Reply All - #165 The Mold and The Beautiful

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

This week, a conspiracy theory involving Jeffrey Epstein and a benign, wholesale furniture company, plus, the jam scandal that rocked Los Angeles. Yes Yes no is back, with special guest Jason Mantzoukas. Further Reading: The first tweet in this weeks YYN The second tweet The picture that goes along with the second tweet (warning... it's gross). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJVow. Welcome once again to Yes Yes, No, the segment on our show where normally we make a fool of our boss, who doesn't know anything about the internet. But this week, we get to make a fool of someone completely different. Jason Manzukas, actor, comedian. Make a fool. What type of, like, wow.

Wow. What a fuck. This is how you bring me in. This, wow. Like, you know what, Alex? Come at me as hard. as hard as you want, bro, because as long as Alex Bloomberg isn't here, I'm happy to make you the target of this segment.

As long as there's an Alex to ridicule, you don't mind who it is. As long as there's an Alex, my wrath will be limitless. Thank you for having me, Jenna. Watching a power and balance shift so fast really makes me happy. No, you know, you don't have social media. You don't do social media at all. So every time we do this, I give you my Twitter username and password. Do you want to just say what that is for the listener?

I will. I'm happy to. Right now it's, hello Jason, exclamation point, which will be changed by the time that this comes out. But it has been that password from at least today to the last time we recorded. Anyway, yeah, Jason comes to us with something he doesn't understand on the internet. And then we explain it to him. And he's definitely better no matter what for having learned it is what.

It is. That is, okay, A, not the case. I will say these forays into stuff like this are unsettling and disheartening. It is so strange to poke around in the internet, like into mean culture and stuff that I genuinely come across and I'm like, truly, because it'll happen to me every once in a while in normal life too. I'll see somebody will point to something and I'll be like, I just don't even know or reference. something. I just don't even know what you're talking about. And so whenever this comes up, and then I'm forced to root around, I am always shocked by how little, and it makes me feel old. It makes me feel like, oh, fuck, I missed out on like this kind of new language that people are speaking.

But also, like, you don't feel a sense of I want to participate in the new language. You're like the new language. I don't. It feels and seems like deeply, it seems bottomless and overwhelmingly negative. And on that note, why don't we get to our first tweet? Okay. Okay. So, I found this. Now, okay, this is a tweet from Sky Pink, which is at Mary Pin 41096045. That is the address. Okay. Then it says, and this is the body of the message, is expose Rachel Chandler, parentheses, Epstein's child handler, close parentheses, recruiting manager at Wayfair. Dot, dot, dot. And Wayfair is capitalized, so that's clearly a business of some sort or something.

Okay. And then there's a lot of hashtags. Hashtag child trafficking. Hashtag save the children. Hashtag know thy enemy. Hashtag Wayfair. Hashtag Wayfair trafficking. Hashtag pet trafficking.

Now, if you don't think there are a number of pictures attached to this post, you are wrong. There is a whole mess of pictures cobbled together in some sort of collage fashion. So there's a picture that is a woman in a fedora and underneath it it says Rachel Chandler, who is clearly the subject of this post. And then it says Rachel Chandler, comma, R.C. And then a little box, a little purple box, it says evil. And then it says Rachel Chandler, a former sex slave of Jeffrey Epstein is now a recruiter slash handler of underage children for Epstein's Island, parentheses, Little St. James. And what does that say at the end? And clientele.

Okay. Then it's, then in another thing, there's a LinkedIn. profile and it just says it's circled that recruiting manager at Wayfair, I'm assuming for this same woman, Rachel Chandler. Then a picture of Rachel Chandler with former president Bill Clinton. Right. Oh, and then it's okay. Guys, I haven't even finished describing the thing yet. There's a whole part of Twitter, which is just like the crazy wall from Homeland.

Yeah. Then there's a picture of Reese Witherspoon, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and who is the, oh, and Wayfair director Andrea Young, I'm assuming, because she is, she is labeled by name. Okay, got it. So now, there's a picture of these four women, and it says, hashtag, follow the rabbit hole. And then it says, hashtag Wayfair, hashtag child trafficking, hashtag know thy enemy. and that is right? Is that the totality of I think you got it. Obviously I know some of these keywords but I have genuinely no idea what this is. Where are you at on this one, PJ?

