Endless Thread - Pawn Man

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Evan Kail is a wise-cracking antique dealer and TikToker. Last September, his world turned upside down when one of his videos ignited an international media frenzy. In his words, the TikTok created a "perfect storm." The subject of the video? A photo album from WWII which Evan believed contained photographs of the Nanjing Massacre — a horrific episode during Japan's invasion of China in 1937. This episode is about historical memory, why the Nanjing Massacre is still an incredibly sensitive topic in China and Japan, social media virality, and the true contents of that WWII photo album. Credits: This episode was written and produced by Megan Cattel. Mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson are the co-hosts.

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WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Ben. Shammery. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. How about you? I'm okay. It's nice to be with you.

I know. Same. I was thinking that we would take a little trip back in time together today. Is that okay? Take a little trip. Take a little trip with me. Take a little trip.

That's the way you want it. That's the way you need to take a little trip with Amory. That's beautiful. Okay, so we're going to go back to about six months ago when I was on a little road trip without you. What? For fun or for work? For fun turned work, but still fun.

Okay. So I was in Minneapolis back in early September. Okay, I've just started a little voice memo here. We're on Minnetonka Boulevard in Minnesota. Hmm, the breadbasket of America. I don't know what that means. I won't tell them you said that, just in case they're like... The punk rock cheese curds of America.

Sure. Okay, so I'm on this trip, and I get a text from a friend and a former colleague of ours. Damn, that's interesting. That former colleague, Jessica Almond, for any OG endless thread fans out there. And Jessica sent me a story that she thought I needed to look into. But the crazy thing is, Jessica had no idea that I just so happened to be in the city where the story she sent me takes place.

She was rubbing her crystals in the right direction. She must have been. So I'm in Minneapolis. I'm just about to start driving across the state of South. Dakota from there, but this story centers on a particular shop in Minneapolis. And it turns out, after a little Google Map search, that that shop is just 10 minutes away from where I am in that very moment. In the punk rock cheese curds of America?

Exactly. So you had to go? I had to go, no question. But because this was not a work trip initially, as we established, I didn't have my usual recording equipment on me. Hmm, you don't just carry it with you wherever you go, Emory. I try to travel light, you never know when podcast will happen. It's true, but fortunately, our phones now do a pretty darn good job in a pinch.

So I got off the highway. I started recording, and I headed on over to... SLP Gold and Silver. A gold and silver dealership where you're trying to get some bling? Emery, you want some rolled gold? You know me. I can never have too much. But no, I was there for neither gold nor silver. I was there to meet a guy known on social media as pawnman. Pawn man, sharing crazy stories.

Pawn man saying patience is a virtue. Pawn man, talking thieves. Pawn man. Hold on one of the rarest coins I've ever come across in my career. Holy shit. Hi, how are you? I just started roll. I made a voicemail book.

I said. We're on a road trip with my friend Claire. Hi. And I'm Amory. Nice to meet you. And what is your name? Evan. Evan Kale. Yeah.

Evan Kale. Okay. Okay. Evan Kale, aka Pondman, is tall. He's kind of lanky. He has a boyish face. He's in his early 30s, and he's been a precious metal and antique dealer since 2019. And despite being known as Pondman to his 1.2 million TikTok followers,

So this actually isn't a pawn shop. It's not a pawn shop. I'm sorry. No, it's okay because everybody... The pawn man. I literally... Pond man does not run a pawn shop. He does not.

It's a buy-sell. It's as simple as that. You come in with something to sell. If I can legally buy it, you know, I don't do firearms. There's certain things I don't do. But if it's, you know, just a whatever item that doesn't have any law regulations around it, then I just make an offer and that's it. Which, it turns out is different from a pawn shop,

which loans money to people who bring. in a valuable item, usually like a guitar. But then they can get that item back when they pay back the loan. Hmm. Sounds like some personal experience in there, but yes. So Evan is showing me around his non-pond shop, and he walks me up to one of several jewelry cases. So I have, this is coins and currency,

either from a bygone era that was a bad one in America or just from terrible countries. So we have North Korea. We have Third Reich. SLP also has a jewelry case full of jewelry, as you might imagine. There are various paintings all over the walls, including one that I particularly liked of this moustachioed, very distinguished-looking war general of some sort.

