Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How NOT to Fake Your Own Death | Marcus Schrenker

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

How NOT to Fake Your Own Death | Marcus Schrenker

This is Marcus Schrenker. In 2009, he tried faking his own death by crashing his airplane near a Florida neighborhood. As it turns out, Mark had a lot to run away from after being caught scamming his company's clients out of millions of dollars across several states. In the days following his capture, Mark was exposed in the media as a con artist who crossed every line to get what he wanted, even stealing from members of his own family in the end. In my mind, we were going to do this interview. and you were going to be releasing the video probably after the interview or when this interview came out

something along those lines like I wasn't realizing the interview was going to come out and it actually showed up on my YouTube so it showed like I picked up a thing and I saw shrinkers pick you I saw his thumbnail

and I was like huh like you know there's a few out there little ones 10 minutes five minutes I thought oh look at this there's a whole thing and my first thought was, wow, I wonder if you knew. I was like, I wonder if he knows that there's an, and I thought I should probably tell him that

you know, that, that this is out. Yeah. This just came out. And so, but I, but in the meantime, you know, I clicked on it. I started listening to it. And and, um, and then, you immediately mentioned my name. And so, but I, but in the meantime, you know, I clicked on it. I And then you immediately mentioned my name. I still didn't know it was you until I heard my name being mentioned. And then I was like, oh, my God. And I was like, wait a second. I started clicking, click, click, click.

And I was like, oh, he released it. And I thought, oh, he released it early. To tell you the truth, so the way the production went was I had this thought that maybe I would wait till the anniversary, like January 11th or 12th or whenever I was and put it out. um over the holidays though like i found that i actually had way more time than i anticipated i would to actually get it done right and after spending who's it two three months in marcus shrinker's head basically through reading the book reading the documents bringing the documents to work every day printed out highlighting just the whole nine yards i went all in on this video in a way i I haven't in a while since I did Crazy Eddie from New York.

But by the time I was getting to that point where I was actually editing the video and seeing the progress, I was just ready for it to be finished out to the world before New Year's. That was the end of it. So I had always actually had the goal of getting it out before New Year's, but I honestly didn't think I'd be able to meet that goal. And then, I think it was on the 23rd or the 24th of December, I looked at my video and saw all the recording I had done and how much I actually had left of my script to edit, record,

revise, all that stuff. And I was like, oh, my God, I could totally get this out for New Year's. Right. So I went ahead and did that. Yeah, I was going to say, by the time it, by the time the YouTube record, recommended it to me. It already had 50,000 views. I am really impressed with how well it's done. And I have no idea if the guy's actually seen it or not. Like, I don't know. Maybe I, I assume he's the kind of guy that would Google his own name. Like, I could totally see that. So I haven't had any, you know, feedback from him yet that I can confirm. Although I had one person in the comments, I think it was yesterday or the day before, a very like no subscriber. been on YouTube for a while but has never really done much and they were like oh you didn't

post any sources that's a little suspect or that's a little sketchy or whatnot and first of all I have a credits to the video that lists every single you know um video like program that I watch like Dateline all that stuff I listed all the names of the stations and news outlets in the credits and then I even put in the credits if you want or sorry in the video description if you want an itemized list at everything that I used, all 60 resources, I have one, just ask, basically. But I didn't want to just link to a Google Doc or anything like that that can be traced back to my email unless somebody really wants it.

So whether that was him trying to, you know, poke the bear a little or not, I'm not sure. But it wouldn't, I wouldn't put it past him just based off of what I've heard from you and other people I've talked to. I wouldn't be, I mean, look, I think when you, you, when you do, or when he does see it, I think very quick, I think he'll, he'll probably shoot you off an email talking about suing you and all these other things, all these other things that he won't do. Yeah, yeah. And you know what? I've talked to, I've talked to friends who are lawyers or in the legal profession. And I'm reporting a news story that's the public interest.

There's nothing that he can really do. And I took care also because I mean, I found some of what he's up to nowadays. I'm pretty sure he's a photographer nowadays. I can't confirm that, but he's certainly not flying planes, that's for sure. But so I found some pictures and this and that, and I made a conscious effort not to use any of it because I don't want to give him that leash where he can go ahead and try to, you know, oh, well, you used a picture, one picture of mine,

So I'm going to claim that as my copyright and got this taken doubt because you're using my stuff without my permission. All the video footage that I used was from television programs under fair use where it's transformative and all that. I don't think he really has much recourse to. No, he does. But he'll always, he'll usually make that effort, you know. Yeah. And he'll blatantly lie in a letter to YouTube. He'll blatantly lie and have letter to, you know, he can't provide anything.

And even if he does, you know, it's like you said, it's all fair use. use. He doesn't have use. He's got to be careful because on YouTube, if you make a copyright claim, because I've had to deal with this before, where people have actually taken my videos full sale, blurt out my logos, and then uploaded it as their own,

but they get content I need by YouTube and I get an email for it. You have to be really careful. If you say that you're taking somebody's video down because it's yours and you own the footage, it straight up says, I confirm that this is my stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, under penalty of perjury.

So he's risking perjury if he does try and do something and isn't exactly going about the right way of doing whatever it is he's trying to do, i.e. getting the video pull. Like, I'm not, I'm not saying that it would be pointless for him to try because, I mean, there have been plenty of times. Friends of mine have had videos pulled because somebody didn't like what they put out. There was a bit of a battle, but very rarely, have I noticed

that somebody can just walk right up, make a pointless claim and get away with it without like even after a little bit, sorry, after a little bit of illegal or YouTube back and forth with YouTube themselves,

a lot of times YouTube will be like, yeah, okay, this guy doesn't really have a leg to stand on, so his claim is we're just going to not deal with. But I think it would be very interesting if he did try to pull something, I hope he doesn't. I mean, it's an headache,

but at the same time, I've had in the back of my mind since I started the video or at least editing the video that it's always a possibility. So, if he tries, all the spite of him on,

like, he, it wouldn't be the first time, as we know, with how we got the book, bailout pulled from, from Amazon by trying to say, oh,

you know, the shit that he tried to say what's so funny about that too is like you know like you didn't you find like i've been contacted by people that have producers and you know production uh companies who have while they're kind of vetting me they're like hey tell me about this a cease and desist from marcus shrinker and i'm like like i didn't even know he had filed a cease and desist yeah i just knew he had filed paperwork with my probation officer and amazon like he never filed anything with me. Yeah.

Like, I'd never seen that. Other people have told me about it. I've never even seen it. Yeah. Well, the one thing I found when I was making the video, especially after reading and rereading the book and rereading again when I was putting together my script, because it was always kind of my anchor where I wasn't sure of when something happened. I just flipped through the book.

Oh, okay, yeah, I was in between this and this. And that would kind of set me on the right path. But what I found interesting was that even after he got pot, this was a guy that was willing, not just willing, but eager to talk to anybody and everybody. And you can see, I think it was the 2020 clip where he's like tearing up a little when he was recounting his story and acting all remorseful and this and that. And like I had a couple of people that I know that I would send previews of the video to that said like, there's just something like in his eyes. so you can tell that there's a lack of sincerity. And even when he's tearing up, you don't get that sympathetic feeling in your chest

when you would watch somebody else who, you know, has had their hand caught with the cookie yard is genuinely remorseful for it. He is just basically, like, it's crocodile tears. He's trying to... Well, he's still, like, it's funny how he's talking about, like, I jumped out of the plane and it was going down there.

