S-43, which Hughes piloted but crashed. Again, he walked away from the crash only with a large gash on his head, but two other employees weren't so lucky and were killed. Oh no. Holy shit. But probably his most famous of his four plane crashes in his lifetime.

Jesus Christ. Four. Oh, no spores, unless did any of them take him out? No. He survived all four. Wow. But probably he is most famous, and this one is in the aviator, occurred on July 7, 1946, when test flying the US Army Force reconnaissance aircraft, the XF11, and he was flying it above Los Angeles.

Hughes had been flying for an hour, twice as long as the agreed half-hour test, when an oil leak began to affect the right-hand propeller. It began to pull sharply to the right and rapidly lose altitude. Hughes could have parachuted out, but he elected to see if he could solve the problem manually. So he got out on the wing with a screwdriver in his mouth. Getting out there, juttering in there.

Get out a bit of gum, put it in the hole. He could not solve the problem manually, so he aimed to perform an emergency landing on the Los Angeles Country Golf Club. Sadly, he didn't quite make it and landed about 300,000. meters short of the golf club. Clipping. A pillow factory. He clipped three houses, one of which was destroyed when it caught fire.

Oh my God. Hugh sustained significant injuries in the crash. This is the worst crash he ever had. He, which included a crushed collar bone, multiple cracked ribs, a crust chest with a collapsed left lung. His heart was shifted to the right side of the chest cavity. Wait, what? Did you know that was possible?

Yeah, usually when it happens, you die. His heart was shifted. His heart gets moved over. His heart got moved to the other side. Can you just skeech over a bit, please? Me? He had numerous third degree burns as well, so he was burnt a lot. He was very injured, and most people thought he was going to die.

Do burns get worse the higher or lower than a lot? Third's bad. How many layers of... Normal sports rules. Skin it's burnt through. I forget which one's a golf rules. Three's real bad. But I've heard it hurts less because by that stage it's burnt through the nerve.

Which is... Oh, that's all right, then. But I mean, it's harder to recover from, though. Best of both worlds. Yeah. It doesn't recover well and, you know, you'd need skin grafts and stuff like that. And you're in pain for the rest of your life? Potentially, but not immediately.

Right. You know? Especially probably in 1930s. I must say, that's what I've heard. I'm certainly no Burns expert. But he was very, very injured. But Mr. Burns. Yeah, I love him.

That's pretty curious. He was very injured, expected to do. die. But he got to hospital and whilst recovering, which he did recover, he noticed how uncomfortable his hospital bed was. Oh my God. So he used his time to invent what we know as the modern day hospital bed. Got a screwdriver in his mouth, crawled out onto the wing. You know how when you're in hospital now, they can be raised and lowered in different sections? Yep. They didn't used to be able to do that. He invented that. He invented that. He came up with these plans and sent them to his assistants and said, can you change this? He put hot and cold water

that would help with his burns in the hospital bed. Yeah. So basically, he invented what we know is the modern day hospital. So in the end it was good, for the greater good that he went down that day. That's amazing. And yeah, he survived. I feel like that is often the way you need rich and important and powerful people to have a problem for it to filter down to the unpowerful plebs.

Like, you know, the average people. who suffer from something, they need someone from up top to, you know, care about it enough to do something about it. Far out, that is wild, Dave. It's absolutely crazy. That's a good thing that came from the crash. The bad thing was he began taking codeine,

painkillers, Valium and many other drugs at this time, many of which he would be dependent on for the rest of his life. Codeine. Right. How do you take your codeine? Only for migraines. But do you take pills? Yeah.

Great. He liked to be. inject it. Okay. And it got more and more as his life went on, because he had a lot, he was in pain for the life of his life. If you go to the chemist to get it, they ask you four million questions because it's, it is, like, very addictive.

Right. They asked, he, they would ask him one question, which was, is your name how it used? And he'd say yes, and they'd just give him all he wanted, especially back in this day. Yeah, maybe this was before. Oh, I mean, they probably knew that it wasn't great, but it was probably before. Back then, Sprite. was made with codeine. Yeah, that's right.

One of the key ingredients of spryd. So he was depended on that for the rest of his life. Having said that, nine months of recovery later, Hughes returned to the XF11. They made another one that wasn't destroyed. And he performed a second but much safer test. However, the plane never went into mass production. Okay.

But that's one thing that blows my mind. He just invented another plane. Is that you could be in an accident that serious. And nine months later, I'd be like, all right, I'm going to try again. And as well, Between trying, unsuccessfully and trying successfully, he revolutionized hospital beds. That's so wild.

That's so cool. Hughes Most Famous Plan came next. Hughes H4 Hercules, aka the spruce goose. Hercules aeroplanes have heard of. They're quite... Yeah, that's like military ones now. You're right. Yeah, me not all have a song about him.

Here come the Hercules Here come the submarines Well that's a great impression If you don't know Middard all Yeah, it's very good But Also, submarines, dumb Dumb, they were so dumb

You had me at Hercules, Peter But you lost me at submarine So the spruce goose Which was the nickname for it It was conceived as a giant flying boat For use during World War II Do you think that's dumb? A giant...

A reverse submarine. A flying boat. Yeah, I think that's done. It's basically a big sea plane. Yeah, a flying boat. But it was referred to as a flying boat. The US government contracted Hughes's company to design to build an aircraft that's capable

of transporting 700 troops or a load of 60 tonnes across the Atlantic because this is during World War II. Because of the lack of metal during wartime, Hughes proposed that the boat be built completely out of wood. Yes. That sounds... Good.

It's big. Aluminium's hard to get hand-on. Aluminum if you're from overseas. And we're going to use old growth forests. Big heavy timber. Real heavy. Beautiful. We'll polish it up.

We'll oil it. Oh my God. It looks stunning. It's treated pine. Yeah. Oh, yes. And you have to power it with coal. A big open furnace.

What could go wrong? Have a big supply of petrol just in case it goes right. It turned out to be a bit of a nightmare of. build because he had to get people to carve and plane back and test each bit of wood. Playing back. Which much more than aluminium. So everything had to be tested way more. Yeah, right.

Because wood is not as consistent as a piece of metal. So they had to test everything. And it had to be giant to achieve its brief of carrying 700 troops. It was the largest egg. 700 fucking out. It was the spruce goose as a wooden plane. Yeah. And it was the largest.

A flying boat, thanks, Matt. Sorry. It was the largest aircraft ever built with a wingspan of 97.5 meters. So for a comparison, you imagine a 747, that has a wingspan of 67 meters. Yes, and this was how much? 97. Right. So it's one and a half times.

Surely just ran it up to 100. Yeah. It's basically 100 meters of wing. Yeah, I'm imagining 100 meters on a track. And it was the biggest plane ever built until the strata launch was flown last year. Right. Which is, do you see this in the plane? The Titanic of the sky.

It's the strata launch is one where they, it's used to launch stuff into space. It's actually got two cockpits and that they're connected by a wing in the middle. Anyway, they look amazing. Is that the Richard Branson thing or something else? It's one of those type companies that are competing for that. But the H4 Hercules, so it was absolutely massive. It wasn't without its doubt as in critics. It was nicknamed the Spruce Goose by the media, a name that Hughes reportedly detested.

That is, despite the playing being mostly made out of birch rather than Sproulouse. Bruce Wood. Right. But they just called it the spruce goose. He hated that name. Because it was wrong. That's why it wasn't. Yeah, yeah.

He's like, well, I don't care if you hate it. Just don't call it. Call it the birch bastard or something. Spruce? I'm not using spruce. There were lots of delays on the plane and the war finished before it could be completed. So both these planes, the XF11 and the Hercules were accused of being failures and waste of money. In 1947, Hughes was called to testify before the US Senate or a US, a US

Senate committee investigating whether he'd misused millions of dollars in government funds on the project. They'd spent $22 million, fortunate at the time, and only two prototypes of the XF11 were ever produced. One crashed, and the Hercules hadn't even been flown yet. So they were like, what have you done with our government money? Really? It sounds a lot like Australian government manufactured submarines.

Remember we've spent so much money on them and they've just never been used? Yeah. I forget about that and remember sometimes, like, we're so. dumb. What are we doing? Because submarines are dumb. Right. Jess is actually a powerful lobbyist.