You know, when I hear silver and gold store, Amory, I honestly think of like a 90-year-old man with a giant beard who maybe reeks of cigarette smoke. Yeah. But I don't really think of a 30-something TikToker, I will admit, which just shows how narrow of a view I have. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I don't consider it to be the hippist job,

but Evan says he tried the hip job thing. He started out trying to be a writer, and then when the starving artist thing lost its cute factor, as he told me, he went to work for a guy like the one you're probably picturing. and he tried to bring this guy's shop into the 21st century. The first thing I did was digitized his store because he was like a dinosaur. He literally wasn't on the internet.

So I made an eBay account and then COVID hit, and eBay's what saved him from COVID. And the eBay was massively successful. Evan says that's when he started using social media to promote the gold and silver business. He was making these educational TikTok videos and YouTube videos. And in just a few months, his following grew to two 100,000 people, which is amazing, except the owner of the store that he worked for,

didn't like Evans' mix of educational videos and this kind of off-color humor. Boomer's shit is one of my favorite things I've done here on social media, and one of my least favorite things to buy when it comes into my shop, because I got to be the bear of bad news that not only did Grandpa die, cable shopping network absolutely fucked up. I walked out the door, and they kind of laughed me out the door, and I opened up this shop three weeks later. And I've been destroying them.

This sounds pretty, I mean, this is a true, this is like an unscripted television series rival-worthy situation right here. It almost sounds kind of like Shakespearean, this revenge. Yeah. And Evan says he was winning in this Shakespearean battle. SLP was doing great. His social media accounts, the pawnman accounts, those were growing steadily. And then in late August of last year. Someone brought an item into Evan's store that had him shaken.

This is the most disturbing thing I have ever seen in my career, and I desperately need your guys help. No music on this video. I'm not even to say pawnman. It's inappropriate. So he makes a TikTok video, and it takes off pretty much right away. Let a customer reach out and tell me that they have this old book of photos from World War II. It's been in their family for a while, and they wanted me to try and sell it.

I said, okay, not knowing what I was getting into. Now the book starts out, okay, the soldier is... But as Evan keeps flipping through this photo album from World War II, the pictures start to take a turn. From images of everyday life in China and Southeast Asia, to images of soldiers marching, warships, and then... And I had no idea. When I got that book on Monday, and I opened it up, and I got me on that page,

I screamed. I'm Amory Sieverts. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. you're listening to Endless Threat. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. So Evan is thumbing through this newly acquired photo album from World War II, and when he gets past a certain page, he realizes... Somehow, that guy who took those photos was present for the rape of Nan King,

and he took about 30 photographs that are unknown to history that are worse than anything I've seen on the Internet in color. And those photos aren't black and... and white. The rape of Nan King, or more commonly known today as the rape of Nanjing or the Nanjing massacre. It was one of the most painful chapters of the Sino-Japanese War leading up to World War II. It started in December of 1937, and for a period of about six weeks, Chinese civilians were raped, their businesses and homes were looted, and they were murdered by the Imperial Japanese army. The death toll at Nanjing is estimated to have been around 200,000 people. But it's been

contested and debated over the years. Japan's role as an aggressor during World War II is also an incredibly sensitive topic to this day, both in Japan and all over Asia. I majored in Japanese studies, and we cover the Raven and King, and I remember my professors telling me that photographic evidence was mostly destroyed by the Japanese. There are very, very few photographs out there. And this guy took photos of things that I've read about in books that I didn't even realize anybody had ever documented before. So how did a gold and silver store in Minneapolis

end up with a photo album that seemingly contains some of the only photos of one of the worst atrocities of World War II? Social media. A few days before Evan made that TikTok video, He was contacted by a man in New York who had been following Pondman on social media for a while. The guy told Evan that his dad was given this photo album by the photographer's wife.

Yeah, so the story, as far as I understand from this person, his father acquired it as payment from a contracting job. So the person, I think, who took the photos... What? That already is insane. Yeah, it's very weird. The person who took the photos died, and left it to his wife, and his wife didn't want it and hired this guy and somehow knew this guy like military, and this person was also a service person, said, look, I can't pay you, but I got this book,

I don't want it, it's really disturbing, do you want it? So she gave it to him, and he kept it for years, and he recently died and left it to his son, and his son reached out to me. So when I said, okay, I did not know what I was accepting. Evan says he's generally wary of World War II memorabilia. For good reason, people try to mail him violent photos of the Holocaust of prisoners and camps. And Evan says he turns these requests down. He says he doesn't want a profit off of genocide. He didn't realize how bad this book's contents would be.