Like, isn't it weird that you jumped out of, of the plane at exactly the place where you had stored your bike the day before. He's like, I can see how that's, that, that, that coincidence is, is, is very strange how it looks, but it's, it really, it's like, what do you, like, you must think I'm an idiot. Yeah. And it was funny, because there's a couple of times, um, in your book where he drives that, like with the, the Kinney's family CPA. One of my favorite lines in your book is about how he's like, right, right. I can see where you were mistaken as it, like, he's putting it on. her I caught you and you're trying to say I'm the one that's it's like oh yeah yeah I can see how

that would look that way yeah he said that he did that to me multiple times where he's like no no I can he is I can see where you're uh where you're confused or something like yeah I'm confused you're lying yeah of course I'm confused you're lying of course it looks that way because it was that way right what are you trying to pull and um like with like uh 20 20 that just that tearing up and oh you know like it was so horrible that i put my family through that and then the judge flat out said to him in the legal documents that i was looking at and i you know obtained if you were so concerned about how that would impact your family you sure didn't seem that way when you're actually going through the motions of you know stealing people's money churning people's

money lying about euro funds or lying about this being a good investment or that or whatever like you really didn't care when it was like you didn't care until you got caught like right i think that that was and like you know what his lawyer that guy that he had Chadwick like that guy did a fantastic job yeah making that work uh how it did but i still got the sense that he almost wasn't even satisfied with that uh the strength oh no he wrote letters to the judge he wrote letters to the judge he wrote letters to like he still was not you know and even me he he when he would talk to me it was always about how he shouldn't have been locked up he he you know it was such such crap you know let's talk a little bit about um you know where you were raised and and how you ended up starting this channel

and and doing these um you know documentary videos so i um i'm from canada uh Ontario specifically small town, you know, I went to school, high school. I had a huge interest in video production from an early age. I took all the classes. I was in a specialized program, actually, at my high school that allowed me when I was about 18 or 19, I worked at a local television station interning, making television commercials back when, you know, that was still a thing that happened at TV stations where they would actually have the in-house creative team.

So I got my feet wet early on with that. and then I kind of had this idea that I was going to be, you know, an actor, stuff like that. So I moved up to Toronto, you know, the big city where a lot of things are produced. And then I realized they really didn't like big cities. So I moved back to my hometown and kind of bombed around for a few years. I wound up going to university and getting a degree in history. And while I was in university, a lot of the jobs that I worked either had an element of filmmaking. So I worked for a film festival at one point.

and or they had they related to my history training that I was getting and I mostly I mostly studied Latin American history, Chinese history stuff like that. So international was always my focus academically but I found that I was getting I was finding I had an interest in stories historical stories that mostly from the last 50 or 60 years. So not really. really history in the sense of archaeology digging up bones or anything like that. I was more interested in recent history.

And in particular, I was finding I was being drawn to stories that I would hear about when I was like anywhere from the age of about 7 to 17 of like weird offbeat kind of stories. Like there was this internet forum I used to go on quite frequently called something awful forums.

And on there, it was a common. forum but there was a plethora of different topics being discussed and one of them was called the the weird Wikipedia article or creepy Wikipedia article or offbeat I don't remember anyways it was a long story short it was a thread where people could just post interesting stories that didn't really fit anywhere else so there was one about this group of Russian travelers I think it was in the 50s or 60s and one night they were camping and all of a sudden media just swept this

party of seven or eight people and they all ran outside into the snow basically naked and froze to death and for years they couldn't figure out why and what it wound up being as I recall was there was some kind of avalanche or

weather effects that basically spooked them and they thought that they were going to be snowed in and they had to get the hell out of there before that happened and of course being in that mania everybody just races out without you know getting properly dressed up and they freeze to death now what was interesting about it was before they actually came like people in the modern day came to realize what exactly was

that was happening there was all this kind of paranormal stuff that people were talking about like all the other travelers were reporting that they saw like orange orbs in the sky and stuff like that or the other thing was like when they found their bodies they were all like their skin was all bright orange but when I read the story you know 15 years ago or whatever it left out the fact that the reason that their skin was all orange is because they found their bodies like three weeks later so of course their skin was all orange because these bodies were already decomposing yeah yeah decomposing and being exposed to the elements so it was kind of that almost paranormal but not quite paranormal element to it where I think there was always an explanation that was logical and scientific in the end,

but it would tantalize you with these weirder details. And then I got into other stories like one of my videos is a fellow named Jack Chick. And literally how I found it about Jack Chick was I was working out Walmart and I was cleaning the bathrooms as a teenager and you'd find these little like these Christian comic books that would tell you why you were going to hell. Like Harry Potter is going to cause you to go to hell. or this or that and I was fascinated by this and I wound up doing my own research into who this guy was that was producing him and it turns out he's been doing this since like or he was doing it he's dead now but he was doing it since the 60s so and like in the 70s and 80s in particular was this heyday because he was talking about how dungeons and dragons was going to I don't know poison your soul or whatever so it was all these kinds of loosely related stories that I would read a bit or find out about and I found I had a great, great interest in like finding out the actual

details, especially if there were, like I would go and I'd, um, so how I got into the YouTube channel, I should say, um, is that, uh, I would go and look up these videos on YouTube and I would, there was no video on it. So I thought, huh, after enough times of that happening, I thought, well, you have the, there should be a video. There should be a video. You have the training in video editing. You learned out of research historical stuff. diversity and you spend enough time working at museums and stuff and giving tours to people. Why not write a couple of scripts and see where it goes? And if nothing comes of it, nothing comes of it. But the first video I did was on a fraudster who stole elderly people's money in Japan. His name was

Kazuo Nagano or Nagano or however it's pronounced. But early on and even to this day, I'm not always the best of pronouncing, pronouncing words because a lot of times I read stuff. I don't always get the video footage of it or get video of it until I'm already well into editing it and I realize my error and fix it usually but anyways going back to what I was saying I

came to the conclusion that okay these videos don't exist yet but they're interesting stories that I think people get something out of like there was this my second video was a guy called Jamaka Iwater and he pretended he was like this Native American expert that came

from sub tribe and I think he even said he came from Canada or something like that. It's been a while since I've looked back on that story but he basically built a career as an author and speaker pretending to be a Native American and giving the Native American perspective

on things and it turns out he was like some Jewish guy from New York or something or California it was California where he was from. He had like a background like both of his parents were Europeans. There was no Native American blood in him and then

was called on that, I think, in the 80s, after he had already won, like, the Newberry medal for writing, like, I think the book was called Ann Powell that he wrote. And, like, this was a book that kids read in, like, grade schools and high schools in the 80s and 90s. And he, over the years, like, there was this guy named, I think was Hank Adams. He was, like, really prominent Native American, like, real Native American scholar. And he was noticing all these inconsistencies on what this guy was saying. And, like, he would flat out make up things about this tribe that he purportedly was from and he uh this Hank Adams character started really keeping tabs on him and called him out basically and then all of a sudden this guy

story changed like oh well you know like my my birth parents were European but I was adopted by Native Americans and adopted into their tribe and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah which I believe wound up being true except for the fact that he was adopted into their tribe when he was in his 30s or 40s after he had already written all these books about this tribe that he was supposedly adopted into as a kid. So he was another one of those

shrinker type characters that was constantly making things up and constantly changing his story however it suited him or to who he was talking to or whatever. So I found that I was zeroing in on a niche of

fraudster type characters or unscrupulous characters liars basically a lot of them were and like the psychology of how they were so good at it was fascinating to me and that's how I wound up doing Crazy Eddie which is one of my more popular videos of last year

and in general but basically Crazy Eddie how that story came to me at front of my about two or three years ago was listening to Rogan's podcast and Joey Diaz was on there talking about how when he was throwing up in New Jersey and everything he'd see these commercials commercials for Crazy Eddie. His prices are insane. That's what he'd say. And what it turned out being

was that Crazy Eddie had stores in all five boroughs in New York and basically blew up as the first discount electronics chain. And the way he was doing that was because they were cooking the books. They were skimming money off the top of every cash purchase that was made by people and literally stuffing their mattress full of this money. And then they eventually wanted to take the company public. So he sent his cousin to school to become a CPA to learn how they could do it, like learn how they could get away with continuing to defraud their investors and everything like that without ever wanting to pay back their money. And again, like the details are fuzzy to me because that was like

six or seven months ago when I did that story. But there was this whole, like I have a 50 minute video on the entire process of it. And it was quite remarkable how much of a science this guy and his cousin had it down to scamming people. And so I guess for me, it's the sheer audacity. And like all of it is always, there's always a comedic element to all of it. Like it's funny that this guy, Jamake Highwater, wound up lying his way into being the Native American consultant on a Star Trek show. I think that's very funny that nobody betted this guy. Everybody just took him at his word based off of who he had lied to before.