The picture, the reveal of the picture where Reese Witherspoon is involved in this is truly where I am like, whoa, what? Queen Reinh. Reese? How? What's happening?

I'm worried. I'm, like, probably, I know that there's a door here that I've, like, mostly avoided opening. I know that there was, like, a wayfair thing. Like, I know the barest, barest bones of it. Alex Golden, where are you at on this suite?

I hate to say this. Because, you know, you know people who, like, who, like, when there's a car accident, the rubberneckers. I'm like an internet rubbernecker. So like I keep up with this stuff. I know what's going on with it all the time.

And it's careful. Internet rubbernecker is a porn category. So admitting you are one is, you know, pretty dangerous. It's not good for me. But it's sort of where I'm at. So I'm at 100% comprehension on this one. A hundred percent? Says the man who is in an attic that looks like it is.

some sort of murder barn. Yep. You actually look like right now, like, surrounded by weird digital synths and, like, a low attic ceiling, you look like the person who's cast in the movie as the expert on, like, exactly this tweet. Like, they saw your audition tape and they were like, we don't need to see anybody else. I tried to dress the place up. Look, I've got Christmas lights up now.

Doesn't that come for something? It's the part of the movie where my guy has the flash drive, but is like, but I don't have any way to decrypt it. Wait a minute. I know a guy. And then I show up to Alex's attic where he's like. like busy composing the synth score to this bad movie I'm in. And he's like, I can decrypt this.

I just need time. And I'm like, Alex, we don't have time. The one thing we don't have is time. Your only other line is enhance. Can we enhance that? Can we enhance quadrant four? Basically, you guys are saying that I'm Kevin Smith in live free or die hard. You wish.

You wish you were Kevin Smith in live free or die hard. All right. Okay. Okay. We're at yes, no, basically no. Yeah. And I'm a no, no, no, no, except for knowing some of these keywords. So what keywords do you know?

You know, I know Epstein is obviously referring to Jeffrey Epstein and I know it refers to his island and so forth. I know that. I know there are Epstein connections to the Clinton, so I know that. hashtag pedophilia hashtag child trafficking isn't this all the QAnon stuff and all that is kind of down this rabbit hole

am I in the right zone? Yeah, yeah. But I don't know who Rachel Chandler is. I don't know what Wayfair is, etc. And I don't, and I genuinely don't know what Reese Witherspoon is doing in this scenario.

I'm worried. So, So, Alex, you want to walk it out? Yeah. So basically you've been dropped into the latest Q&ONONN conspiracy. Oh, okay. So it is a Q&OND. It is a Q&ON thing.

So it's not just Q&ON like. It is like Q&N like. It is very much Q&ON brand conspiracy. So the way that Q&ON works is it's essentially like a shotgun that sprays anybody that, like, they'll go after celebrities, but then anybody who's within proximity of a celebrity, they also get some of the buckshot. You know? Like basically if you've been in a picture with a famous person. Yeah. Like, for example, if you're a young woman who is in a picture with Bill Clinton that's been online for years, it might come to pass that in 2020, you are suddenly at the center of this of a conspiracy.

Okay. I see. Okay. And that is the woman that we're talking about here. Yes. Who is, who is, you know, identified in this thing. So Rachel Chandler is, I've done a bunch of research on. her and it's very hard to do because she's not like a super public person she's like a socialite

she used to be a model now she's a photographer she's married to a guinness beer sion okay they're just like rich social people they're people in the world super rich socialite yep um unfortunately i don't know if it's fucking serial killer movie like if it's like police procedurals or what that has taught people to believe that like everybody who's committing a crime has to telegraph it somehow. Uh-huh. There's this profound belief that Rachel Chandler, her name is Rachel Chandler, not because that was her name at birth, but because she wants to signal to people that she was Jeffrey

Upstein's child handler, aka Chandler. Oh, my God. No. Yeah. That she changed her legal name as a way to illustrate her job title? Yes. Wow. Wow. Why don't they, why, why this Chandler of all the Chandler's?

