Futility Closet - 151-Double-Crossing the Nazis

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from a dog's vigil to a nation inside Nevada. This is episode 151. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1941, Catalonian chicken farmer Juan Pujol made an unlikely leap into the world of international espionage. He became a spy, first for the Germans and then for the British, rising to become one of the greatest double agents of World War II. In today's show, we'll describe Pujol's amazing talent for deceiving the Nazis, which led one colleague to call him the best actor in the world.

Starting point is 00:00:48 We'll also contemplate a floating Chicago and puzzle over a winding walkway. Thanks to listener Claire Rousseau for suggesting this one. Juan Pujol Garcia was born in Barcelona in 1914. He had a rocky start in life. He failed at almost everything he tried, including working as a chicken farmer and managing a cinema and a hotel. In 1931, he joined the Spanish army for six months of compulsory military training, but he said he lacked the essential qualities of loyalty, generosity, and honor that were needed for a successful military career. When the Spanish Civil War came in 1936,

Starting point is 00:01:24 he joined the Republicans at first in his native Catalonia, but he felt they mistreated his family. So he deserted them for the nationalists, but he found them abusive and oppressive. In the end, he said, I had managed not to fire a single bullet for either side. He came out of the war hating totalitarian regimes and extremist politics in general. He said, Spain under fascism was as intolerable as it would have been under communism. He said, He later wrote, I yearned for justice. From the medley of tangled ideas and fantasies going round and round in my head, a plan slowly began to take shape. I must do something, something practical. I must make my contribution to the good of humanity. unfold from Spain, which was neutral, and he came to admire the British, who kept fighting against increasing odds until they were Germany's only remaining adversary. He decided to become a spy

Starting point is 00:02:08 for the Allies. He said, I wanted to start a personal war with Hitler, and I wanted to fight with my imagination. In January 1941, Pujol visited the British embassy in Madrid and offered his services to the British. He was 29 years old, and he had no experience in espionage. In fact, his most recent job had been running a poultry farm outside Barcelona. His only qualification was that he hated Nazism and wanted to help the Allied cause. So the British turned him down. And then he took a very bold step. He decided he could make himself more valuable to the British by ingratiating himself with the Germans. So he contacted the Upfair in Madrid, that's the German military intelligence service that's responsible for espionage, and presented himself as a Spanish government official who was fanatically pro-Nazi.

Starting point is 00:02:50 He offered to spy on the British for them and told them he'd be able to travel to London on business. And they accepted him. They gave him a crash course in espionage, a bottle of invisible ink, a code book, and 600 pounds for expenses. They told him to travel to England via Portugal and to start recruiting sub-agents when he got there. And they warned him not to underestimate the British, which is a warning that would take on huge ironic significance in the years that followed. When he got to Lisbon, Pujol renewed his offer to British intelligence, saying, hey, now I'm in with the Germans, so now I can be a double agent for you. But they turned him down again, and now he was stuck. He'd never been to Britain and didn't even speak English, but the Germans were now expecting him to live there and manage

Starting point is 00:03:28 a network of spies. In fact, he couldn't even legally enter the country. He had shown the Germans a visa, but it was only a forgery. So he made another audacious plan. On July 19, 1941, he sent a message to his German handler from Lisbon saying that he'd arrived in Great Britain. He warned the Germans that his letters would have a Portuguese postmark. He explained that message to his German handler from Lisbon saying that he'd arrived in Great Britain. He warned the Germans that his letters would have a Portuguese postmark. He explained that he'd met a pilot with a Dutch airline who had agreed to smuggle his letters from London down to Lisbon. So he said, you'll be getting my letters with a Portuguese postmark because this guy's going to ferry them down to avoid the British. But I really am in England. Right. And when you get them, you can just reply to the same address in Portugal,

Starting point is 00:04:06 and he'll just take them back up to me in London. So it's going to look very much like I'm living in Portugal. But I'm not. But of course, we both know that's ridiculous, as we've agreed I'm living up here in England. But the Germans accepted this. They congratulated him on his resourcefulness, in fact. And when he got their reply,