She's destroyed the submarine industry. I think they're dumb. They're so funny. Am I right? I might be misremembering that. But we put billions in. And then I think they were like, the technology was superseded before they were finished and they had heaps of problems anyway.

I think that rings a bell. I think they're still making them. I think they're still making them. Yeah. I think it's, by the time they're finished, they will be superseded. Maybe that's it. Right.

I think there were ones before these that maybe had the... And the cost is literally in the billions for that, so that's crazy. Anyway, important for us to have submarines. Yes. So the hearings... We are girt by sea, man. So best to protect our sea, of which we are girt. Yes.

You've got to protect that girt. I reckon if we were smart, we would have built huge wooden flying boats. Yes. If we were smart. People were smart, but we're not. Well, you said... Lucky country, not the smart country. Yeah, those clowns up in camera,

don't know bloody, the heads from their bums. Is that a saying? Yeah, I reckon. Imagine approaching the microphone with the wrong end. Thanks for coming here today. I think you've been the wrong end of the microphone.

You might not have to pick that up, but I said something real funny. Unless you did pick it up and then. well, Dave probably edited it because of what I actually said was very funny. So he's been called before the Senate committee hearing to explain what happened to the money.

At the hearings, Hughes said of the spruce goose, quote, not that he called it that. I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation rolled up in it. And I have stated several times that if it's a failure, I'll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it.

Where are you going to go? I don't know. It goes to Canada and then just looks at America through the window. Through a powerful telescope. Yeah. That he invents. He could see through walls. The hearings were widely publicised.

So despite being a billionaire, Hughes was widely seen as the underdog. Yeah, right. He was pretty popular. He knew actions spoke louder than words. So when there was a break in the hearing, he flew to California to continue testing with the Hercules. With members of the press on board and Hughes himself at the helm, in November

1947, the plane finally took off. Eh, that's cool. For 27 seconds. Oh, no. Three more seconds. It flew... Thank you. It flew just 70 feet or 25 metres above the water

before landing one mile later. So it just took up like just... But I mean, it landed in water. That's what it's meant to do. It's a boat. That's the beauty of it. You're like, yeah, it's what we wanted. It's a boat, but if it's really bumpy on the water that day,

we can just hover above it. Yeah, we'll hover it for a little bit. For a bit. And then we'll come back down and maybe we'll hover again. It'll look like we're sort of don't know what we're doing, but that's exactly what we're meant to be doing. It's a bouncy boat. Just trust me on this one.

Everyone's going to be flying bouncy boats soon. Yeah. You just watch. I'm ahead of the curve here. You're the idiots. Yeah. No one's there. He's talking to stuffed animals.

Depressive all. He's not wearing pants. This guy never wore pants. So it flew for less than 30 seconds, and that was the only time that the plane ever flew. Cool. But it didn't matter. Hughes had proved that the plane could technically fly,

so the hearings lost steam, and after that, Hughes was seen as vindicated. I love winning on a technicality. Yeah. Because they were saying, this thing never flew, and he went, yes, it did. And they had to be like,

all right, damn it, this hearing's over. Love that. It's over 27 seconds. Yeah, a bit of wind caught underneath it. We were lucky with that gust of wind. Oh, man. Oh, shit. That saved me a lot of money.

Well, he later spent millions and millions of dollars over the years keeping the plane in a specially built centre that kept the wood, you know, hydrate and stuff like that. That's what you want for your plane to need to be in a special place. But it never flew again. He also spent millions of dollars getting Owen Brewster, the senator who was seen as the instigator of the hearings, basically get unelected. Oh, so he spent whatever it cost to get someone else elected over him. it was very rare for an incumbent senator to lose their own seat in the primary

so he wasn't even nominated in the next election because Hughes had spent so much money on his opponent. Right. So he ruined that of the guy's career. Far out. Yeah. Sick. Yeah.

Yeah. Isn't that wild? That sucks. Yeah, it really sucks. He wasn't a, I'm not going to lie to you, he wasn't a great guy. I don't know about this politician, but that does feel like when your democracy's not too strong when one guy can just spend money and change results. He basically saw no problem that he couldn't throw money out.

What's sort of his attitude? Which we can't relate to here with Clive Palmer claiming his billion spent, bought the election for the government. Of course he claims that though. Yeah. Clive's got an episode in him of this show for sure. For people who don't know, we've spent some, we'll save this for a possible future. We should.

But he spent a lot. of time and money with plans to build Titanic 2. A dinosaur park. A dinosaur park, yeah. He bought his way into our parliament as a senator and never really rocked up. But when he did, he drove in and rolls Royces and sports cars and stuff. He once made a compendium of, I think it was a 1600-page thing of all the things he'd ever said in Parliament, had it bound, had like 3,000 or 4,000 copies made and sent to

every other politician and journalist in the country. Why? Just to show that he could. So we spent like hundreds of thousands of dollars on this project only for people to just throw it in the bin. Oh, what a jerk. In 19, allegedly. I like you if you're listening.

Three million dollars, please. I'll give you a fact. Three million dollars and we'll stop trash talking here. I'll take it. Hey, when I said that you built Titanic 2, I meant I'm like, what a legend. That's what a cool idea. What a cool, great idea. Because the first one was so good.

Yeah. So we want another one, please. Just don't change anything. Oh, dinosaur park. Yes, please. I love Jurassic Park. If they could not kill me, that would be ace. I love Titanic.

Can we make them clever girls a little less clever? In 1948, Hughes bought a controlling interest in RKO Pictures Corporation. Hughes was storchly anti-communist, and after he acquired the corporation, production was shut down for six months, during which time investigations were conducted on each employee as far as their political leanings were concerned. What? If he suspected that someone was communist, he fired them or scrapped their films.

What? Oh, yeah, there was a whole period in Hollywood where a lot of people got blacklisted for having possible links. Was this McCarthyism? Yeah, that's that era. What movie is about that? Billy Madison? Yes. Billy Madison covers this very topic.

Condition is better. Stop looking at me, swan. Yeah, I think that was, he was sort of acting out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was an allegory. Yeah. It's like the animal farm of Adam Say on the films. Veronica Vaughn, she was sort of like the Trotsky.

And then you've got the bus driver, played by Chris Farley. He was more of your whoever McCarthy is. And then when he said, that Veronica Vaughn is one fine piece. of ace. That was some sort of comment on it. Yeah. We've written a thesis on it. Yeah. But we don't want to release it yet because it's pretty damning. It's very damning.

And quite sexy. It is very sexy. It's a really sexy thesis. Does it mean sealed? Yeah, it does. There's a sealed section in the middle where every question that Jess got right, I took off a piece of clothing. She didn't get any right, but, you know, it alludes to possible nipples.

Yeah. Do you wear a Howard Hughes design bra? Everyone's got nipples blow their shirt, if you know what I mean? Really? I don't feel like I'm losing it. If you know what I mean? Some of us have more than one, if you know what I mean? Some.

Is this our sealed section? It's too hot to put out now. So he started firing people just because he thought they might be communist. He became the first sole owner of a major Hollywood studio since the silent film era, but he sold the shares in 1953. The following year he bought the whole company back, only to sell it again in 1955. What's he doing? He remained chairman of the board of Arcao until 1957 when he left the film industry for good.

So Hollywood was behind him from this point out. He married actress Jean Peters in 1957. The two had an earlier relationship and they just sort of rekindled their love. At the time, he apparently kept asking him to marry him. And finally, they got together in 1957. But this is where his behaviour starts to take a bit of a wild tour. This is the final third. Right.

So you're blaming her? Absolutely not. No. No way. Just coincidence. No, I absolutely feel sorry for this. Oh, no. Around this time, in the late 1950s, he went into complete seclusion.

Great. Which we're kind of doing now. Yeah, honestly, he would be thriving in the current environment. I'm mostly, I'm doing a lot better than I thought I would, to be honest. He would often wash his hands until they bled. That's how much he had a germ. So in this current era of us washing our hands between, he would laugh at the 22nd rule. And say, I'll raise that to 200 seconds.