Because she's in a picture with Bill Clinton, I bet. Because she's in a picture with Bill Clinton on what looks like a private jet. And even though it's been proven that it's not Jeffrey Epstein's private jet, it has nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein at all. The Q&N people are convinced that this is, in fact, Jeffrey Epstein's private jet. Okay. And that they are en route to Little St. James, which is the island that Jeffrey Epstein owned in the Caribbean? I don't know.

I know there was an island, but I don't know. It's in the Virgin Islands. So this poor woman has been like pulled into this conspiracy theory where she is basically being painted as like a ringleader of Epstein's child abuse ring. But okay. And already, sorry to interrupt you so quickly, but like, and maybe this is like an unanswerable question. But like why? Why this? Why now?

Because Q put it in one of his drops. Oh, okay. Jason, do you understand? Q and his drops? No. Q is a person or collection of people who go on the internet

and post these very sort of abstract these very abstract and open to interpretation. They're like horoscopes, but for like crazy boomers. Like it's like vague sort of haiku posts

that then after the fact Q fans can read and be like, oh, three birds fly at midnight there were like three planes that flew at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and therefore like you predicted whatever.

Here's one. Here's one I can read you from July 9th of 2019. I'm picking this totally at random. Welcome to Epstein Island. Ask yourself, is this normal? What does a temple typically symbolize? What does an owl symbolize? Dark religion? Tunnels underneath? How many captured in Rachel Chandler's pick? Rooms indicate size. Hallways shown. Symbolism will be their downfall. These people are evil. Also, if these questions are like derailing or whatever, just tell me. But like, this has actually been a

question I've had is like, because QAnonon prior to Jeffrey Epstein being a thing, Like being like a known person was constantly talking about sort of like, you know, like made up child sex rings. And the idea that like Trump was, you know, fighting the deep state and like trying to stop stuff like this. Now in a world where there's actual evidence of this like horrific, horrific thing happening. But like Trump is friends with Jeffrey Epstein or at least was like buddies and was in pictures with him. Like how does that, has that informed like Q mythology? Do you know what I mean? Oh boy, do I have an answer for you?

Okay. I was wondering this too. I've been wondering this for a while and I actually recently tried to figure this out. So apparently the idea is that that video from 1992 where they're like at a party watching cheerleaders dance and they seem to be like talking about how attractive they are. Trump basically has been undercover trying to bust him for decades. Oh, yeah. The idea is that the reason Trump has been photographed or actually videotaped with Jeffrey Epstein talking about how Jeffrey Epstein is his first. friend and Jeffrey Epstein like him, like young women, is because he was an undercover real estate mogul trying to stop it from happening. And I got to see this all happen in real time this week. I got to see the sort of conspiracy community synthesize a new piece of contradictory information this week. Which was, so as you know, Trump is very outspoken about calling people losers and weirdos and blah, blah, blah. And Gielaine Maxwell, who is currently being charged for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually exploit underage girls, her name came up at a press conference.

And Donald Trump was asked to answer a question about her. And his response was, I wish her well. Which is super weird. Which is a super weird thing to say about a person. Yeah. For somebody who is up on those charges. So at first, I went into the conspiracy subreddit to watch people talk about it. And people were just like, why is he always stick his foot in his fucking mouth?

It's unbelievable. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And there was a lot of like gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. But then by the following day, what it was was a signal. It was a threat to all of the actors who might try and assassinate her that he will be watching. I wish her well means you better not touch her because I am here to make sure that justice is served. Oh, wow. It's so interesting.

This idea that the online community has to decode. or synthesize this stuff when you described earlier the post that Q had put up welcome to this, the temple looks like this or what is an owl symbolize. It literally sounded like you were starting

a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Oh my God. You know, you know, and that us as the players are going to have to decode and figure out how to move through this world that you've created, this cryptic world

of puzzles and games and codes and figuring it out and to figure it out means you are now enlightened. You're on the inside rather than the outside, right? Exactly. And that brings us to Wayfair. That brings us to Wayfair. Okay, what is Wayfair?

Okay, I know this is the part where I have like a tiny little whatever of knowledge. Wayfair is an e-commerce company that sells furniture and home goods. Oh, okay. They sell like wholesale furniture. My mom used to have a discount there for some reason. So she'd be like, oh.