Starting point is 00:04:24 now he had irrefutable evidence in his hands that he had the confidence of the Germans. So he took that to the British and again offered to become a double agent, but they still weren't interested. So he decided now to gather a whole portfolio of spy correspondents with the Germans to show what he could do for them, for the British. This meant he had to write convincing intelligence reports for the Germans about what was happening in Britain, even though he was really living in Portugal. Amazingly, he was able to do this using only the information that was publicly available in Lisbon, including just newspapers, cinema newsreels, a tourist's guide to Britain, magazine advertisements, and train timetables. He used the Lisbon Public Library to get the names and addresses of real British companies, and then he would just sort of embroider this and send it off in a report. If you think this sounds like a bad movie, I agree with you. In fact, it would later inspire Graham Greene's comic novel Our Man in Havana, which is about an English vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba who begins sending phony spy

Starting point is 00:05:16 reports to England. But it worked. The Germans bought it. Pujol wrote his reports in a verbose style that was designed to fill out the pages with the minimum possible information. And he discovered he had a real talent for this. The reports were so convincing that they not only impressed the Germans, but they alarmed the British who intercepted them. They believed that a real spy had infiltrated England and was reporting on them. Meanwhile, he was working on this spy network that he'd promised to build. Its first member was the imaginary airline courier he'd claimed was ferrying his messages between London and Lisbon. He had demanded absolute discretion from the Germans in building this network, saying that any leakage would ruin his cover in England. So he now was claiming to be traveling around England recruiting these spies, and in order to keep up appearances,

Starting point is 00:05:58 he submitted travel expenses periodically to the Germans. Interestingly, he didn't understand the predecimal currency that they were using at the time, pounds, shilling, and pence. So he couldn't total his listings. He could look up plausible fares in a British railway guide in Portugal, but then he would simply send in these listings saying, I'm too busy now to total these up for you. I'll do it later. You can do the math.

Starting point is 00:06:20 But that didn't set off any alarm bells. I guess it wouldn't. Then he tried a fourth time to interest the British, this time in Madrid, but he got a cautiously suspicious response, even when he showed them all this evidence he'd accumulated. So the Germans love him and the British keep rejecting him. He wrote later, why, I kept asking myself, was the enemy proving to be so helpful while those whom I wanted to be my friends were being so implacable? He was in too deep now with the Germans to wait any longer for the British.

Starting point is 00:06:49 He was in real danger now. Portugal was accessible to the Germans, so if they discovered he was lying to them, they could have just come in and grabbed him and put him in a concentration camp. He approached the Americans in February 1942 after they'd entered the war. They showed somewhat more interest, but even that relationship was slow to develop, and Pujol was now getting desperate. He applied for some visas to emigrate to Brazil with his family, in case that we had to. What finally convinced the British were some reports that they intercepted. On April 2nd, 1942, they saw that Pujol had told the Germans about a non-existent naval convoy headed from Liverpool to Malta. This was followed almost immediately by a flurry of orders in which the Germans told their own naval units to intercept this convoy. That convinced them that Pujol had real authority with the Germans and would make an ideal candidate

Starting point is 00:07:28 for a double agent. So they finally accepted him. Once the decision had been made, the British wanted to get him out of Lisbon as soon as possible, so he moved his family up to London. His MI5 handler, Thomas Harris, later said it seemed a miracle that he had survived so long. Pujol spent the rest of the war expanding the fake spy network and communicating with his German handlers, first by letter and then by radio. He turned out to be just super naturally gifted at this work. He got the code name Garbo because one case officer said he was the best actor in the world. Author Stephen Talti writes, Pujol had failed in almost everything he tried in his 32 years, student, businessman, cinema magnate, and soldier.

Starting point is 00:08:09 His marriage was falling apart, but in one specialized area of war, the espionage sub-world known as the double-cross game, the young man was a kind of savant, and he knew it. After years of suffering and doubt, Agent Garbo felt he was ready to match wits with the best minds of the Third Reich. At first, he reported just basic troop movements within England and little bits of military information that were true but not very useful. As the Germans came to rely more and more heavily on him, he began to add falsehoods, and this had to be done very gradually and carefully. At the same time, he was inventing dozens of phony sub-agents, almost as many as the total number of real double agents that the British managed during the entire course of the war. And these weren't just colorless characters like sub-agent number one.