You're singing happy birthday while you do it. I'm bleeding. I'm reading war and peace whilst washing my hands. And then I start again. He had developed obsessive, compulsive disorder over the years and had become obsessed with germs. In one of the few times he lived in a home rather than a hotel, remember I said he lives in hotels. He bought a modest-sized house, but installed air purifiers intended for shopping centres to ensure the air was clean. Okay, love that.

But in the 50s he began to be surrounded by AIDS, and rather than go out... Oh, that he would hate of that. Not that AIDS are a germ, but, you know, it's still some sort of sickness, isn't it? I'm not a scientist. I think AIDS is bad. I believe AIDS is bad. He got on early, though, too, because I don't even think it was around yet. No, it wasn't.

He was... Early adopter. He was worried. He began to be surrounded by these AIDS, and rather than go out, they would do things for him. So he was always inside. They would do his bidding. In 1958, Hughes told his age that he wanted to screen some movies at a film studio near his home. He didn't leave the dark studio for four months.

What? His pupils would be so dilated. Or the opposite of that. They'd be real little. Yeah. This is the start of the Mr. Burns. Big, right? No.

Yeah. This is the start of the Mr. Burns era stuff. So he's grown on a big beard looking like Moses. He ate only chocolate bars and chicken and drank only chocolate bars and chicken and drank only. the milk. Okay, I'd do that. And was surrounded by dozens of clean Xboxes that he continuously

stacked and rearranged. He wrote detailed memos to his aides, giving them explicit instructions neither to look at him nor speak to him unless spoken to. He would ask one of them what the time was and when they began to speak, he would shush them and demand to be

silently shown their watch. So someone would be like, Oh, Mr. Hughes hits 330 and he'd be like, show me the cockwatch. You'd drop your drawers. He'd thank you and you'd leave. Okay. Well, he says thank you.

Yeah. Politeness doesn't cost much. One of the notes that he had made survived, and this is what it said, it is equally important to me that nobody ever opens any door or any opening to any room, cabinet or closet or anything used to store any of my things, even for one thousandth of an inch for one thousandth of a second. I don't want the possibility of dust or insects or anything of that nature entering. More instructions.

dust and insects in the same category. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Dust, insects or any kind of bullshit like that. Anything like that. Or any sort of combinations of too, like dust mites, which I believe to be dust come to life. Dave, explain to me what a closet is.

How do you say that? Closet. Closet. Clause. Mate, this is Birmingham. Oh my God. That still angers me. What was the word?

Debut. Yeah. I said debut. Instead of debut. They lost their minds. It's amazing that they collectively lost their mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the lack of my defence, I don't think anyone says closet except for me.

So that is what you normally say closet. Closet. I don't think I'd ever say it. Closet. It's a very American thing, right? A closet, yeah. Yeah, we'd say cupboard. A cupboard.

A wardrobe. I'd say my walk-in robe. Of course you would. I'd say my walk-in. pantry. I'd say my walk-in closet. My food closet. Fod closet.

So the takeaway there is that he had extreme instructions. Other things he'd say, use six to eight tissues to turn the knob on the bathroom door. Not seven. No, seven's allowed. Yeah, that's fine. Then use eight new tissues to open the bathroom cabinet and remove an unused bar of soap. Clean your hands with the soap. Use at least 15 tissues to open the door to the cabinet containing the hearing aid.

Remove the sealed envelope. containing the hearing aid with two hands use another 15 tissues in both hands. Did he buy stuck in tissues? He's lost it. He often sat naked in the cinema watching film after film. Oh my God, the dream!

Never bathing. His hair, beard and nails grew very long. Didn't cut any of it. No, I don't love that. It's weird to be a germaphobe and also not wash. Yeah, and to be nude all the time. Yes, and also to be with so much. many different sexual partners.

Oh, he's still, they're still... Is he still doing that? No, by the stage he is a bit of a lot. Yeah, yeah. But throughout his young year... His cock is dried up. He was always worried about germs though. It's tripled.

His whole life, but yeah. Yeah, Dave, you could have safe sex, you know. Did you know about that, Dave? Sorry, what? You can use protection, Dave. Did you know that? Do you mean do it in the closet? Yes, do it in the closet.

It's safe in there. No one can touch me. Do it through the closet door. He would also reportedly weigh into jars and keep the jars. Yeah, see, there's some inconsistencies here. I want everything clean and tidy. Except me. I don't want any germs getting near my piss jars.

My precious piss jars. He left the cinema and then moved into a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel where he also rented rooms for his aides, his wife and numerous girlfriends. Actually, he was still seeing women at this stage. He would sit naked in his bedroom with a pink hotel napkin placed over his genitals and watch films for hours at a time. You can put it on underwear. You don't have to put a napkin over your bits.

Well, one of the people, things, it's hard to know because he obviously never did interviews about this kind of thing. But one of the arguments is that he would inject himself with codeine for pain and possibly stayed naked because clothes he found would hurt his skin. Because memory, it had horrible burns and things like that. Yes, of course. So possibly he just stayed naked. it didn't like bathing because he was in tremendous

bad. Oh, yes. Well, that all adds up all of a sudden. Yeah. Pissing in jars still doesn't? Yeah, no. But yeah, good point with that. And why was it a pink napkin?

Is that where the term pink fits came from? I assume so, yes. He coined a lot of terms. Yeah, right. This is an interesting. But I think there's got to be a point where it doesn't matter how much money you have. Why do people let very rich people get away with weird or inappropriate behavior? Like, he's just taken over a cinema for several months and he's living.

there and people are presumably bringing him chicken and milk and chocolate. So they're bringing him. I will say one of the reasons people think he married Gene Peters, his second wife, was that they were very close and had dated in the past. But one of the reasons people think he married there was some speculated that he was worried that his aides were about to get him committed to a mental asylum. But if you're married, you have to get this at the time. The spouse had to agree to it.

Right. But if he was unmarried, anyone could just commit him. but if he was married to Jean, he could say to her, don't let them commit me. So that sort of suggests that he was still with it. Yeah, pretty sharp. Yeah. Or at least very paranoid.

Yeah, that's true. He was pretty paranoid. Yeah. Because as soon as his aides send him off, they also lose their jobs. Yeah. And if they're still working those jobs, you're assuming they want the jobs.

And that became a bit of a vicious cycle is that they became yes men that were doing no matter. So no one would actually give him help because he was so rich that even these aides were getting paid hundreds of thousands. of dollars a year. So it's a very lucrative job. It's like you say, you don't want to lose your income. So you're like, all right, I'll go along with this wacky shit. I won't talk to him. Some people, like one of the aides has since done interviews and like one of his jobs was if Howard felt lonely, he'd go into the hotel room, which is completely dark, all the windows are taped

shut, sit in a chair. He wasn't allowed to talk to Howard, but Howard would just talk to him. And that was his job. He'd sit there for hours. Howard would talk to him and then he'd leave. So he wouldn't even respond? No, he wasn't allowed to respond. He just wanted someone to talk to. Put a podcast in. Yeah. No worries.

So, and that was one of the things that people would ask these strange requests and they're like, well, he's the man with the money. We've got to keep this dream going, baby. Yeah, right. I mean, if you don't want the other person to answer, just talk out loud. There doesn't have to be someone there. Talk to a mirror. No, he wasn't well.

But money was never a problem for Howard. In 1966, he sold his shares in Trans World Airlines for more than... 1960s. See, you're the same. when the VFL Premiership How does this year keep coming up? I don't know. God damn it.

Stop. Like, you should have just changed that. In 67. Or said mid-60s. He sold his shares in Trans World Airlines for more than $500 million. Holy cow. Which is in the billions today.

Wow. Crazy. He never wanted for anything other than very clean hands. Yeah, everything he touched pretty much turned to gold. But it's still, yeah. You could say he's got the Midas touch. Hmm. You would tell that to him and he'd ask to wash his hands.

Yes. Later that year, this is 1960-something, he moved via train to Las Vegas and set up residence with his team of AIDS on the top floor of the Desert Inn Casino Hotel. He lived in the penhouse, taped the window shut, and only a small inner circle of people were ever allowed to see him.