When Evan cracked open the cover, the first thing that got his attention was the quality of the photos. Holy shit, these photos are really good. They're just well done. When you see photos from World War II, they're blurry, they're shaky, there's not a lot of depth. It's just not good quality. But this was something else.

As high-quality photos of civilian life turned into high-quality photos of war crimes and its casualties, I couldn't even finish going through the book. I just closed and I put it in the back. And I had, I went home on Monday and I just was like, I don't know what I can do with this. I don't know what I can do with this. I almost mailed it right back to him.

But I decided, I'll put it in the back and I'll think about it. As you're flipping through the book, when did you have a sense of what you were looking at? Right away, because I majored in Japanese and I knew it was a master curve of Chinese people I was looking at. But Evan didn't know what to do with this book, and he wanted more information about it. So he takes to TikTok a couple of days later on Wednesday.

By Thursday, his video has 7 million views. And that's when my friend sent it to me. By Friday, the day I walk into SLP, gold and silver, the number of views on Evan's TikTok video had tripled. And mind you, as we heard Evan say in the video, he does not show the alleged photos of war crimes, which led some to wonder if they were what Evan said they were, or if they even existed at all.

Articles in Rolling Stone and NBC had quotes from historians saying Evan was spreading misinformation. Comments on the video said Evan was being irresponsible. Some people called the video straight-up clickbait. Some accused him of making an inflammatory video just to publicize his business and get customers over to SLP Golden Silver. Evan made another video responding to the haters,

talking about how his viral moment had impacted his business negatively. It's completely upended my entire life, my business, everything. I'm so freaking stressed out. I have, well, it doesn't matter. The media attention, phone calls, and visitors lining up to see the book forced Evan to take security measures. He says he always has a gun on him. Attempted robberies aren't all that uncommon in his line of business.

But in light of the photo album controversy, he also started wearing a bulletproof vest. And finally, after two full days of chaos and controversy, Evan says he had to get the book out of his store for his own safety. Literally just got it out of here like an hour ago. Really? Yeah. I missed it by an hour. Yeah. Like you called me right after I sent it out of here.

I have to say, Amory, like, some of the details of how he dealt with this make me a little, you know, like some of the hairs on the back of my neck went up. You know what I mean? Hmm. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's why, even though I was about to leave for South Dakota, I was like, you know, I should just go see what I can see and learn what I can learn about this. Right. And then you get there and he's like, oh, you just missed it. Yes, but the book was not gone, gone.

Evan was having it digitized. That's where the book went. Okay. And I have to say, and maybe this goes to some of the hairs on the back of your neck, like I was a little relieved, actually, that the book wasn't there because I don't want to see photos of war crimes. I really, I don't. I mean, I don't want to turn a blind eye to any atrocity that's happened in history.

All your nerve endings haven't been crisp. by the internet like mine have. No, they haven't been. So I would have been really nervous to see what was inside. But instead, I got to bear witness to something else. Because while I was there, a handful of Chinese people came into the store to just express their appreciation to Evan for using his pawnman platform to talk about the Nanjing massacre. People like Suu and his wife, who came into the store holding a bouquet of flowers for Evan.

Just want to say thank you to you. You know why, right? Yeah, I'm a professor in the Minnesota State University. Oh. But I'm Chinese. Yeah. So this is why. Thank you so much for saying that, post that video.

You know, your video is below the entire Chinese media right now. Yeah, I heard that. I'm a little overwhelmed. Just, can you just tell me why you're here? Because his video. Like, all my friends asked me, do you know there's some, there's a guy in the mini- He posed something on the TikTok. We're Chinese. We know the history.

But this is my first time to hurt an American can create very clearly explained situation, the rape of 19. By this point, there were strong opinions swirling around about what should happen to this photo album. A lot of people felt that it belonged in China. Sue Wei and his wife acknowledged the tough position Evan was in. My wife just keep asking me, they don't push him too much. We don't want to put pressure on you, but just want to let you know that we are.

We're great. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you guys. It's really kind. I also met Zheung, a student at the University of Minnesota who'd learned about the photo album through a Chinese news outlet and had come to SLP that day hoping to do a school assignment all about it. It's very, it's so positive. I say thanks.

