Endless Thread - Suitcases of Cash and Bob Saget's Ghost

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

Gather round for this week’s Snacktime episode, where Ben tells iLab producer Nora Saks two stories about found money, a gambling ruse in a Belizean casino, and why Bob Saget would block himself on Twitter if he could.

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Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Hello, Nora Sacks. Hello, Ben Brock Johnson. You are, in fact, not Amory Siebertson. Never have been. Never will be. Amory is on vacation. So, excellent producer from the

I Lab, Nora Sacks, has stepped in to hear my tales to tell, and I have two. Two tales to tell. I'm ready for all two of them. Cool. These are stories about two things that popped on the internets in recent days. We're clearly not back with a new season of Endless Thread. Sorry, folks. But also, stay tuned.

Nora, what is the largest amount of money you have ever found in the wild? Definitely no more than $20. Wait, can you give me? Do you have any recollection of where you found this $20? Dallas? I remember hiking Mount Katadden in Maine and being just absolutely wrecked by the end of it. And then finding a bill on the ground in the parking lot and then seeing that it probably came from a tourist who dropped it and then deciding to keep it. I'm not a moral person.

Okay. First of all, everybody's a tourist on a mountain. Yeah, yeah. No, I remember feeling like, wow, this day was really hard. Oh, I found some free money. Amazing. So that's the closest memory I have of it. And you did not try to return it.

You were like, listen. Yeah, I think I saw some out-of-town plates. And I was like, well, dinner's on me. Wow. Man, just throwing shade at the tourists. If you're a tourist and you bump into Norrisax, ladies and gentlemen, don't ask for help because you won't get it. True statement.

Oh, man. Okay. So this is about an amount of money discovered in the wild, supposedly. I'm going to read this post. It is from Reddit. It comes from the subreddit, suspiciously specific. Have you ever dabbled in that subreddit community? No.

I'm not heard of it. That's totally fair. But I probably do suspicious things, so I'm into it. Suspiciously specific things. Right. So this was posted. It was reposted on the suspiciously specific subreddit. It actually came from the Ask Reddit community. And this is a question.

It says, you've found a suitcase full of $750,000 in cash in $100 bills in the brush next to a highway. You can tell that it's been there for at least a year. How would you integrate this money into your life without raising red flags? What would you do, Nora? How would you sort of like stiff fly under the radar but also like spend that dough? Because clearly you're not going to try to return it

as we've learned already. Like how would I spend it so that no one would know that I had all of a sudden come into three quarters of a million dollars? Yeah. I would get another border collie. Okay.

I would fix my truck. I don't know. I would just make slow, steady purchase of things that I've been aiming for for a long time. Okay. Well, this country music song was this by Nora Sacks, producer for podcasts at WBUR. I'd get another dog and fix my truck with three quarters of a million dollars. Okay.

And you forgot the dilapidated farmhouse I'm planning on buying. You're not going to get in. Okay. Not a fancy house, right. No. All right. Okay. So we did get a response to this question.

So this is what this user is Spector agent number 13 says. Assuming they aren't marked or serial numbers aren't logged anywhere, the simplest way would be to keep your current lifestyle, aka border collie, truck, etc., to avoid suspicion and pay everyday things in cash. So buy groceries, gas, home supplies, dilapidated farmhouse, etc. with the cash. And if you need smaller denominations, take like $1,000 to a bank and break it for 50s and 20s, put the money from your paycheck

that you would spend on these things into your savings account. Now, another less honest option, this person says, to get most of it directly into your bank account would be to travel to a country outside of North America.

This is kind of genius that has casinos, some smuggling required, but 750K does. take up too much space. Put all the cash up for chips slash credit. Play a little bit, but mostly spend your time drinking enough to look like a drunk who just doesn't have it in them to actually play. At the end of the trip, pull the remaining money as a check with the casino's name on it and return home. You can then deposit the money, pay the taxes on it, and enjoy what's left.

I recommend going to Belize for this, says this person, since they, use the U.S. dollar so you could claim you pulled the cash from ATMs. It's fairly inexpensive, and they also don't have the legal infrastructure to look too hard at anything like this. In order to cut down on the possibility of getting caught, bringing in so much cash, I would recommend the old rolls of cash in the shaving cream can trick and multiple trips over a few years bring in about $200,000 at a time. that's like a specifically that's a suspiciously specific response wouldn't you say oh yeah a thousand percent like faking at being a bad gambler and then cashing out at the casino in belize and coming

home that's someone with a lot of experience doing that right yeah but so the whole point of this subreddit though like are we to believe someone actually did find a suitcase of three quarters of a million dollars next to the highway? I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's just like a movie reference or something, you know? Like, who knows? This is the beauty and the madness of Reddit, right? Like, we don't really know why this anonymous user posted this question.