Wow. The Desert Inn grew frustrated with Hugh, He was staying there for months because he was taking up all the rooms usually occupied by the high rollers that would gamble in the casino. Right, of course. He's paying the big fees, but he's not a gambler. So they're losing money. Hughes refused to leave, and they threatened to kick him out. They were like, we're going to send security up if you don't leave tomorrow, and we're going to remove you from the building.

So Hughes came up with a compromise. He would buy the entire hotel, which he did. And they said, thank you very much. He wrote them a big fact check, and they made a lot of money. What? He just bought the hotel. How old is he at this point? Did he say he was born in 1912 and this is the late 60s?

I think he was born in 1905 so he's 60 years old in his 60s. Wow. That's wild. So yeah, so you can just throw money at any problem. Any problem. You want to kick me out? I'll buy this hotel. Name your price.

And they were like, sweet. At the time the hotel had a golf course that hosted the PGA tour tournament of champions and that brought in all the big names Jack Nicholas, all these kind of people and thousands of guests would come to watch it was very lucrative for the hotel very profitable event

had been going for over 10 years big event on the golf calendar but Hughes thought that the guests would bring in too many germs so he just cancelled the tournament he said another hotel can do it I don't care and his advisors were like dude that just cost us lots of money he was like I don't care

Don't care. Too many people. I don't want people going in. But then Hughes discovered a way to ride off tax through the casino, through gambling losses. And from this point on, he began buying up multiple casinos and vacant land across Las Vegas. He bought Castaways, New Frontier, the landmark hotel and casino and the Sands Casino.

So he just started buying because they're great investments. Whoa. He reportedly was kept awake at night by the Silver Slippers trademark Silver Slipper. There are a few. used to turn it off. So he bought the casino. What is that? That's like a light...

Yeah, like a light up slipper. Right. Like, you know, neon sign basically. He said, he rang him and said, can you turn it off? And they said, no. So he said, okay, I'm buying the casino. And then he moved the slipper.

He owned so many hotels. He couldn't just move his bed a bit. Hasn't he taped up the window? Yeah. He was like, no, I don't like it. Get rid of it. Just knowing it's there is enough. That's insane.

So he just moved the slipper. Yeah. At the time, Las Vegas You should have just turned it off after a certain point, you know? 10 o'clock it turns off. He doesn't respect Nard or day. At the time, Las Vegas was seen as being run by the mafia, and Hughes, this is actually written on Encyclopedia Britannica,

is linked with changing the city's image through his development. So before that, it was run by the mob, but he bought all the hotels and developed a lot of stuff, and then it became more of a go-to destination, and, like, yeah, families and stuff could go there. Yeah, right. But before then it was... Yeah, the real family destination that is today.

Well, it's got a lot of, like, theme parks and sort of shows and things like that. Yeah, when I was eight and we stayed at Circus, Circus. Me too, I stayed at the Hilton. Oh, okay. Which at the time had a Star Trek ride. Oh, sick. Which was very fun. Did someone died for that to happen?

Did you tell us that recently? Yeah, that was. All your family trips was. That was my mother's great uncle. Well, my great uncle, my mom's uncle, yeah. So, unlike Howard Hughes, your parents didn't, invest into huge money-making companies. They just poured it all in good memories with their families.

Yuck. Yeah. We saw it, and I would never do this today, but we saw Siegfried and Roy, the Magic Tiger Show. Yeah. That ended in tragedy when one of them was attacked by one of the white tigers. But yeah, that's a crazy thing that we did. Hmm.

Looking back on that. Anyway, so he actually changed the image. of Las Vegas, many people say. Amazing. He also loved watching movies. And he bought a local TV station and told them what movies they should play each night. Fantastic. Basically programmed it.

It is reported that if he fell asleep during one, he would call up the station and ask them to start it again. No. And they'd say, no. Other people at home would be watching it going, huh? I thought I saw this bit. The lion's roaring again. What's going on? He could, surely he could be like, I was up to around this point.

Yeah. I saw this happen. Go back to that. Fast forward, fast forward, fast forward. Stop. No, rewind. Marty had just got in the DeLorean for the first time. That's so funny and kind of cute.

Start it again. From the top. I fell with sweep. I'm sweepie. Go to sleep then, Howard. Go to sleep. No? Start it again.

Hughes began surrounding himself by what have been termed by some as the Mormon mafia, as a member of the group, were members themselves of the Latter-day Saints movement. Something Hughes himself wasn't. He wasn't a Mormon, but a lot of his key advisors in this time were high-up members of the Mormon church. The group of aides and assistants, as I said, were essentially yes-men to the eccentric billionaire, bowing to his every whim, no matter what he asked for. Hughes once became fond of a Baskin-Robbins banana nut. ice cream. Oh yeah. Talk to me. So his aides sought to secure a bulk shipment for him, only

to discover that Baskin Robbins had discontinued the flavor. So he bought Baskin and Robbins. Well, not quite. I wish I could tell you that. They put in a request for the smallest amount the company could provide for a special order, which was 350 gallons or 1,300 liters of ice cream, and they had it shipped to his hotel in Las Vegas. A few days later, the order arrived. Hughes announced that he was tired of banana nut and only one. French vanilla ice cream. Oh my God. The Desert Inn ended up distributing free banana nut ice cream to casino customers for the rest of the year.

They had too much. Tell the real banana nut and nut in that story. Who? I'd hate that. I like bananas, but banana-flavored things. I like bananas. I like nuts. I like banana nuts.

Except peanut butter. Yeah, I reckon bananas. Sounds like it could be really good. I like banana ice cream maybe. Barney banana. Popsicles. Yum yum Yum

Yum You'll never know Because they discontinued it Damn it That's so funny And then he goes He goes from banana nut To French vanilla

Surely you've got to love that Dave You love plain foods I love ice cream I really love it Yeah fair enough So much Hmm I'm gonna have something after this

The last time I had it Was when we had an ice cream date Dave You haven't had it since then Over a year Maybe two years Maybe Maybe No, when did you

You talk about Adelaide Yeah, I can't remember Oh wait, Adelaide Perth Perth That wasn't that long ago Yeah, that was less than you're yeah Oh right, yes we were quite drunk at the time

Drunk an ice cream What a great time that was Yeah, I heard you coming Because I was back at the apartment I was drunk Oh, baby, this ice cream's amazing! Keep it down in there. It's me and a whole lot of banana and nutting, am I right?

David's banana nutting in that waffle cone. I don't even want to clarify now. Yeah, let's leave it. Leave it to everyone's imagination. Wait, there's no imagination left. Anyway. All right, we're nearly there for Howard Hughes. In 1970, his wife, Jean Peters, filed

for divorce after not having seen her husband in over three years. That's fair, I reckon. Jean Peters is a great name. Great name. Did she, I don't know her work. She was a famous Hollywood actress, yeah, at the time. Yeah, right. This is a wild story.

And she got a big alimony payout. She just got paid a certain amount for the rest of her life and then went on to marry another man, so hopefully she was a bit happier. Another man, eh? In fact, so she hadn't seen him in three years. In fact, no one had really seen Howard Hughes for years, so people started to speculate that he was in fact dead and that people were pretending he was alive to keep control of his assets.

Ah, that makes sense, potentially. In 1972, author Clifford Irving claimed that he had co-written an autobiography with Howard Hughes. This was a lie, but Hughes was such a recluse that he didn't come out and say that the letters Irving had released reportedly signed by Hughes, were in fact fake. Wow. It was enough to get Irving hundreds of thousands of dollars in an advance from a book publisher.

So big, big money. That's a sweet scam. Eventually, to prove that he was alive and that Irving was lying, Howard Hughes agreed to a press conference over telephone with reporters who he had known from years earlier and could therefore verify that they were talking to the real Hughes. Right, yeah.

So they recognise his voice, but also... What's your favourite colour? They actually did ask him questions about stuff like that to verify that it was not. so on doing an impression of him. Wow. Irving, the author, was convicted for fraud

and spent a year and a half in jail. Not the best scam after all. Well, he later wrote a bestselling book about this called The Hoax, and that was made into a Richard Gear film in 2006. What? Pretty woman. Yeah, it was a rewrite.