who had also taken him out his word. So he basically had built up this reputation, got on to Star Trek, and was advising them. And 20 years later, people are like, yeah, that character that he was advising the writing for, there was nothing about him that even remotely could be considered genuine. And same with Crazy Yeti.

Like, it was funny to me that he was coming up with all these hairbrain schemes for how he could like basically steal from his investors and from the U.S. government. and he would like he was such a character like he had his pause and everything so even when they would write scripts

they would write scripts in a way for his commercials I should say that would basically they would write things down that they knew he would want change later on because they knew he would go in and he was the type of guy who was the type of narcissist

that would want to always have the final word of the script. So if they knew that they wanted the word breezy used in there, they would use a word that wasn't breezy, but very similar to it in a way that the writing would suggest that no other word but breezy

would be good. And Greasy Eddie would come along and be like, yeah, the script's fine, but you need to change this word to Breezy. And they'd be like, great, okay, we have the script that we want now because we basically tricked him

using his own narcissism into rewriting the scripts. Right. We know he wants to participate. We know he wants to participate. in some way or correct it in some way so let's give him let's paint him into a corner where he'll come up with exactly what we wanted exactly exactly and i was going to say it's like um the president picking picks the uh the head of the uh federal reserve bank it is but the truth is the banks that

own the federal reserve bank give him a list of 10 people that he can choose from yeah we're okay with any of them but this way it makes it look like you chose the head of the you didn't but yeah exactly and we're going to make sure that those nine other options are so like by contrast so unqualified compared to who we want that you have yeah you're down to two but yeah so that was basically how i got my start um i started writing scripts and just editing videos how long ago is this how long ago so five years ago as of this july and it was because I was working at a I was working at a place

where basically I was behind a desk eight hours a day and like it was a museum but I worked in the gift shop and I was behind a desk for eight hours a day and I would watch all these tour guides come like go through every half hour and I would see the crowds of these people that they would entertain for half an hour

handing them tips $5, $10 and I'm like we know what I don't think I'm half bad of a storyteller I might not be Alfred Hitchcock or anybody like that but I can certainly, I think, hold somebody's interest for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever. I'm going to try my own hand at doing basically my own tour guide type things, but I'm going to do it using my experience in video by making YouTube videos. And those turned into, like they started out as maybe 12 minute long videos.

And my first one that was over 20 minutes was I think about Papa John. because that was when he was going through his whole media shitstorm of oh, I'm going to eat the 40 pizzas in 30 days and that was when he was losing his marvels because they basically took the company from him after he got caught on all those training calls. Right.

Basically using racial, wasn't it racial slurs? Yeah, like, so they were doing, he was doing role playing. He was using some words that people consider weren't exactly politically correct and he was also complaining because Obamacare was coming in and he was talking about, oh, I'm going to have to raise the price of pizzas by 25 cents to be able to pay for the health care for all white people. And I'm thinking to myself, like, I don't think most people really give a shit at their Papa John's pizzas, 25 cents

more expensive. Like maybe, I don't know, the people that are, the people that eat Papa John's every day, okay, sure, they're going to notice an increase. But at the end of the day, he was making a really big deal out of it. And it was funny seeing him get, like, basically go on the news and just rant and rave like a crazy person. And then the company finally was like, okay, you need to slow down because you might have been the guy who started this company. You might be our CEO, but you're starting to affect our bottom lines by going on MSNBC and rant and raving about how horrible it is that your pizzas have to go up 25 cents.

We're going to loop you into some training seminars like teleconferences and straight yet a little so that you can be a bit more friendly of a PR guy for like a friendlier face for the company. And so in these calls, he was doing role play. And he started just out of nowhere, like bringing up all these racial words and like slurs and this and that. And like to the point where the people on these conference calls are like, okay, hold on, what are you doing here? Like any of well, yeah, I'll like, what if this happens? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, like, they're just shaking their heads like.

And then those calls, as I remember, it either got leaked or transcripts of them got leaked. And long story short, he got in even more hot water. And that was when they basically ousted him and brought on Shaquille O'Neal as the spokesman for Papa John's after that point. And where you can tell, you can pinpoint actually where it was that Papa John got kicked out of his own company. because around that time they changed the logo from having an apostrophe in the name to imply it was Papa John's

pizzeria like the possessive to just Papa John's with no apostrophe as if that was just the like Papa John was like Captain Crunch or something just some character that they had invented and wasn't actually real and it was because they kicked them out of the company and he tried raising a stink about it

and saying well you know I started this pizza place out of my grandfather's bar or something like that And I slowly, the whole story about how he sold his truck and so that they could afford the pizza ovens or something like that. And anyways, the Papa John's one was the first one to go over 20 minutes because it was topical at the time. And I wanted to strike on it. But I started realizing the longer form content is where the money is on YouTube. Right.

And so I realized, okay, if I want to actually start making a couple of bucks off of YouTube, I'm going to have to have to. start making things there are over 20 minutes and then that led into over 30 minutes and then with crazy Eddie I finally hit the 40 minute mark or sorry the 50 minute mark almost and then with this video I probably could have done another 10 or 15 minutes but I wanted to keep it succinct I didn't want to like I wanted the script to be punchy and I didn't want to go off meandering as I probably have in the last 40 minutes I'm somebody that needs to stick to a script and um anyways I found that with like these 40 minute videos, there are a lot more interesting and people, they seem to resonate more with people. So going forward into this new year, I'm probably going to be focusing on making less videos, but longer videos.

Right. Well, this one's only, so how often do you release the videos? So my release schedule is all over the place. Like when, so I work a job where basically I'm off in the summers. I have a lot of time to work on videos. I was, I've been off. I'm off this week. I'm off last week. So I had a lot of time to work on Shranker. But it's harder during like when I'm at my full time job to find the time in the

evenings or the energy really to put videos together. So I find that I have to do a lot of my research on the weekends. And the research is always what takes the longest. Once the research is done, I can record fairly quickly, edit the videos fairly quickly. and get them out. Essentially, I have been able to finish a script and then get the video out in 10 or 15 days if I'm going whole hog and the editing.

The process for the average video, I would say, can take anywhere from six weeks to two months. Now, that being said, that being said, I have, I did one video in the summertime right after Crazy Eddie. I think it came out two or three weeks later, and it was on some Polish criminal. It was basically the Polish Robin Hood.