Savage flex, PJ. Savage flex. I was going to say that it's incredibly suspicious, given all of this. Alex, you really want to go down that road? Nancy Warren will hear this program. I'm sorry, Miss Warren. Mrs. Mrs.

Alex. This is fascinating right now. Is that your mom is Nancy Warren? Yeah. Yeah. I'm just saying. My mom has a Twitter account that's like her name and some numbers after it. And she only uses it to tweet at the reply all show account to say like,

those guys really work hard and people should appreciate their work. I'm not giving too much guff if new episodes aren't coming out on time. That's really funny. Is she the one that said on the reply all Twitter that Jason Manzukas is a real hunk? Mom, I'm sorry that this is happening. Every episode. Is she the one that says, I hope it's a Jason Manzukas episode? every time.

Jason Manzukas, what a snack? Mom, I'm so sorry. Didn't your mom put up a post? I tried to, see, it's weird. I tried to use one of your mom's tweets that said, I heart Jason Manzukas, hashtag snack, hashtag Hollywood bad boy, hashtag the Zoops is loose.

I actually got my... So, Wayfair is a furniture website. Okay, so the way this Wayfair stuff started is someone, I think, totally independent of Q&OND, noticed that there are these incredibly expensive cabinets on the website Wayfair. They're like these industrial cabinets. As a matter of fact, why don't I screen share with you guys, so you can take a look at this?

Yeah. Oh, my God. Can you first describe the cabinets? Just describe the cabinets. They're really, they're the cabinets. They give you a generic dorm room. University. They're just like big white industrial board. They look like, yeah, industrial

cabinets that you might put in the garage to put like rakes and brooms and so forth. They remind me of the cabinets that I used to keep the vegetables in at subway. Okay. Alex gets 20 bucks every time. I think PJ and I did a pretty good job of describing them, Alex. But then

you were like, people need to know I worked at subway. I need people to know. I'm just going to sit this one out. You guys can figure out the rest of it. All right. Oh, the cabinets are really expensive. They're $15,000 subway vegetable cabinet.

They're very expensive. It's true. Yeah. The logic that this person had was the cabinets are very expensive and they all have women's names. So the names are like Samia, Naraya, Yerica. they all have the names of women. As like the product line. As the product line.

Like the same as like Alexa or, you know, you know, or like the IKEA lines that have all their weird names. Exactly. Like the Billy bookshelf is the IKEA bookshelf. Then they started scouring like missing persons databases. Oh, if you type in this woman's name to see if a person with this name has ever been kidnapped. Yes. And let me guess. They found people whose names match these cabinets that are missing, assuming then you could basically go to the Wayfair website and order a person, right, under the guise of ordering this cabinet.

Right. I just want to say, even for a conspiracy theory, this is so nonsensical. Like, the idea that they're like, yeah, a furniture company must be involved in trafficking because they have a suspiciously expensive cabinet. Well, I mean, listen, if your mom has a discount, it's a lot cheaper. I'm just saying. Mom, I'm so fucking sorry. I mean, like, your mom is now, I believe, by the transitive property of mathematics involved in child trafficking.

I really want to just tell my mom to skip this episode. I feel like she's going to be stressed out. She's a great mom. She's a great mom. Oh, how dare you? So as near as I can tell, this whole conspiracy theory originated on Reddit, and I just wanted to read one of the top posts

in the thread where I first saw it. It's by someone called Skydiving Squid. They have 387 upvotes on this thing. An associate of mine discovered some items being sold on Wayfair a couple days ago and reached out to me asking if they seem suspicious. And the associate of mine. Another loony tunes from the internet.

It was items we initially found where white cabinets being sold anywhere from $10,000 to $18,000 USD. Each cabinet was identical, yet somehow had different prices and discounts. Now, if that's not odd enough, each cabinet had a girl's name and a number between 4 and 12 next to it. Every name we looked up was a child that recently went missing. Yesterday morning, someone on Reddit discovered there were pillows that were selling for $10,000 on Wayfair. These identical pillows can be purchased on Amazon for $32. Here's the thing.