But the bones of it are there. In his last year, Howard Hughes and his crew moved from Penn House to Penhouse all around the world. But no one ever saw him. They would sort of ship him in at night, go straight to the room, blacked out curtains, no one was allowed to see him. But sadly, awkward things must come to an end. And years of injecting codeine and never leaving your bed, sure do take its toll. On April 5, 1976, Hughes lay unconscious and probably dying, and his personal doctor was called, but instead of treating him, the doctor spent two hours shredding documents.

Oh, no. Oh, my God. Apparently, many documents were shredded by his entourage that day. It's not clear if they were protecting him or themselves or both. Oh, geez. Four hours after the doctor... You're going to be... Dad, he's in a bad way.

The doctor comes in. He puts out his briefcase. Has inside of it a shredder. He puts on gloves. A stethoscope. And he falls on. C-Cs, stat. He's just shredding.

Four hours after a doctor was called, Howard Hughes was put on a plane back to Houston, his hometown. Flying or floating? He was flying. Both. Perhaps fittingly for the once great aviator, he died as the plane was landing in Houston. Howard Hughes was 70 years old.

Wow. He was apparently so unrecognizable that his fingerprints were required to identify the body. Wow. His nails, beard and hair were all long. and despite being 6 foot 4 tall, he only weighed 90 pounds or 41 kilos. Oh, shit. That was not much left.

Geez, he wasn't eating too much of that French vanilla. Chicken and milk and chocolate. Yeah, geez, that's so, that is tiny. Yeah. He was malnourished and covered in bed soles because he hadn't really left bed in years. X-rays, X-ways. X-rays revealed five broken off hypodermic needles in his arms that had snapped off whilst he was injecting himself.

Jesus. So he was very unhealthy. And his kidneys, which they put it down to kidney failure, were apparently basically non-existent while the time he died. Whoa. He was buried next to his parents all those years later. Oh, shit. Yeah, because they died when he was so young.

Wow. So what happened to his money? He was worth $2.5 billion when he died, which is $11 billion today and was the richest man in America at the time. No kids, so... No kids? Yep. No wife.

Then she left. Two divorced wives. And where does it go? He was one of the richest men in the world and the richest in America. Approximately, three weeks after Hugh's death, a handwritten will was found on the desk of an official of the Church of the Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is called the Mormon will, people have referred to it as, which gave $1.5 billion to various charitable organizations, including $600 million to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. nearly half a billion dollars to the upper management in Hughes Companies and to his aides, so they got a lot of the cut,

$150 million to his first cousin William Limus, and $150 million split equally between his two ex-wives, Ella Rice and Gene Peters. That's cool. Probably strangest of all, $150 million was supposedly endowed to a gas station owner named Melvin Dumas, who claimed that he had once discovered a man lying abandoned

on Route 95 outside Las Vegas, not knowing where he was. Dumas says that the man asked for a ride to Vegas, and after dropping him off at the Sands Hotel, Dumas said that the man told him that his name was Howard Hughes. Dumas claimed that days after Hugh's death, a, quote, mysterious man appeared at the gas station, leaving an envelope containing the wheel on his desk. Unsure of the wheel was genuine, unsure what to do,

Dumar left the wheel at the Latter-day Saints Church office. immediately people began to question the legitimacy of this will. And for a few reasons. The will left money to his two ex-wives, Ella Rice and Jean Peters, even though both women had alimony settlements that barred claims on Hughes' estate. So they actually had no claim. Hughes had often said he wouldn't be giving any money to his aides, and this will said that they got millions of dollars each.

The will also was filled with misspellings, including the misspelling of the name of Hughes's cousin. It also called Hughes's famous flying boat The H4 Hercules, the spruce goose, a nickname that Hughes had always hated and would never use. Why would that have even needed to be in the will? It said, I would like to donate my spruce goose to a museum. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, that's all the other ones. I'm like, he could have had a change of heart about his ex-wives and his AIDS, but yeah, that does seem very strange that he would have called it a spruce goose. So it was, of course, found to be a fake. Wow, that's real smart by that guy. Yeah. Just these little details. Hughes had died without a valid will

and most of the money went to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which he had founded, which he put money into, but a lot of people have later come out and said that that was probably just a tax ride off. But in the years since, they've had millions and millions of dollars and have done actual good medical research. And most of it went to his distant relatives.

According to the Wall Street Journal, around 1,000 people have benefited from the estate, including 200 of Hughes' distant relatives. after liquefying many of his assets they collectively were awarded one and a half billion dollars Whoa That's the old make of all of them rich

Yeah so even if they all got an equal share Which you wouldn't over a thousand people That averages out to be one and a half million dollars each In the 70s Holy shit Imagine being a distant relative You don't even know you're related to this guy And you just get a million bucks

And that's sort of loosely What the movie King Ralph was based on Yeah And that is the end of my report. That's how Matt ends it. It's a great report. Well done, Dave. What a wild story.

I knew nothing. Yeah, I wanted to talk about him for a while because he's so eccentric. I must say, after researching, watching a couple of documentaries and stuff like that, he was, like, some of the stuff he did is absolutely crazy and eccentric. But then I was also disappointed to find out that he didn't seem like a very nice man. Yeah, that is a bit disappointing. Yeah. You want him to be a bit of a kook.

Yeah, well-meaning. Yeah, I want to be eccentric but fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's the stuff that when I first discover this on Wiki all those years ago, I'd read about him locking himself into Cinerino eating chicken for four months. I'd be like, that's really funny. But he was psychologically affected and also before that, just pretty rich and didn't treat people very kindly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like someone who got rich when they were 19. Totally. It was born rich anyway. And parents had died and like obviously a lot of rough. Yeah, there's a lot of things to overcome there. Yeah, absolutely. It's difficult. Well, fantastic report.

And as always, for the first-time listeners, you won't know, but long-term listeners will know that always finish the report by tying it back to the film King Ralph. I'm so sorry about that. Don't you apologise, Dave. You said that and I was a bit, I don't even know the film King Ralph, to be honest. John Goodman, he's American. The whole British monarchy is reunited for a big foe.

The photo cables go through water and electrocutes and kills the whole British monarchy. So that's pretty funny. The throne goes to a distant relative who is an American man played by John Goodman called Ralph and he becomes King Ralph. I love it. Yeah. That's just so crazy it might work. Yeah, it's pretty great. I saw it at the cinemas.

It's one of the first films ever saw it at the movies. It's a real good time. All right. That brings us to everyone's favorite segment of the show, which is the fact quote or question segment. I think the jingle goes something like this, Jeff. Fact quote or question, thing. And the way this works is,

if you support us at patreon.com slash do go on pod, there's a bunch of different levels. You can get different rewards on. This one is if you get on board the Sydney Shine, Berg, Rest in Peace, deluxe Memorial Edition level. and this one gets you a bunch of things, including two bonus episodes a month,

which is also included on the DB Cooper and above levels. That's right. We also just released, we released, what, five bonus episodes this month because we, or for April, because we, or March, we put out,

getting ahead of ourselves, we put out our Dungeons and Dragons special series, Dugo D&D that we did with Adam Carnivalet. Adam Carnivalet. From Sanspans. So if you're interested in hearing that, if you pledged right now, you can hear us play Dungeons and Dragons for the first time across four episodes. That was fun. Very fun.

That's right. But on the Sydney Shineberg Deluxe Memorial level, you get to give us a fact, a quote or a question. You also get to give yourself a title. And I'm going to go through two of those right now. The first is the gentleman, Odie Matthews, who's given himself the title of CEO of not knowing what a CEO does. Yeah. And he's asked a question. Oh, this is interesting.

I don't read this until I read them, which makes sense if you think about it. But we were talking about this before. He says, you mentioned a North America tour coming hopefully soon. Oh, so sorry, Odie. I think you wrote this before COVID hit, that scampy little tiger.

Was that on this episode we're talking about that? Okay, great. So he writes, you mentioned a North American tour coming hopefully soon. Yeah, October. So I was curious, is there any American restaurants you've heard about that you're excited to try? Oh, Dave, this is right up your alley. Well, I must say, I was very lucky to go to L.A. for a week in November last year, and I was stoked to try In-N-Out burger.