To hang, it's lots of Chinese people want to say thank you. Thanking Evan for bringing attention to an event in history that some feel has gotten buried among the narratives of World War II. This book potentially confirmed what many Chinese people grew up hearing about. And it was important not just to ordinary citizens. When I was at Evan's shop, he got this phone call. I don't have to take this. Yep.

Sounds part gold, silver. Yep, this is him. Yes, but I don't have the book here. No, I had to get it out of here. It's someplace else. It'll be back here on Wednesday if you wanted to check it out. All right, thank you. Bye-bye.

He's from the Chinese embassy. Whoa. Uh-huh. Yeah, they kind of vaguely threatened me yesterday. How so? They used some strong wording about how it needs to be returned to China. So there's a lot of photos of China, but it's also, it has a very heavy American perspective because it's this guy's perspective, you know, going through. Oh, interesting. And I just, I would hate to give it to a Chinese museum and have them only pull out the bad photos and throw the rest away.

Evan said at that point, he really wanted the book to stay in America. This was a collection of photographs taken by someone in the American Navy during World War II. And Evan thought it was important that its current presentation should be preserved. But was the book what he thought? Were these original photos taken at the rape of Nanjing? That's coming up in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories.

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To understand the intense media coverage, Evans' photo album caused around the world, we called up two experts. I don't actually do TikTok, and so I'm very grateful when my students bring the real world to me in this fashion. And they were just like, oh, Professor Duden, oh, my God, you won't believe this is happening. Professor Alexis Duden teaches 20th century East Asian history at the University of Connecticut. My specializations are modern Japan, modern Korea, and the legacies of the 20th century that linger into the present. The legacies of the 20th century that linger into the,

the present. I like that a lot. What does that mean? It's the blowback that's actually encapsulated by the denialism at the heart of, I think, the conversation we're having about this photograph album, even. It's the tensions between Japanese society with itself over how best to narrate the disaster that was the collapse of the Japanese empire and the devastation. that was visited upon Japan during the war. Professor Da Ching Yang teaches at George Washington University and focuses primarily on Chinese-Japanese relations. For him, this work is personal.

So you grew up in Nanjing, which has its own kind of rich and turbulent history. Exactly. Tell me about that and about what you grew up knowing and learning. In middle school, I learned about what is called the Nanjing Massacre. So it was a rather late discovery for me, and that is a major reason for me to be interested in how historical memories are constructed and passed on. Professor Yang discussed some of the photographs he saw in Evans' TikTok. One of them shows a street sign that says,

Nanking Road. Evan assumed the photograph was taken in Nanking or Nongjing, but no, Nanking Road is actually a really busy street in Shanghai, and it was even back in the 1930s. Some of them, for example, were scenes of a horrific scene in Shanghai, I believe, after a bombing raid. I believe with the same one, actually a Chinese bombing rate that has gone wrong, whether it's due to ground fire or not. A bomb was accidentally dropped into the international concession, and there were dozens, if not more, corpses in these photos.

So anyone with some minimum historical knowledge should be able to. to put these photos in context. By the time we sat down with the experts, a lot of Evan's statements in the video had been scrutinized and or debunked. According to many historians who contacted Evan or posted their findings online, the images in the book, the ones Evan claimed were originals, are actually easily searchable through Google images. One such photograph was of a public execution that took place in Beijing during the Qing

dynasty era called Lingchurch. which is translated as death by a thousand cuts, literally. The practice was outlawed around the early 1900s. But we also wanted clarity on another claim that surfaced in the wake of Evans' TikTok video, the claim that Japan, quote, never apologized for the atrocities in Nanjing. Here's what Professor Duden told us.

It's really tricky. I mean, Japan officially, various prime ministers have issued various apologies. and then another prime minister will come in and kind of pull the rug out from the apology. So on the one hand, there are very specific words that address a broader sense of responsibility, and yet there has been no specific, for example, a specific imperial apology, for example, because remember, the emperor of Japan at the time was not only the head of state, but he was also the commander in chief. There's never been an emperor apologizing for the Nanjing massacre.