Wayfair is scrambling right now. Initially, they said this was a conspiracy around a price glitch of their specific white cabinet. Waifer essentially called everyone on this subreddit directly idiots for making something out of nothing. A price glitch that affects only one product, a glitch that duplicates the same product multiple times, assigns different prices between $9,000 and $18,000 and gives them all missing female children's names and ages, we stumbled upon a child sex trafficking front on Wayfair, and now Wayfair is scrambling. Those kids have... But also, sorry to interrupt, why would they be hiding the children in pillows?

I don't think they're hiding the children in pillows. I think the idea is you say, oh, I want the Ereza cabinet, and then instead... Also, why would... If you kid have the child, then you sold them on a wholesale furniture website that my mom has a discount on them. Sorry, Mom. Why wouldn't you at least change the name of the child? That I don't know.

Doesn't that seem like you would be leaving a pretty obvious, like, trail? Yeah. You're asking me as though I have something to do with this. I don't. You're the one reading it, like, I will say passionately. Very passionately. Okay, so then they say, I have the screenshots. I have screenshots of all their white cabinets, black cabinets, and pillows.

The FBI has them now, and hopefully they're doing something to stop Wayfair. I doubt the corporations involved, but someone with access to their sale site is. I just hope the idiot can't somehow delete the system logs or get to. far. This is another win for Reddit, but it's far from over. Oh, wow. I mean, like, really, like, it's like, it really is you're described, what you're reading and what you're describing is someone who believes themselves to be on, like, a hero's journey. It's also awful because there are actually missing children. Like, somebody's kidnapped kid is getting, like, their name, I mean, is getting dragged into this stupid furniture

conspiracy. And on top of that, if you're then to follow it to the next least, which is they found someone who worked at fucking Wayfair. The actual job title was assistant vice president and recruiting manager, Rachel Chandler. So now they're hassling two Rachel Chandler's, a Rachel Chandler who's a photographer who has no need to work at Wayfair for any reason. Some other Rachel Chandler who has nothing to do with the one who also had nothing to do with a child trafficking ring. Like Wayfair had to issue a statement, which to me is like so, it like, it speaks to sort of the

just the tidal wave of people who are willing to buy this. So let me find their statement. They said, quote, there are, of course, no truths to these claims. The products in question are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately priced. Recognizing that the photos and descriptions provided by the supplier did not adequately explain the high price point, we've temporarily removed the products from the site to rename them and provide a more in-depth description in photos that accurately depict the product to clarify the price point. It seems totally reasonable.

God. Well, we're at a very sad yes. We're at a very sad yes. Oh, God. Yes, yes, yes, I guess. Should we go back to the tweet? Yeah, sure. Do you want to explain this tweet to us, Jason? Sure. Okay. So again, the tweet is expose Rachel Chandler, parentheses Epstein's child handler, parenthesis, recruiting manager at Wayfee. hashtag child trafficking, hashtag save the children, hashtag know thy enemy, hashtag wayfar, hashtag wayfar, hashtag wayfarfare trafficking, hashtag pedophilia. And then it is pictures of this socialite Rachel Chandler, but then a LinkedIn profile from a different Rachel Chandler who works for this company called Wayfair, a picture of the socialite Rachel Chandler with Bill Clinton.

And then my favorite picture, which has Reese Witherspoon, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Wayfair Director Andrea Young. And my now understanding of this is to all say that this is part of this theory that there are pedophiles who are using, in this case, the Wayfair company online catalog and finding these expensive cabinets. The cabinets are so expensive that the only way they could be charging this much money for these cabinets, that have female names. And so the theory that is being proposed is that the wayfair is you are able to order children from their company under the guise of I'm ordering this industrial cabinet.

And that this Rachel Chandler is actually not Chandler, but is child handler. Chandler, that's what this is purporting, right? That's what this tweet, have I done it right? Yeah, you've done it right. I don't, I wish I hadn't. Sorry. Such a terrible, terrible culture. I wish I hadn't.

I don't want it. I don't want to know all this. This is why I'm not on social media. This is why you get all here at social media by podcast. Yeah. Coming up after the break, scandalous jam. Welcome back to the show. Jason, what else have you got?