Starting point is 00:08:44 He wanted them to seem like real people with identities that would be plausible to the Germans. Author Stephen Budiansky lists a few of these. A garrulous Royal Air Force officer, a Ministry of Information official with extreme left-wing views, a Venezuelan businessman in Glasgow, a communist Greek sailor in eastern Scotland, a Gibraltese waiter in a service canteen, an anglophobic American sergeant, and an Indian poet in Brighton. Incredibly, eventually there were 27 people in the network, all of them completely imaginary. They reported on everything from the morale of British troops in North Africa to a big, passionate, pro-fascist fifth column in Britain, as well as a large underground network of tunnels in the London area that was supposedly used to send ammunition to airfields and anti-aircraft batteries around the city.

Starting point is 00:09:29 The information they gave to the Germans was a combination of abject falsehoods, true facts that weren't very useful, and valuable military information that was artfully delayed. For example, one of Garbo's fake spies reported that a convoy of ships had left Britain headed for North Africa. They arranged to have this message postmarked before the ships arrived and sent via airmill, but to have it arrive somehow just too late to be of any use. Pujol received a reply saying, we're sorry they arrived too late, but your last reports were magnificent. And Pujol sometimes had to think quickly to thwart the Germans' inquiries.

Starting point is 00:10:01 As the British prepared to invade North Africa, they built up a fleet in Liverpool. The Germans asked about this since Pujol had told them he had a sub-agent there, and Pujol, thinking quickly, explained that the agent had mysteriously stopped sending reports recently, and that when they'd investigated, they'd found him in the hospital badly ill. To cover themselves, they later reported that the agent had died and published a fake obituary in the Liverpool Daily Post to prove this. The Germans believed this so thoroughly that they even sent a pension for the agent's widow. Oh my. Altogether, Pujol and his case officer, Tommy Harris, sent 315 letters averaging 2,000 words each to the Germans. Their reports were so voluminous that the Germans eventually stopped asking them to recruit more spies.

Starting point is 00:10:39 In time, the Germans came to think of Pujol as their primary agent in the United Kingdom. Every report that his network sent to Madrid was immediately retransmitted to Berlin. And this is interesting. In fact, this helped the British to break the famous Enigma cipher, since they knew the content of the messages the Germans were sending. They would send them down to Portugal, where they'd be re-encoded in Enigma and sent on. But that's helpful in trying to break the cipher if you know roughly what it says. And circumstances forced the Germans to rely more and more on Pujol. In the early phases of the war, the Germans could check their spies' reports against information

Starting point is 00:11:08 that they were getting from other sources, which made it hard to fool them. But by 1944, the British had driven away the Germans' reconnaissance aircraft, so they were forced to rely on their spy network to get all their information. Pujol's greatest contribution came as the Allies were preparing for their massive invasion of Europe in June 1944. The Germans knew that this invasion was coming, but they didn't know where, and in January they asked Pujol to keep them informed. In the six months before the invasion, Pujol sent more than 500 radio messages, sometimes more than 20 per day, working to mislead them as to where the invasion would take place. He told the Germans truthfully that the invasion would come at Normandy, but he arranged for this message to arrive too late to be useful. Then three days later, as the fighting was still going on, he warned them that Normandy

Starting point is 00:11:48 had not been the main target, but only a diversion. He said that the real attack would come up the coast at Calais. He said that George Patton was massing an army of a million men in southeastern Britain, ready to pour into France across the Strait of Dover. As a result, the Germans held back two armored divisions and 19 infantry divisions, bracing for a second invasion that never came. Apparently, they never did suspect Pujol. Even after the war, the German generals believed that the attacks at Calais had been canceled because the Normandy invasion had been so successful. Incidentally, all of this was almost overthrown by Pujol's wife, Araceli. According to MI5 files that were released just last year, she was unhappy being stuck in a safe house in the suburbs of London.