Oh, yeah, people love that. It was very good. They did a pop-up in an out burger in Melbourne last year, and there was, like, people queuing up around the block. I'm like, you guys are maniacs. Do you remember people doing that when Krispy Kreme opened here? People lining up around the blocks coming out with multiple 24 packs of donuts. It's like you don't eat that. I never get it.

I never understand. Even like people will do that when a new gaming console or phone come there. It's like there'll be no line for this tomorrow. Yeah, I never understand that. I've got to be first. Or I've got to get 48 donuts. Why? Are you having 48 friends over?

Not anymore. Yeah. Yeah, I must say, I was, I loved trying. an app burger. I had Tucker. Is that the square one? I was listening to a podcast where people were talking about American burgers and one of them comes in squares.

It wasn't this one. No, this was just like I got a double beef patty. There's only three options for burgers, I believe. I don't know what the veggie option was if they had one, to be honest. But yeah, and he had fries and it was like in a diner style thing, which was really cool. And then you get the world's biggest soft drink container. Of course. And you get to fill it up.

It's a fucking tub. Yeah, right. But I also tried Taco Bell for the first time, which we've just recently opened up one in Australia. Oh, how was it? Yeah, I loved it. Cheesy Gordita Crunch. I'm all about them.

How does it compare to Taco Bills? It's sort of, it's more like a takeaway stuff, like fast foodie on the go. But it was very cheap and very, very yummy, yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I have an answer for this one. No, I don't think I do. I'm supposed to be going to Hawaii.

in August. That's probably not going to happen. Yeah, I'll be in Edinburgh. We'll maybe go to the airport together. Yeah, that can be sweet. I'll give you a lift. I was going to Africa. I had to cancel that.

I forget. Yeah, all these points. I'm going to see Faith no more coming up in Adelaide. Oh, that's probably not happening anymore. That's not going to happen. Damn it. Oh, well, it's all for the greater good. That's right.

That's right. Of course. We all stay home and shut down now. Hopefully next year we can all. And us not getting to have holidays is very low down on a list of problems. So this is not going to age well if things get real bad. Totally. Oh,

come, bam, bam, we aren't really complaining that much. No, but that's the thing too. And that's what I've been saying to people, like when they do go,

oh, I've had to cancel this or that. I'm like, you're allowed to be disappointed by that. Of course you are. You're a human being. Nobody could see this coming. You're allowed to go,

well, that sucks, but you don't go, oh, the world is it? Because of me, you're like, fuck you.

But you're allowed to still be a bit disappointed. by it. I haven't heard anyone doing that second one. God, you've really ignored my social media. Yeah, Dave has been... I'll go get a pie. I can't get a pie.

I wish Odie hasn't suggested any himself, but he does finish the question by saying maybe some you've heard are terrible and that makes you all so excited to try them. Have you heard of any terrible ones? What are there some of the other ones? Wendy's is different there. I hop.

I hop. I'm back to eye. I heard that's real bad. I like pancakes. Yeah, I've been in there. I had some pancakes at home today. Did you? Yeah.

Me too, actually. What the fuck? Crapes. You guys did not tell me. I could have made pancakes. You should have made pancakes. Oh, you just skyped in. Always tell me what you're having for Brecky.

Sorry, it was the first time in months I've missed my Brecky message. Morning, Jess. Yeah, I hope I've heard as real ordinary. Pretty average, yep. What else is there? I, you know, You know, there's the, what's their hungry jacks called again? Burger King.

Burger King, which in a lot of ways is the original hungry jacks. I like, that's true. I do like to try McDonald's in different places. Oh yeah. Just see if it's different. A bit of fun. I just, I'm so excited to go and hopefully we are allowed to leave Australia again one day. One day.

And, yeah, we'll be asking for tips, Odie, if you have any. What about Little Caesars? I'm just going through a list. I've heard of that. I've heard of that. What about Olive Garden? Papa John's? I don't know.

What's Olive Garden? Olive Garden's like a big chain Italian restaurant. I saw someone tweet about it somewhere recently saying it's basically like fine Italian food if you don't have any better options. But most cities, like if you're in New York, there's going to be better. Italian. Yeah. Right. With it's cheaper and better on every street.

So that's what someone said in their tweet. Wow. They were so. I think I read that somewhere. I've heard that. of our Arby's. Arbys I've heard of that, yeah. What's the big one in Canada?

It's a man's name. Yeah, I'm sick. Ed Hardys, something like that. It's not Ed Hardy's, but something like that. They talk about how I met your mother. Pop-Eyes? It's not Popeyes, but that sounds good. But it's like a guy, it's, it's, they make coffee, I think.

And it's the most Canadian thing. Fuck. Probably moose go there to eat. parties? No. I'm just going through a list here. Sorry. I've had a quiz nose in Iceland.

They've got Tarkabelle. They don't have, I think they don't have McDonald's in Iceland, but they did have KFC, Tarkabelle and Quiznos, which is like, like toasted rapy sort of stuff. I look forward to Americans laughing at us, mispronouncing their things. Sorry, it's Quiznos. Sorry, Quiznos. What, could you, as an American listener. laughing at us, what could you name for an Australian establishment? If you name La Pocetta, I will give you...

La La La Paquetta la la la la la la la la la paquetta la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Now that's crap Italian food. Someone was telling me... Smorgies? There's an Aussie comic who had a bit about La Pocetta that they were looking forward. They'd been touring their show and realizing that La Pagetta is really a Victorian thing. So they were really looking forward to the Melbourne Comedy Festival so their Lapa Ketic gear could work and obviously they never happen. That's so good.

Good on you, Odie. Thanks Odie. Great question, Odie. Tim Hortons. Well done, thank you. And great question. Yeah, but yeah, feel free on the Twitters and social media's Americans and Canadians.

Hit us up with your hot tips on all social media. Yeah, I actually love that. It really would. Do go on pod. especially leading up to hopefully our 2021 tour fingers crossed. It's the year. Although is the curse, should we stop trying? Yeah, let's stop trying.

Well, we try again and some other even bigger disaster happens. Yeah. We promise we didn't cause this. We'll try one more time. If another disaster happens, we'll pull their heads in. We're not making any promises. Like when we've locked something in, we'll let you know. You know?

All right. So, here is the second one of the fact. quote a question. It's from Suraj Paris. Surrage. Who is such a legend. Hold on Saraj. He's given himself the title, officer in charge of primate's

Beanie stock monitoring and subsequent disappointment. He's trying to buy him off me a few times in person. Oh. I think, this might sound crazy, but I think in England and in Australia,

but that might be wrong. I might be misremembering that. But he just brought, bought four recently online. Yes. Four. How many heads does you have? Oh, he's a four-headed beast.

Oh, okay, cool. Well, good to say cozy. So, very good title. Thank you, Saraj. And he's given us a quote in the form of a letter here. Hi, all, I came across this line while catching up on my reading. Oh, you love this, Dave. Here we go.

You love reading, you fucking virgin. Hey, well, stop reading books and try to read a woman. It's body language sometimes. It seemed like an intro to the inevitable stage adaption of DoGo On. Oh, I love that as an idea. Yes, inevitable. Obviously, off Broadway. Quote, I pray you indulge me for a space,

for I am going to set out on a speech which may have some duration, but whose theme may be gleaned from its opening phrase. That's great. That's from Boston Marriage by David Mamet. We do talk for a long time. David Mamet, yes. It also features this line, quote, and we must have a pie.

Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie. It sounds like one of Dave's lines. I love you, David Mamet. What a guy. I'm surprised he was able to find out two lines without swearing, to be honest. Oh, right. What's one of his famous works? I've heard the name.

Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. Oh, right. Glenn Gary, Glenn, Glenn. A, B, C. Always be calm. Finish this by saying, keep up the great work. Thank you, Saraj.

Thank you, Odie. A couple of fantastic. Absolutely. As I say, you can get involved in that if you go to... What am I talking about? Patreon.com slash do go on pod. I mean, all these are links that we're talking about are being the show notes. And they're both in the section of the Patreon that voted for this.

topic. Oh, that's right. So another one of the Sydney-Shineberg things you get is two-thirds, basically two out of three topics you get to vote on directly. Damn right. But anyone can suggest topics. That's a thing people get confused with some time. There's a link in the description. If you've got a sick topic that you think why haven't they done this one yet?