And that took me three or four weeks to do because it was an easier story. All the facts were laid out very nicely. And then 10 days later, I had another video out about the judge who sued his dry cleaners because, again, was a very straightforward story. He sued his dry cleaners $54 million because they stole his pants. which is the most ridiculous thing in the world but a lot of times the downtime between videos comes from me

because I'm very discerning with the topics I get a lot of topic suggestions and I court topic suggestions from people but I always say like there are no guarantees so there's a lot of topics I won't approach so anything involving like child abuse animal abuse I stay away from because I don't want to profiteer off of that

and quite frankly it's an uncomfortable topic to talk about it in the first place So I don't really do those kinds of videos. Now, early on, I did do a video about a troubled teen help center. But that one was a little bit different because it was a lot of people after the fact coming out and wanting to say their side of the story and exposed basically this place because it was funded by like Hollywood, like, B-list Hollywood celebrities from like the 50s and 60s We're pouring all kinds of money into this place in the 70s and 80s.

And basically I found a web forum where people came together and were like, yeah, I was there too. Like I was here from 71 to 73 and this is what I dealt with and this and that. So that one was a little different because I found actually there were a few people that I had been in touch with directly that were on board with it. So I thought, okay, I'll do this. But again, that was early on in the channel before I kind of established those rules for what I. I am and I'm not willing to cover. So a perfect example of a video I was going to do, and then I did some research and dropped at the last minute from, actually just before Schrenker was I was going to do a video on

this guy called Lobster Boy. A lobster boy had... I know a lot of... Gipsington, Florida. Yeah, yeah. He had extradactylie, which basically made his hands, like the fingers all fused together like lobster blob, right? And it was a very entertaining story up until.

got to the boy where it was like yeah he he smacked his kids around he smacked his wife around and he was really ugly about it too so it wasn't just like him yelling at them or be getting like uh all pissy and just being a angry loudmouth he was actually quite physical and that was a substantial part of the book that i had read that was kind of my primary source on the topic so i kind of decided you know what there's a little too dark for my taste i'm going to go ahead with a guy that instead stole millions of dollars off of elderly people the new New BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some.

Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit BMO.com slash ViPorter to learn more. Hardworking pilots. You didn't do lobster boy? I mean, there's always, there's always the possibility in the future that I could revisit it, but for now, my, the girl, when that whole thing was going on, the chick that I was dating, that I dated for about four years, by the way, and it was engaged to be married to her.

Her mother was a secretary at the law firm that represented lobster boy. Oh, no kidding. That's hilarious. So you have like a direct connection to the story. Yeah. Because initially the, when, you know, he was killed and the video came out where they're showing him like abusing the kids, right? Yeah. And then later they find out they get the audio. Yeah.

And you find out that's not what was happening in that video. No. It was a lot different. Yeah. And the other thing too is the only. So that particular video with the audio, I found online on some archive website that archives old news stories and stuff like that. But to get access to the video, it was something like they wanted a huge amount of money for like 20 to 30 seconds of footage. Like I think they wanted over $1,000 for it.

And I thought, you know what, with how much this video might make, I could justify that later on in my life, in my career. Like, if I have five videos that are all making five grand in a year, well, then, yeah, dropping a thousand bucks on a video is nothing if I'm going to get that return on my investment in the end. But it's still, like, I'm still at a stage right now where it's shaky. Like, I did a 33-minute long video on the cat lady that got all that surgery to make herself look like a feline because her husband was cheating on her. And she was a billionaire.

like she's still around and she's nuts like I'll straight up say I think that this lady is a little cute you have to be to get all that surgery but she like that video only made a couple hundred bucks and it's been out for like three or four months so if I would have dropped a thousand bucks on that I would be $700 in the hole and I'm like one person so anything any money that I make off of the channel usually goes back into the channel but I can't really justify myself paying out of pocket a thousand bucks especially right now in the current

financial climate just to buy paying a thousand bucks for 30 seconds footage on a video that might be 100 bucks now lobster boy might do famously I might make 10 grand from it but there's still the issue I would want to find an angle to the story that more emphasizes

less emphasizes the really dark shit he did and more the dark comedy of how his the chain of events led to and you know shooting his son-in-law

and then getting shot himself a few years later well I think that a part of it would be Gibsonton Florida is is basically it's a carney town I mean you know there's a lot of odd people yeah like that's a very very inexpensive place to live

and it's filled with these people that, you know, they, they follow like the, you know, the circuses, you know, the traveling circuses and carnivals and, you know, so they're carnies and they, you know, they're there, they work a few months here, a few months there, a few months here, and they leave for months. And then they live in trailers and it's an odd situation, huh? There are people up the road. And that's kind of like their vacationing town. or when they're in their off season where they kind of base of operations from the impression

that I got from it. Right. That's a base of operation. That's definitely the way. So, you know, you've got it's a very transient area with a lot of odd people. One thing I found remarkable that I had read about when I was reading about Gibson in preparation for the afforded video was that it was interesting to me how they emphasized that This community truly is a community where everybody was looking out for each other.

And, like, they, they were more tightly knit than most, you know, affluent communities that you see in Canada or the United States. Like, these people were really truly looking at each other's best interests. Yeah, they're on the fringes, you know what I'm saying? They're on the fringes, yeah. So they tend to stick together because they feel like it's them against everybody else. And it's actually reminiscent. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie. It's from the 30s called Freaks.

And it's for the Goobble Gobble One of Us, like from the Wolf of Wall Street. That's where that came from. And basically the point of the movie, from what I recall, is that it's this girl that meets all these people that at first your impression is that they're low-lifes, their weirdos, they're freaks, as the title implies.

But over the course of the movie, you really come to an understanding that they have better hearts than all the scumbagged, rich people. that go and gawk at them and point at them and go and take the piss out of them and everything like that. There are better people at the end of the day

than these people that are supposedly the civilized, affluent people that are, what's the right word for it? The so-called good people of society really are good in comparison to the so-called freaks of the movie. And that was,

so when I was reading about Gibson, And it brought me back to that film. And I thought, huh, that's, that's also an interesting angle that I would try and incorporate into a lobster boy video. Because he kind of, there was mixed opinions on him. Some people said that he was the nicest guy ever when it came to taking care of his, like his people, his employees and his people that work for him on the road. Because he actually came, he was quite a shrewd businessman. And had he not always been on the sauce, he probably could have made quite a name for himself. as, you know, a very successful

Cardi, for lack of a better way of putting it. But because he was an alcoholic and he couldn't get off the sauce, that basically led to his downfall. And most of his violent outbursts he did have were a direct result of that. So I would think that that would be an interesting angle

to weave into it. It was like, yeah, there were a lot of people that understandably thought he was a piece of shit. but at the same time there was a lot of people that spoke very highly of him based on and like all bearers at his funeral that said yeah

what he did with his family was God awful but he always did right by us so I think a duality is interesting and there was some of that duality too I found when I was researching shrinker especially after shrinkers like those early days where people

like he was still missing and not there wasn't a man hunt for him like they thought there was like the first day after he left and people were coming out of the woodwork to say yeah like it's terrible like I know that he had some troubles but I can't believe it would lead him to do this blah blah blah and then a few days later you had Tom Britt come out and say yeah I could totally see like he was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde right um but you see real quick how did you even get on to shrinker How did you even stumble across this board? There's a gentleman who's been a patron of my channel

pretty much since I think the first or second video and he's been like one of my biggest supporters all along. And he actually, one night I was having a few drinks online and just chatting with them and he said, well, you're always looking for stories that are basically new stories from 10 or 15 years ago that people might vaguely remember but there's a much deeper story to he said i remember this story happening here's the wikipedia article

have a quick skim through that because it's basically the wikipedia article for shriker is quite small in comparison to the whole story like it's a couple of times and uh he basically said i have a feeling there's much more to the story go ahead read the wikipedia article and tell me what you think and i read it and i thought yeah there's something there's something more here and that was what set me off initially was that potential for I thought, like, you could take the Wikipedia article and maybe make an 8 to 12 minute long video like the kind we were talking to earlier than you could see. And the, upon reading the sources for the Wikipedia article and all the stuff that was left out, I was like, okay, there's some interesting things going on here. Like, and there's a lot more digging I could do.