Okay. Next one is, Okay, so I know a little bit about this, but I don't know a lot about this. But I'm curious because it is Los Angeles where I live adjacent. So this is from Jack at I am Jack Manning. And then it is, okay, now the tweet is, the tweet has a structure to it, which is in the upper left-hand corner, it says mold on jam. In the upper right-hand corner, it says squirrel and it's S-Q-I-R-L, which is a restaurant here in Los Angeles,

squirrel on Virgil Avenue. And then below those in the middle is the hand-holding emoji. And then it says unwanted organism on host. Okay? Okay. That's what it says. Now, I know a little bit about this in that I know nothing about this, just to be clear. Okay.

I know a little bit about this in that I saw a headline about the restaurant squirrel serving moldy food. Oh, it's so good. So that is what I know that this tweet is about that. Yes. But so I'm like, I know, I guess, I don't know, I know 30% of what this is maybe. Oh, you do not. know 30% of what this is. Oh, really? Okay. This is even better. Yeah. Oh, God. Okay. And Alex, you know nothing? No. I mean, now, thanks to Jason, I know that Squirrel is a, is a squirrel.

Okay. So just for background, squirrel is a very popular. It's been around from, I'm going to say, maybe the last six or seven years, an incredibly popular Los Angeles, like lunch, brunch, hipster, spot that has like high-end granola and yogurt and like very yummy, but like very basic kind of brunchy kind of food. Alex, just so you can get a sense of squirrel. Can I just show you this video of like, it's like a food network video of them making Blackberry Jam at squirrel just so you can like see and describe the place? Yeah.

Okay, wait, let me send you the link and you can screen share it. Okay. All right, here we go. Just east of downtown Los Angeles is a source. small cafe called squirrel. This is like Joy the Baker from the Food Network, learning how to make like the vaunted squirrel jam. But what they're really famous for is their jam,

made by squirrel's owner, Jessica. Hi, Jeff. How's good. It's just like a cutesy, hipster. Yeah, yeah. It looks like a lot of places in New York. All right. Do you want to keep this going?

Nice lighting. Jam. Okay, cool. PJ, have you been there in your... I was taken there by fellow podcaster, Rishikesh Haraway from Sog Exploder. Yes. Fellow friend of all of us.

And like a cool, you know, like, like, like, like, of course, of course Rishikash Hereway would take you to squirrel. Yes. Yes. I indict you all. So this place is like, it's like a very cool, like, it's like one of those places like when Rishikash took me. He was like, it's kind of embarrassing because it's like such a hipstery, popular like capital C,

cool place. But like it's also really good. So we're going to go. We went and it was great. And as like a pretentious person, I was like, I went to Squirrel. It was like bragging about something I didn't understand. But so it, what I didn't know and what basically this whole story came out a few weeks ago, it's like wonderful, which is like squirrel. The first thing they got famous for was the woman who started the chef named Jessica Coslow.

She was really good at making jam. And she made this like delicious jam that everybody was crazy about. And like before she met a restaurant, it was like she would go to like, farmers markets and like and the squirrel jam is still like the thing like there is a a reply out producer who like for reasons it will become clear i'm not going to name who bought lots and lots of squirrel jam and keeps it in or previously two weeks ago is keeping it in her freezer as like a special treat to eat oh wow a backlog of that jam yeah she's cramming that jam she's cramming the jam all right okay so so so so i don't know what it was like two weeks ago or

whatever. This guy named, wait, let me look this up. I want to get this right. This guy named Joe Rosenthal, who's just like, does not live in Los Angeles. I think he lives in the Midwest. He is a mathematician, but he also likes to blog about food. And he started posting on his Instagram account. He had like 20 Instagram stories, which he called The Fungle. And he was claiming that squirrel, this beloved fancy like emperors new clothesy, uh, L.A. restaurant that when they made this special jam, they made it in unsanitary conditions and that it was growing layers and layers of mold. And that instead of throwing that jam out, they would just scrape the mold off the top

and then sell everybody the jam. And can I ask you a question? because that is the, that's basically with the headline I saw was. That's so gross. But my question was like, I know there are some foods that mold is part of it, like cheeses and stuff like that, right? This is bad, right? It isn't like good.

This isn't a way you make jam. Is it? No. No. Okay. No. Okay. That's what I was like.