Click the link in the show description and you'll find a form that you can fill out with the suggestion and also a section where you can say why it's an interesting topic and that's your chance to really sell it and I highly recommend doing that because we're running out of good ideas that's not true there's so many there's so many there's thousands uh but we also love to thank a few more of our patrians our great patron supporters and uh just normally comes up with a little game to play here jess what do you reckon this week we're going to name the four things they're the best at oh fantastic okay right

The world. So Hughes had golf, aviation, cinema and wealth. Money. He was good at money. Well, he was good of money. He was good at money. He was good at money. It was kind of outrageous.

So we're going to give them the four things. They're the greatest at. Okay. Would you mind if I kick this off? I love that. From Ontario and Canada, I'd love to thank Tommy Brennan. Good on you, Tommy Brennan. What is he the best set?

Tommy makes anything like a tomato sauce. We should go around the circle and say one each. Come back around. Oh, we're doing three for each. Okay. Yeah, maybe three. Three makes sense. That way we can do it.

Yeah, right. So Tommy Brennan is best at Matt? Tomato sauce drinking. Oh, okay. He can drink like in a race. He can drink the most liters of gallons of tomato sauce. Well, similar theme in terms of beverages. He actually makes the best Tommy's margarita,

as voted on by the margarita ball. Oh, wow. And what was Tommy's migrator again? It's a type of migrator, man. Whoa. That's cool. He's also really, really good at surfing. He's like the Kelly Slater of surfing.

Wow. Wow. That's one of the best ever. I'd also, thank you so much, Tom. Tommy, great. These people are all triple threats. All of them. I'm a big fan of the name Tommy.

I'm out for it. I love an adult who goes Tommy. Yeah. My brother goes Tom. Is anyone ever give him Tommy? I give him Tommy. Nice. Tommy boy.

I'd also love to thank from Clinton Township in MI USA. Is that Missouri? Or Minnesota or Michigan. It's so hard, isn't it? There's so many. It's like that Gary Goyne bit. It's Michigan. Michigan.

I'd love to thank Richard Cameron, not the first, not the second. No. But the third. Oh my God. Holy shit. It's Richard Cameron the third. That's Dick. The turd.

He did it. And he's good at three things. Oh, wow. Richard, you would be sick of that one. But apologies. Jess, what's he the greatest set? Rock climbing. Well, that's a cool thing.

Wow, he's also really good at making furniture from wood. Wow. Carpentry. Look at a chair. Yeah, and I looked at a picture of his rock. Okay, so you got rock wood. I'll do the third most important element. he can tie

Jello snakes into a long line The longest line Wow Jello Rock Wood Yep they're the big three That's why the three little pigs

built their houses Over the big three For Rick Cam 3 Rick Cam 3 Thank you very much Can I thank some people as well Yes I would love to thank

From What's C8 Oh California I was like What does USA stand for? You dumb shit I would love to thank Jacob, Isaac, Pastrano. Oh my God.

You sound delicious. Yum. I am hungry. Jacob. All right, Matt, what's Jacob good at? He can make the best coffee foam art in the world. Oh, sick. He'll do like personalized portraits.

Yeah, he could do anything. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's amazing what he could do. I love that. I worked as a barista for a couple of years, and the best I could do was like a wiggle. Wiggle, like the stinky Jeff. Yeah, which one? Yeah, I did a wiggle.

No further questions. You made it sound like that's not impressive, but drawing a human wiggle is pretty great. No further questions. Dave, what's he good at? He's really good at ballroom dancing. Yes. Like, so good. Like, really good.

Like the best in the world good. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Could he do other kinds of dancing or just strictly ballroom? Well, yeah. Oh, no. Oh, it's strictly ballroom. You know how ballroom dancing is kind of.

of lame until you're incredibly good at it and then it's impressive. But leading up until that it's like, oh my God, this is so lame. But then when you're very, very good, it's like, wow, that's amazing. Yeah, let's list all our most famous ballroom dancers. You've got Paul MacIrio. Damn it. Now you do

one. Sonia Cougar. Oh, is she? She's in that film. Oh, is she? Yes. Wow. It's actually a really good film. It is actually. Is that Baz's first? That's Baz's first and only, in my opinion. That's his only good one. Yeah, wow. No, I thought Australia was Fantastic.

I've never seen it. Australia or Strictly Ballroom. I've never seen either of those. I have seen Romeo and Juliet and the one where Leonardo DiCaprio pretends to be rich, or is rich. The Great Gatsby? Yeah. Actually, I haven't seen The Great Gatsby. I can't really.

I don't think I have either. But not a big fan. Maybe I should try watching the film because I could not get through the book of the Gatsby. Anyway, we're talking about it. I know. I know. That's all I need. It was on bookchee.

We did it. Jacob, he's great at. So we've got coffee art. Ballroom dancing and... And remote control repair. Wow. He's like the best of the world. Anything.

Anything. Any remote control. Wow. And like everyone else will try and they'll go, I can't. We have to send it to Jacob. Just get a new universal one. He says, don't worry about it. He just like, you know when you take the thing out of the game and you just blow on it?

He just does that and it just works. Wow, the magic breath. It's crazy. Breath? Magic breath. Yeah, okay, great. And finally, I would also like to thank from Adelaide, Australia. I would love to thank Bianca and Robbie.

Wow. I think that's only one B. That's Roby. Roby. Bianca and Roby. Thank you so much for your dual support over in Adelaide. You sure that's not a surname? And Roby? Maybe.

It definitely could be. Thank you so much. Bianca and Roby. Well, should we think of something that they could do together? They're a power couple. We shouldn't have already been born, Bore him dancing. Damn it. Other duo things.

Okay. Okay. Singing duets. Yes. Damn it. I was going to say something like that. They made Huey Lewis and whoever he was with in that film look like bullshit. Two-man rowing.

Wow. That's a good one too. Two-man canoe. Rowing. They're very good at rowing, but only them. Did I nail it? Absolutely nail it. It's actually two persons.

and women can canoe too. I don't believe that's true. As a woman, I've never canoed. I've canoodle, sure. Oh, you have canoodle. I've seen you canoodle. Some of the finest canoodling I've seen. Yeah, I'm one of the best canoodle as ever.

But sadly, these people on this list cannot match my level of canoodle. No, that's true. Well, one thing they are great at, Jacob and Roby, sorry, that's not right, is it? It's Bianca and Roby. So sorry, my eyesight's not so good today. Bianca and Roby, they are also fantastic.

They share this with how it used. They are fantastic film directors. Oh, yes. They are the Australian Coen brothers. Right. Yeah, yeah. But whatever relationship they are to each other. Yeah, that.

Probably not brothers. Probably not, but we don't know. But maybe. Maybe. Anger and Roby, you two are the best at being the best together. Congrats on that. Huge. We appreciate that a lot.

Huge win. Dave, bring it home. I would like to thank all the way from Miami, Florida. A place I'd love to visit. You know, lots of Art Deco and Miami. I'd love to see that. You love art deco. Combining our Deco

With the beach Yeah, wasn't it? I literally just, I watched the first episode of Golden Girls today Yeah Because I've been watching so much Was Blanche horny Oh, Blanche is always so horny First episode, she's getting hitched to a guy

She's just met Blanche, classic Blanche I don't really know much about that But sounds fantastic Yeah, I'd never watched it before And then I've just been watching So much serious stuff That I felt very sad

And I was like, oh, I need to watch something light I'll imagine that's perfect It's great, I loved it Look at me, I'm fine, aren't I? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's B. Arthur's in it? Be Arthur, she's fantastic. And her mom in that show is actually younger than her or something?

She's a younger actor in makeup. And Betty White's old in it already. And it's from the age. Betty White's the oldest in it. Yeah, right. She doesn't look at it. She looks amazing. Oh, yeah.

She still does. Anyway. I would like to think from Miami, Florida, Grant Vetsnik. Oh, yeah. Grant Vetsnick. Fantastic name there. don't often see a V, a Z and a K in a name. He's done it.