Starting point is 00:12:26 She had never left the Iberian Peninsula before. She missed her mother back in Spain. She hated the English weather, and she thought that English food had too much macaroni and potatoes and too little fish. Finally, she had a violent quarrel with Pujol and threatened to go to the Spanish embassy and tell them everything she knew about the invasion plans unless she was allowed to visit her mother. If she'd done this, the Spanish would certainly have shared her information with their fellow fascists in Germany. Pujol came up with a plan. They pretended that the British intelligence authorities had detained him due to her outburst. She swore that she hadn't really planned to follow through on her threat. She'd only wanted to be taken seriously. Harris, Pujol's handler, said she promised that if only he was released from prison,

Starting point is 00:13:00 she would help him in every way to continue his work with even greater zeal than before. She left the camp more composed but still weeping, so he could go on with his work now. Their marriage would last through the war, but it broke up shortly afterward. Altogether, the Germans paid Pujol $340,000 over the course of the war to support his imaginary network of 27 spies. His spying career finally drew to a close with yet another deception. The Germans had begun launching V-1 flying bombs into England, and in late June they asked him to report on their effectiveness so they could increase the destruction. Pujol and his handlers couldn't think of a way to give them false information without giving themselves away, so they pretended that Pujol had been arrested on suspicion of spying. He returned to work shortly afterward, having been cleared, but the Germans asked him to stand down for his own safety.

Starting point is 00:13:43 work shortly afterward having been cleared, but the Germans asked him to stand down for his own safety. Amazingly, not only did the Germans never suspect him, but they awarded him the Iron Cross for his services to the German war effort. This required Hitler's personal authorization, since the award was normally given to men who fought on the front lines. They announced the award via radio, and one of Pujol's German handlers presented it in person after the war. Shortly after this, King George VI gave him an MBE, so he received distinctions from both sides in the war, which I guess is the highest accomplishment a double agent can get. The Nazis never realized that he'd fooled them. He may be the only spy to receive decorations from both sides during World War II.

Starting point is 00:14:15 His British friends wanted him to stay in the UK after the war and offered him employment at an insurance company, but he was worried that the Germans might make reprisals and decided to start a new life in South America. MI5 helped him fake his death of malaria in Angola in 1949, and he moved to Venezuela and opened a bookshop there. As time went on and people learned more about British espionage during the war, journalists began to search for this elusive figure called Garbo. The contribution of Britain's wartime spies didn't really get the attention it deserved until the 1980s. It was hidden by the Official Secrets Act and by Margaret Thatcher, who refused to sanction an official history of

Starting point is 00:14:48 deception. The British writer Rupert Allison spent years trying to uncover Garbo's identity and made no progress until 1984, when a former MI5 officer told him that Garbo's real name was Jay Garcia. That's all he had to go on. Allison had his assistant call every Jay Garcia in the Barcelona phone book, and he finally reached Pujol's nephew, who finally put him in touch with his uncle in Venezuela. Allison persuaded Pujol to return to London, where he reunited with some former comrades in MI5 and had an audience with the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace. He retired again into obscurity as books began to appear about his exploits,

Starting point is 00:15:21 and he died in Caracas in 1988. Do you love books but find you never have time to read them? With Audible, you can get audiobooks and listen to the books you've been meaning to read on the go. With Audible, you own your books, so you can access them anytime and anywhere right from your smartphone. Audible also has the great listen guarantee. If you decide you don't like the book you chose, no worries. You can exchange any book you aren't happy with for another title anytime, no questions asked. One audiobook that I really enjoyed was The Righteous Mind by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Haidt seeks to explain why liberals and conservatives have very different intuitions about what's right or wrong. He makes the case that it's not that one group is making better judgments than the other, but it's more about people's instinctive values and which values

Starting point is 00:16:13 they prioritize. It's easy to feel that your group's moral judgments are superior, but hate really strives to help us see the genesis of our own and others' feelings about issues, to see how neither side is inherently superior, as well as to try to appreciate some of the strengths or advantages of both the liberal and the conservative perspectives. Turn walking the dog into the biggest adventure of the day. You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. Turn your chores into something more with a free trial at Audible.