And I saw a potential initially for a 20 minute long video. as I was doing the research into it I came across bailout and I came across quite a few older sources like the like Dateline and 2020 and all all of those things so initially before I had bought bail it I think I read the excerpts or the condensed version that you have on the website right read through that and I was like okay I need to get a copy of this book but I also need to get in touch with this Matthew Cox guy because he sounds like he sounds like somebody that would have quite an interesting insight into the story which you did and And so we got chatting that way.

But while I was watching the Dateline and the 2020 and there was, I think, the episode of Who the Bleep Did I Miry that Michelle was on? Right. Piece of the puzzle. Like, so over that, well, probably 90 minutes worth of video that was there, each one had something that the others didn't have. And that led me to believe, okay, there's got to be a paper trail or something like that to connect all these dots.

and can actually be spun into a full narrative because the video that was put out by the Indianapolis insurance commissioner or whatever, it was like a series of three vignettes of three criminals from Indiana and he was one of them, of course, and it basically talked about the financial side of things, but it didn't really get too much in depth with the actual people that he affected. Then the Dateline video, that was where we got the side of the story from, who was it, Smith. Smith. And, and Kenny, like,

Charles Kinney actually was on that video and that was where he talked about meeting the kids, the more intimate side of their relationships and how he would, Marcus would basically insert himself into people's lives. And that was another thing that I found very entertaining about

the portion of the book that you had where he was talking about how he got the list of the pilot names. And like, by driving down to the airport, and basically schmoozing and giving the pity party about all I'm a college student my thesis is going to be impossible to do without

this and blah blah blah basically playing the con game and then taking that to the next level and actually phoning up the pilots and my favorite part is where he would be like good afternoon captain and like he would basically he was like greasing the wheels with everybody to get exactly what he wanted

but the fact that he was able to do that over such a long period of time like 10 15 years where like Charles Kinney said like I went to his house and I met his wife and I held his newborn child and stuff like that. I found that really, really while shrinkers ripping him off. While shrinkers ripping him off like and lying to his space at bed and saying, oh yeah, we got some great investments or oh yeah, your parents.

They'd be really smart to invest in this thing that's not going to pay off for 15 years, except I'm not going to tell you that part. Well, you know, what's funny is he would say whatever he had to say. Like after 9-11, he was telling people, well, you know, with, you know, with terrorists and things of that nature, the best place to put your money now with all the terrorism is this. Like he was, he's using whatever scare tactics he can to get you to do what he wants with your money so he can make a commission. Yeah. And have access to the money. Once he had access to the money, now you have a real problem.

Oh, yeah. And the remarkable thing is that he would then turn around and in court when he was getting all. these lawsuits from all these companies after 9-11 that wanted to pull out or were getting a little annoyed with him because things were understandably not doing this well financially and these lawsuits were piling up. That was his very defense as well you know people are spooked by the 9-11 market. Meanwhile he's telling he's spooking people into investing against their own interest while turning around and telling the court yeah nobody wants to do business right now because of this thing and it's a really terrible thing but that's that's why my business isn't

doing well and why I shouldn't be on the office. Right. And like the amazing thing to me too is that there were warning signs. Like when he got arrested in 1992 for selling the fenced jewelry, that guy should never have been allowed. Like it was. And claiming bankruptcy. Yeah. Claiming bankruptcy. Twice. How are you a financial manager? Like almost a third time right before everything came crashing down around him. And that guy should never have been allowed to handle people's money after being caught selling stolen jewelry and then the other things he grew about like something I didn't touch on that much in the video was how his father was superintendent for the school board that he

eventually got moved into after the whole incident stepfather and the like there was a news article I'll never forget it one of the first news articles I read about was how oh yeah Marcus, he used to get into a bit of trouble as a kid. He installed a water cannon on the back of his father's pickup truck so that he could shoot water at all the kids in the neighborhood, spray them down with it. And I'm like, okay, so right off the bat, this is telling me that this guy was a bit of a dink, really.

And somehow he was always able to schmooze his teachers and lie to get at a class. And eventually, like, I don't know, but Purdue University is probably not cheap to get into. No, I'm going to say he's not stupid. I mean, he's not, you know, he's a super, which the problem is most, most pathological liars, I think are probably intelligent. You know, the problem is they get such a thrill out of lying to people. Yeah.

You're fooling people. They chase that high. Oh, I pulled the wool over somebody's eyes rather than just being calculated about it. because you could be a pathological liar and nobody ever find out if you're intelligent about it and he could have easily done that and probably still been getting away with managing people's money and you know skimming a little off the top

maybe not living in a five bedroom home but maybe a three bedroom home and maybe he doesn't own five planes he owns one plane but he could quite easily have gotten away with everything he did had he just been a little more discreet and not that's not this guy No, it's, it's, that's, I wish, character flaw. I wish you could have a 30 minute to an hour conversation with him. I would have relished that.

I, I almost was tempted to reach out to him. But by the point where I felt like, like, by the point where it dawned on me, maybe you should get in touch with Marcus and hear his side of it. I had already devoted so much time with the script rating that I was like, yeah, I don't want this video like in tanking this before I need to be done it because I already put so much time into it. but I would relish a 30 minute to an hour conversation with them to hear his side of it because I mean obviously he's going to have his own side of it and he I'm sure to this day feels like he didn't do anything wrong and that's where the interesting part of it comes is that yeah he was a pathological liar and he lied to a lot of people but in his mind does he truly consider every single little thing he said a lie is he even aware that he's lying? lying 90% of the time. I'm sure he's aware that he's lying or that he's

calculating about it, but I almost get the sense that he's been lying for so long that if he tells you that he, like to your face, that he's got a green Cadillac and it's actually more of a blue color, it's not even dawning on him that that's a lie. That's just him seeing

something to you. Yeah, there's no he has no guilt. There's no, like there's no empathy. He doesn't understand. Dan, he's one of those guys that is watching TV and everybody in the room laughs at a joke and he sees them laugh and then he goes, because he sees everyone laugh, but he didn't get the joke. He didn't get the joke, but he doesn't want to look like this.

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That's a little too excited Smurfs Only theaters July 18th Right, he's very good at mimicking What he thinks the proper response is Yeah, like that mirrored behavior And like I mean this is a guy That was lying in the hospital

he's recovered from the slash wounds on his self-inflicted slash wounds on his wrist lying in the hospital under guard calling up a stepmother saying that his arm got ripped off in the plane crash. What about what about when he was being sued and he told them that he had he had multiple sclerosis? Yeah, like the or what was it? Didn't he also say that he had colon cancer or pancreatic cancer or something at some point? say anything he had to to get you to do what he wanted to do. That was when he was selling some, he was selling something to a client. And the client told him that he had, you know, whatever, pancreatic cancer. And he said, oh my lord, I have it too. Like, it was like, almost like this twisted Minkausen that he has where like, it's almost second nature for him to just blurt out. Well, yeah, I have cancer too. Like, Even if he would have done it anyways, like to just to scam the person, it almost, it comes off to me almost like he hears it and he's like, yeah, me too. I totally out that without even realize it. He wants to make that connection. And then the moment the person's like, and you're working,

he's like, you know, I talk to my wife and my kids about it. And the truth is that I could stay home and drive them crazy for the next six months to a year. But the truth is, I love what I do so much. I love helping people. I love the, you know, and, you know, he gives this whole spiel where the guy feels bad for, if he doesn't, but then the guy's a scumbag, if he doesn't buy his part, what he's pitching, because we both have cancer and you're still working and I'm not. And you're doing it because you help people because you think this is the right thing to do. And gosh, darn it, I'm going to buy this product from you. Yeah. Yeah, like, it's insidious.