That's, that's, if your word, if your name was an acceptable Scrabble answer. Oh man. You destroy it. Every time. Go on your Grant. And Grant is fantastic at. He's really good at, um, he invented this new thing and it's also the best at it because he's the only one has ever done it. Jumping out of a plane, whoa, with crushed up chalk in different colors.

And he then, he sort of, he blows his eyes. Whoa. And then from below, it looks like Monet painted the sky. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. That's a lot of chalk. Yeah.

Is chalk good for the environment? Look, all right. Here we go. I mean, we're all going to make sacrifices. Here comes woke Jess ruining the art party again. Art party. That's an impressive thing. Absolutely.

Yeah. And he's the best at it. Because he's the only one can do it still. Pretty cool. Still pretty impressive. Jess? Equally impressive is he's the best at solving Rubik's cubes. Whoa.

That is cool. Equally impressive. Well, equally impressive, he's also the best at eating pickles in a short amount of time. Ah! He wins pickle eating competitions all the time. I love pickles. I love pickles. I love pickles.

Pickles make any burger better. Couldn't agree more. I'm in on a pickle. Yes. On a burger. Absolutely. Get me in that burger with a pickle. I've been listening.

Have you listened to James Acust? There's podcast where they eat, they eat an imaginary meal. Oh yes, it's very good. Him and Ed Gamble. At one point he'll yell at the guest. What does he say? Pumper dumps or bread. Is that a question in England?

Popper Dumbs or bread. Because they're building their best meal. What's the call? I can't remember what it's called. I was just reading about it today. Yeah, it's like perfect restaurant. No. It's very good.

But yeah, that's a question. Ed Gamble, did you just say that? Yeah, Ed Gamble. So a drink, a. starter, a main course and a dessert, your favourite meal. But then one of the questions is always, Papa Dom's or bread. Off menu.

Off menu. Like that's a common question in the UK, Popatoms or bread. You never get off the problem here. Still or sparkling. Yeah. Classic question. Yeah, that's fine. I'm happy with that.

Although I haven't been to a restaurant as fine enough to have their question for a long time. But then on the podcast they always take it like, oh, I used to be a Popatoms eater, but now I'm more of a Brit. Like it's so common for them. Ronnie Chang tore it apart. That's the episode of those too recently.

He's like, oh, you're great Western. All this Western questions. That's great. All right. Fantastic from Grant. And finally I'd like to thank from Boras in Sweden. Well, hopefully we have not done that to you today. I would like to thank, oh, how do we pronounce this name?

because this next entry was in the golden hat a couple of weeks ago. Johannes Oulul. Because didn't he tell us how to pronounce it? I can find that. Johannes Oul, I think, is what Matt said last time. Yeah. The O... Oh, no.

Worth the weight. I'm sure you... Just to confirm it as well, probably. Johannes Oul. The first letter in... my last name, the O with the dots, is pronounced like the U in the word burn. Yes. Ewol.

Yeah, we did it. We did it. Good on you. Byrne. Erwal. Ull. Irwal. Johannes.

Thank you. And Johannes is fantastic at. Shredding guitar solos. Monopoly. Whoa. That's a good skill. Like nationally ranked. internationally ranked at Monopoly.

Geez, he would be unpopular with his siblings and other... No, because he's so good, he can actually get the game done quickly. Oh, that is good. So he's putting people out of their misery. Yeah, yeah. He's a merciful over-wold. Like many, I've never played it till the end. No.

One time, and we were... My brother was in his 20s and I was in my late teens and we were playing with his now wife and my best friend. And we were getting so heated. My brother slammed it shut. said, come on, we're going to get ice cream. And we all went down to the shop, got ice cream. That's a good result.

That was. It was very smart of him. Great diffusion. Fantastic. And Johannes Uwool, final skill is, of course, creating sculptures out of yogurt. Wow, that is hard. Yoget sculptures.

Frozen yogurt? No. Yogurt, yogurt. He's very good. Wow. The other kind of yoga, which I call sloppy yogurt. Is that what you're talking about? Unfrozen yogurt.

as I call it. Yuck. Wow, there go. That he's that good. Yeah. Does he wait till it's off? No, it's just straight from the packet. He can make it do things.

That's amazing. That is amazing. Well done, Johanah's. And he's not putting any toothpicks or anything. He's not making a sculpture and then pouring yogurt over it. That's not happening. I could not be more impressed. No, there's no structures involved.

He's just, he's just slopping her on top. Just slopping it up. Slopin it, flopping it. Chopin it. All right. Incredible. That is very incredible. Do you know, I just realized this episode is coming out on April 1st.

April. No joking. No fulun. Fools. We got you. Everything Dave said was wrong. Oh, this guy never existed. Loll.

Now let's start the real report. Prank you. Well, that does bring us to the end. of the episode Almost. One thing, which I've just remembered, and that is, of course,

people that have been supporting this show for three years continuously without dropping off and on the bonus episode level. No, on the shoutout level. What is that called?

Is it called the arse prod maybe? Yep, yes. That sounds right. That does sound right. On the shout out level. On the five buckaroo. If you've done that for three years continuously, we will add your name

to the golden holes of the Triptitch Club. Only the one inductee this week. Bob, do you have a drink or hors d'oeuvre for them tonight? It's a tomato themed night. So we're having Bloody Marys. Yes. And brusquetta. You would hate yourself if you were someone else listening to you.

You say, you could... Magrita. Yeah. A busketa. Can I have the spinach and ricotta? Fuck you. I've been tripped up by brisketta before and prichetta. One of them's like thin meat and one of them's bread with sauce on it.

Is that right? Yeah. But I could not tell you which. Gun to my head, couldn't tell you which. CH in Italian is K. Yep. And just see by itself is a ch sound. Yeah.

So it's very confusing. And every time I pronounce brisketa properly at a restaurant and they say, The brichetta, yes. I'm like, I fucking, I'm right here. I'm right here. I'm right here. Don't correct me to my face. But the only inductee this week is from that great state,

M.I. What was it again? Michigan. Michigan. From Lincoln Park. Whoa. Shout out to those who are one step closer to the edge. I'd love to thank Philip Bourgeois.

Philip Bourgeois. Who's got one of the great names, of course. enjoy tomato night, as well as everyone else who's already been inducted, which there's tens of you in there already. So that... You've got a team every night. It's all feeling a little bit more bourgeois since you've joined. It's so good to have you in there, Phil. Or Philip, sorry.

Fabulous Philip. I don't want to assume that you're comfortable with Phil. You might be a lip. Yeah, you might be a lippy man. Oh, a bit lippy, Phil. Well, our bouncer are friendly, but first warning, mate. There will not be a second First and final, mate.

Welcome in, Philip. So good to have you in and everyone else who's already in the Triptitch Club. Of course, you'll know if you are because you'll be on the special page on our website, which Dave has written all your names.

We're going to read to the entire website just for this shitty page, all right? Shitty page. Come on, this is the... Sorry, glittie page, meaning glittery. Glittery. Behind the velvet rope. Meaning glitterous.

Yeah, this is quite glitteral. Okay. I have to go to bed. Yes. Well, we should wrap up then. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Get in touch. Do you go onpod.com.

There's links. There's merchandise. There's Patreon. There's an email there. You can contact us. There's also at Doagawon Pod on all the social medias. You'll find us. We'll say hi.

Yes. It would be a pleasure to see you out there on the World Wide Web. Absolutely. We've got to stay connected. That's what I call it. You call it the internet. Is that what the WWWs? Well, that's the little one that I've come up with.

I don't think that's the actual thing. But yeah, a bit of fun. It helps me remember WWW. Yeah, right. Is it four Ws? Is it two W? And as I always stop, I say, World Wide Web, and then I type it.

Yeah, great. But how many U's eight U's? Oh, my God. What does that stand for? I don't know. I don't know. HTT, of course, is hot tamale, tamale, tamale potato.

Hot tamale tamale potato. I like it. I'll never forget it. Anyway, that's definitely where we should end as we lose our tiny little minds. I can see my fingernails growing before my eyes. Let's all get in my spruce goose and get out of here. Thanks so much for joining us, everybody. And until next week, I'll say thank you and goodbye.

Later. Bye. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. I mean, if you want, it's up to you. Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there. Wherever we go, we always hear six months later,

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