Starting point is 00:16:39 Go to audible.com slash futility to start now. audible.com slash futility to start now. We have mentioned mirages a few times on our recent shows, such as in episodes 142 and 147, and Jason Richards wrote to let us know that for those of us in the U.S., there are superior mirages occurring much closer to home for us. Jason said, it seems that superior mirages are not limited to the oceans or northern latitudes. As a native Michigander and current Chicagoan, I had no idea that Lake Michigan could produce these mirages. It's neat to see one in practice. The local West Michigan paper published an example today. I've enjoyed the show greatly and tell everyone I know about it for what that's worth. So thanks, Jason. We really appreciate any

Starting point is 00:17:24 help we can get in spreading the word about our show. Please do tell everyone you know about it for what that's worth. So thanks, Jason. We really appreciate any help we can get in spreading the word about our show. Please do tell everyone you know. And it was really interesting to learn that apparently it's not that uncommon for the Chicago, Illinois skyline to show up as a mirage across Lake Michigan on Michigan's shore, about 45 or 50 miles away, or that's 70 to 80 kilometers for those who think in those units. In the newspaper article that Jason sent a link to, meteorologist Mark Torregrossa said, it's the time of year when warmer air over the chilly Lake Michigan water causes refraction, commonly known as a mirage. And he went on to say, April is what I call Mirage Month on the Great Lakes. It's the month when the temperature difference between the Great Lakes water surfaces and air at 5,000 feet up is the largest all year. As you might remember, if you've listened

Starting point is 00:18:09 to some of our other discussions of mirages, these superior mirages occur when there's a big difference in temperature between different layers of air, such as the layer right near the chilly water and the warmer layers above. The light travels differently through these air layers that have different temperatures and thus different densities, and sometimes the optical curvature is stronger than the curvature of the lake's surface, and that can cause objects below the horizon to become visible, appearing inverted and floating above their actual position. So in this case, you may see a distorted or upside-down version of the Chicago skyline appearing above a false horizon and looking much closer than it actually is. From what I was reading about this, the temperature differentials this time of year

Starting point is 00:18:49 would cause mirages actually to be fairly common at Lake Michigan, but what is less common is having really clear air that allows the mirage to be visible at larger distances. So if it's a warm, clear April day, those of you in the Lake Michigan area can go to the Michigan side of the lake and look across to Chicago to see if you can spot a superior mirage. And for those who don't want to take the trouble to do that, we will have some links to articles with photos in the show notes. In episode 149, I told the story of how Christopher Knight had lived alone for 27 years in the Maine woods, and Ian Street wrote in about another aspect of that story. Hi, Futility Closet podcasters and Sasha the podcat. In listening to episode 149 about the North Pond Hermit and your referencing the story reporter Michael Finkel wrote in GQ

Starting point is 00:19:35 about Christopher Knight and about just how hard Knight was to even get to talk, brought up the plight of the fact checker for the story who had to figure out how to find Knight after he was done talking to anyone and had left no contact information to find him. Fact checker Riley Blanton had to pick up a cold trail and find Knight and then take on the difficult task of getting him to talk to confirm story details. Knight would only confirm a few like the fact that Finkel had indeed visited him once Blanton did find Knight. had indeed visited him once Blanton did find Knight. This story is in Brooke Borrell's Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, an example of how hard it can be for a fact-checker to locate a source that doesn't want to be found and check details.

Starting point is 00:20:13 Luckily, with other witnesses, police records, and a few other sources, Blanton was able to confirm at least most of Finkel's story satisfactorily without much involvement of Knight. And from what I had read about Knight's story, Finkel was the only journalist that Knight had spoken with, and this anecdote in Borel's book says that Finkel wasn't allowed to record the conversations. So I can understand GQ wanting to do some fact-checking for themselves before running the article. As Ian noted, it was apparently pretty challenging for the fact-checker to track down Knight in the time that he had before the article was due to run, and then he just couldn't get Knight to say very much.

Starting point is 00:20:50 There was some written correspondence between Knight and Finkel, as well as the police and court records and the things Knight had said to the officers who arrested and questioned him. But really, a great deal of what we know about Knight's story does come only from what Finkel has written about their conversations. And I guess only Finkel and Knight know for sure what was actually said during them. I think that's great. That's like the ultimate fact checker challenge. There's only one source, and he's a reclusive hermit. Yeah, go find him wherever he may be. And you have two days. Connor Byrne wrote in about our last episode in which Greg told the story of con man Gregor McGregor and his scam involving a fictional Central American paradise. Hi, Greg, Sharon and Sasha. Alongside yourselves, one of my absolute favorite podcast is Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast. While listening to the Gregor McGregor episode, I remembered that McGregor made an appearance in the South American Revolution.