And they're clearly never going to tell. So are you inspired to go to Belize and start gambling? I mean, I'm always inspired to go to Belize. I don't really like casinos. Are you into casinos? Not a big casino person myself. You're more of a kayaker. I would probably get the $750,000 in cash and then put it in the hatch of the kayak and then paddle away and hope no one found me.

That's my plan. Good plan. Thank you. Also suspiciously specific. Yeah. All right. Nora, I have another story for you. This one from Twitter, and it evolves Bob Sagitt, an end.

indie rock band and avoiding toxicity on social media, which is one thing I think we can probably all get behind. All right. Back in a sec. 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, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not. science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world an new. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast.

There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. So, Nora, do you know who Bob Sagitt is? If I am correct, he is the father on Full House. Well done.

Yes. Well done. Thank you. Anything, do you know anything else about Bob Sagitt? I feel like his life has taken some dark turns, but I can't remember what they are. Well, I feel like your instinct is, again, on point here. Bob Sagitt is an interesting character. He hosted for a long time the television show, America's Funniest Home Videos.

Oh, right. Which you may or may not have viewed. I watched a lot of America's funniest home videos. His views is a pretty good show. It's sort of YouTube before YouTube, right? Yeah, YouTube before YouTube. And from what I remember, like, a lot of really silly animal antics. I like those a lot.

Never wonder what your cat does when it goes under your bed? Now you don't have to wonder anymore. So Bob Sagitt is also apparently famous for filthy stand-up comedy, I think. So that's another thing. Just to say about him. So, Nora, do you know the band Carseat Headrest? I've heard of them. I could not describe the music to you.

I like them because they kind of itch this indie guy. guitar rock thing that I grew up on, but they still feel kind of young, so I feel not that old listening to them, if that makes sense, you know? Yes. They sound a little bit like this. So this band has a song from like many years ago called The Ghost of Bob Saggett. Tell me more. Bob Sagitt's still alive, right? So this is interesting that you ask that because the song title itself led some internet users to wonder that very question. Yes, Bob Sagitt is still alive. The song refers to the actor, but is sort of, you know, similarly to some of his stand-up,

it's pretty not safe for work. So I'm just going to leave that one there. And there's apparently also this comic book connection. There's a comic called Ask Castle that's involved that I'm not going to say much more about just because it's not actually all that super-duper relevant or interesting. But the band's lead singer was friends with this comic book artist, creator. who inspired some of the lyrics to the song, Ghost of Bob Sagitt.

Apparently fans just the other day got to talking about the song and the comic book, for some reason, Bob Sagget caught wind of this on Twitter. And Bob Saggett started sort of like blocking people, Willie and Nilly on Twitter. And this resulted with people like tweeting at Bob Saget trying to get blocked.

So it quickly turned into this like internet silliness that, you know, so often happens. And this was all weird enough that, you know, it turned into a full on trending topic on Twitter. Blocked by Bob Sagitt, amazing. Okay.

So eventually Bob Sagitt tweets an apology to quote all the people I've blocked over the years. And he says, Just can only let positive stuff in. If I could block myself, I would. He then ends the tweet with an addendum, sending car seat headrest my very best. Whoa. There's so much going on there.

You know, he's just trying to have a positive time on Twitter, which is we can say difficult sometimes. It's nigh impossible. It sounds like some positive toxicity going on, possibly. Yeah. Like good vibes only, right? Good vibes only. What is he trying to keep out of his life?

I don't know. It's like it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell. And again, some of the words to this song, the ghost of Bob Sagitt, are not safe for work. They're inappropriate. So can you give us a little bit more just about, you know, what were they saying about the ghost of Bob Saggett? Like, what does he come back to do? Does he haunt people?

Does he haunt San Francisco? What does he do? So the song and Saget's place in it, according to Rolling Stone, were inspired by this comic. Um, essentially, uh, these different ghosts haunt the singer of car seat headrest. Um, they talk about death, uh, talks about, um, sexual orientation, uh, talks about these big, sort of meaty topics. Um, and these different ghosts haunt the lead singer to discuss these different meaty topics. And by the ghost of Bob Sagitt is, um, is, is, is one of the, um, is, is one of the, um, um, is, is, is one of the, um, um, um, is, is, is, is one of the, characters featured in this litany of ghosts, apparently. Hmm. But, you know, I guess Bob's, yeah, he's keeping it posy.

But why does he want to block himself? That, to me, just says so much about his unheeled relationship with himself, you know? Really? Bob's Haggett, give us a call. Let us know you're all right. And if you want to talk, we're here. We're here for you. And also don't get to trigger happy with the blocking, you know, because even on Twitter,

Nora, everywhere you look, everywhere you look, there's a face of somebody who needs you. That's from the theme music, yeah. Yeah, I just got goosebumps on the bad kind. Nora, thank you so much for stepping in this week. It's great to have somebody to talk to. Yeah, you're not blocked from talking to me. yet. Bye.

Bye.