The Nanjing massacre and other Japanese war crimes during World War II have been debated and in some cases openly denied by various Japanese leaders over the years, which has caused, understandably, friction with its neighbors like China and Korea. And to Professor Young, it makes sense that this friction would translate into online virality. The mass response on the internet doesn't surprise me. This thirst for new ironclad proof that something like Nanjing massacre happened has been very, very strong among many Chinese people. Professor Dudden says events like the Nanjing Massacre have been controversial in recent memory too. Former Prime Minister Abe was arguably the most divisive leader Japan has had recently within Japan, precisely for his views over Japan at war.

In particular, the atrocities Japan committed during its quest to conquer Asia. He was also very specific and clear about what was driving him. It wasn't because he was in the archives looking for evidence. It was, as he wrote in his autobiography, to give back honor to his family name, specifically his grandfather, Kishi Noboske, who was a former prime minister of Japan,

and also prior to that had been designated a Class A war criminal because of his role in leading the industrialization of Manchuria when it was a Japanese occupied territory, known as Manchukuo. Both Professor Dutton and Professor Yang talked about tensions created by nationalism. When China started to transition in the early 1980s from the Soviet-style-planned economy

to embracing state capitalism, the country's patriotic identity began to shift too. Schools began teaching kids about China's century of humiliation, which lasted up until World War II when the country had to seed territories to European powers and was eventually invaded by Japan in the 1930s. There is a very well-known phrase that more Japanese soldiers have died on Chinese television sets and movie theaters

than during the war itself. And at the same time, the atrocities were real. And so the Chinese government, not unique to national nation cohesiveness or building a national identity, uses the memory of being overwhelmed by extreme violence to try to bolster a notion of that China can be powerful today. Professor Young and Professor Dutton also spoke about the need for people in both countries to have face-to-face exchanges.

Things like tourism, students studying abroad, and business partnerships can help establish more positive international relations. But those exchanges have been nearly, impossible during the pandemic. It really does boil down to education, education, education. And if you've got textbooks that are in classrooms that just don't even mention the Nanjing Massacre, when that person is older, they're going to wonder, A, why didn't I learn that, and why are you yelling at me? Has all of this inspired you to spend more time on TikTok? No, I really, I personally don't do any of the social medias, not only because I would embarrass my child, but I get a lot of death threats on

just plain old email and snail mail. What do you get them for? I say that the Nanjing massacre happened. And I say that Japan bears state responsibility for forced militarized sexual slavery. And it's that consistently controversial to say that stuff. Oh yeah. I get called a liar, all sorts of great names. It's not that I've gotten used to it or accustomed to it, but I have learned a pretty important ratio, which is for every 10 emails of hate, I get two or three totally unsolicited notices from, let's just say, regular Japanese people will write me or email me and say, keep doing what you're doing. The day after I met Evan in early September, he lawyered up. He was advised to stop speaking to journalists until

really had made a decision about what to do with the book, and it was no longer in his possession. But Evan assured us he would eventually be able to tell us more. And a couple months later, in December of last year, Pondman was ready to pawn jam. If by that, I mean, talk to us. Yeah. So at this point, the photo album was no longer in the U.S. Evan had decided to donate it to China through the Chinese consulate in Chicago. The last time I spoke to you, we were in your store in Minneapolis. You had a bulletproof vest on and a gun on your hip.

And while I was there, you got a phone call from someone at the Chinese embassy who wanted to see the book. Yeah, and it, you know, I got calls from everyone that day. You were sitting there. My phone was ringing off the hook. Evan said that the Chinese visitors who came into his shop really changed his mind about keeping the book in America. What was so striking about it is most of the people that were coming in here were very young, younger than me. You know, I kind of thought that my generation was the cutoff, you know, for talking to people from World War II and having that impact.

And I was just so surprised that these young Chinese people were, you know, the war was so real to them still. So in September of 2022, Evan began taking steps to send this book back to China. It would be a long, complicated process involving lawyers and the consulate general in Chicago. You know, what people don't seem to understand is I can't just call up a foreign government and say, hey, I got a little something, something that could shake up geopolitics. You guys want to meet in a parking lot and I'll give it to you? Like, I needed to get a lawyer and do this carefully. Evan says that the video and the accusations that the photo album was a hoax,

damaged his credibility. Historians from universities and museums withdrew their offers to look at the book. The ones that did agree to verify the book's contents only did so anonymously. The allegations that I used a war crime to get famous is such a heinous accusation. It just is so damaging and destructive and bad. It just created this thing that like, God, nobody wanted to go near it. A lot of people attack me. But hey, you know what?