How even after the fact, too, like, he's standing in that court. room and they're just listing up, like, remember the time you stole from your aunt? Remember the time that you lie about having MS? Remember about the time that on Dateline, you told them X, Y, and Z, and we're proving to you right now because we have videotaped evidence of you contradicting this? Remember the time that you said that your arm got torn up? Even though, like, it's a very obvious thing. Like, nowadays, he would have probably had that call with his stepmother through FaceTime or whatever, he wouldn't have been able to straight up say that his arm got ripped off, but it's like it's all stuff that's so easy to prove him wrong about. And yet he still does it. And it's that pathology to it that makes it so interesting to me that. Is there really a way to like undo that in somebody? Like can he ever get out of that? No, he can't. There's no medication. There's no like there's medication that can help them kind of control it. And then, but they don't want to take it. It's like, it's like bipolar. They don't want to take the medit, or schizophrenics. They don't want to take the medication. You know, it makes them feel weird and they don't feel themselves. And it, it kind of, you know, makes them, it mellows them out, but it, it eliminates those highs. So he, he love, they love the highs. Yeah. That's why they do what they do. So you just took the highs away. I understand it's detrimental to me, but I love the highs. So they're like drug addicts. It's, that's totally like, uh, it's, that's totally like, uh, it's. Uh, it's. It's, that's totally like, uh, uh, it's. It's, uh, it's. It's, it's, it's. It's, it's, it's

That's totally about it. It's an addiction to them. And it's remarkable to me. Like I, like I said earlier, I found out that from a comment, now I can't verify this. I looked into it myself, but I couldn't find anything that actually confirmed it in any, you know, court receiver documents or whatever or search engines online. I couldn't find anything about his brother suing him in 2016. But according to one of my viewers, that's what happened. And I for details and I couldn't I haven't gotten any yet but uh oh he's been arrested multiple times yeah he was arrested in uh now the only reason I didn't put this in the video because it was literally one website that looked like anybody could have built like created it and just taken an old mugshot of him and thrown it up but it said that he got arrested in 2022 for uh it like so about two years ago for domestic battery I think is what it was twice twice you actually got arrested because I don't know why you couldn't find it i actually had gone to the sheriff's website and pulled up the photos of him but i i you know but i don't remember where it was and i actually had told i think

i told you i'd contacted that guy that i told you about and he gave me the name of the sheriff's website and everything where i'd pull it up maybe maybe the charges got dropped and shrinker got them to take it off the website or something i don't know but i mean i saw the arrest photos i saw the what he was arrested for, the whole thing. I talked to that same fellow briefly as well. And he had mentioned that there was something along those lines. And he went into just slightly more detail, but for whatever reason, he wasn't able to give me the full details of it.

So I just, I didn't pursue it too much because at the end of the day, I ended the video off on a note of hopefully he changes his ways, but don't anticipate it, right? right um so without dwelling too much on stuff that i couldn't get actual details like if i could have got like if there was a news article about it and then also the court documents about it it would have been terrific because i could have said okay well this is what was in the news about it right this is the note we're going to end it off on that this is still ongoing but aside from like all i had really to go off was speculation because it just said um if i look up the website it just said

something along the lines of domestic battery, and there wasn't any details beyond that, which is unfortunate because, again, that seems like something given his history that should be more, like, out there in the media. Yeah, so, sorry, the website that I found was called Mugshots Zone, and that was the only place I could find online despite all the Googling and all the searching I did, uh he was arrested in santa rosa county they say and it was on battery domestic violence bond was a thousand dollars nothing beyond that could i find so it's unfortunate because it would be interesting to know exactly what was going on right i don't think that just based off of your

kind of your code on your website about what's going to happen the next time he scams some unfortunate in person. I don't think you're too surprised by finding out that he's been arrested for... Yeah, I would not be shocked if at some point he's not re-arrested for scamming somebody.

And this is just, it's in his nature. He's not going to change. I mean, these people don't change. They just keep doing what they do until eventually they get a little bit better at it, but eventually he'll get, he'll steal from somebody else and get arrested again and, you know, that'll be... He's already remarried

from what I've been able to find out. So, like. I'm sure he's making her for everything she's got. Yeah, that's, that's, unfortunately, like, we wish everybody all the best, obviously, but based off everything that's in front of us. Right. Yeah, I, I sure wouldn't be investing my money with him, that's been sure.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny is he, um, you know, when he was at Coleman, he's telling people that, you know, he was just like you went over in the video that he he had worked for NASA he had interned for NASA he worked for NASA he that he was he was a fighter pilot you know that he was I mean all these ridiculous things that people are telling me yeah yeah oh yeah Marcus flew in Desert Storm Marcus was in the invasion of Afghanistan Marcus was an I'm like none of that's true yeah but the number timeline doesn't have right and so you know doing

writing that book about him was so difficult but it's funny I was telling my my wife I was like it's really too bad that that it's not on Amazon you know it's on Bronze and Nobles but it's too bad it's not on Amazon

because that book when I first released it was selling great and it's and it's out of all the stories I've written it's probably it's up there it's one of the best oh yeah it was like I read the book three times I think

like front to back not just including flipping through it and it's a hell of a read like i've told every single person that i know that reads books like on a regular basis and just consumes books you should get this book because even though i've done the video on it your spin on it your take on it is so refreshing and unique as far as true crime literature goes because he actually did time with the guy right it's like anybody that's a fan of true crime should have a flip through it because It's funny, too. I think it's really funny.

Well, you know, what's so interesting about it is that, like, the nice thing about being locked up with these guys is there's no way a normal true crime writer could spend the amount of time. Like, nobody else was going to get that story out of him. No. Because nobody else can spend the amount of time that it took to spend. Nobody else, it's just not, unless you're, you know, Ben Messerick. Yeah.

You know, and you're able to spend, you know, a year writing a book and really engross yourself because you're making you've got you're already a multi-millionaire so you can spend a year on your next project like nobody can spend the same amount of time i was able to spend and even ben mesric can't spend that much time with the other person because they have a life yeah we were in prison we don't have lives you're yeah you're there you may as well make the best of it so i'm writing and then i'm talking to him for two or three hours i'm writing and then i'm talking to him about it for two or three hours i'm writing and then i'm ordering documents and i can wait for the documents to come in because they have plenty of time.

All this time in the world, yeah. Right. I found that out of all the videos I've done, this was probably one of the ones that drained to be the most just, like I don't want to say mentally draining because it's like I wasn't emotionally impacted by it or anything like that, but like it takes a lot of, like when you're not somebody who's a lawyer or somebody who's in business, parsing through all this stuff, boiling it down to the layman, like it's, I'm sure you remember from writing it like it's a lot of information to take in process and then what what about those letters

that he was writing telling them everybody he had sold his house he packed up his stuff i don't like money anymore i don't like money i mean so the lies are so overwhelmingly um you know apparent and just disgusting it's like yeah you can't like the stuff he says is so just you know it's like you you must think i'm a fool yeah and you didn't even say that in the same breath going and like talking to talking to kinney's one friend who's like he's really close with saying oh yeah this is everything heritage is offering for 2007 right you mean the company that they just closed yeah yeah and like I was a little confused about the whole like so there was heritage wealth management there was another company called heritage yeah and then there was

icon and I was yeah I was going to say at some point I explain that I do a footnote where I explain that I consolidated all of them because he changed the names of his company so often. Yeah. I just went with Heritage Wealth Management. That's what I did as well. Right. And stuck with it. Because otherwise you have to constantly explain, keep in mind, he's now closed this company and he started this one.