Jam and like I had to look this up after this happened, but like jam is definitely not supposed to be moldy. It's not like how blue cheese is moldy on purpose. Like the chef. Koso, she said that the reason her jam was molding was because it was low in sugar. But then her former employee said, no, the reason her jam is moldy is because there's a mold-covered fan spewing mold spores over the jam as we're making it. In any case, this mold was not supposed to be there.

Got it. Great. So let me send you guys a picture. I'm going to just text this to both of you. You guys have your phones, right? Yes. Yeah. So the tipster leaked a photo of the purported mold bucket. where when they scraped the mold off, they would keep it in this bucket,

especially for that. I have not received, oh. Oh, whoa. It looks like someone tossed a bunch of paint chips into some jam. Oh, that just literally triggered my gag reflex. Oh, that's so gross. The way that the, oh my God, it is. My eyes watered and it triggered my gag reflex.

specifically the way that the mold is pushed up against the edge of the barrel, like folds and folds of mold, like has been pushed. Ugh. It's truly disgusting. That's so fucking gross, dude. This is next level gross. Holy shit. Wow.

Okay. Yeah. And according to Joe Rosenthal's informant, they were making this jam in an illegal secret kitchen space that was purposely hidden from health inspectors. According to him, they told him that when the health inspectors would show up, they'd be locked in this windowless room.

They would have to turn off all the lights and block the door with garbage bags so that no light would leak out and the health inspectors wouldn't see it. Oh, so they're like cooking their kitchen books. They have like a, they have the big kitchen up front and the real bold kitchen in the back. Yes.

Whoa. At least that is the version of the story that Rosenthal said he heard from the former employees. Jessica Coslow, the chef, has a slightly different story, which is, she says, like, yes, I did have a, she calls it a secondary kitchen that the health department didn't know about. She says they were only using it to store jam, not make jam. And she says that it was sort of like a shortcut they took in the early days. And eventually they fell into health department compliance is what she says. But the other thing that Coslow did that I think sort of made people trust her less is that when this came out and people were arguing about like what exactly happened, she basically said the thing that your brain.

wanted to tell you, Jason. She was like, you know, like some food has, like, mold on it. Like, cheese has mold on it. Yeah. You know, we, this might seem gross to you guys. But, like, the reason I know this is okay is because we're operating under the guidance of a mycologist, like a mold expert, this guy, Patrick Hickey, like, he said this is totally fine.

And she was like, you know, that bucket, like, that was something like we had for like a second, like years and years ago. So then the tipster sends another picture of the bucket, but with a date stamp on it of 2019 and the Washington Post gets in touch with the renowned mold expert and he's like, I've never talked to this woman. I have no recollection of telling her anything. He was like, I guess I said in like a BBC interview or something that at home, if you have like jam in your fridge and there's a little mold on it, you can scrape it off. But I would never have told a restaurant to scrape mold off the top of their jam as like a normal matter, of course.

What? Wow. Okay. Holy cow. And then sort of, I guess, like, the last step of this was like, like, I don't really know LA neighborhood super well, but I guess the neighborhood that she's in is sort of like been a gentrifying neighborhood and the restaurant's sort of been a part of it. And Kozlo had given these quotes a few years ago about like how like the only way she could make her restaurant work was by taking lots of shortcuts, which she said in like a puckish way because people weren't thinking about moldy jam. And also by like living in a real shitty neighborhood, which I think people were. You're like, oh, this is gross, and the ethics of it are gross, and this place that everybody loved, like, maybe we do not love so much now. Interesting. I mean, like, how has this not come out sooner if this is what's been going on for years? Because I can't stress enough.

Squirrel is, like, a very popular restaurant, you know, in Los Angeles. It is not, like, just like a little neighborhood spot. It's like, it's a popular place. So, like, I'm surprised, in other words, I'm surprised this hasn't come out. simply by the nature of how much press squirrel gets. I think partly that this may have come out when it did is that the chef was on kind of a publicity tour because she's the author of a new book,

I think it's publishing this month. Yeah, July 21st, 2020. It's called The Squirrel Jam Buck. Oh, boy. It's not called The Mold and the Beautiful? It's not too late. Oh, my God. Wow.