Starting point is 00:21:43 Along with popping up in episodes of the Revolution series on the South American Revolution, he also got his own supplemental episode. For any listeners who were captivated by the charismatic Scotsman, they must give it a listen. Then the rest of the podcast. It's awesome. Episode 5.17a Supplemental Gregor McGregor. Love the podcast.

Starting point is 00:22:01 Please never stop. My boyfriend and I listen together every week. The perfect murder episode broke our brains. We're waiting for the day you introduce yourselves as Sharon, Greg and Ross Ross. It's our own little running joke. Much love from Ireland, Connor and Kieron. Sharon, have fun with Kieron's name if you happen to read this. He spent the summer of 2015 in America. He said very few people ever got it right. P.S. He also doesn't know I'm writing this email. So surprise, Cudon.

Starting point is 00:22:34 And I'm not sure if it's going to be a bigger surprise if I'm getting your name terribly wrong or if I've managed to get it halfway right. If I did get it halfway right, that's only because I'm managing to pick the best of the somewhat different pronunciations that I found on the internet. Connor didn't say that I couldn't try to get help. I have to admit that without the internet, I would have been very much at sea with trying to guess at it. So hopefully a good surprise for you, Ciaran. As for the Revolutions podcast, which calls itself a podcast series examining great political revolutions, they do indeed have an episode on Gregor McGregor, subtitled Do Not Buy Land in Poyais, which, as we know, is rather good advice. I haven't had a chance to check out the show myself, but we'll have a link in the show notes if anyone wants to hear what they have to say about McGregor. about McGregor. So thanks so much to everyone who writes into us. We really appreciate reading your comments and feedback. And if you have any that you'd like to send, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going

Starting point is 00:23:39 to give me an odd sounding situation and I have to try to figure out what is actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Alon Shaham. This year, the Aishwarya Bar in Kerala, India, installed a maze-like walkway at its entrance. Why? You have to prove you're not drunk to get in? No. That's a good guess, though.

Starting point is 00:24:03 You said it's at a bar. I'm assuming you mean a drinking establishment? Yes. Yes, okay. So they've got a maze. Does this have something to do with being able to prove how old you are? No, another good guess. So in order to get in the bar, you have to basically navigate something similar to a maze?

Starting point is 00:24:20 Yeah. And this is a bar for humans? Yes. And it's humans. I'm picturing mice and rats and mazes. Okay. It this is a bar for humans? Yes. And it's humans. I'm picturing mice, rats, and mazes. Okay. It's a theme bar for rats. Yes. Theme bar for rats. Okay. Does it matter what the maze is made out of? No. Does it matter what the maze looks like? No. So I just have to really figure out what the purpose of the maze is, would you say? Yes.

Starting point is 00:24:45 Okay. Is the maze intended to keep certain types of people out? No, I wouldn't say so. No, you wouldn't say so. Is the maze intended to slow people down? Is that part of its purpose? I'll say yes to that. Was it that you used to have people flocking into the bar too many at once?

Starting point is 00:25:10 No. Okay. Stampeding people coming into the bar. It's a very popular bar. Yes. Now it's going to slow them down because they have to get through this maze. Would you say it's a difficult maze? No.

Starting point is 00:25:22 So it's a fairly simple maze. Yeah, it's like a labyrinth. You just go back and forth. I mean, it's just... Okay. It's not like you're going to get lost in it. And you said it's sort of to slow people down? Yeah, I think that would be fair to say. Okay.

Starting point is 00:25:36 Is it because they do have too many patrons trying to get in? Okay, they just want to slow people down. A certain class of patrons. A certain class of patrons. Does it matter where the people are coming from? Yes. So they're trying to slow down people that are coming from? Does it matter why the people are trying to get into the bar?