But it's the same basic company. You know, so I didn't want to do that to the reader. It's, it's also difficult when people start, you know, they're constantly changing names. Yes. You know, so you, a lot of times you say, I'm going to pick one name. name. And I did that with another book I wrote on Frank Amadeo. He had several companies under the umbrella of one company. And so it's like this one was defrauded and this one was defraud. This one did this. And he closed this one and opened this one and transferred. So I just went with this is the

company. You know, you put a footnote, it's too confusing for me. If I were to tell you how to do it, it would be so overwhelmingly confusing, it would take away from the overall story arc. I'm not going to do that. And that's kind of why I streamlined some of the details towards the end, too, because there were other things like Michelle being on the hook for, you know, her role in all of it. Like I could have gone into maybe a little more detail about that. But at the end of the day, the video was about Mark. And that was another thing, too, actually, that I found interesting is he goes by Mark Schrenker now. He was, he went by Mark. And a lot of the documents I found and stuff like that, there were video or whatever. He was calling himself Mark.

but then sometimes like so the media always referred to him as Marcus and then other times like he'd be dealing with a different set of clients and he'd be going by Marcus and I found that kind of interesting too because I was like well what is it? Is it Mark or is it Marcus? And I just went with Mark because it rolls off the tongue a little easier sometimes

when you're reporting quite frankly but I mean he does go by Mark to this day so they as well go with what he's currently calling himself. Yeah he's yeah he's I'm sure he's working on his next indictment um and back uh very quickly back to what you said about the nassah thing i had to laugh because after our last chat i was just doing a little bit of snooping on facebook and you know i caught up with where the rest of the shrinkers are at now and one of his sons who's now an adult was actually posing in front of some display that had to do with nassah and i thought oh i guess

the apple doesn't fall far from the tree eh yeah let's hope he's uh I wonder how all of his kids are doing. Yeah, well, the daughter's estranged from both him and Michelle. And I guess Michelle, based on what the daughter had said in the one article, Michelle essentially kicked her out of the house. And from what the daughter was saying, she had a lot of conflict with brothers. Now, when you go on to Michelle's Facebook,

it's all pictures of Michelle and the sons, nothing of the daughters. You go on to Mark's Facebook, every so often both post a picture of the daughter and say missing you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which leads me to believe that it's the daughter who doesn't want anything to do with Mark rather than, unless Mark is just trying to post the picture of his daughter for sympathy, which I wouldn't have asked him either. Yeah, I wouldn't either. But it's interesting to me that he would even bring her up when by the daughter's account, the two parents don't want anything to do with her. well who knows yeah family family yeah um well well so yeah how long so are you going to start posting more i mean your your channel's got like over 50 000 subscribers it's doing pretty well

like somebody who sounds like it's just a a hobby you know like i mean you got 50 000 subscribers that that video's got a ton of views in just a few days. I would love nothing more than to be able to do this full time. It all comes down to the financial side, right? Like, you got bills to pay, so, and like, I'd like to be in my career that I went to school for six years for, but at the end of the day, if YouTube video making makes more money or leads to more lucrative things, like, it's funny because I never expect this to happen, but I've heard friends who are

YouTubers or have really big channels and then I see comments on their pages. It's like, oh, Netflix should give you a deal. And I always think to myself, wouldn't that be the dream of getting like Netflix money to basically produce six to eight episodes in a year

and that's what I do full time? That's like a dream come true. But at this stage of the game, it's still something that's kind of hobby, something I take seriously. It's something that I want to do well at doing. I want to produce things that people are going to watch two, three years from now.

There's a lot of what are called content bills on YouTube where it's just somebody who basically reads a Wikipedia article, flaps very rudimentary stock footage on it, calls it a day, posts it. Book club on Monday. Jim on Tuesday.

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Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. And they do that every day. And they get tons of views, but they always peter out after a year or two. I'm going on my fifth year of doing this, and each year I've seen growth rather than oh, I did really well in the beginning and now everything's petered off and I don't even

I don't even break a thousand views per video. I would rather have that stable foundation to build on than to just content and all stuff because I know that after a year or two I would be burnt. Right. That's the hope.

Like, I would love to get into more writing or video editing but it's all going to come down to what the audience wants it the audience shows that they want more videos uh by way of watching my stuff and that continuous engagement and interaction and you know putting more money to um make better videos in the long run is something that they would value then yeah by all means i'd love to do that but at the moment i i'm one guy right so right so but your goal is ultimately you'd like it if

this would pay off. Oh, I would love it. You'd be doing it. Yeah. Even if it were the kind of thing that, like, I got a good run, the way that, like, you know, those people that have like a million subscribers on YouTube, they have a good run for five or ten years of it. And then they retire from it and go and do something else. I would be perfectly okay with that, too.

But the end goal of it, it would be lovely, lovely, lovely to make that kind of money where I could support myself full time off of it and not have to live. basically like a popper doing something that they love but like you know the struggling artist kind of thing i'm i'm past that point in my life of being the struggling artist i right i want to i want to have a family and take care of them and stuff like that so it's uh it's definitely something that i want to do in the long run but if it doesn't pan out i have other stuff that i can fall back on right so but hey let's hope that this year i break 100,000 yeah i at least want to get that that silver plaque that's that's one thing like the plaque that youtube gets you i would love to

have one of so that would be uh how still like here's a thing like i thought that was so silly yeah i did and then you know then you know we we got the plaque and i and i was like i was pretty cool it's pretty like i was like i was like that plaque care about that black and then i we got close and i was like who it's you know and then we got the black and i was like i got the black It's like being the guy that like, you know, you grow up, maybe you come from a working class fan. I don't need a BMW. BMWs are for assholes, blah, blah, blah. And then one day you can afford a BMW.

You're like, I got to get the BMW. I got to get the BMW. And it was funny is, you know, people walk into the studio and they'll be like, oh, wow, you got your plaque. You got a, that's right. You got over. And I'm like, the fact that it means something to people. Yeah. What's so silly to me.

And then, you know, but then once you get into it and you're into YouTube and you start paying attention, you're like, no, that's an accomplishment. Yeah. That's a milestone. So, you know, I, like, I mean, I have two university degrees that I sometimes have up on the wall, sometimes don't. I would almost feel it's a bigger, like, anybody can go to university and get a degree. But to have, to be able to say I have 100,000 people that when I post-submit on a video, they'll be there and ready to watch it, that's a good point of pride to have that you can entertain 100,000 people at any given time or have their attention. and that's something to be very proud of. I wish 100,000 people were watching my videos.

It'd be great if it really worked like that. So I've got about close to 180,000 that, you know, and only a fraction of them are watching the video. I always find it's about whatever your subscriber count is. You can guarantee about 10% of that will be there for the opening of a video. Yeah. That's what I do. I get 10% of that number, then I'm happy with that.

I would be thrilled with 10%. Yeah. I'm getting five. Well, I'm getting five to 10%. So, I mean, some of the videos get more.

So on average, I'm getting about 5%, which is, you know, it's okay. Like, it's okay. Like,

I'm, I'm happy that it's doing what, that the channel's doing well. Yeah. It's, it's a great channel. So, all right,

well, anything else you want to, so I'm going to put the link, obviously. We'll put the link in the, in the description box, so that anybody can, can click on the,

link actually you know what i'll try and do if if especially it'd be great if you remind me at the very end the video right now we'll put the link we'll put the actual we'll put i can one i think i can put your channel cool yeah and i can put the video that we've been talking about that you can just so the person can click it right now at the video it'll it should show up and you just click on it'll bring you right there or the subscriber well you could also subscribe once you get to the video but either way so yeah that might that might work too and i'll also put the link in the description. Yeah, thank you. That would be great. And again, earlier on when I was talking about how I got started, if I rambled, feel free to just chop that out. It's fine.