This is a food whose time has come, declared Mark Bittman, about Squirrel, the much-beloved Los Angeles restaurant that locals, tourists, and critics like all flock do. Squirrel all began with jam. Mark Bittman, the minimalist cooks at home, Mark Bittman? Yes. It just, it makes me happy because it feels like, um, it's so stupid. And it's so, I mean, like people, people who worked in that restaurant who feel like they were mistreated. That's not stupid.

But, like, fancy people eating more. Goldie Jam feels like it belongs to the world before we all had to live in caves because of the pandemic. Like, it just really... I just want to say that in the industrial cabinet at the subway I worked at, everything was very clean. Yeah, I bet. Wait, Alex, you went to the subway? Yeah, you didn't know that. Maybe it's a callback.

Maybe that part was cut out. We don't know. Can we make a note? Please cut that part out, truthy. So this will just be a second reference that we reference having a. existed in the past. And then the conspiracy theorist can be like, what was said? What was that a callback to?

The missing 17 minutes. Release the full tapes. Release the truth. Release the shruthy cut. It is weird that it's all about stories about like secret underground terrible things happening, but then sometimes they happen. So what happened to this? Like what happened to this restaurant?

I mean, they're still open. They've gotten a lot of bad press. The book's still coming out. Um, Coslow has apologized. She said something in the fact of like, you know, back when we were starting out, we were scrappy, we cut some corners. I would not cut those corners now. Um, I don't know. I actually like my, this was like, you know when you just like a story that like I've been to this restaurant one time.

I didn't eat the jam. It's your favorite restaurant. Bear restaurant. But I was like enjoying it. So like I read every single thing that was published about this stupid content. controversy. And the only thing I didn't get to see, which I am still curious about, is just like, like tomorrow is there still a big line outside of this restaurant? And I feel like maybe for the 40% of people that are like, I'll never eat there again, there's like 20% of people are like, oh, I mean to check that place out. There's probably like no line right now. Yeah. So this is just so I can do the whole bit. Yeah. This is a tweet because I think I get, oh, sorry, Alex, do you get it? Yes. I think so.

You said it a little bit like I'm not sure if you do. Okay. Do you want to recap the tweet? Oh, oh, I get it. Yeah, I get it. I can recap it if you want. Well, I don't want to put you on the spot. Surely you've done your bath homework.

So would you like me to do it? Yeah, do it. Okay. This is wild to be a part of. Things are out of control. Okay, so it says on one to the left, it says mold on gym. to the right it says squirrel on Virgil Avenue and then the handshake, underneath

the handshake it says unwanted organism on host meaning that mold on jam is an unwanted living organism on a host which is the jam squirrel on Virgil Avenue is a restaurant that has gentrified

that has helped rapidly gentrify a community and is itself an unwanted organism on the host of this neighborhood am I right? Yeah. I think so. Yeah, that makes sense. I told you I got it.

Yikes, guys. That's a yikes. Food stuff for me is like, that's, I really, like, my eyes watered and I got like gaggy looking at that. I urge everybody to seek out that picture because it's a straight barf. We'll put it in the, we'll put it in the show notes. So you can straight barf. So it'll be unavoidable. Jason, thanks for doing this.

Yeah, thank you. Guys, what an absolute delight. I mean, basically what we did is gross you out and tell you about horrible things that are going on to the world. It's a bummer. You know what? The world was a better place before you went into your closet and turned on your microphone. Now I'm going to walk out of my closet into my house and be depressed for the rest of the night. Thanks, guys. Thanks.

What a great Friday night. Reply All is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. The show's produced by Shruti Pinnaminani, Fia Benin, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, Jessica Young, and Emmanuel Jochi. Our executive producer is Tim Howard. We were mixed by Rick Kwan. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Lisa Wang. It is Lisa's last week on the show.

Lisa stayed on longer than her intended internship to continue to help us during this completely unprecedented and bizarre time. And she's great, and we will miss her a lot. Thank you so much, Lisa. Special thanks this week to Brandy's Adrosny. Our theme song is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, additional music production by Mari Romano. Matt Lieber is the satisfying mechanical click and whir of a jukebox switching records.

You can listen to our show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to be replaying some of our favorite episodes for the month of August while we work on new stories. Thanks for listening, and we will see you in September.