Starting point is 00:25:57 No. No, okay. So it's not like some people are trying to get into the bar for different reasons than other people. No, that's right. Everybody's going in just to presumably socialize and drink. Yes. Okay. But some people are coming from someplace that other people aren't?

Starting point is 00:26:12 A certain class of people- People are coming from someplace- Yeah, the maze is intended to apply to a certain class of the customers and not all of them. But everybody has to go through it? Yeah, just because they only have one entrance. Okay. But it's going to affect some people more than others? No, it's going to affect all of them, but it's there for... It's there to inhibit one class of people. Would you say it's to... But

Starting point is 00:26:34 it's not to keep them out. It's just to slow them down. Right. Okay. So I have to figure out what distinguishes this class of patron? Yes. Okay. Age? No. Gender? No. Religion? No. But where they're coming from, where they're coming from geographically, like some people are coming from different cities or different suburbs or...

Starting point is 00:26:57 No, but you're sort of on the right track there. But where they're coming from immediately prior to going to the bar. Right, exactly. Like they're coming from another bar. No. They're coming from church or some kind to the bar. Right, exactly. Like they're coming from another bar. No. They're coming from church or some kind of religious service. No. They're coming from some sort of celebration, sporting events.

Starting point is 00:27:14 It has to do with- I'm trying to think of where do you go before you go to the bar. How they arrive at the bar. Okay. Whether they arrive on, people that arrive on foot. Is it, ask that as a question. Okay. Are you trying to affect the class of people that arrives on foot?

Starting point is 00:27:31 No. People that arrive by, let's say, like taxi or something, whatever passes for taxis in India. No. Hired. People that arrive in any kind of motor vehicle. Yes. Okay. Certain types of motor vehicles.

Starting point is 00:27:44 No. Any motor vehicle at all? For simplicity, I'm going to say yes. Yes. So they're trying to slow down people that arrive by motor vehicle, any kind of motor vehicle. Yeah. Okay. Because I was originally coming up with maybe they're riding donkeys or horses and they don't want those in the bar. Okay, so anybody that arrives by a motor vehicle, they want those people to get into the bar more slowly. The bar is near a highway. The bar is near a highway. And everybody's coming in for the same reason. It's not like they're trying to discourage people from stopping and coming just in to use the bathroom or something. No, no. No. Okay, the bar is near a highway.

Starting point is 00:28:25 And again, it's not to prove that you're not drunk, that you can navigate it. But some people arrive on foot or by taxi or however, but some of them will pull off the highway. And go to the bar to buy alcoholic beverages. Right. And you want to slow them down for some reason. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:49 Just to keep people from doing this too frequently so they're not true is this somehow to curtail how much people are drinking uh yes like you want motorists to be drinking less yes so is it that they would i don't know go into too many bars in this way you make it onerous to get into the bar so they're not going to get into a bar and then drive and get into a bar and drive. That's close enough. I'll give it to you. That's close enough. To reduce the number of deaths due to drunk driving, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that as of April 1st, 2017, bars, pubs, and liquor shops must be at least 500 meters away from state and national highways.

Starting point is 00:29:22 The Aishwarya Bar is closer than this, so it built a lab for its patrons to traverse before reaching the front door. I didn't get that, okay. No, you did. I mean, you got the spirit of it. Shiju P., the bar manager, told the India Times, we have done nothing illegal. The plot behind the bar also belongs to the owner, and we have constructed an extended way to reach the bar. Now it is 520 meters from the highway. We are set to approach the circle inspector of excise with the new route map to authorize the reopening of the bar. And apparently this is going to be allowed. An excise official said we do not measure the aerial distance, but only the walking distance.

Starting point is 00:29:53 However, they will be fined for altering the entrance. Oh, okay. Well, this is a non-fatal puzzle in which we prevent people from dying. So that makes up for some of the fatal ones. So thank you for sending that in. Yes, thank you a lot. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you enjoy Futility Closet and our quirky stories and life-saving lateral thinking puzzles,

Starting point is 00:30:22 then please check out the support us section of our website or our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset to learn how you can support the show so that we can keep making it. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample more than 9,000 eminent snattics. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast

Starting point is 00:30:46 with the links and references for the topics in today's show. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the wonderful Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 151-Double-Crossing the Nazis

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