I think it's fun. It's something that I, like, I know the history of where I got to, but until it's actually coming out of my mouth, it's like, oh yeah, well, then that happened. Then that happened. And, you know, I was working, I was working in a gift shop when I started writing my scripts. Probably shouldn't have been doing that on the clock, but if you're going to stick me in a gift shop when I wanted to be a tour guide, then that's what I'm going to do. Whatever. And five years later, who cares? Did you ever, um, so on, I want to say it's Apple, there's a series called, um, it's called silo. Okay.

But it's based on the book, Wool. Now, Wool was the first commercially successful, self-published book on Amazon. Oh, okay. And the guy that wrote it had written, he'd gotten a publishing deal before for a science fiction book. He published it, got a real publishing deal, the book bombed.

He then wrote wool and nobody was interested. Like, yeah, the last book bombed. Like, okay. So he, at the same time, self-publishing, Amazon was coming out, right? KDP was coming out and you could self-publish your books.

When he wrote these books, he he was working as a librarian and he's like and I had time like I had time to write so there's not a ton you're not going to believe this

but a ton of people don't use libraries like they're funded but people don't really use them so he had downtime right so he's taking notes he's writing it he ends up writing it

and he self-publishes it well first he starts he's publishing excerpts of it on a blog And then people are like, oh, you've got to put this into a book. So he makes an entire book, which was his plan. He makes this entire book. It's called wool.

And unless you read the book, you don't really understand it. Obviously, YouTube realized, that's not a good enough. We're going to go silo because they're actually, these people are living in a silo. Yeah. And it, so we're talking about it, it did very well. It blew up. That's awesome. And there was a huge article when I was locked up that I had read about it.

There was a couple articles, but one of them I read. And it talked about how like, I don't know, like the owner or the whatever, the managing editor, whoever it is, the president of like something like Simon & Schuster or Penguin or something, contacted him and said, look, we're willing to give you, I think it was like a million dollars for the rights to the book or the print rights. to put it in source and he went he said let's see I'm making $80,000 a month right now and he said and it's climbing yeah he goes so why would I take your million to walk away he said when in 10 when in 11 months from now 12 months I'll have that million yeah and I've already I've already made half a million like it had been like six months he's like I've already made it close to half a million because it was steadily going up and so they can came back and they said, okay, we'll give you, they never really tell what the number is for

the print rights. You can keep the self-publishing rights. For the Kindle, for the print on demand, we want the rights to print the books and put them in bookstores. And they gave them a small or reduced price, which was out of his, which I couldn't do anyway. Yeah. You're going to give me a bunch of money for the right to something that I don't have the rights to, that I can't do myself so it was one of the first books and it was massively huge but it's so funny too because they they option the film rights you did like all these some big company came in and optioned the film rights and then it never got made 15 years went by before it finally got made incredible that that's just what how long it takes yeah and you know but this guy so i've been watching

when i watched the first season only one season it's fucking amazing That's a great, great story. But, you know, this is a guy who had failed and kept going and was on his, it was his, he turned his side gig into something phenomenal. I mean, I love that. I love those guys who like, hey, I'm going to do this on the side. Maybe it turns into something. Maybe it doesn't.

And he actually failed once already. Failed so badly. Nobody wanted to give him a second chance. And instead of him saying, oh, well, then I'll just be a librarian. There's nothing wrong with that. you know instead he was I'm going to keep trying there's this new thing

that's the kind of mentality I always try to have like every once in a while I'll have a video that comes out and it bombs and I won't be able to figure out why like I did one on a guy called Dr. Chaos who was basically this computer nerd or two who took over the subways in Chicago over a

Saturday night he shut everything down and then they found like his little hideaway that he had basically he the reason that he shut it down is because they found him he was basically an urban explorer they caught him with cyanide on his body that he had stolen out of an abandoned factory

and he just kept it with him because he thought it was cool he was basically like an overgrown man child but it sounds of it but it shut down the subway because they went and they found that he had actually storage room that he had taken over changed the locks on and had all this computer hacking equipment and all kinds of stuff and they basically thought he was going to be the next Ted Kaczynski

when he was never going to be the next Ted Kaczynski. He was like just some nerd that liked to pal around with his friends and ghost slunking and all that stuff and found chemicals and kept them on him because he thought that made him cool. But they basically made a huge mountain

out of a molehill and it was a really interesting story. And it got I think like 15,000 views. It wasn't a popular video. And then I did one on like the coolest cooler, which was this Kickstarter campaign to create this cooler that

basically was just souped up a little and it was a very cut and dried story of the guy overpromised underdelivered and then didn't give anybody their money back like i didn't think it was a terribly like it wasn't the most interesting story i've ever covered but for some reason that one got a hundred thousand views and i couldn't figure it out having those two contrasts it would be very easy to throw your hands up in the air and be like i can't figure this out i'm just gonna i'm just gonna phone it in basically but i don't like that idea there's a book i read called the perennial seller by a guy named Ryan Holiday and it basically walks you through like the story you were just telling me with that silo how that happens and how artists go back to the drawing board

and they don't give up and don't just resign themselves to being a librarian or whatever and they keep going and it's perseverance in the end that pays off and that's something I always like if anybody ever says to me what if I want to get 50,000 views on YouTube like you have or 50,000 subscribers. What should I do? And I basically tell them, keep making stuff and always try and do a little bit better than the last time. And you'll get there. Right. Are there people that have 15 videos on their entire channel and millions of subscribers and millions of views? Sure. But what I would say is what were they doing before they made that channel that gave them the tools that they needed to be able to hit the ground running. I basically came

into making my channel with skills I picked up in high school and working at a TV station. for three months and the ability to research based off of getting the same four-year degree in history that anybody could get with a little bit about oafers. So I kind of started from a foundation of not really knowing what I'm doing and just going ahead. Now I would say my videos are much better produced, much better research. And it took that five years, but what I'm excited about is where could I be in five years from now? And maybe I'll have a different YouTube channel that I start, but only has five videos before it gets a million views or whatever. Maybe not. Maybe I'll stick with what I'm doing. The point is

you got to persevere. Always have to set yourself to that. Okay. That little bit of daily increase. And yeah. All right. So let's wrap it up. Let's wrap it up. Great conversation. I actually So going back to my very first video, the Casuo Nagano story, that's a video that, because I'm heading up on my five years after the channel, it's something I actually want to go back and research, even if I don't put together a new video or I do something for Patreon exclusive or whatever, I want to go back and revisit that story based off the skills I have now. So if you ever interested in talking about that story, about this Japanese fraudster who got murdered in front of 30 people because he was caught scamming the elderly, and it was on national television. literally getting stabbed in his apartment. You can hear the screens and all the TV reporters are just standing there listening to what happened.

It's a very interesting story how he built it up. And there's also some cult like elements. So if you're ever interested in chatting about that, I'd be more than willing to. But this was fun. I like, I don't get on podcasts very often, but I always have a great time. So thank you for this opportunity.

Hey, I really appreciate you guys watching the video. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. do me a favor please consider joining my patreon i am going to leave the link to anomaly docks or yeah anomaly docs the youtube channel and we're also going to put up the whatever they call that logo and we'll put up the video about marcus shrinker and i really appreciate you guys watching see you