The end result of this, it's come full circle. And I think I've proven that I didn't stage this. created a perfect storm of words with a TikTok. It was an accident. I'm not going to lie that I didn't intend that this was going to happen. But once it did, this was the best way I could think of owning it. Evan didn't shy away from talking about the mental and physical toll that this video going viral had on him.

He said he lost weight. He started seeing a therapist. This is a very special club being in this video that goes so viral and you get picked apart a million ways from Sunday. And it's very – but again, it's not about me. I wouldn't do anything different. I really think that I did a good thing here. And I just, the education I provided, I think is really valuable.

And obviously China agrees with me. That's something that came up again and again. Even though the photos were not really of the Nanjing Massacre, Evan's original TikTok video about it spread awareness about a dark chapter of World War II history that isn't all that well-known outside of Asia. Here he is in a follow-up video. Even if it turns out that these photos are not genuine, this video and what I've done here has educated so many people about what happened in World War II. Some people didn't even know that.

I was shocked reading comments like, wow, I never knew. Yeah, Japanese were just as bad as the Nazis. Now that the book is back in China, Chinese academics may or may not release its findings to the public. But in the meantime, the consulate general thanked Evan and gave him a gift as a sign of gratitude. So they sent me a new contract. I signed that at my attorney's office with them, met with them, read them a letter. We shook hands. They presented me with a letter. And then they gave me a porcelain vase, which I have come to learn this vase that gave me. They only give to, like, heads of state and, like, top dignitaries. It is, like, the greatest gift they can give a foreign person from their government. So, Ben, I've been thinking a lot about an object as a piece. a piece of history, a teaching tool, a window into a time period in history. And we've spent the whole episode talking about the book, but with this vase that the consulate

general gave to Evan, which is like a very delicate, beautiful porcelain vase. It's yellow. It has this blue bird on it sitting on some sort of lovely, dainty branch. I'd like to think that someday, many, many, many years from now, after Evan's shop has closed or changed hands, that vase will be sitting in an attic, or maybe prominently on display, who knows, and someone's going to come across it and be like, this is beautiful.

Where did this come from? What is the story of this vase? And that's going to lead someone else down a whole, rabbit hole. Maybe long after TikTok is gone. We've moved on to other platforms. And they'll have that

question of what is this? And why is it important? And we'll see which podcast decides to make an episode about that. Which VR cast? Which chat GPT

cast? Which alternate reality? Yeah. Which fourth dimension podcast? I like that. I think that's a really nice, you know, positive thought. I also want to say, like, I think, I guess this story had me thinking about the impact and implications of denying a trauma happened. And, like, how that can reverberate through generations of people and how there's something really powerful about. a group of people like recognizing and saying out loud like no this happened you know this is a

part of history that i have i know very little about but i think what this story tells me is that no matter how hard you may try to deny that something that actually happened happened it will live on in generational trauma and until we recognize that that and like try to heal it through acknowledging it, it will continue to exist no matter how hard you try to hide it or deny its existence. Back to Shakespeare, the truth will out. That's right.

That's right. I don't know what to do with that, but I hope that people, it sounds like people got some solace from at least the conversation that this raised. on TikTok, and I think that sounds like a good thing. Hear, hear. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was written and produced by Megan Catell.

It was co-hosted by me, Ben Brat Johnson, and Amory Siebertson, Mix and Sound Design by Emily Jenkowski. The rest of our team is Quincy Walters, Dean Russell, Norris Sacks, Grace Tatter, Amy Grell, Matt Reed, and Paul Vicus. Special thanks to WBURR alum Jessica Alpert for tipping me off about Pond Man and the photo album at the most opportune time. And to my friend Claire Kaiser for being up for a little detour along our road trip just to meet Evan.

Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and your local gold and silver store. And this episode was the epitome of an untold or at least undertold history, an unsolved mystery and a wild story from the internet. If you have any of those things that you want us to tell, you can hit us up. email endless thread at wbUR.org. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR pawn shop.

What would you have in the NPR? Like you go into the NPR pawn shop, you're like, will you take this tote? And they're like, I'm sorry, this entire shop is totes. I'm sorry. We cannot take a tote. Toots on toots on toots. How about this mug then?

No, I'm sorry. What about a subscription to the New Yorker for a year? Would you be interested in giving me some money for that? I don't know. NPR can use all the funds it can get these days. It's true. It's true.